Backlist

Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library

~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

THE GATES OF AZYR
An Age of Sigmar novella

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
An Age of Sigmar novel

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
An Age of Sigmar novel

~ THE REALMGATE WARS ~

WAR STORM
An Age of Sigmar anthology

GHAL MARAZ
An Age of Sigmar anthology

HAMMERS OF SIGMAR
An Age of Sigmar anthology

CALL OF ARCHAON
An Age of Sigmar anthology

WARDENS OF THE EVERQUEEN
An Age of Sigmar novel

WARBEAST
An Age of Sigmar novel

FURY OF GORK
An Age of Sigmar novel

BLADESTORM
An Age of Sigmar novel

MORTARCH OF NIGHT
An Age of Sigmar novel

LORD OF UNDEATH
An Age of Sigmar novel

~ LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

CITY OF SECRETS
An Age of Sigmar novel

FYRESLAYERS
An Age of Sigmar novel

SKAVEN PESTILENS
An Age of Sigmar novel

BLACK RIFT
An Age of Sigmar novel

SYLVANETH
An Age of Sigmar novel

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Epilogue

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.

Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.

But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.

Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creation.

The Age of Sigmar had begun.

Chapter I

The sorcerer’s face curled back in a leering rictus, exposing the blackened stumps of bone hidden behind his lips. There was something almost batrachian in his visage, bulbous eyes jutting from puffy folds of skin. Unlike the flesh around them, there was no softness in Khoram’s toadlike eyes, only a rapacious hunger as they stared both outwards and inwards.

Possibilities and potentialities, the twistings of doom and fate, the shadows of futures yet unmade. Scenes of glorious victory and visions of annihilating disaster, each waxing and waning like the falling sands of time. The ebb and flow of prophecy was unrelenting and unforgiving. The weak of mind were consumed by the ordeal of divining insight from the tide of omen and portent, driven mad by their inability to confine such knowledge into purely mundane perceptions. The weak of spirit lost themselves in the cosmic expanse of the infinite, flesh and soul obliterated as they surrendered to the cyclopean enormity where past and future united into a single moment that defied the mortal conceit of time. Humanity had been the first and least of the sacrifices Khoram had rendered to his black arts.

The sorcerer was a tall man, his body disfigured by the manifold blessings thrust upon him by his dread god. Grossly mutated, his robes and armour folded awkwardly about his frame. The side of his neck bulged with a hideous feathered growth, pushing his head down towards the opposite shoulder. One hand, the less malformed of his extremities, gripped a long staff. The other hand, ending in elongated, boneless digits, beckoned to the fist-sized sphere of glass that hovered around his head. At his summons, the sphere came to rest, floating just before his eyes.

Wind rippled the sorcerer’s robes, disturbing the feathers of the growth on his neck. The beast upon which he stood shuddered, shifting slightly as it adjusted its flight through the darkling skies, high above the bleak hills of Shadowfar. The sorcerer’s boots were gripped by hairy tendrils that emerged from the creature’s back, melded into its very substance. The flattened, ray-like daemon could no more divorce itself of its rider than it could shed its own organs. Its corporeal form had become subsumed by Khoram, existing as an extension of his own. Through the skies of Chamon it would carry him until such time as it was dismissed and its physical mass dissolved into vapour. There would always be another daemon ready to enter the Mortal Realms to replace it when the sorcerer was in need.

Khoram’s wormy fingers reached out and curled around the scintillating sphere, little ribbons of steam rising where his cobalt-hued skin rested against the glassy surface. Even flesh that had been transformed by the blessings of Mighty Tzeentch wasn’t immune to the corrosive touch of temporal abeyance.

‘Mighty is your power, oh Orb of Zobras,’ Khoram hissed to the gleaming sphere. ‘You are prophecy manifest. Prediction given physical form.’ He felt the heat in his fingers gradually lessen. The sorcerer thought of the great seer who had created the orb. ‘Zobras sacrificed much to achieve you,’ he told the relic. ‘At the height of his power he commanded daemons to forge you from the essence of time and dream. You are the pinnacle of his magic.’

The flattery spilled off Khoram’s tongue, tasting bitter in his mouth. By arduous rite and obscene ritual, the sphere had been soulbound to him, orbiting him like a captive star. To command the orb was never enough, however. It had to be appeased. Zobras had ignored the will of the relic he had created and in the end it had betrayed him when the armies of Chaos laid waste to his theocracy. The prophet’s ruin was a warning, a reminder to remain humble before the Dark Gods.

‘Reveal to me the path of things yet to become,’ Khoram enjoined the orb.

He stared into the sphere, peering into its thousands of facets. Each one bore its own story, its own interpretation of how the future would unfold. Trying to concentrate upon all of them would be futile, an effort that had driven lesser sorcerers mad. Khoram, however, had received one blessing from his god that made all the difference.

‘There! There!’ The words sounded from the feathered growth on Khoram’s neck. A tiny face peered out from the midst of the feathers, clusters of black eyes fixated upon the orb’s planes. ‘There!’ the homunculus repeated.

Khoram diverted his attention from the images his parasitic daemon had rejected. He depended upon the creature’s guidance to lead him to the most propitious of the visions. A connoisseur of lies, the tretchlet unerringly sniffed out the truth for its master.

The sorcerer’s eyes gleamed as his familiar drew his attention to the image playing out within one of the facets. The moment he focused upon the image and his mind digested the scene, the other surfaces around it changed. Now they exhibited a new array of futures, possibilities derived from the initial prediction. Again, Khoram felt the tretchlet guiding him to the most truthful of the prophecies. Mustering his resolve, he tore his gaze away from the orb. It was unwise to peer too far ahead at one time. Therein lay the route of obsession and the madness of infinity.

Looking away from the orb, Khoram gazed out across the cloud-swept skies. Ugly fogs of scintillating amber cascaded through the atmosphere, thrown aloft by the forests of spytepine that infested the hills far below. Buzzing swarms of tiny blot-midges flocked to the amber, greedily glutting themselves on the shimmering motes of hardened sap. Those that fed too lustily became weighted down by their feast, crashing onto the slopes below, their carcasses fertilising the very trees that provoked their downfall. The flux of Change in action, from benefactor to exploiter, from predator to prey. The role played one moment was but a mask that could swiftly be torn away, either by expedience or by the whims of fate.

Khoram’s left hand closed tighter about the whorled runestaff he held. Glancing down at the daemon upon which he stood, the sorcerer drove the spiked butt of the implement into one of the scarred grooves that circled the creature’s forward edge. The disc-shaped thing snarled in irritation as the goad jabbed at it. Wormy tendrils tried to writhe up from underneath the daemon’s body, but their reach was incapable of threatening the mortal on its back. The creature let out another snarl, the shudder of its annoyance shivering through its substance up into Khoram’s feet. The circular daemon floated upwards, racing towards the height to which its master directed it.

The roar of battle crashed upon the sorcerer’s ears. The skies below him were filled with conflict. Savage warriors draped in kilts of sapphire and malachite soared through the air on daemonic chargers similar to the one Khoram rode. Fiery chariots harnessed to still larger daemons careened across the atmosphere, trailing plumes of smoke and flame in their wake. Bird-faced half-men glided about the fray, borne aloft upon shrieking daemon-steeds and loosing arrows of bone from bows cut from the tendons of gargants.

The warhost of men and monsters spiralled around a clutch of fantastical craft. Great ships soared over Shadowfar, supported by metal cupolas suspended above their decks. From prow and stern, each ship directed an array of weaponry against their tormentors. Beams of golden light streaked out at masked warriors, punching through their flesh as they solidified into bullets just before reaching their targets. Harpoons rocketed away from cylindrical launchers fixed to the decks, the spears impaling howling beastmen, leaving them dangling against the keel until the chains fitted to the projectile were reeled back in.

From the decks, from armoured baskets fastened to the cupolas and the sides of the hulls themselves, the crew of the sky-vessels directed a determined defence. Pistols belched shot into the very faces of the attackers, larger snub-nosed weapons spewed blasts that shredded the wings of beastmen and scoured the hides of daemons. Axes and pikes were employed to deadly effect, hacking through the beaked faces of the monstrous raiders or plucking warriors from the backs of their steeds to send them plummeting to the earth far below.

‘How unfit for the storm are our foes,’ Khoram mused, the tretchlet gibbering in agreement. The crews of the sky-vessels were utterly unlike their vicious foes. They were shorter and stockier, broadly and stolidly built. Most wore bulky armour of heavy metal plates, their faces locked inside helms with glowering masks and golden beards. ‘They lack the grace and agility of those born to the skies. Brutes of rock and stone that seek to conquer the tempest with their puerile inventions.’

The sorcerer shook his head. ‘The duardin are a meddlesome breed. Whatever the peculiarities of their creed they invariably demand great effort to dispose of. More effort than some are willing to expend.’

As the thought came to him, Khoram gazed back into the orb. Responding to his mind, the facets shimmered and displayed a new array of images. Each facet displayed the same Chaos warrior standing upon the back of a daemonic disc. He presented a gruesome aspect, his baroque armour still dripping with the sacrificial blood used to anoint it before the fighting. Dismembered fingers dipped in wax were plastered about his gorget like hideous candles. Veiled by the smoke rising from the smouldering fingers his horned helm was an indistinct suggestion of shape and motion. Only the nine eyes that stared from the jumble of visors scattered across the helm’s face exhibited any clarity, shining through the smoke like angry embers.

‘Tamuzz is in a particularly wrathful humour,’ Khoram told his homunculus.

As he watched, an armoured duardin defending the bow of one of the ships jabbed at the warlord’s daemon-steed with a pike, ripping into its mottled hide. Tamuzz brought the fiery blade of the glaive he bore crunching down into the duardin’s head. Even as the enchanted blade bit through iron helm and bony skull Tamuzz pressed the attack, not relenting until he had cleft the enemy from pate to palate.

‘Losing so many of his followers in the fighting has upset him,’ Khoram stated. ‘For all the blessings Mighty Tzeentch has seen fit to bestow on him, Tamuzz still reckons power in tired old conceits of mortal rule and domination.’

Seen in the facets of the orb, Tamuzz ripped his glaive free and sent the body of the slaughtered duardin hurtling over the side of the ship. The warlord sought another foe, but even as he did Khoram sent a tendril of magic rippling through the orb to reach into Tamuzz’s mind. ‘Come to me,’ Khoram hissed, his homunculus echoing the words in a greasy titter. ‘Come to me.’ He was careful to invest the summons with more suggestion than command. Too overt a touch would rouse Tamuzz’s resistance and Khoram knew from past experience that the warlord’s will was strong enough to defy his magic if he was aware of its influence. ‘Set the thought in his head, let Tamuzz think it is of his own volition and there is little he will not do,’ Khoram boasted to his tretchlet. The daemonic parasite whined, reminding his master that his boast wasn’t entirely true.

The dark spectre of the warlord came speeding away from the battle, a thin slick of ichor seeping from the injured daemon that supported him, leaving a greasy smear in his wake.

‘My slaves perish, curseling,’ Tamuzz hissed at Khoram as he soared towards the sorcerer.

‘Mighty Tzeentch demands payment,’ Khoram replied. ‘The Changer does not favour slaves…’

Tamuzz shook the massive glaive he bore, the arcane energies bound within it causing a flicker of power to coruscate along the blade. ‘Spare me your philosophy. You promised me the sky-vessels. Bring them down.’

Khoram cocked his head to one side, staring past Tamuzz to watch the battle over the warlord’s shoulder. He saw one of the warlord’s adepts pitch from the back of his daemon-steed when a duardin shot him in the face. ‘They will fall,’ Khoram said. ‘But they will fall when it is propitious to a greater purpose. The purpose to which we both strive.’

The flash of arcane energy faded from the warlord’s glaive. The smouldering eyes lost their lustre, almost seeming to pull the veiling smoke tighter around them. ‘I have not forgotten,’ Tamuzz replied.

‘Then let us do what is needed of us,’ Khoram said. He waved his snaky fingers away towards the horizon. ‘We must harry them still further away from Shadowfar. The next valley. That is where their doom will come.’ The sorcerer nodded at the orb circling him. ‘Such is the prophecy that guides us.’

‘I will lose more warriors,’ Tamuzz objected, some of the edge creeping back into his tone.

‘You will gain more, glorious Tamuzz,’ Khoram insisted. ‘Through me, you will be at the right hand of Power.’

Grokmund Wodinssin watched from midship as carnage waxed and waned all around him. The gold fillings in his teeth felt as though lightning were racing through them, an impression that had always presaged some disaster. The last time he’d felt that unpleasant tingling in his teeth was when Lodrik Kodraksimm had challenged him to a drinking contest and he lost his stake in a most profitable voyage.

What he felt now was far worse. Grokmund thought if he champed his teeth sparks might fly out, so fierce was the sensation. Was it because of greater danger or because he had more to lose this time? He glanced at the deck beneath his feet, picturing the box locked away in his cabin below. The aether-khemist’s tests had given every indication that this find would make all their fortunes, would expand the wealth of Barak-Urbaz a hundredfold. If Grokmund was right, this venture would mean more than riches – it would mean fame and glory. The mightiest duardin in the sky-hold would regard them with honour.

Grokmund ducked down as a daemon-riding cultist flew above the Stormbreaker’s deck. As the brawny human passed, he brought a heavy mace swinging at the aether-khemist. The bludgeon struck sparks from the duardin’s helm but failed to deal any greater damage. As the enemy soared away he was struck from behind by the rifle-fire of a Grundstok thunderer. The cultist sagged across the disc-like daemon, borne away as the creature flew onwards.

Grokmund rose slowly, shaken by the nearness of his escape. Mutant beastkin darted around the ships of Admiral Thorki’s fleet like megalofin pups in a school of sungills. The Kharadron defenders sent volley upon volley into the raiders, felling some but leaving far too many to press the attack. Swooping from below the hulls of the frigates and gunhaulers, diving down from on high to slash at the great endrins that kept the vessels aloft, the ambushers were taking a slow but steady toll upon the Kharadron. Lifeless skyriggers drifted away from the fleet, the small aether-endrins fitted to their backs keeping them airborne until at last their fuel would run out and bring them sinking earthwards. Some of the skywardens who’d attached cables to the frigates now dangled from the sides of the ships, their aether-endrins damaged, their bodies clanging incessantly against the iron-plated hulls.

‘You’ll lose your head that way,’ Admiral Thorki reproved Grokmund as he helped him back to his feet. Encased in a heavy suit of aether-powered armour, Thorki was easily able to lift Grokmund with one hand while his other aimed a volley pistol at the raiders. He sent a bullet smashing into the beaked face of a beastman as it came whipping towards the ironclad’s endrin. The maimed creature dropped its bow and pawed at the gory wreck of its face before vanishing into the distance.

‘I have to do my part,’ Grokmund told Thorki. ‘Protecting the find is all that matters now.’

Thorki shook his head. ‘We need you to make certain of our claim and secure full rights to the find.’ Despite their magnetised boots, both duardin felt the deck beneath them tremble as aethershot carbines mounted in the hull plastered the attackers with a withering volley. Around them, Grundstok thunderers blasted away at the raiders with their rifles and mortars, trying to keep the attackers from swarming the ironclad’s decks. ‘Get below,’ Thorki told the aether-khemist.

Grokmund remained where he was. ‘If the ship falls it won’t matter anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d prefer to die fighting than hiding down in the hold.’

Thorki conceded the point grudgingly. ‘If you get yourself killed, our backers will shave my beard,’ he snapped. The admiral swung around, shouting commands to the gunners up on the forecastle. He gestured with his pistol towards a pack of bird-faced beastkin that were flying at the ship from starboard. ‘Udri! Bring them down!’

At Thorki’s command, the gunners swung around the great volley cannon bolted to the roof of the forecastle. The whole ship shook as they fired the weapon. Caught in the explosive discharge the centre of the oncoming pack was shredded, daemons and beastmen alike plummeting from the sky. Arkanauts rushed to the gunwales, picking off mangled survivors with their pistols.

‘We’re winning!’ Grokmund shouted. The very next instant he felt a withering heat smash against his face. Visions of glory evaporated as a spout of sorcerous fire splashed against the side of the ship, immolating the arkanauts that had been picking off wounded beastmen. Behind the flames came a sinister chariot drawn by slavering daemons. Standing in the chariot, seemingly growing up from its bed, was a foul fungoid thing with stumpy arms that sprayed jets of shimmering orange fire. An arkanaut sprinting past Grokmund was caught in the flames, flailing about wildly as the daemonic fire clung to him and gnawed greedily at his armour. Another arkanaut tried to help his comrade smother the flames only to have the fire leap eagerly to his gauntlet, bubbling and sizzling as the metal began to melt.

Grokmund hastened to the stricken arkanauts, gesturing to Thorki to hold back. ‘Keep everyone away,’ he warned the admiral.

Closing upon the fire-wrapt duardin, Grokmund employed his anatomiser, drawing out the air from his immediate surroundings. The daemon-fire had little kinship with natural flame, but even it couldn’t withstand the resulting vacuum. In a heartbeat, the ghastly fires were snuffed out. The arkanaut whose gauntlet had been afflicted staggered around, befuddled by the anatomiser’s effects. His comrade was little more than a charred smear on the deck.

The injured duardin ripped away his mangled gauntlet and flexed his fingers, ensuring they could still hold a weapon before trusting his pistol to them again. ‘Profit to you, Master Grokmund,’ he thanked the aether-khemist, his voice distorted by the breathing mask fitted to his helm. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the sky. ‘I’d pay tenweight in gold if that murdering scum would come in range of my gun.’

‘Let me see where it has gone,’ Grokmund said. The enhanced array of lenses on his helm made it possible to succeed in his purpose. The discordant pattern of splotches and blemishes that marked the stalk of the fungoid fire-sprayer was distinct enough to recognize again. Grokmund saw it diving for one of the frigates, again letting its daemonic flames splash across the decks and harry the crew. The long-suffering frigate could do little to repel the monster, so depleted had the ship’s crew become. Yet the chariot made only one attack. It didn’t linger to press its advantage, or remain to vanquish its enemy. Instead it went speeding away to assault a gunhauler and then to turn upon another frigate.

A suspicion grew in Grokmund’s gut. He swung around to Thorki. ‘The Chaos scum are up to something,’ he declared. Carefully he picked out another of the attackers, a bird-faced beast-kin loosing shimmering arrows at the sky-vessels. He watched it fly past one of the frigates then duck away to come at the Stormbreaker. An arrow sizzled against the plated hull, then the creature was wheeling away again, seeking out a new target.

‘They aren’t pressing their attacks,’ Grokmund told Thorki. He quickly pointed to the almost crewless frigate. ‘They aren’t seizing advantage when they gain it.’

‘Sky-devils eat their bones,’ Thorki grumbled. He raised a spyglass to his eye, watching as the raiders displayed more coordination than he had considered them capable of. ‘They’ve some design in mind. Deliberately wearing us down.’

A fierce war-cry brought the two duardin spinning around. Grokmund pulled back just as a half-naked cultist came diving down at him upon a daemonic disc. The man slashed at him with a crooked blade, the serrated edge biting into the blue-green steel covering his shoulder. The impact sent Grokmund staggering back a pace. Before the masked human could strike at him again, he raised his atmospheric anatomiser and pressed its actuation rune. This time, instead of drawing in the air, the mechanism expelled a plume of virulent gas. The cultist raised his heavy shield to block the blast of the noxious aether, but the vapour simply billowed over its edges. The man shrieked as the gas seared his face. Wracked with pain, he fell from his daemonic steed onto the ironclad’s deck. The daemonic disc flew away, unconcerned by the fate of its late rider.

Thorki fired his volley pistol at another of the cultists, preventing the man from aiding his stricken companion. Bullets ripped into the daemonic steed as its rider sent it rearing back to absorb the shots. Then the man was leaping down, slashing at the admiral with a crooked blade.

Grokmund moved towards the foe he had knocked to the deck. He unlatched the heavy hammer from his tool belt and stalked after the fallen cultist. The man was clawing at his face, struggling to remove the beaked mask he wore. He had it free just in time to see Grokmund’s hammer swinging at his face. A crunching impact spilled the man back to the deck, a mash of brains and bone dripping from the duardin’s hammer. Before Grokmund’s shocked gaze, the corpse twitched and writhed, its contours shrinking and shrivelling. The warrior he’d struck down had been powerfully built, in the prime of condition for a human. The corpse at his feet was that of an old man, wrinkled and wasted. Only the swirling tattoo across his chest proclaimed that this was indeed the same foe. Grokmund touched his thumb to the face of the steel girdle he wore, pressing against the forehead of the revered ancestor moulded across it. Such repulsive sorcery was disturbing even to an aether-khemist.

As Grokmund turned from his fallen foe, Thorki was just settling his own adversary. The admiral’s gauntlet was around the cultist’s neck. With a brutal clenching of his fist, Thorki crushed the man’s throat. He tossed the twitching body to the deck and swung around.

‘It would seem they’ve tired of their strategy just as we suspect it,’ Thorki said. The admiral sprinted towards the forecastle, shouting orders to Udri and the gunners. ‘Fire wherever they bunch up! Break their resolve!’

The men who had attacked Grokmund and Thorki were not alone. They were part of a renewed surge of enemies, a universal increase of ferocity. The enemy now pressed home their assaults, no longer content to harass, to strike and run as they had before. Gunhaulers went down with all hands as flying leech-like daemons latched onto their endrins and compromised their integrity, rupturing fuel lines and reservoirs to send jets of aether spilling into the atmosphere. Skyriggers were shot down by the arrows of beastmen, struck again and again by the piercing shafts. One frigate had its prow turned into a conflagration as three chariots concentrated their attacks against it, the fungoid daemon-riders loosing blast after blast of eerie flame at the ship.

Grokmund fended off the attack of a charging beastman, managing to break one of the rope-like feelers of its disc-steed as the creature retreated. He could see the endrinriggers hovering overhead trying to keep the attackers away from the tanks of the endrin above the ironclad’s deck. They spun away, attacking with their rivet-guns and saw-blades, lashing out with the tools they used to repair the ship in order to defend it.

The ironclad’s captain was likewise doing his best to protect the ship. Since the attack had begun the Stormbreaker had been pushed to top speed, striving to pull away from the foes. An uncanny headwind had defied them, retarding their efforts at escape. Having spotted a method to the attack, Grokmund now wondered about that stubborn gale. The fleet had turned in the direction of least resistance in trying to escape the attack.

Until these last moments the slaves of Chaos had been content simply to harass the fleet. Now they pressed the attack with unrestrained malice. Why, Grokmund asked himself, unless the reason for such restraint had passed? Like the wind, the enemy had been trying to steer them, lead them to some point they wanted the Kharadron to be. The nauseating image of ripperbats herding prey into the waiting fangs of their colonies filled his mind.

Grokmund turned from the fray unfolding about the ironclad’s port side, hurrying towards the forecastle to alert Thorki of their danger. ‘They are herding us into a killing-ground!’ he shouted to the admiral.

Thorki was just climbing the ladder up to the forecastle when he heard Grokmund calling to him. He looked back, puzzlement in his eyes.

‘They are trying to drive us into a trap,’ Grokmund declared. ‘That is why they press their attack now!’

‘We can outrun them,’ Thorki stated. ‘That is the best way to reduce our losses.’

Grokmund shook his head, waving his fist in the air. ‘Don’t you see? This hellish wind is conjured by their sorcery! It pushes us where they want us to go. Their attack is simply to force us to stay the course.’

Thorki paused in his climb. ‘The only other choice would be to smash our way through them. That would cost us too much to accomplish.’

‘Risk some to save the rest,’ Grokmund advised. ‘Trying to save everything might bring the whole fleet to ruin.’

Thorki turned his head, looking across the embattled ships of his fleet. ‘We have lost too much already,’ he said, his tone almost accusing.

‘If my box does not make it back to Barak-Urbaz, then their deaths count for nothing anyway,’ Grokmund snapped. He had to get Thorki to appreciate their peril. Only the admiral had the authority to command the fleet and turn them around before it was too late.

Before Grokmund could press his point a ghastly figure swooped down upon the forecastle – a huge man clad in armour and wearing a tall helm topped with spiralling horns, his face hidden in a murk of smoke. The flying daemon he was riding sank its jaws around the head of Udri, who was loading the volley cannon. Even as the gun commander fell, the daemon’s rider lashed out with the fiery glaive he bore, the red-hot edge shearing through armour and bone to leave another gunner mangled at his feet.

Admiral Thorki lunged up the ladder and charged at the Chaos butcher. His volley pistol barked, sending blasts of aetheric shot streaking at his enemy. Arcane runes flared outwards from the shield the barbarous foeman carried, each sigil surrounding one of the shots and snuffing it out entirely. The warlord’s glaive caught the upward sweep of the admiral’s immense hammer as Thorki tried to press his attack.

‘Thorki!’ Grokmund cried as he sprang for the ladder. But before he could help the admiral he found himself beset by an adversary of his own. A hideously mutated man suddenly appeared between himself and the ladder. Arrayed in armour seemingly moulded from molten sapphire and crushed malachite, the human stood a head taller than the duardin. An obscene growth protruded from his neck, bloated and feathered. The growth’s head rested against the smooth helm that covered that of its host.

‘It is the fool who would hurry his doom,’ the man declared.

To Grokmund it seemed he heard the words not with his ears but more as though they were thrust directly into his brain.

‘All things come into season. Even death.’ The sorcerer raised the gnarled staff he carried. The riot of talismans and charms chained to its jewelled head clattered wildly as he harnessed their powers.

Grokmund raised his anatomiser, thinking to spray the sorcerer with corrosive aether before he could work his magic. He was depending upon the stifling qualities of his own aether-powered equipment to at least partly impede whatever spell the warlock hurled against him. In this, however, he again underestimated the craft and cunning of the enemy. It wasn’t against the aether-khemist that the sorcerer directed his magic, but the deck beneath his feet. A coruscating spiral of crackling light spilled across the floor, undulating with a monstrous animation as it seeped into the wood and iron.

The violent swirl of energy crackled through the planks. Before Grokmund could react, the deck under him shuddered open, gaping wide like a waiting maw. Like a plummeting stone, he was sent crashing down into the darkened hold below.

His last view of the battle was the sorcerer and his parasite staring down at him from above.

Khoram turned away from the fallen aether-khemist, glancing back at the forecastle. Tamuzz was still locked in his duel with the duardin commander. Both leaders had been joined by some of their followers. Tamuzz was supported by a pair of tzaangors and a masked acolyte while the duardin had what was left of the gun crew and another crewman armed with a pike.

The rest of the ironclad’s crew was fending off the assault of Tamuzz’s retinue. Bands of acolytes circled the ship, casting searing bolts of arcane energy at the duardin while tzaangors sent arrows cracking against the armoured hull and the fortified cupola where sentries continued to fire at the warband. One of the daemonic screamers Khoram had summoned to aid their attack was obliterated as duardin guns blasted its leathery body to ribbons, leaving only a corrupt sludge behind. A burning chariot faltered as the carbines mounted in the hull ripped away at it. The flamer standing in the chariot suddenly burst into a ball of fire, immolating both itself and the eldritch vehicle.

Khoram glanced at the terrain below. They’d come many leagues from the hills of Shadowfar into a land of winding canyons and jagged peaks. He could see the black mouths of caves, the exposed bones of ancient beasts jutting up from the rock, their stony claws reaching to the sky. Strange patterns of colour and shadow rippled across the ground as snareweeds crawled about in search of water for their roots. The sorcerer’s attention was drawn to one of the deeper canyons, a black gash across the landscape.

‘There,’ Khoram declared. ‘That is the place.’ His homunculus whispered in his ear, reaffirming his decision. ‘It is enough. We have brought the Kharadron to where they need to be to suit our purposes.’ A cold rictus spread across his mutated face. ‘It is time for Tamuzz to call off his attack.’ The warlord would not like that, but he had enough intelligence to accept the demands of necessity once they were made clear to him.

The sorcerer raised his staff. A string of profane utterances hissed across his lips. Upon the forecastle, a great flare exploded, blinding the combatants of both sides and causing them to fall away from their foes. While they were yet blinded, Khoram exerted a further enchantment upon the daemon disc that carried the warlord. The creature swiftly abandoned the conflict, spinning up into the air with its master.

Khoram commanded his own daemonic mount to join Tamuzz. By the time he reached the warlord, he’d recovered his vision and was ready to rejoin the fray.

‘It is enough,’ Khoram told him. ‘The duardin are where we need them to be.’

Tamuzz gestured with his glaive to the forecastle and the armoured admiral who was making short work of the warriors still opposing him. ‘They cannot defeat us,’ Tamuzz said. ‘I will make an offering of them to Mighty Tzeentch. Their last breath shall be given to the Changer.’ He looked at Khoram and a derisive laugh emerged from the veil of smoke. ‘They will pay for their defiance.’

‘They will,’ Khoram assured him. ‘But in a way that will suit us better. Do not allow the triumph of a single battle to cause you to lose sight of the greater war.’ The sorcerer gestured with a tentacle-finger at the circling Orb of Zobras. ‘Great favour will be shown to you if you are victorious. There will be no mercy if you fail.’

‘If we fail,’ Tamuzz warned the sorcerer. Still, Khoram had made his point. The warlord scowled down at the ironclad. He tore the ivory horn from his belt and raised it to his smoke-shrouded face. Three ululations sounded, a command all within his warband understood and hastened to obey. Those warriors locked into combat with the duardin broke away hastily, reckless of how exposed they were as they effected their retreat. The screamers and daemon chariots slowly faded from existence as the spells sustaining them in Chamon were banished.

A great cheer rose from the embattled Kharadron ships, a jubilant cry of victory. The duardin thought they’d broken the attack, driven off their enemies.

His disc now free from the sorcerer’s enchantment, Tamuzz urged his steed back towards Shadowfar. ‘Attend to them and quickly,’ Tamuzz called after the sorcerer. ‘Leave none alive.’

Khoram smiled at the warlord’s last order. ‘No,’ he whispered to his homunculus. ‘Not all of them. The orb has shown there is greater potential if one of them survives.’ He gazed after the departing warlord. ‘He knows my plan,’ the sorcerer said. ‘In his anger has Tamuzz forgotten that detail?’

The tretchlet chirruped in reply, affirming Khoram’s suspicion. ‘He thinks to bait me into spoiling my own ploy. Tamuzz is having second thoughts. He has become more worried about the price of failure than the rewards of success. He hopes to craft a scapegoat to excuse his failure. Such abject treachery might amuse Great Tzeentch enough to forgive him his failures.’

Khoram didn’t like the energetic agreement his homunculus made to the last statement. It was something the sorcerer would have to be wary of. Whatever common allegiances he shared with Tamuzz they each had their own ambitions. Glory wasn’t a thing easily divided.

The sorcerer was soon alone in the sky, the rest of the warband withdrawn to Shadowfar or dispersed back into the Realm of Chaos. Only the duardin remained. The duardin and the creature that had been following them from above all through the battle. Khoram drew from the skavenskin bag that held his arcane paraphernalia a shard of mirror, a fragment from the legendary Maze of Reflection. Gazing into it he saw the image not of himself but a reptilian creature soaring through the clouds on leathern wings. Holding his arm up, he let the tretchlet gnaw at his wrist with its sharp fangs. A trickle of blood escaped his torn flesh. Withdrawing his arm he held it above the mirror and allowed a single drop to splatter against the glass. Instantly the image of the flying reptile vanished.

Thorki watched as the Chaos raiders fled across the sky. Around him, his crew began to cheer. Soon enough they would reflect on the comrades they had lost, the damage inflicted upon their ships. For now it was a moment of victory.

‘Reload the cannon!’ Thorki commanded the surviving gunners. Briefly, his gaze fell upon the headless body of Udri. It was an ignoble death for any duardin, much less an old campaigner like his chief gunner.

The admiral stepped to the rail of the forecastle and bellowed orders to the arkanauts on the deck below. ‘Ready weapons! This may be a trick! Keep your eyes open! Be vigilant!’

Thorki looked around for Grokmund. He had lost track of the aether-khemist during the fray. His stomach turned to think Grokmund was among the casualties. Thorki dropped down from the forecastle and started to inspect the dead. He caught hold of the ship’s quartermaster, Frekrin. ‘Have you seen Grokmund?’ he demanded.

‘No, admiral,’ Frekrin answered.

A thought came to Thorki. ‘Check his cabin. Find his box.’ If Grokmund had not been thrown overboard by the attackers, then he might have gone below to check on their find. The quartermaster hurried below to carry out his orders.

‘Above us! Above us!’ Frantic cries rained down from the observation cupola high up on the endrin. The shouts were echoed from the remaining skyriggers as they turned their heads upwards.

‘Gods below,’ Thorki prayed as he stared into the heavens.

Like a gathering fog, a colossal shape appeared in the sky above the Kharadron fleet. Its dimensions were enormous, twice the length of even the Stormbreaker. A huge reptile with scales of lustrous blue and blackish green, immense wings that stretched away from its broad shoulders and fanned out for a dozen yards in either direction. Four massive legs were folded against its pallid underside, each ending in a set of sickle-like talons. A serpentine tail writhed behind it, tipped by a cluster of blackened spikes. Along its back, like a phalanx of spearmen, were double rows of spines, transparent membranes held taut between them. The beast’s head was elongated, jutting forwards in a fanged snout, bulbous multifaceted eyes bulging from the edge of its horned skull. The head was supported by a long, sinuous neck, a neck that was bifurcated midway along its length. Here the neck branched out into a thick stump to which a second, smaller head was attached.

‘Dragon!’ Thorki bellowed, the word rushing across the deck like a sliver of ice. He turned back towards the volley cannon. ‘Reload! Reload!’ The depleted gunners frantically tried to match the urgency of the admiral’s tone.

Shouts of alarm rose from each of the ships, commands yelled across voice pipes calling for more speed and hasty manoeuvres. A barrage of gunfire struck up at the flying reptile, lances of aethershot from rifles, which crackled ineffectually across the thick scales. Heavier weapons struggled to draw a bead upon the monster as the ships that carried them tried to re-position themselves. A harpoon flew up at the wyrm, passing through the membrane of its wing. The cannon of a Grundstok gunhauler roared, smashing its salvo against the beast’s belly.

With a thunderous shriek of annoyance, the dragon hurtled downwards. Its claw smashed into the gunhauler that had fired at its belly, shearing through its endrin and turning the vessel into so much wreckage. The crumpled ship fell towards the earth, smoke and shimmering aether bleeding from its ruptured hull.

Thorki scrambled back up the ladder and helped his crew rearm the volley cannon. ‘Aim for the belly,’ he enjoined the gunners.

Hurriedly they targeted the descending dragon and fired. The fusillade crackled against the wyrm’s scales but not so ineffectually as the gunhauler’s salvo. The dragon howled in pain, smoke and blood dribbling from the pock-mark scars inflicted by the cannon. With an angry hiss, the reptile dived upon the ironclad.

The thunderers and arkanauts on the decks fired their guns at the beast as it came for their ship. Endrinriggers detached the cables that bound them to the ironclad and rose up to meet the oncoming beast. Drill cannons and skyhooks peppered the scaly hide but did nothing to stem the reptile’s descent. A lash of the dragon’s tail sent two endrinriggers tumbling through the sky, their aether-endrins ruptured by the violence of the assault. A third was reduced to pulp by the monster’s talons, his corpse flung back at the ironclad like a mangled bullet.

‘Faster! Faster!’ Thorki howled at the gunners as they rearmed the volley cannon. Every second more of his crew was slaughtered by the beast. Every instant might bring final destruction to them all. He turned his head, staring up at the reptilian behemoth. What he saw matched his worst fear.

A glowing fire built at the back of the dragon’s throats. Both heads leered down at the Stormbreaker. With a deafening rush, the wyrm sent its fire spilling down upon the ship. The endrin supporting the ironclad shuddered, hoses and pipes rupturing as the tremendous heat washed across them, the lookout posted in its cupola broiled in his own armour. The flames swept down onto the decks, melting armour and fastenings, evaporating cables and ropes. The arkanauts caught in the blast were cooked instantly, reduced to sooty smears on the deck. A few surviving thunderers took aim, firing a couple of vindictive shots at the brute.

The dragon roared, the wrathful note rolling across the sky like thunder. Its dive brought it slamming down onto the endrin. Claws impervious to the heat of its own fire clenched tight about the bulky device, tearing into its metal skin. It swung its heads around as Thorki brought the volley cannon to bear upon it.

‘We’ll hit the endrin!’ one of the gunners protested when he saw what Thorki intended.

‘We will also hit the dragon,’ Thorki told them. There was not any help for it. If they held off, the reptile would send them crashing anyway. If they brought the beast down with them then at least they could save the rest of the fleet.

The hesitation of the gunners was brief, but long enough for their enemy. Hissing, the dragon sprang from its perch upon the crumpled endrin and came lunging down on the forecastle. The volley cannon was smashed under its massive weight. Thorki cried out in agony as the beast’s weight pressed down on him, pinning him beneath its huge claws. Almost daintily, the dragon’s main head arched down and snapped up one of the gunners. Jealous, the secondary head bit at the dangling legs, tugging at its portion of the prey until the doomed gunner was pulled in half.

Shots from the other ships of the fleet turned the dragon from its gory repast. A fresh surge of pain swept through Thorki as the reptile lunged up into the air and the tremendous weight lifted from him. The heavy armour he wore had offered scant protection from the dragon’s enormity. Instead of bursting under its mass he’d been crushed, ribs splintered and bones shattered. Blood dribbled from his torn body, surrounding him in an expanding pool. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open, to resist the pull of the grave as warmth fled from his flesh.

Thorki could see some surviving thunderers desperately trying to climb up to the endrin, to repair some measure of the damage inflicted upon it. Even as they dragged wreckage over to form a crude ladder, one of the compromised reservoirs inside the endrin burst, belching a stream of aether gases. Thorki heard their cries of horror as the ironclad’s plight became clear. The ship lurched, throwing the broken admiral to the deck below.

Thorki landed in a tangle of shattered limbs. He felt hands fumbling at him, managed to turn his head enough to see Frekrin trying to drag him away with one hand while the other gripped Grokmund’s box. Sight of the aether-khemist’s treasured find added a final note of bitterness to Thorki’s ordeal.

‘Too late,’ Thorki told Frekrin. ‘All is lost.’

Frekrin persisted in trying to move Thorki. ‘There’s still a chance, admiral. If we…’

Whatever the quartermaster intended, it remained unspoken. The stricken ironclad lurched again, drawing renewed cries of despair from the surviving crew. Frekrin was knocked off his feet, even the magnetised boots unable to maintain their grip. Thorki saw him thrown across the deck to fall into a hole in the planks near the forecastle. One instant he was there, then he was gone.

Much like Thorki’s ship, the admiral reflected. The efforts to save the endrin were futile. The end was inevitable now. ‘All is lost,’ Thorki repeated. He felt the tomb closing around him, his pulse faltering in his veins.

A last cry of terror from his crew reached Thorki’s ears.

The buoyancy of the ship failed and Stormbreaker fell like a rock into the valley miles below.

Khoram watched the ironclad’s destruction with a deep satisfaction. It was like planting a seed. A seed from which great things would grow.

The sorcerer glanced back at the rampaging dragon as it ploughed across the sky, striking the survivors of the fleet. A frigate that had survived its first attack now hurtled earthwards as a twisted mess of wreckage. The others would soon follow it. Khoram didn’t give their obliteration much concern. All that was of consequence to him was that the ironclad was where he needed it to be. The valley the Orb of Zobras had shown him.

The field that would soon yield a most auspicious fruit.

Chapter II

The beacon fire billowed from the rocky summit, a twisting serpent of flame and smoke rising up through the twilight sky. Bone totems surrounded the wooden mound, dismembered skeletons of giant beasts and vanquished enemies bound together with cords of dried sinew until they merged into great pillars surmounted by the skulls of fallen chieftains.

Far above the beacon, three bulky vessels sailed through the sky. The largest of the three flew ahead of her companions, dipping down as she advanced, drawing nearer to the summit. Bold runes engraved into her prow proclaimed her as the Ang Drak in formal duardin, though those who sailed upon her thought of her by the more familiar name of Iron Dragon.

To Captain Brokrin Ullissonn, the ironclad was more familiar than his own skin. Standing up near the prow of the ship, he could feel every shiver that went through his vessel’s hull, sensing it like the heartbeat of a living thing. He knew the Iron Dragon well enough to know when she was healthy and when she was ill even before the endrinriggers found out. She was a part of him and he was a part of her.

Through the aether-glass he held to his eye, Brokrin could see every detail of the tribal display raised around the beacon. There was a light dusting of snow on the totems, a sign that they had been put there before the last snowfall, meaning they had stood there at least four days. Under the blond plaits of his beard, the duardin smiled. He wasn’t gulled by the totems and the banners.

‘The Chuitsek might be good hunters but they’re also sharp traders,’ he said. ‘All those trophies arrayed around the beacon are just an advertisement. They’re telling us why we should come down and barter with them.’ Brokrin removed the glass from his eye and collapsed the bronze tube back into a flattened oval.

‘How many other Kharadron saw the beacon before we did, do you think?’

The question came from Mortrimm, the gruff old aether-navigator who’d been plying the skies so long that he’d made many a voyage under the command of Brokrin’s father. There was a gentle touch of reproof in his tone as he spoke, a mild reminder that it was not wise to spend a profit that might not be there.

‘Other traders from Barak-Zilfin,’ Brokrin shook his head. ‘We were late leaving the sky-hold and this route is known well enough among the guilds.’ His hand clenched into a fist.

‘Just bad luck,’ Mortrimm said. He was regretting the reaction he had drawn from Brokrin. ‘It happens to everyone. Better to be delayed a few days rather than ride the winds with a leaky endrin.’

‘Bad luck,’ Brokrin repeated. ‘The Iron Dragon gets more than her share of that. If our luck gets any worse, we’ll find that ships from the other holds have started straying into our trade routes.’

Mortrimm pointed a finger to the horizon where the first stars could be seen twinkling in the darkening sky. ‘Spring constellations,’ he stated. ‘The most profitable time to visit the Chuitsek is after the thaw when they are eager to get rid of the pelts and skins that kept them warm through the winter. Nomads are not fond of carrying too much with them between the seasons.’

‘The other holds trade with other tribes,’ Brokrin told the grey-bearded navigator. ‘They will know now is the time to make deals. If somebody beat our ships to the rendezvous then all we can expect to find are their leavings. Whatever they deemed too shabby to carry back to Barak-Zilfin.’

Mortrimm frowned at Brokrin’s mood. ‘And you will chalk that up to more bad luck,’ he challenged. ‘A captain needs at least a little confidence to be prosperous. If you can’t find that then you may as well have saved us all the bother and stayed home.’

The gruff rebuke was enough to rouse Brokrin, as Mortrimm had expected it to. From deep in his gut a rumble of annoyance rolled through his stout frame. ‘By the Twenty Lightnings of Grungni, I will beat this ill luck that has dogged me these many seasons! One fiasco after another, chipping away at the profit margins of my ventures until I was forced to dole out slivers of my own shares to appease our backers at Barak-Zilfin! The pyre-tempest that nearly burned the Iron Dragon from the sky and made the cargo of ar-ale in the hold boil over and go bad. The pack of piratical grobi that so vexed the Iron Dragon that we failed to reach the Zephyr-strike before the bulk of its rich aether-gold veins was already locked away in tankers from Barak-Mhornar.’

‘You forget the shimmerstorm that befouled every piece of navigation so that even I could not make sense of our position,’ Mortrimm interjected. ‘We burned weeks of fuel before finding our way back to the trade routes.’

‘That was nearly as costly to repair as the infestation of scabicles that pitted the armour plating when we were coming back from Dwimmervast,’ Brokrin said. ‘We had to put in at Barak-Nar for an overhaul and it cost us an eighth-share of the feydust we were carrying before they were through.’

Brokrin shook his head, a bitter taste in his mouth. That last incident particularly rankled him. To go limping into another sky-hold was infamy enough without begging the favour of Barak-Nar. He had too much of a history with the gold-fingered Brokk Grungsson, had crossed paths with the opportunistic magnate too many times to have fond thoughts of either him or his blasted sky-port. If ill fortune plagued Brokrin, then his rival had been born with a luckstone in his mouth. Brokk had beaten him to the salvage of the trawler Grudgemonger after its calamitous run-in with a harkraken. He had been first again at signing the trade treaties with the Arwatti dervishes and the rich lapis they dredged up from the desert sand. He had been the one to discover the Grimmhold Lode while Brokrin was busy chasing a treasure map that wasn’t worth the animal hide it was drawn on.

Brokrin banged his fist in irritation against the iron rail, too angry to wince at the crackle of pain that shot through his forearm. ‘Bad luck all around!’ he growled. ‘I feel like there is a buzzard hovering over my shoulder, darkening the path wherever I turn.’ He laughed, but it was a cheerless sound. ‘Look at me,’ he told Mortrimm. ‘Even something as innocuous as trading with the Chuitsek has me thinking in terms of disaster. Maybe the whispers they mutter behind my back are more than bitter griping. Maybe there is a curse.’

Mortrimm was quiet a moment, digesting Brokrin’s words. When he did speak, his voice was sombre. ‘If there is a curse – and I do not say there is – then it is up to you to break it.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘That starts up here.’

The steady clomp of heavy boots caused Brokrin to glance at the stair behind them. His crew knew his moods by now; there were only a few who’d intrude upon him while he was up near the prow, alone with his thoughts. One was Mortrimm. Another was Drumark, a duardin who would not recognise tact if it was forty feet tall and bellowing the bawdiest pub-song ever heard in Barak-Zilfin.

The black-bearded sergeant of thunderers mounted the steps with the plodding grace of a drunken ogor, a smell of stale beer and aethershot billowing ahead of him. Though the sergeant was exacting about the appearance of his soldiers, his own steadily decayed the longer they were out of port. Right now he was at about the midpoint of dishevelment, his clothes stained, his armour splotched, his hair tangled, his beard knotted through a string of beads so he could avoid combing it. There was a splotch of grease along the side of his bulbous nose that almost looked like a dirty tear.

Drumark nodded to Brokrin as he ambled over to the rail, gave a half-hearted wave of his hand in greeting to Mortrimm. Brokrin’s grumble of annoyance as he shifted aside to make room for him appeared to remind Drumark that there was such a thing as courtesy. He sketched a hasty, but not quite slovenly, salute before staring out across the broad vista of hills and valleys the ironclad was passing.

‘The manlings look eager to trade,’ he observed, stabbing a thumb at the distant beacon. Drumark started to say more, but the words evaporated in a glottal belch.

‘The Chuitsek,’ said Brokrin. ‘I saw their totems built up around the fire.’

Drumark nodded. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? Would have been a really bad run if it was just one of the beggar tribes down there. At least the Chuitsek have some good stuff most times. We should make a decent bit from them.’

‘The Chuitsek always have good pelts,’ Mortrimm agreed.

‘If somebody else hasn’t been here first,’ Brokrin reminded them.

A snort of laughter spilled down the black beard. Drumark thrust a finger under his belt and leaned back against the rail. ‘As my mother used to say, sky-sharks don’t hunt every day. Things will turn about.’ He pointed again at the beacon. ‘They must have something to sell, otherwise they wouldn’t be signalling.’

Mortrimm nodded. ‘I was just trying to explain the same to the captain…’

Brokrin would not be so easily stirred from his brooding humour. ‘For all I know they are calling us down just to see if we will tell them if we have spotted any herds or if we will go and put in a good word for them with their sky-gods.’

Drumark laughed again. ‘Just as long as they don’t expect us to bring back an answer. It’s hard to keep a straight face listening to Skaggi spew so many lies at once. If his tongue was any glibber it’d uproot itself and try to cut its own deals.’

The sergeant’s derisive comments about the logisticator Skaggi forced even Brokrin to smile. He clapped a hand on Drumark’s shoulder. ‘What odds would you give that the manlings will have anything worth the journey? Enough to share between ourselves and the other ships in the fleet?’

Drumark covered his mouth and tried to stifle another burp. ‘I never make odds. Gambling’s too dicey.’ His gaze strayed to the few frigates following behind the ironclad.

Brokrin followed the sergeant’s gaze, watching as the frigates reacted to the beacon. It was an informal fleet, an arrangement for mutual protection and convenience. ‘The other captains know about the hoodoo they say hangs over the Iron Dragon. The only reason they are following my lead now is because their own ventures didn’t pan out.’ He looked at Mortrimm. ‘They probably figure their own luck can’t get any worse.’

‘The Iron Dragon is a good ship,’ Mortrimm declared. ‘She’s carried us both through many a scrape and we’re still walking her decks.’

Frowning, Brokrin looked across his ship’s deck. ‘Too many new faces. Most of the arkanauts have only been on a few voyages with me. Gotramm and his company shipped out with me only because no other vessel had open berths.’

Drumark snorted at the statement. ‘Gotramm’s a young pup. Fresh from the Academy and eager to make his fortune. Cocksure of the inevitability of his own success.’ He pointed to Mortrimm. ‘Despite what this old star-spotter says, I’ll take a good dose of realistic pessimism over the blind optimism of inexperience.’

‘Gotramm lacks perspective,’ Brokrin agreed. ‘So if he fails to prosper on this voyage he is apt to blame it on the jinx. Another mouth to spread the story. To tell everybody about Ghazul’s curse.’ He turned and cast his gaze towards the ship’s stern.

Brokrin’s gaze settled on the great skyhook bolted down on the deck. In many ways it was a symbol of what he regarded as his downfall. He’d spent no small amount on the weapon – one of the finest of its kind developed by the Harpooners’ Society. The spears flung by the aetheric launcher had obsidian heads so keen that the gunners had to wear gloves coated in diamond dust to handle them. The triangular head was contrived to grip a target more efficiently than a standard harpoon, leaving a wound that wouldn’t close should the target manage to rip itself free. The chains fitted to each skyhook were wrought from dirgesteel excavated by the grave-robbing zaaraki from the drowned cities in the swamps of Journ, so strong that even a megalofin couldn’t bite through it.

Ghazul’s Bane, the skyhook was called, for that was its intended purpose. To bring down the beast that had upended Brokrin’s fortunes. A ship only had so much luck to draw on and escaping that monster had emptied that allotted to the Iron Dragon. Her captain was convinced the only way to break the curse was to kill the beast, the horror the sages of Isomir called the Great Northern Terrorfang.

‘There’s a touch of madness about you, captain,’ Drumark stated, noticing where Brokrin was looking. ‘Anybody else would be grateful to escape a beastie like Ghazul with his skin in one piece. You, though, you go out looking for the blighted thing.’

‘Hoping, maybe, but not looking,’ Brokrin said, shaking his head. ‘Though I’ll be damn sure ready if it crosses my path again.’

Mortrimm waved his hand towards the skyhook’s crew. ‘Don’t tell that to Arrik and his lads. They didn’t sign on just for the shares. They’re expecting a crack at that monster.’

‘They’ve killed just about anything else that ever took wing,’ Brokrin agreed.

He studied Arrik as the gunner made one of his semi-daily inspections of Ghazul’s Bane. The duardin’s helm was crafted in the semblance of a snarling hound, the mouth open on the left to leave his face exposed and let his beard spill down his chest. The right side, however, was pinched closed, concealing a mass of grotesque scars. Even Arrik’s followers did not know what had disfigured their leader. It was a subject he ignored. Even Drumark, at his most brusque drunkenness, had failed to provoke a response from Arrik about what had happened to him.

There was one thing Brokrin did know about Arrik. The hunter wasn’t on board the ironclad simply hoping to run into Ghazul again. He expected it. He felt that the monster had left its mark on the ship, that it had claimed her for its own. Some day, somewhere, the beast would find the Iron Dragon and finish their interrupted battle. Such was Arrik’s conviction.

