Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  ‘Like yourself, curseling?’ Tamuzz asked. ‘Is that why you dispelled the daemons when I needed them?’

  ‘You would have won the battle,’ Khoram said. ‘There can be no question of that. But would winning the battle have cost you the war? That is what the visions in the orb warned me of. I had to act as I did.’ He extended his tentacled fingers, indicating the chalk circle that was drawn upon the floor of the cavernous chamber. ‘As you’ve so often advised me, our destinies are intertwined. If one of us prospers, both of us do. If one of us falls, then we are both damned.’

  Tamuzz’s eyes gleamed menacingly from behind the veil of smoke rising from the finger-candles fastened to his armour. ‘Do you seek to remind me of your loyalty or threaten me against punishing you as you deserve?’ Tamuzz stepped across the perimeter of the summoning ­circle, contemptuous of the magic flowing from it. Like the wards etched into the rock walls, the protections of the circle failed to arrest his intrusion. Wisps of shade-essence pawed at him, only to be absorbed into his baroque armour.

  ‘I do neither, Lord Tamuzz,’ Khoram stated. ‘I only do what is needful to help you… and serve the Master.’

  ‘Nothing for Khoram?’ Tamuzz sneered. He glowered at the sorcerer. ‘I know better than that. You seek to use me. That is a dangerous game to play.’

  Khoram did not flinch as he looked up at Tamuzz. ‘There is no magic that is without hazard. Those who would make use of a sorcerer should remember that.’ He gestured to the far side of the room. ‘Your armour disrupts the summoning. I cannot complete my conjuration while you are within the circle.’ He shook his head. ‘Unless you would rather I did nothing to steer the duardin where we wish them to go. If you would prefer to leave everything entirely to the whims of fate…’

  Tamuzz glowered at him an instant longer, then turned on his heel and marched from the circle. ‘Schemes within schemes, plots within plots,’ he called out to Khoram as he walked away. ‘One day you’ll be caught in a web of your own weaving and I will not raise my hand to cut you free.’

  Khoram waited until the warlord had left the cavern before resuming his interrupted ritual. Tamuzz was necessary to him, a conduit between the Mortal Realms and the labyrinthine corridors of Tzeentch’s power. Soon, however, Khoram would have an even more direct channel to draw on the might of his god. When that happened, Tamuzz would learn his place. Then there would be no question who was master and who was minion.

  The sorcerer reeled in his anger, letting thoughts of Tamuzz collapse into the shadows of his subconscious. To that mental nether-realm he sent his own ambitions, his manifold plans and schemes, his intentions for the duardin and how they would serve him. He threw the daemonic mutterings of his parasite into a cell of silence, stifling any distraction that might shift his focus from what was before him.

  The scroll he removed from the urn he now stretched across the floor at his feet. The letters inked upon it in blood were ancient beyond measure, the knowledge they conveyed older still. Names already forgotten when the realms took form from the nothingness burned themselves upon his vision. His tongue moved in unfamiliar cadence, his mouth shaping unspoken sounds. Faster and still faster the incantation ­dribbled into the air, becoming heavier and more solid with each breath.

  As the incantation reached its apex, Khoram returned to the urn once more. Dipping his tentacled hand into it he removed from its depths a pink and wailing thing. In a savage gesture he swung it against the floor. Stunned, it lay supine while he stabbed at its heart with a bone-handled athame. The knife was soon slick with gore, the heartblood of his sacrifice. This he raised to the foul parasite bulging from his neck. In one swift flick, he spattered the sanguine drops across the face of his homunculus.

  The slaughtered sacrifice lay bleeding just within the circle, its gore gleaming in the light of witchfyre spheres. Khoram expected to see the manifestation appear there, emerging from the dead husk. Instead a horrible and prolonged coughing seized the sorcerer, wracking his body from side to side. The tretchlet joined in his spasm, wailing as it too coughed. Instead of emerging from the corpse of the sacrifice, it was from the tretchlet that the noxious thing Khoram had summoned emerged. The homunculus coughed until from its depths it hacked up the dark magic that was choking it.

  The thing spattered against the floor, a finger-long splotch of slimy blackness. For an instant it was inert, then it began to move, writhing from side to side like a dark worm. As it moved, it began to rise, levitating in the air. Khoram no longer coughed, but reasserted the primordial invocation. No longer were the arcane syllables a summons. Now they became words of command.

