The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  Khalamor leapt from its stony perch, tearing the idol’s head from its shoulders. As the dragon began to climb, it let the enormous head crash back to earth. Scores of stunned, charred dwarfs were crushed as the mass of stone slammed into the ground and rolled through their ruined halls.

  It was all necessary, Teranion reminded himself again, to preserve the colonies and protect the Asur Empire. So long as he took no pleasure in killing, he could still claim to be civilised.

  Nadri’s Retribution slowly descended from the clouds, the other airships in Heglan’s fleet following after their flagship. As the skryzan-harbark entered the open air, Heglan could see the countryside laid out before him. The vast swathes of lush green forest to the north, the dim wall of the Vaults to the south. Below were green fields and hill country, the lands that had been settled by the skarrenawi.

  More than most of the dawi, Heglan could accept the peculiarity of disposition that had made the skarrenawi quit the vaults and tunnels of the Karaz Ankor for the open skies of the lowlands. There was a majesty of the surface world that most of his people were oblivious to, a wonder as profound and magnificent as anything to be found in the roots of the mountains.

  Now, however, Heglan found little beauty or magnificence to appreciate. As he looked over the countryside he could see thick pillars of smoke billowing up from the hills. The farms and fields of the skarrenawi were burning. A great smouldering ruin was all that remained of Kazad Thar. The hill fort had been almost razed to the ground, its walls broken open, the halls within blasted with fire and clawed out. Sections of the hold had been scorched with such fiery fury that the walls were as smooth as glass. Other sections were ragged and ripped, scourged by monstrous talons. Columns and pillars, some as much as twenty feet around, lay toppled like the toys of a petulant child. The great gates, which had once stood so proudly, were naught but twisted iron and splinters now, hurled down from the heights to lay crumpled at the foot of Kazad Thar.

  A hold of thousands of skarrenawi had been reduced to soot and cinders. Gazing upon it, Heglan felt the blood boiling in his veins. A new urgency wrapped itself around his thirst for revenge. Elgi had done this. Elgi and their thrice-damned drakk!

  Heglan pressed his spyglass to his eye, staring down at the shattered husk of Kazad Thar. The charred corpses of dwarfs lay strewn all about the rubble. The dragons made no distinction between dawi or rinn, longbeard or child. Pools of bubbling metal were all that remained of the fort’s armouries and treasure vaults, and mounds of soot and ash were all that remained of timber and wool. The drakk had taken pains to leave nothing of value behind. Even so, Heglan could see clutches of stunned survivors stumbling about the ruins, trying to excavate the escape tunnels and boltholes where more of their kin might yet remain.

  The urge to order his air-fleet to descend and help the survivors gnawed at Heglan’s heart. He’d been entrusted with command of the skryzan-harbark by King Brynnoth himself. Not one of Barak Varr’s sea captains or thanes, not one of the stronghold’s generals or warriors. The king had chosen Heglan, an engineer, because he knew the machines, knew what they were capable of. Capability meant more than just what the skryzan-harbark could do but what they should do.

  There was only one decision to make, despicable as it felt to Heglan. The survivors of Kazad Thar had to be left on their own. If the skryzan-harbark descended to help, then the airships themselves would be vulnerable to attack.

  ‘Sky-master Heglan,’ Nugdri called to the engineer. The hammer-footed captain pointed his hand towards the airship leading Heglan’s fleet. There were seven skryzan-harbark, all the workshops of Barak Varr had been able to build since the conquest of Oeragor. Each was a marvel of engineering and invention, but Heglan considered the ship at the fleet’s vanguard to be his finest work. It was a great black-hulled behemoth of the air, nearly twice the size of Nadri’s Retribution and boasting more weaponry than any two airships.

  King Snorri it had been named and it was under the command of the late prince’s friend and confidant Drogor Zarrdum. Heglan and King Brynnoth had offered the thane whatever price he wanted for the secret of his fire. A flame that burned hotter than zonzharr and which could melt steel in the blink of an eye was worth the ransom of a king. Drogor had spurned gold and jewels, however. What he wanted was one of Heglan’s airships to command. What he wanted was the chance to strike back against the elgi and avenge the honour of Snorri Halfhand.