Brokrin decided that little bit of information was something he didn’t need to share with his crew. They grumbled enough about the jinx.

Drumark was complaining about a different matter. The warrior had turned back to look down towards the beacon. Patches of snow lay in the shadows of the great grey boulders that littered the plain below the summit. A few stands of gnarled trees thrust up from the russet soil. They could see the hide tents of the Chuitsek clustered around the trees, the smaller cook fires and the packs of enormous dogs the tribe used to transport their possessions. Beyond the tents was a wooden palisade where the nomads kept the great herd of horses that gave them the mobility to range across the plains and hunt the largest of game. ‘You don’t think they’re going to make us drink that greasy chai of theirs again, do you? By Grungni’s anvil, I swear that sludge gave me piles last time.’

Brokrin gave the sergeant a sombre look. ‘It’s a religious thing. A way of proving to them we’re not in league with daemons. They believe the drink will poison anyone with impure intentions.’

‘I’ve some impure intentions for whatever sadist brews that muck,’ Drumark grunted. Suddenly he spun around and faced his captain, a bright gleam in his eyes. ‘How about we just bomb them until they’re convinced we’re friends? It’d save a lot of time.’

‘And how would I justify the cost of the bombs to Skaggi?’ Brokrin laughed.

An amused light shone in Drumark’s eyes. ‘Easy. Just have the beardy git take a mouthful of that chai.’

Primitive banners fashioned from animal hides stained with ochre and blood hung from the totems that surrounded the nomad encampment, simple pictoglyphs recording the saga of each leader and the fortunes of the tribe while under their rule; skin-clad hunters stirring forth to fell mastodons and slay gargants, brave warriors making war against marauding orruks and blood reavers. A standing testament to the strength and glory of the Chuitsek tribe.

The chiefs of the Chuitsek gathered in a circle around Brokrin’s delegation. As humans went, the nomads were a hardy stock, powerfully built with broad features and coppery complexions. Their elders sported colourful tattoos commemorating their individual contributions to the tribe. The younger warriors were arrayed in feathered capes and had braided scalp locks that hung across the side of their faces. Man and woman alike, each warrior had a bronze blade hanging from a loop woven into their kilt while the most prosperous among them had weapons of cold iron or steel tied to their belt.

Only the masked shaman and his assistants remained standing while the chiefs and warriors seated themselves on the ground around the visiting duardin. The priest, arrayed in the hide of an icewolf, prowled among the congregants, muttering a ritualistic song that would fend off the attentions of malignant spirits. His assistants bore great clay pots, steam rising from the hot chai inside them. Brokrin noted with a twinge of humour that Drumark was the first of the duardin the Chuitsek expected to imbibe.

The larger size of – and consequent expense of operating – the Iron Dragon gave Brokrin primacy among the captains. It was a heavy responsibility as well as a great honour. ‘Strange how the same thing can be both privilege and burden,’ he commented to Mortrimm.

The navigator nodded and accepted a pot of chai from one of the nomads. ‘Negotiations with the tribe are part of being expedition leader. Nothing gives a manling more incentive for hard bargaining than a lack of solidarity among his customers.’

‘Fêted if I can wheedle a healthy profit, berated if I don’t,’ Brokrin said. He gave Mortrimm a hard look. ‘I could take that if I didn’t know what a bad deal will mean. There are those who will take it as more evidence that there’s a curse hanging over me and my ship.’ He raised his eyes, looking skywards towards the frigates. ‘I can just about feel them watching me through their glasses.’

‘You may be thankful for their caution,’ Mortrimm opined. ‘There’s an air of wariness about the Chuitsek. We’ve traded with them in the past and I’ve never sensed them being on edge like this.’ He nudged Brokrin, drawing his attention to the anxious glances some of the nomads were casting their way. The instant the humans saw that the duardin had noticed them, they hastily averted their eyes.

‘Something is going on,’ Brokrin agreed. ‘Don’t think we’re the only ones to notice. I spotted Drumark shifting his pistol around so he can draw it fast with either hand. Gotramm has been staring at their high chief Kero so intently I’m surprised his eyes haven’t fallen out.’ A grim laugh rose from deep in his chest. ‘You’ve been fidgeting with the balance-arm of the aetheric-scale since we sat down, and don’t tell me that is as innocent as you make it look. It’d make a capable bludgeon if it had to.’

Mortrimm set down the long metal rod. ‘An ill wind is better than no wind,’ he said. ‘But only if it gets you to better skies.’

Brokrin stroked his beard, pondering the old parable. ‘I always hate it when you quote philosophy. Brain-problems for duardin without enough work to do.’

‘You’d prefer I was more industrious?’ Mortrimm asked. ‘Maybe fixate on my duties the way Skaggi does with his?’

Among the dozen duardin that had disembarked from the Iron Dragon, only Skaggi remained unperturbed. The logisticator was focused entirely upon his work, scrutinising the pelts and hides the nomads had brought to the circle, calculating their value on the abacus-rings on his left glove and matching them against the expenditures he tallied with the rings fitted to his right glove.

‘If Skaggi thought it would cost him so much as a copper coin, he wouldn’t notice if his beard was on fire,’ Brokrin said.

Mortrimm was of a different opinion. ‘Skaggi knows there is tension here, it just doesn’t upset that avaricious streak running through him. Where money is concerned, his brain is a one-piston engine.’

Skaggi flipped the jeweller’s eye up onto a silver headband that circled his brow as he finished inspecting the pelt of a snowlion. He turned a grave face towards Brokrin. Even at his most cheerful, the logisticator had the expression of a hungry vulture. Now he looked positively famished. He glanced aside at the chief who’d brought the pelt, all nods and smiles as he returned it to the tribesman. ‘A word with you, cap’n,’ Skaggi said.

‘It is nothing good, is it?’ Brokrin muttered when the logisticator drew close to confer with him.

Skaggi kept his voice low. They employed a patois called barterspeak in dealing with the human tribes, though a few of the nomads were clever enough to have picked up a smattering of duardin words. Enough to make him cautious as he spoke with the captain. ‘Third-tier stuff,’ he declared. ‘Nothing I have seen so far looks worthwhile. That last pelt is infested with shiver-mites. Delousing it will bleed most of the colour out, leave it looking like a badly bleached deerskin. Everything I have looked at has been bad.’ He scowled, knowing Brokrin wasn’t going to like what he had to say. ‘Someone must have been here and taken all the good stuff.’

A nauseous feeling grew in Brokrin’s belly. He glanced over at the smoking remains of the beacon. ‘Why did they bother lighting the fire then?’ he spat.

The murmur that swept through the assembled chiefs told him that his ire didn’t escape the Chuitsek. At the moment, he didn’t much care if they took umbrage.

‘No ivory, no scrimshaw, no gemstones, no cragbull oil,’ Skaggi said. ‘Just a handful of hides I do not think anybody would want.’ The logisticator removed the gloves he’d used when examining the pelts, dropping them on the ground. ‘Won’t pay for the grog, much less our other expenses. It will be a bad time when we make port and the lads see what their shares come out to.’ There was an understandable note of anxiety in Skaggi’s voice. After the captain, it was the voyage’s logisticator who would be blamed for the shortfall.

Brokrin was contemplating more immediate concerns. He turned to Mortrimm. ‘If the Chuitsek already sold off their best goods, why did they bother to light the beacon?’

‘The first time we made contact with them, they saw a demonstration of our artillery,’ Mortrimm said. ‘Bombarded an orruk warband into a stain on the ground. The nomads are not such fools as to deliberately provoke us.’

‘What are they up to?’ Brokrin wondered. ‘What is their game?’

Looking at Chief Kero, Brokrin could see the uneasiness in the man’s expression. He was watching his own people as closely as he was the duardin. Brokrin got the impression Kero was waiting for one of them to make some move, some overture that he felt would bring trouble. All the dickering over ragged hides was just a preamble, a stall until one of the tribesmen worked up the nerve to tell the duardin what they really wanted.

Brokrin decided to force the issue. He stepped away from the other duardin and faced Kero directly. ‘No deal,’ he addressed the chief. ‘Pelts bad. No trade.’ Even in barterspeak, the statement was curt and abrupt, the kind of unrefined bluntness Drumark might adopt but hardly befitting the ship’s captain. Brokrin continued to watch Kero, waiting for the chief’s reaction.

Kero held up his hand. ‘Wait, cloudwalker,’ he implored. He motioned to some of his tribesmen. They unravelled rolls of mastodon-hide to reveal an array of metallic objects of duardin manufacture. A few exclamations of shock escaped the watching Kharadron. They felt there was no fair way the nomads could have come by such items. Allegations of theft and worse rose from Drumark and a few of the others.

‘Let the cap’n sort it out,’ Mortrimm advised the crewmen.

Brokrin turned to his own followers to stifle the angry snarls that quickly followed after their initial surprise. He appreciated their feelings. His own blood ran hot as he looked down at the assortment of items the Chuitsek had brought forwards. The dented helm of an arkanaut. A set of endrinrigger’s goggles. Valves from an aetheric pressure gauge. Metal-soled boots far too wide and far too short for human feet. An assortment of oddments but all of distinctly duardin manufacture.

‘Ask them how they got these,’ Brokrin told Skaggi. Barterspeak patois was not going to be enough to get an explanation and the logisticator was the only one among his crew with any aptitude for the Chuitsek language. ‘Tell them to bring out everything – even the pieces they were going to keep for themselves.’

While Skaggi addressed Kero, Brokrin and the others started taking a closer look at the duardin goods. Endrinmaster Horgarr brought attention to a spanner that had a manufacturer’s rune impressed upon its side. ‘Barak-Urbaz’, Brokrin observed. When the Chuitsek started to bring out more items from their tents it became clear that all of the items had originated at that sky-port.

Drumark had a ready grip on his pistol. ‘Waylaid the last lot that came down to trade with ’em,’ he growled, glaring at the nomads. ‘They’ve another think coming if they think they’ll pick my bones!’

‘Ease down a might,’ Mortrimm said. ‘They don’t look eager to fight.’ The navigator waved his hand at the tribesmen. The truth of his words was obvious even to those duardin in the company with limited experience of humans. The Chuitsek weren’t making any signs of aggression; if anything their reaction was just the opposite. Many of them acted ashamed, averting their eyes and trying not to face the duardin. It was a curious display for a bold warrior culture to make.

‘Let’s wait and hear what Skaggi has found out,’ Brokrin advised. He still felt angry inside but he was curious enough to restrain himself from giving vent to that anger. There was a puzzle here and he wanted to solve it before making an irreversible decision. Why would the Chuitsek risk future trades with the Kharadron by trying to sell them objects stolen from other duardin?

Skaggi was a long time conversing with Kero, both logisticator and chieftain making broad gestures with their hands as they each tried to explain their relative positions. Finally, Skaggi turned and motioned for Brokrin to join the discussion.

‘Come with me and stay alert,’ Brokrin told Gotramm. He didn’t think the Chuitsek intended any kind of treachery, but if they did the duardin weren’t the only ones who could throw their enemy into confusion by knocking out the leaders first.

Kero bowed his head and folded his arms across his chest as Brokrin came towards him. ‘Great High Chief of Icereach Chuitsek Kero Beareater welcomes mighty cloud-father. May his lodge be filled with many sons and his hammock warm with many wives.’

Brokrin shook his head, unable to pick more than the term ‘cloud-
father’ from Kero’s speech. He held up his palm, trying to stop Kero’s genuflections, then turned to speak with Skaggi.

‘Three days ago they made a trade with a Barak-Nar fleet,’ the logisticator stated, taking no notice of the scowl that flashed across Brokrin’s face. ‘They sold all their worthwhile goods to them. Must have been a poor logisticator though, since they cut a much better deal than I would have given them.’

Brokrin waved aside Skaggi’s vanity. ‘That doesn’t matter right now. I want to know how they got all this stuff from Barak-Urbaz.’

‘I was coming to that,’ Skaggi said, irked by his captain’s reproach. He gestured to a young warrior sitting behind Kero. ‘A little after the tribe finished trading with Barak-Nar, a hunting party led by Kero’s son Djangas returned loaded up with the goods you’ve been looking over. That was why they lit the beacon again. They wanted to give it back to the duardin. They were hoping we would look favourably on the gesture and offer them gifts in return, but once we were here they started to worry we might hold them to blame instead.’

The young privateer Gotramm came forwards. ‘Where did they get this?’ Gotramm asked, glaring at Djangas. Unlike the other nomads, the chief’s son didn’t avert his eyes. The hunter clearly felt he had nothing to feel guilty about.

‘There’s a valley a few days’ ride from here called the Serpent’s Craw,’ Skaggi answered. ‘Djangas and his men went to hunt there. Instead they found the wreckage of a sky-vessel. They looked around for survivors…’

‘I’ll bet he did,’ Gotramm sneered, still watching Djangas.

Brokrin motioned the privateer to be quiet and urged Skaggi to continue.

‘When they didn’t find anyone alive they started scavenging the wreck,’ Skaggi said. ‘Weapons, armour, anything that caught their eye. They figured to keep the best bits for themselves and try to earn our gratitude with the rest.’

‘Surrender no tithe to tragedy,’ Gotramm said. He looked over at Brokrin. ‘The Kharadron Code is explicit on that point.’

Brokrin weighed his words before replying to the privateer. ‘There’s good reason for that clause. Pay a villain and you encourage him. You make all Kharadron a target for claim-jumpers, kidnappers,’ he looked across the chieftains, especially Kero, before adding one last crime to the list, ‘and wreckers.’

‘No wreck. Find,’ Djangas insisted, recognising the last word Brokrin uttered and replying in a broken sort of duardin. The warrior reached to his neck and ripped away the necklace he wore. ‘Take,’ he said, tossing it at Brokrin’s feet. The captain saw that the ornament had been fashioned from fine golden wires, the sort an ironclad’s gyroscope might have inside it.

‘They’d be mad or stupid to show this stuff to us if they were responsible,’ Skaggi stated. ‘It would be an admission of guilt.’ A cunning look crept into his eyes as he mulled over the situation. ‘The beardling’s right about the Code, though. We can’t give them much of a gift on the chance they are guilty of something unsavoury. Maybe one twentieth what the stuff is worth. That should smooth things over without encouraging them.’

Gotramm snorted in contempt at the logisticator’s wheedling. ‘You’re just worried the Chuitsek won’t want to deal with you later on.’

‘It is a real concern,’ Brokrin told Gotramm. ‘You don’t put a hole in the mug you drink from. Trading with the nomads opens new markets for our sky-hold and puts coin in all of our pockets.’ He picked up the necklace Djangas had discarded, running the threads through his rough fingers. ‘Still, we have to know if the Chuitsek are doing us wrong.’

Skaggi grinned at the captain. ‘The salvage bears all the marks of Barak-Urbaz. Their misfortune is our advantage. Do we really need to concern ourselves with what happened?’

Mortrimm glared at the sharp-faced logisticator. ‘The Code makes no distinction between our kin and those of another sky-hold. An injury against one is an injury against all. I wouldn’t care if it was some slinking vein-poacher from Barak-Mhornar, if someone thinks they can steal from the Kharadron you feed them their beard.’

Skaggi held out his hands in open apology, glancing anxiously at the watching Chuitsek. ‘I understand and agree, but we have to be practical. There is a delicacy to these things. These are simple people, easy to offend. We have to give them some token of gratitude or they will take insult and maybe next time they don’t light the beacon at all.’ Tactfully he decided not to mention the tribe selling their goods to another fleet.

Brokrin motioned Gotramm to keep quiet when he would have countered Skaggi’s suggestion. Like the logisticator, the captain was taking the measure of the humans, the general feeling exhibited by those in the circle. There was that impression of guilt but there was also an air of expectancy, even hope. Skaggi was right. They couldn’t afford to shut out the tribe completely. Neither would the duardin countenance rewarding possible murderers. However unlikely that prospect was, he could not dismiss it out of hand.

‘Tell them we’re taking all their salvage,’ Brokrin decided. ‘They will be paid quarter value.’ He held up his hand to thwart the protest that he saw rising in Skaggi’s throat. ‘Tell them quarter value,’ he repeated. ‘They’ll need to have a generous reward to look forward to because they’re not having it right now.’

A puzzled look came upon Gotramm’s face. ‘What’s your plan?’ he asked.

‘We’re going to look over the wreck for ourselves,’ Brokrin explained. ‘Satisfy ourselves that the manlings came by their salvage honestly. Once I’m convinced of that, I’ll know we’ve upheld the Code.’

Skaggi shook his head. ‘The Code also stipulates against wasteful expenses,’ he grumbled. ‘We can bring them in hand for a good bit less than quarter value.’

‘You’re looking at it from the wrong end,’ Brokrin scolded the logisticator. ‘How much salvage do you think a few hunters could bring back? How much more do you think they had to leave behind?’

Brokrin’s observation did much to quell Skaggi’s misgivings. ‘I will tell them,’ he said. ‘We will get directions to this valley…’

‘No,’ Brokrin interrupted. ‘We won’t take directions. We will take a guide.’ He nodded at Kero. ‘Tell him we want someone to lead us back to the wreck.’ He paused a moment, the anger boiling up inside him again. If there was evidence of treachery, if it did emerge that the tribe was responsible, then there was one manling he wanted there with him. The one who had claimed to have discovered the tragedy. Brokrin pointed at the warrior in question, returning the scowl Djangas wore with one of his own. ‘I want that manling with us when we leave here.’

Skaggi hesitated. ‘It might make trouble with the chiefs,’ he advised. ‘We could take one of the other hunters if you think we need a guide.’

‘I want Djangas,’ Brokrin insisted. ‘If they’ve dealt false with us, let the humans know the consequences. Kero can oppose us now or he can surrender his son as hostage. That is my demand.’

Chapter III

The Iron Dragon and her companions soared above the boulder-strewn plains. Patches of greenery showed where the thaw had enabled hardy thorngrass to send up its first shoots. A few more weeks and the plains would appear far less desolate, covered in a mantle of greenery that would draw the mammoth herds out from their winter refuges. It was in anticipation of the returning herds that the Chuitsek had made their camp a few leagues distant. Close enough to hunt the beasts but not so near as to get trampled by the mighty brutes.

The journey out from the camp had covered a distance that would take the nomads days to travel on foot, in only a few hours. It had given the duardin some time to cool their tempers, to really digest Mortrimm’s urgings for calm and Skaggi’s warnings against haste. Most of all, it was Brokrin’s sombre assurances that curbed their misgivings. If something untoward had been done, they could trust their captain to set it right.

Gotramm nibbled the corner of a stonebread biscuit and made a show of smacking his lips after swallowing. He wasn’t overtly fond of the heavy, gritty biscuits that formed a much too prominent part of an arkanaut’s rations. Lately, however, he had discovered a new appreciation for them. Djangas didn’t have the stamina for duardin fare – his attempt at biting into some stonebread had chipped a tooth and cut his lip. To eat it at all the nomad had resorted to drowning the biscuits in beer until they became a pasty sludge. Gotramm wondered why the tribesman had brought so little of his own food. Perhaps the Chuitsek held the Kharadron in such superstitious awe they thought a journey on sky-ships would be over before it was time for dinner.

The tribesman might be primitive compared to the Kharadron, but he wasn’t so simple-minded that he failed to appreciate exactly what Gotramm was doing. He frowned at the arkanaut and turned away to look out over the side of the ship and stare at the plains far below. Gotramm snorted in amusement and took another nibble at the biscuit.

The irritation was mutual – Gotramm felt justified needling the nomad. Djangas was by turns frustratingly suspicious and annoyingly obstinate. He had never been on a sky-vessel before. Indeed, for all his bravado it had taken some cajoling to make him embark once it was time to leave the Chuitsek camp. There was a certain awe with which his tribe regarded the Kharadron and Gotramm suspected they had all kinds of superstitions about the duardin that went beyond the swiftness of their ships. Djangas had been an ashen-faced shivering wreck as the ironclad climbed away from the earth.

Unfortunately the man hadn’t stayed that way. Gotramm grudgingly had to admire the nomad’s pluck. Instead of cowering down in one of the holds, Djangas let fascination overcome his fear. First timidly, and later boldly, the young man moved from one end of the deck to the other, gazing in wonder at the lands over which they soared. The nomad, of course, had no air-legs, and every bumpy patch of ill-humoured aether, every shift in the wind currents, had him staggering about trying to maintain his balance. He’d become fiercely agitated when Mortrimm tried to fit a tether to him to prevent him from falling over the side. Skaggi had explained the man’s anger – he felt the duardin were trying to leash him like a dog. Horgarr managed to fit a set of magnetised boots to the manling’s feet once he succeeded in convincing Djangas he needed them. After that, Brokrin had appointed Gotramm to play nursemaid to their passenger and ensure he got into no trouble.

‘Beardless horse-fondler,’ Gotramm cursed, watching Djangas lean out over the rail. He ambled forwards and pulled the warrior back. ‘You’re going to fall over and splatter yourself on those mountains,’ he told the nomad, keeping his voice level and placid.

Djangas didn’t understand his words, only picking up on tone. Gotramm could call the man a damnable grobi-snatcher and the hunter would just nod.

‘Maybe I should push you over the side,’ Gotramm said. ‘Would you like that, you gawking idiot?’ By way of response, Djangas simply nodded. Then the man made a cupping motion of his hand and raised it towards his face, muttering some Chuitsek word that Gotramm didn’t know but could guess the meaning of. The privateer’s annoyance rose. ‘More grog?’ he snapped. There was still quite a bit in the stores, but for any duardin away from his hold the fear of running out was always on his mind. ‘You barely kept down the last mug I gave you.’ The nomad either didn’t understand him or didn’t care, continuing to pantomime the act of drinking.

‘Growing weary of your friend?’ The jeering remark was punctuated by a loud burp. Gotramm looked around to see Drumark shuffling towards him. The arkanaut felt his irritation grow. They already had Drumark doing his part to drain the grog ration; they didn’t need this human depleting it even faster.

‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’ Gotramm replied. ‘Drill your thunderers? Take a bath?’

Drumark raised one arm, trying not to spill any of the beer in the bronze stein he carried. His face wrinkled as he sniffed. He looked back at Gotramm and shook his head. ‘No, I’m good.’ He looked past the arkanaut and grinned at Djangas. The nomad pointed at the stein he held and made the same pantomime of drinking. ‘He looks thirsty,’ Drumark commented, taking a swig of beer. ‘You should do something about that.’

‘I’m not taking orders from a manling,’ Gotramm declared.

Exaggerated surprise showed on Drumark’s face, his eyebrows threatening to tip over his helm. Belatedly Gotramm understood he’d fallen into the Grundstok sergeant’s trap. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ he said with feigned shock. ‘It isn’t what Skaggi was saying…’

Gotramm looked over at Djangas. The nomad’s pantomime was taking on a demanding, almost imperious quality. The arkanaut addressed Drumark through clenched teeth. ‘What was Skaggi saying?’

Holding up his hand to stave off Gotramm’s question, Drumark took another drink. ‘Well, Skaggi mentioned something about getting you to look after the manling. Make sure he didn’t fall overboard or get tangled up in the gubbins. He felt you’d be dependable enough for the job. Of course he had to sell the idea to the manling.’

Gotramm’s beard bristled. ‘What did he tell the human?’

‘Not much,’ Drumark said nonchalantly. ‘Just how you’d be attending him. Not as a bodyguard – a big bad warrior like the manling might take offence at that. No, Skaggi said you’d be more of a servant. Seeing to the manling’s needs, that kind of thing. He’s an important person, the manling is. Son of Chief Kero and all that. Why, their tribe must own two hundred horses. Absolute height of nobility.’ Drumark laughed and jabbed a thumb towards Djangas. ‘He still looks thirsty, by the way.’

‘Skaggi,’ Gotramm hissed. ‘That copper-pinching coin-grubber.’ He didn’t appreciate being used by the logisticator. Not that Skaggi had exactly lied to him, he had just deigned to disclose only certain particulars. It was something Skaggi was quite adept at, skirting the spirit of the Code while always keeping within its rules. ‘I’ll pluck his beard out hair by hair.’

Drumark ran a hand through his own beard and nodded sympathetically. ‘You’d be better off suckering the prat into a game of dice. His honour’s too slippery to sting. Only way to hurt him is to lighten his pockets.’ He started to laugh then abruptly broke off. His attention had shifted back to Djangas. The nomad wasn’t demanding a drink now. He was at the rail, pointing excitedly at the horizon.

The duardin could see a dark fissure running through the mountain range they had been approaching for some hours. The cleft was so severe that it looked like some primordial colossus had hacked it from the mountains with an axe. Deep shadows filled the chasm, a ribbon of black slithering its way between the snow-capped peaks.

‘Look,’ Djangas declared in barterspeak, pointing at the fissure. ‘There. Sky-folk.’

‘Well, looks like we’ve arrived,’ Drumark quipped. ‘That must be what they call the Serpent’s Craw. Where these fellows say they found the ship.’

Gotramm caught hold of Drumark’s arm and drew his attention to the ground below. Something sparkled in the sunlight. Something big and metal. ‘Whatever he found, there’s more of it,’ the arkanaut said, his tone grim. A cold sensation swept through him. He wished he had a spyglass to make certain, but what was below them certainly looked like a debris field, though much bigger than the ones described to him at the Academy.

‘Somebody’s reached the end of their voyage,’ Drumark observed, his voice sombre. He had seen enough crashes at first hand to recognise the aftermath.

A buzz of activity swept through the Iron Dragon. Skywardens detached themselves from their tethers and started a slow descent with their aether-endrins. Mortrimm and Horgarr were peering down from the aftcastle with their glasses. Brokrin called to the engine room to reduce their speed. Signals flashed from the frigates accompanying the ironclad.

Gotramm glowered at Djangas, the suspicions about the nomads deliberately wrecking the downed ship rising to the fore. His suspicions were the root of his animosity towards the manling, the near-certainty that Djangas had been party to murder. There were many hills around on which the tribe could have lit a deceitful beacon and plenty of mountains against which the craft could have crashed.

Drumark disabused the privateer of his suspicion. ‘That puts him in the clear,’ he said and nodded at Djangas. ‘Too much wreckage for one ship and there isn’t an admiral in the sky-holds that would let an entire fleet get suckered in by a beacon. Whatever happened here, it was something else.’

Far from easing Gotramm’s mind, the sergeant’s words raised new worries. Anything powerful enough to cause such havoc might still be around. He glanced back at Brokrin, thinking of the gargantuan monster that had demolished the captain’s old fleet.

There was something else to worry about as well. Despite the wreckage below them, Djangas continued to point at the shadowy valley. ‘There sky-folk! Sky-folk, there!’

Gotramm followed the hunter’s pointing finger. As vast as the debris field was, could it be possible they’d find even more in the valley?

‘Master Vorki, take the helm.’ Brokrin stepped aside as his first mate relieved him at the Iron Dragon’s wheel. As he always did, Vorki wrapped one arm about the wheel and took a slug from the hip-flask he carried. He spat a little of the dark liquor onto his palm, then switched hands and did the same to the other. Throwing his head back, the first mate gargled what was left in his mouth before swallowing it in one go.

The noisy ritual was one Brokrin had seen many times. He wasn’t sure he bought Vorki’s claims about old family traditions. It struck the captain that his antics were a kind of low theatre with a very specific plot: to display that even with all the song and dance attendant to his taking the wheel, Vorki was such a master of his craft that the Iron Dragon didn’t so much as shiver once he was at the helm.

‘Why someone who can handle a ship like you does not try to get his own command makes little sense to me,’ Brokrin said.

Vorki shrugged. ‘There is more to being a captain than steering the ship,’ he answered.

‘There’s great profit in it,’ Brokrin said. ‘A good chance for advancement if a voyage brings enough wealth to Barak-Zilfin.’

The mate nodded. ‘That’s as may be, cap’n, but I’ve seen enough of what goes with your job. I can’t say I’d relish the burden of responsibility. Knowing that every decision rested on my shoulders. Knowing what came of every decision was mine to own. I don’t know I could bear that. To know your successes will be celebrated has to be balanced knowing you’ll be answerable for your failures.’ He gave Brokrin a sheepish look. ‘No disrespect, cap’n.’

‘None taken,’ Brokrin told him. ‘Failure is hard for a captain to live down and it doesn’t help that our people have long memories.’ He ran a hand through his beard, reflecting on the way his fortunes had turned since running into Ghazul. ‘Very long memories. Sometimes I miss the simpler times when I was merely a rating and only carried out orders instead of giving them.’

As he left the helm, Brokrin looked back at the aftcastle and the massive skyhook emplaced there. Arrik and his crew were poised around Ghazul’s Bane, each gunner staring out across the horizon, scanning the skies with a motley array of aether-scopes and spyglasses. The obsidian head of the lance glistened from the barrel of the launcher, heavy chain piled beneath it on the deck. No banter passed between the gunners. Each duardin was too keen and alert to divorce even the slightest scrap of attention from the task at hand.

Brokrin’s palms itched when he thought about what they’d found. He tugged off the heavy gloves he wore when tending the wheel and rubbed his hands against his knees to ease the sensation. He couldn’t lightly consider the destruction of a dozen Kharadron ships, even if they were from another sky-hold. Scored by fire, twisted and mangled even before they came smashing to the ground, the doom that had set upon the unfortunate duardin wasn’t cheering to contemplate. Only a vast and tremendous force could have afflicted the gunhaulers and frigates to such a devastating degree. Everyone on the Iron Dragon and the frigates who sailed with her was aware of what had befallen Brokrin in the past. Even those who didn’t believe in it knew the hoodoo that hung over Brokrin’s ship and they wondered if that curse had at last led the Iron Dragon back to Ghazul.

‘A grim business, cap’n.’ Old Mortrimm joined Brokrin as he walked along the deck. The navigator moved with a lurching gait, the aetheric brace bound about his left leg grumbling with every step. He’d been fortunate to keep that leg at all – a memento left to him from the last time the Iron Dragon’s path crossed that of Ghazul. Yet it wasn’t the chance of meeting the beast again that troubled the venerable duardin. ‘The holds of the Dron-Duraz are piled high with dead.’

Brokrin shook his head. The debris field they’d found had been a harrowing sight. The crews of the frigates had done their part recovering the bodies of the dead duardin and taking them aboard. ‘Our Barak-Urbaz kinsmen took a bad pounding,’ he agreed. ‘I’m obliged that Captain Kjnell took them aboard his frigate.’ He turned and glanced back in the direction of the debris field. ‘We don’t even know what struck them down. It would be nice to tell Barak-Urbaz who or what it is they need to enter a grudge against.’

Mortrimm removed the stone pipe-bowl and a clay stem for it from his belt. After snapping off the chewed end of the stem, he screwed the pieces together and began stuffing dried weed into the bowl. ‘Arrik and his lads seem pretty certain,’ he observed.

‘They’ve let eagerness cloud their senses,’ Brokrin said. ‘They want what hit that fleet to be Ghazul.’

Mortrimm arched an eyebrow as he drew a long puff from his pipe. ‘And don’t you?’

The captain’s expression darkened. ‘Nothing would please me more,’ he admitted, ‘but wanting a thing doesn’t make it so. Those ships weren’t just knocked out of the sky, they were burned and clawed. Hardly the kind of attack Ghazul would make.’ Brokrin pointed to a scarred patch of the deck where the mark of a great fang had left its impression.

‘Then what, or who, struck them down?’ Mortrimm asked.

Brokrin was thoughtful for a moment. Then he pointed towards the prow where Djangas stood. ‘Kero’s son was as surprised as we were when we came upon those ships. He claims the wreck his hunters found was a good deal further on.’ He squinted at the sun, then glanced back at the ground they’d already covered. ‘We’re an hour out from the wrecks, so we should be drawing close to the one the nomads originally found. Djangas also said that it was much bigger than those gunhaulers and frigates.’ He stamped his foot down on the deck. ‘More like our ship.’

‘An ironclad,’ Mortrimm mused. He drew another puff from his pipe, exhaling a grey smoke ring that was quickly drawn away by the wind. ‘Possible. Maybe the flagship of the lot we already found. The markings on the salvage the Chuitsek scavenged are from Barak-Urbaz.’ The navigator tapped the stem of his pipe against Brokrin’s shoulder. ‘If this ironclad is from the same fleet then it means the manlings couldn’t have been responsible for bringing her down.’

‘Perhaps,’ Brokrin conceded. ‘Either way, we’ll find out soon enough. There’s the valley Djangas talked about. The Serpent’s Craw.’

It took no small amount of skill to negotiate the narrow canyons of the Serpent’s Craw. Erratic winds whipped about the Iron Dragon as it tried to manoeuvre through the ravine, threatening to dash the ship against the jagged walls that reared up on either side. Once the grinding shriek of distressed metal scratched across the air as the massive endrin glanced off the side of the canyon.

At last there came excited shouts from Djangas. The magnetised boots he was wearing limited the human’s movement to frantic pointing and waving, but it was clear enough what he was yelling about. The Kharadron had reached the crash site and the wreck the Chuitsek had scavenged.

Through his spyglass, Brokrin could just make out the distinct colours of the ship that denoted her as belonging to Barak-Urbaz. Djangas had been right. She was much larger than the ships they’d found earlier. She was an ironclad of slightly older design than the Iron Dragon, albeit not of so remote a vintage as to be fitted with two endrins to keep her aloft. He could see the muzzles of gas carbines mounted under her prow, the twisted mess of a volley cannon sagging against her aftcastle. There were ugly scorches along her hull, weird patches where the iron plating appeared to have been corroded rather than melted.

It was the bulbous hulk of the endrin itself that arrested Brokrin’s attention. It had been smashed and torn, gouged in such a way that was suggestive of great claws. Perhaps not the despised Ghazul, but maybe a creature from the same hellish brood.

‘No sign of life, cap’n,’ Mortrimm declared, scrutinising the wreck through a long bronze scope fitted with an array of lenses and aetheric magnifiers. ‘Though if there had been survivors, the manlings would have found them when they were here.’

A dark thought. One that was, in its way, worse than if the nomads had deliberately wrecked the ironclad. Brokrin imagined the hunters scouring the debris and dispatching the wounded survivors. ‘We’ll go down and see,’ Brokrin decided. ‘We’d need to anyway to recover the manifest and the bodies to send along to Barak-Urbaz.’

‘Do you think that wise?’ The question came from the sharp-faced logisticator Skaggi. ‘This valley is treacherous. We could ourselves become a wreck, and then what profit should we bring back to Barak-Zilfin?’

Mortrimm scowled at Skaggi’s hesitance. Taking a deep breath, he expelled a puff of pipe-smoke into the logisticator’s face. ‘The Code is explicit on our duty here. The destruction of any Kharadron is to be investigated and warning passed among the sky-holds.’

Skaggi returned the scowl. ‘The Code also states that such duty may be set aside if the afflicted Kharadron are of another kin and to do so would bring undue hazard to the discovering ship. Were this a vessel of Barak-Zilfin, then we would be bound by duty. As it stands, we have more latitude.’ He looked back at Brokrin. ‘I must advise that we turn away. I may also mention that having given my advice, I am absolved of any responsibility for whatever may follow.’

Brokrin chewed his beard, letting the retort that was on his tongue go unspoken. At length he offered Skaggi a middle ground. ‘We’ll signal the frigates. They inspected the other wrecks. Now it is our turn. Tell them to hold back while we descend to search this wreck. In the event some disaster does afflict the Iron Dragon, it will leave the rest of the fleet in the clear.’

The decision was one that didn’t appease Skaggi or fully mollify Mortrimm, who hated conceding any point to the logisticator. Neither duardin questioned Brokrin’s choice, however. Ultimately, without an admiral present, the captain’s word was law on his ship.

The floor of the Serpent’s Craw was a jagged network of spindly stone spear points. It was the resemblance to snake’s teeth as much as the writhing contortions of the valley that had caused the Chuitsek to name it as they had. Many of the stone ‘teeth’ had been broken by the ship’s violent crash, their points scattered among their intact neighbours. Ugly clumps of luminescent moss sprouted from the severed tips, seemingly feeding on the minerals coursing through their inner layers. Here and there a lonely vein of cinnabar broke the surface, winding through the maze of black stone.

The Iron Dragon descended to a point a little above the wreck. Battered runes bolted across the ship’s hull named her as the Stormbreaker. From the manner in which her bottom was impacted, it looked as though she’d come almost straight down when she’d crashed. Compromised buoyancy would do that, the great endrin failing gradually so that a ship didn’t simply plough straight into the earth. After it crashed, the ironclad had slumped over slightly to one side, her decks pitching at a pronounced list. From what those aboard the Iron Dragon could see, there was no sign of life. Not even the bodies of any dead.

Hawsers were cast over the sides and Brokrin led a landing party down to the crumpled deck of the downed ironclad. He chose Gotramm and his arkanauts for the duty, leaving Drumark’s thunderers behind to support them with their firearms from the vantage of the hovering sky-vessel. It came as a surprise to him when Djangas extracted himself from the heavy boots Horgarr had given him and scrambled down the ropes to join them. Shortly after the hunter made his descent, Skaggi followed. Any thought that the logisticator was concerned about acting as translator for the nomad was quickly smothered. He took a quick look at the wreck to orient himself, then slunk away towards the captain’s cabin and the manifest that would be found there. The Kharadon Code was quite specific about returning such manifests to the sky-hold they belonged to. It was less specific about reading what was written in them and making use of that information. More than once, Brokrin had heard it said of Skaggi that he could sniff out a gold filling in a megalofin’s jaw.

Tilted at a sharp angle by the situation of the ship’s landing, the deck was ungainly footing for the duardin. Their magnetic boots let them shuffle along, but it made for slow progress. Djangas, by contrast, was able to jump from fastening to fastening, scurrying about like a spider. The hunter would sometimes pause to point at some feature or another, remarking on those pieces of equipment that the nomads had salvaged. Brokrin understood enough barterspeak to recognise the words for ‘took’ and ‘find’, words that frequently appeared in the human’s outbursts. Any deeper meaning or nuance would need Skaggi to decipher.

‘I would give my sideburns to know what he’s jabbering about,’ Gotramm grumbled as Djangas gestured at the open hatch leading down into one of the holds. The recess was dark, the interior indistinct. He noticed that Djangas had drawn a long bronze dagger and was watching the hold with more than mere suspicion that it housed some kind of danger.

‘I am of the same mind,’ Brokrin said.

‘Want me to fetch Skaggi back here?’ Gotramm asked. He waved his hand at the wreck. ‘He should be amiable given there’s nothing to show the manlings brought this ship down and the trade deal won’t be in jeopardy now.’

Brokrin continued to watch Djangas. ‘Something is bothering the human,’ he stated. ‘But there is something bothering me even more.’ He gave Gotramm a hard stare. ‘Where is the crew? If they all died, we should see their bodies scattered about. If they survived, would they neglect to post a watch over their ship?’

‘Then what do you think happened to them?’ Gotramm asked.

Before Brokrin could answer him, a frightened cry rose from below decks. Gotramm turned in the direction of the captain’s cabin where Skaggi had gone. The cry was repeated a second time, accompanied now by a sharp crash of metal.

Pistol in hand, Gotramm dived towards the short flight of steps leading down into the cabin. Brokrin followed close behind the young privateer, the rest of the arkanauts coming after the officers. Pushing himself down the steps, Gotramm turned towards the cabin doorway just as another distressed cry rang out. His charge at the half-closed door was abetted by the angle at which the ironclad lay, gravity adding to his momentum as he ploughed towards the sounds. With a grinding snarl his armoured body slammed into the door, whipping it back and propelling Gotramm into the room.

The cabin was a shambles, its furnishings thrown against the far wall in a disordered heap. Among the debris of desk and bed, wardrobe and sky-chest, Gotramm could see the gleam of fleshless bones. A pallid shape crouched upon the wardrobe, striving to wrench open its iron-studded face. At the sound of Gotramm’s surge into the cabin, the thing raised its head, exposing a monstrous face with crimson eyes and a mouth distorted by a profusion of sharp fangs.

The creature snarled at Gotramm, then was flung backwards as the privateer’s pistol sent a bullet slamming into its chest. Before he could shoot again, the beast sprang at him. Hurtling over a mass of debris it flew at the privateer and knocked him against the wall. A vicious claw raked down at him, grinding against his chestplate. The over-wide mouth snapped at his face, the carrion-stink of its breath making him gag.

‘Throw it off!’ Brokrin shouted from the doorway. The captain had his volley pistol aimed at the creature but was worried about hitting friend as well as foe.

Gotramm tried to bring his legs up and under the monster, though it wasn’t so easy with the magnetised boots trying to draw his feet back to the floor, but he managed it at last. With a tremendous heave he broke the creature’s hold, hurling it back towards the heap of furniture. The thing crashed into the desk, one of its long arms cracking painfully against the stout stonewood surface. It yelped in pain, then started to lunge for Gotramm a second time.

Thunder roared through the cabin as Brokrin fired into the hurtling monster. Pale, cadaverous flesh shredded under the withering hail of bullets. Foul blood spurted from its wounds, splashing walls and ceiling as it was thrown back. Again, the thing’s body cracked against the heavy desk, but this time when it sagged to the floor it made no effort to rise again. Its fangs snapped at the carved leg of the desk as life ebbed from its savaged body.

‘I could have taken care of it myself,’ Gotramm grumbled as he pulled himself up from the floor.

‘No doubt,’ Brokrin said, reloading his smoking volley pistol. ‘But that pretty rinn of yours back in port might like you a bit more without half your face chewed off.’

Gotramm scowled at the quip and cautiously approached the dead creature.

It was a loathsome being, all skin and bone, claws and fangs. The head was small in proportion to its lean body, its clawed hands immense when compared to its skinny arms. The stench rising from the creature was that of rotten carrion and open graves. Gotramm kicked out and broke the hold of the thing’s fangs on the desk. Its head lolled back on a broken neck to reveal a leather collar adorned with golden studs locked around its throat.

‘A curious affectation for such a filthy beast,’ Brokrin said as he came up to inspect the creature. Some of the arkanauts kept a wary watch at the doorway, their attention divided between the cabin and the closed doors of the other rooms.

Gotramm nodded. With his toe he flipped the thing onto its back. Sprawled out, the length of its limbs and the marked emaciation of its body were even more pronounced. Yet there was a fearful similarity about its overall shape.

‘This… may have been a manling at one time,’ Brokrin said. ‘The collar could be a memento from when it wasn’t quite so… abased.’ He reached down and took a closer look at the collar. Stitched into the leather, just barely visible in the dim light filtering through the cabin’s porthole, were a few characters from some human script, an old one with which he had passing familiarity. The letters seemed to spell the word ‘King’.

The doors of the cabinet creaked suddenly. In tandem, Brokrin and Gotramm swung around from the dead monster and brought their pistols to bear against the heavy wardrobe. A frightened voice called out to them to hold their fire.

‘It’s me! It’s me!’ Skaggi called as he extricated himself from within the wardrobe. The logisticator took a quick look around the cabin, smiling when he saw the dead monster lying on the floor. ‘You killed it!’ he cheered, walking over to spit on the carcass. ‘That’ll teach you to try and make a snack of duardin!’

Gotramm rolled his eyes at Skaggi’s after-the-fact bravado. He gripped the logisticator’s shoulder and turned him around. ‘What happened here?’ he demanded.

Skaggi didn’t fail to notice the irritation in the privateer’s voice. It took him only a moment to compose himself, to sweep the splinters of wood from his beard and pat down the cloth that’d been torn by the monster’s claws. When he spoke he made a point of addressing his words to Brokrin rather than Gotramm. ‘I was checking about the cabin, trying to find the manifest, when that… that slinking horror rushed me from behind. It swatted at me with an old bone. It was all I could do to stumble into the wardrobe and shut myself in.’ He looked from Brokrin to Gotramm, frowning when he saw the incredulity in their eyes. Angrily he pulled off his cap and offered to let them see the back of his skull where the thing had hit him.

The logisticator was even angrier when he held up a mangled mash of copper leaves. ‘This is what is left of the manifest,’ he cursed. ‘That thing must have gnawed away its cover and bindings, then tried to chew up the pages! Not enough here for a rune-sage to make sense from.’

During Skaggi’s outburst, Gotramm turned and took a closer look at the piled debris. Hesitantly he removed one of the bones scattered among the furniture. His face wrinkled with disgust. ‘This looks like a duardin bone,’ he said. ‘And something’s been chewing on it.’

Brokrin glared down at the dead monster. It might not have brought down the ironclad, but it had certainly done its part to bring grudge-debt on its head. ‘Skaggi, remove that thing’s collar. If we can’t bring Barak-Urbaz proof of what brought down their ships, at least we can tell them what has been eating their dead.’

Skaggi drew a long knife from his belt. Holding his arm out as far as he could reach, he began to saw away at the collar. The logisticator tried to find a positive aspect to his repugnant work. ‘This would explain the missing crew,’ he said. ‘It means the Chuitsek were dealing fair with us. We can take Djangas back to Kero and everything will be just as it was before.’ He chose to overlook the evidence that the tribe had been trading with other Kharadron.

Mention of the nomad caused Gotramm to look back at the doorway. ‘Where is the manling?’ he asked the arkanauts gathered in the hall. He shook his head. ‘Who’s watching him?’ None of the duardin could answer. They hadn’t thought about the hunter when rushing down to investigate Skaggi’s cries.

‘Find him,’ Brokrin ordered, but even as he spoke, a shout of warning sounded from above their heads.

‘Djangas,’ Skaggi supplied needlessly. ‘He’s screaming about “jackal-folk”,’ he added, translating the man’s words.

Gotramm took one glance at the dead monster and the gnawed bone in his hand. ‘Up on deck! Now!’ He urged his arkanauts ahead of him, back up the stairs. Behind him, he could hear Skaggi remarking on the collar’s inscription.

‘King,’ the logisticator quipped. ‘That’s what these manlings sometimes name their dogs.’

Chapter IV

Emerging from the interior of the Stormbreaker, Brokrin and his crew encountered a sinister scene. Djangas was perched atop the smashed and ruptured endrin, clinging to its torn casing with one hand while using his other to slash his knife at the monstrous throng that swarmed around him. They were kindred of the creature that had ambushed Skaggi below, scurrying about the broken ship like so many spiders. Inarticulate howls and hungry moans rose from the ghouls as they circled around the trapped nomad. While the duardin watched, more of the scavengers came leaping up from an open hatch lying amidships, joining the rest of the gruesome pack.

‘By volley! Fire!’ Drumark bellowed from the hovering Iron Dragon. At his command his thunderers sent a fusillade into the ravening ghouls emerging from the hold, bullets slamming into the scrawny brutes and pitching them back into the darkness.

The ghouls surrounding Djangas spun around as the duardin came surging onto the deck. Several of them charged towards the arkanauts, howling with savage fury. The rattle of pistols rose from their intended prey as Gotramm’s privateers sent shot after shot into the rabid mob. The foremost of the ghouls dropped, their starved frames shattered by the aetheric guns. Those that came after, however, displayed a frenzied cunning. Springing past their fallen kin, they used the side of the deckhouse and the bulky engines that had powered the endrin as fulcrums from which to launch themselves at the duardin.

‘Axes and irons!’ Brokrin shouted an old Barak-Zilfin battlecry. His volley pistol snarled, catching a monstrous scavenger as it sprang at him from the corner of the deckhouse. His shot broke one of its arms, but the ravenous brute pressed its assault, snatching at him with its remaining claw and trying to bite him with its gnashing fangs. A sweep of his axe tore open the beast’s side, splitting it from hip to rib. The ghoul coughed blood as it fell away from him, crashing to the deck in a twisted mass.

Immediately Brokrin was beset by a second ghoul, this one rushing at him from the far edge of the smashed endrin. The beast’s leap was such that it came hurtling towards him like a falling meteor. Before it could land and bear him down under its weight, Brokrin dropped into a crouch and brought his pistol up again, expelling the load in one of the unfired cylinders. The blast caught the ghoul just as it dropped towards him, hitting it full in the chest, smacking its body against the crumpled endrin before it slipped off to the valley floor.

More of the feral scavengers came rushing at Brokrin. Another shot from the volley pistol settled for a third, his axe opened the skull of a fourth, but still there seemed no end to the monsters. All around him Gotramm and the arkanauts were locked in a deadly melee with their own foes, unable to aid the captain. Though gunfire still sounded from above, it had taken on a more sporadic and cautious tone. The swirling fray made it too easy to confuse the position of friend and foe for Drumark to risk a more ambitious attack. The best his support could do was to suppress the ghouls still emerging from the hold.

‘By the Guild’s purse-strings, you’ll not snack on my bones!’ Brokrin cursed as the ghouls fell upon him. He shattered the jaw of one scavenger with the studded heft of his axe, then dealt his staggering foe a vicious kick to the ribs as it stumbled away from him. Another of the monsters lunged for his extended arm, catching it in a vice-like grip while its fangs snapped against the iron vambrace that guarded his forearm. ‘I said you’ll not be dining on my bones,’ he snarled and smashed the bludgeoning weight of his pistol’s barrels against the scavenger’s head. Blood streamed from its gashed skin. The sharply pointed ear at the side of its skull was reduced to a pulpy mash, yet still the ghoul maintained its desperate assault. Brokrin could see another of the scavengers moving around from behind the one attacking him to come at him from the flank. Unless he could quickly free himself of the first ghoul, there was nothing he could do to counter the second.

Before the ghoul could set upon Brokrin, it was itself attacked. Shouting a tribal war whoop, Djangas drove his knife deep into the creature’s chest, wrenching the blade with a vicious twist to enlarge the wound before ripping his weapon free. The ghoul lashed back at him with its claws, but the hunter was already shifting position, dodging around the back of the scavenger to rake the edge of his knife across its throat. A final glottal hiss, and the monster slumped to the deck.

The nomad’s aid gave Brokrin the time he needed. The bludgeoning impacts of the pistol against its head finally pounded an awareness of pain into the ghoul’s brain. It stopped trying to bite through his armour and instead attempted to twist away from the duardin’s reach. The moment its grip on his arm relaxed he drove the butt of his axe into its belly. Retching, the ghoul reeled away, whimpering like a whipped cur. There was no need for Brokrin to pursue the monster. As it drew away from him, the scavenger exposed itself to new danger. A shot rang out from the hovering Iron Dragon and the monster collapsed with half its head reduced to mush.

Few of the scavengers remained now. Between the fire from above and the efforts of Gotramm’s arkanauts, the ravenous throng had been decimated. The beasts had stopped trying to climb out of the hold, unable to withstand the punishment visited on them by Drumark’s thunderers. Yet even as the tide started to ebb, a new wrinkle was thrown into the conflict.

A series of savage bumps and bangs came from below deck. A section of iron buckled upwards, smashed out of position by the tremendous force assaulting it from beneath. Another vicious impact and the deck-plate was wrenched from its fastenings as a gaping hole appeared.

‘What new devilry is this?’ Gotramm cursed. ‘Up to the aftcastle,’ he warned his arkanauts back while he reloaded his pistol.

‘Keep alert,’ Brokrin added. ‘This may be a trick to distract us.’

Before the duardin could withdraw to higher ground the exposed cavity disgorged a fresh pack of ghouls into the fray. Brokrin made to repel the monsters, but even as he did he found himself stumbling back. The deck was shaking again. A second and still third deck-plate crumpled upwards, expanding the narrow cavity into a gaping pit.

Out of that pit crawled a nightmarish shape.

‘Beard of my Ancestors,’ Gotramm gasped as he gazed in horror at the crawling thing. His shock was echoed by the other arkanauts as they hurriedly backed away from the grotesque abomination.

