Contents

Cover

Krenkha Gorogna – Guy Haley

Notes

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Overlords of the Iron Dragon’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Drekki Flynt:

Krenkha Gorogna

By Guy Haley

When the pot started steaming, Drekki knew they were in trouble.

Four-legged grot scuttlers marched into the cave, hunchbacks swaying over armfuls of wood. They hissed half-words in their spidery language and tittered to one another. Their joking was exclusive, not meant to be enjoyed by their duardin dinner, who scowled, bound fast in spider silk, their hands manacled behind their backs for good measure.

Quite a bind, Drekki reflected ruefully. He tested the strength of his restraints.

‘No wriggling out of this one,’ he muttered to himself. No give. No escape. Not without a knife…

He looked about for a blade or something sharp. There were too many grots to overpower. The crew’s equipment had been heaped in the far corner with little care, weapons and all – a coterie of pallid snotlings frolicked in the helms and stolen boots, giggling and squirming into everything – but that was well out of reach.

Drekki looked to the rest of his arkanauts, who were sorry and battered and tied up tight, some stuck to the cave walls. Evrokk was propped upside down on his head, worse luck for him. Not so much as a piece of flint between them. The grots had been thorough about that. Most were gagged with spider silk. Only Adrimm, Drekki and Kedren Grunnsson had their mouths free. It looked hopeless, but then Drekki narrowed his eyes. Adrimm was bound to the rickety gantry built around the grots’ large iron pot, upon which sat the grots’ shaman or leader, or… cook? Drekki wondered, schemed…

The grots heaped the wood around the cauldron base. Fire guttered. Smoke belched. The duardin choked, bringing more laughter from their captors. Their loads deposited, the grots marched back towards daylight, comically licking their lips and patting their bellies as they passed, red eyes winking with mirth. One pointed to the cauldron and mimed drowning, which the rest found perfectly hilarious.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Drekki, nodding indulgently. ‘Very amusing. I can swim, you know. But I could do with a bath.’

Still giggling, the scuttlers scuttled off to fetch more wood.

‘Working up an appetite,’ Kedren Grunnsson said, squint-eyed and calculating. ‘Cheeky grobi.[1] I’ll have their heads when we get out of this.’

‘We’ll not get out!’ wailed Adrimm Adrimmsson.

Drekki smiled slyly, as if he knew something the others didn’t. He didn’t.

‘There’s always a way out, until there isn’t,’ he said. ‘That’s what my dear old mother Karon used to say.’ Though if there is an out, Drekki thought, I better find it quick.

The pot had started to boil. A host of bones swung from strands of web hanging from the ceiling. This was a successful band of cut-throats. The odds were looking slimmer.

He wriggled some more. Still bound fast, confound it!

‘Listen to your captain, lad,’ said Kedren. ‘I’ve not met a duardin blessed with such outrageous luck.’

‘And skill!’ said Drekki, with feigned affront. ‘And skill, Kedren.’

‘Luck runs out. Skill has limits. We’re done! At least they’ll probably choke on that long beard of yours, ground thumper,’ Adrimm said. He was righteously peeved.

‘Manners,’ said Kedren mildly, though he put a dangerous edge on it. ‘I am your elder. Age still counts for you sky beards, I’m sure.’

Bokko Dwindonsson, ship’s endrinrigger, nodded vigorously. He was known for his manners, was Bokko, but he could say nothing in support of the runesmith, for his mouth was stoppered with silk.

‘Why? Why should I mind my manners?’ said Adrimm Adrimmsson. ‘Join up with me, Drekki says. Be part of the crew of the Aelsling, the fastest sky-cutter around. See the Skyshoals! Win fame and fortune!’ He kicked his feet and growled an impotent growl before turning his ire upon Drekki. The gantry trembled. ‘I could have joined any ship, any crew. I had to pick Captain Flynt!’

‘Come now, what other real choice is there for a duardin out for adventure and riches?’ said Drekki. ‘The other captains are all so dull. And poor.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Some of them are dead.’

‘Other choice?’ said Adrimm incredulously. ‘What other choice for a duardin of my calibre? Seriously?’

Second highest rating from the Arkanaut Academy in Barak-Mhornar, mouthed Kedren behind Adrimm’s back.

