The Dark Lord was stronger. He was faster, and he seemed suddenly without all the fatigue and wounded sluggishness which had been causing Silenos’ advantage to grow by the attack. He had made an error, and it seemed like that error was about to kill him. It took a very young and a very stupid caster to die. He could only hope his hasty precautions over the past few weeks would be enough.

  Silenos raised his lance, missing the mace as it twisted unexpectedly low and thudded into his side. The impact hurt- more than the last few he’d taken, cracking the keratin with a jagged pop and sending the kinesis of his wound to permeate deep through the softer tissues below. He stumbled back, guard instinctually shifting to protect his wounded side just as the Dark Lord’s mace came around for the other. This time it hit an already weakened set of armour, cracking that fully open, and caving in a rib beneath it. Blood rose up into Silenos’ mouth as his knee buckled.

  It shouldn’t have been possible. He’d never heard of a creature able to feed off the magics of an Entity, let alone several. The closest he’d ever heard a caster getting was his own ritual to absorb from as part of a contract- and only he and Adonis had known about that. Whatever was happening now was beyond the scope of his predictions.

  But not beyond killing him.

  He fell back, too slowly. He guarded too weakly, he felt his combat form’s anatomy slowly surrendering to the whittling blows of his enemy.

  And then the Dark Lord disappeared, hurled to one side with a supersonic whipcrack shaking the air in his wake. A moment later the sound of a cannonshot reached Silenos’ ears. He looked to the side, and found himself truly surprised.

  For descending from the skies was Swick the Swift’s airship; repaired and battle-ready.

  ***

  God, did it feel good to be in the air again. Swick had barely even known how much he’d been dying, trapped down there on the dirt. Now he was free, now he was airborne, and the world was that much sweeter.

  The wind was a gentle caress on his skin, the skies a refreshing blast of oxygenated air to infuse his every breath with energy. There was the same old thrill to flying he’d always felt, but stronger. Sharpened and intensified by years of neglect. He’d forgotten how life felt up here, after so long of seeing it only through his fugue of alcohol. Now he remembered.

  But he didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on it for long, because they were closing in on their enemy. Were it not for Swick’s Vigour he’d have been unable to pick anything out at all- unable to even remain on the deck of the ship’s exterior with the speed they were moving. As things were he could just make out the Dark Lord fighting against Shaiagrazni at the midst of some great battle.

  Beside him, he just barely heard Felicia growl.

  “That’s the fucker, right?” She asked.

  Swick had glimpsed the Dark Lord once or twice- always from a safe distance of course. He nodded.

  “Then ready these new weapons of yours, this one’s for my brothers.”

  He hurried to do so, taking careful aim with Shaiagrazni’s cannon and whispering a silent prayer of thanks to the insane Fleshcrafter for being so preemptive in outfitting the vessel with it. It was a bigger weapon, too, firing iron balls measuring a good half-foot in diameter. He loaded one, packed the back of the weapon with blasting oil, gave the signal. Waited for his own.

  They’d not had long to rehearse, and Swick could only hope their aim was on point. Fortunately, luck was behind them.

  His ears shivered as the cannon fired, and the entire vessel trembled as if in fear of its own prow’s weapon. A whipcrack rang out, sharp and sudden, and he heard a light popping as an air funnel formed and died all within a fraction of a second.

  The Dark Lord was hundreds of yards ahead- perhaps as much as half a mile. But the impact caught him in less than a second, aimed more perfectly than skill alone could possibly have allowed and bowling the caster fully off his feet to grind a deep gouge out through the dirt underfoot. He stopped sliding and rolling only after he’d been driven twenty paces sidelong.

  Of course that was not much of an alleviation on their current situation. For one thing, the ground was still covered in shambling undead as far as the eye could see- while Galukar and Lilia both fought tooth and nail against swarms of…Something. Swick couldn’t describe the things, seeing them only as physical anomalies in the periphery of his vision. They were powerful, though, and barely being held at bay.

  Right when Shaiagrazni collapsed from his wounds, and remained collapsed even while the undead around him started hurtling for his unconscious body with weapons raised and jaws wide.

  Well, that made priority number one quite obvious; stop their strongest fighter from being cannibalised in his sleep.

  “We’re going low!” Swick called, not needing to glance over his shoulder to know the command would be heard, heeded, executed. Rigging rerigged, sails raised as a windbreak, ship prepared to turn its velocity downwards, bleed the excess speed away and strafe over the enemies.

  It had always been among the deadliest manoeuvres a skyship could perform, but its mastery and frequent use was half the reason for Swick’s reputation. He felt the deceleration start all at once, then continue with a sluggish consistence as they arced downwards. The undead were almost on Shaiagrazni- they were almost on the undead- the wind was a scream in his ears. He gave the order just as they closed.

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  Felicia was the one on catch-and-run duty, tethered to the deck and fast as anyone. She leapt overboard just as they came nearest to Shaiagrazni’s form.

  While she did, in the precious moments before she dropped down to grab him, the cannons fired. All of them, at once.

  Powerful damned things that they were, Swick actually feared the ship might break apart from the recoiling force of their blasts. It held, though, and he was able to enjoy the sight of scores- even hundreds- of undead coming apart into clouds of vaporized viscera and rapidly spinning limbs. The air suddenly smelled of rancid blood and that strange acrid scent that always came with blasting oil detonations.

  And Felicia was dropping down in the distraction, grabbing Shaiagrazni just as the ship tore past. Both of them were dragged in its wake, rope croaking in pain at the considerable effort of hauling so heavy a load with so much speed.

