Page 44 of The Cradle of Ice

Graylin waved to her. “We should be going.”

She wanted to argue, but from the distress in Daal’s eyes, she simply nodded, dropping this mystery for now. “Will you still take us to your village?”

“Yee,” he agreed.

Nyx knew the plan was to reach his home. Daal was not the only mystery they had to solve. Their group had waited on the beach, keeping close to the sailraft, off-loading essentials, all the while hoping that there might be some sign of the other escaping sailraft and its occupants. Not to mention the Sparrowhawk, which was last seen fleeing into the mists, drawing off the pack of raash’ke.

As she joined the others, she gazed up at the mists, shimmering under the glow of the encrusted ice.

Where are you all?

22

RHAIF CIRCLED THE beached sailraft for the sixth time, but nothing had miraculously changed since the fifth time.

He stared at the stretch of sand, dotted by thorny bushes with crimson berries that were surely poisonous in this landscape that only the undergod, Nethyn, could appreciate. Everywhere he looked, the strand extended to lapping green waters.

“Why did you have to land us on an island?” Rhaif complained, turning back to the raft. “We’re trapped here.”

The pirate’s snowy-locked daughter, Glace, stalked atop the sailraft, wading through the ruins of their shredded gasbag. Its remains draped and hung over the raft, like a god’s dispirited cock.

She glowered down at Rhaif, her almond skin darkening with anger. “Be thankful you’re in one piece.”

Hyck, the Sparrowhawk’s engineer, crouched up there, too, inspecting the wreckage. The scrawny man had stripped off his shirt in the humid heat, showing all his ribs. He fingered a ragged rent in the balloon’s fabric, then tossed it aside. “No sewing this back together.”

“Don’t matter,” Glace said with a hard scowl. “We have no way to inflate it. And we only have dregs of flashburn left in the raft’s forge. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Then we’re stuck,” Rhaif groused, swiping the sweaty strands of ruddy bangs from his brow. “And with nothing but salty water all around, we’ll be sucking on pebbles before long.”

The twin pirate brothers, Perde and Herl, hauled out the last of their supplies, stacking crates and barrels in the sand. It hadn’t taken long. In the rush to flee the Sparrowhawk, they hadn’t had time to stock their provisions. The pair had also shed their roughspun shirts, showing wide chests and a splay of tattoos over their backs, depicting various scenes of carnage and debauchery, likely preserving the histories of their respective exploits. It was the only distinguishing feature between the two, that and Herl’s crooked nose from an old break. The two Gyn-sized behemoths both hailed—or rather escaped—from the closed and walled-off Hegemony of Harpe. They certainly had the typical Harpic jaundiced complexion and pinched eyes.

Herl had noted Rhaif’s complaint. “Aye, the thief is right about sucking on pebbles. We have only one barrel of water.”

Perde shrugged. “But two of ale.”

“Well, at least you all prioritized correctly,” Rhaif conceded. “We can get drunk before we sweat to death on this god-fekked island.”

He scanned the mists.

The fog hung thicker on one side, where the waters boiled and spat, giving rise to heavier steam. Far overhead, the world was roofed by ice, the underside of the mighty Shield above. Through the hot mists, the surfaces glowed in hues of crimson, blues, and emerald, shining from crusts and drapes of moldy growths.

Rhaif only knew the source of illumination because their raft had gotten too close to that jagged roof. Earlier, while descending into the massive rift in the Shield, Glace had guided their craft away from a cliff of ice that rose on one side. She feared colliding with it, especially when near blinded by the fog. That avoidance sent their vessel gliding into the mouth of a vast cavern hidden below the Shield. Apparently, it must have melted into existence countless millennia ago, creating the mineral-rich, salty sea below.

They hadn’t even been aware they had swept into that cavernous space until one of the roof’s fangs of ice ripped into their gasbag, sending them into a wild, spiraling dive.

Even now, Rhaif hadn’t completely caught his breath. His heart continued to pound in his chest.

Still, despite his grousing, Glace had saved them all. She had staved off their plummet long enough to spot the sea under them—only it had been bubbling and belching with steam. The heat had come close to boiling them alive, like crabs in a stewpot. Glace fought the raft away from the danger, spotted a beach ahead, and aimed for it, believing it was a shoreline. They crashed here, gouging a deep groove in the sand and rock, cracking a gaping rent in the keel.

Only after bailing out did they recognize their error.

It wasn’t a shoreline, but the crest of a sickle-shaped island. The sandbar stretched half a league in length and a fraction as wide. Except for the scraggly bushes, it appeared barren.

“How are we getting off here?” Rhaif asked.

Hyck clambered down from his perch and offered an option. But from the engineer’s sour expression, he wasn’t confident in his plan. “We have two axes. Maybe we can hack free a section of hull and create a raft. Make oars out of other planks and row free from here.”

Rhaif scowled, pointing out the largest flaw in this endeavor. “And go where exactly?”