‘I had the second highest rating from the Arkanaut Academy in Barak-Mhornar!’ said Adrimm. ‘I had my pick.’

‘Yes, and you saw them all, those captains and their craft,’ said Drekki. ‘But you chose me. You signed my contract. You’ll see, it was the right choice. There’ll be rewards aplenty, just you wait. Nobody ties up Drekki Flynt for long.’

‘Your current plight suggests otherwise. We’re stuck and about to be eaten!’ Adrimm threw himself about. The gantry creaked. The grot atop it hissed a warning but did not come to investigate.

‘Interesting…’ muttered Drekki, looking up at the platform. It was a typical grobi build, scraps of wood and cloth. ‘Held together by optimism, that is.’

But Adrimm wasn’t listening.

‘It said nothing on any contract about getting devoured by scuttlers, Captain Flynt.’

Drekki gave Adrimm what he liked to call his captain’s eye.

‘It’s hard to allow for such things, my lad. If I put all the perils of the Skyshoals onto paper, it’d run to a thousand pages, and you’re not the quickest reader. No reward comes without risk, Adrimm. You know the Code.’

‘Don’t,’ said Adrimm, choking on his anger, ‘quote the funti-brazi Code at me!’

‘What else is it for, if not for quoting?’ said Drekki. And bending, and breaking, when occasion demanded.

‘Listen, lad,’ said Kedren. ‘All duardin like to grumble, and so they should, for the world is an imperfect place, but your moaning is getting deep into my beard, right to the roots like a flea.’

‘So much I wish the grots had been a little more diligent with their gagging,’ added Drekki, ‘and saved us your griping.’

Adrimm threw himself about impotently. The gantry shifted. Wood squeaked on wood.

The shaman scuttled over, four legs pattering. It wore a mask, spider chitin, the scavenged integument shining with the light of multiple, malevolent eyes. It brandished a large cook’s knife.

‘Ugly little beggars, aren’t you? Too many eyes and legs for regular greenies,’ said Drekki.

‘Food… stay… quiet…’ hissed the shaman in broken Khazalid. It mumbled a curse, then went back to stirring the pot.

Drekki smiled.

‘What’s the plan, Drekki?’ Kedren asked softly. ‘I know that look, lad. What are you thinking?’

‘I’m weighing up the means of escape,’ Drekki said, flashing his most winning smile.

Snotlings tittered as they piddled into an upturned helm.

‘Grungni save us! That one’s mine!’ said Adrimm.

‘Look,’ Drekki said sternly, ‘we’ll be out of this soon. When have I ever let you down?’

‘I don’t know, plenty of times. You certainly let Dunzik Albo and Brok Barunki down, seeing as they’re both dead,’ said Adrimm miserably.

‘Look,’ Drekki said more sternly still. ‘I’m willing to overlook a bit of insubordination. You all have a turn at a grumble, though I’ll add there that you take more turns than most.’

‘Why, you–’ Adrimm was angry again. That was his way, up and down like a ship in a tempest.

‘So if this is my fault, tell me this,’ interrupted Drekki. ‘Who was at the lookout when the spiderwebs loomed? Not I, but your good chum Evrokk right there.’ He nodded at Evrokk.

Evrokk gave a muffled moan. Whether in support of Drekki, or in refutation of the fault, or just in pain at being balanced on his head, they could not tell. Drekki was an optimist. He took it as support.

‘And who was on the tiller when the shout went up to ware silk-air? That’d be Brok Barunki. Slow turner, Arkanaut Barunki. I’ll not let him steer my ship again.’

‘He’ll not get the chance, on account of being eaten by spiders,’ said Adrimm.

‘On account of him steering us right into their web,’ said Drekki. ‘Don’t forget that, Adrimm Adrimmsson. And he did a better job than you would. Very poor sailor, you are. Second highest mark, indeed.’

Adrimm snarled. That annoyed him. He heaved at the pole. The gantry swayed dangerously. Good, thought Drekki.

‘Food… quiet!’ hissed the grot, but it did not re-emerge.

‘Yeah? And whose idea was it to take the short route past the Silk Isles? Drekki Flynt’s, that’s whose.’

‘He’s your captain, lad!’ Kedren growled. ‘It’s a captain’s responsibility to choose the course.’

‘What stake have you got in this?’ Adrimm said. His leathery skin was getting darker with rage. ‘You’re no Kharadron.’

