Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  Bershad ran down the bridge. There were broken bits of steaming dragon bone everywhere, along with the splattered corpses of men who’d been thrown from their exploding skyships. In the distance, there was a noise like a hurricane and a flurry of movement in the foggy distance. He ran faster.

  When he was close enough to see through the fog, he saw something that he didn’t understand.

  There was a horde of deformed creatures throwing themselves at a patch of churning red mist in the middle of the bridge. The creatures were torn apart on impact, but they just kept coming.

  Through the haze of gore, Bershad saw flickers of Ashlyn’s yellow poncho. The mist broke for a moment, and he saw that her arm was extended, her hair was on fire, and she was screaming.

  “She can’t keep that up much longer,” Bershad muttered.

  He charged forward and started spearing the creatures in the backs of their skulls. He got through six or seven before any of them turned around and attacked him instead of Ashlyn. He bashed them backward with his shield, throwing them into Ashlyn’s curtain of lodestones and reducing them to bloody scraps.

  There were still two of the creatures alive when Ashlyn’s lodestones started spinning out of control—flying into the air with a wild hiss, or skittering across the cobblestones. Within a few heartbeats the shroud was gone and Ashlyn was on her knees, chest heaving.

  Bershad speared one of the creatures through the face and shoved the other one off the bridge and into the muddy water below. Then he ran back to Ashlyn and smothered her burning hair with both hands. Her poncho was soaked with blood and covered with bone chips.

  “Ashe,” he said. “Ashe, it’s me.”

  She blinked at him. “Silas?”

  He nodded. Squeezed her into a tight embrace. “I never should have left you. I’m sorry, Ashe. I’m so sorry.”

  “Did you save Deepdale?”

  “I saved the people. The city belongs to the dragons now.”

  “Then you did the right thing, because my plan was destined to go to shit no matter what.” She turned to Jolan’s limp body. “Is he alive?”

  Bershad moved to the boy. Checked his neck. “Yes.”

  Ashlyn nodded. Got to her feet. “We need to get off this bridge. I can walk if you can carry Jol—”

  She was interrupted by the roar of a skyship engine passing through the sky above them.

  A moment later, Vallen Vergun landed between Bershad and Ashlyn with a bone-crunching snap. He was wearing black leathers. Carrying no weapons.

  His knees popped back into place almost instantly. Healing faster than Bershad ever could, even with a belly full of Gods Moss.

  He turned to Bershad and smiled. “Hello, Silas.”

  Bershad cocked his spear and charged.

  Vergun sidestepped his spear thrust, then lashed out with one arm. Bershad raised the shield to block the impact, but it was far stronger than he’d expected. The shield kicked back into his temple, flashing his vision white. When it returned, Bershad was twenty strides away and crammed against the side of the bridge.

  Ashlyn’s bands whirred to life. A lodestone zipped out of the wreckage and careened toward Vergun’s bare chest. But his skin shifted to a patch of black scales a moment before impact. The lodestone shattered.

  “You’ll need to do better than that, Queen.”

  “As you wish,” she said, bands spinning even faster. This time, nine lodestones rose from the wreckage. Two of them tottered and fell back to the ground again, but the other seven flew forward at speed, surrounding him and smashing into different points on his torso. His scales shattered about half of them, but the others blasted through his bare, pale skin, sent him reeling backward.

  Ashlyn screamed. The lodestones swarmed back around her, gaining momentum.

  Before she could attack Vergun again, a whip snapped around her arm and shocked her.

  Her back arched, violent and strained. Her bands froze. Then she crumpled to the ground, lodestones falling around her.

  “Ashlyn!” Bershad screamed, body surging with panic.

  That gray-eyed Balarian emerged from behind a broken piece of skyship, face blank and calm as he walked toward Ashlyn.

  Vallen was back on his feet. The wounds from Ashlyn’s lodestones had healed.

  “Ward wants her alive,” said Vergun. “But he did not express the same desire toward you, Silas. Are you ready to die?”

