"Bloody crows," Marcus breathed. If all the ships could sail so swiftly over the ice - though he somehow doubted that the Slive's performance was typical - they could sail the entire breadth of the Realm in... bloody crows. In hours, a handful of days. Phrygia and Riva were the two most closely placed of the great cities of the Realm - a fast-moving Legion on a causeway could make the journey in less than three days.
If it worked, if the winds held, the ice held, and the newly designed ships held, it would be the swiftest march in Aleran history.
Stunned, Marcus heard himself giving orders to his cohort and coordinating with the First Aleran's officers to make sure the embarking went smoothly. He found himself standing in silence beside the captain as men, Canim, and supplies were loaded.
"How?" he asked quietly.
"My uncle used to take me sledding during the winter," Octavian said quietly. "This... seemed to make sense."
"The snow was your doing?"
"I had help," the captain said. "From more than one place." He lifted a hand and pointed to the north.
Marcus looked and saw movement among the trees to the north of the Shieldwall. Faint, blurred shapes with pale, shaggy fur flickered here and there among them.
"Sir," Marcus choked. "The Icemen. We can't possibly leave Antillus unprotected."
"They're here at my invitation," he replied. "Managing snow in springtime is one thing. Turning it into ice quickly enough to suit our need is another thing entirely."
"The reports at Antillus were true, then? That the Icemen have power over the cold?"
"Over ice and snow. A form of watercrafting, perhaps. That was my mother's theory." He shrugged. "We certainly don't have the ability to coat the ground in ice from here to Phrygia. The Icemen do. That's where Kitai's been the past few days. Their chiefs are on good terms with her father."
Marcus shook his head slowly. "After all those years of... they agreed to help you?"
"The vord threaten us all, First Spear." He paused. "And... I gave them an incentive."
"You paid them?"
"In property," Octavian replied. "I'm giving them the Shieldwall."
Marcus began to feel somewhat faint. "You... You..."
"Needed their help," the captain said simply. He shrugged. "It is Crown property, after all."
"You... you gave them..."
"When this is all over, I think I'll see if I can get them to lease it to us."
Marcus's heart was actually lurching irregularly. He wondered if it was the beginning of an attack. "Lease it, sir?"
"Why not? It isn't as if they've got much use for it, except for keeping us away from them. If we're leasing it, we'll be responsible for upkeep, which they couldn't do in any case. A tangible, fixed border will exist between us, which might help lower tensions on both sides if we can avoid incidents. And since it's their own property, generating revenue, I think they might be considerably less likely to attempt to demolish it on a weekly basis."
"That's... sir, that's..." Marcus wanted to say "insane." Or perhaps, "ridiculous." But...
But a blizzard was coating the land with ice in the middle of what should have been a pleasantly warm spring day.
The analytical part of Marcus's mind told him that the logic of the idea was not without merit. If it didn't work, in the long term the Realm would certainly be no worse off than it was now - barring a major invasion, which was already under way, if from a different direction.
But what if it did work?
He was thoughtfully staring at the ships and the distant Icemen when Magnus approached and saluted the captain. He studied Marcus's expression for a moment and frowned slightly.
"This wasn't your idea, I take it?" the old Cursor asked.
Marcus blinked at him. "Are you barking mad?"
"Someone is," the older man growled.
Octavian gave them both an oblique look, then pretended to ignore them.
Marcus shook his head and tried to regain his sense of orientation and purpose. "Times," he said, "are changing."
Magnus grunted sour, almost offended, agreement. "That's what they do."
Chapter 15~16
Chapter 15
Their kidnappers had bound Isana and covered her head with a hood before taking her from the room. Her stomach dropped from beneath her as they took to the air again, two windcrafters combining their skills to summon a single wind column to support the weight of three people. Isana was not clothed for such travel. The wind was making her skirts billow out and putting her legs on display.
She had to stop herself from laughing. The Realm's deadliest foe had just taken her from the heart of the most heavily defended city in the world of Carna, and she was worried about impropriety. It was laughable - but hardly funny. If she let the laughter start, she was not sure she would be able to stop it from becoming a scream.
Fear was not something she had ever become comfortable with. She had seen others who had - and not simply metalcrafters, either, who could cheat - walling away all of their emotions behind a cold, steely barrier of rational thought. She had known men and women who felt the fear every bit as intensely as she did, and who simply accepted its presence. For some of them, the fear seemed to flow through them, never stopping or finding purchase. Others actually seemed to seize on it, to channel it into furious thought and action. Countess Amara was an excellent example of the latter. Whereas, even closer to her, Araris had always stood as an example of the former...
Araris. She had seen him fly limply across the room. She had seen men dropping a hood over his lolling head. They had, apparently, taken him with her when they left. They wouldn't have hooded him if he was dead, surely.
Surely.
Isana flew on in her fear, and it neither gave her strength nor poured around her leaving her untouched. She felt like a bar of sand that was slowly and steadily being eaten away by the currents of terror around her. She felt sick.
Well enough, she chided herself sharply. If she vomited in the hood, she'd have a considerably humiliating situation to add to her danger and discomfort. If she could neither use nor coexist with the fear, she could at least force herself to carry on - refusing to let the fear make her stop using her mind to do everything within her power to resist her enemies. She could at least do as much as she had in the past.
She had been blinded before, and been forced to rely upon other senses to guide her. She could not see through the hood, nor hear over the roar of the wind, or feel with her cold-numbed, bound hands, nor smell nor taste anything but the slightly mildewed scent of the hood over her head. But that did not mean she was unable to learn anything about her captors.