Time seemed to thicken as he lunged, his attack all rage and pain and time-honed habit. He flicked the chisel from his weak left hand to his right, and rammed its tip through the gaps in the sergeant’s ribs. Jean-Claude felt the thunk all the way to his shoulder. The man huffed, his eyes wide with shock.

Jean-Claude captured his sword as he fell, but the other marines fell upon him. He caught a slash on the flat of his blade, but another sliced his thigh. His leg buckled and he crashed to one knee. A marine knocked the sword from his hand.

All the desperate hope that had upheld Jean-Claude these last few hours passed out of him like aether from a burst balloon. Yet he would not yield to Travers and his horrors. Let come the end.

Then the deck shook and there came a blast of sound like someone firing a broadside from a pipe organ. The Seelenjäger exploded from the stall, cracking the stanchion and shattering the bulkhead. He had doubled in size and sprouted tusks like scimitars. Thick armored plates covered his back and flanks.

The Seelenjäger plowed through the marines, crushing one under his hooves and goring another with his tusks, tossing him to the ceiling to rain down in a shower of blood.

Jean-Claude snatched up a sword and lurched to his feet, shouting defiance as hope returned. His fresh wound was shallow but painful. He limped after the Seelenjäger, who had finished off the marines and was looking around for something else to kill.

Jean-Claude tapped him on the flank, and leapt back as his head whipped around. The fire in his eyes cooled when he saw Jean-Claude.

Jean-Claude pointed to the companionway. Down was escape. He swung himself onto the ladder and prayed his new friend would follow his lead. A Seelenjäger in close quarters was a terror to behold, but there were still several hundred aeronauts and saints only knew how many Sanguinaires on this ship. It would take only one touch from a bloodshadow to end the rampage.

He hit the orlop deck and nearly crumpled. The Seelenjäger swarmed down behind him as a massive six-legged, blue-skinned lizard. Shouts came from above and down the passageway. Jean-Claude rounded the bulkhead and took the ladder down through the hold to the turvy deck.

He hit the lowest walkway with a hip-jarring thump and startled a turvyman who was just climbing up from the rigging below. Jean-Claude clocked him with a blow from the pommel of his stolen sword and laid him out flat.

Open hatches in the floor looked down through the turvy rigging to the deep sky. Jean-Claude checked himself before he slipped over the edge. Damned vertigo made him dizzy. He averted his gaze.

The Seelenjäger had assumed a shape that was a bipedal version of his hexapedal lizard, with four arms and a long tail. Must be his erstepelz.