Twilight of the Dragons (3 page)

“I'll do it,” said Talon, and dropped his pack. “Any dwarves come down that tunnel, they'll get a shaft down their throat. Bastards.” He smiled, with a nasty glint in his eye.

Beetrax nodded, and glanced sideways at Dake, who remained silent, and then looked over to Lillith. Unspoken words passed between them and Lillith gave a narrow smile.

We'll all look out for him,
that smile said.
We'll protect him, down here, in the mines of the Harborym Dwarves.

D
ake dreamed
.

He stood at the altar of the
Blessed Church of the Seventh Holy Mother
, boots so shiny he could see his face in them, handlebar moustache neatly waxed, hair combed back and slick with oil. His regimental uniform was pressed to perfection, and he wore a ceremonial sword at his hip, a sword that had been passed down through all the Lords of the House of Emerald. It was truly priceless.

In front of the altar, petals had been strewn down the aisle, and the church was filled with smartly dressed friends and relatives, all talking in hushed whispers. Candles burned, perhaps a hundred in total, giving the whole scene a beautiful ambience; the air glowed, and was heady with incense.

Dake twitched, looking back down the aisle, then back to the altar.

“Don't worry,” rumbled Beetrax, looking hot and bothered in his starched shirt and neatly pressed black jacket. He looked so out of place in a uniform it wasn't even funny, and he constantly shifted and wriggled, tugging at his cuffs and collars, his (for once) waxed and neatly combed beard not its usual bush, contrasted nicely with the deep black of his military dress.

“Worry?” Dake met his gaze. “I'm not worried.”

Beetrax boomed out a laugh, and slapped Dake on the back. The laugh reverberated around the stone interior, and there came a rush of buzzing disapproval from many present. “Well, you could have fooled me, you dickhead!”

“
Beetrax,
please,
no bad language in here. It's the
Blessed Church of the Seventh Holy Mother!
Have some respect!”

“I lost my respect for religion a long time back,” Beetrax growled, frowning, eyebrows moving together. “The day my dad died, I realised it was all a farce. God? The Holy Mother? The Seven Sisters? Don't make me puke. They're all in it for the money,
your
money,
my
money,
our
money, it's all about bloody money!”

“Shh!” Dake actually stamped his boot. “This is hardly the time or the place! Shut your stupid fat mouth!”

Beetrax shrugged, nonplussed. “All I'm saying, right, is that your bride will
definitely
turn up. I've seen the way she looks at you, mate. No sitting at home bloody weeping, wondering whether or not she loves you, wondering whether or not to stand you up at the altar! Oh no. No massive embarrassment and unforgiveable humiliation for
you,
Dake my lad.”

“
Shut up
!”

Gentle music tinkled from a large, curved, brass harp by the doorway, made to sing under the fluttering fingers of a delicate elfin maiden. Jonti Tal stepped through the breach, head to foot in white, her dress flowing, her brown hair full of flowers.

Dake gasped audibly.

Beetrax kicked him on the shin.

“What did you bloody do that for?” scowled Dake, eyes narrowed at the huge axeman.

“Just keeping it real, lad. Keeping your feet on the ground.”

“Well…
don't
!”

Jonti was walked down the aisle by her father, an old army sergeant with neat uniform, ramrod spine and stiff upper lip. They stopped beside Dake and Beetrax, and Jonti's father smiled kindly, and said, “Look after her, son. Or I'll break every finger you possess,” before retiring to the rough-sawn bench with his other daughters, and never once bending from above his arthritic hips.

“Great,” muttered Dake, then watched as Jonti lifted her delicate veil.

She smiled at him, in radiance.

He beamed back, like a hopeless fool in love.

The priest stepped forward, smiled, and said, “Let us begin.”

T
hey drank
, they danced, they kissed, lost in their own little world, a bubble in which only Dake and Jonti existed. Her lips were sweeter than a peach. She smelled like summer flowers, her skin softer than the most delicate of feathers.

They looked deep into one another's eyes, transfixed.

“I love you more than life,” she said.

“And I you.”

“I'll love you forever, Dake.”

“I know, my sweet. And I'll love you until the stars go out.”

She snuggled her head against his chest. “Let's grow old together. Let's die together.”

“Yes, my sweet,” he said, burying his face in her hair. “
Let us die together
,” he whispered.

And in his sleep, Dake wept.

T
alon touched Beetrax's shoulder
, and he grunted, looking up.

“You all right, Axeman?”

“Aye. I am that.” He yawned. “You're looking… fine. How do you manage without sleep?”

Talon shrugged. “I think I've finally found an equilibrium. Mentally. We have a mission to carry out. We get in, out, and then the fuck out of this fucking nightmare. And to be honest, after coming down here, sleep is something I rarely
need.
”

Beetrax nodded.