  Bershad gathered the shield and spear. Stood up.

  Before he could charge, Felgor appeared out of the smoke and tackled him, taking them both over the edge of the bridge and into the swirling, brown waters of the Gorgon.

  82

  GARRET

  The Gorgon Bridge

  For a moment, it looked like Vergun was going to follow Bershad off the bridge and into the river. Garret wouldn’t have stopped him. The man had always been insane. Now he appeared to also be invincible.

  But Vergun came to his senses after glaring out at the water for a few angry moments. He stormed back to Ashlyn Malgrave.

  “She is alive, right?” he growled.

  “Yes,” said Garret. “As ordered.”

  Garret had given some thought to increasing the current and killing her. But cleaning up an old mess at the cost of creating another one bothered him. He’d give Ward a chance to keep his promise and let him kill Ashlyn when he was through with her.

  If Ward broke that promise, he’d simply kill them both.

  Vergun licked his lips. “I’m hungry.”

  Garret thought that was a pretty odd thing to say, given the current situation, but he didn’t respond because it was at that point that he noticed Jolan was also lying unconscious on the bridge. His pulse quickened.

  Before he could do anything about Jolan, Castor swung Ward’s little skyship around and landed it on the bridge. Nebbin rushed out of it, flanked by three war acolytes.

  The engineer checked Ashlyn’s pulse. Nodded approval.

  “Pick her up,” he snapped at one of the acolytes.

  Then he looked around. Saw Jolan. Motioned to the other acolyte. “You get the boy.”

  “Why bother with the kid?” Garret asked.

  “He was assisting Ashlyn Malgrave. He might have information.”

  “No. The boy stays here.”

  Nebbin smiled. “You don’t give the orders, Hangman. I do. Now drop your weapon and surrender.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You told us that the Blue Sparrow was commandeered by Count Garwin. And yet we have received three separate reports that the Blue Sparrow is the very ship—currently dead in the air—that kidnapped Kira Malgrave. You lied, Hangman.”

  Garret’s happiness for Vera was stunted by the immediate problems it caused for him. He didn’t know how Ward planned to punish him, and he didn’t want to find out. He squeezed down on the whip, drawing more blood and fueling the current. But before he could turn Nebbin into a pile of ash, the engineer produced a rectangular piece of machinery from his pocket and pushed a white button made from dragon bone.

  The current from Garret’s whip reversed flow, shocking his body and sending him to his knees. His jaw clenched. Muscles spasmed and went tight, freezing him in place.

  “Should I kill him?” Castor asked.

  “No need,” Nebbin said lightly. “He’s incapacitated.”

  “The man’s dangerous. Leaving him alive is a risk.”

  “That weapon is bound specifically to his blood, and Master Ward would like to attempt an unbinding experiment on him at his leisure.” He waved his hand around at Garret, Ashlyn, and Jolan. “The acolytes can guard these three until another skyship arrives to collect them. We’re done here. On to the runaway princess!”

  Castor shrugged. “Works.”

  Nebbin glanced at Garret and smiled. “I will see you later, Hangman.”

  He pushed the button on his device again.

  Everything went black.

  83

  VERA


  Above the Soul Sea

  “Decimar, if this this skyship doesn’t start moving again soon, we’re all going to die.”

  “I’m aware of the stakes,” Decimar said, grunting as he tightened a metal nut. Then he moved to a hulking rubber belt and hauled it back into place. “But we blew half our pistons fighting against whatever force was pulling us back to that bridge.”

  “How long to fix it?”

  “I can give you a detailed estimate or I can just fix it as fast as I can,” Decimar said.

  “Fine. Do it.”

  Decimar worked for a few more minutes on various parts of broken machinery. When he had things in some semblance of order, he moved to a big lever. Grabbed hold.

  “Please work,” he whispered. “Please, please, please.”

  He pulled the lever. The engine roared to life.

  “Thank fucking Aeternita!” Decimar said, stepping back.

  Relief flooded Vera’s body, but it didn’t last long.

