On Discord Isle (The Dawnhawk Trilogy)

by Burgess, Jonathon

  Fengel slipped like a shadow through the forest of hanging machine-parts. From the sounds echoing back to him, most of his new crew were nearby, their Salomcani foes engaging them in outnumbered skirmishes. Fengel did what he could, taking care never to engage enough of them that he’d be pinned down again, the way he had in the first chamber of the hollow mountain.

  He found Private Simon standing with his back to a massive metal torso, cut free from its suspending chains by a stray energy blast. Cumbers lay behind him at his feet, groaning incoherently. Five Salomcani sailors faced him in a semicircle. The private held one of the lightning-muskets by the wrong end, ready to swing it like a club.

  “This thing may be out of fire,” he cried with more conviction than Fengel had ever heard from him, “but I’m not! Come forward, men of the Sheik! I’ll see you to your graves!”

  They made to rush in, and Fengel stepped in to block their progress. A few parries, cuts, a thrust, and all five were bleeding or crying out on the ground.

  Fengel raised an eyebrow. “Admirable spirit,” he said. “But I consider it a great virtue, Simon, to avoid getting boxed-in so.”

  The young soldier swallowed. “I didn’t have a choice, sir. The sergeant, he collapsed, and I couldn’t get him moving.”

  Fengel nodded. “Well, all right. Still, let’s get you two up. We’ll get him somewhere safe for the moment, maybe back near the platforms. Then I could use your help.”

  Simon nodded. He bent to pick up his comrade, and Fengel reached down with his off-hand to assist.

  A bolt of viridian lightning brushed against his left side. Pain bloomed, crawling its way down through his innards to shake his arms and legs. Fengel cried out and fell to his knees, managing just barely to keep his hand clenched around his saber.

  Natasha stepped out around from behind the mechanical torso. In one hand she held her scimitar, the other a lightning-musket. The tip of the thing glowed green and tiny sparks crackled around it. Private Simon raised his bludgeon, readying to fling himself at her. She pointed the artifact at him and he froze.

  “Now, now,” she said with a smile. “I’d like to think that you wouldn’t underestimate me.” She glanced down at Fengel. “How are you doing down there, you supercilious prig?”

  Fengel glared up at his wife. “You shot me!” he gasped.

  “Oh, please. Grazed you, barely.” She raised the lightning-musket. “These are amazing. And there’s hundreds of them here! I’m going to loot this place from teeth to toes—no one’ll be able to stand against me. Especially not that collection of treasonous bastards that have my ship. Oh, they’ll rue the day they crossed me. I’ll make certain of it. I’ve gotten ever-so-many bright ideas—”

  “You. Shot. Me!” Fengel threw himself at her, enraged. Natasha blinked in surprise and parried his overhead chop with the lightning-musket. The blow jarred his arm and sent the alien weapon flying. She cursed, cutting at his head with the scimitar in her off-hand. Fengel blocked the blow and countered with one of his own, driving her backward.

  Natasha laughed. “Being angry isn’t going to do it, lover-mine. Though maybe if you’d been paying attention, then I wouldn’t have tagged you in the first place?” She feigned a cut at his chest, looping the blade around when he parried the blow.

  Fengel ducked away at the last second. He hissed, every breath making his ribs feel as if they were on fire. Natasha pressed her advantage with a flurry of blows. Fengel fell back against the onslaught, ducking behind another of the hanging torsos and then behind a long clawed arm. He came around the opposite side with a lunge that almost caught his wife between the shoulders. She spun at the last moment, crying out as the tip of his blade drew blood. Natasha whirled then, knocking his blade aside with a squeal of metal and a shower of sparks.

  “I am far from helpless,” said Fengel. He glared at her through the cracked lens of his monocle, making her answering snarl seem broken and crazed.

  “That is a matter of opinion,” she replied.

  “Shooting a man in the back, though? How basely done.”

  “I needed the advantage,” she replied. “I’m not stupid.”

  “That,” he replied nastily, “is a matter of opinion.”

