Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  ‘Fortune favour you,’ Skaggi called down to the landing party as they started off down the dock. The logisticator waved his arm in a cheery farewell.

  ‘I ask myself if he is hoping we don’t get back,’ Drumark growled as he fell into step beside Brokrin. He pointed at the duardin around them. ‘Anything happens and there will be a lot fewer shares to be divided.’

  Brokrin readjusted the volley pistol tucked into his belt so that it would not dig into his thigh as he walked. ‘You would need an abacus to think like Skaggi,’ he said. ‘With him it is all about balancing risk against reward. If he thinks our success here will put more coin in his purse then he is being as sincere as he can be.’

  The sergeant pulled the flask from his belt and took a deep pull of grog. He offered the flask to Brokrin, shrugging when he declined. ‘I forgot you do not like the bite of gunpowder in your grog,’ he grinned. ‘To me, it adds just the right punch.’

  ‘I always felt it gave a new meaning to the term “gutshot”,’ Brokrin said. He turned and looked ahead at Gotramm. The privateer had taken the front position, leading the small party as they marched towards the yawning entrance and the dark unknown. ‘If he lives long enough to get some experience behind him, that beardling is going to make a good admiral some day.’

  ‘He is already captain of a ship,’ Drumark pointed out with a little malicious humour.

  Brokrin smiled at the jibe. ‘You could have done worse than vote for him,’ he conceded. ‘He has made some bad choices but some sound decisions.’

  ‘The crew did not have much of a choice,’ Drumark said. ‘Picking between sharing in Grokmund’s strike or settling for whatever we could scrounge up from the other nomad traders.’

  ‘That is just the thing,’ Brokrin told the sergeant. ‘Doesn’t it all feel wrong to you? Grokmund, this aether-gold of his, all of it just doesn’t seem real. Too good to be true, is how it strikes me.’

  ‘You have had some damn bad luck, cap’n,’ Drumark said. ‘You are like a dog that has been kicked so much it no longer trusts anything.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ Brokrin lifted his gaze, staring up at the face carved across the peak. ‘We should not be here.’ He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder, gesturing to the Iron Dragon’s holds. ‘We should have left the aether-gold right where it was.’

  ‘Maybe you think we should have left Grokmund down in the Stormbreaker?’ Drumark asked.

  Brokrin’s face was grave as he considered the question. ‘Maybe it would have been better for all of us if we had.’

  Ahead of them, the black opening of the entry hall stretched across the peak. Hacked from the living rock, reinforced by great pillars of stone, it was not hard to imagine the commotion and activity that would have once filled this place. The bustle of commerce around the trading stalls cut into the walls. The clamour of industry from the smithies and workshops that would have served visiting ships. The rumble of carts as they trundled along the steel rails set into the floor, bearing loads of ore away to the refineries nestled deep within the outpost.

  ‘If we follow the tracks, we will find what we are looking for,’ Gotramm told the duardin following him. There was an edge of urgency about his voice. Brokrin did not think it was due to any impatience to see the aether-gold turned into even greater profit. He thought Gotramm was feeling the same way he did about this place. It may have been built by duardin, but it was no longer a place where they belonged.

  A powerful draught came whipping out from the darkness, ruffling their beards and cloaks. The wind had a cool, stagnant feel to it. Brok­rin’s nose wrinkled at the smell that saturated that draught. It was a smell he might have expected from the jungle far below, but not here among the clouds. It was the odour of fecundity, of foul and tiny things spawning and dying in their multitudes, the stench of a scum-covered pond and the amphibian things swimming in its depths.

  It was an evil smell, Brokrin knew. Evil and very old.

  The echoes of their footsteps sounded like the thunder of war drums to Gotramm’s ears. The silence within Finnolf’s Fortress was so absolute, so complete, he felt that if they stopped walking, the quiet itself would reach out to smother them. Even the cold draught that wafted through the dark corridors did so without so much as a whisper.

