First Lord's Fury (Page 74)

The Aleran woodcrafters who fought to hold the ships together were no exception. Marcus watched as the four men aboard Khral’s ship staggered drunkenly down the ladders to the ground. Then they shambled away to sit on a fallen tree trunk nearby and pass among themselves a bottle of some vile concoction the amateur distillers in the Legions had created. Dazed legionares and limp-eared Canim warriors alike took the opportunity to stretch their legs, united by a torturous common foe – or at least by a common torture.

Khral’s caution remained vigilantly in place. His ship had been brought to a halt better than eighty yards from any of the others, and sentries had been posted fore and aft, port and starboard. Against the backdrop of rippling white ice, anyone who approached would be spotted immediately.

Marcus and Sha padded down the length of an Aleran ship parked parallel to the larger Canim vessel, and Marcus waited until a gust of unseasonably chill wind had driven a cloud of snow and sleet into the air, swirling it around them in a freezing veil. Then Marcus drew his sword, grunted with effort, and hacked a hole in the sheet of ice a little larger than his own foot. He put a hand down through the ice to the bare earth beneath, called upon his earth fury, Vamma, and the ground quivered, the ice cracked, and the cold earth swallowed both him and Sha without making a sound.

The Cane clutched at Marcus’s armored shoulder with one paw-hand, and the steel plates creaked in protest at the strength of the grip. Marcus gritted his teeth and tried to keep the damage to the ice sheet to a minimum as he parted the earth around them as if it had been water. He held a compact sphere of open space around them, small enough to force Sha to hunch over almost double. Marcus was acutely conscious of the Cane’s hot, panting breaths sliding over the back of his neck.

"Easy," he said. "We’re fine."

Sha growled. "How long will it take to reach Khral?"

Marcus shook his head. "Depends on the ground between here and there. Earth will only take a moment. If there’s much stone, it will be more difficult."

"Then begin."

"Already have."

Sha let out a pensive rumble in the close darkness. "But we are not moving."

"No," Marcus said. "But the earth around us is, and carrying us with it." He took a shuddering breath. He hadn’t used a tunneling crafting in fifteen years. He’d lost his appreciation for how strenuous they were. Or perhaps he was just getting old. "I need to concentrate."

Rather than make any affirmative response, Sha simply fell silent.

Crows, but it was good to work with a professional.

The ground between their entry point and Khral’s ship was heavily scattered with megalithic boulders, the leavings of some long-vanished glacier, freed from the ice and sunk into the silt in the following thaw, most likely. He detoured around them. Passing directly through would have been possible, but stone was an order of magnitude more difficult to craft than earth. Though it doubled the distance the tunneling had to travel, Marcus judged that, even so, he would come out ahead in terms of energy expended – though time would be a concern. It took them nearly twenty minutes to reach their destination, which was under the safety margin he’d estimated in planning, if only barely.

It was impossible to feel the ship itself through the baffling layer of ice upon the surface, but it was easy to sense the pressure of the ship’s weight, transferred through the ice and pressing down upon the soil. He guided the tunneling to the ship’s aft and began to nudge slowly upward. The temperature inside the little bubble of air suddenly dropped, and the earth of its curved top was replaced with chill, dirty ice.

They couldn’t afford to simply rip up through the ice. Breaking ice could cause great whip-crack bolts of sound. Sha went to work. He drew a tool from a scabbard at his side, a curving blade the shape of a crescent moon, but with its grip suspended between the moon’s points, so that the outer curve ran along the wielder’s knuckles. The blade was toothed like a saw, and the Cane went to work with great, ripping motions of his arms and shoulders. It took him less than a minute to slice out a hole in the ice large enough for him to fit through, and when the block of ice fell in, the black-stained hull of a Canim ship was revealed above it.

As the Cane carefully stowed the odd knife, Marcus rose, laid a hand on the wooden hull, and called upon his wood fury, Etan. As his fury surged into the ship’s hull, he felt his own senses extend through its superstructure. The timbers were all under strain, of course, and the evidence of recent, heavy furycrafting was everywhere. Excellent. Amidst all of those marks of activity, a few more gentle touches would never be noticed.

Marcus murmured to Etan beneath his breath, made an effort of will, and watched as the timbers of the hull gathered and puckered like a suddenly opening mouth. Sha watched this with his eyes narrowed, then nodded once and slithered through the opening. Marcus waited for a few breaths, so that Sha would have time to give warning of any trouble. When no such warning came, he hauled himself into the ship and found himself standing in the deep shadows of the ship’s aft cargo hold.

Sha went to the edge of the hatch, centered himself in the hold, and took seven quick silent paces directly toward the stern. He turned directly to his right, took two more paces, then reached up to put his fingers on the hold’s ceiling. He glanced at Marcus, to be sure the Aleran had seen the spot.

Marcus nodded and slid up to stand in the indicated position. Sha turned to interlace his fingers, creating a stirrup of his hands. Marcus stepped up into the Cane’s grip and found himself lifted lightly upward until he could touch the Canim-scale ceiling. He focused on the planks, narrowed his eyes, and with a sudden spreading motion of his hands, forced the thinner deck planking apart just as he had the hull. Even as the opening gaped, Sha heaved, and Marcus found himself shooting upward through the hole. The stench of rotten blood and musky Cane flooded his nostrils. He landed on one knee, oriented rapidly, and found a lean, reddish-furred Cane sitting on his haunches at a low table, a dozen rolls of leathery parchment spread out before him over its surface. Khral.

Marcus took two swift steps and smashed into Khral, overbearing the Cane by sheer surprise and momentum. Fangs raked at his face, until he drove a hard fist upward, slamming the Cane’s muzzle closed just as Khral began to let out a cry.

Surrounded by wood and far from the earth below, Marcus had no way to call upon Vamma again, to borrow of the fury’s power, and as a result he was at a lethal disadvantage in close combat with an adult Cane. He delivered a quick, hard strike to Khral’s throat. The blow wasn’t nearly strong enough to be lethal, but it did turn a second attempted shout into a croaking sound, then the Cane grabbed hold of Marcus’s armor and flung him halfway across the cabin.