  Then everything went wrong.

  A fireball came for the ship, breaking against its hull- newly reinforced with that keratin stuff Shaiagrazni used in his grotesqueries- but detonating in the impact. It sent flames blasting out in all directions, hot and dense. They engulfed Felicia and Shaiagrazni.

  Swick stared, fearing for one moment that he was about to see charred corpses where thered been allies mere moments ago. He didn’t, of course, both Heroes seemed fine- the explosion had been far enough, the energy diluted enough by distance, that even Felicia barely had a singed eyebrow. But the rope wasn’t filled with Vigour, and that was on fire now.

  More fireballs quickly distracted Swick from the fact, and he started barking orders again.

  “Propulsion!” He roared. “Full speed, sails down, evasion in light arcs!”

  It was a very important detail, that last feature. With the speeds a skyship could move, turning at anything but a shallow angle would incur huge changes in acceleration and deceleration to its mass. With something as heavy as it, such differences were catastrophic.

  Skyships were very rarely destroyed by enemy fire, directly. Mostly, when one heard about such a vessel falling in battle, it was because the idiot piloting it panicked under enemy fire and tore his own ship in half trying to avoid it.

  Swick didn’t intend to make that sort of mistake, new hull or not.

  Within moments their speed was picking up, fireballs left far behind and even heavy trebuchet stones or ballista bolts not much quicker in catching them. They cut wide arcs around the army, circling over them with a league-long turning radius to manage their acceleration. Even that looked like just about the limit of what some crewmen could manage, but Swick didn’t dare any less evasion than this.

  Besides, they had other things to focus on than just flight.

  “Cannons!” He roared. “Load the starboard set with blastshot, port with solid shot. Fire at will!”

  They were circling the enemy clockwise, which meant that starboard was facing the army. Swick had seen the Dark Lord’s durability first-hand, though, and he wanted to make sure that they had as many fortress-cracking solid shots prepared as was possible if he suddenly attacked again. Hence the loading pattern on their port side, allowing for such weapons to be brought to bear with only a turning of the vessel. It would have to do.

  And it did. In moments, cannons were firing. All half-dozen of the heavy things spitting out their devastation in long volleys, one coming every minute and a half. There’d not been long to drill on the way to the battlefield, but the Red Fingers were always quick to learn, and they’d been careful to put as much work as they could into mastering the weapons. Twenty hours or so made a lot of difference.

  But the shells made more. Each one was only a thin outer skin of the bony substance used in Shaiagrazni’s mass-produced projectiles, their interiors filled with blasting oil and smaller, solid projectiles about as wide as a man’s pinkie. Upon impact, they detonated. Detonated powerfully enough that Swick could see the concussion as it distorted air and sent refractive waves running through it.

  And he could see the carnage better. Every cannon was a hundred, even two hundred dead or dying enemies. Within their first volley they’d erased enough of them to man a smaller fortress.

  But they had the ammo for a good few dozen more.

  Swick left the boys too it, with orders to bring him back for any new concerns, and finally hurried to look at Shaiagrazni. Things had deteriorated there.

  The rope was still intact, despite the turns. That was good but expected- he’d specifically chosen the thickest one they had, a hand-wide mass of fibre able to withstand over twenty tons before snapping.

  When intact. It wasn’t now, though, and in fact it was still on bloody fire. Swick cursed, recognising the flames as some form of magic. It wasn’t a particularly hard deduction given their vibrant green colouration, and ability to continue burning the rope despite being pelted at all times by winds in excess of a hundred miles per hour.

  Still, the rope held. For now, and it was being pulled back in. A few more moments- a minute, maybe, at most- and Shaiagrazni would be on deck.

  Swick heard the call an instant later;

  “Captain! Come look!”

  He sighed. Of course things weren’t that easy, when the fuck had they ever been?

  The Dark Lord was up, and turned to them. Swick’s blood ran cold. He wasn’t just facing them, he was close. He must’ve crossed the battlefield without their noticing, carefully positioning himself at a point where the vessel’s turn left it nearer to the bulk of the forces, setting a trap with himself as the killing instrument.

  And it was too late to turn away.

  Ahead, the air twisted and flashed vibrant crimson. Demonic energies, Swick recognised, were building, densifying, solidifying. The very atmosphere seemed to break down around them, conjuring a strong wind which sucked in everything nearby as the Dark Lord’s power continued to congeal. Then it came on as a single wall, a deadly stormfront from which no escape was possible.

  For an instant, Swick froze. Fear flashed through his mind, punching the thoughts out of him, dragging him to memories of a looming stony wall and a fiery descent. Then his mind hardened, he gathered his wits, and he started throwing out orders.

  “SLOW!” He roared, instantly. “SAILS ONE THIRD DOWN, ANGLE THEM AT TWENTY DEGREES.”

  There was no hesitation, thank God, but he saw plenty of confusion. That was fine, Swick was almost confused himself. He started running. “EVERYONE TAKE COVER.” Swick hit the wheel, watching his men disappear down under the decks. Then the wave was on him.

  It caught the sails first, snagging them, dragging with resisting air for a solid few seconds.

  The hull groaned, screamed, cracks forming and running along it measuring farther from head to toes than a man. The entire vehicle trembled with the strain, and Swick knew instantly it would have been destroyed already were it not reinforced so well by Shaiagraznian magic.

  He’d banked on that, though. He’d banked on everything that was happening. Swick had flown a skyship for longer than perhaps any other man in living memory, survived more crashing incidents than perhaps any ever.

  And now, he was stone-cold sober.