“The mon-keigh are here,” said Eldarec, rising to his feet to address the audience, seeing the living masks of troupers shifting amongst the inanimate faces of the mannequins. The amphitheatre was instantly transformed into a council hall. “We knew that they would come one day, that the sacred ground of Arcadia would eventually be sullied by their ugly, earnest boots.”
“Why are they here?” a voice called from the balcony. A grim-faced Harlequin rose to his feet, standing out of an immobile and sinister row of grinning mannequins. “Do they know where they are?”
“The young races have no sense of the value of things, but they act with such passionate confidence. Although the old races know this value too well, their fear of its power leads to impotence,” answered Eldarec, smiling in pleasure at his circular response.
There was silence. None knew how to reply.
“There are many things in this place that the mon-keigh know nothing about. We must ensure that these things remain hidden. There are other things here that they may have come to find.” The Great Harlequin turned the Blade Wraith in his hands, admiring its flawed form. “And we must deny them these things.”
“We are few. They are many.” Murmurs of discussion rippled around the auditorium, as though even the life-sized mannequins were enjoined in the conspiracy.
“Not so many that our numbers seem small,” countered Eldarec, his lips curling into a playful smile.
“And we are not alone.” The voice was low and resonant, echoing around the amphitheatre with profound drama. It was an expert projection by a powerful trouper, but its origin was lost in its pervasiveness.
Eldarec’s smile fixed for a moment, losing its sincere vitality. He glanced around the hall, taking in the faces and masks of each of his troupe. They appeared suddenly worried and tense, their expressions becoming fixed like those of the mannequins. They knew whose voice this was—he could be the mannequin next to them. They knew as well as Eldarec did. Discomfort and fear fell over the theatre.
“Show yourself, Karebennian!” commanded the Great Harlequin from the stage. “This is no time for your tricks.”
“Quite wrong,” echoed the reply, as though from everywhere at once. “This is the perfect time for tricks. It may be the time for nothing else.”
The voice of the Harlequin Solitaire rumbled and rolled around the theatre, tumbling with playful menace, making the Harlequins in the audience shuffle and eye-check the dolls around them. Then there was a flash of darkness and shadow, and Karebennian faded into visibility next to Eldarec. It was as though he had just climbed out of the webway itself, emerging onto the stage through an immaterial trapdoor.
Eldarec recoiled slightly, edging away from the newcomer with an obvious mix of disdain, awe and fear. The Solitaire was well known to the Harlequins of Arcadia; he had passed through the Ritual of Laughter with them long ago, emerging on the other side of that rite of passage free from the temptations and clutches of Slaanesh. But there had been something different about him even then, something dark and depthless that set him apart from his kinsmen in the masque. There had been whispers that his spirit had been touched by the essence of the Laughing God himself. In the Great Dances of the Mythic Cycles, he was drawn towards the forbidden roles until eventually his mask began to take on the terrible, daemonic visage of Slaanesh.
Shunned by his troupe and shunning them in return, Karebennian had condemned himself to the wilderness, plunging into the webway and vanishing from Arcadia for a hundred years. He lived the life of a solitary wanderer and a troubadour, dancing the matrix of the webway and losing himself in the infinite complexities of time and space, becoming one with the ancient structure itself. It was said that he even found his way to the Black Library.
Then, one fateful day, he had felt a force calling into his soul, screaming and singing and laughing at his solitary existence, drawing him back onto the stage of his people. He had flashed through the labyrinthine webway and reappeared on Arcadia in the midst of a performance of the legendary tale of the Birth of the Great Enemy, the most dangerous of all Harlequin masques. He had sprung out of an unknown and hidden portal onto the stage, immediately and naturally taking on the role of Slaanesh itself—the one role that even the Great Harlequin could not adopt without being driven into insanity. It was then that the Harlequins of Arcadia realised that Karebennian was a Solitaire—the vagabond troubadour, the lonesome traveller, the wandering warrior poet of legend.
