There was a polite scratch at the door.
“Enter,” Varg rumbled, and his pup, Nasaug, entered the cabin. The younger Cane bared his throat in respect, and Varg returned the gesture with slightly less emphasis.
Pup,
Varg thought, as he looked fondly upon his get.
He’s four centuries old, and by every reasonable standard should be a Warmaster in his own right. He fought the accursed Aleran demons on their own ground for two years and made good his escape despite all of their power. But I suppose a sire never forgets how small his pups were once.
“Report,” he rumbled.
“Master Khral has come aboard,” Nasaug rumbled. “He requests an audience.”
Varg bared his teeth. He carefully placed a thin bit of colored cloth into the pages of the book and gently closed it. “Again.”
“Shall I throw him back into his boat?” Nasaug asked. There was a somewhat wistful note to his voice.
“I find myself tempted,” Varg said. “But no. It is his right under the codes to seek redress for grievances. Bring him.”
Nasaug bared his throat again and departed the cabin. A moment later, the door opened again, and Master Khral entered. He was nearly as tall as Varg, closer to nine feet than eight when fully upright, but unlike the warrior Cane, he was as thin as whipcord. His fur was a mottled red-brown, marked with streaks of white hairs born from scars inflicted by ritual and not by honest battle. He wore a demonskin mantle and hood, despite Varg’s repeated requests that he not parade about the fleet in a garment made from the skins of the creatures who were presently responsible for keeping them all alive. He wore a pair of pouches on cross-body belts, each containing a bladder of blood, which the ritualists needed to perform their sorcery. He smelled like unclean fur and rotten blood, and reeked of a confidence that he was too foolish to see had no basis in reality.
The senior ritualist stared calmly at Varg for several seconds before finally baring his throat just enough to give Varg no excuse to rip it out. Varg did not return the gesture at all. “Master Khral. What now?”
“As every day, Warmaster,” Khral replied. “I am here to beg you, on behalf of the people of Narash and Shuar, to turn aside from this dangerous path of binding our people to the demons.”
“I am told,” Varg rumbled, “the people of Narash and Shuar like to eat.”
Khral sneered. “We are Canim,” he spat. “We need no one to help us attain our destiny. Especially not the demons.”
Varg grunted. “True. We will take our destiny on our own. But obtaining food is another matter.”
“They will turn on us,” Khral said. “The moment they have finished using us, they will turn and destroy us. You know this is true.”
“It is true,” Varg said. “It is also tomorrow. I am in command of today.”
Khral’s tail lashed in irritation. “Once we have separated from the ice ships, we can pick up the pace and make landfall within a week.”
“We can make ourselves into meals for the leviathans, you mean,” Varg replied. “There are no range charts of the sea this far north. We would have no way to know when we entered a leviathan’s territory.”
“We are the masters of the world. We are not afraid.”
Varg growled low in his chest. “I find it remarkable how often amateurs confuse courage with idiocy.”
The ritualist’s eyes narrowed. “We might lose a vessel here and there,” Khral acknowledged. “But we would
not
owe our lives to the charity of the demons. A week, then we can begin to rebuild on our own.”
“Leave the ice ships,” Varg said. “The same ships that are carrying more than half of our surviving people.”
“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.”
“It is what bloodspeakers do,” Varg said.
“He could be dangerous.”
“Fools often are.”
Nasaug did not gainsay him, but then he rarely did. The younger Cane straightened his shoulders in resignation and looked out to sea.
Varg put a hand on his pup’s shoulder. “I know Khral. I know his like. How they think. How they move. I have dealt with them before, as have you when you fed Sarl to the Tavar.”
Nasaug showed his fangs in a grin of remembrance.
Varg nodded. “If necessary, we will deal with them again.”
“This problem might be better removed now than later.”
Varg growled. “He has not yet stepped outside the code. I will not kill him improperly.”
Nasaug was quiet for a moment more. Then he looked back behind them at the tiny, cramped cabin built just behind the forecastle, the smelliest and most uncomfortable quarters on the ship.
It was where Varg’s Hunters lived.
“Hunters do not exist to circumvent the code,” Varg growled, “but to preserve its spirit against its letter. Of course they could do the job. But it would only give Khral’s ambitious underlings additional fire—and a genuine grievance to rally their followers behind. We may need the ritualists before all is done.” He leaned his paw-hands on the rail and turned his nose into the wind, tasting the sky and the sea. “Master Marok is the brother of one of my finest enemies, and seniormost of the followers of the Old Path. I have his support within the ritualist camp.”
Nasaug flicked his ears in acquiescence and seemed to relax a bit. He stood with his sire for a moment, then bared his throat and departed back to his duties.
Varg spent an hour or so on deck, inspecting, offering encouragement, snarling at imperfection. All was quiet, otherwise, which he mistrusted. There hadn’t been nearly enough adversity during this crossing. Ill fortune must be holding its balest bolt until it could be sure it was lethal.
Varg returned to his book, an ancient Aleran writing apparently handed down since their people’s prehistory. Tavar had said that they were not sure how much of the material was original and how much had been added in over the centuries—but if half of it was truth, then the Aleran warmaster described in its pages had been competent, if a shade arrogant. It was easy to see how his memoirs had influenced the strategies and tactics of the Aleran Legions.