“Do you miss the outside, Trax?”

“I do, lad. I miss the mountains.”

“I miss the fresh air! A breeze on my face. Trees. Birdsong. How do they do it? How do they live in this pit?”

“It's just wrong, ain't it?”

There was a pause. Beetrax stood, and faced Talon. “I meant to say. You did well back there. During all that shit. All that violence.”

Talon shrugged. “It's what we're good at, isn't it?” He smiled. “Killing, I mean. What we're trained for.”

Trax nodded. “I can't remember a time when it wasn't.”

Talon moved away, to a stone bench, and tried to get comfortable. But in truth, and despite his words, exhaustion was his mistress, and despite the hard ridges digging into his spine and knees, in only a couple of minutes he was asleep…

Beetrax moved to the head of the tunnel, and seated himself, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, heavy battleaxe in both scarred hands.

“Fucking dwarves,” he muttered, and his words were laced with poison.

He looked back over his shoulder. Everybody was sleeping. Snoring.

Beetrax gave a nod, and gripped his axe tighter.

I'll protect you.

I won't take no shit.

Any dwarves come, they get an axe between the eyes.

But between the reality of the world, and the chemistry of exhaustion, Beetrax was just like any other human. He was prone to the laws of his basic physiology. Two hours of sleep were nothing and slowly, tenderly, Beetrax's eyes drooped. He sat there, leaning on his brutal chipped axe, and the demon sleep gently took him, and spirited him away…

“
K
a kash
!”

“Ko karim kek jo kash! Be quiet, cunt!”

“What is it?”

“Up ahead. An overlander. With a big fucking kresh axe!”

“Fucking slaves. They need to die.”

“Shh. Carefully now. It'll be easier if we don't wake him. He looks… handy. Not like the worms we are used to.”

Nods.

Boots trod softly, as the dwarf killing party advanced on the sleeping, snoring figure of Beetrax…

T
he dwarf was stocky
, and yet if anybody had been present to observe him, watching him kneel at the altar, they would have realised he was also…
twisted.
Broken. His back was hunched, the result of a historic tunnel collapse in which he'd been trapped for days, spine broken, and after his miraculous rescue, the injury had slowly healed and yet… healed
wrong.
This resulted in Skalg, First Cardinal of the Church of Hate, suffering intense pain during pretty much every waking hour when not under the influence of tryakka or lillimuth or the golden petal. Here and now, however, in the Iron Vaults deep beneath the Cathedral of Eternal Hate, core and pillar and cornerstone of the Church of Hate, shrine to their doctrine, containing the Holy Library and protected pages from the Scriptures of the Church of Hate, as penned by the Great Dwarf Lords themselves, so Skalg was enamoured with something other than drugs flowing through his veins, or lingering like gas in his lungs. Here, and now, Skalg was infused with
religion
and he was high on
belief.

The altar was a huge, twisted, carved iron beast, with spikes and curves and angles, with absolutely no symmetry at all because it was a symbol of power and a symbol of chaos, a core concept which ran through every page of the Scriptures of Hate, like virgin blood once ran like wine in the cups of the Great Dwarf Lords, Gods of the Harborym Dwarves and the original creators of the Dragon Engine.

“Now gone, now broken,” said Skalg, and tears wet his cheeks. And although
belief
in his faith ran strong through his every atom, so
disbelief
in the escaped dragons, Volak, Kranesh and Moraxx, peppered Skalg's fractured, jumping mind like randomly fired crossbow quarrels puncturing his skull from a hundred misguided Educators.

Stop,
came the word, and with it, came calm.

Skalg looked down. Before his kneeling form, on a cushion of black velvet, were the three Dragon Heads – fist-sized, colourless jewels said to contain the remains of the Great Dwarf Lords themselves. Despite being clear, each jewel had facets and faults, layers and internal markings. When light shone through them, it changed, moved, bounced, diffused, split, each second moving and shifting and changing, always unpredictable, constantly unreadable.

Skalg took a deep breath, pain tingling at the edge of his hunched, broken back, and his eyes narrowed as he thought about the escaped dragons.
How? How did it happen? What fool set free the minds from Wyrmblood?

