Hotch appeared moments later with the wizard in tow. A warforged of indeterminate gender, the mage wore a simple white-hooded robe over its metal and wood fiber body, but its two-toed silver feet were visible beneath the hem and three-fingered hands poked out from under long, flowing sleeves. Its metal jaw worked in some arcane chant while the crystals that formed its eyes glowed orange.
“Hard to port!” Thecla ordered the Lyrandar half-elf, who complied with a small moue of concentration. As the airship came about, Sabira was at last able to see the cause of all the commotion.
A clutch of three yrthaks was attacking another airship a few miles ahead, out over the open water. As she watched, one of the yrthaks bore down on the ship, opening its improbably wide mouth. The starboard side control fin burst in a cloud of wooden debris and the airship began to list to that side. As it did so, Sabira could just make out a crest emblazoned on the side of its hull.
It was the Inheritance.
“That’s my—that’s a Sentinel Marshal ship! We’ve got to help them!”
“Ai! Quiet, quiet!” Hotch yapped, holding one clawed finger up to his snout. “Too noisy! Attract birds before wizard done with spell!”
Sabira looked over at the warforged to see it bringing a small golden horn to its lips. With an oath, she sprinted for the sterncastle, pulling her shard axe from its harness. Hotch was the only one who seemed to realize what she was up to, and he jumped in front of her, only to be backhanded out of the way without a second glance. She reached the warforged just as it was beginning to blow a silent note on the magical instrument and swung her urgrosh. The strike connected, sending the horn skittering across the wooden deck with a clatter.
Silence reigned for an instant as she darted over to retrieve the instrument, and then it sounded as if all the souls in Dolurrh had been let loose at once.
Thecla roared in fury, drawing his blade and yelling for his men to do the same. Hotch was whining and yelping at her from where he still lay on the deck, blood trickling out from a new gap in his teeth. The wizard, meanwhile, was waving its hands and shouting a new and terrible incantation.
And above it all, a voice shouting from the bow.
“Incoming!”
And then the sound of the two forward ballistae firing in quick succession, followed by a string of heartfelt and rather imaginative curses.
“Unless you want those things doing to the Dust Dancer what they just did to the Inheritance, you’d better do exactly as I say, and quickly.” As she spoke, Sabira edged closer to the wheel, the railing at her back. She held her urgrosh in one hand and dangled the horn from the other, out over the railing, where a quick toss would send it tumbling into the whitecaps far below. She knew there were at least two crossbows trained on her—maybe more—but the crew didn’t dare shoot while she held the horn that represented their only chance against the rapidly advancing yrthaks.
Thecla growled but nodded, lowering his weapon and motioning for the others to do the same. When the warforged seemed disinclined to cease his spellcasting, the first mate slapped the back of the wizard’s head with his hook, the sound of the impact ringing out across the deck like some alien bell tone.
“Cast your spell,” Sabira said, tossing the horn back to the wizard. As the warforged snatched it nimbly out of the air, Sabira dodged to the side, a crossbow bolt nearly catching her in the calf. And then she was behind the Lyrandar pilot, one forearm across his throat and the spear tip of her urgrosh held pressed up against the base of his skull.
The warforged looked from her to Thecla, who nodded again, his face red with barely contained rage. There was another incomprehensible shout from the bow, and then the wizard blew on the horn and there was nothing but silence.
“You make speak in normal tones. The sound will not carry, as long as it is not excessive,” the warforged intoned in its hollow voice.
Thecla looked over at her, a sly grin tickling the edges of his mouth.
“Give it up, Sabira. You don’t really expect me to believe that a Sentinel Marshal would stoop to murder, do you?”
Sabira tightened her hold on the pilot’s throat.
“I’m not going to stand by and do nothing while a member of my House—a friend—dies.” Not again. “Believe that.”
She leaned into the pilot, her urgrosh pressing into the soft flesh of the half-elf’s neck as she breathed into his pointed ear.
