Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  ‘That was the whole purpose behind it,’ Gotramm told him. ‘We are taking enough chances with what is in the hold. We do not need to test our luck stacking more all over the deck.’

  Grokmund nodded. ‘A prudent course to take,’ he conceded. ‘Costly, but prudent.’

  ‘Not as costly as having the whole ship blow up,’ Gotramm said. ‘There is no profit in being dead.’

  Grokmund bowed. ‘I was not questioning your decision,’ he apologised. He nodded towards Skaggi, drawing Gotramm’s attention to the logisticator as he skulked his way below deck. ‘His ambition got the better of his judgement. You were right to oppose his reckless plot.’

  It was a look of suspicion that Gotramm trained upon Grokmund. ‘Why does that sound like you have some reckless plot of your own?’

  Grokmund tapped the side of his head. ‘Not a plot, but a proposal. And it isn’t reckless. Far from it. If you are agreeable, we could make the cargo safer and more stable.’ He smiled at the privateer. ‘More valuable too. The raw ore is precious, but distilled into a solid it will be even more so.’

  Gotramm thought it over. He lifted his gaze from Grokmund, focusing on Brokrin as the captain paced across the deck of the ship that had been his to command. Brokrin was an experienced skyfarer. If his worry about the stability of Grokmund’s ore was great enough for him to risk mutiny, then it was a worry that shouldn’t be dismissed easily. As he had told the crew, now that they weren’t looking at disaster when they returned to Barak-Zilfin, Gotramm was not so eager to take any undue risks.

  ‘If you have an idea how we might make the cargo safer, I will hear it,’ Gotramm told him. ‘If it sounds feasible to me, we will put it to the rest of the officers.’

  Again, Grokmund smiled. ‘If I can convince you, cap’n, then I am certain I can convince them.’

  To say he felt awkward would have been a vast understatement. There was something almost surreal to Brokrin in the situation, sitting to one side of the table in his cabin with Gotramm conducting a conference of the Iron Dragon’s officers. The last time they had all been in this room, he had been captain of the ship. Now he was adrift, a spectator to events. An interested observer, to be certain, but in no real way a participant. That Gotramm had asked him to remain was out of courtesy rather than necessity. Brokrin had no authority now.

  The subject at hand was, of course, the explosive cargo in the ironclad’s holds. After the violent exhibition Gotramm had arranged for the crew, there were more than a few misgivings about carrying Grokmund’s volatile ore. Skaggi’s plans to overload the ship had been scuppered, but now there were arguments that even the amount in the holds should be reduced.

  ‘A reduction would not change anything,’ Horgarr told the others. ‘You all saw the punch just a tiny draught of this aether-gold had. Bleeding off some of what we have already loaded would not change a thing. If you want to play safe you will have to get rid of it all.’

  Grokmund was quick to speak lest anyone seize upon Horgarr’s extreme suggestion. ‘Disperse what has been brought on and it will be lost for good,’ he argued. ‘Even if the vein does not drift, anything you expel from the holds is certain to. Think of what you stand to lose.’

  ‘If I was thinking of that, I would not be telling Skaggi where he can put his barrels,’ Drumark snorted. The logisticator scowled at him, but the sergeant simply grinned back.

  Arrik stood and looked around the table. ‘As I see it there is a big difference between having the aether-gold exposed on deck and locked away down in the holds. It is safe enough down there.’

  Mortrimm glanced over at Brokrin, then answered Arrik’s statement. ‘This aether-gold is more caustic than the common sort. Makes it more valuable, but more dangerous too. I do not know that it is any safer down there than it is sitting next to an open flame.’

  Skaggi slammed his fist against the table. ‘By that logic we should not take any of it,’ he growled. ‘Just tuck tail and fly back to Barak-Zilfin empty-handed.’ He glared at the other duardin. ‘Maybe you have a taste for being up to your beard in debt, but not me. We have come this far.’

  ‘Maybe we have been lucky,’ Drumark told him. ‘I am not keen to have creditors nipping at my boots, but I am not anxious to have my body blasted across half of Chamon.’