  Natasha growled and shoved forward. Fengel fell back. He rebounded and threw himself at her again. They met, each of them with a curse on their lips, their blades clattering and clanging together. Fengel withdrew, lunged, pirouetted. Natasha did the same, and they danced through the forest of mechanical limbs, the cold steel in their hands flickering against the burnished Voorn brass all around them.

  Fengel’s aching side sapped at his strength. Any other time, he’d have handily finished Natasha. But every bit of swordplay he tried sent an aching flare through his burned ribs, wrecking his finesse.

  The ground gave another tremor beneath them. It rumbled and shook, setting the forest of dangling machinery to swaying. Fengel ignored it, focusing on his footwork. He tried a new tactic, shifting to defense and seeing if he could draw Natasha into the path of one of the limbs.

  She redoubled her assault, chasing after as he’d expected. Fengel spun, ducking behind a mechanical leg as Natasha followed, stepping past a long clawed toe hidden by shadows near the floor. She tripped on it and he exulted, darting back in with saber upraised. Natasha swore and desperately parried a blow for her head.

  No finesse now. Fengel hacked and stabbed, seeking to overpower his wife where she half-crouched in distress. She beat back each blow, barely, failing to recover a little more each time. Her snarl was marred now, frozen with uncertainty. He had her now.

  A green flash from the corner of his eye warned him just in time. Fengel fell away with a curse as an errant blast of Voorn lightning flashed between them, blinding him for a half-second as it burst against the mechanical leg. He raised his saber just in time to parry the cut Natasha had aimed at his head. The moment was lost—she’d recovered and pressed her attack as he regained his footing. Fengel admitted a grudging kernel of admiration; his wife was a tenacious woman.

  Abruptly, they broke free of the dangling chain conveyors. The chamber opened up again into a wide space floored in Voornish brass. At its center rose something improbable; a mechanical dragon over eighty feet in height. The thing squatted on powerful mechanical legs, its reptilian form hunched forward and still. The long segmented tail curled lightly on the floor, rising up to meet the torso, which had wickedly sharp spines rising from the top. The torso itself was thick and armored, with heavy plates protecting the more delicate cables, clockwork, and flywheel mechanisms he could see half-buried within it. Two forearms hunched in tight to the chest, long and strong, though not as heavyset as the legs. Up above the body continued a long reptilian neck rising to support the massive and fearsome head, crowned with wicked horns that swept down to a long maw filled with jagged teeth.

  The thing did not move. Its eyes were shuttered and still. Great cables descended from the dim ceiling to varying positions along the construct. Whether for fuel or restraint or some other arcane purpose, Fengel did not know. Scaffolding and ramp-work enclosed the machine, rising up from the foundry floor in a series of thin metal walkways all the way to the head of the thing itself. Just past the beast was wall of rock and stone, incongruous in comparison to the rest of the foundry. It spanned around to the front of the dragon where a giant pair of double doors stood half-opened, filled with earth and stone that spilled down to form a slope all the way to the ground.

  Small fights raged across the floor of the foundry. The crews of the Salmalin and the Goliath warred, continuing the struggle they’d fought since before Fengel had even come to the island. The Perinese were outnumbered now two to one, fighting half a dozen separate duels. An occasional flare of viridian lightning arced across the great space. Yet most of the battles were up close and personal with blade, fist, and truncheon.

  “Your men don’t seem to be doing so well,” laughed Natasha.

  “They’ll do just fine
until I can rally them,” replied Fengel. “They’re Perinese, after all.”

  Their duel brought them across the floor, ducking, weaving, and circling. Natasha laughed again. “What’s this? Nationalism? Pride? A bit late for that, you traitor. You mutinied against them, remember? Do the scrubs you’ve conned here even know that?”

  Fengel found himself at the base of the scaffold and the mechanical dragon, the ramp leading upward at his back. A tremor shook the chamber again. Natasha fell back into a guard position, and he took the opportunity to climb up the ramp; higher ground was a great advantage.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he replied. “The people of the Sheikdom are an unwashed rabble, and you don’t even have that much to cling to. You’re one of the Copper Islanders, a bunch of castaways that weren’t even important enough to keep fighting for.”

