Cursor's Fury Read Online Free PDF

furycraft, like you?”

    “The people were called Romans,” Tavi corrected him. “You call something Romanic when it was built by Romans. And yes. Though I’m surprised you remember that from the Academy. ”

    “Don’t blame me. I did everything I could to prevent it, but it looks like some of the lectures stuck,” Max said, and eyed Tavi. “You nearly took my head off with that rock, you know. I fell off my horse. I haven’t done that since—”

    “The last time you were drunk,” Tavi interjected, grinning, and offered Max his hand.

    The big young man snorted and traded a hard grip with Tavi. “Furies, Calderon. You kept growing. You’re as tall as me. You’re too old to grow that much.”

    “Must be making up for lost time,” Tavi said. “Max, have you met Maestro Magnus?”

    The old man picked himself up off the ground, brushing away dirt and scowling like a thunderstorm. “This? This mental deficient is Antillus Raucus’s son?”

    Max turned to face the old man, and to Tavi’s surprise his face flushed red beneath his tanned skin. “Sir,” Max said, giving an awkward duck of his head. “You’re one of the people my father bid me give his regards should I see you.”

    Magnus arched a silvery eyebrow.

    Max glanced at the wreckage of the engine. “Uh. And I’m sorry about your, uh . . . your Romanic thing.”

    “It’s a war engine,” Magnus said in a crisp tone. “A Romanic war engine. The carvings we’ve found refer to it as a mule. Though admittedly, there seems p. 21 to be some kind of confusion, since some of the earlier texts use the same word to describe the soldiers of their Legions . . .” Magnus shook his head. “I’m wandering again, excuse me.” The old man glanced at the ruined war device and sighed. “When is the last time you spoke to your father, Maximus?”

    “About a week before I ran off and joined the Legions, sir,” Max said. “Call it eight years or so.”

    Magnus’s grunt conveyed a wealth of disapproval. “You know why he doesn’t speak to you, I take it?”

    “Aye,” Max said, his tone quiet. Tavi heard an underpinning of sadness in his friend’s voice, and he winced in sympathy. “Sir, I’d be glad to fix it for you.”

    “Would you now?” Magnus said, eyes glinting. “That’s quite generous.”

    “Certainly,” Max said, nodding. “Won’t take me a minute.”

    “Indeed not,” Magnus said. “I should think it a project of weeks.” He lifted his eyebrows and asked Max, “You were aware, of course, that my research compels us to use strictly Romanic methods. No furycrafting.”

    Max, in the midst of turning to the war engine, paused. “Um. What?”

    “Sweat and muscle only,” Magnus said cheerfully. “Everything from harvesting timber to metal fittings. We’ll rebuild it. Only the next one needs to be about twice as large, so I’m glad you’re volunteering your—”

    Tavi got nothing more than a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye to warn him, but suddenly every instinct in his body screamed of danger. “Max!” Tavi shouted, even as he dived at the Maestro again.

    Max spun, his sword flashing from its sheath with the speed only a wind-crafter could manage. His arm blurred into two sharp movements, and Tavi heard two snapping sounds as Max cut a pair of heavy arrows from the air with the precision only a master metalcrafter could bring to the sword, then darted to one side.

    Tavi put a low, ruined wall between the attackers and the Maestro and crouched there. He looked over his shoulder to see Max standing with his back to a ten-foot-thick stone column that had broken off seven or eight feet above the ground.

    “How many?” Tavi called.

    “Two there,” Max replied. He crouched and put his hand to the ground for a moment, closing his eyes, then reported, “One flanking us to the west.”

    Tavi’s eyes snapped that way, but he saw no one among the trees and brush and fallen walls.