Chapter 1473: Salt And Pork

The open water of the northern sea was not blue. It was the color of crushed iron and old slate, churning under a sky that looked like a bruised turnip.

The flagship of the Sixth Legion’s vanguard was a massive galleon built for war, with reinforced hulls and four towering masts. Even so, the northern currents pitched and rolled it like a wooden toy. Ice crusted the rigging in white sleeves, and the wind carried a bitter, metallic sting that chewed straight through standard-issue wool coats.

Han was currently leaning over the starboard railing, actively wishing he was dead.

He heaved into the grey spray, groaning as another heavy swell lifted the deck beneath his boots. His face was the color of spoiled milk, and his fingers were locked onto the frozen wood in a death grip.

"You’re breathing wrong," Doron noted, standing three feet away.

The Shadow Soul practitioner rode the swaying deck as if it were a paved road. He stood perfectly straight with his hands tucked into his armpits, watching Han with flat, unhurried smugness.

"Shut up, Doron," Han gasped out, before emptying his stomach into the sea once again.

"I’m just saying," Doron continued smoothly. "If you synced your diaphragm with the trough of the wave instead of the crest, you wouldn’t feel like your organs are trying to escape through your teeth. But by all means, keep feeding the fish."

Rian stood a dozen paces away with his back against the mainmast. He kept his hands in his pockets and the collar of his frayed black coat turned up against the wind. He watched the exchange with dark, unreadable eyes, his knees giving easily with every roll of the ship.

’At least the fish are getting a decent breakfast.’

Across the deck, a group of Sixth Legion regulars in heavy blue Winterward coats watched the Eleventh Squad with open disdain. Their coats were spotless, and their halberds were polished to a mirror shine. They were Ascendants and high-tier Masters, hardened veterans of the Eastern war, and they carried the long steel shafts as easily as walking sticks.

"Look at them," one of the vanguard sergeants muttered to his corporal, making no effort to lower his voice. "Border rats. Put them on a real ship and they lose their stomachs before we even clear the bay."

The corporal scoffed. "The Captain said the mercenary held a valley. I say the Church made up half the story to sell indulgences. They don’t belong on a vanguard deck."

Iren stood nearby, slowly polishing the pommel of his sword with a tallow rag. He did not look up, but his jaw tightened, and a thread of yellow lightning crackled across the metal for a fraction of a second. Baletta simply glared at the regulars, her hand resting heavily on her hip.

Rian did not react. He let the insult pass, preferring the creak and sway of the ship to a pointless deck brawl.

Instead, he turned his attention inward. He kept his Shingan suppressed behind compressed soul gates, limiting the Demon Eye’s output to a faint, passive read. Even without projecting his aura, the Third Eye unspooled the martial structure of the flagship’s crew with ease.

He swept his gaze lazily across the deck. Six Ascendants stood in the immediate vicinity, the sneering sergeant among them. The combat mages stationed near the aft castle gave off the tight, drilled essence of imperial academy training, their mana circulating in even, measured pulses like soldiers marching in step.

His eyes drifted toward the lower deck hatch.

’Thirty-two Masters, eight Ascendants, and one very annoyed quartermaster. The Empire really doesn’t want anyone surviving this.’

Below decks, in the lower hold, Quartermaster Toris was having a terrible morning.

Toris was a harried logistics officer who had spent the last decade counting grain sacks for the Winterward. At the moment, he was pinned flat against the wooden floorboards.

Sitting squarely on his chest was Mr. Fluffy.

The war-beast was still wearing his disguise as a northern snow hound, his true nature condensed into a single, aggressively bushy white tail. Even disguised, he weighed nearly four hundred pounds. He looked down at Toris with a pair of chillingly intelligent blue eyes and waited.

"Get it off me!" Toris wheezed, his face turning a dangerous shade of purple. "Guards! Shoot the beast!"

Two legionaries stood awkwardly at the edge of the hold with their spears lowered, each waiting for the other to move first. The hound had not attacked anyone. It had simply walked into the hold, located the quartermaster, and sat on him.

"I believe," Rian said, coming down the wooden stairs at an unhurried pace, "he is waiting for his ration."

Toris craned his neck to look at Rian. "The requisition form hasn’t been approved by the central ledger yet! You can’t just take Imperial stores!"

"I am not taking them," Rian pointed out, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. "My dog is taking them. I’m just here to translate."

Mr. Fluffy let out a low, rumbling growl that shivered through the floorboards and rattled the teeth in Toris’s skull. The hound shifted his weight, pressing harder on the man’s ribs.

"Fine!" Toris choked out, flapping a hand toward a stack of wooden crates near the salt barrels. "Take a crate of the salted pork! Just get him off!"

Rian snapped his fingers. Mr. Fluffy stood at once, padded over to the nearest crate, bit through the iron banding as if it were spun sugar, and dragged the entire two-hundred-pound box away with a satisfied huff.

"Pleasure doing business with the Sixth," Rian told the gasping quartermaster.

He left the hold and climbed back up into the wind. He made his way toward the aft castle, weaving between hurrying sailors and riding the pitch of the deck without once reaching for a rope.

Captain Ysolde Vaertia stood alone at the stern railing, looking back at the churning grey wake of the flagship. She wore no hat against the spray, and her silver lion pin gleamed dully under the bruised sky.

Rian stepped up beside her and leaned his forearms on the iced railing.

"Your men are adjusting poorly to the waves, Mercenary," Ysolde noted, without taking her eyes off the horizon. Her voice was dry as parchment, and it carried over the wind without effort.

"They’ll manage," Rian said. "They’re used to solid dirt and things trying to eat them. The sea is a lack of both."

For a long moment, Ysolde said nothing. She pulled her dark blue Winterward coat tighter around her shoulders.

"I hate the sea," she said quietly.

It was the first piece of genuine conversation she had offered since Rian signed the contract. He did not push. He simply watched the grey water and waited.

"When I was stationed in the East, we fought along the jagged coasts of the old peninsula," Ysolde continued, her eyes distant. "The war there isn’t fought on fields. It’s fought on the water. When an army breaks on land, you can retreat. You can hide in the forests, or hold a mountain pass. When a fleet breaks, there is nowhere to step. You just drown in the dark."

She turned her head and fixed Rian with a hard look.

"The capital thinks this expedition is a glorious march into the wild," she said. "But the ocean doesn’t care about the Emperor’s ledgers. It doesn’t care about your single talent, or my rank. It swallows everything the same."

Rian met her gaze. He knew that look. It belonged to a veteran who knew exactly what a slaughter looked like, and had long ago stopped pretending it was noble.

"Then it’s a good thing we’re on a very large boat," Rian said flatly.

Before Ysolde could answer, the stern fell silent.

The shrieking wind died all at once. The spray drifting over the deck hung in the air, beads of salt water suspended at eye level and refusing to fall.

Rian turned toward the prow.

Rolling over the grey water, moving far faster than the dead wind could carry it, came a dense wall of pale fog. It swallowed the horizon whole and crept across the waves, erasing the other ships of the fleet from view one by one without a sound.

His hand slipped toward his pocket.

’Well. That doesn’t look like weather.’