Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  The axe came chopping down as the bat-beast tried to rise, cleaving through the bones of its leg. The monster slumped onto its side, ear-piercing shrieks now rattling from its blood-smeared jaws. Breaking its leg, Brok­rin had rendered both limbs on its left side immobile. The beast was reduced to frustrated flopping and flailing as it tried to spin around to confront the duardin.

  Grinding the bones of its broken leg beneath his boots, Brokrin climbed onto the fallen monster’s back, pushing it down into the mire of beer that coated the floor. Taking his axe in both hands, he stared at the beast’s face as it twisted its head around. The creature glared back at him with more hate than any mere animal could express.

  ‘When you pass into the Grey Halls, tell them it was Brokrin Ullissonn who sent you there,’ the duardin growled as he brought his axe crashing down upon the beast’s skull. The monster flailed under the impact, carrion treacle spurting from its wound. Brokrin grunted in disgust and brought his blade up for another swing. Again and again he hacked away at the monster’s head until at last what was beneath his feet became still and silent.

  Raising a hand to wipe the creature’s sickly gore from his face, Brok­rin glanced over to the corpse of Djangas. Already the scavengers in the hold had fallen upon it, rending the nomad with their claws, stuffing his flesh into their fanged mouths. The captain uttered a howl of outrage. Tugging his axe free from the hacked skull of the bat-beast, he started towards the ghouls.

  Gunfire boomed from the hole above. The scavengers were swatted aside as bullets slammed into them, knocking them back into the debris. As Brokrin started forwards, a final shot rang out, quickly followed by the irate voice of Gotramm.

  ‘Hold your fire, lads! That’s the captain!’

  Gotramm stood at the edge of the hole, one hand gripping the arm of another arkanaut, shifting the privateer’s aim upwards. Gotramm’s face was bruised, his beard matted with blood, but when he saw Brok­rin step out into the light a broad smile worked its way onto his face.

  ‘We thought you were done for,’ Gotramm called down. ‘Skaggi saw that big brute take off after you into the hold.’

  ‘That was its last mistake,’ Brokrin replied. ‘Any casualties for our side?’

  Gotramm shook his head. ‘A few scrapes and gashes. Nothing serious enough to get anybody an extra disability share from the voyage’s profits.’ An awkward silence followed the privateer’s jest, a reminder that their journey had yet to produce profit of any kind. ‘I haven’t seen Djangas,’ Gotramm said. ‘He must have scampered during the fight. Halfway back to his tribe by now, I’d imagine. Just as well. I wearied of keeping an eye on him.’

  Brokrin shook his head. ‘Nobody will have to keep an eye on him,’ he said, pointing at the nomad’s body. ‘But don’t let it be said he ran away from a fight. That’s one thing which can’t be taken from him. He helped me fight that monster, gave me the edge I needed when it counted the most.’

  Gotramm shook his head. ‘I misjudged the human,’ he admitted. ‘I thought him a thief without honour or courage.’ His tone was sombre, as he looked down on the nomad’s corpse. ‘I’d take back the things I said to him and the ugly thoughts that put them on my tongue. He was unworthy of my scorn.’

  ‘A lesson truly learned is always hardest to bear,’ Brokrin told Gotramm. ‘Judge someone by the quality they show to you, not the quality you only think you see.’

  The privateer touched his hand to the barrel of his pistol, an old gesture of respect to a fallen comrade in arms. ‘A lesson truly learned,’ he echoed Brokrin’s words. He turned his eyes back to the captain. ‘Do you see a way up from that hole?’

  Brokrin took the tinderlamp from his belt and lit it. Carefully he turned around, letting the light fall across the ravaged hold. ‘I don’t see either ladder or stair,’ he called up to Gotramm. ‘The jackal-folk must have used the beams to climb onto the deck.’

  ‘We’ll get some ropes and have you out of there,’ Gotramm promised. He stepped back and started issuing commands to his arkanauts.

  Brokrin gave the arkanauts only a moment’s notice as they hurried to arrange his extraction. His attention was focused on the darkened hold around him. An uneasy tingle rippled down his spine, a sense of brooding menace. He kept turning back towards the dead bat-beast, watching its carcass, waiting for the slightest movement.

