Xalt nodded. “Every warforged was built to be a soldier, no matter what path we followed after that.”
“Excellent. The lathon stocked our weapons stores at the Wandering Inn. Go into the hold and grab a bow for me, one for you, and as many arrows as you can find.”
Soon after Xalt disappeared into the hold, Keeper’s Claw took off, climbing higher into the sky. Under Sallah’s hand, Phoenix followed. Kandler strode up to the ship’s bow and soon found he had an excellent view of most of the mountain.
The air was cold and thin up here. After the close, foul atmosphere of the dragon’s lair, it made Kandler feel lighter. It gave him a focus he needed, something he’d been unable to find when facing down the dragon through that doorway in the iron wall.
He knew that this was his best chance to rescue Esprë. He’d had enough of this chase that had led him across three nations and into a fourth. He was prepared to kill whoever or whatever he had to so that he could put an end to it. He was ready to die so that she might be free. One way or another, this pursuit would end today.
Below him, a plume of smoke erupted from the mountain. It took a moment before he realized it wasn’t smoke at all but a tower of dust thrown up from the rocks below.
“Take us down,” he called back at Sallah. As he spoke, he saw Keeper’s Claw moving into position to one side of the plume near its base.
Another plume went up inside the first, piercing it as it surpassed it. A terrible boom sounded out, and the mountaintop shook with it. Rocks tumbled down from the mountain’s tallest heights. Off to the west, an avalanche started, the snow shaking from the top of the mountain in waves and roaring down until it passed the snowline and became part of a rockslide instead.
The noise drowned out all else for a moment. Kandler thought he could still hear a steady pounding coming from somewhere inside the mountain, but he couldn’t be sure.
As the avalanche ground itself out somewhere near the base of the mountain, another plume went up near where it had before. Te’oma and Sallah adjusted the positions of their ships to accommodate it, for a moment coming perilously close to the plume. Kandler could smell the dry, metallic scent of shattered rock in the chilly air.
Then a part of the side of the mountain exploded outward, showering Phoenix in gravel and rocks. Kandler ducked his head under his arms to protect himself and found himself coughing on the fine dust that seemed to blow onto and through everything.
He looked up to see something had blotted out the sun. At first, he thought it was the cloud of dust and dirt still settling out of the air.
Then he heard the dragon’s mighty roar.
54
Kandler leaned back and shaded his eyes against the rain of dust and gravel as the dragon burst into the sky not a hundred feet off the bow. He struggled to peer through the sun-flecked haze as the dragon spiraled high above him, climbing toward the clouds.
He still searched the sky when Xalt tapped him on the shoulder with the end of an already strung bow. The justicar took the weapon from the warforged, along with a quiver full of arrows, which he slung over his back. He nocked an arrow fletched with white feathers and pulled back on the bowstring, sighting along the shaft as he scanned the sky again.
Nithkorrh roared again. Finding the dragon wouldn’t be the problem, Kandler knew. Getting a clear angle at some part of him that an arrow could pierce, that would be the trick. He knew that he had little chance of hurting such a beast with a thin piece of wood, no matter how sharp it was or how far back he drew the bow. Even if it punctured the dragon’s ebony scales, it would be little more than a bee’s sting to it.
But then he wasn’t here to kill the dragon. He just wanted his daughter back.
He heard Esprë scream as the echoes of the dragon’s roar finally faded away. He spotted her then, hanging in the dragon’s clutches as its wings beat a path to the open sky.
No, he corrected himself. The dragon held Ibrido in its claws, and the dragon-elf had Esprë slumped over in his arms. Kandler couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, but she seemed to be in one piece at least.
Keeper’s Claw raced toward the dragon, its ring of fire crackling loudly as the changeling pushed its elemental to its limits. Nithkorrh spotted the ship coming and rumbled out a horrid, phlegm-caked laugh. It hovered in the air for a moment, then dove away to the east, over the mountains and toward the darkening sky.
Sallah brought Phoenix to bear on the dragon, which ended up following in the creature’s turbulent draft. Nithkorrh might be more nimble in the open than an airship, but he was no faster. Kandler suspected that all those years spent trapped within the mountain had atrophied the creature’s wings. Soon Phoenix was gaining on it.
“Ready?” Kandler said to Xalt. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the warforged nod.
“Fire!”
The two released their bowstrings as one, and the shafts raced toward the beast before them. Kandler’s struck the dragon in the back, while Xalt’s hit its leg. Both arrows pierced the dragon’s scales but did not bite deep. With the next flap of Nithkorrh’s wings, they both fell away in the breeze.
As the dragon glanced back over its wings, Kandler smiled. The arrows had done their job: getting the dragon’s attention.
Xalt cursed as he nocked another arrow to his bow. When Kandler looked over at him, the artificer laughed. “What? I am a warforged, not a priest. Swearing is part of our training.”
Kandler would have replied to that, but the dragon in front of them decided to roll up and over until it hovered above them, cackling and preparing to spit.
This was the first good look Kandler had gotten at the beast. He’d seen a great many things in his life. A career as an agent for the Citadel in Sharn took him to a number of strange and distant lands. Even so, he’d never been this close to a dragon before.
If Nithkorrh had been frightening in its lair, out here in the sunlight its presence numbed the mind. Its wings spanned nearly as long as the whole of Phoenix, and its mouth burst with dozens of serrated teeth, some as long as a sword. It bore a pair of horns atop its head, the points of which swung out over its leathery batlike ears and toward its toothy jaws. Its ebony scales each looked as solid as a pikeman’s shield. Its hands and feet terminated in long, sharp talons that Kandler guessed could pry apart a suit of armor in seconds.
A flaw leaped out of the dragon’s menacing majesty though. Where its right eye should have been, a blackened hole peered out instead. Burch’s shockbolt had half blinded the beast. If it could be hurt, it could be killed, Kandler thought, although faced with the entire dragon, he had no idea how.
Sallah hauled back Phoenix as hard as she could, shoving Kandler and Xalt against the bow. Nithkorrh’s burning green spittle tumbled past the front of the ship, right where the craft would have been if the lady knight had maintained her speed. Instead of landing on the deck, though, it fell through the air to the rocks far below.
Duro let loose a bolt from his crossbow, but it sailed through the gap between the dragon and its wings. The dwarf cursed as he reloaded his weapon.
The dragon snorted in glee. “Well played,” it growled down at Phoenix. “I appreciate foes who make the fight interesting.”
The ship leaped forward again, leaving the dragon hovering as Phoenix zipped away. Kandler and Xalt managed to hold on to the bow rather than tumble back down the length of the ship.
“Where is it?” Kandler shouted as he scanned the sky behind the ship. The dragon was gone.