Brokrin shared their sense of revulsion. The ghouls had struck him as loathsome because of their debased semblance to men. In the hulking monster that now crawled into view, there wasn’t more than an echo of such a resemblance. It was a beast in truth, a monstrous frame covered in mangy black fur except at the hands, feet and face where the skin was dark and leathery. The feet were crooked with clawed toes. The face was scrunched forwards in a wide muzzle, sharp fangs hanging over its taut lips, squashed nose with flaring nostrils, beady eyes set far back in deep sockets. The hands were mere nubs at the end of long, leathern wings. Incongruous with its animalistic shape, the thing had draped about its chest a fine silken shirt with an elaborately frilled neck, jewels gleamed in its long bat-like ears, and about its waist there was a velveteen cummerbund.

The huge bat-beast used its finger-claws to pull itself up from the depths of the wreck. It squinted angrily at the sky, resenting such sunlight as managed to filter its way down into the Serpent’s Craw. The creature’s nose wrinkled as it drew in the scent of battle. For an instant it stared at Gotramm and the other privateers as they met the new surge of ghouls, then it suddenly spun around and fixed its scarlet gaze upon Brokrin.

The bestial face pulled back in the horrible semblance of a smile. It brought its clawed wing forwards in a motion that to Brokrin seemed like nothing so much as a duellist challenging an opponent.

The inhuman horror rushed at Brokrin. Exhibiting a speed that belied its immense size, the monster crashed into him, hurling him back. He careened against the side of the deckhouse, the wind knocked out of him as breath fled from his lungs. One of the beast’s finger-claws curled under the edge of his helm, pushing it to one side. He could feel its cold, rancid exhalations spilling over his face as the fiend leaned towards him. A long lupine tongue licked across gleaming fangs as hunger swelled in the creature’s beady eyes.

‘Help the captain!’ Drumark’s voice shouted from the ironclad hovering above the wreck. Shots clattered about the deck, trying to provoke the bat-beast and frighten it back into the hold. The combatants were too close for more direct fire.

‘Help Cap’n Brokrin,’ Gotramm echoed the sergeant’s cry. He redoubled his efforts to break clear of the ghouls around him, but the scavengers were too many to be easily overcome.

Brokrin was alone against his enemy.

Duardin iron bit into the monster’s flesh, drawing from it a pained howl. Thrown back by his foe, Brokrin had kept hold of his axe. Now he pressed it into the beast’s belly, raking the blade from side to side in a slashing motion. The cuts were shallow but hurtful enough to disrupt the bat-beast’s attack. For an instant its prodigious strength faltered, giving Brokrin the opening he needed.

The captain’s heavy boot came clamping down on the monster’s foot with a satisfyingly bone-crunching impact. The beast pivoted away from this newest injury to itself and in so doing left itself open to a more grievous assault. Without the monster pressing directly against him, Brokrin was able to do more than simply rake the blade of his axe against its body. He brought his arm back and around, swinging the weapon in a violent arc. The axe chopped into the creature’s body, hewing through flesh and bone, cleaving ribs as it ripped its way downwards.

The pained howl of a moment before lifted into a shrill wail. The claw hooked under Brokrin’s helmet jerked back, ripping free the armour and pitching him forwards. Brokrin crashed face-first on the deck, but quickly rolled onto his back. The bat-beast was already pouncing after him, jaws agape and murder blazing in its eyes. Brokrin’s axe met the monster’s rush, biting into its shoulder as it sought to smash him against the deck.

‘Sky-folk see! Chuitsek brave!’

Ignored by the ghouls during their fight with the duardin, Djangas had been able to climb down from his refuge. He was still unencumbered by the scavengers, free to fight or run. He chose to fight, to prove his courage to the Kharadron.

A tribal war whoop accompanied Djangas as the hunter rallied to Brokrin’s aid. While the captain dug his axe deeper into the beast’s shoulder, the nomad leapt upon its furred back and stabbed his knife into its mangy hide. A stagnant ooze bubbled from the wounds, a crypt-broth of decay and dissolution. The bat-beast shrieked again, lashing out in a spasm that was equal parts pain and rage. Djangas went sprawling as the monster bucked him from its back. Brokrin was sent sliding across the deck by a flick of the creature’s claw.

Spinning towards the gaping hole the bat-beast had created, Brokrin was unable to arrest his momentum. His hand slipped as he made a grab at the crumpled deck-plate leaning over the hole. The next instant he was falling into the darkness of the hold, and only a desperate swing of his axe staved off his plight. Hooking the edge of the cavity with his blade, Brokrin dangled over the side, staring down into a charnel house.

By such light as dripped through the gaps in the deck above, Brokrin could see that the Stormbreaker’s hold was as much a shambles as the captain’s cabin had been. Whether dislodged by the crash or ransacked by the scavengers, everything that wasn’t nailed down had been flung around. Kegs and barrels lay smashed, boxes and crates splintered. Sacks of provisions were torn and tossed about, a mire of beer and grog formed a pool at one side of the hold. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom his attention was fixated upon the bones strewn about the debris, bones pitted and scarred by the attention of gnawing fangs, bones cracked by claws digging for marrow. Here was the tomb of the ironclad’s crew.

A feral growl was Brokrin’s only warning. A few ghouls had lingered below. Sighting the duardin captain hanging helpless above their heads, the monsters scrambled out of the darkness and leapt at him. His flailing feet kicked out, one boot smashing down into the face of a ghoul as it jumped at him. The impact of boot against flesh sent a jolt through Brokrin’s body, just enough to shift his grip on the axe. The blade slid ever so slightly, losing its precarious hold on the edge. Brokrin cried out as he dropped, plunging down into the morbid gloom.

The duardin slammed into the bottom of the hold, sending a wave of spilled grog spurting into the air. Brokrin found the impact of his fall lessened by the scavenger he’d kicked. The ghoul’s body was beneath him as he dropped, his armoured weight breaking its spine. Another of the lurking scavengers sprang at him, but a backhanded sweep of his axe sent it scurrying away, claws clutching at what was left of its face.

Brokrin started to rise, when the faint light filtering down into the hold was blotted out. He looked up to see the bat-beast glaring down from the deck above. It brought one of its wings flashing forwards, hurling a large shape directly at him. He was just able to roll aside as the savaged body of Djangas slammed into the hold. The hunter had surely died before the beast threw him in, for no one could have survived the enormous bite that had removed half the manling’s neck.

Brokrin glared up at the murdering beast, his thumb tapping against the heft of his axe. ‘What are you waiting for, you corpse-licking cur? Come and try for some dessert. Just come and try!’

The furred monster launched itself from the edge of the hole, its wings spreading as it dived for Brokrin. The captain whipped his axe through the mire of alcohol he was standing in, sending a stinging spray full into the eyes of the gliding horror. The creature veered away, crashing against what remained of the hold’s ceiling. The jarring crack of its head against the roof brought the beast spinning downwards again.

Brokrin’s axe was ready. Flashing out in a deadly arc, the blade sheared through the bat-like wing, cleaving through the arm bone and leaving the maimed limb dangling from the leathery membrane. The monster’s flight became a twisting roll. It smashed into the tilted floor of the hold, crushing several barrels beneath its hurtling mass.

The duardin captain stormed after the maimed creature, vengeance hammering inside his heart. Vengeance not only for the defiled crew of the Stormbreaker, but also for the manling hunter who had been slaughtered by the fiend. Whatever grudge-debt the monster owed Barak-Urbaz, Brokrin had a debt of his own to settle with the brute.

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 and 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 discovered 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.

The bat-beast lived.

It lurched towards Gotramm, reaching out for him with one of its clawed wings. Backing away from it, the shocked arkanaut saw the cause of the creature’s resuscitation. Its fur was blotched with the gore that had splattered across it from the torn bodies of the ghouls he had pushed towards it. Now, before his eyes, he saw those dark stains shrinking, sucked down into the monster’s grotesque body. A vampiric fiend, the creature had been revived by the blood of its own minions. Now it sought a much fresher supply to hasten its recovery, to knit the bones of the shattered leg it dragged across the floor and the mangled wing that flopped against its side.

Gotramm looked at the pistol in his hand and thought of how much damage Brokrin had visited against this beast to put it down the first time. The gun felt suddenly puny, inconsequential beside the menace he faced. Briefly he thought of shouting an alarm to his comrades, but doing so might shift the vampire’s attention to them, send it raging onto the deck before they could mount a defence. He looked past the monster, to where the rope dangled down into the hold. If he could just get past the creature and reach that rope…

Gotramm remembered what Brokrin had said about the beast’s aversion to light and sought to capitalise on that weakness. Tucking the coffer under his arm, he whipped the tinderlamp off his belt and flung it at the bat-beast. His intention had been to simply blind it, but as the lamp came hurtling towards it the monster swatted it aside with a flick of its claw. The lamp cracked against the wall, sending a cascade of sparks across the pools of spilled beer and grog. Blue flame crackled across the hold as the alcohol took light.

The bat-beast drew back in agony, shrieking at the leaping flames. Gotramm seized upon the distraction, lunging past it and rushing for the rope. He gained it and began pulling himself up when the monster came charging after him. He could feel its sickly breath against his face as he swung around and pressed the barrel of his pistol against its chest.

Even the bark of the pistol was drowned out by the tortured howl that rose from the vampiric brute. The bullet had punched through its decayed flesh with minimal effect. It was the flash from the muzzle that wrought ruin upon it. Before being revived by the blood of ghouls, the beast’s carcass had been lying in the mire of alcohol. Now, its beer-soaked fur was ignited by the flame from Gotramm’s pistol. In a matter of heartbeats, the monster was transformed into a screaming firebrand, lashing about in blind agony until it tripped into the blazing puddles at its feet.

Gotramm didn’t wait to see more. Hand over hand he scrambled up the rope. At the mouth of the hole he was met by Brokrin and Thurik, confusion writ large across their faces. The sounds of battle and the roar of flames had brought them rushing back. Proudly, Gotramm handed up the coffer to Brokrin and then let Thurik help him onto the deck.

‘There was a coffer,’ Gotramm smiled. ‘Skaggi owes that old bird an apology.’

Brokrin glanced at the coffer but his attention quickly went back to the conflagration down in the hold. ‘What happened down there?’ he demanded.

Gotramm had been awed by Brokrin’s description of his battle with the bat-beast. Now the arkanaut felt it was his turn to be the subject of praise. ‘Your sparring partner from earlier came back for a second round,’ he told Brokrin. A grim smile stretched across his face. ‘It didn’t do any better with me than it did with you.’

Brokrin shook his head. ‘Tell me about it when we’re away. A wrecked ironclad with a fire in her belly isn’t the place for tall tales. A poor tomb for duardin, but the only one their bones can claim now. I only hope whatever gods the Chuitsek honour, they find Djangas in the rising smoke.’

The reminder of the lost dead took the wind from Gotramm’s sails. His smile collapsed into a pained grimace. He could take most any kind of wound in battle, but an injury to his pride was unbearable. Silently, he followed Brokrin and Thurik to the ladder the Iron Dragon had lowered for them. Though far less frantic, the climb back to their ship was harder for him than his escape from the burning hold.

As they set foot again on the Iron Dragon’s deck, excitement stirred among the crew. Drumark waved down at the wreck below. Gotramm turned in time to see a hulking shape pull itself up from the hold. It was impossible to make out any features, for the creature was fully enveloped in flame, but Gotramm knew it had to be the monster he’d shot. Like a living torch, the thing stumbled about for a few moments, wailing in torment. Then it stood straight and an ear-piercing shriek stabbed through the air, forcing many of the duardin to cover their ears. The next instant, the beast collapsed, whatever fearful vitality lingered in it at last extinguished.

That final shriek seemed to echo back to the Iron Dragon from afar, and then Gotramm perceived that it wasn’t quite the same, like a tune played upon a different instrument. That instrument, he realised, was a horn. Someone was answering the monster’s dying shriek.

‘To the south!’ Mortrimm called out. ‘By Grungni, there must be hundreds of ’em!’ The navigator stood near the prow, his spyglass turned in the direction from which the horn had sounded. Soon every scope and glass on the ship was turned in that direction, the crew muttering their own epithets as they saw the sight Mortrimm had discovered.

Gotramm borrowed a glass from Horgarr and saw a multitude of the scrawny, hunchbacked scavengers they had fought on the wreck loping out of caves and grottos, scurrying through the rocks. Other ghoulish brutes followed them, monsters cast from a similar mould as the cannibals but far larger and more muscled. A few of the bat-like beasts could be seen leaping from rock to rock or using their leathery wings for brief glides between outcroppings. When the horn sounded again, Gotramm noticed a pallid scavenger arrayed in the tatters of a huntsman’s vestments. Near him, an obscenely twisted and vicious-looking fiend overlooked the roused cannibal horde, its immense claws preening the decayed finery that hung about its grisly frame.

Skaggi set down the glass he was peering through. The logisticator shuddered. ‘Like the lord of the land conducting a hunting party.’ He shivered again, staring at the collar in his belt. The next second saw him toss the thing to the deck. He had a good idea what this particular lord used for hounds.

‘There’s no profit to be had fighting these beasts,’ Brokrin called out to his crew. ‘Only the added expense of expended ordnance and lost time. If need be, after the survivor is able to talk to us, we can come back and bomb them in their holes to settle such grudge-debt as they owe.’

The captain’s decision brought visible relief to Skaggi, his sharp face looking almost happy for once. Gotramm was of a similar mind. He was not one to shy away from a fight, but neither did he really want to repeat the fracas from the wreck on a grander scale.

Gotramm’s last view of the flesh-eaters was a mass of indistinct shapes crawling all over the wreck and howling up at the Iron Dragon as it ascended to join the frigates above the Serpent’s Craw.

Chapter V

Above the ancient hills of Shadowfar, a great pinnacle of stone thrust itself skywards. No natural formation of upheaval or erosion, the spire had been conjured by sorceries primordial and eldritch. Shaped from the blackest of magic, the jagged peak reared thousands of feet into the air, its craggy slopes twisted into a coruscating spiral. A remnant of the long age of darkness when the claws of Chaos held dominion over the realm of Chamon, the mountain had been conjured up from the earth as a citadel of evil. The Sapphire Palace it was called by those steeped in the arcane arts, the profane witchcraft that alone could grant mortal eyes the power to perceive its vastness or tarry within its loathsome halls.

Near the very summit of the bastion, burrowed deep within its black interior, was the cavernous sanctum that had played host to the most infamous warlocks over the centuries. In such fashion did the diabolic lair continue to serve.

Suspended in the nine corners of the vast cavern, great braziers cast an eerie glow across the sanctum, reflecting from the arcane sigils etched into the floor. At the very centre of nine concentric rings, surrounded by nine black candles shaped from corpse-wax, stood a misshapen figure swathed in a dark robe.

Drawing back the sleeve of his robe, Khoram pressed the edge of the knife against his mutant arm. While his homunculus jabbered fearfully into his ear, the sorcerer began to saw into his skin. Layer by layer the oily flesh parted, oozing a translucent substance that was more daemonic ichor than mortal blood. He ground his teeth, his eyes shutting tight against the pain that shivered through his nerves.

‘Pain?’ Khoram almost snarled the word to his homunculus. ‘What is the pain of flesh beside the virulent compulsion that howls through my mind? My every thought twists towards a single obsession.’

The tretchlet chirruped in warning, its beak nuzzling against the sorcerer’s neck. ‘Nay,’ Khoram told it, ‘there is no cause to fear. The very idea of defying my purpose is impossible. There are things it is too dangerous to understand. It is enough to simply obey.’

The wound in his arm throbbed. Electric tremors sizzled through his body. Khoram opened his eyes and stared at the wound as he felt another sensation running beneath the sizzle. He focused his awareness, his very being, upon that violent undulation, encouraging it with his own will. Slowly something pushed its way up through the cords of sinew and nerve, the streams of blood vessels and the solidity of flesh and fat. Inch by inch it thrust itself free from the meat of the sorcerer’s arm until at last Khoram gazed directly upon it.

The gore of its violent passage dripped away, repelled by the object that had emerged onto the surface of Khoram’s arm. The light cast by the braziers reflected off the thing’s shiny coating, throwing across the stone ceiling a rainbow band of colour and shadow. An eerie tinkling sound accompanied each band of light as it was cast off by the mirror-sheen.

Khoram had heard the sound before, but never could he fully prepare himself for it. The noise was akin to that of breaking glass, for what was embedded in his arm was similar to glass, a sliver of mirror endowed with enchantments that made the Orb of Zobras seem a child’s toy. So great a treasure was it that it wasn’t enough for the sorcerer to keep it on his person, but rather in his person. It was a fragment of reality itself, a window between realms that allowed him direct communion with his daemonic patron. As long as he possessed the shard, there was no rival who could match his mastery of the black arts.

Gleaming at Khoram, the mirror seemed to glow with a dull pulsation. Not exactly a manifestation of light, but rather of power, the fell energies set loose by the connection between Chamon and the Realm of Chaos itself. Khoram dared not turn his gaze from the mirror, but he knew from prior experience the kinds of changes those energies were working upon the room around him. Solid stone becoming porous vapour, dull granite exploding into a vibrant panoply of coloured fur, crawling insects magnified into lumbering abominations only to be reduced once more into a coating of slime on the floor. There were wards and sigils to contain these energies, confining them to the chamber in which Khoram brought them. It wouldn’t do to have them run rampant throughout the Sapphire Palace and reduce the stronghold of Tamuzz to a pillar of soot or a deranged jungle of lotus-blossoms.

As the glow streamed upwards into his face, Khoram felt the presence of his patron. The great daemon communicated not in words, not even in thoughts. The connection between mortal acolyte and daemonic master was more primal than that, more visceral and profound than a simple exchange of ideas. The daemon’s intentions emblazoned themselves upon Khoram’s memories, reshaping his awareness in the process. The sorcerer didn’t learn what was needed of him, but rather felt he’d always known that purpose. Sometimes he found that he’d already acted to carry out these new-old commands. It made him wonder if his patron, through the medium of the sorcerer’s memories, wasn’t reaching back through the veil of time to set its plans into motion even before they were revealed to its servant.

Khoram felt angry as the daemon-glow shone upon him. Tamuzz, the presence within the Royal Glass impressed the name upon him. The warlord is stubborn. Favoured of the Changer yet stubborn in his methods. He refuses a more subtle means from fear of his prestige.

‘He is bitter, master,’ Khoram spoke, gazing into the Royal Glass. ‘Many of his followers were lost attacking the Kharadron ships.’

Pawns must be sacrificed to accomplish any great goal. Tamuzz seeks compensation. He is tempted by the notion of capturing the second fleet of sky-vessels.

Khoram felt something like panic gnaw at him. Tamuzz’s actions would threaten the plans he had made so carefully by consulting the Orb of Zobras. The Royal Glass impressed on him what would be his fate if those plans were undone.

‘I cannot strike against Tamuzz,’ Khoram pleaded. ‘He is favoured of Mighty Tzeentch and bears the most sacred of the Changer’s marks.’

A choice of doom. Fear which may become truth or destruction which is assured. The Changer’s ways are many and not all taboos are inviolate.

Khoram shuddered as the concepts stabbed into his brain. There was promise and threat in the concepts expressed. The path between destruction and truth might be thin as a needle and sharp as a razor. ‘I will not allow Tamuzz to interfere,’ Khoram vowed.

Why have you failed to stop him? Already Tamuzz meddles. Look!

Without conscious volition, Khoram turned his eyes to the orb spinning around his head. In the facets of the orb he could see the Kharadron ironclad on which the sole survivor from the Stormbreaker had been given passage. In the image, he could also see the warriors of Tamuzz drawing closer, flitting through the skies on the backs of daemons. Soon the warlord would lead his followers in attack.

Why have you failed to stop Tamuzz?

Khoram looked back to the Royal Glass. ‘Under care of the duardin, the survivor will recover,’ he said. ‘But will they trust his story when he tells it? There is strategy in allowing Tamuzz to harry the sky-vessels. When he speaks of battle, there will be proof of his words. If the duardin believe him about the attack then they will accept his talk about treasure…’

A sullen glow emanated from the Royal Glass, impressing Khoram with its ire. The plan is not enough for Tamuzz. He will not relent. He will rush in to seize what looks to be easy prey. He will ignore your strategy of engagement and withdrawal. He thinks in terms of compulsion rather than manipulation. He would seize the Kharadron ships and force those taken captive to do what was needed of them.

Khoram shared in his patron’s anger. The direct approach Tamuzz favoured was too reckless. The subtle ploy developed by the Master was the better course to take.

‘I cannot strike against Tamuzz,’ the sorcerer said. ‘The Mark he bears is necessary to my magic. His mere presence focuses the Eye of Tzeentch upon the Sapphire Palace, allows me to harness the Changer’s arcane winds.’ Khoram’s face pulled back in a ghastly smile. ‘I will prevent him from spoiling our designs without forsaking the power he provides. He is still needful to our purposes.’

Bring him to heel. You know what is at stake if you fail me.

The glow faded away. Khoram cried out as the Royal Glass squirmed its way back beneath his skin. The torn flesh folded in upon itself, sealing up until not even a scar remained. The process was, if anything, even more tortuous than when the mirror had emerged. The sorcerer was left panting on the floor, sweat dripping down his chest, feathers moulting from his tretchlet.

He knew what was expected of him. How to accomplish it was the question. With an effort, Khoram stood up, and managed to summon the orb to him, the coils of his mutant hand wrapping about it as it left its circuitous orbit. He snarled at his daemonic parasite, rousing the tretchlet from its exhausted stupor.

‘I must prevent Tamuzz from going too far,’ Khoram told the homunculus. ‘He jeopardises the strategy I have set into motion.’ He stared into the orb. ‘Guide me to the vision of prophecy that will show the best way to rebuke Tamuzz. Then I will know how to act.’

As Khoram watched the images flicker across the orb’s facets, he rejected the feeling of urgency that nagged at him. Sorcery wasn’t a thing to be conjured in haste. The duardin would simply have to defend themselves until Khoram was ready to act.

Gotramm stared down sat the recovering duardin who now rested in Horgarr’s cabin. The endrinmaster had surrendered his quarters to the unconscious survivor, reasoning that it was the best place for him. The walls of Horgarr’s room were double-thick to muffle the sounds of the ship and allow him better concentration when meditating on the Iron Dragon’s mechanics and how best to effect repairs or augment their performance. The quiet would also help the wounded duardin recover faster.

Though at the moment, it didn’t seem the survivor was in any better shape than he had been down in the wreck. After making that frantic entreaty to Gotramm about getting the coffer, the duardin had lapsed back into silence. By the time he was brought aboard, he was completely insensible, not even reacting when Drumark clumsily banged the survivor’s knee against the gunwale while extracting him from the harness.

Lodri attended the survivor’s wounds, scrubbing them with a grog-soaked cloth and digging splinters out of the duardin’s flesh with a narrow-necked pair of grippers. The grippers were normally used for fishing debris out of the directional vents on an aether-endrin; doubling as a chirurgeon’s tool was slightly outside its design. Then again, Lodri was a powder monkey who only doubled as a healer. The real bone-setter had jumped ship two voyages back, complaining about the curse and resultant lack of profit. For all that he stank of cordite and was about as friendly as a hungry vulture, Lodri did know enough about the healer’s art to keep the odd cut and break from developing into something more malignant and debilitating.

‘Beer for him, grog for me,’ Lodri said as he set down the grippers and reached for a pair of bottles. Unhooking the clay stoppers and letting them dangle on their wire hooks, he pressed one of them to the survivor’s mouth while quickly chugging the contents of the other. A shiver ran through Lodri as the liquor rushed down his body. His patient’s reaction was less dramatic, merely a ruddiness that shone on his cheeks and forehead after a minute or so.

‘Is he going to recover?’ Gotramm asked. He felt a strange kind of obligation towards the survivor since going down into the hold for his coffer. It was hard for him to describe, much less rationalise. It wasn’t as though the duardin was part of his privateer company or even a member of the Iron Dragon’s crew, yet he still felt a profound responsibility for him. He was important, somehow, in a way Gotramm couldn’t make sense of.

Lodri turned his head and gave Gotramm a stern look. Slowly he pushed the stoppers back into the bottles with his thumbs. ‘I’m doing everything I know,’ he stated, then let a cold smile pull at his beard. ‘Maybe not everything. I could bring one of the gas-carbines in here and shoot him.’ As he said the last, he pressed both stoppers home with a loud ‘pop’.

Gotramm started at the unexpected noise. Lodri chuckled and turned back to the wounded duardin. ‘Take care of your work, I will see to mine.’

Gotramm turned to leave the cabin. As he did, his eyes were drawn to the coffer. Brokrin had ordered it put here so that the survivor would see it when he awakened. The captain hoped that sight of the thing would ease the duardin’s mind. He also wanted to keep it safely away from Skaggi. Ever since the logisticator had learned there was a coffer, he had been pestering Brokrin to open it so they could claim their share of whatever treasure was inside, quoting several clauses in the Code that encouraged compensation for any charity received during a voyage.

The same curiosity vexed Gotramm. He felt his own interest in the box was justified. He had risked life and limb to recover it after all. Why should he not be allowed the first peek inside? Even as he started to reach for it, a loud cough sounded from behind him. The privateer spun around to find Lodri scowling at him.

‘You’ll keep your hands off that,’ Lodri warned. He pointed at the cumbersome lock that bulged from the front of the coffer. ‘There are forty-seven runes engraved into that lock. Press them in the wrong order and who knows what’ll happen? Might stick your finger with a poisoned needle or snap open like metal jaws to bite the whole thing off. Or maybe it’ll just blow up in your face. Whatever happens, the cap’n will expect me to patch you up and I’ve enough to annoy me right now trying to breathe some life back into this foundling.’ He made a gesture to shoo Gotramm out the door. ‘You’ll see what’s inside when he wakes. And if he doesn’t, it’ll be up to the cap’n what’s done with the thing.’

Gotramm nodded. ‘Get him up and about, Lodri. There is something precious in that coffer and I want to know what it is before Skaggi does.’

An indignant look crossed Lodri’s face. ‘If I won’t let you fiddle with it, why would I treat Skaggi differently?’

The arkanaut tossed a last jibe at Lodri while he was leaving the cabin. ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘Skaggi is apt to offer you money.’ Chuckling at his own remark, Gotramm left the healer snarling abuse at his back.

The privateer’s good humour evaporated when the Iron Dragon abruptly jounced. If not for his magnetised boots, the violent motion would have spilled him to the floor. As it was he slammed against the wall, his head bouncing off the panels. While he was rubbing a bruised ear, the ship was buffeted once more. This time he braced himself with his hands and avoided a painful familiarity with the opposite wall. From above he could hear rushing feet clomping across the deck, and raised voices.

At the far end of the corridor, Thurik popped into view. The warrior stopped on the stairs when he saw Gotramm. ‘You are needed on deck,’ Thurik shouted. ‘The ship is under attack.’

Like a swarm of angry bees, the raiders came billowing up from the mountains, emerging from the dense forests of spytepine in a burst of ferocity. Almost before the lookout atop the ironclad’s endrin spotted them, the enemies were already in striking distance. Brokrin bellowed an alert into the speaking horn mounted beside the wheel, his voice magnified across the ship.

‘All hands to battle stations,’ Brokrin ordered. ‘Incoming raiders from the port side!’ He let the horn slip back down into its cradle and shouted up to Mortrimm on the aftcastle. ‘Signal the frigates,’ he told the navigator.

Brokrin saw his old friend limp to the rail and remove a long tube from his belt. Unfolding the device, he soon had a long cylinder fitted with an array of lenses and filters in his gloved hands. Pointing the zephyrscope towards the frigates, Mortrimm spread the alarm with a series of coded flashes.

The raiders drew closer. Strange orbs of blazing light hurtled up at the ironclad, sizzling with arcane fury as they struck the metal plates. Arrows tipped in glowing crystal crackled through the air, exploding into balls of flame as they smashed against the gunwales. Brokrin watched as a billowing stream of flame shot across the prow. The eerie blue fire was thrown at the ship by a mushroom-shaped atrocity riding in a weird chariot of frozen smoke drawn by a pair of giant fluke-shaped beasts.

‘Drumark!’ Brokrin cried into the speaking horn. ‘Bring down that daemon chariot before it cooks the whole ship!’

Brokrin’s alarm sent thunderers rushing to the gunwales. The daemon-drawn chariot had already darted away, but Drumark’s warriors had no paucity of enemies in its absence. Gunfire barked at the closing raiders, returning their eldritch assault in a withering hail. Brokrin saw one bird-faced monster knocked from its disc-like steed by the impact of a bullet, its body flailing wildly as it plummeted earthwards. Another raider, a masked man in silken robes, clung desperately to the surface of his own steed as the crippled thing began to sag and droop in the air. A shrill shriek rang out as the disc lost the ability to sustain itself and both it and its rider went hurtling towards the ground.

In watching the masked man plummet, Brokrin spotted a new threat to his crew. A fluke-shaped daemon soared up and over the edge of the ship, using the vessel itself as cover against the defenders on the decks. It arced over the Iron Dragon like a breaching whale, then came diving down again.

‘Drumark!’ Brokrin bellowed, already aware his warning was too late. Luck favoured the sergeant, however, for it was the thunderer standing beside him who was smashed under the daemon. The doomed duardin uttered a thin cry as the huge mouth on the daemon’s belly closed around him. A sickening crunch of bone silenced his screams.

‘Drumark!’ Brokrin called again, but the sergeant was too furious to listen. Instead of pulling back from the daemon, Drumark pressed the barrel of his decksweeper against its leathery hide. As he pulled the trigger, the front of the monster was ripped to shreds, splattering the surroundings with shreds of flesh and splashes of stinking fluid. The daemon made a feeble effort to rise, even with most of its forequarters blown off. Drumark caught at the mangled thing, dragging it back to the deck and driving the stock of his gun into it. The sergeant continued to pummel the beast until its stubborn resilience gave out and it was still.

‘Cap’n!’ Horgarr called from the base of the endrin. ‘More coming at us from starboard!’

Brokrin saw three men in grotesquely carved masks jockey their daemonic discs across the middle of the ship, using their steeds as platforms from which to cast blades of gleaming energy and whips of crackling lightning at the duardin. Their brief rampage was brought short when Gotramm came running up on deck. A shot from his pistol kicked one cultist off the back of his steed and sent him crashing into a second, spilling both men to the deck. The enemy Gotramm had shot lay unmoving, but the other one staggered to his feet. No sooner did he unfasten the bronze mace from his belt than he was struck from the side by a skypike, spitted on the end of it like a fish. With a mighty heave, the arkanaut who’d impaled the cultist lifted him into the air and shook him off the pike’s tip, throwing him over the ironclad’s side.

‘Attack my ship, will you?’ Brokrin growled as the third cultist tried to get away. Leaning out from the wheelhouse, he aimed his volley pistol at the man as he swept past. Expertly gauging the enemy’s trajectory, the captain sent a bullet to lodge in the Chaos worshipper’s back. The cultist howled in pain, then pitched over and fell from his flying mount.

A crackle of energy scorched the windguard that surrounded the wheelhouse. The smell of bubbling iron and charred wood filled Brokrin’s nose as he turned about and looked for his attacker. Off and away to his left he saw an armoured warrior standing on the back of a fleshy flying disc, a veil of smoke rising about his head. From that dark cloud a cluster of eyes glared at him. The warrior looked down upon Brokrin and brought his strange mount diving for the captain.

Brokrin aimed his volley pistol up at the diving enemy, firing two barrels. Both shots seemed to evaporate before they could strike the foe’s baroque armour. The Chaos warrior flew nearer, his sword at the ready. Before he could complete the dive, he suddenly darted aside. A huge spear went flying past the warlord, heavy chain uncoiling behind it. It shot upwards, harpooning the weird daemon chariot as it came around for another assault. The skyhook ploughed through the flame-spewing rider, provoking an explosion of unnatural blue light that steadily consumed the chariot itself and the creatures pulling it. Only the skyhook was spared from immolation, dropping away as its anchorage of daemon flesh dissipated. Arrik and his team began hurriedly winding the missile back into Ghazul’s Bane.

Roaring in outrage, the armoured warlord brought his steed swinging around once more, darting through the melee being fought by the arkanauts and a pack of bird-faced beastkin. Again he flew towards Brokrin, defying the bullets that glanced from his armour and the arcane shield that guarded him.

There was a pulsating light in the warlord’s hand, some ensorcelled object clenched in his fist. As he charged towards Brokrin, he hurled the glowing object at the wheelhouse. The missile sailed over the lip of the windguard and came falling towards the captain. In doing so, its pink light became blindingly bright, expanding in size until it filled the wheelhouse entirely. When it reached its pinnacle of size, the light collapsed into a solid mass. A mass that descended upon Brokrin in a riot of tentacles and fangs.

‘Blood of the ancestors,’ Brokrin swore as he emptied his pistol into the monstrous pink abomination. The shots ripped chunks of flesh from its lumpy frame and shattered the clawed limbs it brought scratching at his face. The thing’s fanged mouth opened in a pained howl as the volley pistol shredded it. The shots knocked it back. It crashed against the inner wall and slid to the floor in a welter of shimmering liquid.

‘Now where’s that craven warlock?’ Brokrin swung around to look for the man who’d sent the daemon against him and noticed a blue glow shining behind him. The carcass of the pink monster was evaporating, but as it faded away a pair of blue lights shone out from its dissolution. Blue lights that, like the pink radiance, expanded to their utmost until suddenly collapsing into a solid mass. Soon the lights were two misshapen horrors like the one that had spawned them. It was little consolation to Brokrin that they were smaller than the parent horror. His pistol was empty.

‘Yes,’ he growled. ‘This is fair.’ The daemons giggled to one another as they leapt at Brokrin. He just had time to draw the axe from his belt and slash out at the things. His first blow caught one of them in mid-air and dashed it to the deck. He stamped his boot down on it to keep it in place while he jerked the axe free to meet the rush of its companion.

While he staved off the remaining blue daemon, Brokrin felt the mass under his boot dissolving. This time it was a crimson glow that caught his notice, causing him to look down at the squirming mess under his boot. What was left of the blue daemon was quickly dissipating. From its evaporating remains, a pair of tiny daemons coalesced out of the crimson light. Gibbering maliciously, the fist-sized imps sprang at Brokrin, scrabbling at his armour and trying to pry his fingers away from the axe.

Brokrin struggled to fend off the attentions of the red monsters. He barely managed to duck aside as the blue horror lunged for him. He caught its bulbous body beneath the ship’s wheel, using it to pin the creature in place. Brokrin pushed his body against the wheel, sending the ironclad into a sharp turn, but at the same time putting murderous pressure against what passed for the thing’s head. Under that pressure such skull as the daemon possessed burst open, exploding in a profusion of stinking ichor and blue light.

Once more, where Brokrin had slain a single daemon, more were spawning from its corpse. His own victories against the beasts were causing him to be overwhelmed.

Chaos raiders swept across the ironclad’s decks, engaging the duardin crew. Tamuzz gave the efforts of the bearded warriors to fend off the attentions of his followers only the smallest notice. He needed some of them alive to pilot the ship after he captured it, but he didn’t need all of them. If his cult happened to kill some of them it might serve as a good example to the rest.

Tamuzz was more interested in the plight of the duardin captain in the wheelhouse. ‘Yes, fool, try to strike my daemons down and be overwhelmed for your trouble,’ he gloated as he watched the brimstone horrors crawling over the captain. The daemons unfastened his armour, bit at his arms, and scratched at his face. The ironclad’s momentum faltered, the ship wagging from side to side as the beleaguered captain wrenched the wheel back and forth in his struggles.

‘I need some of your crew,’ Tamuzz laughed, ‘but I won’t need you. Your ship will have a new captain soon enough.’

Tamuzz swung around as a new threat presented itself. The cough of gas-carbines announced the intrusion of the smaller Kharadron vessels into the fray. Diving down from the afternoon sun, the frigates rushed to the rescue of the embattled flagship. A tzaangor barked in mortal agony as it was hit by the fusillade, its body tumbling through the air as it was knocked from its steed. The riderless disc kept spinning across the sky, directionless and devoid of purpose. The daemon lacked the motivation to act as an individual. It would need a sorcerer of Khoram’s skill to endow it with such guidance.

Thinking of Khoram brought a malignant gleam to the warlord’s eyes. He didn’t care for his sorcerer’s campaign of shadowy manipulation, depending upon the duardin to act in such a manner that it was to the benefit of Tamuzz’s cult. There were too many things that might go wrong, too much that was left to chance. The Orb of Zobras might have shown Khoram the most favourable designs to steer events, but Tamuzz was prepared to trust its prophecies only so far. In the end the orb hadn’t revealed to the theocrat how to save his little empire from the grasp of Chaos. Neither was it certain the relic wouldn’t be as capricious with Khoram.

Another duardin fusillade brought two more beastmen to destruction. The frigates would soon run out of targets as Tamuzz drew his followers closer to the ironclad, using the big ship as cover from the smaller ones. The other duardin would be forced to hold their fire from fear of hitting friend as well as foe. At closer range they might risk such shots, but by drawing so close they would be within the reach of the Tzeentchian warband.

That was the method by which Tamuzz preferred to work; direct coercion and control of the victim. Too much subtlety, too much reliance on trickery, was a pitfall that had undone many a scheme. The craft and cunning of those who served the Changer were renowned but at times they could become a double-edged sword. A plot could become overly complicated, the goal lost amid a tangle of needless intrigue. Safeguards against a thousand unlikely possibilities could weigh down a plan until it advanced at a snail’s pace and was overcome by its own inaction.

Tamuzz would not let that happen, not when so much was expected of him. He would do more than influence the decisions of the duardin. He would seize their ships, force them to his will. Then there’d be no ambiguity, no question of how the Kharadron would act. They would be commanded by Tamuzz and guided by his will. If another of the Changer’s cults learned of it, then that was a challenge that would be dealt with in its own time.

Do not seek needless challenges. The voice echoed across Tamuzz’s mind, and he recognised it as that of Khoram.

The psychic entreaty was insistent, enough of a distraction that Tamuzz turned his steed away from the fighting so he could focus upon the sorcerer more directly. Khoram would know who was in command.

‘You forget who is master and who is servant,’ Tamuzz snapped. ‘It is you who is beholden to me.’

And we are both beholden to still greater powers, Khoram warned. Powers that will not forgive failure. Restrain your warriors. Limit them to a harassing raid. Keep to the plan.

Tamuzz shook his head. ‘We are winning. Even with all your portents can you not see that we are winning? We can claim victory over these duardin right now.’

That is not the path shown to us, Khoram replied.

‘What need for your elaborate ploys?’ Tamuzz spat. ‘Once the sky-vessels are captured we will have their guns to augment our own arcane weapons if some rival thinks to steal our triumph from us.’

My strategy is certain, Khoram objected. Leave the duardin to act of their own volition.

‘You underestimate the range of torture with which I am versed,’ Tamuzz said. ‘Do not tempt me to give you a sampling of how persuasive I can be.’

And you forget the powers at my command, Khoram replied.

Abruptly, a nearby cultist screamed. Tamuzz looked towards him, watching as the man went shrieking groundwards. Then another of the masked acolytes howled in despair, pawing at the empty air as he too was sent hurtling to his doom. Unlike the first warrior, Tamuzz saw why the second fell. The daemonic disc upon which he rode had suddenly winked out, vanished from existence in a burst of arcane energies.

It was my magic that conjured these daemons to carry your raiders, Khoram warned. What I have conjured I can easily dispel.

‘Only a little more and they are ours,’ Tamuzz insisted. He tried to make Khoram understand, to appreciate how close victory was. The sorcerer made no argument. His answer was the bursting of another daemon beneath the feet of a rider.

It was the warlord’s turn to cajole and plead. Tamuzz could see the confusion the abrupt dissolution of the daemons had wrought upon his followers. Soon their morale would break and then victory would slip through their fingers. Already he could see the pressure against the duardin faltering, giving them the space they needed to rally. The captain in the wheelhouse had even managed to dispose of the brimstone horrors that plagued him, the imps so diminutive that when they were vanquished there was not sufficient energy left to coalesce into still smaller monstrosities.

The pleas and entreaties went for naught. Another disc blinked out of existence, sending its rider to his doom.

The attack has already accomplished its purpose, Khoram declared. Tell your followers to withdraw while you still have any left to command.

‘Very well,’ Tamuzz relented. He brought the curled horn to his smoke-wreathed mouth and blew the note that would draw his followers out of the fray. There was a bitter undertone to the call, put there by the foul taste in his mouth. ‘I will not forget this insult,’ he told the sorcerer.

The cheers of the duardin as the raiders withdrew was like a whip across Tamuzz’s ears. He watched them fire departing shots at the Chaos warband, picking off a few stragglers. Lewd insults and mocking gestures chased after the cult as they fled beyond the range of the Kharadron guns. It was an ignominious display, and one that Tamuzz wouldn’t forgive.

‘You will answer for this humiliation,’ Tamuzz vowed. ‘The reckoning will not be quick. It will come later. It will come when you think your victory is assured. Then you will know how it feels to be cheated of your triumph.’

Tamuzz made no effort to hide his intentions from Khoram. Let him stare into the orb and try to steer things another way. Tamuzz knew that there was one personage who failed to appear directly in the orb’s prophecies, whose fortune could only be interpreted by that of his followers. He was that personage, the one who had been blessed by Mighty Tzeentch to be freed from the weave of doom, to possess the power to guide his own destiny from moment to moment.

Let the sorcerer ponder that, Tamuzz decided as he directed a last baleful look at the Kharadron ships. Let Khoram try to factor the Fatemaster’s wrath into his arcane calculations. Let the sorcerer try to foresee the exact moment when his usefulness was at its end.

Chapter VI

Gathered in the captain’s cabin, the officers of the Iron Dragon paid close attention to the list of damages tabulated by Horgarr and Vorki. Beside each item Horgarr had listed an estimate for how much it would cost to replace or repair, as well as a notation as to whether the repairs were critical or not. Brokrin listened to the catalogue of injury suffered by his ship, mentally adding up the sums involved. More expenses incurred by a voyage that had yet to produce anything of note.

There were some losses, however, that could not be recovered. As Horgarr reached the end of the list, Brokrin motioned for the endrinmaster to hand it across to him. He coughed to clear his throat, his eyes roving across the final items on the inventory. He looked up from the page and let his gaze sweep across the gathered duardin.

‘Into the keeping of their ancestors we entrust the names and honour of fallen comrades.’ He reached out and grabbed the silver chain that hung down from the ceiling beside his chair. The cord connected to the bronze bell mounted to the side of the forecastle. In better moments it was rung to announce the conclusion of a trade or a successful business negotiation. The bell had another role and it was that duty it now performed. ‘We name Ragniff Modrinsnev and claim grudge against the beastkin archer who sent an arrow through his eye.’

In naming the slain duardin, Brokrin gave the chain a sideways tug. From the deck above a dolorous note sounded, the bell’s clapper muffled by a mourn-cloth so that its tolling was suitably dour. ‘We name Fulgri Gornsson and claim grudge against the propagator of the witchfire that consumed him. We name Ulfirr Hawknose and declare him avenged by Sergeant Drumark Scrapbelly against the daemon-beast that brought him death, may its spirit ever be accursed by the gods.’

The listening officers took their beards in their left hands and ran their fingers down their length, each duardin whispering a solemn hope that their fallen companions would be welcomed as worthy into the company of their ancestors.

‘We were fortunate,’ Brokrin declared when he finished. ‘The Chaos filth must have expected the Dron-Duraz and Grom-Makar to abandon us and make a run for it. When the frigates turned back to help us it scared the scum off. Otherwise the damage could have been much worse.’

‘Much worse,’ Horgarr emphasised. The endrinmaster turned a grim gaze across the other officers. ‘The witchfire that was used and those exploding arrows… The marks they left behind are too similar to what we found on the destroyed sky-vessels from Barak-Urbaz to be coincidence.’

Drumark stepped away from the wall he had been leaning against and gave Horgarr a reproving look. ‘All respect to the grey in your beard,’ he told the endrinmaster, ‘but I can’t believe that rabble could down an entire fleet. They might have been from Barak-Urbaz, but they were still Kharadron.’

‘How could they damage the endrins and hulls the way we found those ships?’ Gotramm wondered. ‘Some of them looked like they were almost pulled apart. As though they had run into…’ He stopped himself before he mentioned the name of Ghazul, but not before his meaning was clear to everyone in the cabin.

‘They must have had the help of some big beastie,’ Arrik declared, his voice ringing with excitement. ‘When they hit the fleet they must have herded them into the territory of some immense monster. Something big enough to swat a frigate around like it was a songbird.’ He looked over to Brokrin, a hopeful expression in his eyes. ‘That might be what they thought they could do to us. Their beastie might be hiding around here somewhere.’

‘All the more reason to put the engines at full speed,’ Skaggi demanded. The logisticator gave Arrik a sour look. ‘The expedition’s backers are expecting a return on their investment. I don’t think a trophy for your wall is going to impress them when they have nothing to show for what they have spent.’ He turned towards Brokrin. ‘That list of expenses Horgarr tabulated, even if we ignore the damage that is mostly cosmetic…’

‘Yes,’ Brokrin sighed, ‘and to that we can add the wergild for Kero’s son. And restitution to the clans of the crew we’ve lost. I’m well aware of what the chances of making a profit from this voyage have become.’

Skaggi leered across the table at the seated captain. ‘Then what are you going to do about it? This is pretty much your last chance, you know. If this voyage turns into a fiasco you will have nobody willing to gamble on you again.’ He stamped his foot against the floor. ‘You will have to sell this tub to settle your debts and there isn’t anyone crazy enough to buy a ship with a curse on it. You’ll have to break her up and sell her off as scrap.’

‘That is enough of that,’ Mortrimm growled at the logisticator. ‘Anyone can have a run of bad luck. There isn’t an admiral in all the sky-holds who has not had his share of disasters.’

‘How many of them had the dragon’s share?’ Skaggi sneered. ‘Speaking of shares, how much do you think we are going to get from this? Enough to buy you a new brace for that gimp leg? Enough to keep Drumark’s brain soaked in booze? Enough to pay for Gotramm’s little rinn?’

Crimson rushed to Gotramm’s cheeks. He stepped towards Skaggi, grabbing his shoulder and pushing him down in his chair. ‘Mortrimm said that was enough and he was right.’

Skaggi squirmed in the arkanaut’s grip. When Gotramm increased the pressure he winced in pain. ‘Go ahead, shut me up. But it doesn’t change the fact that we are all thinking the same thing.’ He pointed at Brokrin. ‘You and this ship have a hoodoo on you and it isn’t fair you expect the rest of us to suffer for it.’

Brokrin spread his hands on the table and leaned forwards, staring into Skaggi’s eyes. ‘What is your advice?’ He already knew what the logisticator would say but he wanted the others to hear it and know what Skaggi was really after.

‘That coffer,’ Skaggi said, tapping his finger against the table. ‘Now, none of us here knows what’s in it.’ He grinned up at Gotramm, as though to imply that perhaps the statement was not exactly true. He shifted his gaze and glanced at the other duardin. ‘We can infer the contents are valuable by how frantic the survivor was about finding it.’

‘The box belongs to him,’ Brokrin said. It was the same rebuke he had given Skaggi a dozen times before. He didn’t think it would be any more successful now than it was earlier. ‘We are not pirates. We do not steal from other Kharadron.’

Skaggi pounced on the statement like a buzzard swooping down on carrion. ‘Ah, but it would not be stealing, cap’n.’ Wearing a smug look, he again tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. ‘There is a clause in the Code that says any duardin not a member of the company who is rescued from conditions in which his continued survival is deemed impossible shall forfeit all claims upon any share in the proceeds of said company.’

‘The coffer is his property,’ Gotramm said.

‘Is it?’ Skaggi asked. ‘It was not with him when he was brought up from the hold. We’ve only a few disjointed ramblings to connect him with it at all.’

‘If not for him, we would not have known it was there at all,’ Gotramm pointed out.

Skaggi nodded. ‘A point that is not in question,’ he said. ‘What I contest is the assumption that the coffer is his own property and not something that belonged to the Stormbreaker. That is to say, something that belonged to the ship’s company.’

‘And therefore falling under the terms of salvage,’ Drumark scratched at his beard. ‘The coin-shaver might have something there. That coffer could be rightful salvage. I am not saying we cut the fellow out completely, but we may have a right to split up whatever is in that box.’

There was a loud cough from the doorway. All the duardin turned their heads to see Lodri peeking inside. ‘You might want to postpone the rest of this discussion,’ he announced. ‘The fellow in question just woke up.’ He looked at Brokrin. ‘He has been asking to see you, cap’n. Most insistent in fact. Couldn’t quiet him down until I promised to fetch you.’

Brokrin rose from the table. ‘Well, if he is that insistent, let us not keep him waiting. There are more than a few questions I would like to have answered myself.’

Grokmund sat at the side of the cot, sipping from the snifter of strong ale the healer Lodri had provided him. His eyes were fixed on the coffer resting across the room from him. He made no move to reach for it, relieved simply to know it was there. When the cabin door opened and Lodri led a party of other duardin into the small room, he bowed his head in respect.

Lodri gestured to a blond-bearded duardin with a stern look about him. ‘This is Captain Brokrin,’ he said by way of introduction.

‘I am told you are the one who found me,’ Grokmund addressed Brokrin. ‘I’m Grokmund,’ he thumped his hand against his chest. ‘Late of the Stormbreaker.’

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Brokrin asked.

Grokmund was silent a moment, averting his eyes and staring down at the floor. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Before he tried to speak he took another sip of his ale, letting its warmth flow through him. ‘I cannot say how many days and nights I was trapped alone in the hold. It is a pleasure merely to hear the voices of other duardin.’

This was something of an understatement. Grokmund savoured each word spoken to him as though listening to an orchestra of the Skald’s Guild. ‘I despaired of ever hearing another Kharadron.’ He shuddered, his fingers tightening about the mug of ale until his knuckles shone white. ‘All I heard while I was down there was the clack of fangs tearing at meat, the crack of bones being splintered, and the bestial growls of ghouls squabbling over their meal.’ Grokmund upended the mug, draining it to the bottom. The warmth of the ale could hardly contend with the chill of his memories.

‘I heard them eating my shipmates,’ Grokmund stated, staring into Brokrin’s eyes. ‘That cannibal frenzy was the only thing I had to listen to for night after night.’

A duardin much younger than Brokrin came forwards and nodded in sympathy to Grokmund. ‘I went down into that hold to recover your box,’ he said. ‘I saw for myself what went on down there. I cannot imagine what it was to endure such an experience.’

Grokmund managed to smile at the young duardin. ‘To whom am I indebted for rescuing my coffer?’ he asked, setting a protective hand upon the small box.

‘His name is Gotramm, mine is Skaggi,’ another of the duardin interrupted, pushing his way past the others to stand directly between Grokmund and his box. ‘This vessel is the Iron Dragon, bound on a trading expedition for Barak-Zilfin.’ He couldn’t quite keep his eyes from straying away from Grokmund to glance at the coffer. ‘We learned of your distress from a tribe of manling nomads who took salvage from your ship.’ A thin smile curled the logisticator’s lips. ‘Looking for you has involved considerable inconvenience for us and jeopardised the profit we planned to reap from the tribes. If other clans should engage the tribes first–’

Brokrin cut him off abruptly. ‘We can discuss financial inveiglements later,’ he said. ‘For now it is the safety of my own ships that is of the most concern to me.’

Grokmund thought he saw an almost haunted look enter the captain’s eyes. ‘From what we found, it seemed your fleet was destroyed by some mighty beast.’