  “Vera!” Entras shouted from above. “We got a real big problem coming our way. You both need to get up here.”

  Vera and Decimar climbed onto the deck. Entras pointed west, where a flying object was approaching fast.

  “Dunno if it’s a skyship or the most fucked-up dragon in existence,” Entras said. “But it’s coming right at us.”

  “It’s a skyship,” Vera said, although not one she’d ever seen before. It was made from the skull of a dragon and cobbled together with iron sheets. It was smaller than anything else in the fleet and there was a trail of black smoke in its wake. “Throttle up the engine and head east.”

  “I’ve only got one piston working. That won’t be enough to outrun that thing.”

  “I know. I want arrow volleys on it as soon as it’s in range.”

  Decimar nodded. Turned to his men. “Prep weapons.”

  While the longbowmen were getting ready, Vera went to see Kira in the royal cabin. She’d been asleep last Vera checked, but was sitting up now and seemed more alert.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. What’s happening outside?”

  Vera swallowed. “There’s going to be a fight. You need to stay in here, no matter what. Understand?”

  Kira nodded.

  * * *

  Decimar was right, they couldn’t outrun the ship. It only took twenty minutes for the bone ship to close the gap between them. Once it was in range, Decimar and his men peppered the ship with arrows, but they bounced harmlessly off the hull.

  “I think they’re going to ram us,” Decimar said.

  Vera backed up toward the door of the royal cabin and loaded her sling.

  The skyship slammed into the port side of the Sparrow and got stuck there. For a few moments, nothing happened.

  Behind her, the door opened.

  “Vera?”

  “It’s not safe, Ki. Close the door and—”

  A man vaulted out of the dragon skull and landed in the middle of the deck.

  Vallen Vergun.

  Vera whipped her sling in three tight arcs and released. Hit him in the right temple. But instead of tearing a canyon through his skull, there was a flash of black against Vergun’s alabaster skin. Her shot shattered as if it was made of mud, not steel.

  Next, the longbowmen turned and loosed their arrows at him, but his skin shifted again and the arrows glanced off him, skimming uselessly into the sky.

  Then the killing began.

  Vergun darted forward and punched straight through a man’s chest. Tore out another’s throat. The longbowmen drew their swords and attacked, but their blades bent and broke against his skin. Vergun tore all of them apart in seconds.

  Decimar had moved to protect Entras, and had a fresh arrow nocked. Vergun stalked toward them. Decimar waited until he was five strides away, then loosed the arrow. At that range, it punched straight through Vergun’s heart.

  Vergun looked down at the arrow, smiled, then ripped it out and rammed it through Decimar’s eye. He came over to Entras and tore his head off, threw it overboard, then reached into the cockpit and killed their engines.

  Vera’s body filled with blind rage.

  She didn’t think of Kira. She didn’t think of herself. She just screamed, then charged Vergun, extending the poisoned barbs along her arm as she ran. She had no idea whether Caellan’s barbs could pierce Vergun’s skin. She had no idea if the poison inside of the barbs would kill him.

  And she never found out.

  When she was ten paces away from Vergun, a strong hand grabbed her by the back of the skull and threw her overboard.

  84

  CASTOR

  Above the Soul Sea

  Castor watched Vera fall. That strange cloak made her tumble and rip through the air in an odd way—kind of like a wounded bird catching random wind currents on a broken wing—but it didn’t seem to slow her down much.

  He didn’t see her land in the violent, choppy water. Too much rain.

  Castor took a quiet moment to lament the fact he’d never hear Vera speak in that silky accent of hers again, but the private vigil was cut short when the empress of Balaria came out of nowhere, jumped on his back, bit his ear off, and spat it back in his face.

  “I’ll kill you, you fat cheeked turtle-fucker!”

  She dropped to the deck and started harrying him with a series of surprisingly well-placed attacks, aiming for his throat, eyes, and balls. For royalty, the girl cursed and fought like a demon. Castor was tempted to simply punch the girl in the face, but one hundred thousand gold coins will stir a remarkable amount of patience into your body, even when you’re missing an ear.

