by D. P. Prior
This time, this second time he’d watched her die, it had been both better and worse. Better because he knew what to expect, but worse in terms of intensity. It felt like he’d received a year’s worth of grief in one fell swoop. It had smacked him to the ground, crushed him like the sky falling on him, taken away his will to act and live.
But something had rousted him from his catatonia. In part, it was the knowledge he’d seen Kadee die once before and weathered all that bereavement had to throw at him. Partly, it was the knowledge that the time they’d had on Thanatos was a bonus, something to smile about because it had happened at all, not despair at the fact it had passed. In part it was the threat facing Nameless from the Thanatosians that were hounding them, and the possibility he might somehow still need Shadrak’s help if he were to save his people. But the thing that finally clinched it, the thing that snapped him from his gloom-filled dungeon, was the sight and sound of Cid shooting the shog out of the enemy. It was something he wanted a piece of.
Atop the battlements, he gazed up at the ceiling of inky water surrounding the citadel. The sea was alive luminous jellyfish that glimmered like stars. Only the translucent shields encompassing Arnoch stood between him and drowning. It was a strange sensation, staring up at all that thwarted water. It felt precarious, as if the shields might shatter at any moment, and death come calling as swift and unexpected as it did on Thanatos.
Dwarf Lords were already at their posts beside the cannons poking from wide embrasures all about the curtain walls. Cid had been striding along the parapet for hours, coaching, inspecting, chastising. For an old man, he was getting sprightlier by the minute, and Shadrak, exhausted as he was from running and fighting, and from the leeching tug of grief, was hard-pressed to keep up with him.
“Choose your shots wisely,” Cid said to the umpteenth time, and the Dwarf Lord at the cannon nodded. Her shoulders bunched up, and she was clearly trying not to sigh. “You have maybe fifty per cannon, depending on the state of the crystals. You know how long it takes the suns to recharge them?”
“Seven hours,” the Dwarf Lord said.
“Oh. Did I tell you already?”
“At least four times,” Shadrak said.
“Really? Well, uhm, very good, then, Klanice Jarl of House Brogal. Keep up the good work.”
“You know her name?” Shadrak said, as Cid led him away to a stone bench behind one of the merlons.
“Know all their names. I might be an old coot, but there’s nothing wrong with my noddle. Well, nothing too much wrong. You forget, sonny, I’ve known these dwarves since they was nippers, and when you only have a few hundred of your kind left living, you tend not to forget who they are.”
“You think it will work?” Shadrak said.
He admired all the planning, most of it coming from Abednago, Ancient Bub, and Cid. The homunculus and Bub had the harder task, persuading the Matriarch and the Council of Twelve to see eye to eye, and to agree that the airship plan might have been a last, desperate throw of the die, but it was the only chance they had. They’d been hard at it, squabbling in the throne room, when Cid up and left, beckoning Shadrak to come with him. Shadrak was warming to the old dwarf: not only did they share an obsessional scrupulosity when it came to planning, but Cid understood the need for decisive action, and he was big on preparation, so much so, he made Shadrak seem careless in comparison.
“Will it work, sonny? No idea,” Cid said. “Bub says the Annals record numerous dragon attacks on Arnoch. After the initial disasters, my House invented the dragon guns—these cannons—and all subsequent attacks were repelled. But those were all red wyrms, he says, no longer than a hundred feet. This monster, from what I hear, is on a totally different scale.”
“And it has five heads,” Shadrak said. How could he ever forget? And all five of them so enormous, he couldn’t imagine anything the dwarves could throw at them even grazing the surface.
“That makes ten eyes to aim for,” Cid said, unslinging one of the long guns from his back and handing it to Shadrak. “Which is where you and me come in. The cannons are a diversion, to draw the dragon away from the airship, give it time to clear the citadel. They pack one mean wallop, and though they might not penetrate its scales, they’ll irritate the shog out of it. But you and I, my friend, with these beauties…” He unslung the second gun and raised it to his eye. “Every glimpse we get of one of those big ugly orbs, we take a crack at it. What we want is an enraged dragon, not a thinking one. Last thing we need is for it to cotton on to what we’re doing with the airship.”