The statement surprised Grokmund. ‘I saw no single great beast, but many lesser ones. The filthy slaves of Chaos in all their loathsome shapes.’ He extended his empty mug, prompting Lodri to refill it with ale. Taking a gulp, he sat back and tried to gather his thoughts. ‘They seemed to come at us from everywhere at once. No warning. Some witchery must have hidden them from our lookouts until they were ready to attack.’ He slapped one hand against his head as though trying to shake the confusion from his thoughts.

‘Some were manlings… Evil-looking men wearing crazy masks. Others were horned brutes with the faces of bird and beast.’ Grokmund shook his head. ‘There… there were things with them. Infernal things that flew through the air like fish swimming in the sea. There was fire… but not from any clean flame. Daemon fire, and they used it to burn our fleet.’ Grokmund leaned forwards, recalling a detail he had failed to relate. ‘They rode on those things. Great fleshy shields with mouths underneath them. They skipped through the clouds like stones across a pond.’

‘Those sound like the raiders who attacked us,’ Gotramm said to Brokrin.

Grokmund gave the young duardin a sharp look. ‘These were led by a misshapen human with some kind of feathery goitre bulging out of his neck. It was… it was him who sent me crashing down into the hold.’ Again, Grokmund slapped the side of his head. ‘I… I don’t remember how, I only know I was going to help Admiral Thorki fight one of their champions when this one came at me…’

‘You didn’t see the end of the fight?’ a grizzled duardin with the look of a harpooner asked. ‘Then you have no way of knowing what it was that finished off your ship. The marks we found on the Stormbreaker, indeed on many of the wrecks, indicated some immense beast.’

‘I saw no such colossus,’ Grokmund said. ‘That much I can say for certain. If such a monster attacked, it did so when I was in the hold. Whether it was in league with the Chaos scum or something that chased them off to claim their prey for its own, I cannot say.’

Skaggi set his hand on the top of the coffer. ‘Do you have any idea why these raiders targeted your fleet?’ he asked, insinuation in his tone. ‘Some treasure they learned of and coveted for themselves?’

Grokmund gave the logisticator a hard look, then glanced at the other duardin. The confusion of his recollections gave way to anger. ‘So that is why you rescued me. Looking to put some treasure in your holds?’ A disgusted laugh bubbled up from his throat. ‘“There is no charity in a thin purse”,’ he bitterly recited an old parable.

‘If we were so miserly, we would have left you on the wreck,’ Gotramm said. ‘We would have cracked open that coffer without waiting to see if you’d recover.’

‘But as you say,’ Skaggi inserted, ‘a thin purse can’t afford charity.’ He turned towards Brokrin. ‘Isn’t that right, cap’n?’

Brokrin shook his head. ‘The spirit of the Code is as valuable as the letter of it,’ he stated. ‘I will not scavenge off your misfortune, Grokmund, however legal such a claim might be.’

‘The box may not even be his,’ Skaggi said. He glared at Grokmund. ‘Who does that coffer belong to? Is it your property or does it belong to your ship?’ He tapped his finger against the lid. ‘What is inside here that is so valuable you sent one of your rescuers back into a ghoul-haunted hole to recover it?’

Grokmund’s ire mounted with each word Skaggi thrust at him. He shifted his grip on the mug, ready to break the logisticator’s nose if he kept pressing. ‘It is mine,’ he said. ‘Admiral Thorki put it in my keeping. What is inside it is also mine.’

Skaggi drew back, holding a hand towards Gotramm. ‘You feel no debt to those who saved you? No inclination to share your good fortune with those who risked their lives to find it?’

The logisticator’s words were still hostile, but the track he laid down with them was such that it gave Grokmund pause. He slumped back, feeling a sense of shame. ‘I… I do owe you something,’ he said. ‘Let me think. Give me some time.’

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 the 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.’

‘Like yourself, curseling?’ Tamuzz asked. ‘Is that why you dispelled the daemons when I needed them?’

‘You would have won the battle,’ Khoram said. ‘There can be no question of that. But would winning the battle have cost you the war? That is what the visions in the orb warned me of. I had to act as I did.’ He extended his tentacled fingers, indicating the chalk circle that was drawn upon the floor of the cavernous chamber. ‘As you’ve so often advised me, our destinies are intertwined. If one of us prospers, both of us do. If one of us falls, then we are both damned.’

Tamuzz’s eyes gleamed menacingly from behind the veil of smoke rising from the finger-candles fastened to his armour. ‘Do you seek to remind me of your loyalty or threaten me against punishing you as you deserve?’ Tamuzz stepped across the perimeter of the summoning circle, contemptuous of the magic flowing from it. Like the wards etched into the rock walls, the protections of the circle failed to arrest his intrusion. Wisps of shade-essence pawed at him, only to be absorbed into his baroque armour.

‘I do neither, Lord Tamuzz,’ Khoram stated. ‘I only do what is needful to help you… and serve the Master.’

‘Nothing for Khoram?’ Tamuzz sneered. He glowered at the sorcerer. ‘I know better than that. You seek to use me. That is a dangerous game to play.’

Khoram did not flinch as he looked up at Tamuzz. ‘There is no magic that is without hazard. Those who would make use of a sorcerer should remember that.’ He gestured to the far side of the room. ‘Your armour disrupts the summoning. I cannot complete my conjuration while you are within the circle.’ He shook his head. ‘Unless you would rather I did nothing to steer the duardin where we wish them to go. If you would prefer to leave everything entirely to the whims of fate…’

Tamuzz glowered at him an instant longer, then turned on his heel and marched from the circle. ‘Schemes within schemes, plots within plots,’ he called out to Khoram as he walked away. ‘One day you’ll be caught in a web of your own weaving and I will not raise my hand to cut you free.’

Khoram waited until the warlord had left the cavern before resuming his interrupted ritual. Tamuzz was necessary to him, a conduit between the Mortal Realms and the labyrinthine corridors of Tzeentch’s power. Soon, however, Khoram would have an even more direct channel to draw on the might of his god. When that happened, Tamuzz would learn his place. Then there would be no question who was master and who was minion.

The sorcerer reeled in his anger, letting thoughts of Tamuzz collapse into the shadows of his subconscious. To that mental nether-realm he sent his own ambitions, his manifold plans and schemes, his intentions for the duardin and how they would serve him. He threw the daemonic mutterings of his parasite into a cell of silence, stifling any distraction that might shift his focus from what was before him.

The scroll he removed from the urn he now stretched across the floor at his feet. The letters inked upon it in blood were ancient beyond measure, the knowledge they conveyed older still. Names already forgotten when the realms took form from the nothingness burned themselves upon his vision. His tongue moved in unfamiliar cadence, his mouth shaping unspoken sounds. Faster and still faster the incantation dribbled into the air, becoming heavier and more solid with each breath.

As the incantation reached its apex, Khoram returned to the urn once more. Dipping his tentacled hand into it he removed from its depths a pink and wailing thing. In a savage gesture he swung it against the floor. Stunned, it lay supine while he stabbed at its heart with a bone-handled athame. The knife was soon slick with gore, the heartblood of his sacrifice. This he raised to the foul parasite bulging from his neck. In one swift flick, he spattered the sanguine drops across the face of his homunculus.

The slaughtered sacrifice lay bleeding just within the circle, its gore gleaming in the light of witchfyre spheres. Khoram expected to see the manifestation appear there, emerging from the dead husk. Instead a horrible and prolonged coughing seized the sorcerer, wracking his body from side to side. The tretchlet joined in his spasm, wailing as it too coughed. Instead of emerging from the corpse of the sacrifice, it was from the tretchlet that the noxious thing Khoram had summoned emerged. The homunculus coughed until from its depths it hacked up the dark magic that was choking it.

The thing spattered against the floor, a finger-long splotch of slimy blackness. For an instant it was inert, then it began to move, writhing from side to side like a dark worm. As it moved, it began to rise, levitating in the air. Khoram no longer coughed, but reasserted the primordial invocation. No longer were the arcane syllables a summons. Now they became words of command.

‘Rise,’ Khoram snarled at the wormy thing. ‘By the thousand horrors of Witching Night and the ten thousand curses of Arnizipal, I abjure thee! Be bound unto my desire! Be slave to my design!’ He thrust his hand upwards, one finger-tendril pointing at the ceiling. ‘Go! Seek out the duardin! Seek those who must also become slave to my designs!’

Like an arrow, the black thing shot upwards, stabbing into the roof. Dirt rained down into the circle as the thing burrowed its way from the sanctum. In his mind’s eye, Khoram could see it ripping free from the summit of the mountain. He watched as it floated into the air, now expanding and growing with each heartbeat. Becoming as vast and malignant as a thunderhead.

‘Kill what is needful,’ the sorcerer told the thing. ‘Spare only what I allow to survive!’

Another eldritch command, and Khoram sent the gargantuan mass rolling across the heavens to seek its allotted prey.

Chapter VII

Through his spyglass Brokrin watched as the ornithopter lifted away from the deck of the Grom-Makar and started towards the Iron Dragon. Stout, almost block-like in its design, it looked too cumbersome for flight, much less the rapid, darting manoeuvres that characterised its motion. As it moved it resembled nothing so much as a huge insect flitting through the air, weaving and bobbing with almost contemptuous ease.

Buoyed by a pair of small endrins mounted to the sides of its frame, directed by a great propeller suspended at the centre of that frame immediately above the wheelhouse, and steered by a large steel rudder fastened to its lean tail section, the ornithopter was little larger than a Grundstok gunhauler. The machine wasn’t designed especially for combat, boasting only a set of gas-carbines situated at either side of the compartment that acted as both hold and cabin. Its real function was to act as scout for the Grom-Makar, investigating conditions in advance of the frigate and sparing the larger ship the hazards of unfavourable circumstance by ferrying goods and personnel. Captain Olgerd had spent a considerable sum on the machine and was inordinately proud of it, declaiming that one day every vessel of respectable tonnage in the sky-fleets of the Kharadron would be making use of them.

At the moment, Brokrin was certainly making use of Olgerd’s toy. Signalling the Grom-Makar, he had asked the ornithopter to conduct the captains of both frigates to the Iron Dragon for a conference. He knew the message he’d sent was insufferably terse and vague, but the last thing he wanted was an observant crewman catching the gist of what was going on. He had enough problems with the excitement Grokmund had whipped up on his own ship; he didn’t need it spreading to the others. Olgerd and Kjnell had a right to know what was going on. Whether they shared that information with their crews was a question of their own discretion.

‘They will be here soon enough,’ Mortrimm stated. ‘I would never dare let him hear me say it, but Olgerd might have something with that contraption he bought.’

Brokrin turned and leaned against the gunwale. His eyes roved across the deck, watching the duardin as their officers tried to keep them busy. He could see the frequent glances the crewmen threw at him, almost hear the whispers that passed among them. Somebody had been talking. Word had spread through the ship about Grokmund’s treasure. He knew it was not Horgarr or Vorki, doubted it could have been Drumark. Gotramm was young and passionate, but he didn’t strike Brokrin as foolish enough to go gabbing to his arkanauts. Lodri? If the powder monkey strayed above decks it was unusual enough; if he was sober when he did so it was truly remarkable. No, the most likely suspects were Skaggi and Grokmund himself, and between the two he would put his bets on the logisticator. Skaggi had the financial sense of a criminal genius, but the morality of a starving rat. If he saw a way to push things in the direction he wanted them to take, Skaggi would act before anyone could even say the word ‘oathbreaker’.

Brokrin scowled as he spotted Skaggi up near the prow. The logisticator was watching the ornithopter’s progress as it flitted over to the Dron-Duraz.

‘It is a tempting scheme,’ Mortrimm said. He stretched and twisted his waist, trying to crack his back. ‘If I were younger and more foolish than I am, I would gamble on it.’ He smiled and winked at Brokrin. ‘Sadly, I have seen enough to know that bold talk and big ideas aren’t enough to make something so. A wager can be lost the moment it is made if you aren’t careful.’

‘That is a lesson some of these beardlings have yet to learn,’ Brokrin said, nodding towards Gotramm.

‘Let us just hope they are around long enough to have the chance to learn,’ Mortrimm replied. ‘Sometimes when you gamble and lose, there isn’t enough left to start over.’

Brokrin turned and pointed at the ornithopter as it left the Dron-Duraz. ‘That is why you hedge your bets, if you are smart. If we had this conference down on the ground, somebody might get the idea of splitting up the crews. Load everybody willing to take Grokmund’s gamble on one side, leave everybody else to go off on their own.’ His hand tightened into a fist. ‘I did not pull the Iron Dragon through that battle with Ghazul just to be voted off her. We keep everybody up here, in the clouds, and maybe they won’t get any funny ideas.’

‘Put Skaggi in the brig,’ Mortrimm advised, ‘and maybe the funny ideas won’t spread.’ The suggestion was uttered in a jovial fashion, but the look in the old navigator’s eyes was anything but flippant.

‘That would force things to a head,’ Brokrin said. ‘Make everybody pick sides when maybe they are still undecided. No, I cannot lock Skaggi in the brig.’ He smiled and laughed. ‘Toss him overboard maybe, but not lock him up.’

Mortrimm sighed and leaned against the gunwale. ‘That’s not a bad idea either, cap’n. If Skaggi has any family at all, they are apt to be indebted to you if you got rid of that little creeper.’

‘No more of that kind of talk,’ Brokrin warned. ‘Temptation is demoralising.’

The captains of the frigates sat to either side of Brokrin while Grokmund put to them the proposal. It was a smaller meeting than the earlier conference had been. Aside from the three captains and the aether-khemist, only Skaggi, Horgarr and Mortrimm were present in Brokrin’s cabin.

Grokmund summed up his plan for the Barak-Zilfin officers. ‘The claim remains the property of Barak-Urbaz,’ he said. ‘That much cannot be negotiated. To protect the interests of my sky-hold, a fourth share of whatever aether-gold you extract from the vein will be appropriated for Barak-Urbaz. That will leave the other three-quarters to be divided amongst yourselves, your crews and your backers.’

Captain Kjnell pointed at the tiny ingot Horgarr had distilled from Grokmund’s sample. ‘A considerable sum,’ he stated, ‘if the ore is as rich as the assay indicates.’

‘You can trust Horgarr’s estimations,’ Brokrin declared. ‘The sample, at least, is every bit as valuable as you have been told.’

Captain Olgerd scratched at the steel patch that covered the hollow of his left eye-socket. It was a peculiarity of his that the missing eye would itch whenever he was deep in thought. ‘You claim to be against this plan,’ he told Brokrin, ‘yet here you are telling us the find could be as rich as Grokmund says it is. That strikes me as slightly contrarian.’

‘Not when you consider the other factors,’ Mortrimm explained. ‘The volatile nature of this ore–’

‘Any ship that leaves port risks disaster of one kind or another,’ Skaggi grumbled. He pointed at Grokmund as an example. ‘The whole Barak-Urbaz expedition was lost with all hands bar one. They didn’t need holds filled with precious aether-gold to be annihilated. But they were, just the same. Yes, there is risk, but you have to consider the reward to be gained.’

Kjnell shook his head. ‘I like gold better than might be healthy for me,’ he said, ‘but even I am uneasy about turning my ship into a flying bomb.’

Olgerd clapped his hands together, a broad smile tugging at his beard. ‘There is an easy fix. We put all the aether-gold in a single ship and equip it with a skeleton crew. The others provide escort at a safe distance.’ He glanced at both Kjnell and Brokrin in their turn. ‘Naturally the one who volunteers his vessel for such duty should receive extra compensation.’

‘There is more than enough to fill all your holds,’ Grokmund reminded them. ‘It would be the height of foolishness to leave so much wealth behind.’

‘You promise a lot,’ Kjnell observed, ‘but I have yet to hear where this strike you made is to be found. All we have is your claims that it is as vast as you say it is.’

‘He is in for a fourth share,’ Olgerd said. ‘If it wasn’t big, he would not be worried about losing out.’

Brokrin gave Grokmund a close study. ‘It might be our friend is more interested in acclaim than riches.’ He waved his hand at the refined sample. ‘The discoverer of a new kind of aether-gold would be lauded by his clan and his guild, wouldn’t he?’

Skaggi’s eyes gleamed as he seized upon the idea. ‘The Code makes providence for recompense,’ he said, looking at Grokmund but ensuring everyone heard his speech. ‘Not only the rescue from the Stormbreaker but also the expenses entailed in making the journey to this strike.’ The logisticator smiled and nodded to each of the captains. ‘The risk to the ships and crew, with all due foreknowledge, could constitute a predetermined hazard, which in itself is grounds for compensation. All of which, of course, would come from the share you have claimed for Barak-Urbaz.’

Brokrin could only shake his head in stunned awe at the methodology Skaggi employed to chisel Grokmund’s share. Allotments, fees, obligations, a litany of financial sleight of hand steadily eating away at that portion allocated for Barak-Urbaz. In proportion to that diminishment, the rewards to be divided among the Barak-Zilfin vessels grew. Through it all, the demeanour of Grokmund became more resigned. Whether from fear that the strike would be lost if they did not act quickly or motivated by fame over greed, the aether-khemist looked ready to accept whatever terms saw the small fleet bound to his cause.

Skaggi looked set to win over the other captains when Horgarr intervened. The endrinmaster held a minuscule scraping of aether-gold between his outstretched fingers. ‘Before you agree to anything, know what you are getting into,’ he declared. The other duardin had to squint to see the little fleck of aether-gold after Horgarr set it down on the table. ‘Cap’n, if you would remove the ingot please.’ He waited while Brokrin retrieved the ingot and its box, then motioned the others away from the table. Once the area was cleared, Horgarr pulled a small hammer from his belt. Holding the tool at arm’s length, he brought it slamming down on the scraping.

A deafening roar boomed through the cabin accompanied by a searing flash of light. It was as though someone had fired off a volley cannon in the room. When the duardin blinked away the spots that danced before their eyes, they stared in wonder at the splintered wreck of Brokrin’s table. Stout steelwood had blackened and buckled, a deep crater gouged almost clear through. The severed heft of Horgarr’s hammer lay on the floor, smoke rising from where its missing head had been. The endrinmaster himself clutched at his arm, trying to massage away the explosive tremor that had bruised his very bones.

‘You saw how little it took,’ Horgarr told the others. ‘Keep in mind that this was refined ore and more stable than the raw gas we would be storing in the holds.’

Skaggi sputtered objections, trying to win back Olgerd and Kjnell. Grokmund tried to help his effort, but it soon became obvious their entreaties were in vain. However powerful their arguments, Horgarr’s demonstration was impossible to discount.

The cabin door opened a moment later, a grave-faced Gotramm staring at the smashed table. ‘We heard an explosion,’ he told Brokrin.

Brokrin glanced at the other captains. ‘Just a lesson in risk management,’ he said. ‘I think it has all been settled now.’

Gotramm didn’t understand, but he could guess from one look at Skaggi and Grokmund what the lesson had been and how it had shaped opinion. It would not do any good to argue now. Brokrin had outmanoeuvred them. He quickly looked away from his captain and addressed Olgerd. ‘If it is risks that interest you, then you had better have a talk with your pilot. We have spotted a storm on the horizon. Closing fast. He says if the ornithopter doesn’t leave soon then you’re going to be sitting it out on the Iron Dragon.’

It seemed to Brokrin, as the other captains made their apologies and hurried to follow Gotramm up on deck, that they were less concerned about the storm than they were about what staying on the Iron Dragon might cause them to do. The sober judgement that now motivated them might give way to Skaggi’s persuasive arguments if they gave the logisticator half a chance. Indeed, their step seemed to quicken when Skaggi and Grokmund followed after them.

Brokrin waited until they were gone before walking over and thanking Horgarr. ‘You can boast now that you got the better of Skaggi in a deal,’ he congratulated the endrinmaster.

Horgarr continued to rub his arm. ‘I did not plan for it to be so strong,’ he confessed. ‘Skaggi might re-evaluate how much Grokmund’s ore is worth. Could even come up with a figure big enough to tempt me.’

‘You have spent too much time patching up this old girl to be blowing her to smithereens,’ Mortrimm said. ‘A craftsman should show a little pride in his work.’

‘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 piped 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 tentacles 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

Unseen, unheard, the slender finger of darkness slithered from shadow to shadow, flitting through the ironclad’s holds and hallways, creeping under doors and across cabins. Its senses were limited, but its awareness was pronounced, heightened far beyond what it possessed when it was part of a colossal whole. An intelligence greater than itself flowed within it, endowing it with purpose and motivation. From shadow to shadow it stole, always growing still when a member of the ironclad’s crew walked past. It used its squamous, almost shapeless body to squeeze through the narrowest of gaps. Its serpentine length would twine around beams, climbing up and across them with a rapid, undulating movement, casting its coils forwards to gain new purchase before pulling the rest of its length along. Always, bobbing above the snake-like tube of its mass, the bulbous eye quivered at the end of a lumpy horn-like projection.

The storm-beast’s severed eye-stalk had not dissipated with the other segments cut from the monster’s main mass. A powerful enchantment sustained it, infusing it with vitality so that it could continue to serve. Everything the remnant saw was conveyed back to its master, feeding back into the sorcerer’s brain as though drawn from his own eyes. The compulsions that directed the remnant’s movements were fed back to it by that same brain, commands that the segment would not have been able to resist even if it were capable of such thought.

The hideous spy continued its silent survey of the Iron Dragon until at last it came to the cabin of her captain. As the blemished eye gazed down from the roof beam, it saw two duardin arguing. The cluster of ganglia that controlled its muscles gave no special attention to the bearded figures. Even the memory of such creatures attacking it and hacking it from one of the larger tentacles during the recent battle was too much for the remnant to maintain. It was the sorcerer guiding it who supplied that information, who urged it to greater secrecy and made it coil up within the shadows.

It was Khoram who had the remnant fixate upon the two duardin, Khoram who identified one of them as the ironclad’s captain. And it was Khoram who used the segment’s eye to watch the lips of the captain and his companion as they argued. For one who had mastered the tongues of daemons, there was no mystery any mortal language could hide from him.

Skaggi paced across the cabin, fingers twisting in his beard as frustration steadily grew within him. What shone in his eyes was a kind of sullen spite, ugly and imperious. He pointed a quivering finger at Brokrin, snapping at the captain as though he were a cadet back at the Academy.

‘How can you fail to appreciate how monstrously the situation has changed?’ Skaggi demanded. ‘It was simply pragmatic before to take advantage of Grokmund’s deal. Now it is essential! The loss of the frigates, the wergild the families of their crews can demand, these are costs which will destroy the careers of every officer on this ship! The debt will pass down to the third generation, allowing a reasonable interest can be negotiated. Our backers will suffer immense loss, and it might be just the thing to make the financial guilds take seriously all the dockyard scuttlebutt about a curse hanging over you and your ship.’ He gave his beard a vicious twist, several hairs coming off in his hand. ‘It isn’t a choice now,’ he declared. ‘We have to take Grokmund’s deal. That aether-gold vein he discovered is the only chance we have of coming out of this fiasco with anything beyond enough debt to choke an ogor.’

‘So you have mentioned,’ Brokrin said, his voice low and steady as a mountain. Those who knew the captain best also knew that it was when his voice took on that stony quality that his temper was starting to boil over. ‘You have explained yourself quite clearly. I do not need to have it repeated again and again.’

‘You do,’ Skaggi retorted. He knew Brokrin’s moods, but his own temper had risen too far to back away now. ‘You need to have it repeated until something like sense works its way into that thick skull. This isn’t a choice now. We have to do this. It is essential. The only chance there is of–’

Brokrin cut him off with a slashing motion of his hand. ‘The only chance to see this ship blasted across the winds of Chamon!’ He shook his fist at the blackened crater that scarred his table. ‘Are you forgetting what just a little of Grokmund’s treasure did?’

Skaggi glowered at Brokrin. ‘Are you forgetting that Horgarr exhausted the rest of the sample fighting off that…’ he waved his hands in a helpless gesture, ‘whatever that thing was?’

‘Maybe it would have been better to let it rip this ship apart the way it did to the frigates?’ Brokrin snapped back.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Skaggi returned. ‘We are fortunate Horgarr had the wit to make use of it. But it would have been prudent of him to save at least a sliver of it. Even if we were of a mind to go back to Barak-Zilfin and try to interest someone in the find there is no proof now. No collateral to offer backers. All we have is Grokmund’s stories and our own claims.’ His eyes narrowed and he shook his forefinger at Brokrin. ‘The claims of an impoverished crew, I might add. Investment is all about appearances, whether something looks sound. How sound do you think we will look coming back to port with our hold empty, our fleet missing, and owing a tidy ransom to manling savages?’

‘We are not equipped to transport Grokmund’s strike,’ Brokrin tried to explain once more. ‘As gaseous ore it will be far more dangerous than the distilled ingot Horgarr refined.’

‘There is no reward without risk,’ Skaggi said. He arched his eyebrow and gave Brokrin a wary look. ‘Are you afraid of losing the ship? By the Black One’s bony beard, they are going to take her away from you anyway! What difference does it make if she blows up trying to haul a priceless treasure back to Barak-Zilfin or if she is broken up by a scrapper to pay off your debts? Debts that will far exceed what you’ll get for this tub in salvage, I might add.’

‘You seem to forget that if the Iron Dragon blows up hauling this aether-gold, she will take every hand with her.’ Brokrin laid his hand against the wall, caressing it almost as though it were alive. ‘If she is lost to the scrapyard, she goes by herself.’

‘She will take you with her,’ Skaggi warned. ‘Your reputation will be ruined. Nobody will trust you again.’ He frowned when he saw that his words were taking no effect. ‘Everybody’s future is on the line, cap’n. With things standing that way, you should let the question be put to a vote.’

Brokrin glared at the logisticator. ‘She is still my ship and I am still her captain. There is not going to be any vote. And there is not going to be any further discussion on the matter.’

Skaggi turned and marched from the cabin. His last words were muttered in an angry hiss too low for Brokrin to hear. ‘Then we won’t discuss it any more.’

Plying needle and thread, Gotramm mended the tears in his undercoat, sealing the gashes and cuts inflicted by the sky-horror’s tentacles. He had been lucky none of the flailing tendrils had landed a more telling blow. There was a dent in Thurik’s pauldron that had come close to driving the crumpled armour straight through the arkanaut’s shoulder. Another of his privateers had suffered a broken leg when a severed tentacle flailed against him in its death throes.

‘What you are selling, I am not buying,’ Gotramm stated, not bothering to look up from his work.

While the holds were empty the areas had been given over to the Iron Dragon’s crew to use as living quarters. As the holds were filled with commodities to bear back to Barak-Zilfin, they would be shuffled around to ever more cramped compartments. It was not unheard of for a particularly successful voyage to have its crew sleeping on the decks or slinging hammocks over the sides of the hull. Gotramm had heard stories about the Gilded Eagle after making the Fatherfold strike where the ship was so overladen with aether-gold that the kitchen had been re-situated above the forecastle on a scratch-built platform.

The hold in which Gotramm’s arkanauts had billeted themselves was the largest, positioned midship just below the immense endrin and its powerful aether-motor. The size afforded the privateers the space to accommodate the aether-endrins of the skywardens, granting them quicker access than the ship’s armoury would provide. It was not that factor which had led Gotramm to make the middle hold his choice of billet, but rather the added durability of this section of the hull. Here the timbers were reinforced to give extra support to the endrin, making this the toughest and most rugged part of the ship. If the Iron Dragon were knocked from the sky, this was the spot most likely to survive the fall. He was reminded that it was in the Stormbreaker’s middle that Grokmund had been found miserable, but alive.

Even at that early point in the voyage, when they were just setting out, Gotramm had had his misgivings. All the talk of Ghazul’s curse and the hoodoo hanging over Brokrin must have coloured his decisions, even if at a subconscious level. He had not merely prepared for disaster. Some part of him had anticipated it. Despite his show of unconcern and indifference, that part of him was very interested in what Skaggi had to say.

The logisticator leaned against one of the beams, his foot idly kicking an empty hammock and setting it slowly swinging back and forth. ‘If you are going to pay a price, it will be from not listening to me,’ Skaggi said. ‘It isn’t my fingers in your purse, slashing your share down to nothing. I am only trying to help.’

‘The only one you’re trying to help is yourself,’ Thurik grumbled. He removed the slice of meat he had pressed against his bruised shoulder, frowning at the purplish cast to his skin. Aside from the duardin with the broken leg, Thurik was the only arkanaut in the hold with Gotramm and Skaggi – the nearest thing to a private conference the privateer would consent to.

Skaggi gave Thurik a withering glance. ‘Even if I am,’ he said, his tone sharp, ‘by helping myself I also help everyone.’ He wagged a finger in the general direction of the officers’ cabins. ‘Even Captain Brokrin, if he would only open his eyes.’

‘I don’t particularly like you,’ Gotramm said, finally setting down his mending. ‘There is a sneaky streak about you, Skaggi. You are loose with your honour and loose with your word. If someone dug into the halls of your ancestors I would not be surprised if they found a few grobi before they were finished.’

The insult brought a shocked gasp from the broken-legged arkanaut. Thurik’s eyes went wide with alarm, his hand dropping to the knife in his boot. Both of them expected to see Skaggi make a lunge at Gotramm, to redress the slight on his ancestors with fist or blade. Gotramm, however, remained relaxed. He didn’t expect Skaggi to rise to his baiting. The logisticator was not that sort of duardin.

What Skaggi did was to stop kicking at the hammock. He pushed away from the wall and gave Gotramm an offended glare. ‘How quick and ready we are to throw dirt on logisticators. We call them honourless and oathbreaker, chiseller and thief, conniver and scoundrel. No insult is too base for them. They are parasites sucking the blood from every enterprise, battening on the sweat and courage and determination of decent duardin. They are no better than grobi with beards, vultures trying to stuff their gizzards with whatever they can grab. They lie, they cheat and they steal.’ He turned and glared at Thurik. ‘They are only in it for themselves. That is why they are always trying to craft the best trades and agreements, why they are always struggling to determine the ideal balance between expenditure and profit. Of course they don’t feel any pride, any sense of obligation or duty to increase the shares of the duardin they voyage with. Those too honourable to condescend to call a logisticator “comrade”. No, all we do is take, never with a thought about how we can help our clan or our sky-hold. All we care about is swindling a few more coins into our share.’

Skaggi turned back to Gotramm. ‘If you will listen to me, I don’t give a damn what you call me or what you think of me. Believe only this – if we do nothing then we all become equal partners in disaster.’

Gotramm felt the barbs of Skaggi’s speech, not enough to make him any more disposed to the logisticator, but enough to make him willing to hear him out. He nodded slowly. ‘I don’t trust you,’ he stated, letting the words establish the sentiment in which he held Skaggi so there would be no illusions between them. ‘I would be happier to sit beside a sky-sick ogor than share a stein of beer with you. But say your piece and I will listen. If I have judged you unfairly, then I owe you that much.’

‘Then listen,’ Skaggi said. He looked aside at the other arkanauts. ‘Keep your ears sharp as well, because I will only say this once. It is no secret that this voyage has descended into a catastrophe. It isn’t a question of fault or blame, simply statement of fact. With the loss of the frigates and their crews, only a discovery of incredible scope could salvage this expedition. That possibility has been presented to us. The aether-gold Grokmund found is precious enough for us to recover from these disasters. We can meet our obligations to everyone and still turn enough profit to hold our heads proud.’

‘Captain Brokrin feels otherwise,’ Gotramm pointed out. ‘He says the aether-gold is too volatile to transport in the Iron Dragon. It would need a specially equipped tanker to handle–’

Skaggi cut him off. ‘Where would we find such a vessel? Back at Barak-Zilfin? And if we go back to port, what guarantee is there Grokmund will continue to work with us? There are many loopholes in the Kharadron Code he could exploit to free himself of such debt as he owes the Iron Dragon. Only a little cunning on his part and we could be cut out completely. Left holding all the expenses but without any claim on the rewards.

‘Right now, Grokmund is forced to deal with us. We are the only option he has,’ Skaggi explained. ‘He is terrified that the strike will be lost unless it is harvested quickly. Just now he is thinking about fame more than fortune, having his name recorded as the discoverer of this new ore. Give him some time to think it over, especially with better-equipped vessels available to him, and he might start to see things more clearly. All the more reason for him to negotiate with someone else rather than honour his arrangement with us.’

‘Brokrin doesn’t want to risk the ship,’ Gotramm persisted.

‘Maybe he believes in the curse,’ Skaggi said. ‘Maybe it is because he believes in it that the curse becomes real.’ He held up his hand in a gesture of apology. ‘Don’t mistake me, I know that the captain’s burden isn’t an easy one, but you must agree that he has made some poor choices. Choices that have made things worse, not better. A captain who is reckless can bring calamity to his crew, but so too can a captain who is too timid.’

‘The cap’n is no coward,’ Thurik growled.

Skaggi shook his head. ‘Not cowardice, but overcaution. Brokrin expects the worst so he blinds himself to the best. He can only see the danger of securing Grokmund’s stake. He refuses to see the possibilities of taking that chance.’

‘The cap’n doesn’t make decisions lightly,’ Gotramm said, his patience wearing thin. ‘He has considered everything before telling you to–’

‘Has he?’ Skaggi challenged. ‘Has he considered everything? Has he really thought about what kind of debt this voyage has incurred and how that debt will be parcelled out among his officers? As a captain of privateers you should stand to have three shares in the expedition’s profit. That makes you responsible for three shares of its liabilities. How long do you think that will take you to pay off? Allowing any ship will take you on, how many voyages would it need just to be back where you were before we left port?’ An ugly smirk pulled at the logisticator’s face as he added a more personal touch to the argument. ‘Helga is a pretty rinn. I am sure she has many suitors vying for her hand. How long will she wait for you? How long before she starts listening to fellows who aren’t loaded down with debts and obligations?’

Gotramm’s face was florid as he strode towards Skaggi. He set his balled fist against the logisticator’s nose. ‘Get out of here,’ he warned. ‘Get out of here before I break my hand on your face.’

Skaggi sketched a quick bow and hurried out from the hold. As he withdrew, a sly grin crossed his face. Gotramm had more in jeopardy than any of the others. He was less capable of accepting the losses Brokrin’s decision would force onto all of them. He was the weak link. Even his antagonism towards Skaggi served in the logisticator’s favour. Because when the time came to force the issue, having an enemy supporting him would impress the rest of the crew far more than having a friend echoing his demands.

All it needed now, Skaggi felt, was the right moment to bring things to a head.

‘I am not saying the cap’n is wrong, mind you. Just a bit overcautious.’ Skaggi fairly whispered the words into Drumark’s ear. The sergeant answered with a far from subtle belch. Flecks of beer spattered across the logisticator’s tunic, forcing him a step back as he wiped at the detritus.

‘Should have been standing downwind,’ Drumark gave some tardy advice. He ran his glove through his beard, wiping the collected foam off on his breeches. He took another pull from the bottle before tossing the empty over the side of the ship. Peering over the gunwale, he watched it speed downwards until it was lost from sight. ‘Good eye exercise, that,’ he told Skaggi. ‘Helps strengthen distance vision. Less revolting than gnawing on a carrot.’ The sergeant let his voice dip into tones as subdued as the ones Skaggi had been using. ‘Anyway, you were saying something mutinous about the cap’n that I was only half listening to. Start over.’

Skaggi ground his teeth and glared at the sergeant. ‘I am sure you’ll find it very funny when you are in debt to half the creditors in Barak-Zilfin. I would almost like to see how you deal with that.’

Drumark smiled and smacked his lips. ‘They can’t put a lean on the beer ration,’ he said. ‘That is right there in the artycles.’

‘And what about your share?’ Skaggi hissed. ‘Don’t you care about that?’

‘I would just spend it on more beer,’ Drumark shrugged. He clapped a hand against Skaggi’s arm, almost knocking the logisticator over. ‘You should enjoy the simple things more. Gives you less to worry about in the long run.’

Skaggi started to answer but Drumark pressed his fingers against his lips, silencing the logisticator. The sergeant wasn’t looking at the other duardin, but had raised his gaze to something above Skaggi’s left shoulder. ‘Wrong season for geese,’ he muttered, squinting at the objects he had spotted.

Skaggi squirmed out from Drumark’s grip, sputtering angrily as he spat the taste of the sergeant’s fingers from his lips. ‘You grot-grabbing…’

Drumark was not listening to Skaggi’s diatribe. He was watching the objects he had sighted, growing more uneasy with each heartbeat. It was difficult to judge distance without anything to measure against. What he saw could be small fliers quite close to the ironclad or they could be much bigger ones at a further distance. Keeping his eyes on the flock, he yelled up to the lookout posted in the endrin’s cupola. ‘Starboard at the forty! Something flying around up there!’

It took the lookout a moment to focus his glass in the direction Drumark indicated, a little longer to find the objects the sergeant had spotted. From the deck, the sergeant could see the sentinel’s sudden agitation as the spyglass brought the fliers into focus. They were a good deal further away than a flock of geese and a great deal more monstrous.

‘Chimeras!’ the lookout’s cry rang out. Those with spyglasses and aether-scopes trained their instruments in the direction he was pointing, verifying for themselves the magnitude of his warning. Commands were swiftly issued. Brokrin’s voice barked orders to Arrik’s gunners as they put Ghazul’s Bane into readiness. Gotramm had his arkanauts muster amidships, each privateer double-checking the charge in his pistol and the readiness of axe and skypike. Skywardens and endrinriggers emerged from below decks with their cumbersome aether-endrins, each duardin assisting the comrade next to him in securing the devices to the harnesses that criss-crossed their bodies. Horgarr and Mortrimm took posts near the wheelhouse, both endrinmaster and navigator armed with the tools of their respective professions.

Drumark shouted for his thunderers, drawing the Grundstok company to the flanks of Gotramm’s arkanauts. The duardin marksmen readied their weapons, taking aim at the fast-approaching monsters. ‘Make each shot a good one,’ Drumark told his thunderers. ‘Aim for the eyes and throat, the vulnerable spots where a bullet does more damage. Hurt ’em where it counts, because sure as a grub-miner’s beard has lice, if you just nick ’em, all you will do is really piss ’em off.’

The flock drew steadily closer. Drumark didn’t bother lifting his decksweeper yet. The gun was powerful but only at close range. He would have to wait until the chimeras were right on the ship before cutting loose. Among his thunderers there were weapons with less punch to them but able to hit at a greater distance. Aethershot rifles and Grundstok mortars would begin blasting away at the aerial monsters while Drumark’s decksweeper and the aethercannons of his troops were still biding their time. The sergeant uttered a grim laugh. Bad things came to those who waited when they assailed a force of Grundstok thunderers.

‘Ready the mine!’ Horgarr’s voice cried out. From the prow of the ship, a team of crewmen unlimbered the heavy supremacy air-mine from its carriage, fitting a small endrin to its chassis and preparing to send it ploughing towards the foe. The Iron Dragon carried only a few of the immense aerial mines and they were too deadly to keep in proximity to one another. It would take Horgarr some time to assemble a second one from the components stored in the ship’s armoury. The weapon being unfastened from the deck was the only one in usable condition.

Hearing Horgarr’s voice, Drumark turned his head and glanced around for Mortrimm. The navigator had many devices to help him steer the Iron Dragon into the most favourable of Chamon’s currents, drawing the ship like a lodestone to the most propitious winds. The most versatile of these was the ornate zephyrscope. The flashes that had been used to signal the lost frigates could also be dialled to much more powerful settings, actuated to draw upon the thermals and harness them into a stormy tempest that would loose its fury against whatever position the navigator chose. Drumark could see Mortrimm working his zephyrscope, gazing up at the skies and watching the approaching chimeras. He was waiting for the ideal moment to set the winds against the monstrous flock.

‘They have come again.’ The words came in a voice that was somewhere between fatalism and bitterness. Drumark swung around to find Grokmund standing beside him. The Stormbreaker’s aether-khemist had his gaze fixated upon the chimeras, his lip trembling with rage. ‘Everything is lost and still they want more.’

‘What are you babbling about?’ Drumark growled at Grokmund. ‘Get below. There is fighting to be done here.’

The curt reprimand snapped Grokmund from his bitter reflections. He looked to Drumark and nodded. ‘Indeed, there is fighting to be done. I have come to help.’ Without explaining himself, he began playing with the dials of his atmospheric anatomiser. A hazy gas slowly gathered around Grokmund, spreading outwards in a translucent cloud until it engulfed all of the thunderers. Drumark saw the energy readings on his decksweeper fluctuate before settling back to their original levels. Shouts from those of his duardin armed with rifles told him the fluctuation had been different for them.

‘Sarge! My rifle is at peak charge!’ one of the thunderers yelled.

‘Don’t look a gift vein in the shaft,’ Drumark barked back. It had been on his tongue to snap at Grokmund for interfering with his battleline but now he bit back the words. With the rifles drawing extra energy from the haze Grokmund had conjured with his anatomiser they would be able to maintain a greater rate of fire, not waiting between shots for the rifles to recharge. He nodded respectfully to the aether-khemist, then turned his focus back on the chimeras.

The discordant howls of the beasts could be heard now, a grating warble that was part shriek and part laugh, rising and falling through a cacophony of pitches. It was a sound of madness and nightmare, the scream of wild things corrupted and defiled, the roar of monsters that existed only to vent their rage upon the world.

‘Loose!’ Arrik’s command boomed from the forecastle. The next instant the lance loaded into Ghazul’s Bane went shooting out through the air, coils of heavy chain unspooling behind it. The lance wasn’t as elaborate and deadly as the obsidian-headed harpoon that had been lost in the explosive destruction of the tentacled horror, but the gunners sent it flying at their target with lethal precision. The great skyhook pierced one of the oncoming beasts, punching through its breastbone and out through its spine. The monster’s wings faltered and with an anguished screech, it dropped, transfixed by the harpoon and its chain.

The death of one of their fold heightened the aggression of the others. Shrieking their disordered cries, the flock surged onwards. Now the duardin could see clearly the kind of beasts that stalked them. The chimeras were a confusion of limbs and extremities, the consistency of their hides varying from one individual to the next. One creature boasted a shaggy crimson pelt while another was clothed in sleek fur of deep purple. Some of the monsters had bare, scaly skin with a pebbly texture and dark stripes. Others were mottled with patches of mangy hair. Each of the monsters was bigger than a steer, a long body of vaguely leonine shape. The foremost of their heads was likewise cat-like in its form, often surrounded by a thick mane. On each creature this lion-head was flanked by others that branched off from shoulder and neck. Some of these heads were like those of goats and boars, others were the reptilian visages of snakes and wyrms. Feline or otherwise, the heads were revoltingly twisted and corrupt, loathsome mutations creating a fell display of malformation. Warty growths peppered jowl and throat, horny bulbs of bone protruded from nose and brow.

Enormous wings lifted the chimeras through the sky, yet even their pinions lacked symmetry of form and shape. Some of the wings were thick and leathery, like those of a bat, while others were broad and feathered in the manner of condors. A few even exhibited the gossamer translucence of insects, their membranes gleaming in the light with a jewel-like lustre. The same beast might sport wings of wildly disordered design, flinging itself through the air with awkward heaves of its mutant frame. However monstrous or corrupt, the ghastly flock kept steadily approaching the ironclad.

‘Rifles! Fire!’ Drumark commanded. At his order the thunderers equipped with aethershot rifles opened up on the chimeras. The energised field Grokmund had created fed their weapons, speeding the recharge so that the duardin were able to send a withering stream of shots into the beasts. One of the chimeras plummeted from the sky, its shaggy hide ripped apart by the rifles. A second veered away, howling with pain as it cradled its bleeding limbs against its bloodied chest.

After the rifles, the Grundstok mortar banged away, its explosive shot shredding the wing of one monster and knocking it from the sky. A second beast, torn by shrapnel, lunged onwards only to be brought down by the gas-carbines mounted in the ironclad’s hull. With a deafening wail, the dying monster hurtled earthwards.

The flock plunged closer still, then a great flash flared outwards from Mortrimm’s zephyrscope. Drumark could feel a hot breeze plucking at his beard as the navigator’s instrument brought Chamon’s winds whipping across the sky. The worst of the aetherstorm worked its wrath upon the chimeras, slowing their onset, forcing them to struggle through the gale that drove against them. The retarded advance of the monsters gave the Grundstok thunderers time for a second salvo. Again they knocked one of the beasts out of the sky and left another wounded.

With the stubbornness of rage, the chimeras pressed on. Now they were almost upon the Iron Dragon. From draconic maws and leonine jaws, the monsters spat gouts of golden fire at the ship. The caustic spittle sizzled against the iron hull-plates and the metal casing of the endrin. One endrinrigger, struck by the burning spume, went careening wildly above the decks, too pained to control his aether-endrin.

Drumark brought his decksweeper up to his shoulder, picking a beast with goat-horns curling out from its leonine head. He listened to the crack of pistols as Gotramm’s arkanauts shot at the flock, heard his own troops fire off their aethercannons. Still he waited, letting the beast close almost upon the ship before firing the full charge into its faces. The chimera reared back, almost seeming to stand upon its hind legs in mid-air. It flailed about wildly, knocking one of its pride into the hull with its anguished writhing. Drumark could see the thing’s leftward snake-like head hanging limp and torn against its shoulder. Half of the central leonine face was ripped away, exposing a mush of bone and gristle. Only the boar-like head to the right retained any sign of awareness, and that awareness was simply pain.

The burning sizzle of Horgarr’s cutting beam seared across the porcine head, piercing the brain nestled within its thick skull. The endrinmaster’s shot finished the mangled beast. The chimera slammed against the hull as its carcass tumbled downwards.

In the next instant, Horgarr wrought far greater destruction upon the chimera pride. The aerial mine the crew had sent spinning away from the ironclad received the signal he sent it. With a blinding flash and a deafening roar, the supremacy mine detonated in the very midst of the flock. A tumult of torn limbs went thudding across the deck, glancing from the gunwales and slamming into the crew. Drumark’s head was ringing as a severed claw struck his helm. He saw Gotramm knocked over when a leg crashed into him.

The sergeant started towards the arkanaut, then hesitated. Despite everything they had unleashed against the foe, the battle was not over.

Such was the fury of the chimeras that even the devastating supremacy mine failed to break their attack. Reduced to only a few mangled specimens, they plummeted through the wreckage of their flock to strike at the Iron Dragon. One beast dived for the wheelhouse, its tail slapping across Arrik and knocking the hunter flat. Its claws closed around one of the gunners, wrenching the duardin up from the deck and lifting him towards its fanged jaws. All three heads bit down at the same time, each ripping a gory morsel from its screaming prey.

Before the chimera could strike again, it was beset from all sides. The remaining gunners came at it with skypikes, stabbing and slashing at the beast. Rushing out from the wheelhouse, Brokrin emptied his volley pistol into its side, crumpling its left wing. From behind came Mortrimm, the old navigator’s hand clenched tight about a ranging pistol. He fired at the monster’s back, putting his shot between its shoulders. The burning flare glowed white-hot, searing its way down into the monster’s flesh. The chimera threw aside its victim, each of its heads contorted in agony as it thrashed about the forecastle. Ghazul’s Bane was knocked from its moorings, teetering precariously as it struck the gunwale and threatened to pitch over the side.

Brokrin rushed past the chimera’s flashing claws, seizing hold of the weapon before it could hurtle over the side. The surviving gunners continued to prod the monster with their skypikes, steering it away from where the skyhook had fallen. Arrik rallied, recognising the crisis at once. Seizing his axe, he lunged at the chain connected to the skyhook’s reel. Still attached to the first casualty of the battle, Ghazul’s Bane was being pulled over the side by the dead weight of its victim.

Three blows of the axe against the same link broke the connection. Brokrin and the skyhook tumbled back onto the deck as the dead chimera and the chain were cut free. Arrik shouted a warning to the captain. Brokrin just had time to roll aside when the claw of the rampaging monster came slamming down, missing him by a matter of inches.

The flare Mortrimm had fired into the beast continued to burn its way deep into the chimera’s body. An agony of panic ruled the monster now as it flailed across the deck. Already wracked by torment, it cringed away from the skypikes, letting the gunners herd it towards the side of the ship. The chimera stumbled against the gunwale, then crashed through, its great weight ripping a section of the railing away. With its wing ruined by Brokrin’s volley, the chimera fell to the ground far below.

Brokrin laid a hand on Ghazul’s Bane, using the skyhook to steady himself as he rose to his feet. Arrik limped over to him, relief on his face. ‘My thanks for your timely aid,’ Brokrin said.

Panting, Arrik smiled back. ‘Without you, we won’t get paid,’ he said. The hunter laid a caressing hand against Ghazul’s Bane. ‘Without this, we don’t have a job. Plenty of incentive to take a hand in things.’

The last of the chimeras dived straight towards Drumark’s command. The thunderers fired ragged shots at the brute, but nothing seemed to slow it. It came slamming down on the deck, cut and bloodied by its struggles. One of the thunderers was crushed beneath its paws. A slap of its wings sent an arkanaut hurtling through the air. The flailing tail slapped another duardin before he could turn his mortar against it, sending him tumbling across the deck.

The beast’s six eyes glared murderously at Drumark. Some facet of its brutish brains had decided he was the leader of its tormentors. Foam dripped from the chimera’s fangs as it prepared to lunge at him.

Abruptly, the beast spun around. It snuffled loudly, drawing the air into its noses. Its gaze narrowed and it turned its attention upon Grokmund. Angrily the thing’s lizard-head spat, sending a blob of caustic spittle to smoulder against the deck-plates. Grokmund backed away, hurriedly trying to manipulate the settings of his atmospheric anatomiser.

Before the monster could disgorge more of its fiery spume or lunge at Grokmund with its rending claws, Drumark was in action. His decksweeper roared as he sent the blast full into the chimera’s body. The right foreleg buckled as the bones within were shattered, the lizard-like head sagging as the hairy neck under it was broken.

The maimed chimera swung back around to confront Drumark. He could feel the hate in its eyes. A scalding hiss rasped across the fangs of its living heads. Even as it sprang for him, half a dozen guns spoke. The chimera crashed to its side, flopping against the deck, riddled with shot from rifles and pistols and aethercannons. Drumark marched over to the stricken beast and smashed the butt of his gun into its skulls. After a moment, the anguished throes abated and the chimera was still.

‘Well, lads,’ Drumark shouted to his duardin. ‘Let us not be in any great hurry to do this again.’ He kicked his boot against the leonine head. It wobbled brokenly from side to side, drawing a few relieved laughs from the thunderers. Like their sergeant, they were feeling the excited rush of surviving the battle.

‘By Grungni’s Beard!’ It was a different sort of excitement that characterised Grokmund’s shout. He stood staring down at the deck. It wasn’t the chimera that interested him, but the spot of steaming residue left by its spittle. Grokmund pointed at it and clapped his hands. ‘They are from the strike! They are from the strike!’ He turned and looked at the Iron Dragon’s crew, startled by the confusion he saw on their faces.

‘Don’t you see?’ Grokmund exclaimed, pointing again at the steaming residue. ‘We must be close to my strike! Enough riches to make every duardin on this ship a thane! All we have to do is reach out and take it!’

Chapter IX

Grokmund saw the uncertainty in Drumark’s stare. The other duardin regarded him with wariness. Irritated, he drew a lead stylus from his belt and poked it into the steaming smear left by the chimera’s spittle. The end of the stylus glowed with heat, but as he lifted it, a nimbus of golden light shone around it. Every Kharadron knew what those wisps of energy drifting away from the stylus were: raw aether-gold.

