Chronicles of Gilderam: Book One: Sunset (38 page)

Owein picked himself up. He wasn’t sure if Jerahd had even noticed his intervention. He summoned up his strength again and went in for another blow. This time his target whirled around at the last second and stopped Owein’s forearm with a one-handed block. His shock transformed into sheer panic when he saw Tolora’s other hand brining a blade up to impale him through the abdomen.

Just before he was stabbed, a rag-clad hand gripped Tolora’s sword arm by the bicep and halted his thrust. Tolora pushed Owein out of the way with his blocking arm and gave Jerahd an elbow to the face. The Disciple reeled back, and Tolora twirled around, bringing his sword about to cut Jerahd in half. But Owein was there to grab him by the back of the collar.

“Hey!” Owein barked. “He’s with me!” Using his back as a fulcrum, he threw Tolora over his shoulder and sent him into the deck with a hard
splat
. “You don’t kill my friends.”

“We’re friends?” Jerahd asked half-jokingly. Owein smiled out of the corner of his mouth and gave a little shrug.

But Tolora was on his feet in the next instant. His thin eyes sized up his foes as they stalked carefully towards him. They were cautious, creeping in from both sides with their swords angled low. Tolora only had to wait. His eyes were glued to Owein.

Jerahd was the first to strike. He came in with a feinted jab that reversed and became a downward slash. Tolora read his mind, and wasted almost no momentum diverting the initial thrust, but instead expertly deflected the ultimate strike.

As he did so, his other hand drew the smaller blade from his hip and cleanly parried Owein’s attack from the other side. With another block and a spin, the assassin somehow placed himself on the other side of Owein – away from Jerahd.

Now facing the swordsman head-on, Owein was reminded of his pitiful technique as a flurry of blades rained down upon him. He tried to keep up as best he could, but his cutlass, although considered a nimble weapon amongst Gresadians, was woefully sluggish and ineffective against this man’s assault.

Fighting two blades at once, Owein quickly fell behind the strikes and was about to suffer lethal injury when Jerahd’s sword appeared around his torso to save him. Owein was overwhelmed, but his protector from Val was a fair match for Tolora.

The three of them clashed in violent concert. The war in the skies around them faded away, and their awareness became limited to the patch of deck on which they fought.

Owein could only hear footsteps and the sound of his own breathing. The other two were ghostly silent. He read his enemy’s footwork with his ears. He didn’t have to look down, and he couldn’t afford to. He had to keep his eyes up, always watching for the streak of steel. Clues about where it was and where it was going were in Tolora’s shoulders and hips. Sometimes the clues were misleading. He had to be ready.

The clang of steel, usually abrasive and jarring, was muted as they fought. It sank softly into the background, becoming almost dulcet. The distinction between Owein’s cutlass and his arm blurred, until he couldn’t think of one without the other.

Forgetting to compare skill, Owein now held his own with the other two combatants. He forgot to think about anything else. Really, he forgot to
think
.

Block, shunt, thrust, block.

Slash, dodge, parry, jab.

On and on it went. Maybe for an eternity.

Tolora’s tactics grew steadily more erratic. Possibly he foresaw his own doom, which became more and more likely the longer this bout continued. His attacks were losing precision and gaining ferocity, and his movements were lacking stability but increasing in force.

In what Owein guessed was an act of desperation, Tolora threw himself between he and Jerahd. With enemies on two fronts, he fought them each with a single arm. His opponents sprang for the opportunity of advantage, laying into him with all they had.

But Owein’s spirit sobered when Tolora managed to handle both of them with little apparent difficulty. He negotiated two separate duels with the same cool temperament he gave to one.

Owein began to wonder if Tolora’s perceived weakening and subsequent carelessness had actually been calculated to lure them into some kind of trap. Owein started losing ground. He was backpedaling.

More than just holding Owein and Jerahd at bay, Tolora was somehow
gaining
on both of them simultaneously. With deep lunges he drove them back, farther apart from one another. With hops and pivots, he rotated between them.

Severed from Jerahd’s aid, Owein was on his own against half of Tolora. Perhaps just one of his hands, he started to worry, might prove too much for him.

