The Shard Axe: An Eberron Novel (Dungeons & Dragons)

by Marsheila Rockwell

  Suddenly, Sabira remembered the tale of the Flamer priests up in the Starpeaks. Promising half of her next three fees to the Temple of Olladra, she cleared her throat and began to sing the first thing that came to mind.

  The Marshal saw that time had fled

  And though she pleaded and implored

  The yrthak’s head whipped around in her direction and its claw came up.

  Tears cutting worse than any sword

  “Farewell, my heart,” was all he said

  Amazingly, the creature began to move toward her across the deck, ignoring the downed Marshal as if he no longer existed. And since he wasn’t moving or making any noise, maybe to the yrthak, he didn’t. Hopefully Elix would be smart enough to keep playing dead until the yrthak was well away from him.

  She knew then in her deepest core

  He was Deneith, trueborn and bred

  As the beast neared, Sabira slowly raised her shard axe, readying her strike.

  And even if they one day wed

  He’d always love his duty.…

  As she sang the final words of the stanza, she took a deep breath, shouted, “Now!” and swung. The edge of her axe-blade caught the yrthak’s lower mandible, sheering through a portion of bone and scattering bloody teeth all over the deck. On the right, Mountainheart, who’d been pacing the creature on that side, stabbed into the yrthak’s mouth, slicing off its bulbous tongue. Farther back, others landed blows on the creature’s body, smashing ribs and scoring flesh. On the left, Elix, broadsword back in hand, cut three feet off the yrthak’s trailing wing, then took off another two with his backstroke.

  The yrthak bellowed soundlessly, slamming its massive head down at Sabira. She tried to dodge out of the way, but the tilting deck and fresh blood pool conspired to make her lose her footing and she went down, losing her grip on her shard axe as her elbow hit the wood with such force that her hand went momentarily numb.

  The yrthak was on top of her in a flash, one clawed forelimb pinning her arms and chest while the other rushed down at her with inevitable speed.

  Sabira bucked her hips and wrenched her head from side to side, but the yrthak was unshakeable. Time seemed to slow as one long, wicked-looking talon arrowed toward her throat. She was going to die here, on a disabled airship in the middle of nowhere, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

  She could imagine the overenthusiastic and largely fictional broadsheets now: Famous Sentinel Marshal Slain by Dragons over the Thunder Sea! Nation Mourns! Travel to Xen’drik Suspended Indefinitely While House Deneith Investigates!

  Well, at least she’d cause as much trouble in death as she had in life; she supposed she couldn’t ask for a more fitting epitaph than that.

  She wondered idly how long she would have after the yrthak impaled her. Would she bleed out in long, agonizing minutes, or would it all be over in an instant? While she was no stranger to pain, if she was going to die either way, she’d prefer for it to at least be quick. The only way to ensure that was to meet the creature halfway; it was certainly better than lying here like a bored courtesan, waiting for it all to end.

  Sabira tensed her neck and shoulders, ready to dart her head forward as soon as the talon was in range. It would be her last act of defiance in a life that had been full of them. She had to make it count.

  Almost there …

  As the curved bone filled her vision and she readied herself for her final act, something bright flashed in front of her face and then warm, acrid blood splashed across her, filling her nose and mouth and making her gag.

  Then the weight across her torso was gone and she rolled blindly away from the yrthak, not sure what had just happened, and not caring. She was still breathing. That was enough for now.

  Wiping the yrthak’s blood from her eyes, she saw the others finishing the now-limbless creature off. All but one.

  She looked up to see Mountainheart standing over her, her urgrosh in his hand. The dwarf was splattered with ichor and flushed with pleasure, looking for all the world as if he’d just flopped dragons up. As he cleaned the blood from the shard axe with a handkerchief, Sabira realized he must have used it to cut off the yrthak’s claw before the thing could impale her. She rose to her feet and then accepted the weapon back from him as he handed it over with a grin.

