Chel lobbed the skin. It arced away from him, hissing faintly, trailing an acrid stench in its wake. Already his fingers felt stained and itchy where he’d held it. The skin flopped up through the air, then began its descent, now bulging almost spherical. The two reavers who were next in line to charge paused to watch the strange, round object travel slowly through the air, its landing spot well in front of where they lurked.

The skin hit the ice and burst. It more than burst. It erupted. It split apart with a great crack, blasting tatters of animal hide into the air. A great fountain of thick white cloud spurted outwards, while hissing liquid sprayed in all directions, coating the ice. One of the reavers was caught in the spray and collapsed screaming, clawing at the affected skin. The others were overcome with coughing as the smoke rolled over them, hands to faces, eyes streaming, failing.

Then the ice split. Whatever had sprayed from the skin had eaten through the crust, weakened by the explosion, and a great chunk reared before them, cracks widening either side of it. A moment later, a channel of black water yawned between the mules and the reavers, peppered with icy chunks, some still hissing.

‘What the fuck was that?’

The question came from all sides. Chel looked to Kosh, who began to stammer the names of reagents.

‘Move! Move, move, move!’ Rennic was yanking at a mule’s rope, gesturing the others to do likewise. He began to drag the protesting mule away from the smoking ruins, where the reavers hacked and rolled.

‘Which way is the shore?’

‘It’s a lake! It’s all shore eventually!’

They ran, feet slipping against slick ice, mules resisting, leaving the one dead animal and a dozen stricken reavers behind them. Chel looked over his shoulder in time to see Dalim’s beautiful glaive slip from the fractured ice and into the dark waters of the hungering lake.

Then the ice split beneath him, and he plunged.

***

The shock was immediate. He disappeared beneath the water, his world nothing but bubbles and grey filtered light and pressure in his ears and incredible cold, then rose to the surface with a great rush and a watery explosion, coughing and spluttering and terrified. He trod frigid lake-water, fighting the drag of his sodden clothes, sucking him back below. His breath came in desperate little shocks of fog, bursting over the lapping black of his own waves. The cracked ice had split around him, breaking away into diminishing chunks, and his numbed and flailing hands grasped only drifting shards.

‘Help! Help me!’

From somewhere he thought he heard Rennic bellowing ‘little man!’, but his movements were becoming urgent and spasmodic as his body started to shake. His eyes were blurry with water and panic, and he blinked furiously. The monochrome smears in his vision resolved themselves into figures, lurking at the ice’s edge.