Amazingly, the creature began to move toward her across the deck, ignoring the downed Marshal as if he no longer existed. And since he wasn’t moving or making any noise, maybe to the yrthak, he didn’t. Hopefully Elix would be smart enough to keep playing dead until the yrthak was well away from him.
As the beast neared, Sabira slowly raised her shard axe, readying her strike.
As she sang the final words of the stanza, she took a deep breath, shouted, “Now!” and swung. The edge of her axe-blade caught the yrthak’s lower mandible, sheering through a portion of bone and scattering bloody teeth all over the deck. On the right, Mountainheart, who’d been pacing the creature on that side, stabbed into the yrthak’s mouth, slicing off its bulbous tongue. Farther back, others landed blows on the creature’s body, smashing ribs and scoring flesh. On the left, Elix, broadsword back in hand, cut three feet off the yrthak’s trailing wing, then took off another two with his backstroke.
The yrthak bellowed soundlessly, slamming its massive head down at Sabira. She tried to dodge out of the way, but the tilting deck and fresh blood pool conspired to make her lose her footing and she went down, losing her grip on her shard axe as her elbow hit the wood with such force that her hand went momentarily numb.
The yrthak was on top of her in a flash, one clawed forelimb pinning her arms and chest while the other rushed down at her with inevitable speed.
Sabira bucked her hips and wrenched her head from side to side, but the yrthak was unshakeable. Time seemed to slow as one long, wicked-looking talon arrowed toward her throat. She was going to die here, on a disabled airship in the middle of nowhere, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.
She could imagine the overenthusiastic and largely fictional broadsheets now: Famous Sentinel Marshal Slain by Dragons over the Thunder Sea! Nation Mourns! Travel to Xen’drik Suspended Indefinitely While House Deneith Investigates!
Well, at least she’d cause as much trouble in death as she had in life; she supposed she couldn’t ask for a more fitting epitaph than that.
She wondered idly how long she would have after the yrthak impaled her. Would she bleed out in long, agonizing minutes, or would it all be over in an instant? While she was no stranger to pain, if she was going to die either way, she’d prefer for it to at least be quick. The only way to ensure that was to meet the creature halfway; it was certainly better than lying here like a bored courtesan, waiting for it all to end.
Sabira tensed her neck and shoulders, ready to dart her head forward as soon as the talon was in range. It would be her last act of defiance in a life that had been full of them. She had to make it count.
Almost there …
As the curved bone filled her vision and she readied herself for her final act, something bright flashed in front of her face and then warm, acrid blood splashed across her, filling her nose and mouth and making her gag.
Then the weight across her torso was gone and she rolled blindly away from the yrthak, not sure what had just happened, and not caring. She was still breathing. That was enough for now.
Wiping the yrthak’s blood from her eyes, she saw the others finishing the now-limbless creature off. All but one.
She looked up to see Mountainheart standing over her, her urgrosh in his hand. The dwarf was splattered with ichor and flushed with pleasure, looking for all the world as if he’d just flopped dragons up. As he cleaned the blood from the shard axe with a handkerchief, Sabira realized he must have used it to cut off the yrthak’s claw before the thing could impale her. She rose to her feet and then accepted the weapon back from him as he handed it over with a grin.
“Envoy Mountainheart. Thank y—” she began, grudging but sincere. He waved her gratitude away with a laugh.
“Please. Orin. I think saving your life officially puts us on a first-name basis, don’t you?” He grinned again, almost playful, and Sabira looked at him askance, wondering just how long he’d been holed up in the nuptial home with his new wife.
“Besides, you didn’t really think it would be that easy to get out of paying your debt to me, did you?”
Sabira blinked.
Had the dwarf actually just made a joke? He really had been cooped up too long.
“No, I suppose not,” she replied, with a small, sardonic grin of her own. “Though I suppose even if I had died, you would have just had me resurrected, then charged me for that, too.”
Mountainheart’s grin grew bigger, and he opened his mouth to laugh, though what came out was only a bloody gurgle as a shadow passed behind him and the tip of a spiral green horn burst suddenly from his chest like some sort of rampant, murderous weed.
The yrthak who’d been attacked by Sabira’s erstwhile mount lifted the dwarf up off the deck with its horn. It shook its great crocodile-like head to make sure its prey was firmly lodged. Then it flapped its wings once and rose into the air.
Sabira didn’t stop to think. She ran forward, pulling her shard axe back in a two-handed grip. Then she brought it down on the yrthak’s neck, the adamantine blade biting deep. The creature flopped back down, slamming into the forecastle, its sonic scream taking out a huge section of the forward deck and sending the corpse of its clutch-mate plunging into the hold, along with half of the Inheritance’s remaining crew.
She caught a glimpse of dark hair out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t dare look to see who’d fallen; she couldn’t. She just kept hacking and hacking, until she was covered in the yrthak’s blood and it had long since stopped moving. She hacked until the thing’s head had been completely severed from its body and her arms ached from the exertion. She might have kept at it still if Elix hadn’t grabbed her arms and forced her to lower the weapon and look at him.
“Saba! You can stop now. It’s dead.”
She looked at him, wildeyed, not immediately recognizing him or registering his words. And then she dropped the urgrosh and threw her arms around him, crushing him to her.
“I saw—I thought …”
“It’s all right,” he said as she mumbled brokenly into his chest. He freed one arm from her embrace and reached up to stroke her hair. “It’s over now.”
“… of losing you, like I lost Ned …”
“Ned. Of course.” He stiffened in her arms, and pulled away, breaking the embrace and allowing her to regain her composure.
As he stepped back, she looked up into his hazel eyes, not sure what darkness she saw there. Anger? Disappointment?
Resignation?
Then she caught sight of the yrthak’s severed head over his shoulder, and remembered why she’d been assailing the hapless thing.
“Mountainheart?” The dwarf had saved her life. She had to see what she could do to save his.
Elix moved aside so she had a better view. The last two crew members had pulled the dwarf off the yrthak’s horn and were tending to his wounds. Sabira hurried to his side, but even from here, she could see how pale he was. He didn’t have long.
As she was about to kneel beside him, something glittered at the edge of her vision. Turning, she saw it was coming from the yrthak’s head. Moving nearer, she saw something dark shining in its reptilian skin, just to the side of its horn. It appeared to be a gem of some sort.