  Gotramm interrupted before the pair could really start arguing. ‘There are precautions we could take,’ he told the duardin. ‘Ways to make the aether-gold safer to transport.’ He motioned for Grokmund to explain.

  ‘We could refine the gas,’ Grokmund said. ‘Distil it into a solid. As ingots it would be easier to carry and take up less room in the holds.’

  ‘Refine it?’ Horgarr scratched at his beard, mulling over the idea. ‘It would help the stability. Certainly it would be easier to carry.’

  Skaggi nodded slowly. ‘Ingots would take up less space. We could distil what we have and come back for more.’

  ‘Or we could be content with what we have and not go pushing our luck,’ Drumark shot back.

  Skaggi gave Drumark a look that was almost murderous. ‘Grokmund promises the ore will increase in value when it is refined. But nobody is going to refine it for nothing. They will expect their own share, and it would be naive to think they will settle for a small one. Now, if we went back, got some more aether-gold, we could offset that expense.’ He turned to regard the other duardin. ‘That makes sense, does it not? Why throw away money?’

  Brokrin could not help but throw his own opinion into the fray. ‘There is an old saying. Something about not counting on a claim until it has been filed. I am sure you get the meaning.’ From the sulky way Skaggi sank back into his chair, he could tell that he did. Brokrin pointed at Grokmund. ‘Your expedition was not able to file a claim on that strike. Until you get back to do so, anybody could come along and claim it.’

  Grokmund’s face went pale. He stared at Brokrin as though he’d suddenly sprouted horns and grown a second head. ‘You wouldn’t…’ he stammered.

  Gotramm allayed Grokmund’s fear. ‘We have too much honour to steal your strike out from under you,’ he told him. ‘Skaggi might be able to find some obscure addendum to the Kharadron Code that would allow for it, but as far as I am concerned – all of us are concerned – that would not make it right. We are entitled to compensation, but you are entitled to your claim.’ He turned towards Brokrin. ‘You are right though. Until a claim has been filed any prospector who comes along could say the vein is his discovery.’

  ‘What is your advice?’ Drumark asked Brokrin.

  Brokrin was quiet a moment. It was not lost upon him that some of these were the same duardin who had denied him his command. At the same time, some of them might have sided with him in the vote. How much support he had here was an open question. Because it was a question, he chose his words carefully. ‘The aether-gold is already loaded,’ he said. ‘That means the risk is the same for carrying a ransom back to Barak-Zilfin as it is for carrying a pittance. It is not any less a folly to make sure everyone gets rich.’ He pointed to Grokmund. ‘Distilling the gas into a solid would mean taking it somewhere first. That means more time in the hold, more time away from port, and more time for something to happen.’

  Skaggi added his own opinion into the argument. ‘Distilling the gas means paying someone to refine it. More fingers in the pot. More shares to be split.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Mortrimm said. ‘There is a way to refine it without getting any metallurgists involved.’ The navigator rose and walked over to the shelf where Brokrin stored the ship’s navigation charts and log books. He was familiar enough with the charts to immediately pull out the one he wanted. Unfolding it on the table, he pressed his thumb to a great swathe of dull yellow that indicated an ice-desert. ‘This is where we are,’ he said. ‘Or at least ten thousand feet above this point. Now, if we do this…’ Keeping his thumb pressed upon their current position, Mortri
mm spun his hand around and brought his forefinger pressing against the chart. ‘Seven leagues,’ he declared.

  ‘Seven leagues to what?’ Drumark asked.

  Mortrimm moved his hand, tapping the spot his forefinger had touched with a triumphant flourish. ‘Seven leagues to Finnolf’s Fortress.’ He saw that the name was strange to the others, so he hurried to explain. ‘Finnolf’s Fortress is a sky-island. The peak of a mountain that was mined out from under it. Instead of subsiding, the peak stayed where it was, floating in the clouds. Finnolf’s people kept mining away, grinding downwards, sending the ore back to the peak to be refined and loaded onto ships.’

  ‘How does that help us?’ Gotramm wondered.

