Matt Forbeck - Marked for Death

Kandler stood at the end of the arena and waved to make sure the pilot saw him. As he looked up, he thought he saw Brendis at the wheel with Deothen leaning out on the bowsprit and shouting orders, but the craft was moving too fast for him to be sure.

As the airship swooped in over the arena, Kandler sprinted back toward the other end where Gorgan stood stunned, watching the airship come in at it. The crackling flames of the airship’s elemental roared overhead, echoing off the arena’s interior walls and painting everything in an angry orange light.

The warforged in the stands roared. Two of the ballistae squads mounted along the edges of the moving city fired their giant bolts at the incoming ship. One missed, but the other slammed into where Majeeda’s spell had exploded against the bow, and it smashed through the planks of the hull and disappeared.

The airship kept soaring along without pause. As she zoomed over his head, Kandler reached up and grabbed one of the mooring lines. After a few steps, he leaped into the air and began climbing the line.

“Stop it!” Bastard shouted through its golden horn. “Stop that ship!”

Gorgan roared with anger and shoved his hammer-arm into the air as the airship buzzed overhead. Kandler grinned when he saw that the ship was too high up for the creature to reach, then his face fell as he realized what the creature was trying to do.

“No!” Kandler shouted to Brendis high above him, although he knew it would be impossible for the young knight to hear his plea. “Pull up! Pull up!”

As the justicar yelled, the ship pulled him farther into the air, and for a moment he allowed himself to hope that the airship might make it.

Gorgan reached up with his splintered arm and stabbed it at the rope ladder as it went by. The ladder’s strands caught in the titan’s shattered arm and held. As the airship sailed past, Gorgan brought his arm down and pulled.

The airship swung about like a toy boat on a ten-ton anchor. Deothen disappeared from his position on the bow. Kandler winced at the thought of what might have happened to the knight, and he hoped that Brendis had been smart enough to strap himself in behind the wheel.

As the airship spun around, Kandler found himself whipped in the opposite direction and flung into the air. The rope burned his hands as it slipped from his grasp, and he went skipping across the arena floor like a flat stone on a smooth lake.

“Full speed, my son!” Kandler heard Deothen shout. The ring of fire around the airship roared as if the elemental inside it were screaming in protest.

Gorgan dug in its heels, but the airship dragged it along at a snail’s pace. It was only a matter of time until something gave. Kandler staggered to his feet and glanced around the arena. All eyes were glued to the conflict between the titan and the airship.

The ship pitched wildly under the strain as if it was a wild horse bucking to break free. Kandler spotted Deothen as the knight tried to make his way along the railing to cut the rope ladder loose, but it was all he could do to avoid being hurled from the ship’s deck.

Gorgan lashed out with its hammer-arm, and the weapon smashed right through the arena floor behind it, staking the creature solidly to that surface. The rope bridge snarled in the fragments of its other arm stretched under the extra strain but did not snap. The tension between the ship and her new anchor point lifted the titan off its feet for a moment, but the airship then slipped and dropped Gorgan back to the arena floor with a thunderous boom.

Kandler reeled about to see the other titan bearing down on him from the corner of the arena in which it had sat out the start of the fight. The justicar dashed to the right and dove across the floor at the last moment. He turned as he slid away from the gigantic warforged and saw that the creature had not been chasing him after all.

Instead, the titan reached out and wrapped its axe-arm around one of the mooring lines dangling from the stern of the ship. Once it had a semblance of a grip, it spun, winding the rope around it and winching the ship closer to the ground.

“No,” Kandler whispered in horror. If the airship had half a chance to get away from a single titan, that had just slipped away. The entire ship creaked and groaned as she struggled to escape, but the titans anchored the airship as solidly as blocks of granite.

Kandler spotted Deothen making his way back toward the bridge, moving along the ship’s railing hand over hand. “Haul back!” the knight commander ordered the young knight at the wheel. “You’ll tear the ship apart!”

The airship stopped pulling away so hard, and the two titans fell over onto their backs at the loss of opposition.

“Archers!” Bastard’s amplified voice said. “Loose!”

The Mournland sky darkened with arrows as the archers along the top rows of the stadium loosed their bows at the airship. Most of the missiles stuck in the ship’s hull. Only a few made it over the railing and onto the pitching deck. None of them found either of the knights.

“Again!” Bastard yelled. “Again! Again!”

Kandler finally saw his chance. Focusing on the mooring line wrapped around the unharmed titan, he drew Sallah’s sword and dashed toward the rope, the blade bursting into flames as he ran. But before he could reach his goal, the titan lashed out with its axe-arm and swept the justicar aside.

The flat of the blade smacked Kandler back off his feet and then passed over him. As he scrambled to right himself, he looked up and saw the titan’s axe poised above him, ready to cleave him in two. He kicked into a backward dive, and the massive wedge came crushing down only inches from his feet.

“Hold!” Bastard said through its horn. The order reverberated throughout the arena. Every warforged in the arena froze. This included the titans, who ceased trying to haul the airship in closer so they could crush it to splinters.

The airship continued to pull back and forth against the rope ladder and the mooring line that held it fast, jerking about like a fish with a hook in its mouth.

“You, in the airship, stop fighting!” Bastard said. “I have a proposal for you!”

Deothen’s arm waved out over the railing he’d fallen behind, and Brendis let the airship come to a rest. She still strained against her bonds, but not so desperately.

Kandler saw the gray-haired knight lean out over the railing nearest to Bastard. He thought he saw blood leaking from the man’s nose.

“Speak!” Deothen said as he peered down over the airship’s railing. “And be fast about it. I have little patience for tyrants.”

On the arena floor below, Kandler edged his way closer to the mooring line he’d targeted before, working his way around so that he was out of the tangled titan’s field of view. When he was close enough to strike, he held back and waited for Bastard’s gambit to play out.

“I admire your airship,” Bastard said. “We could use such a device. I fear that in trying to capture her-and you-we will destroy her.”

Deothen clambered his way up to the bridge as the warforged leader spoke. When he reached the narrow stairs, he turned around to reply. “That is a risk you shall have to endure.”

Bastard laughed into the horn. “I propose this-If you agree to land your airship here and surrender her to me, I will let you and your people go.”

Deothen climbed up the ladder and stood next to Brendis. “Ha!” he said. “So we can die of thirst trying to cross the Mournland?”

Bastard shook his head. “We have food and water. I can even give you horses.”

Deothen narrowed his eyes. “I do not negotiate with those who bear evil in their souls. This society-this gang of abominations-you have created here is anathema to me. Had I an army behind me, I would bring your city crashing to the ground and grind you and your fellows to dust.”