Page 188 of The Cradle of Ice

“Someone needs to go over there and fetch help,” he finished for her.

Rhaif turned with a wince toward Brayl. Agony pinched her eyes. Fresh crimson flecked the corners of her lips. More blood stained the waters dark, spreading wider with each hard breath. Brayl glared through her pain and shook her head, but she didn’t have the breath to curse, to tell him not to bother. She was a pirate’s daughter. She knew death was near.

“Where would I even look for help in Iskar?” Rhaif asked.

“If there are any survivors, they’ll be holed up in one of our mag’nees shelters, protecting themselves from the raash’ke’s cries. I can tell you where to find such places.”

He had heard the stories of the attack a few days ago. He had inspected a few of those lodestone chambers himself.

For this very reason—in case there was another attack.

“I can find them,” he said.

“Go first to our house,” Floraan warned. She cupped a hand over an ear. “I have two shield-helms in a cupboard. I gathered them after the last time. From the dead who no longer had use of them.”

Clearly, she had taken extra precautions, too.

Fenn shifted higher. “If there are two helms, then I should go with Rhaif.”

Rhaif wanted to refuse. Prior to all of this, he had been a thief in Llyra’s guild. He knew how to skulk and move unseen. But any good thief could always use another set of eyes, especially with dangers on the ground and in the air.

“Henna and I can see to Brayl,” Floraan said. “And considering the dangers out there, take Kalder, too.”

Rhaif pictured the vargr tearing into the guardsmen. Still, he balked at leaving two women and a girl unprotected in a crashed sailraft. “There are dangers in these waters, too.”

“Nothing I can’t handle in these shallows. All the noise will keep the worst away. Even the raash’ke are unlikely to bother us this far out.” She waved Fenn up, ready to take his place. “All of you, go.”

Rhaif took a breath and nodded. He glanced at Brayl one last time. She still glared but managed a hoarse curse. He took it as a thank-you. He headed for the broken stern and the cooling ruins of the forge. He collected Kalder on the way out—or tried to. The vargr was reluctant to leave Henna’s side, and for the girl, that feeling was clearly mutual.

Floraan helped by calling Henna to her side. She then addressed Kalder with the scolding voice of a mother toward a recalcitrant child. “Tak ga, Kalder. Tak ga nya.”

The vargr curled a lip at her, then hung his head and swung to follow Rhaif.

Fenn waded after them, binding his gashed forehead with a scrap of gasbag sailcloth.

Floraan called after them. She had briefly inspected Brayl as she took Fenn’s place. “Wait! In that same cupboard, there’s a healer’s satchel. I have elixirs to stem bleeding and pain. If you can, bring that back, too.”

Rhaif turned to her. “While we’re at it, how about a couple bottles of sweet wine?”

She smiled at him. “If it’s not too much of a bother.”

He grinned back at her, then skirted around the forge. He led the others to the stern but held them at the threshold. The sailraft had crashed into waist-high shallows. Using every bit of skill and luck she could muster, Brayl had gotten them over the sea, instead of hitting the beach. Even this meager cushion of water likely saved their lives.

Rhaif glanced at Fenn, who nodded.

We owe it to her to take this risk.

Still …

The beach ahead was cloaked in smoke from the blasts and fires. The heavy pall had blown against the towering ice cliffs and rolled to either side. It had also swallowed Iskar. The village was only a brighter glow within the dark fog.

Screams and cannon fire echoed out. Near Iskar’s docks, one of the enemy swyftships had lowered in front of the village’s plaza. Its forges steamed but it had gone dark, as if trying to hide from the horde in the skies.

And with good reason.

A slipfoil sped over that smoke bank, wobbling uncontrolled, pursued by a winged shadow. The tiny ship slammed into the cliff, crushing its narrowed nose, then exploding into a fireball. Dark wings swept away the wreckage.

Lower down, a small bonfire lit the edge of the beach between them and the village. It marked another crashed sailraft, one that hadn’t had Brayl manning its wheel and hadn’t emptied its flashburn tanks. Bodies washed back and forth in the surf.