Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

Marcus and Sha went back to the opening in the hull and leapt down into the open pocket beneath it, dragging Khral with them. Marcus called up Vamma with a snarl, and within a moment, they were enclosed in earth once more.

“Is he alive?” Marcus demanded a moment later.

“In the strictest sense of the word,” Sha replied.

“Wake him.”

Sha was silent in the darkness. Then he growled something beneath his breath. There was the sound of several sharp blows. Khral began to make sputtering sounds.

“He speak Aleran?”

“No,” Sha said.

“Translate for me, please.”

“Yes.”

Marcus reached out a hand and felt blindly until he encountered Khral’s hide. Then he shot out a hand, seized the Cane by the ear, and dragged him forward with all the strength Vamma could give him.

“I am about to kill you,” he said quietly, and Sha echoed him in rumbling Canish. “In a moment, we will leave. And I’m going to leave you here. Ten feet beneath the earth and the ice. The dirt is going to press against you, press into your mouth, your nose, your eyes.” He gave the ear a savage twist. “You’re going to be crushed to death, slowly, Khral. And no one will so much as know whether you are alive or dead.”

Marcus waited for Sha to finish speaking, then shoved Khral roughly away, releasing his ear. Khral babbled incoherently in Canim, and it sounded like he was trying to cling to Sha.

Marcus heard Sha’s saw-toothed tool leave its sheath, heard it strike with a meaty thump. Khral let out a scream. An instant later, Marcus smelled bile and sewage. Sha had gutted the ritualist.

Marcus put his hand on the earthen wall again and willed the tunneling to begin moving again. Khral began to babble in greater panic as the sphere of air moved away from him, left him behind. He kept on babbling and screaming until, a few seconds later, his voice abruptly vanished.

Sha let out a satisfied growl but otherwise made no comment.

They emerged where they had entered the tunneling, with Marcus checking warily before they climbed out—but he found that no one was paying any attention. The horns were still blowing. Marcus swept his gaze around as best he could and spotted winged black forms high overhead, flying up from the south. Vordknights.

“Come on!” Marcus growled to Sha as he clambered back up onto the sheet ice.

Sha came out hard on Marcus’s heels and let out a snarl.

“Aye,” Marcus said in reply. “We’re under attack.”

Marcus hadn’t run twenty feet when Antillus Crassus came soaring out of the open sky on a roaring column of cold wind, landing beside him and dropping into a run with him. “First Spear! Captain wants you!”

“Where?” Marcus called back. Drums and horns continued sounding, and everywhere Canim and Alerans alike were running back toward their ships. Flags were being run up masts—the green pennants that were the signal to continue on course at full speed.

Instead of answering, Crassus dragged one of Marcus’s arms over his shoulders, clamped onto him with an iron grip, and both of them were lifted off their feet by a surge of gale winds. The ice below receded as they arched sharply into the air, and Marcus found himself fighting not to cling to the young Tribune for dear life. He hated flying, hated being utterly at the mercy of another’s talent and judgment. They swept over two dozen tall-masted ships swarming with activity, and all the while, the distant forms of the flying vord grew closer.

The flight was a brief one—more like an excessively long jump than Marcus’s previous experiences with flight. They came down directly onto the deck of the Slive , sending a pair of coiled lines slithering over the deck and earning a glare of reprimand from Captain Demos. Crassus clapped Marcus on the shoulder and bounded back into the air, soaring up to join the fliers of the Knights Pisces already in the air. They were spread out into a covering formation around the Slive .

Marcus spotted the captain up near the prow, speaking intently with Maestro Magnus. The Ambassador stood with him, wearing a mail shirt, the only armor he’d ever seen her wearing. Maximus and two of the First Aleran’s Knights Ferrous loitered nearby, and Marcus noted that all of the Slive ’s most skilled swordsmen, some of them capable of being Knights Ferrous themselves, were doing their jobs in the areas nearest the captain.

Marcus strode to the front of the ship, stepping over a pair of heavy, loose poles on the way—replacement spars for the rigging, probably—and banged his fist to his heart in salute. “Captain.”

“Marcus,” the captain replied. He frowned and nodded down at Marcus’s armor. “What happened?”

Marcus glanced down. He hadn’t seen any blood splatter on his armor aboard Khral’s ship. It must have happened during the tunneling, when Sha had gutted the scheming ritualist. The speckles of blood had been smeared by the wind of his short flight, but fortunately that helped to thin it out, disguising its true color. Canim blood was darker than Aleran, but spread thin over the surface of his armor, it looked almost the same. “Just one crowbegotten thing after another, sir,” he answered.

“Tell me about it,” the captain said. He squinted up into the grey sky and nodded at the incoming enemy. “Tell me what you see, First Spear.”

Marcus grunted and turned to look as well. His eyes weren’t what they used to be, but he could make things out well enough to understand what the captain meant.

“That’s not an attack force, sir,” he said after a moment. “There’s not enough of them, and they’re spread too thin.”

The captain grinned as the wind began to gust harder than it had all morning. “That was my thought as well.”

“Scouts,” Marcus said.

The captain nodded. “Maybe spread all up and down the Shieldwall.”

With a grinding sound, the vessel nearest the Slive began to move, her sails bellying out before the cold wind. Up and down the line, other ships were getting under way, though the Slive’s sails were still furled.

“Why?” Marcus asked.

“Looking for us, naturally,” the captain replied. “I think odds are good that the vord knew we left Antillus marching north. And even though this idea has worked out, it wouldn’t take a genius to deduce that the only major structure north of Antillus might play a role in whatever we had planned.”

Marcus grunted. It made sense. The vord could spare a few thousand fliers for scouting duties, and barring the windcrafters enslaved by the enemy, the vordknights were the fastest troops they possessed. More ships passed the motionless Slive . “What is the plan, sir?”

“Oh, we run,” the captain said offhandedly. “They’re flying against the wind, and we’re with it. They can’t maintain the pace as easily as we can. They’ll tire, and we should lose them within a few hours.”

Marcus nodded. “Yes, sir.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not a sailor, sir, but don’t we need to use the sails if we’re going to leave the vord in our wake?”

Behind the captain, Ambassador Kitai grinned wolfishly.

“I don’t want to take unnecessary losses in a general skirmish,” the captain said. “We are going to remain behind. If they see a lone ship, potentially unable to run, I believe the vordknights will see it as an opportunity to attack.”

“You want to stop them from running off to tell their Queen about us,” Marcus said, nodding.

The captain spread his hands. “That, and I need to explore a few theories. It might be better to test them now than when we reach the enemy’s main body. I’d like you to coordinate efforts with Captain Demos and make sure he has someone who can advise him on how he and his crew can best work in tandem with our Knights.”