Lords Of Nocturne, page 61
‘Mercy of Vulkan...’
The reaper dwarfed the two Salamanders, its shadow engulfed them. It raised its power-scythe, sharp enough to cleave ceramite with ease.
Nihilan had left one final surprise for them. Pyriel had just triggered it unwittingly.
As the Librarians backed away from the effigy of death, Pyriel knew there would be no escape.
Death to the Salamanders!
The scythe came down on them in a glittering arc.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I
THERE BE MONSTERS...
Monsters. That was how he would describe them. The things pursuing them through the haunted alleyways of the dark city were unlike any hounds Corporal Tonnhauser had ever seen. What was more, they were not entirely in this place. Through snatched glances, he’d seen their forms shimmering, the edges of their obscene musculature blurring. It was as if the hounds were not entirely synchronised with whatever plane of existence the survivors found themselves upon.
‘Hurry, human,’ snapped one of the giants. His green armour plate was badly battered. A gash along one side was gummed with blood. A thin line of onyx-black skin was revealed beneath an inner mesh.
Tonnhauser was no artificer or enginseer – he knew almost nothing about power armour. It was the aegis of the Space Marines. It was supposed to be almost impregnable. Surrounded by seven of these legendary warriors, ushering him and what remained of his troops through a nightmare of bladed streets and spiked structures, Varhane Tonnhauser should have felt safe. He did not.
Two of the Salamanders ranged ahead, trying to find a route through the alien byways and keep them ahead of the chasing pack. Two more roamed on either flank, the Night Devils between them. Another three served as rearguard behind. Most of Tonnhauser’s men had their heads down, some even ran with their eyes shut, clinging desperately to the belts of their fellow Guardsmen. These men were lost, just like the ones whose screaming had devolved into a piteous mewling. He didn’t blame them.
Tonnhauser’s head hurt from the shrieking of the beasts and the calls of their whelpmasters. The dark eldar were travelling behind the pack on a spiked skiff that hovered above the ground through Emperor-knew-what infernal technologies. His mind was reeling. This place was hell, Tonnhauser decided. It bent reality and twisted what he accepted as possible.
As the dark city passed by in a blur, even the sight of its barbed edges making him sicken, Tonnhauser thought of his father. He was back on Stratos and fought as part of the Air Corps. He’d wanted the same for his son, but Varhane had left as part of a planetary tithe of men and materiel to the Imperial Guard. He’d wanted to see the galaxy. If he was to die then he’d do it under a foreign sky and in the Emperor’s name.
Hunted down in the desolated streets of some alien city between realities had not been a part of his glorious vision. He didn’t know what had happened to his father. Varhane hadn’t seen or spoken to the man he knew as Colonel Abel Tonnhauser, or just ‘The Colonel’, in years, ever since he’d shipped out on the heavy lander. At that moment he hoped he’d see him again.
Tonnhauser slipped, losing his footing on a jagged spur jutting from the ground. It gashed his leg, even though it only struck a glancing blow.
‘Be mindful,’ said the giant beside him, hauling Tonnhauser along so he didn’t break stride. This one was massive, even bigger than the others. His head was squared like a block of black granite and his eyes were sunken like molten pits of fire. ‘The way ahead is sharp,’ he warned. ‘Stay with me and watch your footing. We can evade the creatures.’
At the mention of the hounds, Tonnhauser glanced over his shoulder. He wanted to believe the Salamander but their pursuers would not be shaken. Even now, they were gaining. The acid-burned hides of the beasts, shaggy with clumps of blood-flecked hair, came into greater detail as they closed. Their sulphur-yellow eyes glared hungrily. Where the skin was bare, it shimmered like oil on water. It was neither one hue nor another, but an iridescent melange of many. Faces were trapped behind that flesh, the half-devoured victims of the hounds beckoning others to join them in eternal torment.
It was no fate for a soldier, no fate for any man of flesh and blood.
When Tonnhauser started to hear their plaintive voices he turned away.
‘They’re herding us,’ said the massive Salamander. One in black, the leader and some kind of preacher, answered.
‘We have to keep moving. Be ready.’
