The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2

by Forbeck, Matt

  Esprë laughed at the image that leaped into her mind. “Good.”

  A fist hammered at the door. Esprë stayed locked to her seat, but one of the skeletons got up and slid the bolt aside.

  “I have to go,” she whispered.

  I’ll try to contact you again later then. Keep yourself safe.

  The door opened, and a third skeleton entered the room. It pointed at Esprë with a long, thin finger bone. She stood up and followed it from the cabin without a word, the wind pushing her from the place once again.

  Ibrido waited for her on the bridge, his green scales glinting in the midday sun. The bosun, a reedy man who looked to have been left out to dry too long in the sun, stood at the wheel this time. He eyed the girl carefully, without a trace of hope in his eyes, only the desperate glare of a cornered animal that knew it had been outmatched. Esprë decided that this one would be no help to her.

  The dragon-elf bared his teeth at her as she stepped up on to the bridge and walked over next to him. “There it is,” he said, indicating a tall, snowy peak that towered over everything else for miles around, “Mount Darumkrak.”

  Esprë stared at the mountain from top to bottom as they scudded near it, already slowing down. She thought she detected a plume of smoke escaping from somewhere near the peak. “Does your superior live at the top?”

  Ibrido shook his head. “That smoke comes from the forge fires of the clan of misfit dwarves who live like sparrows tucked into the eaves of his roof. They believe they have walled him into his lair, but there is nothing the pathetic creatures of Clan Drakyager could do to keep him trapped.”

  “He lives with them?”

  “His home is an underground lake deep beneath the mountain’s roots, a swamp of sorts in which he lets his food fester before he devours it.”

  Esprë craned her neck around. “How do we get to it then?”

  “We will moor the ship over there,” he said, pointing toward a tall stand of pines. “Then we will descend via a rope ladder, along with a skeletal escort. Once we reach the lair, only you and I will enter though. He has a taste for bones, and he would devour the first skeleton he saw.”

  Keeper’s Claw inched closer to its mooring point. A few skeletons stood along the port gunwale, twirling loose ropes and looking for a tree to tie the ship to.

  “Do we both have to go?” Esprë said. “It sounds dangerous.”

  “It can be,” Ibrido said, “but those are my orders. I’m to present you to him right away. He will then decide exactly what’s to be done with you. He might eat you on the spot.”

  Esprë’s stomach flipped over on her. She’d hoped to figure out a way to stay behind on the ship until Phoenix caught up with them. She wondered if she could make herself vomit. The dragon-elf might not push her for a bit if he figured she was sick.

  “I don’t feel—”

  She never got to finish her sentence. A loud explosion rocked the airship and sent her reeling toward the rear rail of the bridge.

  Duro Darumnakt saw the airship coming from leagues away. “In all my years,” he said to his younger cousin Wolph as they watched the craft, “I’ve never seen an invader show himself so plainly.”

  The ring of fire stood out strong and bright, even in the midday sun. At first Duro had thought it was the sunlight glinting off something hard and metal in the distance, but it never once twinkled the way you’d expect a reflected light to do as it moved through the air, unless it targeted you on purpose.

  Soon he had realized the light burned with its own energy. He thought it might be a bit of glowing gases emerging from the swamp near the foothills of the mountain, right where the streams that spilled down from the melting snowpack melded together into a shallow delta before gathering themselves into the headwaters of a creek that wound its way toward lower lands. Perhaps it was a will-o-the-wisp playing around those murky waters, hoping to lure unwary prey to its doom.

  The light grew too steadily and came at him in too straight a line. When he saw it was not a ball of light but a ring, he knew it could only be trouble. He sounded the alarm and brought his kin to gather around him near the secret gate he’d been charged with watching that afternoon.

  At first, not all of them had believed him. Many of the stragglers had heard too many false alarms over the years to give such sounds much credence, but they came anyhow. Even if it wasn’t the emergency it should have been—and turned out to be—they figured they wouldn’t want to miss the chance to mock whoever had set the alarm off.

  “It’s an airship,” Duro had told them.

