Chapter 1475: Grimhaven

The fog finally tore open, giving way to a snow-choked morning.

Skell’s fjord lay ahead of them, a jagged cut of black rock and white ice running out into the iron-grey waters of the northern sea. The vanguard flagship broke through the last of the mist with its timbers groaning under the strain and its sails stiff with rime. The wind bit through wool and leather at once, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of deep ocean salt.

For a moment, the silence on the deck was absolute.

Rian stood near the port rail with his hands tucked loosely into the pockets of his frayed black uniform coat. He did not shiver. He only watched the rest of the fleet come out of the unnatural weather behind them.

The vanguard ships, packed with Sixth Legion soldiers used to fighting on solid earth, had suffered terribly. Two of their escort vessels never came out of the fog at all. They were gone, swallowed whole by the Drowned Choir.

The navy ships were another matter. They came in ordered, disciplined lines, and their sailors were already at work, chipping ice from the rigging and hauling the hempen lines taut. Many of them were still pulling chunks of yellow wax out of their ears. They had known exactly what to do when the Leviathans started singing in the mist. They had followed their drills, ignored the illusions, and come through the crossing with a fraction of the casualties.

Rian’s dark eyes followed the navy’s flawless formation across the water.

’Experience. It’s a currency you can’t fake.’

The flagship limped toward the forward anchorage known as Grimhaven. It was supposed to be a safe harbor, a resupply and regroup point manned by a permanent imperial garrison before the final push across the deep sea. It was meant to be a place with warm fires, hot food, and solid walls.

Instead, as the ships drew closer to the rocky shore, a single plume of black smoke rose against the grey sky.

The Eleventh Squad had gathered near the mainmast, still finding their feet after the crossing and the Choir. Han leaned heavily against a stack of sealed crates with one arm clamped over his cracked ribs and his teeth chattering. Baletta stood perfectly still, her hand resting near her sword hilt, and watched the fortress grow closer.

"That doesn’t look like a welcoming party," Doron said flatly. His shadow-soul fog had wound itself tight around his leather boots against the chill.

Jalsket peered over the rail as his hair shifted from dull black to an anxious, icy blue. "Are they burning the refuse early?"

Rian did not answer. He did not need his suppressed Shingan to read what was waiting on that shore.

Grimhaven was ruined.

The stone walls of the imperial fortress were cracked and blackened, burned and iced over from the inside. Its iron gates had been torn clean off their hinges and lay twisted on the frozen ground. Jagged spikes of unnatural frost jutted from the watchtowers and glittered in the dull morning light.

Worse than the broken stone were the drag marks.

Deep trenches had been gouged into the frozen earth and the bedrock beneath it, running straight from the ruined fortress down into the sea. Whatever had hit the garrison had not stopped at killing them. It had dragged everything back into the black water with it, stone and steel, supplies and bodies.

The garrison was gone.

A longboat from the lead navy vessel rowed up to the flagship’s port side, cutting smoothly through the icy chop. A woman climbed the rope ladder with a fluid, practiced grace that belied her age.

Then Bosun Grael heaved herself over the rail and landed on the deck with a heavy thud.

She was a Master-rank sailor, weather-beaten by a lifetime on open water. Her wool coat was stained with salt and tar, and the wind had carved deep lines into her face. When she grabbed a belaying pin to steady herself, Rian noticed that three fingers were missing from her left hand. The sailors near the rail stepped out of her path without being told.

"Mother" Grael did not waste time on salutes. She walked straight past the shivering legionaries toward Captain Ysolde Vaertia, who stood near the helm tallying the vanguard’s dead on a piece of slate.

On the way, Grael turned her head and spat a wad of dark tobacco onto the pitch-sealed deck.

"I’ve anchored at Grimhaven seven times, Captain," Grael said. Her voice was a harsh, grinding rasp that carried easily over the wind, and she pointed a scarred, two-fingered hand at the drag marks on the shore. "That’s never happened."

Ysolde looked up from her slate. Her face stayed as dry as parchment, unmoved by the broken walls. Even so, her eyes followed the gouges all the way from the shattered gate to the waterline.

"The garrison?" she asked curtly.

"Gone," Grael answered bluntly. "All of them. The sea took them. It’s colder this year, Captain. Stranger. Whatever is out there is getting fundamentally worse."

Rian stood quietly by the rail with his hands still in his pockets, and let his gaze drift toward the dark water.

’Something is waking up. And it’s hungry.’

Ysolde turned back to her slate, the silver lion on her collar catching the dull light.

"We hold here to repair the masts," she ordered, and her voice cut through the muttering that had started among the legionaries. "No one sets foot inside that fortress. We stay on the water."

She finished her tally and slowly lowered the slate.

The vanguard’s final count came to thirty-eight. Thirty-eight imperial legionaries swallowed by the Drowned Choir in the fog, because her own Ascendant aura had failed to hold the line against the terror of the deep.

Her eyes found Rian across the crowded deck.

She knew her aura had failed. She knew the Choir had breached the flagship. And she knew, with the cold certainty of a veteran commander, that whatever was hiding inside the lazy, black-haired mercenary was the only reason she was still standing on a ship that floated.

She gave him one long, sideways look, her jaw set tight.

And then, honoring the unspoken rule of the border veterans, she asked absolutely nothing.

Rian tipped his chin half an inch and turned back to the ruined fortress.

’Good. Some things are healthier left under the rug.’