The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  Warhammer: The End Times stories from blacklibrary.com

  THE RETURN OF NAGASH

  Book One of the End Times

  THE FALL OF ALTDORF

  Book Two of the End Times

  THE CURSE OF KHAINE

  Book Three of the End Times

  THE RISE OF THE HORNED RAT

  Book Four of the End Times

  THE LORD OF THE END TIMES

  Book Five of the End Times

  DEATHBLADE

  A Tale of Malus Darkblade

  GOTREK & FELIX: KINSLAYER

  A Gotrek & Felix novel

  GOTREK & FELIX: SLAYER

  A Gotrek & Felix novel

  It is an age of legend.

  In the elder ages when the world was young, elves and dwarfs lived in peace and prosperity. Dwarfs are great craftsmen, lords of the under deeps, artificers beyond compare. Elves are peerless mages, masters of the dragons, creatures of the sky and air. During the time of High King Snorri Whitebeard and Prince Malekith, these two great races were at the pinnacle of their strength. But such power and dominion could not last. Fell forces now gather against elves and dwarfs. Malekith, embittered by his maiming in the Flame of Asuryan, seeks to destroy them both but still darker powers are also at work. Already strained, disharmony sours relations between them until only enmity remains. Treachery is inevitable, a terrible act that can only result in one outcome... War.

  The dwarf High King Gotrek Starbreaker marshals his throngs of warriors from all the holds of the Karaz Ankor, whilst the elves, under the vainglorious and arrogant Caledor II, gather their glittering hosts and fill the skies with dragons.

  Mastery of the Old World is at stake, a grudge in the making that will last for millennia. Neither side will give up until the other is destroyed utterly. For in the War of Vengeance, victory will be measured only in blood.

  Chapter One

  Fires in the Sky

  236th year of the reign of Caledor II

  ‘I might be a damn zaki, but scupper me if I don’t glory in all this.’

  Heglan Copperfist smiled at the other dwarf’s outburst. He looked up from the airship’s broad deck and to the wheelhouse where Nugdrinn Hammerfoot was scratching anxiously at the hollow of his missing eye. The old sea captain had adjusted magnificently to the demands of his new vocation – that of sky captain. Far below them, the snowy peaks of the Vaults peaked out from a mantle of misty cloud, a sight to awe the heart of any dawi, moving him to stark terror or, as in Nugdri’s case, exuberant jubilation.

  The engineer couldn’t indulge the same thrill as Nugdri. He couldn’t afford to. A grand honour had been given to him, but along with that honour had come a terrible obligation – a grim duty that pressed down upon him with all the weight of the great rock Durazon.

  No, he wouldn’t fail. He couldn’t fail. He was the last of the Copperfists, the last of his line. Only Heglan could redeem the legacy of his grandfather, exonerate the engineering theories of Dammin Copperfist and erase the ridicule and shame that had been heaped upon his name. Only Heglan could bestow upon the arsenals of King Brynnoth and Barak Varr a weapon that could match the might and horror of the drakk and their elgi masters.

  Only Heglan would have the glory of avenging his brother Nadri Gildtongue. Destroying the dragons, eliminating the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of the elgi, would pave the way for a quick and decisive victory against the hated foe. A fleet of airships descending upon Tor Alessi, raining havoc upon the city as the drakk had wrought havoc upon the dawi armies.

  In response to Heglan’s command, Nugdri coaxed the skryzan-­harbark still higher. The rest of the crew, down on the main deck, chewed nervously at their beards, eyes locked on the enormous leather sack suspended above them. Filled with buoyant gas, the air-bag was what enabled the skryzan-harbark to defy the pull of rock and earth. Great copper vanes, whirling about at rapid speed, provided the ship’s propulsion, but it was the air-bag that was the true triumph of Heglan’s invention. At higher altitudes he’d found that gas escaped from the air-bag. A new coating derived from a mix of resin and tar was proving an effective sealant thus far. If the skryzan-­harbark were to contend with dragons, Heglan felt it essential that the airships be able to strike from above the monsters. He’d studied birds for many years and one thing had been imprinted on his mind: a predator always swooped down upon its prey from above.

