Marked for Death

Chapter 53

“Full speed, my son!” Kandler heard Deothen shout. The ring of fire around the airship roared as if the elemental inside it were screaming in protest.

Gorgan dug in its heels, but the airship dragged it along at a snail’s pace. It was only a matter of time until something gave. Kandler staggered to his feet and glanced around the arena. All eyes were glued to the conflict between the titan and the airship.

The ship pitched wildly under the strain as if it was a wild horse bucking to break free. Kandler spotted Deothen as the knight tried to make his way along the railing to cut the rope ladder loose, but it was all he could do to avoid being hurled from the ship’s deck.

Gorgan lashed out with its hammer-arm, and the weapon smashed right through the arena floor behind it, staking the creature solidly to that surface. The rope bridge snarled in the fragments of its other arm stretched under the extra strain but did not snap. The tension between the ship and her new anchor point lifted the titan off its feet for a moment, but the airship then slipped and dropped Gorgan back to the arena floor with a thunderous boom.

Kandler reeled about to see the other titan bearing down on him from the corner of the arena in which it had sat out the start of the fight. The justicar dashed to the right and dove across the floor at the last moment. He turned as he slid away from the gigantic warforged and saw that the creature had not been chasing him after all.

Instead, the titan reached out and wrapped its axe-arm around one of the mooring lines dangling from the stern of the ship. Once it had a semblance of a grip, it spun, winding the rope around it and winching the ship closer to the ground.

“No,” Kandler whispered in horror. If the airship had half a chance to get away from a single titan, that had just slipped away. The entire ship creaked and groaned as she struggled to escape, but the titans anchored the airship as solidly as blocks of granite.

Kandler spotted Deothen making his way back toward the bridge, moving along the ship’s railing hand over hand. “Haul back!” the knight commander ordered the young knight at the wheel. “You’ll tear the ship apart!”

The airship stopped pulling away so hard, and the two titans fell over onto their backs at the loss of opposition.

“Archers!” Bastard’s amplified voice said. “Loose!”

The Mournland sky darkened with arrows as the archers along the top rows of the stadium loosed their bows at the airship. Most of the missiles stuck in the ship’s hull. Only a few made it over the railing and onto the pitching deck. None of them found either of the knights.

“Again!” Bastard yelled. “Again! Again!”

Kandler finally saw his chance. Focusing on the mooring line wrapped around the unharmed titan, he drew Sallah’s sword and dashed toward the rope, the blade bursting into flames as he ran. But before he could reach his goal, the titan lashed out with its axe-arm and swept the justicar aside.

The flat of the blade smacked Kandler back off his feet and then passed over him. As he scrambled to right himself, he looked up and saw the titan’s axe poised above him, ready to cleave him in two. He kicked into a backward dive, and the massive wedge came crushing down only inches from his feet.

“Hold!” Bastard said through its horn. The order reverberated throughout the arena. Every warforged in the arena froze. This included the titans, who ceased trying to haul the airship in closer so they could crush it to splinters.

The airship continued to pull back and forth against the rope ladder and the mooring line that held it fast, jerking about like a fish with a hook in its mouth.

“You, in the airship, stop fighting!” Bastard said. “I have a proposal for you!”

Deothen’s arm waved out over the railing he’d fallen behind, and Brendis let the airship come to a rest. She still strained against her bonds, but not so desperately.

Kandler saw the gray-haired knight lean out over the railing nearest to Bastard. He thought he saw blood leaking from the man’s nose.

“Speak!” Deothen said as he peered down over the airship’s railing. “And be fast about it. I have little patience for tyrants.”

On the arena floor below, Kandler edged his way closer to the mooring line he’d targeted before, working his way around so that he was out of the tangled titan’s field of view. When he was close enough to strike, he held back and waited for Bastard’s gambit to play out.

“I admire your airship,” Bastard said. “We could use such a device. I fear that in trying to capture her-and you-we will destroy her.”

Deothen clambered his way up to the bridge as the warforged leader spoke. When he reached the narrow stairs, he turned around to reply. “That is a risk you shall have to endure.”

Bastard laughed into the horn. “I propose this-If you agree to land your airship here and surrender her to me, I will let you and your people go.”

Deothen climbed up the ladder and stood next to Brendis. “Ha!” he said. “So we can die of thirst trying to cross the Mournland?”

Bastard shook his head. “We have food and water. I can even give you horses.”

Deothen narrowed his eyes. “I do not negotiate with those who bear evil in their souls. This society-this gang of abominations-you have created here is anathema to me. Had I an army behind me, I would bring your city crashing to the ground and grind you and your fellows to dust.”

The warforged in the crowd gasped. Kandler winced at the knight’s words. It was just that sort of pervasive attitude that had kept the Last War raging for so long and which threatened to spark it up again. All eyes turned to Bastard.

Kandler readjusted his grip on the sword. He eyed the line carefully. It would take only a single blow to sever it, he hoped. Maybe two. He was sure he wouldn’t get the chance to try three.

The warforged leader raised the golden horn to his face again and spoke. “I will not repeat my offer. If you do not accept it, my titans will drag you down to your death. We will hang your remains from the front of our city as a warning to all who would impede our progress. Willingly or not, you will lend us aid.”

“You have your answer, fiend,” Deothen yelled. “No quarter asked and none given!”

Kandler readied his sword for his swing, then Bastard did something that surprised him. The warforged leader beckoned for the guards to bring Sallah to join him at the front of the leader’s box.

“In that spirit,” the warforged leader said, “allow me to demonstrate how we treat intruders in our city.” He reached out and traced a line along Sallah’s jaw with a metallic finger. “Those who come with nothing to trade but their lives.”

Kandler’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. He realized his hands were sweating, and it wasn’t because of the heat from Sallah’s sword.

Deothen shouted to the lady knight. “The Silver Flame will embrace you, my daughter. You have been a brave and valiant knight, and it will merge your light with its own.”

Bastard drew a massive sword from beside his chair and held it to Sallah’s throat. He drew its edge across her porcelain skin until the point rested in the hollow of her neck. Her blood ran red along the length of the blade. She did not make a sound nor shed a tear.

“Would you sacrifice your own child so easily?” the war-forged leader said.

Kandler’s face grew ashen. “That’s not his daughter!” he shouted. The words surprised him as they leaped from his lips. He grimaced at drawing attention to himself, but he pressed on. “He calls everyone that!”

Bastard looked down at the justicar. “He calls you ‘daughter’?” he asked without a trace of irony.

“No!” Kandler said, “He says ‘my son’ or ‘my daughter’.”

“And are you his son?”

Kandler looked up at the bridge of the airship and saw Deothen whispering something to Brendis as he wrapped his hands in a set of the leather straps along the rear rail. “No!”

“So you are not his daughter?” Bastard asked Sallah. As he spoke, he pressed the end of his sword into her throat. The lady knight pressed her lips together until they were white, and she shook her head.

“Do not deny me now, my daughter!” Deothen said. “I want this creature to know who is killing him and why!”

Bastard threw back its head and rasped out a laugh. “You see,” he said, pressing his blade against the lady knight’s neck again, “I am right.”

Kandler shook his head in confusion. This was one thing he’d never suspected.

“Father!” Sallah said. “No!”

“Now!” Deothen shouted at Brendis. “Full speed ahead!”

The airship lurched forward-straight at Bastard’s box.