In a surprise move, Tolora abandoned Owein to fly at Jerahd with everything. The Disciple of Votoc managed to prevent a fatal wound by diverting the attack, but he was unable to stop a solid head-butt from connecting with his nose.

Owein leapt forward to help, but Tolora had already turned around – he was coming for him.

Owein battled for his life as both weapons came at him without mercy. He was sure Tolora was at last being honest about his true ability, and knew it was only a matter of time before the assassin would outplay him. When he did, the consequences would be mortal.

Owein guessed it would not take long.

He had no choice but make a steady retreat, taking one step after another, until he felt
Gilderam’s
deck rail bump into the small of his back. In the next instant his sword flew from his hand. He watched it skitter across the deck.

At that moment Jerahd was charging, his crescent dagger drawn, and Tolora was forced to address him. The two traded blows in an imperceptibly rapid spate of swordplay so furious that all the various clangs of their weapons melded into one wild, cacophonous roll.

It ended with a fantastic
ring
as all four blades locked together. Tolora placed one foot on Jerahd’s thigh, another on his chest, and jumped backwards from him with all his might, launching himself high into the air.

He flipped over gracefully – elegantly, beautifully – and tucked his legs along the way. Owein watched him falling right at him, and knew there was nothing he could do.

There was no time.

Nowhere to go.

He’d been beaten.

At last.

Both of Tolora’s legs, outstretched in a double mule-kick, slammed squarely into his chest. With a little “
Oof!
” Owein tumbled backward over the rail and fell into the open sky.

Jerahd gasped in horror as Owein fell out of sight – kicked overboard. Tolora landed in a crouch and popped up to peek over the rail. Without looking back, he jumped right over and threw himself off the ship after Owein.

In pursuit?
Jerahd wondered.

He ran to the edge in time to see a personnel carrier passing underneath
Gilderam
. Owein clung to the globular shroud atop one of its two balloons. Tolora had landed behind him, barely making the jump in time, and hung on for dear life to the aft end of the same balloon.

Jerahd swore to himself in his native language as the personnel carrier sailed on, now hopelessly out of reach. He gripped the rail tightly, and his mind raced to think of what to do. His eyes darted all around searching for an idea.

I have to find a way to
….

A horn blared from behind him – the deep, heart-shaking tone of an airship’s warning blast. It was a clipper, burning badly, honking to signal nearby ships that she was flying out of control. Her rudders were crumbling cinders, and she was unable to turn properly. Vrei and the bridge crew responded, veering
Gilderam
sharply to port to avoid a collision.

Jerahd didn’t miss a beat. He sprinted across the deck as the passing clipper struggled to avoid
Gilderam
, nearly bumping against her starboard side. He put one foot on the rail and fired his body forward, both hands reaching out for the flaming ship.

Owein got his bearings atop the balloon. It was a long, stretched-out spheroid of canvas wearing a netted shroud. Another one ran parallel to it, connected by hundreds of intervening tethers. Between and below them both, a gondola for passengers and crew hung under a dense web of lines.

Holding onto the shroud, he craned around in time to see
Gilderam
fly away without him. Then, just cresting the top of the balloon, he saw Tolora’s dingy tricorn rise from the rear.

Owein picked himself up and hurried along the length of the balloon to the front. The
baethes voth
threatened to blast him off, so he bent low as he ran, keeping his hands close to the shroud just in case. He came to the fore end of the balloon and discovered it was dead end. He had nowhere left to go, and Tolora was sprinting atop the balloon to catch up with him. Owein opted to head over the side – for the other balloon.

He threw himself onto the lines, tight cables fastened horizontally between the two balloons. They
twanged
when he hit them, and bounced around more like elastic cords than steely rigging. Holding onto some ropes and walking on others, Owein slid himself clumsily across.

Tolora ran full tilt across the balloon, erecting himself to his full height as he rounded to the inside. He leaped as far as he could and landed on tethers an
entil
from Owein. The disturbance of his weight on the cordage was nearly enough to knock him free.

