Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  ‘You’ll lose your head that way,’ Admiral Thorki reproved Grokmund as he helped him back to his feet. Encased in a heavy suit of aether-powered armour, Thorki was easily able to lift Grokmund with one hand while his other aimed a volley pistol at the raiders. He sent a bullet smashing into the beaked face of a beastman as it came whipping towards the ironclad’s endrin. The maimed creature dropped its bow and pawed at the gory wreck of its face before vanishing into the distance.

  ‘I have to do my part,’ Grokmund told Thorki. ‘Protecting the find is all that matters now.’

  Thorki shook his head. ‘We need you to make certain of our claim and secure full rights to the find.’ Despite their magnetised boots, both duardin felt the deck beneath them tremble as aethershot carbines mounted in the hull plastered the attackers with a withering volley. Around them, Grundstok thunderers blasted away at the raiders with their rifles and mortars, trying to keep the attackers from swarming the ironclad’s decks. ‘Get below,’ Thorki told the aether-khemist.

  Grokmund remained where he was. ‘If the ship falls it won’t matter anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d prefer to die fighting than hiding down in the hold.’

  Thorki conceded the point grudgingly. ‘If you get yourself killed, our backers will shave my beard,’ he snapped. The admiral swung around, shouting commands to the gunners up on the forecastle. He gestured with his pistol towards a pack of bird-faced beastkin that were flying at the ship from starboard. ‘Udri! Bring them down!’

  At Thorki’s command, the gunners swung around the great volley cannon bolted to the roof of the forecastle. The whole ship shook as they fired the weapon. Caught in the explosive discharge the centre of the oncoming pack was shredded, daemons and beastmen alike plummeting from the sky. Arkanauts rushed to the gunwales, picking off mangled survivors with their pistols.

  ‘We’re winning!’ Grokmund shouted. The very next instant he felt a withering heat smash against his face. Visions of glory evaporated as a spout of sorcerous fire splashed against the side of the ship, immolating the arkanauts that had been picking off wounded beastmen. Behind the flames came a sinister chariot drawn by slavering daemons. Standing in the chariot, seemingly growing up from its bed, was a foul fungoid thing with stumpy arms that sprayed jets of shimmering orange fire. An arkanaut sprinting past Grokmund was caught in the flames, flailing about wildly as the daemonic fire clung to him and gnawed greedily at his armour. Another arkanaut tried to help his comrade smother the flames only to have the fire leap eagerly to his gauntlet, bubbling and sizzling as the metal began to melt.

  Grokmund hastened to the stricken arkanauts, gesturing to Thorki to hold back. ‘Keep everyone away,’ he warned the admiral.

  Closing upon the fire-wrapt duardin, Grokmund employed his anatomiser, drawing out the air from his immediate surroundings. The daemon-fire had little kinship with natural flame, but even it couldn’t withstand the resulting vacuum. In a heartbeat, the ghastly fires were snuffed out. The arkanaut whose gauntlet had been afflicted staggered around, befuddled by the anatomiser’s effects. His comrade was little more than a charred smear on the deck.

  The injured duardin ripped away his mangled gauntlet and flexed his fingers, ensuring they could still hold a weapon before trusting his pistol to them again. ‘Profit to you, Master Grokmund,’ he thanked the aether-khemist, his voice distorted by the breathing mask fitted to his helm. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the sky. ‘I’d pay tenweight in gold if that murdering scum would come in range of my gun.’

  ‘Let me see where it has gone,’ Grokmund said. The enhanced array of lenses on his helm made it possible to succeed in his purpose. The discordant pattern of splotches and blemishes that marked the stalk of the fungoid fire-sprayer was distinct enough to recognize again. Grokmund saw it diving for one of the frigates, again letting its daemonic flames splash across the decks and harry the crew. The long-suffering frigate could do little to repel the monster, so depleted had the ship’s crew become. Yet the chariot made only one attack. It didn’t linger to press its advantage, or remain to vanquish its enemy. Instead it went speeding away to assault a gunhauler and then to turn upon another frigate.