  More than the sounds they made, it was the light they bore that made Gotramm feel like an invader. The crystal-paned lamps that jutted from the walls or protruded from the ceilings overhead were long extinguished, their aetheric power exhausted centuries ago. Once those lamps would have bathed the great halls of the outpost in light, a golden glow of prosperity and life. Now they were naught but dim frameworks of stone and steel, the crystal panels dull and empty, envious eyes ­staring down at the light-bearers who marched past them.

  By the flicker of the tinderlamps fastened to their belts and the steady glow of the aether-lights two of his arkanauts carried, Gotramm could imagine the grandeur that had once filled the settlement. The corridor they travelled down was broad enough that the Iron Dragon could have sailed through it with plenty of space to spare. The rune-etched columns that supported the vaulted ceiling were as thick around as a giant stout-oak, their centres cut away to display elaborate frescoes of duardin mining and fighting, building and trading. Near the summit of each column, carved in a scale many times that of reality, the statue of a duardin lord passed its stony judgement upon the traffic below.

  Dwellings and businesses were cut into the walls, some still sporting the remnants of doors and shutters, others closed off only by a litter of decayed wood. Inns and taverns were plentiful closer to the dock, stone markers declaring their custom with images of pillows and steins and bestowing on them names like The Raven’s Rest and The Broken Barrel. Further down the great hall there were breweries and tenements, jewellers and gem-setters, armourers and axesmiths. Drumark ducked inside one doorway they passed, emerging a moment later with a dust-covered firearm with a funnel-shaped barrel.

  ‘And that was supposed to be a gunsmith,’ the sergeant said, cracking his discovery against the floor to remove the patina that encrusted it. The old weapon came apart in his hands, a litter of broken pieces. Drumark shook his head and moved on.

  Every building the crew explored had the same stamp of age and decay. After the first hundred yards even the most optimistic among them gave off looking for anyone. The outpost was exactly what it seemed to be: dead. Gotramm considered that they could very well be the first duardin to walk these halls since the traders Mortrimm had spoken of.

  ‘We are fortunate the rails have not split off,’ Grokmund told Gotramm. Like the rest of them, he kept his voice low, as though afraid to draw attention to himself. ‘That bespeaks an orderly design to this place. Everything I need to process the aether-gold should be in one place.’

  Gotramm waved his hand, indicating how wide and tall the corridor was. ‘I imagine this settlement looked very different before it became prosperous. The first Kharadron who decided to dig down into the mountains were led by hard and ruthless lords. Lords who would think nothing of displacing their subjects to heighten the grandeur of their domains.’ He nodded to himself as he considered his own theory. ‘These halls would have been much narrower when they were first dug out and the inhabitants would have cut their homes into the existing walls. Then, later, the hammers of progress and industry would come back around and clear it all away.’ He gave Grokmund a regretful look. ‘The Code was designed to give each duardin certain considerations, but there are some who claim as soon as a duardin comes down from the sky and seeks his fortune in the earth that all the protections of the Code are lost. The Iron Thanes were of such a mind and I rather suspect Finnolf was one of them.’

  ‘A tyrant’s ghost keeps its own company,’ Grokmund said. ‘His ancestors don’t want him and Black Nagash won’t take him. There is a kind of justice in that, if you believe in such things.’ He glanced around
at the empty windows and broken doors, stamped his boot in the thick dust under their feet. ‘Either way, any legacy he was trying to leave behind has come to this.’

  Gotramm caught the change in Grokmund’s voice. ‘That is what this is all about for you, isn’t it? Skaggi really had the truth of it when he said you were more interested in the discovery than the gold.’

  ‘It is everything to me,’ Grokmund said. There was a distant look in his eyes as he spoke, as though he were peering into some distant place. ‘There might be some aether-khemists who are content to simply hone their craft and excel at their trade, but that was never enough for me. I wanted to add something, to bring something new into the world, something that would be a boon to the Kharadron. When the Stormbreaker discovered the chimera rookery and the vein from which they built their nests, I knew I had found the thing that would ensure I would not be forgotten. I would leave behind a legacy, something that would endure after me.’

  ‘Every duardin wants a name he can take pride in,’ Gotramm said.

