Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

There was something else to worry about as well. Despite the wreckage below them, Djangas continued to point at the shadowy valley. ‘There sky-folk! Sky-folk, there!’

  Gotramm followed the hunter’s pointing finger. As vast as the debris field was, could it be possible they’d find even more in the valley?

  ‘Master Vorki, take the helm.’ Brokrin stepped aside as his first mate relieved him at the Iron Dragon’s wheel. As he always did, Vorki wrapped one arm about the wheel and took a slug from the hip-flask he carried. He spat a little of the dark liquor onto his palm, then switched hands and did the same to the other. Throwing his head back, the first mate gargled what was left in his mouth before swallowing it in one go.

  The noisy ritual was one Brokrin had seen many times. He wasn’t sure he bought Vorki’s claims about old family traditions. It struck the captain that his antics were a kind of low theatre with a very specific plot: to display that even with all the song and dance attendant to his ­taking the wheel, Vorki was such a master of his craft that the Iron Dragon didn’t so much as shiver once he was at the helm.

  ‘Why someone who can handle a ship like you does not try to get his own command makes little sense to me,’ Brokrin said.

  Vorki shrugged. ‘There is more to being a captain than steering the ship,’ he answered.

  ‘There’s great profit in it,’ Brokrin said. ‘A good chance for advancement if a voyage brings enough wealth to Barak-Zilfin.’

  The mate nodded. ‘That’s as may be, cap’n, but I’ve seen enough of what goes with your job. I can’t say I’d relish the burden of responsibility. Knowing that every decision rested on my shoulders. Knowing what came of every decision was mine to own. I don’t know I could bear that. To know your successes will be celebrated has to be balanced knowing you’ll be answerable for your failures.’ He gave Brokrin a sheepish look. ‘No disrespect, cap’n.’

  ‘None taken,’ Brokrin told him. ‘Failure is hard for a captain to live down and it doesn’t help that our people have long memories.’ He ran a hand through his beard, reflecting on the way his fortunes had turned since running into Ghazul. ‘Very long memories. Sometimes I miss the simpler times when I was merely a rating and only carried out orders instead of giving them.’

  As he left the helm, Brokrin looked back at the aftcastle and the massive skyhook emplaced there. Arrik and his crew were poised around Ghazul’s Bane, each gunner staring out across the horizon, scanning the skies with a motley array of aether-scopes and spyglasses. The obsidian head of the lance glistened from the barrel of the launcher, heavy chain piled beneath it on the deck. No banter passed between the gunners. Each duardin was too keen and alert to divorce even the slightest scrap of attention from the task at hand.

  Brokrin’s palms itched when he thought about what they’d found. He tugged off the heavy gloves he wore when tending the wheel and rubbed his hands against his knees to ease the sensation. He couldn’t lightly consider the destruction of a dozen Kharadron ships, even if they were from another sky-hold. Scored by fire, twisted and mangled even before they came smashing to the ground, the doom that had set upon the unfortunate duardin wasn’t cheering to contemplate. Only a vast and tremendous force could have afflicted the gunhaulers and frigates to such a devastating degree. Everyone on the Iron Dragon and the frigates who sailed with her was aware of what had befallen Brok­rin in the past. Even those who didn’t believe in it knew the hoodoo that hung over Brokrin’s ship and they wondered if that curse had at last led the Iron Dragon back to Ghazul.

  ‘A grim business, cap’n.’ Old Mortrimm joined Brokrin as he walked along the deck. The navigator moved with a lurching gait, the aetheric brace bound about his left leg grumbling with every step. He’d been fortunate to keep that leg at all – a memento left to him from the last time the Iron Dragon’s path crossed that of Ghazul. Yet it wasn’t the chance of meeting the beast again that troubled the venerable duardin. ‘The holds of the Dron-Duraz are piled high with dead.’

  Brokrin shook his head. The debris field they’d found had been a harrowing sight. The crews of the frigates had done their part recovering the bodies of the dead duardin and taking them aboard. ‘Our Barak-Urbaz kinsmen took a bad pounding,’ he agreed. ‘I’m obliged that Captain Kjnell took them aboard his frigate.’ He turned and glanced back in the direction of the debris field. ‘We don’t even know what struck them down. It would be nice to tell Barak-Urbaz who or what it is they need to enter a grudge against.’

