Demos gave Marcus a deadpan look. “We’re sailing down a smooth, flat sheet of ice, which is staying cold in the middle of spring, running in front of a wind coming in from a good angle to move us that hasn’t wavered or fluttered for two days.” He looked back up at the oncoming vord. “That isn’t luck. There isn’t that much of it in the whole world.”

Marcus had long suspected that the captain’s talents had begun to blossom, and Demos had a point. If he was unsure of his abilities, the captain might well decide to test them upon a real foe in some controlled fashion—somewhere out of sight of the rest of the fleet, in the event that things did not proceed well.

The last of the fleet’s ships went gliding past, and Demos watched its stern speculatively. “There they go.”

“Might want to get your men out of the rigging,” Marcus said. “Vord’ll be here shortly. The flyboys will be making it too breezy for them to come down on us all at once.”

Demos nodded laconically and gestured to the bosun. He started bellowing sailors down out of the rigging. Though they often went about armed with knives, today Demos’s crew were all wearing armored jacks and carrying blades and other instruments of martial mayhem. Demos ordered the sails furled, taken down, and stowed, so that they would not become victims of combat. He’d also ordered the decks wetted, and the crew had been slopping laboriously melted water over the entire ship for the past quarter of an hour. Despite the wind and cold air from the north, the temperature was not quite sufficient to refreeze the water on the deck, and the Slive’s timbers soaked it up as if the ship herself was thirsty to return to the sea.

Marcus could hardly fault Demos’s caution. Firecrafting could be dangerously unpredictable in a battle, even when used by experts. If the captain had decided to try his hand at it, Demos’s precaution was entirely sensible. They had just finished when one of the sailors cried out, “Here they come!”

Marcus turned his head to see the group of vordknights alter course and go into a steep dive toward the motionless ship. As they came down, perhaps a score of them split off from the main body, diving ahead of the rest to engage Antillus Crassus and his Knights Aeris.

Tribune Crassus made a broad circling motion over his head with his left arm to gain his Knights’ attention, and flashed a quick series of hand signals. Half a dozen of the Aleran fliers streaked up to meet the contingent of vordknights, falling into a v-shaped formation as they went. The others, including Crassus, remained behind to guard the ship.