At the top of the ladder, Akstyr yanked his legs up and rolled into the corridor. “Books!”
He slammed the trapdoor shut and groped about for a lock. There wasn’t one. Clangs rang out from below-someone climbing the ladder.
“Books,” Akstyr hollered again and pulled out his short sword. He wished he had a pistol. “Are you-”
Something shattered in the navigation cabin, and the vessel tilted, dumping Akstyr against a wall.
The trapdoor flew open. A man’s head popped out, a black bandana wrapping his hair. He lifted a crossbow. Akstyr kicked the weapon out of the man’s hands with enough force to hurl it to the ceiling. He aimed a second kick at his attacker’s head, but the stowaway saw it coming and had time to duck. By luck more than design, Akstyr managed to snatch the falling crossbow from the air after it bounced off the ceiling.
He aimed it at the opening and eased backward, finding the door to the cargo bay with his heel. He risked taking a hand off the crossbow to try the latch. If he could get inside, he could use the doorjamb and wall for cover. Someone had locked it.
“Cursed ancestors,” Akstyr growled.
A metallic canister spun through the trapdoor opening and clanked down at Akstyr’s feet. It was one of the smoke grenades he had brought on board. The conniving bandits were attacking them with their own weapons.
Green smoke hissed into the air. Akstyr held his breath and squinted his eyes against the haze, but he didn’t let go of the crossbow.
Something stirred the smoke near the trapdoor. Akstyr fired.
The quarrel clanged off metal instead of thudding into flesh, but someone cursed and ducked out of sight. A curse on his own lips, Akstyr plucked the grenade from the floor and darted toward the trapdoor. Acrid smoke stung his eyes and his nostrils puckered, but he held on long enough to drop the canister through the hole.
He leaped over the trapdoor and slammed it shut. For lack of a better way to secure the entrance, he stood on top it. The smoke would irritate the men below, but probably wouldn’t hurt them or make them pass out. Too bad. He wished Amaranthe had given him some of the knockout gas too.
Through bleary eyes, Akstyr checked the crossbow. It was a twin-loader with one quarrel remaining.
A thump sounded in the navigation cabin. From his position in the corridor, Akstyr didn’t have a good view, but he glimpsed Books’s face being smashed against a console.
“Not good,” he muttered, but if he went to help, the two thugs below would escape.
As if to validate his thought, the door rose an inch beneath Akstyr’s feet. He braced himself against the wall and bore down.
“Stay down there, you prick suckers!” he hollered.
“Mountain!” That was Harkon’s voice, not Books.
Furious poundings battered the trapdoor beneath Akstyr’s feet. A few more acrid green fumes escaped through the cracks.
After a moment of indecision, Akstyr decided he ought to be skilled enough by now to handle a couple of smoke-choked gutter rats.
He slid off the trapdoor. More thumps sounded before the men realized their doorstop had moved. The trapdoor flew open, clanging against the metal deck. A cloud of smoke wafted into the air. Akstyr shot at the first person to come into view. This time, the quarrel didn’t miss. It sank into the man’s throat, and he tumbled off the ladder.
The other stowaway hung a couple of rungs lower and was too busy gaping at his falling comrade to notice someone creeping up on him. Akstyr dropped the empty crossbow, reached in, and hauled the man out. That he could do so surprised him-he hadn’t realized how much strength he’d gained in the last nine months.
Akstyr shoved his foe against the wall and pressed his sword into the tender flesh at the base of the throat. Tears and snot streamed down the man’s face.
“Listen,” Akstyr said. “What’re you people-”
The dirigible lurched again, and Akstyr stumbled back a step.
The man used the distraction to jerk his arm downward, his hand darting toward a dagger. Akstyr tried to whip his sword back into place, but the tilting floor unbalanced his swing, and his blade bit into the man’s jugular.
“Donkey balls,” he muttered. How was he supposed to get answers from a dead man?
Remembering that Books might need help, Akstyr kicked the trapdoor shut again and ran past it. Sword at the ready, he sprinted into the navigation cabin.
Books knelt, a knee in Harkon’s back, while the tattooed man struggled, attempting to escape. The ivory-handled pistol lay on the floor a few feet away. Blood trickled from Books’s nose, but he wore an expression of smug triumph. Until the vessel tilted again.
The floor sloped downward, and Akstyr almost tumbled into the control panel. He gripped the doorjamb for support. Enough daylight remained that he had no trouble seeing the rocky hillside straight ahead of the dirigible. They were close enough that he could also see a goat lift its head to stare at them.
“Akstyr.” Books lifted his head to study the control panel. “I need to-”
“Yes, do it.” Akstyr scrambled across the tilted floor, grabbed the pistol, and pressed the muzzle into the back of the pilot’s neck.
Books leaped up and yanked a lever. The floor leveled, but the vessel was too low, and they were veering straight toward a mountainside.
“You did watch him for long enough to learn how to fly this thing, right?” Akstyr asked.
“I watched him, but it’s unlikely the intricacies of aviation can be mastered in such a short time.”
“That’s not your pompous way of saying we’re going to crash, is it?”
“Actually, we’ve reached our destination, so I was hoping to land.” Books’s eyes searched the control panel.
“I hope there’s a difference.”
The goat had faded from view when the ship leveled, but another one scampered into sight. Brilliant, their crash was going to be the evening entertainment for the mountain critters.
Books tapped an altitude gauge, mumbled something, and finally seemed to spot what he wanted. He spun a wheel. At first nothing happened, but then the goat slipped out of view to the side of the glass shield. The dirigible was slowing turning to fly alongside the mountain instead of toward it. Too slowly. A jolt ran through the craft, and a squeal of metal arose from outside.
“That didn’t sound good,” Akstyr said.
“We’re fine,” Books said. “We glanced off a boulder.”
A thump reverberated through the dirigible, and an ominous crack came from below.
“What was that?” Akstyr asked.
“It was a tree.”
An image flashed through Akstyr’s mind-a giant hole being torn in the bottom of the dirigible and the engine falling out. No, he told himself. The hull was metal. It was sturdier than that.
Another thump battered the ship, this one hard enough to send tremors through the hull. Harkon’s muscles bunched, as if he were preparing to try something. Akstyr pressed the pistol into his skin.
“I already killed the two stowaways down below,” he growled, doing his best to sound menacing. “I have no problem shooting you too.”
“Do it then,” Harkon snarled.
Akstyr thought about obeying the man. Sicarius would. Hostages were more likely to be trouble than not, but they might yet need help flying-or landing.
Books’s fingers gripped the wheel so hard the tendons on the backs of his hands were trying to leap out of his flesh. The craft shuddered again, and the quietness of the fancy engine meant Akstyr had no trouble hearing cracks and thunks from outside-rocks sheering away from the mountainside and bouncing into the depths below. Beads of sweat rolled down Books’s temples and dripped onto the control panel. Finally, the dirigible veered far enough from the rocky slope that the scrapes and squeals faded away.
Books wiped his brow. “Two stowaways?”
“They tried to shoot me when I went to look at the engine,” Akstyr said. “How’d we end up so close to the mountains anyway?”