Below the jagged fingers of rock, the thick spires of stone that could impale the airship and rip it right in half as it fell, were boulder-strewn heaths. Scattered farms dotted the landscape but it was largely barren aside from old burial mounds and trickle-thin streams. Plummeting now, loft decreasing more swiftly with each passing moment, but no longer spinning, the airship slipped through the forest of crags and spires.
Only earth awaited it, packed tight and resilient by the winter. It would be like hitting the solid rock of the mountainside.
Heglan cursed again. Foolish sentiment had got in the way of prudence. Heart ruling the head, it was a mistake he had made before. Nostalgia to release the airship from the Durazon and honour his grandfather Dammin’s memory had left him undone.
He wept openly at the thought, but could not take his eyes off the vessel he had so doomed. Striking the edge of the last crag, just the smallest of nicks, the hull was torn open in an explosion of splintering wood.
Every blow brought a wince to Heglan’s tear-streaked face.
‘Valaya, please be merciful…’
But the ancestor goddess of healing was not listening. Her gaze, deep within the earth, did not extend to sky and cloud. Thunder and storm were Grimnir’s domain, and he was ever wrathful.
Entangled with the rigging, the other sails ripped open and dragged much of the hull with them. Deciding upon discretion rather than valour, the dwarf captain at the wheel leapt from the tower and hit the ground a few seconds before the stricken vessel. He landed with a heavy bump, but otherwise survived unscathed.
The same could not be said for the skryzan-harbark.
Prow first, the airship ploughed an ugly furrow into a rugged patch of farmland. Its proud dragon head smashed upon impact, split down its skull as if killed by some mythical dragon slayer. The hull broke apart like a barrel divested of its bands, and the ship’s three masts jutted at obscure angles like broken fingers.
Bruised, in both pride and rump, the dwarf captain looked down at the wreckage that had finally settled in the valley and then up at the Durazon. Too far to see anything, he limped off furtively.
Heglan’s wrath almost overflowed. He hoped the dwarf below would feel its heat as he looked on disconsolately.
Impelled by what was left of their perpetual motion, two of the propellers still spun. The rudder flapped like a dead fish, hanging on by one of its hinges, the stern jutting up in the air in an undignified fashion.
Free of Nadri’s grip, Heglan sank to his knees and held his face in his hands.
‘I am finished,’ he breathed, letting his fingers trawl down his cheeks, pulling at his beard in anguish.
‘Dreng tromm,’ muttered Nadri, shaking his head. ‘I am sorry, brother. I really thought it would work.’
‘It should have worked, but I didn’t take into account the wind shear, the vagaries of weather or that wazzock, Dungni.’
Adding insult to already stinging injury, the grog from the sundered hold began to leak through the jagged gashes in the wood. It reminded Heglan of blood. His magnificent machine was dead, his dream was dead, so too his tenure as an engineer of Barak Varr.
Strombak was not kind with his reproach as he stomped over to him.
‘Gather it up, all of it,’ he growled under his breath. ‘You have disgraced this guild with your invention and your enterprise. Such things are not for dawi! Tradition, solidity, dependability, that’s what we strive for.’
Heglan begged. ‘Master, I… Perhaps if–’
‘If? If! There is no “if”. Dawi do not fly. We live under earth and stone. Do not tread in the same shameful footsteps as your grandfather. Dammin was thrown out of the guild, or is your memory so short that you’ve forgotten? Keen to endure the Trouser Legs Ritual too are you, Heglan son of Lodri?’
The rest of the assembly was leaving, chuntering about the wilfulness of youth and foolhardy beardlings. First to go was the high thane, already descending the Merman Pass on his palanquin-shield. He left without word or ceremony, pleased to leave the draughty plateau no doubt and enjoy the fire in the hearth of his hold hall.
Unable to rise from his knees, Heglan answered Strombak with his head bowed, ‘No, master. I only wish to be an engineer of the guild. I am a maker, a craftsman. Please don’t take that from me.’
The scowl on Strombak’s face could have been chiselled on, engraved much like the runes on his tools, but it softened briefly before Heglan’s contrition.
‘You’re not without skill, Heglan. A decent engineer, aye. But you’re wayward, lad.’ He gestured to the sky, ‘Head up in the clouds when it should be here–’ he stamped his boot upon the rock, ‘–in the earth. We’re not birds or elgi, we’re dawi. Sons of Grungni, stone and steel. You’d do well to remember that. Not like your grandfather. He was gifted–’ Strombak’s voice became rueful, ‘–but he squandered it on foolishness and invention.’
Heglan remained silent throughout his chastisement. Strombak left a long pause to glare at him, measuring him as he would a windlass, crank or a mechanism, to see if what he was saying was sinking in. He grumbled something inaudible, an expression not a word, then sighed deeply.
‘Another misstep and you’ll be cast out, sworn to secrecy about all you know of our craft.’ Jabbing a leathery finger at Heglan, he said, ‘Change your ways or change your profession! Barrel makers and hruk shearers are always looking for guilders. Now,’ he added, drawing in a long breath that flared his nostrils, ‘gather up that mess and use it to fashion something that works, something tried and tested. Tradition, not progression, lad – that is the dawi way.’
Heglan nodded – there was little else he could do – and was left alone with Nadri.
On the Durazon, the winter sun was dying as the storm from the southern peaks eclipsed it. Black clouds were gathering,
