Page 187 of The Cradle of Ice

—From the second act of The Vale of Treason by Sensaoria of Hyparia

74

RHAIF WOKE INTO chaos. His head throbbed with each strained blink as he fought to keep his lids open. One eye went blind. He swiped at it in a panic, only to smear away blood and clear his vision—which still swam wildly.

The world was muffled, as if he were hearing everything underwater. He jerked higher, thinking he was drowning, only to realize his head had been half-submerged. He splashed up with a gasp. The muting cleared from his ears, replaced with a cacophony of screams, crying, howling, and a frantic pleading for help.

The world continued to spin, flaring brighter, then dimming. Shapes danced in and out of focus. Then hands grabbed him and yanked him higher.

“Hala nee ya nestala wenn!” was shouted into his ear.

He blinked a few more times, trying to force the world back into its proper place, tasting blood on his tongue. “Wha … What…?” A familiar face swam into focus. “Floraan…”

She leaned closer, searching his face as if she were reading a book. She seemed satisfied with the content and drew back, pulling him with her.

“You must help us,” she gasped. “Now!”

He swallowed down more blood, wiped his eye, took another breath to search around him. Then he remembered.

The crash …

He let Floraan lift him half up, then managed the rest himself. Sloshing for balance, he surveyed the wreck of the sailraft. Water climbed to his knees. Underfoot was a hazard of broken boards. The roof had crushed lower. The stern door had torn away, replaced with the bulk of the stern forge that had shoved up from below. Seawater steamed and hissed from its overheated bulk. Beyond, shreds of the gasbag floated in the lapping tide.

Floraan had hold of Rhaif’s hand and tugged him the other way, toward the bow. He turned and stumbled after her.

Kalder hulked to one side, one ear hanging low, ripped by something sharp. The vargr growled, still protecting the youngest of them. Henna clung to his ruff with both fists. Her eyes were huge, but her fear of his savagery had been replaced with a need for the same fierceness. She must have innately sensed that place of security.

“Before we crashed,” Floraan wheezed out as she pushed past the vargr, “Kalder shoved me, wrapped around Henna. Saved her.”

Only now did Rhaif notice the woman was cradling a limb close to her belly, her forearm crooked.

He tried to get her to stop. “You’re hurt…”

“It can wait.” She continued to the bow. “This can’t.”

Rhaif followed her to the front. As she stepped aside, it took Rhaif a moment to make sense of the sight. Then his heart pounded.

Fenn sat waist-deep in the water. His brow had been sliced open, showing bone through the flow of blood. But he was not the one imperiled. His right shoulder held Brayl’s head and upper body out of the water.

“Help us,” the navigator rasped.

Even in the shadows, Brayl’s face was a ghastly white, her eyes tight with pain. Her breathing panted through strained, bloodless lips. She could not move. A spar of draft-iron from the balloon rigging pierced her chest, pinning her in place.

“I can’t get it to move,” Fenn said, both hands tight to the bar. “Not on my own.”

Rhaif hurried over. He braced a leg to either side of Brayl’s submerged waist and grabbed hold of the draft-iron bar above Fenn’s hands. “You push. I’ll pull.”

Together they fought the spar, straining and cursing. They changed their grip, wrestled it all directions, but to no avail. The spear of iron—thick as his wrist—would not budge. It was lodged up top by the crush of the roof and impaled below, maybe as far down as the seabed.

Floraan recognized the truth. “We need more men. And tools.”

Rhaif backed a step, breathing hard. “Where?”

Floraan looked out the stern, to where a war was being waged, but it was no longer just the Hálendiian butchers. The sharp cries of the raash’ke cut through the bellows and screams, undercut by the low booms of cannons. The battle sounded distant, down the beach to the left, centered around one target.

“Iskar,” Rhaif said.

Floraan looked at him, clearly knowing what she had to ask but afraid to voice it.