‘Code doesn’t care on that score,’ said Kedren. ‘So long as conditions are fulfilled.’ This was not the first time Adrimm had thrown the runesmith’s foreignness back at him. This was a familiar dance. ‘I’ve all the papers, taken all the oaths. A duardin of any stripe should be stoic. Don’t shame yourself in the eyes of the ancestors. They’ll be less tolerant of your wittering than I am, when you get to the Glittering Halls.’

‘Ancestors!’ scoffed Adrimm. ‘Glittering Halls! What do they know about anything? What do you know, in fact?’

‘I know that I’ll box your insolent ears, and teach you that respect for elders you like to forget,’ said Kedren dangerously. Under normal circumstances, this would have been enough to quell the angriest arkanaut.

These weren’t normal circumstances.

‘I’d wager he’d put you on your back right fast, Adrimm,’ said Drekki. ‘Old though he is.’

Adrimm’s face was purpling, like an exotic fruit.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Adrimm said, swivel-eyed. He looked to his crewmates. ‘I call krenkha gorogna!’

A chorus of moans went up from the crew, gagged or not.

‘Seriously?’ said Drekki. ‘You’re challenging my command? Who’ll back you? You need a quorum of the trommraad.’[2]

‘Not I,’ said Kedren levelly. He was oldest of all. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘Otherek’s unconscious,’ said Drekki, jerking his beard at their aether-khemist.

‘What about Umherth?’ said Adrimm. ‘He’s awake.’

Umherth Davrok made a series of noises behind his gag. His brows were low, nose shaking, obvious signs that he wasn’t happy either.

‘We can’t hear what Umherth here is trying to say,’ said Drekki, which was true, though how Umherth felt was blatantly clear. ‘Besides, he’s one of four. One’s out cold, the other has said to your face that he won’t support the motion. I know which way Otherek will vote, and Hrunki Tordis, if she could speak.’

Hrunki nodded vigorously.

‘See? They’d all vote for me.’

‘Hrunki don’t count. She ain’t got no beard,’ said Adrimm.

‘She’s old enough, and times are changing, Adrimm. And who’d take command? You? You couldn’t navigate your way out of a bathtub.’

‘Bathtub? Bathtub!’ Adrimm threw himself about. The gantry shook violently.

The grot paused in its cookery. It scuttled over again and scowled. The liquid was belching bubbles, not long from the boil. They didn’t have much time. The grot drew its knife across its throat in threat, spoiling it by accidentally cutting itself.

‘Food be quiet!’

It crept off. Drekki waited for the sound of vegetables being chopped to resume.

‘I’ll give you a bathtub!’ Adrimm whispered. ‘At least I don’t have to rely on an ogor.’

‘Ah, but only because you don’t have one.’ Drekki sniffed. ‘I think you’re jealous. You’re jealous of my Gord, that’s it. It’s the only explanation.’

‘But you are relying on him, aren’t you? To come and rescue us? Gord will not come back. He was off like an aethershot the moment we were boarded. Ogors have no loyalty, unless you buy it, and you can’t even reach your purse right now, can you, captain?’ Adrimm said acidly.

‘No need for that,’ said Drekki. ‘I’ll tell you why. In fact, I’m going to tell you about how I met Gord.’

‘Oh Grungni, no, not one of your bloody stories. You’re worse than Evtorr!’

He referred to the ship’s signaller, and self-appointed poet, currently gagged. Nobody was sad about that.

‘One last tale to pass the time before we’re all eaten. It’ll be nice to remind myself how brilliant I am before it’s all over.’

‘I don’t want to spend my last minutes alive listening to one of your tales!’ wailed Adrimm.

Drekki’s voice ran over Adrimm’s complaints as effortlessly as a steam engine crushing a ration can. Adrimm continued to moan, but not a word of what he said could be heard. Nor could the grumbles of any of the others, and they were plentiful. Drekki’s stories were not popular.

Eyes twinkling at his own cleverness, Drekki recounted his tale.

‘We were far from the realm heart,’ Drekki said, ‘chasing the aether-currents through the isles off the Lackshelter Peaks. A lot of aether blew that way after the Garaktorum, enough to make a duardin rich, if he knew where to look. As you lads all know, it’s just not me to sit in the wheelhouse, sailing a harvester while some other cove has all the fun. Too slow! Too boring! So, we were scouting for the trawler fleets. Otherek was there, so was Umherth. A few of you others. But most of you lads won’t have heard this before.

