with thousands of other legionares and warriors, staring at the out-of-place ships.
Octavian wheeled his horse and rode to approximately the midpoint of the line. Then he turned to face the troops and raised a hand for silence. It was rapid in coming. When he spoke, his voice sounded calm and perfectly clear, amplified by an effort of windcrafting, Marcus was certain.
"Well, men," the captain began. "Your lazy vacation to sunny Canea is now officially over. No more recreation for you."
This drew a rumbling laugh from the Legions. The Canim did not react.
"As I speak," the captain continued, "the enemy is attacking all that remains of our Realm. Our Legions are battling them on a scale unmatched in our history. But without our participation, they can only postpone the inevitable. We need to be at Riva, gentlemen, and right now."
Marcus listened to the captain's speech, as he outlined the situation on the far side of the Realm - but his eyes were drawn to the ships. He didn't see as clearly as he used to, but Marcus noted that the ships had been... modified, somehow. They rested on their keels, but instead of plain, whitewashed wood, the keels had somehow been replaced or lined with shining steel. Other wooden structures, like arms or perhaps wings, swept out from either side of the ships, ending in another wooden structure as long as the ship's hull. That structure, too, sported a steel-lined keel. Between the ship's keel and those wings, it stood perfectly straight, its balance maintained. Something about the design looked vaguely familiar.
"With decent causeways," the captain was saying, "we could make it there in a couple of weeks. But we don't have weeks. So we're trying something new."
As he spoke the words, a ship flashed into sight. It was a small, nimble-looking vessel, and Marcus immediately recognized Captain Demos's ship, the Slive. Like the other ships, she had been fitted with a metal keel. Like the others, she sported two wing structures. But unlike the other ships, she had her sails raised, and they bellied out taut, catching the power of the northerly winds.
That was when Marcus realized what the modifications reminded him of: the runners of a sled. He took note of another detail. The ground before the wall wasn't covered in inches of snow. It was coated in an equal thickness of ice.
The Slive rushed along the icy ground, moving swiftly, far more swiftly than she ever could at sea. A cloud of mist sprayed out from its steel runners in a fine, constant haze, half-veiling the runners, creating the illusion that the ship was sailing several inches above the ice, unsupported by anything at all. In the time it took Marcus to realize that his jaw had dropped open and to close it again, the Slive appeared, rushing down upon him, its runners making the ice beneath them crackle and groan, then soared on by, its sails snapping. Less than a minute later, it was better than a mile away, and only then did it begin to heave to, swinging around into a graceful turn. It took a few moments for the ship to rerig its sails to catch the wind from the opposite quarter for the return trip, and they bellied out for almost a minute before the Slive lost her momentum and began to return toward them.
"I'm afraid it's back to the ships," the Princeps said into the shocked silence. "Where we will sail the length of the Shieldwall to Phrygia and take the remaining intact causeways south to the aid of Riva. Your ship assignments will be the same as they were when we left Canea. You all know your ships and your captains. Fall out by cohorts and report to them. We'll leave as soon as the road ahead is ready for us."
"Bloody crows," Marcus breathed. If all the ships could sail so swiftly over the ice - though he somehow doubted that the Slive's performance was typical - they could sail the entire breadth of the Realm in... bloody crows. In hours, a handful of days. Phrygia and Riva were the two most closely placed of the great cities of the Realm - a fast-moving Legion on a causeway could make the journey in less than three days.
If it worked, if the winds held, the ice held, and the newly designed ships held, it would be the swiftest march in Aleran history.
Stunned, Marcus heard himself giving orders to his cohort and coordinating with