Deothen stood to the side and watched the flames as they passed by. As he did, he saw something moving behind them. Bastard. The warforged leader turned to Deothen, and the senior knight saw the light of the fire flickering in the creature’s sapphire eyes.
“Without your titans around you, you slither away,” Deothen said as he walked toward the warforged. “Like a snake to its hole.”
He brought his sword arm back, but before he could swing, Bastard stepped behind a nearby walker. Deothen slashed at the intervening golem, cutting its thin legs in half. The walker fell to the ground, and the platform sagged down where the creature had once held it up.
“You hide behind your tools like a child behind its mother’s skirts,” Deothen said. “Come out and fight me, coward!”
Bastard laughed as he stepped behind another walker that blindly ignored both its master and the intruder with the blazing blade. “What you call cowardly, I call cunning,” the warforged leader said. “I didn’t become a lieutenant of the Lord of Blades by charging into battle against every sword-waving idiot who challenged my bravery.”
Deothen cut down the walker standing between him and Bastard, but the warforged leader was no longer behind it.
“Face me!” said Deothen, waving his sword about to punctuate his words.
The knight heard something charging up behind him fast, and he turned. He was too late to bring his sword to bear, and the warforged leader slammed into him. He went sprawling across the dirt until he smacked another walker in the back of its legs. It fell away, and the platform sagged down over Deothen’s head.
Bastard leaned forward and kicked the downed knight. The spikes on his foot punched through Deothen’s armor and punctured his side. The knight cried out in pain, but he slashed up at Bastard at the same time.
The knight’s sacred sword bit into Bastard’s thigh, cutting deep into the fibers beneath its shining, spiked plates. The warforged leader grunted and leaped back before Deothen could strike again.
The knight struggled to his feet, clutching his chest. Blood seeped through the holes Bastard had kicked there.
“So, this snake can bite,” Deothen said through gritted teeth.
He spun about, looking for some hint of Bastard’s location. The arena floor above him shuddered as the airship fought to free herself from the stands.
“I answered your taunts once,” Bastard called. “I’ll not be so foolish again.”
Deothen glared into the gloom in the direction of the voice, then he turned to look back the way he’d come. There, in the wan light streaming through the hole the airship had torn in the arena floor, he saw Bastard. The creature’s spiked armor seemed to glow in the pool of daylight.
Bastard raised his golden horn and said, “Halt.”
The walkers carrying the massive city’s platforms on their shoulders slowed their pace to a crawl and then stopped.
“Fire and ashes!” Deothen said. He launched himself at Bastard, but the creature was too far away.
“Down.” Bastard’s order echoed in Deothen’s head. He ignored it and kept racing forward. Nothing was going to stop him from hacking the warforged leader to pieces with his blade.
Deothen grazed his head on the platform over him as he ran. At first, he thought he must have run up a slight rise in the ground. Then he realized that the walkers all around him were crouching down, each working its way to its knees.
“Down!” Bastard said again.
Deothen bent over and hustled along as fast as he could. Even though the city had stopped moving, Bastard and the hole above him seemed no closer. Soon Deothen could no longer stand at all. He threw himself down and scrambled forward on his hands and knees, his flaming sword still clutched in his fist. Bastard wasn’t so far away now-perhaps a score of yards-but it seemed like miles of dark and broken road.
Deothen’s hand slipped, and he found himself on his belly. He tried to rise to his knees again, but there wasn’t enough room.
All around the knight, the walkers who had been carrying the city above them folded themselves down on the ground. Unlike him, they didn’t need to breathe. They had no lungs from which the air would be crushed by the horrible weight above them. They could just lie there in the suffocating dirt for hours, even days, and then rise once again at their master’s call.
“Down!” Bastard said one last time.
The heavy platforms came down flush with the ground. Deothen kept worming ahead until his armor wedged stuck between the earth and the platform above. He was almost close enough to strike out at Bastard. He might die here, but he was determined to have one last chance to take the warforged leader with him.
Deothen lashed out with his sword at Bastard’s feet, swinging the blade flat and true through the final inches of space left to him as his armor began to give.
“Sallah!” he cried with his final breath.
Bastard stepped backward out of the knight’s reach. The platforms came down within bare inches of the ground beneath them. Blood spurted from Deothen’s mouth and everything went black.
Chapter 59
High above, the airship had stopped bumping around. As Esprл fought to regain control of the ship’s wheel, she saw Te’oma slip her hands from the leather safety straps and walk across the bridge to deal with Xalt.
“You’re tenacious,” the changeling said to the warforged. “I never see most of my victims again.”
She reached out with her foot and kicked the artificer’s hand that clutched the edge of the ship’s deck. Xalt cried out in pain.
“Is it because you’re a warforged?” Te’oma asked. “Are your kind harder to kill?”
She ground her boot down on the Xalt’s fingers, then stomped down on them again. The warforged shouted in agony.
“You are durable,” Te’oma said. As she spoke, she drew her black knife and got on one knee next to where the artificer’s battered fingers still clung to the airship’s bridge.
“No!” Esprл screamed. She had had enough. She grabbed the airship’s wheel and gave the elemental trapped in the ring of fire a nudge. The ship lurched forward.
The changeling howled as she pitched over the aft of the ship. Her black knife tumbled from her hand and spun end-over-end down to the arena floor. Te’oma reached and grabbed at the edge of the shattered railing. The tips of her fingers latched on the last spindle there.
“Don’t do this!” Te’oma shouted at Esprл.
“Drop him!” Sallah yelled from below.
Hope leaped in Esprл’s chest at the sound of the lady knight’s voice. Then, when she heard her stepfather speak, that hope grew tenfold.
“Drop Brendis!” Kandler said. “We’ll catch him!”
“I won’t let you kill him!” Esprл shouted at Te’oma from the wheel. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Over the past few weeks, she’d seen more than enough death. She couldn’t let the changeling hurt anyone else again. She still remembered the look on the warforged’s face when the black knife had slipped into his back, and she was ready to do everything she could to stop anything like that from happening again.
The ship bounced just a bit into the air, and Esprл heard something crash to the floor below. Kandler cried out in pain.
“To stop me, you’ll have to kill me,” the changeling said. “And you’re no killer. You’re-No!”
The railing from which Te’oma hung cracked and gave way. The changeling cascaded back from the airship, the spindle she’d been clutching still in her hand.
“No!” Esprл screamed as Te’oma fell out of sight. She let go of the airship’s wheel, stretching out her hands in a feeble hope of somehow being able to stop it.
The warforged reached up and pulled himself up onto the bridge. Still on his belly, he scrambled across the deck to where Esprл knelt, crying into her hands. He reached out and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.