And he knew the answer, instinctively. The dragons themselves had somehow ushered a victim to the tower where the minds had been trapped, imprisoned, with what promise Skalg could not even imagine. But what he did know was that now, the three great wyrms were free, and superbly pissed off. They would wreak havoc through the Five Havens, through Janya, the highest underground city which traditionally housed the poorest of the dwarves, usually the lowliest mine workers, criminals, the unemployed; next came Keelokkos, where dwarves of self-awarded self-importance lived in the meagre abodes purchased with their lowly incomes. Third down the descending hierarchy of wealth and prestige was Sokkam, a place of modest spires and iron bridges, of plain arched walkways and cobbled streets, with confined streets and black stone houses built high and narrow, stepping out until they nearly touched in the higher reaches. Fourth came Vistata, and now,
now
the architecture became grand, with soaring carved bridges of stone and iron, with broad decorated walkways containing ornate iron trees and sculpted iron flowers, and sprawling residences of the wealthy. But only in Zvolga, home of the Iron Palace, the Cathedral of Eternal Hate and a thousand other magnificent civic and public buildings where only the
truly
wealthy could afford to live in luxury, only in Zvolga could one truly walk with head held high and know,
fucking know
you'd scrambled down through the mountain and up the hierarchy and actually
done something
with your life.

Skalg was one such dwarf. From mine digger to broken invalid to church apprentice, Skalg had worked and betrayed and killed and sucked and fucked his way up the church hierarchy, fuelled by his pain and crippled back, driven on by purest hate, the true diviner and motivator for one in the church. Yes, Skalg had progressed at a rate of promotion never before seen in the Five Havens, and would probably never be seen again.

Zvolga.
Ahhh, sweet Zvolga.
His city, his birthright, the place of his home and the most grand of his churches – now burned and smashed by the vengeful bitch dragons on their way up to the surface to first punish the world of men, and then, the fear sinking in, when the days had turned into weeks and months of terror, waiting for them to return and finish the job. And yes, then they would return, and Skalg knew the Harborym Dwarves did not have the might, the tools nor the magick to resist them.

“O Great Dwarf Lords, it is I, Skalg, First Cardinal of the Church of Hate, and I am here to seek your counsel!”

Silence.

Skalg opened one eye and stared at the Dragon Heads. Light pulsed gently through them from the candles lining the altar. A cool breeze crept across the floor like an invisible mist. Skalg breathed, and could see his breath like… like dragon smoke.

“O Great Dwarf Lords, I beseech thee, speak to me in this hour of need! The mighty wyrms, Volak, Kranesh and Moraxx, whom you captured and imprisoned many years ago, whose city of Wyrmblood you destroyed, cast to the flames, crushed under the mountain, they have escaped, and I need your ancient wisdom.”

Again, silence.

Candlelight pulsed.

Frustration started to gnaw through Skalg's mind, which began to jump in terror, flitting fast from one problem to the next to the next to the next, until fetid images piled up like a deck of cards, all overlaying one another, a rough-shuffled pack of abstract problems which he could not solve. He felt fear, not personal physical fear, although Skalg was privy to such personal doubts on occasion, but sheer terror at the plight of the
church
, and the possibility of the dragons destroying the churches, and even the Cathedral of the Church of Hate itself. More importantly, he felt the fear of
losing his position as First Cardinal
. The death of King Irlax, Skalg's direct opponent in the power play of Crown and Church in the Five Havens, had left the playing field wide open for Skalg's utter dominance. He'd won! The Church had won! And then the fucking dragons had awoken and spoilt it all!

Skalg chewed his lips.

“O Great Dwarf Lords,” he intoned, and stared at the Dragon Heads. He thought, not for the first time or the hundredth time, that
maybe
this was a pile of donkey shit,
maybe
the Great Dwarf Lords were just a construction to keep the Harborym Dwarfs in check,
maybe
it had been dwarves, not gods, who had tamed the mountain, tamed the dragons, and built The Dragon Engine. Just
maybe.

“O Great Dwarf Lords,” he said, throat raw now, eyes itchy and full of frustration tears, “O Great Dwarf Lords, stop these fucking dragons from burning down my world, stop them taking away my churches and houses and Wardens and Educators. Help me put these fucking disgusting wyrms back in their cage…”

There was a
thrum,
a pulse of power that surged through the chamber. If Skalg had been standing, he would have lost his footing, but kneeling, he pitched sideways, one hand shooting out to steady himself and as a result sending a spear of pain through his hunched back. He screamed, a short sharp sound of animal pain, but the scream was cut off when his eyes fixed on the Dragon Heads.

They were vibrating. Jiggling against their black velvet cushion.

Skalg lay there, staring at them, his mouth dry, piss leaking through his trews. He waited for something terrible to happen, for some great energy to rip through him, destroying him utterly, or for some dragon to rip the roof off the chamber and bite him in two. In shame, he soiled himself, and a rancid reek wafted up from his dirtied undergarments.

“I curse you!” he screamed suddenly, and waved his fist from his lying position. “The mountain fucking gives and the mountain fucking takes away! Well, all it did was fucking take from me in that bastard mine collapse! Look at me! Look what a feeble cripple I have become.” And he wept, lay there for a long time, the jewels – priceless before him, and yet unable to cure his ailments – vibrating against velvet.

Slowly, the vibrations, the rumbling, the feeling of pressure inside Skalg's skull – they all stopped.