  ‘Rise,’ Khoram snarled at the wormy thing. ‘By the thousand horrors of Witching Night and the ten thousand curses of Arnizipal, I abjure thee! Be bound unto my desire! Be slave to my design!’ He thrust his hand upwards, one finger-tendril pointing at the ceiling. ‘Go! Seek out the duardin! Seek those who must also become slave to my designs!’

  Like an arrow, the black thing shot upwards, stabbing into the roof. Dirt rained down into the circle as the thing burrowed its way from the sanctum. In his mind’s eye, Khoram could see it ripping free from the summit of the mountain. He watched as it floated into the air, now expanding and growing with each heartbeat. Becoming as vast and malignant as a thunderhead.

  ‘Kill what is needful,’ the sorcerer told the thing. ‘Spare only what I allow to survive!’

  Another eldritch command, and Khoram sent the gargantuan mass rolling across the heavens to seek its allotted prey.

  Chapter VII

  Through his spyglass Brokrin watched as the ornithopter lifted away from the deck of the Grom-Makar and started towards the Iron Dragon. Stout, almost block-like in its design, it looked too cumbersome for flight, much less the rapid, darting manoeuvres that characterised its motion. As it moved it resembled nothing so much as a huge insect flitting through the air, weaving and bobbing with almost contemptuous ease.

  Buoyed by a pair of small endrins mounted to the sides of its frame, directed by a great propeller suspended at the centre of that frame immediately above the wheelhouse, and steered by a large steel rudder fastened to its lean tail section, the ornithopter was little larger than a Grundstok gunhauler. The machine wasn’t designed especially for combat, boasting only a set of gas-carbines situated at either side of the compartment that acted as both hold and cabin. Its real function was to act as scout for the Grom-Makar, investigating conditions in advance of the frigate and sparing the larger ship the hazards of unfavourable circumstance by ferrying goods and personnel. Captain Olgerd had spent a considerable sum on the machine and was inordinately proud of it, declaiming that one day every vessel of respectable tonnage in the sky-fleets of the Kharadron would be making use of them.

  At the moment, Brokrin was certainly making use of Olgerd’s toy. Signalling the Grom-Makar, he had asked the ornithopter to conduct the captains of both frigates to the Iron Dragon for a conference. He knew the message he’d sent was insufferably terse and vague, but the last thing he wanted was an observant crewman catching the gist of what was going on. He had enough problems with the excitement Grokmund had whipped up on his own ship; he didn’t need it spreading to the others. Olgerd and Kjnell had a right to know what was going on. Whether they shared that information with their crews was a question of their own discretion.

  ‘They will be here soon enough,’ Mortrimm stated. ‘I would never dare let him hear me say it, but Olgerd might have something with that contraption he bought.’

  Brokrin turned and leaned against the gunwale. His eyes roved across the deck, watching the duardin as their officers tried to keep them busy. He could see the frequent glances the crewmen threw at him, almost hear the whispers that passed among them. Somebody had been talking. Word had spread through the ship about Grokmund’s treasure. He knew it was not Horgarr or Vorki, doubted it could have been Drumark. Gotramm was young and passionate, but
he didn’t strike Brokrin as foolish enough to go gabbing to his arkanauts. Lodri? If the powder monkey strayed above decks it was unusual enough; if he was sober when he did so it was truly remarkable. No, the most likely suspects were Skaggi and Grokmund himself, and between the two he would put his bets on the logisticator. Skaggi had the financial sense of a criminal genius, but the morality of a starving rat. If he saw a way to push things in the direction he wanted them to take, Skaggi would act before anyone could even say the word ‘oathbreaker’.

  Brokrin scowled as he spotted Skaggi up near the prow. The logisticator was watching the ornithopter’s progress as it flitted over to the Dron-Duraz.

  ‘It is a tempting scheme,’ Mortrimm said. He stretched and twisted his waist, trying to crack his back. ‘If I were younger and more foolish than I am, I would gamble on it.’ He smiled and winked at Brokrin. ‘Sadly, I have seen enough to know that bold talk and big ideas aren’t enough to make something so. A wager can be lost the moment it is made if you aren’t careful.’

  ‘That is a lesson some of these beardlings have yet to learn,’ Brokrin said, nodding towards Gotramm.

