The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2

by Forbeck, Matt

  For not the first time in the past week, Kandler wished he was a praying man. He looked up at Sallah as he strode back toward the bridge, and he hoped she could do enough of it for all of them.

  “Monja,” he said, “I need you ready to heal my daughter as soon as we get her aboard.”

  “Of course,” the halfling shaman nodded.

  “Duro,” Kandler said, “how good are you with that crossbow?”

  “I’ll hit the dragon,” the dwarf said, unslinging his weapon. “It’s a big target.”

  Kandler clapped Duro on the back. Although he’d known the warrior only a short time, he’d already decided he liked him.

  “Good,” the justicar said. “I want you back here covering the bridge. Sallah will be too busy with the wheel.

  “Sallah,” Kandler said, “keep on the changeling’s tail. They’re to engage with the dragon first. We’ll try hit and run attacks until we can get a good angle on snatching Esprë away.”

  The knight stuck out her chin and nodded. “We’ll get her back.”

  “What about me?” Xalt said.

  Kandler hadn’t forgotten the warforged. “How are you with acid?” he asked.

  Xalt stared at Kandler with his ebony eyes for a moment. “My metal plates would provide some protection against it, but it would eat my fibers away as quickly as your skin.”

  Kandler frowned. “Can you fire a bow?”

  Xalt nodded. “Every warforged was built to be a soldier, no matter what path we followed after that.”

  “Excellent. The lathon stocked our weapons stores at the Wandering Inn. Go into the hold and grab a bow for me, one for you, and as many arrows as you can find.”

  Soon after Xalt disappeared into the hold, Keeper’s Claw took off, climbing higher into the sky. Under Sallah’s hand, Phoenix followed. Kandler strode up to the ship’s bow and soon found he had an excellent view of most of the mountain.

  The air was cold and thin up here. After the close, foul atmosphere of the dragon’s lair, it made Kandler feel lighter. It gave him a focus he needed, something he’d been unable to find when facing down the dragon through that doorway in the iron wall.

  He knew that this was his best chance to rescue Esprë. He’d had enough of this chase that had led him across three nations and into a fourth. He was prepared to kill whoever or whatever he had to so that he could put an end to it. He was ready to die so that she might be free. One way or another, this pursuit would end today.

  Below him, a plume of smoke erupted from the mountain. It took a moment before he realized it wasn’t smoke at all but a tower of dust thrown up from the rocks below.

  “Take us down,” he called back at Sallah. As he spoke, he saw Keeper’s Claw moving into position to one side of the plume near its base.

  Another plume went up inside the first, piercing it as it surpassed it. A terrible boom sounded out, and the mountaintop shook with it. Rocks tumbled down from the mountain’s tallest heights. Off to the west, an avalanche started, the snow shaking from the top of the mountain in waves and roaring down until it passed the snowline and became part of a rockslide instead.

  The noise drowned out all else for a moment. Kandler thought he could still hear a steady pounding coming from somewhere inside the mountain, but he couldn’t be sure.

  As the avalanche ground itself out somewhere near the base of the mountain, another plume went up near where it had before. Te’oma and Sallah adjusted the positions of their ships to accommodate it, for a moment coming perilously close to the plume. Kandler could smell the dry, metallic scent of shattered rock in the chilly air.

  Then a part of the side of the mountain exploded outward, showering Phoenix in gravel and rocks. Kandler ducked his head under his arms to protect himself and found himself coughing on the fine dust that seemed to blow onto and through everything.

  He looked up to see something had blotted out the sun. At first, he thought it was the cloud of dust and dirt still settling out of the air.

  Then he heard the dragon’s mighty roar.

  Kandler leaned back and shaded his eyes against the rain of dust and gravel as the dragon burst into the sky not a hundred feet off the bow. He struggled to peer through the sun-flecked haze as the dragon spiraled high above him, climbing toward the clouds.

  He still searched the sky when Xalt tapped him on the shoulder with the end of an already strung bow. The justicar took the weapon from the warforged, along with a quiver full of arrows, which he slung over his back. He nocked an arrow fletched with white feathers and pulled back on the bowstring, sighting along the shaft as he scanned the sky again.

