Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) (50 page)

The shaking ceased as his airship settled on the platform above with a mighty groan. Fengel grabbed a wincing Henry with one hand and gestured up to it, past where Imogen clung to the stair they stood on. “She’s stopped! Henry, if ever you’ve borne me any love, get me to the ship! We can still save them—we can still save Natasha!”

His steward stared at him, appalled and uncertain. Then he nodded, spat blood out over the courtyard, and helped Fengel forward. They stepped past Imogen where she was clambering unsteadily to her feet, and climbed the last few steps up onto the airship landing pad.

It wasn’t large, certainly not like the piers up at the Skydocks. An oval-shaped platform of wood and steel, the Mechanists had built it for their own purposes, and it stuck out from the central smokestack spire of the Gasworks. The Dawnhawk lay perpendicular to it, having touched down in its middle and slid to a violent arrest up against the now-bent smokestacks.

Fengel felt his throat catch. Past the broken boards and burning debris that littered the platform, his lovely airship was dead. Her hull was snapped in two, her uppermost deck presented to him as if to show what would never be again. The great gasbag envelop burned, half-floating, half-dangling from the smokestacks like the awning of some great pavilion.

My ship. My crew. Natasha!

He let go of Henry and stagger-stepped across the platform, oblivious to anything beyond or below it. Images flashed through his mind’s eye of the last time this had happened, of the last time he’d lost an airship. But the
Flittergrasp
hadn’t been carrying the woman he loved.

A piece of debris reached up and grabbed his leg. Fengel toppled, falling to the creaking platform and slamming hard into it.
That had to have been a hand...

Fengel rolled onto his back. He looked down the length of his body at a bedraggled, crumpled figure lying at his feet. It stared back up at him with eyes like hard glass set above a hawklike nose and greying beard.

“Euron?” choked Fengel, incredulous.

Euron Blackheart relaxed his grip. He coughed, then hawked and spat. “Popinjay. Realms Below, but I wish ye were anyone else.”

Fengel couldn’t help himself. “What are you even doing up here?”

The old pirate sighed. He sat painfully upright, debris from the
Dawnhawk
sliding off of his ruined yesteryear outfit. “What do it even matter anymore?”

Fengel didn’t even feel his temper rise. “I asked you, what—”

“I came up here to watch th’ end,” Euron snapped back at him. “Ye damned mutinous cur! Ye took everything, rose up against me, an’ those cowardly dogs followed! Ye think yer so clever, that ye’d find a way out. So I came up here to watch ye cock it all up.” He shrugged. “Then I smelled light-air gas, and something exploded down below. Then ye arrived along with yer Bluecoatie friends, ye traitor.”

“They’re not my friends,” growled Fengel. He knew the answer, but still felt he had to ask. “And if you saw us fighting down there, why didn’t you come help?”

Euron made a flippant gesture, ignoring the approach of Imogen and Henry Smalls. “What would be th’ point? Ye’d already gotten what ye wanted, ye coward. It weren’t enough to cut and run yerself, ye had to take the whole town! Better death than that. Better to fall before a worthy enemy.” He looked up at the rapidly darkening sky. “It should have been Reddon, back then. Only one ever worth a damn. An’ now I got nothin’.”

A small explosion roared behind them from the envelope of the
Dawnhawk.
Fengel glanced back to it, feeling all his earlier panic and fear again. He turned back and lashed out at Euron with his right fist, catching the old pirate by surprise and connecting squarely with his jaw. Wooden teeth sailed through the air to bounce off the shirt of a surprised Henry Smalls. Fengel followed through, scrabbling to his knees and grabbing the old man by his ragged shirt before he could fall.

“You incompetent, glory-hungry old fool!” he screamed. “Nothing? Have nothing?” Fengel gestured at the wrecked airship only a couple dozen paces away. “Your daughter is on that ship! She could be burning alive while you wallow here in pity!” He made to climb to his feet, then stumbled. Henry Smalls ran to help him up.

Euron glanced up at him hatefully. He rubbed his jaw, then stopped as if he’d just made sense of Fengel’s words. “Natasha?” He looked back at the
Dawnhawk
, eyes widening. “But I sent her away! What is she doing back here?”

“It doesn’t matter!” screamed Fengel. He found his balance, then let go of Henry to hobble towards the
Dawnhawk.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father-in-law clamber up after him.

