Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1)(52)

Sail shakes his head. “I heard he requested it.”

My eyes cut over. “Really?”

“Really.”

A slow smile pulls at my cold lips. I knew he liked me. “I’ll get him to play a drinking game with me yet.”

Sail chuckles. “You have your work cut out for you. I’ve never seen him relax or let loose. But if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

“Did you find out why we stopped?”

I look up at Rissa and the other saddles who are now outside of their carriages, standing around in a circle in the snow.

“The scout went missing. They went to go find him.”

Her pretty face pinches with worry. “Are we stopping here for the night?”

Sail shakes his head, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “No, as soon as they get back, we’ll need to keep moving.” He turns to me. “Come on, you’re shaking like a leaf. Let’s get you in the carriage.”

I don’t argue as he leads me past the saddles. Just as we make it to my carriage, thunder cracks. I turn to the sky and groan. “Another storm?” The thought of being stuck in a torrent of wind and freezing rain again does not sound appealing.

Sail frowns, but he’s not looking at the sky. He’s looking at the mountain ahead. “I don’t think that was thunder.”

“Hey, what’s that?” a saddle behind us asks, pointing forward.

Everyone converges, abandoning the carriages to skirt around the bottom of the hill to look into the valley. Sail and I join them, scanning the landscape, but my eyes catch onto something far away, far and glowing like a beacon.

“Is that...fire?” Polly asks.

The warm light hovers in the distance, an orange glow that streaks against the black, like a smear on glass.

“Maybe it’s the lantern from the scout?” someone offers.

“No,” Sail says, shaking his head. “At this distance...that’s way too big to be from a lantern.”

But as soon as he says it, the “way too big” glowing fire breaks off, into dozens of little fires. The blazes spread out, weaving and shifting, until they form a line far across the snow plain, stretched out so that my eyes have to flicker left and right to take them both in.

“What in Divine’s hell...” I trail off.

Then there’s that noise again. A boom of thunder in the distance. The kind of sound that’s so low, it’s barely heard, more felt. Except it’s not coming from the clouds.

Behind the row of strange firelight, at the base of the mountain, snow shifts. Falls. Like smoke rising, a plume of white blooms, smothering the balls of light for a moment, as the snow at the base of the mountain moves.

“Oh, Divine, it’s an avalanche!” one of the women shrills. Two more screams tear out from panicked throats as some of them turn to run.

But I watch, enraptured, as the shadows that I mistook for the base of the mountain break off. Break off and begin to follow the dots of flame. And those dark forms, those lights, they all move so fast, heading right in our direction. The noise rumbles through the air again, and my whole body tenses.

“That’s not an avalanche,” Sail breathes beside me.

Dread thickens, like a pinching fog, gripping the breath from my lungs.

“Holy Divine fuck,” a guard curses. “Snow pirates!”

One blink. One breath. One solitary moment for the words to sink down, down, down. And then chaos erupts.

Before I can even fathom the implications of what’s happening, Sail has me by the arm and he’s hauling me away, my steps tripping through the thick snow, but he doesn’t let me go. Doesn’t let me slow. His face is blanched and pale, panicked. So, so panicked.

“Come on!”

He starts sprinting toward the carriages, pulling me along with him. My feet try to keep up, my legs pushing through shin-deep snowfall, the bottom of my skirts growing heavy and wet.

Slow, it feels like we’re going too slow, though I’m moving as fast as I can.

Men are shouting orders, words barked back and forth that I can’t concentrate on long enough to comprehend. Sail continues to haul me forward, while the other women run alongside us, tripping and screaming as they go.

Snow pirates. We’re about to be attacked by snow pirates.

I’ve heard of them, but they were always a distant story, nothing I’d ever actually think to see for myself. They roam here in the Barrens, and they stalk the Breakwater Port, pillaging imports, stalking trade routes, stealing whatever they can.

They call themselves the Red Raids, their faces always covered in blood-red balaclavas. I’ve heard Midas grumble about stolen shipments, no doubt their doing. But no one ever spoke about the danger of the snow pirates tracking us. They go for the ships and the large hauls. Not traveling caravans.

Sail and I run as fast as we can, and by the time we reach my carriage, more thunderous noise erupts in the air. Though this time, it’s accompanied by a new sound as well. Sail and I both stop to listen, breaths panting as we crane our heads and strain our ears.

It’s loud. Low. Unsteady.

“What is that?” a saddle asks, more of them piling into their carriages, shoving past each other as they go.

The noise builds, uneven yet constant, a collection rather than a single source. A split second later, I realize that it’s voices. Hundreds of voices, raised together in a battle cry. And it’s getting louder, louder and nearer.