Smoke has infiltrated even down here. Our jarred reserves are caked with ash.

Baby starts hacking into my chest, and I race back up the steps, breaking outside where we can breathe. “Astra? Pewter? Fang?” Their names fall from my mouth, each one more urgent, until my fear eventually betrays me and I can’t keep my voice calm.

There’s no one here.

I turn in circles beneath the night sky, my throat tight. That’s when I notice an extra plume of smoke coming from the lake. I run the hundred paces from memory, gagging as I get nearer. Three bodies lay prone on the dry bank.

I kneel beside them. I don’t want to look, but I have to.

The first body is Astra. The second Cobel, her son. They’ve both been shot in the chest, the front of their skulls smashed open. I turn away and heave. I’ve had little to eat but goat’s milk, jerky, and water, and I vomit it all up immediately.

“Delta?” the third body croaks. “Indie?”

I roll Astra and Cobel aside, finding Old Fang beneath them. He’s been shot too—once in the shoulder and again below his arm. Dried blood marks his brow, as though he’s been struck with a rock. Both of his legs are broken.

“A raid,” he manages before I can ask. “Came from the north. A dozen of them. Wearing black and riding stallions.”

I haven’t seen a stallion on the plains in more than a year. They’re wild beasts, far more trouble than the mares. How a raiding party managed to rope and break a dozen of them is beyond me.

“Where are the others? What happened?”

“They were looking for something. Don’t think they found it. Killed anyone who fought back”—his eyes dart to Astra and her son—“and took everyone else.”

“Took them where?”

His eyes roll, his breath coming in shallow bursts.

“Where, Fang?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did they say? Did you hear anything?”

He coughs up a spattering of blood. I help him sit and let him drink all that remains in my waterskin.

“They spoke of a general, that he’d be disappointed.”

I’ve never heard of such a man. Not even Flint has mentioned him, and he’s spoken of the raiding parties often in his recent visits. I don’t know what would be worse—for the raids to be random, or for them to be orchestrated by this general.

“Anything else? Please, Fang.”

“They checked our dead to see if they were gods touched. That’s why they . . .” Again his gaze trails to poor Astra and her boy. Gods touched. I have never heard the term before. “I’d’ve been next, but another storm was coming. They didn’t realize I was still breathing. They left with the pack.”