Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  ‘And a navigator should know enough to chart his course,’ Brokrin told the old duardin. He clapped a hand to Mortrimm’s shoulder. ‘That is one storm settled for the moment. Now let us see what we can do about the one that’s yet to break.’

  When the captains of the frigates had flown over to the Iron Dragon, the skies had been almost clear, spotted only by a few wisps of white cloud. At best, Brokrin judged the meeting to have taken only an hour and the time since Gotramm’s report of a storm closing in was only a question of minutes. Yet when he climbed up onto the deck to see off the other captains, Brokrin saw a sky that was black with stormclouds. The noonday sun was utterly blotted out, hidden behind the masking veil of elemental malignance.

  Black and vicious as any storm he’d ever seen, the speeding bank of angry clouds came surging towards Brokrin’s tiny fleet. The crews of the ships had barely even started bracing their vessels for the coming torrent. Olgerd and Kjnell managed to scramble aboard the ornithopter ahead of the downpour, but only by the smallest margin. Dirty rain pelted the Iron Dragon’s decks as the small craft lifted off and darted towards the closer of the two frigates.

  Brokrin wrinkled his nose at the stink of the grubby drops. The greasy water smelled like dogs’ drool, perhaps with a dollop of old garbage for added pungency. There was an oily sheen to it as well that would likely leave a scum behind when it evaporated. He rolled his eyes. His crew was going to be irked enough when he turned down Grokmund’s proposal; he could imagine their mood would not improve when they were all swabbing the decks.

  At first he thought it was imagination, the impression of undulating motion that caught Brokrin’s attention. Then, as he focused his gaze on the dark clouds swirling about the small fleet, a cold chill rushed through his body. It was not imagination. There was something there, something within the billowing storm. It seemed to him to be long and lean, almost snakelike in its outline and moving with a weird sideways motion that made it appear and disappear amidst the clouds.

  ‘Olafsson! Signal the frigates!’ Brokrin bellowed, rushing towards the forecastle. ‘Warn them there’s something in the storm!’

  The captain’s shouts had already put Arrik and his team on the alert. The gunners stood by Ghazul’s Bane, eyes scouring the storm for the first sign of a target. Practised hunters, they debated amongst themselves what exactly it was they kept catching glimpses of.

  ‘Might be a harkraken,’ Arrik told Brokrin as he joined them. ‘Sometimes they lair in stormheads like this, just flowing along with it and scooping up whatever the gales don’t knock down.’

  Brokrin caught another flash of motion, the aerial slithering of some grotesque form. He had seen harkraken before, fended off their attentions a few times when he was a mate. Whatever this was, it did not act like a harkraken and it did not move like one.

  Flashes from the frigates confirmed that Olafsson’s signals had been received. Brokrin could faintly see the crews readying weapons on their decks. Skypikes and boarding axes were in evidence, a clear sign that Arrik was not the only one thinking of harkraken. Brokrin looked aside at his own deck where Gotramm and Drumark were preparing their troops. The arkanaut skywardens attached heavy chains to their belts so that if a harkraken’s coils wrapped about them they would have less chance of being pulled away from the ship. Demanding greater flexibility, Horgarr’s endrinriggers had to make do with cable tethers, protection enough against high winds but small comfort when it came to a hungry predator.

  ‘Olgerd! Stay put, damn you!’ The outburst came from Mortrimm. The navigator caught Brokrin’s eye and pointed towards the Dron-Duraz. The captain felt the same sense of worried frustration as he watched the ornithopter lift off the frigate’s deck and start for the Grom-Makar. The small craft was buffeted violently by the tumultuous winds, dipping markedly as it struggled towards its destination.

  It was as the ornithopter started to rise once more that the thing within the storm lashed out. From amidst the boiling black clouds, a thick tendril uncoiled, whipping around the ornithopter in an instant. The howling wind drowned out the screech of twisting metal, the ­rumble of thunder muffled the screams of the doomed duardin. The black mass of the tentacle tightened around the craft’s body, buckling its hull and collapsing its cabin. Brokrin could see the flash of the gas-carbines as they discharged, firing point-blank into the murdering coils. The thing betrayed no sign of injury, simply tightening its grip and flattening the craft. The propeller above the body broke free, tumbling away on its mast. The rest of the wreck was drawn upwards, pulled into the storm by the dark tendril until it was lost within the veil of clouds.

