“I’ll keep up, now move!”
She turned and ran, Simon on her heels. Zahra flew ahead of them across the ice, seeking the safest path.
“Left!” she cried, directing them around a thin patch of ice. “Jump!”
Eliana threw herself off a ridge of ice and onto another slab a few feet away.
“Simon, here!” she cried over her shoulder. “Follow my voice!”
He jumped onto the ice beside her. It rocked violently, sent them both sliding. Eliana stabbed Arabeth into the ice and grabbed Simon’s shirt with her other hand. His weight yanked hard on her muscles. She cried out in pain, clung to her dagger with every ounce of strength she possessed.
Simon scrabbled up the ice beside her, tipping the ice level once more.
A dark shape flew over their heads, landing hard a few feet away.
Eliana looked up in horror as a stream of crawlers raced by. Their heads were human enough—but misshapen and approaching bestial—with sharpened teeth spilling out of broken jaws. Faded scraps of clothing clung to their bodies, and the patches of skin Eliana could see were spotted with scales, patches of scraggly dark fur. They sniffed the air like hounds. Thick, pointed fingernails stabbed the ice.
All those women, snatched while they slept, taken from their beds and their homes and their loved ones, and made into this.
It was an unthinkable fate—and the one awaiting her mother if she couldn’t find her in time.
Two crawlers slammed into the ice, then spun around and raced right for Eliana.
Zahra cried out, her form flickering out of sight. “This way!”
Eliana turned and ran. On all sides, a sea of howling crawlers raced for the shore. Cannon fire hit the ice. The impact blew the pursuing crawlers behind them into pieces.
Ears ringing, Eliana turned. Simon? Still there, his sword out and ready, his hair frosted with ice. Eliana followed Zahra’s shimmering path over a shifting, dark gap between icebergs, along a ridge of icy rocks, across a long, flat stretch of frozen white.
Then, Zahra’s form shuddered and disappeared.
Eliana stumbled, her ears ringing with panic.
“Keep running!” Simon shouted.
“Zahra?” Eliana cried. “Where are you?”
The wraith swooped alongside her, a faint distortion in the air. “I’m sorry, my queen. I can barely hold myself together!”
“Go to the fleet, tell them we’re out here!” Another blast exploded just ahead of them. Eliana skidded to a halt, shoved Simon to the ground. Shards of ice and bodies went flying. Fiery sparks rained down upon them. “And for God’s sake, tell them to stop firing at us!”
Zahra fled.
Eliana looked back over Simon’s head to see a group of four crawlers crouching on an icy ridge a few feet away.
One of them, hair a dark matted mess, pawed the ice with a bulbous hand.
“Simon,” Eliana muttered, “get to your feet, slowly.”
He obeyed. Together they took a few slow steps back.
Then the lead crawler let out a baying howl. The four of them leapt across the water, teeth bared. They moved like roaches—fast, erratic. Simon brought his sword down hard on the neck of one; its head flew off into the water. Another slammed into him, knocking him flat.
A third reared up, nails bared. Eliana ducked the blow, then stabbed it in the stomach. As it fell, she yanked Arabeth free and whirled, flung the dagger between the shoulder blades of the creature hissing on Simon’s chest. It roared in pain and fell to the ground.
Eliana turned, reached for Whistler. But the fourth crawler with the tangled dark hair was nowhere to be found.
Eliana raced over to Simon, yanked Arabeth from the crawler’s twitching body, and kept running.
“This way!” she called, but Simon was already behind her, his breath labored in the air. “Are you all right?”
“Splendid,” came his strained reply.
Crawlers scrambled across the ice on all sides. Hundreds, Eliana thought. Maybe thousands.
Gunfire split the air in two, followed by terrified human cries. She looked to the west. Some of the creatures had made it ashore. They slithered onto the beach from the water like sea monsters come to ground. The Astavari army engaged them with revolvers and swords, but the crawlers kept coming.
A shadow fell over her as they ran. She looked up. They’d reached the Astavari fleet—small, elegant ships, each mast a hundred feet in the air. Crawlers swarmed the nearest one, tearing sails from their masts and tackling Astavari soldiers to the decks.
“Almost there,” she shouted over the sounds of death and gunfire, howls and snapping wood. “Stay with me, Simon!”