With a final deafening roar, Dathrax plunged out of the sky and smashed into the boat. This, though, Will had time to recognize, was not the lightning raid of claws and teeth that had come before. This was not deft destruction. The knot of sails and rigging had worked itself even more completely around Dathrax’s body. His right wing was hopelessly tangled with his back leg, and his neck was being pulled brutally to the left. He came at the boat sideways, almost skidding through the air.
Balur still stood in the prow, hammer raised high above his head, mouth pulled back in a monstrous grin, howling in joy.
Dathrax struck him full force. The front of the boat disintegrated, so much wood pulp and flotsam. Balur sailed through the air, his flight actually gaining momentum from the hammer still clutched in his hand. The Analesian cleared the full length of the hold, came down on the ruins of the wheel, and lay there quite still.
Will had all of half a second to take that in before Dathrax claimed his attention once more. The vast dragon was writhing on the deck, trying to right itself. As it did so, the boat dipped violently, the smashed prow sinking toward the waterline.
Shattered planking, bits of broken mast, knots of ropes, rolling ballista bolts, actual ballistas—all went tumbling down the length of the boat, toward Dathrax. Desperately, Will flung himself sideways to escape a deluge of barrels crashing past him, rolling toward the dragon.
Dathrax flailed again, snagging more of the ruined ship around his limbs. He tried to get a foot steady beneath him, but with his weight, and the ship’s impaired structural integrity, the limb shot through the deck, to be mired in the hold below.
The boat was tilting even farther now. Balur’s body was sliding back toward the prow. Will, lying prone, started to slide as well. He managed to brace his foot, caught hold of one of the ship’s rails that was still intact.
The thing he was bracing his foot on yelled. It turned out to be Lette’s face. She was hanging grimly to the ship’s rail directly below him. Quirk was another yard farther down. The wooden rail she was holding on to was smoking.
Beyond Dathrax’s increasingly desperate flailing, he could see the water churning as the boat sank deeper and deeper below the waterline. Vast aquatic bodies writhed. Fins sliced the water’s surface into finer and finer froth.
“Balur!” yelled Lette. “You have to get Balur!”
The lizard man was almost parallel with Will, and picking up speed.
Isn’t he your partner? Will almost said, but didn’t. The things I do for infatuation.
He planted his legs against the rail and before he could think about it much, he leapt. Whether he traveled horizontally or vertically he was no longer sure. He smashed through tumbling piles of detritus, closed the distance between himself and Balur.
He crashed back onto the deck, landing woefully short. He scrabbled for a handhold, found none. He plunged down, slipping and sliding. On the plus side, he was careening toward Balur on a pretty decent intercept trajectory. On the more negative side of the equation, Dathrax’s jaws—stretched wide in a scream of frustration—were waiting for them both just beyond that.
Will could see panic in Dathrax’s fiery eyes now. The dragon lunged his massive jaws at the stump of a mast, bit down, searching for any purchase it could get. The mast splintered and shattered. Dathrax spat a mouthful of splinters and smoke, let out a bellow of despair.
Something in Will—no matter that he was falling down the deck of a near-vertical ship, no matter that he could see his imminent death waiting for him—took flight at Dathrax’s plight. He might be about to die, but so would this tyrant, this despot, this arsehole.
In the abrupt warmth of this hope, a plan flashed into Will’s mind. Suicidal. Idiotic. Foolish beyond imagining. But the same could be said of all his plans so far, and they’d gotten him this far.
If he’d had time, he would have laughed at that.
But there was no time. He simply reacted. He bunched his legs and kicked off from the surface of the deck. He flew out into space. Then he was in pure free fall. No safety net beneath him. No deck. Only the writhing, snapping head of Dathrax the dragon.
He slammed bodily against the dragon’s skull. He felt scales rip at his skin. But there was no time for pain. Even as he skidded over the dragon’s brow, even as he felt the raw heat of Dathrax’s breath blasting up at him from outraged nostrils, even as he planted one foot in one of Dathrax’s yellow eyes, he reached out a hand for Balur just as the lizard man plunged toward the dragon’s jaws.
And caught him.
That was, he thought, pretty fucking magnificent.
Then the pendulum weight of Balur tore through Will’s precarious balance, pivoted them like ballerinas, Will’s heel slip-sliding over Dathrax’s eye, both of them flailing in the air. Then, hand in hand they went tumbling toward the water below.