[Lost Mark 01] - Marked for Death

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

Chapter

  52

  Kandler took Sallah’s sword in his hand. Silver fire danced along its edges. The flames were weaker and dimmer here in the Mournland compared to bright holy fire he’d seen on display in Mardakine. Whatever foul magics infected the Mournland, even the knights’ blades were not immune.

  “Take good care of it,” Sallah said. “It is sacred.”

  “I just care if it’s sharp,” the justicar said as he swung the sword about, testing its balance. He sighted down its edge, looking for any imperfections. “Do you think there’s any chance that thing’s afraid of fire?”

  Burch’s words still echoed in Kandler’s head—“Wouldn’t bet your life on it.”

  The justicar twisted his head from side to side, cracking his neck and loosening his shoulders as he walked toward the wide black circle painted in the center of the arena’s floor. The titan named Gorgan lumbered forth and took its place just within the bounds of the circle, opposite from Kandler’s position.

  The gigantic creature slammed the arena floor with its weapons, and Kandler had to struggle to keep his feet. In response, the justicar leaped into the air and pounded the ground with Sallah’s sword. The warforged in the stands laughed.

  “And now,” Bastard’s voice said through its golden horn, “let the deathmatch begin!”

  Kandler stood his ground and raised his sword at the massive creature. Gorgan dragged the blade of its axe-hand across the front of its hammer-hand, sending sparks flying toward the justicar, then the creature threw its arms in the air and rasped out an ear-shattering howl that sounded like a hundred swords being forced against a massive grindstone.

  Kandler turned and ran. There was no way he could hope to stand toe to toe with such a creature, and he wasn’t about to try. He just needed a bit of time to execute his plan.

  The crowd laughed harder than ever. Gorgan stood stunned for a moment, unsure what to do.

  Bastard’s voice rang out across the arena. “Run the breather down, Gorgan,” he said, “then kill it!”

  The crowd roared its approval.

  Kandler slowed to a trot when he reached the far end of the arena, and the titan started toward him, pounding its hammer rhythmically on the ground as it moved, like an old man leaning on a walking stick. The massive creature covered the ground fast, and Kandler found himself staring up at Gorgan as it bore down on him.

  The justicar waved the blazing sword around him like a flag. Weak as the silver flames were, they still shone like a beacon in the dim light of the Mournland. He hoped that this might work like waving a red cape in front of a bull, but he was more concerned about the display he was making than how it affected the titan.

  Kandler bounced his head along with the beat of the titan’s gait as it charged toward him, the floor shaking with every step. Gorgan raised both of its massive weapon-hands high above its head to smash or slash Kandler to pieces with a single overwhelming attack. As it did, the justicar dashed straight at the titan.

  Matching the creature’s rhythm in his head, Kandler sprinted toward the creature and dove between its legs. Gorgan stumbled and almost tripped over itself as it struggled to compensate for the justicar’s unexpected move. It managed to right itself at the last instant, but by the time it turned around to look for Kandler, he was halfway across the arena again.

  The titan charged after Kandler, a low growl building in its barrel-sized throat. This time, the justicar ran over toward Bastard’s box and stood before the stands. The crowd booed as the justicar waved his blade at the titan again, goading it toward him faster.

  As Gorgan neared, Kandler faked left and then ran right. The titan fell for the feint. When it tried to correct its momentum, it went to its knees right in front of the platform. As it raised its head, it found itself eye to eye with Bastard. The creature was close enough that Bastard eschewed his golden horn as it shouted, “He’s making a fool of you, Gorgan! Take your time. Kill him at your leisure.”

  The titan pulled itself to its feet. Already at the end of the arena, Kandler looked out past the creature as it stood, and he smiled. Panting just a bit from the exertion, he wiped the sweat from his brow. So far, his plan had gone well enough. He just wished he knew what might happen if it worked. “One more time,” Kandler said to himself.

  Gorgan lumbered across the arena floor this time, keeping its eyes on Kandler every second. As it neared, the justicar feinted to the left and right, but the giant warforged kept up with him, not giving him a chance to run past. Gorgan waited for the right moment, then struck. Its axe-hand came down with a terrible crash. Kandler managed to sidestep the blow, but the impact knocked him from his feet.

  The titan followed up the axe strike with a swing of its hammer-hand. Kandler didn’t see a way to outrace it, so he dove next to the creature’s axe-hand, which was still where it had landed on the arena floor.

  The titan’s hammer came down atop its axe. The blow drove the sharp edge of the axe further into the floor, and the axe-blade kept the hammer from smashing Kandler to a pulp.

  The justicar scrambled to the other side of the titan’s axe. Gorgan tried to raise its axe-hand again so it could attack, but it was stuck.

