Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  A smug smile was on Skaggi’s face. He might have pushed still harder, but before he could resume his harangue, Brokrin pulled him back. ‘Enough,’ he told the logisticator. ‘Now is not the time to badger him. He has been through enough.’

  Brokrin turned and addressed his other officers. ‘Always answer for the honour of your acts. You can sell honour,’ he told them, ‘but all the gold in Chamon can’t buy it back.’

  The words had a sobering effect on those who’d started to warm to Skaggi’s position. They took the reprimand to heart, shifting their eyes away from Grokmund and his box. To Grokmund, it seemed the only one unmoved by Brokrin’s words was Skaggi. There was a contemptuous expression on the logisticator’s face.

  Grokmund leaned back on the cot and took another slow sip of ale. His mind turned over the situation, the destruction of his kinsmen and where things might lead from here. It took some deliberation to make the decision he finally made, but it was, he felt, the only one possible. Even if the officers of the Iron Dragon were putting on an act, Brokrin feigning sympathy while Skaggi sought to distract him with blatant ­avarice, he could still make use of these duardin.

  ‘Hand me the coffer,’ Grokmund suddenly told Gotramm. Reluctantly Skaggi stepped aside as the arkanaut retrieved the box and gave it to him. While his fingers worked at the rune-lock, Grokmund explained himself to Brokrin. ‘I was the Stormbreaker’s aether-khemist,’ he said. ‘My duties included evaluating the minerals we distilled from cloud-deposits and sky-veins. I’m not sure how much I can show you without the proper equipment, but maybe it’ll be enough to convince you just how valuable this box and its contents are.’

  In a short time Grokmund had the lock open. The top of the coffer hinged back, automatically flipping up as some hidden spring slipped its catch. Within was a mass of dark fabric. Removing it, Grokmund revealed a layer of soft wool jammed tight inside the box. Carefully he began pulling it away. The watching duardin were impressed by how thin and fine each strip was, almost like gauze in their consistency. A gasp of excitement dropped from Skaggi’s tongue when he saw that the last layer Grokmund exposed wasn’t so much a layer as a clutch of tubes individually wrapped up.

  Grokmund paused and studied the faces of his rescuers. ‘What I am going to show you is a thing that no one living has seen. Only my crew knew of it. Now I share that secret with you and trust that you will guard it closely.’ He drew the wool away from one of the tubes, exposing a slender length of glass. Though hollow, the tube was not empty, for inside was a swirling haze, a wispy mist with a golden sheen.

  ‘Aether-gold,’ one of the watching duardin named the contents of the tube. Aether-gold was the most precious substance in all the realms to the Kharadron, for it was the life-blood of their technology, the power behind their amazing sky-vessels and sky-holds. Precious as it was, however, its value was not so great that the few vials in Grokmund’s coffer would recoup the expenses of this voyage. At least, Grokmund reflected, if it was a typical grade of ore.

  Skaggi shook his head. ‘All that trouble for barely enough aether-gold to refuel your fleet,’ he told Brokrin. He pointed at Gotramm. ‘Aren’t you glad you risked having the meat gnawed off your bones going back for this idiot’s box? Treasure! I wouldn’t strangle a drunken grot for what is in there!’

  Grokmund listened to the logisticator’s tirade with increasing anger. He took one of the vials and tapped it against Skaggi’s hawk-like nose. ‘Take a good look at it before you start your cackling,’ he snapped. ‘See if you’re as smart as you think you are.’

  Skaggi cringed away, his eyes wide with horror and staring at the delicate vial and its caustic contents. ‘I do not indulge the whims of lunatics,’ Skaggi snarled. ‘I have seen enough aether-gold to know what it looks like.’

  ‘Have you?’ Grokmund scoffed. He turned and held the vial towards Brokrin. ‘Maybe you would care for a closer look. See if your eyes are sharper than the copper-pincher’s seem to be.’

  Brokrin took the vial. Grokmund folded his arms across his chest and sat back, waiting for the captain to conduct his own examination. He watched as Brokrin gave it an indifferent look, turning the tube one way and then another as he held it towards the light. Grokmund smiled when he saw the puzzled wrinkling of Brokrin’s brow. He held the vial closer to his eyes, his study of it becoming far from indifferent. The captain’s interest swiftly spread to his officers. Even Skaggi was watching him intensely.