  A pile of smashed boxes stirred, sending some of them toppling to the floor. Brokrin spun around, both hands locked tight about his axe. He wished he’d had Gotramm find his volley pistol and toss it down to him. He wasn’t keen on the idea of marching into the dark to find out what was moving the boxes around.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Brokrin called out. It was nerves that made him speak. He hardly expected a response. His shock when he got one was nearly as great as his first sight of the bat-beast crawling onto the deck.

  ‘Here.’ The reply was faint, barely above a whisper. Brokrin thought at first it was nothing more than imagination. Then it was repeated, even more feebly this time.

  Any fears of the dark were cast aside. Brokrin rushed towards the sound and began pulling boxes away from the pile. It was a voice. A voice that sounded weak and injured.

  More importantly, though, it was the voice of a duardin.

  Gotramm helped his arkanauts haul the nearly insensible duardin up onto the deck. He waved his privateers back as he knelt to check the prostrate body for signs of life. ‘Get a line back down to the cap’n,’ he told them. ‘I don’t want him stuck there any longer than he has to be.’

  Gotramm reached down and took hold of the duardin’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. He found one, faint but regular.

  ‘Think he will make it?’ Skaggi asked, coming over to see for himself how the survivor was faring.

  ‘How he escaped the notice of those flesh-eaters is beyond me,’ Gotramm said. ‘He must have been down there quite some time.’ The privateer shook his head. ‘He’s been lucky this far, it would be cruel to abandon him now.’

  ‘The favour of the gods,’ Skaggi said, his tone almost petulant.

  Gotramm rounded on the logisticator, disgusted by a thought that had occurred to him. A survivor would reduce the value of any salvage the Iron Dragon could claim. ‘It is remarkable that the cap’n heard him call out. A few minutes more and we would have pulled Brokrin out of the hold. Then there would have been nobody around to hear him.’

  Skaggi grimaced at the hostility in Gotramm’s voice. ‘I meant nothing untoward,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking how this fellow’s luck is the cap’n’s misfortune. Certainly these amazing coincidences will feed dockyard gossip about Ghazul’s curse and that sort of rot.’ His face became the very mask of innocence. ‘I was only thinking about the Iron Dragon’s reputation.’

  Gotramm snorted. He didn’t buy it for a second. Skaggi was thinking about profit, nothing more. Still, he decided not to press the matter. Looking away from the logisticator, he saw Brokrin being lifted up from the hold.

  ‘Rig up a sling,’ Brokrin called to the crewmen watching from the Iron Dragon’s deck. Gotramm saw Horgarr nod and hurry off to carry out the command.

  ‘We should get this fellow aboard and into Lodri’s care as soon as we can,’ Gotramm told Brokrin.

  ‘Lodri’s not much of a healer,’ Skaggi protested. ‘He’s nine parts powder monkey. I don’t see where there is overmuch he can do to improve his chances.’

  Gotramm scowled at the logisticator. ‘Unless the cap’n says otherwise, we make the effort anyway.’ He looked back at Brokrin, waiting for the captain’s agreement.

  ‘I don’t know how long he was buried down there without food or water,’ Brokrin said. ‘But whatever Lodri can do for him, we’ll see that it is done.’

  Mention of food and drink spurred an idea. Reaching to his belt, Gotramm removed a flask of thunder-stout. Raising the survivor’s head, he pressed open his lips a
nd poured some of the fiery liquid down his throat. The duardin coughed but a flush of colour was already rushing back into his pale skin.

  Brokrin watched, waiting to see if the draught would rouse the survivor further, but he remained in his deathly stupor. ‘There are a great many things I would like to ask him,’ he sighed.

  ‘Whatever story he has to tell, whatever happened to him and his ship, we’ll have to wait to hear it,’ Gotramm said. He turned his head and looked back at the dark mouth of the hold. ‘What about the rest of the crew?’

  ‘We’ll gather their bones and make them ready to send back to Barak-Urbaz,’ Brokrin said. ‘It is the least we can do for them.’

  ‘I’ll not want to be within a league of Barak-Urbaz when they get that shipment,’ Skaggi commented. The captain gave his logisticator a sour look.

  ‘I dare say there’d be thin margin in such business,’ Brokrin told him. ‘But you can be sure they’ll appreciate the chance to render any ­honour to their dead.’