  A suspicion grew in Grokmund’s gut. He swung around to Thorki. ‘The Chaos scum are up to something,’ he declared. Carefully he picked out another of the attackers, a bird-faced beast-kin loosing shimmering arrows at the sky-vessels. He watched it fly past one of the frigates then duck away to come at the Stormbreaker. An arrow sizzled against the plated hull, then the creature was wheeling away again, seeking out a new target.

  ‘They aren’t pressing their attacks,’ Grokmund told Thorki. He quickly pointed to the almost crewless frigate. ‘They aren’t seizing advantage when they gain it.’

  ‘Sky-devils eat their bones,’ Thorki grumbled. He raised a spyglass to his eye, watching as the raiders displayed more coordination than he had considered them capable of. ‘They’ve some design in mind. Deliberately wearing us down.’

  A fierce war-cry brought the two duardin spinning around. Grokmund pulled back just as a half-naked cultist came diving down at him upon a daemonic disc. The man slashed at him with a crooked blade, the serrated edge biting into the blue-green steel covering his shoulder. The impact sent Grokmund staggering back a pace. Before the masked human could strike at him again, he raised his atmospheric anatomiser and pressed its actuation rune. This time, instead of drawing in the air, the mechanism expelled a plume of virulent gas. The cultist raised his heavy shield to block the blast of the noxious aether, but the vapour simply billowed over its edges. The man shrieked as the gas seared his face. Wracked with pain, he fell from his daemonic steed onto the ironclad’s deck. The daemonic disc flew away, unconcerned by the fate of its late rider.

  Thorki fired his volley pistol at another of the cultists, preventing the man from aiding his stricken companion. Bullets ripped into the daemonic steed as its rider sent it rearing back to absorb the shots. Then the man was leaping down, slashing at the admiral with a crooked blade.

  Grokmund moved towards the foe he had knocked to the deck. He unlatched the heavy hammer from his tool belt and stalked after the fallen cultist. The man was clawing at his face, struggling to remove the beaked mask he wore. He had it free just in time to see Grokmund’s hammer swinging at his face. A crunching impact spilled the man back to the deck, a mash of brains and bone dripping from the duardin’s hammer. Before Grokmund’s shocked gaze, the corpse twitched and writhed, its contours shrinking and shrivelling. The warrior he’d struck down had been powerfully built, in the prime of condition for a human. The corpse at his feet was that of an old man, wrinkled and wasted. Only the swirling tattoo across his chest proclaimed that this was indeed the same foe. Grokmund touched his thumb to the face of the steel girdle he wore, pressing against the forehead of the revered ancestor moulded across it. Such repulsive sorcery was disturbing even to an aether-khemist.

  As Grokmund turned from his fallen foe, Thorki was just settling his own adversary. The admiral’s gauntlet was around the cultist’s neck. With a brutal clenching of his fist, Thorki crushed the man’s throat. He tossed the twitching body to the deck and swung around.

  ‘It would seem they’ve tired of their strategy just as we suspect it,’ Thorki said. The admiral sprinted towards the forecastle, shouting orders to Udri and the gunners. ‘Fire wherever they bunch up! Break their resolve!’

  The men who had attacked Grokmund and Thorki were not alone. They were part of a renewed surge of enemies, a universal increase of ferocity. The enemy now pressed home their assaults, no longer content to harass, to strike and run as they had before. Gunhaulers went down with all hands as flying leech-like daemons latched onto their endrins and compromised their integrity, rupturing fuel lines and reservoirs to send jets of aether spilling into the atmosphere. Skyriggers were shot down by the arrows of beastmen, struck again and again by the piercing shafts. One frigate had its prow turned into
a conflagration as three chariots concentrated their attacks against it, the fungoid daemon-riders loosing blast after blast of eerie flame at the ship.

  Grokmund fended off the attack of a charging beastman, managing to break one of the rope-like feelers of its disc-steed as the creature retreated. He could see the endrinriggers hovering overhead trying to keep the attackers away from the tanks of the endrin above the ironclad’s deck. They spun away, attacking with their rivet-guns and saw-blades, lashing out with the tools they used to repair the ship in order to defend it.