  Mortrimm removed the stone pipe-bowl and a clay stem for it from his belt. After snapping off the chewed end of the stem, he screwed the pieces together and began stuffing dried weed into the bowl. ‘Arrik and his lads seem pretty certain,’ he observed.

  ‘They’ve let eagerness cloud their senses,’ Brokrin said. ‘They want what hit that fleet to be Ghazul.’

  Mortrimm arched an eyebrow as he drew a long puff from his pipe. ‘And don’t you?’

  The captain’s expression darkened. ‘Nothing would please me more,’ he admitted, ‘but wanting a thing doesn’t make it so. Those ships weren’t just knocked out of the sky, they were burned and clawed. Hardly the kind of attack Ghazul would make.’ Brokrin pointed to a scarred patch of the deck where the mark of a great fang had left its impression.

  ‘Then what, or who, struck them down?’ Mortrimm asked.

  Brokrin was thoughtful for a moment. Then he pointed towards the prow where Djangas stood. ‘Kero’s son was as surprised as we were when we came upon those ships. He claims the wreck his hunters found was a good deal further on.’ He squinted at the sun, then glanced back at the ground they’d already covered. ‘We’re an hour out from the wrecks, so we should be drawing close to the one the nomads originally found. Djangas also said that it was much bigger than those gunhaulers and frigates.’ He stamped his foot down on the deck. ‘More like our ship.’

  ‘An ironclad,’ Mortrimm mused. He drew another puff from his pipe, exhaling a grey smoke ring that was quickly drawn away by the wind. ‘Possible. Maybe the flagship of the lot we already found. The markings on the salvage the Chuitsek scavenged are from Barak-Urbaz.’ The navigator tapped the stem of his pipe against Brokrin’s shoulder. ‘If this ironclad is from the same fleet then it means the manlings couldn’t have been responsible for bringing her down.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Brokrin conceded. ‘Either way, we’ll find out soon enough. There’s the valley Djangas talked about. The Serpent’s Craw.’

  It took no small amount of skill to negotiate the narrow canyons of the Serpent’s Craw. Erratic winds whipped about the Iron Dragon as it tried to manoeuvre through the ravine, threatening to dash the ship against the jagged walls that reared up on either side. Once the grinding shriek of distressed metal scratched across the air as the massive endrin glanced off the side of the canyon.

  At last there came excited shouts from Djangas. The magnetised boots he was wearing limited the human’s movement to frantic pointing and waving, but it was clear enough what he was yelling about. The Kharadron had reached the crash site and the wreck the Chuitsek had scavenged.

  Through his spyglass, Brokrin could just make out the distinct colours of the ship that denoted her as belonging to Barak-Urbaz. Djangas had been right. She was much larger than the ships they’d found earlier. She was an ironclad of slightly older design than the Iron Dragon, albeit not of so remote a vintage as to be fitted with two endrins to keep her aloft. He could see the muzzles of gas carbines mounted under her prow, the twisted mess of a volley cannon sagging against her aftcastle. There were ugly scorches along her hull, weird patches where the iron plating appeared to have been corroded rather than melted.

  It was the bulbous hulk of the endrin itself that arrested Brokrin’s attention. It had been smashed and torn, gouged in such a way that was suggestive of great claws. Perhaps not the despised Ghazul, but maybe a creature from the same hellish brood.

  ‘No sign of life
, cap’n,’ Mortrimm declared, scrutinising the wreck through a long bronze scope fitted with an array of lenses and aetheric magnifiers. ‘Though if there had been survivors, the manlings would have found them when they were here.’

  A dark thought. One that was, in its way, worse than if the nomads had deliberately wrecked the ironclad. Brokrin imagined the hunters scouring the debris and dispatching the wounded survivors. ‘We’ll go down and see,’ Brokrin decided. ‘We’d need to anyway to recover the manifest and the bodies to send along to Barak-Urbaz.’

  ‘Do you think that wise?’ The question came from the sharp-faced logisticator Skaggi. ‘This valley is treacherous. We could ourselves become a wreck, and then what profit should we bring back to Barak-Zilfin?’

