Pirin bit his lip. He didn’t know how to destroy a warship. He was just a single bird rider. Usually, entire squadrons of birds attacked a ship, shooting flaming arrows or dropping alchemical bombs until the ship crumbled or burned up.
But there was only one of them.
The ship had to keep its ballista bolts somewhere, though. A weapons magazine. If he could start a chain reaction, he could destroy the entire ship.
But Pirin didn’t have bombs or flaming arrows. He’d have to get down to the ship’s deck and slip inside. “There isn’t enough room to land!” Pirin yelled to Gray. “Ah, Eane-foresake it.” His Reyad wasn’t active.
Gray tilted her head and let out a chorus of confused tweets.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pirin grumbled. “I can’t form it back again, anyway, not without taking myself out for a few minutes…”
He shook his head. If he couldn’t land on the ship’s deck, he’d have to jump from Gray’s back. She’d have to circle from a safe distance and avoid the ship’s air defences. Without a rider, she’d be nimble enough.
Pirin pressed his elbows against Gray’s neck, urging a little more speed out of her. They navigated across the harbour, flying toward the approaching warship. It was one of the smaller warships in the port, armed only with a pair of ballistae and other small arms like catapults and repeating crossbows, but it would sink an unarmed passenger vessel with ease.
As soon as they were above it, he guided Gray downward. They weren’t invisible in the moonslight, no matter how much he might have wanted to be. A cluster of archers with longbows gathered near the ship’s prow, beneath the first ballista, and fired a volley upward. Pirin and Gray swerved to the side. The arrows whistled harmlessly into the sky.
A flak catapult hurled a scattering of pebbles toward them. He pulled up just in time to avoid most of the blast, but a pebble still grazed Gray’s wing. Without a Reyad, and without looking into her mind, he couldn’t share any of the pain.
They needed to dive faster. No circling down.
Gray tightened her wings and tucked her head. Pirin pressed himself flat against her back. The wind whistled all around him, ripping at his cloak and coat, and threatening to pull the inactive mask from his face.
The archers fired another volley at them. They swerved to the left, then back to the right, then to the left again to dodge a burst of stones from the flak catapults.
The moment they passed the top of the warship’s superstructure, Pirin sprung out of the saddle. He landed on an upper platform just below the ship’s bridge. Rolling along the boards, he dug his heels in to slow himself down, until he hit the wall in front of him with a thud.
Nothing broke, but he’d add that to the list of bruises he’d have tomorrow morning.
He pushed himself up as fast as he could. A sailor in a white gambeson turned to face him, but Pirin knocked the ostal off the platform with a quick punch. He drew his sword.
He looked up. From the ship, Gray was just a shadow in the night sky, silhouetted against the clouds of fog and firework smoke. A starburst of sunset-coloured light sparks far off in the distance, but the fireworks weren’t dangerously close—yet. The small arms proved more difficult. She swerved up and down and side to side, avoiding arrows and pebbles.
Pirin had to be quick, or they’d get lucky and shoot her down.
He ran to the front bulwark of the platform. All across the ship, archers with longbows ran out onto the deck and superstructure platforms. They fired a volley at him, and he ducked behind the bulwark just in time. As soon as the arrows stopped thudding against the wood, he looked up again.
There was one ballista at the front of the ship and one at the stern, and there had to be a way to get the explosive bolts from the ship’s internal magazine to the weapon.
Pirin drew his sword and leapt over the bulwark. He fell down to the ballista’s proform and landed in a crouch. The fall still jolted his legs, and he stumbled.
A pair of Dominion soldiers protected the ballista, clad in thick silver armour and wielding their swords confidently. Pirin deflected one’s sword and punched the other in his exposed face.
The other soldier swung again with his sword. Pirin blocked it, then spun out of the way and blasted him with a Shattered Palm. Having only charged it for a second, the blast didn’t hit as hard as he hoped, and the soldier only stumbled. He stabbed the ostal through the neck with his sword.
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More sailors and artillerists charged. He could beat them, but it’d only wast time. He dove toward a hatch that led below deck. He hauled it open, then slammed it shut behind him and barred it with a beam of wood.
A stairway descended deeper into the ship. He sprinted down it, taking the steps two at a time, until he reached a low, cramped hallway. A pair of sailors ran towards him, carrying an explosive-tipped ballista bolt between them. They dropped the bolt and ran towards him, making fists. They weren’t wizards, and he slipped between them with ease. He slammed one’s head into the wall, then struck the other atop the head with the pommel of his sword. They both collapse.
Pirin sprinted down the hallway, ducking under low-hanging thatch insulation or ropes and chains. Hanging lanterns lit the hallway, but sparingly, and he could barely see.
When he rounded a corner, only a single red glove hovered in darkness.
