The Cradle of Ice (Moonfall #2)

Chapter 68

68

T HIS IS TAKING us far too long.

Rhaif scrabbled through a shattered landscape of broken ice. Tall, frosty sickles, sharp-edged wedges, and huge ice blocks towered all around him. He cursed the treacherous maze.

Earlier, the big quake had cracked massive slabs off the wall. They had slammed like icy hammers onto the beach. Apparently, such icefalls were a constant danger in the Crèche. It was why their villages had been built close to the sea and away from those treacherous cliffs.

Still, the route to Iskar’s ice pen crossed through one of those fallen slabs. By now, his armpit was on fire, rubbed raw by his crutch. His breath came in ragged gulps.

Ahead, Floraan picked her way forward with Henna in hand, flanked by Kalder.

More explosions echoed as the bombardment continued. Screaming chased them, echoing all around. Groups of villagers fled across the sand or sailed out to sea.

“Everyone down!” Fenn warned.

They all ducked for cover, except for Kalder. Floraan had to push his bulk under an icy overhang. A small arrow-shaped craft with tiny wings and a tapered balloon shot past overhead, its stern forge flashing with blue-orange flames.

“Slipfoil,” Fenn said as the navigator crowded next to him.

Rhaif followed its passage. It swept and dove over the beach, where it unloaded a small black cylinder toward a clutch of evacuees. The explosion sent them all flying, gouging a deep crater in the sand. A couple of figures regained their feet and kept running. But the rest remained down, scattered like broken dolls.

“Keep going,” Rhaif said.

As they fought through the ice, he no longer complained about the broken terrain. The towering labyrinth offered some measure of protection. It also helped that the eventide gloom deepened the shadows surrounding them.

A sharper boom , followed by another, drew his attention behind him. These blasts sounded different, more insistent. Far down the beach, the Shadowhawk continued to be harried by the other swyftship—not that the crippled Hawk could offer any true resistance. Another of those booms echoed, revealing a curling blast of smoke from the deck of the enemy ship.

Cannon fire.

The first two blasts must have missed the ship, as it appeared undamaged. The third pierced a section of its gasbag, sending it fluttering and sagging. The rest of the balloon, baffled into sections, still held the ship up.

Rhaif realized the first two cannon blasts were likely meant as warning shots and the third underlined the enemy’s intent.

They wanted the Hawk grounded.

Darant got the message. The firepots atop the deck snuffed out. Slowly, the Hawk sank back as the air cooled within the remaining baffles of its gasbag. Its broken keel settled back in the water and its stern came to rest on the beach.

But the damage could have been far worse.

Rhaif pinched his eyes, suspecting why the Hawk had been spared. The enemy wanted to capture and interrogate those aboard, which could only mean one thing.

They want something from us.

He pictured Nyx.

“Why have you slowed?” Fenn hissed at Rhaif. “They’re swarming all over now.”

Rhaif tore his gaze away and followed Fenn, hopping on his crutch. The swyftship that had grounded the Hawk had discharged its trio of sailrafts, like the other swyftship had done earlier. Of the six rafts, half had landed, unloading foot soldiers in light armor, even several knights atop horses.

They were all clearly Hálendiian.

Somehow the king’s forces had found their group.

As he fled, Rhaif caught glimpses and snatches of the war.

The ground forces swept the beach, cordoning off Darant’s ship and blockading the village. Overhead, more slipfoils patrolled, sweeping back and forth, casting down fire from on high.

Explosions still burst, but they had dwindled in number as this corner of the Crèche was quickly subdued. Boats now burned out on the water. Blast craters blackened the sand. Bodies sprawled everywhere.

The Pantheans had been ambushed and outgunned. It had been no battle, only slaughter.

Rhaif despaired, knowing the doom they had brought to the Crèche.

First the raash’ke, now these Hálendiian butchers.

“Over here!” Floraan called to Rhaif and Fenn.

They hurried to join her.

From the shelter of the labyrinth’s edge, she clutched Henna close and pointed down the stretch of wall to the right. “The entrance to the ice pen is right there. It delves deep into the cliff.”

Rhaif looked aghast at the woman. The giant doors into the ice cave gapped open, as if welcoming them. But to reach it, they would have to abandon the broken ice and flee a quarter league across open sand.

“We must try for it,” Fenn said.

Rhaif glared at him. “Are you the one on a crutch?”

Fenn pointed behind them, where voices echoed eerily through the ice, accompanied by the stomp and nicker of a horse. “A patrol is hunting through here. We go now or get caught.”

Rhaif considered his options.

If I’m going to die, I’d rather be fighting for my life than huddling in a corner.