  ‘Let us just hope they are around long enough to have the chance to learn,’ Mortrimm replied. ‘Sometimes when you gamble and lose, there isn’t enough left to start over.’

  Brokrin turned and pointed at the ornithopter as it left the Dron-Duraz. ‘That is why you hedge your bets, if you are smart. If we had this conference down on the ground, somebody might get the idea of splitting up the crews. Load everybody willing to take Grokmund’s gamble on one side, leave everybody else to go off on their own.’ His hand tightened into a fist. ‘I did not pull the Iron Dragon through that battle with Ghazul just to be voted off her. We keep everybody up here, in the clouds, and maybe they won’t get any funny ideas.’

  ‘Put Skaggi in the brig,’ Mortrimm advised, ‘and maybe the funny ideas won’t spread.’ The suggestion was uttered in a jovial fashion, but the look in the old navigator’s eyes was anything but flippant.

  ‘That would force things to a head,’ Brokrin said. ‘Make everybody pick sides when maybe they are still undecided. No, I cannot lock Skaggi in the brig.’ He smiled and laughed. ‘Toss him overboard maybe, but not lock him up.’

  Mortrimm sighed and leaned against the gunwale. ‘That’s not a bad idea either, cap’n. If Skaggi has any family at all, they are apt to be indebted to you if you got rid of that little creeper.’

  ‘No more of that kind of talk,’ Brokrin warned. ‘Temptation is demoralising.’

  The captains of the frigates sat to either side of Brokrin while Grokmund put to them the proposal. It was a smaller meeting than the earlier conference had been. Aside from the three captains and the aether-khemist, only Skaggi, Horgarr and Mortrimm were present in Brokrin’s cabin.

  Grokmund summed up his plan for the Barak-Zilfin officers. ‘The claim remains the property of Barak-Urbaz,’ he said. ‘That much cannot be negotiated. To protect the interests of my sky-hold, a fourth share of whatever aether-gold you extract from the vein will be appropriated for Barak-Urbaz. That will leave the other three-quarters to be divided amongst yourselves, your crews and your backers.’

  Captain Kjnell pointed at the tiny ingot Horgarr had distilled from Grokmund’s sample. ‘A considerable sum,’ he stated, ‘if the ore is as rich as the assay indicates.’

  ‘You can trust Horgarr’s estimations,’ Brokrin declared. ‘The sample, at least, is every bit as valuable as you have been told.’

  Captain Olgerd scratched at the steel patch that covered the hollow of his left eye-socket. It was a peculiarity of his that the missing eye would itch whenever he was deep in thought. ‘You claim to be against this plan,’ he told Brokrin, ‘yet here you are telling us the find could be as rich as Grokmund says it is. That strikes me as slightly contrarian.’

  ‘Not when you consider the other factors,’ Mortrimm explained. ‘The volatile nature of this ore–’

  ‘Any ship that leaves port risks disaster of one kind or another,’ Skaggi grumbled. He pointed at Grokmund as an example. ‘The whole Barak-Urbaz expedition was lost with all hands bar one. They didn’t need holds filled with precious aether-gold to be annihilated. But they were, just the same. Yes, there is risk, but you have to consider the reward to be gained.’

  Kjnell shook his head. ‘I like gold better than might be healthy for me,’ he said, ‘but even I am uneasy about turning my ship into a flying bomb.’

  Olgerd clapped his hands together, a broad smile tugging at his beard. ‘There is an easy fix. We put all the aether-gold in a single ship and equip it with a skeleton crew. The others provide escort at a safe distance.’ He glanced at both Kjnell and Brokrin in their turn. ‘Naturally the one who volunteers his vessel for such duty should receive extra compensation.’

  ‘There is more than enough to fill all your holds,’ Grokmund reminded them. ‘It would be the height of foolishness to leave so much wealth behind.’

  ‘You promise a lot,’ Kjnell observed, ‘but I have yet to hear where this strike you made is to be found. All we have is your claims that it is as vast as you say it is.’

  ‘He is in for a fourth share,’ Olgerd said. ‘If it wasn’t big, he would not be worried about losing out.’

  Brokrin gave Grokmund a close study. ‘It might be our friend is more interested in acclaim than riches.’ He waved his hand at the refined ­sample. ‘The discoverer of a new kind of aether-gold would be lauded by his clan and his guild, wouldn’t he?’

