Master of Dragons Read online

The surviving asur on the walls stared up at him, their faces fearful. The surviving dwarfs beat a hasty retreat under the whirling shadow of Draukhain’s wings, summoned away by frantic signals from the battlefield.

  Imladrik was unable to take his eyes from the scene. Thoriol lay awkwardly on a broken slab of marble, his hand still half-holding a longbow. He was dressed in the manner of a common archer. The last time Imladrik had seen him he’d been arrayed in the acolyte’s robes of Tor Caled.

  He should have been in Caledor. He should have been safe.

  Draukhain began to labour in the skies. Imladrik could sense the itch for combat become restive. He looked back over his shoulder, over to where the sea of dwarfen warriors marched, their momentum stalled but their numbers still formidable. The other dragons wheeled and dived at them, lighting up the dusk with blooms of consuming fire.

  And then, distracted, Imladrik felt his long-kindled bloodlust boil over. He felt the spirit of the dragon surge through his limbs, animating them with a dark, cold fire. He saw the pale, bruised face of his only son before his eyes.

  They have done this. They dragged me here. They caused this war. They laid waste to this land. Damn them! Damn their stubborn, ignorant, savage minds!

  Draukhain responded instantly, rising higher against the backdrop of swirling smoke. The beast’s animal spirits burst into feral overabundance. Fires sparked into life between his curved fangs. His pinions spread, splaying out like a death shroud.

  ‘Damn them!’ roared Imladrik, giving in at last, feeling the hot rush of exhilaration take him over. ‘Damn them!’

  His blade became hot in his gauntlets, searing like the cursed steel of the Widowmaker itself. He felt the blood of Aenarion throb in his temples. The runes on his ancient armour glowed an angry arterial red, responding instantly to the preternatural powers unleashed across the sacred silver.

  Draukhain pounced, sweeping out into the dark with a magisterial surge. Imladrik levelled his sword-tip over the ocean of souls before him. He no longer saw them as worthy adversaries to be curtailed. All he saw in that moment, his soul twisted with blood-madness, was prey.

  The other dragons sensed the change in mood. They dived into the enemy with renewed fervour. The lowering sky fractured with bursts of fresh flame and cries of dawi agony. The asur behind the walls, also sensing the vice of restraint lifting, began to pour out through the gaps in the walls. They spilled out on to the plain, murder glittering in their eyes.

  Amid them all and above them all, mightier than all others between the mountains and the sea, came the Master of Dragons, unleashed at last, his brow wreathed with darkness, his countenance as severe as Asuryan’s, his soul burning with the madness of Khaine.

  They have done this, he sang, his mind-voice icy. Leave none alive.

  Chapter Twenty

  Grondil strode onwards through the morass of blood and churned-up mud. It swilled over his shins, dragging at him, though he barely noticed the pull.

  Up ahead the walls of Tor Alessi burned a vivid red in the darkness. Trails of fire shot up from the trebuchets and bolt throwers, streaking out in the night. The noise of battle was deafening – a frenzied melange of drums, shouting, screams, magefire explosions.

  ‘To the breach!’ he roared, blind to all else. His hearthguard strode with him, weathering the storm of arrows that whined and clattered about them. He had no idea how many had managed to follow him thus far. The battleground had dissolved into a vast scrum of straining bodies and labouring war engines, all formation lost in the churning melee at the base of the walls.

  The sudden arrival of the dragons had changed nothing. They soared and dived into the host, lighting up the sky with flashes of iridescence. Their power looked phenomenal, but that did not concern Grondil. No opponent, however towering or malevolent, had ever truly concerned Grondil. They all drew breath; they could all be killed.

  His contingent was still fifty yards short of the walls and making heavy weather of the march. The shells of ruined trebuchets burned in the mud around him, grisly monuments amid a press of straining bodies. The attack was faltering; it needed something decisive to turn the tide.

