First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

Khral looked around wildly until his eyes lit upon one of the pale leather pouches the ritualists all carried, hanging from a peg on a wall. The Cane lunged for it.

Marcus lifted a hand and made a sharp beckoning gesture, willing Etan into motion, and the peg wavered and dropped the pouch just as Khral reached for its strap. It hit the deck with a sludgy, sloshing sound, and droplets of blood spattered the wall.

Sha came slithering up through the small hole in the floor like an eel racing from its burrow. The Hunter soared across the cabin in a single bound and landed atop the struggling Khral. Sha's arms moved in a lashing motion, and Khral's eyes bulged even farther as a leather cord whipped tight around his throat. Sha rode Khral down to the deck, leaning back against the strangling cord as they went.

Marcus strode across the room and replaced the pouch upon the peg on the wall. He touched the wall and coaxed Etan into absorbing the droplets of gelatinous blood into the wood, drawing it deep into the grain, where it would not be seen from the surface. He turned to Sha, who was holding tight to the strangling cord, pulling with just as much strength though Khral had stopped moving several seconds before.

When Sha saw that Marcus was finished, he glanced at the wood, gave Marcus a respectful nod, then twisted the strangling cord so that he could keep it looped around Khral's throat while gripping it in one hand. He used it like a boat hook, dragging the senseless ritualist over to the hole in the floorboards, and made his silent way back down into the hold.

Marcus replaced several pieces of the fine, pale hide upon the table, examining his memory to be sure they were returned to the same spot they had been when he entered. Then he checked the cabin door, finding it bolted from the inside, and finally made his way back to the entry point.

Marcus smiled. No one within the ritualist camp was going to know what to make of this.

As he was about to descend, he saw Khral's bunk and stopped to stare at it in fascinated horror.

The bunk was covered with a heavy hide blanket, its fur still upon it. For a moment, Marcus couldn't think of what kind of beast would leave such a mottled, mismatched, patchy coat behind. Then he understood what he was looking at.

There were perhaps a hundred human scalps in the grisly blanket. Many of them sported hairs so fine that they could not possibly have come from an adult. Some of the scalps were, in fact, quite small.

Marcus fought down his gorge and made his way almost blindly into the hold. Up on the deck of the ship, he heard a trumpet blow, a call that was taken up generally, the quarter-hour warning. The fleet was preparing to move again.

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."

Chapter 23~24

Chapter 23

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.