Twilight of the Dragons (13 page)

“One day,” he muttered, “one day,” as they emerged onto a black granite platform and stopped.

He turned and surveyed the thirty battle-hardened, grim, scarred, battered dwarves. Not for Val new recruits. No. This mission had come from… a special place. A special person. One Val respected above all else. Yes. Even above Skalg, First Cardinal of the Church of Hate.

“This way,” he said, and the grim dwarves followed Val, dropping down into the cutting and, with weapons drawn, gleaming, headed into the smoky, obsidian gloom of the mine carriage network.

B
eetrax shook himself
, his body and mind stunned, trying to remember what the fuck had hit him.

Dragon beast splice thing.

Chamber?

Fire?

Talon…
burning…

With a growl, Beetrax stood, trailing dust and debris, and rolled his head on tortured neck tendons. He glanced over at Lillith who was pale and shocked. Jael stood behind her, looking like he was going to puke. Beetrax glanced at Sakora: unconscious. Blood ran from nostrils and mouth. Maybe she was even dead. He felt an incredible raw rage well up from inside him.
How dare it! How dare this cunt kill them after all they'd fucking been through! Well, he, Beetrax the Axeman, he had something to say about it…

He moved sideways, eyes fixed on the creature that was busy tearing at the scaffolding struts. More and more broke with heavy cracks and snaps, and the whole structure teetered again, making the flames roar higher. Talon was hanging on for his life. He'd lost his bow. His legs were kicking…

Beetrax grasped his axe.

Braced himself.

And screamed, “Come on, you ugly motherfucker, is that really all you've got?”

The creature turned, and its strange elongated face fixed on Beetrax, eyes locking onto him, its brow furrowing.

“You understand me?”

Its lips twisted, but no sound came out, only flames.

“What the
fuck
are you?”

With a wail more filled with pain and sadness than anger, it charged, taking the final supporting strut with it as the scaffold creaked and cracked, and almost in slow motion, collapsed, sending Talon tumbling into the heart of the raging flames…

It charged at Beetrax, who suddenly turned on the barrel, and his axe slammed out, puncturing the wood and iron struts. Again he hit, and again, until a sudden flood of oil gushed out onto the rocky ground before him. The creature came on, growling and snarling, as Beetrax's axe hit the second barrel, puncturing it, sending its black oil contents gushing out over the rocky floor. He turned and ran…

As Talon rose from the centre of the flames, bow in hand, face grim, and sighted down the shaft of an arrow with a flaming, flickering tip…

The arrow flashed, an orange streak across the chamber, and hit the gushing oil surrounding the creature.

There came a
whoosh
of screaming flames as the oil went up, and the beast was caught in the centre of an inferno, its feet and legs soaked, its body burning, its arms thrown up, muzzle lifting to the cavern roof as it wailed and screamed and gnashed its fangs, and fire burned and flames rolled and a thick, black smoke rolled up to fill the chamber with a dense cloud…

Talon leapt across the burning scaffold, patting at his flaming clothing in panic, and then sprinted to Lillith and Jael. Beetrax stood, shoulders braced, axe ready, watching the creature burn.

It fell slowly to its knees, flesh on fire, the scorched stink of burning meat twitching their nostrils and making them want to gag.

Fire roared. Glowed.

The beast writhed… dropping to its knees, voice keening, wailing, ululating a song of desolation to a god of engineered flesh, a demon of the Equiem, who did not care, would never care, because the Old Gods despised everything living in the world of men.

Gradually, the flames died down, the oil burning out, except for a few pools on the scorched rock.

Beetrax strode across to the crumbled, keening creature, and stared down with his hard face, and his hard eyes, and yet couldn't help feel some sympathy for the poor, burned, fucked-up mess.

Talon had helped Sakora to her feet, and Dake had only just recovered, and they moved to Beetrax.

“It's still not dead,” said Talon, breathless, face a little scorched in places.

“I can see that, lad.”

“Well… shouldn't we kill it?”

Beetrax stared at Talon hard. “It tried to burn you alive, lad.”

Lillith touched Beetrax's arm. “Please. End its life. Show some mercy, Trax. Please.”

“I agree,” breathed Dake, holding his bleeding nose.

