Esprë pushed away from Duro and rushed to help Burch. Her hands crackled with a black energy, and Sallah knew that the girl had summoned the power of her dragonmark.
The thought that such a young creature could wield such horrible power chilled the lady knight. When she’d begun her quest to find the bearer of the Mark of Death, she’d thought only of her duty, not of the unknown soul who’d been branded by powers beyond her ken.
Now, though, as her love for Kandler blossomed, she’d come to care for his stepdaughter as well. In many ways, Esprë was barely more than a child, and now she had to bear this horrible burden that had put her life at risk and the lives of anyone near her. Whenever Sallah felt saddened at her own losses, she had only to think of Esprë to put them into perspective.
As Esprë charged, determined to kill once more* the object of her attack flicked his wrists out, and a pair of daggers appeared in his hands too. He drew one of them back to throw, and Sallah saw that the killer would hurl the blade into the girl’s chest long before she had any hope of reaching her target.
Esprë skidded to a halt in the face of the assassin’s weapons. No matter what the girl’s powers might be, they would do her little good if she died before she could use them. But as she slid to a stop, she slipped and fell flat on her back.
The assassin smiled at this, drawing back his teeth to expose another set beneath them. Sallah saw then that the first set of teeth had been tattooed across the killer’s lips, part of a mask of death etched upon a living face.
An axe appeared in the center of the grinning killer’s chest. Blood seeped from around the wound as the assassin’s eyes rolled back up into his head. Somewhere behind Sallah, Duro hollered, “Yes!”
As Burch bucked his attacker’s corpse off of him, Sallah moved toward the other two, interposing herself between them and Esprë. The girl scrambled to her feet and stood beside the lady knight as the killers reassessed the situation.
Sallah figured there were more than a dozen dwarves in the room, along with her, Esprë, and Burch. Four of the assassins lay dead, including the one who had failed to extinguish the flames devouring its head in time.
Only two stood in here, although only the Flame knew how many others might be lurking outside. She had to presume that some of them had kept Kandler too busy to join her and the others inside the inn.
The two killers seemed to realize their odds at the same time as Sallah. They spun and fled.
Six more battle-scarred axes spun through the air and struck the killers down before they reached the door. Two of the weapons clanged into each other and off their mark, but the others all hit deep in the assassins’ bodies, and they fell without a sound.
Sallah glanced down at Esprë.
“Kandler!” the girl said, already rushing for the dock.
Kandler lashed out with his fist. It smashed into the killer’s jaw, and Kandler felt the satisfying crunch of smashed teeth.
Kandler kicked free from the stunned assassin’s grasp. He spied his fangsword on the far side of the deck, but the other two killers would be on him before he could do more than gain his feet. Instead of scrambling for the weapon, he reached back and ripped a dagger from the hand of the assassin sharing the floor with him. When the killer offered resistance, Kandler slammed his elbow into the assassin’s nose, and the blade came free.
Just in time, Kandler brought the dagger up to parry a thrust from the first of the two other killers racing up the gangplank. As the attacker’s blade turned wide, Kandler punched out with his left fist with a blow that cracked the bone around the assailant’s eye.
As Kandler shoved the assassin off him, the other flung a dagger at his chest. The justicar threw up his arm to protect himself, and the blade went right through his arm, its point stabbing straight in and out of his muscle. The pain forced him to drop the knife in his hand.
Sensing that Kandler might be ripe for the kill, the assassin leaped atop the justicar, stabbing at his belly with his other knife. Kandler wrenched himself out of the way just in time.
As the killer landed on the deck, Kandler reached back and slashed at the assassin’s neck with the blade still embedded in his arm. Pain lanced straight up through his shoulder with the move, but his aim struck true. The tip of the knife punctured the killer’s throat, spilling his blood across the deck.
Kandler staggered to his feet, the knife still stuck in the flesh of his dripping, red arm. Two of the killers were still alive and hungry for his death, and they stood now too, their blades flashing as they readied to take the fight to him once more.
Kandler left the knife in his arm. He’d seen too many battles in which men had pulled free a weapon in their body and watched their lifeblood pour out after it like wine from an unstoppered bottle.
He went for his fangblade instead. One of the assassins hurled a dagger at Kandler as he scooped up his sword, but it just grazed his shoulder, laying open his shirt and tracing a shallow, crimson line along the flesh.
Kandler swung around, bringing the fangblade up in a wide, slashing arc. It caught one of the killers in the chest and nearly cleaved the man in two. It sprang free just as smoothly as it had entered the killer’s form, its ivory blade now turned crimson.
The last assassin stared at Kandler as his compatriot’s corpse slumped to the deck. He cursed then, a single word under his breath in Elven. Then he flung both of his daggers and Kandler at once.
The justicar dodged one of the blades and knocked the other out of the air with his sword. The assassin hadn’t even bothered to see if the knives would strike their target. Instead, he turned and raced back toward the gangplank. When he reached it, he stutter-stepped once, betraying perhaps an instant’s hesitation. Then he leaped out into the open air between the airship and the dock and disappeared.
9
As Kandler reached the gangplank, Esprë burst from the inn, calling his name. He glanced below, looking for the killer. Seeing no trace of the assassin, he stumbled down to the deck and took his stepdaughter in his good arm.
“You’re hurt!” Esprë said, staring at his injured arm.
Kandler nodded as Sallah came up behind Esprë, relief and concern warring on her face. She took the justicar’s wounded limb and held it up to inspect it. As she did, Burch emerged from the inn with Duro right behind him. Krangel poked his aged nose out of the door after them, and the other dwarves in the inn peered through the open windows, each of them jostling for the best positions near the sills.
“That all of them?” Burch asked, nodding at the two cooling bodies lying on the airship’s deck. He cocked his crossbow as he spoke.
“One of them dove into the gap,” Kandler said, pointing to where he’d last seen the suicidal killer.
Kandler could see the shifter was steaming from having been caught unaware by these assassins. He stalked the dock as if he might decide to stomp down through the boards to relieve his temper.
“I can help with that,” Sallah said, taking Kandler’s arm more tenderly in her hands, “but we’ll have to remove the knife first.”
Kandler nodded and gritted his teeth, ready for the worst. He focused on the woman’s lidded eyes as she gripped the handle of the blade and prepared to pull it free. As he did, he heard Krangel shouting orders to the other dwarves in the inn, and they leaped into action, their feet now padding along the dock.
Sallah yanked the dagger free in one swift move. Kandler hissed through his teeth, and Esprë reached up to hold his free hand to comfort him. As the blood poured from the wound, Sallah wrapped her hands around the injured area, forming a ring with her palms and fingers.