Marked for Death

Chapter 57

As consciousness slowly returned, so did the pain. The wound in Xalt’s hack hurt worse than anything in his life. Still, he had patched together enough other warforged in his time to know that the wound would not be fatal, and this helped him to avoid panicking.

Xalt calmly pushed himself up and sat on the platform on which he had been stabbed. He put his hands against his chest opposite of where the knife had entered his back. Recalling his training, he repeated the magical words and rubbed his hands across his skin in the proper pattern. This never worked as well inside the Mournland as it did without, but still, Xalt could feel his fibers knitting back together. They weren’t as good as new, but they would do for now.

When Xalt was done, he stood and looked up at the arena. The changeling who had stabbed him and taken Esprл had gone off in that direction. It was time for Xalt to enter the place as well. With no elf-girl in tow, he’d be much less conspicuous.

As he walked toward the nearest tunnel, he saw the airship come screaming in over the arena. The craft stopped in what Xalt could only think was a disastrously fast manner. At first the crowd went wild, but then the assembled warforged fell quiet.

It sounded to Xalt like Bastard was saying something through that horn he liked to wave about so much, but the artificer couldn’t make out the words. It felt as if everyone inside the arena was holding their collective breath.

Then Xalt heard the crash. The city’s platforms shook with the violence done to the arena, and the voices of hundreds of warforged roared in panic and pain.

Xalt tried to race up the tunnel, but before he got halfway, a flood of warforged came rushing at him, fleeing from whatever disaster had taken place inside. The artificer had to turn back and wait for the great rush of creatures to ebb before he could brave the tunnel once again.

“What happened?” Xalt asked one of the stragglers as the outflow slowed.

“Breather attack!” the warforged said as it kept running. “The stands are on fire!”

Xalt looked down the tunnel through which the straggler had come, then started the long walk into what he thought must be almost certain doom.

When Xalt emerged from the tunnel, he saw an incredible tableau laid out before him. To his left, Kandler, Burch, and Sallah battled a warforged titan bent on tearing them to pieces. In front of him, the airship’s stern jutted straight out of Bastard’s reserved section of the arena’s stands. The floor around the airship burned. To Xalt’s right, he spotted Te’oma leading Esprл out of the stands and toward the burning airship.

Now that Xalt got a closer look, he saw that the airship wasn’t burning, although everything around it was-including the lower half of a second titan, whose upper half still jutted through a hole in the airship’s hull.

Xalt circled around the airship to the right, hoping to get a better look at just what the changeling was doing with Esprл. When he caught sight of them again, Te’oma had gathered up the girl in her arms and was leaping from the splintered stands onto the airship’s tilted deck. The pair climbed up the railing toward the bridge. Xalt wondered if he could find a way onto the deck and take Esprл back.

Xalt gauged the distance of the leap he would have to make. The length paralyzed him for a moment, then the decision was torn from him, as the ship started to move. The artificer guessed what the changeling was doing. If she could extract the ship from the stands, she’d be gone before anyone could stop her. Xalt had to move now.

He surveyed the airship, looking for some means of getting aboard other than leaping from the unstable footing of the stands. There was the hole in the bottom of the hull, but the mad, half-dead titan in there closed off that route. The rope ladder was now too high from the ground for Xalt to reach. That left the mooring lines.

The two fore mooring lines lay draped over the shattered remains of Bastard’s box. One of the aft lines had been chopped in half, but the other hung down straight from the airship’s stern. Xalt decided this was the only option. He stomped toward the line. He could hear the cries of a few injured warforged in the stands, and part of him wanted to stop and help them. It was in its nature to do so, but he did not have time now.

When Xalt reached the mooring line, he grasped it and began the long, arduous climb to the ship’s deck. The absence of one of his fingers slowed him, but he was determined and tireless in his task. As he ascended, the ship jerked about like an animal caught in a foot-trap. For a moment, it was all he could do to hang on. When the shaking stopped, he began hauling himself upward again.

Xalt neared the ship’s aft rail, and the airship broke free from the stands and started for the sky. But something shook the ship violently, and the craft dove toward the ground. Xalt glanced down at the hold that was now in front of him rather than above. Through the hole, he could see the remains of the half-titan fighting on, and the warforged couldn’t help but feel the stirrings of a touch of pride that a creature forged like himself could be so powerful and tenacious.

The ship zoomed forward at top speed, and the titan tumbled into the aft of the hold. A moment later, the ship ground to a halt, and the titan burst out of the front of the ship’s hull and fell out. As the titan’s bulk left the airship, the craft lurched into the air, and Xalt went with it. For a moment, the artificer feared he would be flung from the rope, but he managed to hang on. Determined to get off the rope and on the ship as quickly as possible, he hauled himself up the line.

Just before Xalt reached the ship’s deck, an armored figure slid into the battered rear railing, which gave way. The artificer instinctively reached out to grab the knight who slammed into him.

The warforged’s left hand gripped the edge of the damaged decking even as his body went swinging out into space. The remaining finger and thumb of Xalt’s right hand ensnared the steel collar of the knight’s breastplate. Still unconscious, Brendis dangled limply as the weight dragging on his limbs caused the warforged to howl in pain.