  The frigates opened up on the monstrous thing. Cannons and small arms blazed away at the beast, a ragged chatter of gunfire and muzzle flashes that came too late to rescue the ornithopter and which seemed too little to avenge the vanished craft.

  Duardin on the Iron Dragon contributed to the general fusillade, aiming their weapons at the intermittent flashes of motion that could be seen rippling through the heavy mantle of black clouds. Close by, Brok­rin could hear Arrik reminding his hunters to stay at the ready, to wait and launch the skyhook only when they had a clear target to aim for. It would not be enough to harpoon a single tentacle. The hunters needed to hit the central mass to which those tentacles were joined if they wanted to trap the beast.

  Now, from the midst of the storm, more coils came spilling down at the fleet. To Brokrin’s horror it appeared as though the tentacles did not so much emerge from behind the clouds as seem to draw substance from them. Even darker than the blackness that filled the sky, the tendrils whipped out, crackling across the Dron-Duraz. One tremendous coil twined itself around the frigate’s stern, crumpling its rudder and arresting its motion. Caught in the firm grip of the beast, the frigate was tormented by a clutch of other tendrils. Crewmen shrieked as they were smashed against the deck or sent hurtling into empty air. Deckplates were wrenched asunder by the savage blows, exposing beams and supports, the internal structure of the besieged ship.

  More coils came raining down, oblivious to the frantic fire the Grom-Makar and Iron Dragon sent into them. A darkened mass of destruction pelted the Dron-Duraz, battering her from stem to stern, mocking her desperate efforts to break free. Tentacles slithered down past the ruptured plates, twining themselves about the beams and crossbeams below. Some of the timbers were wrenched asunder, ripped free of their fastening and dragged up through the deck before disappearing into the sinister clouds. Others held firm, acting as points upon which the rampaging horror could anchor itself. Brokrin expected the fiend to emerge from the midst of the storm, pulled down by the enormous weight of the frigate. Arrik’s gunners readied themselves for that eventuality, loudly vowing to revenge their sister ship.

  Incredibly the coils began to jerk the frigate upwards. She listed to one side as the tendrils gripping her prow brought her about. Debris and dislodged crew tumbled from the listing craft as the colossal monster slowly reeled in its whip-like limbs and brought the vessel angling upwards.

  ‘There, just above where it has hold of the Dron-Duraz!’ Arrik cried, rallying his gunners to the attack. Ghazul’s Bane growled like an enraged hound as it sent the obsidian-headed harpoon soaring towards its prey. The heavy chain snaked away behind the speeding spear, link after link unspooling from the ironclad.

  Brokrin groaned in disappointment when the skyhook swept through the clouds above the Dron-Duraz. No monstrous mass lay behind the blackness to be impaled upon the lance, pinioned upon its barbed head and caught by the pursuing chain. The skyhook simply continued onwards, hurtling through the storm until its momentum was spent and it came falling back once more. Arrik cursed lividly, leading his crew as they hastily set the windlass in motion and began recovering the chain and the harpoon fastened to its end.

  Brokrin left the gunners to their task. Turning away from the rail, he hastened to the wheelhouse to relieve Vorki. He pip
ed commands down to the aether-tenders in the motor-room, barked out orders to the endrinriggers. He wanted every ounce of speed the Iron Dragon could muster as he brought her swinging about and set her speeding towards the stricken frigate.

  Rescue, not revenge, was foremost upon Brokrin’s mind as he brought the ironclad around. Kjnell and his remaining crew were locked in desperate combat with the attacking coils, chopping away at the black nest of tendrils with every weapon they could bring to bear. Salvoes from the gas-carbines mounted in the Grom-Makar’s hull stitched a path across the undulating tide. Brokrin saw one of the tentacles ruptured by the barrage, yards of its seething mass crashing to the deck of its victim. Detached from the main mass, the severed tendril arose with a loathsome and persistent agitation of its own. Like a huge python, the black horror went raging amidst Kjnell’s crew, swatting and crushing them in its ophidian fury.

