Well. Relatively safe. The pace of the ships was faster than any travel Tavi had ever heard of, short of actual flight. They had covered the full day’s marching distance of a Legion on a causeway in the first three hours. At that speed, a patch of bare earth within the ice could catch a ship’s keel, and sheer momentum would send it tumbling end over end down the length of the vessel. The Tiberius actually had struck such a bare spot, where the ice hadn’t had time to harden properly.

Tavi had watched in helpless horror from a hundred yards away as the vessel wavered, its wing-runners snapping off, and began to tumble, its masts snapping like twigs, its planks splintering into clouds of shattered wood—its crew being tumbled before and among the juggernaut mass of the doomed ship.

Three other ships had foundered as well, overbalanced by the wind, or by mismanagement of their sails, or by simple foul luck. Like the Tiberius, they had come to pieces. Tavi thought himself a bit cowardly for feeling relieved that at least he hadn’t actually seen it happening with his own eyes: When an ice-sailing ship went down at full speed, no one survived the wreckage. Canim and men were simply crushed and broken like limp, wet dolls.

Now the fliers were marking any spots that might cause another such accident. It was a simple precaution that had already guided them around two more potentially lethal patches of ground. Any idiot could have thought of it ahead of time, but Tavi hadn’t—and the lives of the crews of four ships, Canim and Aleran alike, now hung over him.

“The way remains smooth!” Tavi called, noting the next green-flagged javelin beyond the first. “Keep the pace!”

“Giving orders to keep doing what they’re already doing,” drawled Maximus from a few feet down the handrail. “Well, they say never issue an order you know won’t be obeyed, I suppose.”

Tavi gave Max an irritated glance and turned back to face forward. “You want something?”

“How’s your stomach?” Max asked.

Tavi clenched his teeth and stared out over the land ahead of them. “Fine. It’s fine. It’s that slow rolling that really does me in, I think.” The ship struck a depression in the ice, and the entire vessel sank, then rose sharply into the air, its runners actually clearing the ice for a fraction of a second. Tavi’s heels flew up, and only his hold on the safety ropes kept him from being slammed violently to the deck or off the ship completely.