Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [9]
I’d not let that happen.
The reinforcements provided by Rannon’s guards were winning the fight for us when the slowing of the ship let the vullwings catch us from behind. Once more the rain of enemy arrows loosed, but this time our people were ready with shields and few of the darts found their mark. Those arrows would slow our attempts to clear the decks, however, and given a chance the reivers would land more of their own to counter our hard won advantage. We had no bows on deck, no way to strike back at them in the air.
Or did we?
I was on the midship riser, the aft ballista sitting below me. I dropped down beside the weapon, Valyan warding my back, then spun it outward from the ship and pulled the lanyard to fire the five side-by-side arrows. Those arrows weighed almost four pounds apiece. They cut the air with a heavy swish, and they scarcely slowed as they went through the feathers and flesh of two vullwings flying close together. I regretted the birds. But not the men on their backs.
A slap of my hand reloaded the weapon and I swiveled the mechanism to the left and fired again. A vullwing was just landing at the stern. Two raiders stood beside it. The ballista load swept the deck clear like a broom, spraying crimson over the railing.
A vullwing was above me then, on its back a lean Human in black leathers. His dark brown hair was braided at the sides and a savage scar writhed palely through the stubble of beard at his chin.
Strange how one notices details at such times. I noticed most the man’s crossbow, jaguar-spotted and of an odd design. Its quarrel was triple sized and glittered like the sun. He fired it at me. And Valyan, who was beside me with his emerald skin splashed red with blood, dove in front of me and caught the quarrel in his shield.
The glittering bolt thunked home in the lacquered surface of the buckler and exploded, literally exploded, as if pregnant with gunpowder. I’d thought there was no gunpowder on Talera, though there were the materials to make it. It seemed someone had discovered how.
Valyan’s shield shredded in the explosion, scattering shrapnel on the wind. The heavy boss knocked down a guard nearby and a wood fragment as long as a nail went through the meat of my forearm. Valyan was down, the front of his body porcupined with splinters.
The man in black hung only a few feet above me, the wings of his mount buffeting the deck. He was reloading. I shouted in rage, put one foot on the bracing of the ballista, and leaped upward for his throat. At the top of my arc I swung my sword overhand and down.
The reiver was quick; I’d give him that. He got the crossbow in the way of my saber and the steel blade snapped on the steel heart of the bow. The second bolt released on its own, hissing evilly as it went past my head. I didn’t see it strike, though I heard it boom. My hand caught the man’s boot on the way down.
The good leather failed to yield and my weight yanked the outlaw from the saddle. There were straps and ties that held him to that saddle, and they didn’t yield either. But the combined weight of the two of us dragged the vullwing to one side and crashed it to the deck. Its neck snapped, killing it.
I was on my feet in an instant. Only a stub of blade hung in my hand but it would be enough for this outlaw, whether or not he had murdered Valyan. The fellow was trying to get up, and trying to draw the rapier belted at his left side. I took a step toward him and the deck dropped beneath me, stealing my balance and throwing me to the planks.
I cast a glance toward the pilot’s glass chamber and saw it cracked open like an egg. Now I knew where the second explosive bolt had landed. The inside of the chamber was splashed with blood, and fire licked around on the deck beneath.
We were going down in flames. Without a pilot. Toward the snake curve of the Shauval River beneath us.
And Rannon was below decks.
CHAPTER THREE
SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES