Aren’s body went still. He could feel the pressure shift in the air. Could see the faint spiral of flame as it began to fall.
The sound came a second later.
Boom!
It struck the edge of the cliff line, flipping and rolling into the jungle, destroying everything in its path. The air reeked of burning pitch and charred vegetation, but there were no screams.
Instead, a hush fell over the island, and in it, Aren roared, “Deploy!”
Lara had moved to man the shipbreaker, brow furrowed as she rotated the machine slightly left. Then she pulled the lever.
Crack!
All along the cliffside, shipbreakers deployed with deafening cracks. Boulders flew through the air, nothing but shadows soaring toward the front lines of the Harendellian fleet.
But Aren didn’t watch them strike, because coming toward the island were six balls of flame.
99
Ahnna
As Ahnna raced around theisland to the southern edge, thick greasy smoke rolled over her.
She scrambled up the rise with James close behind, her boots sliding in the damp earth. Ash fell in soft spirals, catching in her eyelashes and coating her tongue with its bitter taste. But worse were the screams.
“Commander!” someone called out, but Ahnna’s gaze was fixed on the sea. Harendell’s ships edged closer, the oars protruding from them reminding her of great centipedes, their decks blossoming bright with fire every time a projectile was lit. Each crack of a catapult being loosed made her twitch, fire soaring through the sky with the promise of death.
A burning ball flew overhead, trailed by a tail of smoke. It exploded into the jungle canopy, tearing through trees and leaving behind a line of char.
Ahnna winced, throwing an arm up against the heat, but her eyes never left the battlefield. If the ships got much closer, they’d be able to hit the structures at the center of the island. Structures that contained all the food, all the supplies, and all the injured whom Nana and her assistants would be struggling to keep alive.
The crews on the shipbreakers were loading and shooting asswiftly as they could, and damaged ships listed in the waves, one of them actively sinking.
“The vessels with the catapults aren’t loaded with soldiers.” James lowered his spyglass, his face glistening from sweat. Ahnna knew hers was the same because the heat was intense. “It’s the ones with the towers, and they’re holding back.”
“They’re not within range.”
“They’ll come when they think our shipbreakers are destroyed.”
As if in answer, a ball of fire flew toward the clifftop. Those manning the shipbreaker dove to either side right as the war machine exploded, sharp pieces of wood and metal flying in every direction, the base catching fire.
The screams were horrible, and Ahnna raced to shove down the soldiers whose clothes had ignited from the spray of fire. The damp earth smothered the flames but did nothing for the burns.
“It hurts! It hurts!” sobbed the woman beneath her. “Make it stop!”
Ahnna lifted her up and shouted, “Get the injured to Nana. The rest of you, keep hitting them.” Sickness pooled in her stomach. “Use fire!”
“Should we bring back the other shipbreakers?” someone demanded.
“Not yet.” She struggled not to look at James to beg forgiveness for her next order. “We wait until they commit the ships with soldiers.”
It had been so much easier when she’d given orders to defend Eranahl, because she’d been fueled by anger and hate. Not so now. There was only one person she wanted dead, and if she was here, Lestara would keep well out of reach.
Runners brought forward clay pots filled with tree sap that were kept in a trench behind lines, and within moments the shipbreakers were launching incendiaries of their own.
Fire exploded across a ship as one projectile clipped a mast—not with enough force to break it, but the burning sap sprayed over the sails and over the sailors below. Too far to hear the screams, but they echoed in Ahnna’s head all the same.
The Harendellians returned the attack, ships moving to take the places of those that were damaged beyond use. Dirt and fire and rock exploded all around, the noise deafening. James aided with one of the shipbreakers while she directed fire, forced to scream over the uproar for anyone to hear her.
