I waved my hand desperately. “Please, please, hurry!”
Much too slowly, the girl crawled away from her mother.
“Yes, that’s good, so good,” I coaxed her, even as the roof groaned louder. “Now, shove this table a bit.”
She screwed up her face and pushed on the table blocking the door. Flaming embers rained down, one striking her arm, and she cried out.
“Fucking Four!” I shouted, grabbing my board and jamming it against the table.
Just a few more inches. Just a few moregods-damned inches.
Sweat poured down my skin. Then the table shifted backward. I tossed away the board and held the door open.
“Hurry!” I beckoned for the girl.
She crawled out just as the rest of the ceiling collapsed with a roar. I swept her little body into my arms and sprinted away from the burning rubble.
“Camilla? Camilla!”
The girl pulled her face away from my neck and waved wildly at someone over my shoulder. “Brodney!”
I twisted around to see a young boy chasing after us, his clothing singed and torn. She wriggled out of my arms and into the boy’s. He pressed a kiss to her matted hair. He couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, but he had the grim expression of a warrior who’d seen too much.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Are you with the Rellmirans?”
I shook my head. “I’m just here to help. My name’s Kiera.”
“She saved me,” Camilla announced.
Brodney subjected me to another moment of suspicion before relenting. “I’m her cousin. I’ll take care of her,” he said.
I nodded, relieved. There would be others, and I couldn’t search for them with Camilla wrapped around me.
I pointed to where Nikella’s horse had trotted to a patch of grass to graze, as if the world weren’t burning down. “Can you ride?”
Brodney gave me a look that reminded me so much of Ruru, I couldn’t catch my breath. “I’ve been riding since I could walk.”
“Good. Go as far as you can. Don’t come back until the ship is gone.”
He nodded and hurried toward the gray horse, tugging Camilla with him.
Swallowing hard, I turned back to the burning lodges. They were much larger than the Yargoths’ and more permanently built, with thick wooden beams and stone. But that didn’t stop them from succumbing to the barrel bombs.
I checked each structure, working from the outside in. Most were empty or already ash. Families fled through the muddy streets, heading for the safety of the treeline while shouting for their friends and relatives.
In a healer’s shop, I found an old man with his leg crushed under a bookshelf. Torn books littered the floor around him, and liquid from crushed bottles flavored the smoke in the air with heavy herbal notes.
I held up the bookshelf long enough for the man to crawl out. Then I helped him hobble partway up the ridge. He said nothing, just stared at the destroyed village with hollow eyes.
At some point, I lost my face covering, but I didn’t stop searching for survivors.
The closer I moved to the center of the village, the more bodies I stumbled over. I tried not to look, but I still saw too much. Burned and broken bodies. Some large, some much too small.
Then there were the others. The ones with missing limbs and bloodied clothes. Warriors with shattered weapons and Teachers with torn robes.
Fire didn’t do that.
With shaking fingers, I unsheathed my borrowed sword and edged closer to the center of the village. A small square that musthave been a market, judging from the destroyed carts and spilled goods, opened before me.