The duardin looked with a new sense of wonder at the scorched deck-plate and the dead chimera. Grokmund uttered a snort of laughter. ‘Not much here,’ he stated. He pressed the stylus between two small plates of iron, closing them tight about the lead implement with a set of screws. He tucked the packet into a pouch, then glanced at the onlooking duardin. ‘We saw these beasts when we found the vein. These monsters have been taking aether-gold to build their nests. When they do, there is always a residue that collects in their throats.’ Grokmund tapped his own neck to illustrate what he meant. ‘When they try to roast something with their spit, some of that residue is expelled along with it.’ He laughed again and kicked the flank of the dead chimera. ‘Not much, lads. At best you might find half an ounce if you cut this thing open. Ugly work for little reward.’

From whatever hole he’d found to keep himself hidden during the fighting, Skaggi was back to hear Grokmund’s words. He was quick to seize on them. ‘Little reward for excavating the stinking carcass of a chimera,’ he declared, gazing across the crew. ‘Little reward for risking life and limb fighting these beasts. At least by fighting them here.’ He gave Grokmund a cunning smile. ‘How much do you think could be made by collecting their nests?’

Grokmund was quiet for a moment, pondering the question. ‘Each nest would likely have enough aether-gold in it to be worth two hundred guilder. It is the same high-grade ore as we would find in the strike itself.’

Skaggi saw that Grokmund’s estimation of the profit to be had was not lost on the crew. Any pain or fatigue that held them a moment before vanished in the new ambitious glow that shone in their faces. ‘How much to be had from the vein itself?’ Skaggi asked. ‘How much would each share be worth if we filled the Iron Dragon’s belly with your ore?’

‘Enough!’ Brokrin’s furious roar was nearly as savage as the shrieks of the chimeras. He stormed his way through the press of crewmen, marching straight at Skaggi. ‘I already made my decision clear to you,’ he told the logisticator, his voice dipping down into that dangerously calm tone that his old shipmates knew to fear. ‘Agitating my crew is just going to land you in the brig.’ He turned a glowering eye towards Grokmund. ‘The same holds for you. Until you disembark from my ship, you will follow my rules.’

Skaggi stood his ground, fingers tugging at his beard. ‘Your rules are unreasonable,’ he said, his blunt words shocking many of the spectators. ‘Your decisions are wrong. Tell your crew that we are going to turn our backs on this find.’ He waved his hand at Grokmund. ‘The strike he made will make all our fortunes. Shares won’t be worth hundreds but thousands! And you want to sail off and leave it, just turn away because you are afraid of what will happen.’

‘It is not any normal aether-gold,’ Brokrin reminded Skaggi. He turned and addressed the crew. ‘The Stormbreaker found it but did not want to risk carrying it in her hold, even with all her escorts. I have seen what even a little of this stuff can do in a refined state. I am not going to risk this ship and everyone on here–’

‘You already have,’ a voice from the crowd declared.

Arkanauts and thunderers stepped aside as Gotramm strode towards Brokrin. ‘This voyage has put the ship and everyone on her at risk already. The debts and obligations our misfortune has saddled us with will blight all of our careers. It might take decades to earn enough to be free from our burden. Allowing any ship will take us on. The Iron Dragon herself will go to a scrapyard to compensate your backers, cap’n.’

Brokrin shook his head. ‘Gotramm, think about what you are saying. What you will be putting at risk if you listen to this gold-grubber.’

‘I am, cap’n,’ Gotramm said. ‘I am thinking about what we all have to gain. I am thinking that maybe you cannot see through the gloom of your own bad luck to recognise good fortune when it is right in front of you.’ He pointed at Grokmund, raising his voice so that every duardin on the deck could hear him. ‘You worry about curses and ill omens, but what about providence? What incredible odds to bring us to Kero’s bonfire and learn about the Stormbreaker’s fall. What amazing coincidence that finds Grokmund, alone of all her crew, alive and able to tell us about this incredible strike. Now we have these chimeras, the same beasts that make their nests around that strike, coming upon us as though to give one last sign that we are at the very edge of destiny.’ He clenched his fist and held it above his head. ‘The vein is so close all we have to do is reach out and grab it.’ He opened his hand, splaying the fingers wide. ‘Or we can let it all slip away. For what? To squander years paying off our debts? To spend the next decades as indentured labour for our backers?’

‘Fill the holds with that ore and you will blow this ship to the Nine Hills,’ Brokrin warned.

‘Or fill our pockets with enough wealth to…’ Gotramm stopped, lifting his arms in frustration. ‘What is the use? You refuse to even consider seeing things a different way.’

‘When my ship and the lives of my crew are concerned, you can bet your grandfather’s beard I am not going to put them needlessly at risk.’ Brokrin turned from Gotramm, his eyes roving across the faces of the other duardin. The looks that greeted him ranged from dour to outright hostile. ‘You have heard my decision. Will you abide by it?’

Gotramm licked his lips, something like uncertainty in his eyes. For a moment he looked as though he would relent. Then his finger touched the malachite band around his arm, the vow-ring which bore Helga’s name etched upon its surface. ‘We can’t accept your decision.’

Brokrin nodded his head. It felt as though a heavy weight was dragging at his heart. ‘It will mean mutiny.’

Like a vulture, Skaggi swooped on the word. ‘Mutiny with cause is allowed by the Code,’ he stated, his voice cracking as he strove to project his words far enough for all to hear. ‘When a captain has exhausted the limits of his abilities, when his command has drawn the voyage into the doldrums of unprofitability, then a crew may take it upon themselves to appoint a new captain.’

Gotramm shook his head. ‘It is not your fault things have gone this far,’ he told Brokrin. ‘You have done the best you could until now. But now the only thing that can turn our fortunes around is the decision you refuse to make.’

Brokrin met Gotramm’s gaze. ‘Is it your choice,’ he asked, ‘or his?’ He jabbed his thumb at Skaggi.

‘The choice belongs to all of us,’ Drumark declared, removing his helmet and turning it upside down. ‘Somebody fetch beans and lentils from the galley. Everybody takes one of each. Those voting to keep the cap’n put a lentil in my helm. Anybody voting to make Gotramm captain, toss in a bean.’ He gave Brokrin an apologetic smile. ‘Foolishness should always be democratic, don’t you think, cap’n?’

From Brokrin’s perspective, it took hours for the voting to be over. As a final gesture of deference to his rank and his role as captain of the ship, Drumark gave his helm to Brokrin. One by one he removed the beans and lentils. As he let each one fall to the deck the absurd thought came to him that with the right broth they would make a decent soup when it was over.

One by one Brokrin let the votes slip from his fingers. Sometimes a subdued cheer would issue from the crew as he sent another bean bouncing across the deck. The first few lentils made Skaggi groan, but the logisticator soon lost any sense of anxiety. There were far more beans in the helm. When it was over it was apparent only seven of his crew had voted to keep Brokrin on as captain. By design he didn’t know who they were. Nobody did. Anonymity was the only way the crew could still function after such a contentious vote.

Brokrin turned towards Gotramm. ‘I cannot congratulate you,’ he stated. ‘I cannot wish you well in this endeavour. If you valued anything I could say to you, it would never have come to this. As you are in command now, I ask only that I be allowed to retire to my cabin. Unless of course you intend to assume that as well.’

Gotramm scowled at Brokrin’s hostility. He did not expect the displaced captain to be enthusiastic, but it grated on him to feel the accusation in his words. ‘You are dismissed,’ he told him. ‘It will not be necessary to disturb you. Keep to your cabin. We will discuss the new disposition of shares when you are in a better humour.’

Brokrin again gestured with his thumb at Skaggi. ‘Stop listening to him and maybe we will live long enough to see me in a better humour.’

Brokrin did not wait for any response, but headed for the stair leading below. The last thing he heard before he withdrew was the Iron Dragon’s new captain giving his first orders.

‘All right, boys,’ Gotramm shouted. ‘Let us get things set to rights. Heave this carcass overboard. Patch up that rail! Horgarr, help Arrik’s crew fix the skyhook! Be quick about it! Our next port of call is Grokmund’s fields of gold and plenty!’

Gotramm had been captain of the Iron Dragon for less than a day and already he felt out of his element. He did not know the ship the way Brokrin did. He did not know the quirks and peculiarities that governed her. He was not an accomplished skyfarer, not the way Brokrin was. He had not piloted a vessel as large and powerful as the ironclad. Since taking command he had left most of the piloting duties to Vorki, only alternating with the first mate when he needed a rest.

With his hands on the ship’s wheel, Gotramm imagined there was a strange sort of resistance, as though the ship herself resented his assumption of command. The wheel fought him, lagging behind his touch. The ship jerked and juked when he was in the wheelhouse, causing the crew no small measure of annoyance. Drumark had snidely remarked that it usually took three kegs of beer to get him to stagger half as much as the arkanaut’s steering.

Gotramm did not want the job. He knew he did not want it. Somehow he had expected that to make it easier for him to bear. Instead it just made things more difficult. It fed into his inadequacy, his sense of being out of his element. Humility was a luxury only someone of accomplishment could afford. As a fighter, as a privateer, perhaps he had earned that luxury, but as captain of a ship he knew he did not have the experience to justify himself. By refusing to exult in his new position he instead found himself despising it. Despising all the responsibilities bound within it.

Pacing across the deck, Gotramm stopped to watch Mortrimm employing his zephyrscope to detect the optimal currents upon which to sail. The flashes that strobed from its lens flared up into the blue heavens. Minuscule particles caught and reflected the light, their density and flow advising the navigator as to both strength and direction. By the adjustments to their course advised by Mortrimm and consulting the navigator’s charts, Grokmund boasted they had shaved days off their journey. Gotramm thought such an advance to be quite remarkable. All the more because he was certain the old navigator was firmly opposed to this venture and had voted to keep Brokrin in command.

‘Can you feel it yet?’ Skaggi asked as he walked over to join Gotramm. He had been up near the prow with Grokmund but had sauntered back when he spotted Gotramm. ‘I can fairly smell it in the air. Aether-gold!’ He grabbed Gotramm’s shoulder. ‘You will be a legend back in port when you bring this haul in. There will not be a guild in the sky-hold that will not be jumping to offer you a contract. You will have your own ship. By thunder, they might even give you this one if you want it!’

Gotramm plucked Skaggi’s hand away, letting it fall at the logisticator’s side. ‘All I want is to get this voyage over with.’ He nodded at the endrinriggers and crewmen working around the Iron Dragon’s massive endrin. ‘I just want to give them all a fair share. That is all I ask.’

Skaggi shook his head and tugged his beard in annoyance. ‘Here I thought you had some ambition.’ He tapped his finger against Gotramm’s chest. ‘Better find some, lad, or that rinn of yours will find somebody who does. Mark my words, it needs ambition to get things done. Leading a family is like leading a crew.’

‘You have a family, Skaggi?’ Gotramm suddenly asked. When he saw the bewildered look on his face he posed another enquiry. ‘You have captained a ship before?’

‘You know I haven’t,’ Skaggi grumbled.

Gotramm turned from the sharp-faced duardin and started towards the prow. ‘My apologies. I thought you knew what you were talking about.’ He did not turn when he heard Skaggi’s offended mutterings. Something his mother once said to him flashed through his mind. An eagle does not fret over a squawking crow.

Up near the prow Gotramm found Grokmund. The aether-khemist had begged or borrowed a spyglass from some member of the crew and was scouring the skies ahead with it. Such was his eagerness and anxiety that he rocked back and forth, swaying from one foot to the other regardless of Vorki’s stable flying. Every gesture and motion Grokmund made was expressive of a nervous excitement.

‘Are we getting close to your strike?’ Gotramm asked Grokmund.

‘Soon,’ Grokmund promised without moving his attention away from the glass. ‘You might want to have the armed elements of your crew ready. The chimeras we fought were the males. The females will be back in the nests. It is even odds whether they attack us or hunker down in their nests. The last time, they did not bother us, but that is because we went past them straight to the vein. The males must have picked up on my scent when they returned from hunting.’

‘More likely they felt we were intruding on their territory,’ Gotramm suggested. ‘I have heard it said that a chimera pride will claim a certain section of sky as their hunting grounds.’

Grokmund chuckled. ‘Maybe at first,’ he said, ‘but that last one we killed certainly had my scent. When it turned for me, the hate in its eyes was not that of an animal trying to get a meal but an old enemy coming upon its foe.’ The smile broadened on his face. Pulling the glass away from his eye, he handed it over to Gotramm. ‘See for yourself,’ he suggested.

What Gotramm saw magnified in the scope was a stream of shimmering clouds that looked as though they had been wrought from powdered diamond. At lower altitudes, darker spots could be seen, packed with greater solidity than the gossamer mists above. These darker splashes reflected a golden gleam, fairly throbbing with an inner light. It took Gotramm’s eyes a moment to resolve the grotesque shapes perched among the nests. When he did he felt a mix of revulsion and uneasiness. The lower reaches of the cloud bank were populated by a host of chimeras, a rookery of creatures as twisted and monstrous as those that had attacked the ship.

‘I do not want to depend on those beasts being as complacent as before,’ Gotramm said as he handed the glass back to Grokmund. ‘When you were here the last time you had an entire fleet behind you. We are just one ship. The difference might make the chimeras less tolerant of our presence.’ He clapped his hands together as he thought the matter out. Horgarr had another supremacy mine assembled, but the explosive was only practical at much closer range. Set it adrift now and there was no telling how far it would be blown off course. He had seen the havoc the other mine had wrought on the males of the pride. What they needed to do was pull the others away from their nests, anger them enough that they rushed the ship.

‘If we sent a torpedo in there, how much do you think it would upset the vein?’ Gotramm finally asked.

Grokmund thought about the question. ‘If you target the lower altitudes I do not think the blast would be enough to cause the vein itself to drift.’ He shook his head, clucking his tongue in a regretful fashion. ‘You would lose the nests for certain though. They are packed tight and apt to rain earthwards if they are put upon.’

‘You did say the vein would yield far more than the nests,’ Gotramm reminded him.

‘Harder to get. A lot more work. But well worth it,’ Grokmund confirmed. ‘If you got all those nests together you would not even scratch the potential of the vein itself.’

The statement decided Gotramm. He called for Horgarr. He would need the endrinmaster to fiddle with the warheads somewhat to accomplish what he had in mind.

It was the work of only an hour before Horgarr informed Gotramm that the adjustments had been made. The privateer assembled his new crew.

‘Your fight against the chimeras was the bravest I have seen,’ Gotramm told the crew. ‘You repelled the beasts with courage and efficiency that would make any admiral proud.’ He paused, letting his praise sink in before continuing. ‘There is a similar fight ahead of us. The rookery from whence the chimeras came stands between us and our fortune. We must again engage the brutes. With one difference, one crucial difference,’ he declared. ‘When we have won through, it isn’t the open skies we will be taking but a fat vein of aether-gold rich beyond the measure of avarice. Once more into the fray, lads, and our fortunes are assured.’

The speech brought cheers from the crew. Skywardens and endrinriggers ascended to their posts above the decks, each duardin tethered to the ship by a stout cable. Drumark assembled his thunderers, calling over Grokmund to render them the aid of his atmospheric anatomiser as he had before. Horgarr supervised the final preparations with the supremacy mine while Mortrimm had his zephyrscope ready to draw down an aetherstorm that would slow the chimeras when they came for the ironclad.

The Kharadron knew their jobs well; everything moved with precision. The only difference was the great skyhook’s absence. Ghazul’s Bane had not been repaired in the interval. Arrik and his hunters were still trying to secure it to the forecastle, reinforcing the planks that had been ripped up in the earlier fight. Somehow it struck Gotramm as strangely fitting the weapon was out of commission. It was something that belonged to Brokrin, stamped with his personality. It would feel in some way wrong to make use of it without Brokrin’s involvement.

Gotramm’s mood darkened as he thought of Brokrin down in his cabin below. It was certain that Brokrin knew of the fight that was coming. All he had to do was say something and Gotramm would welcome his aid. But Brokrin was too proud to offer that help. If he was honest with himself, Gotramm knew he was not without his own hubris, because the arkanaut was too proud to ask for assistance.

‘As Grungni wills it,’ Gotramm whispered before reaching to the speaking tube set into the walls of the wheelhouse. Vorki looked on as the new captain piped orders to the torpedo room. ‘Launch the whelp,’ he commanded.

A single torpedo went shimmering away from the prow of the ship. It looked like a silver lightning bolt as it clove through the clouds. Just like lightning, it grounded itself in a flash of violence and a thunderous roar. The missile exploded at the centre of the chimeras’ rookery. Horgarr had reduced the charge in the warhead, bleeding off aetheric energy to minimise the torpedo’s impact. Even so, several of the chimeras were savaged in the blast. Gotramm could see a few of them plummeting from their nests, while others had smoke billowing from their singed hides, blood coursing from their torn flesh. Wounded or whole, the survivors of the blast took to the air, rising in a vengeful swarm that soared towards the Iron Dragon.

‘Launch,’ Gotramm piped to the torpedo room once more. There was no need to clarify this time. Only one of the warheads had been tampered with. The rest of the torpedoes were at full charge.

The second torpedo snaked away from the ship, racing to meet the oncoming swarm. It flew past the foremost of the chimeras before exploding in the midst of those that followed. The roar this time was not that of lightning but rather of some volcanic discharge. A great ball of gold-tinged fire expanded to engulf most of the chimeras. Black smoke rolled through the air. Charred, torn carcasses dropped away from that cloud of smoke, dead and mangled monsters falling towards their final dissolution.

Out from the conflagration, a greatly reduced pride came rushing for the ship. Too close now for another torpedo, the crew of the Iron Dragon reverted to their earlier tactics. Mortrimm’s aetherstorm slowed the beasts while Drumark’s thunderers shot them up with their rifles and mortar. As the brutes won clear of the fusillade, they were caught in the detonation of the supremacy mine. Again the ironclad’s decks were assailed by a shower of organic debris. This time, however, no beasts pushed through to press the attack. The chimeras had had enough. A few injured specimens fled across the sky, wanting no further contact with the duardin who had decimated their pride.

A victorious cheer rang out across the decks. The plates shook as the Kharadron stamped their heavy boots against the floor. Gotramm felt colour rush to his face when he heard his name being toasted by the jubilant duardin. He stepped out from the wheelhouse, waving to his comrades to quiet themselves.

‘Save your energies, lads,’ he admonished them. ‘The fighting is done but the work is just starting.’ He pointed to the shimmering clouds of powdered diamond. ‘That is where the vein is. That is where our fortune’s to be made. It will not come easy, but when has any duardin worth his ancestry shirked from honest labour?’

‘We are with you, cap’n,’ a voice from the crowd called out.

Gotramm paused, feeling awkward to hear himself addressed in such a way. Suppressing his uneasiness, he issued new orders to the crew. ‘Get the sifting nets ready! Pumps and bellows brought up. Get the hoses secured. We are going to fill this ship from stern to bow with every puff of aether-gold the sky has to offer.’

Again the crew cheered him. This time Gotramm suppressed his misgivings and basked in the adulation. Soon they would all be rich. Even Brokrin.

As he closed his eyes and basked in the cheers of his crew, the Iron Dragon’s new captain was unaware of the dark, rope-like thing that watched him through a gap in the deck where the skyhook had been mounted. He didn’t see the unblinking eye that peered at him, studying him. Every image the remnant saw was conveyed back to its master.

Khoram cautiously made his way through the nine rings of sigils drawn across the floor of his sanctum. He scratched at the feathered head of his homunculus as he watched the duardin celebrate their triumph.

‘The Kharadron are not the only ones delighted by their victory,’ Khoram told the tretchlet. ‘Despite Tamuzz’s fears, the duardin are conforming to my expectations. They act in accordance with my plan.’

The sorcerer stepped into the innermost of the circles. As he did he brought from a pouch on his belt a pinch of chalky dust. Exactingly, he began to close the wards he had crossed by sifting the dust through his fingers.

‘Why use force to compel an enemy?’ Khoram mused. ‘All it needs is the slightest push and they can be moved to do what is needed. Not by command but by their own desires. Tamuzz fails to appreciate that there is no slave so dependable as the one that believes himself free.’

The tretchlet squawked in agreement, its feathered bulk rippling with amusement.

Khoram’s attention turned to the Orb of Zobras. He studied the scenes caught within its facets, letting the gibbering of his tretchlet guide his attention to those images that showed futures with the greatest potential of coming to pass. One of those visions caught him cold. It was the image of a ramshackle sky-ship, a claptrap construction of raw timber and plundered resources. That it could keep itself aloft seemed an act of greater magic than even he’d care to risk. Yet there was a threat here, a threat to all his carefully laid schemes.

Across the decks of the scrap-ship swarms of diminutive creatures blundered about in a confusion of bullying antics that could only with the greatest charity be considered as labour. The creatures were half the height of a man, with wizened faces and long, gangly arms. Their skins were green and leathery, their faces long and malicious with wide mouths and hooked noses. They were arrayed in a wild costume of bright cloth and grubby armour. Short swords and broad daggers were tucked into their belts, bandoliers of pistols dripped across the chests of the largest.

‘I know these creatures,’ Khoram snarled. ‘Grots. Malicious kin of the orruks. They look absurd but the weedy little monsters have a vindictive cunning and a murderous sort of humour. Even for me their intentions are difficult to predict with any great accuracy. Their minds are moved by strange whims. At once they are capable of ferocious aggression and abject cowardice. I have even seen them squander a victory because they were too busy fighting among themselves.’

The image in the orb showed the motley array of weaponry that littered the scrap-ship. Things that looked like crude bolt-throwers, others that might be cannons, still other contraptions that looked like nothing so much as the over-sized slingshot of a shepherd. Together it made for a considerable if crude arsenal. The stacks of plunder carelessly strewn about the decks left little question how the grots used that arsenal. The green-skinned creatures were pirates.

Pirates that had heard the explosive battle with the chimeras and now turned their vessel towards the Iron Dragon. If the duardin were braced for a fight, Khoram was certain they would blast the grot ship into splinters. At the moment, that was not the situation. They had started drawing gas from the sky-veins. Their ship was at its most vulnerable, their crew least prepared for an unexpected attack.

Khoram studied the scene in the orb. He had learned long ago that it was doubtful to factor grots into any scheme. ‘This will not do,’ he declared. ‘This uncertainty is too great an obstacle to compensate for. They must be eliminated before they can meddle in my affairs.’

From beneath his robes, the sorcerer withdrew a dragon scale of prodigious size. Setting its shape clearly in his mind, Khoram closed his eyes. His lips murmured a series of hissing incantations, the sounds crawling through the floors of his sanctum. As the spell took shape, he felt his awareness creeping into another brain and another body. He poured his commands into that brain, impulses and urges it would be incapable of resisting.

Powerful magics and debased rituals had given him a hold upon the great reptile the scale had once belonged to. Fell enchantments that had put a fragment of Khoram’s own essence inside the mighty wyrm. An arcane link that could be broken only in death. A bond that recognised no distance or impediment.

The sorcerer’s body grew hot, the clothes beginning to smoulder against his skin. The pained whimpers of his tretchlet pulled at him, drawing him out from the being into which he had so briefly projected himself. As he returned to his own body he ran to a ewer of water, its contents enchanted against just the sort of effects he now suffered. Imbibing the liquid, he soon felt the fiery sensation abate.

Looking back into the orb, Khoram saw a different scene. The grots were scrambling about in terror, frantically loading weapons, training them against the enemy that had so impossibly appeared in the sky above them. In prodding his beast to the attack, Khoram had stripped away the dragon’s veil of invisibility, restoring it completely to the time-place it should occupy.

The wyrm hurtled down at the scrap-ship like a vengeful meteor. For a beast that had decimated an entire Kharadron fleet, the grot pirates would be nothing. They would be obliterated before the Iron Dragon even knew they existed. Once they were gone, Khoram would once more use his sorcery to put the dragon out of phase with the substance of Chamon.

Once more it would become the duardin’s invisible guardian, ready to act should any peril threaten the ironclad.

Ready to strike should the duardin stray from the course Khoram had plotted for them.

Chapter X

The Iron Dragon’s holds were filled with aether-gold after a few days of arduous work. Despite the hardship, Gotramm was stunned by the size of the yield. Every prospector claimed his strike was just waiting to be collected, ready to just flow into the hands of those who but reached out to take it. It had always been an exaggeration, a lie fed by excitement. In the case of Grokmund’s strike, however, the claims were as near to being true as Gotramm had ever encountered. Yes, the duardin had to work to get at the vein, but once it had been tapped the yield exceeded even the most optimistic expectations.

‘If they were with us, we could have filled the Dron-Duraz and Grom-Makar with aether-gold,’ Drumark observed as he watched the pumps feeding gas into the expandable tanks in the aft hold. ‘It will be rough leaving some of it behind.’

Gotramm nodded. He was feeling some of the burden Brokrin must have felt: responsibility for the ship and her crew, abhorrence towards anything that smacked of recklessness. He gave Drumark a wary look. ‘Are you suggesting we load up barrels and pile them on deck?’ If the sergeant were, he would not be the first. Skaggi took that distinction, broaching the subject as soon as it was confirmed that the vein had more aether-gold than they could store in the holds.

‘I do not pretend to be wise and long in the beard,’ Drumark answered, ‘but I am not a complete fool either. We are taking a risk filling the holds the way we are. Having even more piled up and exposed on the deck is tempting things too far.’ He scratched at his beard, picking a few crumbs out and flicking them overboard with his thumb. ‘Leastwise that is the way I see it.’

‘We are in agreement then,’ Gotramm said. ‘It comes down to weighing the chances and deciding what risks to take and which ones to avoid.’ He sighed and turned to watch the duardin working the pumps. ‘I am not as sceptical as Brokrin, but I am starting to see his point of view.’

Drumark caught Gotramm’s arm and pulled the new captain close. The smell of his beer-soaked breath spilled across the arkanaut’s face as the sergeant whispered into his ear. ‘You might see things even more like Brokrin,’ he warned.

‘What do you mean?’ Gotramm asked.

Drumark glanced across the deck to where Skaggi was observing the collection process. He had a copper tablet in his hand, etching away at it with an acid-dipped needle. ‘Skaggi has been talking to the crew, working on them the way he did before. Those tabulations he is making – he is figuring out exactly how much everyone’s share will be worth. He is also calculating how much they would get if every pot and pan on this ship was filled with aether-gold.’

The sergeant leaned back, tucking his thumbs under his belt. ‘A crew that has already mutinied against one captain won’t hesitate to mutiny against another.’

Gotramm knew the sergeant was right. Skaggi had whipped up the crew to unseat Brokrin, so he would have even less problem moving them against him. The only chance he had was to cut the logisticator off before he could bring things to a boil.

‘Be careful how you do it,’ Gotramm told Drumark, ‘but tell Horgarr I want to see him. I want to discuss an idea with him. Skaggi is busy telling everybody what they have to gain. I think they need to be reminded of what they stand to lose.’

The signal that blared from the Iron Dragon’s whistle was the most imperious of the many commands Kharadron crews learned. ‘All hands on deck’ it shrieked in its aetheric voice of steam. Wherever they were, the duardin left their duties and rushed to answer the summons. Endrinriggers let their aether-endrins sink towards the deck, gold-gatherers shut off their pumps and sealed off their hoses as they scrambled to answer the summons. Only the lookout high atop the great endrin and Vorki manning the ship’s wheel were exempted from the call, their duties too crucial to be cast aside, even for a moment.

The duardin muttered anxiously among themselves, looking about for some hint as to the emergency that had provoked the signal. Many eyes stared at the deck under their feet, picturing the holds below filled with gaseous aether-gold. More than a few brows began to form beads of sweat.

Gotramm stood up on the forecastle and shouted down to the assembled crew. ‘I applaud your quickness to attend the signal,’ he declared. ‘I will apologise for any alarm you’ve been given. Let me assure you that the ship is in no danger.’ He raised his hand as a visible wave of relief swept through the crew. ‘The ship is in no danger… yet,’ he elaborated. His gaze settled for a moment on Brokrin. His expression had some sympathy about it, but also a kind of righteous satisfaction that cut at Gotramm’s pride. Yes, he thought, you were right.

Unsurprisingly it was Skaggi who demanded an explanation from Gotramm. ‘A poor prank to be pulling, cap’n,’ he grumbled. ‘Unbecoming of your command.’ His hard stare made it clear he understood the purpose of Gotramm’s summons. From the first, he intended to undermine the privateer’s authority and make whatever argument he put to the crew less convincing.

Gotramm resisted the urge to smile. He had a trick up his sleeve he did not think Skaggi would expect. ‘It is no jest,’ he said, sweeping his eyes across the crew. ‘I would not jest about a cargo of aether-gold. We have a fortune in our holds already, but some among us aren’t satisfied. They are more worried about what they do not have than what they do. That is the kind of greed this voyage can ill afford.’

‘You are sounding like Captain Brokrin now,’ Skaggi challenged, throwing his words among the crew like seeds. ‘I imagine we still have beans and lentils in the galley.’ The remark brought some harsh laughs from the gathered duardin.

Gotramm drew his pistol and fired it away from the ship. The crack of the shot quieted the crew. ‘The situation is different now,’ he declared. ‘When we voted against Captain Brokrin, it was because we were a crew without prospects with nothing waiting for us back in port except debt and disgrace. Now things are different. Now we have a cargo that will bring us plenty when we get back to port. There is a time to take risks and a time to be prudent.’ He looked down at Brokrin, bowing his head in respect. ‘Captain Brokrin worried about the stability of this cargo. That was why he refused to take it aboard. He had the safety and welfare of the ship in mind. All of you know this, but I wonder how many of you have considered precisely what it means.’

A wave of his hand signalled Drumark and Horgarr to step away from the wheelhouse. Between them, the two duardin carried a small iron-banded keg. They walked over to where an idle aether-endrin was lying. While Drumark held the keg, Horgarr strapped it into the aether-endrin’s harness. Around them, the crew watched in bewilderment.

‘That keg is filled with aether-gold,’ Gotramm announced. ‘You need not fret; it has been deducted from my share.’ He felt a sense of triumph when he saw the shock on Skaggi’s face. Sharp and conniving, the logisticator was ready to work any angle but he hadn’t considered that someone would throw away their own money. Skaggi knew what was coming now. Maybe not the exact method, but he knew the message Gotramm was going to send to the crew. The logisticator looked again at the keg being fitted to the aether-endrin and began to twist his beard in a fit of nervousness.

‘There is not a lot in there,’ Gotramm elaborated. ‘As I said, it is coming out of my share.’ The comment brought laughter from the assembled duardin. The privateer looked over at Brokrin, saw the knowing look in his eyes. Like Skaggi, Brokrin knew what was coming.

‘We made a test with an even smaller amount down in the cap’n’s cabin,’ Gotramm said. ‘You did not see that. What you did see was what happened when Horgarr used the larger ingot to destroy that sky-horror that brought down the frigates. In the heat of battle, that seemed more boon than threat. I think all of you could benefit from a clearer demonstration of the danger this ore represents.’

Horgarr turned away from the aether-endrin and nodded to Gotramm. He made a gesture with his hand. Together, Horgarr and Drumark sent the keg over the side of the ship. Suspended by the aether-endrin it was soon caught by the wind current and carried away. Gotramm waited until it was a hundred yards away. He gave another signal with his hand. Drumark took up the aethershot rifle that was leaning against the wheelhouse.

‘Remember,’ Gotramm enjoined the watching crew, ‘there is only a little of the aether-gold in that keg.’

Drumark snapped the rifle up to his shoulder and fired. The shot cracked against the airborne keg. The next instant there was a tremendous explosion, its shockwave such that the Iron Dragon rolled from side to side. When the ringing in their ears abated, the duardin looked at the faint wisps of smoke that were the only remains of the keg. Gasps of wonder spread amongst the crowd.

Gotramm folded his arms across his chest. He knew he had made his point.

‘I do not think you’ll have much trouble defusing Skaggi now,’ Grokmund stated quietly as he walked over to join Gotramm. Alone of the crew, he was unfazed by the explosive spectacle.

‘That was the whole purpose behind it,’ Gotramm told him. ‘We are taking enough chances with what is in the hold. We do not need to test our luck stacking more all over the deck.’

Grokmund nodded. ‘A prudent course to take,’ he conceded. ‘Costly, but prudent.’

‘Not as costly as having the whole ship blow up,’ Gotramm said. ‘There is no profit in being dead.’

Grokmund bowed. ‘I was not questioning your decision,’ he apologised. He nodded towards Skaggi, drawing Gotramm’s attention to the logisticator as he skulked his way below deck. ‘His ambition got the better of his judgement. You were right to oppose his reckless plot.’

It was a look of suspicion that Gotramm trained upon Grokmund. ‘Why does that sound like you have some reckless plot of your own?’

Grokmund tapped the side of his head. ‘Not a plot, but a proposal. And it isn’t reckless. Far from it. If you are agreeable, we could make the cargo safer and more stable.’ He smiled at the privateer. ‘More valuable too. The raw ore is precious, but distilled into a solid it will be even more so.’

Gotramm thought it over. He lifted his gaze from Grokmund, focusing on Brokrin as the captain paced across the deck of the ship that had been his to command. Brokrin was an experienced skyfarer. If his worry about the stability of Grokmund’s ore was great enough for him to risk mutiny, then it was a worry that shouldn’t be dismissed easily. As he had told the crew, now that they weren’t looking at disaster when they returned to Barak-Zilfin, Gotramm was not so eager to take any undue risks.

‘If you have an idea how we might make the cargo safer, I will hear it,’ Gotramm told him. ‘If it sounds feasible to me, we will put it to the rest of the officers.’

Again, Grokmund smiled. ‘If I can convince you, cap’n, then I am certain I can convince them.’

To say he felt awkward would have been a vast understatement. There was something almost surreal to Brokrin in the situation, sitting to one side of the table in his cabin with Gotramm conducting a conference of the Iron Dragon’s officers. The last time they had all been in this room, he had been captain of the ship. Now he was adrift, a spectator to events. An interested observer, to be certain, but in no real way a participant. That Gotramm had asked him to remain was out of courtesy rather than necessity. Brokrin had no authority now.

The subject at hand was, of course, the explosive cargo in the ironclad’s holds. After the violent exhibition Gotramm had arranged for the crew, there were more than a few misgivings about carrying Grokmund’s volatile ore. Skaggi’s plans to overload the ship had been scuppered, but now there were arguments that even the amount in the holds should be reduced.

‘A reduction would not change anything,’ Horgarr told the others. ‘You all saw the punch just a tiny draught of this aether-gold had. Bleeding off some of what we have already loaded would not change a thing. If you want to play safe you will have to get rid of it all.’

Grokmund was quick to speak lest anyone seize upon Horgarr’s extreme suggestion. ‘Disperse what has been brought on and it will be lost for good,’ he argued. ‘Even if the vein does not drift, anything you expel from the holds is certain to. Think of what you stand to lose.’

‘If I was thinking of that, I would not be telling Skaggi where he can put his barrels,’ Drumark snorted. The logisticator scowled at him, but the sergeant simply grinned back.

Arrik stood and looked around the table. ‘As I see it there is a big difference between having the aether-gold exposed on deck and locked away down in the holds. It is safe enough down there.’

Mortrimm glanced over at Brokrin, then answered Arrik’s statement. ‘This aether-gold is more caustic than the common sort. Makes it more valuable, but more dangerous too. I do not know that it is any safer down there than it is sitting next to an open flame.’

Skaggi slammed his fist against the table. ‘By that logic we should not take any of it,’ he growled. ‘Just tuck tail and fly back to Barak-Zilfin empty-handed.’ He glared at the other duardin. ‘Maybe you have a taste for being up to your beard in debt, but not me. We have come this far.’

‘Maybe we have been lucky,’ Drumark told him. ‘I am not keen to have creditors nipping at my boots, but I am not anxious to have my body blasted across half of Chamon.’

Gotramm interrupted before the pair could really start arguing. ‘There are precautions we could take,’ he told the duardin. ‘Ways to make the aether-gold safer to transport.’ He motioned for Grokmund to explain.

‘We could refine the gas,’ Grokmund said. ‘Distil it into a solid. As ingots it would be easier to carry and take up less room in the holds.’

‘Refine it?’ Horgarr scratched at his beard, mulling over the idea. ‘It would help the stability. Certainly it would be easier to carry.’

Skaggi nodded slowly. ‘Ingots would take up less space. We could distil what we have and come back for more.’

‘Or we could be content with what we have and not go pushing our luck,’ Drumark shot back.

Skaggi gave Drumark a look that was almost murderous. ‘Grokmund promises the ore will increase in value when it is refined. But nobody is going to refine it for nothing. They will expect their own share, and it would be naive to think they will settle for a small one. Now, if we went back, got some more aether-gold, we could offset that expense.’ He turned to regard the other duardin. ‘That makes sense, does it not? Why throw away money?’

Brokrin could not help but throw his own opinion into the fray. ‘There is an old saying. Something about not counting on a claim until it has been filed. I am sure you get the meaning.’ From the sulky way Skaggi sank back into his chair, he could tell that he did. Brokrin pointed at Grokmund. ‘Your expedition was not able to file a claim on that strike. Until you get back to do so, anybody could come along and claim it.’

Grokmund’s face went pale. He stared at Brokrin as though he’d suddenly sprouted horns and grown a second head. ‘You wouldn’t…’ he stammered.

Gotramm allayed Grokmund’s fear. ‘We have too much honour to steal your strike out from under you,’ he told him. ‘Skaggi might be able to find some obscure addendum to the Kharadron Code that would allow for it, but as far as I am concerned – all of us are concerned – that would not make it right. We are entitled to compensation, but you are entitled to your claim.’ He turned towards Brokrin. ‘You are right though. Until a claim has been filed any prospector who comes along could say the vein is his discovery.’

‘What is your advice?’ Drumark asked Brokrin.

Brokrin was quiet a moment. It was not lost upon him that some of these were the same duardin who had denied him his command. At the same time, some of them might have sided with him in the vote. How much support he had here was an open question. Because it was a question, he chose his words carefully. ‘The aether-gold is already loaded,’ he said. ‘That means the risk is the same for carrying a ransom back to Barak-Zilfin as it is for carrying a pittance. It is not any less a folly to make sure everyone gets rich.’ He pointed to Grokmund. ‘Distilling the gas into a solid would mean taking it somewhere first. That means more time in the hold, more time away from port, and more time for something to happen.’

Skaggi added his own opinion into the argument. ‘Distilling the gas means paying someone to refine it. More fingers in the pot. More shares to be split.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Mortrimm said. ‘There is a way to refine it without getting any metallurgists involved.’ The navigator rose and walked over to the shelf where Brokrin stored the ship’s navigation charts and log books. He was familiar enough with the charts to immediately pull out the one he wanted. Unfolding it on the table, he pressed his thumb to a great swathe of dull yellow that indicated an ice-desert. ‘This is where we are,’ he said. ‘Or at least ten thousand feet above this point. Now, if we do this…’ Keeping his thumb pressed upon their current position, Mortrimm spun his hand around and brought his forefinger pressing against the chart. ‘Seven leagues,’ he declared.

‘Seven leagues to what?’ Drumark asked.

Mortrimm moved his hand, tapping the spot his forefinger had touched with a triumphant flourish. ‘Seven leagues to Finnolf’s Fortress.’ He saw that the name was strange to the others, so he hurried to explain. ‘Finnolf’s Fortress is a sky-island. The peak of a mountain that was mined out from under it. Instead of subsiding, the peak stayed where it was, floating in the clouds. Finnolf’s people kept mining away, grinding downwards, sending the ore back to the peak to be refined and loaded onto ships.’

‘How does that help us?’ Gotramm wondered.

‘Because two hundred and fifty years ago some calamity hit the outpost,’ Mortrimm stated. ‘A trading vessel put in there and found the place completely deserted. Not a soul around. When the crew they sent inside to look for signs of life became ill, they decided that some plague had decimated Finnolf’s people. The traders left in a hurry so the same thing would not happen to them.’ Mortrimm looked each of the duardin in the eye. ‘Nobody has gone back there to reclaim the place or any of the things Finnolf’s folk left behind.’

Gotramm nodded. ‘Enough time has gone past to take the bite out of any plague,’ he said. ‘But even if the machinery they used to refine their ore is still there, would it serve our purpose?’

‘In the old days skyfarers used to take their aether-gold there,’ Mortrimm said.

‘It would make things easier… safer and more lucrative,’ Horgarr opined. He studied the chart for a moment. ‘If the peak’s altitude is as high as this indicates, the machinery should be in good condition. A little spit and polish and I might have it working again in short order.’

Skaggi perked up as he listened to Mortrimm and Horgarr. ‘If Finnolf’s Fortress were abandoned with all its material still in place then it is an amazing boon to this venture.’ He rubbed his hands together, a sly gleam in his eyes. ‘If we took the aether-gold to port to be refined then we would be at the mercy of the guilds. In its raw state the value could be bargained down, and if we were to take it to the metallurgists they could command whatever price they felt they could get away with. But if we refined it ourselves, brought it back that way, then no sharp trader could try to cheat us and contest the ore’s unique properties.’

‘There is more to refining aether-gold than just getting machines to work,’ Brokrin said.

Grokmund waved away Brokrin’s concern. ‘I am familiar enough with the process. With Horgarr’s help I am certain we could distil the gas and condense it into a solid.’

Brokrin remained unconvinced. ‘It means a trek of seven leagues to a desolate outpost that may or may not have what you need. Either way, you still have to think about the voyage back to Barak-Zilfin.’

Gotramm shook his head. ‘There are times when you have to decide when to be cautious and when to gamble. This is one of those times. Stacking barrels of aether-gold on the deck was not a gamble I felt was worth the risk.’ He looked down at the chart, stroking his beard as he stared at the abandoned outpost. ‘This is different,’ he decided. ‘If we are successful, then we are reducing the risks and increasing the rewards. If not, we are just adding seven leagues to our travel.’

‘Fourteen,’ Brokrin corrected him. He waved his hand at the chart. ‘You have to take the ship there and back again. That means if there is nothing there, then you are putting another fourteen leagues between you and home. And all that time the ship’s belly is filled with,’ he pointed at Grokmund, ‘well, you’ve seen what his find can do to a keg.’

‘We also know what an empty hold means when we get back,’ Gotramm told him. ‘You might believe in this curse that hangs over you, but I do not. If we have had a turn of bad luck, then we are due some good.’ He stabbed his finger down at the chart. ‘I think the outpost gives us a good chance to turn things around. Unless any of the acting officers object, I am saying we go there and see if we can get the odds even more in our favour.’

Brokrin sat back, giving the privateer a discouraged look. ‘As you say, I am not an acting officer any more. I am just along for the ride. I was just hoping you were not sailing straight to our tombs.’

‘You will feel different when you get your share of the aether-gold,’ Mortrimm insisted.

‘I thought you were too old for this kind of foolishness,’ Brokrin told the navigator. ‘Treasure hunts are the domain of beardlings.’

‘We have already found the treasure,’ Gotramm said, his voice taking on an edge. ‘You are just envious because you did not have the confidence to take us to it yourself.’

‘Confidence can be a beardling teasing a sleeping troggoth with a sharp stick,’ Brokrin said. ‘It is easy to be confident until the troggoth bites your hand off.’ He jabbed his thumb in the direction of the forward holds. ‘You have a troggoth locked in there and every hour it is on board you are poking it with a stick. Only if it wakes up, we are all going to lose more than a hand.’

Chapter XI

The mountain peak floated amidst the clouds, its slopes banded about in deposits of crystalline snow. Staring at it through his spyglass, Brokrin was struck by the wonder of the sight. What force held it suspended thousands of feet above the earth betrayed no physical sign. No fantastic luminance, no magical haze of power rippled from the bottom of the peak. Only the empty sky and the howling wind filled the void between it and the ground below.

The mountain had been vast and mighty once, but the rapacious delving of the duardin had worn it down until what sprawled far below the peak looked like the stump of a broken tooth poking up from a decayed gum. Gaping pits pock-marked that stump and clusters of colossal digging machines lay scattered about, quietly rusting away as the jungle below the mountain gradually crept towards them. If the mountain was a rotting husk of what it had once been, the jungle around it was fecund and rapacious. Its dense foliage rolled away in every direction, spilling across the distant horizon. The leaves below were translucent, shining like fire as the sunlight struck them, turning the untamed forest into an ocean of flickering flames. Strange birds and gigantic insects flew from the eerie trees, squawking and buzzing, hunting and hiding as they soared through the jungle. Sometimes colossal beasts would poke their heads up through the shimmering canopy, blinking at the sky with batrachian eyes before ducking back down into the gloom of the forest trails.

This was the land in which Finnolf’s Fortress had been built, the place where his folk had prospered until a weird doom brought the outpost to ruin. The duardin had kept the peak intact, employing it as a refuge against the beasts of the jungle and the rampaging hordes of Chaos that had plagued the Mortal Realms for an age. Here and there the slopes of the peak had been cut away to expose air shafts and guard posts, watch towers and loading platforms, but only on its northern side had a more pronounced construction been executed. Here the face of the mountain had been reshaped into the brooding countenance of a duardin king, likely old Finnolf himself. Beneath the sculpture’s squared chin, the wide platforms of a port had been hacked out from the rock. Docks for sky-vessels, a few of them big enough to harbour anything up to the size of a battleship. Obelisk-like totems etched with runes announced the fees and tariffs that would be collected from any vessel that put in to the outpost. Towers arrayed around the port, each with the menacing snouts of cannons poking from their windows, made it clear the settlement would enforce that collection.

The menace of the towers was of a different sort now. As the Iron Dragon sailed closer to the peak, the duardin crew could see marks of decay and neglect. Acidic rains had pitted the muzzles of the cannons when no one withdrew them against Chamon’s storms. Slates from the roofs had been knocked free by the elements, leaving dark holes in their absence. Dried brambles and dead leaves lay clumped in the lee of overhangs where condors and eagles had built their nests. The threat of the guns was long past, the menace the towers now posed less overt. It was a menace that set the mind to wondering and a chill to rush over the skin, the haunting air of antiquity and mysteries without answer.

Skywardens descended from the ironclad, their aether-endrins bearing them slowly down towards the dock as they vented gas from the tanks. They carried the heavy mooring chains that would tether the ship to the outermost dock. While they wound the chains about the great granite stanchions, Drumark’s thunderers watched from the deck above, guns at the ready. The outpost appeared abandoned, but the Kharadron were not going to trust mere appearances.

After securing the chains, the skywardens worked the rusted cranks set into the stanchions. Fashioned in the semblance of a dour-visaged ancestor, the stone pillars gradually began to rotate, revolving on hidden turnstiles. The groan of age and neglect rumbled from the stanchions as they turned, slowly drawing the Iron Dragon downwards. Flecks of rusted metal and bits of crumbling stone dropped away from the sculptures, culminating in the beard sloughing away from one statue and clattering across the pier.

Several minutes of hard labour finally brought the ironclad to rest, her deck level with the dock. Drumark and several of his thunderers disembarked, fanning out to cover the cavernous entry into the outpost. Once the area was secured, Gotramm signalled and led some of his arkanauts as they disembarked. Grokmund followed them after a final hurried conversation with Horgarr. The two had been discussing what facilities they would need to convert the aether-gold into a solid state since the lookout first spotted Finnolf’s Fortress. The endrinmaster would have preferred to accompany the landing party but had been deemed too important to the maintenance of the ship to be put at risk.

The last to disembark was Brokrin. Unlike Horgarr, he had no vital duties that bound him to the Iron Dragon, certainly not since the mutiny, and felt he was expendable enough to go exploring the old outpost. It would be more productive than keeping to his cabin and letting his mind brood upon how things had come to such a state.

‘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 turned 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.

‘Another of the rotters!’ Drumark cried out. Brokrin spun around in time to see a second gangly creature with a single eye lumbering into the doorway. The next instant it was cut in half by the decksweeper, thrown back into the workshop as though it had been punched by a gargant. Drumark started to cheer the monster’s brutal destruction when his gaze dropped to the clutch of gibbering, toad-sized beasts that clambered across the thing’s body and rushed towards the sergeant.

Like bloated, living pustules, the tiny creatures swarmed out from the workshop. Drumark swung at them with the stock of his gun, bursting them in welters of rancid ooze. Grokmund hastened to the sergeant’s side, stamping at the fiends with his boots and chopping at them with his tools.

Brokrin started towards the fray, but before he took his first step, he swung around. It wasn’t a sound that alerted him, but rather the lack of sound. The mewing of the shot creature had suddenly stopped. It was not because the thing was dead. He found it back on its hoofed feet, glaring at him with its single eye. Its right arm quivered, the lower part of it sloughing away, exposing a long length of blackened bone. Its left hand reached into the wound, ripping free the dark shaft. As its fingers curled about the bone, the object began to twist and expand, lengthening into a ghastly weapon with a rippled edge.

This lurking horror was no mortal beast, but a fell daemon of Chaos! The realisation made Brokrin look anxiously at his emptied pistol. A hideous chuckle shook the fiend when it understood his distress. Brazenly it took a step towards its enemy, the diseased blade in its hand continuing to lengthen and reshape itself into a monstrous sword.

Across the corridor, Brokrin could hear the sounds of combat. More daemons had emerged from the other glowing splotches of corruption, falling upon Gotramm and the others. Drumark and Grokmund were locked in desperate struggle against the toad-like imps. Every one of the Kharadron was beset by the noxious manifestations.

Still uttering its malicious chuckle, the sword-wielding daemon charged Brokrin. It was in for a double surprise. First, he stood his ground. Second, he took his empty pistol and threw it straight at the fiend’s leering eye.

The daemon warbled in pain as the pistol struck its face. It clapped its hand to its injured eye, staggering back as jelly dripped between its claws. The blade clutched in its other hand slashed out, raking the air blindly in an effort to fend off Brokrin. He was too cautious to rush headlong at the monster. He circled around to its flank, coming at it from the side with his axe. The cleaving blade came chopping at its bony shoulder, tearing through the diseased meat to shear through the spongy bone within.

A fiendish wailing rose into the air as the daemon’s arm crashed to the floor. The claws scrabbled at the ground for an instant, then fell still. Almost at once the severed limb began to corrode, disintegrating into a mush of worms and slime.

The daemon spun around, its smashed eye glaring unseeingly in Brokrin’s direction. It brought the huge plaguesword swinging around, attacking with such speed that the duardin felt the wind of its passing as he dropped to the floor. He didn’t hesitate to assault it from his prone position, bringing the axe slashing across the ankle above one of its hoofed feet.

Putrid liquid jetted from the daemon’s leg as Brokrin’s axe tore through flesh and bone. The fiend howled as it crashed to the ground. It kicked out with its remaining hoof, smashing into Brokrin’s breastplate. The duardin felt his breath knocked from him as he was tossed back by the blow. Ahead of him, the blinded daemon kicked and flailed, snarling in frustration as it tried to find its enemy.

Recovering his breath, Brokrin stood above the thrashing daemon and swung his axe in a downward sweep. The blade crunched through its horned skull, extinguishing the stubborn vitality that lingered in the creature’s mangled form. For a moment it struggled to rise, then slumped against the floor, its body dissolving into a worm-ridden sludge.

Brokrin turned from the vanquished daemon. Across the way he could see Gotramm bringing his own axe down across the neck of another horned monster. The arkanauts and thunderers were finishing off the last of their own foes, clubbing them with the butts of rifles and hacking them down with axes and skypikes.

Nearer to hand, Brokrin found Drumark and Grokmund still beset by the swarm of imps. He hastened to aid his comrades, seizing hold of a small monster that had latched itself to the aether-khemist’s back and was trying its best to gnaw through his armour. The little grotesquery writhed in his grip as he seized it and squeezed. He expected to feel bones crack under the pressure, but instead it was like crushing mud between his fingers.