  Natasha’s eyes widened. Her lips drew back in a feral snarl. She bulled forward with over-handed chops that Fengel parried with ease. “So is that it, then?” she asked. “Is that what you’ve really thought, all these years? For King and Country? If they’d have given you what you wanted, you’d have never left.”

  Fengel backed into one of the thick cables that jutted out from the side of the dragon and rose to the ceiling somewhere above. Natasha tried to take advantage, and he hurriedly dodged around behind it. Her blade punctured the rubbery hose, letting loose a cloud of heated steam that obscured and stung them both. As she cursed, Fengel climbed farther upward. He ducked a cluster of smaller cables, then moved to where the ramp met the slope of the dragon’s back, rising up toward the head and neck.

  He paused to catch his breath and consider. Had he really meant what he’d said? The Kingdom of Perinault and its institutions were arrogant, cruel, and elitist. He’d always thought himself noble for rebelling. But was Natasha right?

  His wife emerged from the steam. He shoved these thoughts aside. It was no matter. He’d meant his own words to injure, and they obviously had. It was enough.

  They met again, blades flashing. Fengel glowered. Didn’t she get tired? His own stamina was flagging; the wound in his side flared with every step he took, scalding. He ducked behind more cables, using them for cover and half-second breaks to catch his breath. Natasha didn’t care. She cut away the ones she could, releasing sprays of strange liquids and yet more hissing steam.

  A quick glance told him he was running out of room. The ramp ran up to the hunched shoulder of the dragon and abruptly stopped. A small forest of thin, tangled cables rose there from between the armored plates.

  An idea came to him then; Natasha’s intemperance would be her undoing. He gave more ground, falling back until he was just behind the bundle. Natasha narrowed her eyes and raised her scimitar. She swung, aiming to cut through to him, just as he’d suspected. Fengel ducked out of the way and grabbed the cables. When her scimitar sheared through, he twisted them, pointing the severed ends directly at her. Something like hot oil sprayed free. Natasha gave a cry of pain and scrabbled away, back up onto the shoulders of the dragon.

  Fengel pursued, the tables now turned. Natasha cursed inventively, trying to ward him off and clear stinging oil from her eyes and face at the same time. She staggered over the line of blades rising from the spine of the dragon. Fengel pressed forward, saber raised.

  The chamber shook. Fengel cursed and fought for balance. This one was the worst yet, setting the dragon they stood upon to shifting and quaking. Shouts of surprise and alarm echoed up to him from the battles down below. The whole chamber heaved, and Fengel grabbed at one of the spines, letting out a surprised hiss as it cut his palm.

  He looked up to see Natasha kneeling as well, just opposite him. She glared, the skin around her eyes swollen and puffy, and as one they raised their blades to renew their conflict.

  A shadow fell over them both. Natasha looked away, and Fengel exulted; she’d finally made her last mistake. Fengel prepared to strike, then paused. She wasn’t even paying attention to him anymore. In fact, she seemed to be staring at something just off to their right. Fengel tried to focus, tried to resist glancing away. This was a trick, had to be.

  A rumbling shiver vibrated the metal chassis beneath him. Maybe a quick peek won’t hurt.

  Fengel glanced to his right and froze. The dragon sat still no longer. Its armored metal neck was upraised, the massive head sweeping back and forth. The eyelid shutters had opened to reveal great red lenses, like burning embers caught behind glass.

  It stood upright, scattering the fragile scaffold that enclosed it. The pieces rained down to clatter on the foundry floor.

  Fengel caught Natasha’s eyes. “Look what you’ve done!” he cried.

  She stared at him in surprise. “Me? You did this!”

  “I wasn’t the one cutting all those cables!”

  “No, you were the one who kept ducking behind them!”

  The dragon cocked its head, then peered back around at the two people on its back. Fengel took one look at the metal maw and bolted upright. He rushed past Natasha and leapt for a ledge along the rocky wall past the spine of the dragon. There was a brief, sickening moment where only air lay beneath his feet, and then he landed. The ledge he found himself on was wide, leading into a shallow niche that led to a small double door of Voornish brass was set into the wall only a short distance within. Fengel glanced about for somewhere else to go.