Owein quickened his progress across the ropes, but the small man with the ponytail proved far more adept at such awkward wrangling, and caught up to him in no time. He skirted through the lines with liquid ease and delivered Owein a firm sidekick upon his arrival. That jarred him loose, and he fell half his height before catching a cable under his armpit.

Owein stubbornly tried to continue to the other side, but Tolora dropped down to his level and brought a heel-stomp at his head. He narrowly avoided a cranial injury, but took the stomp in the shoulder instead. The force dropped him once more, and this time he wasn’t able to catch a line again. He bounced painfully back and forth between the cables before landing on the gondola below.

He hit the roof of the bridge with a sickening
thud
, rolled off it, and fell ultimately on the deck right outside it. Crewmen standing by tried to find the right curse word to utter as Owein pulled himself up and took off running. He heard Tolora land far more gracefully than he had on the roof behind him.

“Hey! Who are –?!”

Owein socked the bluejack across the face, and he went down instantly. His buddy took a swing, but Owein dodged it, and returned with a sturdy jab to the jaw.

“Stop him!”

“Intruder!”

“Get him!”

Owein didn’t have time to see where all the shouts were coming from – he was too intent on finding an escape route. And he soon did: an Avladian yawl, coming in fast, about to swoop underneath the personnel carrier.

He could hear a parade of footfalls coming down the deck after him as he took off for the port gunwale. He didn’t look over his shoulder to see who was behind him. There was no alternative. He
had
to make it to that ship.

He leapt.

Owein saw nothing but trees,
itthum
below, as he free fell through the air.
Where was that ship?
It should have flown under him by now, or into him. But Owein couldn’t take his eyes off the trees.

This was taking too long. Maybe it had already passed by above him. Were these trees the last thing he’d ever see? He was sure he’d miscalculated the jump now, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the undulating leaves….

At the last possible moment the Avladian ship sped up to catch him, and he drilled into its only varride balloon. He thought he hit the bottom before it bounced him three
entilum
back into the air. The trajectory of his bounce was unguided, and it sent him flying sideways away from the ship, into the open sky once more.

He saw the forest below him again, and that same feeling of certain doom gripped his stomach just as a vast, spined wing flew up in front of him and swatted him like a fly.

Owein careened backwards onto the ship, sliding across the deck and barreling into a capstan. Twinkling stars blinked around him as Avladian mariners helped him up.

They muttered all kinds of exclamations in Avladian – a mixture of Elvish and Gresadian – and though Owein couldn’t understand them, he knew what they meant from context.

“No, thank you, I’m fine,” Owein lied as they hoisted him to his feet.

Then he saw Tolora, standing indomitably atop the balloon at the stern of the ship.

“There!” Owein cried, pointing, and his tone was all that was necessary to communicate to the Avladian sailors that this man was extremely dangerous.

They drew their weapons and approached him cautiously, shouting commands in Elvish along the way.

Jerahd whirled in a tight spin, his sword a flash of sunlight. When he came to a stop, the crowd of bluejacks surrounding him fell over – stone dead. He stood at the center of a ring of bodies. The sole survivor, a young midshipman standing just outside the circle of death, was running before his blade hit the ground.

Jerahd casually flicked the blood from his sword and strolled to the edge of the deck. Three ships away he could see Owein aboard a small Avladian airship. Tolora was there too, held at bay by a paltry handful of sailors.

The Disciple searched the sky for a ride that would bring him closer. A sputtering caravel glided vaguely in that direction.

He ran for it.

Tolora easily outplayed the Avladian mariners with his sword. He hacked a polearm in half, chopped an arm clean away, disemboweled one of them, and decapitated another in the span of a few seconds.

Owein picked up a spear from a crate and lit its end on fire in the on-board furnace. He joined the diminishing Avladian crew and thrust at Tolora. His target moved like water, dodging each stab, somehow always able to bend his body out of the way. No matter where the flaming spearhead went, Tolora was sure to not be there. The weapon was too heavy, designed for piercing hulls rather than flesh.