Tonnhauser didn’t like the sound of that. A loud cry made him look behind again to see a Salamander hurl a spear into one of the beasts as it pounced.
The barbed tip of the flung missile tore into the hound’s unnatural flesh, spilling ichorous fluid akin to blood. But the beast had momentum and the warrior was borne down under its massive weight. Though impaled, the hound rent his armour plate and flesh. A welter of blood marred the green as another Salamander whacked a flat-bladed sword into the beast’s flank. This one was just a vanguard. More were coming. A third warrior, the last of the rearguard, took the creature’s head with an axe. Together the two uninjured Salamanders dragged the carcass off their fallen brother and hauled the spear-hurler back to his feet. Tonnhauser thought he must be dead. Incredibly, he managed to run.
‘Here,’ shouted another from up front. He was slighter of frame, though still bulky in his armour. He wore a perpetual snarl from some kind of burn. He beckoned towards a narrow cleft in the razor-edged avenue ahead.
Darkness within. It didn’t look like salvation to Tonnhauser. It looked like a dead end. Perhaps the Salamanders thought that too. Perhaps they’d elected to make a last stand. War could be glorious when you were engineered for it, when you were superhuman. Tonnhauser was just a man, with a man’s desires and dreams. He didn’t want to die here but if that was to be his fate then he’d meet it with the same resolve as the giants around him.
‘Give me a weapon,’ he said before realising he’d spoken.
They had almost reached the cleft. Just a few more metres…
‘Forge the armour strong,’ said the other outrider opposite the massive warrior. His voice was grating. The bloody gash in his neck – looked like it was from a garrotte – forced a rasp. ‘No weak links.’
The big warrior regarded Tonnhauser. ‘No weak links,’ he repeated, and tossed him a dagger that in the human’s hands was more like a sword.
‘Once on the other side, form up in a defensive phalanx,’ the preacher – Tonnhauser had heard them call him ‘Chaplain’ – was swift to add.
‘Make a wedge behind me,’ said the big warrior. He too carried a spear. To Tonnhauser it was massive, far too large for a man to wield, yet the giant hefted it like it was nothing. There was something old in his movements, as if he’d learned his war craft somewhere other than the place that had trained his brothers.
Tonnhauser had no more time to think on it. The Night Devils were being ushered through the gap and into the darkness within.
Seconds felt like hours as they waited. The hounds were coming. Their slavering voices presaged doom. Tonnhauser thought they were in some kind of amphitheatre. Rows of broken seats delineated a wide elliptical expanse that was strewn with debris from the upper floor. Several columns, razor-edged and sculpted with obscene and daemonic faces, had collapsed in the centre too.
Dust, disturbed upon their arrival, swelled in fat clouds. Several men coughed. It was like breathing in powdered glass. It stung Tonnhauser’s eyes enough so that when he looked up to the highest echelons and thought he saw a bulky figure flitter into view and out again, he passed it off as vision blur.
‘They are coming!’ said the big warrior. His spear was levelled and his footing braced. His brothers made an arrow behind him, two at either shoulder, two more at the shoulder of the next. The last two formed a rearguard, ready to step in should any warrior fall. Tonnhauser and the Night Devils were in the middle. The distance to the opening was barely a metre. The fighting wedge filled it. Close quarters and bloody was how the fight was going to play out.
Tonnhauser gripped the haft of his sword and prayed to the Emperor.
‘Show Vulkan your mettle this day, Salamanders!’ Elysius was brandishing his crozius, his spitting fervour coming through his borrowed battle-helm in a roar. ‘Break them on the anvil, Fire-born.’
Ba’ken’s twin hearts were pumping hard. His Brother-Chaplain had stirred his warrior spirit. Three hounds were coming for them. The cleft was narrow, though. Unless they were breached, only one beast could get at the Salamanders at a time. Iagon had chosen well. The other sergeant was on Ba’ken’s right shoulder, wielding a serrated sword. The weapons could have come from any wielder. This hell-place was like a battlefield in parts. Ba’ken shuddered at the thought of the lives taken by it, at the sport made of the captives by its hunter packs. Simple blades and spears, large enough for Astartes to wield, had been easy to procure. They would only do so much. He wished he had his heavy flamer. But as the lead hound closed on Ba’ken, a spear would have to do.
