The Road to Death

60

Esprë tried to run after Sallah to come to Kandler’s aid too, but Xalt and Duro wouldn’t let her.

“They are fighting to protect you,” Xalt said, holding her by the arm. “If you put yourself in harm’s way, you can only distract them.”

“But he’s killing them!” she said.

“Have some faith in them,” Monja said from the ship’s wheel. “I’ve never met warriors so fine.”

“Look at Kandler,” Esprë said. “He’s dying! I have to help them.”

“Hold still, little elf,” Duro said as he leveled his crossbow at Ibrido. “You’ll spoil my aim.”

The dwarf pulled the weapon’s trigger and loosed a bolt at the dragon-elf. It stabbed into Ibrido’s shoulder, causing him to howl in pain. Duro cheered his success as he hunted for another bolt and slapped it into his crossbow.

“See?” Xalt said, his hand still on Esprë’s arm. “Sallah is there now. She will protect him.”

The young elf, the dwarf, the halfling, and the warforged watched the lady knight and the dragon-elf square off in a dazzling display of swordplay. Esprë held her breath through most of it, only letting it out to squeal with delight or dismay.

Duro cursed as his crossbow wavered toward the fight. “I can’t get a clear angle,” he said, “not on a moving airship.”

“Burch could do it,” Esprë said.

“He is occupied,” Xalt said, pointing down and to the starboard, where Nithkorrh assaulted Keeper’s Claw.

The young elf heard Monja praying at the wheel. “Can you do anything for them from here?” she asked the shaman.

The halfling shook her head. “When I pray to the Host every morning, I don’t ask for the power to hurt others, only to help and heal.”

Esprë looked down the length of the ship to see Kandler struggling to stand against the railing along the bow. Blood trickled through the fingers he held over his stomach.

“I think we’re going to need some of that,” the young elf said.

Hope leaped in Esprë’s heart as she watched Sallah launch a furious attack at Ibrido. She couldn’t hear the words they traded over the sounds of their clanging blades and the crackling roar of the airship’s ring of fire, so she crept down from the bridge, trying to get closer.

“I do not see the wisdom in this,” Xalt said as he escorted the girl on to the deck. “I do not believe Kandler would approve.”

“He’s too hurt to object right now.” She took a few more steps forward along the ship’s starboard side, trying to get a better view of what was going on. She noticed Duro creeping forward along the port gunwale, looking for a clear angle with his crossbow, too.

If Ibrido defeated Sallah, Esprë didn’t know what she would do. She’d been sure that Kandler could handle the dragon-elf. Everyone she knew always said he was the best swordsman they’d ever known, but that damned sword of Ibrido’s more than evened the odds. How could Kandler have hoped to win a swordfight in which his foe destroyed his sword?

Esprë was grateful that Sallah’s sacred sword had held up better against Ibrido’s fangblade. Otherwise, she knew the lady knight would already be dead. Right now, she was Kandler’s only hope—and by extension, Esprë’s too.

The young elf knew that the others would be no match for Ibrido should he beat Sallah. Xalt was next to useless with a weapon. Duro’s crossbow bolt had barely broken the dragon-elf’s hide, and she guessed the fangblade would slice his axe apart in seconds. That left only Monja and her, and the shaman had already declared herself a healer, not a fighter.

It would be up to Esprë then. As the thought struck her, the dragonmark on her back began to burn.

When Ibrido lay open Sallah’s breastplate, the young elf gasped in horror. The lady knight seemed to hang there in the air for a moment, shocked at the ease with which the dragon-elf had sliced through her armor. Then she stepped backward and slipped in a pool of Kandler’s cooling blood.

Esprë stifled a scream as she watched Sallah fall into Kandler’s arms. She knew she had to act, and fast, or Ibrido would kill them both.

The Mark of Death on her back felt like it might sizzle through her tunic. She felt icy fingers of glowing black run down her arms and envelop her hands, which she flexed as she slipped up behind the dragon-elf. Xalt tried to pull her back by her elbow, but the warforged flinched away at her freezing touch. She turned and shushed him with a finger to her lips. The ebon glow didn’t bother her at all.

Esprë remembered what had happened the last time she’d tried to kill Ibrido, and she refused to make the same mistake again. This time, she would strike before he could react. On one level, it seemed an act of cowardice to her to ambush someone like that, but she knew it was a matter of survival. If she took on the dragon-elf toe to toe, he would cut her to pieces. The only chance she and everyone else on the ship had was if she could catch Ibrido by surprise.

Esprë reached out with her glowing hands to grasp at the dragon-elf as he prepared to finish off Kandler and Sallah. She struggled to be as silent as she could, but just before she could grasp Ibrido from behind, Kandler spotted her, and his eyes grew large with surprise.

The justicar bit his tongue, trying not to give the young elf away, but the look on his face was enough to arouse the dragon-elf’s suspicions. Ibrido snapped his head around to look over his shoulder, and his crimson, reptilian eyes caught Esprë in their unblinking gaze.

As if Ibrido were a walking basilisk, Esprë froze.

“So,” the dragon-elf sneered, “you think to kill me with your deadly touch? A good try, elfling, but—”

A crossbow bolt smashed into Ibrido’s snout and ricocheted off into the open air. Stunned, the dragon-elf tottered backward and lowered the tip of his fangblade.

Before he could recover, Esprë leaped up and wrapped her hands around his throat. As she did, she let go every bit of power she had pent up in her dragonmark.

The night-colored glow flowed out through her hands and swallowed Ibrido whole. The dragon-elf dropped his sword as he toppled backward, frozen stiff as if rigor mortis had already set into his joints.

“No!” Ibrido screamed through clenched teeth as the heat of his life was forced from him. “Please, stop. I beg of you. Please!”

Esprë didn’t respond, not with a single word. She fed the fire of all her frustrations and anger into her dragonmark and let the grave chill of death ripple down her arms and into her victim.

“Please,” Ibrido whispered as the light left his eyes, as they froze wide open, staring at the sky.

Esprë never uttered a word as she pulled her hands from the dragon-elf’s neck. The glow around him vanished, and what was left funneled back up her arms and disappeared. The dragonmark on her back that had itched for so long finally felt like it had been scratched.

Esprë looked down at the body beneath her and collapsed on top of it, sobbing. She wept for herself, for her lost innocence, and she wept for Ibrido as well. Sad as she was, she knew she wouldn’t have done anything differently. She’d had to kill the dragon-elf, whether she wanted to or not. Now that it was done, so permanently, she cried—she knew that not even her hot tears could thaw him back to life.