by Jim Butcher
The Queen focused on the mother and child. “You,” she said, pointing a deadly, clawed fingertip at the young woman. “The child is your blood?”
The young holder stared at the vord Queen with wide, panicked eyes. She nodded once.
The vord Queen stepped forward, and said, “Give him to me.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her eyes flicked around the room, haunted, seeking the gaze of someone else—anyone else—who might do something. None of the other holders could meet her gaze. The young mother looked up at Invidia pleadingly, and she began to sob. “Lady,” she whispered. “My lady, please.”
Her stomach twisted and rebelled, but Invidia had learned long ago that retching sent the parasite into convulsions that could all but kill her. She ate seldom, of late. “You have another child,” she told the young mother in a calm, hard voice. “Save her.”
The man sitting beside the young mother moved. He gently took the boy from her arms, leaned forward to kiss his hair, and held him out to the vord Queen. The child wailed in protest and tried to go back to his mother.
The vord Queen took the child and held him in front of her. She let him kick and wail for a moment, watching him with her alien eyes. Then, quite calmly, she held the boy close to her body with one arm and twisted his head sharply to one side. His wails ceased.
Invidia found herself about to lose control of her stomach, but then she saw that the child still lived. His neck was twisted to the breaking point, his breaths coming in small, labored gasps—but he lived.
The vord Queen stared at the sobbing mother for a moment. Then she said, “She feels pain. I have not harmed her, yet she feels pain.”
“The child is hers,” Invidia said. “She loves him.”
The Queen tilted her head. “And he loves her in return?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it is the nature of love to be answered in kind. Especially by children.”
The Queen tilted her head to the other side. Then she stared down at the child. Then at the young mother. Then at the man seated beside her. She leaned down and touched her lips to the child’s hair and paused for a moment, as if considering the sensation.
Then, moving slowly and carefully, she released the child from her hold and passed him back to the weeping mother. The young woman broke down into shuddering sobs, holding the child close.
The vord Queen turned and left the cottage. Invidia followed.
The young Queen walked up a nearby hillside and, once they had crested the hill and moved into sight of a vord landscape stretching out before them, stood with her back to the little steadholt for a time. “Love is not always returned among your kind.”
“No,” Invidia said simply.
“When it is not,” she said, “it is a kind of pain to the one who has loved.”
“Yes.”
“It is irrational,” the vord Queen said—and to Invidia’s shock, there was a quiet heat to the words. An anger. The vord Queen was angry.
Invidia felt her mouth go dry.
“Irrational,” the Queen said. Her fingers flexed, the nails lengthening and contracting. “Wasteful. Inefficient.”
Invidia said nothing.
The vord Queen spun abruptly, the motion so swift that Invidia could barely track it. She stared at Invidia with unreadable, alien eyes. Invidia could see a thousand tiny reflections of herself in them, a pale, half-starved woman with dark hair, clad only in a suit of vord-chitin carapace that fit her as closely as her own skin.
“Tomorrow,” the vord Queen said, smoldering anger filling the normally empty tones of her voice, “you and I will have dinner. Together.”
Then she turned and vanished in a blur of green silk into the endless rolling waves of croach.
Invidia fought the sense of terror spreading through her stomach. She stared back down at the collection of cottages. From her place on the hillside, the steadholt looked lovely, furylamps glowing in its little town square and inside the cottages. A horse nickered in a nearby pasture. A dog barked several times. The trees, the houses, they all looked so perfect. Like dollhouses.
Invidia found herself suppressing a laugh that rose up through the madness of the past several months, for fear that she would never be able to stop.
Dollhouses.
After all, the vord Queen was not quite nine years old. Perhaps that was exactly what they were.
Varg, Warmaster of the fallen land of Narash, heard the familiar tread of his pup’s footsteps upon the deck of the Trueblood, flagship of the Narashan fleet. He peeled his lips back from his teeth in macabre amusement. Could it be the flagship of a Narashan fleet when Narash itself was no more? According to the codes, it was the last piece of sovereign Narashan territory upon the face of Carna.