  Skaggi’s eyes gleamed as he seized upon the idea. ‘The Code makes providence for recompense,’ he said, looking at Grokmund but ensuring everyone heard his speech. ‘Not only the rescue from the Stormbreaker but also the expenses entailed in making the journey to this strike.’ The logisticator smiled and nodded to each of the captains. ‘The risk to the ships and crew, with all due foreknowledge, could constitute a pre­determined hazard, which in itself is grounds for compensation. All of which, of course, would come from the share you have claimed for Barak-Urbaz.’

  Brokrin could only shake his head in stunned awe at the methodology Skaggi employed to chisel Grokmund’s share. Allotments, fees, obligations, a litany of financial sleight of hand steadily eating away at that portion allocated for Barak-Urbaz. In proportion to that diminishment, the rewards to be divided among the Barak-Zilfin vessels grew. Through it all, the demeanour of Grokmund became more resigned. Whether from fear that the strike would be lost if they did not act quickly or motivated by fame over greed, the aether-khemist looked ready to accept whatever terms saw the small fleet bound to his cause.

  Skaggi looked set to win over the other captains when Horgarr intervened. The endrinmaster held a minuscule scraping of aether-gold between his outstretched fingers. ‘Before you agree to anything, know what you are getting into,’ he declared. The other duardin had to squint to see the little fleck of aether-gold after Horgarr set it down on the table. ‘Cap’n, if you would remove the ingot please.’ He waited while Brokrin retrieved the ingot and its box, then motioned the others away from the table. Once the area was cleared, Horgarr pulled a small hammer from his belt. Holding the tool at arm’s length, he brought it slamming down on the scraping.

  A deafening roar boomed through the cabin accompanied by a searing flash of light. It was as though someone had fired off a volley cannon in the room. When the duardin blinked away the spots that danced before their eyes, they stared in wonder at the splintered wreck of Brok­rin’s table. Stout steelwood had blackened and buckled, a deep crater gouged almost clear through. The severed heft of Horgarr’s hammer lay on the floor, smoke rising from where its missing head had been. The endrinmaster himself clutched at his arm, trying to massage away the explosive tremor that had bruised his very bones.

  ‘You saw how little it took,’ Horgarr told the others. ‘Keep in mind that this was refined ore and more stable than the raw gas we woul
d be storing in the holds.’

  Skaggi sputtered objections, trying to win back Olgerd and Kjnell. Grokmund tried to help his effort, but it soon became obvious their entreaties were in vain. However powerful their arguments, Horgarr’s demonstration was impossible to discount.

  The cabin door opened a moment later, a grave-faced Gotramm ­staring at the smashed table. ‘We heard an explosion,’ he told Brokrin.

  Brokrin glanced at the other captains. ‘Just a lesson in risk management,’ he said. ‘I think it has all been settled now.’

  Gotramm didn’t understand, but he could guess from one look at Skaggi and Grokmund what the lesson had been and how it had shaped opinion. It would not do any good to argue now. Brokrin had out­manoeuvred them. He quickly looked away from his captain and addressed Olgerd. ‘If it is risks that interest you, then you had better have a talk with your pilot. We have spotted a storm on the horizon. Closing fast. He says if the ornithopter doesn’t leave soon then you’re going to be sitting it out on the Iron Dragon.’

  It seemed to Brokrin, as the other captains made their apologies and hurried to follow Gotramm up on deck, that they were less concerned about the storm than they were about what staying on the Iron Dragon might cause them to do. The sober judgement that now motivated them might give way to Skaggi’s persuasive arguments if they gave the logisticator half a chance. Indeed, their step seemed to quicken when Skaggi and Grokmund followed after them.

  Brokrin waited until they were gone before walking over and thanking Horgarr. ‘You can boast now that you got the better of Skaggi in a deal,’ he congratulated the endrinmaster.

  Horgarr continued to rub his arm. ‘I did not plan for it to be so strong,’ he confessed. ‘Skaggi might re-evaluate how much Grokmund’s ore is worth. Could even come up with a figure big enough to tempt me.’

  ‘You have spent too much time patching up this old girl to be blowing her to smithereens,’ Mortrimm said. ‘A craftsman should show a little pride in his work.’