  Natasha landed on the ledge with a wild cry. She hadn’t quite cleared the gap, however, and clung to it, half on, half off.

  The dragon rose to its full height. It wheeled about, with a rumble of hidden gears and shifting mechanisms, to peer at the two pirates before it.

  A tiny voice cut through the yells of the sailors on the floor. “Hastra Hailo!” it cried. “What have you done? This Dray Engine was never to be activated! How could you have even done so?”

  Fengel peered down over the ledge, past the Dray Engine, to the foundry floor below. The Voornish automaton stood there, gesticulating wildly up at them.

  The Dray Engine turned as well. It peered down at the automaton and snorted in something like irritation, unleashing a great cloud of steam. Then, as the automaton spun in worried circles, it lifted one heavy foot and stamped down, hard. The tinny, buzzing voice of the automaton fell silent.

  Then the dragon raised its head to the unseen ceiling and roared. Fengel dropped his sword and fell to his knees as the cacophony shook the chamber. Dirt and rocks fell from the ledge. Something brushed past him, and he opened his eyes again, to see Natasha running for the double doors at his back.

  The Dray Engine closed its jaws and peered down at them. It raised one arm and reached for Fengel. He rolled aside as the armored limb slammed down only inches from where he now lay, carving dirt and rock alike aside in a crushing grip that punched through the metal doors. It pulled back, revealing both daylight and open air through the opening beyond the ledge; the door had been burst wide open to reveal the exterior of the volcano.

  Natasha had likewise ducked aside, barely missed. As the dragon reached out to claw at them again, she leapt through the opening into the space beyond. Fengel took one look at the massive claw descending and threw himself through it as well.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The pirates slipped through Breachtown in a conga-line mockery of stealth. They stumbled from one shadow to the next, whispering exaggerated warnings to their friends and snickering as they went. More than a few were singing.

  “This is ridiculous!” hissed Lina. She ran ahead of the committee as they led the crew toward the Breachtown Counting House in an attempt to face them down. “We don’t need nearly this many people down here on the ground.”

  “Now, Lina,” said Lucian as he strode past, “extra hands are prudent. Especially for an undertaking such as this.” The committee-member held a wineskin in one hand, gesturing with it at the alley around them. “We could be ambushed at any moment.”

  This struck her as especially likely. The crew of the Dawnhaw
k were taking a discreet route back to the counting house, almost the same path she’d taken earlier with Rastalak. But where she had skulked through the colony, some thirty of her crewmates were now stumbling along beneath the rising moon without a care in the world. It’s only sheer luck that some damned patrol hasn’t spotted us by now.

  Lucian took a swig and tossed his wineskin behind him. It sailed past Reaver Jane to bounce off of Sarah Lome. She stopped in surprise, causing Allen the Mechanist to run into her. The committee-member glowered back at him through the ink stains that covered her face like tribal tattoos.

  “And that’s another thing!” hissed Lina as they all walked past. “Everyone’s drunk! Who thought that was a good idea? How could this have ever been a good idea?”

  Reaver Jane shook a hand lazily back her way. “Yer worryin’ too much, Stone.” She paused to hiccup. “The lads just needed something to take the edge off. S’not like we don’t deserve it. Besides, I know that tavern-keep. He’ll keep his quiet.” She frowned. “I think.”

  Lucian reached the alley mouth and paused to look around. “Ah! Here we are.” He glanced back to Lina and the rest. “No worries, right?”

  Lina ran up beside him. The alley they stood in sat directly across the street from the Breachtown Counting House. Its windows were darkened in accordance with the curfew, and the front of the building sat shaded but for two gas lanterns on each side of a pair of great wooden double doors. Two bored guards framed the entrance, leaning against the wall and chatting amiably.

  “Right,” continued Lucian. He clapped his hands together and looked to the rest of the crew. “Everyone ready?”