But could the code of law of Narash be truly considered its law without a territory for it to govern? If not, then the Trueblood was nothing more than wood and rope and sailcloth, belonging to no nation, empty of meaning as anything but a means of conveyance.
Just as Varg himself would be empty of meaning—a Warmaster with no range to protect.
Bitter fury burned inside him in a fire-flash instant, and the white clouds and blue sea he could view through the cabin’s windows abruptly turned red. The vord. The accursed vord. They had destroyed his home and murdered his people. Of millions of Narashans, fewer than a hundred thousand had survived—and the vord would answer to him for their actions.
He got hold of his temper before it could goad him into a blood-rage, breathing deeply until the normal colors of daylight returned. The vord would pay. There would be a time and a place to exact vengeance, but it was neither here nor now.
He touched a claw tip to the page of the book and carefully turned it to the next. It was a delicate creation, this Aleran tome, a gift from Tavar. Like the young Aleran demon, it was tiny, fragile—and contained a great deal more than its exterior suggested. If only the print wasn’t of such a diminutive size. It was a constant strain on Varg’s eyesight. One had to read the thing by daylight. With a proper, dim red lamp, he couldn’t make it out at all.
There was a polite scratch at the door.
“Enter,” Varg rumbled, and his pup, Nasaug, entered the cabin. The younger Cane bared his throat in respect, and Varg returned the gesture with slightly less emphasis.
Pup, Varg thought, as he looked fondly upon his get. He’s four centuries old, and by every reasonable standard should be a Warmaster in his own right. He fought the accursed Aleran demons on their own ground for two years and made good his escape despite all of their power. But I suppose a sire never forgets how small his pups were once.
“Report,” he rumbled.
“Master Khral has come aboard,” Nasaug rumbled. “He requests an audience.”
Varg bared his teeth. He carefully placed a thin bit of colored cloth into the pages of the book and gently closed it. “Again.”
“Shall I throw him back into his boat?” Nasaug asked. There was a somewhat wistful note to his voice.
“I find myself tempted,” Varg said. “But no. It is his right under the codes to seek redress for grievances. Bring him.”
Nasaug bared his throat again and departed the cabin. A moment later, the door opened again, and Master Khral entered. He was nearly as tall as Varg, closer to nine feet than eight when fully upright, but unlike the warrior Cane, he was as thin as whipcord. His fur was a mottled red-brown, marked with streaks of white hairs born from scars inflicted by ritual and not by honest battle. He wore a demonskin mantle and hood, despite Varg’s repeated requests that he not parade about the fleet in a garment made from the skins of the creatures who were presently responsible for keeping them all alive. He wore a pair of pouches on cross-body belts, each containing a bladder of blood, which the ritualists needed to perform their sorcery. He smelled like unclean fur and rotten blood, and reeked of a confidence that he was too foolish to see had no basis in reality.
The senio
r ritualist stared calmly at Varg for several seconds before finally baring his throat just enough to give Varg no excuse to rip it out. Varg did not return the gesture at all. “Master Khral. What now?”
“As every day, Warmaster,” Khral replied. “I am here to beg you, on behalf of the people of Narash and Shuar, to turn aside from this dangerous path of binding our people to the demons.”
“I am told,” Varg rumbled, “the people of Narash and Shuar like to eat.”
Khral sneered. “We are Canim,” he spat. “We need no one to help us attain our destiny. Especially not the demons.”
Varg grunted. “True. We will take our destiny on our own. But obtaining food is another matter.”
“They will turn on us,” Khral said. “The moment they have finished using us, they will turn and destroy us. You know this is true.”
“It is true,” Varg said. “It is also tomorrow. I am in command of today.”
Khral’s tail lashed in irritation. “Once we have separated from the ice ships, we can pick up the pace and make landfall within a week.”