‘I’d not long been granted captaincy of the Aelsling by order of the Admiralty Courts. I’d brought it in, of course. They claimed it. Technically, it wasn’t their ship. Technically, it wasn’t mine. But we came to an agreement. A tougher battle that was than any I’ve had in my life.’

Adrimm tensed. He was not alone. Drekki grinned. The court story was particularly long. He let them suffer for a moment.

‘But that’s for a different time,’ he said.

There were sighs of relief.

‘I had my letter of marque – a Mhornar privateer, officially. I let it get to my head, let it swell up my heart. And that,’ he said, allowing himself a certain breathy drama, ‘is how I found myself in a position not a million raadfathoms from this…’

This is how it went. A cry went up. Burazdak Tovsson, it was. Good lookout, rich as an aelven prince now, and almost as haughty, but I remember when he was on my ship, a kinder lad back then, and he was good crew.

‘Silverfins!’ he was shouting. ‘Silverfins!’

I might not be a habitual fisher of aether, airfish or birds, but a silverfin strike is an opportunity, and in opportunity is profit, as the Code so rightfully says.

I rushed to the prow, where Tovsson stood. Another good thing about that lad, he never laid so much as a finger on the figurehead of my Aelsling, but kept a respectful distance – not like Gunterr Borrki over there, whose hand I’ve seen resting on its shoulder when he thinks no one’s looking!

‘There, captain,’ Tovsson told me, ‘off the port bow. A grand shoal!’

I took out my glass to have a look.

‘Fine piece that was,’ Drekki said wistfully. ‘Lost it down the maw of a harkraken.’ He took a breath and hurried on before Adrimm could interject. ‘But that’s yet another story.’

It was a grand shoal, as Tovsson said – a hundred thousand strong, no word of a lie. They were hunting, air bladders pulsing, chasing up and down the currents.

Of course, silverfins are not so valuable as aether-gold, but I’ve always been of a mind that a sure thing of lesser value is better than a possible thing of greater worth. Aelchemists will pay a good price for some bits of a silverfin – the scales make for pretty armour, and the rest make good eating. So, I called all ahead full. The Aelsling’s engines shone bright, the screws chopped hard at the air. Rigging creaking, we chased the shoal.

A day and night passed. We sailed hard, gaining. They flew faster. Back and forth it went. They could smell us on the wind, and were afraid. We were dogged. We chased and chased until we were right amongst them.

A shoal of silverfins is a sight. Their scales are solid silver, and make a great rattling as they swim the airs. We plunged into them. The clouds of them burst apart. We dived, they turned, we ascended, they dived. We drove them close to the ground. We had them.

I had the lads up with skyhooks, and they snared five, ten, then twenty. Gaffes brought in more. They struggled, they’re strong – fin-wings one hundred grunti long thrashed against us, caused a few cuts and more curses. But we were pulling them in by the brace and then the score. A rich catch. The lads talked excitedly about their shares.

I was directing things from the gunwale, gripping tight to the rigging, leaning out all heroic like, when this enormous bull silverfin – and I mean enormous, twice my size – came athwart the deck and crashed head first into my chest.

I didn’t have the time to draw a breath. I went sailing over the edge. I’d no safety line, no parachute. Trokwi flew down beside me, but he couldn’t keep up, the silverfins were so thick. I bounced from fish to fish, turned all about as I fell. My, the crash of my helmet on their silver scales made my ears ring for days after, not that poor hearing was chief of my concerns, oh no! For the ground was rushing at me.

First thing that saved me was the fish. Black and blue I was for weeks. But each hit was a little momentum stolen, a little more air traversed.

Second thing that saved me was the distance. The fish had dived for safety, see, and had got themselves pinned by the land. We were not so far above the ground.

Third thing that saved me was leadwood birch. Thin forest beneath me, I saw, as I tumbled head over heels, round and round fast enough to make me fill my helm and soil my beard with yesterday’s rations. Leadwood birch is dense but soft. I fell into the branches, and they sagged obligingly beneath me, slowing me, then tipped me out, three hundred grunti above the ground. Alas, there were rocks. Oh, there were rocks.