  “Envoy Mountainheart. Thank y—” she began, grudging but sincere. He waved her gratitude away with a laugh.

  “Please. Orin. I think saving your life officially puts us on a first-name basis, don’t you?” He grinned again, almost playful, and Sabira looked at him askance, wondering just how long he’d been holed up in the nuptial home with his new wife.

  “Besides, you didn’t really think it would be that easy to get out of paying your debt to me, did you?”

  Sabira blinked.

  Had the dwarf actually just made a joke? He really had been cooped up too long.

  “No, I suppose not,” she replied, with a small, sardonic grin of her own. “Though I suppose even if I had died, you would have just had me resurrected, then charged me for that, too.”

  Mountainheart’s grin grew bigger, and he opened his mouth to laugh, though what came out was only a bloody gurgle as a shadow passed behind him and the tip of a spiral green horn burst suddenly from his chest like some sort of rampant, murderous weed.

  The yrthak who’d been attacked by Sabira’s erstwhile mount lifted the dwarf up off the deck with its horn. It shook its great crocodile-like head to make sure its prey was firmly lodged. Then it flapped its wings once and rose into the air.

  Sabira didn’t stop to think. She ran forward, pulling her shard axe back in a two-handed grip. Then she brought it down on the yrthak’s neck, the adamantine blade biting deep. The creature flopped back down, slamming into the forecastle, its sonic scream taking out a huge section of the forward deck and sending the corpse of its clutch-mate plunging into the hold, along with half of the Inheritance’s remaining crew.

  She caught a glimpse of dark hair out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t dare look to see who’d fallen; she couldn’t. She just kept hacking and hacking, until she was covered in the yrthak’s blood and it had long since stopped moving. She hacked until the thing’s head had been completely severed from its body and her arms ached from the exertion. She might have kept at it still if Elix hadn’t grabbed her arms and forced her to lower the weapon and look at him.

  “Saba! You can stop now. It’s dead.”

  She looked at him, wildeyed, not immediately recognizing him or registering his words. And then she dropped the urgrosh and threw her arms around him, crushing him to her.

  “I saw—I thought …”

  “It’s all right,” he said as she mumbled brokenly into his chest. He freed one arm from her embrace and reached up to stroke her hair. “It’s over now.”

  “… of losing you, like I lost Ned …”

  “Ned. Of course.” He stiffened in her arms, and pulled away, breaking the embrace and allowing her to regain her composure.

  As he stepped back, she looked up into his hazel eyes, not sure what darkness she saw there. Anger? Disappointment?

  Resignation?

  Then she caught sight of the yrthak’s severed head over his shoulder, and remembered why she’d been assailing the hapless thing.

  “Mountainheart?” The dwarf had saved her life. She had to see what she could do to save his.

  Elix moved aside so she had a better view. The last two crew members had pulled the dwarf off the yrthak’s horn and were tending to his wounds. Sabira hurried to his side, but even from here, she could see how pale he was. He didn’t have long.

  As she was about to kneel beside him, something glittered at the edge of her vision. Turning, she saw it was coming from the yrthak’s head. Moving nearer, she saw something dark shining in its reptilian skin, just to the side of its horn. It appeared to be a gem of some sort.

  Curious, Sabira bent forward to get a closer look.

  “Elix,
hand me your dagger.” She knew he carried one in his left boot, because she was the one who had given it to him. The length of fine Reirdran steel had been her trainer’s gift to him when he completed his first year in the Defender’s Guild.

  He walked over and handed her the blade without comment. She used the tip to dislodge the jagged crystal, then she wiped it clean on one of the few spots on her shirt not already covered in blood. She held it up to the sunlight, where it gleamed with a blue-black intensity.

  A Khyber dragonshard.

  How in the name of the Mockery had that gotten there?

  “I hate to interrupt your looting,” Elix said brusquely, “but we have a problem.”

  He pointed to the starboard binding strut. The burst of sound that had collapsed the forecastle had further weakened the supports, and the elemental was fighting to free itself.

