I stretched out my hand. Aiden grasped it, and I helped him rise.
“We need to talk to the others,” I said.
We found them gathered around the fire. They had contained its spread with large stones. Their discarded shackles lay in a heap by the table that was now empty of our bombs.
“I moved everything into one of the other logs,” Nikella said, wrapping a strip of fabric around a bleeding cut on her arm. “What was left, anyway.”
I cringed. “I’m sorry, Nikella. I?—”
She held up her hand. “It was smart. We still have enough bombs for the mine, especially if we supplement with some fireseeds from the forge.” Her brow creased. “As far as the blackrust powder, I’ll just have to think of something else for the cliff gate. Losing Shayn is far more troublesome—may the gods find his soul.”
We all murmured the same farewell.
Aiden walked over to one of the dead soldiers. He picked up his helmet and put it on his head. “I’ll be our new guard.”
“What about our bloody papers?” Maz asked between gulps of water from a canteen. “None of these men had any on them.”
“We’ll have to go without,” Nikella said grimly.
“Perhaps they’ll be too busy to check,” Ruru added with a shrug.
Unlikely. But we’d spin that lie when needed.
Another problem was that, if Aiden was our new guard, he wouldn’t be able to help me and Ruru free the prisoners.
I glanced at Ruru.
He nodded solemnly at me. “We can do this.”
“We’ll need more time,” I told Aiden.
“I’ll think of something.” He glanced at Maz and Nikella. “That means you’ll have to hold off on lighting the fuses a bit longer.”
“We’ll wait for the signal, brother. As long as it takes.”
I fidgeted with the end of my braid, then dared to ask, “What if Skelly and Jek and the others aren’t there?”
Maz scowled at me. “They’ll be there.”
“But if they’re not?”
“Then we’ll try to steal one of their ships anyway,” Aiden said quietly. “Escape with those we can and destroy everything else.”
The silence crackled between us like the fire.
We were probably headed to our deaths. The memory of the prisoner woman’s face from a few days ago surfaced in my mind. Her desperate gratitude, her shock at being free.
There were a hundred more like her in the mine. Plus thousands of frightened Rellmirans in Aquinon.
They needed us.
“We should go,” I said. “But first, we need to burn the bodies to cover our tracks.”
Nikella shook her head. “Leave them. We’ll lose too much time. Even if a patrol comes by and spreads a warning that reaches Calimber, our mission will already be over.”
I nodded, relieved at her reasoning.
Aiden stripped the soldier of his uniform and donned it over his rags. I swept up the shackles and dumped them into the river while the others heaved the raft back into the water. My thigh throbbed as we scrambled on board.