Since then he had appeared from time to time to bring news of the other sons of Isha, and each time he had struck the souls of his kinsmen with awe and fear. Whispered legends told of how he flitted between the craftworlds and exodite colonies, how he stood guard over one of the myriad portals into the Black Library itself, and even of how he made no distinction between the eldar and their darkling cousins, performing for each in their appropriate time and place. It was said that his name was known by the leaders of every eldar and dark eldar cluster in the galaxy. “Karebennian,” said Eldarec, watching the shifting pleasures cycle over the Solitaire’s mask. “Your presence here is unexpected, as always.”
“Thank you, Eldarec the Mirthful.” The answer was almost a song, turning the respectful language back on itself, and producing a uncomfortable lilt.
Karebennian bowed with such ostentation that it resembled pantomime. There was the show of deference, but there was nothing earnest in it. Everything was a performance.
“There will be no further masques today, Solitaire.”
“I do not come to dance with you, cegorach,” he replied, using the ancient term for the Great Harlequin, playing with its syllables as though it were a puzzle. “I come with news. There are mon-keigh feet in the sands of Arcadia.”
“We know this,” answered Eldarec. “We are taking precautions to keep those things that are secret hidden, and to hide those things that appear to be plain to see.”
Glancing down at the Blade Wraith in Eldarec’s hands, a flicker of emotion wisped over the Solitaire’s mask. He nodded. “The blade of Lanthrilaq is not to be surrendered to these animals. But I suspect that the mon-keigh seek other treasures. They will take what knowledge they can, for knowledge is pleasure and knowledge is power. We must guard it well. They must not be permitted to find the portal to the Black Library.”
“The mon-keigh are strong. There is a sorcerer amongst them that is known to us. A powerful and ancient soul, rich in knowledge that should have been forbidden to it. It thirsts for more and it is hard to resist.”
“Yes, Ahriman. We have met before.”
“You have defeated him before?”
“We have met, and we both dance the webway yet.” The Solitaire’s answer was ambiguous. “We are not alone in this fight, cegorach. I have met with a seer of Biel-Tan, and she has promised to send aid. Her Bahzhakhain—the Tempest of Blades—was in ruins, but her soul spoke of other defenders of truth; she will bring them to our side. The sorcerer and his mon-keigh soldiers may have found their way to Arcadia, but we will ensure that they do not leave. If the exits are clear, then they must be obscured. Knowledge is power, and it is not to be shared with these mammalian primates.”
The troupe remained in silence, always unsure of how to respond to the elliptical speech of the Solitaire, never wholly convinced that his words contained less artistry than truth. For the Harlequins, life was a performance art. “It will be as you have said,” announced Eldarec with grave seriousness, shaking his head forlornly and looking down at the ground. Then suddenly he erupted into mirth as a broad grin cracked across his mask. The mock earnestness vanished and laughter rolled around the auditorium; the dramatic atmosphere was broken once again. With a hint of theatrics, the Great Harlequin reached out and embraced Karebennian like a long lost friend.
The Solitaire did not laugh; it was a cheap trick.
The desert shone red in the reflected light of the triple suns, as the Thunderhawk dropped through the atmosphere. It was a smoking ruin of dull metal, dripping f
lames out of its burners and scattering hull fragments in sparking rains. Entire sections of the fuselage ruptured and buckled as the gunship ploughed through the stratosphere, flaring into brilliance before breaking free and tumbling down to the ground. The Thunderhawk was falling apart even as it descended towards the barren surface of Arcadia.
“Engines?” asked Gabriel, his voice hissing with static as the vox-beads in the squad’s helmets crackled through the ionosphere. Blasts of air and waves of pressure crashed through the shredded compartments, throwing equipment and shattered parts of the structure against the Space Marines. Flames licked out of gashes in the terminals and deck, filling the interior of the gunship with an inferno of heat, smoke and flickering light. Gabriel stood in the middle of the main compartment, letting the tempest rage around him as though unwilling to acknowledge its force.