  Nithkorrh roared again. Finding the dragon wouldn’t be the problem, Kandler knew. Getting a clear angle at some part of him that an arrow could pierce, that would be the trick. He knew that he had little chance of hurting such a beast with a thin piece of wood, no matter how sharp it was or how far back he drew the bow. Even if it punctured the dragon’s ebony scales, it would be little more than a bee’s sting to it.

  But then he wasn’t here to kill the dragon. He just wanted his daughter back.

  He heard Esprë scream as the echoes of the dragon’s roar finally faded away. He spotted her then, hanging in the dragon’s clutches as its wings beat a path to the open sky.

  No, he corrected himself. The dragon held Ibrido in its claws, and the dragon-elf had Esprë slumped over in his arms. Kandler couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, but she seemed to be in one piece at least.

  Keeper’s Claw raced toward the dragon, its ring of fire crackling loudly as the changeling pushed its elemental to its limits. Nithkorrh spotted the ship coming and rumbled out a horrid, phlegm-caked laugh. It hovered in the air for a moment, then dove away to the east, over the mountains and toward the darkening sky.

  Sallah brought Phoenix to bear on the dragon, which ended up following in the creature’s turbulent draft. Nithkorrh might be more nimble in the open than an airship, but he was no faster. Kandler suspected that all those years spent trapped within the mountain had atrophied the creature’s wings. Soon Phoenix was gaining on it.

  “Ready?” Kandler said to Xalt. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the warforged nod.

  “Fire!”

  The two released their bowstrings as one, and the shafts raced toward the beast before them. Kandler’s struck the dragon in the back, while Xalt’s hit its leg. Both arrows pierced the dragon’s scales but did not bite deep. With the next flap of Nithkorrh’s wings, they both fell away in the breeze.

  As the dragon glanced back over its wings, Kandler smiled. The arrows had done their job: getting the dragon’s attention.

  Xalt cursed as he nocked another arrow to his bow. When Kandler looked over at him, the artificer laughed. “What? I am a warforged, not a priest. Swearing is part of our training.”

  Kandler would have replied to that, but the dragon in front of them decided to roll up and over until it hovered above them, cackling and preparing to spit.

  This was the first good look Kandler had gotten at the beast. He’d seen a great many things in his life. A career as an agent for the Citadel in Sharn took him to a number of strange and distant lands. Even so, he’d never been this close to a dragon before.

  If Nithkorrh had been frightening in its lair, out here in the sunlight its presence numbed the mind. Its wings spanned nearly as long as the whole of Phoenix, and its mouth burst with dozens of serrated teeth, some as long as a sword. It bore a pair of horns atop its head, the points of which swung out over its leathery batlike ears and toward its toothy jaws. Its ebony scales each looked as solid as a pikeman’s shield. Its hands and feet terminated in long, sharp talons that Kandler guessed could pry apart a suit of armor in seconds.

  A flaw leaped out of the dragon’s menacing majesty though. Where its right eye should have been, a blackened hole peered out instead. Burch’s shockbolt had half blinded the beast. If it could be hurt, it could be killed, Kandler thought, although faced with the entire dra
gon, he had no idea how.

  Sallah hauled back Phoenix as hard as she could, shoving Kandler and Xalt against the bow. Nithkorrh’s burning green spittle tumbled past the front of the ship, right where the craft would have been if the lady knight had maintained her speed. Instead of landing on the deck, though, it fell through the air to the rocks far below.

  Duro let loose a bolt from his crossbow, but it sailed through the gap between the dragon and its wings. The dwarf cursed as he reloaded his weapon.

  The dragon snorted in glee. “Well played,” it growled down at Phoenix. “I appreciate foes who make the fight interesting.”

  The ship leaped forward again, leaving the dragon hovering as Phoenix zipped away. Kandler and Xalt managed to hold on to the bow rather than tumble back down the length of the ship.

  “Where is it?” Kandler shouted as he scanned the sky behind the ship. The dragon was gone.

  Xalt tapped the justicar on the shoulder and pointed up. Kandler craned his neck back and saw the dragon climbing higher and higher into the air on its leathery wings.

