“We haven’t the time,” Hanaleisa replied.

“We haven’t a choice,” Temberle said. “They have good crews here. They’ll get more boats in fast.”

Shouting erupted on the docks. It escalated into pushing and fighting as desperate townsfolk scrambled to get aboard the first two boats.

“Sailors only!” a man shouted above the rest, for the plan had been to fill those two boats with experienced fishermen, who could then retrieve the rest of the fleet.

But the operation wasn’t going as planned.

“Cast her off!” many people aboard one of the boats shouted, while others still tried to jump on board.

“Too many,” Hanaleisa whispered to her companions, for indeed the small fishing vessel, barely twenty feet long, had not near the capacity to carry the throng that had packed aboard her. Still, they threw out the lines and pushed her away from the wharf. Several people went into the water as she drifted off, swimming hard to catch her and clinging desperately to her rail, which was barely above the cold waters of Impresk Lake.

The second boat went out as well, not quite as laden, and the square sails soon opened as they drifted out from shore. So packed was the first boat that the crewmen aboard couldn’t even reach the rigging, let alone raise sail. Listing badly, weaving erratically, her movements made all on shore gasp and whisper nervously, while the shouting and arguing on the boat only increased in desperation.

Already, many were shaking their heads in dismay and expecting catastrophe when the situation fast deteriorated. The people in the water suddenly began to scream and thrash about. Skeletal fish knifed up to stab hard into them like thrown knives.

The fishing boat rocked as the many hangers-on let go, and people shrieked as the waters churned and turned red with blood.

Then came the undead sailors, rising up to some unseen command. Bony hands gripped the rails of both low-riding ships, and people aboard and on shore cried out in horror as the skeletons of long-dead fishermen began to pull themselves up from the dark waters.

The panic on the first boat sent several people splashing overboard. The boat rocked and veered with the shifting weight, turning uncontrollably—and disastrously. Similarly panicked, the sailors on the second boat couldn’t react quickly enough as the first boat turned toward her. They crashed together with the crackle of splintering wood and the screams of scores of townsfolk realizing their doom. Many went into the water, and as the skeletons scrambled aboard, many others had no choice but to leap into Impresk Lake and try to swim to shore.

Long had men plied the waters of Impresk Lake. Its depths had known a thousand thousand turns of the circle of life. Her deep bed churned with the rising dead, and her waters roiled as more skeletal fish swarmed the splashing Carradden.

And those on the wharves, Hanaleisa, her bothers, and Uncle Pikel as well, could only watch in horror, for not one of the eighty-some people who had boarded those two boats made it back to shore alive.

“Now what?” Rorick cried, his face streaked with tears, his words escaping through such profound gasps that he could hardly get them out.

Indeed, everyone on the wharves shared that horrible question. Then the storehouse collapsed with a great fiery roar. Many of the undead horde were destroyed in that conflagration, thanks to the daring of Hanaleisa, but many, many more remained. And the townsfolk were trapped with their backs to the water, a lake they dared not enter.

Rag-tag groups ran to the north and south as all semblance of order broke down. A few boat crews managed to band together along the shore, and many townsfolk followed in their protective wake.

Many more looked to the children of Cadderly and Danica, those two so long the heroes of the barony. In turn, the three siblings looked to the only hope they could find: Uncle Pikel.

Pikel Bouldershoulder accepted the responsibility with typical gusto, punching his stump into the air. He tucked his cudgel under that shortened arm and began to hop around, tapping his lips with one finger and mumbling, “umm” over and over again.

“Well, what then?” a fishing boat captain cried. Many people closed in on the foursome, looking for answers.

“We find a spot to defend, and we order our line,” Temberle said after looking to Pikel for answers that did not seem to be forthcoming. “Find a narrow alleyway. We cannot remain down here.”

“Uh-uh,” Pikel disagreed, even as the group began to organize its retreat.

“We can’t stay here, Uncle Pikel!” Rorick said to the dwarf, but the indomitable Pikel just smiled back at him.

Then the green-bearded dwarf closed his eyes and tapped his shillelagh against the boardwalk, as if calling to the ground beneath. He turned left, to the north, then hesitated and turned back before spinning to the north again and dashing off at a swift pace.

“What’s he doing?” the captain and several others asked.

“I don’t know,” Temberle answered, but he and Rorick hooked arms again and started after.

“We ain’t following the fool dwarf blindly!” the captain protested.

“Then you’re sure to die,” Hanaleisa answered without hesitation.

Her words had an effect, for all of them swarmed together in Pikel’s wake. He led them off the docks and onto the north beach, moving fast toward the dark rocks that sheltered Carradoon’s harbor from the northern winds.

“We can’t get over those cliffs!” one man complained.

“We’re too near the water!” another woman cried, and indeed, a trio of undead sailors came splashing at them, forcing Temberle and Hanaleisa and other warriors to protect their right flank all the way.

All the way to an apparent dead end, where the rocky path rose up a long slope, then ended at a drop to the stone-filled lake.

“Brilliant,” the captain complained, moving near Pikel. “Ye’ve killed us all, ye fool dwarf!”

It surely seemed as if he spoke the truth, for the undead were in pursuit and the group had nowhere left to run.

But Pikel was unbothered. He stood on the edge of the drop, beside a swaying pine, and closed his eyes, chanting his druidic magic. The tree responded by lowering a branch down before him.

“Hee hee hee,” said Pikel, opening his eyes and handing the branch to Rorick, who stood beside him.

“What?” the young man asked.

Pikel nodded to the drop, and directed Rorick’s gaze to a cave at the back of the inlet.

“You want me to jump down there?” Rorick asked, incredulous. “You want me to swing down?”

Pikel nodded, and pushed him off the ledge.

The screaming Rorick, guided by the obedient tree, was set down—as gently as a mother lays her infant in its crib—on a narrow strip of stone beside the watery inlet. He waited there for the captain and two others, who came down on the next swing, before heading toward the cave.

Pikel was the last one off the ledge, with a host of zombies and skeletons closing in as he leaped. Several of the monsters jumped after him, only to fall and shatter on the stones below.

His cudgel glowing brightly, Pikel moved past the huddled group and led the way into the cave, which at first glance seemed a wide, high, and shallow chamber, ankle deep with water. But Pikel’s instincts and his magical call to the earth had guided him well. On the back wall of that shallow cave was a sidelong corridor leading deeper into the cliffs, and deeper still into the Snowflake Mountains.

Into that darkness went two score of Carradoon’s survivors, half of them capable fighters, the other half frightened citizens, some elderly, some too young to wield a weapon. Just a short while into the retreat, they came to a defensible spot where the corridor ended at a narrow chimney, and through that chimney was another chamber.

There they decided to make their first camp, a circle of guards standing at the cave entrance, which they covered with a heavy stone, and more guarding the two corridors that led out of the chamber, deeper into the mountains.