His detached force numbered two thousand, with Marshal Ranker in overall command as her sappers and scouts would be more valuable to their purposes than regulars or heavies.

...

The fleet made good pace, for the first three days.

Then the sickness started.

It showed in the sailors first. Fever, sweat, weakness of the limbs and after twelve hours they were dead. Amadeus ordered any with the symptoms thrown overboard as soon as he first saw the disease. It was too clean and too sudden: there had been no sign at all before the fevers, the sailors being in perfect health. It was not a natural disease. Reluctantly, he ordered every Proceran sailor disposed of after the first legionary showed symptoms. It was too late, by then.

On the sixth day, Amadeus of the Green Stretch found he was the only person left alive of the entire fleet.

- Book 4, Interlude: Queen's Gambit, Declined