  Heglan joined Nugdri on the wheelhouse. ‘Glory and danger go together like pick and hammer,’ he cautioned the captain. They were climbing into the clouds, the mists of the mountains wrapping around them like a grey cloak. ‘The greater the glory, the greater the danger.’

  Nugdri stamped his metal foot against the deck, a habit he had that he claimed drew the attention of his ancestors and reminded them to send better luck his way than they had when he’d lost the appendage. ‘If you die seeking glory, there’s no shame in that.’

  The engineer’s expression grew sombre. ‘There is if others are depending on you,’ he stated. ‘Pride is a poor excuse to offer the dead.’ He turned his head, trying to pierce the clouds with his stony gaze. The skryzan-harbark were wondrous creations, but their mastery of the air wasn’t unquestioned. Older and fouler things rode the winds these days.

  Signal fires had alerted sentinels in Karak Norn, and from there the alert had passed to Karak Izor and Karak Hirn, finally reaching Barak Varr, the great sea hold, the mighty dwarf bastion on the Iron Gulf. There were few dwarf kingdoms as powerful as Barak Varr and none that possessed the amazing weapons Heglan had devised. It was to King Brynnoth and Barak Varr that the embattled holds in the Grey Mountains and Vaults turned when the elgi were on the march. It was to Barak Varr that the alarm was sent.

  The warning had been only one name and one word. Kazad Thar. Dragons. That was enough to relay that Kazad Thar was under attack by the hated drakk.

  It was rare that any king of the dwarfs made a decision quickly, but it had taken Heglan and Guildmaster Strombak only a few minutes to convince King Brynnoth that the skryzan-­harbark must be sent to help the stricken fortress. The hill dwarfs – the skarrenawi – were yet cousins of the dawi and it would be an offence to the ancestor gods to abandon any dwarf to the depredations of the elgi and their beasts. Heglan had proven that they could confront the dragons in their own element.

  Whether they could win… That was still a question that carried with it considerable doubt. The dwarfs had fought many battles with dragons in their long history, but the gold-grubbing wyrms that threatened their treasure vaults and mines weren’t nearly so destructive as the drakk trained by elves. It took a lot to even injure one of those dragons. To kill one would require more weaponry than a single skryzan-harbark could carry. At least, if the airships bore ordinary weaponry.

  Test upon test had been made, but even Heglan couldn’t be certain that he had the weapons he needed. Ideally, he would have liked to coax one of the drakk out, lure it into a trap and prove the efficacy of their new ordnance under controlled conditions. The war, however, wouldn’t wait for his experiments. Year by year, the War of Vengeance became more savage and bitter, the elgi stealing forth from their cities to raid and pillage the scattered mines and outposts of the dawi. Dragons would scorch anything that moved on the roads, forcing the dwarfs to delve new branches of the Ungdrin Ankor to escape their flames. Elgi sorcery had withered the crops and herds that fed many of the strongholds. Elgi ships had even dared to challenge Barak Varr for control of the Iron Gulf and the outlying seas.

  The dawi had returned the outrages of the elgi with methodical deliberation. Twilight raids with axe and fire that
reduced orchards and vineyards to so much ruin. Bold attacks with hammer and pick that toppled towers and walls. Grim ambushes against elgi knights and soldiers that demonstrated to the arrogant tall-ears the mettle of dwarfish courage and dwarfish steel. The dawi didn’t need sorcerers and drakk to fight their battles. To answer the grudgements laid against the elves – the murder of Prince Snorri Halfhand and the unforgivable humiliation of High King Gotrek’s ambassadors – it would take dwarfish blades. The blood of the elgi Prince Imladrik was but a drop in the sea of retribution that awaited the enemy.

  From his vantage, Heglan could see the artillerists at their assigned stations, each ready to execute the manoeuvres they had drilled for months. Six sleek, bronze-framed bolt throwers were anchored to the mid-deck, three to a side. Metal mantlets shaded each platform, protecting the weapons while at the same time preventing them from being elevated to such an angle that they could threaten the air-bag above. Blockers set into the deck itself likewise arrested any divergence left and right. The bolt throwers required such precautions – their frames were wonders of engineering, designed by Bagdrimm Tallbeard of Karak Kadrin. Fitted to complex swivels, the weapons could pivot from side to side as well as depress or elevate. Each weapon was so expertly balanced that a single dwarf could manipulate it.

