Marcus shook his head. "Depends on the ground between here and there. Earth will only take a moment. If there's much stone, it will be more difficult."
"Then begin."
"Already have."
Sha let out a pensive rumble in the close darkness. "But we are not moving."
"No," Marcus said. "But the earth around us is, and carrying us with it." He took a shuddering breath. He hadn't used a tunneling crafting in fifteen years. He'd lost his appreciation for how strenuous they were. Or perhaps he was just getting old. "I need to concentrate."
Rather than make any affirmative response, Sha simply fell silent.
Crows, but it was good to work with a professional.
The ground between their entry point and Khral's ship was heavily scattered with megalithic boulders, the leavings of some long-vanished glacier, freed from the ice and sunk into the silt in the following thaw, most likely. He detoured around them. Passing directly through would have been possible, but stone was an order of magnitude more difficult to craft than earth. Though it doubled the distance the tunneling had to travel, Marcus judged that, even so, he would come out ahead in terms of energy expended - though time would be a concern. It took them nearly twenty minutes to reach their destination, which was under the safety margin he'd estimated in planning, if only barely.
It was impossible to feel the ship itself through the baffling layer of ice upon the surface, but it was easy to sense the pressure of the ship's weight, transferred through the ice and pressing down upon the soil. He guided the tunneling to the ship's aft and began to nudge slowly upward. The temperature inside the little bubble of air suddenly dropped, and the earth of its curved top was replaced with chill, dirty ice.
They couldn't afford to simply rip up through the ice. Breaking ice could cause great whip-crack bolts of sound. Sha went to work. He drew a tool from a scabbard at his side, a curving blade the shape of a crescent moon, but with its grip suspended between the moon's points, so that the outer curve ran along the wielder's knuckles. The blade was toothed like a saw, and the Cane went to work with great, ripping motions of his arms and shoulders. It took him less than a minute to slice out a hole in the ice large enough for him to fit through, and when the block of ice fell in, the black-stained hull of a Canim ship was revealed above it.
As the Cane carefully stowed the odd knife, Marcus rose, laid a hand on the wooden hull, and called upon his wood fury, Etan. As his fury surged into the ship's hull, he felt his own senses extend through its superstructure. The timbers were all under strain, of course, and the evidence of recent, heavy furycrafting was everywhere. Excellent. Amidst all of those marks of activity, a few more gentle touches would never be noticed.
Marcus murmured to Etan beneath his breath, made an effort of will, and watched as the timbers of the hull gathered and puckered like a suddenly opening mouth. Sha watched this with his eyes narrowed, then nodded once and slithered through the opening. Marcus waited for a few breaths, so that Sha would have time to give warning of any trouble. When no such warning came, he hauled himself into the ship and found himself standing in the deep shadows of the ship's aft cargo hold.
Sha went to the edge of the hatch, centered himself in the hold, and took seven quick silent paces directly toward the stern. He turned directly to his right, took two more paces, then reached up to put his fingers on the hold's ceiling. He glanced at Marcus, to be sure the Aleran had seen the spot.
Marcus nodded and slid up to stand in the indicated position. Sha turned to interlace his fingers, creating a stirrup of his hands. Marcus stepped up into the Cane's grip and found himself lifted lightly upward until he could touch the Canim-scale ceiling. He focused on the planks, narrowed his eyes, and with a sudden spreading motion of his hands, forced the thinner deck planking apart just as he had the hull. Even as the opening gaped, Sha heaved, and Marcus found himself shooting upward through the hole. The stench of rotten blood and musky Cane flooded his nostrils. He landed on one knee, oriented rapidly, and found a lean, reddish-furred Cane sitting on his