Page 177 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

MARCUS

For all their initial shock at discovering his army outside Celendrial’s gates, the Fifteenth and Twenty-Ninth showed their training as they moved to man Celendrial’s walls.

But there was no mistaking how they fumbled with aging catapults that had always been just for show.

“When was the last time those things were tested?”

Wex shrugged. “Lescendor is my domain, not Celendrial, but, I’d hazard, not recently.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes, marking the movements of the men on those walls, because even if only a few of the catapults worked, they could put up a decent fight.

Celendrial’s walls might be for show, but they were tall and thick, Cel construction at its finest. “Felix, I think it’s time Celendrial gets a taste of what it’s like to stare down their own war machine. ”

A taste of the fear they’d shoved down the throats of nearly every nation across Reath.

“Yes, sir.”

The horn blew a series of notes, repeated by each legion as the message raced across the wall of men converging on the city.

Then the noise began.

Weapons slammed against shields to the rhythm set by the drums, thousands of men shouting the same wordless chant promising death.

It was deafening, and his horse squealed and pinned its ears, causing Marcus to miss his golden mare.

But he knew that inside the city, the ground and walls would be trembling, the noise flowing over the walls terrifying, and that panic would reign.

In the distance, smoke rose from the harbor.

Qian had obviously put fire to the docks to drive away ships, cutting off that line of escape for those who Marcus sought.

Those who’d know that they were whom he was coming for.

The circle of death tightened, and though the noise made it impossible for him to hear, Marcus’s imagination conjured visions of Celendrial’s streets.

Civilians screaming and racing to barricade themselves in their homes while legionnaires not on duty extracted themselves from brothels and wine houses and sleep to move to their positions, leaving the interior of the city devoid of policing.

“Signal,” he said to Felix, and the horns blew another series of prearranged notes that would mean one thing to those on the walls and another to the hundreds of men he’d ordered to sneak into the city during the dark hours, all dressed in plain clothes.

Wex cast a sideways look at him. “You aren’t actually planning to throw rocks at the walls, are you?”

Marcus smiled, knowing that his men inside would be racing about the city, filling the ears of every civilian they found with the same message.

The legions serve the people, not the tyrant.

“Rise up,” he murmured, seeing in his mind’s eye the million people in the city racing out into the streets.

People from every province across the Empire, from the northern tundra of Sibern to the redwood forests of Bardeen to those born of Celendor herself, all whose backs had been stepped upon by the polished and perfumed men who lorded over them from their perch on Celendrial’s Hill.

Men who’d ordered them terrorized and killed for resisting a tyrant.

Men who’d stood by while children were stolen from their parents to be turned into soldiers, then sent to die in order to line those same men’s coffers. “This is your fight. Rise up.”

His front lines had reached range of the catapults, and Marcus ordered the men to stop, but to continue with the noise.

Over and over, he had the signalmen repeat the same signal.

Those on the walls knew by now that the signal meant something different than their training told them, but rather than easing their fear that they were about to be hit by a barrage of rock, it increased it.

Because they knew that something was happening, and that it would not be good.

An accurate assessment, because the signal told his men inside the walls to spread the word that the legions were not here to harm the people but to defend them.

A duty Marcus had shirked for far too long.

The legionnaires on the walls abruptly turned to look behind them into the city. Marcus smiled as they began to understand that the true threat was not the army behind them but the masses they’d so violently subjugated.

“Silence,” Marcus ordered, and within a few heartbeats, his army was quiet. Motionless.

Waiting.

Marcus rode his horse forward a dozen paces ahead of the front line, then stopped, listening to the clash of weapons, the shouts of fear, the screams of pain, and then… the roar of triumph.

The gates burst outwards. Yet rather than a wall of legion spears, dozens of civilians raced out to sprint toward Marcus. “The city is yours, Legatus!” one of them shouted.

There was an undeniable allure to that statement, but Marcus only shook his head. “Celendrial belongs to no one man. She belongs to the people.” He lifted his voice and shouted, “Thirty-Seventh, you have your orders! Root out the rats and bring them to the Curia. Alive.”

