The bear lunged for Bela, its jaws wide.
She leaped back, away from the snap of its teeth, but the pounding of the bear’s weight on the boards made the deck bounce as if it had been wave-struck. It pitched Bela off-balance, but she still managed to twist away from a quick swipe of the beast’s claws—a strike intended to take out her gut.
The wood under her heaved, but Bela widened her stance as if the ship were in a storm, and she swept her sword out in an attack of her own. The blade cut through the cold air, ran a red gash across the top of the bear’s forearm.
It roared in pain and surged at her again.
She once more twisted out of reach of its gaping maw, but when the next claw swiped at her, Bela’s foot hit a coil of frozen rope and had nowhere to go. The claws missed her, but its arm did not. It punched her shoulder, and the weight of it bounced her backward like a toy boat caught by a cresting wave.
Her fingers, numb from the cold, lost their grip on the sword. The steel skittered across the deck. Her back hit the raised frame of the cargo hatch as she flew, and it slammed her against the wood. She slid across its frozen top, splayed out across the surface, pitching frost.
Her momentum stopped when her feet hit the other side of the hatch. She coughed frigid air into her lungs and looked back. The wood of the hatch beneath her bent with the extra weight, but it didn’t give way.
Onyeka’s skin was gently aglow from the Char. Her eyes were half-closed, and her fingers were rippling through the air, weaving with invisible strings. Malaika was on the deck, her eyes wide as she clutched at the torn line across the front of her chest. She was covered in blood.
The beast had turned back at them, but when it reached for the fallen woman, its paw was struck away like a fly cast aside by some mighty, unseen hand.
The bear snuffed, roared, then tried to leap upon Malaika instead, but Onyeka’s weaving tightened. Bela could actually see it now: a wall of air made visible as it arose from the deck, pulling with it a fine mist of frost. The wall took the bear’s weight, held it, and then threw it backward.
Right at Bela.
She cursed, kicking against the smooth boards under her back, and she just managed to roll herself off the cargo hatch the moment before the beast hurtled into it.
The hatch had held her weight, but that was a feather compared to the bulk of the massive bear. The cold boards snapped and shattered into splinters. The animal fell through. It roared as it bounced down into the hold of the ship.
The hold where the rest of the crew would be sleeping.
Bela’s sword hadn’t gone far. She slid through the frost, grabbed it, then glanced back at Onyeka and Malaika. The evoker was kneeling, gold upon her skin, weaving across the fallen woman’s wound. Already, the skin was pulling back together.
Bela thought for a moment of leaping down through the open hatch after the bear, but she knew it was folly. She’d break a leg at best.
Weeks earlier, she had ordered the Sandcrow’s foredeck ladder sealed to preserve what warmth they had belowdecks, so she now had to run toward the wider doors at the quarterdeck. Shoving through them, she dashed right, taking the stairwell down to the level of the main hold.
The walls around her echoed with the screams of her crew and the deep, throaty noise of the angry beast.
It had been only seconds since the bear had crashed through, but when she swung around the stairs toward the cargo hold, all she saw was devastation. The animal was in a blind rage in the tight space. Hammocks that had been slung along the walls were tattered. Shiphands who’d been asleep in them were dead or dying. No one in here was armed—no one had a reason to be—and the women stuck in the cramped space had nowhere to run.
We are what we can do.
The old adage came to Bela’s mind like a voice from another room. It was a truth, perhaps the strongest truth, that bound the Seaborn each to each: what was useful was prized. A woman was what she could do.
And Bela was the shipmistress of the Sandcrow.
This is what I can do.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t even hesitate. Raising her sword, she ran screaming into the space, shouting at everyone to run even as she slashed her blade across the thick white fur on the back of the beast.
The bear screamed—there was no other word for the sound—and a red line stained its back. Then it was turning, lumbering around, trying to reach her.
Bela danced away, trying to keep behind it.
The bear swung around, its body crashing into deck supports and fracturing them.
Looking past its bulk, Bela saw at least two women limping away, heading for the stairs. Beyond them was Oni, flying down the stairs with a sword in her hand. She shoved the two wounded women behind her. “Mistress!”
“Here!” Bela shouted.
Between them, the animal turned its attention to the newcomer. It threw a mighty paw at Oni, but she ducked the blow.
And then, in the midst of the chaos, Bela saw him. Tewrick. The scriptkey. The one man on the ship.
He must have been sleeping in a corner of the room when the bear came crashing down. The little bald man was huddled there now, not ten feet from Oni, his eyes wide in fear, hugging his satchel to his chest as if the books inside might protect him.
Though she knew little of such things, Bela was certain they would not.
“Oni!” Bela shouted. “The scriptkey!” She darted around one of the bear’s kicking legs and slashed again at its back, hoping to get through to its spine. Or at least get its attention.
The animal roared in response, and in lumbering rage, it again tried to spin around.
Oni moved quickly. Bela saw her run over to the little man, grab him by his slight shoulders, and unceremoniously heave him toward the stairs.
His bag fell from his hands as he stumbled away. He screamed in horror—a pathetic, weak sound—and reached back for his precious books.
“Cockless fool!” Oni yelled. She slapped him away and shoved him onward.
But it was too late. The bear had already scented the scriptkey’s fear. Forgetting Bela, it lunged back in the other direction. Oni cursed, rolled out of the way. Tewrick scrambled backward, just out of its reach.
Bela lunged, too, and her sword plunged deep into the monster’s extended leg.
The blade bit nerve, and the beast reared up in anger and pain. Its head crashed into the ceiling, raining down frost and splinters.
Then, when it brought its weight down, the impact knocked Bela off her feet.
She fell back against the hard floor—and heard, deep in the ship below her, the sound of wood breaking. The sound of water. Then new screams from belowdecks.
The bear lifted up again, deliberately smashing into the deck above. Weakened by the cold, a line of planks snapped and swung down. Biting air washed over them.
The boards fell at an angle, making a kind of ramp back up to the top deck. The bear lurched toward it, claws scraping and then hooking into the wood.
The ship trembled, wounded.
Bela got to her feet, but then she hesitated, caught between her concern for the sounds belowdecks and her desperate desire to kill the rampaging beast before it could do even greater damage.
Suddenly, Onyeka was there, atop the ramp. Bela’s heart soared, but then she saw how the evoker’s fingers twitched and flexed with the magick of weaving—but not with the expected grace. Something was wrong. There was panic in her eyes.
The bear lunged upward. Its open mouth, full of teeth and stench, caught the old woman by the neck. Her scream was wet and short.
In one massive bound, the animal carried the evoker out of sight. A moment later, the ship shook with the weight of it jumping down for the ice.
Then the Sandcrow quivered again, groaning in death.
Oni got to her feet beside Bela. Her eyes took in the gore of the savaged women that surrounded them, the open cold where Onyeka had stood. She looked down as if she could see where the frigid water was breaching the hull belowdecks. Each was a horror. Together, they were almost inconceivable.
“Well, shit,” the shipmaiden said.