Page 110 of A Frozen Pyre
“Look out!” came a loud, strained voice from the ship.
Harland’s face shot up from where he’d been picking his way against the slippery surface to distinguish a gloomy figure on the deck.
He opened his mouth to exclaim but understood the warning a moment later.
An inhuman shriek had him stumbling back into the snow within seconds. On the horizon, the moon caught the glistening outline of a horrid, ghostly form as its jaw dropped open in a scream. He could have counted all of the teeth in its too-wide jaw in the moments it took him to draw his sword. He didn’t have to understand what he was fighting to fall upon a century of training. His sword came up in a preemptive arc, anticipating the monster’s trajectory before it was upon him. With a loud cry, Harland landed his blow. The blade crunched against flesh and spine as the monster gave a guttural howl. His sword ate into its flesh as it flew to the side. Blood drenched him as the demon skidded from its path.
Harland stumbled to his feet to dislodge his sword as the creature spun on him.
“What the fuck!” He gasped, staggering backward.
The monster clutched at him from the snow with insect-like arms. Its jaw dragged along the snow as if it lacked hinges altogether. The cutting, razor-sharp shriek of the beast sliced into him, puncturing his ears with knives made of sheer sound as it wailed. It twisted through the clotted puddle of inky blood as it righted itself and sprang for Harland a second time.
There was no time for the shock that gripped him. Hewas a heartbeat away from having his heart torn out and dying on the snowy expanse of this goddess-forsaken wasteland. He shook off the adrenaline as he readied himself for the animalistic lunge.
This time when he swung, his sword ate clean through the monster’s neck. The screaming didn’t stop as it skidded across the ice again. Its hands and legs continued to kick and thrash even as it fell to the ground and began searching through the blowing and drifting snow for its decapitated head.
Harland brought the sword down again and again and again. He left the creature in a pulp of twitching bits before the men aboard the ship shouted to him once more.
Harland looked down at himself to assess the damage, expecting to see torn clothes and evidence of the attack, but instead he found…a lack.
“What in the goddess’s lighted kingdom…” he breathed in horror as vacancies dotted his body. Where his whole leg, torso, and arm should have been, bits of him were missing. He could see the snow below him as if pieces of his very being were made of nothing at all. Harland took his fingers and pressed them into the windows through his body, but they connected with solid flesh. He was still there, he just…wasn’t.
Harland stumbled away from the beast and the baffling repercussions of tussling with such a creature. He jogged up to the boat as a rope was tossed down.
“Where did you come from?” a frantic voice demanded from the deck.
“Aubade,” Harland said. “Did Princess Ophir come this way?”
A small crew gaped at him, and Harland could guess a dozen reasons why. The most obvious, of course, was because he was stitched together by air. “It’s the demon,” Harland said. “I don’t know how, but it seems to have had this effect. One of you, get me some water. I need to see if the damage is permanent. Someone, for the love of the All Mother, answermy question. Have you seen Princess Ophir?”
A low, sorrowful moan bubbled up from the belly of a heavyset man. It consumed him until his shoulders were shaking, face red with emotion.
“For fuck’s sake,” one of them muttered. “He’d just stopped grieving.”
“She’s dead,” mourned the man. “The princess is dead.”
Harland’s soul escaped through his parted lips. There was a weightlessness to the sick and terrible denial that took its place, filling the vacant shell of his body. She couldn’t be dead. She’d escaped the coliseum only to die out here in the cold and ice? His mouth moved to form a question, but no sound came out. Instead, he listened to the sobs of the man as they mingled with the wind.
At long last, he forced himself to swallow. He couldn’t cry. Not yet. “Where is her body?”
“She went out onto the ice, and she died,” he cried.
Another sailor shook his head. “He’s been repeating it nonsensically for hours. We can’t get more out of him.”
Harland’s eyes widened. Venom dripped from every word as he demanded, “You left her body out on the Straits?”
“Sir, the demon—”
“Go!” Harland barked. They’d scanned his royal garb the moment he’d boarded the ship. Perhaps the Frozen Straits weren’t under either Farehold’s or Raascot’s jurisdiction, but in the calamity that had befallen their ship, perhaps they found it comforting to have someone tell them what to do. Four men hustled to obey. They descended the rope and began to jog in the direction that their pained companion had indicated.
“She’s dead,” he repeated again and again.
“Where are the others?” Harland asked. A ship this size should have had a crew of at least twenty men.
“Dead, sir,” answered a sailor. “Some by the demon, and others by a sickness. It fell upon them so swiftly; no one knows what happened.”
He stiffened slightly. “A sickness?”
