Page 79 of Lord of Fire and Ice

The other women were obscured by dense smoke, but she could hear them still clawing at the locked portal. Perhaps there was a way to dislodge the hinges.

“It makes no difference,” Aldis wailed. “Here or there. We die anyway.”

“Do you want the child to die too?”

The woman’s face crumpled, and she thrust the babe into Katla’s arms. “Take Linnea. Take her. I can’t bear to watch when death comes for her.”

Katla clutched the squirming babe to her chest and crawled one-handed toward the door. Aldis keened behind her but didn’t follow.

“Keep moving. Only the dead deserve rest.”

Brandr’s last message jerked her from hopeless stupor and filled her with determination. Katla wouldn’t give up. Not so long as she could draw breath.

A fiery beam crashed to earth behind her, burying Aldis behind a wall of flame. The keening stopped abruptly, the sound snipped off mid-wail.

Katla kept moving.

The child stopped struggling and went limp in her arms. She passed the bucket by the central fire pit and splashed a handful of water over the babe’s face. Linnea sputtered, gave a weak cry, and began rooting against Katla’s breast. Katla swallowed back a sob and poured the last of the water over both of them to protect them from burning ash. Then she continued to crawl toward the door.

As she neared it, the smoke parted, swept away as if by an invisible hand. Overhead, there was a loud whoosh, and the fire was suddenly snuffed out. The opening to the sethus swung wide, and a man was framed in the doorway, his face in shadow.

The other women pushed past him, squealing with relief.

He strode into the sethus and knelt beside Katla long enough to scoop her into his arms.

“Brandr.”

With a grunt, he rose, carrying her and the baby out into the night. Once they cleared the doorway, Brandr set her down a safe distance away. She sank onto the stubbled grass, dragging in breaths and coughing out the smoky air trapped in her lungs. The sickly sweet scent of roasting meat made Katla want to retch.

There was no sign of the other women. Katla assumed they’d taken to their heels without stopping to see who’d won the fight.

“Is there anyone else inside?” Brandr asked.

The child’s mother was dead. She shook her head and clutched the snuffling baby tighter.

“It’s dangerous to leave the sethus like this then,” Brandr said, “Only half-destroyed. It might fall down on someone.”

Then as Katla watched in amazement, a blue flame bloomed in the center of Brandr’s palm. He tossed the ball of fire to the charred roof and rib cage of beams, where it caught and blazed up into an inferno almost instantly.

Katla gasped. “What did you…what are you?”

Her vision wavered for a moment, then darkness gathered at the edges. Finally she winked out as completely as a pinched-off candle.

***

Brandr lifted the baby from Katla’s arms and set the squalling mass off to the side.

As long as the brat’s making enough noise to wake the dead, there’s nothing truly wrong with it, Brandr reasoned.

Katla, on the other hand, was pale and drawn, her eyes open and unseeing. He checked her for injury and found none. He laid his head between her breasts and was relieved to hear her heart beating, though it was thready and rapid.

“Princess.” He gave her shoulders a slight shake and tried to wipe the black soot from her face with his sleeve. Panic clawed at his gut like a cornered badger. “Katla. Love. Come back.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she coughed twice.

She sat up, her body racked by another bout of hacking. He wished he had a water gourd to offer her. She lifted her arms to him, and he gathered her close, rocking her slightly.

“You’re alive,” she whispered. “We’re both alive.” Then she pulled away and cocked her head at him. “Why is the baby crying?”