  It had taken much gold and more flattery for Guildmaster Strombak to secure Bagdrimm’s invention for the skryzan-­harbark, but Heglan knew it would be worth it. For the airships to be true predators of the sky they needed more than just wings; they needed claws as well. Claws capable of knocking a dragon out of the air.

  Claws of fire.

  There was pride in Heglan’s eyes as he focused on the ammunition positioned beside each bolt thrower. The great ashwood arrows with their barbed, steel heads were only the vehicle for the true bite of the skryzan-harbark. Their real power lay in the small stone pots that would be fixed to each arrow with chain just before it was loaded. The pots were sealed with pitch, a short length of fuse dangling from the mouth. The arrows would strike a dragon hard, but the dwarfs had seen time and again how difficult it was to pierce a drakk deep enough to really hurt it. Thus each missile’s barbed head was meant only to hold the shaft in place until the burning fuse touched off the contents of the pot.

  Heglan had worked long and hard to find the ideal compound to use. He’d been inspired by ‘mine-damp’, the explosive build-up of gas that often proved so devastating during the dawi’s excavations. He’d tried very hard to find just the right mixture to recreate that destructive power. In the end, he’d been forced to appeal to the engineers’ guild, to see if a brother engineer might have the answer that was proving so elusive to him.

  The answer was Tharzharr – ‘thunder-fire’ – but it came not from another engineer, but a displaced thane. Drogor Zarrdum, a traveller from the distant hold of Karak Zorn, had brought the secret of Tharzharr to Barak Varr. It was an incendiary of unmatched ferocity, capable of melting its way through solid steel. It was more than merely an explosive: when it was unleashed, it would splash across a target in a burst of green fire, burning its way through whatever suffered its touch.

  It was a hideous weapon, but so too were the drakk the elgi employed to reduce dwarf warriors to cinder and smoke. There was no room for sentiment in war, no place for conscience and half-measures. To be victorious, you had to be more ruthless than your enemy. If Heglan ever had any doubts about that, he only needed to recall the name of his ship to cast them aside.

  Nadri’s Retribution. It would bring retribution. It would make the elves pay in blood for his brother and all the others who had been treacherously killed by the feckless elgi. The Book of Grudges kept by each hold was filled with debts against the elves. The skryzan-harbark would be the vessels to settle those scores.

  Lord Teranion had to remind himself that the smell of burning flesh was repugnant, that it should horrify him to the very core of his being. He couldn’t exult in what he had unleashed. He had to remember who he was, what it meant to be asur. He couldn’t allow centuries of civilisation and culture to slip away, shed like a worn-out skin.

  The dragon becomes you. You become the dragon.

  Teranion recited the old proverb to himself. How many times had he heard that warning spoken by Prince Imladrik? Somehow, no matter how often a dragon rider was told, the wisdom behind the words would fade away. The meaning would recede, all but forgotten until that moment, that instant of horror when an elf felt his identity being consumed by a force so primal it was older than the gods. The arrogance of most elves led them to believe dragons were their servants, that somehow these mighty beasts were beholden to them. The truth was that the best any asur could hope to inspire in a dragon was a sort of tolerant amusement, the indulgent affection bestowed upon a beloved pet by its owner. In all the long history of the elves, there had been only a few elves wise and powerful enough to truly be called Master of Dragons.

  Away to the south and east, Teranion could see the forbidding heights of the peaks the dawi called ‘the Vaults’. They stood as a stark reminder to him of the monumental task ahead of his people. To destroy the dawi, to bring the dwarfs to their knees, would be like breaking down the very mountains in which they dwelled. It was an effort of such enormity that it made the heart shudder, but was ever such an attempt more necessary? If the dawi weren’t brought to heel, then the asur would never know peace again in their colonies. The shining promise of Elthin Arvan would be smothered in the smoke of war.

  How, then, to cast down the mountains? One stone at a time! And Kazad Thar, the little hill fort crouching in the shadows of the Vaults, would be that first stone.