  A great groaning shudder swept through the Dron-Duraz, heralding the frigate’s sorry finish. Her back was broken by the murderous tentacles, the keel itself twisted out of all semblance of shape. Her integrity lost, she began rapidly to break apart, loosing a tragic rain of wreckage and screaming duardin. More of the tentacles came slipping down from the clouds, snatching at the falling ruins, seizing hold of steel and wood with the same viciousness as they did flesh and bone. Some of the tendrils, as they whipped out at the wreckage, split into disparate branches, entangling different targets.

  As the tentacles pulled apart the remains of the Dron-Duraz, more of them came reaching down to menace the Grom-Makar. Shouts of alarm rose from Brokrin’s crew as some of the black tendrils lashed out at the Iron Dragon. Incredibly vast, obscenely rapacious, the cloud-veiled horror was not content to claim a single victim but was now giving battle to the rest of the fleet as well.

  ‘It is in the clouds!’ Brokrin heard Vorki cry as his first mate emptied his pistol into the enormous tendrils above them. Casting his gaze upwards, the captain saw the shot crack against the writhing mass, setting a dribble of stinking ichor spurting into the air. He also saw how impotent such a puny attack was against so mammoth a foe. In the blink of an eye, the bullet hole closed upon itself, choking off the bleeding and rendering the limb as intact as ever before. Black mist swirled about the wound, seeping into it and reinforcing it.

  Giving it shape!

  The impossible impression that had struck Brokrin before was revealed as horrible reality now. No wonder Arrik’s gunners had failed to strike the thing’s main mass. There wasn’t anything to hit. The monster did not lurk behind the clouds after the fashion of a harkraken. It was the clouds, the very storm itself! The tentacles were a manifestation of its elemental wrath, coalescing from the mist and vapour to assume the solidity of mighty arms. Just as aether-gold was distilled from sky-veins, so the monster distilled itself from the raging storm, focusing more and more of its essence into a murderous concentration.

  ‘Repel boarders!’ Gotramm called out to his arkanauts as a seething confusion of tendrils lashed at the ironclad. It seemed an absurd command to issue at such a time and in such conditions, but the very familiarity of the order brought instant response from the privateers. They slipped into the routine patterns of drill and training, laying about themselves with pike and axe. Drumark’s thunderers sent up a hail of supporting fire, pelting the writhing limbs with a steady stream of shot.

  ‘Again! Fire!’ Arrik commanded his team. Ghazul’s Bane sent its sharp lance speeding away. This time the gunners did not try to target an unseen mass behind the clouds, but instead took for their target that spot where a cluster of tentacles came spilling down from the storm. The rune-etched head raked across the roots of the tendrils, severing half a dozen of the noxious limbs and sending them hurtling earthwards. The entire storm seemed to seethe in agitation.

  At the same instant as the Kharadron appeared finally to deal the storm-horror some significant hurt, the beast wrought its own toll upon them. A forest of coils ensnared the Grom-Makar, winding around her hull in a seething mass. The cannon mounted on her forecastle rumbled in defiance, blasting away one of the tendrils in a burst of ichor, but even such violence was not enough to break the thing’s grip. Rapidly, with nigh incredible ferocity, the vine-like coils tightened around their prey. Screams and gunfire rang out as the frigate’s crew tried to save her, but it was too little to escape the monster’s crushing embrace. Cracking and groaning, the Grom-Makar was ground to splinters in the serpentine grasp of her foe.

  The Iron Dragon fought on. But now she fought alone.

  ‘Damn your filthy hide!’ Gotramm bellowed in outrage as he slashed the blade of his axe across a groping black coil. Greasy fluid, as foul and stagnant as the reeking rain, spattered his face as he brought his blade chopping down again and again. He lifted his head and shouted to his arkanauts. ‘This monster has taken two ships! It will not claim a third! Not while we can fight!’