“Thank you for coming straight to me,” said the Red Hand, stepping out of the gloom. He hadn’t even bothered to cover his eyes. “What did you do to my disciple?”
“I bested him,” Pirin hissed. “Now, I…uh, I just need to get through there.” He pointed to the hallway behind the Hand. The magazine had to be somewhere back there. “If you’d just—”
“The Emperor demands your head, and so it shall be done.” The Hand drew his sword and slashed at Pirin in a single movement.
Pirin leaned aside. The Hand’s sword swished past his shoulder. Pirin held out his free arm and tried to gather the Hand’s mind in his palm. The man hadn’t even covered his eyes. All it would take was a single wave of Essence, a careless blast, to scramble the Hand’s mind. On the first try, a swirling gray orb formed.
Pirin wouldn’t say no to a little good luck once in a while.
He pushed a surge of his base Essence out of his hand, hoping to overwhelm the orb and tear it to shreds, like he’d done to Nael.
His surge of Essence crashed harmlessly on the orb, like waves against a seawall, then disintegrated into a pale blue mist.
He was that strong?
The Hand smashed Pirin in the chest with the hilt of his sword, then backhanded him across the face with his gloved hand. Pirin ducked just in time to avoid the sharp end of the Hand’s sword, then stumbled back down the hallway.
“You tried that before, and it failed,” the Hand said in a monotone voice. “Why would it be different this time?”
Pirin deflected the man’s next swipe, driving it up into the roof. The blade sliced through a rope and the loose thatch. Straw poured down on them. Pirin blasted it into the Hand’s face with a weak Shattered Palm, and as the man staggered, Pirin slipped past him.
He sprinted down the hallway until he reached a portcullis at the center of the ship. Two sailors stood in the room beyond it, hoisting a heavy ballista bolt from a rack. They abandoned their task and tried to shut the small portcullis, but Pirin dove under. It slammed shut behind him.
Projectiles filled the room—quivers of arrows, ballista bolts, and bags of gravel. One of the sailors grabbed an arrow and tried to impale Pirin with it. He slashed the arrow out of the sailor’s hand, then cut them both down with quick swipes.
He turned to the rack of wagon-length ballista bolts. He smashed open the rune-etched tip of one, spilling its contents all over the deck. The tip of the warhead carried some sort of acid and Essence-infused bile. Yellow wyvern scales rested in a segment behind it. Khuzel—destruction—runes covered the outside, which would activate when the bolt passed quickly through the natural auras of the world.
Pirin just had to fuel one rune himself, and he’d get a chain reaction.
The Red Hand thudded against the portcullis. “Open the door, elf! You’ll kill us both!”
Pirin tried to ignore the man. He bent down and pressed his hands onto an intact warhead, then forced a glimmer of Essence into it. The runes lit up and activated, giving him only seconds.
Pirin barely had time to register what he’d done. The blast would shred him. Despite his aching arms and stinging bones, he launched one last Shattered Palm. It arced out of his hand, shockwave of Essence pressing up against raw fire and flame and shielding him from the worst of the blast.
The fire singed his coat, and the force flung him back toward the portcullis—or where the portcullis should have been. The blast had shattered the gate as well, and Pirin skidded to a halt in the empty hallway, coughing and barely maintaining his breathing pattern.
Pirin scrambled to his feet. He had been flung just past the Red Hand, who reeled and just barely climbed to his feet as well. Pirin glanced back over his shoulder. The rest of the alchemical warheads in the magazine were glowing and smoking. A few quivered, ready to explode in unison. Pirin had lit an enormous fuse.
Again, he only had seconds.
He ran. Heavy bootsteps pounded in the hall behind him—the Red Hand running behind him.
Pirin sprinted back the way he had come. The deck rumbled behind him. One of the warheads went off, spewing more fire and debris down the hallway.
Pirin jumped up the stairs to the ballista platform and crawled back out into the open air. The Hand chased him out the hatch, followed by a tongue of flame. The ship’s deck heaved and the boards cracked.
“Gray!” Pirin yelled, staring up at the sky. “Gray!”
Gray swooped low towards the railing. There were no more archers—they had all dived overboard. She glided just above the water, below the railing of the main deck.
Pirin vaulted over the railing and landed on Gray’s back. The Hand leapt overboard just beside him, reaching for Gray’s tail feathers. His gloved hand just barely missed.
“Up!” Pirin shouted, scrambling into a proper position in the saddle. He pulled back on her nape. “Up! Up, up, up!”
A fist of fire blasted out the side of the ship, and the entire vessel tilted. Another tidal wave of fire and smoke burst out the other side, scattering flaming wooden debris across the harbour in a wide arc. Gray rose up above the flames, but not high enough to avoid the shockwave.