  Mortrimm scowled at Skaggi’s hesitance. Taking a deep breath, he expelled a puff of pipe-smoke into the logisticator’s face. ‘The Code is explicit on our duty here. The destruction of any Kharadron is to be investigated and warning passed among the sky-holds.’

  Skaggi returned the scowl. ‘The Code also states that such duty may be set aside if the afflicted Kharadron are of another kin and to do so would bring undue hazard to the discovering ship. Were this a vessel of Barak-Zilfin, then we would be bound by duty. As it stands, we have more latitude.’ He looked back at Brokrin. ‘I must advise that we turn away. I may also mention that having given my advice, I am absolved of any responsibility for whatever may follow.’

  Brokrin chewed his beard, letting the retort that was on his tongue go unspoken. At length he offered Skaggi a middle ground. ‘We’ll signal the frigates. They inspected the other wrecks. Now it is our turn. Tell them to hold back while we descend to search this wreck. In the event some disaster does afflict the Iron Dragon, it will leave the rest of the fleet in the clear.’

  The decision was one that didn’t appease Skaggi or fully mollify Mortrimm, who hated conceding any point to the logisticator. Neither duardin questioned Brokrin’s choice, however. Ultimately, without an admiral present, the captain’s word was law on his ship.

  The floor of the Serpent’s Craw was a jagged network of spindly stone spear points. It was the resemblance to snake’s teeth as much as the writhing contortions of the valley that had caused the Chuitsek to name it as they had. Many of the stone ‘teeth’ had been broken by the ship’s violent crash, their points scattered among their intact neighbours. Ugly clumps of luminescent moss sprouted from the severed tips, seemingly feeding on the minerals coursing through their inner layers. Here and there a lonely vein of cinnabar broke the surface, winding through the maze of black stone.

  The Iron Dragon descended to a point a little above the wreck. Battered runes bolted across the ship’s hull named her as the Stormbreaker. From the manner in which her bottom was impacted, it looked as though she’d come almost straight down when she’d crashed. Compromised buoyancy would do that, the great endrin failing gradually so that a ship didn’t simply plough straight into the earth. After it crashed, the ironclad had slumped over slightly to one side, her decks pitching at a pronounced list. From what those aboard the Iron Dragon could see, there was no sign of life. Not even the bodies of any dead.

  Hawsers were cast over the sides and Brokrin led a landing party down to the crumpled deck of the downed ironclad. He chose Gotramm and his arkanauts for the duty, leaving Drumark’s thunderers behind to support them with their firearms from the vantage of the hovering sky-vessel. It came as a surprise to him when Djangas extracted himself from the heavy boots Horgarr had given him and scrambled down the ropes to join them. Shortly after the hunter made his descent, Skaggi followed. Any thought that the logisticator was concerned about acting as translator for the nomad was quickly smothered. He took a quick look at the wreck to orient himself, then slunk away towards the captain’s cabin and the manifest that would be found there. The Kharadon Code was quite specific about returning such manifests to the sky-hold they belonged to. It was less specific about reading what was written in them and making use of that information. More than once, Brok­rin had heard it said of Skaggi that he could sniff out a gold filling in a megalofin’s jaw.

  Tilted at a sharp angle by the situation of the ship’s landing, the deck was ungainly footing for the duardin. Their magnetic boots let them shuffle along, but it made for slow progress. Djangas, by contrast, was able to jump from fastening to fastening, scurrying about like a spider. The hunter would sometimes pause to point at some feature or another, remarking on those pieces of equipment that the nomads had salvaged. Brokrin understood enough barterspeak to recognise the words for ‘took’ and ‘find’, words that frequently appeared in the human’s outbursts. Any deeper meaning or nuance would need Skaggi to decipher.

  ‘I would give my sideburns to know what he’s jabbering about,’ Gotramm grumbled as Djangas gestured at the open hatch leading down into one of the holds. The recess was dark, the interior indistinct. He noticed that Djangas had drawn a long bronze dagger and was watching the hold with more than mere suspicion that it housed some kind of danger.

  ‘I am of the same mind,’ Brokrin said.

  ‘Want me to fetch Skaggi back here?’ Gotramm asked. He waved his hand at the wreck. ‘He should be amiable given there’s nothing to show the manlings brought this ship down and the trade deal won’t be in jeopardy now.’