  Lanterns blinked from King Snorri’s aft. The code was a derivation of that employed by the engineers’ guild, a system of flashes that conveyed information quickly and efficiently. As Heglan interpreted the message being sent from Drogor’s ship, he felt rage boiling up inside him.

  ‘They’ve spotted what’s left of a skarrenawi army, warriors from Kazad Mingol caught rushing to help their kinsmen,’ Heglan told Nugdri. ‘The drakk burned them on the march. There’s a two-mile scorch across the hills where King Orrik’s army was reduced to cinders.’ The engineer’s expression darkened, his eyes taking on a fiery gleam. He raised the spyglass to his eye again and turned his gaze to the north-west. Dimly, he could see what the spotters on the King Snorri had seen. There was smoke rising in the direction of Kazad Mingol.

  It seemed the outrages of the drakk weren’t over. Well, this time the elgi and their wyrms would pay for lingering at the scene of their crimes. This time the dwarfs had the weaponry to hit back.

  ‘Signal all ships,’ Heglan bellowed, his voice so loud that he didn’t need the bronze speaking horn to be heard by every dwarf of his crew. ‘All speed to Kazad Mingol! All artillerists to their stations! We hit the drakk high and hard. We make the elgi know what it means to defile the hearths of the dawi!’

  Two dragons were circling above the shattered walls of Kazad Mingol. They had broken through the outer fortifications, sending great jumbles of earth and stone rolling down the southern face of the hill the stronghold had been built upon. Some of the upper deeps had been exposed by the destruction, great galleries of granite lined with broken pillars and archways. Here and there the titanic statue of an ancestor god towered above the rubble, staring with stony malignance at the flying reptiles as they swooped down and spat flame upon the dwarfs below.

  Two dragons: a great monster with scales of alabaster and silver, and a smaller beast with an almost bronzed colouring. The elven riders would have been lost to view upon their steeds if not for the banners fastened to their armoured backs, pennants of sapphire and emerald that snapped and crackled in the wind. Sometimes one of the elves would brandish his lance, shouting at his foes as his steed scattered them in its fury. Sometimes one of the dragons would snatch up a clawful of dwarfs and carry them high into the air before opening its talons and letting them hurtle to the ground far below.

  For all their savagery, the dragons worked in concert with each other. When one wyrm dived in to attack, the other would circle overhead, watching for any threat to its companion. Any sign of a ballista being turned towards the marauding dragon, any hint of crossbowmen gathering together to loose a volley, and the watching drakk would snarl a warning to its fellow and then dive down to spit fire upon their foe.

  Heglan at once appreciated the mistake the drakk and their riders had made. They’d confined their vigilance to the ground. Secure in their supposed dominance of the heavens, they didn’t spare a glance at the sky above. That was an error the murdering wyrms and their elgi wouldn’t live to regret.

  The engineer barked a command to his signalman, sending prearranged orders to the other airships in his fleet. Three of the vessels would divert northwards and hold themselves in reserve, coming into the fight only if it looked like the dragons would escape. The rest, including Nadri’s Retribution and King Snorri, would circle around and try to engage the drakk from the south-east. The fiery weapons Drogor had provided were vicious things. Like the elements they were named for, the flames wouldn’t distinguish between friend and foe.
Heglan wanted to strike from such a quarter that he could minimise the risk to Kazad Mingol and its inhabitants. It would be small consolation to them if they were cooked by dawi fire instead of an elgi drakk.

  As the airships started their manoeuvres, the dragons noticed them. Heglan cursed when he saw the reptiles turn away from the burning halls of Kazad Mingol. If the drakk had risen to confront the skryzan-harbark, such a tactic would have played into the engineer’s hands. The wyrms would have brought themselves within range of the dwarfs’ bolt throwers. The pots of Tharzharr would have burned the beasts out of the sky. Instead, the pair of dragons were in full retreat, speeding away towards the north and the elf cities. Several of the airships loosed bolts at their foes, but the shafts fell well short of the mark, spinning downwards to shatter in fiery splendour against the earth.

  ‘After them!’ Heglan roared. With what they had seen at Kazad Thar and now witnessed above Kazad Mingol, there wasn’t a dwarf in the fleet willing to countenance the escape of the dragons. The monsters and their riders would pay for the havoc they had wrought. They would answer for the grudges born from their rampage!

