Honourbound - Rachel Harrison
Page 42
The captive had an insignia pin after all. A small dark badge fixed to his torn collar. It had been blackened to dull its gleam, which is why Olort hadn’t spotted it at first.
He unfixed it. A skull, with a straight dagger placed vertically behind it.
‘Mortekoi,’ he said. Ghost.
‘Magir?’ the sirdar asked, blade poised.
‘Ger shet khet artar, Sek enkaya sar vahakan,’ said Olort. This is one of the special ones, the ones He whose voice drowns out all others has told us will lead the way to the Victory.
Olort looked at the pin again, then slipped it into his tunic pocket.
‘Voi het tasporoi dar,’ he ordered. Make him ready for transport.
The sirdar nodded and sheathed his blade.
Olort looked at the captive.
‘Mah-koll,’ he said, with a soft smile. ‘Ver voi… you are a ghost, kha? A ghost? Mortekoi, kha?’
The captive looked directly at him.
‘Nen mortekoi,’ he said. ‘Ger tar Mortek.’
Olort jerked backwards. The sirdar and the Son started in surprise, and looked at the damogaur, bewildered. The Imperial had just used their language fluently. I am no ghost. I am death.
Mkoll lashed out with his right hand. The brass hook-pin that had once fastened his missing label had been straightened and concealed in his palm. He punched it into the packson’s neck just below the ear.
The Son reeled away, yelping and clawing at his neck. Mkoll was already turning on the sirdar. He grabbed the sirdar’s right wrist, snapped his arm straight, and twisted, forcing the officer over in a helpless, painful stoop. Mkoll brought his knee up into the officer’s bowed face.
The sirdar dropped to his knees, lifting a spray of blood. Mkoll maintained the arm lock, reached over the officer’s hunched back, and yanked out his skzerret.
He pivoted, locking the arm in a tighter twist with his left hand, meeting the charging Son with his right. The packson still had the pin jutting out of his neck. The ritual blade sliced through the Son’s throat. He staggered backwards, blood jetting between his clamping hands, and fell sideways, lifting waves that churned the surface of the blood pool.
Olort lunged at Mkoll. Mkoll kicked him in the gut and folded him up. Everything was slick and sticky with blood. The kneeling sirdar managed to wrench his wrist out of the armlock.
He tried to tackle Mkoll. Mkoll blocked him with a forearm, grabbed him just below the left elbow, and forced him to turn with another twist. The sirdar barked in pain. He was rotated. Mkoll forced the trapped left arm up like the lever of a pump, and punched the skzerret hilt-deep in the sirdar’s armpit.
Mkoll wrenched the blade out, and the sirdar dropped on his face in a violent splash. Olort was trying to back up, trying to rise, trying to breathe. He floundered in the blood pool.
He pulled out his sidearm, but Mkoll kicked it away. Mkoll grabbed him by the front of his soaked tunic, dragged him to his feet and slammed him back against the mosaic wall. He put the skzerret to the damogaur’s throat.
The saints watched, eyes wide.
No one was coming. The Sons in the anteroom outside were used to cries of pain and dismay echoing from the chamber.
‘What did you mean… special ones?’ Mkoll hissed.
‘Voi shet–’
‘My language!’ Mkoll whispered. ‘I know you have some. Why are we marked out by your Anarch?’
‘Khet nen–’ Olort gurgled.
Mkoll pinned him by the throat with his left forearm, and used the edge of the ritual knife to cut open the seam of the damogaur’s tunic pocket. He fished out the Tanith pin and held it up for Olort to see.
‘Why does this matter?’ he growled.
‘Y-you are the ones,’ Olort gasped. ‘He whose voice drowns out all others has identified this. You are enkil vahakan. You–’
‘Those who hold the key of victory.’
‘Kha! Kha! Yes!’
‘So he fears us?’
Olort shook his head.
‘Nen. He will take the key from you. For the woe is already within you.’
‘Woe?’
‘The Herit ver Tenebal Mor!’
‘The bad shadow? The Heritor’s bad shadow?’
‘Yes. It was cast upon you a long age ago, mortekoi.’
Mkoll glared into the damogaur’s eyes. He relaxed his grip.
‘Next question,’ he whispered. ‘How do we get out of here?’
Click here to buy Anarch.
To Mum and Dad, for every museum trip, every library visit and all of those plastic dinosaurs.
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Marc Lee.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-869-2
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