The Road to Death

33

“We caught you red-handed trying to escape,” Berre said. “For that, there will be consequences.”

Kandler bit back a snarl.

“That’s doesn’t matter right now,” he said, pointing his sword over the dwarf’s shoulder at the airship beyond. “You have to listen to me.”

A bolt whizzed past Kandler’s outstretched arm, and he dropped his blade like a hot iron.

“The rest of you, drop your weapons,” Berre said.

She didn’t need to raise her voice for everyone to hear the menace in it. Her time living with so many skeletons had made her used to having her orders followed without question, Kandler realized. He knew that she would not brook any disobedience, however pleasant she might have been to him and the others before.

Sallah sheathed her sword, and Burch slung his crossbow back across his shoulders. Kandler stepped forward, putting up his hands to show that he wasn’t a threat.

“We’re not your problem here,” he said, struggling to keep the desperation from his voice. He had to make her listen to him, and if she thought he was lying, there was little chance of that.

“Stand back.” Berre shoved her battle-axe into Kandler’s face, and he stuttered two steps away.

“You don’t want us,” he said. “You want Esprë.”

The Captain of Bones fidgeted a moment as she weighed the truth in the justicar’s words. “Where is she?” she asked. “What have you done with her?”

“We were trying to escape,” Kandler said. “That much is true, but we were tricked, betrayed. We don’t have her any more.”

Berre scowled at the justicar. “Where is she?”

Exasperated, Kandler pointed at the Karrnathi airship again, this time with his finger. “Why don’t you ask whoever’s in charge of that ship?”

Berre turned to gaze out at Keeper’s Claw and gasped. The skeletons crewing the airship had tossed off all of the mooring ropes and drawn in the gangplank, cutting off access to the ship from the top of the fort’s rear wall. All it waited for was for someone to take the wheel and fly it away.

“Who would dare?” the dwarf asked.

“It’s the changeling,” Burch said. “She never left the fort.”

The windows framed by the ribs of the ship’s horrific masthead shattered, sending broken bits of wood and shattered glass cascading down to the ground behind the fort. A body followed along with them, spilled toward the ground. Whitish but covered with blood, it fluttered down slowly on tattered, black wings that could not keep it aloft.

As the body disappeared behind the back wall of the fort, Burch looked at Kandler. “All right,” the shifter said, “I could be wrong about that too.”

The door to the captain’s quarters in the lower part of the forecastle opened, and a tall, powerful creature covered with green scales strode forth. He wore a black cloak that seemed to have some sort of insignia of rank embroidered across a fold near the wearer’s chest. The green-scaled creature stopped for a moment to stare down at the crowd assembled near the fort’s open gates. Then he sprinted toward the rear of the airship.

“Sailors of Keeper’s Claw,” Berre shouted. “Halt!”

The skeletons on the airship ignored the captain and kept about their work, preparing the ship to leave.

Berre cursed. “The bastard has one of our command cloaks,” she said, “one with a rank at least as high as mine.” She cupped her hands around her lips.

“Soldiers of Fort Bones,” Berre called in her loudest voice, “stop that ship!”

The skeletons inside the fort turned as one to face the airship. Those armed with crossbows loosed their bolts at the craft, several of which bounced off their fellows on the deck of the ship. One or two caught in an eye socket or between a couple ribs, but they did no real hurt. None of them found the stranger.

“The half-dragon!” Berre said. “Kill the half-dragon!”

As the skeletons loaded another round of bolts into their crossbows, Kandler launched himself forward, with Sallah and Burch following close in his wake. Berre started to protest but cut herself off before she distracted any of her soldiers from the more vital target of the half-dragon.

As Kandler raced past Monja and Xalt, they joined the others chasing after him. He charged for a ladder near the fort’s rear wall and hauled himself up it as fast as his arms would take him. He knew that Esprë had to still be on that ship, and he was determined not to let it leave without him. He hadn’t come so far, gone through so much, to lose her again.

By the time he popped through the walkway floor and hurled himself to the top of the wall, though, he was already too late. Ibrido stood on the bridge, the wheel in his hands, and the ship was scudding away. The justicar could do nothing to prevent it.

He leaped atop the crenellated wall and gauged the distance to one of the ship’s mooring lines. It hung far out of his reach, but a desperate leap might put it within grasp. He crouched low to jump and shoved out with all his might, stretching his fingers as far as they would go in the vain hope that they might catch on one of the fast-moving ropes and give him one last chance at saving his daughter.

