The headless vordknight turned in place as if the blow had done nothing to inconvenience it, blades slashing. Captain Demos, long blade in hand, was forced to leap back from the foe, though his sword spat angry scarlet sparks again as it met one of the enemy scythes, and cut it cleanly from the vord’s body. Demos regained his balance, hacked the vord’s other scythe away with casual efficiency, then stepped forward and drove his heel into the thrashing creature’s belly. The kick sent it tumbling over the side of the ship.

Two more of the vordknights landed on the aft deck, rapidly followed by a third. Demos raised his left hand and made a twisting motion, and the railing around the stern side of the deck suddenly bowed, as if made of a supple willow switch, and snared one of the vordknights around the ankle.

Marcus charged the other pair before they could orient themselves and attack. He drove his blade into a gleaming eye, released it, and shoved the wounded vord away with all his strength. He ducked beneath the second vord’s blow and came in low, hitting the thing around the waist and getting his own body in too close to the vordknight’s to allow the creature to use its scythes on him. He was heavier than the vord by a very great deal. It weighed no more than a large sack of meal, and as his armored body slammed the vordknight to the deck, it crunched audibly.

He heard Demos’s light steps as the ship’s captain went past him, and sparks flared several more times somewhere at the edge of his vision. Marcus concentrated on the vord beneath him—the creature was tremendously powerful, easily more than a match for his own physical strength, and Marcus could not enhance it with furycraft this far from the earth beneath the ship, even if it hadn’t additionally been coated in six inches of ice.

Marcus stayed atop the vord, relying upon his weight instead of his strength, keeping as close to the vord’s body as possible, denying it any small bit of leverage with which it could employ the full power of its body. Marcus began to slam his helmeted head against the vord’s, one blow after another. After several such strikes, his own ears were ringing, but the vord’s struggles had lost cohesion.

A second later, Demos’s blade hissed somewhere near Marcus’s back, and red sparks fell all around his head and bounced up from the vordknight’s face. Marcus rolled to one side as swiftly as he could and looked up to see Demos behead the scytheless vord. He carried Marcus’s gladius in his left hand and shifted his grip upon it to offer it back to him. Marcus took the sword with a nod and looked around, his heart pounding.