  Brokrin continued to watch Djangas. ‘Something is bothering the human,’ he stated. ‘But there is something bothering me even more.’ He gave Gotramm a hard stare. ‘Where is the crew? If they all died, we should see their bodies scattered about. If they survived, would they neglect to post a watch over their ship?’

  ‘Then what do you think happened to them?’ Gotramm asked.

  Before Brokrin could answer him, a frightened cry rose from below decks. Gotramm turned in the direction of the captain’s cabin where Skaggi had gone. The cry was repeated a second time, accompanied now by a sharp crash of metal.

  Pistol in hand, Gotramm dived towards the short flight of steps leading down into the cabin. Brokrin followed close behind the young privateer, the rest of the arkanauts coming after the officers. Pushing himself down the steps, Gotramm turned towards the cabin doorway just as another distressed cry rang out. His charge at the half-closed door was abetted by the angle at which the ironclad lay, gravity adding to his momentum as he ploughed towards the sounds. With a grinding snarl his armoured body slammed into the door, whipping it back and propelling Gotramm into the room.

  The cabin was a shambles, its furnishings thrown against the far wall in a disordered heap. Among the debris of desk and bed, wardrobe and sky-chest, Gotramm could see the gleam of fleshless bones. A pallid shape crouched upon the wardrobe, striving to wrench open its iron-studded face. At the sound of Gotramm’s surge into the cabin, the thing raised its head, exposing a monstrous face with crimson eyes and a mouth distorted by a profusion of sharp fangs.

  The creature snarled at Gotramm, then was flung backwards as the privateer’s pistol sent a bullet slamming into its chest. Before he could shoot again, the beast sprang at him. Hurtling over a mass of debris it flew at the privateer and knocked him against the wall. A vicious claw raked down at him, grinding against his chestplate. The over-wide mouth snapped at his face, the carrion-stink of its breath making him gag.

  ‘Throw it off!’ Brokrin shouted from the doorway. The captain had his volley pistol aimed at the creature but was worried about hitting friend as well as foe.

  Gotramm tried to bring his legs up and under the monster, though it wasn’t so easy with the magnetised boots trying to draw his feet back to the floor, but he managed it at last. With a tremendous heave he broke the creature’s hold, hurling it back towards the heap of furniture. The thing crashed into the desk, one of its long arms cracking painfully against the stout stonewood surface. It yelped in pain, then started to lunge for Gotramm a second time.

  Thunder roared through the cabin as Brokrin fired into the hurtling mo
nster. Pale, cadaverous flesh shredded under the withering hail of bullets. Foul blood spurted from its wounds, splashing walls and ceiling as it was thrown back. Again, the thing’s body cracked against the heavy desk, but this time when it sagged to the floor it made no effort to rise again. Its fangs snapped at the carved leg of the desk as life ebbed from its savaged body.

  ‘I could have taken care of it myself,’ Gotramm grumbled as he pulled himself up from the floor.

  ‘No doubt,’ Brokrin said, reloading his smoking volley pistol. ‘But that pretty rinn of yours back in port might like you a bit more without half your face chewed off.’

  Gotramm scowled at the quip and cautiously approached the dead creature.

  It was a loathsome being, all skin and bone, claws and fangs. The head was small in proportion to its lean body, its clawed hands immense when compared to its skinny arms. The stench rising from the creature was that of rotten carrion and open graves. Gotramm kicked out and broke the hold of the thing’s fangs on the desk. Its head lolled back on a broken neck to reveal a leather collar adorned with golden studs locked around its throat.

  ‘A curious affectation for such a filthy beast,’ Brokrin said as he came up to inspect the creature. Some of the arkanauts kept a wary watch at the doorway, their attention divided between the cabin and the closed doors of the other rooms.

  Gotramm nodded. With his toe he flipped the thing onto its back. Sprawled out, the length of its limbs and the marked emaciation of its body were even more pronounced. Yet there was a fearful similarity about its overall shape.

  ‘This… may have been a manling at one time,’ Brokrin said. ‘The collar could be a memento from when it wasn’t quite so… abased.’ He reached down and took a closer look at the collar. Stitched into the leather, just barely visible in the dim light filtering through the cabin’s porthole, were a few characters from some human script, an old one with which he had passing familiarity. The letters seemed to spell the word ‘King’.