  ‘Because two hundred and fifty years ago some calamity hit the outpost,’ Mortrimm stated. ‘A trading vessel put in there and found the place completely deserted. Not a soul around. When the crew they sent inside to look for signs of life became ill, they decided that some plague had decimated Finnolf’s people. The traders left in a hurry so the same thing would not happen to them.’ Mortrimm looked each of the duardin in the eye. ‘Nobody has gone back there to reclaim the place or any of the things Finnolf’s folk left behind.’

  Gotramm nodded. ‘Enough time has gone past to take the bite out of any plague,’ he said. ‘But even if the machinery they used to refine their ore is still there, would it serve our purpose?’

  ‘In the old days skyfarers used to take their aether-gold there,’ Mortrimm said.

  ‘It would make things easier… safer and more lucrative,’ Horgarr opined. He studied the chart for a moment. ‘If the peak’s altitude is as high as this indicates, the machinery should be in good condition. A little spit and polish and I might have it working again in short order.’

  Skaggi perked up as he listened to Mortrimm and Horgarr. ‘If Finnolf’s Fortress were abandoned with all its material still in place then it is an amazing boon to this venture.’ He rubbed his hands together, a sly gleam in his eyes. ‘If we took the aether-gold to port to be refined then we would be at the mercy of the guilds. In its raw state the value could be bargained down, and if we were to take it to the metallurgists they could command whatever price they felt they could get away with. But if we refined it ourselves, brought it back that way, then no sharp trader could try to cheat us and contest the ore’s unique properties.’

  ‘There is more to refining aether-gold than just getting machines to work,’ Brokrin said.

  Grokmund waved away Brokrin’s concern. ‘I am familiar enough with the process. With Horgarr’s help I am certain we could distil the gas and condense it into a solid.’

  Brokrin remained unconvinced. ‘It means a trek of seven leagues to a desolate outpost that may or may not have what you need. Either way, you still have to think about the voyage back to Barak-Zilfin.’

  Gotramm shook his head. ‘There are times when you have to decide when to be cautious and when to gamble. This is one of those times. Stacking barrels of aether-gold on the deck was not a gamble I felt was worth the risk.’ He looked down at the chart, stroking his beard as he stared at the abandoned outpost. ‘This is different,’ he decided. ‘If we are successful, then we are reducing the risks and increasing the rewards. If not, we are just adding seven leagues to our travel.’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Brokrin corrected him. He waved his hand at the chart. ‘You have to take the ship there and back again. That means if there is nothing there, then you are putting another fourteen leagues between you and home. And all that time the ship’s belly is filled with,’ he pointed at Grokmund, ‘well, you’ve seen what his find can do to a keg.’

  ‘We also know what an empty hold means when we get back,’ Gotramm told him. ‘You might believe in this curse that hangs over you, but I do not. If we have had a turn of bad luck, then we are due some good.’ He stabbed his finger down at the chart. ‘I think the outpost gives us a good chance to turn things around. Unless any of the acting officers object, I am saying we go there and see if we can get the odds even more in our favour.’

  Brokrin sat back, giving the privateer a discouraged look. ‘As you say, I am not an acting officer any more. I am just along for the ride. I was just hoping you were not sailing straight to our tombs.’

  ‘You will feel different when you get your share of the aether-gold,’ Mortrimm insisted.

  ‘I thought you were too old for this kind of foolishness,’ Brokrin told the navigator. ‘Treasure hunts are the domain of beardlings.’

  ‘We have already found the treasure,’ Gotramm said, his voice taking on an edge. ‘You are just envious because you did not have the confidence to take us to it yourself.’

  ‘Confidence can be a beardling teasing a sleeping troggoth with a sharp stick,’ Brokrin said. ‘It is easy to be confident until the troggoth bites your hand off.’ He jabbed his thumb in the direction of the forward holds. ‘You have a troggoth locked in there and every hour it is on board you are poking it with a stick. Only if it wakes up, we are all going to lose more than a hand.’

  Chapter XI

  The mountain peak floated amidst the clouds, its slopes banded about in deposits of crystalline snow. Staring at it through his spyglass, Brokrin was struck by the wonder of the sight. What force held it suspended thousands of feet above the earth betrayed no physical sign. No fantastic luminance, no magical haze of power rippled from the bottom of the peak. Only the empty sky and the howling wind filled the void between it and the ground below.