The wreck of the
Dawnhawk
was complete. She lay not quite sideways, her starboard side facing out, ruined deck shown in full. The hull was cracked in half, and he could see down past her decks almost all the way into the cargo deck. Debris covered her: tangles of rope, mounds of canvas, and torn metal struts from the skeleton of the gasbag above. To say nothing of all the bodies. Jets of flame shot out from the gas bag as light-air cells cooked off, like the breath of angry dragons.

A staggering figure was illuminated by the flames. She was short and clutched a boarding hatchet in two trembling hands.

Fengel put both hands to his mouth and yelled. “Stone!”

Lina Stone whirled, raising up the hatchet defensively. She bled from a myriad of cuts, scratches, and gashes. Upon seeing Fengel she froze but did not lower her weapon.

“Captain Fengel?”

Fengel clambered up the wreckage and through a broken section of the gunwales until he stood on the deck. “Stone, where are the others? Where’s Natasha?”

“They just kept coming,” said Lina. “Not tame like all the others—or like Omari had ever said. They...they just kept coming, and they wanted us dead, and they were clutching at us with dead fingers, and it was just like Breachtown all over again, and I saw Andrea, only she’s not herself any—”

Fengel grabbed the small woman by the shoulders. “Focus!” he snarled, only inches away from her face. “Where’s Natasha?”

Lina stared at him. “Stern, near the hatchway stair,” she said in a rapid-fire monotone. “She’s trapped. Omari and Allen are helping, but I can’t find Rastalak or Runt or even Michael to help.”

Something seemed to give way in her. “Oh Captain, it’s all gone tits up. The ship. She’s dead. There was the Stormhammer, but it was broken, and Euron left a bunch of angry pirates marooned there...look out!”

She shrugged free of his grip and reared back with the hatchet. Fengel followed her eyes, the twist of her arms. He stepped to one side, drew his saber, then whirled. The blackened, wizened head of a dead pirate went rolling down the deck as he cut it neatly from its shoulders. What was left of the corpse fell limply back down to the deck, still reaching for him. Then Fengel’s injured leg voiced a complaint, forcing a gasp from him.

“Come on!” he yelled to Euron and the others as they picked their way aboard the airship. “Aft hatch stairway. Watch out for Revenants!” Then he pushed past Lina and staggered his way down across the deck.

It was easy to see where to go. The Yulani witch and his ship’s apprentice Mechanist worked feverishly to free Natasha, who had both her legs pinned beneath a heavy metal strut. Her awful parrot, Butterbeak, hopped back and forth between the wreckage. The parrot was too fat to fly with its feathers so singed.

“Put yer damned backs into it!” snarled Natasha.

“I am not some draft horse!” said Omari.

“We need a pulley,” said Allen, his voice tight with exhaustion and pain, who had one arm bound tightly to his chest with a length of rope and looked as badly off as Fengel felt. “If...if we can attach it to the envelope with some rope, we can—”

A section of that very gas bag fell away, crashing to the deck and sending soot spraying across them both.

“Or...not,” he continued. Allen’s eyes lit up as he spied Fengel. “Captain!” 

Fengel swept his arm back and forth to clear the air as he staggered forward. “Natasha!” He sheathed his saber and fell down to his knees beside her.

His wife was gorgeous, as always, even though she was covered in soot, grime, and dried blood. She smelled like an abattoir, though. And part of her hair had caught fire, which also wasn’t doing her scent any favors.

“About time you showed up,” she snarled. Her face froze in a rictus, then she sat up and slapped Omari across her shoulder. “Argh! Be careful! That’s my legs under this thing, not some loose change you’re digging for!” She glanced back at Fengel, face softening. “You look half dead.”

“I know,” agreed Fengel. “I know.” He waved the others over. “Move your feet!”

Fengel staggered over beside Omari and put his hands to the strut. It was made of steel and thick as his torso, buried at one end by a massive heap of canvas. “Here, Omari. You and I both lift. Allen! See if you can jam a lever underneath.”

The young Mechanist grabbed up a much-battered boarding pike with his good arm. But rather than help, he looked around worriedly.

“We have to hurry,” he said. “The...the Castaways are all dead, but they’re not like the other Revenants. They’re almost unstoppable, and they’re recovering from the crash.”