  Castor grabbed the girl’s wrists and clamped them down against her body. “Stop. Struggling.”

  Kira froze, eyes wide, and Castor thought his orders got the wild bitch to behave until he followed her gaze to Commander Vergun, who was eating the entrails of one of the men he’d killed.

  “Commander?” Castor asked. “What are you doing?”

  Vergun didn’t respond. Just shoved another handful of intestines into his mouth, barely chewing before he swallowed.

  “Gods…” Kira whispered.

  The girl started thrashing around again, but while she was doing that, Engineer Nebbin crawled out of the bone ship. His forehead was bleeding from the impact when Castor had rammed the Blue Sparrow. He hurried across the deck and injected a needle into Kira’s neck. She went limp in Castor’s arms.

  “That will keep her sedated until we can return her to the machine,” said Nebbin.

  He looked back at the bone skyship.

  “You’ve destroyed Master Ward’s prototype with that ramming maneuver. We’ll have to return to Floodhaven on this vessel, and who knows how long—”

  The moron went quiet when he saw what Vergun was doing.

  “Why is Commander Vergun ingesting that corpse?”

  “You’re the engineer. You tell me.”

  Nebbin’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

  “I believe his loom fabric has become corrupted. We need to get Commander Vergun back to Osyrus Ward for treatment.” He moved closer to Castor and lowered his voice. “Bring the Malgrave specimen into this skyship’s cabin and keep her away from Vergun. I will get the ship on a course to Floodhaven as quickly as possible.”

  * * *

  Castor sat with Kira in the cabin, listening to the rain and trying to weigh the balance of all the gold he’d been paid to fight this war against what Vallen Vergun was doing on the deck outside. Truth was, eating raw corpses wasn’t any worse than the things he’d done at Deepdale. No reason to go soft now.

  Not like he was about to switch sides on this war now, anyway.

  Without their witch queen, the Jaguars were fucked.

  PART IV

  85

  BERSHAD

  Coast of the Soul Sea

  Bershad hadn’t given himself stitches in ten years. He was out of practice. But the cut along his stomach
was wide and deep, so he did the best he could.

  “You sure you don’t want me to do that for you?” Felgor asked, wincing.

  “I’m almost done,” Bershad said.

  They’d managed to grab hold of some skyship flotsam and ride it down the Gorgon River until the current let up in the harbor. Then they’d paddled to shore under the cover of darkness.

  The towers of Castle Malgrave were just barely visible through the heavy fog. Each tower pulsed with a blue, artificial light.

  “You think Vergun took Ashlyn back to the castle?” Felgor asked, poking at a tiny puncture wound on his left palm.

  “That’s what Vergun said.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I have no fucking idea, Felgor. I’m trying to work that out.”

  Bershad didn’t say anything while he finished his stitches. Just tried to think through their options, none of which were good.

  “You shouldn’t have pushed me off that bridge,” Bershad said, wincing as he made another stitch.

  “I saved your life.”

  “I could have figured out a way to deal with Vergun. Could have saved Ashlyn.”

  “No, Silas, you really couldn’t have. He’d have killed you, and Ashlyn would be totally screwed. At least we have a chance to rescue her now.”

  “What chance?” Bershad snarled. “There’s no shitpipe we can crawl through to get to wherever Osyrus Ward took her. And without the moss, any one of Ward’s acolytes can tear me apart like a lamb.”

  Bershad pulled too hard with the needle and tore a stitch out of his skin. He cursed. Threw the needle into the water. Decided to just pack the rest of the wound with a wad of mud. Looked off at the castle, too angry to think.

  “We could go meet the Jaguar Army,” Felgor said after a while.

  “They might not have even crossed. Or they might have died trying.”

  “But if they made it, they’ll have those bombs.”

  “The bombs aren’t much good if the skyships aren’t destroyed.”

  “Well, it’s better than knocking on the city gates! Fuck, Silas. I’m trying to be helpful here.”