Rhaif scowled, knowing what he’d rather do.

Not die at all.

Rhaif waved them on. “Then go already.”

With a deep pained breath, he followed behind the others. Kalder kept close to Floraan and Henna, as if instinctively protecting the youngest among them. Fenn wavered between keeping up with them and trying to help him.

Rhaif waved an arm.

Better one of us dying than all of us.

They continued along the wall. Ahead and to the right, Iskar burned, cloaked in smoke, ruddy with fires. Some of the pall was blown by the sea breeze and piled against the ice cliffs, offering some cover.

Rhaif heaved and huffed after the others. It felt as if his crutch were about to rip his shoulder out of its socket. With each step, he cursed everything around him. The crutch. The gods. The pickkyn that had hobbled him. His own stupidity. He saved his last and most heartfelt curse for the moon.

You couldn’t stay up there a little longer? Until I lived a long and uneventful life?

Still, somebody took pity on him. The others safely reached the door. He hobbled after them as they ducked inside. Kalder had the courtesy to wait, though it might be because the vargr was not keen on close spaces.

Either way, Rhaif huffed to the great beast, “Good boy.”

Then Fenn came retreating back out, followed quickly by Floraan and Henna.

Rhaif reached them as they all stumbled to a stop. The door swept wider. A cadre of warriors armed with tridents guarded the threshold. Behind them, he spotted Ularia and Berent. The Reef Farer’s face was one of confusion and anger. Ularia had decided on just fury. This group must have fled here, too, seeking refuge.

Ularia pointed at them. “You did this! You brought this ruin upon us!”

Rhaif couldn’t argue. She was right.

Fenn tried to placate her. “We only seek shelter. This enemy is as much yours as ours. We can help.”

She looked aghast, incredulous, her anger flaring even brighter. “The only way you can help is by dying.” She waved to the guardsmen. “Kill them. Maybe their bodies will appease those who came to hunt them.”

Rhaif waved for the others to back away.

The warriors hesitated.

Ularia growled her frustration. She clearly would not tolerate any such insolence. Not now, likely not ever. The arrival of their entire group days ago had upset a precarious balance of power. Her ambitions were shaken by all that had happened. She intended to regain her authority by any means necessary.

She shoved one of the warriors forward, to get them all moving. “Kill them! Or I’ll have your heads, too!”

The men strode after Rhaif and the others. They all frantically backpedaled. Henna tripped, sprawling on her side. Floraan lost her grip and fell, too. A warrior rushed forward, trident high—that was a mistake.

The child had a guardian.

Kalder lunged with a swiftness that the vargr seldom demonstrated. His speed was unnerving, reserved for hunting the deep Rimewood, for bringing down a fleet-footed buck. The vargr struck the man a glancing blow, ripping away his arm as he passed. The trident flew from the severed limb and impaled into the sand.

No warrior of the Crèche was prepared for a vargr, especially one fully unleashed and feral. Here was the heart of the beast that no one had ever tamed. Not Graylin, not Nyx. Kalder was a blur of savagery, a shadow with teeth. He crashed into the clutch of warriors before they could react. Throats were ripped, skulls crushed in jaws that broke the bones of bears, chests torn open by huge, hooked claws.

Two warriors made it back into the ice pen. The door slammed behind them. The scrape of a heavy bar could be heard over the screams of the dying. One last man survived. He threw aside his weapon and lifted his hands, begging in Panthean, dropping to his knees.

“Enough, Kalder!” Rhaif called to the vargr.

It was a wasted breath. Bloodlust deafened the beast. A reminder that Kalder truly heeded no man, just his nature.

The vargr leaped, fangs bared, and grabbed the warrior’s throat. He shook the man’s body wildly, wrenching it back and forth until the limbs went slack. Only then did he throw the dead weight against the door, letting all within know who the victor was.

Kalder turned to them with a snarl, his muzzle steeped in blood.

They backed away, giving the vargr space for that fire to ebb from his eyes.

“What do we do?” Floraan asked, gathering Henna.

The girl’s face ran with tears, her eyes wide with terror at Kalder. She would not be trying to put a saddle on him anytime soon. She hugged tight to her mother.

Fenn pointed back to the broken ice field. “We could try to hide back there. If we’re lucky—”

Before he could finish, a handful of men appeared out of the jumble of ice, followed by two knights atop armored horses.

Rhaif turned the other direction, toward the thicker smoke hugging the ruins of Iskar. “Make for the village!”

It was their only hope.

As they ran, Rhaif tossed aside his crutch. At this point, it was more of an anchor than an aid. Each step flared with pain, but the agony only urged him faster. Kalder followed, sticking to his pack.