  At Lord Teranion’s urging, Khalamor dived down upon the dwarf hold. Before the lookouts in the crude stone towers spotted the drake, the dragon’s fire was already rushing across their walls. Burning dwarfs leapt screaming from the ramparts as Khalamor rushed past. The dragon’s long tail slashed out at the battlements, cracking against them like thunderbolts. Rock crumbled and masonry shattered as the tremors of the impact shivered through the fort.

  The dwarf warriors still on the walls and towers trained their weapons on Khalamor as the drake circled around. Horns and gongs rang out as the alarm was sounded and terrified dwarfs fled towards the great gates of their hold. Crossbows and bolt throwers sent a barrage of steel-tipped missiles flashing at the dragon in a vain effort to drop it from the sky. Those few bolts that struck the drake lacked the strength and velocity to penetrate its thick scales. The roar that bellowed from Khalamor’s jaws was almost scornful as it echoed down upon Kazad Thar.

  Their attention fixed upon Khalamor, the dwarfs weren’t able to bring their heavy weapons to bear when a second dragon swooped down on them from the opposite side of the hold. Again, dragon fire blasted the ramparts, spilling burning dwarfs down the slopes of their hill. Reptilian claws dug into the wall, tearing a section from its foundations and leaving a great gash in the side of the fort. As the drake flung the crumbling section of masonry earthwards, a burst of flame shot from its maw and into halls its attack had exposed.

  Khalamor swept back around, hurling itself at the skarrenawi as they turned their efforts towards fighting Lord Heruen and Mornavere. Teranion felt a contemptuous pity for the miserable creatures in that instant before his steed’s fire washed down upon them.

  Teranion brought his dragon crashing down upon the gatehouse, pulverising an armoured dwarf warchief beneath the reptile’s claws. Khalamor’s jaws closed about the frame of a bolt thrower, ripping it from its mount and dragging the weapon and one of its crew away. Ballista and dwarf alike were hurled across the battlements by a turn of the dragon’s head, smashing the crossbowmen assembling there. Dozens of dwarfs were crushed by the wreckage, their bodies flattened against the crenellations behind them. For good measure, Khalamor sent a gout of fire chasing after the survivors as Teranion urged the drake skywards.

  Below, the walls of the dw
arf hold were but so much rubble. Teranion could see Heruen upon Mornavere sweeping above the carnage. A blast of flame erupted from the dragon’s jaws, engulfing a group of bearded warriors as they tried to pick themselves from the wreckage. Screams rang out as the dragon fire immolated them. They didn’t have a chance, no more than a mouse in the jaws of a fox.

  Such was the way of war, Teranion reminded himself. It wasn’t all glory; it wasn’t all honour. It was dirty and it was despicable. It drew out the most selfless sacrifice from those who fought, and then demanded of them the most remorseless brutality. For only in unrestrained brutality could there ever be an end to the war.

  Khalamor dived down upon the burning hold. The dragon’s claws ripped into the face of a great stone idol. For a moment, the reptile perched there, spitting fire into the tunnel-­like openings to the lower deeps of the dwarf citadel. Teranion noted a score of bearded warriors rushing from behind his steed. At his urging, the dragon whipped its powerful tail around, sending the dwarfs sprawling with broken bones and ruptured organs.

  It was all necessary, Teranion reminded himself. This horrific destruction was necessary. Lord Salendor had long urged that the war be extended to the skarrenawi. The hill dwarfs hadn’t taken up arms against the asur the way their mountain cousins had, but they still gave the enemy material support. Iron ore, copper, timber, wool, grain – all these flowed from the skarrens to the karaks of the mountain kingdoms. If that flow of resources was stopped, the dawi would find it more difficult to prosecute their war against the asur.

  As Teranion urged his dragon back into the sky, he reflected upon the other reason for this vicious attack. The mages in Tor Alessi had scryed some new weapon being developed by the dwarfs. A weapon that could irreversibly shift the balance of power in Elthin Arvan. This attack, therefore, wasn’t simply to destroy the skarrens, but to draw out this mysterious threat.

  Draw it out and destroy it.