Drumark roared in pain as one of the daemons assaulting him finally managed to claw away the straps binding his pauldron in place. As the shoulder guard slipped away, the daemon buried its needle-like teeth in his flesh. The imp raked its jaws back and forth, ripping at the duardin morsel caught in its fangs. Outrage and disgust infused Drumark with a new surge of strength. He clapped both hands around the toad-like beast, tearing it from his body in a spray of blood. For an instant he glared down at the abomination, then broke its twitching body in half, hurling the fragments from him. He lashed about with his boots, smashing and stamping until none of the little fiends were left. Such was Drumark’s fury that none of the imps escaped.

‘Cursed filth bit me,’ Drumark said as he turned towards Brokrin. He pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

Around them, the sounds of combat faded. No cheers came from Gotramm and the crew. The daemons had been too abominable an enemy to take any heart from their destruction. There was no sense of accomplishment in crushing vermin underfoot. The carcasses of their adversaries lay strewn about the hall, dark stains on the stones that were quickly dissolving into slime.

‘Sound off!’ Brokrin cried out, reverting to a captain’s first instinct after a fight: to make a tally of his crew. Gotramm gave him a weary but not ungrateful wave while the rest of the duardin answered. As each crewman called out, a sense of relief built in Brokrin’s chest. None of them had been killed in the fray.

‘The miserable filth bit me,’ Drumark repeated, drawing Brokrin’s attention back to him.

Brokrin took a step towards the sergeant, but before he could reach him, Drumark collapsed at his feet.

Chapter XII

Drumark awoke with a start, flailing about with his arms. He was bewildered by his surroundings, unable to explain to his own satisfaction how it was that he found himself lying on a bed with a wood block under his head and a heavy blanket thrown across his body.

Some of the confusion left him as he stared up at the beams overhead. He was back aboard the Iron Dragon. From the corner of his eye he could see Lodri sleeping in a chair, a jar of grog sitting on the floor near his leg. Smoke drifted up from a bronze smudge pot, filling the cabin with the heady odour of smouldering herbs.

A scowl pulled at Drumark’s beard. ‘You are getting old, you idiot,’ he chided himself. He had once been able to go axe to choppa with orruk bulls. Now he had to be dragged back to the ship after a short fracas with tiny imps. It was enough to tear the heart out of a duardin warrior. His body felt like one big sore, the nerves in his legs tingling as though they were on fire. His arms felt like lumps of lead, the muscles struggling simply to raise him up onto his elbows. Never had he felt so drained of strength. Drumark had always abided by a philosophy of self-dependence. It flattened his pride to be so feeble now. Despising his weakness, he forced himself up from the bed.

Idly he wondered who had brought him back. Drumark hoped it was not Brokrin. He felt guilty enough about voting against the old captain without adding another debt of gratitude to the account. If only Brokrin could have been more reasonable about things. Now, of course, it was too late. Mutiny was not a thing to be taken lightly. If Gotramm failed to bring back a profit, and failed to prove to their backers’ satisfaction that Brokrin would not have been able to do the same, the penalties would be considerable.

There was little chance of that now, Drumark reflected. With Skaggi’s glib tongue to turn the trick there was no likelihood of the backers not supporting the mutiny. Good news for the crew, but a calamity for Brokrin. Oh, he would get his share, but it would be small compensation for what he would lose. He would never get a command again. Nobody would invest in a captain whose crew had mutinied against him to bring back a profit. Certainly not a profit as immense as what Grokmund’s strike promised to bring.

Such was the way of commerce. There were always winners and losers. Drumark only wished Brokrin would not lose so much.

The sergeant swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He reached for the pot of grog resting next to Lodri’s chair. He was certain the powder monkey would not begrudge an injured duardin a spot of liquor to fortify himself. As he reached down for it, however, pain flared in his shoulder. Drumark collapsed back into the bed. His hand grabbed at the injury, fingers clawing at the thick bandage wound about his body. Rapidly he worked his fingers through the windings, ripping them away with an almost animalistic ferocity. He had to get at the wound, had to stop the pulse of agony rushing through him.

Drumark soon denuded his shoulder. He tried to twist his head around to look at his injury, but it was too close to the neck for him to see. His fingers probed at it, feeling its horrible edges. The gash was wide and deep. He could feel the wet dampness under his touch. He clamped his jaw tight when something firm and solid met his probing finger. He shuddered at the image of raw bone that screamed across his mind.

Then the ‘bone’ shifted, sliding aside from under his touch. He felt something damp slither across his finger, causing him to jerk it away in disgust. His horror mounted when he heard a soft, muttering sound close to his ear. Close… and slightly below.

Drumark forgot all about pain as a mounting panic seized him. He sprang from the bed and hurried across the cabin. He fumbled about where his clothes had been piled, pawing through them as he groped for what he sought. Out from one of his pockets he pulled a little silver mirror that he used for inspecting the barrels of his decksweeper when cleaning the gun. He held the tiny mirror up, angling it so he could get a look at his shoulder.

The muttering in his ear grew louder, almost mocking in the tone of its babble. Drumark got a good look at what was on his shoulder. The thing his fingers had probed was a tiny mouth, the object that had felt like bone a little tooth. A little snub of a nose and two beady eyes completed the tiny face that smiled back at him from the mirror. It was the semblance of the verminous imps that had attacked them in the outpost.

Drumark shoved his hand into his mouth, biting down lest he should scream. With one hand he scooped up the remainder of his belongings. Horror and shame roared inside his head. He was disgusted by what had happened to him but even more revolting to him was the fear that others would find out about it. To know he had been corrupted by the imp’s bite.

Retreating into the hall, Drumark almost crashed into Mortrimm. The old navigator was taken aback, surprised by both the sergeant’s abrupt arrival and his state of undress. He gave Drumark a hard look. Drumark felt there was suspicion in that stare. The muttering in his ear agreed, its babble slipping into faint words that fed his worry. He knows, the voice told him. He’ll tell, the voice warned him. You can stop him. You can keep it from happening. While he is asleep, put your hands around his throat…

Drumark clapped his free hand to the ear directly above the little face, not realising as he did so that he left his shoulder exposed to Mortrimm’s observation. Hurriedly he let the bundle of clothes fall to the floor and covered the face with his other hand.

‘Is everything all right?’ Mortrimm asked. He glanced briefly at Drumark’s shoulder, then back at the sergeant’s eyes. ‘You had us worried when Brokrin brought you back.’

Drumark blinked in disbelief. It was impossible that the navigator had failed to see that mutant face on his shoulder. Even if he could not see it, he had to hear it!

He will expose you! The entire crew will be against you! Kill him! Kill him! Kill! Kill!

Trying to block out the whispers with his hand had done nothing to block the goading voice. Surely Mortrimm must hear it too!

‘Lodri thought it would be a few days at least before you were on your feet again,’ Mortrimm continued. ‘It is good to see he was wrong. Next time maybe Captain Brokrin will engage a real healer before he sets out from port.’

They cannot help you. They will kill you if you do not kill them first.

Drumark tried to smother the mutant mouth with his hand, unable to understand why Mortrimm was so calm.

It is a ruse to lull you into complacency. He is waiting for you to let your guard down.

Drumark rejected the whispers. No duardin could hide his disgust at such a foul growth. Mortrimm would show some sign of revulsion.

The only other possibility was that the navigator didn’t see it or hear it.

‘You do not feel well?’ Mortrimm asked.

He knows! He knows! Kill him!

Drumark shook his head slightly to one side. ‘I am not sure,’ he answered.

A grim trial had occurred to him to test the theory that Mortrimm could not see the mutation. He hesitated to do it, horrified at the prospect of being wrong. Firming his resolve, Drumark drew his hand away from his shoulder. ‘How… how does… my wound look?’ he managed to ask.

Mortrimm leaned close, stroking his white beard as he inspected Drumark’s shoulder. The scream of horror he expected did not come. Instead Mortrimm stepped back and nodded. ‘I owe Lodri an apology,’ he said. ‘Your wound is healing nicely. Barely a scratch there now.’

His banality is but a pose. Do not be tricked! Kill him before it is too late. Your shame will be known to the entire crew. There will be no place for you then. Nowhere for you to go. Take the butt of your gun and bash his skull in! Then you will be safe!

Drumark hastily backed away from Mortrimm, sickened and terrified by the thoughts the whispers tried to put inside his head. ‘Thank… thank you,’ he stammered. ‘I feel much better.’

Again, there was a look of concern in Mortrimm’s expression. ‘Are you sure? You should take it easy for a while.’

Kill him! Kill him! Kill!

The whispers were growing more insistent, more persuasive. Drumark did not dare to linger. ‘No, I… I have to find the cap’n.’ He rushed for the steps leading up to the deck.

‘Which one?’ Mortrimm called after Drumark. ‘Neither of them is on board. They are helping Grokmund get the machinery going.’ The navigator threw one last remark up at the sergeant as he hurried across the deck. ‘I do not think they will appreciate seeing you without breeches on.’

Drumark was already scrambling for the pier. He ignored the bemused looks the guards on duty gave him. After the murderous panic he had felt towards Mortrimm, he did not dare stop to speak to anyone. He had to get away, had to try to figure out what was happening to him. How to assert some sort of control over both himself and it.

The dark. It is where you belong. Seek the dark. Let the shadows flow through you.

The whispers continued to seep into Drumark’s ear, drawing amusement from his plight. They encouraged him to retreat into the darkness of the outpost. They exulted in the clammy shadows, the faint echoes of decay and despair that clung about the abandoned settlement.

Look upon what was.

As the whispers seeped into his ears, images flashed through Drumark’s brain. Memories that were not his own. He saw the heyday of Finnolf’s Fortress, the wealth of a prospering community.

That was before. Before I came. Before their prosperity began to rot. Before everything was consumed by what they released from the root of the mountain. The images in Drumark’s mind shifted and changed, showing him the downfall of the settlement as the daemon described it to him. That daemon’s power struck at the duardin from within, nurturing itself inside each of them, passing from the unclean to the clean, polluting and tainting all in its course.

I spread rapidly. Sickening and devouring. Fragmenting and dispersing. A thousand thousand infections, each with its own mind and its own identity. Yet all a part of me. All shards of a single unity. Just as you are now a part of my unity. Naught but a shard.

Stranger than all the uncanny effects he’d been subjected to was the way the whispering voice faltered when it evoked the semblance of itself to shards. Before, Drumark had sensed a taunting joviality behind the voice, a debased sort of mockery in the way it sought to manipulate him. Now he knew that the daemon had simply been toying with him, amusing itself with his defiance. Now he knew how completely he was its slave.

Had I desired it, you would have killed Mortrimm. You would have killed anyone I demanded you to kill.

Drumark knew this because he now felt the irresistible force of the daemon’s power. A deadly seriousness had extinguished its ridicule. He dashed through the darkened halls, clothes and weapons tossed aside in his haste. The blackness was impenetrable, yet his pace didn’t slacken. He ran unerringly through the halls, navigating chambers and corridors he had never been in before with a familiarity that horrified him. Even as his volition was being smothered, he felt the daemon planting pieces of itself in his mind, replacing his memories with others, things that would aid it in its purpose.

Purpose. That was what had caused the change in the force that possessed Drumark. Something it had sensed, a connection it had made had instilled in it an urgency that hadn’t been there before. The key was a single word, something it had whispered to him. Shard. Try as he might, Drumark could not understand why that was of such importance. What did it mean?

The daemon had no inclination to explain. Drumark was no longer a plaything but a vessel, a vehicle to accomplish the daemon’s purpose. Down through the pitch-darkness it drove him, compelling him to such exertions that even his duardin stamina was taxed to its limits. His lungs gasped for want of air, his limbs felt like lumps of lead, his muscles burned as though they had been coated in lava, yet still it forced him onwards.

From the perfect silence of the dead halls there now came the faint sound of voices. Drumark recognised those of Grokmund and Horgarr, Gotramm and Brokrin. There was more, the sputtering creak of ancient gears and pistons, the dull rumble of neglected machinery shuddering back to life.

The daemon caused Drumark to veer away from the voices at the last moment, urging him around the chamber where his comrades must be. Around and away, his steps diverging from a direct path. He was in a narrow corridor now, a chimney from the amount of soot caked against its walls. Down this filthy passage the daemon compelled him, forcing his weary body to still greater exertion.

The voices were nearer now. The rumble of machinery caused the chimney to shake around him. He was close to the other duardin, but Drumark was much closer to something else.

The moment his eyes saw it, Drumark knew this was what the daemon had sent him after. It represented part of what had drawn the entity’s inclination away from devilish amusement to a purpose of ancient enmity and opposition.

There was a shaft staring down into a vast chamber, a chamber lit by the glow of lamps and from which duardin voices arose. Coiled about the mouth of that shaft was a serpentine body surmounted by a single lidless eye. Drumark recognised it as a fragment of the tentacled horror that had attacked the Iron Dragon.

It is more than that. It is the essence of sorcery. A power in opposition to us both.

The forsaken names of Nurgle and Tzeentch thundered through Drumark’s soul as the daemon inside him glared at the sorcerous spy. The remnant sprang away from the shaft, hurling itself upon Drumark. Like the daemon, it was aware of the rival Power that sought to oppose it. That awareness fed into those coils a horrific strength. Like the bands of a steel spring, they closed around Drumark’s body, dragging him to the floor.

More than just the crushing pressure of those cold ribbons of darkness assailed Drumark’s body. There was a searing, agonising pain of the soul as well. He could feel the daemon railing against the inimical power of the opposing sorcery, striving to drive back the force that threatened to vanquish it. He felt that if he just relented, if he accepted destruction, he could let the corruption be burned away from him. It would mean his life, for he would not be able to free himself of those crushing coils on his own.

Aid me, mortal! Fight for your existence or we shall both be consumed!

It was not the daemon that moved him, but the sound of the voices below that made Drumark refuse the enticement to surrender. He struggled against the coils. He knew the remnant was only a symptom, part of some still greater evil.

Yes, a Power that will destroy all your friends if you do not fight against it! Give me your strength, mortal. Submit to me, end your resistance to my presence and together we can destroy our enemy.

The daemon admitted to him that the taint of corruption was in his bones and in his soul. Nothing would change that.

You cannot help yourself, but you can still help your friends.

The coils tightened. Drumark felt as though his ribs were beginning to bend. Soon they would crack and then it would be over. Shutting his eyes, he damned himself and agreed to the daemon’s demands. Instantly he felt the thing’s obscene presence magnified, growing greater and greater within him. As its dominion swelled, so too did the sorcerous fire that sought to burn it to nothingness.

The inhuman strength that rolled through his body was not enough to break the constricting coils. Drumark felt more powerful than he ever had in his life, and at once more helpless than a baby. He gnashed his teeth in frustration, spittle flying from his mouth. He saw it spatter across the black length of the remnant, steaming and sizzling against it. Where the spittle struck, the coils began to decay, visibly rotting off his body.

His own spit was like acid now, polluted by the daemon’s essence. Drumark felt a pained tremor pass through the remnant’s coils. Resolutely he spat at it again, burning it more severely. The hideous spy realised its peril, tightening its grip.

Drumark cried out in torment, struggling to free himself from the horror. Knowing that if he died then he would leave his comrades unaware of the danger they faced.

The refinery was situated in a vast hall. Great furnaces dominated one of the outer walls, their mouths sealed by immense metal doors. Confusions of pipes and tubes ran from each furnace to giant metal tanks bolted to the opposite wall, huge vessels that held the chemicals and propellants that fed the alchemical flames. Chains hung from the ceiling like jungle vines, fastened to great cauldrons and shallow iron kettles that were themselves fixed to steel rails set into the roof. Moulds shaped from granite and basalt lay clustered about the floor, ready to receive the molten metal from the furnaces. Along one wall a system of smaller forges had been erected to refine more delicate ores, aetheric bellows and gigantic gas-hammers sitting idle beside them. All about the hall, flues and chimneys snaked down to clear away fumes and smoke, expertly placed to maximise the advantages of air currents and the suction of roaring ovens.

The dozen duardin from the Iron Dragon seemed like ants as they scrambled about the great hall, trying to coax the long-idle mechanisms back from the oblivion of neglect. After hours of work, their labours were finally bringing results.

The great machines shuddered once more. Brokrin had lost count of how many times they had tried to get them working. Ten? Twenty? He could not say for certain. Each effort had seen Horgarr and Grokmund making adjustments to levers and switches, inspecting pistons and gears, tugging at chains to see if they were caught or if they had become too slack. Lubricants had been applied, mechanisms removed and replaced, broken links soldered back together. Adjustment after adjustment, yet still the machines refused to obey.

This time it was different. This time after the immense motor shivered into action it didn’t sputter out with a feeble groan. This time it kept whirring, throbbing with life. The duardin watching waited in anxious silence, not daring to utter a word. The machinery rumbled on and on, heartbeats stretching away into minutes. Finally Horgarr threw his helm into the air and laughed. Grokmund sank back on his haunches and wiped the sweat from his brow, sighing in relief. The rest of the duardin cheered. The endrinmaster and the aether-khemist had succeeded. They had got the old refinery functional again.

While the other duardin cheered, Brokrin felt uneasiness and a sense of something terribly amiss. His misgivings about the amazing string of circumstances that had brought them to this juncture escalated with every new advantage that came their way.

He looked at the vast refinery they stood in. For all their trials getting the automated machinery functional again, Brokrin could not shake an impression of wrongness. The decay they saw elsewhere had, for some reason, only lightly afflicted this complex. The great steel cauldrons still hung from their chains, ready to have the molten aether-gold poured into them. The moulds for the ingots were not cracked or split, the furnaces remained whole, their pipes unharmed by centuries of neglect. Such hurdles as they encountered were ones that could be overcome, and overcome in very definite ways. It was not a question of if repairs could be made, but simply how long they would take.

Briefly Brokrin wondered if it was his pessimism that made him suspicious. But he could not do more than fleetingly entertain the thought. He knew in his gut that he was right. Something was wrong here. He could not place his finger on it. It was too elusive, too intangible to be defined, but it was there.

Brokrin gazed at the cheering duardin. They were readying trolley-carts to push up the rails back to the dock, eager to start bringing the aether-gold up from the Iron Dragon and down to the refinery. He saw Skaggi, busy with his copper tablets and etching-acid, calculating and re-calculating the expected yield from each share of the treasure. The logisticator would be the last one to lend him a sympathetic ear. Casting his gaze further afield, however, he saw Gotramm off by himself near one of the cauldrons. His demeanour was several degrees less jubilant than that of the other duardin.

Brokrin made his way over to Gotramm. ‘Well, it is all coming together now,’ he said.

Gotramm nodded slowly. ‘It certainly looks that way.’

As the privateer turned towards Brokrin, the deposed captain could see that the flap of his holster was unfastened, the pistol poised for a swift draw.

‘Worried about the mutiny?’ Brokrin asked. ‘If this aether-gold yields even half of what Skaggi thinks it will, you will have nothing to apologise for.’

‘It isn’t that,’ Gotramm said. He cast his eyes across the refinery, peering at the shadows that filled the spaces between the machinery. ‘It is this place. Those… creatures… they were daemons. Manifestations of Chaos itself.’

‘Yes,’ Brokrin said. ‘I believe they were. Certainly they were nothing natural.’

Gotramm nodded slowly. ‘They might have been left over from what destroyed Finnolf’s Fortress all that time ago. That might be what happened to everyone who was here.’

‘Something happened here,’ Brokrin agreed. He gave the privateer a studying look. ‘You are thinking if it happened here it could happen somewhere else.’

‘I have always understood that the greatest danger daemons pose isn’t what they destroy but what they corrupt,’ Gotramm said. ‘The people and things they put their taint upon, leaving them as unclean as they are.’

Conflicting emotions seized Brokrin when he realised what was vexing Gotramm’s mind. He felt a sense of admiration for the arkanaut. Here, with the promise of wealth right within his reach, Gotramm was not thinking about the riches that would soon be his. No, he was thinking of one of his crew, wounded in battle, the seriousness of his injuries unknown.

Brokrin also felt trepidation, because Gotramm was not just thinking about Drumark’s injuries, but the kind of being that had caused those wounds. ‘What would you do?’ Brokrin asked. ‘Leave him behind? Let him stay here and rot alone and abandoned in the dark?’

Gotramm’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘I would not… abandon him.’ His hand brushed against the holstered pistol. ‘Well, what else is there to do? Take him back to Barak-Zilfin when he might be infected? Take the risk of it spreading? Leave the sky-hold looking like this place?’

‘What about that?’ Brokrin asked, pointing at the refinery, at the crewmen rolling the trolleys down the corridor. ‘Whatever daemon-taint you fear, it could just as easily be carried by things as well as people. Bring the aether-gold in here and you might be infusing it with the same threat you fear in Drumark.’

Gotramm shook his head. ‘It has gone too far to do anything about that. The crew would just toss me out and pick a new captain. Maybe a worse one,’ he glanced at Skaggi so that Brokrin understood his meaning. ‘There is no other way to save something from this expedition now. We have to bring back the aether-gold.’

‘Let us hope that we only bring back aether-gold,’ Brokrin told him, working on Gotramm’s concerns. He looked into his eyes. ‘If you will risk trusting the aether-gold, do you not owe the same trust to Drumark?’

Gotramm couldn’t hold Brokrin’s gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know either way. I know as captain the decision is mine, but I don’t know if I can make it.’

‘I know as captain, there is nobody else who can make the decision for you,’ Brokrin told him. ‘And whatever you decide, you will have to live with it. Remember that.’

Brokrin left Gotramm to sort out his thoughts. He was not sure what he was going to do if Gotramm decided against Drumark. He knew he would not let Gotramm shoot him, but how far he would go to prevent that was a question he tried not to ask.

Brokrin left the refinery as the first trolley-cart came back from the ship. Brokrin had no interest in watching the aether-gold distilled into molten ore. As Gotramm had said, events had taken on a life of their own. They could not put a stop to it now short of holding the crew at gunpoint.

Brokrin started back down the darkened great hall, following the rails towards the port. The lanterns hanging on the returning trolley-carts acted as his guide. He didn’t get far from the refinery before a sound arrested his attention. His volley pistol was in his hand, his eyes roving across doorways and windows, watching for the sickly glow that had presaged the first daemonic attack.

No green light rewarded his vigilance, but he heard the sound again. This time it was more distinct. He could tell it was a voice calling his name. A weak voice, sounding as though it were gasping for breath.

Keeping his volley pistol at the ready, Brokrin started towards the voice. His path took him deeper into the darkness, the only light coming from the tinderlamp hooked to his belt. When he found that the voice was calling from a narrow hall that opened in a gap between two buildings, he hesitated. Brokrin edged back towards the main corridor, ready to call for help. He stopped himself when the voice spoke to him yet again. He knew that voice, knew who it belonged to. He thought about his recent discussion with Gotramm.

No, Brokrin would not call for help. Not until he found out why and how Drumark had left the ship and what kind of condition the sergeant was in.

‘I am here,’ Brokrin said, keeping his voice lowered so it would not carry back to the duardin pushing the trolley-carts.

‘So am I, cap’n,’ Drumark answered. The sound of feet stumbling in the dark followed close upon his words.

Brokrin was not sure what he expected, but Drumark’s appearance when he shambled into the light was not it. The sergeant’s skin had a pale, bloodless look to it, his body battered and bruised from head to heel. Drumark’s state of undress made every gash and cut visible – and of these there were many. The cuts in particular had a certain symmetry about them that set the hairs on Brokrin’s arms tingling.

Around the duardin’s body were what looked like leather straps. It took Brokrin a moment to realise they were the coils of some creature. Whatever the thing was, it was clearly dead, parts of it burned down into a mere ribbon of flesh. That the coils had not snapped apart was due to whatever weird vitality had provided it motivation in life. The black folds had rippled around and under one another, forming a tangle that even the burning away of entire sections had failed to undo.

Holstering his pistol, Brokrin took out his axe instead. He hurried over to Drumark. Gently he let the injured sergeant down to the floor. Then he began carefully working the edge of his axe against the remaining coils, seeking to free Drumark from the thing that had attacked him.

‘No questions, cap’n?’ Drumark managed to gasp as Brokrin cut one ring away.

‘I don’t think you are in a condition to answer them,’ Brokrin answered, trying to focus on his grim task.

A weary laugh shook Drumark. ‘That is where you are wrong,’ he said. ‘Now is the only condition I can say anything in.’ He closed his eyes, a peculiar smile on his face. ‘Part of me is tired. Worn out. Asleep. When it wakes up, I will be less myself.’ His eyes opened and he gave Brokrin a hard look. ‘You should have let me die. It might have been better that way.’

‘Stop talking nonsense,’ Brokrin snapped at him. ‘I have seen you much worse than this and you pulled through.’

Drumark laughed, a bitter and cheerless sound. As Brokrin hacked away at the coils, the sergeant was able to move his hand up to his shoulder. He tapped the spot where he had been bitten by the imp. ‘All healed up, am I right, cap’n?’

Brokrin paused in his labour. His brow knotted with confusion when he looked at Drumark’s shoulder. There was not so much as a mark on it. He shifted his gaze to the other shoulder, thinking he was mistaken in which one had been bitten.

‘You don’t need to say it,’ Drumark told him. ‘I already know there is nothing there you can see. Mortrimm could not see it either. But I can. There is a little face there, a spitting image of the daemon that bit me. I can see it and what is more I can hear it.’ Again, he managed a tired laugh. ‘Not now. Now it is quiet. Took a lot out of it killing this thing.’ He kicked his foot against one of the coils that had been cut away.

‘What… what was that?’ Brokrin asked, nodding towards the tendril, trying to avoid talking about the other horror Drumark spoke of.

‘It is part of the monster that brought down the frigates,’ Drumark claimed. ‘It has been hiding on the ship, following us around. Spying on us for someone.’ An edge crept into his voice when he saw disbelief in Brokrin’s face. ‘It is the truth, cap’n. I know that much at least of what the daemon told me is real. There are tribes of daemons and some are enemies of others.’

Brokrin shook his head. ‘Your wound is giving you delusions,’ he said. He refused to believe any of it. If he did then he would be forced to admit that Drumark had been infected, that Gotramm’s solution… ‘You are sick. I need to get you back to the ship. You need to rest.’

‘I can’t rest,’ Drumark insisted. ‘Right now it is resting. Killing this spy took a lot out of it. It might even be gone, for all I can tell. But before it left, it made me scratch things into my skin.’ He pointed with a bloodied finger at the cuts Brokrin had noted. Through the crusted blood vague symbols could be seen. They were not duardin runes, or any human script with which Brokrin was familiar. For all of that, there was enough regularity about them to make them appear more than simple slashes.

‘I don’t know what they mean,’ Drumark stated, ‘but while I was digging them into my skin I had a sense that they are important. I felt like marking them down this way was the most important thing I would ever do.’ He caught hold of Brokrin’s arm, pulling the captain towards him.

‘There are tribes of daemons,’ Drumark repeated. ‘The ones that destroyed Finnolf’s Fortress have enemies, but that does not make them our friends. Those enemies have something to do with this voyage, otherwise they would not have sent that spy to watch us. When I found it, the thing was in one of the chimneys above the refinery Grokmund is using.’

‘Do you know what you are implying?’ Brokrin asked, startled by what he was hearing.

‘It is more than just refining aether-gold,’ Drumark said. ‘There is something going on. Whatever it is, it has to be stopped.’

Drumark sagged back against the floor. His eyes moved away from Brokrin and focused on the symbols he’d clawed into his skin. ‘It has to be stopped before it is too late.’

Brokrin stared down at Drumark, at the litter of coils strewn about on the floor. By his own admission Drumark had been infected by a daemon. That made anything he said suspect. At the same time, his last statement rang more true to Brokrin than anything he had heard before. He had to stop his former crew from refining Grokmund’s aether-gold.

Before it was too late.

Chapter XIII

The skies above Finnolf’s Fortress filled with dark clouds. Great thunderheads swiftly rolled across the jungle, swirling about the suspended peak of the mountain. Day was transformed into a murky twilight, throwing a sooty pall across the outpost.

Khoram gave his tretchlet a reassuring pat. The daemonic parasite was uneasy, its senses keyed to the brooding atmosphere that clung to the levitating summit. An aura of expectancy, perhaps even anticipation.

‘Soon,’ the sorcerer promised the homunculus. ‘Destiny will be ours soon enough.’

Hidden within the veil of black clouds, Tamuzz and his cult swept down upon the old duardin settlement. Ray-like daemons raced ahead of the dozens of mortal cultists, darting across the snow-capped summit. Their fluke-shaped bodies twitched across the wind, ducking only to rise again as they arched over a jagged boulder or climbed above the deserted battlements of a lonely tower. The keening wail that typically accompanied the sky-daemons was muted now, reduced to only a dull buzz. There would be time for uttering their deafening shrieks, a time to draw terror from the souls of their prey. For now, it was a different role they performed for Tamuzz the Fatemaster. The daemons ranged across the peak, seeking a way inside, a route that would bear the cult directly to the heart of the outpost without being observed by the duardin.

From the back of his daemon steed Khoram watched Tamuzz giving orders to the cultists as they emerged from the black clouds. He knew the warlord’s mind. The Fatemaster was high in the favour of Tzeentch, and with that rise had come a deep fear of decline. The greater Tamuzz’s prestige, the more he saw the interference of rivals and enemies in the slightest impediment. The magisters of other cults, the soul-spawn of ambitious daemons, the witchcraft of sorcerous adversaries – he saw all of these threats ranging against him from among those who served the Changer of Ways. The rewards Tamuzz would gain from the Master were immense, too great to be ignored by those jealous of his favour.

Khoram had seen the dangers of the path ahead. The Orb of Zobras had displayed many things in its manifold facets. His tretchlet had guided him to the most auspicious chain of events, but the sorcerer was still unsettled. His last consultation with the orb had been hurried, less diverse than other divinations. The unexpected destruction of his spy had brought with it something almost approaching panic. Everything else was proceeding in accordance with his carefully crafted intrigue so this discordant note had shaken his self-assurance. He had wondered if Tamuzz was not partly right. If perhaps there were others working against the Master in ways as subtle as those Khoram himself had set into motion.

The chill of the high altitude set the tretchlet shivering as Khoram commanded his disc to follow Tamuzz. The warlord was leading his entourage towards a great chimney set into the side of the peak. The scout daemons had settled against the tremendous steel bars that sealed the mouth of a colossal chimney that protruded from the snowy slope. A lattice-work of metal blocked a yawning maw that would have permitted two chariots to descend side by side. The gaps between them were so tight that the spacing was too small for even a grot to squeeze through. The daemons latched onto the bars with their flattened bodies, their fanged maws rapidly dissolving the steel.

Khoram’s tentacle-fingered hand twisted in rhythm to the gnawing daemons, infusing them with arcane energy, speeding their destruction of the bars. The quicker the way was opened, the less likely it was that Tamuzz would start to challenge his strategy.

As the bars crumbled away and the daemons flitted into the darkened chimney, Khoram urged his flying disc to join Tamuzz. The warlord raised one hand in greeting as he came near. It was not lost on the sorcerer that his other hand was closed about the heft of his glaive. The marks and blessings that exalted Tamuzz above others who devoted themselves to Tzeentch rendered him superhumanly resistant to magic. The greatest weapon at Khoram’s disposal would amount to nothing if it came to a contest between them. The curseling could not boast a similar resilience should he be pitted against the ensorcelled glaive.

‘My scouts have cut us a path inside, mighty Tamuzz,’ Khoram announced proudly.

The eyes within Tamuzz’s helm glittered with scorn. ‘I need neither you nor your orb to tell me what I can see for myself,’ he snapped. ‘It is your task to advise me on those things I cannot see. The shadows of what will be and what must not be.’ He gestured with the blade of his glaive at the dark opening. ‘Your plan calls for us to descend into the mountain. To force the duardin to obey. As you have seen fit to obstruct my own strategy, this plan had better prove auspicious. Otherwise you will learn what it means to cross me, conjurer.’ The scorn in his eyes became fierce and suspicious. ‘Why is it now that you forsake subtlety and say a firmer hand is needed? Has your cunning reached its limit? Or is it only now bearing its most bitter fruit?’

Khoram glanced around him. The tzaangors glowered at him, clacking their tongues against the sides of their beaks, a vulturine hunger in their eyes. The human cultists were masked, their visages hidden, but they too had an air of expectancy about them. Were they anticipating the triumph ahead of them or was it something more immediate that fed their excitement?

‘I have read no omens, found no portents that would cause me to conspire against you,’ Khoram told Tamuzz. ‘Especially now, when all our plans are so close to fulfilment.’

The warlord brought a hand up to the side of his neck, plucking his fingers against the gorget. ‘I have no parasite to warn me when lies are told to me,’ he said. ‘I must rely upon my own judgement.’

‘Then rely on this,’ Khoram returned. ‘The reward for serving the Master will magnify your might a hundredfold. The punishment if we fail will diminish you a thousandfold.’ He brought his good hand up to his tretchlet, patting its feathered head. ‘You may end up as naught more than this, a homunculus enslaved to those still in Tzeentch’s favour.’ He let his gaze shift across the rest of the cult, ensuring they knew the same warning applied to them. ‘We are bound together in this great work, Tamuzz. There exists no principality or power that could entice me from aiding the Master. You seek glory for your service to him, but for me there will be no greater glory than to serve the Master.’

Tamuzz urged his steed nearer to Khoram, reminding the sorcerer of the wards cut into its hide, the charms that indicated it was a boon granted to him by their god. It would not heed the curseling’s spells or vanish back into the Realm of Chaos should Khoram demand it. ‘What if I tell my followers not to descend into the mountain? What if I tell them that we will strike the sky-ship instead? I could still seize the ship and then force the duardin inside the mountain to do my bidding.’

Khoram nodded. ‘I have seen that possibility in the orb,’ he admitted, pointing at the circling sphere. ‘I have also seen the threat that could arise from such a tactic. It will be safer to strike at the duardin inside.’ Raising his head, he looked up at the blackened sky. ‘Should it be needed, I have taken steps to prevent the ship from escaping. There is no need for concern.’ Just the slightest trace of menace entered his voice as he added, ‘The rite to bring destruction on the ship is a quick one.’

The threat wasn’t intended for Tamuzz but for the warlord’s followers. They too looked up into the clouds. Beast or man, they knew what waited there, invisible and unseen. They also knew Khoram could set it upon them as quickly as he could upon the duardin.

‘I wished to hear the conviction of your voice,’ Tamuzz told the sorcerer. The tretchlet started jabbering into Khoram’s ear, advising him of the warlord’s lie. Taking advantage of his distraction, Tamuzz brought his steed spinning straight at the sorcerer, reaching out his hand through the arcane wards and protective spells that guarded Khoram.

He closed his steely fingers about the sorcerer’s neck and pulled the spell-maker towards him, letting his eyes peer into Khoram’s. ‘You are afraid,’ he said. ‘It is well that you are, for if you fear me then you are still useful. Remember this moment, Khoram. Remember that if you defy me, your spells won’t stop me. Your magic comes from the same source as my protection.’

The warlord released Khoram, shoving him back. If not for the gripping hairs of his flying disc, the sorcerer would have been sent crashing down the slope and hurtling into the jungle far below. He brought his hands to his bruised throat, rubbing at his pained flesh. Outrage flared up within him, but he quickly suppressed it. Tamuzz was trying to goad him into something injudicious, something that would make the sorcerer’s removal justified. Khoram refused to make things so easy for him.

‘I live only to serve, great Tamuzz,’ Khoram declared, genuflecting towards the warlord.

‘Remember that too,’ Tamuzz told him. He lifted his glaive, brandishing it so that his followers would be roused to action. ‘The last obstacle to our grand work is within the mountain. We will remove it now.’ He glanced at Khoram. ‘Take some of them alive,’ he instructed before jabbing his glaive at the chimney.

The warband acted swiftly, urging their daemonic steeds into the darkness. Horned beastmen and masked cultists sped away into the murk, the glow cast by their enchantments quickly vanishing as the shadows tightened around them. Tamuzz lingered behind, waiting until Khoram entered the shaft before him.

Khoram did not blame the warlord. At this juncture, the last place he should want the sorcerer was at his back. He only wished there was some way he could have avoided having the Fatemaster at his own back.

As the duardin started the furnace, a thunderous roar rushed through the refinery. Gotramm could feel the vibration pulsing through the walls. It was as though they had poured life back into Finnolf’s Fortress and what he felt were the palpitations of its awakened heart.

Gotramm frowned at the odd impression. He drew his hand away from the warm stone wall and reminded himself of the reality around him. Except for the machinery Horgarr and Grokmund had cajoled into usefulness, the outpost was still an abandoned ruin. Dust coated everything, the stamp of time and decay was everywhere. It would need more than imagination to pour life back into the settlement. It would need the duardin who’d vanished so long ago.

Morbid thoughts for a time when he should be jubilant. It was the burden of command, Gotramm decided, turning his mind towards the grimmest prospects. That or by becoming captain of the Iron Dragon he had also assumed Ghazul’s curse, filling him with a pessimistic gloom.

His judgement was still sound, however. Unlike Brokrin, Gotramm had no intention of trying to buck the tide of events. What good would come of it if he were to contest the transmutation of the aether-gold? The crew had a fortune right in their hands. All he would do would be to relinquish his authority. Tempting as that was, Gotramm would not do it. Stubbornness or pride, he was not sure which.

Or maybe it was something else? Gotramm had expressed no great desire for the wealth the aether-gold would bring, but that might be a half-truth. Wealth was one thing, but the longer-term benefit would be the acclaim he would receive. He would be fêted by the backers, celebrated by the guilds as the officer who brought this boon back to Barak-Zilfin. A commission would be agreed, a ship of his own more than likely. The moment he walked down the gangplank, his future would be assured. Not just a captain of an arkanaut company, but a hero to his kin. More importantly, a hero to Helga.

There would be no more reason to delay. Gotramm could wed her, start the family that would continue his legacy. No more doubt, no more uncertainty. His worries and his fears would be gone. All he had to do…

Gotramm drew his hand back from the wall as though the stone were not merely warm but scalding hot. He could have sworn he was not touching it a moment before. As his thoughts strayed so too must his hand. Or had it been the other way around? Cause and effect?

A shiver passed through Gotramm as he contemplated that grisly vibration so much like a heartbeat. He thought about Drumark and his concerns about the sergeant’s condition. He thought too about Brokrin and his anxiety over the aether-gold. All those coincidences that had conspired to lead them here, converting Grokmund’s strike into…

Wealth. They were turning the aether-gold into wealth. Gotramm had only to look at his comrades to recognise the truth of that statement. Why should he question it? Of what good were such foolish fears? The next thing he knew he would be jumping at shadows.

There were ten duardin in the refinery – Thurik and a mix of Drumark’s thunderers and Gotramm’s other arkanauts; many of the same ones who had initially explored the ruins. Horgarr and Grokmund, of course, tended the transmutation process like worried mothers, carefully monitoring every step. Now at the final phase the two duardin had donned special glasses with darkened lenses. Armed with these, they stared straight into the fiery maw of the furnace, watching as the gas condensed into a molten liquid.

Skaggi stood close to Grokmund, pacing back and forth, muttering under his breath. The logisticator was out of sorts because he had been unable to secure a set of forge-goggles for himself so he might watch his avaricious dreams become something tangible.

The first sign of disturbance came from Grokmund. He had been staring intently into the furnace when suddenly he turned away. He removed the goggles from his eyes, rubbing at them for a moment. Skaggi, a broad smile on his face, reached out to relieve Grokmund of the glasses. He was ignored, the aether-khemist not even looking in his direction. Satisfied that the goggles were clear of any debris, Grokmund replaced them and stared once more into the blinding flames.

Only a moment later he was turning away again. Grokmund reached for Horgarr, gaining the endrinmaster’s attention. Sensing something amiss, Gotramm hurried over to join them.

‘Did you see anything unusual in the cauldron?’ Grokmund asked Horgarr.

Horgarr slid the goggles up onto his forehead and gave Grokmund a puzzled look. ‘I can’t say that I did,’ he said. ‘I am not as experienced as you when it comes to melting down aether-gold. Did I miss something?’

‘You did not see a kind of discolouration?’ Grokmund elaborated. ‘A darker patch swirling about the cauldron?’

Gotramm felt his nerves tighten. The warnings Brokrin had given him sprang to mind. ‘What did you see?’ he asked Grokmund. When he hesitated, Gotramm rephrased the question. ‘What do you think you saw?’

Grokmund glanced back at the furnace. ‘It seemed…’ He shrugged. ‘Had to be my imagination. Nothing could be moving around in there. Much less swimming in molten aether-gold.’

‘Sounds like the kind of thing Drumark would see after he starts the fifth keg,’ Skaggi laughed. He wagged his finger at Grokmund. ‘This is what happens when you don’t share.’

‘Maybe not swimming,’ Grokmund considered. ‘It was all ripply, like a reflection in a disturbed pond.’

Skaggi laughed again, but Gotramm was more serious in his display of interest. ‘A reflection of what?’

Again, Grokmund could only shrug. ‘I am not sure. It looked a little like some kind of bird.’

Brokrin’s nebulous warnings rang in Gotramm’s ears. Something deep inside him, deeper than reason, was trying to warn him. Gotramm looked from the aether-khemist to the endrinmaster. ‘Get the cauldron out of there,’ he told them.

‘You can’t do that!’ Skaggi protested. ‘Any of the gas that hasn’t finished liquefying will dissipate! Who knows how much will be lost!’

Gotramm brushed away Skaggi’s clawing hands. He saw the other duardin drawing close. He was not sure how many of them had caught Skaggi’s entreaty, but he decided to knock the feet out from under him before he could make a direct appeal. ‘Lads, there might be something wrong with the furnace,’ he said. ‘If there is, we need to know right away. We will lose a little of the gaseous aether-gold, but acting now might let us save the rest of it.’ He pointed at Skaggi. ‘Or we can wait and maybe lose the lot. We still have some raw aether-gold on the ship to distil, so we have got to be certain everything is all right.’

Put in such terms, there was no protest to Gotramm’s order that the cauldron be brought out. The crew had enough faith in his capabilities to elect him captain; they were willing to trust his judgement now. Skaggi muttered a few curses into his beard and walked away, unable to watch even a tiny amount of the aether-gold go up in smoke.

The cauldron came rumbling out from the mouth of the furnace, its surface glowing from the heat of the flames that had engulfed it. The heavy chains that moved the huge cauldron groaned and creaked under its weight. Grokmund and Horgarr used a pair of long bronze poles to arrest the swaying motion and help guide the immense vessel to a big granite slab. There was a dolorous boom as the cauldron came to rest, dropping into the depression designed to receive it.

Gotramm felt a shiver run through him as the echoes of that sound rumbled across the refinery. He could see that the others felt the same, their visages suddenly becoming grave. Concerns about losing the aether-gold had been supplanted by a more primal feeling, a nebulous fear that refused to focus yet also refused to be denied.

The glow that suffused the cauldron gradually ebbed as the iron bled away the heat of the furnace. Yet the aether-gold within continued to exude a brilliant light. It was a hazy, shifting kind of luminance, like a mirage flickering upon a desert horizon. Gotramm thought of Grokmund’s rippling reflection. A need to peer down into the cauldron, to stare directly at its contents, took hold of the privateer. Thurik guessed his captain’s intention and tried to keep him back, but he would not be stopped.

The heat still rolling off the cauldron was blistering. Gotramm was almost instantly drenched in sweat. His resolution remained firm, and suppressing his own discomfort he climbed the small overlook that was poised above the granite slab. From this vantage he stared down into a pool of molten aether-gold.

He had seen aether-gold in its liquid state before, yet never had it seemed so impressive to Gotramm as it did now. There was a deeper, richer colour to this ore. Seen from above, the glow that emanated from it was like captured sunlight, warm and vibrant. Nothing he had ever seen had such a look of wealth about it. He was staring into a perfection of avarice, a promise of fortune incalculable. A mad impulse sought to catch him, to make him leap into that molten pool and be joined forever with its riches.

‘Cap’n, what do you see?’ Thurik’s voice was both excited and worried.

Gotramm was not certain which quality snapped him from the hideous delusion that had started to come upon him. It was enough that the suicidal spell had been broken.

The fascination of the aether-gold evaporated. In its stead came a creeping horror. It looked as precious and valuable as it had before, but now Gotramm saw something else. If what was in the cauldron was aether-gold, then it was not just aether-gold. There was a shape there, the faintest semblance of a reflection caught under the golden surface. He could make out a long, curved beak and eyes that were multi-faceted like those of an insect. Gotramm thought he saw mighty pinions with eye-like markings upon the feathers. Did he see or merely sense a mammoth claw reaching out for him, frustrated when it could not push its way from image into substance?

Hastily, Gotramm scrambled down from the overlook. Part of him – or was it part of him? – chided his imagination. He had let Brokrin’s nightmares poison his brain. Now he was seeing things, deluding himself that there was something unclean and evil about Grokmund’s aether-gold.

If that voice was indeed a part of him, Gotramm cast it aside. His eyes might have been deceived but there was no reasoning away the feeling of revulsion that gripped not only himself, but the others as well. He could see it on all their faces, a desperate urgency to know what he had seen and an unspoken appeal that pleaded with him to keep the secret.

Before Gotramm could say anything, a cry sounded from the front of the refinery. The yell was Skaggi’s. The logisticator came rushing back towards the others, repeating his warning.

‘Raiders!’ Skaggi shouted. ‘Raiders in the halls! Raiders come to steal our gold!’

Finnolf’s Fortress was a vast labyrinth of galleries and corridors, mammoth chambers and gigantic halls. Miles of tunnels, thousands of rooms, dozens of levels and sub-levels. When it had been inhabited there were few who knew their way into every corner of the settlement.

A stranger, entering the outpost for the first time, should have been utterly lost. Without a definite route to follow, without an understanding of duardin design and construction, the invaders should have found it nigh impossible to navigate the immense network.

Khoram was at no such disadvantage. All the black arts of sorcery were at his command. He had the observations of his destroyed spy to lend him insight. He had his knowledge of what the duardin were after to speed his course. But most importantly, he had the beckoning presence of the Master to guide his way.

Unerringly, the sorcerer led Tamuzz and his cult down through the upper galleries, around the great halls and along the silent thoroughfares. Khoram fed his commands directly into the scouting daemons, steering the screamers as they whipped through the empty settlement. The cult followed behind the daemons and after the cult came Tamuzz and Khoram.

The pulse that vibrated through the very walls now acted as the cult’s guide. There was no longer any need to feed directions into the daemons. They sped onwards without mortal guidance, drawn like iron filings towards a lodestone by the Master’s presence. The discs upon which the cultists were mounted exhibited the same urgency to be with the Master. Khoram took satisfaction from seeing Tamuzz’s steed likewise compelled by a force greater than either it or its rider. Even Tamuzz had to acknowledge powers mightier than himself.

The advance swept onwards to the source of the vibrations. The smell and heat of the refinery were detected long before the screamers came within its sprawl. A duardin, possibly posted as a sentinel, cried out, racing back towards the forge to alert his companions. The screamers would have dived down upon him except that Khoram exerted his magic to restrain them. The cult would need hostages to negotiate with the duardin still on the ship and keep them from doing anything reckless.

In answer to the sentinel’s shouts, the duardin within the refinery moved to defend themselves. Several appeared at the entrance to the chamber, training their guns on the invaders. Shots rang out. Cultists cried out in pain as they were hit, tzaangors bleated in misery as they were knocked from their steeds. Khoram heard Tamuzz snarl a curse, urging his steed down towards the enemy.

‘Remember,’ Khoram warned Tamuzz, ‘we need captives. The rite demands mortal blood to secure the Master’s transition from spirit to physical incarnation.’

‘I know what is expected of me,’ Tamuzz growled at Khoram. ‘Pray to Tzeentch that your magic is equal to what your tongue promises.’

His threat made, Tamuzz wheeled away on the back of his disc, rushing to lead his cult to the attack. The sudden surge of the warlord’s steed brought the duardin rifles turning in his direction, but instead of aiming at the fast-moving Tamuzz they fired at Khoram.

Hastily Khoram brought one of the screamers diving down. The daemon took the shots that would otherwise have struck him, and crashed to the floor of the refinery, flopping across the ground while ichor spurted from its mangled frame. As it flailed about the screamer grew more indistinct, its essence being drawn away from the Mortal Realms.

All around him, Khoram found that the cultists were striving to subdue the duardin and force their way into the refinery. Arcane fire from a cabal of masked acolytes sent the bearded warriors retreating back into the chamber. The moment the gunfire was silenced, the cult was rushing through the entrance.

The duardin took shelter behind the great statues and immense columns that stood all about the cavernous refinery. Some scrambled behind banks of pipes and machinery, peeking out from behind gigantic pistons and enormous flywheels to fire shots at the cultists. A few of the tzaangors were picked off by the ragged shots, but hardly enough to make a difference. There were at most a dozen duardin in the refinery. Arrayed against them were nearly a hundred mortals and daemons leagued under the banner of Tzeentch.

The cult pressed their attack. Bolts of magic and the crystalline arrows of beastmen forced the duardin to retreat. As they withdrew deeper into the refinery, the cult pursued them. Khoram saw Tamuzz impale one of the Kharadron on his glaive but the cultists were more cautious about restraining themselves. He saw one acolyte cut down by an axe, his arms locking about the weapon as he fell. Before the duardin could free his weapon, a goat-headed beastman flew close to him and kicked him in the head with a cloven hoof. Another defender emptied his rifle into a bird-faced tzaangor only to have a human cultist leap at him from the back of a flying disc, flattening the gunner in a sprawling tackle.

Throughout the refinery the duardin were being brought down. Outnumbered and unable to match the agility of their flying enemies, the defenders were further hampered by the malefic influence of the Master itself. While the Master’s presence emboldened and strengthened the cultists, it had the opposite effect on the Kharadron. They were befuddled, hampered in their reactions. It was impossible for them to coordinate any kind of opposition. While the cultists came at them in pairs and trios, each duardin fought on his own.

Khoram saw the sole survivor from the Stormbreaker, the duardin whose shape the Orb of Zobras had revealed to him. Khoram had ensured this one alone of all his comrades would survive to fulfil the role revealed to him in his divinations. His duel with the duardin on the Stormbreaker had been engineered specifically to knock him into the ship’s hold where he would be safe from the dragon’s attack and would be found by rescuers later.

The survivor had achieved his purpose. Khoram felt no especial concern when the duardin collapsed under the snarling weight of a screamer. A younger duardin rushed to his aid, vanquishing the daemon in a blast of shot and the cleaving edge of an axe. The daemon reared up, trying to bring its snapping teeth against its attacker. The bearded warrior brought his axe smashing against its jaw, managing to prop it open. While the daemon sought to gnaw through the blade, the warrior shoved his pistol inside its mouth and fired. The blast blew out the back of the screamer’s head, leaving it to flail miserably on the floor as its corporeal substance dissipated. The duardin helped his reeling comrade away from the fading daemon, retreating back towards the cauldron.

Khoram turned away from the tableau of hurt duardin and evaporating daemons. A thrill coursed through his body, a terror that filled him with excitement. The tretchlet mewed and nuzzled against his throat, hiding its eyes as the same sensation of enraptured horror flowed into its feathered body. Khoram set his eyes upon the cauldron and the glowing pool of metal within it. He exulted in the presence he felt rising from that molten core and the instinctual fear that quivered through his mortal flesh.

The Master, banished from the Mortal Realms by the hammer of the accursed champion of Sigmar, had returned!

Skaggi watched in mounting horror as the Chaos cult swept through the refinery. They looked to be the same raiders who had nearly overwhelmed the Iron Dragon, the same foes Grokmund claimed had brought down the Stormbreaker and her fleet. Now they had returned, to assault the duardin when they were far from the armoured hull and big guns of their ironclad.