“We can make ourselves into meals for the leviathans, you mean,” Varg replied. “There are no range charts of the sea this far north. We would have no way to know when we entered a leviathan’s territory.”
“We are the masters of the world. We are not afraid.”
Varg growled low in his chest. “I find it remarkable how often amateurs confuse courage with idiocy.”
The ritualist’s eyes narrowed. “We might lose a vessel here and there,” Khral acknowledged. “But we would not owe our lives to the charity of the demons. A week, then we can begin to rebuild on our own.”
“Leave the ice ships,” Varg said. “The same ships that are carrying more than half of our surviving people.”
“Sacrifices must be made if we are to remain true to ourselves,” Khral declared, “if our spirits, our pride, and our strength are to remain pure.”
“I have noticed that those who speak as you do are rarely willing to include themselves among those sacrificed.”
A furious snarl burst out of Khral’s throat, and one paw-hand flashed toward the hip bag at his side.
Varg did not so much as rise from his crouch. His arms moved, shoulders twisting with sinewy power as he flung the Aleran book at Khral. It sailed through the air in a blur of spinning motion, and its hard spine struck the master ritualist in the throat. The impact knocked Khral’s shoulders back against the door to the cabin, and he rebounded from it to fall to the cabin’s deck, making gagging sounds.
Varg got up and walked over to the book. Its leaves had opened, and some of the delicate pages had been harshly folded. Varg picked it up carefully, smoothed the pages, and considered the Aleran creation again.
Like Tavar, he mused, it was apparently more dangerous than it appeared.
Varg stood by for a moment, as Khral’s gagging gradually transformed to labored breathing. He hadn’t quite crushed the ritualist’s windpipe, which was disappointing. Now he’d have to suffer the fool again tomorrow. After surviving today’s conflict, Khral would be unlikely to allow Varg another such opportunity to remove him.
So be it. Some ambitious underling might turn a dead Khral into a martyr. It was entirely possible the ritualist would be more dangerous dead than alive.
“Nasaug,” Varg called.
The pup opened the door and considered the prostrate form on the floor. “Warmaster?”
“Master Khral is ready to return to his boat.”
Nasaug bared his throat, not quite hiding his amusement. “Immediately, Warmaster.” He leaned down, seized Khral by his ankle, and simply dragged him out of the cabin.
Varg gave Nasaug a few minutes to get Khral back into his boat, then strode out onto the Trueblood’s deck.
The ship was painted black, as most Narashan vessels were. It offered a stealth advantage when moving at night, and during the day it collected enough heat to enable the adhesive sealing the hull to remain flexible and watertight. It also lent them an air of menace, particularly to the Aleran demons. They were nearly blind at night and painted their own ships white so that they could see a little more clearly during darkness. The very idea of a black ship was alien to them, and darkness was a primal fear for the species. While their blindness and fear might not stop them from attacking, especially with their sorcery at hand, it did prevent any independent individual or small group from attempting to board a Narashan vessel for whatever mad reason it might concoct.
The Alerans were many things, but not stupid. None of them liked the idea of stumbling around in the darkness while the night-wise Canim came for them.
Varg went to the ship’s prow and stared out over the sea. They were in waters hundreds of leagues north of any he had sailed before, and the sea was choppy. The weather had remained clear, either as the result of fortune or Aleran sorcery, and the fleet had made the long, slow trek from Canea without serious incident—something Varg would have considered the next best thing to impossible only months before.
The voyage from Canea to Alera was a month’s worth of sailing with a moderately favorable wind. It had taken them over three months to get this far, and there were still three weeks’ worth of ocean in front of them at their current pace. Varg turned his eyes to the south and studied the reason for their crawl.
Three almost unbelievably enormous ships rode squarely in the center of the fleet, rising like mountains from the sea and dwarfing even the Trueblood into insignificance—but their size was not the most remarkable thing about them.
The ships had been built from ice.