  By the time he had an audience worth talking to, he was sure. “I saw these things during the Last War. The Karrn used them as troop transports and sometimes in battle too. They move faster than any mount, and they can carry an entire platoon of troops into a fight before their foes can react.”

  “What can we do about such a thing?” Kallo had asked. The young dwarf liked to play at being a great warrior, but he had yet to be blooded, and everyone knew it.

  “We should retreat into the caves and wait for them to come to us,” had said Medd Karaktrok. “We can make our stand there in our element, where none can hope to prevail against us.”

  “Where they can trap us like rats in a blind hole,” Duro had said, shaking his head. He thanked the Sovereign Host that the Clan Drakyager elders had seen fit to give him this command and not entrusted it to one of his slow-witted friends. “We make our stand out here on the mountain’s face. If things turn against us, we will retreat into the caves where we can rally a counterattack.”

  “Who could hope to ‘turn things against’ the sons of the Ironroot Mountains?” Shano had said, abroad grin across his wide, white-bearded face as he hefted his battle-notched axe.

  Duro had often wondered how Shano had survived to such a ripe old age with such ill-considered notions rattling around in his head. Perhaps the Host did smile on drunks and fools, for Shano qualified as both. Duro thought he might even have been intoxicated at that moment, perhaps along with a few of his younger brothers. He knew they had secreted a still somewhere on the mountainside, despite the way their last such efforts had brought down a section of the caves on their heads when it exploded.

  “Get the shockbolts ready,” Duro said. “With luck, we can use them to blow the thing out of the air before anyone has the chance to disembark.”

  Medd gasped at the plan. “You know those are only to be used in the direst circumstances. We only have five of the magical bolts, and each is worth a year’s wages for any of us. You risk much.”

  Duro handed Medd his spyglass at that point so the rock-brained dwarf could see for himself. “I’d say that a Karrnathi airship crafted to look like a giant, hungry skeleton might just qualify as a ‘dire circumstance.’ ”

  Medd stared through the spyglass for a long moment before handing it back to Duro. “Host preserve us,” he said, “I fear you are correct.”

  From there, the others scrambled into their designated positions, ready to launch themselves into battle as soon as Duro fired the first of the shockbolts. Standing alone on the rocky lookout point, Duro cradled the shockbolts in his hands before slipping one of them home into his crossbow. It was the same shape as a regular bolt, but it felt heavier in his hand, dense like gold or lead. He could not read most of the runic letters carved into its steely surface, except for the few along one edge that stated in clear, simple Dwarvish, “Use with utmost caution.”

  He waited for the airship to come closer and closer. He treated it as a test of his nerves, to see if he’d loose the bolt before the airship came into range. He wouldn’t have more than one or two chances before the Karrns aboard the craft retaliated. He had to make sure his first attack found its mark.

  The air itself seemed to warp as the airship neared, its ring of fire devouring the atmosphere all around it as it passed. It crackled louder in Duro’s ears than any bonfire, and it was all he could do to sight along the shockbolt in his crossbow and aim it s
quare at the craft’s hull. As he waited for it to come closer, it seemed to grow larger and larger until it blotted out most of the sky.

  He heard Wolph shouting at him over the noise. “Loose!” the young dwarf yelled. “Loose!”

  He held off a moment longer, just another moment longer, until it seemed that the heat of the ring of fire might singe the ends of his forked and braided beard. Then he pulled the trigger and stared after the shockbolt as it sped toward its monstrous target, the gaping mouth of the skeletal masthead that promised a swift and painful death to all that crossed its path.

  The shockbolt slammed into the masthead and exploded with such force that Duro wondered that the mountain didn’t come crashing down on his head in response. The airship rocked backward like it had struck a reef. A number of bodies catapulted over the gunwales and crashed toward the rocky slope below.

  Even before the smoke had cleared, Duro loaded the next shockbolt into his crossbow. He hoped that the first bolt would be enough to scare off the ship, perhaps even disable it, but he wasn’t willing to bet his life on it.

  When the smoke around the airship cleared, Duro’s ears still rang louder than the cave bells announcing the Winter Feast. He ignored the fact he couldn’t hear anything else and peered up through the vanishing smoke to see that he’d blasted the masthead’s carved face clean off the craft.

