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 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.

Marcus strode to the front of the ship, stepping over a pair of heavy, loose poles on the way—replacement spars for the rigging, probably—and banged his fist to his heart in salute. “Captain.”

“Marcus,” the captain replied. He frowned and nodded down at Marcus’s armor. “What happened?”