  The ironclad’s captain was likewise doing his best to protect the ship. Since the attack had begun the Stormbreaker had been pushed to top speed, striving to pull away from the foes. An uncanny headwind had defied them, retarding their efforts at escape. Having spotted a method to the attack, Grokmund now wondered about that stubborn gale. The fleet had turned in the direction of least resistance in trying to escape the attack.

  Until these last moments the slaves of Chaos had been content simply to harass the fleet. Now they pressed the attack with unrestrained ­malice. Why, Grokmund asked himself, unless the reason for such restraint had passed? Like the wind, the enemy had been trying to steer them, lead them to some point they wanted the Kharadron to be. The nauseating image of ripperbats herding prey into the waiting fangs of their colonies filled his mind.

  Grokmund turned from the fray unfolding about the ironclad’s port side, hurrying towards the forecastle to alert Thorki of their danger. ‘They are herding us into a killing-ground!’ he shouted to the admiral.

  Thorki was just climbing the ladder up to the forecastle when he heard Grokmund calling to him. He looked back, puzzlement in his eyes.

  ‘They are trying to drive us into a trap,’ Grokmund declared. ‘That is why they press their attack now!’

  ‘We can outrun them,’ Thorki stated. ‘That is the best way to reduce our losses.’

  Grokmund shook his head, waving his fist in the air. ‘Don’t you see? This hellish wind is conjured by their sorcery! It pushes us where they want us to go. Their attack is simply to force us to stay the course.’

  Thorki paused in his climb. ‘The only other choice would be to smash our way through them. That would cost us too much to accomplish.’

  ‘Risk some to save the rest,’ Grokmund advised. ‘Trying to save every­thing might bring the whole fleet to ruin.’

  Thorki turned his head, looking across the embattled ships of his fleet. ‘We have lost too much already,’ he said, his tone almost accusing.

  ‘If my box does not make it back to Barak-Urbaz, then their deaths count for nothing anyway,’ Grokmund snapped. He had to get Thorki to appreciate their peril. Only the admiral had the authority to command the fleet and turn them around before it was too late.

  Before Grokmund could press his point a ghastly figure swooped down upon the forecastle – a huge man clad in armour and wearing a tall helm topped with spiralling horns, his face hidden in a murk of smoke. The flying daemon he was riding sank its jaws around the head of Udri, who was loading the volley cannon. Even as the gun commander fell, the daemon’s rider lashed out with the fiery glaive he bore, the red-hot edge shearing through armour and bone to leave another gunner mangled at his feet.

  Admiral Thorki lunged up the ladder and charged at the Chaos butcher. His volley pistol barked, sending blasts of aetheric shot streaking at his enemy. Arcane runes flared outwards from the shield the barbarous foeman carried, each sigil surrounding one of the shots and snuffing it out entirely. The warlord’s glaive caught the upward sweep of the admiral’s immense hammer as Thorki tried to press his attack.

  ‘Thorki!’ Grokmund cried as he sprang for the ladder. But before he could help the admiral he found himself beset by an adversary of his own. A hideously mutated man suddenly appeared between himself and the ladder. Arrayed in armour seemingly moulded from molten sapphire and crushed malachite, the human stood a head taller than the duardin. An obscene growth protruded from his neck, bloated and feathered. The growth’s head rested against the smooth helm that covered that of its host.

  ‘It is the fool who would hurry his doom,’ the man declared.

  To Grokmund it seemed he heard the words not with his ears but more as though they were thrust directly into his brain.

  ‘All things come into season. Even death.’ The sorcerer raised the gnarled staff he carried. The riot of talismans and charms chained to its jewelled head clattered wildly as he harnessed their powers.

  Grokmund raised his anatomiser, thinking to spray the sorcerer with corrosive aether before he could work his magic. He was depending upon the stifling qualities of his own aether-powered equipment to at least partly impede whatever spell the warlock hurled against him. In this, however, he again underestimated the craft and cunning of the enemy. It wasn’t against the aether-khemist that the sorcerer directed his magic, but the deck beneath his feet. A coruscating spiral of crackling light spilled across the floor, undulating with a monstrous animation as it seeped into the wood and iron.