  He could empathise with Grokmund. There were many chances for a bold captain to lay claim to fame and fortune. At the start of every voyage there was at least the possibility of coming home a wealthy hero. This venture was Grokmund’s chance, his opportunity to do something that would see his name toasted by his contemporaries, his chance to bring back a discovery that would see his name set down in stone.

  Gotramm’s gaze strayed to one of the statues on the columns. He noted that there were runes cut into the base beneath its feet. A name set down in stone with none left to read it. He glanced back at Grokmund, thinking just how fragile posterity could be.

  Gotramm focused on the darkness ahead of them. The desolate outpost was oppressing his spirits, turning his thoughts down grim channels. The sooner they found what they were looking for, the better. He was eager to be quit of this place.

  Not least because Gotramm could not shake the impression that they were being watched. That somewhere in the shadows something was observing them.

  Waiting for its chance to strike.

  Slithering through the blackness, the severed eye-stalk crept after the Kharadron explorers. It had no need of light as they did, its vision based upon principles wildly divergent from those that composed duardin sight. Even in pitch darkness the grisly eye would not be blind, able to detect the shifting currents of magic itself and use it to navigate. The spells that sustained it as a remnant of its parent body had also enhanced and expanded its abilities – anything that would endow it with greater utility as the sorcerer’s spy.

  Far away in his sanctum, Khoram fed his commands into the remnant, instilling in it the impulses and urges that kept it pursuing the duardin while avoiding their notice. The arcane senses bestowed upon the eye let it see things unobserved by the explorers.

  There was an energy that emanated from the outpost’s walls, a vibration of power embedded in the very stones. It was little more than an echo, a shadow that almost melded with the darkness around it. Khoram was not deceived, however. He knew it was there, knew it was no trick of imagination that caused him to see it. There was a power here, ancient and terrible, pregnant with malignancy.

  Once that power would have been far greater. Khoram could sense its vastness in the echoes it had left behind. The duardin, in their avaricious destruction of the mountain, had drawn something out from its depths that would have been better left buried. Their doom had been sealed from that moment. The power had swelled, devouring those who unearthed it, expanding to consume the rest of the miners. Up and ever up it had spread, rising to penetrate Finnolf’s Fortress, to glut itself upon the inhabitants. Like a raging conflagration it had burned, growing hotter and wilder as it spread. And like a conflagration, its malevolence had at last abated as the fuel that fed it expired.

  The power had lost its vibrancy, unable to seep back down into the root of the mountain, incapable of finding new prey upon which to feed.

  Khoram frowned as he contemplated the impressions the remnant conveyed to him. The power was diminished, but it was not gone. The fire was over, but embers remained, waiting to be fanned into hideous life once more. Before he could allow his plans to proceed the sorcerer had to ensure those embers were snuffed out. Even as an echo and a shadow, they posed a threat to the Master.

  Khoram drew from a horse-hide basket a pale and mewing thing. There was no pity in his eyes as he raked a blade across its throat and let its blood splash across the arcane wards he’d daubed upon the cavern floor. An eldritch harmony developed as the blood took on a pulsating glow. The arcane energies it drew into itself Khoram fed back into the remnant and through the remnant he fed those energies into the darkened corridors of the outpost.

  In the dark, the embers of malignance began to blaze a little brighter. Khoram had to be careful, had to ensure there was not too much energy on which it could feed. He wanted to fan the embers into a fire, but not much more than a flicker. He wanted them to draw substance and shape, but not strength and cunning.

  When the embers became a fire, when the lurking power reached out to strike, Khoram needed to ensure it lacked the ferocity to burn the duardin. Even for a sorcerer, gauging such degrees of magic was a doubtful process. He could not be certain how much was too much, how little was too little.

  Dealing with daemons was never a simple thing.

  At first Brokrin thought his eyes were deceiving him. He brought his hand across them, rubbing at them to clear any weariness from his gaze. It did no good. When he looked again the sickly green light was still there, flickering around the doorway of a cooper’s workshop.