  Nadri’s Retribution and the other airships began to descend at an angle, trying to get into range of the dragons below. Smoke from the burning stronghold billowed across the airship’s bow, drawing tears from Heglan’s eyes.

  ‘Drakk portside!’ Nugdri cried out. The captain kept one hand locked about the wheel as he shook his fist at a vast, blue-scaled monster. The dragon was swooping down at the airships, flames billowing from its jaws. The wyrm had been hiding in the clouds, biding its time until the skryzan-­harbark were below. In the distance, Heglan could see a fourth dragon diving at the three airships he’d sent to flank the first two wyrms.

  It was an ambush! The elgi had been waiting for the skryzan-harbark, waiting for Heglan to come rushing to the defence of the kazads.

  Even more infuriating to Heglan was the realisation that so long as the wyrms stayed above the airships, there was no way the dwarfs could bring their weapons to bear against them…

  The grim fatalism that had hung so heavy about Rundin’s mind on the frantic march from Kazad Kro became pride when he saw the skryzan-harbark appear above Kazad Mingol. Rumours of the wondrous airships of Barak Varr had reached even the halls of the skarrenawi, but he’d never imagined he’d see them for himself. The dawi had come! They had not abandoned their cousins, despite the arrogance of High King Skarnag.

  Thinking of his king made Rundin’s heart go cold. When the plight of the other hill forts was made known to Skarnag Grum, the High King had ordered almost his entire army to march with haste to the embattled strongholds. From a strategic sense, the king’s decree was reckless. From a moral standpoint, it was despicable. Rundin had been there to see his king react to the news that Kazad Thar was being attacked by dragons. Skarnag was thrown into a panic, not from any concern over the misery of his subjects or the untold numbers of skarrenawi being slaughtered by the drakk. No, the miserable, gold-crazed despot was terrified that the dragons would strike his own stronghold and steal his treasure.

  That was all Skarnag Grum cared about. That was why the High King of the skarrenawi finally deployed his army. Not to fight the elves and join the War of Vengeance. Not to protect the lands and lives of his subjects. Not to defend the honour of hearth and hold.

  Such was the miserable creature to whom Rundin had sworn oaths of fealty, loyalty and service. He wondered if there could be any more shameful burdens a dwarf could take upon himself. He wondered if his ancestors could ever forgive him for the disgrace he had brought upon them when he bent his knee before Skarnag Grum.

  ‘Seven of them,’ Furgil cheered as he counted the airships. The ranger captain and a dozen of his followers had joined Rundin’s warriors when they were only a few hours into their march. The rangers of Karaz-a-Karak made a welcome addition to Rundin’s own pathfinders, helping them scout ahead of the main columns as they made their way towards Kazad Mingol. The plan had originally been to join forces with King Orrik’s warriors and then move on to support King Kruk at Kazad Thar.

  Instead, they had discovered Kazad Mingol burning. Rundin had been thankful for the caution that had him split his force into three separate columns. If the dragons attacked one, then at least there was a chance the other columns could engage the wyrms.

  Now, of course, such caution looked foolish. Rundin couldn’t imagine anything opposing the magnificent airships. He was especially impressed with the flying colossus that could only be the flagship. He felt a tingle of pride when he read the golden runes upon its prow. King Snorri.

  ‘The elgi will rue this day,’ Rundin spat. ‘Their treachery has brought doom upon their beasts.’

  Furgil nodded. ‘Aye, and when the drakk lie burning, the dawi will march upon Tor Alessi. This time their walls will fall and the elgi will be driven into the sea.’

  ‘The skarrenawi will be there,’ Rundin vowed. ‘After this, Skarnag Grum cannot keep us from joining the war.’ Bitterness dripped from the warrior’s mouth as he thought of his king’s reticence, his all-consuming greed. The skarrens should have been united with their mountain brothers from the beginning.

  One of Rundin’s warriors thrust his axe skywards, shaking it at the clouds. ‘Look! More drakk have come!’

