A gnarled fist larger than her head yanked the weapon free and it disappeared once more into the swirling mists above her.
Shimmer ran.
Cries of terror continued all about, most cut off in throttled gurgles. She stumbled over boulders, flinched when her boot pressed down on a yielding body. It was galling that just nearby, out of sight, waves slapped against boats. If she could only find theirs!
A voice called then, from nearby in the mist, and she recognized it: Petal. ‘Shimmer!’ It was spoken, not shouted, as if from just next to her.
She shouted, ‘Yes!’ and was chagrined by the note of panic she heard.
‘This way. Follow my voice.’ She set off, feeling her way. Petal spoke every few heartbeats to reacquaint her with his location: ‘Keep going,’ he sometimes said, or, ‘More left.’
Distantly, she heard cordage creaking and sweeps banging wood; the ships were drawing anchor and pulling out. From across a portion of the strand she could make out the silhouette of one of the giant brothers, Anger or Wrath. The massive shape knelt at the shore then rose, roaring, and she recognized the shadowy curve of a boat’s side rising with him. A mass of panicked shouts and screams was abruptly cut off as the longboat, overturned, fell upon its crew.
The giant’s roar of laughter was an avalanche of falling rocks.
‘Swim for it,’ Petal told her.
‘What of you?’
‘Never mind me. Swim!’
Snarling her displeasure, she pushed her way into the surf. It was a good thing she’d chosen not to wear her armour, but then it had been weeks since she’d donned it. Her feet left the bottom and she paddled — she’d only ever had a few basic lessons from Blues. Something snagged at her and she flinched, gained a mouthful of water, and almost slipped into blind flailing terror. Blues’ first lesson saved her: don’t panic, he’d told her. As in a fight, panicking is the worst thing you can do.
She forced her eyes open, stilled her slapping of the water, and saw that she was engaged in a struggle with a corpse. Its limp arms kept bumping up against her. She pushed it away and carried on.
‘To the right.’ Petal spoke again and she realized then that he’d never been with her at all. It was a sending of some sort, or he was watching for her from his Warren. She paddled on.
‘Shimmer!’ a new voice shouted. She recognized Bars bulls’ bellow.
‘Here!’
‘Follow my voice! This way! I have an oar! Do you see it?’
Something splashed the water nearby through the cloaking fog. She headed that way. A tall cliff of darkness emerged from the bank — the side of a vessel. ‘Here!’ she called.
An oar came sluicing through the waves. She grasped for it but missed. She caught it on the second try.
‘There’s a rope here,’ Bars said. The oar pulled her along through the water to where a rope ladder hung from the side. She took hold and started up. On deck, she was met by all the landing party.
‘You’re last,’ Bars told her.
She scanned the shore; the coursing banners of fog still obscured everything. The rest of the Guard were manning the sweeps. She noticed that, oddly, Lean was at the rudder.
‘Where’s Havvin?’
Bars and K’azz exchanged glances. ‘I’m sorry, Shimmer,’ K’azz said. He motioned to where several shapes lay bundled in sailcloth.
Shimmer suddenly felt very cold as she stood dripping wet in the fog. She shivered. ‘How many?’
‘Eight,’ K’azz said. His voice, and his features, did not change at all, and Shimmer realized that he was holding himself under a terrifying degree of will. ‘Taken by the mist.’
She swallowed to dare her next question: ‘Any of us?’
‘None.’
She was vastly relieved, but then fixed her gaze upon him; she wished to take hold of his shoulders and shake him. ‘Why? Why?’
‘The … Vow … I imagine.’ He lurched away and seemed to totter off.
She let him go. He knows more than that — he must. She met Bars’ gaze, but the man just shook his head.
‘I’m very sorry, Shimmer.’
‘As am I, Bars,’ she sighed.
The Avowed helped on the sweeps, a skeletal few, yet Mael’s Forbearance made steady headway. They finally emerged from the fog and Shimmer found that they were a good way out in the bay. Behind, the thick bank obscured the shore for several bowshots. Utterly unnatural, that concentration of mist. She peered round, counting ships. Found nine. Every vessel, it seemed, had escaped — though most of the ship’s launches and their crews probably hadn’t. She turned to face ahead, and while the sky was a leaden hue, overcast, she still had to squint in the light. Three vessels were far ahead: the Letherii modified merchantmen. It seemed Luthal Canar was in no mood to offer anyone any aid. Well, that was fine: they could face whatever lay ahead first.
At that, she shifted her gaze to where a pale light seemed to glow to the north-east. ‘What is that?’ she asked Bars.
But Blues answered, sounding uncharacteristically grim: ‘An ice field.’ She remembered that he’d crossed the immense plain of ice that separated Stratem from the lands of Korel to the north.
‘Can we get through?’ she asked.
Blues shrugged. ‘There must be some way.’
She nodded at that. Yes. Surely some vessels must have made it through ahead of them. Her gaze fell on the wrapped bodies. ‘We should give them a proper send-off.’
‘Yes,’ Bars agreed, and he sounded very firm on that.
It was a channel. A narrow gap of open water that ran between tall cliffs of white and sapphire glacial ice. They reached it near to dusk, but such was the peculiar light held by the ice from the moon, and the star field where it shone through gaps in the cloud cover, that they continued on.
Luthal’s command ahead did likewise. They too neither paused nor let up, and Shimmer began to wonder whether the Letherii merchant had — rather stupidly — decided that this was some sort of race. And the gold to the winner.
Behind, the rest of the ragtag convoy straggled along. Next in line was the Mare galley. Privately, Shimmer was of the opinion that if any ship survived, it would be that one. She had a great respect for the vessels and crews of that seafaring nation.
The passage narrowed alarmingly in places. The cliffs reared nearly overhead. At times great reports cracked the night air and carriage-sized shards of ice came crashing down ahead or behind to send up fountains of frigid spray. Some of that spray even reached them on board the Forbearance.
Something about these avalanches of shards troubled Shimmer, and not just that any one of them could crush them into splinters. As they proceeded through, the sweeps hissing through ice-mush and clattering off floating chunks of sapphire-blue ice, it came to her.
The ice was only falling near them.
She watched to the rear for a time: no ice shards burst from the cliff faces behind them — at all. She turned ahead to study the three Letherii vessels and the full length of the channel ahead: nothing. No fracturing, cracking or rumbling.
She turned to K’azz.
Cowl suddenly appeared next to their commander. His scarred, ghostly pale face was upraised to study the overhanging cliffs. ‘We must back out — now,’ he said.
K’azz frowned his puzzlement. ‘Back out? Why?’
The High Mage lowered his face to gaze straight at K’azz. ‘You know why.’
K’azz snapped his gaze to the cliffs. ‘You don’t think …’
‘I do.’
K’azz spun to the mid-deck, roared, ‘Back oars! Back off!’ The Avowed on the oars pushed hard, heaving. Mael’s Forbearance came to a slow sluggish halt amid the wash of hissing crushed ice. ‘Back oars!’ K’azz yelled anew.