That was three beasts out of twenty. The seventeen others closed on Weatherlight.
"Fold the airfoils!" Gerrard shouted.
With a snap, Karn complied. Weatherlight no longer soared on the air but rocketed through it.
Gerrard managed one more shot. It bounded free of the cannon, dead on for a dragon engine. Before it struck, though, the beast's own incendiary weapon vaulted out. Black mana met red plasma. The opposing energies ate each other away.
More black mana belched in a killing cloud before the dragons. Tahngarth and Gerrard unloaded their cannons into the deadly stuff. A thin corridor opened.
At the helm, Sisay steered into the slim passage. The Gaea figurehead plunged through clear sky. Whips of black power scourged the keel and hull. It ate the wood away in moments.
Multani surged to the affected sites and awoke new life in them.
One tendril slipped past the rail and slapped Tahngarth's arm. His white fur melted immediately. Corruption ate into skin and muscle. With a roar the minotaur flung the stuff away.
"Orim! Get up here!" Gerrard ordered.
Weatherlight punched through the black mantle and was suddenly among the roaring throng of dragons.
Gaea destroyed the first beast herself. Her hardwood brow smashed into the horned head of a dragon. Normally the titanium crest of the serpent would have shattered wood, but Multani was in the figurehead. He bore the braining blow as an attack on his own being. He held the wood together, diamond hard.
The dragon's skull buckled over its biomechanical brain. Shards of metal cut wires and optic fibers. The dragon went limp in flight.
Even the corpse of the thing was deadly. It folded up before the surging ship and struck it like a hammer.
Gerrard and Tahngarth unleashed twin beams that vaporized much of the body. The rest grated away beneath the compromised keel.
Intent on preventing the keel from giving way, Multani drained from the figurehead down along the line of damage. Green wood swelled out where he went. He did not merely replace what had been destroyed but made it stronger, sharper. He grew a knife-edged spine directly before the keel. It proved its worth a moment later, lancing through a dragon engine and splitting it in half. The segments tumbled to either side of the keel.
"Good work, Multani!" shouted Gerrard. "Sisay, make good use of that spike."
"Way ahead of you, Commander," Sisay replied.
The prow rose suddenly, slicing the blade through the neck of a dragon engine. Its head flung over the bow rail and impacted the forecastle. Its severed neck followed, spitting sparks as it whipped past Gerrard. Head and neck bounded away. Its body meanwhile slumped brokenly off the racing hull. Three more shuddering thumps announced the deaths of three more dragon engines, chopped as if by a cleaver.
Weatherlight shot out beyond the pack of beasts. Sisay brought her hard about. Air spilled over the rail as she turned. The dragons were turning too, the eleven that remained. Weatherlight leaped eagerly toward the swarm.
Gerrard sprayed the heavens with ray cannon blasts. A beam struck a nearby dragon and burst over its metallic scales. Energy sank within and melted through flesh. The dragon held together one moment more before the blast dismantled it. Only wings and legs, head and tail remained to find their separate ways to ground.
Another bolt pierced a great black machine. The dragon's core went critical. Seams of white fire opened across its frame, turning it to shrapnel. The pieces tore outward to strip the scales from serpents nearby. Three more beasts spun crazily, tumbling for the ground.
"Think you're death incarnate, aye?" growled Gerrard over the roar of the falling beasts. "Well, Death, you've met your match."
He swung his cannon down and shot away the black mana breath of another beast. Energies ate each other. Gerrard followed up the shot with another. It scouted a dragon's head down to the metallic skull. Another beast lost its wings in a flare of cannon heat.
"You see that one?" Gerrard shouted over his shoulder to Tahngarth.
The minotaur stood with hooves spread on the deck, one arm deftly wielding the ray cannon and the other extended for Orim to bandage. Almost casually, he triggered a bolt of energy. It swatted a dragon engine from the air.
Weatherlight listed suddenly toward port, as if dragged down by a huge weight. The jolt swung Gerrard around. Just before him, gripping the forecastle rail, were a pair of huge metal talons. The wingless creature clutched the hull of Weatherlight. There was no way to blast those talons without damaging the ship herself.
Cursing, Gerrard pulled free of the gunnery traces. He raked out his sword and strode toward the spot. He would hew the conduits buried beneath those claws…
The dragon lifted its head above the rail. It reeked, this metallic beast. Its enormous fangs gaped wide, and it lunged toward Gerrard. Black, tarry mana flooded up the neck to spew out.
Roaring, Gerrard rammed his blade at the scaly jaw of the beast. The sword drove through flesh and tongue and up into the creature's ribbed pallet. It pinned the mouth closed. Black mana oozed between its teeth. Ducking beneath the gush, Gerrard jammed the sword higher, into the neural core of the beast.
It pulled back. Gerrard went with it, still gripping his sword. His boots left the deck. The dragon engine arched its head, intent on hurling him away.
Gerrard swung out into the reeling sky. He held on tightly. Clouds tore around him and the impaled serpent. Below, Urborg rattled past in black quagmires. The only thing that kept Gerrard from falling was the monster he was trying to kill.
"Let's do it!" he shouted, releasing his sword and clawing his way up the dragon engine's horn-studded muzzle. He rammed his fist in its eye. Glass lenses shattered. Knuckles smudged blood across mirror arrays. "Let's go down together!"
The beast's struggles grew frantic. It pitched its head back and forth, struggling to shake off its tormentor.
"I've got a friend I want to see," Gerrard yelled as his fingers slid into the housing of the beast's other eye. "I've got things to sort out." He yanked the whole orb from its socket. Its demon glow faded to darkness. Into the dragon engine's ear, Gerrard shouted, "You could broker the deal!"
Beneath his feet, cables went slack. Scales slumped. Will left the beast. Its claws slid from the scarred rail. With an irresistible motion, the monster dropped out of the bright sky toward the blackness below.
Gerrard felt the beast pull away beneath him. He held on tight. Dead trees and stagnant waters flashed in his wide eyes. "Let's do this."
Something struck his shoulder, something that burned like cold iron in his back and burst in a bloody rose out his front. Barbs spread, gripping flesh and muscle and bone. Gerrard roared, his hands releasing the dragon engine and gripping the end of the impaling thing. It yanked brutally on him. He rose, away from the plunging carcass.
The dragon fell to the treetops. A cypress speared the body. It broke free and rolled, flinging water. Limbs, head, and tail were all uniformly crushed around it.
Gerrard saw no more. The weapon that had torn through his shoulder was attached to one of Weatherlight's lines. Gerrard had been hooked like a fish. Winds shoved him up beneath the ship's hull, near her saw-toothed keel. It didn't matter. He was prepared to die. He was eager to appear before whatever lord ruled the dead and join his love, his Hanna.
The rope dragged him fore. Someone had other plans for him.
Thumping against the gunwales, Gerrard left crimson spots on the boards. His hands hung limply at his sides. The rope tugged. He slid up alongside the massive figurehead of Gaea. Hair mantled her shoulders and her ancient face. Her body was both maidenly and matronly. Out of hardwood eyes gazed a sad and familiar countenance.
The figurehead spoke, "What are you trying to do, Gerrard?"
"Multani," the man gasped through gritted teeth. Once this nature spirit had instructed him in maro-sorcery.