Edge of Destiny (26 page)

The fang was unharmed, but the chisel’s end had curled over.

Eir dropped the chisel and mallet beside her. She also let fall the whole belt of tools. Closing her eyes, she raised her face toward the dark rafters high above and said, “Spirit of Bear, guide my work.”

She swung her arm at the fang, but before she could strike it, fingers had become claws. The foreleg of a great grizzly lashed at that tooth. Claws rasped across it but left no mark. From the other side, more claws ripped at it. These were claws that could tear down a young tree, could scratch stone, but the fang stood, inviolate. Now fully a bear, Eir lunged in to set her own massive teeth against the dragon’s great tooth. Enamel skirled, but no harm came to the Fang of the Dragon.

Eir reeled back, her figure transforming again into that of a norn warrior—shaking, sweating, enervated, and defeated. She looked out numbly at the crowd.

Rytlock stepped up, pulling Sohothin free. “Let me have a shot at that thing.”

Logan arrived with hammer in hand. “Me, too.”

“No!” Eir snapped. “We’re done here. Let me through! Let me go!”

Her friends pushed back the crowd and moved in to hold her up as she went.

“It’s fine,” Snaff said softly as they moved along. “So, we’re not ready yet. But we
will
be. We’ll defeat the dragons. Together, we can defeat anything.”

That night, there were more gifts and feasts and stories and ale. But Eir was quiet through it all, and all the comrades felt the weight of what had happened. Even more norn had flooded into town. From hundreds of miles, they had come, and the merrymakers from the last two nights had not dispersed. The sound of the ongoing party was like a logging camp next to a stockyard beside a slaughterhouse.

“With an army like this, they could have done it without us,” Eir muttered.

She gathered her companions and led them to her workshop. “I’ve had about as much of this as I can take,” she confessed.

Rytlock laughed out loud, but then looked around at the others, saw that they agreed with Eir, and sullenly stared at his claws.

“Norn ale is stiffer than most,” Logan said, rubbing his forehead. “And norn pints are gallons.”

“That’s what I
like,
” Rytlock said.

“And here they are!” came a new voice at the workshop door—a deep voice that was somehow both jovial and ferocious. Eir and her companions turned to see Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed. He towered in the doorway, his pistol-strewn bandoliers gleaming in the lantern light. A smile lurked beneath his long mustache. “I came all the way from Lion’s Arch to toast Destiny’s Edge, the slayers of the Dragonspawn—and yet, no one knew where you were.”

“Here we are,” Eir replied.

Magnus sighed, his breath ghosting from his nostrils. He stepped into the workshop. “Well, anyway, congratulations!”

“Something like that.”

Magnus set his boot on a nearby chair and leaned toward them all. “Now I need a favor.”

Logan said, “What kind of favor?”

“Help me hunt down and destroy another dragon champion.”

Rytlock arched an eyebrow. “
Who
is this dragon champion?”

“His name is Morgus Lethe,” Magnus responded. “He rules the black seaways beyond Lion’s Arch—he and swarms of undead. They attack ships and tear through their hulls and drop them to the bottom. They kill hundreds of sailors a week and turn them into more undead.”

“Can’t you handle a few undead?” Rytlock asked. “After all, they
are
prekilled.”

“One by one, they are nothing, but where there’s one, there’s a thousand.”

Logan put in, “If you haven’t noticed, there are only seven of us.”

“Yes, but you defeated a thousand before,” Magnus replied. “And I have a personal score to settle with this devil Morgus Lethe. In life, he was a norn like me, captain of the
Cormorant
before me. Since he fell among the undead, they have known our every move, our every route, our tactics, our vulnerabilities. I need—”

“You need strangers,” Eir interrupted.

Magnus nodded thoughtfully. “You’ve destroyed one dragon champion. Help me destroy another.”

“We must,” Caithe said. “If we are not yet powerful enough to face down a dragon, we must face down their champions. We must fight them.”