“Failing.” Ephraim was lying on his back at the rear of the compartment, his abdomen half-hidden under a torn and exposed bulk-head. His multiple, metallic arms were chittering and working in the cavity above his head, and jets of simmering oil were venting across his armour.
“How long?”
“Seconds.” Ephraim pushed himself clear of the wrecked engine block and clambered to his feet, fires burning intermittently over his arms and chest, where the oil was rendered incendiary by the harsh wind.
Only Korinth remained in the cockpit, trying to restore some element of control to the plummeting gunship. He struggled with the controls, but to no effect; the stabilisers and thrusters had failed completely as the Thunderhawk had punched into the fiery atmosphere. It was little more than a massive, flaming dead-weight crashing towards the ground.
“Distance,” demanded Gabriel, unmoving in the centre of the deck. With one arm clamped around a bent structural truss in the wall, Corallis hung out of the ruined side of the Thunderhawk, catching himself at an angle so that he could assess the distance of the vertical drop beneath the plummeting gunship. “Two thousand metres.”
Something on the distant but rapidly approaching ground caught Corallis’ enhanced and well trained eyes, glinting like a treasure under the ocean. “Captain—there is another gunship in the desert. It looks like a Thunderhawk. Not one of ours…” He hesitated for a second. “And the ground… it’s incredible.” Corallis strained his eyes to work out the intricate cracks, valleys and patterns that had been carved into the surface of the planet below. He couldn’t work out whether the work was the result of natural or artificial processes, and he couldn’t even work out what he was looking at. “It’s incredible,” he repeated.
Before Gabriel could react, an impact shook the craft suddenly, sending the remaining equipment skidding across the deck and making the Marines check their balance. It was followed in rapid succession by two more hits.
“Tanthius?” asked Gabriel, remaining in the centre of the burning deck.
“Some kind of projectile—non-explosive. Could be a primitive cannon or an advanced cluster cannon of some kind.” The Terminator sergeant peered out of the other side of the Thunderhawk, trying to catch a glimpse of what had hit them. “I cannot see the source.”
They come… The thoughts were weak and feeble, hardly even discernable in the chaos of the plummeting gunship.
Gabriel’s immovability faltered as the rasping thoughts made themselves felt. “She’s still alive,” he snapped, striding through the flames towards the broken shape of Taldeer, who was strapped and restrained in one of the crash-harnesses.
For a split second, Zhaphel and Jonas exchanged glances, then Jonas moved to help the captain as he stooped down over the bleeding body of the alien. Zhaphel watched them for a moment and then moved over to one of the brutal gashes in the cabin wall, staring out into the rush of red air outside.
“Nightwings,” he said, identifying the sleek, swift fighters that spiralled through the atmosphere around the dropping dead-weight of the Thunderhawk. The ruby radiance of the triple suns burst around the speeding shapes, rendering them into silhouettes. The swept wings of the fighters were slowly pushing forward as the crafts slowed to engagement speed. Blasts of dark projectiles hissed out of the dual-pronged noses, and lines of lasfire streaked out from under their fuselages. “Eldar fighters?” Corallis swung himself back inside the compartment and hurried over to Zhaphel to confirm the identification. “Captain,” said the veteran scout, peering out of the holed hull. “Four Nightwings, but they are not alone.”
Intermixed in the formation of the curved and smoothly shaped Nightwings were two other vessels. Their design was not wholly different, with wide, elegant, sweeping wings around a central fuselage. But the outlines were not smooth like those of the Nightwings; instead they were barbed and bristling with spiked features. There was something brutal and menacing about their shape that set them apart from the other fighters.
“Ravens,” said Corallis with foreboding.
They come for me. Taldeer’s thoughts were weak.
Stooped over her blind and bleeding body, Gabriel looked back at Corallis.
“You’re sure?” His voice betrayed his confusion and concern. Ravens were dark eldar fighters; to see them in formation with eldar Nightwings was unprecedented. Although a number of theories suggested that the two alien races were distant kin, Gabriel had never heard of any sightings of them co-operating. It had always been supposed that the two species were mortal enemies, opposed in nature and ideology.
