But it hadn’t escaped completely, and its systems were struggling to reset.
‘Typical,’ said Raeven. ‘Just when I need you most...’
He dragged Albard’s sword from its heavy scabbard, but cursed when he realised it was an energy sabre, and therefore now useless. The blade didn’t even have an edge, relying upon disruptive energies to cut through an opponent’s armour.
With a crash of splintering timber, the azhdarchid finally tore itself free of the yoke securing it to the skimmer carriage.
‘Hurry, Raeven!’ pleaded Albard. ‘Help me!’
His brother’s eyes were filled with fear. Albard could hear the mallahgra – its bloodcurdling roar and the thump of its clawed hands powering it forward – but he couldn’t see it, and that fear of the unknown had unmanned him. He’d already lost an eye to a beast like this and was in no hurry to be standing in the way of this one.
‘Sorry, brother,’ said Raeven, still clutching the impotent sword.
He stood, but before he could turn and run, the mallahgra was upon him.
Its multiple eyes were bloodshot and confused, which was no surprise, but it knew fresh meat when it saw it. A three-clawed hand swiped for him, but Raeven’s honed reflexes carried him out of the way. He dived and swung the sword, the blade bouncing from the monster’s thick hide without effect. It roared and snapped its segmented, shark-like head toward him. Serrated teeth sliced through his thin clothing and tore a deep furrow across his chest and shoulder. He cried out in pain, rolling beneath its slashing paws.
More soldiers were coming forward, shooting from the hip at both beasts. The azhdarchid met their charge, its heavy wings slashing out like bludgeoning clubs and dewclaws tearing through half a dozen men with every arcing sweep. Its razored beak bit armoured warriors and their mounts in two with each bite.
Raeven scrambled to his feet, running towards the Citadel and hoping that someone inside would have the presence of mind to open the damned gates. He pulled up short as a whining, screeching steel leg stomped past, almost slamming into him as it went. The wake of the Knight’s passage spun Raeven around, and he fell as the energised force of the ion shield pushed him down. Sparks and breached fuel lines drooled in the wake of the Knight’s steps.
The mallahgra launched itself at Cyprian, throwing both its arms around his mount, but Raeven’s father was in no mood for a close-quarters brawl.
Turbo lasers blitzed with killing fire, punching bloody craters deep into the beast’s chest and ripping scorched chunks from its back. It bellowed in anger and pain, but its stunted nervous system would take more punishment before it would drop. A thundering blow slammed into the Knight’s canopy – which Raeven saw had remained stubbornly open – sending blades of broken steel stabbing inside.
Its jaw closed on the Knight’s head with a throaty bellow, but the teeth slid clear, chewing silver gouges in its armoured carapace. Scads of torn armour plating fell around Raeven, and he jumped aside as heavy lumps of chewed metal slammed down. The turbo lasers blazed again, and this time the mallahgra knew that it had been hurt.
Sticky blood rained down as Lord Devine freed his chainsabre arm and its internal generator finally overcame the effects of the electromagnetic pulse. The enormous chainsabre roared to life and the spinning teeth, each larger than a man’s forearm, revved up with eye-blurring speed.
The screaming blade plunged into the mallahgra’s gut, tearing up into its heart and lungs and exploding from its shoulder in a welter of shredded bone and meat. The beast howled as Cyprian wrenched the madly revving sabre from its body, and its arm and most of its right side peeled away from its spine.
Rightly was Cyprian Devine known as the Hellblade.
Finally accepting that it was dead, the mallahgra slumped to its knees, its remaining arm falling limply to its side as it slid down the front of the blood-spattered Knight. The carcass fell onto its side and the noxious stink of it mingled with the burnt electrical smell of the wounded machine.
Cyprian rotated the body of the Knight to look down at Raeven. Blood covered his father’s features, and Raeven saw two spars of steel impaling his body – one through the stomach, the other through a shoulder. The Knight’s armoured frame sagged in sympathetic pain, but Cyprian Devine wasn’t about to let potentially mortal wounds slow him down.
‘Get your brother into the Sanctuary,’ he ordered through gritted teeth.
With the immediate danger over, Raeven stood and wiped a hand across his face.
‘You can’t mean to go through with the Becoming?’ he said. ‘Not after all this?’
‘Now more than ever,’ snapped Cyprian. ‘Do as I say, boy. Both of you must imprint with your armour tonight. The suits have been consecrated and prepared, they are awaiting you in the Vault Transcendent. If you do not bond with them now, they will never accept you.’
Raeven nodded as his father turned the Knight and set off with a lopsided stride after the rampaging azhdarchid. Its screeching, hooting cries came from farther down the valley, where Devine soldiers were still trying to bring it down.
A slow smile spread across Raeven’s face as he realised the people around him were cheering his name, but it took him a moment to understand why.
He stood beside the corpse of a gutted mallahgra with a blade in his hand, a blade that now began to spark into life and blaze with violet energy. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t killed this beast, only that he’d stood against it.
He raised the borrowed sword and yelled, ‘Devine!’
Two regiments of Dawn Guard awaited them within the citadel, but whatever ceremonial splendour had once been imposed on their ranks had been shed the moment word came through about the assassination attempt. Officers and soldiers discarded high-fluted helms, fluttering pennants and gilded breastplates of ornamented gold and silver. They wanted to march out to fight alongside their lord and master, but their duty to Lord Devine’s sons kept them within the citadel.
Raeven felt a twinge of regret that the mallahgra’s attack had robbed him of this chance to parade in front of these men on his way to the Sanctuary, but contented himself with the crowds cheering his name from beyond the walls.
‘If I was a superstitious man, I’d be inclined to think that this attack was a bad omen,’ he said.
‘If I believed in omens, I might agree with you,’ said Albard, wheezing and breathless with the effort of walking in bulky fusion armour with a fried generator and no motive power.
‘Did you see the size of that mallahgra?’ said Raeven, letting out a pent-up breath as the sliced meat of his arm throbbed painfully. ‘Throne, I thought that brute had me.’
‘We almost died out there,’ Albard gasped, his scarred features ashen and his eyes wide.
‘I nearly died,’ corrected Raeven, holding out his bloodied arm and doing his best to hide just how much it really hurt. ‘That beast wasn’t looking at you like you were its next meal.’
‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ said Albard.
Raeven dropped into a fencing stance and held out Albard’s sword. ‘Me?’ he said with a wide grin. ‘It’s the mallahgra that’s the lucky one. If your sword hadn’t shorted out, I’d have taken its whole arm off.’
‘Lucky for it then.’
‘If father hadn’t intervened, I swear I’d have cut it apart, piece by piece.’
The twin-drum fusion generator on Albard’s armour sparked with alarming bangs of overloaded control mechanisms and hissed with venting gasses. Irreparably damaged electrical systems leaked blue-tinged smoke.