  ‘The breach!’ he bellowed again, swinging his warhammer around his head. The walls ahead had been hammered into semi-ruins, exposing the soft innards of the city within. If a salient could be pushed into the city’s perimeter, sheltered by the walls and out of the sweep of the dragons, that might be enough. Grondil could already see the jagged edges of the stonework picked out in the firelight, swarming with defenders trying frantically to shore up the defences. Axe-blades flickered in the half-light, rising and falling like picks at a coal-face.

  He tried to run, to break into the charge that would carry him to the fighting. His armour clattered around him, weighing him down. He stumbled, falling to one knee, tripped by jutting debris left in the mire. Hot air rushed across his back, scorching him under his armour. A tart stench of ashes clogged his nostrils, followed by a sharp scent of blood.

  Cursing, he twisted round to beckon his contingent onward, and his jaw dropped.

  They had gone. They had all gone, swept away as if scooped out of the ground by the hands of some daemon of the earth. All that remained was a vast crater of scorched soil, thick with blackened corpses. In the centre of it writhed a gigantic creature, a golden dragon with wings unfurled, its serpentine tail coiling around it, its long neck arched above him.

  Up close, it was colossal. Grondil had never seen a living thing so enormous. He almost lost his grip on his hammer.

  The rider on the dragon’s back lowered a sword in his direction. It danced with a strange, elusive light that made Grondil’s eyes smart.

  He didn’t wait for it to explode into life. He pushed himself up from the mud and broke into a charge.

  ‘Grimnir!’ he bellowed, holding his weapon two-handed and scouring the creature’s hide for a weak spot. All he saw was a screen of glistening golden armour, flawless in its protective coverage, splattered with great streaks of dwarfen blood like honour markings.

  Before he could get within strike-range the dragon belched a searing blast of flame. It overwhelmed him, raging across his plate armour, worming its way into every joint and crevice. He staggered on for a few more paces, blinded by the heat, hoping to land at least one blow before his strength gave out.

  The heat suddenly ebbed. Grondil reeled, trying to squint through the pain, to somehow get into position for a swipe.

  But the dragon had taken flight again, hovering just a few yards above the wreckage of Grondil’s company. The downdraft of its huge wings was acrid and gore-flecked. For a moment longer Grondil stayed on his feet. He dimly heard shouts of alarm, of retreat. Somewhere close by, something exploded with a dull boom – a siege engine, perhaps.

  The beast loomed over him, magnificent and terrible, out of reach of his warhammer, impervious to anything he could throw at it. Blood sluiced down Grondil’s armour. Delayed by shock, he felt the onset of the burns he’d taken, waves of pain that swelled across his whole body. Then, as if as an afterthought, the dragon turned in the air, switching back sinuously, its tail sweeping round in a casual arc. The heavy end-spine caught Grondil square in the chest, hurling him back through the air, driving his breastplate in and crushing the ribs beneath.

  Grondil thudded back to earth twenty paces distant, sliding on his back, his spine arched in pain. Through blood-wet eyes he saw the dragon climb higher into the air, its body a dazzling mottle-pattern of crimson and gold. It snaked higher, graceful and unconcerned, its rider already searching for fresh prey.

  Grondil felt oblivion creep up on him. His limbs went cold. He couldn’t lift his hammer. The whirl of battle around him became muffled, as if underwater. He kept his eyes fixed on the heavens, trying not to slip away too soon.

  He would have raged then, if he had been able. Not against his own death, which meant li
ttle to him, but for what the dragon had done to the army about him.

  Grungni’s beard, he thought, aghast at the cold realisation even as his mind slipped into darkness. We cannot beat them.

  Morgrim watched the dragons with a slow and growing sense of awe. He had witnessed such creatures before, of course. He had even come close to riding one – the very sapphire monster that was currently ripping his armies into shreds – but he had never seen one unshackled in battle. Only his ancestors in the days of glory, back when Malekith had fought alongside Snorri Whitebeard, would have witnessed such terrible carnage.

  He stood grimly amid his faltering legions, resting on his axe, staring fixedly at the bloodshed.

  ‘We cannot hold them!’ cried one of his thanes – he did not even notice which one. Warriors were hurrying into position all around him, reserves suddenly pressed into action and charging out across the battlefield. He heard the bellows of captains exhorting their troops to move faster, to fight harder, to bring the damned drakk down.