Skaggi crouched down behind a massive iron kettle as a pair of goat-headed beastmen went soaring past. The brutes were loosing arrows at the thunderers shooting at the cult from behind the bases of statues, trying to drive them from cover. The arrows were tipped with some kind of explosive, for when they struck there was a flash of flame and smoke. Under the continued assault, the thunderers were soon forced to relinquish their positions and retreat deeper into the refinery.

An arkanaut tried to run for the entrance up into the settlement’s main concourse, thinking to avoid attention while his comrades fell back in the other direction. It was a ruse Skaggi watched with keen interest. If the arkanaut made it, then Skaggi would try his own luck with such a ploy.

But the arkanaut did not make it. As he hurried towards the entrance, a tall human in heavy armour swept down upon him. From the back of a flying disc, the man brought the edge of a fiery glaive lashing out. The duardin was struck in the back of the neck, flesh and armour ripped apart by the blow. The head went rolling across the floor while the body took a few staggering steps before it collapsed.

The sight was enough for Skaggi. He had witnessed a few of his shipmates being taken prisoner by the cultists. For whatever reason, the enemy wanted some of them alive. He knew it could be for no good purpose, but the example of the arkanaut’s butchery reinforced his conviction that he had nothing to lose. If he surrendered he might even be able to work some kind of deal with these raiders, appeal to their sense of greed.

Skaggi looked around, trying to spot whoever was leading the enemy. His gaze settled upon a grotesque man with a bulbous mass of feathers sprouting from his neck. There was an air of command about the sinister figure, not least because he seemed content to leave the fighting to the other raiders. Desperation rather than courage made Skaggi leave the shelter of the kettle and run towards the mutant.

‘I yield! I yield!’ Skaggi half sobbed as he came close to the mutant. He repeated his cry as several masked cultists turned their daemon-steeds about and came whipping towards him.

The mutant raised a worm-fingered hand and waved aside the approaching cultists. He stared down at Skaggi, a hard glint in his eyes. ‘Your grovelling interrupts my contemplation of the Master,’ he said, gesturing to the cauldron of aether-gold.

Skaggi dropped to his knees. ‘I surrender!’ he cried out.

The sorcerer peered a little closer at Skaggi. Something like a laugh hissed from his mouth. ‘I recognise you now. Your name is Skaggi. My spy observed you often. You have the gratitude of Khoram for the good turn you have done me.’ He stretched his arms, indicating the battle raging across the refinery. ‘All of this is your work.’

Hope flared in Skaggi’s heart as he listened to the sorcerer’s words. A shrewd expression came onto his face. If the sorcerer was feeling grateful, then Skaggi might convince him to let him go. He felt a flicker of guilt, even shame, that he could have led his shipmates to destruction, but it was not enough to quell the urge to survive. Whatever the shame, Skaggi wanted to live. Alive he could embark on new ventures, amass enough profit that he could blot out this stain on his honour.

Khoram laughed again. ‘You are the conniver, the schemer, the manipulator. Your greed has been so useful to my plans. I am not surprised that you think yourself clever. Cunning enough to buy your life from me.’

Skaggi was nodding his head in emphatic agreement. ‘If you spare me, I promise you great profit.’ He pointed at the cauldron. ‘There is more aether-gold on our ship. I also know where the vein we took it from is!’ He suppressed the bitter shame that tried to stifle his next words. ‘I am the only one who can lead you there,’ he lied.

‘I need hostages,’ Khoram said, waving his tentacled hand towards the duardin the cult had subdued. ‘Captives who will coerce your companions on the ship into doing as I tell them.’ He scowled at Skaggi. ‘I don’t think any of your kin would raise a finger to save your skin.’ The scowl became a cruel smile. ‘Yet even you may be of some use to the Prismatic King.’

Skaggi drew back, horrified by the change that had crept into Khoram’s voice. ‘I will do what is needed,’ he muttered, trying to appease the sorcerer.

‘Yes, you will,’ Khoram told him. ‘Your treacherous spirit and your scheming mind are already attuned to the designs of Lord Tzeentch! Your soul is black, defiled by your own deeds and your own intrigues. I could ask for no better offering to render to my god. It might have needed a dozen of your kinsmen to provide a suitable sacrifice to Tzeentch.’ His hand coiled into a fist as he shook it in the air. ‘You, I think, will be all that the ritual requires.’

Too late Skaggi appreciated his mistake. His shrewd expression was gone now, replaced by a look of horror. Pain twisted his features still further as Khoram pointed his staff at the duardin. The breast of his tunic smouldered as sorcery burned a brand into his flesh – the mark that Khoram himself bore.

The mark of the Prismatic King.

Khoram leered down at the duardin, seeing the mounting terror in his face. That was good. The Dark Gods were always more appreciative when their offerings were brimming with fear. He pointed down at Skaggi. ‘Run,’ he commanded. ‘Run if you still think you can escape.’

The duardin turned to flee, rushing back across the refinery. His retreat went unnoticed by all the cultists except one. The one who was fated to render this offering to the Prismatic King. Tamuzz dived down upon Skaggi, the blazing head of the glaive ripping through the logisticator’s body, piercing the brand Khoram had placed there. Brand and blade created a symmetry, an arcane conjunction of tremendous potential. Khoram might have chosen any of the duardin to act as sacrifices, but the sneaky ways of Skaggi lent themselves to a certain sympathy with the deceptions of the Prismatic King. Lies and illusions, plots and schemes, all were the province of the Lord of Change.

The glow around the iron cauldron intensified. Despite the heat of the furnace, frigid cold swept through the refinery, forming crystals of ice on the walls. Magic, powerful and enormous, was at work. Khoram used his mastery of the black arts to channel the gathering energies, feeding them into the vessel chosen long ago. Screamers and flying discs winked out of existence as the forces sustaining them in Chamon were drained away, fed into the now bubbling aether-gold.

‘Alive in triumph when they thought him slain!’ Khoram crowed. ‘The Prismatic King comes!’

The seething mass of the daemonic screamer crushed Grokmund to the floor. Its wings smashed him down, pummelling him viciously as he tried to squirm out from beneath it. Blood gushed from his mouth as his face bounced off stone. Broken teeth dripped into his beard. Another swat of the monster’s fluke-like wings and his nose became just a mess of pulp.

Suddenly the daemon’s weight was lifted off him. Grokmund heard its pained howl as it reared back. Ichor jetted from its ruptured flesh, a fiery liquid that stung him when it splashed into his wounds. The screamer’s savage wails grew to a deafening crescendo as continuous blows ripped into it. A shot rang out and the screamer’s howls were silenced, its bulk falling aside and flopping against the floor in a shuddering mess.

The creature’s killer pushed it away from Grokmund. Reaching down, he grabbed hold of his arm and started dragging him away. His rescuer was Gotramm, his face almost unrecognisable behind the gore spattered across it. Grokmund felt a new sting of pain, a pain born of guilt. He had seen enough of the battle to know there was no lack of duardin in need of aid. Yet it was the stranger from another sky-hold Gotramm had come to help.

‘Fall back!’ Gotramm shouted. ‘Fall back towards the furnace!’

Grokmund managed to twist his head around, to see the position from which Gotramm intended to make his stand. The doors of the furnace were flung wide. Roaring flames shot from its maw. Horgarr stood near the gauges, working the controls that would adjust the fuel being pumped into the machinery. The endrinmaster was using the furnace to create a wall of fire to protect one flank. With the wall at their back, it would leave the embattled duardin only one front to hold against the foe. It was not much of a chance, but at least they would go down fighting.

A few of the duardin managed to break clear of the enemy to obey their captain. As they withdrew, the beastmen and humans pursued with vicious determination. The bird-headed beastkin dived down towards the Kharadron, the jaws on the undersides of their flying discs snapping and slavering. The masked cultists hurled balls of shimmering energy at their adversaries, felling a few and scorching the armour of others.

Thurik jogged over and grabbed Grokmund’s other arm. Together with Gotramm, they were able to drag him back into their chosen strongpoint. There was a moment of morbid satisfaction when a beastman tried to intercept them but instead overshot its target and plunged through the flames billowing out of the furnace. The disc-shaped daemon emerged from the fire unharmed, but the rider on its back was a screaming torch, fur and feathers sizzling away from the cooked meat of its body.

The beastkin’s screams were quickly eclipsed by the death-shriek of a duardin. Grokmund managed to lift himself enough to see the armoured warlord who had attacked the Stormbreaker with Skaggi impaled upon his glaive. The logisticator was thrust through the centre of his chest, lifted from the ground like a child’s doll. As vitality ebbed from him, the atmosphere in the refinery shifted, taking on a tangible feeling of doom and destruction.

Grokmund’s gaze was pulled to the cauldron of aether-gold, as was the attention of everyone within the cavernous chamber. Human, beastman, and duardin watched in shocked wonder as the glow around it intensified. Cultists fell to the floor as their daemon steeds evaporated from under their very feet. Screamers winked out of existence, their infernal substance drawn away to feed the power amassing in front of them.

The shadow Grokmund had seen in the furnace, the reflection of a great predatory bird, wasn’t anything to compare with the reality that oozed up from the cauldron.

The thing Grokmund had seen, the image Gotramm had climbed above the cauldron to observe, was more terrifying than any nightmare could imagine. It was tremendous of size, ten times the height of a duardin. Its body was lean and hungry, yet there was a suggestion of strength in its wizened limbs. Hands and feet ended in massive talons, the fingers and toes that supported them covered in a scaly texture. The rest of the humanoid body was feathered as were the condor-like wings that erupted from its back. Abominable eye-shaped markings shone from the tip of each feather. The thing’s head was poised upon a long, vulturine neck that looked much too thin to support it. The shape of the head was that of an eagle, the beak hooked and sharp. The eyes that bulged from its avian visage were multi-faceted like those of a moth or spider.

More horrible to Grokmund than the form the thing had assumed, more terrible even than the aura of malign might that it exuded, was the very nature of its substance. It wasn’t a thing of flesh and bone, even the arcane simulacrum of flesh that daemons assumed when trespassing in the Mortal Realms. This monster’s body was gold. From the top of its feathered head to the tip of its lowest talon, the fiend was formed of gold. Claws and feathers, arms and wings, all of it was a dull gold in colour. Even the terrible eyes with their grotesque facets, even they were golden.

The shadow, the reflection Grokmund had seen in the molten aether-gold, he had been wrong about what it was. He had thought it was some flaw in the ore, some eldritch parasite that had attached itself to his strike. Now he appreciated the monstrous truth. It wasn’t merely in his aether-gold, it was his aether-gold in the same way the hair in Grokmund’s beard was part of his own being.

He heard the sorcerer cry out in triumph. Grokmund could not recognise the barbarian’s language, but he understood at once the tone. This had all been by design. The sorcerer and the armoured warlord, they were the same ones who had brought the Stormbreaker down. He had been the only survivor – allowed to live so that the Iron Dragon could find him. Spared so he could lead them to the strike. Used by the forces of Chaos to bring about the profane manifestation that now stood before them in its golden splendour.

Grokmund had dreamed of building a legacy for himself, to ensure his name wouldn’t be forgotten. Now he saw that his legacy wasn’t what he had imagined it would be. This was his legacy, this daemon-horror clad in gold. He had hoped to bring a wondrous boon to the Kharadron. Instead what he’d brought his kinsmen was a monstrous doom.

Unwittingly, Grokmund’s ambition had restored the reign of the Prismatic King.

Chapter XIV

Down through the darkened vaults of the outpost Brokrin and Drumark made their way. Despite Drumark’s insistence that there was an imminent threat to their comrades in the refinery, he refused to accept Brokrin’s efforts to use the main concourse and take the direct route to the chamber. There was a less obtrusive ingress, Drumark claimed, a passageway used by the settlement’s thanes to spirit away their treasures from the refinery unobserved by the general populace. Drumark refused Brokrin’s efforts to reason with him, compelling the captain to follow along through the dark corridors. For almost an hour they crept through the shadows, and at each stage Drumark became a little more unsettled. Frustrated by his inability to find the passageway. Frightened that the daemon within him would regain its strength.

Brokrin could feel the change that swept through the atmosphere within Finnolf’s Fortress. The brooding desolation, rife with its haunting air of abandonment and tragedy, now took on a feel that was overtly malignant. It was a cold, stinging fire that reached into the soul with a thousand sharp claws. His pulse raced, his nerves tingled with the primitive fear of prey when the predator is nearby, stalking unseen in the darkness.

Drumark leaned against the wall, dragging great gasps into his battered body. He looked at Brokrin, his eyes covered by a rheumy sort of sheen. ‘Too late,’ he coughed. ‘We are too late. The Prismatic King has returned to claim his throne.’ These last words were spoken in a glottal croak utterly alien to Drumark’s voice. Despair shone in the sergeant’s gaze. He saw the look of alarm in Brokrin’s eyes and nodded his head. The possessing force was again exerting its influence upon him.

A shudder swept through Brokrin. It was not only the ghastly possession of Drumark that sent shivers through him. He had heard old legends about a terrible Chaos lord that had gone by the title of Prismatic King. It was said to have been destroyed by a champion of Sigmar. All of the stories were vague, but they agreed upon the nature of the Prismatic King, a fiend of unspeakable evil and unimaginable power.

Brokrin looked ahead, peering down the darkened corridor. In the distance he could see a weird, pulsating glow, golden in colour but somehow conveying an impression of incredible darkness. Faintly he could hear the sounds of battle.

‘The passageway,’ Drumark said, pointing towards the glow. ‘The tremor has thrown open the door. The glow is coming from the refinery. They have already called the Prismatic King. If we would stop him, we must hurry.’

Brokrin hesitated, every fibre of his being pleading with him to turn and run, but he could not. As repugnant as the glow and the power it represented might be, the thought of abandoning his crew was still more repulsive. When he heard a duardin voice cry out in a mix of horror and defiance, his course was decided for him.

Checking the charge of his volley pistol, Brokrin tried to hand his axe to Drumark. ‘Whatever is down there, we will stop it.’

Drumark pushed the axe away. ‘I have no need for your weapon,’ something within him said. ‘You will need it more than I. Just get me close to the Prismatic King. Get me close enough that he can see and hear me. Get me close enough that he cannot fail to see and hear me.’ Drumark’s words collapsed into a guttural slobber that was part cough and part laughter.

Brokrin tried to keep the disgust from his mind. It was not Drumark anymore. Or at least it was not just Drumark.

Drumark shook his head. ‘Help me, cap’n. I am lost, but you can help make my finish count for something. Whatever has changed, we still share the same enemy.’

Another duardin cry from the refinery decided Brokrin. Tightening his grip on his pistol and axe, he hastened towards the glow and the sounds. He could hear Drumark following after him, his bare feet slapping against the stones, his foetid breath wheezing from his lungs. He tried not to think about what had happened to his friend, to wonder how much of the sergeant was still there. As he had said, whatever he was, Drumark could still fight a common enemy.

Savage shouts and cheers echoed from the refinery now, the triumphant howls of monsters and madmen. Brokrin felt the terrible might within the golden light, felt it rush out at him with the cloying filth of a harkraken’s ink. He pressed through the unclean miasma, forcing his way towards the refinery and nearer the source of the golden light. Cautiously he came to the open door. The base of a column obscured his view of the chamber beyond. When he peered around it his eyes were drawn inexorably to the colossal figure exuding the golden glow.

The Prismatic King emerged from a great cauldron, its giant frame wrought in gold. Brokrin recognised the sheen as that of aether-gold. How or why it had been possible, he did not know, but somehow the bird-headed daemon had used Grokmund’s strike to build for itself this physical incarnation.

A fascination of terror gripped Brokrin. All intention ebbed from his mind, all thought of action smothered by an awesome fear. To fight against this being was futile madness, the desperation of the damned! Dimly he realised he was groaning in horror, the sound climbing steadily, threatening to blot out all sanity.

Look away, mortal, the glottal voice that was not Drumark’s forced its way into Brokrin’s mind. Even the possessed voice had a quiver of fear about it, a tremble that had not been there before. Look away or lose your soul.

Drumark took hold of Brokrin, turning him aside and breaking his enraptured gaze. Brokrin looked across the refinery. The giant daemon was foe enough to consider, but there were scores of cultists and beastmen too. Brokrin recognised their leader in his baroque armour and blazing glaive as the same one who had attacked the Iron Dragon and her escorts, the same who had set upon the Stormbreaker and her fleet. His followers were scattered around the middle of the refinery in a broad perimeter except for a disfigured man with a feathered growth on his neck, who remained well behind that defensive line. Beyond the cultists, he could see Gotramm, Thurik, Horgarr, Grokmund and four other duardin making a last stand beside the open doors of the furnace. Their chances against the cult would be poor, outnumbered as they were, but with the daemon lord against them as well, they had no chance at all.

‘The only chance is the one you make for them,’ Drumark said.

Brokrin’s skin crawled at the idea the sergeant had reached into his brain to read his thoughts. It did not change the fact that he was right.

‘You have to resist the Prismatic King’s aura,’ Drumark told Brokrin. ‘You must steel yourself against its influence. Unless you can, all is finished. You must draw its attention before we can follow.’

Brokrin summoned up every ounce of determination inside him. He thought of honour and duty, obligations to clan and kin. He thought of his crew and what would be their doom unless he intervened. Trembling, he forced himself to look again upon the golden daemon.

The Prismatic King was moving now. As it stepped out from the colossal basin, its clawed foot expanded across the floor, exhibiting a strange semi-solidity, as though still straddling the line between metal and liquid. The beaked face turned downwards, staring in disdain at its distorted foot. Brokrin could feel the arcane power that pulsed through the golden giant as it willed its foot back into shape.

‘It must be destroyed before it can make itself complete,’ Drumark urged, his voice feeling like a pestilence in Brokrin’s ear.

Stealing out from behind the statue, Brokrin advanced upon the cultists standing between himself and the Prismatic King. His approach was possible only because the enemy was distracted, facing away from him, either staring up at the daemon in abject adoration or else watching Gotramm’s crew with undisguised malice.

Even as Brokrin made his stealthy advance, the Prismatic King was in motion. It stretched forth one of its great talons, pointing at Thurik. The arkanaut shrieked in agony as a wave of purple light swept down upon him in a coruscating flash. He collapsed to his knees as his flesh began to wither, sinking close to his bones. By the time his screams ended Thurik had been reduced to a mummified husk. Howls of anguish rose from the warriors around the furnace. Horgarr had to seize hold of Gotramm to prevent him from a vengeful charge towards the Prismatic King and its mortal vassals.

With its other hand, the Prismatic King pointed to one of its minions, the disfigured human with the hideous feathered growth sprouting from his neck. The cultist was suffused by the same purplish light, but instead of diminishing under its glare, he appeared to expand. An aura of terrible power rippled around the man, and Brokrin realised he must be a sorcerer.

Thurik’s death spurred Brokrin into immediate action. He brought his axe chopping into the side of a horned beastman, breaking its ribs and leaving it flailing on the ground. Its agonised bleating brought a masked human swinging around, a ripple-bladed sword clenched in his fists. Before the cultist could strike, Brokrin’s axe was hacking through his mask, crunching into his skull. As the man fell, Brokrin planted his boot on his chest and wrenched the blade free.

Brokrin’s violent assault brought more cultists rushing towards him. He opened up with his volley pistol, dropping two more of the masked humans and crippling a feathered beastman. Across the refinery, Gotramm’s crew rallied, shouting Kharadron war shanties as they rushed from their defensive position and flung themselves at the surrounding enemy.

The armoured warlord charged towards Brokrin, clusters of eyes gleaming balefully from behind the mask of his helm.

The duardin captain fired round after round at the cult leader, but each shot went spinning away, deflected by some invisible force.

The warlord drove at Brokrin with a crooked glaive, its edge rippling with eldritch fires. ‘You dare pit your luck against the destiny of Tamuzz?’ he raged as he swung at the duardin.

The captain ducked beneath the sweeping blade, feeling its fire sizzle against the top of his helm. He struck at the heft with his axe, managing to knock one of Tamuzz’s hands loose. The warlord stumbled, unbalanced by the abrupt shift of his grip.

‘My luck is already bad,’ Brokrin spat. ‘You will not make it any worse.’

Tamuzz drove back on the assault, bringing his glaive sheering down in an overhanded arc. Brokrin barely managed to swing to the side. He fired a last shot straight at the warlord’s face, disheartened when the bullet went spinning away without doing any damage.

‘I am Tamuzz, the chosen of Tzeentch!’ the warlord jeered. ‘My fate is not to be decided by any mortal.’

Brokrin brought his axe chopping around, crashing the blade against the glaive and sliding its edge down the heft. This time he slashed it across the warlord’s fingers. Tamuzz jerked back, recoiling as the armour was shivered and strips of metal gouged into his flesh. Brokrin grinned at his enemy. ‘I have naught to lose by trying,’ he snarled.

Drumark waited until Brokrin was engaged against Tamuzz and Gotramm’s fighters were distracting others of the cult, before he rushed out from behind the statue. The Prismatic King was still feeding Thurik’s stolen essence into the sorcerer. Even so, it should have noticed him but for the disorienting nature of its transition from spirit into substance and the carnage initiated by Brokrin’s attack.

Drumark was determined that it would not have that chance. His mind cringed from the images of horror that raced through it, images of what the Prismatic King had done and of what it would do unless it was vanquished. He knew these were not his own thoughts but things fed to him by the daemon that had seeped into his body. How much was truth, how much was lies he could not tell. It did not matter. Of one thing he was certain, and that was that the Prismatic King had to be stopped.

Drumark hurried towards the Prismatic King. The great daemon’s malefic power boiled across his bare flesh. He could feel the cuts in his skin ablaze with torment, blood oozing anew as the scabs melted away. The Nurglish entity that had infected his soul crackled with enmity, ancient rivalry and eternal spite rippling through its diseased core.

The Prismatic King. Proud seneschal of Tzeentch who failed to prevent the advent of Sigmar’s Celestant-Prime! The Prismatic King who allowed into the Mortal Realms a force that continues to bring ruin upon the designs of Chaos.

The bitter hate of the plague daemon melded itself with Drumark’s own antipathy for the Tzeentchian cult. With cancerous tenacity it slithered through every corridor of his mind, leaving little pieces of itself until no corner of the duardin was spared. He could feel the sickness sweeping through him, the foulness bubbling in his stomach, the congestion building in his nose, the pulsing ache inside his skull. A hundred illnesses unleashed at once, filling him utterly, infesting him entirely. Yet somehow the plague did not weaken him. Instead it poured new strength into his quaking limbs. It gave him the stamina to forge ahead, marching through the malevolent aura wafting from the Prismatic King’s avatar.

The bubbling croak that spilled from Drumark’s voice was nothing he could recognise as his own. The slobbering sounds that fell from his lips were not words, and yet they had meaning. Meaning more strange and hideous than he could fully fathom. They were power, evil transformed into sound.

Words have power, but in the Mortal Realms it needs a mortal voice to speak them. The perfidy of magic. Only a mortal tongue moved by a mortal will can invest meaning into those sounds. A mocking shiver swept through Drumark’s soul as the daemon continued. You must learn and speak. It must be from you. But for that I could have extinguished your identity any time after your fight with the sorcerer’s spy.

You have become a pawn in a game played between jealous gods. It is still in your power to resist me, and in resisting you may save your soul. But that will bring the Prismatic King victory. It will mean sacrificing the lives of all your companions to their enemies. Your soul against their lives. That is the wager.

Drumark looked down at his scarred skin, understood the meaning of the symbols scratched into his flesh. They were the same as the sounds the plague daemon had spoken. Not simply sounds, but a name. A True Name.

‘Yth’nitzzilik,’ Drumark intoned, the daemon helping him shape the sounds. ‘Yth’nitzzilik,’ he repeated the ghastly intonation, the noise somewhere between a vulture’s call and a wolf’s howl. As he spoke he could feel his tongue shifting, changing into a new and abominable shape. He fought down the urge to vomit and repeated the name a third time.

The mutant mouth upon his shoulder echoed the name, whispering it into his ear, urging him to keep uttering it. Now the unleashed power of Nurgle’s daemon bubbled up across Drumark’s face. Oozing nodules sprouted from his lips, crimson pustules bulged from his brow, his cheeks shrivelled into fleshless wisps of skin, clumps of hair fell from his beard. All the malign energies of the plague daemon lent themselves to his words, but there was a price for such power.

The golden giant swung around. The Prismatic King’s beak opened in a squawk of fury, the sound crashing through the outpost like a clap of thunder. Its scintillating eyes glowered, losing their metallic sheen as the monster within peeked through.

Yet even as the Prismatic King turned upon its enemies, the arcane compulsion of its True Name afflicted it. The great foot-talons gouged into the floor, losing shape and substance, pooling outwards in a sticky mire that held the Lord of Change fast.

The cuts on Drumark’s skin shone with an inner light, blazing into the daemon’s eyes. He staggered nearer to the golden fiend, forcing it to stare at him, to both see and hear its True Name. Into the croaking sounds Drumark fed a command, an intention within the word. He felt the Prismatic King railing against his order. Like fire, thoughts blazed into his mind. A cascade of threats and promises that drove the Nurglish daemon into the very corners of his awareness.

You can live, the Prismatic King told him. I will burn away the force that possesses you. Temptation became threats. If I fall, I will wait for you in the Realm of Chaos and your cursed soul will be tormented until the sundering of all realities!

Drumark fought against the Prismatic King’s demands. He thought of his comrades. Their lives were in his hands. That was all that mattered. Fiercely he uttered the command for the ninth time. Before him, the golden body lost its suppleness, stiffening and hardening, freezing in place.

‘Defiler!’ The epithet was screamed by the sorcerer the Prismatic King had been feeding Thurik’s energy into. Brandishing his staff, he sent a spiral of burning light searing into Drumark. Under the arcane surge the diseased pustules littering his body burst, their infected strength evaporating. His skin blackened, his bones contorted into new and ghastly shapes. Such hair that had not fallen out erupted into an explosion of colour. The mutating beam ripped through Drumark, wrenching him asunder.

Drumark collapsed as his deformed knees buckled beneath his weight. His voice faltered as his jaw fused into a bony mass. The cuts across his skin sloughed away. Yet still he persisted. The sorcerer’s magic was killing him, had in fact made his death inevitable, but it was doing so far slower than his enemy intended. The infection of Nurgle opposed the transformations of Tzeentch, and in that opposition there was a lingering existence.

Drumark brought his fingers raking across the exposed meat of his chest, scratching anew the symbols that had marred his skin. The mutant mouth on his shoulder howled out, louder and more persistent, speaking not with the plague daemon’s voice but that of the duardin.

Towering above the fading Drumark, the Prismatic King struggled against the force of its own True Name. It stretched forth one of its gigantic claws, arcane energies glowing in the tips of its fingers. A wave of magic leapt forwards, searing down into Drumark, evaporating his arms, searing the flesh from his skull. Yet still the abominable essence of Nurgle’s daemon sustained him.

Defiantly, Drumark raised the wet bones of his exposed skull and cried out the Prismatic King’s True Name again. The golden giant’s frame shuddered, limbs stiffening still further as the duardin’s command imposed its dominion over the great daemon.

Grokmund looked away from the mechanisms that fed the furnace as Gotramm cried out to the remaining duardin. ‘Earn a death worthy of your ancestors!’ Gotramm shouted as he led the remainder of his crew out against the cultists. Brokrin’s attack had inspired the flagging hope of the duardin. A moment before they had been ready to sell their lives at a dear cost to their foe. Now they charged forwards to make the enemy pay for every drop of blood.

Grokmund alone lingered behind. It was not the wounds he had suffered under the pounding wings of the screamer but much deeper injuries that held him back. He had been used, monstrously exploited by the fiends of Chaos. He had been unaware of what the tainted aether-gold really was, so absorbed in its amazing possibilities that he had not questioned why it was so amazingly potent. The aether-gold had been nothing but a lie, bait to ensnare the Kharadron. A means for the daemonic horror to take shape once more.

He thought of Admiral Thorki and all his crewmates on the Stormbreaker, all the duardin that had been lost with the rest of Barak-Ungrin’s fleet. He thought of the Iron Dragon’s escorts and those from her own crew who’d been killed. All those lives were on Grokmund’s hands, their blood dripping from his fingers. It was his dream that had brought them all to their doom. A dream built from a daemon’s lie.

A dream sustained by his own lust for recognition. In his way, Grokmund felt he was even greedier than Skaggi. He had let his ambition blind him to the things he should have seen for himself, to keep him from asking the questions he should have asked. If it were only himself who paid the price for such hubris perhaps it would have been something he could bear.

The crackle of sorcery caused Grokmund to cringe back towards the furnace. He thought of Thurik’s grisly death as the Prismatic King turned him into a smouldering husk. But it was not against him that this magic was turned. Gazing beyond the embattled figures of cultists and duardin, he could see the golden daemon and, standing near its feet, the mutilated figure of Drumark. The sergeant looked completely broken, flayed and ragged, wracked by both disease and injury. Yet still he fought. Still he struggled to oppose the enemy. The sorcerer’s magic burned across his body and still he refused to submit.

Grokmund noticed something else as well. The Prismatic King did not help its sorcerous minion. The huge daemon stood frozen in place, its colossal frame only capable of the slightest motion as it tried to free itself from its paralysis. Unspeakable rage shone from its eyes as it glowered down at Drumark.

How this could be, why it had happened, these were questions Grokmund had no answer for. He did not need any. It was enough that the daemon was stopped. But how long would it be stopped? The fiend’s dread aura still filled the refinery. Whatever had happened to it, the Prismatic King was not vanquished. It was still here, waiting for the moment it would be free once more.

That was something Grokmund could not let happen. He spun around, looking back at the furnace. His eyes fell on the battery of cylinders that fed the great fires burning in its belly, untold gallons of caustic chemicals and incendiaries that could melt the strongest ore and transmute aether-gold from gas to liquid. He looked too at the bank of emergency release valves. In that moment his decision was made.

‘Back to the ship!’ Grokmund howled, praying his warning would carry to Gotramm and the others. He repeated the cry, finally causing Horgarr to look back. The endrinmaster saw him point at the valves and at once a grim look came upon Horgarr’s face.

The endrinmaster knew what Grokmund was about to do. Horgarr passed the alarm to the other duardin. They fell back from their enemies, withdrawing into a tight knot of axes, pikes and pistols. When the moment came, they would be ready to act, ready to flee the lethal torrent Grokmund would unleash.

Grokmund looked again at the battery of levers. Better than anyone, he could guess what that cocktail of chemicals would do when it was unleashed. The other duardin were far enough away that they would have some chance of outrunning the torrent when it came. For himself he knew there would be no escape. With that understanding came a crawling horror. He was not afraid to risk his life to save his comrades, but this was not simply risking his life. This was certain death, a horrible and atrocious kind of death. That knowledge made him pause.

Then Grokmund heard Drumark’s tortured cries. He could see the sergeant being ripped apart by the sorcerer’s magic. Despite the agony he was enduring, Drumark refused to lie down and die. He remained defiant, struggling to oppose the slaves of Chaos even as his body was broken by witchcraft.

Resolutely, Grokmund lunged for the levers. He reached them just as several Chaos cultists came charging for him, belatedly noticing the lone duardin who had lingered behind the advance of his fellows. The spheres of crackling magic they cast upon Grokmund sizzled against his back. Pipes from his atmospheric anatomiser were ruptured, spraying gas into the air. He stumbled, but not enough to stay him from his purpose. His fingers tightened about two of the levers. With a mighty heave, he brought them sliding down and across into the release notch.

‘Burn!’ he snarled at the masked cultists as the chemical pipes opened and their caustic contents sprayed onto the refinery floor. It was an emergency design, a last ditch safeguard against an explosion within the furnace itself. There were safer ways to bleed off the chemicals, to empty the reservoirs, but this was not one of them. It was a designed disaster to prevent an accidental cataclysm.

For the cultists the distinction made little difference. The gushing flood of chemicals splashed down upon them, bathing them in searing liquids and viscous jellies. Masks melted into faces, armoured girdles dripped away from steaming bones. Shrieking in their death agonies, the cultists fell, the enchantments that enhanced their physicality fading as their existence exploded into a single instant of torture.

Grokmund hastened to the other levers. His left foot was red torment as chemicals splashed across it, dissolving his iron boots in a matter of heartbeats. He flung himself at the controls, opening more pipes, adding more destruction to the deluge. Incendiary gases spilled across the chemical stream, igniting and adding a wave of snarling flames to the violent tide. Chemicals sloshed together, mixing into deadly combinations, sending clouds of noxious vapour steaming across the refinery. Grokmund saw a pack of beak-faced beastmen collapse as a bank of poisonous fog rolled over them.

Grokmund pulled himself up onto the last bank of controls. His legs were just so much boiled meat now, the chemicals continuing to gnaw through his flesh. He clamped his jaws tight against the scream he would have given voice to, knowing if he started screaming he would never stop. He turned his head, determined to see the full measure of what he had unleashed before he became one of its victims.

Gotramm and his crew had managed to exploit the confusion and terror that accompanied the burning tide. The duardin were fleeing back into the main corridor, gunning down the few enemies with the tenacity to try and intercept them. Grokmund was not sure if the flood would rise above the level of the refinery floor or if the gases being released would spread into the outer halls, but if Gotramm kept his crew moving, they should be able to keep ahead of the destruction.

Brokrin was not able to escape as easily. Smoke and poisonous vapours billowed across the refinery, swiftly filling the vast chamber. The toxic smog blinded most of his enemies, but not Tamuzz. Staring through the smoke rising from the finger-candles plastered to his gorget, the warlord pressed his attack with undiminished ferocity. Brokrin fled to one of the kilns and scrambled on top of it. Using the higher position to hold his foe back, he was able to reach the chimney above the kiln and start pulling himself up. The warlord sprang after him, pursuing him into the chimney. A pair of beastmen rushed to follow their leader, but they were not quicker than the tide of chemicals and smoke. Just as they reached the kiln the flood washed over them, eating into their legs and pitching them face-first into the corrosive mire.

Drumark’s fate was already sealed. Tortured and transformed by the sorcerer’s spells, it was a mercy when a stream of flaming jelly consumed him. He was immolated where he crouched before the golden colossus, a living firebrand that was swiftly extinguished.

The Prismatic King’s own destruction was more prolonged. The glow that emanated from the daemon’s golden avatar changed, becoming a sullen red in hue like the last ember in a dying fire. But instead of fading away, the glow grew rapidly stronger. From the legs it spread up to the waist, across the chest, down arms and wings. The bird-like head was aglow with the volcanic light. Hotter and hotter the light became, feeding upon the aether-gold. Cracks appeared in the daemon’s skin, molten ore spilling from the fissures. The legs began to congeal, evaporating in the fiery swamp of chemicals. Visually the effect was that of watching the daemon sink down into the mire, as though it were being pulled under by some titanic force.

Still held frozen by the power of its True Name, the Prismatic King vanished into the acidic pool, its physical avatar consumed by the rampaging fury of aether-khemistry. The multi-faceted eyes glared balefully as the head slipped down into the dissolving muck. A soul-searing shriek raged through the smoke-filled refinery, a cry of eternal outrage and defiance that shook the very stones of the mountain.

The next moment, all that was left of the daemon was a golden slick upon the steaming tide.

Only one among the Chaos cult remained behind to see the Prismatic King’s dissolution. The deformed sorcerer hovered above the caustic sludge, levitating by means of powerful magics. The feathered growth that bulged from his neck shrieked mournful wails, but the sorcerer simply glared across the destruction at Grokmund. The aether-khemist took a grim delight in seeing the villain’s fury. The cultists had thought to use him to free their daemon. But in the end it had been their hapless pawn who had turned the tide against them and destroyed their evil ambitions.

Before the sorcerer could collect himself enough to inflict some tormenting spell against him, Grokmund released his grip on the machines. He fell backwards into the chemical mire beneath him. The shock of sinking into the acidic flood was so great that all further sensation of pain was seared from his nerves. He felt nothing as the acids ate him away.

Gotramm and his crew hurried through the darkened halls. After the malefic luminance cast by the Prismatic King, the tinderlamps they’d left hooked to pillars and walls along their line of march seemed feeble. Behind him, Gotramm could hear the screams of the cultists as the toxic gases billowing from the refinery rolled over them. The agonised shrieks goaded the duardin to greater effort. Despite injury and fatigue, every one of them dredged up the energy to quicken his pace.

It was not until they felt the malignant shriek drawing at the air around them and the profound emptiness that followed it that the duardin knew Grokmund had succeeded. Gotramm no longer felt the Prismatic King’s evil presence, his body no longer shivered from a nameless dread.

‘Grokmund must have killed it,’ Gotramm gasped as he jogged down the halls. He glanced back the way they had come, saw one of the tinderlamps flicker out as the chemicals splashed against the pillar it had been set against. The sight urged him onwards, knowing the gases would extinguish him as easily as the lamp.

‘Think he made it, cap’n?’ one of the surviving arkanauts asked, desperate hope in his tone.

Horgarr dashed the warrior’s delusion. ‘Even if he climbed above the tide, he had nowhere to go,’ the endrinmaster stated. ‘The fumes would do for him as surely as the acid. No, there is no escape for Grokmund. And he knew it. He was buying us a chance to get away.’

‘And a chance to destroy the daemon,’ Gotramm added. Again he looked back the way they had come. He saw a dark shape rushing towards them ahead of the gas cloud. For a second he delayed, thinking the figure might be a duardin. When he saw the golden mask fitted to the cultist’s face, he aimed his pistol and fired. The shot clipped the human, ripping across his side. The man fell to the floor, wailing as the chemical cloud swept over him a moment later.

Gotramm holstered the weapon and quickened his pace. He had held his shot because he too had hope. Not that Grokmund would escape, but that Brokrin had. The last time he had seen him, he had been duelling the Chaos warlord. Only the timely interruption of Brokrin and Drumark had granted the duardin the respite they needed to rally against the enemy. But for them, all of them would have been subdued by the Prismatic King’s cult. Destroyed as Thurik had been destroyed.

There was no chance for Drumark, but Gotramm wanted to believe Brokrin had survived. There was so much he owed to the captain, not least of all his profound apology. Brokrin had been right about everything, but the crew had been too blind to see. They had mutinied against a leader who had been trying to keep them all from a voyage without any reward, only the promise of danger and death. Gotramm felt a deep debt to the officer he had rebelled against. His worry was that there was no time left to pay back that debt.

The halls around the fleeing duardin shuddered. Dirt and stone clattered down from the roof. The Kharadron stumbled, flailing about as the tremors threatened to upset their balance. They locked arms, helping one another, knowing that to fall now would mean falling to the pursuing tide of acid.

‘The mountain is coming apart!’ Gotramm shouted to his crew. Larger slabs of rock came crashing from the ceiling. Pillars swayed and columns lurched. The doorways of buildings cracked, collapsing as the weight above them came smashing down. However long Finnolf’s Fortress had endured suspended far above the jungle, that endurance was spent. Whether the chemicals unleashed by Grokmund had burned their way down to some hidden machinery or the Prismatic King’s dissolution had disrupted some arcane magic, Gotramm did not know. All he did know was that the entire peak seemed to be tumbling around their ears.

‘To the Iron Dragon!’ he yelled, urging his exhausted duardin to a final effort. The ship was their only chance now, a last gamble to escape the crumbling outpost. Even as Gotramm made that realisation, he thought of Brokrin. If he had survived the chemical flood and escaped the refinery, what chance could he have if he were cut off from the ship?

Chapter XV

The heat from the chemical fire raging below made it difficult to breathe. Every gasp Brokrin took felt as though he were sucking smouldering embers into his lungs. The chimney was barely wide enough to admit his body, provoking an awful sense of claustrophobia that he had to consciously resist. He was doubled over, feet pressed against one wall while he slid his back up against the other. In such tight quarters it was not difficult to keep from slipping and falling back down to the refinery. The arduous part was making any kind of progress, of making that awkward shift of his legs to push himself upwards.

Brokrin did not use his hands to help himself along. They were too busy setting a new charge in his volley pistol. Even over the screams and corrosive bubbling that echoed across the refinery, he could hear the grating noise of his pursuer’s armour scraping against the walls of the chimney as Tamuzz followed him upwards. By the light of the fires raging below he could see the warlord. The human could have already reached Brokrin if he had discarded the massive glaive he carried. Tamuzz kept hold of it, however, making his advance ungainly as he shifted its bulk around at every stage of his creeping pursuit. Brokrin took small solace from the retarded pace. If his own climb slackened, Tamuzz would gain on him and with the long reach of the glaive it would not need much to put the duardin in jeopardy.

There was one thing for which Brokrin could be thankful. With the Chaos warlord below him, the worst of the toxic fumes rushing up from the chemical flood were assailing Tamuzz instead of himself. Mixed into the metallic scraping of his armour against the walls was a steady coughing and choking as the noxious vapours struck the warlord. If the air stung Brokrin’s lungs, he could not begin to imagine what it must be doing to his enemy.

A violent shudder swept through the chimney. Brokrin could feel the walls shiver against his back and boots. The domineering presence of the Prismatic King dissipated, vanishing utterly. In that moment he knew that, no matter what else happened, the Kharadron had won. The Chaos plot to summon the great daemon had been thwarted. Besides that, whatever else happened was insignificant.

From below, the point of the glaive came stabbing up at Brokrin, urging him to renewed effort. Tightening his grip on the reloaded pistol, he forced himself to shuffle upwards. The bucking, quivering walls threatened to send him spilling back down towards Tamuzz. The vision of striking the glaive, of impaling himself upon its murderous blade, was one that sent cold fingers closing around his heart.

The tremor rolling through the walls intensified. To Brokrin it felt as if the outpost were tearing itself apart. Distant roars pounded at the edge of his hearing, the faint echoes of destruction muffled by the thick walls of rock all around him. His mind filled with visions of pillars cracking, columns crashing down like felled timber, the roofs of halls and chambers spilling down to pulverise whatever was beneath them. His skin crawled as he pictured broken bodies lying pinned under tons of debris, wailing futilely for help as they died alone in the dark.

Faster. If he could only move faster Brokrin might yet reach the surface. He could escape before the quake made the sides of the chimney come smashing together, crushing him into a red smear. He could climb up from the cloying darkness, ascend onto the slope of the mountain.

And what then? Trapped on the snowy slopes, alone and with no hope of rescue? To die a lingering death of deprivation and starvation? Or if the mountain did indeed come apart would he be plunged headlong into the jungle far below? A bitter laugh rasped across Brokrin’s tongue. Such a fate would be in keeping with the pattern of his luck. Ghazul’s curse paying out to the very last.

The despair that held him caused Brokrin to tarry. The glaive jabbed up at him, its hot edge pressing against his armour. More by instinct than thought, he started to climb again. He felt the Chaos lord’s weapon jab at him a second time, the fiery tip singeing his leggings.

Climb. It was all he could do. Climb and climb and climb. Brokrin could not stop, could not let himself fall within reach of that evil blade. He had to keep going, to reach the top. To stand there in the light, to feel the wind whipping through his beard, to draw breath into his lungs that was clean and not a searing vapour of chemicals. Up, if he just kept going up, he could die in the open skies he had journeyed across for so many years. He could see the grand vista of the world at his feet and the glorious sweep of the heavens.

Who could say? He might yet survive. Some miracle might see Brokrin rescued from the peak. Stranger things had certainly happened.

New hope coursed into Brokrin’s limbs. He shuffled his feet and back along the walls with increased determination. Even as he did, he felt the glaive dig at him once more. The burning stab of the tip brought with it a grim suspicion. Where had that fresh surge of hope come from? It was not anything that drew itself up from his own thoughts. What had provoked such a sudden and commanding ambition?

He looked down at the warlord pursuing him. The enemy who came near enough to poke and prod him with his weapon, but not close enough to overtake him. Brokrin scowled, banging his head against the wall as he tried to exorcise the alien presence from his brain. He was being used, just as Drumark and Grokmund had been. Chaos had latched on like a parasite to his own urges.

So certain was Brokrin of his conviction that he stopped climbing. He exposed himself to the butchering sweep of the glaive. Instead all he felt was the same goading jab, the same light stab to push him on. With the walls still shivering around him, Brokrin used his feet to firm his position. He brought his volley pistol around, aiming it downwards.

‘I am not going to lead you out,’ Brokrin snarled as he fired the weapon down at Tamuzz. The chimney was filled with a blinding flash as the aetheric weapon discharged. The clamour of all barrels going off at once was almost deafening, smothering the distant rumble of falling pillars and collapsing rooms.

From below there came a brilliant flash of sapphire light. When its glow ebbed away, Brokrin could see Tamuzz staring up at him, unharmed by the shots fired into him at such close range. Instead, in a ring all around the warlord, the walls of the chimney were pitted with bullet holes. Brokrin could see the ebbing blue glow that flickered around the sigils etched into the warlord’s armour.

‘You should have learned your lesson before,’ Tamuzz jeered. ‘I am not fated to die by your hand. The magic I have learned from the Changer is less ostentatious than that of Khoram, but no less powerful in its ways. It preserves me for my destined fate. It brings me the things I deem necessary to my ambition.’

Brokrin hurled the spent volley pistol down at the warlord in a fit of rage. Even this crude missile failed to strike Tamuzz, glancing off the wall and clattering past his head through the only spot that was open.

‘I will not be your puppet!’ Brokrin snarled. ‘Find your own way out!’

A dry, sinister laugh rose from the warlord. ‘You think I need you to lead me out of this place? I could leave whenever I wished. Just as I can destroy you whenever I wish. A thrust, like so!’ Tamuzz brought the glaive stabbing upwards. Brokrin felt it pressing against him, the sharp stab of its hot point against his armour. Before it could break his skin, the weapon was withdrawn.

‘Or I could simply withdraw the magic protections around us,’ Tamuzz stated. Immediately Brokrin felt the trembling walls around him sway with still greater violence. It was all he could do to keep from slipping, an effort made worse by the sweltering air he was forced to breathe and the acidic sting of the chemicals within it. After a moment, the heat and violence became more subdued. Brokrin did not know if Tamuzz had used his magic to heighten the hazards around him or if indeed he was using his spells to suppress them. Either way, the message was the same. He was in the warlord’s power.

‘Then end it now,’ Brokrin spat. ‘End it, rot your bones.’

Tamuzz laughed once more, but now there was a seething hate woven into the sound. ‘It would be too easy to simply kill you. Have you any concept of what you have done? The dream you have destroyed by your meddling? The Prismatic King has waited long to return to the Mortal Realms and avenge himself upon his enemies. I was chosen to fulfil that mighty purpose. But you, a miserable little sky-thief, have undone my plans. You have brought ruin upon me. Where sorcerers and warlords, the legions of the thunder-knights and the hordes of the orruks have all failed to defeat me, you have succeeded. There is nothing I can do to atone for this failure, no penance I can perform to redeem myself in the eyes of the Changer. There is no hope left to me.’ He brought the glaive stabbing up, pressing into Brokrin’s side, forcing him to scramble upwards out of its reach.

‘You have cost me everything,’ Tamuzz declared. ‘In the moment of my triumph, everything was taken away even as I reached out to claim it.’ His eyes glared up at Brokrin’s. ‘No, it is not enough to simply kill you. Not enough by half. I will see you reach out to claim the fruit of hope only to have it snatched away from you. When you die, let the bitterness of failure, the loss of so near a victory be the taste that colours your fleeing soul. I am only sorry that you are too simple to aspire to anything of more consequence than leaving these catacombs and seeing the open sky one more time. Yet that dream, that ambition will have to be enough. It will hurt, sky-thief, when even so small a hope is ripped from your grasping fingers.’

The glaive jabbed at Brokrin again. He ground his teeth together and started climbing. As Tamuzz said, the will to live was strong, too strong to be forsaken even when he understood his survival was naught but at his enemy’s whim. The siren call of hope drew him on. Feeble and impossible as it seemed, it still beckoned to him.

Tremors shook the chimney. Dust and debris clattered down the shaft now. The dull, muffled sounds of destruction swelled, rising in volume to become a steady roar. The peak was tearing itself apart. Whatever Tamuzz thought to do with him, he wondered if it could be worse than having the walls of the chimney crush him between them.

Morbid despair started to close its talons around Brokrin’s mind. Then he raised his gaze and noted a faint light far above him. Daylight! The top of the shaft at last! Freedom was up there, escape from the claustrophobic tomb of the chimney. He quickened his pace for a moment, hurrying upwards in a spurt of effort.

The moment passed. Brokrin’s excitement evaporated in a morass of dejection. What good would it do to climb any higher? Tamuzz would kill him before he could reach the top. He felt the point of the glaive jabbing at his back, trying to goad him on.

The sting of pain conjured up a desperate gambit in Brokrin’s mind. There was one advantage he had over Tamuzz. The Chaos lord was filled with a lust for revenge, savouring every moment of suffering he could inflict on him. That meant Tamuzz wanted to keep him alive, at least until his hate was satisfied. That might be enough to make the warlord hesitate at the crucial moment.

‘You see the sun,’ Tamuzz taunted from below. ‘Climb to it! Perhaps I will let you stand under it. Perhaps you will look across the sky one more time. Climb!’ He jabbed Brokrin again with the glaive. When he refused to budge, Tamuzz thrust at him once more.

In a heartbeat, Brokrin acted. As Tamuzz thrust up at him, he leaned away from the wall, moving his back from the chimney. For a second he was slipping down, then he pushed out with his legs and pressed his back against the wall again. The difference was the hot sting of the Chaos lord’s weapon. It was caught between Brokrin’s body and the wall.

Instinctively, Tamuzz tried to wrench the weapon free. As he did, Brokrin reacted. He drew back his legs and let himself fall down the shaft. With the glaive now above him, there was no chance of being impaled on the weapon. Instead his full weight came smashing down into Tamuzz. Protective sigils flickered on his armour, but their enchantment was not enough to fend off a projectile as big as the Kharadron’s plummeting weight. There was nowhere to deflect Brokrin within the narrow expanse of the chimney.

Brokrin smashed into the shocked Tamuzz, three hundred pounds of armoured duardin breaking the Chaos lord’s grip on the walls and the glaive. With a shriek, the warlord was sent hurtling down the shaft. True to his smug claims of arcane protection and eldritch destiny, it was not a mortal’s hand that brought him to his fate. It was the boiling lake of acidic chemicals that smouldered at the bottom of the chimney.

Brokrin would have followed Tamuzz to his doom but for the warlord’s glaive. Catching hold of it as he fell, Brokrin twisted it to one side with a vicious motion. Stone screeched as the burning glaive raked across it. How many dozens of feet he continued to plunge before the glaive finally caught he could not say. All he knew was that it did arrest his fall at last. Wedged between the walls, the glaive acted as a brace for Brokrin, a platform from which he could resume his arduous climb.

The walls quaked and shivered around him, the air was a stinging smog, but Brokrin continued his ascent with greater energy than before.

When he finally emerged from the chimney, exhaustion swept over Brokrin. He fell in a heap beside the opening of the shaft. It was all he could do to drag himself away from the steady plume of toxic fumes billowing up from the vent. The ground under him was trembling, the slopes around him were fracturing and sending great boulders plunging away to the jungles below.

Brokrin looked around, trying to gauge his position on the mountain. There were snowy slopes and a couple of massive stone towers, a field of grated chimneys that disgorged a steady stream of smoke. He could see no trace of the port or the great watchtowers, much less the dock where the Iron Dragon had been tied. Grimly he considered that he might be on the other side of the peak. Well away from his comrades and any chance of rescue.