Logan shrugged. “Sounds less dangerous than another night of celebration in Hoelbrak.”

Rytlock growled. “I’m not leaving until
tomorrow.
”

Caithe, Logan, and Rytlock exchanged looks, and Caithe spoke, “We’ll go.”

“Of course we’ll go,” Eir said, “all of us. We go not just because you asked, but to destroy another dragon champion—”

“Wonderful!” Magnus proclaimed. “Morgus Lethe, prepare to meet Destiny’s Edge!”

From Her Royal Majesty, Jennah,
Queen of Kryta and so forth . . .
To Logan Thackeray

Greetings:

The news spreads through Kryta of your conquest of the Dragonspawn. Congratulations, my dear Champion. I knew that my trust in you was well placed. Your brother was relieved to hear the news as well, though he hid it with annoyance. Comparing your battles against icebrood to his long days guarding castle walls, I can see why he might be jealous. I hope that, someday, you both find common ground and brotherhood.

I had hoped you would return to Divinity’s Reach, but I hear that is not to be. With the news of your victory also came a report of your next mission: to face Morgus Lethe, champion of the dragon Zhaitan.

It seems you are most alive in the heart of danger.

My heart tells me to forbid you to go. I should. An entire army would have difficulty facing Lethe. You are my champion, not one of Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed’s sailors. But I know you will not turn away from danger. Not when doing so could aid Kryta. And in that, I support you.

But if you lose to Morgus Lethe, it would be worse than losing an army.

So, your Queen must allow you to go. Yet still, I think of you often. I imagine you marching across blasted tundra, battling monsters in caves of ice, standing stalwart against our enemies. Perhaps I am just imagining the battles you fight, but I choose to believe we have a deeper bond. When you are finished killing Lethe—which I know you will do—I hope that you will come to Divinity’s Reach. I would see you once more, and greet you as a true hero of our grateful nation.

Your grateful queen,

Jennah

MORGUS LETHE

T
wo weeks later, Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed led a pair of tiny geniuses on a tour of his gigantic galleon—the
Cormorant.
“Through here, we have the captain’s quarters,” Magnus said as he pushed back a pair of twelve-foot-tall doors. “A little cramped.”

“Spacious! Tremendous!” Snaff said.

Zojja started to march off the dimensions of the room.

Snaff went on, “We could fit two golems in here if we put the table, bunk, ale cask, and so forth into storage.”

The captain colored slightly but managed a laugh. “No. This is the
captain’s
quarters, not the golems’ quarters.”

“Fifty feet wide by forty feet deep,” Zojja announced with satisfaction.

“Fifty by forty?” Magnus said. “It’s hardly twenty-five by twenty!”

“I’m using asuran feet. More accurate,” Zojja said. She glanced at his boots. “I’d never measure in norn feet!”

Huffing in annoyance, Magnus reached down to cup the asura’s backs and shuffle them out of his quarters. “How about we look in the hold? Plenty of room in the hold for golems.”

“The hold!” Snaff gazed admiringly at the captain. “Where you
hold
things. You maritime types are quite literal, aren’t you?”

Captain Magnus shepherded them across the deck, ignoring the sniggers of his mates. He jabbed fingers into a wooden grate and yanked it upward. “There it is—the hold of the
Cormorant,
big enough for a thousand large crates.”

Snaff and Zojja waddled up to the hatch and stared down into the huge, dark hold, loaded with crates and casks. The asura began muttering back and forth.

“A thousand large crates? I’d say ten thousand large crates.”

“He’s talking norn-large, not asura-large.”

“Ahem,” Captain Magnus interrupted. “How does it look to you?”

“Most suitable!” Snaff pronounced with a grin. “Of course, we’ll have to off-load all this cargo, and you won’t be able to man the cannons you have down there, and we’ll need to cut six new hatches, three along each rail, with trapdoors—”

“Cut new hatches? With trapdoors? The crew will fall through!”