  Wolph came up from behind Duro and smacked him on the back, letting loose a war cry neither of them could hear. Duro grinned back at his cousin, pleased—despite his pessimistic nature—at how much damage he’d done.

  Then a bolt fired from the ship took Wolph through the neck.

  The younger dwarf fell over backward, clutching at his throat. He smashed his head against the rocks behind him, denting his helmet and cracking his skull.

  Not knowing if Wolph lived yet or not, Duro brought up his crossbow and loosed the second of the shockbolts at the airship. This one sailed wide of its mark and skittered off the hull at an oblique angle. It sailed straight into the ring of fire, which set it off.

  The explosion shoved the airship up as if it had run aground. The break in the ring of fire, though, brought it slamming down toward the mountainside. It righted itself only a dozen feet shy of crashing into splinters.

  Duro turned to check on Wolph and saw blood trickling from under his cousin’s helmet. He knelt next to the young dwarf and saw by the blank roll to his eyes that he was dead.

  “May Dol Arrah guide your spirit home,” he whispered as he closed Wolph’s eyes. He wondered how he would explain this to his aunt and uncle, to his parents. Then another bolt ricocheted off his own helmet, knocking it from his head.

  “Retreat!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs as he picked up Wolph’s corpse and tossed it over his back. “Fall back!” he yelled, hoping the others could hear him over the angry crackling of the ring of fire and the ringing that might sound in their ears too.

  He’d made it only a handful of steps before the first Karrnathi skeleton landed on the rocky slope behind him.

  Get down!” Ibrido shouted, shoving Esprë to the bridge’s deck. The ship rocked back from the force of the explosion, throwing her toward the rear railing. She came up hard against it instead of going over it as some of the less fortunate skeletons did.

  Ibrido crashed into the railing next to her, and it flashed through Esprë’s mind that she should try to shove him up and over it. He righted himself before she could act on the thought though.

  If the bosun hadn’t been strapped to the console—or perhaps chained, it now seemed—Esprë was sure he’d have been knocked away from it too. As it was, his white-knuckled grasp never left the wheel, and the ship started to weave back and forth in an insane effort to avoid another blast.

  “Crossbows!” the dragon-elf shouted. “Find your targets, and loose your bolts!”

  A group of skeletons gathering near the front of the ship each snatched up a crossbow off a rack of them near the bow, loaded the weapons, and peered down over the prow, hunting for whatever it was that had attacked the ship. Ibrido glanced down at Esprë, who still huddled against the rail, and said, “Stay down!”

  With that, the dragon-elf sprinted toward the bow. Esprë scrambled to her feet and peered out over the bridge to watch him run. She noticed he had the strange loping gait of a large lizard.

  Before Ibrido could reach the bow, though, the Karrnathi skeletons seemed to find a target. A handful of them loosed their crossbows toward the ground, and the sound of someone’s dying wail rewarded them.

  Esprë looked over at the bosun, who seemed to be smiling, or perhaps he bore a grimace of pain. She wondered if he might help her if she freed him.

  Before that could happen, though, another explosion went off. This time, it came from underneath the ship, to the starboard side. It lifted the airship up several feet in the air, knocking Esprë to her knees.

  Then, before she could recover, the ship fell toward the ground as if someone had shoved it off the edge of a cliff. Esprë clung to the railing around the bridge as she felt her feet lift up off the bridge, and she screamed right along with the bosun’s wordless voice.

  Esprë was sure that this was her death. The airship would smash into the mountain’s face and then tumble down the quarter mile to the foothills. If she was lucky, she’d be thrown clear before the restraining arcs holding the elemental ring of fire in place broke. When that happened, the explosion would make whatever had knocked the airship from the sky seem like a distant thunderclap. It would consume the entire ship and anything near it.

  “No!” Esprë shouted at the bosun as the ship plummeted to the rocks below. “Up! Up! Up!”

  Just before the ship smashed into the mountainside, the ring of fire managed to reconstitute itself, and the craft came to a bouncing stop. Esprë didn’t know how near they were to the ground, but she suspected it was far too close.