  ‘It has an unusual shine,’ Brokrin said at last. ‘Like nothing I’ve seen before.’ He weighed the vial in his hand and gave it an appraising look. ‘Unless our kin from Barak-Urbaz use a heftier glazing process than we do, it seems this aether-gold is heavier as well.’

  ‘It is,’ Grokmund stated. He puffed out his chest as he announced: ‘That is the finest grade of aether-gold I have seen in two hundred years of prospecting and refining. It is so pure, so magnificent, that it almost beggars belief. We assayed it at a value twenty to fifty times greater than common grade distillations. More than that, it is easier to harvest, almost jumping into the drift-nets.’ He shook his finger at the vial Brok­rin held. ‘I will tell you this, too, it is easier to refine. Why, you could concentrate this stuff into ingots with a third of the labour.’

  Brokrin shook his head. ‘It is an unusual find, I will grant that,’ he said. ‘But for the rest of it…’ He handed the vial back to Grokmund.

  Grokmund clucked his tongue in disappointment. ‘You are too sceptical, cap’n. It isn’t some fable I am spinning for you, but Grungni’s own truth. We made extensive tests on this stuff on the Stormbreaker. Admiral Thorki was hurrying back to the hold for an entire trawling fleet to grab up the strike before somebody else found it or some freak storm dispersed it.’

  ‘And that explains why you have shown us this find,’ Brokrin stated. ‘You are worried about losing the strike and want to cut some sort of deal to use our ships.’ He glanced over his officers. ‘We don’t have near the weaponry of the fleet you lost and we don’t have close to the carry­ing capacity of a trawler.’

  ‘You would not need to carry much for the voyage to bring you riches beyond imagining,’ Grokmund said. There was a flicker of panic in him now. He had been certain the prospect of wealth would entice the Iron Dragon’s crew to help him. They might be his only chance to harvest the vein before someone else found it. Someone who would then claim the glory that Grokmund knew only he was entitled to.

  ‘I suspect there is a reason your admiral refused to load up his ships with that stuff,’ an old duardin with a brace around his leg said, pointing at the vial. ‘If it is as potent as you say, I can see where filling an ironclad’s holds with it would not be the smartest idea. Be like sailing on a bomb.’

  Skaggi interrupted, surprisingly coming to Grokmund’s defence. ‘We should not be too quick to dismiss the idea without first looking into it,’ he said. ‘We could at least assay this sample. See exactly how much it is worth. How much money we are turning our noses up at.’ The logisticator was shameless enough to ignore his display of just that quality only a few minutes before.

  ‘We have the equipment to do it, cap’n,’ a duardin with the grimy complexion of an endrinrigger declared. ‘I could even refine a bit of it. See if it works as quick and easy as he claims.’ He stepped over to Grokmund and held his hand out. ‘I am Horgarr, the Iron Dragon’s endrinmaster. If you don’t mind, I can put the stuff to the test. I’ll try to use as little as possible.’

  Grokmund laid the vial in Horgarr’s hand. ‘Use as much as you need to,’ he said. ‘When I am proven right, then the investment will be worth it.’ He nodded to Brokrin. ‘Once you know how much you stand to gain, then you’ll think twice about the risks.’

  It was late into the next day when the ironclad’s officers were again assembled in Brokrin’s cabin, each of them eager to hear Horgarr’s findings. Grokmund had a victorious look on his face.


  The endrinmaster wore heavy lead gloves and an apron coated in thick metal plates when he stepped to the table and laid down upon it a heavy bronze box. Pulling away the pins, he let its sides drop open to display the product of his labours. Resting inside the box was a half-inch long sliver of extremely dark gold. An impressed whistle escaped from Drumark, but the other duardin were no less excited. All eyes were riveted to the tiny ingot Horgarr had distilled from Grokmund’s sample.

  ‘It tests more pure than anything I have seen,’ Horgarr stated. ‘Maybe a more accomplished prospector would know better, but as far as I can tell this is the richest ore any Kharadron has discovered.’ He turned and bowed to Grokmund. ‘It is everything you said it was. I took a shaving off it, no thicker than my fingernail, and with that shaving I was able to put my aether-endrin buoyancy at full charge. I even had to bleed off some of the energy to keep it under control.’ He held out his fingers, pinching them together to indicate how small an amount he was discussing. ‘No bigger than that,’ he emphasised.