“What about you? Whoever is helming the Inheritance, he or she is a pilot like you. A Lyrandar like you. Is Arach really paying you so much that the life of a fellow Lyrandar is worthless by comparison? And the lives of all the other people on that ship?”
The half-elf didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
Sabira felt a momentary stab of jealousy. Apparently, she’d sold her services on the cheap. Fast on the heels of that mercenary regret was an equally strong urge to shove the spear tip of her shard axe into the pilot’s brain for his callousness, but she squelched it as quickly as it arose, recognizing the hypocrisy behind it. How could she blame him, when she herself only really cared about one person on the Inheritance herself, and it wasn’t the Lyrandar?
“Fine. Take the Dust Dancer up over the top of the Inheritance and then suppress the elementals.”
“But then we risk attracting the yrthaks again!” the pilot protested, before Sabira repositioned her arm forcefully across his larynx. He was right, of course; even if the Dust Dancer was silent, the air flowing around it as it moved could still be detected by the yrthaks.
“Not really seeing the problem with that, since you’ve got four ballistae here to the Inheritance’s one,” Sabira replied. “So how about you just do what I say before I get tired of holding my urgrosh and find somewhere to stick it, hmm?”
The pilot couldn’t reply, but Sabira felt him stiffen as he invoked the powers of his hidden Mark of Storm and the ship began to rise in response. With the warforged’s spell still in place, the ascent was eerily quiet, making it easy to hear the muffled sounds of the battle playing out somewhere below them.
The faint sound of a ballista being fired was followed by a weird, high-pitched scream. Had they scored a hit or just enraged the yrthak? Sabira strained to hear, but she couldn’t tell. There was shouting, but there was no way she could make out individual voices. No way to know who was still fighting and who had already fallen.
Then came the cry she’d been dreading, clear even through the dampening effects of the wizard’s spell.
“Man overboard!”
Host, no. In these waters, that meant almost certain death.
“Stop here!”
The pilot made a wheezing noise, and Sabira shifted her arm just enough so that he could speak.
“I don’t know if we’re in the right—”
“We’re close enough. Now suppress the elementals.”
“But—”
Sabira let the sharpened spike pierce flesh. “With ears that big, Lyrandar, I know you’re not deaf. Quit stalling and suppress the elementals.”
The half-elf did as he was bade, and the Dust Dancer came to a stop, floating serenely on the air currents.
“Now let’s move.”
Sabira urged him along, keeping his body between hers and the weapons of Thecla’s crew, more of whom had acquired crossbows in the interim.
The first mate, who hadn’t moved from his place by the wizard, crossed his arms and gave her a skeptical look.
“Just how far do you think you’re going to get, Marshal? The minute you let him go, my men are going to fill you so full of feathers you’ll be able to fly yourself. Maybe I’ll have them do it before you let him go. I’m sure we have enough healing potions on board to patch Irlen back up after the fact.”
Sabira didn’t bother to respond; if that were true, she’d already be a porcupine. A dead one.
She moved down the stairs to the main deck as quickly as she could, tightening her hold to make sure Irlen didn’t decide to fake a stumble. Thecla fo
llowed her, trailed by Hotch and the warforged. Ears was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, but gave way at a word from Thecla.
“Grab a life ring,” she ordered the pilot while she threw a glance over her shoulder to make sure none of the crew had circled behind her yet. The path to the port-side railing was still clear.
Irlen pulled the wooden circle down from its mooring and it immediately floated up into a horizontal position at waist level.
“Pull it along, up at your chest,” Sabira said as she backed them toward the railing. When she felt the wooden balustrade at the back of her thighs, she shifted the urgrosh away from the half-elf’s neck. “Hang on tight!”
And then she threw her weight backward, wrapping her legs around Irlen’s torso as the two toppled over the side of the airship and plummeted toward the ocean at an alarming speed.
“What the—?”
Life rings were supposed to be able to bear the weight of four people with no problem, and to slow their descent to roughly a third of the normal rate of fall. This one was either malfunctioning or else Irlen was a lot heavier than he looked.