His legion exploded past him, surging under the mouth of the snarling golden dragon above the gates and into the city, the centurions all carrying lists of names. Felix nodded once at Marcus as he passed, his friend’s target the tyrant himself.

Once they were all through the gates, Marcus handed off the Thirty-Seventh’s standard to Servius, then nodded at his guard. “With me.”

They moved into the city, past the ranks of Twenty-Ninth and Fifteenth that were on their knees under the eyes of countless armed civilians, past streets splattered with blood and littered with bodies, for insurrection always had a cost. Past endless balconies and doorsteps filled with people shouting “Libertas!”, their fists pumping the air, and toward the Hill that loomed over it all.

It was crawling with his legion, who were bodily dragging every senator from their villa, ignoring their screaming wives.

The silence of their watching servants told Marcus everything he needed to know about what type of men they were.

Only a few senators walked out of their own accord, some nodding at Marcus as they were escorted to the Curia.

Where there would be a reckoning.

He reached the Egnatius villa in time to find Tiberius leaving in the company of a group of Thirty-Seventh.

“Legatus,” his brother-in-law said, inclining his head. “Bold, as always. There were better ways than this.”

“The people said otherwise.” Marcus rode past him. “In case I don’t have another opportunity, I wanted to let you know that Agrippa is marked as deceased in my ledgers, but last I saw him in Mudamora, he was alive. Do not go looking for him—he’s made a good life for himself.”

Tiberius stiffened, but Marcus was already past him, riding through the gardens to where his sister, still dressed in her night clothes, stood holding a baby. Her other children clutched her skirts and wept, though they went still at the sight of him.

“Brother,” Cordelia said sourly. “You have a way of doing things that I can’t say that I care for.”

“It’s not my way,” he replied. “It’s the Empire’s way, only this is the first time she’s been on the receiving end of it. It’s good for you to feel what it’s like. For your children to feel what it’s like. May you all remember it in the days and years to come.”

She huffed out a breath, then handed the baby to her eldest child, murmuring for them to go back inside. “Spare me the speeches. Why are you here, Marcus?”

“Isn’t my presence what you asked for? For me to return to Celendrial and use my power to do right by my own people rather than doing wrong against those on the far side of the world?”

“Yes,” Cordelia answered. “But you aren’t here because I asked you to be.

Nor are you here because it was the right thing for you to do.

I think not even Teriana influenced your choice to return, not her hold on your heart or the fact she defeated you.

So why did you come home, brother? Because we both know that you being here will have a great cost.”

Marcus considered her words, then said, “I think we all have beliefs so core to our heart that they define us. Influence every action, every choice. For me, it has always been to safeguard those who mattered to me the most: my family. To do whatever it took to keep them safe from those who’d do them harm, no matter what acts it took.

No matter that those acts made me a villain of the worst sort.

No matter that I left ash and death in my wake. ”

“You’ve decided to change that belief, then?”

“No. I just realized that I need to put my real family first.”

Cordelia didn’t answer, but he swore he saw relief in her eyes.

“When last we saw each other, you would have heard Wex say to me, ‘Just because you were born to them doesn’t make them your family. Look to those who guard your back, not those who throw you to the wolves.’” He glanced backward at the commandant, who sat his horse just out of earshot.

“I’ve always known the Thirty-Seventh was my real family.

My brothers. Yet that bond isn’t limited to just my legion, but to all our brothers-in-arms. Not a family we chose, but a family that we made in the blood and in the mud, and Cassius delivered the youngest of our ranks to the wolves when he sent the Fifty-First into the blight alone.

He did it to put me in my place. To remind me that he ruled.

What he failed to remember is that I am every bit the villain that he is, and when you come for mine, I come for blood. ”

Cordelia drew in a deep breath, then pressed one hand to her face for a long moment. Lowering it, she said, “That isn’t the answer I’d hoped for.”

“Nor will this be the end you wished for,” he answered. “Take care of yourself, sister.”

Wheeling his horse around, Marcus rode away.