Feels like home, he thought with a sad spike of nostalgia, back in Themis.
The Sanctuary City was another world away; more than just galactic distance separated it from the Salamander. Sentiment had no place in war. The battlefield respected only blood and sweat.
The hound reared up and Ba’ken stabbed it in the chest.
It struggled on the barbed tip of the spear, thrashing, exerting all its strength to free itself. Ba’ken stepped into its killing arc, ducking a swiping claw that would’ve taken his head had it connected. He came close, getting under the beast. The hound’s efforts only impaled it further.
‘Shoulder-to-shoulder!’ Ba’ken cried, taking a firmer grip on the spear and lunging hard. Iagon and G’heb obeyed, thunking sword and axe blade into the beast’s flank.
It howled – an unnatural and reverberant sound. Ba’ken smiled. It was hurt. He pushed harder and grunted when the barbed tip punched through the hound’s back, spraying gore.
He let go of the spear, bracing its haft diagonally against the ground. Muscles straining, Ba’ken seized the stricken beast’s forelegs and heaved. Iagon and G’heb rammed their shoulders in, lending weight.
The beast tipped over, spine cracking as it twisted awkwardly, and the spear was wrenched back through its chest.
At last it fell, oozing ichor, and rolled into a ragged heap.
‘Wedge forward,’ said Ba’ken, taking up his spear again.
Two more were coming. They appeared reluctant.
‘They recognise a hunter of the Arridian Plain before them, a man of Themis,’ Ba’ken revelled. He brandished his weapon in triumph, eager for another kill. Too late, he realised the beasts were being held back. A skiff hovered into view. A dark beam spat from the cannon on its prow.
It took Ba’ken in the shoulder, shredding the armoured pad and spinning him hard into Iagon. The two sergeants rolled and collapsed. One side of the wedge crumpled. In the same instant, the hounds were let slip. G’heb was still trying to fill the gap, L’sen and Ionnes coming from the rear to support him, when the beast smashed into him. It glowered over the Salamander, who was still flailing for his axe when the hound snapped its jaws and G’heb lost his head.
A fountain of blood spewed up from the dead warrior’s neck cavity, bathing human and Salamander alike. Some of the Night Devils were screaming in terror. Barging into the amphitheatre, the hound made room for its kin.
Elysius met the second beast with Ionnes and L’sen.
The first hound sprang off. A savage blow raked along Iagon’s flank and sent him sprawling off into the darkness. His scavenged sword scraped away along the ground, useless. Ba’ken was still coming to his senses when the loping beast came for him. On his back, he crabbed away and felt for his spear. The hound knew what its prey was attempting and trapped the haft with its paw. Hot saliva that smelled like oil and copper dribbled from its distended mouth. Up close there was something distinctly alien about these monsters. This one was partly scaled, with a long saurian maw. Its eyes were yellow pinpricks, beady and evil.
Ba’ken was about to leave the spear when the hound yelped and released the weapon as it turned about.
The human he’d given the dagger to was standing his ground in front of the beast.
A surge of pride turned to horror in Ba’ken as his saviour was struck a glancing blow by the beam weapon on the skiff. He lost the human from sight, but snatched his spear and got up. Ba’ken drove a heavy blow that skewered the hound from shoulder blade through to the gullet and out the other side. It was a vital wound and lathered the ground in viscous fluids. A death rattle sounded before the beast gave out and slumped dead.
‘Fall back!’ he heard Elysius cry, ‘Deeper into the ruins, fall back!’
The Chaplain’s crozius was drenched in blood and matter from where he’d bludgeoned the third hound to death. But more were coming, the skiff and the hunters too. The dark eldar had but one cannon. Judging by the blackened scar and the shorn ceramite of Ba’ken’s shoulder pad, it was a deadly one. He barely registered the pain. Suppressors in his bloodstream filtered it out, nulled it, but kept him alert. He left G’heb, mouthing a silent prayer to the primarch as he did so. The Salamander was dead. With no Apothecary in their ranks, G’heb’s legacy to the Chapter was sadly ended.