Well, first things first. Sabira released her hold on the half-elf’s neck and slapped her urgrosh into its harness. Then she reached over his shoulder to grab onto the edge of the life ring. Once she had a firm grip, she unwrapped her legs and began pulling herself painstakingly around to the other side, hand over hand.
Once their weight was more balanced, the ring began to descend at a more reasonable rate, but still faster than it should.
Not that it really mattered. She wasn’t planning on dangling from it for long.
“Over here! Hey, ugly! Over here!”
“What in the name of the Devourer are you doing?” Irlen hissed, eyes wide with alarm as he stared down at the yrthaks harrying the listing airship. “You’re going to—”
“Attract one? Yeah, that’s sort of the point.”
Irlen had stopped the Dust Dancer several hundred feet from the Inheritance’s position. There was no way she was going to be able to reach it unless a gale blew up suddenly out of the east, in which case she’d have a lot more things to worry about than just saving Elix. So she’d have to go with the next best option: taking a ride on the back of a yrthak.
And, lucky her, it looked like one had finally noticed her and Irlen and was about to oblige.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Zol, Nymm 10, 998 YK
Somewhere over the Thunder Sea.
If she’d thought the yrthaks were ugly from a distance, seeing one up close was nothing short of a nightmare out of Xoriat. The reptile swooped toward her, its impossibly huge mouth yawing open. She could clearly see the rows of jagged teeth, the protruding, bulbous tongue, and the blackness beyond that led to the creature’s gullet. Something fleshy was lodged there. Sabira didn’t want to think too hard about what it might be.
It was coming at her from the side and looked like it was more interested in taking a chunk out of her than blasting her with that Hostforsaken horn, so she kept yelling and kicking to make sure its focus remained on her legs. Sabira waited until the last moment, when it lowered its head and arched its neck for the bite, then pulled her legs up out of the way. The yrthak passed harmlessly beneath her in a rush of foul wind, mere inches from where Sabira hung from the life ring like a pig on a spit. Then she breathed a prayer to Olladra and let go.
She mis-timed her fall and landed on the back of the thing’s elongated head, almost where its eyes would be, if it had any. She’d hoped to use her urgrosh on the yrthak the same way she’d used her arm on the Lyrandar pilot, holding it across the creature’s neck, controlling where it went by controlling its air supply. She quickly realized the flaw in that plan, though, for where the half-elf could understand her instructions, the yrthak, while it responded to the sounds, did not seem to comprehend the meaning behind them. Either that or it was too incensed by the sheer audacity of the two-legged thing trying to use it as a mount to care what she was saying.
“Calm down, big guy. No one needs to get hurt here,” she said, trying to soothe it like a skittish horse, but to no avail. She gripped its head between her legs, hoping the pressure of her knees might induce the yrthak to go where she wanted it to, but that only seemed to anger it further. It whipped its massive head back and forth, trying to shake her off.
Fine. If the stinking reptile wanted to act like a headstrong stallion, well, she knew how to deal with one of those.
She pulled her urgrosh back out of its harness and leaned forward, swinging it around and catching the haft just below the axe-head in her other hand. Then she pulled back on it like a scared trainee sawing at the reins, snapping the yrthak’s jaw shut with a spray of slimy spittle.
She’d only thought the creature was mad before. Now it tossed its head in all directions, spinning in the air and diving and banking in an effort to dislodge her. It even tried to scrape her off on the hull of the Inheritance, but she leaned far to the side and all it succeeded in doing was taking off a layer of its own scaly skin. Through it all, Sabira held on doggedly, helped in no small part by the shard axe’s enchantment. There was an old saying, “Sooner move a mountain than a dwarf,” and the yrthak was learning the truth of that now, for with the urgrosh in her hands, she was as unyielding as any Mrorian ever born.
It seemed to take hours, but the yrthak finally tired and became compliant, banking right when she put pressure on the left side of its jaw and left when she put pressure on the right. She was likewise able to get it to descend or rise by exerting the appropriate force. She had the thing under control.
Now she just had to hope that neither of the airships’ crews would decide to shoot the yrthak out of the sky while she was on it.
