He also knew another certain truth.
The kingdom’s fate is my own.
Understanding this, Wryth spurred his horse toward the Klashean wyndship. He drew the others in his wake as he trampled and knocked workers to the side. He led the charge toward the rising ship. Still, by the time he was near enough, its keel was far overhead and beginning to turn south.
Laach clattered up to him. “We’re too late.”
Wryth turned his fury upon the archsheriff. “No. We do what we must.”
Laach shifted in his saddle. He was plainly uncomfortable with what had been worked out earlier, an eventuality that they had both hoped to avoid.
“If the king finds out you let that potent artifact of malignant power fall into the hands of his enemy,” Wryth warned, “it will be your head.”
Laach sank more firmly atop his horse, recognizing the truth in Wryth’s threat. He twisted and bellowed to his men, “Archers to the fore!”
A cadre of bowmen separated from the others, pounding forward and slipping from saddles, their longbows already in hand. A torchbearer ran across the row with a fiery brand, lighting the oil-soaked wraps knotted below each iron tip. One after the other, the archers dropped, bending knee and bow, strings pulled to ears, flaming points aimed skyward.
“Let loose!” Laach ordered, chopping an arm down.
Strings twanged, and bows sprang. A volley of streaming fire shot through the smoky air. Several hit their mark, piercing the skin of the balloon and winking out. Even before those struck, the torchbearer ran the line once more, and another dozen fiery tips pointed high.
“Again!” Laach hollered.
More arrows peppered into the balloon with hardly any more effect. As a third volley was prepped, Laach looked at Wryth. The sheriff’s face vacillated from apology to fear. Maybe even a little relief. What they were doing could ignite far more than a wyndship.
Then Wryth heard it. A muffled blast from above. He stared high but saw nothing. The wyndship continued to rise, the gasbag drawing it ever upward. The balloon faded into the bank of low clouds—which suddenly flared brighter, as if run through by lightning. Thunder followed in booming blasts. Gouts of flame shredded apart the gloom. The bow of the wyndship tipped downward as loose cables drizzled out of the fiery cloudbank.
“Back!” Laach yelled, swinging an arm overhead. He yanked his reins and tugged his steed around. “Go!”
To either side of Wryth, the guardsmen fled, some on horseback, others on foot. Laach galloped past him. Wryth kept his horse rooted in place. He watched the fiery spectacle above.
I must be sure.
Overhead, the ship canted steeply down, first slowly, then faster. Wryth searched for any billowing dispatches of sailrafts from its flanks, in case anyone on board tried to make an escape from the plummeting ship. He saw none. The destruction had happened too fast.
As he watched, the few cables still attached to the ship dragged the flaming remnants of the blasted balloon out of the black clouds. The ship plummeted even more swiftly, diving toward its doom.
Wryth swore he could hear faint screams of terror, but maybe it was only his own heart’s desire given voice. He cursed the thief for causing him so much grief, for requiring such rash action. But he dared not let that ancient bronze mystery fall into the clutches of Klashean alchymists. For the sake of the kingdom, that must not happen. No matter the consequences.
Better for it to crash to ruin here.
He finally tore his horse around, dug in his heels, and galloped away. A splintering boom exploded behind him. He twisted back to see the ship shatter against the rock, cracking in half, blasting a wave of sand toward him. He raced it to the ridge and finally reined in his steed alongside the others.
Sand washed over the group and rolled past the ridgeline. Debris rained and pelted all around. Finally, the flaming remains of the balloon drifted down and settled over the broken ship, like a fiery death shroud.
Wryth faced the destruction with one goal.
To sift through the wreckage for the treasure that is mine.
* * *
FROM A QUARTER league above, Rhaif stared out their cabin’s window down to the fiery crater atop Eyr Rigg, where the flaming husk of the Klashean wyndship smoked and burned. He and Pratik had watched the flaming attack upon the other craft from the safety of a wyndship flying the curled horns of Aglerolarpok.
“Clearly your precautions—as deceptive as they were—have proven wise in the end,” the Chaaen said dourly.
Rhaif heard little praise in the man’s words, and he certainly felt no satisfaction himself, only a pain in his chest that he rubbed with a knuckle. “I did not expect my ruse to lead to such a fiery end, to more lives lost.”
As their wyndship was drawn farther into the clouds, the view below grew obscured. Rhaif turned his gaze out to the smolder of the Boils in the distance.
So many dead …
He shook his head. “I only wanted to fool the others into thinking that I’d fled to the Southern Klashe, to draw their eyes that way, instead of west.” He glanced to Shiya, whose bronze face was exposed after he had removed her veiled helm in the privacy of their cabin. He looked at Pratik. “I hadn’t imagined they’d have connected your escape from the gaol to me so quickly. I thought it would take them a day or two at the very least.”
He hadn’t even explained his ruse to Pratik until they were marching toward the wyndships. He had wanted everyone—including the Chaaen—to believe the other ship was his goal. Days ago, when Laach’s men had begun rounding up Klashean traders, Rhaif had come up with his plan. In order to reinforce the assumption that he would flee to the Klashe, he had plotted to break a Chaaen out of the dungeon, knowing eventually someone would realize who had orchestrated that escape. Especially as Rhaif had left behind clues at the whorehouse, connecting him to the crime. He needed everyone to believe he had persuaded the Chaaen to help him board a Klashean ship.
But I had underestimated who pursued us.
He knew the fiery wreckage could not be laid at the feet of Llyra hy March. He pictured the tattooed countenance of Wryth. From the air, Rhaif had spotted the Shrive ride up with Laach in a flurry of horses. Then the flaming arrows had flown, surely directed more by that accursed Iflelen than by the archsheriff.
Pratik looked ill. “Let us hope they do not realize too quickly that we were never aboard the other craft.”
Rhaif was not overly concerned in this regard. “It will take them some time for the fires to be snuffed out, for the ashes to be sifted through, before they realize that Shiya’s bronze form is not in the wreckage. Even then, they’ll still have to judge if we backtracked to Anvil or took one of the two wyndships. Hopefully, by then we’ll be across the seas and well on our way to the lands of Aglerolarpok.”
Pratik nodded. “Despite the tragic outcome, there was wisdom in your plan.”
Rhaif sighed and stared down through the dark clouds at the ruddy glow still faintly visible. He remained unconvinced if the steep cost in lives and misery was worth the freedom of one thief. The Chaaen’s next words reinforced this.
“There will be consequences,” Pratik warned. “This attack upon a wyndship flying the Klashean Arms, along with the fiery deaths of so many of my people, it will not go unpunished. The honor of the Imri-Ka will require swift and bloody vengeance.”