Sighing, Snaff climbed up on a nearby barrel so he could look the captain in the eye.

“What is it?” Magnus asked.

“Eir said we needed to turn your ship into an undead destroyer,” Snaff explained patiently. “This is how we’ll do so.”

Captain Magnus stroked his black mustache. “I suggest a change of plan. You’ll not be turning
Cormorant
into an undead destroyer. You’ll be doing it to
that
ship.” He pointed to a vessel moored nearby. “A barque.”

Snaff dubiously scanned the ship. “
Bark
like a dog?”

“No,
barque
like a ship. You should know barques. They’re asuran. Just your size.”

It was not just small. It was decrepit.

“Hmm,” Snaff mused. “Looks burned.”

“Part of it is. But, look, it’s seaworthy. It’s got a solid hull. That’s all you really want, right?”

Snaff sniffed. “It’s too small.”

“Take two, then,” Captain Magnus said, gesturing to a second barque docked in the shadow of the first. It was somehow even shabbier.

“Where’d you get them?”

“Saved them—but only just—from Morgus Lethe,” said the captain. “Both crews—asuran crews—were lost.”

“Sadly, asuran krewes are often lost,” Snaff said reflectively. After a few more moments of thought, Snaff jabbed his hand out toward the captain. “We’ll take them. Very soon, those barques will be barking at Morgus Lethe!”

Smiling ruefully, the captain took the asura’s tiny hand and shook it.

The preparations for war took two months.

While Snaff and Zojja labored away to retrofit the pair of barques, Eir, Logan, Rytlock, Caithe, and Garm learned the ways of the sea. Captain Magnus took them out in the
Cormorant
for training expeditions.

They learned how to keep their feet on rolling decks, how to climb ratlines in a gale, how to furl and unfurl sail, how to hurl grapnels and board ships and fire blunderbusses. More than once, a companion ended up in the drink, and sadly for Rytlock, no hyenas were near at hand. After his first plunge, sinking like a stone, Rytlock was required to wear a safety line tied around his waist. Of course, when they used it to to haul him out of the sea, he rose backside first. Rytlock quickly learned to swim, if only to shuck that embarrassing line.

He also learned to keep down his lunch, though he would often be a little green beneath his dark fur.

Meanwhile, Eir learned the charts, the currents, and the hazards of the local seaways, as well as the lairs of their enemy. Captain Magnus made sure they never approached the unholy sanctum of Morgus Lethe, for to do so would be to draw him out, but he showed Eir on the charts where it lay. It was a maelstrom above a great graveyard of ships. To go into those waters would be certain death—unless they were prepared.

At last, they were.

The galleon
Cormorant
breasted through gray waves beneath a gray sky. Her sails snapped white overhead, straining with the elemental wind that Zojja had called up to carry them across the sea. The deck of the ship groaned beneath four hundred boots—crew at battle stations. Gunners loaded cannons, fighters drew blunderbusses, and necromancers readied vials of enchanted acid. Grim-jawed, they braced for war.

Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed manned the helm. His eyes glowed with the thrill of the hunt, and his hands held the wheel in a steady beat against north winds. Beside him stood Eir Stegalkin, slayer of the Dragonspawn. Logan, too, was there, assigned to guard Snaff and Zojja. The two asura stood nearby, wearing golden laurels and swaying slowly. Rytlock and Garm were stationed along the starboard rail, tasked with deck-to-deck fighting, and Caithe had taken up her position in the crow’s nest.

Eir had planned out the whole battle, giving assignments to each of her friends. She had even asked Zojja to enchant every weapon aboard to strike hard and true against undead. Everything was in place.

Now, they just waited for Morgus Lethe.

“Do you think we’ve scared him off?” Eir asked, scanning the choppy waters ahead.

Captain Magnus shook his head. “Lethe doesn’t scare off. The
Cormorant
gives him pause, aye, but only until we’re fully above his lair.” The captain nodded to the fore. “We’re approaching it now.”