  Skaggi held the collar from the ghoul that had attacked him, shaking it as he answered Brokrin. ‘They’ll want revenge and might not be so reasonable about who they blame. Giving them this isn’t going to be enough.’ He looked over as the harness came rolling down from the Iron Dragon’s deck and Gotramm’s privateers strapped the senseless survivor into its fastenings. ‘If he pulls through I might be able to angle something for us. If he’s anybody important we might even earn a reward worth the trip.’

  Gotramm glared at the logisticator. ‘We’re not buzzards, flying about trying to feed off someone else’s misery.’

  ‘We had better find something to feed off,’ Skaggi told him. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten Djangas. When we took him aboard, we became responsible for him. Now that the manling’s dead we’ll have to pay wergild to Kero. Since he was the son of a chief, they might demand ten times his weight in steel as restitution.’

  Gotramm nodded. ‘We’ll pay it,’ he said, his tone sombre.

  ‘Of course we will,’ Skaggi said. ‘Because the strictures of the Code make it clear that we’re not just responsible for the manling, but the trade treaty with the Chuitsek. If they turn hostile then every duardin in our fleet will bear the cost of lost future profits from that treaty.’ The logisticator scowled at Gotramm. ‘Now just ask yourself how we’ll pay when this voyage hasn’t seen enough profit to answer for provisions, fuel and ammunition.’

  Gotramm sputtered into his beard, unable to articulate an argument that would shut down the legitimate concern Skaggi raised. They would have to pay Kero and as it stood, there wasn’t any certainty they could.

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ Brokrin declared. ‘The Kharadron meet their obligations. It is a fool who lets interest pile onto a debt.’

  Thurik, Gotramm’s lieutenant, drew him away from the conversation, clapping a hand on his shoulder. ‘He’s ready,’ the red-bearded arkanaut reported, nodding at the harness. The survivor was trussed up like an Ascensionfest goose, banded around with a jungle of straps and buckles. It certainly seemed there was no danger of him slipping out once he was hoisted into the air. Gotramm raised his hand to give the signal to the Iron Dragon’s crew to start pulling when he suddenly stopped. He thought of Brokrin’s expression of responsibility for Djangas, an obligation he’d taken personally. If Brokrin could feel such a sense of duty towards a manling, certainly Gotramm owed more to a fellow duardin.

  Stepping over to the survivor, Gotramm made a close inspection of the fastenings that held him, ensuring everything was tight and none of the straps were worn. He gave the rope a tug to test its firmness. Satis­fied, he raised his hand to give the signal again.

  As he did, Gotramm received a shock. Weak fingers clutched at his leg. Feeble words rose to his ears. Looking down, he found that some fragment of awareness had returned to the survivor. His eyes were open, wide with a kind of frantic fright. Understandable if he thought himself still under the debris and surrounded by flesh-eating scavengers, but the duardin’s words proved he was aware of his rescue.

  ‘Don’t take me without my box,’ the survivor rasped, his eyes pleading with Gotramm. His grip tightened on the privateer’s leg. ‘My coffer. In the hold. My coffer.’

  Gotramm laid a reassuring hand on the duardin’s chest. ‘I’ll get it,’ he told him. ‘Right now you need to rest.’

  The survivor would not be appeased. His clutch became still tighter, his voice more desperate. ‘My coffer. Don’t leave my box!’ The effort of speaking brought a ragged cough that shivered through his body. He sagged back into the straps. Thurik came forwards and gently loosened his grip on Gotramm’s leg. The next moment the crew of the Iron Dragon were hoisting him up from the wreck.

  ‘There is something to thank the gods for,’ Brokrin stated as he watched the survivor carried away. ‘He is alive at least.’

  Skaggi shook his head. ‘What was all that nonsense about a coffer?’

  Gotramm shrugged. ‘Something he lost down in the hold. At least that’s what he said. Seemed important to him anyway.’

  ‘The shape that place is in, the only thing important to me about that hold would be getting out of it,’ Skaggi said. He looked over at Brokrin. ‘Like you say, he is alive. But his brain has turned into cheese.’ He tapped the side of his head and rolled his eyes. The logisticator glanced back at Gotramm when he noticed the privateer heading towards the hold. ‘You’re not going down there?’ he scoffed.