  The hard stop hurled Esprë to the deck. She landed flat on her chest, knocking the air from her lungs. It took her a moment before she could reach her feet again.

  When she did, she saw Ibrido standing at the ship’s bow, shouting for a skeleton landing party to disembark. “Go!” he said to them. “Get those dwarves! Kill them all! Make them pay!”

  The skeletons slipped over the gunwales on thin ropes, sliding down faster than any flesh-covered hands could manage. Some of them carried crossbows, but all of them bore long, curved scimitars as well. A few of them clamped the blades in their teeth before taking the rope in their hands and diving overboard to the ground below.

  Esprë heard shouts from below and the clash of metal on metal. She rushed to the railing on the starboard side of the bridge and looked down to see what was happening. There, on the mountainside, she saw a pair of skeletons pull a screaming dwarf from his hiding place and start carving him into pieces. Another dwarf—this one with a long, silver beard he kept tucked into his wide, leather belt—leaped into the fray with a double-handed grip on his heavy warhammer. With a single, mighty swing, he shattered the helmet of one skeleton and the skull hiding beneath it.

  The other turned and stabbed the dwarf right through the thigh. He fell backward, clutching his injured leg and tumbling down the mountainside. Esprë thought perhaps he was the lucky one. A third skeleton came up to join the other, and together they made quick work of the cowardly dwarf, who’d gone from screaming to simple whimpering as he tried to hide behind his shield. The skeletons systematically tore the dwarf’s defense to pieces and then continued to do the same to him without a pause.

  Esprë gasped in horror but found herself unable to turn away. Ever since she’d realized that her dragonmark was the Mark of Death, she’d become more and more interested in how people died, and she’d rarely seen a battle like this. She’d witnessed the conflict in Construct, but that had been Kandler and the others fighting for their lives against those two warforged titans and the juggernaut known as Bastard.

  Somehow, the struggle going on below her seemed m
uch more personal and real. Perhaps it was her gods’-eye perspective on the battlefield. From her vantage point, she could see no fewer than five different hard-fought conflicts pitting dwarf against skeleton, the desperate living against the implacable undead.

  The dwarves grunted, cursed, spit, and bled as they fought. They panted loudly as they swung their hammers and axes. They cried out in pain when injured, and they roared in victory when they struck a solid blow against their foes.

  In contrast, the skeletons uttered not a word. The only sound they made was the rattling of their bones in their armor and the clash of their blades on the shields, the weapons, and even the flesh of their foes. The dead dealt death and misery wherever they went, but they took no joy in it, and their compatriots shed no tears when they fell. They were only tools made of bone, emotionless contraptions forged from the violated remains of the dead and turned into killing machines.

  Esprë watched as one dwarf tossed another over his shoulder—wounded or dead, she couldn’t tell—and shouted for a retreat. His words came too late for many of his fellows. Some of them already lay dead, and others could not break away from their foes for fear of being struck down as they fled.

  One dwarf faced with a pair of skeletons decided to give running a try. Even though he had been born to this rugged land and could climb the slopes better than a mountain ram, the longer-legged skeletons chased him down within only a few yards. One of them slashed him across the back of his legs, hamstringing him, and he fell to his knees with a bitter roar. He struck back with his warhammer, smashing his attacker’s rib cage and spine to tiny bits.

  The creature’s entire structure gave way, and it collapsed on top of the dwarf, showering him with bones. As it fell, its compatriot hacked into the terrified dwarf’s arm, cutting through sinew to the bone. His weapon fell away from his useless hand and tumbled back down the slope, far out of his reach.

  The dwarf roared in frustration and hurled himself at the skeleton with his one good arm, blood trailing behind him from his other arm and legs. He fell upon the creature, and the two rolled down the slope in an uncontrollable double cartwheel. The spectacular fall ended only when the pair cascaded off a small ridge and came smashing down onto the rocks below. The dwarf landed atop the skeleton, smashing it to pieces, but he smacked his own head open on a pointed rock as he went, dashing his brains behind him.