  “What is it doing?” Xalt asked. “Trying to escape into the sky?”

  The ship slowed down, and Kandler spotted Sallah gazing up at the dragon high above and behind them. Just as the dragon reached the top of its climb and started its downward dive, he understood its plan.

  “Full speed!” he shouted back at Sallah. “Full speed!”

  The lady knight grabbed the wheel with both hands, and Phoenix leaped forward, but it was too late. The dragon’s power dive gave it far too much speed for them to outrun it.

  Kandler and Xalt stood shoulder to shoulder and nocked their arrows. “Fire low,” Kandler said. “We don’t want to hit Esprë, just shove the dragon off his mark.”

  They fired their shafts as one, speeding toward Nithkorrh’s legs. The creature ignored them, letting them stab into one clawed foot and the bottom of its snaking tail.

  “Duck!” Monja yelled from her spot next to Sallah on the bridge. It took a moment before Kandler realized the halfling’s warning was meant for Xalt and him.

  Xalt pushed Kandler aside at the last moment, just as the dragon charged in for its attack. It lashed out with its tail, which smashed into the ship’s deck, right where Kandler had been. The tip of it caught Xalt in the shoulder and spun the warforged about, sending him hurtling toward the bow.

  Kandler reached out and grabbed Xalt by the wrist as he went by, but the justicar hadn’t managed to anchor himself. The warforged’s momentum pulled them both toward the gunwale and the empty space beyond.

  As he slammed into the railing across the bow, Kandler scrabbled for a good, strong hold and found one, just as Xalt tumbled over the edge. The sudden shift in the warforged’s momentum from outward to downward felt like it might shatter Kandler’s elbow, but he managed to keep hold of both the ship and Xalt too.

  The airship slowed down and Kandler fought against gravity to haul the warforged back on to the ship. As he hung over the railing, his arm stretched almost to the breaking point, he looked past Xalt’s dangling feet to the ground far below. From this high up, it didn’t seem real, more like a painting than anything else. The amber glow of the dying sunlight gave the landscape a surreal cast that Kandler wished he had more time to appreciate. If he didn’t let go of the heavy warforged soon, he thought it might be the last thing he ever got to see.

  “Release me!” Xalt shouted.

  “Pull yourself up!”

  “I’m too heavy. I’ll bring us both down,” the warforged said. “Release me now!”

  Kandler didn’t bother to respond. He gritted his teeth and locked his knees under the railing along the gunwale. Then he swung his other arm out to grab the warforged too.

  It was a calculated risk, and Kandler instantly regretted it. He felt the wood digging into his knees and then starting to slip. Sweat broke out on his brow as he strove to hold on to both Xalt and the ship, and he felt both getting away.

  Then a set of hands grabbed him by his sword belt and pulled him back and up hard. He shoved his legs under the railing and pushed with all his might, hauling up with his arms at the same time. He thought the strain might tear the muscles in his back, but as he straightened his legs with the help from behind, he saw Xalt’s head and arms clear the railing and clamp on.

  Kandler grabbed the warforged’s shoulders and hauled him bodily on to the airship’s deck. As he did, he fell back against Sallah, who held him in her arms.

  “Thank the Flame,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Kandler.

  “Wait,” Xalt said, “if you are here, who is flying the ship?”

  Kandler scrambled off Sallah to spy Monja standing at the wheel, waving at them. The halfling stood on the spokes in the middle of the wheel, just so she could see over it, but she seemed to be handling the ship well enough. Duro stood behind her, waving his crossbow about as he tried to cover the sky.

  “As long as we don’t need any fancy maneuvers, she should be fine,” Sallah said.

  The dragon didn’t roar as it approached this time. The first Kandler saw of it, its claws had already touched down on the deck between him and the bridge, its reptilian, orange eye glaring out at him. As the justicar bounded to his feet, the creature set Ibrido and Esprë down on the deck in front of it and started to laugh.

  Kandler stood and drew his blade as Ibrido leaped from the dragon’s claws and landed on the deck of the airship, the unconscious Esprë in his arms. Beside him, Sallah did the same, silvery flames crawling up and down the length of her sacred sword. Xalt drew a short knife from a sheath on his side, and the three stood ready to face the dragon together.

