The Queen of Death

31

“It seems like they’ve been gone forever,” Esprë said. She chewed on her lower lip as she stared out over the port railing of the bridge. “Should it take so long?”

“Supplying a ship isn’t like popping into the market for a quick bite,” Monja said, perched next to her on the gunwale. “It’s going to be a long journey, across the sea. The water alone will be too heavy for them to carry. They’ll have to hire a wagon.”

Esprë hated the way the halfling sat on the railing. She always felt that the little shaman would go tumbling off to the ground. True, they were only a couple dozen feet in the air—just high enough to keep the ring of fire from burning the grass below—but such a fall would still hurt and could even kill. If she hadn’t been standing at the wheel, she would have reached over and plucked Monja from the gunwale, but she knew if she let go of the controls the airship would probably buck the halfling off before Esprë could reach her.

“I wish we could have just sailed the ship to Pitchwall.” Esprë slumped against the wheel.

“Airships are great for travel, but they attract too much attention,” said Monja. “We need less of that right now. Remember how smoothly everything went in Aerie?”

“Burch said there are only a few hundred people in Pitchwall. How dangerous can they be?”

“If they’re either afraid or greedy? Very. Humans are notorious for thinking about their skins and their purses far too much. Best to avoid it altogether, I say.”

Esprë sighed. The others had all agreed with Monja, and hours ago Kandler, Burch, Te’oma, and Sallah had set out for the little village of Pitchwall on their own. That left Esprë with Xalt and Monja, lolling about in the floating airship as the craft hovered behind series of low hills that separated her from Pitchwall and the ocean beyond.

“I thought Q’barra was full of monsters,” Esprë said.

“It was,” said Xalt who stood next to Esprë, “but after the Last War began, a Cyran duke came here to found his own nation, a place separate from the battles that ravaged the rest of the continent.”

Esprë and Monja stared at the warforged. The young elf thought the warforged would have smiled if he’d been able to move his mouth in that way. Instead, he cocked his head at them and said, “History lessons were part of my training. My instructors thought it would motivate the warforged to fight better if we had an idea of the reasons why we fought. They meant to help us put the battlefield into context.” “Did it work?” Monja said.

“No. Just the opposite. Once I understood what had caused the war, it seemed more senseless than ever. That’s when they decided to make me an artificer and trained me to repair my fellow warforged.” As he spoke, Xalt’s hand wandered up to his thick, severed finger, which he wore on a lanyard around his neck.

“What else do you know about Q’barra?” Esprë asked, eager to help the warforged get his mind off his injury.

“Many of the same thunder lizards that roam the Talenta Plains live here too, alongside the largest lizardfolk civilization on the continent. They often attack the settlers from the Five Nations who come here, most of which are the roughest sorts of refugees who band together only as long as it takes to repel each raid.”

“Why are we here again?” Monja asked.

Esprë stared out into the distance. A few lines of smoke curling from far beyond the hills in the distance marked the direction of the town. “Where are they?” she said.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” Sallah asked.

Kandler ignored her and snapped the reins again. The team of three horses drawing the wagon surged forward, pulling the vehicle’s wide-tracked wheels along the narrow path that was only barely drier than the surrounding wetlands.

“We re not stuck in the swamp yet,” he said. “That’s all I care about.” He twisted his head around to look for Burch. “Did we lose them yet?”

Crouched atop barrels of water and other supplies they’d procured from that shady merchant in Pitchwall, the shifter sat scanning the sky. It had been a long time since Kandler had felt like washing his hands after cutting a deal with someone, but Sliford’s oily handshake had made that happen.

“They’re three of them up there still,” Burch said. “They’re hanging back a bit.”

“Just waiting for the right moment,” Te’oma said.

She’d morphed into a copy of Burch right now. In the village, she’d resumed the look of Shawda again. Now that they were in for a fight, though, she seemed to have duplicated Burch to throw their attackers off a bit.

Seeing the two Burches next to each other had rattled Sallah at first, who’d said a quick prayer to the Silver Flame when she’d first noticed. Burch, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he’d taken to calling the changeling “Lady Burch.”

Kandler didn’t care. He’d known Burch long enough that Te’oma couldn’t fool him for an instant. Her voice, her stance, even her eyes, were all wrong—at least to someone looking for his best friend.

“They’re moving up,” Burch said. He held his voice even as he raised his crossbow and took aim at the sky.

Kandler wanted to keep his eyes on the road ahead—such as it was—but he decided to trust the horses for a moment and peek back at the sky. Three winged thunder lizards hung there above them, their white-scaled skins hard to pick out against the clouds in the sky.

They reminded Kandler of the glidewings they’d ridden from the Wandering Inn to Fort Bones, but Burch—who’d called them soarwings—had said they were even larger. Without any means of comparison at this distance, Kandler could only trust his friend’s judgment. The fact that each of them looked to be carrying a lizardman lent the claim credence.

“Duck!” Te’oma cried. The changeling flung herself from the wagon as its wheels squelched through the muddy terrain. Her bloodwings burst open before she hit the ground, and an instant later they started to carry her into the sky.

Kandler saw none of that though. The sudden appearance of a feathered spear right next to him jarred his concentration. It embedded itself deep into the wooden plant on which Kandler sat. A half foot to the right, and it would have run him through. He snapped the reins again—harder.

“Uh-oh,” said Monja. The halfling twisted about on the gunwale and stood upon it, staring out toward where the village of Pitchwall was supposed to be.

“What?” said Esprë. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The halfling raised a tiny finger and pointed up at the sky to the east. Following the gesture with her eyes, Esprë’s spotted three shapes moving in the sky above the hills.

“They look like birds,” Xalt said.

Monja scowled as she leaped down to the bridge’s deck. “Those are soarwings, and they have riders. This can only mean trouble.”

“Maybe they are escorting the others back to the ship,” Xalt said in a more than normally helpful tone.

“Or chasing them,” said Esprë. “Are they coming this way?”

The sharp-eyed Monja nodded. “And they’re armed. I just saw one throw a spear.”

“They must have spotted us by now,” said Xalt. “The ring of fire can be seen for miles from the air.”

“That’ll make them even more desperate to finish their job before we can stop them,” Monja said. “Get this boat moving!” she shouted at Esprë. “We’ll be too late!”