As his feet cleared the fort’s wall, though, a pair of hands reached out from behind and snatched him back by his sword belt. The nearest rope skated by his fingers, just out of his reach.

Kandler fell back to the walkway behind the wall, tangled in the arms of whoever it was who had robbed him of his—of Esprë’s—final chance. “No!” he raged. “No!”

The justicar drew back his fist to smash into the face of the person who had stopped him in mid-leap, but his eyes fell on Sallah’s beautiful features. His hand froze behind him. “You?”

“It was too far,” she said as she panted for breath. “You could have been killed.”

Kandler punched his fist into the floor behind the lady knight’s head, then stood up to stare after the airship as it sped away into the night. Already, all he could see of it was the ring of fire and some of the rear parts of the ship silhouetted against it.

He swore he could hear something else over the crackling of that massive wheel of flames though, something dry and painful, something that sounded like laughter.

The justicar turned on the lady knight, who now stood behind him, watching the airship over his shoulder. Her emerald eyes shone with pain but showed no regret. He knew she’d have made the same choice over and over again, no matter what it might cost her. He didn’t care.

“That was my call to make,” he said as he shouldered past her and slid down the ladder to the fort’s open yard.

“Explain yourself,” Berre said, stepping square into Kandler’s face, although she was at least two feet shorter than him.

“We were trying to escape,” he said. He didn’t care what she thought of that or what she might do to him. He only knew he had to get after Esprë fast. “It went wrong.”

He stormed past her, heading for the stables. Three of the horses, saddled up and ready to go, had wandered out of their stalls after Burch went sprinting past them. Kandler strode up to one and mounted it. As he grabbed the reins, he saw that the gates to the fort were closed and a handful of Karrnathi skeletons stood dropping the gates’ ironbound bar back into place.

“Get that out of my way,” Kandler said to Berre as she stalked after him.

“I’ll do no such thing,” she said. “You are my guest here, but you are not permitted to come and go as you please.”

Kandler put his hand on the pommel of his sword. “It wasn’t a request. I’ll kill you and everyone else in this backwater pit.”

“You are not in charge here,” she said, drawing her battle-axe.

A hand reached up and held Kandler’s sword arm in place before he could bring forth his blade. The justicar looked down to see Xalt staring up at him.

“Don’t try to stop me,” Kandler said.

“I want Esprë safe too,” the warforged said, keeping his hand—the one missing the finger he’d lost standing up to his cruel superior—on Kandler’s, “but you are no good to her dead. The ship is gone. This horse cannot catch it.”

Kandler slapped Xalt’s hand away and kicked the horse into a trot toward the gates. As he reached them, he dismounted and strode up to the bar holding them shut. With a mighty shove, he pushed up on the bar, dislodging it from its home.

“Guards,” Berre said, “bar the gate.”

A half-dozen skeletons leaped forward to obey the order, pressing the heavy bar back into its brackets. Kandler bent his knees and shoved up against them, struggling with his every muscle. He knew he couldn’t win. There were too many of them. Even if he drew his sword and beat them all into a pile of broken bones, scores more stood ready to take their place. And with every moment Esprë grew farther away.

Someone pounded on the gates then, a desperate, hammering knocking that rattled them from end to end. It took Kandler a moment to realize the sound had originated outside the fort’s walls.

“Open up!” a strained voice called over the top of the gates. Kandler would have recognized it anywhere. It belonged to Burch.

“Didn’t you hear him?” Kandler said, not caring for an instant how the shifter had wound up outside the fort. Perhaps he’d tried a jump for the mooring lines himself—without Sallah to stop him—and had come up short. At least he’d tried. At least he’d had the chance.

Berre nodded. “Open the gates,” she said.

The skeletons who had been pushing down on the massive bar reversed themselves and pulled the heavy, banded log out of its brackets with one practiced move. Then they moved as one to push the gates outward into the night.

As soon as the gates cracked open wide enough, Burch sidled through into the yard, bearing someone’s slack body in his arms. At first, hope leaped in Kandler’s heart that it might be Esprë, that the shifter, his closest friend, had somehow found a way to rescue his little girl.

Then Kandler saw the clothing and armor that had belonged to Brendis, the chain mail, the breastplate, the red tabard embroidered with the silver flame. He wondered if Burch had gone outside to recover the young knight’s corpse.

But then he saw the long, blond hair and bone-pale skin of the changeling poking out above the tabard’s collar. Blood the same color as the tabard covered her face, even running into her eyes. Her neck hung at an unnatural angle.

“She’s still alive,” Burch said.