As though to answer Gabriel’s question, a hail of splinter fire from one of the Ravens rattled and crashed against the crumbling fuselage of the Thunderhawk, followed by the sizzling and explosive impact of a Nightwing’s bright lance.
The alien fighters screamed past the Thunderhawk, ripping through the air over and under the ruined gunship, sending Corallis and Zhaphel rushing to the other side of the compartment to see the fighters peeling out of formation and turning back for another attack run.
With the light of the triple suns no longer behind them, the fighters leapt out of silhouette and into bizarre multicoloured glory. The usually black Ravens were coated in brilliant colours, daubed across their barbed yet elegant hulls in an ostentatious and vaguely comic display. Similarly, the sleek Nightwings, which were usually painted into the intricate, disciplined and uniform patterns of a craftworld army, were splattered with eclectic and brightly coloured patterns. The unlikely squadron appeared to cohere in its random and colourful abandon.
They come for me, Gabriel. I can hear them calling. The rillietann—they are singing in my mind!
“Rillietann?” asked Gabriel, distracted from the impacts and the quaking Thunderhawk by Taldeer’s thoughts. The word seemed familiar to him, but he could not place it. “What did you say?” asked Jonas, looking up from the dying seer as debris and sparks rained down over the captain next to him. “Rillietann?”
“Yes. Does that mean anything to you, father?”
“It’s an eldar word. Harlequins,” answered Jonas, rising to his feet and striding over to Corallis and Zhaphel. “They are Harlequin fighters. That explains why there is such a mixture of gunships. Conventional wisdom suggests that the Harlequins maintain relations with all of their various kin, both the eldar and the dark eldar. It seems that evidence now bears out the theory.”
As he spoke, lances of fire speared through the already shredded Thunderhawk, blasting chunks of hull and armoured panels clear out the other side of the gunship. A second later and the gloriously rag-tag squadron roared past the dropping Thunderhawk once again, banking up into the largest of the suns before turning for another run.
The coughing engines started to splutter and falter, then they simply cut out, leaving the Thunderhawk in complete freefall. At the same time another barrage of fire punched through the increasingly flimsy armour around the hull, dragging blasts of wind into the compartment and whipping the flames into new levels of intensity. The whistle of wind resisting the acceleration of gravity began to fill the cabin.
They come for me.
“Instruct them to stop,” said Gabriel, taking the prone and almost lifeless body of Taldeer by her shoulders.
They do not obey me. They are the rillietann and answer only to cegorach. They are outside the society of eldar. They come for me, but they do not come at my bidding.
Suddenly the attack ceased. Aside from the crackling of fires and the whistling of the wind, silence abruptly embraced the interior of the Thunderhawk.
“They’ve broken off the attack,” said Tanthius, watching the fighters as they held their position about a thousand metres away. “They’re matching our velocity—keeping pace with the fall.”
“Korinth?” asked Gabriel, letting Taldeer’s body slump back into the harness as he hurried into the cockpit. “Can you land this thing?”
The Librarian looked back over his shoulder at the captain, his visor reflecting the flaming ruin that wracked the main compartment behind Gabriel and his helmet obscuring the look of incredulity that flashed over his face. “No,” he said.
The body of the Harlequin mime went suddenly limp. Its feet swung back and forth in the stream of ruddy light that pushed in through the circular window of the librarium. The noose of rope around its neck was looped up over the lintel that ran over the top of the window cavity. Thickening blood coursed down its cut and violated body, dripping into a growing pool beneath its feet. If it hadn’t been dead when it was strung up, it was dead now.
Sitting at the stone desk next to the alien’s feet, the great sorcerer Ahriman leant casually over an open book. He had been staring at same page for some time as though reading and re-reading the same passage over and over again, undistracted by the hanging eldar corpse that swung gently in the breeze next to him.
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 20