The smoke thickened around them, but there was little breath left to smother. Still, the patrol and horsemen vanished into the pall behind them. It stirred some hope that Rhaif and the others might reach the village.

“No…” Fenn moaned, glancing behind him.

Rhaif cringed and looked back, expecting to find the patrol closing in on them. But it wasn’t a soldier or a knight. Overhead, a slipfoil sped through the pall, sweeping like a winged shark at them.

They could never outrun it.

Even if they could, it was backed by a sailraft diving at them, intending to close off any escape ahead. Rhaif slowed, accepting defeat.

Might as well not die so winded.

The sailraft fired its forge, blazing fire through the smoke. But the raft’s pilot made an error in his haste to catch its prey. It got too close to the slipfoil. Its keel hit the slim ship’s balloon. The forge’s flames burned through the fabric and ignited the slipfoil’s gasbag. It exploded into a huge fireball that rolled high, just missing the raft.

The slipfoil swept past overhead, spinning its wings in an uncontrolled roll. It sailed far, then struck the sand, cartwheeling end over end until its flashburn tank exploded, blasting the foil apart.

The sailraft followed the same trajectory, passing over Rhaif’s group as they stumbled forward, less with any hope of escape and more on momentum alone.

Ahead of them, the raft skimmed the beach. Its stern door dropped open, its far end dragging across the sand.

Brayl glared at them from beside the door. “Run, you idiots!”

She dashed back to her controls.

Rhaif sprinted, forgetting his pain, buoyed by hope.

Or maybe I’m dead and just imagining this.

Still, they all reached the bouncing door and flung themselves into the hold. Kalder leaped in after them. Rhaif rolled around enough to see a pair of horsemen come galloping out of the gloom.

Rhaif thrust his arm up in a rude gesture.

Too late, you bastards.

Brayl fired the forge and shot the raft higher. The beach fell away under them. The horsemen vanished again into the smoke rolling off the flaming ruins of Iskar. All around, enemy ships dashed and floated. But for now, no one suspected this lone sailraft wasn’t one of their own.

“Someone get that door!” Brayl called.

Fenn rushed and cranked the stern closed, sealing them in.

Rhaif knelt up. “How did you… where did you…?”

“I was just returning from the Fyredragon, ” Brayl shouted back. “Saw the battle. Snuck in when I saw the other rafts. Blended in as best I could, sticking to the thickest smoke. Lucky I did, or I wouldn’t have spotted you. Then again, a fleeing vargr… that’s hard to miss.”

To the side, Floraan hugged Henna in her lap. The girl sobbed and shook. Kalder paced in a tight circle, still snarling, hackles held high.

“Nee… faza ja… Kalder,” Henna got out between her gulping breaths. “Wall thah.”

Floraan whispered reassurance in her daughter’s ear. Henna gave a tiny nod and settled deeper into the lap, already calmer.

Rhaif cast her mother a questioning look.

“I told her Kalder is not a monster. That he just got scared. And was only trying to protect her from the bad men.”

“I think everything you said was true—except maybe for the scared part.”

Fenn crossed between them to join Brayl. “What do we do from here? Where do we go?”

Brayl pointed at Floraan. “I was hoping she would know.”

“What about making for Kefta?” Rhaif suggested. “Get the sea between us and them?”

“Not enough flashburn in my tanks to reach there. I’m running on dregs as it is.” She glanced back at Floraan. “Is there a village close by—”

Rhaif stiffened and jerked back as something flew past the window behind her.

Noting his reaction, Brayl swung around. “What?”

“It’s gone,” Rhaif said.

“What was it?”

He shook his head.

Overhead, something suddenly tore into the balloon, shaking the entire raft. Past the window, a black silhouette cut through the mists. It dove past the bow. Then another. And another.

“Raash’ke,” Floraan moaned.

All the explosions and screams must have lured the beasts back into the Crèche.

The raft whipped hard as the last of the raft’s balloon was ripped away. Rhaif caught a brief glimpse of a wing and a tattered flap of fabric.

Then the ship plummeted.

Brayl cursed and pressed both pedals flat to the floor. The forge roared under them. Its flames fought to slow their fall, braking their descent, but not by much. As the raft spun, Rhaif caught snippets of a beach, the sea, the cliff wall.

Which of them would they strike first?

Brayl struggled to get them over water. But she had little control over the raft. Most of the forge’s force was directed downward, trying to curb their speed.

But even that quickly proved useless.

The forge’s flames sputtered with its last gasps of flashburn.

Once, twice—then died.

The forge fell silent, leaving only the winds shrieking outside.

No one bothered to add to that screaming.

They rode the spinning raft down—heading for a splintering crash.