It was just as well, Brokrin reflected. The mountain’s turmoil was becoming worse, making the very possibility of escape doubtful. If Gotramm had got back to the ship, he hoped they had cast off and sailed away. The belief that his ship and his crew would survive was a great comfort to him.

One of the huge towers nearby suddenly fractured and came crashing down in a jumble of massive blocks. Brokrin watched the collapse with a sense of fatalism.

It couldn’t be long now.

‘Up! Up! Up!’ Gotramm shouted the command as he led the survivors from the refinery rushing down the dock towards the Iron Dragon’s waiting deck. All around them the outpost was coming down. Sculptures sloughed away from the face of the mountain, crashing down in great heaps of rubble. Towers lost their moorings and went spinning away as they fell to the jungle far below. One entire pier split and went raining earthwards.

Gas-carbines barked as the Kharadron still aboard the ironclad opened up on the beastmen and cultists that came charging out from the outpost’s entrance. Men and beastkin alike were cut down before they could retaliate. A few turned back towards the tunnel but sight of the caustic cloud rolling behind them caused them to charge the ship instead. Preferable by far were the guns of the duardin and the ironclad’s crew were only too happy to oblige their enemies. The toxic cloud rolled across the dead and the dying, smothering them as it went spilling over the edge of the dock.

Gotramm leaned wearily against the gunwale as he boarded the ship. He drew a few ragged breaths, then hurried onwards, still shouting commands to the crew. ‘Away! The whole place is coming down!’ He brought himself to the wheelhouse, snapping orders to Vorki to get the ship in motion.

The crew could see for themselves the peril around them. They had already made most of the preparations to leave when the tremors started. All that remained was to cast off, and this was accomplished by Mortrimm and Lodri. Hefting a heavy axe, the old navigator sheared through the mooring chains at the stern while Lodri attended to the one at the bow. The moment it was free, the Iron Dragon shot upwards, rapidly climbing away from the doomed outpost. Below them, the Kharadron watched as the dock they had been tethered to started crumbling away. A massive slab of rock broke away from the summit above, careening downwards to sweep straight through the spot they had been in only a short time before.

‘Pull away,’ Gotramm gave the order.

Mortrimm gave him a pained look, colour draining from his face. ‘What about the others?’ he asked, almost in a whisper.

Gotramm shook his head. ‘There are no others,’ he stated. He gazed across the rest of the duardin on deck. ‘There are no others,’ he repeated. ‘We are it. Nobody else is coming.’ He turned back towards the wheelhouse. ‘Vorki! Get us away from here before we are crushed!’

There was no jubilation as the Iron Dragon climbed away from the collapsing outpost. Counting the comrades already lost in battle, those who had perished in Finnolf’s Fortress brought the toll to over a third of the ironclad’s complement. The crew was sombre as they considered that comrades like Thurik, Drumark, and even Skaggi were gone.

Arrik scratched under his eyepatch and grumbled into his beard. ‘All that aether-gold lost,’ he muttered.

Gotramm spun around on the gunner, fixing him with a furious look. ‘There was no aether-gold!’ he snarled. ‘It was all a trick, an enchantment conjured by Chaos. What we brought here was not aether-gold but the essence of a daemon waiting to be given form!’

Arrik backed away, stunned not simply by Gotramm’s tone but by the haunted look in his eyes. ‘I only meant… what we have been through…’

Horgarr laughed, but there was no cheer in the sound. ‘If we had listened to Brokrin, none of this would have happened. He knew. From the first he knew something was not right.’

Guilt stabbed at Gotramm as he heard Horgarr’s words. It was true. If they had only listened to Brokrin.

‘Vorki!’ he shouted to the wheelhouse. ‘Keep us close to Finnolf’s Fortress! I want to look for survivors.’

Mortrimm grabbed hold of Gotramm as he started towards the ship’s prow. ‘You think someone is alive in all that?’

Gotramm shook him off. ‘I don’t think it,’ he told Mortrimm, ‘but by all my ancestors, I pray for it.’

Gotramm peered through a spyglass and scoured the mountain below. The peak was continuing to destroy itself, sections of the slopes crashing inwards as chambers inside collapsed. The brooding visage of the thane broke apart, sealing off the entrance. It was at that point Gotramm told Vorki to turn the ship and fly around to the other side of the mountain. Even if one of their crew had found a way over the toxic flood he would have no way of digging through all the rubble.

He knew he was looking for Brokrin. Gotramm just could not accept that he was gone, that the debt of honour he owed to him could never be repaid. He had helped Skaggi sway the crew to mutiny. Now it was a wrong he could never set right.

As the ship started around the peak, a peculiar pattern to one of the columns of smoke rising into the sky caught Gotramm’s attention. He focused the glass on a shape standing near a smoking chimney, waving something over the opening to create the distinct pattern he had noticed. ‘Grace of Grungni,’ he muttered, almost unable to believe his eyes. He thought he recognised the object in the black, a soot-black figure, a broad-sleeved shirt he had last seen…

It was Brokrin! He had managed to somehow escape the refinery and climb his way almost to the very top of the peak. ‘It is the cap’n!’ Gotramm fairly shrieked.

The declaration brought a dour silence to the crew. There was a sense of shame on most of their faces as they looked to one another. Those aboard the ship had been told about Brokrin’s intervention in the refinery. Those who had been there knew they owed their lives to Brokrin as much as Grokmund. There was nothing they could do for Grokmund, but they might still help Brokrin.

Against this had to be weighed the fact Brokrin was their old captain. They had mutinied against him, a deed that could only be exonerated by bringing great profit back to Barak-Zilfin. The loss of the aether-gold made that impossible, but there was another way to clear themselves. They could simply leave Brokrin behind. Nobody would ever need to know about the mutiny then.

Horgarr saw the shame on the faces of the crew as they considered this option. He raised his voice, ensuring his words reached every duardin on the deck. ‘The cap’n risked his life for us, even after we turned on him,’ he told them. ‘He could have left and saved himself, but he didn’t. He came back to help us. Now he needs our help. Are we going to turn our backs on him again?’

‘No,’ Gotramm said. ‘We’re not.’ His eyes bore into those of every crewman. ‘We are Kharadron. We live by the Code and the Code says no shipmate is to be cast off except when he has brought ultimate dishonour to the sky-hold. If we turn from him, it will not be Captain Brokrin who is the oathbreaker, but each one of us.’

There were no protests when the ship was brought around and the Iron Dragon flew back to the crumbling peak. The crew attacked their duties with gusto. Skywardens fixed tethers to themselves and checked their aether-endrins. With the mountain coming apart, the safest way to rescue Brokrin was to hold the ship off and send skywardens down to pick him up.

The Iron Dragon shuddered as the pinnacle came away from the peak and went sliding off to its ruin. The resultant avalanche sent a plume of snow across the deck. The crew looked on in horror as the raging spill swept downwards. It was diverted by a craggy outcropping, sliding off to the left instead of continuing on towards the prostrate captain.

Without waiting to get any closer, the skywardens went over the side. Manipulating the feed of fuel into their aether-endrins, they were able to descend quickly to the slope. The tethers that attached them to the ship grew taut. Carefully Vorki brought the ironclad still closer, giving the duardin the slack they needed to reach Brokrin.

The cheer that went up as the skywardens descended to the chimney and reached Brokrin wasn’t restrained. The joy was genuine. Whatever their worries about the future might be, the Kharadron were happy they had been able to rescue Brokrin.

‘Bless all the gods! They have him!’ Mortrimm shouted, stamping his good foot in glee.

‘You can’t kill the cap’n,’ Arrik declared. ‘He is tough enough to wrestle an ogor and come out best!’

Gotramm choked on the rush of emotion that filled him. Brokrin alive! A chance to redeem his honour. A chance to make amends for his mistakes and the disaster they had helped inflict on the Iron Dragon’s crew.

The skywardens swiftly rose. The tumult of falling rocks and cascading snow forced Vorki to back away even as they came flying up towards the vessel. There would be time enough to recover them and their captain once they were a safe distance away.

Or would there be? Just then Gotramm spotted someone else moving across the snowy slopes. He recognised the sorcerer who’d presided over the Prismatic King’s summoning. He could feel the man’s vengeful gaze fixated upon the Iron Dragon. He thought of Thurik and the hideous manner in which his friend had died. Could the sorcerer inflict a similar spell on them from so great a distance?

The sorcerer’s voice was raised in a terrifying ululation. No fire leapt from the sorcerer’s hands, no lightning shot out from his shrieking mouth. Instead there was a primal shifting in the atmosphere around the Iron Dragon. In the clouds above Finnolf’s Fortress, a mammoth shape emerged, drawn back into the time-place the sorcerer needed it to be.

Gotramm felt as though a blade of ice had stabbed his heart. This, he felt, was the monster that had settled the Stormbreaker and her fleet. The immense claws, the long smashing tail, the savage jaws – these were things that could have wrought the havoc they had seen in the wrecked sky-vessels of Barak-Urbaz.

None of the duardin failed to recognise the nature of the beast the sorcerer had conjured to destroy them. From prow to stern the cry went out, a shout almost primordial in its tone of dread.

‘Dragon!’

The instant he was on deck Brokrin hastily unfastened the harness the skywardens had attached to him. All around him the duardin were hurrying to their combat stations. The captain shook his head as he saw the thunderers readying their arms and the arkanauts preparing skypikes. He caught hold of the nearest skywarden as he prepared to go over the side. ‘You can’t do any good out there,’ he warned him. Brokrin pointed at the gigantic flying reptile as it circled above the ship. ‘You would not even be a snack for that thing.’

The reptile was immense. Easily three times the length of the Iron Dragon, its long tail lashed wildly behind it as it soared through the sky. The claws on its feet were bigger than a beer barrel and thicker around. The teeth in its main head were as long as the Chaos warlord’s glaive, those in the smaller head that jutted out from the side of its neck still more like swords than fangs. The leathery pinions that bore it aloft were dark and membranous, dull in consistency, unlike the shiny gleam of its sapphire scales.

The dragon was the very vision of death, a thing of such immense power that even the Kharadron sought to invoke its might when they named the ironclad. The beast that now menaced them was a monster of its mighty breed.

Brokrin saw that his point had been made. Leaving the skywardens, he hurried to the wheelhouse, where Mortrimm was having an impassioned talk with Gotramm.

‘I am telling you we can’t fight this thing,’ the old navigator was insisting. ‘We lost the obsidian harpoon for the skyhook. Nothing else we have will pierce that wyrm’s hide deep enough to do any good.’

Gotramm shook his head. ‘We can’t outrun it either. If we are to be destroyed anyway, I say we die fighting.’

Brokrin interrupted both officers. ‘We will fight,’ he told Mortrimm. He then shifted his gaze to Gotramm. ‘Not because we are going to die, but because we are going to win.’ Brokrin pointed at the deck. ‘Get everyone below and tell them to hold their fire. The less activity the dragon sees, the less we do to annoy it, the less inclined it will be to wash our decks in fire. The only duardin I want up here are a team to send off a supremacy mine and Arrik’s lads to crew the skyhook. Everybody else goes below.’

Gotramm shook his head. ‘I would rather stay. All of this is my responsibility.’

Brokrin clapped his hand on the arkanaut’s shoulder. ‘I need you below. When I pipe the signal to you, I need you to empty the holds. Every drop of Grokmund’s cursed aether-gold is going to be put to good use.’

Gotramm nodded. ‘I think I understand, but will it work?’

‘If it doesn’t, we will not be around long enough to ask if it was a bad idea,’ Brokrin told him.

‘Arrik is short a few gunners,’ Mortrimm stated. ‘I could act as spotter for them. I might not get around as well as I used to, but my vision is still good.’

Brokrin nodded his agreement. Picking up the speaking horn, he relayed his command to the duardin on the deck, sending them down into the holds and alerting the gunners at the gas-carbines to hold their fire. Horgarr led a pair of arkanauts across to the prow, the supremacy mine held between them. When the command was given, they would send the devastating explosive overboard.

Relieving Vorki at the wheel, Brokrin brought the Iron Dragon into a steep climb. The dragon had finished its preparatory circling above its prey. Now it came diving down, smoke billowing from its jaws, its claws splayed, ready to rend and tear into the Kharadron sky-vessel.

‘I hope you know what you are doing, cap’n,’ Vorki muttered.

Brokrin shook his head. ‘After our run-in with Ghazul I made a study of the great beasts that prowl the skies of Chamon. That meant reading a lot about dragons and their habits. There is a theory that a dragon is a bit of a miser when it comes to its fire. It would rather demolish prey with its claws and tail and conserve its flame.’ He gave a grim laugh. ‘Of course if it is challenged or antagonised, it comes in for blood and does not hold back.’

Vorki licked his lips anxiously. ‘So… We do not upset it is what you are saying?’

‘Not until we need to,’ Brokrin said. ‘If this works, it will need exact timing.’

The wyrm was diving straight at the Iron Dragon, on a collision course with the ship. Brokrin had to maintain that course until the last possible moment. He had to outmanoeuvre a beast born to rule the skies.

With the lives of every duardin on board depending on him, Brokrin was not going to fail. He refused to accept that his luck was so pernicious that it would doom them all.

‘Be ready with the skyhook,’ Brokrin called to Arrik. ‘Fire as soon as the wyrm flies past the ship.’ He gave Horgarr and Gotramm similar warnings. Like himself, they would each need exact timing or all would be lost.

Brokrin watched as the dragon came winging ever closer. He could see the cold reptilian malice in its eyes. Smoke continued to stream from its jaws. Every moment he expected the great beast to expel a gout of flame into the ironclad, to turn the ship into a flying pyre and explode the theories he had read.

The dreaded flames never came. Nearer and still nearer the wyrm dived, its claws outstretched, ready to snatch up the ship like a falcon swooping upon a songbird. Brokrin bided his time, denying the fear that would provoke him into acting too soon.

‘Wait,’ Brokrin admonished his crew. ‘Wait until the dragon is too close to pull out of its dive.’

Closer and closer. The musky reek of the dragon bathed the deck, drawing tears from the eyes of the duardin. Brokrin wiped them away, keeping his desperate vigil. The beast was near now, within rifle range.

Still Brokrin waited. The reptile was close enough to hit with a decksweeper, then it came close enough to throw a spear at.

‘Up!’ Brokrin sent the ironclad lifting away with such suddenness that his crew were astonished their ship could act so quickly. The dragon was likewise surprised, diving past the vessel, only empty air in its grasping claws. Brokrin saw the wyrm fly below the rising ship. He knew it would quickly ascend, turn around and come at them once more. The next time it would not be fooled by the same trick.

It was up to the Kharadron to ensure the reptile never got the chance for another attack. Brokrin heard Arrik snap the command to fire. The harpoon screamed away from Ghazul’s Bane. The first phase of his desperate ploy to bring down the dragon had begun.

Khoram felt the awesome power of the dragon pulsing through his body. The sorcerer sat behind the reptile’s primary head, his finger-tentacles embedded in grooves cut into one of its horns. Beneath his feet a shard of mirror had been embedded in the monster’s hide, an enchanted replacement for the scale he used to control the monster. By means of the scale he could command the wyrm. Through the mirror he could project himself onto the reptile’s back by means of a few simple conjurations.

Escaping the crumbling refinery had taxed Khoram’s powers. Transmuting his physical form into a vapour that could swiftly ascend the flues that peppered the chamber’s ceiling was no mean feat of magic. It had left him depleted, even after the Prismatic King’s boon of power. Without that gift from his Master he might have shared in the fate of Tamuzz and his followers.

His powers virtually exhausted, Khoram still had enough energy to invoke any already-prepared spell. Through the harmony of scale and mirror, he transferred himself from the mountain and onto the dragon’s back. It was a perfect place from which to conduct the only plan left to him now.

Revenge.

Gazing down at the Iron Dragon, Khoram felt only contempt for the duardin. True, they had managed to thwart the Prismatic King’s return, but that was only a temporary victory. Daemons were eternal and the Master would rise again. Khoram had missed his chance to serve in that ascension, but some other sorcerer would bring it to fruition.

The duardin were trying to flee as they sighted the dragon. Khoram commanded the monster to destroy them. He had sensed its frustration at holding back before, now it would attack with ruthless abandon. ‘Destroy the ship and everything on her,’ he ordered the dragon. ‘Scatter her across the jungle. Let the bones of the duardin rot in the foetid filth. Let their names be lost to their kindred.’ He knew enough of the Kharadron’s ways to know that would be more horrible than anything to them.

The Orb of Zobras swung around Khoram’s face, strange scenes playing out across its many facets. The sorcerer ignored the relic, determined to savour the sky-vessel’s destruction. He watched as his dragon dived down to claim its prey.

When the Iron Dragon lifted away from the wyrm’s assault, Khoram growled in frustration. ‘The fools are only delaying the inevitable!’ he snarled at his homunculus. There was no chance they could elude the wyrm forever.

But it seemed the duardin had no intention of running. As the dragon flew under the ship, the skyhook mounted on its forecastle fired its harpoon into the beast. The lance was not strong enough to pierce the reptile’s scales – Khoram could sense that by the way the dragon reacted. But the spear was caught in those scales, and with its chain connecting it to the ironclad, the wyrm was pulled back, its flight arrested.

The dragon spun around, raking its claws across the chain and snapping it instantly. In turning, however, it brought itself close to the prow. Khoram recalled the explosive that had been set against the chimeras. Now he saw another one turned out against his dragon. Hurriedly he drew one of his protective talismans from beneath his robes, calling upon its energies to fend off the oncoming assault. The duardin heaved the mine over the side, sending it fluttering down towards the wyrm’s horned head. It detonated with a tremendous explosion, rocking the ironclad from side to side.

The dragon dropped away, smoke sizzling from its scorched heads. Khoram continued to cling to the horn, his robes smouldering, his head ringing from the nearness of his escape. A snarl of triumph slipped from his lips. The duardin had used their most devastating weapon – to no avail! The mine had not visited any grievous harm on the dragon, it was only stunned momentarily. It dipped away from the deck, flying beneath the ship as it tried to recover its senses.

Then, as the dragon swung slowly under the ironclad, the real attack was made. Khoram stared up in shock. The gates of the ship’s holds were opened, dumping out their contents. The aether-gold that had not been taken to the refinery came spilling out. Away from its vein, the ore was heavier than the air around it. It pelted the dragon in a golden rain. Steam rose from the wyrm’s scales as the gas collected on them. Even with slivers of daemonic energy bound into it, the aether-gold was not caustic enough to bite through the dragon’s scales or burn through the sorcerer’s wards.

It was, however, strong enough to melt through the leathery membranes of the dragon’s wings! Khoram stared in horror as great swathes of the wyrm’s pinions dissolved. The membranes were eaten through by the gnawing vapour, great jagged tears pitting them. The reptile bellowed in horror as its wings lost their ability to keep it aloft. The beast came plummeting down from the sky. Cheers sounded from the duardin ship as the crew realised they had overcome their monstrous foe.

Khoram shared in the reptile’s horror when he saw that it was plunging straight for the crumbling mountain peak. He looked to the Orb of Zobras, but every facet was empty now. There was no future left for the talisman to predict.

‘Lord Tzeentch, show mercy to my soul,’ Khoram begged.

The harsh giggle of Khoram’s tretchlet told the sorcerer that his final hope was a lie. ‘There will be no mercy for your soul,’ it cackled at him. For the first time since it had erupted from his flesh, the homunculus spoke actual words to him. ‘The gods reward accomplishments, not servants. You have failed the Changer.’

The dragon came slamming down onto the slope, its body broken upon the crumbling peak. The violence of its impact was the last strain the summit could take. Already disintegrating by degrees, now it lost all cohesion. The broken dragon was sent plunging earthwards as the last of Finnolf’s Fortress spilled down into the root of the mountain, filling the great crater the duardin had excavated long centuries ago.

Khoram screamed in abject horror as he fell alongside the dead dragon and the sundered slopes of the mountain. He cursed the fickle humour of fate.

This was the same end Khoram had planned for the Iron Dragon – an unknown grave lost in the jungle wastes.

Epilogue

From the deck of the Iron Dragon the Kharadron watched the destruction of Finnolf’s Fortress. Great slabs of rock dropped away from the disintegrating peak, slamming down into the crater far below. The tremors persisted until at last whatever force had been keeping the peak levitating over the hollowed-out root of the mountain was extinguished. In a last great shower of stone and rock, the summit went hurtling earthwards.

The duardin could see the broken body of the dragon falling with the final deluge of stone. Steam continued to rise from its seared wings as the aether-gold dissolved the leathery membranes. Even in death, the reptile was an awesome sight, a thing of might and terror. Many of the watchers still expected the monster to arise, lift itself on its tattered wings to come at the ironclad once more. To have come through such an ordeal unscathed was to them nothing shy of miraculous.

When the dragon’s carcass smashed into the ground and was buried under tons of stone, a boisterous shout rose from the watching crew. As one they turned towards the wheelhouse and cheered the name of the duardin whose leadership had brought them through the ordeal alive.

Brokrin stepped out from the wheelhouse. He let the praise of his crew fill him. It was like a purging flame sweeping through his veins, burning away all the doubt and misfortune that had plagued him for so long. After his masterful slaying of the dragon, there would be no more talk of a curse hanging over him or his ship. He had broken the hoodoo. Even a profitless voyage wouldn’t eclipse this feat. The vanquishing of the Prismatic King might be a greater victory, but it was less visceral than the sight of a rampant dragon falling from the skies. That was a deed that would be told and retold in every tavern in Barak-Zilfin.

Gotramm came over to Brokrin, bowing his head in deference to him. He waved his hand at the cheering crew. ‘I speak for everyone when I say we regret our choice. We would be proud if you would resume your command, cap’n.’

Brokrin looked at Gotramm, cast his gaze across the other duardin. Most of them had voted against him in the mutiny. By asking him to resume his command they were accepting the punishment their mutiny would bring. Debt and indentured servitude at the very least when the guilds learned of it, discredit and prohibition from serving in the sky-fleets was more likely. They were forsaking their futures, accepting that the gamble they had made had been lost. A mutiny with profit might be expedient, one without was nothing but treason.

The captain kept silent a moment, letting the cheers fade. He held up his hand, pointing it at each of the duardin. ‘It is wrong to let the mistakes of the past destroy the promise of the future,’ he stated. ‘We have endured hardship enough on this voyage, and always we have endured it together. Many of you now look with dread to the journey home. You fear what awaits you there.’ He could see the sobering effect his words had, the grim look that came upon the faces of his crew.

The mutiny could act as Brokrin’s salvation. All the responsibility for the profitless voyage would pass from him to his crew. He would be able to save his ship from creditors and angry backers. His reputation would be kept intact. All he had to do was tell them back in port that he had been deposed as captain.

‘Forget your worry,’ Brokrin declared. ‘I will not seek gain in a comrade’s mistake. While you’re forgetting your worry, forget also the mistake itself. There was no vote, no casting of beans and lentils. There was no mutiny on the Iron Dragon.’

Stunned silence held the crew. They gazed at Brokrin in open-mouthed amazement. Every one of them knew he could save himself by simply letting them suffer the consequences of their own action. Instead he was courting his own ruin so that they would be safe. As that realisation sank in, the cheers began again. To the crew of the Iron Dragon, Brokrin had become something greater than a captain or a hero.

Brokrin turned away, seeming embarrassed by the adoration of his crew. He stepped back towards Ghazul’s Bane, resting a hand on the skyhook while Arrik and his gunners praised the captain’s selflessness.

The praise was bittersweet to Brokrin, because it was not wholly justified. What he was doing was not simply for the crew. Helping them meant helping himself. Between plotting the death of the dragon and his magnanimous refusal to report their mutiny, he had inspired a devotion in his crew that bordered on the fanatical. Brokrin needed that kind of devotion. If he had reported the mutiny he would certainly have saved his ship, but he would have no crew. Not the kind of crew he needed.

His hand slid down the length of the skyhook, envisioning the weapon loaded with a harpoon as lethal as the one they had lost fighting the tentacled horror. Brokrin would need to finance a replacement for it before they set out. He had Arrik’s team to work the weapon, but it needed its bite back. The quarry he was after would be much hardier even than the dragon had been.

Brokrin had a crew now who would follow wherever he led them. Even against a monster that was a dark legend among the Kharadron. They would stand by him when he brought the fight to Ghazul, when the beast was no longer hunter, but hunted. Then he would have his revenge. Then he would truly have exorcised the monster’s curse.

Brokrin lifted his gaze and stared off towards the horizon in the direction of Barak-Zilfin. All he had to do now was find a way to keep the creditors from taking his ship. After fighting daemons and dragons, it seemed an almost ridiculous concern to have.

About the Author

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax, the Age of Sigmar novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the End Times novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer 40,000 and the Age of Sigmar.

An extract from Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden.

The sigmarite runeblade gleamed in the soft glow of infinity, as it etched complex patterns upon the air. Wherever the blade passed, light followed. The light, that of ancient stars and newborn suns, glimmered briefly but brightly before fading away. There was a lesson in that, the blade’s wielder mused, as he swept the sword around in a curving slash. But then, lessons were all around, for the attentive student.

And Gardus of the Steel Soul was nothing if not attentive. The Lord-Celestant of the Hallowed Knights was clad only in a simple blue tunic, marked with the sign of the twin-tailed comet. His limbs were bare of all save sweat and scars, and his white hair was cropped short. His armour, gleaming silver and crafted of the same holy metal as his runeblade, lay nearby, alongside his tempestos hammer, stacked neatly against one of the long marble benches that lined the walls, biding its time. Soon, he would once again don the panoply of war, and the man would be subsumed beneath the warrior. But for now, he was simply a man, hard at his labours, joyful and content.

Through the soles of his feet, Gardus could feel the omnipresent rumble of the storms that raged eternally over the aetherdomes of the Sigmarabulum. Overhead, the High Star Sigendil gleamed, an eternal beacon in the black seas of infinity that stretched outwards around the celestial ramparts of Sigmaron. This place had ever called to him, stirring something inside. It was where he felt the most at ease, on the edge of all that was.

The weight of the blade in his hand was a comfort. The pull of his muscles, the growing ache from his exertions. The sweat in his eyes. All of it served to ground him. To anchor him to this place, this moment. There was peace here, for a time. A purity of purpose, simple and uncomplicated. He turned, letting the hilt of the runeblade slide through calloused palms. The mystic steel was an extension of his arm, of his soul.

As he moved, his flesh began to shimmer with an eerie radiance, like sunlight across new-fallen snow. It shone from every pore, filling the air. The light welled up, only to then fade away as he instinctively mustered his will and forced it back down inside himself. He slid forwards, moving gracefully despite his size. With god-given strength came elegance as well. Such were the gifts of Sigmar. But they did not come without a price.

There was always a price. Both physical and otherwise. At times, Gardus felt as if he were a broken vessel, badly repaired, and all that he had been was leaking away. Perhaps that was the origin of the light he had just banished – perhaps it was his soul, seeking escape. The thought unsettled him.

Sometimes, his mind thrummed with fragments – snatches of conversations he could not recall having, faces without names and names without faces. Embers of old emotion flared to new life, before guttering away once more. The ghosts of those he’d known – those he’d failed. Those he’d killed.

He felt phantom heat wash over him. Heard the pad of feet over marble floors, and the guttural howls of the Skin Eaters. His skin prickled as the howls grew louder. The candlesticks were heavy in his hands. The doors of the hospice burst inwards and…

He breathed out. His grip on his runeblade tightened, and he drew strength from the steel, surety from its purpose. Not a candlestick, this. He turned, slicing the air, letting the weight of the blade do the work, as he’d been taught. Banishing the Skin Eaters back to oblivion. But they had not come alone.

A hand, vast and reeking of rot, reached for him. He jerked back, sword slicing up. He heard the rumble of daemonic laughter as the image wavered and dispersed. Another broken memory, though he could put a name to this one – Bolathrax.

‘Much is demanded of those to whom much is given,’ he said, forcing the memory down. Bolathrax was gone. Cast back into the void by Alarielle. He repeated the words. The mantra had a calming effect on his troubled mind. His voice echoed across the platform, its echoes merging with the roar of the storm, even as the reflection of his blade merged with the glow of the stars above. He slowed his movements, falling into a more elegant rhythm. His runeblade moved lazily, with less precision, as he let his muscles relax and his attention wander away from old hurts.

Here, on the precipice of the Sigmarabulum, he was as close as any save the gods could come to the celestial canvas. It was a sea of colour and light, impossibly vast and terrible in its cosmic ferocity. Stars pinwheeled through the fraying strands of pulsing nebulas, and immense coronas flashed in the deep. And, nestled within its tides, the still-beating heart of a broken world. He looked up.

Mallus. The world-that-was. The last breath of all that had come before. A fragment of forgotten grandeur, casting strange shadows over the vast forges, armouries and soul-mills of Sigmaron. The broken world was at once a reminder and a promise for all those who dwelled in Sigmaron.

Gardus turned away, unable to bear the weight of the sight for very long. In any event, he needed no reminding of what was at stake; he would keep his promise, whatever the cost.

He was a Stormcast Eternal, and he could do no less. The embodiment of the tempest, forged anew to wage war in Sigmar’s name. To fight and die, and fight again, until either ultimate victory was achieved, or the foundations of all that was at last crumbled. The thought brought him little pleasure. Victory was not certain, and sometimes the price seemed more than he could bear. He pushed the thought aside, and concentrated only on the runeblade in his hand, and the light of the stars as they played across its edge. Like the weapon he had been forged for a purpose, and he would fulfil it.

He fell into a defensive stance, rolling his wrists, letting the runeblade rise. As he brought it down a moment later, he moved, stepping to his left. Like the storm, it was best to always be in motion. Lessons learned in Ghyran, the Realm of Life, had taught him that standing still often led to being overwhelmed. A warrior must be fluid, like water, else he would inevitably be worn down, as happened to even the tallest mountains.

He paused, sword raised, sensing a new presence just behind him.

‘You employ that blade of yours the way an artist employs his brush, Steel Soul.’

Gardus turned, lowering his sword as he did so. ‘And your voice carries even over the roar of the storm eternal, Beast-Bane. We all have our talents.’

Zephacleas Beast-Bane laughed boisterously. The Lord-Celestant of the Astral Templars did everything boisterously, much to the chagrin of some. ‘Too true,’ Zephacleas said as he came forwards, grinning. ‘When I heard you were back, I decided to come and pay my respects. It has been too long since last we spoke.’ They clasped forearms.

He was bigger than Gardus, big even for a Stormcast Eternal, and brutal-looking despite his cheerful demeanour. In his mortal life, the man who would become Zephacleas had been a barbarian chieftain of the Ghurlands, a brawling, bellowing giant of a man. Apotheosis had refined him somewhat, but the veneer of civilization was a thin one. And, indeed, thinner now than it had been the last time they’d met.

He had his helmet tucked under one arm, leaving his head bare. His hair was long and bound in thick braids, as was his beard. His battered features would never be handsome, but his eyes gleamed with merriment, and his smile was genuine, despite the gaps in his teeth.

Like his face, his bruise-coloured war-plate was scarred by hard use. Its gilded edges were faded and dull, and the plates were now marked by savage adornments. Fangs and claws taken from the slain bodies of monstrous beasts rattled against the holy sigils of Azyr. The skull of an orruk had been mounted on one of his shoulder-plates, the thick bone etched with primitive runes.

Gardus gestured to it. ‘That’s new.’

‘This? This is Drokka.’ Zephacleas knocked on the skull with his knuckles. ‘Was Drokka, I should say. A gift from the Fist of Gork himself.’

‘I heard you’d been sent to parley with the orruks. I’m glad to see you made friends.’ Gardus laid the flat of his sword over his shoulder. ‘I was worried they might take offence to you and send you back in pieces.’

‘You just have to know how to talk to them.’ Zephacleas motioned to Gardus’ hair. ‘Gone shock-headed, have we? Last time I saw you, it was black.’

Gardus reached up and ran a hand through his hair. ‘The Athelwyrd,’ he said simply.

Zephacleas’ smile faded. He knew what Gardus was referring to. They’d fought side by side in the hidden vale, in defence of Alarielle, the Queen of the Radiant Woods, embodiment of Ghyran, the Realm of Life. And during that battle, Gardus had… died.

‘That’d do it, I suppose.’ Zephacleas peered at Gardus, as if searching his face for something. ‘Do you… remember any of it? After, I mean.’

Gardus frowned. Bits and pieces of the last scattered moments rose to the surface of his mind – he smelled the foetid stench of the Great Unclean One as it scooped him up, rotting fingers tightening painfully about his battered form. He felt his bones crack and burst as the daemon sought to wring the life from him. And he felt again the pain as a bolt of searing lightning carried him from the killing grounds, and back to the celestine vaults of Sigmaron. There, formless and broken, he had been forged anew by the hand of the God-King himself, and made fit for duty once more.

Hammer stroke after hammer stroke had shaped the shards of his soul. Each blow, a tempest, drawing forth memory and instinct from what remained. Who he had been was the fire used to fuel his rebirth. Was he even the same being who had undergone those tribulations that still haunted his dreams, or was he but the barest memory of that warrior, recast and given the same name? A memory of a memory, clothed in borrowed flesh.

‘Gardus?’ Zephacleas said softly, startling him from his reverie. He sounded concerned. There was a keen mind beneath that brutish exterior. Zephacleas played the fool, but he was more observant than many gave him credit for.

Gardus shook his head. ‘Some. Pain. Thunder. And Sigmar’s voice, like a bell tolling on high, drawing me up from the depths.’ He hesitated. ‘It hurt worse than death. I was glad when it was done, and I would not go through it again for anything.’ He fell silent. He had died, in the Athelwyrd. And on the Anvil of Apotheosis, he had been Reforged. That was all there was to it. And no benefit to be had in dwelling on it.

Zephacleas looked as if he wished to ask more questions but, thankfully, he kept them to himself. He clapped Gardus on the shoulder. ‘I am glad you are back, my friend. And I am sorry I was not able to fight beside you on your last foray.’

Gardus nodded. The battle for the Great Green Torc had been fierce, and many warriors, both Hallowed Knights and otherwise, had fallen on the sky-borne toroid. They had been victorious but, as ever, there had been a cost. ‘It was your sort of battle, more so than mine. There were giant spiders.’

‘I miss all of the good fights,’ Zephacleas said mournfully. He broke into a grin. ‘Still, there’s always tomorrow.’

‘Unfortunately.’

Gardus went to where he’d left his war-plate and began to pull it on. Other Lord-Celestants were more than content to allow chamber serfs to help them with their armour, but Gardus had no patience for such indulgences. He would do it himself, or not at all. He dressed slowly, the warmth of the sigmarite easing the ache from his muscles. ‘But perhaps not forever.’

Zephacleas grunted and scratched his chin. ‘You’re rejoining your chamber in Ghyran soon, I hear. A last push across the Plains of Vo, or so go the rumours.’

‘You shouldn’t listen to rumours,’ Gardus said. He was looking forward to rejoining his chamber. And he wasn’t alone in that. Other warriors, some newly Reforged, would be returning to Ghyran with him. It had been too long since the Steel Souls had fought as one, and, reunited, they might just be able to swing the war in the Jade Kingdoms in Alarielle’s favour. Or so he hoped.

‘Grymn must be beside himself with joy,’ Zephacleas said.

Lorrus Grymn, Lord-Castellant of the Steel Souls, had assumed overall command of the warrior chamber after Gardus’ fall in the Athelwyrd. The Lord-Castellant had led the Steel Souls to continue their mission in the Jade Kingdoms, and defend Alarielle from the diseased servants of the Plague God, Nurgle. Their efforts had culminated in a final stand against the forces of the Rotbringers at Blackstone Summit, and the subsequent rebirth of Alarielle.

‘He has acquitted himself well,’ Gardus said, smiling slightly as he thought of the taciturn warrior. Grymn was the Steel Souls’ shield, where Gardus was its sword. Where he chose to plant his standard, no enemy would prosper, as the servants of the Ruinous Powers had learned to their cost, most recently during the siege of the Living City. ‘The sylvaneth sing his praises.’

‘The least they could do, given all that you have both done for them and that goddess of theirs,’ Zephacleas said. He picked up Gardus’ hammer and gave it an experimental swing. ‘But then, gods aren’t ones for gratitude.’

Gardus stood and sheathed his runesword. He picked up his helmet and took his hammer from Zephacleas. Whatever Zephacleas thought, Gardus knew that Alarielle owed them little. For, in their ignorance, it was the Stormcast Eternals who had inadvertently cost the goddess her last sanctuary in Ghyran. Whatever debts lay between them were paid, or as good as. ‘It is not for us to question the gods, my friend. Merely to do their will, whatever it might be. Much is demanded…’

Zephacleas laughed. ‘Of course we should question the gods. How else will they know we’re listening?’ He poked Gardus in the chest. ‘Eh? Answer me that.’

Gardus chuckled. ‘As much as I’ve missed arguing with you, I fear I have somewhere a good deal less cheerful to be.’ He looked past Zephacleas. ‘Isn’t that right, sister?’

‘Punctuality has always been one of your more pleasing virtues, Steel Soul,’ the newcomer said, as she drew close. The Lord-Celestant was as large as Gardus, and her silver war-plate was marked with a profusion of blessed prayer scrolls. Her helmet hung from her belt, and her round, dark face was set in a look of stern disapproval as she studied Zephacleas. ‘But your choice of such disreputable friends has ever been your greatest failing. Take care, lest they lead you into impropriety.’

‘My Lady Cassandora, a pleasure as ever,’ Zephacleas said, making an attempt at a courtly bow. He peered up at her as he did so. ‘How’s that for respect?’

‘Adequate,’ she said, smiling slightly. ‘Barely.’

Lord-Celestant Cassandora Stormforged had been among the first of their Stormhost to wage war in the Mortal Realms. It was by her hand that the Queen of Swords had been cast down, and the ancient rim-citadel of Ytalan claimed in Sigmar’s name, during the Crater-War. The Stormforged struck like lightning, and left nothing standing in their wake. ‘Still as foolish as ever, Beast-Bane. I recall it was almost the death of you, in Klaxus.’

‘And yet, here I stand,’ Zephacleas said, gesturing expansively.

‘Yes, thanks to me,’ Cassandora said. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’ She looked at Gardus, as Zephacleas spluttered. ‘It’s time, brother. The Shadowed Soul requests our presence. The lords of the fourth Stormhost gather in the Sepulchre of the Faithful.’

Gardus nodded. ‘Yes.’ He tapped Zephacleas’ shoulder-plate with his hammer. ‘It was good to see you again, brother.’

‘So it was,’ Zephacleas said. He caught Gardus up in a rib-rattling bear hug, squeezing him hard enough to make his sigmarite creak. ‘Go with Sigmar, my brother. And if you need help, I shall be there, come death or ruin.’

Cassandora coughed politely. ‘Time runs swift, brother.’

‘Indeed it does,’ Gardus said. He extended his hammer. ‘Lead on, sister. The Sepulchre of the Faithful awaits us.’

The celestine vaults of Sigmaron rang with the sounds of eternal industry as Tornus the Redeemed strode swiftly after his Lord-Celestant. The Knight-Venator tried his best to hide his uncertainty as he said, ‘I am not understanding, my lord. It is being a – a funeral?’

‘Of sorts,’ Silus the Untarnished said, not unkindly. He led Tornus along the high outer platform, past the great emptiness of the universal sea. In the distance, the aetherdomes crackled with captured lightning, funnelling the fury of the storm into the forges of the citadel. Tornus flinched inwardly as he heard what might have been the faint screams of those undergoing their Reforging, beneath the growl of distant thunder.

‘But we are not dying. We are being Reforged.’

‘Yes.’

Tornus looked up as the shadow of shimmering wings passed over him, and caught sight of his star-eagle, Ospheonis, gliding overhead. The bird accompanied him everywhere. It had become his constant companion since his Reforging. When no further explanation seemed forthcoming from Silus, he asked, ‘Who is to be dead?’

Silus stopped. His shoulders sagged slightly as he turned. ‘A brother of our Stormhost. Tarsus Bull Heart.’

‘I am not knowing him,’ Tornus said. Even now, he knew precious few of his new-found brothers. None had been unwelcoming of him, but few sought him out. He found no fault with them for this reluctance. He was who he was, and who he had been.

‘No. He met his fate before you were Reforged.’

Tornus noted a hesitation in Silus’ answer. He nodded slowly. ‘Before I am being Tornus again, you mean,’ he said softly. Silus frowned.

‘You were always Tornus. Everything else was a lie.’

‘It was not feeling like a lie at the time,’ Tornus said. He smiled, to show it was a joke. Though there was precious little humour to be found in his situation. The few memories he still possessed of his time as defender of the Lifewells, and then later of his imprisonment in the Pit of Filth, welled up unbidden, and he took a deep breath. For seventy-six days, he had resisted the miasmic attention of Nurgle’s chosen, until his stubborn refusal to succumb became the very thing which spelled his doom.

On the seventy-seventh day, Tornus had died. And Torglug the Despised had emerged from the ruin of him, like a maggot from a wound. The things he had done as Torglug still haunted him… He remembered clearly the drowning of the Athelwyrd and the toppling of the Moon-Oak, the screams of his own people and the rasping cries of the tree-kin… All crimes committed by his hand. He had been the Woodsman, the sharp edge of Nurgle’s axe pressed against the bark of the World Tree.

Until the Blackstone Summit, and the coming of the Celestant-Prime. Tornus could still feel the heat of the divine warrior’s first and final blow, as it burnt away the rotten husk of Torglug and freed the dwindled spark of Tornus within. That spark had flourished on the Anvil of Apotheosis, hammered and shaped into a weapon of vengeance and redemption. And yet, he still heard the screams of the innocent who’d perished by his hand. Sometimes he wondered if he had been left those memories for a purpose. A reminder, perhaps, of how far he’d fallen. Or a warning of what awaited him should he fail again.

Silus made as if to clasp Tornus’ shoulder, but stopped short. ‘Whatever you once were, Tornus, you are a Stormcast Eternal now.’ He let his hand fall. ‘You are a Hallowed Knight. A scion of the fourth Stormhost, one of the faithful. Who will stand, when all others fall?’

‘Only the faithful,’ Tornus said. He was all of those things, to be sure. But Silus had never once called him brother. None of them had, as yet. Perhaps it would come with time. He hoped so. In the interim, he was determined to do all that he could to earn it.

‘Only the faithful,’ Silus echoed. ‘Now come, it is time you knew what that truly entails. It is time for you to learn the true price of faith.’

Tornus nodded, but said nothing. He was already familiar with the price Silus spoke of, but saw little reason to insist on it. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘The Sepulchre of the Faithful,’ Silus said. ‘All Stormhosts have such mausoleums, though they call them by different names. A place of quiet contemplation, where the truly dead are honoured, and the memories of our mortal lives are recounted and recorded so that even if we… forget, those moments are not lost.’

Tornus shivered slightly. ‘I am thinking my memories are best forgotten, yes?’

‘No,’ Silus said, firmly. ‘Do you think you are alone in your darkling past? There are many among us who found their faith only in their final moments, or who discovered the light only after a lifetime of darkness.’ He glanced at the Knight-Venator. ‘None fell so far as you, Tornus, but some… came close. That is why Sigmar placed you with us.’

Tornus fell silent. He had his own suspicions as to why he had been inducted into the ranks of those he had, until recently, been trying his level best to kill. Another lesson. Another reminder. This new world was full of them.

Somewhere, the Great Mourning Bell was ringing, sounding a eulogy for the fallen. Stormcasts from other Stormhosts moved to and fro about their own business, and Tornus studied them. He could not help but compare them to those corrupt warriors he had fought alongside in the Jade Kingdoms. Here, there was little of the incessant bickering that afflicted the servants of the Ruinous Powers. Rather than a horde of individuals, each warrior fighting for his own glory, the Stormcasts were truly united, both in war and peace. Indeed, so too were most of those who inhabited Sigmar’s realm.

Sigmaron was not only inhabited by Stormcast Eternals these days. Representatives from Azyrheim, engineers of the Ironweld Arsenal, even envoys from the reclusive clans of the Dispossessed, moved about their business everywhere Tornus looked. In the dark days when the assaults of Chaos had set the Mortal Realms reeling, many had sought refuge in Azyr. As the war had progressed, the descendants of those refugees now prepared themselves to reclaim that which had been lost.

Silus nodded in a friendly fashion to certain of these mortal envoys – among them a tall, dark-skinned warrior-priest, clutching a heavy tome to his chest, a soldier of the Freeguilds, his helmet resplendent with plumage, and a grim-faced duardin warrior, clad in finely crafted armour and carrying a rune-inscribed hammer – though he spoke to none of them. Tornus studied the duardin wonderingly. He had fought such beings before, in darker times. Torglug the Woodsman had hewn apart the ironwood shields of the root-kings, and cast down their stoneoak citadels. The Lord-Celestant noticed Tornus’ fascination with the mortals and said, ‘We are the storm, and these the seeds that flourish in the wake of our rains.’

‘There are being so many of them,’ Tornus said. ‘My folk, the guardians of the Lifewells, were being few in number. As the land grew sick, so too did we, dwindling generation upon generation.’

‘And now, both land and people will grow great again, if we but hold firm to the course the God-King has laid out.’ Silus spoke confidently.

Tornus kept his doubts to himself. He had seen too much to believe victory a certainty. But without that belief, could he truly call himself one of the faithful?

He was still mulling this over when they arrived at their destination at last. They were not alone. Other Stormcasts, all wearing the silver and azure of the Hallowed Knights, were gathering there in the vast antechamber. Tornus found himself awestruck by his surroundings, and somewhat intimidated by their solemnity. Great bas-reliefs of intricate craftsmanship covered the walls, and the massive pillars that lined the path to the inner chamber were inscribed with the Canticles of Faith. Ornate lanterns hung suspended from the ceiling, each one casting a soft, blue radiance over everything.

But what caught Tornus’ attention were the great ironbound books chained to the stone shelves along one wall. It was said that the mortal memories, however patchy or incomplete, of every Hallowed Knight, from Lord-Celestant to Liberator, were recorded in the Books of the Faithful. It was the responsibility of a select few Lord-Relictors to protect and add to the books, but all Hallowed Knights were allowed to read from them, to renew the wellsprings of their faith.

Tornus wondered when his memories would be added to the records. He suspected his deeds might somehow taint the purity of it all. Perhaps he would refuse, when the time came. Why burden others with his sins?

No one spoke as they filed into the inner chamber, where a group of skull-helmed Lord-Relictors awaited them with sombre patience. Clad in their baroque mortis armour, the lords of the living lightning made for an intimidating sight, even for Stormcasts. Eldritch energies crackled across their silver war-plate, illuminating the fell sigils and grim relics that decorated it. They stood arrayed around an enormous pillar of pale stone, larger than the others, erected at the chamber’s heart.

Said to have been carved from purest celestine by the claws of Dracothian himself, and chiselled into its present shape by the ancestral tools of the greatest masons of the Dispossessed, the pillar shone like starlight. It was bare of all decoration, save for a scattering of what appeared to be sigmarite spikes hammered into its surface.

Tornus looked around, studying the Stormcasts around him, searching for familiar faces amongst the sea of silver. It appeared that the commanders and officers of every chamber of the fourth Stormhost were here at the ceremony. He recognised a few of them. Iorek Ironheart, Cassandora Stormforged, even Gardus of the Steel Soul were all in attendance.

The sight of the latter made his heart clench. The Steel Souls had been a persistent thorn in Torglug’s bloated paw. It was said by some that Gardus had hurled himself into the Garden of Nurgle, and escaped unsullied. Tornus could almost believe it, for the Lord-Celestant’s broad form shone with a faint, eerie radiance that reminded him of the purifying energies of the Celestant-Prime. The tribulations the Steel Soul had endured had changed him in undeniable ways.

Tornus knew those changes had come about after Gardus had perished in the battle for the Athelwyrd. While Torglug had not struck the fatal blow, it had been by his hand that the situation came about. Tornus could still feel the echo of his own laughter as he watched a daemon summoned by his command crush the struggling, silver form.

A Lord-Relictor thumped the floor with the ferrule of his staff, startling him. Tornus recognised Cerberac Darkfane, the Lord-Relictor of the Ironhearts warrior chamber. When he spoke, his voice was a hollow rasp. ‘The Bell of Lamentation rings. The stars weep. Who shall stand, when the foundations of the heavens crumble?’

‘Only the faithful,’ the assembled Lord-Relictors intoned.

‘Only the faithful,’ Cerberac repeated. ‘Come forth, Ramus of the Shadowed Soul. Come forth and perform your duty.’

One of the other Lord-Relictors stepped forwards. His armour showed signs of wear, its silver sheen dulled in places, the azure trim stripped and patchy. A great crack ran down one side of his skull-helm, allowing a thin glimpse at the pale features beneath. His dark cloak was singed and tattered. Like all Lord-Relictors, his armour was decorated with sigils of faith, death and the storm. A shield of mirrored silver, carrying a relief of a twin-tailed comet, hung from one shoulder. He carried no reliquary staff like the others, instead clutching his relic hammer in one hand, and a sigmarite spike in the other.

He raised the spike. ‘How many times?’ he asked, his sepulchral voice echoing through the chamber. ‘How many times have we faithful few stood here since the Gates of Azyr opened, and Sigmar’s storm was unleashed upon the Mortal Realms?’ Without waiting for an answer, he continued, ‘How many times will we gather here, in days yet to come?’

The Lord-Relictor looked around, his gaze lingering upon some faces longer than others. Tornus felt the weight of his gaze, and found himself wondering what trials Ramus of the Shadowed Soul had endured. ‘I cannot say, for on this matter, the spirits are silent. Whatever the number, we endure it gladly. Much is demanded…’

‘Of those to whom much is given,’ Tornus and the others said in response. The Hallowed Knights spoke as one, their voices soft and low.

‘This spike of precious sigmarite I bless in the name of him who is lost to us. Tarsus Bull Heart, Lord-Celestant of the Bull Hearts. Hero of the Cerulean Shore.’ The Lord-Relictor placed the spike against the pillar, and raised his hammer. ‘Let… let his name join those of the others who are now gone, never to be Reforged.’ Tornus noticed the slight hesitation, and from the faces of some of the others, he knew he was not alone in that.

For a Stormcast Eternal, death was not the end. But there were fates worse than death, and there were endings even for immortals. There was not a single Stormhost that had not suffered such casualties over the course of the war. Tornus resisted the urge to count the spikes that studded the pillar. One was too many.

Lightning flashed as the relic hammer struck the flat head of the spike, driving it into the pillar. It took but a single blow, and the reverberations filled the chamber, drowning out all sound for a brief instant. The Lord-Relictor stepped back, hammer dangling loosely from his hand. ‘It is done,’ he said. He sounded almost defeated.

Cerberac Darkfane thumped the ground again. ‘It is done. Another soul lost. But while one remains, we will hold true. Who will preserve the light, to its last gleaming?’

‘Only the faithful,’ the Hallowed Knights answered, in unison.

‘Louder, brothers and sisters,’ Cerberac chided. ‘Let Sigmar hear your voices, in this, our hour of grief. Who will defend all that is, even unto oblivion?’

‘Only the faithful,’ came the reply, thunderous in its intensity.

As the echoes of the mantra faded, the pillar began to glow with a harsh radiance. Sparks of lightning leapt from spike to spike, limning each in an azure radiance, if only briefly. As the light and sound faded, Tornus bowed his head, mourning a warrior he had never met, and now, never would.

‘Only the faithful,’ he murmured.

Click here to buy Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden.

To Nick and Josh, for sending me into the skies of Chamon with axe and pistol.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Johan Grenier.

Overlords of the Iron Dragon © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Overlords of the Iron Dragon, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-758-0

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.