furiousmaximus | [sandbox]

[sandbox]

Antillar Maximus stands at the far end of the Elinarch. He is the ranking officer out with the cohort on guard for a surprise attack from the Canes. They'd be beaten back, but there were a lot of them out there, and they might come again. Tavi would have been the ranking officer, but Max had finally convinced him to get some real sleep four hours before. Without furies to draw on, the commander couldn't push himself as hard as his troops could. Besides, Max knew his business.

His eyes scan across the terrain in front of him taking in the still-smoldering ruins where the firetrap had done less than they had hoped. Behind him he hears the steady rhythm of the Legion's engineers improving the fortifications along the bridge.

For one long moment, Max closes his eyes as he thinks about all the men they lost. But they had held. They had held.

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He shakes his head.

"No I shouldn't have," he argues, pointing towards the city. "Because I want to hear what they have the second they get back. Who did you send in that party?"

"Two men from the engineers, a squad of your Crows for security." Max grins suddenly, "And Ehren. He's got an eye for... odd applications."

"Ehren came back from the scouting party and you didn't wake me?" he asks, sounding none too pleased with that.

"Did he have anything to report?"

Max eyes his friend, "If he'd had anything worth waking you over, I would have."

Then he relents, "No changes. No sign of refugees hiding out waiting for the Cane to bypass them, no sign of the Cane heading our way again. I think he's right: they're pulling back to reorganize since we burned their old command structure."

"We burned their old puppetmaster," Tavi corrects. "Nasaug is the leader of the warrior caste and for all intents and purposes, the warleader. He's alive and well and a better strategist than I can be comfortable about. He's probably settling all the lose ends from the ritualist camp and getting a thorough lay of the land."

"The stuff that they really should have done as soon as they landed," Max nods. "Damn, I hate competent enemies."

He laughs, very quietly, and shakes his head.

"Well, unfortunately, Alera has plenty of them. Have any dispatches from the capitol come in?"

"Not yet." Max shakes his head, "I really would have gotten you up for that. But," he shrugs, "no Cursors are here to give us our mail from the First Lord." He grins a bit at his own joke.

Tavi gives him a mildly dirty look before scrubbing his face with one hand.

"And do you have any numbers from Foss on the wounded? How many up and able? How many dead?"

His voice didn't change as he said the last, but there was a subtle difference to his tone.

Guilt.

"I've got them," Max's voice is soft. "The dead are bad enough, but our medicos have just about reached their limit. I don't think we're going to lose any more men, at least not those with any sort of injury that can be crafted, but I do think we're about to lose the use of our watercrafters. They need food and rest. We're probably going to be reduced to our thousand or so effectives and a bunch of walking wounded for at least the next day."

Max frowns, "There's just no way we can push our watercrafters farther. They're already making dangerous mistakes. They have to take a break."

"And no news of reinforcements," he says tiredly.

"Split them into more shifts," he continues, lifting his head. "We'll have less in the tents at any given time, but it'll also mean they'll have more time to rest and should be more functional."

He gives Max a crooked, weary grin.

"It'll be slower going, but it should mean we'll end up with more alive at the end of the day."

"Will do, sir." The usual hint of mockery is absent in Max's tone.

Then it comes back, "You look awful, you know that right?"

"I look like the crows've already picked me over, yes," he agrees with a sigh. "I know. And I'm sure Kitai will be by soon to drag me back into bed. But while I'm still up, I'm getting something done."

Max barks a sudden laugh and leers, "I'm sure that Kitai will drag you back to bed and you'll still be up."

That gets Max a shove and a mock-glare.

"Do you ever manage to pull your mind from the gutter?"

"Oh," Max grins unrepentantly, "Are you saying I'm wrong?"

"I'm saying--"

He scrubs his face again.

"I don't know what I'm saying."

Kitai was rather up front about their activities. So up front, on fact, that they'd been caught a few times already by messengers bringing information to him. Tavi, however, was the only one who turned red.

Max laughs heartily. "It's about time, Calderan. There were days back at the Academy when I despaired of you ever finding a woman," he teases.

"I was already claimed," he points out with a small laugh of his own. "Well and truly claimed. By the Marat Ambassador, no less."

Max lets out a long-suffering sigh, "You weren't when you first arrived. You spent two years avoiding all the perfectly ~~attractive~~ nice girls I tried to set you up with."

"First of all," he points out. "I was busy. On top of that, whether I knew it or not, I was already claimed. And I seriously doubt Kitai would have taken to some other girl on my arm all that well."

He hadn't told Max the extent of his bond with Kitai, but the other man was a trained Cursor. Surely he'd noticed that the pale girl's eyes matched his own exactly.

What Max noticed, and what he admitted to noticing, were certainly two different things. But on this point, he was willing to concede that Tavi was right. Thinking about it, he laughs, "Great Furies, that would have been something to see." Kitai had made an impression on Max, even if she were a Marat.

"In the manner of things I'd rather leave to the crows," he says with a faint smile of his own.

Kitai's silent movement, coupled with the distraction of an ongoing conversation, mean that the first hint of her approach comes when she speaks, "What is it you would rather leave to the crows, Aleran?"

He doesn't startle. That's the last thing her voice does to him.

The tips of his ears, however, go a little red.

"Nothing important, Kitai," he tells her with a smile.

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