  “The strut’s not going to hold much longer. And once it goes, the elemental will destroy what’s left of the ship. And us with it, if we’re still here.”

  Sabira pocketed the dragonshard and handed his dagger back to him as she straightened. Then she gave him a wry grin.

  “That, at least, I think I can fix.”

  Armed with one of the Inheritance’s life rings and several hundred feet of rope tied off to what was left of the helm, Sabira floated down to where Irlen still waited, surrounded by even more fins now that the sharks had finished off his fellow pilot.

  “So … do you want to reconsider your contract with Arach, or should I just save these poor hungry sharks some time and push you in?”

  “You would do that? Really?” the half-elf asked. His tone was skeptical, but his eyes were wary. She hadn’t bothered to clean off any of the yrthak’s blood and she knew she must look like some demon out of a bard’s tale, capable of anything.

  “Irlen, I think I’ve already demonstrated that there’s very little I wouldn’t do for the right people. The question is, do you want to be someone I do things for, or someone I do things to?”

  Whatever else he was, the half-elf was pragmatic, and they were soon back on the badly damaged deck of the Inheritance. They gathered up two more life rings—one for Elix and Mountainheart and one for the two surviving crew members—and then Irlen used the powers of his dragonmark to call up a wind that blew the buoyant rings up toward the Dust Dancer. Behind them, a horrendous crash sounded as the binding strut gave way at last and the elemental, in a frenzy of freedom, set about destroying the ship with crackling, inhuman delight.

  Once back on board Arach’s ship, Sabira knew she’d have to do some quick talking to keep Thecla from slaying them all out of hand. And, indeed, they were greeted with a wall of dwarves all aiming crossbows at them, bolts cocked and ready to loose at the slightest provocation.

  “Well, Sabira, that was surprisingly entertaining,” Thecla said, stepping through the ranks and slapping his hand lightly against his hook in polite applause. “I really must thank you—my crew hasn’t enjoyed a show like that since the time they spent their entire shore leave in Sharn holed up at the Glitterdust. But the fun has to end sometime, and since you were so kind as to bring our pilot back to us, it looks like that time is now. For you, at least.”

  He raised his hand to signal his men to fire, but Sabira stopped him with an amused chuckle.

  “I really don’t think you want to do that.”

  One of the dwarf’s eyebrows quirked up curiously.

  “And why would that be, pray tell?”

  “Because this dwarf here is Arach’s nephew—another Aurum member, as I’m sure you can see from the rings. Arach didn’t trust you to get his shipment to Sharn intact,” she placed special emphasis on the word, “so he hired me to keep an eye on you, and ordered his nephew, here, to follow you, as insurance. Of course, you fouled that up by getting a late start out of Stormreach, but that pales in comparison to the mistake you’ll be making if you kill Arach’s own flesh and blood. Which is exactly what you’ll be doing if you don’t start pouring some of those healing potions you were bragging about down his throat pretty damned quickly.”

  Thecla scoffed.

  “Arach doesn’t have a nephew,” he said dismissively.

  “He does since Orin, here, married his niece, Adora d’Kundarak. You can see the beads in his beard as plainly as I can, and I know you know how to read them.”

  It was a stretch, but a believable one. Thecla himself had given her the idea when he talked about the Glitterdust Nightclub. Adora was a well-known dancer there, and the last time Sabira had seen her show, the dwarf woman had worn red and purple veils, the colors Arach so obviously favored. Coupled with the name of the ship, it wasn’t too hard to figure that the two had a connection of some sort. Sabira doubted Thecla knew what it was any more than she did, which only worked in her favor.

  Thecla hesitated, but didn’t appear entirely convinced. It was time to play her hole card and hope to all the Host that she’d guessed right.

  “Why do you suppose Arach hired a new crew member for this particular run? And for a paltry five dragons?”

  The first mate’s face drew into a frown and Sabira knew she was losing him.