Last I knew was my head ringing off the inside of my flight helm, and I was out cold.

I awoke hours later, groggy and out of sorts. My head pounded like an aether-hammer flattening sheets of iron. I was out of my suit, and clapped in irons, dried kzhunda[3] in my beard.

Drekki’s voice dropped then. ‘I was in a hobgrot camp,’ he explained. ‘The peaks are thick with them little beasts. Nasty, they are, spiteful. But they have one thing in common with us – they like to turn a profit, and that’s what I was bound to become. They’re the sellers of lives, are hobgrots. Snatch you up and ship you off for death and worse in places no good duardin likes to talk about.

‘It was night. Hobgrots bickered around three bonfires of leadwood. The air stank of atomised metals. Bad breathing that stuff, but the hobgrots were either too stupid to know or too wicked to care. Besides, they were drunk. Very drunk.

‘I propped myself up on my elbows. Fair made my head spin, but I was in danger, and I never, ever take it lying down when there’s peril about.’

‘What, like now?’ said Adrimm, leaping into the brief pause when Drekki drew breath. ‘Telling stories when we’re about to be dinner?’

‘Give him a chance, lad,’ said Kedren.

Drekki nodded at the runesmith appreciatively, and went on.

I backed away from the fires, already formulating my escape. It was dark where I was. The hobgrots would never suspect a thing until I was away! Naturally, I was looking forward, not back, and I didn’t see Gord until I’d banged into his foot. I turned and looked up, and up. He was as big as a hill, and chained to a huge rock.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Got you too, eh? Duardin, right?’

I nodded back. Quickly my natural charm asserted itself. ‘Drekki Flynt, captain of the Aelsling, late out of Barak-Mhornar. A pleasure to meet you, good ogor.’ I would have bowed to finish off my introduction, but I felt that would have provoked another vomiting, and besides, what do ogors care for etiquette? Anyway, he gave me an idea for a better plan. Remember, Adrimm, I always have a plan.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Gord,’ said Gord.

‘How’d you like to get out of here, Gord?’ I said.

Gord scratched his chin. His fingernails rasped on his stubble like a file on steel. ‘Suppose I would,’ he said.

‘Right then,’ I said, with unnecessary quiet. Those hobgrots really were drunk. I could have conducted a conversation with Gord via steam whistle and heliograph before they’d notice. From a braid in my hair, I produced one of the many tools of my cunning: an iron lock-pick! Quickly, I had my manacles off – typical shoddy grobi work. Then I set to work on Gord’s. They were a little harder to undo, if only because they were so huge, and so crude, and the pick was too sophisticated… My own design of course.

‘You go for the hobgrots, I’ll run away. How’s that sound for a plan?’ I asked.

‘What’s in it for me?’ said Gord, who I saw then was a little brighter than your average ogor. He rubbed his wrists thoughtfully.

I had an answer ready. ‘You can eat them. All of them,’ I said.

He frowned. ‘You don’t want any?’

‘Oh, not a mouthful, my friend,’ I said. ‘You can scoff the lot.’

He was happy with that. ‘Deal,’ he said. Then he was off, just like that.

I’d seen ogors fight before, but this was the first time I’d seen Gord in action, and by Grungni, he went through those hobgrots in moments. Free of his chains, he just marched up to the nearest crew. They were arguing over some trifle, and he approached unnoticed. He didn’t say a word, but picked one up and pitched it head first into the fire. You should have heard the grobi squeal! The grot smothered the fire. Sparks went up in clouds. The rest fumbled for their weapons, but old Gord had them by surprise. He picked the next up by the head, and swung it about so hard its neck broke. He whirled that hobgrot round him like a flail, feet kicking into the mouth of the next ugly grobi and knocking it senseless. One of them stabbed right into his side with its spear. Gord just grunted, broke the spear shaft with a chop of his hand and booted the hobgrot in the chest. I’m sure it didn’t have a whole rib left in its body. If it did, it was still dead.

The last three broke and fled. I staggered over. Gord gave out a deafening roar. There were about a dozen other hobgrots around the other fires. They could have taken us if they’d come in a rush, played it cleverly. But they are neither brave nor clever, and they ran off into the night. I didn’t even have time to pick up a weapon to help. I don’t suppose they were a big band. There was only a few wretched umgi[4] tribesmen captive besides me and Gord in their camp. I let them go later. Later.