***
“We are not debating it one second longer!” Cordana roared, thumping the top of the long table that had been dragged into King Arios’s throne room.
“This is your democracy?” Matriarch Gitashan said, one eyebrow raised in amusement.
“It’s mine,” Cordana said, “and I’m beyond caring if these prevaricating idiots agree.”
The rest of the Council of Twelve were seated along one side of the table, with a dozen handpicked Dwarf Lords on the other. The Dwarf Lords had been uneasy about it from the start. They were used to doing as they were told, but Thyenna had persuaded her sister to meet the Council halfway, and to at least make an effort to follow their process.
Nameless, at the head of the table, stared into his tankard. Cordana had seated him there, not because of any privileged status, but because there was nowhere else to put him if the councilors and the Dwarf Lords were to have equal representation along each side. He was on his third beer, and it still hadn’t helped him to make sense of the endless objections and rambling discourses of the councilors. If it hadn’t been for the pressure exerted by the smoldering impatience of the Matriarch, and if it hadn’t been for Cordana, they would have still been sat there discussing the pros and cons of each and every aspect of Abednago’s plan until the shields gave way and Arnoch drowned, for good this time.
The homunculus was seated opposite Ancient Bub. At every lull in the proceedings, they exchanged ideas, and Bub kept passing volumes of his Annals across the table for Abednago’s opinion. For a while, it looked like they were the only two doing anything useful, but Cordana was never one to be left out.
“Right, I’ve heard enough,” she said. “We’re doing this thing, whether you like it or not, and if you don’t, then by all means launch a coup.” She glanced at Duck, hovering at her shoulder, and he snapped his fingers. Instantly, five Kryptès stationed around the foot of the dais took a step toward the table.
It was all that was needed to cow the councilors, but the Matriarch and Thyenna exchanged impressed nods.
Leaving the councilors and the Dwarf Lords staring at each other across the table, Abednago led Cordana, Nameless, Gitashan, Thyenna, and Ancient Bub to the base of Arnoch’s central tower, and they entered through immense double doors of intricately carved granite.
The room beyond was truly immense, a gigantic hallway that could have housed a small village. At the far end was a flight of stairs going up, and Nameless groaned. He’d seen how tall the tower was from the outside. He wasn’t sure his knees could take it. Abednago noticed him worrying and grinned, then he crossed the vast, empty space and slid open a concealed door in the wall. They entered a cubicle, not unlike those in Shadrak’s plane ship, he tapped some buttons, and the door closed behind them. With a judder and a whirr, the cubicle sped upward and deposited them in an equally huge chamber at the top.
The ceiling here was unlike anything Nameless had ever seen. It was formed from concave sheets of copper, green with patination, and shaped like the peals of a tulip might have looked from the inside. On the floor, though, looming over them and dominating every aspect of the room, was the thing Abednago had brought them to see.
The airship was staggering to behold. Tip to tale, it spanned the whole breadth of the chamber. Abednago had said it was more than four-hundred feet long, and he couldn’t have been far off. There were ridges all along its sleek surface, which was hard, in contras
t with the Dwarf Lord’s balloon, and colored the gray of storm clouds. The hull rested upon V-shaped stands of steel, and it was moored by dozens of ropes than ran along its length. At one end, the roof of the airship dropped away, leaving the frontmost section exposed.
A ladder was propped against the hull, and Abednago went up first, leading the way to the front, to what he described as the “cockpit.” It was comprised of a bench and a bank of levers and dials, none of which meant anything to Nameless, but clearly did to Bub.
“Just as the Annals described it,” he said. “Control of altitude, speed, and direction. And this,”—he reached down and cranked a ratchet handle—“is to start the engine.” It squeaked and clanked as he turned it, but nothing else happened.
“It’s what I couldn’t figure out,” Abednago. “How to start it.”
“Can I take a look at the engines?” Bub said. “There are supposed to be two of them, both of homunculi design.”