  Gotramm’s shout spurred his arkanauts to throw themselves headlong into the attack. The privateers fought at the centre of an oozing, undulating morass of dark coils. From a distance the tentacles had seemed smooth and uniform, but up close they were stark in their ghastliness. Mouths snapped open and closed along their length, fine feelers writhing from their sides. Blemished orbs gaped from the ends of rubbery eye-stalks, studying the duardin with a monstrous gaze. Less defined structures poked up from the black flesh, suggestions of protruding bones and skeletal growths trying to burst out from under the skin. Veins bubbled up to the surface, quivering as syrupy ichor flowed through them. Thick cords of sinew and muscle rippled with obscene strength as they sent the tendrils lashing across the decks.

  This then was the abominable horror that thought to make the Iron Dragon its victim! Many times Gotramm had wondered how the cursed ship would meet her end. He’d always imagined it would be Ghazul’s claws that would bring the finish, that or the wrecker’s ball when Brokrin’s frustrated backers sold her off as scrap. Never had he imagined such a strange finale, to be pulled apart by a living storm. Dimly he wondered if his beloved Helga would ever hear of his death, how long she would mourn for him before moving on with her life. Would she even know why he never came back, or would she think he had found his fortune elsewhere?

  A clutch of feelers slapped at Gotramm, raking across his helm and plucking at his face. The privateer howled his wrath at the thing and hacked away at the supporting tentacle. Severed feelers and an eye-stalk pelted the deck, writhing in their own gore. Gotramm brought his heavy boots smashing down, stamping the twisted life from them as they tried to slither away. All across the deck, the scene was repeated, arkanauts and crewmen slashing at the tentacles, then trying to crush the life from the severed remains before they could squirm away.

  ‘By volley! Fire!’ Drumark’s bellow rolled across the battle, its echoes consumed by the roar of his thunderers. The Grundstok company sent their bullets shredding through the rope-like tendrils, tearing them into a spray of greasy gore and pulped flesh.

  More tentacles came spilling down from the storm, scrabbling at the endrin, twining about the prow and again at the stern. Despite the ­punishment being brought against it, in defiance of the evasive manoeuvres executed by Brokrin, the colossal monster was intent on devouring the Iron Dragon.

  Then Gotramm caught sight of Horgarr hastening to Ghazul’s Bane. The endrinmaster had a little box-like object clutched close against his chest. He said something to Arrik and the next moment the two duardin were lashing the box to the obsidian head of the harpoon.

  This time, when the lance was sent hurtling up at the storm-beast, it did so in a lazy and almost lethargic manner. Arrik’s hunters had reduced the charge that propelled it and further retarded its speed by playing with the chain that fastened the skyhook to the ship. They were trying to bait the monster, tempting it with a slow-moving morsel. Gotramm could guess their strategy but not their purpose.

  That answer came when the black tenta
cles wrapped themselves around the harpoon and brought their crushing grip to bear. An almost apocalyptic detonation ripped through the sky, its roar utterly smothering the rumble of the storm. Gotramm thought of the violent discharge that had sounded in the captain’s cabin. This was like that clamour but magnified a thousandfold. The Iron Dragon was buffeted from side to side by the blast, endrinriggers and skywardens spinning wildly on their tethers as the vessel recovered her balance.

  Behind the gargantuan explosion, there was only silence. Gotramm could see that the detonation had done more than annihilate the tentacles that closed about the skyhook. The storm itself had been pitted by the explosion, a great swathe obliterated, leaving behind it only open sky. The rest of the storm was patchy and ragged, slivered by the duardin attack. Where the blue sky shone through, the black clouds appeared to squirm in agitation. For an instant they started to draw close, gathering in upon themselves in a fashion similar to the way they had formed their tentacles. Then, with a quiver, whatever presence motivated the storm relented. The black clouds began to dissipate.

  Cheers rang out all across the Iron Dragon as the tendrils followed the pattern of the clouds that spawned them. The tentacles fell still, their animation ebbing as they rapidly began to dissipate. From solidity they took on a smoky, fog-like essence. Then they were naught but a foul haze, a miserable miasma that burned away in the warm rays of the sun.

  For a moment, the duardin celebrated their victory over the beast. Then their mood turned sombre. They looked back, staring after their fallen companions. Each head bowed in silent respect to the comrades they had lost on the downed frigates.

  Gotramm clenched his fists. ‘Your sacrifice will not be in vain,’ he vowed, running his left hand down his beard as he made his oath. An oath to the dead.

  Chapter VIII