Up, up it went, rising with each sweep of it wings. Ganelon abandoned his axe, clinging with both hands to the spines on the dragon’s head. Hampered by the corpse of the ram’s head, unbalanced by the loss of its tail, and trying desperately to shake the murderous parasite from its back, the chimera lurched crazily. One of the larger skyships, a lumbering caravel that looked to be some sort of festival barge, was banking to turn when the chimera crashed into it. One of its orbs—or tidal engines, as Moog had called them—tore loose and went plummeting toward the river below. The ship listed as though caught by a cresting wave, and Clay saw several revellers clinging by their fingers to the rail.
Nearby, Moog bolted suddenly upright. His hair was in wild disarray, his eyes bloodshot. He coughed a gust of smoke and looked dazedly at Clay. “Is it over? Did we kill it?” With some effort, Clay managed to extend the index finger on his left hand and point skyward. The wizard looked up. The bulky caravel was quickly losing altitude, careening dangerously toward one of the support towers. The chimera swept low overhead. Ganelon had torn a spine from its skull and was trying without success to stab it through the scales.
“Oh,” Moog said, looking mightily depressed.
Another skyship—a frigate with sleek webbed sails and whirling engines at fore and stern—opened fire on the monster. Rail-mounted crossbows launched a trio of bolts as long as Clay was tall. The first sailed out over the river. The second dropped to impale some luckless man in the arena crowd. The third took the chimera in the side, and for a moment it faltered, wings flailing like a bat confounded by a pane of glass. Another bolt leapt from the attacking ship, but the beast veered as those on board hurried to rearm the weapons.
Dragon fire washed across the deck. The ship sagged forward as the front engine began to steam. The crossbow turrets were abandoned by men and women rushing to keep the flames from spreading. The chimera turned sharply and came on again. When it struck, Clay knew, the ship was doomed. It would crash into the Maxithon and very probably kill a great many people.
He wondered briefly if Dinantra and Lastleaf were still watching. The gorgon will be halfway to the city gates already if she’s got any wits, he figured. She’d wanted to give Fivecourt something they would talk about for months to come. Well, he thought sourly, mission accomplished.
Clay didn’t look to see if they were there or not. He couldn’t take his eyes off the catastrophe unfolding in the sky above. He saw the chimera descend on the floundering warship, saw the dragon head surge forward, preparing to unleash its fiery breath. Ganelon was straining at something—another spine, maybe?—and whatever it was came loose with a spray of blood.
Flame erupted from the side of the dragon’s neck.
My sword, Clay realized. He tore it out, and now the fire …
He watched in disbelief as Ganelon leapt from the dragon’s head to the lion’s, clutching its mane with one hand while punching the sword in and out of the creature’s throat. Behind him, the dragon sagged as the tear in its side ruptured. An instant later the entire head burst in a wash of blood and gushing fire.
Man and monster plunged into the Maxithon, causing mayhem as they crashed into the uppermost tier and then tumbled down the sloping stands in a thrashing ball of gory fur and blood-slick scales. Spectators scrambled to clear a path, and most of them managed to do so. Those on the lowest tier, however, had no notion of the impending danger. Clay’s eyes preceded the chimera’s destructive path, and so he saw that both the Duke and Dinantra remained inside the patron’s box.
“Please,” he prayed to whichever of Grandual’s gods was in charge of killing people at random with the corpses of chimeras, “grant me this one … fucking … thing.”
Lastleaf turned to find him staring. The druin’s white-furred ears were perked straight up, as though he’d somehow heard Clay whispering. Too late, he seemed to comprehend what was about to happen. At the last moment Clay saw Lastleaf duck and Dinantra rise, her head crowned by a halo of hissing serpents, and then the chimera exploded through the awning, crushing the gorgon and her entourage of half-clad servants before sliding to rest on the arena floor.
Remarkably, Clay found he could bend his joints. He clambered onto his stomach, pushed himself to his knees. Moog was standing, swiping dust from his new robe. When he finished he straightened and looked to Clay.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I think—”
There was a sound like a mountainside crumbling. The ground shuddered, throwing Clay down. He rolled to his side, looking skyward. Had the frigate come down in the chimera’s wake? Had one of the seating tiers collapsed? He could hardly see for the dust in the air, but as it cleared he saw that the wallowing caravel had crashed into the northwest chain-tower.
The tower crumbled. The Maxithon heaved against its chains, and a heartbeat later the one fixed to the southwest tower tore free in a shower of stone and mortar, because that’s just the sort of day Clay was having.
The arena was moving, carried east on the river’s current. The great chains went slack as the two remaining towers loomed closer. The Maxithon dissolved into pandemonium, the roar of the crowd now a chorus of panicked terror as spectators fled toward the exits. Not that there was anywhere to escape to; the tremulous bridges connecting the arena to either bank would have broken away as soon as the arena began moving.
Clay staggered to his feet. His knees trembled, and his balance nearly failed him again. He saw Moog helping Gabriel to sit. Matrick was up on one elbow, blinking at the chaos like a sleeper who’d awoken in the midst of a battlefield.
There was no sign at all of Ganelon. Clay was wondering if he’d been crushed in the fall when one of the chimera’s wings began to twitch. Clay fumbled at his hip for a sword that wasn’t there. He glanced toward Moog, but the wizard was busy knocking on various parts of Gabe’s armour and asking if he could feel anything. Matrick, at least, had seen the monster move as well. He made no move to help, only brandished his bloody arm and shouted over the din, “You got this.”
Clay swallowed, turned, drew Blackheart up beneath his chin, and stepped tentatively forward. He’d taken three steps when the body heaved again, and Ganelon rolled out from beneath the corpse, gasping for air and choking on a lungful of dust.
Clay sighed in relief. The respite was short-lived, however, as the Maxithon reached the length of its shore-bound tethers.
The north tower went first. Its chain popped loose, whipping dangerously across the sky. Miraculously, the south tower withstood the first hard pull. The Maxithon swung toward the southern bank and began a slow, spinning circle, but at last the arena’s momentum dragged the tower into the river behind it. Clay felt the ground quake, and could only imagine the destruction ensuing outside: piers breaking like brittle fingers, boats capsizing, crushed by the mammoth bowl of wood and stone as it hurtled downriver with thirty thousand screaming passengers aboard.
Clay made it to Ganelon’s side. “Are you okay?”
The warrior brushed off his concern. “I’m fine. Where’s my axe?”
“It fell over there,” he said, but before he could turn to point out where Clay saw a figure rise from the wreckage of the patron’s box.
Lastleaf was sheathed in dust, spattered with blood. His hair was in disarray and his ears skewed to crazed angles, neither of which made him look any less frightening as he bared his serrated teeth at Clay and withdrew the long, slender sword from the middle scabbard on his back. It sang as it came free—a sound like the last, lingering echo of a ringing bell—and again as he brought it scything crossways and took hold of its hilt with both hands.
Before he could use it, however, a shadow bloomed on the sand between them.
Looking up, Clay saw a skyship dropping toward the arena floor. At first he assumed it was crashing; he opened his mouth to scream a warning to Gabe and Moog, but then he saw the wizard waving.
When he turned back Lastleaf had vanished into the maelstrom of dust kicked up by the descending ship.
The vessel slowed as it attempted to land on a surface that pitched like the deck of a ship in a storm. It was small, hardly bigger than a dhow, with a single engine spinning on its stern. The name Old Glory was painted on the side, which meant nothing to Clay until he saw the faces peering down over the rail.
“Vanguard,” he breathed, quiet as a prayer that had already been answered.
Chapter Twenty-four