The Road to Death

41

Duro Darumnakt saw the airship coming from leagues away. “In all my years,” he said to his younger cousin Wolph as they watched the craft, “I’ve never seen an invader show himself so plainly.”

The ring of fire stood out strong and bright, even in the midday sun. At first Duro had thought it was the sunlight glinting off something hard and metal in the distance, but it never once twinkled the way you’d expect a reflected light to do as it moved through the air, unless it targeted you on purpose.

Soon he had realized the light burned with its own energy. He thought it might be a bit of glowing gases emerging from the swamp near the foothills of the mountain, right where the streams that spilled down from the melting snowpack melded together into a shallow delta before gathering themselves into the headwaters of a creek that wound its way toward lower lands. Perhaps it was a will-o-the-wisp playing around those murky waters, hoping to lure unwary prey to its doom.

The light grew too steadily and came at him in too straight a line. When he saw it was not a ball of light but a ring, he knew it could only be trouble. He sounded the alarm and brought his kin to gather around him near the secret gate he’d been charged with watching that afternoon.

At first, not all of them had believed him. Many of the stragglers had heard too many false alarms over the years to give such sounds much credence, but they came anyhow. Even if it wasn’t the emergency it should have been—and turned out to be—they figured they wouldn’t want to miss the chance to mock whoever had set the alarm off.

“It’s an airship,” Duro had told them.

By the time he had an audience worth talking to, he was sure. “I saw these things during the Last War. The Karrn used them as troop transports and sometimes in battle too. They move faster than any mount, and they can carry an entire platoon of troops into a fight before their foes can react.”

“What can we do about such a thing?” Kallo had asked. The young dwarf liked to play at being a great warrior, but he had yet to be blooded, and everyone knew it.

“We should retreat into the caves and wait for them to come to us,” had said Medd Karaktrok. “We can make our stand there in our element, where none can hope to prevail against us.”

“Where they can trap us like rats in a blind hole,” Duro had said, shaking his head. He thanked the Sovereign Host that the Clan Drakyager elders had seen fit to give him this command and not entrusted it to one of his slow-witted friends. “We make our stand out here on the mountain’s face. If things turn against us, we will retreat into the caves where we can rally a counterattack.”

“Who could hope to ‘turn things against’ the sons of the Ironroot Mountains?” Shano had said, abroad grin across his wide, white-bearded face as he hefted his battle-notched axe.

Duro had often wondered how Shano had survived to such a ripe old age with such ill-considered notions rattling around in his head. Perhaps the Host did smile on drunks and fools, for Shano qualified as both. Duro thought he might even have been intoxicated at that moment, perhaps along with a few of his younger brothers. He knew they had secreted a still somewhere on the mountainside, despite the way their last such efforts had brought down a section of the caves on their heads when it exploded.

“Get the shockbolts ready,” Duro said. “With luck, we can use them to blow the thing out of the air before anyone has the chance to disembark.”

Medd gasped at the plan. “You know those are only to be used in the direst circumstances. We only have five of the magical bolts, and each is worth a year’s wages for any of us. You risk much.”

Duro handed Medd his spyglass at that point so the rock-brained dwarf could see for himself. “I’d say that a Karrnathi airship crafted to look like a giant, hungry skeleton might just qualify as a ‘dire circumstance.’ ”

Medd stared through the spyglass for a long moment before handing it back to Duro. “Host preserve us,” he said, “I fear you are correct.”

From there, the others scrambled into their designated positions, ready to launch themselves into battle as soon as Duro fired the first of the shockbolts. Standing alone on the rocky lookout point, Duro cradled the shockbolts in his hands before slipping one of them home into his crossbow. It was the same shape as a regular bolt, but it felt heavier in his hand, dense like gold or lead. He could not read most of the runic letters carved into its steely surface, except for the few along one edge that stated in clear, simple Dwarvish, “Use with utmost caution.”

He waited for the airship to come closer and closer. He treated it as a test of his nerves, to see if he’d loose the bolt before the airship came into range. He wouldn’t have more than one or two chances before the Karrns aboard the craft retaliated. He had to make sure his first attack found its mark.

The air itself seemed to warp as the airship neared, its ring of fire devouring the atmosphere all around it as it passed. It crackled louder in Duro’s ears than any bonfire, and it was all he could do to sight along the shockbolt in his crossbow and aim it square at the craft’s hull. As he waited for it to come closer, it seemed to grow larger and larger until it blotted out most of the sky.

He heard Wolph shouting at him over the noise. “Loose!” the young dwarf yelled. “Loose!”

He held off a moment longer, just another moment longer, until it seemed that the heat of the ring of fire might singe the ends of his forked and braided beard. Then he pulled the trigger and stared after the shockbolt as it sped toward its monstrous target, the gaping mouth of the skeletal masthead that promised a swift and painful death to all that crossed its path.

The shockbolt slammed into the masthead and exploded with such force that Duro wondered that the mountain didn’t come crashing down on his head in response. The airship rocked backward like it had struck a reef. A number of bodies catapulted over the gunwales and crashed toward the rocky slope below.

Even before the smoke had cleared, Duro loaded the next shockbolt into his crossbow. He hoped that the first bolt would be enough to scare off the ship, perhaps even disable it, but he wasn’t willing to bet his life on it.

When the smoke around the airship cleared, Duro’s ears still rang louder than the cave bells announcing the Winter Feast. He ignored the fact he couldn’t hear anything else and peered up through the vanishing smoke to see that he’d blasted the masthead’s carved face clean off the craft.

Wolph came up from behind Duro and smacked him on the back, letting loose a war cry neither of them could hear. Duro grinned back at his cousin, pleased—despite his pessimistic nature—at how much damage he’d done.

Then a bolt fired from the ship took Wolph through the neck.

The younger dwarf fell over backward, clutching at his throat. He smashed his head against the rocks behind him, denting his helmet and cracking his skull.

Not knowing if Wolph lived yet or not, Duro brought up his crossbow and loosed the second of the shockbolts at the airship. This one sailed wide of its mark and skittered off the hull at an oblique angle. It sailed straight into the ring of fire, which set it off.

The explosion shoved the airship up as if it had run aground. The break in the ring of fire, though, brought it slamming down toward the mountainside. It righted itself only a dozen feet shy of crashing into splinters.

Duro turned to check on Wolph and saw blood trickling from under his cousin’s helmet. He knelt next to the young dwarf and saw by the blank roll to his eyes that he was dead.

“May Dol Arrah guide your spirit home,” he whispered as he closed Wolph’s eyes. He wondered how he would explain this to his aunt and uncle, to his parents. Then another bolt ricocheted off his own helmet, knocking it from his head.

“Retreat!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs as he picked up Wolph’s corpse and tossed it over his back. “Fall back!” he yelled, hoping the others could hear him over the angry crackling of the ring of fire and the ringing that might sound in their ears too.

He’d made it only a handful of steps before the first Karrnathi skeleton landed on the rocky slope behind him.