The Queen of Death

8

Sallah fell back to the floor, the weight of her attacker crushing the air from her. She glared up at his face and saw an ivory-colored skull staring back down at her. Unlike most skeletons she’d seen in her life, though, this one had eyes of the brightest blue.

Sallah gave thanks to the Silver Flame for her well-fitted breastplate and slashed up and out with her flaming blade. The assailant tried to twist out of the blade’s path, but it gouged deep into the side of his head instead.

The thin, gray linen wrapped around the attacker’s skull burst into flames. He flopped to the ground, still bleeding, and tried to smother the fire consuming his head.

Sallah scrambled to her knees. She saw Burch come tumbling in through the window to the right of the doorway, another of the assassins on top of him. The shifter growled and slashed at his attacker with his claw-tipped fingers, but the gray-clad shape had wrapped his legs around the shifter’s throat and then started to squeeze.

Sallah leaped to her feet, ready to force the attacker from Burch’s throat. As she did, two more of the assassins swung in through the window, landing on the ground as lightly as cats. Long, bone-handled daggers appeared in their hands, and each crossed their pair of blades before themselves, ready to tear through Sallah’s defenses.

Burch gurgled something from his place on the floor as he struggled against the assassin sitting on his chest. He would be strangled in a matter of seconds if Sallah didn’t do something, but she couldn’t reach him without exposing herself to the killers before her.

Esprë pushed away from Duro and rushed to help Burch. Her hands crackled with a black energy, and Sallah knew that the girl had summoned the power of her dragonmark.

The thought that such a young creature could wield such horrible power chilled the lady knight. When she’d begun her quest to find the bearer of the Mark of Death, she’d thought only of her duty, not of the unknown soul who’d been branded by powers beyond her ken.

Now, though, as her love for Kandler blossomed, she’d come to care for his stepdaughter as well. In many ways, Esprë was barely more than a child, and now she had to bear this horrible burden that had put her life at risk and the lives of anyone near her. Whenever Sallah felt saddened at her own losses, she had only to think of Esprë to put them into perspective.

As Esprë charged, determined to kill once more* the object of her attack flicked his wrists out, and a pair of daggers appeared in his hands too. He drew one of them back to throw, and Sallah saw that the killer would hurl the blade into the girl’s chest long before she had any hope of reaching her target.

Esprë skidded to a halt in the face of the assassin’s weapons. No matter what the girl’s powers might be, they would do her little good if she died before she could use them. But as she slid to a stop, she slipped and fell flat on her back.

The assassin smiled at this, drawing back his teeth to expose another set beneath them. Sallah saw then that the first set of teeth had been tattooed across the killer’s lips, part of a mask of death etched upon a living face.

An axe appeared in the center of the grinning killer’s chest. Blood seeped from around the wound as the assassin’s eyes rolled back up into his head. Somewhere behind Sallah, Duro hollered, “Yes!”

As Burch bucked his attacker’s corpse off of him, Sallah moved toward the other two, interposing herself between them and Esprë. The girl scrambled to her feet and stood beside the lady knight as the killers reassessed the situation.

Sallah figured there were more than a dozen dwarves in the room, along with her, Esprë, and Burch. Four of the assassins lay dead, including the one who had failed to extinguish the flames devouring its head in time.

Only two stood in here, although only the Flame knew how many others might be lurking outside. She had to presume that some of them had kept Kandler too busy to join her and the others inside the inn.

The two killers seemed to realize their odds at the same time as Sallah. They spun and fled.

Six more battle-scarred axes spun through the air and struck the killers down before they reached the door. Two of the weapons clanged into each other and off their mark, but the others all hit deep in the assassins’ bodies, and they fell without a sound.

Sallah glanced down at Esprë.

“Kandler!” the girl said, already rushing for the dock.

Kandler lashed out with his fist. It smashed into the killer’s jaw, and Kandler felt the satisfying crunch of smashed teeth.

Kandler kicked free from the stunned assassin’s grasp. He spied his fangsword on the far side of the deck, but the other two killers would be on him before he could do more than gain his feet. Instead of scrambling for the weapon, he reached back and ripped a dagger from the hand of the assassin sharing the floor with him. When the killer offered resistance, Kandler slammed his elbow into the assassin’s nose, and the blade came free.

Just in time, Kandler brought the dagger up to parry a thrust from the first of the two other killers racing up the gangplank. As the attacker’s blade turned wide, Kandler punched out with his left fist with a blow that cracked the bone around the assailant’s eye.

As Kandler shoved the assassin off him, the other flung a dagger at his chest. The justicar threw up his arm to protect himself, and the blade went right through his arm, its point stabbing straight in and out of his muscle. The pain forced him to drop the knife in his hand.

Sensing that Kandler might be ripe for the kill, the assassin leaped atop the justicar, stabbing at his belly with his other knife. Kandler wrenched himself out of the way just in time.

As the killer landed on the deck, Kandler reached back and slashed at the assassin’s neck with the blade still embedded in his arm. Pain lanced straight up through his shoulder with the move, but his aim struck true. The tip of the knife punctured the killer’s throat, spilling his blood across the deck.

Kandler staggered to his feet, the knife still stuck in the flesh of his dripping, red arm. Two of the killers were still alive and hungry for his death, and they stood now too, their blades flashing as they readied to take the fight to him once more.

Kandler left the knife in his arm. He’d seen too many battles in which men had pulled free a weapon in their body and watched their lifeblood pour out after it like wine from an unstoppered bottle.

He went for his fangblade instead. One of the assassins hurled a dagger at Kandler as he scooped up his sword, but it just grazed his shoulder, laying open his shirt and tracing a shallow, crimson line along the flesh.

Kandler swung around, bringing the fangblade up in a wide, slashing arc. It caught one of the killers in the chest and nearly cleaved the man in two. It sprang free just as smoothly as it had entered the killer’s form, its ivory blade now turned crimson.

The last assassin stared at Kandler as his compatriot’s corpse slumped to the deck. He cursed then, a single word under his breath in Elven. Then he flung both of his daggers and Kandler at once.

The justicar dodged one of the blades and knocked the other out of the air with his sword. The assassin hadn’t even bothered to see if the knives would strike their target. Instead, he turned and raced back toward the gangplank. When he reached it, he stutter-stepped once, betraying perhaps an instant’s hesitation. Then he leaped out into the open air between the airship and the dock and disappeared.