  The light began to grow brighter. With it came a rancid smell, like that which characterised the icy draughts which blew through the outpost’s halls. Sounds pawed at the edge of his hearing, a burbling noise that was like the croak of a toad and the bubbling of hot mud. Brok­rin’s skin suddenly felt unclean, intolerably dirty. He fought down the urge to scratch, fearing that if he started he would not be able to stop.

  Drumark was less circumspect, the tinderlight hooked to his belt bouncing wildly as he clawed at his arms, trying to relieve the irritation. His face was wrinkled in disgust. ‘We must be over the sewers,’ he complained.

  Brokrin did not think there was so mundane an answer for their experience. He shouted a warning to Gotramm and the others, directing their attention towards the light. As he did so, the burbling sound was drowned out by the buzz of flies. Out from the workshop’s doorway, a black cloud of hairy insects spilled into the corridor. The loathsome swarm flew at his face, crawling across his eyes, trying to press their way into his mouth and nose.

  ‘Hold your breath!’ Grokmund shouted. He motioned for the others to hang back while he hurried forwards, hands manipulating the controls of his atmospheric anatomiser. As he came close, Brokrin was aware of a sudden pressure against his ears. A strange suction pulled at his hair and clothes, as though some tremendous gale were blowing down upon him from straight above. The buzzing fell silent almost instantly. When he dared to open his eyes, a mound of green hairy bodies lay scattered around his feet.

  Grokmund made a gesture with his hand, warning Brokrin to wait. Again he worked the controls of the atmospheric anatomiser before signing to Brokrin that everything was fine. He drew a deep breath into his burning lungs. He looked around, spotting Drumark lying on the floor with a second pile of flies all around him. Hurrying over to the sergeant, he revived him with a slap across the cheek.

  Drumark came up in a flash, hands balled into fists. When he realised it was Brokrin who had struck him, a confused expression settled upon his face. He started when he saw the dead flies, a shudder passing through him. ‘Filthy vermin,’ he spat, stamping on the dead insects with his boot. ‘My thanks, cap’n.’

  ‘You can thank Grokmund,’ Brokrin corrected him. ‘He killed them by thinning out the air. Guess you did not hear his warning.’ He turne
d towards the aether-khemist, but Grokmund was no longer near. He was walking towards the workshop where the green glow continued to pulsate.

  ‘Now what is this?’ Grokmund wondered. From across the corridor, Gotramm voiced a similar question, as did others. The eerie glow had appeared in the windows of other shops and around the base of one of the columns.

  Brokrin drew the volley pistol from his belt, his body tingling with something that was more than just alarm. It was revulsion, a loathing such as he had never experienced before. There was something here that offended him at the most primal level, that shouted at him to flee with all haste. Duty and pride kept him from heeding the urgings of his instincts. He was of the Kharadron; it was not in him to run while his kinsmen were beset by danger.

  ‘I see something in the light,’ Grokmund said. He began to back away from the workshop. As he did, both Brokrin and Drumark stepped forwards.

  ‘Whatever is in there is unclean,’ Drumark swore. His body shook as he sneezed a dead fly from his nose. ‘Anything that lives with flies has no right to be alive.’ He raised his decksweeper, its barrels aimed at the doorway.

  Before Drumark could fire, a tall and emaciated shape leapt through one of the windows. It landed with a sickening plop on all fours. Brok­rin had the impression of a humanoid figure, the skin dappled with sores and lesions, the flesh coloured a rotten green. The thing glared at them with a single blemished eye set into the centre of its jaundiced face. A long horn curled up from its brow, caked in a kind of mossy velvet. The smell that billowed off the creature was impossibly vile, so foul that Brokrin wondered if the flies had actually been attacking them or simply trying to escape this beast’s smell.

  The monster uttered a gargled howl and sprang at Brokrin. His volley pistol met the thing’s charge, shot after shot slamming into its decayed body. It was thrown back, sprawling across the ground in a puddle of its own fluids, chest and pelvis ripped to pieces by the bullets. A pained mewing rose from the creature’s jagged mouth as it flopped over onto its side.