He lay there, wet, dirty, tears on his bearded cheeks.

That it has come to this,
he thought.
I am a disgrace to the dwarves.

No, said a voice inside his head. And it was at once magical and all-enveloping.

No?

You have been our champion for many a decade. Just because you have a broken, crippled, weak, pathetic shell worthy of nothing, like the lowest and most pointless worm, wriggling through the dirt and the shit, useless to everybody, useless even to the lowest scum and whore and criminal, this has
not
halted your ambition, your drive, and your prosperity. You have done well for yourself, Cardinal Skalg. Very well indeed. You have gone from strength to strength. Increased your power. Killed your enemies. Taken what you wanted. Climbed to the top of the shit pile. And, Cardinal Skalg, First Cardinal of the Church of Hate, we have been watching you.

You have
?

We have.

Why would you watch me?

Because we are the Great Dwarf Lords, and we do what the fuck we want.

Skalg swallowed. One could not argue with that.

You, er, you imprisoned the great dragons? Built the Dragon Engine?

We did.

Er, I'm sorry to tell you this, but things have happened. I don't know how, but the dragons retrieved their minds. They broke out of the pits. They have… escaped.

Yes. We know this. That's why we're talking to you.

To me?
Skalg got a very, very bad feeling, all of a sudden, deep down in the pit of his stomach. It spread like acid, like wildfire, erupting from his innermost being and reaching out in all directions, like strands from a spider's web. Fear followed, and Skalg felt his mouth was suddenly very dry, his mind numb, pounding but numb, and all he wanted to do was get away from this place; to flee. Because, instinctively, he knew something
bad
was going to happen, and it was going to happen to
him,
and life would never be the same again.

What could you possibly want from me? I am a cripple, weak, worthless. A worm, you said! Yes, a worm! A worm in the dirt and the shit.

And yet the most powerful worm in the Five Havens, said the voice, like a very cool lullaby.

Ahh.

Skalg. We are your gods. The gods of the Harborym Dwarves. The escape of the three dragons, Volak, Moraxx and Kranesh poses a very big problem for us. For all of us. For you. And for every dwarf on this planet.

Skalg did not want to ask the question. But he did anyway.

Why?

You must come with us.

Where?

No more questions. Do you agree?

Skalg wanted to say no. He wanted to
scream
no. He wanted to climb to his feet and hobble as fast as his broken body would allow, up the stairs, out of the Cathedral of Hate, away, away from the dwarves, away from everything because this,
this
was a moment of reckoning, a moment he knew would ultimately lead to his downfall. He felt it, in his very bones. After everything he'd done, after all the shit he'd been through, after all the murders and the back-stabbing, after all the whispering and assassins and violence, here, now, he was being called upon by the fucking gods to do the right fucking thing. And he could not bear it.

Do you agree?

There was an urgency there. But something more. An
impatience.
The Great Dwarf Lords were not used to being fucked around. Not even by the First Cardinal of the Church of Hate, and after the death of King Irlax, now the mostly singly powerful individual in the realm of the Harborym Dwarves.

What happens if I do not? I don't mean to sound rude, I'm sorry, truly I am, but I'm very frightened. Running the Church is one thing, but being asked to… what, recapture the dragons? Save the world? That's best left for heroes – dwarves with stout hearts and strong axe arms. Me, I'm a broken waste of space… I would be no good for you, O Great Dwarf Lords.

There came a pause. A very long pause.

Do you agree?

“What happens if I don't?” he squeaked.

The Dragon Heads will bathe you in Holy Fire and your death will take a thousand years.

Skalg considered this. He tilted his head. As if obeying some unspoken command, the Dragon Heads grew warm before him. Heat bathed him. It felt like a gentle warning. Skalg swallowed.

“Yes,” he whispered.

The Dragon Heads grew even warmer, and brightness spilled from their faceted interiors. It flickered around the chamber, shooting beams of light and heat that spun, and danced and coalesced. Skalg cringed in terror, cowering down on that cold stone floor, cowering in upon himself, making himself as small a target as possible – as if that would matter. He was like some bearded, distorted embryo. And still the Dragon Heads spun, and light fell from them, like light from a million stars. And the heat became hot, too hot to bear, and Skalg started to scream curses and obscenities, howling at the Great Dwarf Lords for they were going to kill him, murder him like the backstabbing bastards they were. Heat washed over Skalg, and he wailed like a newborn baby, and covered his eyes, and sniffed in his own shit-stink, and he was a bastard, he was a wretch, and he hoped that death would be quick…

The jewels spun on their velvet cushions, and a noise came, a high-pitched shrilling like a million insects trying to break free. Skalg covered his ears and soiled himself again, feeling the shame as warmth spread across his buttocks and down one leg.