  The dwarfs watched as two more dragons swooped down from the sky, diving at the skryzan-harbark from above. Only a heartbeat before, the airships had seemed invincible. Now, with the dragons speeding down upon them, that illusion was broken. As the reptiles flew at the airships, bolt throwers loosed their missiles at the monsters. Massive spikes of wutroth and steel were hurled into the sky, arching upwards. However high the artillerists elevated their weapons, though, they were unable to strike at the dragons above them.

  The beasts kept their distance, soaring away from the airships after spewing gouts of flame upon them. But the ships’ air-bags had been coated to resist even dragon fire, each blast of the reptiles’ incendiary breath breaking apart like a crashing wave against a cliff. If the airships were unable to harm the dragons, then it seemed the dragons were unable to harm the skryzan-harbark.

  The brief stalemate was broken when one of the dragons suddenly streaked downwards, flashing directly between the massed airships. The crews were compelled to hold their fire out of fear of hitting their own comrades. Unopposed, the drakk swept towards the mammoth King Snorri. Its fiery breath splashed across the stern, protective runes flaring with blinding light as their magic thwarted the caustic blast. The dragon started to dart away, rising back into the sky. Then, before any upon the huge airship could react, the monster turned its ascent into a vicious dive.

  Every precaution had been taken to guard the skryzan-­harbark against the fiery breath of the dragons, but the same defences couldn’t be made against their claws. Talons that could rend steel and crush granite lashed out, digging into the side of King Snorri’s air-bag. A stream of greyish gas wheezed from the jagged rent, striking the drakk as it flew past. Buffeted by the escaping gas, the dragon was forced downwards.

  The instant the reptile dipped within the elevation of their weapons, the dwarf artillerists loosed a salvo into the beast. The dragon howled in agony as one of the bolts smashed into its side, exploding and throwing green fire across its body. Stricken, the monster wheeled away, but it was in range of the other airships now. Missile after missile sped towards it, each hit resulting in an explosion that cast devouring green flames across its scaly body. Flesh dripped from the beast in a fiery rain as the ghastly fire transformed it into a blazing effigy. Like a falling star, the flaming beast plummeted to earth.

  So too did the wounded King Snorri. As more gas fled its air-bag, the ship sank through the sky. Two of the other airships followed it, striving to guard their comrades against the threat posed by the remaining dragons.

  It wasn’t the other dragons that brought destruction u
pon the immense skryzan-harbark. It was the blazing carcass of the dragon the dawi had already slain. As the beast hurtled towards the ground, it fell past King Snorri’s air-bag. Some of the burning flesh dripping from the reptile splashed across the side of the ship.

  The next instant, it seemed to Rundin that the entire world shook. There was a roar like the bellow of a dying god, a sound of such booming malignance that the dwarf felt his teeth shiver in his jaw. A burst of light, more tremendous than the sun, seared his vision, leaving him blinking and cursing. Rubbing at his eyes, he forced himself to look skywards.

  Through the red haze of his vision, Rundin could see the burning carcass of King Snorri slam against the ground. The wondrous ship was nothing but a charred frame that spilled across the plain. Its air-bag was utterly obliterated, transformed into a billowing cloud of fire that blossomed like the petals of some abominable flower. The petals caught the two airships that had tried to protect the stricken King Snorri. Green light burst across their decks as the blazing cloud engulfed them. In the blink of an eye, the vessels that had come to King Snorri’s aid were crashing downwards too. Their air-bags split as they struck, the gas within jetting forth, igniting as it came into contact with the fires all around it.

  ‘Valaya’s Mercy!’ Furgil wailed. Rundin wondered if even an ancestor god was equal to the destruction they now witnessed.

  The burning gas rolled across the plain like some hellish fog, blasting the land black. One of the columns of warriors from Kazad Kro was caught in the conflagration, reduced to ash and shadow in an instant. Then the fiery blast crashed against the walls of Kazad Mingol. Stone melted like wax; bronze gates and iron shutters evaporated. The dwarfs within King Orrik’s halls didn’t even have time to scream before the annihilating wave washed over them.

  Tears were in Rundin’s eyes. Tears for the slaughtered dwarfs of Kazad Mingol. Tears for the massacred warriors of Kazad Kro. Tears for the magnificent airships and the holocaust that had consumed them.