“Sacrifices must be made if we are to remain true to ourselves,” Khral declared, “if our spirits, our pride, and our strength are to remain pure.”
“I have noticed that those who speak as you do are rarely willing to include themselves among those sacrificed.”
A furious snarl burst out of Khral’s throat, and one paw-hand flashed toward the hip bag at his side.
Varg did not so much as rise from his crouch. His arms moved, shoulders twisting with sinewy power as he flung the Aleran book at Khral. It sailed through the air in a blur of spinning motion, and its hard spine struck the master ritualist in the throat. The impact knocked Khral’s shoulders back against the door to the cabin, and he rebounded from it to fall to the cabin’s deck, making gagging sounds.
Varg got up and walked over to the book. Its leaves had opened, and some of the delicate pages had been harshly folded. Varg picked it up carefully, smoothed the pages, and considered the Aleran creation again.
Like Tavar, he mused, it was apparently more dangerous than it appeared.
Varg stood by for a moment, as Khral’s gagging gradually transformed to labored breathing. He hadn’t quite crushed the ritualist’s windpipe, which was disappointing. Now he’d have to suffer the fool again tomorrow. After surviving today’s conflict, Khral would be unlikely to allow Varg another such opportunity to remove him.
So be it. Some ambitious underling might turn a dead Khral into a martyr. It was entirely possible the ritualist would be more dangerous dead than alive.
“Nasaug,” Varg called.
The pup opened the door and considered the prostrate form on the floor. “Warmaster?”
“Master Khral is ready to return to his boat.”
Nasaug bared his throat, not quite hiding his amusement. “Immediately, Warmaster.” He leaned down, seized Khral by his ankle, and simply dragged him out of the cabin.
Varg gave Nasaug a few minutes to get Khral back into his boat, then strode out onto the Trueblood’s deck.
The ship was painted black, as most Narashan vessels were. It offered a stealth advantage when moving at night, and during the day it collected enough heat to enable the adhesive sealing the hull to remain flexible and watertight. It also lent them an air of menace, particularly to the Aleran demons. They were nearly blind at night and painted their own ships white so that they could see a little more clearly during darkness. The very idea of a black ship was alien to them, and darkness was a primal fear for the species. While their blindness and fear might not stop them from attacking, especially with their sorcery at hand, it did prevent any independent individual or small group from attempting to board a Narashan vessel for whatever mad reason it might concoct.
The Alerans were many things, but not stupid. None of them liked the idea of stumbling around in the darkness while the night-wise Canim came for them.
Varg went to the ship’s prow and stared out over the sea. They were in waters hundreds of leagues north of any he had sailed before, and the sea was choppy. The weather had remained clear, either as the result of fortune or Aleran sorcery, and the fleet had made the long, slow trek from Canea without serious incident—something Varg would have considered the next best thing to impossible only months before.
The voyage from Canea to Alera was a month’s worth of sailing with a moderately favorable wind. It had taken them over three months to get this far, and there were still three weeks’ worth of ocean in front of them at their current pace. Varg turned his eyes to the south and studied the reason for their crawl.
Three almost unbelievably enormous ships rode squarely in the center of the fleet, rising like mountains from the sea and dwarfing even the Trueblood into insignificance—but their size was not the most remarkable thing about them.
The ships had been built from ice.
The Alerans had used their sorcery to reshape icebergs calving from a glacier into seaworthy forms, with multiple decks and a vast capacity for their precious cargo—all that remained of once-proud Canea. Makers, females, and pups filled the three ships, and the Narashan captains of the vessels escorting her had orders to spill their crews’ blood like seawater if that was what it required to protect the civilians.
The ships had enormous, flat decks, and no mast could stretch high or broad enough to hang enough sail to move the vessel, but the Alerans had managed to overcome the problem with their typical ingenuity. Hundreds of poles with crossbars had been placed on the topmost deck of the ship, and they billowed with every form of cloth one could imagine. They alone would not propel the ice mountains, but Tavar was, correctly, of the opinion that even a small contribution would prove significant over time. Then, too, the wind demons with the Aleran fleet had been tasked with bringing up enough of a breeze to lighten the load on the water demons who truly drove the vast ships.
Propelled primarily by Aleran sorcery, the ice ships had proved to be steady in the water. If the quarters for his people were a bit cold—albeit less so than one would have imagined—their discomfort was a small price to pay for survival. Some of the sick and elderly had been transferred to Varg’s transports to get out of the cold, but for the most part matters had proceeded with relative simplicity.
Varg looked up and down the length of his ship, watching his sailors tending to their work. His warriors and sailors were painfully lean, though not cadaverous. Gathering rations had been a hurried affair during the escape, and there were thousands of mouths to feed. Priority for food went to the Aleran wind and water demons, then sailors, with civilians close behind. The demon Legions followed, thanks to the necessity of maintaining their fragile forms, and last came Varg’s warriors. The order might have been reversed during lean times in a land campaign, but here, on the open water, those most vital to the fleet’s progress and purpose had priority.
Varg watched as a hunting ship sailed into the fleet from outside the formation. It moved sluggishly, even under full sail, but its speed was adequate to catch the ice ships. A massive form floated in the water behind the hunting ship—the corpse of a medium-sized leviathan.
The demons’ work, again. Leviathans were fiercely territorial, but they hated the cold of the chilled sea surrounding the ice ships. Hunting vessels would sail out of the bitterly cold water and draw the attention of a leviathan. Then air and water demons would work together to slay it, somehow drowning the creatures on air even while they were in the water.
It was a dangerous business. Two out of ten hunting ships never returned—but those that did brought enough food with them, in the form of the leviathans, to feed the entire fleet for two days. The taste of leviathan meat and blubber was indescribably foul, but it kept a body alive.
Nasaug came to his side and watched the hunting ship with Varg. “Warmaster.”
“The good Master is gone?”
“Yes,” Nasaug said. “And surly.”
Varg bared his teeth in a grin.
“Father,” Nasaug said. He paused to choose words carefully. Varg turned to face him and waited. When Nasaug did that, what he had to say was generally unpleasant—and worth listening to.
“In three weeks we will reach Alera,” Nasaug said.
“Yes.”
“And fight the vord beside the demons.”
“Yes.”
Nasaug was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Khral is a scheming fool. But he has a point. There is no reason for the Alerans to keep us alive once we have won the war.”
Varg’s ears twitched in amusement. “First we must win the war,” he rumbled. “Many things can happen in the passing of time. Patience.”
Nasaug flicked his ears in agreement. “Khral is building a following. Speaking to gatherings on the ice ships. Our people are afraid. He is using that fear.”