Page 204 of The Cradle of Ice

From the top of the slope, he recognized their nervousness. They had noted the circling raash’ke, too. The pair kept close to the shelter of the skiff, father and daughter, their horns knocking together, reassuring each other.

He glanced to the skiff’s fish pen and its icy storage of eels and minwins. A small meal would help return the orksos’ good natures. But he knew he shouldn’t overfeed them before—

“What’s that?” Jace asked, stopping ahead.

The thunderous blast threw Jace into Daal. They both rolled in a tangle. A flash of flames and a wave of blistering heat swept over them. Then parts of the skiff rained and crashed all around them.

Daal shoved away from Jace, panic returning his strength.

No, no …

He crawled through the burning wreckage, over broken crates. Once close enough, he denied what his eyes were seeing. He shook his head, trying to wish it away.

Mattis lay on the rocky slope, thrown out of the river by the blast. One wing fluttered. His horn had snapped off near its base. Blood pooled under his bulk.

Deafened by the blast, choked by his heart, Daal slid down the slope to reach the orkso. He ran a palm over his slick flank. Mattis’s nostrils heaved with misty exhalation. An eye swiveled to look at Daal, then over to the river, expressing his worry.

Neffa …

Daal scooted through the blood. Out in the water, Neffa rolled amidst the wreckage, piping in distress for her father. She struggled to claw and hump her way onto shore. The water around her was dark with the blood flowing into it.

Daal slid into the river, shying past her horn.

“I’ve got you,” he said, reaching for her.

She rolled, showing him why she struggled, why she couldn’t reach her father. Blood sprayed from where her foreleg and wing had been ripped away. Each beat of her huge hearts pumped the life out of her.

No, no, no …

He cried out in a wracking sob and hugged her huge head. Still, she beat her tail, fighting to push out of the river, to get to her father.

The others crowded behind him, unsure what to do, but Daal knew there was nothing. Her wound was fatal. From the bank, Mattis tried to lift his head with a whistling wail, calling to his daughter.

Daal recognized the one thing he could do.

He shoved out of the water and crawled, stumbling and shaking, up to Mattis. “Help me,” he cried out.

He shifted to Mattis’s head and tried to shoulder the orkso’s bulk back into the river, to his dying daughter. The others closed to help. They would’ve failed if not for Shiya’s strength. They slid Mattis through his own blood and into the river.

Daal slipped in with them, between them, hugging both. Neffa rubbed her father, nuzzled Daal, whistling as she bled away, flowing her life down the river. Mattis rolled and lifted a comforting wing over his daughter’s flank, but Mattis was weakening, too.

Daal sat waist-deep in the cold water. He sobbed and leaned his brow to each, inhaling their fishy musk, the salt of their last exhalation. Their piping and whistling faded into the air. He didn’t know who died first, but he stayed with them both to the end and beyond.

He hung over them, running a palm along the spiral of Neffa’s horn. The others tried to coax him out of the river, but he refused.

Nyx whispered to Graylin, “What happened?”

His answer was dull with despair. “The crate of armaments in the stern. One of the hand-bombs must have exploded.”

Vikas stepped into view, looking out at the wreckage, gesturing in her language.

Nyx’s reaction was sharp. “Sabotage? Like back on the Hawk? Why?”

Daal tried to block them out, closing his eyes.

“They wanted to make sure we never returned,” Graylin said dourly. “They must have used a long-wicked stykler. Like the one planted in the Hawk’s forge. Delayed to explode until we were far enough away, leaving us dead or stranded.”

“Who put it there?” Nyx asked.