  Skaggi leaned over the table, staring at the aether-gold with unblinking fascination. ‘What would you estimate as its value?’

  Horgarr pointed at the tiny ingot. ‘That bit alone is enough to compensate Kero and still have leftovers,’ he stated. ‘And that is if we let Drumark make the trade instead of a sharp dealer like yourself.’ The remark brought a few laughs from the duardin.

  Brokrin sat back in his chair, one hand stroking his beard. He glanced over at Grokmund. He could understand the aether-khemist’s position. He saw this as his only chance to stake his discovery, to make the deaths of his kinsmen count for something.

  ‘Your luck has changed, cap’n,’ Gotramm said, bringing smiles to all those around him.

  Brokrin did not smile. He did not like talk of luck or curses, because for too long he had been under their pall. However pessimistic his fears, ever since the escape from Ghazul they had invariably proven well founded. Right now, it was not the promise of wealth that was foremost in his thoughts but rather the spectre of doom. He pointed at Horgarr. ‘In your estimation, how volatile is this ore? If just a shaving is enough to power an aether-endrin beyond capacity, what kind of potential are we looking at?’

  ‘You could bring a surplus of power for your entire sky-hold,’ Grokmund promised. ‘Just with what you can carry in this ship.’

  ‘I’m not fretting over profit,’ Brokrin said. ‘I’m concerned about the dangers of transporting it. The Iron Dragon isn’t a tanker. She isn’t designed to have her belly filled with raw aether-gold.’

  Skaggi managed to tear his eyes away from the ingot to stare at Brok­rin in disbelief. ‘You sound like an old rinn!’ he jeered. ‘Worrying over shadows–’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Horgarr corrected the logisticator. ‘Refined, the ore is safe enough, but as a gas it is very caustic. Nothing a tanker couldn’t handle, but put a big concentration down in our hold and it would be a dicey prospect.’ He gave Brokrin an apologetic look. ‘Not saying it would not be worth taking the risk, cap’n.’

  ‘We could put it to a vote,’ Gotramm suggested. It was an idea that had Skaggi’s zealous support and the approval of most of the officers.

  ‘There’ll be no vote,’ Brokrin decided. ‘I am in command. The security of these ships and responsibility for bringing them back to Barak-Zilfin is mine.’

  ‘You also have a responsibility to make this voyage pay,’ Skaggi interjected.

  Brokrin held up his hand to stifle any further talk along the lines Skaggi had opened. ‘My decision is made.’ He looked over at Grokmund. ‘We’ll land you at Barak-Zilfin. There we can arrange a properly equipped expedition to secure this find you’ve discovered. Allowing you are agreeable to terms that share the claim between our two sky-holds.’

  Grokmund had lost the pleased look of earlier. Now he seemed as weak and broken as when he’d been brought up from the Stormbreaker’s hold. ‘Make whatever terms you like,’ he muttered. ‘Your caution might just leave us splitting thin air. Every hour you dawdle gives someone else a chance to stumble upon the vein.’

  ‘You can’t take this on your shoulders, Brokrin,’ Gotramm said. ‘You have two other ships in this fleet. Two other captains who might not see things as,’ he hesitated, reluctant to use the word that sprang to mind, ‘…timidly as you do.’

  The choice of word brought a pained grimace to Brokrin’s face. ‘If that is how you all feel, then let’s get to asking the other captains what they think.’ He rose from his seat, waving his arms to hurry the officers from his cabin. ‘Let’s get an answer one way or the other. But do not think I will stand for any downplay of the risks involved.’

  Gotramm bristled at the captain’s distemper, his sense of guilt at having offended Brokrin only hardening his own decision to oppose him. ‘Don’t think we’ll stand to have the potential reward to be gained dismissed out of hand,’ he warned.

  Brokrin lingered after the other duardin, pausing to extinguish the lamp before following the others up on deck. As he turned away, a glimmer in the dark caught his eye. For an instant he had the impression of a kind of glow that surrounded the ingot, almost as though responding to the darkness that closed around it. He watched for a moment, but the glow failed to return. Discarding the impression as a trick of exhaustion, he closed the door and made his way up to the deck.

