In the Shadow of Falcon's Wings

CHAPTER 15 THE GIFT OF LIGHTNING

The club abruptly transformed into a bright yellow torch, increasing to near white — hot brilliance, and then was extinguished. When the spots cleared from Dodge’s vision, he saw that the broken wooden pole had been completely incinerated. Krieger’s claws continued to spit purple tendrils of lightning and Dodge knew what was coming next. He barely had time to throw himself flat on the catwalk as twin bolts of electricity scorched the air above his head.

The lightning scoured the interior walls, leaving trails of flame in the rough wood. Dodge rolled toward the ladder and flipped over the edge, just as a second burst of electricity set the catwalk on fire. Krieger, possessed by madness, seemed to revel at the wanton display of destructive power. Dodge’s feet slipped uncertainly on the rungs, and failing to find a foothold, he simply pushed away and let himself fall.

He landed on his back, the breath driven from his lungs, and Krieger was there, looming high above on the second level, his talons dancing with violet sparks. Gasping for air, Dodge backpedaled away from yet another attack.

A pall of smoke tainted the air of the enclosure. The walls of the fortress bled fire wherever the pirate king’s lightning touch was felt, and despite the soggy humidity of the tropical environment, the baobab wood burned quickly; the flames were spreading. Dodge finally caught a breath and rolled onto hands and knees, struggling to rise. Krieger, still laughing maniacally, swept down the ladder intent on blocking his foe’s escape.

Dodge scrambled for the large opening but he wasn’t fast enough. An arc of energy blasted into his shoulder blades and launched him through the air to collide with the wall. The electrical shock seized the muscles of his extremities, leaving him momentarily paralyzed and in a daze, but through the miasma of wood smoke, he could smell the aroma of burnt flesh and knew intuitively that it was his own.

Krieger stalked toward him, a cat eager to toy with his prey, intent on delivering the coup de grace in person. Dodge willed his quivering limbs into action and succeeded in rolling over the threshold of the fortress, a mere whisper ahead of his enemy’s arrival.

The compound was still in an uproar from the escape of the prisoners but more than a few of the pirates had taken note of the smoke pouring from the heart of the baobab. If they were surprised to see Dodge half-crawling from the smoldering tree, that reaction was multiplied exponentially when the rogues saw their unmasked leader emerging from the firestorm. A collective gasp went up, faces twisting in revulsion as they beheld the terrible answer to the question that had fueled more than a few drunken debates; now they knew why Krieger wore a mask.

Dodge used the momentary distraction to regain his feet and plunged into the throng. The stunned pirates were slow to react but Dodge, still disoriented from the energy blast, was slower still. He staggered through their midst, careening from one body to the next, instinctively aiming for the river; if he could reach the water, he would be safe.

“Hold him!” Krieger’s voice cut through the ominous quiet and it was enough to break the spell. Dodge felt hands grasping his biceps. He twisted in their grip, lashing out with kicks, but to no avail. They had him.

The pirates parted before their leader like the sea in a Bible story; where once they had merely feared his wrath, they now were petrified by his mere presence. Krieger however cared nothing for their disgust; his blood rimmed gaze was fixed solely on the recaptured fugitive and his claws blazed with static electricity as he closed the intervening distance.

Dodge felt the numbness in his limbs diminishing by degrees, but the reawakening was heralded by a wave of pain and it took every iota of his will to keep from passing out, though perhaps unconsciousness would have been preferable. He fought his captors’ hold, but his resistance was instinctive not deliberate, he was a wild animal caught in the jaws of a trap while the hunter approaches.

Krieger leaned close — close enough that the blood streaming from his self-inflicted wounds dripped onto Dodge’s shirt. “You will pay for this,” he hissed. “You will suffer the tortures of the damned.”

“Maybe,” Dodge answered through clenched teeth as he stared back into the pirate king’s crazed eyes. “But you’ll still be ugly.”

The taunt hit Krieger like a slap, and as his hideous visage twisted to a new level of rage, Dodge saw a chance to strike one last blow. Snapping his neck forward, he slammed his forehead into the other man’s nose. There was a crack of cartilage breaking, and Dodge knew that the spike of pain in his forehead would be nothing compared to what Krieger would be feeling.

With a howl, Krieger randomly unleashed the electricity that had been building in his talons. Twin tentacles of violet lashed into the pirate ranks and set the treetops alight. Dodge felt the restraining hands fall away and abruptly he was standing unaided, free again. Krieger mastered his fire in that moment and turned his attention back to his hated foe, but this time Dodge was ready. Before the unmasked villain could raise claw-blade or lightning in his own defense, Dodge darted in close and delivered a right jab that connected squarely with Krieger’s broken nose. He followed through by planting a booted foot in the pirate king’s chest that sent him stumbling backward to crash in a heap near the entrance to the burning fortress tree.

For a moment, Dodge stood alone in the clearing. A few unlucky pirates, struck down by their leader’s lighting blast, writhed on the ground, but the rest had fled the field. Dodge snatched up an abandoned cutlass and hefted it in his right hand as he closed on Krieger.