Gord tried to grip the spear the grobi had stuck in his side. He couldn’t get a hold of it. His fingers were slick with his own blood.

‘Here,’ I said. ‘Let me help you with that.’

‘Alright,’ he said.

It was slippery alright, but I had it out after a bit of tugging and twisting. It was a wicked thing and made a bigger hole on the way out than on the way in. Gord just winced a couple of times as I worked it, and I was none too gentle. He rumbled when I got it free.

‘Thanks,’ he said. He sniffed. The hobgrot on the fire was roasting. Gord knelt down, dragged its charred body out, pulled its arm off and began to eat it. I admit I was a little queasy at this, but I held my own.

‘You’re a good fighter,’ I said.

‘Suppose,’ he said, between crunchy mouthfuls of grot.

‘Maneater?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Eat anything. But yeah. I’ve been about a bit.’ He proffered the chewed limb. ‘Want some? You look a bit skinny.’

‘Many thanks,’ I said, ‘but a deal’s a deal, they’re all yours.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He went back to his meal. Crunch, crunch went the hobgrot.

Just then, addled as my wits were, a marvellous idea hit me.

‘Would you fight for me? Hypothetically speaking?’

He frowned – apparently, he was bright but not that bright.

‘I give money, you hit things for me?’ I offered.

‘For pay. Sure,’ he said.

I smiled. This was an excellent idea. Of course, the Code’s a little tight on crewing regulations, but I was sure there was a way around. There’s always a way around. Turns out, there was.

‘How’d you feel about fighting on a sky-ship?’ I said. ‘See a lot of places, eat a lot of things?’

Gord agreed. The rest is history.

Drekki leant back, satisfied with a tale well told. There was a moment of quiet.

‘That’s it?’ said Adrimm.

‘Hmm?’ said Drekki.

‘That’s it,’ Adrimm repeated. ‘That’s the story you’re going to tell the moment before we’re all boiled alive and eaten?’

‘Um, yes,’ said Drekki. ‘That’s it. What do you want? All nine hundred verses of The Fall of the Khazalid Empire? No time for that.’

‘You are a piece of work, Drekki Flynt.’ Adrimm’s temper was rising again.

‘You don’t get the moral, do you, Adrimm?’

‘There’s a moral?’

Drekki nodded. ‘Oh yes. And that moral is this. I command the respect of men, duardin and ogors alike. There is no situation too perilous for me to escape, no treasure I cannot steal, no battle I cannot win. Because I am Drekki Flynt, and I am known the length and breadth of the Skyshoals just for being me. Whereas you, Adrimm Adrimmsson, are a pathetic, whining, disloyal duardin who couldn’t command the respect of those snotlings over there. You always think you’ve got a better idea, when in truth you have no idea. You have no right to call krenkha gorogna on me, with your poor marksmanship and second-best qualification from a third-rate academy. Even your craftsmanship is shoddy.’

Adrimm was shaking with fury. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out, only a strangled squeal of outrage.

‘I have seen more talented beardlings than you, and if there is one enormously attractive aether-gold lining to this terrible, terrible cloud we find ourselves in here, it is that nobody is ever going to have to listen to your pathetic whining ever, ever again.’

‘I’ll kill you. I’m going to kill you, if it is the last thing I do,’ said Adrimm, his voice a hoarse whisper filled with violence. Stoked by Drekki’s insults, he heaved forward. His broad duardin back flexed.

‘Oh no, look out! He’s trying to escape,’ shouted Drekki. ‘Everyone be very frightened! Adrimm the unworthy is making grudges!’

Adrimm howled and threw himself forward. Alerted by Drekki, the grot scampered to the edge of its platform just as the wood snapped and gave way. Adrimm was catapulted forward. The grot fell squealing, landing hard on the floor. Drekki heaved himself up like a fish and brought his hefty backside down on the grot’s neck. There was a wet crack, and it lay still.

‘Well done, Adrimm,’ said Drekki. ‘If there’s one thing I can rely on about you, it’s your temper.’

‘I hate you,’ Adrimm groaned into the floor.

‘Kedren!’ said Drekki. ‘Get over here and get its knife.’

With a pronounced lack of dignity yet admirable speed, Kedren squirmed across the cave floor. He rolled onto his side and groped about.