Beetrax nodded. “Stand back, then.”

Like a man about to chop a huge tree trunk, he stepped back, braced himself, and took a mighty swing. His axe whined, and thudded home. The creature's keening raised in pitch. Beetrax cursed, wiggling his trapped axe free. He took another swing, and another, each time the dying creature's wail of pain increasing, and raising the hackles on all their arms and necks.

“Why won't you die, you fucker?” mumbled Beetrax, taking another seven, eight, nine swings. Until, finally, there came a
crack
and the head finally detached from the body. Fire blossomed out, a sudden heat blast that sent Beetrax skipping back, and then the creature seemed to fold in on itself, and crumble down, and inwards, into scaffolds of ash.

Beetrax gave Lillith a haunted look. “You know what I've learned about Equiem magick?” he said, his voice hoarse, cracking, as if he might cry at any moment.

“What's that, my love?”

“You magickers can keep it,” he said, softly, and turned, and walked away.

I
t was later
.

Much later.

Sakora walked through the gloom, and although she normally spent her life without fear – her decades of training, of suffering, of hardship, of purity, after her hardcore upbringing in the art of the Kaaleesh had made her brave and yet wary – things were now getting too much. She was wary of their predicament. Wary of this foolhardy mission they had embarked upon, and the terrifying monsters that seemed to lurk down in these ancient, twisted halls. She was wary of every single dark corridor, black tunnel, junction, hall and intersection. Sakora hated weapons of violence, indeed, hated violence, and yet her life seemed to be a spiral which went down and down and down… a spiral which had started with her husband, Raka.

The bastard.

She could not even fully quantify her hate. She hated him so much, she could not bring herself to utter his name. To picture his face in her mind made her blood immediately boil. To think of his hands on her… touching her flesh… she shuddered. It made her skin crawl. And she was still confused as to how it had all gone wrong, until she thought about it
very carefully
. And she realised. It was complacency. And boredom. And a realisation that he
did not want her.
He did not want her one fucking bit. It was a one-sided relationship. It was a farce, viewed from the outside as a perfect marriage, but inside, internally, she was boiling, she was breaking down, she was crumbling like a chalk cliff into a violent sea.

But now, several years down the line, Sakora was free. Free of his twisted machinations.

It had taken some gentle persuasion.

One day, he turned up with a cart, smashed his way into her home – which had been
their
home, until he left – and started helping himself to her things. She'd arrived as he was rifling through her underwear drawer, and he'd grinned at her, and it was that grin that sent her over the edge.

Raka should have known better. He knew her history, or so he thought. It was just his base stupidity that allowed him to formulate a plan that meant
ripping her off.
Not that she cared about material possessions – not at all. To Sakora, everything of importance was internal. Flesh and mind and soul. Everything else, all real world-possessions, they were just gravy.

But there was
concept.

And there was
honour.

And there was
respect.

Raka was showing her no respect, and despite him being a big man, and even a modest champion in the Fighting Pits, she decided it was about time he learnt to respect her properly. With care.

“You are in my things,” she said, voice quiet.

“Fuck off!”

“I told you not to come to this house again.”

“Fuck off, you bitch! I'm taking what I want. I'm taking what's owed to me. I have a new woman now, one who's not so into your spiritual kind of shit, one who I actually
want
to fuck. Not like you. Boring little Sakora. You're not worth the hassle, with your fucking sermons and your healthy living and your meditation. What a boring
cunt.
”

Sakora moved fast, hand striking an uppercut to his chin that sent him staggering backwards, tripping over a stool and banging his head on the wall. The underwear he'd been holding landed on his face, lace covering his eyes. He looked quite ridiculous.

“I suggest you stay down, Raka,” she said. And smiled at him.

His face turned red, and rage flooded him. He scrambled to his feet. “Oh you've done it now,” he growled. “You want to play big boys' games? You want to come play with daddy? Come on then. If the gloves are off, then the gloves are off.”

He charged at her, his bulk terrifying, dwarfing the slim and gently proportioned woman. His fist hummed past her ear, and she twitched, knee coming up to block, as his boot stamped down to break her knee. Then she frowned. That just wasn't
nice.
That was a dirty pit-fighting trick. Her left elbow struck his jaw, and as he went down again, diagonally, her arm came up, fist in the air, and the tip of her elbow slammed down vertically on the top of his head.

