Shouts swelled in the near distance. Screams. Curses. Panic.
Rounding the next corner, Dane nearly crashed headlong into a writhing wall of men stretching between him and the docks, all fighting for a place nearer the front of the line.Line? What line? There was no line. Only a chaotic swarm frothing for the opportunity to board one of the three ships that hadn’t yet departed for the mainland.
Three. That was all he could see that was left.
His stomach clenched.
It wasn’t enough to evacuate them all.
A piteous cry drew his attention to the left, where in the gaps between bodies he caught sight of a shock of dark hair only rising waist-high.
A child.
“Move!” he shouted, shouldering his way into the chaos. Hands grasped at his cloak, seeking to drag him backward.
“Please!” a man glittering beneath the weight of at least a dozen gold necklaces draped around his neck begged. “I’ll pay you anything for passage on one of those ships. Anything!”
Dane shrugged him off. “Elias! There’s a child!”
“I see him,” the northman growled. “Boy! Boy, come here!”
The boy came crying, but he came. Tears streaked his tawny cheeks. He babbled incoherently in heavily accented common until Elias finally hoisted him up into his arms, and the child caught sight of someone in the crowd. “Mama!” he wailed, pointing somewhere deeper in the sea of bodies. “Mama!”
Dane set his jaw and unslung his shield. “Make a path and let the woman through!” he roared. When the men before him didn’t move, he drew in a deep breath and dove into the chaos.
He slammed his shield into the wall of men, bodily carving a path, wasting precious seconds with each labored step. Bodies pressed against him on all sides, slowing him down. Someone else grabbed his cloak, nearly choking him.
He reached up and unclasped it, freeing himself from its weight.
Screams rippled through the crowd. “They’re leaving! The ships are leaving!”
In horror, Dane glanced over the rim of his shield and watched as two of the three ships began to ease away from the docks, crisp sails unfurling. Panicked men jumped into the waters after them, desperately trying to grab for the cut mooring lines so they could climb aboard.
The crowd surged, propelling Dane forward. A pained cry went up as people were crushed within the throng.
“Hold the last ship!” Dane shouted, though his voice was soon lost beneath the swell of the crowd. “We have two more! Miss? Miss! I have your son!”
“Mama!” the boy screamed.
“Khalid!” a feminine voice shouted back just as a woman stumbled from the crowd. Dane only caught a glimpse of wide, tear-filled eyes staring at him in relief before he caught her around the shoulders and tugged her in close.
“Do you have more children?” he asked against her hair.
“No,” she sobbed, trembling in his grasp. “Just Khalid.”
“My man has him,” he promised, shoving deeper into the crowd. “And I have you.”
His left shoulder screamed in protest at the effort of fighting his way through the crush of men. His heart hammered out a staccato rhythm, louder than any Arathian war drum. Each step was a chore. Each passing moment was a precious second lost.
“Hold the last ship!” Finally, he was close enough to be heard. For his gaze to meet that of one of the crew fighting to keep more men from surging up the gangplank.
The crewman spat and shouted back, “Wedon’t have room!”
“Make room!” Dane snarled.
Ignoring him, the crewman and two others shoved the gangplank clean off the ship, plunging it into the waters of the harbor. The male civilians who had been trying to push themselves aboard fell in along with it, screaming as they went down.
The woman beneath his arm choked on another sob.