  Gotramm showed Skaggi a grim smile. ‘I told him I would,’ he stated. ‘We do have time, captain?’ he asked Brokrin.

  ‘We need the bones of the crew and Djangas brought up still,’ Brokrin said. ‘That won’t leave much time to look for anything else. I didn’t see anything of a coffer when I was gathering up the bones.’

  ‘There’s nothing down there!’ Skaggi groaned, tugging his beard.

  ‘Then that’s what I’ll tell him,’ Gotramm said. ‘After I take a look for myself.’

  Gotramm put deed behind words. Grabbing the rope that still hung down into the hold, he rappelled into the brooding darkness. As his feet sloshed into the spoiled beer that coated the floor he reached to his belt and cranked the actuator that jutted out from the side of the tinderlamp he carried. The mechanism pulsed into life, throwing an illuminating glow from its crystal shutters. Using the lamp to guide him, Gotramm began to pick his way through the debris.

  Though he wouldn’t admit it to Skaggi, Gotramm was as dubious about the existence of the survivor’s coffer as the logisticator was. Still, he’d given his word to him and he intended to keep it to the best of his ability. Above him he could hear his compatriots continuing to withdraw from the wreck. He knew his allowance of time was short and to do any justice to the task at hand he’d have to use strategy.

  Brokrin had already conducted a search of the hold, tearing it apart in his effort to recover the bones of the crew. The bones lay stacked in a neat pile next to the body of Djangas. Gotramm couldn’t see any more bones lying about, which told him the captain’s search had indeed been thorough. That meant that if the coffer was real and was here, then it was in some obscure spot he had failed to search.

  Gotramm looked towards the inert bulk of the bat-beast. There was a spot to be shunned as much as possible. One hand resting on the grip of his pistol, he scrutinised the carcass, peering at the floor and walls around it. Every moment he lingered near the thing made his beard itch. Even dead the monster exuded a malignant atmosphere.

  His inspection yielded nothing. Backing away from the carcass, uneasy about turning his back on it, Gotramm started for the spot where the more man-like flesh-eaters had fallen. Unlike their hideous leader, the ghouls were scrawny enough for Gotramm to shove aside, pushing their bloodied remains away to flop across the bat-beast’s corpse. He made a close study of the floor where the cannibals had been lying but aside from a finger-bone Brokrin missed in his search, he discover
ed nothing.

  Gotramm sighed and shook his head. He felt like a fool. The most obvious spot wasn’t up in the ceiling or under dead monsters. It was that corner where Brokrin found the survivor. It was unlikely Brok­rin had given the area much focus while looking for bones since the flesh-eaters hadn’t bothered with it to begin with.

  Berating himself for not thinking of it sooner and sparing himself the dubious pleasure of kicking around dead flesh-eaters, Gotramm marched over to where the heap of crates had been. Most of them had been tossed aside when Brokrin extracted the survivor, but there were still a few piles he could go through.

  It was not long into his task that Gotramm paused and looked around anxiously. Some sound, some note of warning plucking at the edge of his awareness turned him away from his labour. He swung the light across the hold, its beams reflecting from the puddles of beer, throwing dark shadows across the monstrous corpses and shattered debris.

  Gotramm chewed his moustache, this time chastising himself for letting his imagination nag at him. The sound he’d heard must have been the crew leaving the wreck. Another reminder that he didn’t have long to finish his search. Doggedly, the arkanaut returned to his work, shoving aside the piles of boxes and crates, checking around them for any sign of a coffer.

  Again the eerie sensation plucked at his nerves. Gotramm stopped and looked around. The uneasy feeling was more marked now, nagging at him, quickening his pulse. It took a conscious effort for him to turn back, to make another sweep of the nooks and crannies. When he did, the light from his tinderlamp fell upon a little metal object about a foot long and half as wide, a big bronze lock secured to its lid and four stumpy legs protruding from its base. The survivor wasn’t deranged. There had been a coffer, and this had to be it.

  No sooner did Gotramm retrieve the box than a loud splash echoed through the hold. The privateer spun around, whipping his pistol from its holster. The tinderlamp fastened to his belt threw its light across a grisly, bestial form.