  Kandler lashed out at the titan with his borrowed blade. It bit deep into the creature’s arm, and the titan howled with rage. The flames from the sword’s edge, meager as they were, caught in the fibrous parts of the titan’s axe-arm, and soon the entire limb was ablaze.

  Gorgan’s hammer-hand fell again. Kandler had hoped it would be impossible for the creature to angle its strike accurately over its stuck arm, but the blow crushed a hole in the arena floor, and the Shockwave knocked Kandler to the ground. As the justicar struggled to regain his feet, Gorgan reached back with a leg and kicked Kandler squarely in the chest.

  Kandler flew backward, Sallah’s sword spinning from his grasp. Spots swam before his eyes, and he fought to refill his lungs with air. One thought struck him—this was not how he wanted to die.

  The titan stomped at Kandler again, but the creature’s kick had shoved the justicar out of its reach. It rasped with anger at its trapped arm.

  Still gasping for air, Kandler scrambled away from the creature and after Sallah’s sword. He hefted the blade in his hand. At the moment, the borrowed sword seemed like the best friend he’d ever had.

  Kandler turned back to the titan and scanned for a weak joint, some sort of vulnerability he could exploit. He’d seen one of these things on the field of battle before, in a vicious skirmish between Breland and Aundair. That titan had routed an entire platoon of Breland’s finest soldiers. When the retreat was finally sounded, Kandler had hoped he would never see such a beast again—especially not this close.

  With a spray of splinters and sparks, Gorgan smashed its hammer-hand down into its axe-arm over and over until the limb shattered and it was able to pull the splintered stump free.

  Kandler staggered back from the maddened creature, a grin splitting his face as he saw the fiery ring of the airship soaring down out of the sky. His attempt to signal Deothen had worked. The ship was coming in fast.

  The justicar sheathed Sallah’s sword and ran along the inside wall of the arena, his chest protesting at the way his lungs stretched against the inside of it. His charge took him straight toward the approaching airship.

  Kandler’s heart leaped as he spied a full set of mooring lines dragging down from the ship—two at her bow and two at her stern. He looked for the rope ladder as well. It was there, but it only hung down half as far as the other lengths of rope. At the angle the airship was coming in, he would never be able to reach it.

  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.

  Chapter

  53

  “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.”

  The warforged in the crowd gasped. Kandler winced at the knight’s words. It was just that sort of pervasive attitude that had kept the Last War raging for so long and which threatened to spark it up again. All eyes turned to Bastard.

  Kandler readjusted his grip on the sword. He eyed the line carefully. It would take only a single blow to sever it, he hoped. Maybe two. He was sure he wouldn’t get the chance to try three.

  The warforged leader raised the golden horn to his face again and spoke. “I will not repeat my offer. If you do not accept it, my titans will drag you down to your death. We will hang your remains from the front of our city as
a warning to all who would impede our progress. Willingly or not, you will lend us aid.”

  “You have your answer, fiend,” Deothen yelled. “No quarter asked and none given!”

  Kandler readied his sword for his swing, then Bastard did something that surprised him. The warforged leader beckoned for the guards to bring Sallah to join him at the front of the leader’s box.

  “In that spirit,” the warforged leader said, “allow me to demonstrate how we treat intruders in our city.” He reached out and traced a line along Sallah’s jaw with a metallic finger. “Those who come with nothing to trade but their lives.”

  Kandler’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. He realized his hands were sweating, and it wasn’t because of the heat from Sallah’s sword.

  Deothen shouted to the lady knight. “The Silver Flame will embrace you, my daughter. You have been a brave and valiant knight, and it will merge your light with its own.”

  Bastard drew a massive sword from beside his chair and held it to Sallah’s throat. He drew its edge across her porcelain skin until the point rested in the hollow of her neck. Her blood ran red along the length of the blade. She did not make a sound nor shed a tear.

  “Would you sacrifice your own child so easily?” the war-forged leader said.

  Kandler’s face grew ashen. “That’s not his daughter!” he shouted. The words surprised him as they leaped from his lips. He grimaced at drawing attention to himself, but he pressed on. “He calls everyone that!”

  Bastard looked down at the justicar. “He calls you ‘daughter’?” he asked without a trace of irony.

  “No!” Kandler said, “He says ‘my son’ or ‘my daughter’.”

  “And are you his son?”

  Kandler looked up at the bridge of the airship and saw Deothen whispering something to Brendis as he wrapped his hands in a set of the leather straps along the rear rail. “No!”

  “So you are not his daughter?” Bastard asked Sallah. As he spoke, he pressed the end of his sword into her throat. The lady knight pressed her lips together until they were white, and she shook her head.