into the angle next to Esprл. She coughed on the smoke curling up into the bridge, and said, “We need to move this ship.”
The changeling grabbed a hold of the wheel and tried to turn it, but it didn’t move. “How does it work?” she asked.
The girl reached for the wheel and said, “Allow me.”
Esprл closed her eyes for a moment, and the ship shuddered. The movement startled her, and her eyes flung open wide. Their rims reddened by the smoke, they looked bluer than ever to Te’oma.
The rear of the airship pulled free of the arena floor, but the front remained lodged in the stands. The ship pitched forward, and Te’oma tumbled against the bridge’s console. Brendis’ limp form slid toward the edge, and the changeling reached out and grabbed him before he pitched over it.
“Stop!” she shouted until the girl brought the ship’s stern back down again.
“We have to pull back first,” Te’oma said.
Esprл nodded as she strapped herself to the wheel. “What about Brendis?” she said.
The changeling shoved the young man over and lodged him under the wheel. “Sit on him if you like.”
The girl narrowed her eyes at Te’oma for a moment then grabbed the wheel and pushed her feet under the knight’s body to keep him tight against the console. When she was ready, the ship started to move again.
Esprл coaxed the airship down and back. The craft slid back a few feet and then caught on something. The ship slid from side to side and then back and forth, trying to work around the catch, but it did no good.
Te’oma watched the girl concentrate harder. She ignored the fire, the man at her feet, and her kidnapper and put her every thought into pulling the ship free. The airship slid back a few more feet and then caught again before starting to shudder like the branches of a tree in a stiff wind.
A massive hammer-arm smashed up through the hatchway from the hold, sending splinters everywhere. Te’oma nearly jumped off the ship. Esprл screamed, and her hands came off the wheel. The ship crashed back to the arena floor, and the titan’s hand disappeared.
Te’oma thought the girl would melt to the deck in an utter panic, but instead Esprл displayed a steely resolve. “Too much,” she heard the girl mutter to herself. “We’ve been through too much!”
Esprл grabbed the wheel again, and the airship launched forward into the stands as if it might try to tunnel its way to freedom. Aloud crash echoed from the front of the hold. Then the ship switched directions and pulled out of the stands just as hard. With a spectacular splintering of the broken boards surrounding the ship’s bow, the airship slid backward without a hitch.
Te’oma smiled as the airship rose into the air. Her good mood was smashed flat as a bug under her boot when the weight in the ship shifted again, and the bow flipped up into the air. Before Esprл could scream this time, the hammer-fist stabbed through the hatchway again.
The hatch was too narrow for the titan to fit more than its arm though. The massive hammer-hand flailed about at random for a moment, hunting blindly for a foe, then it disappeared back through the hatch again.
Te’oma peered over the bridge’s console to look down the hatch. As she did, one of the titan’s turquoise eyes slammed against the inside of the portal. It withdrew just as quickly.
Te’oma glanced back at Esprл, who had turned white, despite her newfound resolve. Before the changeling could say a word, the hammer-hand stabbed up through the hatchway again. This time, it was aimed toward the bridge. It slammed into the outside of the console, and Te’oma dove aside as Esprл let out a little squeak.
When the changeling looked back, the girl’s color had returned. She watched as the girl stuck out her jaw, turned to her, and said, “Hold on.”
Te’oma slipped her hands through a set of straps on the bridge’s rear railing just in time. Esprл didn’t wait for her as she drove the airship forward again at a startling speed, heading straight for the arena’s stands again.
At the last moment, Esprл brought the airship to a wrenching halt. The change in momentum nearly pulled Te’oma from her straps. As she prayed to Vol that the battered leather would hold, she heard the titan in the hold let loose a final screech of fury and frustration and felt it slide helplessly toward the hole in the bow through which it had entered the hold. The ship tilted forward steeply as the massive creature slipped out through the holed hull and tumbled through the open air, crashing into the stands below, then the ship snapped back, and Brendis slipped loose from his spot under Esprл and went sliding toward the ship’s back rail.
Chapter 57
As consciousness slowly returned, so did the pain. The wound in Xalt’s hack hurt worse than anything in his life. Still, he had patched together enough other warforged in his time to know that the wound would not be fatal, and this helped him to avoid panicking.
Xalt calmly pushed himself up and sat on the platform on which he had been stabbed. He put his hands against his chest opposite of where the knife had entered his back. Recalling his training, he repeated the magical words and rubbed his hands across his skin in the proper pattern. This never worked as well inside the Mournland as it did without, but still, Xalt could feel his fibers knitting back together. They weren’t as good as new, but they would do for now.
When Xalt was done, he stood and looked up at the arena. The changeling who had stabbed him and taken Esprл had gone off in that direction. It was time for Xalt to enter the place as well. With no elf-girl in tow, he’d be much less conspicuous.
As he walked toward the nearest tunnel, he saw the airship come screaming in over the arena. The craft stopped in what Xalt could only think was a disastrously fast manner. At first the crowd went wild, but then the assembled warforged fell quiet.
It sounded to Xalt like Bastard was saying something through that horn he liked to wave about so much, but the artificer couldn’t make out the words. It felt as if everyone inside the arena was holding their collective breath.
Then Xalt heard the crash. The city’s platforms shook with the violence done to the arena, and the voices of hundreds of warforged roared in panic and pain.
Xalt tried to race up the tunnel, but before he got halfway, a flood of warforged came rushing at him, fleeing from whatever disaster had taken place inside. The artificer had to turn back and wait for the great rush of creatures to ebb before he could brave the tunnel once again.
“What happened?” Xalt asked one of the stragglers as the outflow slowed.
“Breather attack!” the warforged said as it kept running. “The stands are on fire!”
Xalt looked down the tunnel through which the straggler had come, then started the long walk into what he thought must be almost certain doom.
When Xalt emerged from the tunnel, he saw an incredible tableau laid out before him. To his left, Kandler, Burch, and Sallah battled a warforged titan bent on tearing them to pieces. In front of him, the airship’s stern jutted straight out of Bastard’s reserved section of the arena’s stands. The floor around the airship burned. To Xalt’s right, he spotted Te’oma leading Esprл out of the stands and toward the burning airship.
Now that Xalt got a closer look, he saw that the airship wasn’t burning, although everything around it was- including the lower half of a second titan, whose upper half still jutted through a hole in the airship’s hull.
Xalt circled around the airship to the right, hoping to get a better look at just what the changeling was doing with Esprл. When he caught sight of them again, Te’oma had gathered up the girl in her arms and was leaping from the splintered stands onto the airship’s tilted deck. The pair climbed up the railing toward the bridge. Xalt wondered if he could find a way onto the deck and take Esprл back.
Xalt gauged the distance of the leap he would have to make. The length paralyzed him for a moment, then the decision was torn from him, as the ship started to move. The artificer guessed what the changeling was doing. If she could extract the ship from the stands, she’d be gone before anyone could stop her. Xalt had to move now.
He surveyed the airship, looking for some means of getting aboard other than leaping from the unstable footing of the stands. There was the hole in the bottom of the hull, but the mad, half-dead titan in there closed off that route. The rope ladder was now too high from the ground for Xalt to reach. That left the mooring lines.
The two fore mooring lines lay draped over the shattered remains of Bastard’s box. One of the aft lines had
