Мэтт Форбек - The Queen of Death

“You don’t know of what you speak,” Majeeda said, her voice like the hiss of a cornered snake. “I am going back to Aerenal to become a member of the Undying Court. I am!” Esprë smiled at the desperation she could hear in Majeeda’s voice. She knew she had pierced the deathless elf’s armor of serenity. Now she just had to drive her point home.

She let loose of her father’s arm for a moment. He screamed out in terror and pain.

“Esprë! ” he said. “You cannot kill me. I am your father! ” “The fact I’m your daughter didn’t mean much to you,” Esprë said. Her words bore more bitterness than she had realized she felt. She tightened her grip on him again.

“No! Please!”

Esprë averted her eyes from her father and stared at Majeeda instead. “Let them go,” she said.

“I should kill you myself,” the wizard said. “I could destroy you where you stand.”

“You would have done it already,” Esprë said, hoping she was right. “Quit wasting my time. Let them go, or he dies!” “All right!” Majeeda said, panic filling her voice. She closed her eyes for a moment and muttered something. As she did, Kandler and Burch staggered forward from where they were and took deep, grateful breaths.

“Hear that?” Burch said, jerking his head in the direction of the vertical shaft that let out into the room beyond. “Guards on ropes. Be here in a second.”

“The airship is—”

Something large smacked into the building and cut Esprë off. The balcony shook, and the sound of a raging fire filled the air. The screening structures around the outside of the balcony began to collapse, some simply falling to pieces while others went up in flames.

Kandler reached out and grabbed Esprë around the waist. “I think our ride is here,” he said as he carried her toward the low wall around the balcony and hefted her into the air.

Esprë saw the broadside of the Phoenix appear in a gap in the screens. Xalt stood there, his arms extended toward them, ready to pull them in. “Jump!” he said.

Kandler swung Esprë up and out, and she found herself sailing through the air, across the gap between the airship and the building. Xalt caught her in his strong, hard arms and fell backward to the deck, absorbing her fall.

“Bring her back!” Ledenstrae shouted. “Without her, we’re all doomed!”

While Esprë still flew to the Phoenix, Kandler brought his sword around and slashed at the elf. Ledenstrae flinched away and cowered on the floor.

Kandler hesitated for a moment. As much as he disliked Ledenstrae, he had no desire to execute an unarmed foe who seemed to think curling up like a baby offered some sort of defense. Then he heard an angry voice start to speak from the far corner of the room.

Majeeda was chanting.

A crossbow twanged to Kandler’s right, and a bolt appeared in Majeeda’s throat. The feathered end of the missile jutted out from her withered flesh, but no blood flowed from the wound. Still, she clutched at it as if in mortal pain.

Kandler strode to the elf and raised his sword. While Ledenstrae posed little threat at the moment, Majeeda had only been checked for a moment by the bolt. As soon as she could remove it and regain her voice, she would help the elves of Aerie track them down. She had some kind of tie to the airship that only her death could sever, and Kandler meant to solve that problem in the most direct way.

As the justicar charged, he heard a strangled cry behind him. He ignored it for the moment and swung his sword in a flat, level arc that connected with devastating force.

Majeeda’s head sprang free from her shoulders, almost as if it had been waiting for a chance to do so. Her body collapsed to the cold, stone floor, her bones rattling loosely in her papery skin.

A trio of elf guards clambered out of the vertical shaft and into the room beyond the balcony. Getting into a fight with them would only cost Kandler time, but he guessed he’d already spent more of it than he had to spare. Rather than challenge the guards, he turned and raced toward the balcony’s edge.

As Kandler sprinted for daylight, he had to bound over Ledenstrae. The elf lay in a widening pool of his own blood, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest. In one hand, he clutched a throwing dagger by the point.

Ledenstrae swept a feeble hand at Kandler, but his grasp had no strength to it and fell uselessly away. The justicar ignored it and vaulted over the balcony’s railing to the deck of the airship beyond.

He rolled with the landing and sprang to his feet, his sword still in his hand. As he rose, he snapped his head toward the bridge and saw Sallah standing at the wheel. He drew a great breath to shout, “Go!”

Before the word left his lips, the Phoenix shot forward like a ballista bolt, pulling Kandler from his feet.

Kandler’s tumbling came to a stop at the base of the main deck beneath the bridge. As he jumped to his feet, the airship’s deck pitched hard, and he had to fight to keep standing.

A fiery ball of pitch soared past the airship. It had come close enough to pierce the ring of fire like a stone thrown through a hoop, but it hadn’t hit a thing. Then something smacked into the aft of the ship and Kandler found himself on his knees again.

He dove for the nearest gunwale and stuck his head over the edge. Below, it seemed like the entire fortress had mobilized to attack them. Ballista bolts and balls of burning pitch sailed through the sky toward them from every direction.

“Get us out of here!” he shouted.

Sallah didn’t say a word. She just bared her teeth and concentrated on what she had already been doing.

Kandler scanned the deck. Back toward the port-rail, Burch stood crouched over Esprë, who huddled beneath him, still holding Xalt by the arms. The shifter had his crossbow out and seemed to be training it on any incoming attacks, as if he thought he could knock them from the sky with a good shot.

Esprë seemed unhurt, which was the most important thing to Kandler. She started to crawl toward the wall under the bridge, which offered just a hair more protection than the middle of the open deck. Xalt crept along with her, ready to throw himself into the path of any attack if need be.

Toward the bow, Monja knelt over a still form that seemed to smolder where it lay. It took Kandler a moment to recognize it as Te’oma. As he watched, the changeling sat up.

The justicar dashed to the aft of the ship and yanked himself up on to the bridge. “Where’s Duro?” he asked Sallah.

“He sacrificed himself,” she said, not turning to look at him. The ship’s nose pitched forward then, and another ballista bolt skipped off the prow.

“What?”

“He dove into the guards on the dock so we could cut the ship free.”

Kandler grabbed the wheel. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t have time for this now!”

Kandler wanted to object, to pull Sallah’s hands from the wheel and make her tell him what had happened, but right then a ball of pitch soared into the Phoenix’s ring of fire.

The elemental fire incinerated most of the pitch at once, but what was left exploded out from the ring and spattered down like flaming drops of rain all over the fore section of the main deck.

Esprë screamed. She’d been climbing on to the bridge when the ball of pitch had burst open.

“Take the wheel!” Sallah said to Esprë. “I need to help Monja!”

Esprë nodded and dove for the wheel, wrapping her hands around it and taking control of the willful airship. The instant the girl’s fingers touched the wheel, Sallah shoved herself away from it and leaped down to the main deck.

Seeing Burch and Xalt race up after Esprë to protect her, Kandler snapped a salute at them and chased after Sallah. Looking around, he saw that they had just cleared the east wall of the fortress. Within moments, they would be far beyond the reach of even its most powerful weapons. They just had to hold on a few moments longer to escape.