“Don’t look at me,” Abednago said. “Way before my time.”
Bub was already emptying his sack of books onto the bench. “Then the Annals will have to guide us.”
Cordana and Nameless went back down the ladder. Thyenna and the Matriarch lingered for a moment in the cockpit, then they, too, descended.
“You really think this will work?” Gitashan said as she stepped away from the ladder.
“The airship?” Nameless said, “or the plan in general?”
“I meant, do you think this dragon will be so ready to fall for it?” Gitashan said. “On Thanatos, we learned the hard way never to be overconfident with our enemies.”
“Very wise,” Nameless said.
“Personally, I think it’s crazy,” Cordana said. “But maybe that’s the strength of it.”
Gitashan responded to that with a dismissive, “Huh.”
“If anyone can get the airship working,” Thyenna said, “it’s Ancient Bub.” She shot her sister a look that was clearly meant to be mollifying.
“Yes,” Gitashan said, “he is a Dwarf Lord, after all.”
Nameless led Cordana to one side, so they could talk. She was seething, he could see that from her stiffness, the way emotions roiled across her eyes like clouds buffeted by violent winds.
“I’m beginning to think we’d have been better off without them.”
The thought had crossed Nameless’s mind, too, but deep down, he hoped he was wrong. Too much had been sacrificed to bring the Dwarf Lords back to Arnoch, and good people had been lost along the way. Kal, for one, and Kadee for another.
“They’ll come through, Cordy, just you wait and see. “Same as they did when we reached the portal. I tell you, lassie, I’ve never seen the like.” Never felt the like, too, when the blood of the Immortals had sung mightily as the three fought in close proximity.
They stood apart in anxious silence, while Thyenna spoke in whispers to her sister. All the Matriarch gave her in response was the occasional sullen nod.
Eventually, Ancient Bub cried out, “Eureka!” standing up on the nose of the airship and dancing a little jig of joy.
“Of course, the valves!” Abednago said, clapping his hands and heading back for the ladder.
By the time the homunculus reached the floor, Ancient Bub had a panel open on the airship’s hull and was throwing down snaking lengths of tubing.
“All we have to do is hook them up to those valves,”—Abednago ducked down to point beneath the airship’s belly at a series of metal wheels and outlets on the wall behind—“and she’s good to go. You see, there are pipes inside the walls, running all the way down the tower to the foundations of the citadel. It’s all there in Bub’s Annals. The pipes are made of scarolite, the only thing capable of containing the blast in case of an accident.”
“Accident?” Cordana said.
“There are massive tanks beneath Arnoch, My Lady Voice.”
Cordana scowled at the title, but waved for Abednago to go on.
“Tanks of gasoline and tanks of hydrogen: one for the engines, the other for the airbags inside the hull.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Cordana said. “What kind of accident?”
“I think I know,” Nameless said. “It’s why we adopted this balloon plan in the first place.”
“Exactly,” Abednago said. “Gasoline is highly flammable. One spark, and it will ignite, and ignite most violently.”
“And this other stuff,” Cordana said. “This hydrogen?”
“Oh that’s the good part. Hydrogen’s a gas. A very volatile gas. One lick of flame, one misdirected stream of flaming breath, or lightning, from our friend up top, and KABOOM!” He shouted so loud that Cordana flinched, and then she slapped him so hard, he went skidding across the floor on his back.
As Abednago picked himself up and dusted himself off, Ancient Bub called down from the cockpit, “What are you waiting for? Connect them up, and let’s see if this beauty works.”
“Is he going to pilot it?” Cordana said, flicking a look up at Bub. “I assume someone has to.”
Nameless hadn’t really thought of that. He should have done. He should have remembered Lord Kennick Barg going up in his balloon, and not long after, going up in the blast. One life for many. Nothing good ever came without sacrifice.
“It should be me,” he said in a hushed voice. “I brought the Dwarf Lords into this, and I’m the one who forced our people to flee Arx Gravis and put themselves into danger here in Qlippoth.”