Using the urgrosh as a makeshift bridle, she swooped low over the waves to find whoever had fallen from the Inheritance. A body floated face-down in the water, already being circled by fins. A flash of dark hair sent fear coursing through her, but then she saw the tip of a pointed ear poking out and felt a rush of guilty relief.
The unfortunate fellow was probably the Inheritance’s pilot, which was going to make things very interesting after they got rid of all these yrthaks.
If they got rid of them.
But it wasn’t Elix. Thank the Host, it wasn’t Elix.
She knew she couldn’t rejoice just yet. He might not have been the one who’d gone overboard, but he could still be dead somewhere up on that ship. She had to find out.
As she urged her reptilian mount upward, Sabira saw Irlen a hundred feet away, perched precariously on the life ring, which now floated less than a foot above the choppy surface of the sea. A few fins had gathered around his position, too, in anticipation.
Well, the half-elf was on his own for now. She’d save him later, if she could. Just as soon as she’d saved everyone else.
The yrthak climbed up through the air, and Sabira brought it around so she could survey the damage to the Inheritance. The second remaining control fin was half gone, and several holes gaped in the portside bow. One of the binding struts for the elemental ring looked to have been damaged, and flames danced along its length as the now-uncontrolled elemental tried to escape its bonds. A soldier wearing Deneith colors was manning the ballista, firing great harpoon-like bolts at the yrthak that continued to harry the ship from the air. The second yrthak had landed on the deck and was using its jaws to formidable effect while its great leathery wings swooped to and fro, batting its attackers away like chaff in the wind.
One of those attackers was Elix, his dragonmark glowing blue as he ducked the yrthak’s blow and countered with a slash of his sword. Mountainheart was beside him, stabbing out with his rapier, while three others came at the yrthak from the opposite side. Four more bodies lay crumpled about the deck, unmoving.
Sabira used her urgrosh bridle to steer her yrthak toward the ship. She considered leaping from its back to that of the yrthak on the deck, but discarded the idea immediately. The moment she rele
ased her hold on her mount’s jaw, she would be relinquishing her power over it, and it would attack. And since it couldn’t reach her, it would go for the next best thing: the Inheritance and her crew.
No, she needed to take this one out of the picture before she could help fight the other two. Positioned as she was on the back of its head, there was only one way to do that. But she was only going to get one shot, and if she missed, she’d be joining the Lyrandar pilot as food for the sharks.
Slackening her hold slightly, she inched her way up the yrthak’s head until she was at the juncture of horn and skull. Sparing a glance at the Inheritance, she saw that the yrthak was almost above the deck. It was now or never.
She loosened her grip even more so that she could bring her legs back up underneath her. Once she was in a crouch, she released the hand near the urgrosh’s axe-head and swung the weapon out and up with her opposite hand while simultaneously jumping to her feet. Then, before the yrthak could register the fact that it was free, she grabbed the shard axe in both hands and brought it down as hard as she could on the winged reptile’s horn, shearing it off at the base.
And then she jumped.
As she hit the Inheritance’s deck, she bent her knees and curled into a ball, rolling across the pitted wood until she fetched up against the side of the forecastle. The yrthak, meanwhile, opened its mouth wide and screamed in silent agony, thrashing about in midair. One wild wing flapped into the elemental ring, burning through the leathery skin and leaving it in blackened, smoking tatters.
Crazed with pain, the yrthak flew blindly, its tail lashing out and slamming into the ballista, breaking the mighty weapon in two and almost crushing its operator, who dived out of the way at the last moment. Then it careened straight into its airborne clutch-mate, mindlessly attacking it as the two fell toward the water in a snarl.
Sabira climbed to her feet as the deck lurched below her, still listing heavily to the right. She made her way over to where the others were battling the remaining yrthak, only to see Elix on the deck, flat on his back and weaponless beneath one of the thing’s clawed forelimbs. Mountainheart and the others hacked at its tough hide, trying to distract the thing from making Elix its next meal, with little success.
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