Grotty singing echoed down the tunnel. Drekki’s eyes flicked up. This was going to be tight.

‘It’s to your left! Your left!’

Kedren got the knife. Drekki presented his back to him, and the runesmith slit the spider silk.

‘Fine. Impressive. You’re out of the webs,’ mumbled Adrimm. ‘How are you dropping those chains?’

Drekki bent his head awkwardly to the side, picked at his hair, and drew out a long piece of notched iron.

‘That key I mentioned that I used on Gord? I never said I got rid of it, did I?’ He slipped it into the rusty locks. Snick-snack, he switched it back and forth. The bracelets fell free. ‘Now to get the rest of you out.’

The singing got louder.

‘Hurry, lad!’ said Kedren.

‘Indeed,’ said Drekki.

He let Kedren out, then Evrokk, who had had enough of being balanced on his head. The freed duardin sped up the process of releasing the rest. Weapons were fetched. Silk sliced. Trokwi flew in then, trilling a warning.

‘Good,’ said Drekki. ‘Gord should be here...’

A roar drowned out the singing. The singing turned to shrieks.

‘...right about now,’ said Drekki.

Grots raced into the cave, Gord coming right behind them. Trokwi flew around the cave, dive-bombing shrieking grobi. Gord clubbed about himself with his pistol, forgetting to fire it in his excitement. He had a grot by the neck. The rest ran everywhere, trying to race up the walls into the webs in their fear. They were easy prey for the duardin.

‘There ain’t no contingency like an ogor contingency, especially when it comes to flattening things,’ Drekki said. ‘Still want to call the krenkha gorogna, Adrimm? I mean, bearing in mind your position of being webbed up on the floor, and the fact that I’m under no obligation to let you go. Answer carefully, now.’

‘No, captain,’ grumbled Adrimm.

‘Good lad,’ Drekki said, and set about freeing him.

Adrimm glanced up at Drekki, ashamed. ‘You did that on purpose, got me mad.’

‘Only way out. But don’t worry about that. The point is, there was a way out.’

‘Did you mean everything you said? About me, I mean,’ Adrimm asked woefully.

Drekki winked. ‘Not a word,’ he said. ‘Although you do complain like a clan matriarch with an empty pint pot.’

‘That is fair enough,’ said Adrimm.

Drekki cupped a hand around his ear.

‘Captain Flynt,’ added Adrimm.

Drekki nodded. ‘Captain Flynt.’

When Gord finished booting the last scuttler to death, he saw the pot, and his eyes lit up. ‘They put dinner on for me! Nice grotties,’ he said. He dragged the grot still choking in his fist to the cauldron and heaved it in, where it thrashed and squeaked. Boiling water spattered Gord, but it didn’t bother his thick skin.

Drekki peeled off the last of the sticky silk gumming up his flight suit. Bokko handed him his pistol, Karon. The others were arming themselves, putting on boots, kicking snotlings out of the way and scowling at the filth smeared on their gear.

The grot stopped moving and bobbed to the surface, blanched. Gord poked at it with the shaman’s ladle, then tasted with an epicurean frown.

‘Not a bad bit of soup,’ said Gord. ‘But it could do with more grot. Not quite…’ – he smacked his lips – ‘meaty enough.’

More singing scuttlers were tramping home for their dinner, unaware they’d already eaten their last.

‘That can be arranged,’ Drekki said.

The duardin arrayed themselves in a firing line.

‘Krenkha gorogna indeed,’ said Drekki, shaking his head. ‘I’m Drekki Flynt!’

Karon’s hammer clicked back. He levelled her muzzle at the cave mouth.

The scuttlers never knew what hit them.

Notes

[1] Khazalid/Kharadrid: grots.

[2] Lit. ‘Bearded Council’. Comprised of the oldest duardin on board a ship.

[3] Kharadrid: vomit.

[4] Khazalid/Kharadrid: humans.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including the first book in the Dawn of Fire series, Avenging Son, as well as Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood and Astorath: Angel of Mercy. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

An extract from Overlords of the Iron Dragon.

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.’

Click here to buy Overlords of the Iron Dragon.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022. by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham..

Krenkha Gorogna © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Krenkha Gorogna, 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: 978-1-80407-119-9

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

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). 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.

* 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.