“No,” Cordana breathed, the sparkle going out of her eyes. “You can’t.”
“I’m sorry, lassie. I couldn’t live with myself if it were anyone else.”
THE LAST GAMBIT
A crash course in lever pulling, and Nameless still didn’t get it. It didn’t help that Ancient Bub had never flown an airship either, and that all they had to go on were some sketches and rudimentary instructions in the Annals.
It was encouraging, though, when Abednago got the tubes connected up and spun the valves to open. Something happened in response, that was for sure. An astringent odor wafted up to the cockpit from down below. Ancient Bub cursed Abednago out, said he can’t have tightened some of the connections enough. A few adjustments, and the homunculus tried again. This time, the tubes pulsed as gasoline and hydrogen began to flow, all the way from the tanks beneath the city, up pipes of scarolite, and along the tubes into the airship.
“Will there be enough?” Nameless asked.
Bub shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it if there’s not. One thing’s for sure, though: the tanks being made of scarolite will make certain what fuel there is hasn’t degraded.”
While the airship’s fuel tanks and gas bags were filling up, Bub left Nameless to play with the controls some more. It would be easier, the ancient dwarf said, once they powered up the engines. Then, at least the lever that controlled velocity should answer with an escalating growl.
Bub went below to gather whoever was willing to cut the moorings when the time came. After an age, he returned with at least a dozen dwarves in tow, all of them folk Nameless recognized from their long flight together before the feeders of the Lich Lord. It made him proud to see it: the dwarves of Arx Gravis, now the dwarves of Arnoch, playing their part in this last desperate bid for survival.
“Fire her up,” Ancient Bub hollered from beneath the hull. “If there’s not enough gasoline now, there never will be.”
“What do I do?” Nameless called back.
“The ratchet handle. Give it a few good turns.”
Nameless did so, and a spluttering choke sounded from somewhere below.
“Ah, for shog’s sake!” Bub cursed. “I’m coming up.”
A muffled thud rocked the chamber, and in the distance, Nameless could hear a series of clunks that rattled the citadel.
“Best hurry up,” Abednago called out. Nameless couldn’t see him from the cockpit. “They’re releasing the clamps that hold the city. Any minute now, they’ll be shedding the ballast and letting
the air tanks do their work.”
A low drone started up, vibrating the floor and shaking the tower to its foundations.
“And that’ll be the engines that’ll take Arnoch back to the surface.”
Cordana, Nameless realized. She’d been more than mad at him for insisting on piloting the airship, but she must have known he’d volunteer. Not just because he still felt responsible for his people, after all he’d put them through, but because of what he’d learned about being an Immortal. It was something that had been dawning on him for a while, but it had been made crystal clear when he’d stood with Gitashan and Thyenna at the portal. It was why some were gifted with the blood. Not so they could lord it over the rest of the dwarves, but so they could protect them, and if necessary, lay down their lives in those times of greatest need. Lord Kennick Barg had done it, and it seemed likely he was an Immortal. Lord Haxon Kly, too. It was only right and fitting Nameless lived up to the gifts he’d been given.
“Will she wait for us?” he called down to the homunculus.
“Till I give the signal,” Abednago said. “I’m sure there’s a better way, some ancient lore that’s right under our nose, but I’ve assembled a relay of runners, all of them drawn from the Red Cloaks. Once I get the word you’re ready to lift off, Cordana will know in less than a minute.”
Ancient Bub clambered into the cockpit and gave a vigorous turn of the ratchet handle. He slapped a couple of gauges, then turned the handle again. On the third attempt, there was a gurgling sputter, and then the engines roared into life.
“Give the word,” he shouted down to Abednago. “Tell her we’re ready.”
Nameless’s palms were damp with sweat as he gripped each of the levers in turn, trying to memorize which was up, which down, left, right, faster, slower. He was so caught up in his preparations, it scared the life out of him when klaxons began to wail, and the chamber around the airship began to shudder.
“We’re away!” Abednago said. “I’m opening the roof.”