  None of them, not one, considered falling back. Faced with a terror greater than any living dwarf had faced, they just kept advancing, hurling themselves into the fiery maw of it with death-oaths spilling from their lips.

  We never learn.

  Morek limped up to him out of the darkness. The runelord’s grey beard was flecked with ash and blood, his staff leaking a thick dirty smoke.

  ‘The drakk…’ he began, his gnarled face wide with shock.

  Morgrim nodded. ‘I can see, rhunki. I can see it all.’

  Out across the far side of the raging battle, the elgi had pushed out of their citadel, emerging in strength from the breaches his own war engines had carved into the outer walls. Their infantry were formidable enough – well-organised squares of mail-clad spearmen supported by cavalry squadrons that moved steadily across the ceded ground. On their own such soldiers would have been a worthy test.

  But the dragons… they were something else. Morgrim stayed where he was, saying nothing, in silent awe of their supremacy, their matchless arrogance, their contempt.

  Some madness had taken hold of them. They crashed to earth in flailing whirls of claws and tails, crushing everything beneath them, before launching back into the skies with broken bodies trailing in their wake. They smashed siege engines apart. They belched gobbets of coruscation that melted all but the gromril masks of his best equipped elite. Bolts fell harmlessly from their armour. No axe or blade seemed to bite. Those that stood up to them died and, since no dwarf ever ran from danger, that meant whole regiments were wiped out with horrifying speed.

  As the sun finally met the western horizon, casting crimson rays across the fields of death and sending long barred shadows streaking out from the base of the towers, the dragons still glittered like jewelled spears, their scales flashing vividly like the coloured glass in the shrine of Grungni.

  He remembered Imladrik telling him of the Star Dragons. Morgrim had scoffed at the description.

  ‘We know how to kill drakk,’ he had said.

  Imladrik had laughed. Back then, they had often laughed together. ‘Even daemons struggle to live against a Star Dragon,’ he had replied. ‘On this occasion, my friend, you do not know of what you speak.’

  I did not. Truly, I did not.

  The runesmiths were struggling as they attempted to drag up rune-wards that would do something to halt the dragons’ rampage, the elgi mages in the city were freed up to send their own magics whirling and bursting into the shattered dawi formations. Everything had been overhauled, turning with agonising swiftness from the long grind of a city siege into the sudden slaughter of a rout.

  ‘We cannot fight this,’ said Morgrim quietly. With every second that passed more of his host was being hammered into the ground. He could smell the blood on the air, thick as woodsmoke.

  ‘There must be a way,’ Morek insisted, still breathing heavily from whatever summoning he had been attempting. His staff looked as if it had been retrieved from a magma-pit; even Morgrim could see that the power had been burned away from it.

  ‘There will be a way,’ agreed Morgrim. ‘But not this day.’

  Morek looked at him doubtfully. ‘The thanes will not retreat.’

  ‘They will, because I will order them to.’ As he spoke, Morgrim felt a sense of resolution he had never felt before, not even after Snorri’s death. The bloodshed inflicted by the asur was so outrageous, so wild, performed with such abandon that he could scarcely believe he had once entertained notions of making peace with them. Under their veneer of superiority they were as bloodthirsty as any lurking creature of the mountains. They were animals.

  Morgrim drew his axe and held the blade up before him. It reflected the gold dusk-light dully, picking out the intricate knotwork on the metal. He pointed it up at the distant figure of the sapphire dragon, still tearing across the battlefield and lashing tongues of flame down on the warriors beneath its massive span.

  ‘I curse you,’ he cried, his voice as withering as gall. ‘I curse you in the name of immortal Grimnir and the spilled blood of my people. By my blade, I shall find you. By my blade, I shall hunt you down and I shall end you. This is my oath, made in the name of my cousin, made in the name of vengeance, which shall bind us both until death finds us.’

  Morgrim’s arm shook as he spoke, not from weakness but from fervour. His battle-axe whispered its own response – a sibilant yes, barely audible over the clamour of the field. The runes glowed angrily, throbbing from the steel like torchlight. Morek watched, awe-struck.

