Richard Knaak - Day of the Dragon

His eyes flickered to what remained of the knee and the wooden peg attached there. No more glorious combat, no more legacy of blood and death. Other warriors had slain themselves for less grievous injuries, but Nekros could not. The very thought of bringing the blade to his own throat or chest filled him with a chill he dared not mention to any of the others. Nekros Skullcrusher very much wanted to live, no matter what the cost.

There were those in Dragonmaw clan who might have already sent him on his way to the glorious battlefields of the afterlife if not for his skills as a warlock. Early on, his talent for the arts had been noticed, and he had received training from some of the greatest. However, the way of the warlock had demanded from him other choices that Nekros had not wanted to make, dark choices that he felt did not serve the Horde, but rather worked to undermine it. He had fled their ranks, returned to his warrior ways, but from time to time his chieftain, the great Shaman, Zuluhed, had demanded the use of his other talents—especially in what even most orcs had believed impossible, the capturing of the Dragonqueen, Alexstrasza.

Zuluhed wielded the ritualistic magicks of the ancient shaman belief as few had done since first the Horde had been formed, but for this task, he had also needed to call upon the more sinister powers in which Nekros had been trained. Through resources the wizened orc had never revealed to his crippled companion, Zuluhed had uncovered an ancient talisman said to be capable of tremendous wonders. The only trouble had been that it had not responded to shamanistic spellwork no matter how great the effort put in by the chieftain. That had led Zuluhed to turn to the only warlock he felt he could trust, a warrior loyal to Dragonmaw clan.

And so Nekros had inherited the Demon Soul .

Zuluhed had so named the featureless gold disk, although at first the other orc had not known why. Nekros turned it over and over, not for the first time marveling at its impressive yet simplistic appearance. Pure gold, yes, and shaped like a huge coin with a rounded edge. It gleamed in even the lowest light, and nothing could tarnish its look. Oil, mud, blood . . . everything slipped off.

“This is older than either shaman or warlock magic, Nekros,”Zuluhed had told him.“I can do nothing with it, but perhaps you can. . . .”

Trained though he was, the peg-legged orc had doubted that he, who had sworn off the dark arts, could do better than his legendary chieftain. Still, he had taken the talisman and tried to sense its purpose, its use.

Two days later, thanks to his astonishing success and Zuluhed’s firm guidance, they had done what no one would have imagined possible, especially the Dragonqueen herself.

Nekros grunted, slowly raising himself to a standing position. His leg ached where the knee met the peg, an ache intensified by the great girth of the orc. Nekros had no illusions about his ability to lead. He could scarcely get around the caves as it was.

Time to visit her highness. Make certain that she knew she had a schedule to maintain. Zuluhed and the few other clan leaders left free still had dreams of revitalizing the Horde, stirring those abandoned by the weakling Doomhammer into a revolt. Nekros doubted these dreams, but he was a loyal orc, and as a loyal orc he would obey his chieftain’s commands to the letter.

The Demon Soul clutched in one hand, the orc trundled through the dank cavern corridors. Dragonmaw clan had worked hard to lengthen the system already running through these mountains. The complex series of corridors enabled the orcs to deal more readily with the burdensome task of raising and training dragons for the glory of the Horde. Dragons filled up a lot of space and so needed separate facilities, each of which had to be dug out.

Of course, there were fewer dragons these days, a point Zuluhed and others had made with Nekros quite often lately. They needed dragons if their desperate campaign had any hope of succeeding.

“And how’m I supposed to make her breed faster?” Nekros grunted to himself.

A pair of younger, massive warriors strode by. Nearly seven feet tall, each as wide as two of their human adversaries, the tusked fighters dipped their heads briefly in recognition of his rank. Huge battle-axes hung from harnesses on their backs. Both were dragon-riders, new ones. Riders had a death ratio about twice that of their mounts, generally due to an unfortunate loss of grip. There had been times when Nekros had wondered whether the clan would run out of able warriors before it ran out of dragons, but he never broached the subject with Zuluhed.

Hobbling along, the aging orc soon began to hear the telltale signs of the Dragonqueen’s presence. He noted labored breathing that echoed through the immediate area as if some steam vent from the depths of the earth had worked its way up. Nekros knew what that labored breathing meant. He had arrived just in time.

No guards stood at the carved-out entrance to the dragon’s great chamber, but still Nekros paused. Attempts had been made in the past to free or slay the gargantuan red dragon within, but all those attempts had ended in grisly death. Not from the dragon, of course, for she would have embraced such assassins with relief, but rather from an unexpected aspect of the talisman Nekros held.

The orc squinted at what seemed nothing but an open passage. “Come!”

Instantly, the very air around the entrance flared. Tiny balls of flame burst into being, then immediately merged. A humanoid form began to fill, then overflow, the entrance.

Something vaguely resembling a burning skull formed where the head should have been. Armor that appeared to be flaming bone shaped itself into the body of a monstrous warrior that dwarfed even the enormous orcs. Nekros felt no heat from the hellish flames, but he knew that if the creature before him touched the orc even lightly, pain such as even a seasoned fighter could not imagine would rake him.

Among the other orcs it had been whispered that Nekros Skullcrusher had summoned one of the demons of lore. He did not discourage that rumor, although Zuluhed knew better. The monstrous creature guarding the dragon had no sense of independent thought. In attempting to harness the abilities of the mysterious artifact, Nekros had unleashed something else. Zuluhed called it a golem of fire—perhaps of the essence of demon power, but certainly not one of the supposedly mythical beings.

Whatever its origins or its previous use, the golem served as the perfect sentry. Even the fiercest warriors steered clear of it. Only Nekros could command it. Zuluhed had tried, but the artifact from which the golem had emerged seemed now tied to the one-legged orc.

“I enter,” he told the fiery creature.

The golem stiffened . . . then shattered in a wild shower of dying sparks. Despite having witnessed this departure time and time again, Nekros still backed up some, not daring to move forward until the last of the sparks had faded away.

The moment the orc stepped inside, a voice remarked, “I . . . knew . . . you would be . . . here soon. . . .”

The disdain with which the shackled dragon spoke affected her jailer not in the least. He had heard far worse from her over the years. Clutching the artifact, he made his way toward her head, which, by necessity, had been clamped down. They had lost one handler to her mighty jaws; they would not lose another.

By rights the iron chains and clamps should not have been sufficient to hold such a magnificent leviathan, but they had been enhanced by the power of the disk. Struggle all she might, Alexstrasza would never be able to free herself. That, of course, did not mean that she did not try.

“Do you need anything?” Nekros did not ask out of any concern for her. He only wanted to keep her alive for the Horde’s desires.