The pirate rose up on unsteady feet, but thrust his claws forward to defend against any attack. Dodge did not disappoint him; he swung the short sword in a sweeping arc aimed at Krieger’s torso. The disfigured pirate deflected the blade with his talons and steel rang on steel in a shower of sparks — not the unnatural hues of blue and violent electrical arcs, but the bright yellow of friction. Dodge swung again and again Krieger parried but the claw-like prosthetic hands had never been intended for combat. Every smashing blow from Dodge’s cutlass sent a numbing jolt up Krieger’s weary arms. The cumulative effect of the fatigue was showing. Harried by Dodge’s unrelenting assault and bleeding copiously from innumerable flesh wounds, Krieger was on the verge of collapse. Dodge however was hurting, too. He knew that if he didn’t seize the advantage, he might lose it.

With a fierce war cry, Dodge drew back for a two-handed slash, but at the last instant pulled up short. Krieger fell for the feint and overextended himself to parry. Dodge twisted in place and swept up with a one-handed cut that caught the pirate’s wrist. The blade crunched into bone and Krieger’s left-hand claw fell ignominiously to the ground.

Dodge whirled around, drawing the grip of the cutlass back into both hands as he swept around for a follow through. The pirate stared incredulously at the impotent stump and made no move to block the final sweep of his foe’s sword. The blade crashed into the side of Krieger’s head in a spray of crimson, and the pirate king sprawled backward to fall in a heap on the threshold of the fortress. Dodge leaped after his enemy, raising the sword above his head to deliver the final cut. That was when he heard the screams.

For a moment, he thought his ears were being deceived by some trick of the fire; perhaps pockets of moisture evaporating to steam were causing the high-pitched shrieks as they escaped from the super-heated wood but when he cocked his head to listen, he knew better. The cries were human — female.

Notre femmes, Claude had said, and now Dodge understood what he had meant. Our women.

The pirates had taken all the able-bodied villagers from the settlement, male and female alike, but there had only been men in the cage with Dodge. The women had been locked up elsewhere and as the screams grew to a fever pitch, he realized that their prison cell lay somewhere within the flaming fortress tree.

Dodge thrust the mortally wounded Krieger from his thoughts even as he also cast aside hesitation. Following the path of screams, he raced into the tree and into the heart of the fire.

The interior of the tree was wreathed in stifling flames. Dodge inadvertently drew a choking breath of soot-filled smoke then wisely covered his mouth and nose with a shirt-tail as he stumbled toward the ladder. The catwalk on the second level appeared to be on the verge of collapse, but there was no turning back now. He climbed up and charted the quickest path to an opening leading out onto one of the baobab’s massive limbs.

The screams were louder now, away from the crackling of wood being consumed by fire, but Dodge sensed that he was also physically closer to the captive women.

“I’m here to help!” he shouted, hoping that his earnest tone would compensate for any linguistic differences. It seemed to work, for the cries became more urgent and coherent. Dodge turned until he fixed their location; they were in a cage on the next highest branch, some twelve feet above and a quarter of the way around the exterior of the tree.

He ducked back inside the hollow trunk, but the catwalk was immersed in fire; there would be no going back that way. Cursing this turn of luck, he returned to the exterior. There was only one way to reach his goal and it was going to require him to employ skills he had not tested since childhood: he was going to have to climb a tree.

The rough bark made for a decent handhold, but Dodge was too battered and worn to play squirrel. To facilitate the traverse, he used the cutlass to hack out a series of steps reaching above head height and as far around the trunk as he could reach. Then, with the sword tucked in his belt, he started climbing.

It was much harder than he could have imagined. After only a few seconds, his forearms began quivering with the exertion. His anxiety escalated toward all-out panic when he happened to glance down and he forced himself to focus only on the goal, still well out of reach. He scaled out to the limit of his hastily cut notches then used the bark for a handhold as he lifted his feet up onto that last step.

He was close now; his head was level with the boardwalk deck that ran the length of the target limb, and under ideal circumstances, he wouldn’t have hesitated to make a leap of faith. He decided instead to get a little closer — to use the last of his flagging strength to shorten the gap for that final fateful jump. When he knew he could climb no more, he got a good grip with his left hand and drew the cutlass with his right.

Dodge coiled his body like a spring then launched out toward his goal. An instant later, his chest slammed into the edge of the boardwalk, knocking the wind from his lungs for the second time in only a few minutes, but this time he was ready. Ignoring the sudden breathlessness, he drove the cutlass tip into the deck even as he started to slide back from his tentative perch. The sword point caught fast, arresting his fall and giving him a precious moment’s rest to catch his breath and gather his energy for the final effort. The cries of the trapped women changed from fearful screams to shouts of much-needed encouragement. Thus motivated, Dodge hauled himself up to safety.

Smoke billowed from the opening into the trunk, a measure of the intensity of the blaze that now consumed the chimney-like interior of the tree. Dodge hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to get down from this new height, more than forty feet up, and while he had the rough start of a plan, it wasn’t his uppermost priority.

