Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

This drew a rumbling laugh from the Legions. The Canim did not react.

“As I speak,” the captain continued, “the enemy is attacking all that remains of our Realm. Our Legions are battling them on a scale unmatched in our history. But without our participation, they can only postpone the inevitable. We need to be at Riva, gentlemen, and right now.”

Marcus listened to the captain’s speech, as he outlined the situation on the far side of the Realm—but his eyes were drawn to the ships. He didn’t see as clearly as he used to, but Marcus noted that the ships had been… modified, somehow. They rested on their keels, but instead of plain, whitewashed wood, the keels had somehow been replaced or lined with shining steel. Other wooden structures, like arms or perhaps wings, swept out from either side of the ships, ending in another wooden structure as long as the ship’s hull. That structure, too, sported a steel-lined keel. Between the ship’s keel and those wings, it stood perfectly straight, its balance maintained. Something about the design looked vaguely familiar.

“With decent causeways,” the captain was saying, “we could make it there in a couple of weeks. But we don’t have weeks. So we’re trying something new.”

As he spoke the words, a ship flashed into sight. It was a small, nimble-looking vessel, and Marcus immediately recognized Captain Demos’s ship, the Slive . Like the other ships, she had been fitted with a metal keel. Like the others, she sported two wing structures. But unlike the other ships, she had her sails raised, and they bellied out taut, catching the power of the northerly winds.

That was when Marcus realized what the modifications reminded him of: the runners of a sled. He took note of another detail. The ground before the wall wasn’t covered in inches of snow. It was coated in an equal thickness of ice.

The Slive rushed along the icy ground, moving swiftly, far more swiftly than she ever could at sea. A cloud of mist sprayed out from its steel runners in a fine, constant haze, half-veiling the runners, creating the illusion that the ship was sailing several inches above the ice, unsupported by anything at all. In the time it took Marcus to realize that his jaw had dropped open and to close it again, the Slive appeared, rushing down upon him, its runners making the ice beneath them crackle and groan, then soared on by, its sails snapping. Less than a minute later, it was better than a mile away, and only then did it begin to heave to, swinging around into a graceful turn. It took a few moments for the ship to rerig its sails to catch the wind from the opposite quarter for the return trip, and they bellied out for almost a minute before the Slive lost her momentum and began to return toward them.

“I’m afraid it’s back to the ships,” the Princeps said into the shocked silence. “Where we will sail the length of the Shieldwall to Phrygia and take the remaining intact causeways south to the aid of Riva. Your ship assignments will be the same as they were when we left Canea. You all know your ships and your captains. Fall out by cohorts and report to them. We’ll leave as soon as the road ahead is ready for us.”

“Bloody crows,” Marcus breathed. If all the ships could sail so swiftly over the ice—though he somehow doubted that the Slive ’s performance was typical—they could sail the entire breadth of the Realm in… bloody crows. In hours, a handful of days. Phrygia and Riva were the two most closely placed of the great cities of the Realm—a fast-moving Legion on a causeway could make the journey in less than three days.

If it worked, if the winds held, the ice held, and the newly designed ships held, it would be the swiftest march in Aleran history.

Stunned, Marcus heard himself giving orders to his cohort and coordinating with the First Aleran’s officers to make sure the embarking went smoothly. He found himself standing in silence beside the captain as men, Canim, and supplies were loaded.

“How?” he asked quietly.

“My uncle used to take me sledding during the winter,” Octavian said quietly. “This… seemed to make sense.”

“The snow was your doing?”

“I had help,” the captain said. “From more than one place.” He lifted a hand and pointed to the north.

Marcus looked and saw movement among the trees to the north of the Shieldwall. Faint, blurred shapes with pale, shaggy fur flickered here and there among them.

“Sir,” Marcus choked. “The Icemen. We can’t possibly leave Antillus unprotected.”

“They’re here at my invitation,” he replied. “Managing snow in springtime is one thing. Turning it into ice quickly enough to suit our need is another thing entirely.”

“The reports at Antillus were true, then? That the Icemen have power over the cold?”

“Over ice and snow. A form of watercrafting, perhaps. That was my mother’s theory.” He shrugged. “We certainly don’t have the ability to coat the ground in ice from here to Phrygia. The Icemen do. That’s where Kitai’s been the past few days. Their chiefs are on good terms with her father.”

Marcus shook his head slowly. “After all those years of… they agreed to help you?”

“The vord threaten us all, First Spear.” He paused. “And… I gave them an incentive.”

“You paid them?”

“In property,” Octavian replied. “I’m giving them the Shieldwall.”

Marcus began to feel somewhat faint. “You… You…”

“Needed their help,” the captain said simply. He shrugged. “It is Crown property, after all.”

“You… you gave them…”

“When this is all over, I think I’ll see if I can get them to lease it to us.”

Marcus’s heart was actually lurching irregularly. He wondered if it was the beginning of an attack. “Lease it, sir?”

“Why not? It isn’t as if they’ve got much use for it, except for keeping us away from them. If we’re leasing it, we’ll be responsible for upkeep, which they couldn’t do in any case. A tangible, fixed border will exist between us, which might help lower tensions on both sides if we can avoid incidents. And since it’s their own property, generating revenue, I think they might be considerably less likely to attempt to demolish it on a weekly basis.”

“That’s… sir, that’s…” Marcus wanted to say “insane.” Or perhaps, “ridiculous.” But…

But a blizzard was coating the land with ice in the middle of what should have been a pleasantly warm spring day.

The analytical part of Marcus’s mind told him that the logic of the idea was not without merit. If it didn’t work, in the long term the Realm would certainly be no worse off than it was now—barring a major invasion, which was already under way, if from a different direction.

But what if it did work?

He was thoughtfully staring at the ships and the distant Icemen when Magnus approached and saluted the captain. He studied Marcus’s expression for a moment and frowned slightly.

“This wasn’t your idea, I take it?” the old Cursor asked.

Marcus blinked at him. “Are you barking mad?”

“Someone is,” the older man growled.

Octavian gave them both an oblique look, then pretended to ignore them.

Marcus shook his head and tried to regain his sense of orientation and purpose. “Times,” he said, “are changing.”

Magnus grunted sour, almost offended, agreement. “That’s what they do.”

Their kidnappers had bound Isana and covered her head with a hood before taking her from the room. Her stomach dropped from beneath her as they took to the air again, two windcrafters combining their skills to summon a single wind column to support the weight of three people. Isana was not clothed for such travel. The wind was making her skirts billow out and putting her legs on display.