Owein summoned up his willpower, determined to finish this fight, and swung the spear around viciously. He was aching for a hit. Tolora parried the spear without incident, and cleaved off its end with a strong downward slash. Before the flaming spearhead landed on the deck, Tolora kicked it back into the air and batted it with the flat part of his sword.

The fiery dart flew through the air, flipping end over end, and came straight for Owein. He dived just in time to dodge it, and it landed in the crate of incendiary spears behind him.

The box ignited with a plume of flame, and swiftly set fire to the gunwale beside it. No one could be spared to douse it. The few remaining Avladians ran at Tolora in a final, desperate attempt to bring him down.

Owein came to their aid as the unpiloted ship rolled gently to one side. Its last two bombs slid, unsecured, across the deck and thumped against the blazing spear crate….

The explosion blew the front half of the ship to pieces. The rest of it flipped over backward from the force. Owein was flung into a sail, and slid down it until he caught hold at the end of one of the spars.

The wrecked hind end of the ship hurtled to the earth erratically. The wings, free from their controlling tethers, flapped hazardously along the way, further randomizing the descent. Owein could barely hear the screams of the Avladian crew over the rushing wind in his ears.

A few of them were still clinging onto the ship’s carcass. Further up the wing, he saw that Tolora held on as well. Owein was dismayed, but not surprised. The assassin had lost his tricorn in the blast, and his ponytail whipped freely behind him.

Blue sky rolled over into green foliage, which rolled back into blue sky again. The alternating colors wreaked havoc on Owein’s stomach. The world spun so fast it was impossible to deduce how far he might be from the ground.

The sail Owein clung to caught a gust of air and shot straight up. It unfurled with incredible force and flung Owein right off.

He fell away, jettisoned, and still spinning, only now more violently than before. There was no such thing as up or down – the forest and sky blurred together into a single, streaking mess of colors.

Owein closed his eyes.

If I’m going to fall to my death
, he thought,
I might as well
–

But he didn’t get to finish the thought.

He was interrupted by an impact. Owein couldn’t tell what it was he ran into. There was no meaningful sensation, just the feeling of his body connecting with something else.

A powerful rushing sound filled his ears, like the world’s largest waterfall amplified a thousand times, and he was plunged into darkness. Then Owein detected a shift momentum. His trajectory had changed – reversed – and suddenly he was bathed in light again.

Empress Sraia Te Vama had been watching all along from her position on the weather deck of the
Vacthor
. She reclined upon a chaise longue beneath a baldachin, idly observing the warfare in the skies before her. Around the perimeter of the deck, a ring of Imperial guardsmen stood like statues.

Not one flinched when an Avladian yawl, having wandered astray from the battle, exploded almost directly above them. Still no one moved a muscle as debris rained down around them. And not even when the burning remains of the hull slammed into the
Vacthor
a deck below did anyone so much as twitch.

The wailing death-cries of falling airmen rose in pitch as they plummeted, but ended sharply when they hammered into the flagship. The Empress looked on vacantly, as unimpressed by their deaths as she was by the sky battle beyond.

One body
did
catch her attention.

“There,” she called out, pointing.

Four guards broke from their positions at once and climbed down the side of the weather deck. They anticipated where he would land – just a short distance away horizontally, but several
entilum
vertically.

The Empress’ private deck was located halfway up the
Vacthor’s
enormous forward conning tower. Five stories below, two of eight titanic varride balloons swelled from the body of the ship, set on either side of the tower’s base. The flailing body was destined to hit the port balloon.

When it did, sheer velocity tore it through several gas cells. The yellow mist spat free in a jet before dissipating into the atmosphere. Fiery remains of the yawl hit it too, ripping into it, and at least one other body.

The Imperial guards left their halberds behind as they scaled the balloon, which was held down by a shroud of thick ropes. After a moment of fishing through the evacuated cells, they emerged with the unconscious body and hauled it up to the weather deck above.

Behind them, Tolora’s battered form crawled out of a different chasm in the balloon. His coat was lacerated all over, and badly singed by the explosion. Blood trickled down his face in multiple streams.

With psychotic determination in his eyes, he shambled after the guardsmen up the side of the conning tower.