The cage housing the women was not situated above a deathtrap like the one Dodge had briefly occupied but was instead nestled in the hollow of several branches at the end of the tree limb. He chopped through the ropes that secured the door and nine women emerged, their clothes in tatters but their dignity still intact despite the abuse they had suffered at the hands of their captors. He led them back as close to the main trunk as the smoke and heat would permit. “Stay right here.”

Using the sword tip and his bare hands, he tore up a section of the walkway to expose the limb beneath. The arterial branch was as thick as his body — it had to be to support its own weight — and Dodge sensed his hare-brained plan for escape starting to crumble. Still, given the time constraints, a bad plan was better than none at all.

Using the cutlass like an axe, he started hewing at the limb. His first few attempts rebounded as though he had hit a stone, but he stayed at it, refining his attack until he had removed a section of bark nearly a foot wide. Using a crosshatch technique, he was soon knocking out wedges of wood as big as his fist, and little by little, the task became less daunting and the goal that much closer to reality. When he had hacked a third of the way through the limb, there was a sound like a gunshot as the weakened wood broke nearly in two and the entire section fell away. A loud crash followed as the network of branches at the end came to rest on the ground below.

Dodge gazed down the length of the felled limb, admiring his handiwork. “Looks like my luck is finally changing,” he remarked.

“Pardon, monsieur?”

He glanced at the woman who had spoken and shook his head ruefully. For all he knew, this was Claude’s wife — widow, rather — and the thought dampened his elation. He clambered onto the near-vertical surface. “Follow me.”

The slats of the boardwalk served as expedient ladder rungs, facilitating the escape from the doomed fortress. Dodge assisted the women in their descent and used gestures to urge them toward the river but freedom remained elusive. As soon as they left the cover afforded by the burning tree, they came into plain view of the pirates who were beginning to realize that their captives — who represented a source of future income — were slipping away. Some had taken refuge in the second fortress tree, but others were regrouping in the open and hefting clubs and blades as they moved to cut off the only avenue of escape. Dodge raced to the vanguard of his group to meet their charge.

He was only one man and against such odds, he should have been quickly overwhelmed. But it had been a long time since these men had faced a determined enemy, and Dodge’s manic confidence coupled with the wildly swinging tip of his sword, was more than they could bear. Without Krieger’s demon face and hellish wrath to drive them, they simply stood aside and let the fugitives pass. A few crossed swords with Dodge but did not pursue the fight after parrying his fleeting attack. The fugitives broke through the scattered ranks and made the final push for freedom while Dodge fell back to guard their rear. When the last of the women splashed into the muddy water, he whirled to join them.

He almost made it.

One moment he was running headlong for the marshy shallows, the next he was facedown and unable to move. In between jaw-clenching waves of agony, it occurred to him that he had once more been struck by lightning. Krieger?

But Krieger was dead…he had to be.

Dodge focused all his will power into pushing with his left hand, and rolled over onto his back. He wasn’t surprised to see the pirate leader, a walking corpse reanimated solely by the intensity of his hatred; there could have been no other explanation for the electrical discharge. In fact, Krieger’s toehold on life was tenuous at best. He shambled forward like a drunkard, barely able to keep himself erect. His head had swelled like an overripe fruit about to burst, and splinters of bone protruded from the wound in his skull. His eyes however were clear, and focused wholly on the object of his wrath. He took another lurching step forward and leveled his remaining steel talon at Dodge.

A new static charge blossomed on the curved claw blades. Dodge summoned enough energy to throw his body into a sideways roll that brought him a few feet closer to the water’s edge, but he was too slow by a fraction of a second. The lightning bolt sizzled along his leg for a moment but then expended most of its energy harmlessly on the ground. Krieger spat an incomprehensible curse, along with a mouthful of bright blood and lurched forward again. Dodge grimaced through the pain. As his foe closed to within ten paces, he managed to get to his knees and faced the pirate king.

He didn’t know if he could survive another blast of lighting. It was moot anyway; one more paralyzing attack would leave him vulnerable to a fatal slash of Krieger’s knives. He had to stop his foe’s advance.

“Is that all you’ve got?” The taunt seemed hollow, spoken breathlessly through clenched teeth.

Krieger’s eyes boiled like lava and he thrust his talon at Dodge’s face. The lightning was there an instant later, but this time, Dodge was faster. As the electric bolt sizzled from the curved claws, he threw himself flat and ducked under the blast.

The air crackled with ozone as the energy struck the water and fed back to the source. In an instant, Krieger was sheathed in a cocoon of brilliant purple energy — consumed by his own fire. The stunning discharge ended as suddenly as it had begun and when the electric shroud fell away, the smoldering lifeless body of Johannes Krieger toppled over like a stricken tree. Dodge was too exhausted to survey the final fate of his foe, too tired also to hear the crunch of approaching footsteps.

“Tsk. Tres tragique, monsieur. You fought admirably to slay the dragon, but alas, you will still die.”

Though he recognized the voice, Dodge nevertheless turned his head to face the speaker. It was Marten, the treacherous riverboat captain, but his gaze did not linger on the familiar face. His eyes were locked on the enormous twin pistols the big man held in either hand — Hurricane’s custom-made semi-automatic pistols.

With a cruel chuckle, Marten thumbed off the safety, and took aim.