The Alerans had used their sorcery to reshape icebergs calving from a glacier into seaworthy forms, with multiple decks and a vast capacity for their precious cargo—all that remained of once-proud Canea. Makers, females, and pups filled the three ships, and the Narashan captains of the vessels escorting her had orders to spill their crews’ blood like seawater if that was what it required to protect the civilians.
The ships had enormous, flat decks, and no mast could stretch high or broad enough to hang enough sail to move the vessel, but the Alerans had managed to overcome the problem with their typical ingenuity. Hundreds of poles with crossbars had been placed on the topmost deck of the ship, and they billowed with every form of cloth one could imagine. They alone would not propel the ice mountains, but Tavar was, correctly, of the opinion that even a small contribution would prove significant over time. Then, too, the wind demons with the Aleran fleet had been tasked with bringing up enough of a breeze to lighten the load on the water demons who truly drove the vast ships.
Propelled primarily by Aleran sorcery, the ice ships had proved to be steady in the water. If the quarters for his people were a bit cold—albeit less so than one would have imagined—their discomfort was a small price to pay for survival. Some of the sick and elderly had been transferred to Varg’s transports to get out of the cold, but for the most part matters had proceeded with relative simplicity.
Varg looked up and down the length of his ship, watching his sailors tending to their work. His warriors and sailors were painfully lean, though not cadaverous. Gathering rations had been a hurried affair during the escape, and there were thousands of mouths to feed. Priority for food went to the Aleran wind and water demons, then sailors, with civilians close behind. The demon Legions followed, thanks to the necessity of maintaining their fragile forms, and last came Varg’s warriors. The order might have been reversed during lean times in a land campaign, but here, on the open water, those most vital to the fleet’s progress and purpose had priority.
Varg watched as a hunting ship sailed into the fleet from outside the formation. It moved sluggishly, even under full sail, but its speed was adequate to catch the ice ships. A massive form floated in the water behind the hunting ship—the corpse of a medium-sized leviathan.
The demons’ work, again. Leviathans were fiercely territorial, but they hated the cold of the chilled sea surrounding the ice ships. Hun
ting vessels would sail out of the bitterly cold water and draw the attention of a leviathan. Then air and water demons would work together to slay it, somehow drowning the creatures on air even while they were in the water.
It was a dangerous business. Two out of ten hunting ships never returned—but those that did brought enough food with them, in the form of the leviathans, to feed the entire fleet for two days. The taste of leviathan meat and blubber was indescribably foul, but it kept a body alive.
Nasaug came to his side and watched the hunting ship with Varg. “Warmaster.”
“The good Master is gone?”
“Yes,” Nasaug said. “And surly.”
Varg bared his teeth in a grin.
“Father,” Nasaug said. He paused to choose words carefully. Varg turned to face him and waited. When Nasaug did that, what he had to say was generally unpleasant—and worth listening to.
“In three weeks we will reach Alera,” Nasaug said.
“Yes.”
“And fight the vord beside the demons.”
“Yes.”
Nasaug was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Khral is a scheming fool. But he has a point. There is no reason for the Alerans to keep us alive once we have won the war.”
Varg’s ears twitched in amusement. “First we must win the war,” he rumbled. “Many things can happen in the passing of time. Patience.”
Nasaug flicked his ears in agreement. “Khral is building a following. Speaking to gatherings on the ice ships. Our people are afraid. He is using that fear.”
“It is what bloodspeakers do,” Varg said.
“He could be dangerous.”
“Fools often are.”
Nasaug did not gainsay him, but then he rarely did. The younger Cane straightened his shoulders in resignation and looked out to sea.
Varg put a hand on his pup’s shoulder. “I know Khral. I know his like. How they think. How they move. I have dealt with them before, as have you when you fed Sarl to the Tavar.”
Nasaug showed his fangs in a grin of remembrance.
Varg nodded. “If necessary, we will deal with them again.”