  The mountain had been vast and mighty once, but the rapacious delving of the duardin had worn it down until what sprawled far below the peak looked like the stump of a broken tooth poking up from a decayed gum. Gaping pits pock-marked that stump and clusters of colossal digging machines lay scattered about, quietly rusting away as the jungle below the mountain gradually crept towards them. If the mountain was a rotting husk of what it had once been, the jungle around it was fecund and rapacious. Its dense foliage rolled away in every direction, spilling across the distant horizon. The leaves below were translucent, shining like fire as the sunlight struck them, turning the untamed ­forest into an ocean of flickering flames. Strange birds and gigantic insects flew from the eerie trees, squawking and buzzing, hunting and hiding as they soared through the jungle. Sometimes colossal beasts would poke their heads up through the shimmering canopy, blinking at the sky with batrachian eyes before ducking back down into the gloom of the forest trails.

  This was the land in which Finnolf’s Fortress had been built, the place where his folk had prospered until a weird doom brought the outpost to ruin. The duardin had kept the peak intact, employing it as a refuge against the beasts of the jungle and the rampaging hordes of Chaos that had plagued the Mortal Realms for an age. Here and there the slopes of the peak had been cut away to expose air shafts and guard posts, watch towers and loading platforms, but only on its northern side had a more pronounced construction been executed. Here the face of the mountain had been reshaped into the brooding countenance of a duardin king, likely old Finnolf himself. Beneath the sculpture’s squared chin, the wide platforms of a port had been hacked out from the rock. Docks for sky-vessels, a few of them big enough to harbour anything up to the size of a battleship. Obelisk-like totems etched with runes announced the fees and tariffs that would be collected from any vessel that put in to the outpost. Towers arrayed around the port, each with the menacing snouts of cannons poking from their windows, made it clear the settlement would enforce that collection.

  The menace of the towers was of a different sort now. As the Iron Dragon sailed closer to the peak, the duardin crew could see marks of decay and neglect. Acidic rains had pitted the muzzles of the cannons when no one withdrew them against Chamon’s storms. Slates from the roofs had been knocked free by the elements, leaving dark holes in their absence. Dried brambles and dead leaves lay clumped in the lee of overhangs where condors and eagles had built their nests. The threat of the
guns was long past, the menace the towers now posed less overt. It was a menace that set the mind to wondering and a chill to rush over the skin, the haunting air of antiquity and mysteries without answer.

  Skywardens descended from the ironclad, their aether-endrins bearing them slowly down towards the dock as they vented gas from the tanks. They carried the heavy mooring chains that would tether the ship to the outermost dock. While they wound the chains about the great granite stanchions, Drumark’s thunderers watched from the deck above, guns at the ready. The outpost appeared abandoned, but the Kharadron were not going to trust mere appearances.

  After securing the chains, the skywardens worked the rusted cranks set into the stanchions. Fashioned in the semblance of a dour-visaged ancestor, the stone pillars gradually began to rotate, revolving on hidden turnstiles. The groan of age and neglect rumbled from the stanchions as they turned, slowly drawing the Iron Dragon downwards. Flecks of rusted metal and bits of crumbling stone dropped away from the sculptures, culminating in the beard sloughing away from one statue and clattering across the pier.

  Several minutes of hard labour finally brought the ironclad to rest, her deck level with the dock. Drumark and several of his thunderers disembarked, fanning out to cover the cavernous entry into the outpost. Once the area was secured, Gotramm signalled and led some of his arkanauts as they disembarked. Grokmund followed them after a final hurried conversation with Horgarr. The two had been discussing what facilities they would need to convert the aether-gold into a solid state since the lookout first spotted Finnolf’s Fortress. The endrin­master would have preferred to accompany the landing party but had been deemed too important to the maintenance of the ship to be put at risk.

  The last to disembark was Brokrin. Unlike Horgarr, he had no vital duties that bound him to the Iron Dragon, certainly not since the mutiny, and felt he was expendable enough to go exploring the old outpost. It would be more productive than keeping to his cabin and letting his mind brood upon how things had come to such a state.