  The nine corners of the black cavern thrummed with the sound of discordant song. An almost primordial melody distilled from the vanished dreams of aelfkind and reforged into a shivering cacophony. A copper sistrum and a menit of obsidian beads created the eerie music while the lyrics were invoked by Khoram’s hissing voice. The foul tretchlet bulging from the sorcerer’s neck acted to impart the chorus.

  Uncanny flashes of light pulsated from the stone roof far above. The crawling shades of Shadowfar were drawn by the flashing lights, un­aware that their wraithlike substance was being leached away by the ritual, drained off into the fleshless skulls arrayed about the outermost of the circles Khoram had drawn across the floor. The cabalistic signs within the circle shimmered as the shades were consumed, feeding their energy into the sorcerer’s dark magic.

  Deep within the lofty heights of the Sapphire Palace, Khoram’s sanctum was a domain that echoed its master’s evil. Abominable apparatus reposed in niches set into the walls. One niche was given over to great basins and urns within which hideous plants fed upon unnatural soils, their leaves heavy with loathsome fruits and poisonous nettles. Another niche was a mortuary of mummified remains, desiccated husks from a menagerie of both people and beasts. Yet another niche was the sadistic vision of a torturer’s dream, flaying racks and spiked caskets serving as the mildest of the horrors on display. One niche held a collection of scrying mirrors and seeing stones, lesser brethren to the Orb of Zobras. There was a place given over to scrolls and grimoires, a gigantic tome – the infamous Maleficara - chained to an iron lectern so that the animate tome might be prevented from devouring the sorcerer and adding his knowledge to its profane pages.

  Khoram raised his arms in triumph as the collecting skulls faded out one by one, cracking apart and crumbling to dust as they reached the limit of their leaching enchantments.

  ‘Now,’ he told his homunculus. ‘Now we are ready to begin.’ Setting down the sistrum and menit at right angles to one another, he stepped away from them and began withdrawing other arcane paraphernalia from a glazed faience urn. As he was gathering up his sorcerous instruments, the sound of a footfall intruded upon the echoes of the aelfish song. Khoram spun around, hastily invoking wards to preserve himself against the stolen shade-essence should his ritual be disrupted. He turned a furious gaze towards the sound of the disturbance.

  Among the acolytes of Tamuzz’s cult, there were few brazen enough to venture into Khoram’s sanctum. Even the lure of forbidden secrets wasn’t enough to tempt the cultists towards such a trespass. Too many of them had seen th
e squamous, mindless hulk of mutated flesh which had once been the magister Yondo after the pretender had tried to pierce the wards around Khoram’s lair and steal from him the profane Maleficara.

  ‘Who dares tempt damnation eternal by disturbing my rites?’ Khoram snarled. Even as the words were spoken, he would have recalled them to his tongue. He should have known who would be so bold. The one mortal in the Sapphire Palace protected by the grace of Mighty Tzeentch against all the manifold aspects of magic.

  Tamuzz enjoyed the blessings of wise Tzeentch in ways that went beyond Khoram’s own. It was the glaive of Tamuzz that cut the corrupt life from the Yondo-spawn and ended the magister’s grotesque transformation. The same wards that had broken the magister’s protections failed to bring harm to the warlord. Spells that should turn a gargant’s bones to slime couldn’t penetrate the enchantments bound into the Chaos armour Tamuzz wore.

  The warlord’s rage was almost tangible, his suspicions of treachery as visible as the fiery glaive in his hand.

  ‘I should have had them but for your interference,’ Tamuzz growled at the sorcerer. ‘The ships would have been mine. Their crews would have been mine. No vagary of purpose, but harnessed into service like any other slave.’

  Khoram reached to the feathered mouth of his tretchlet to silence the parasite. Tamuzz was in enough of a temper without the homunculus telling him his words were lies. It would need more tact to dissuade the warlord from the belief he’d chosen to be his truth.

  ‘You are too great in Lord Tzeentch’s service to pass unnoticed,’ Khoram said. ‘Wherever your hand is stretched, there are those who watch. Enemies who would stop you. Scavengers who would steal from you. Rivals who would usurp the glory you have earned.’ He raised his finger, pointing at the Orb of Zobras. ‘The prophecies are auspicious. Your service to the Master will bring you much power. There are many who are envious of your future.’