“I told you!” snapped Omari. “They hate you! They really wanted to kill us in life, so they’ll keep on trying in death.”

“We can deal with them afterward,” yelled Fengel. “Now shut up and lift this strut!”

Allen and Omari both shared a look, then bent to work. A shadow fell across them all, and Fengel felt a moment’s relief.
Finally
.

“Henry, help Omari. Lina, put your weight on that lever with Allen. Euron, try not to get in—”

He froze at the look of alarm on Natasha’s face. She opened her mouth to shout denial, reaching for a broken plank at her side. Then a cutlass speared down past Fengel’s shoulder and buried itself in her chest.

Natasha’s eyes popped wide as she slammed back down to the deck. Her breath left in a gasp, and she grabbed at the blade.

“No!” Fengel turned and rose, raising both fists in a two-handed blow at the swordsman behind him. He connected, staggering the man back.

It was a Revenant. He wore a tattered outfit several decades out of date, with a greying beard and wrinkled, well-tanned skin. An eye patch covered a missing eye, a lesser injury than the gaping wound in his chest that had killed him. Fengel didn’t know him, and he didn’t know how he’d gotten here.

The dead man seemed to notice him for the first time. Fengel drew his saber as it swung its cutlass, slow and awkward, though still fast enough to be lethal. Their blades clashed, sending sparks between them both.

The head. Take off the head!
Omari’s accursed undead were usually slow and easily handled. She’d said again and again that they weren’t dangerous unless first threatened.

A cutlass blade chopped neatly through the neck of the one-eyed Revenant. Its head tumbled away off down the deck, and it seemed to freeze. Then the corpse toppled, revealing Euron Blackheart with blade in hand. Henry, Lina, and Imogen stood behind him.

“Morgan One-Eye!” he snarled. “Ye traitor! I warned ye I’d kill ye if ye ever left that island unguarded.”

Henry caught Fengel’s eye. “There are others on the deck, and they’re just as angry.”

A chorus of undead groans echoed about the
Dawnhawk
, underlining his point. Fengel didn’t reply. He turned again and dropped to his knees, letting go his saber and fumbling for a handkerchief, a rag, anything at all to stanch the bleeding. Omari and Allen were there, trying to help but just getting in the way. Natasha was gasping, clutching at her shirt where the cutlass had impaled her. He shoved the two crewmen out of the way and came in close to help her, but she only growled and swatted him away with her free hand.

Natasha reached into the tatters of her puffy pirate’s shirt and fished something out. She flung it to the deck and then fell back with a groan.

It was a small book, the one he’d given her.
How to Pillage Friends and Intimidate People.
The little folio had been almost severed through by the Revenant’s cutlass. Almost.

“Looks like...it came in handy...after all,” she gasped at him.

Fengel wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “I told you,” he said.

“That you did.” Natasha rubbed her chest. “Argh. Still fells like someone took a hammer to my tit. Now quite staring, and will you three get this damned strut off of my legs?” 

“Oh,” said Fengel. “Right. Allen, grab your lever. Omari—”

“What are ye doing down here!”

Euron staggered over to stand above them all. “Dad?” said Natasha, surprised.

“Aye! And I asked ye a question, girl. I sent ye off to secure the Stormhammer. So what are ye doing back here?”

Natasha looked as if she’d spit black tar. “You sent me off to keep me away from the fighting,” she snarled back. “To the Realms Below with that! I leave for a day, and you let the whole town get overrun by Perinese! It’s a
damned
good thing we found our own, working Voornish weapon. Unlike that junk pile up north.”

“Well, of course it didn’t work! Ye would have had to fix it. Should have taken ye days!”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “You knew. You knew that it wasn’t working!”

“Of course he did,” said Fengel. “He never intended to save Haventown. All he wanted was a glorious death.”

As the old pirate rounded on him, a volley of musket fire rang out. Hot lead whipped all around them, splintering wood and ricocheting off metal. Euron jerked violently, almost falling over. Then he looked down at his ragged shirt with a grunt. He touched his chest gingerly, pulling back fingertips tinged by blood. Looking up at Fengel, he narrowed his eyes.

“Me only regret,” he said clearly, “was that I never killed ye myself, popinjay.” Then, turning to Natasha, he reached out to her and collapsed.

“Dad!” yelled Natasha.

Fengel whirled, grabbing up his saber as he did and ignoring the pain in his ankle.