  “Five dragons is a more than fair price for transporting dragonshards. And as delightful as your little run as ship’s bard has been, I’m afraid it’s time—”

  “We both know it’s not the dragonshards I was hired to protect.” With that, she pivoted and brought the blade of her urgrosh down on the defective life ring she’d borrowed from the Dust Dancer. The soarwood circle broke in two, revealing a heavy lead inner ring that was itself hollowed out to hold an iridescent crystallized powder. The glittering particles poured out onto the deck amid several surprised gasps.

  Sabira had suspected from the beginning that the Dust Dancer was carrying something more valuable than dragonshards. The shards and their accompanying guards were a ploy designed to keep any would-be pirates from finding the airship’s true cargo, which Arach had cleverly hidden in plain sight, inside the one thing that the crew would be sure to save in the event that something happened to the Dust Dancer—her life rings. Sabira had begun to wonder when the ring sank so much faster than it should have, as if it were weighted down by far more than just a small woman and a lithe half-elf. But she hadn’t known for sure until she saw the powder spilling out of the ruined wooden circle.

  Crystallized essence of dreamlily was a new, far more potent form of the drug and was worth a literal fortune. The small amount that had trickled out onto the deck was probably worth what she owed Mountainheart and all her other creditors combined.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, feigning concern to cover her relief. “Arach’s not going to be too happy that I had to do that. But don’t worry, Thecla. I’m sure he’ll take the difference out of your pay and not out of your hide.”

  She paused dramatically, then added, “Well, reasonably sure.”

  “Ears, get that cleaned up! And don’t spill a single speck of it or I’ll let Hotch eat a couple of your fingers this time!” Thecla turned his thunderous gaze on her.

  “So what’s to stop me from killing you all and telling Arach that his nephew’s ship was sadly lost at sea and that you had an unfortunate but unpreventable accident?”

  Sabira shrugged.

  “Nothing, I suppose. Except for the fact that Orin contacted Arach before the Inheritance went down and let him know he was coming aboard the Dust Dancer. And Arach told him that he wanted the Dancer to change course and head for a different port. So, go ahead and kill us. It’s nothing compared to what Arach’s going to do to you when his ship doesn’t show up at the right place.”

  Thecla actually laughed out loud.

  “Now you’re not even trying. We were watching you the whole time. When did Orin manage to get this message off—before or after the yrthak ran him through?”

  Sabira looked over at Elix, drawing him into her game. “I’m really surprised Arach hired someone so slow,” she said, shaking her head. “Aren’t
you?”

  Elix had been following the conversation and didn’t need any coaching to play his part.

  “As you say.” He looked disdainfully at Thecla. “Orin was still conscious when I loaded him onto the life ring. He used one of his rings to contact his uncle. Then he whispered the new destination to me before he passed out.” That was a stroke of genius—Elix had leaned over Mountainheart at one point during the trip up from the Inheritance, but it had been to make sure the dwarf was still breathing, not to hear any whispered message. At Sabira’s curious look, he’d mouthed to her that Mountainheart was still alive—but there was no way anyone looking down from the Dust Dancer could know that was what he’d said.

  Of course, Elix’s quick thinking would get them all killed if Thecla happened to have his own means of communicating with Arach. Since Sharn was only a three-day trip from Stormreach, Sabira was betting the dwarf hadn’t bothered with the expense.

  A bet that turned out to be correct as Thecla looked over at the warforged, who nodded after a moment.

  “The rings do indeed emit magical energies. I believe the male Marshal speaks truly.”

  Sabira looked back at the first mate, not bothering to hide her smugness.

  “So, what’s it going to be, Thecla? Trust me, or trust your own towering intellect? It’s only your life at stake—possibly your sanity. Nothing too terribly important. But you’d better decide quickly. I don’t think Orin, here, has much time left.”

  The dwarf was clearly still suspicious, but despite Sabira’s taunting, he was no fool. He knew when to hedge his bets.

  “Hotch! Get that healing kit up here.”