  The violent swirl of energy crackled through the planks. Before Grokmund could react, the deck under him shuddered open, gaping wide like a waiting maw. Like a plummeting stone, he was sent crashing down into the darkened hold below.

  His last view of the battle was the sorcerer and his parasite staring down at him from above.

  Khoram turned away from the fallen aether-khemist, glancing back at the forecastle. Tamuzz was still locked in his duel with the duardin commander. Both leaders had been joined by some of their followers. Tamuzz was supported by a pair of tzaangors and a masked acolyte while the duardin had what was left of the gun crew and another crewman armed with a pike.

  The rest of the ironclad’s crew was fending off the assault of Tamuzz’s retinue. Bands of acolytes circled the ship, casting searing bolts of arcane energy at the duardin while tzaangors sent arrows cracking against the armoured hull and the fortified cupola where sentries continued to fire at the warband. One of the daemonic screamers Khoram had summoned to aid their attack was obliterated as duardin guns blasted its leathery body to ribbons, leaving only a corrupt sludge behind. A burning chariot faltered as the carbines mounted in the hull ripped away at it. The flamer standing in the chariot suddenly burst into a ball of fire, immolating both itself and the eldritch vehicle.

  Khoram glanced at the terrain below. They’d come many leagues from the hills of Shadowfar into a land of winding canyons and jagged peaks. He could see the black mouths of caves, the exposed bones of ancient beasts jutting up from the rock, their stony claws reaching to the sky. Strange patterns of colour and shadow rippled across the ground as snareweeds crawled about in search of water for their roots. The sorcerer’s attention was drawn to one of the deeper canyons, a black gash across the landscape.

  ‘There,’ Khoram declared. ‘That is the place.’ His homunculus whispered in his ear, reaffirming his decision. ‘It is enough. We have brought the Kharadron to where they need to be to suit our purposes.’ A cold rictus spread across his mutated face. ‘It is time for Tamuzz to call off his attack.’ The warlord would not like that, but he had enough intelligence to accept the demands of necessity once they were made clear to him.

  The sorcerer raised his staff. A string of profane utterances hissed across his lips. Upon the forecastle, a great flare exploded, blinding the combatants of both sides and causing them to fall away from their foes. While they were yet blinded, Khoram exerted a further enchantment upon the daemon disc that carried the warlord. The creature swiftly abandoned the conflict, spinning up into the air with its master.

  Khoram commanded his own daemonic mount to join Tamuzz. By the time he reached the warlord, he’d recovered his vision and was ready to rejoin the fray.

  ‘It is enough,’ Khoram told him. ‘The duardin are where we need them to be.’

  Tamuzz gestured with his glaive to the forecastle and the
armoured admiral who was making short work of the warriors still opposing him. ‘They cannot defeat us,’ Tamuzz said. ‘I will make an offering of them to Mighty Tzeentch. Their last breath shall be given to the Changer.’ He looked at Khoram and a derisive laugh emerged from the veil of smoke. ‘They will pay for their defiance.’

  ‘They will,’ Khoram assured him. ‘But in a way that will suit us better. Do not allow the triumph of a single battle to cause you to lose sight of the greater war.’ The sorcerer gestured with a tentacle-finger at the circling Orb of Zobras. ‘Great favour will be shown to you if you are victorious. There will be no mercy if you fail.’

  ‘If we fail,’ Tamuzz warned the sorcerer. Still, Khoram had made his point. The warlord scowled down at the ironclad. He tore the ivory horn from his belt and raised it to his smoke-shrouded face. Three ululations sounded, a command all within his warband understood and hastened to obey. Those warriors locked into combat with the duardin broke away hastily, reckless of how exposed they were as they effected their retreat. The screamers and daemon chariots slowly faded from existence as the spells sustaining them in Chamon were banished.

  A great cheer rose from the embattled Kharadron ships, a jubilant cry of victory. The duardin thought they’d broken the attack, driven off their enemies.