He hit the ground hard, and lay there for a while. An elbow strike to the skull was like being hit by a helve. Or it was when Sakora delivered it.

Sakora smiled internally, and took several steps back, waiting for what she knew would follow.

Groggily, he climbed to his knees, and shot her a look so bad, if looks could kill, she'd be in pieces in a bucket.

“I suggest you leave,” said Sakora, knowing he wouldn't.

“I suggest I fuck you,” he growled, with an evil glint in his eye, and getting to his feet, he charged her, hoping to smother her with his bulk.

Sakora skipped back, legs snapping out, each blow a connection from her shin to his knees and thighs. He howled, but still came on, grappling for her. Sakora ducked and slipped right, slapping a right hook to his jaw, then leaping onto his back, high up, her arm coming up again and tip of her elbow slamming down on his skull, three, four, five times. She rode him to the ground, and he was groaning. She rolled him onto his back, grunting a little for he was a heavy son of a bitch, and then she leapt atop him, straddling him, grinning down.

His eyes fluttered open.

“You bitch,” he said

“You bastard,” she said.

“I'm going to fucking break you.”

“Like this?”

She slammed her hand down, fingers straight, hand like a blade, straight into his septum. Blood sprayed out and his nose broke with a cracking splinter.

His fist whirred past her, then a second punch, which she met square on with her own, what appeared small and delicate, fist. There came a splintering of bone as she crushed two of his knuckles.

He cradled his hand, tears in his eyes.

“I have a suggestion,” she said.

He groaned, unable to reply.

“Why don't you pick yourself up, or even just
crawl,
and get out of my house. Never come back. Never contact me again. And we'll both be happy people. I don't want to hear your voice, and I certainly don't want to see your face.”

“Urrhhhh…”

She punched him in the cheekbone. Just a light slap. To get his attention.

“Do we have an agreement?”

“Yerrrrhhhhh…”

Sakora stood, fluidly, and considered stomping on him. But she was Kaaleesh, which trained restraint. Kaaleesh was not the art of aggression, but the art of self-defence, the art of channelling energies, of honour, of doing the right thing.

Raka crawled to the door. Sakora followed.

He managed to make it to his feet, and staggered outside to where his cart waited, hitched to a patient donkey.

Sakora smiled.

“Goodbye, Raka,” she said, and was half closing the broken, skewed, smashed door when he screamed, and charged back down the short path wielding a mace. It was an ugly-looking weapon, of black and silver steel, the haft about a foot long, the head circular but containing tiny plates of sharpened steel, like mini axe blades. Raka swung for her, and she stepped out into the small garden, skipping sideways as a second blow threatened to crush her skull. One blow from that mace, and Sakora would be dead, skull caved in. Blood and brains leaking to the stone chippings.

“Come on, bitch,” he said, eyes glowing. “Let's finish this.”

“You really want to?” Her voice was perfectly calm. She lifted her chin a little, and eyed the man she once thought she had loved.
I cannot believe I had such emotion for him,
she thought.
I cannot believe I thought I loved him. Did I? I must have done. But now, he is nothing but a primal insect. I am happy for him to die. I happy for him to be crushed underfoot.

He charged again, and the mace whirred past her head. She ducked and twisted away, spinning low, not seeking to land a blow – not yet – but instead, weighing up his technique, his tactics,
studying
him. It was part of the art of Kaaleesh. After all, it was an art, not just brutal combat.

“Come on!” he screamed, and she saw the red flush of anger, and this was good. With anger came stupidity. With anger, came foolishness. With anger, came mistakes that got you dead.

He charged a third time, and the mace slashed in a low horizontal arc. Again Sakora danced back, the mace a thumb's breadth from her abdomen, but this time, as Raka came past, she struck him on the neck. He staggered, flailing low, dropping the mace and ploughing his face into the soil.

He groaned, and did not move.

He could not. Sakora had broken his neck.

She moved, and crouched down beside him. “Consider this the end of our marriage,” she said, and grinned. His eyes swivelled up and fixed on her. He tried to snarl, but barely managed to curl his lips.