  As Nithkorrh rested his weight on Phoenix, the entire ship dipped in the air, and Kandler lost his footing. Sallah and Xalt went down too.

  “Here you are, half-breed,” the dragon rumbled as it flapped its wings to take the bulk of its mass off the sinking airship, which then stopped falling again. “Time to earn your keep. I do not intend to carry you and the elfling all the way to Argonnessen.”

  The dragon-elf lay Esprë down on the deck, then drew his blade, a length of what looked like ivory fashioned into a long, curved blade, serrated along its cutting edge. He held it as if it weighed nothing in his hands, swinging it about in tight loops, weaving a deadly defense around him.

  The dragon growled with delight, baring its many teeth. It crouched back on its massive haunches, clutching at the airship with its massive claws as its beating wings kept it partially in the air, ready to savor the upcoming battle. Kandler had no doubt it would make quick work of him if he somehow managed to defeat Ibrido. First, though, he had to keep the dragon-elf from killing him.

  Kandler glanced up in the sky and had to stifle a smile. He snapped his eyes back down to Ibrido and stalked toward him, making sure he and the dragon kept their eyes focused on him. Sallah strode up on his left and Xalt on his right, each of them keeping pace with him, forming a line across the ship that Ibrido would not be able to dodge past.

  The dragon-elf leaped forward, over Esprë’s sleeping body, and swung his sword down at Kandler. The justicar brought up his sword to parry the blow, catching Ibrido’s strange blade on the tip of his own. A strange clang sounded in Kandler’s ears, and when he brought his sword back he saw that Ibrido had notched it nearly in half at its tip.

  “You face no sell-sword here,” the dragon-elf said. “No mindless skeleton, no careless vampire.”

  Kandler glanced at his weapon again. “There’s more to your blade than to you,” he said, taunting Ibrido. “It’s easy to boast with a dragon at your back.”

  “Nithkorrh is only here as an audience. I don’t need his help to deal with trash like you.”

  “Well,” Kandler said, “here’s your chance to prove it.”

  With that, Kandler, Sallah, and Xalt all turned and threw themselves against the railing that ran along the bow of the ship. Confused, Ibrido stood where he was for a moment, his sword held ou
t before him.

  “Cowards!” he shouted at them. “Face me, or I will kill you where you are!”

  Kandler kept crouched against the railing and made sure that Sallah and Xalt were pressed in tight there too. He didn’t want anyone going over the edge again. “Hold on tight,” he whispered to them.

  Ibrido turned to Nithkorrh for guidance. “What am I to do with such—” Right then, he spotted Keeper’s Claw soaring in behind the dragon. “Master!” he cried.

  Startled, the dragon beat its wings harder and lifted a few feet off the deck of Phoenix. The claws that it had dug into the ship, though, didn’t come free so easily. As the dragon tried to free itself, Burch’s shockbolt slammed into it, right between the bases of its wings.

  The explosion hurtled the dragon into the air. It knocked down Ibrido as it went cartwheeling over the bow, howling in pain and rage. It disappeared over Phoenix’s gunwale and went plummeting toward the mountains below, smoke trailing from its back.

  A cheer went up from the bridge, and Kandler stood up to see Monja leaping up and down on the wheel. As he rose, he grabbed Xalt by the shoulder and said to him, “Protect Esprë. That’s your job. Leave Ibrido to Sallah and me.”

  The warforged nodded and circumnavigated the dragon-elf to the right, hoping to work around him to reach the young elf. Ibrido scoffed and stepped to the left, leaving the way wide open.

  “If you wish to care for her while I carve up your friends, please do,” the dragon-elf said. “With luck, I’ll finish them off before my master returns.”

  Kandler ignored Ibrido and said to Sallah, “Get to the bridge and fly the ship.”

  The lady knight froze. “Monja can handle it,” she said.

  “We need Monja to check out Esprë,” he said. “We don’t know how badly she’s hurt.”

  Sallah stared at Kandler for a moment, locking him in her beautiful green eyes. “All right,” she said. “Just don’t get yourself killed.”