The Dragon Engine (36 page)

Skalg walked slowly towards the three jewels. They glinted, altering the light in a strange way. An impossible way.

Skalg smiled, then. He reached out, and touched one, and closed his eyes, and felt the ebbing throb which ran through his fingers. It calmed him. It soothed him. It made him feel… in control.

He breathed deeply.

His eyes opened.

“The Mountain gives,” he said, his smile broadening, “and the Mountain takes away.”

And First Cardinal Skalg, of the Church of Hate, considered the future.

T
he Karamakkos Mountains
. Untamed, vast, eternal. Ice-locked, brutal, merciless. Friend to no man, dwarf, or elf.

On the peak of Makkos, the sun sank, a huge red orb dominating the horizon and sending liquid blood shadows spilling through the valleys, the crevasses, the frozen tarns, blood shadows creeping across snow-locked slopes, across rocky, ice-encrusted peaks, across ancient ravines and rocky ledges as old as the world. Here, three shadows were outlined in black.

They sat, motionless, ink paintings cut out from the sky.

And then one moved, uncurling slowly; great wings unfurled, and gave a heavy, slapping
wham
, as it leapt up, and soared, banking, to drop fast and straight and vertical, deep into a valley where a snow lion hunted reindeer.

The snow lion, coat thick and shaggy due to the harsh winter conditions, felt a premonition and crouched back at the last moment. A shadow fell over the huge beast, great jaws fastened around its mewling, screeching body, and then it was kicking and clawing as the dragon, the wyrm, carried it high into the sky and returned to the solitary peak of Makkos, landing with a thud, claws gouging ancient rock, and chewed for a few moments, before swallowing the snow lion, her teeth shutting with a final, terminal clack.

“What now?”

“There are still many dwarves beneath the mountain.”

“We have all the time in the world for those bastards. I want them to wait, as we waited in our Dragon Pits. I want them to feel fear, as we felt desolation in the knowledge our children had been destroyed. I want them to build their futile defences down in their fucking stinking holes, as they survey the carnage we have already inflicted, and pray for the day we will never return. They will plot and plan, and seek to destroy us. They will come to understand Wyrmblood, and they will seek to stop us returning.”

“And now?”

“For now,” breathed Volak, flames curling around her snout, “for now, we will enjoy the fresh mountain air; we will enjoy the succulent meat the world provides; we will enjoy the freezing wind on our scales; we will free our minds, give ourselves space and time to think; we will explore the land we once knew as our own, the valleys and rivers, the forests and mountains, we will see what cities the men and dwarves and elves have deemed fit to build in our absence.”

“You think our domain has much changed?” said Kranesh.

“I think we have been written out of history,” said Volak. “I think,” and her lips curled into a black grin, “I think we have been
forgotten
.”

“Then we must remind the world we exist,” said Kranesh, frowning.

“We must show the world that we are dominant,” said Moraxx.

“Yes,” breathed Volak, with joy. “We will do all those things, my sisters. We will fly, and we will feed, and we will explore, and we will burn, and we will destroy. Are you ready? Are you ready to see what a mockery they have made of our world?”

“We are ready,” whispered the mighty wyrms.

And as one, the blood-dark silhouettes detached from the Makkos peak, and with lazy, long wing-beat strokes, these ancient dragons, free at last, headed south… gliding towards Vagandrak.

A
s ever
, lots of people (and a monkey or two) have helped with the creation of this book, and I give love and thanks to you all! You know who you are! Have a banana on me. Ook.

A
ndy Remic is
a British writer with a love of ancient warfare, mountain climbing and sword fighting. Once a member of the Army of Iron, he has since retired from a savage world of blood-oil magick and gnashing vachines, and works as an underground smuggler of rare dog-gems in the seedy districts of Falanor. In his spare time, he writes out his fantastical adventures.

A
NGRY ROBOT

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Slicin' & dicin'

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n Angry Robot
paperback original 2015

Copyright © Andy Remic 2015

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ndy Remic asserts
the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A
catalogue record
for this book is available from the British Library.

U
K ISBN 978
0 85766 453 2

US ISBN 978 0 85766 454 9

EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 455 6

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ll rights reserved
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T
his novel is entirely
a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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