‘Brother-sergeant, move now!’
Elysius was calling him. Ba’ken was the last of them. He stooped as he made to retreat, finding the fallen human who had come to his aid, and hoisting him up onto his back.
‘Tonnhauser,’ he said, reading the boy’s ident-tag on his uniform. ‘I fought with another man who shared your name. He was brave too.’
Tonnhauser’s eyes widened in realisation before he passed out.
Elysius had arranged them into a circle, chunks of cracked stone from the upper tiers forming makeshift barricades in its arc.
They’d lost more of the humans when the hounds had broken through. Ba’ken counted four left, not including Tonnhauser. Dead or lost to the dark, he didn’t know. They were no use now, anyway. Those who remained cowered like children, unmanned by the nightmare they were living.
‘Hell has come, hell has come,’ one was saying, before L’sen cuffed him into unconsciousness.
‘Weak links,’ he reminded Ba’ken, as he joined them in the circle.
‘Not so weak, brother,’ he replied, setting Tonnhauser down within the protective circle.
L’sen grunted, though it came out as a rasp. His eyes narrowed and Ba’ken followed their gaze.
Four more hounds entered the amphitheatre. They moved with a slow yet perverse grace, like the muscled leo’nid of the T’harken Delta and ash-adders from the Themian ridges in one. Ba’ken had hunted both of these creatures. Their pelts adorned his cave in the mountains. It was a place of peace and solitude. Like many Salamanders, when on Nocturne, Ba’ken was a loner. Only through isolation could a warrior learn self-reliance and endurance. The cave seemed very far away now but the lessons learned in its confines gave him strength.
Like the inexorable tightening of the executioner’s noose, the hounds began to circle them. Ba’ken lost sight of one when it loped up a ruined stairway to the higher levels. Suddenly, the protective cordon didn’t feel quite as impregnable.
Weak links… The words of L’sen came back to him. Except now, the chain was flawed because it no longer defended all angles of attack.
‘In the higher echelons,’ he said.
‘Eyes on the enemy around our perimeter,’ Elysius replied, holding back on another sermon for now. They would have need of them when battle was joined.
Ba’ken nodded then looked sidelong at Iagon. The other sergeant was cut up badly but had managed to retrieve his sword.
‘Don’t concern yourself with me,’ he snapped, reading his brother’s expression. ‘Look to your own protection.’ The snarl quickly faded, despite Iagon’s facial injury, and he nodded back.
‘A shame we understand each other now, only to die in a last stand,’ Ba’ken remarked.
‘It’s not over yet.’
The hounds closed again, still circling. Three of the beasts rotated between the cardinal points of the Salamanders cordon, a fourth unseen and waiting to pounce.
Instinctively, the Fire-born moved back a step and tightened the wall.
Elysius was standing on a chunk of fallen column in the middle of the circle. His vantage point gave him a commanding view. He could watch for cracks in the line. He tracked the beasts as they moved into his eye-line but never once shifted position. Instead, he used his other senses to stay aware of their stalking pattern and trusted in his brother Salamanders to remain vigilant where he could not. They all did.
Again, he thought of Vulkan’s teachings, of the crucible of fire and the need for his will to be tested. He resolved not to fail and felt a palpable hum of approval emanate from the Sigil. It was unexpected. Had he imagined it?
When the narrow cleft they’d used to enter the amphitheatre was torn apart by cannon fire, the Chaplain abandoned all thoughts but one: Fight or die.
Through a miasma of dust and crumbling stone, the skiff emerged. Long and jagged, it reminded Elysius of a blade. Much like the raider which had dumped them here, this one was festooned with skulls and other trophies. It hovered low to the ground and agonisingly slowly, all to the whistles and crowing of its alien riders.
Elysius counted six, hanging off the skimmer’s fuselage or languishing on its deckplates, males and females both – though the inherent androgyny of the dark eldar race made it difficult to tell – armed with tridents, barbed nets and whips. Sadism dripped from their every pore, from the bonded leather surplices, the leering hell-masks and spiked collars.