  ‘It is alive,’ he said, staring at the blade. ‘You have awakened it.’

  Morgrim felt the truth of that. The dragons had kindled something, unlocked something. He remembered Ranuld’s prophecy, the mumbled words under the mountain. He could feel Azdrakghar humming between his fingers.

  The battle was already lost, ripped from his fingers by the arrival of the dragons, but other battles would come. The dawi would learn, growing stronger and more deadly even as the elgi crowed over their reckless slaughter.

  ‘Do what you can to shield the fighters,’ he said coldly. ‘We will retreat – for now. Vengeance will come.’

  Even as he said it, the word struck him as absurd. How many causes for vengeance had there already been in this messy, dirty war? How many more would come before the end, piling on one another in an overlapping maze of grudges and resentments?

  It mattered not. For the present, all that mattered was keeping what remained of his forces intact, preserving them and holding them together. Then the counsels would begin, the recriminations, the renewed oaths. All of them would home on to one thing, and one thing only.

  How do we kill the dragons?

  Morek hesitated a moment longer, loath to be part of anything but pure defiance. To fall back, even temporarily, was anathema. Eventually, though, even he bowed his grizzled head.

  ‘It will be done,’ he said.

  By then, Morgrim was no longer listening. He had turned his mournful gaze back over the battlefield. It was rapidly turning into a charnel-pit.

  We will learn, vowed Morgrim, watching the blistering attack runs of the sapphire drake and marvelling at its unmatched destruction. We will learn, and then we will come back.

  He felt the axe shiver in his fist.

  This is not the end.

  Imladrik had no idea how much time had passed. Hours seemed to go by in which he had no awareness of anything at all, though they might well have been mere moments amid the combat. Everything melded into a blur, a long smear of violence. His vision was ringed with black, filmy with the blood that had splashed into his face and across his helm. All he heard was the rush and roar of the dragon, the mighty wall of noise that thrummed and raged in his ears.

  The sun had gone. Flying through the flamelit dark was like flying through the recesses of a dream. Brilliant explosions of drago
nfire and magelight briefly exposed a desolate waste of mud, bone and broken weapons. Tattered standards flew from splintered poles, bearing the images of mountain holds. Every so often Draukhain would spy a living soul and go after it, bearing down like a falcon pouncing on a hare.

  The core regiments had gone. They had been smashed open, first by the dragons and then by the vengeful spear battalions that had emerged in their wake. The battlefield had been thinned out, harrowed, flensed.

  He remembered the screams. Hearing dwarfs scream had been a strange experience – it took a lot to make a son of the earth open his throat and give away his agony.

  All of them had fought. He had admired the hardened units in the centre of the advance on the gate – they had resisted for the longest, striding towards him with utter fearlessness as he glided in for the kill. Their thick plate armour had given them some protection from dragonfire and their blunt warhammers and mauls had been able to crack with some force into the hides of the ravening drakes.

  He didn’t remember how long it had taken to kill them all. The whole recollection was little more than a mix of blind wrath and delirium. Draukhain had raked into them again and again, tearing up the ground beneath their feet and shaking them in his jaws like a dog with its quarry. Imladrik had been a part of that, guiding him, fuelling his rage, amplifying the annihilation.

  At some point the war-horns had sounded again, marking the retreat. That didn’t stop the killing. The dragons raced after the withdrawing columns, harrying them, picking off the outliers and tearing them to pieces in mid-air. The dwarfs never turned their backs. They left the field in good order, facing the enemy the whole time, stumbling backwards over terrain made treacherous by blood-slicks. They left behind huge baggage trains, each composed of dozens of heavily laden wains and upturned carts. When the dragons got in amongst the ale-barrels, the night was lit up with fresh explosions and racing channels of quick-burning fire.

  Only when they reached the cover of the trees did the worst of the slaughter break off. The dragons wheeled up and around again, hunting down those still out in the open. The asur infantry, seeing the assault begin to ebb, established positions out on the plain, unwilling to break formation by pursuing the dawi into the shadows of the forest.