Behind him, he heard grunts and gasps, snarls and spitting, sounds of damage inflicted and damage received.

They were almost to the airship when he forced himself to look back again. The creature was staggering after them, coming as swiftly as its damaged limbs could manage, its cloak shredded. Bandit lay stretched on the ground behind it, unmoving. Damp, glistening patches of blood coated its still body. Tears filled his eyes, and the boy made himself run even faster.

Khyber was already aboard the airship, hacking at the anchor ropes with her long knife, freeing the vessel of her moorings. Pen climbed the ladder so fast he couldn’t remember later whether his feet had even touched the rungs. His eyes searched everywhere. There was no sign of Cinnaminson.

“Get us out of here!” Khyber screamed at him. “It’s coming!”

Pen leapt into the pilot box, fingers flying over the controls. He unhooded the diapson crystals as an exhausted Tagwen tumbled onto the deck, gasping for breath. Khyber cut away the last of the anchoring lines. On the plains below, their pursuer was closing on the ship in a terrible, hobbling rush, the bloodied knife lifted into the moonlight, a low wail that sounded like a dog in pain rising from the dark opening of its hood. Pen threw the thruster levers forward, feeding power to the parse tubes, and the Skatelow lurched and began to rise.

They were too slow. The creature caught the low end of the rope ladder with one hand and held on, lifting away with the airship.

“Tagwen!” Pen cried out frantically.

The Dwarf heaved to his knees, looked over the side, and saw the dark thing below, one hand gripping the ladder, the other the strange knife. Grunting with the effort, he began yanking on the brace of wooden pins that held the ladder in place. Below, the creature swayed in the wind, got a better grip on the rope, and began to climb. One of the pins came free, and Tagwen threw it aside. The ladder dropped to an unnatural angle, and the creature spit out something so terrifying that for a moment the Dwarf froze in place.

“Tagwen, the other pin!” Khyber howled at him, crawling across the listing deck.

The creature had both hands back in place now and was climbing swiftly. At what might have been the last possible moment, the Elven girl shouted out something in Elfish and flung out both hands in a warding gesture. The last pin erupted from its seating in an explosion of wooden splinters and flew off into the night.

The rope ladder and the creature fell away without a sound.

Tagwen and Khyber peered over the side, searching. The landscape below had turned to forest and hills that were dark and shadowy. There was no sign of the creature.

In the meadow farther back, Bandit’s still form was a dark stain on the silvery grasses.

As soon as they were safely airborne and the airship was flying at a steady rate of speed, Pen asked Tagwen to take over the controls. “Just keep her sailing as she is and you won’t have any trouble. I have to take a look below.”