Without waiting for an answer, Ahriman reached forwards and flipped the cover of my book so that it closed in my hand. He turned his head, as though to read the upside down title. Very interesting. I wondered whether you might find this.
I suddenly realised that I had no idea what the book was; I hadn’t even bothered to read its title since I pulled it down off the shelf earlier. As Ahriman’s hand closed around its spine and started to pull it away, I snapped my eyes down to its cover. What I saw there made my heart jump. There was a picture of an ancient heraldic crest: wide, black raven’s wings flanked a bead of blood, which appeared to be represented by an encrusted ruby. The script was runic, probably of eldar origin, and I did not have time to decipher the meaning before Ahriman had the unlikely treasure in his hands. He cracked open the ancient covers and leafed casually through the pages. I have seen a copy of this before, he conceded. I owned one for a long time; it was in my personal librarium. I wonder what its meaning might be for you, Angel of Vidya. As I recall, I took my copy off a seer from Biel-Tan. She seemed to have an unusual fascination for these things.
My mind was racing. I had seen that icon before. A variation on it was inscribed into my own armour. The sight of it made something spark and kindle in my soul, as though a tidal wave of memories were poised behind a massive dam, waiting to break through. And I had given it up so easily. I had picked it up in complete ignorance and then surrendered it without so much as a word. At that moment, I realised that I hated Ahriman and his intense, smug presumption. Is he testing me again? Why must everything be a test?
Because everything is a test. Ahriman’s eyes widened into depthless cavities, daring me to look into his soul.
The Venoms flashed over the desert, whipping up plumes of sand into tunnels of mist and haze that obscured their outlines even more. They banked and peeled away from predictable formations, screeching in between the knots of Blood Ravens and then returning to attack them from behind. Hails of shuriken fire erupted from the twin-linked catapults on either side of the skimmers’ fuselage. As the vehicles closed, Gabriel could see five or six Harlequin troupers on the open-topped gun-deck of each, all of the garishly colourful aliens brandishing long blades and rifles.
Watching carefully, Gabriel realised that he couldn’t make a precise head count: he concentrated his attention on one of the Venoms as it wove and threaded its way through volleys of bolter fire from Tanthius, Corallis and Ephraim. The gun-platform phased and shimmered, partially obscured by the sand-haze and the burst of red sunlight from behind it, but Gabriel focussed on the dancing figures that rode on its back. He counted four armed troupers. Then the Venom banked, twisting in mid flight to bring its main canons back round. Looking again, Gabriel could see six Harlequins on the gun-deck. It bobbed and skidded through three hundred and sixty degrees, spraying shuriken fire in a full circle before continuing to charge the Blood Ravens. Gabriel saw only three troupers on the gun-deck. It was entrancing and horrifying all at once.
Meanwhile, the Blood Ravens were in retreat. They had held their ground with fierce determination, but only long enough to reach a proper understanding of their enemy’s tactics. It was not the way of the Blood Ravens to stand and fight in an unsustainable position, and it had not taken Tanthius long to realise that they would not last long in the open desert against a squadron of Venoms.
Several hundred metres away, the phalanx of Librarians had reached the same conclusion. For a few moments, they had wondered whether retaining two separate firing points might serve to dissipate the Harlequins’ attacks, but it had become quickly obvious that that eclectic and wild attacking style of the aliens actually favoured multiple targets. The Harlequins whooped, sung and cackled as their Venoms charged through the desert between the two target groups—they were enjoying themselves.
Almost at the same moment, Tanthius and Father Urelie had signalled the retreat. The two groups moved diagonally across the sand, maintaining their firing solutions while they closed on each other and on Gabriel’s position near the smouldering and ruined Thunderhawk. They both realised that the wreckage was the only type of cover available to them, and they both suspected that a single concentrated bank of fire would be more effective against the Venoms than their split fire power.
“How many do you count?” asked Gabriel as Tanthius took up a position at his shoulder. The four Marines had clambered into the wreckage of the Thunderhawk and were using its ruined hull to protect their flanks and rear. Flames rose up around them and licked against their armour, half-hiding their blood-red shapes in the heat haze.
“Six Venoms with four in each,” answered Tanthius, tracking one of the skimmers and unleashing a constant barrage of fire from his storm bolter. His voice was tense with anger; his hit ratio was incredibly low, which was not something to which he was accustomed.
Gabriel nodded, sharing the Terminator sergeant’s frustration. “I make it five, with between three and six occupants per Venom. Corallis?”
“They seem to change, captain. I can’t decide on a fixed number. And I can’t track their trajectories either—my shells either fall short or fly past. It’s as though they are not where they appear to be, captain.” The veteran scout, who had been elevated directly out of the scout company into the command squad because of his prodigious talents and impeccable service record, was reaching the brink of his patience.
“These cursed holo-fields,” grumbled Ephraim, yelling his frustration into the wake of a volley of bolter fire. “Their armour may be feeble, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t hit the wretches!”
“This effect is not only the result of holo-fields, brothers,” said Jonas as the Librarians found their way into the gunship’s wreckage. “There is some kind of warp charge held in those skimmers—I can see it. It cycles, building to a crescendo every few seconds. Then the Venom actually dips fractionally into the warp and re-emerges into a slightly different point in space. The movement is slight, but for a second the gun-platform is literally nowhere at all, and then it reappears on a fractionally different trajectory, which throws off our aim.”
“Phase fields,” confirmed Korinth, turning his staff in a slow spin to deflect a flurry of shrieking shuriken that perforated the weakened armour of the wreckage around them. Next to him, the unflinching figure of Zhaphel stood engulfed in flames, his ancient force axe slung casually over his shoulder.
As the Blood Ravens watched, the Venoms swept into a single attack line in the middle distance and then accelerated towards the downed Thunderhawk. The Harlequins opened fire the instant that they came into range, sending sheets of shuriken hissing along in front of them, drilling them into the remnants of the gunship’s armour. Their velocity did not seem to slow, but they flickered and lurched, as though rendered in strobes of light, leaping closer with each phase shift.
The Space Marines waited for the Venoms to veer away, knowing that their most vulnerable points lay at the rear, in the engines themselves. But this time the Venoms showed no sign of turning or slowing. They ploughed relentlessly towards the Thunderhawk, as though they were going to ram it, unleashing torrents of fire in ever increasing intensity as they closed.
Suddenly they stopped. They stopped dead, less than twenty metres from the edge of the wreckage. There was no deceleration and no wavering. They just stopped and their weapons fell silent. Lithe, colourful figures sprang out of each of the four Venoms, arraying themselves in front of their vehicles in various theatrical poses. They held a range of bladed weapons and a number of rifles, but none of them moved to attack. They appeared as though frozen in time.
Wind blew through the space that separated the aliens from the Space Marines, and red dust clouds passed between them.
As the gust of wind died down, a single figure could be seen walking through the no-man’s land. It was a slight, female form, staggering and stumbling as though walking required an incredible effort of will and balance. It was walking out of the lapping flames at the edge of the wrecka
ge and towards the alien lines.
“Taldeer!” Gabriel gasped with genuine emotion. He had thought she was dead. He had thought that he had let her die, that he had killed her—another death on his conscience.
As though hearing his call, the eldar seer stopped and turned. She gazed back into the flames and ruination of the Thunderhawk, her eyeless cavities black and cavernous in her elegant, blood-stained face. It was the face of death itself.
Gabriel.
She dropped to her knees in the sand, unable to maintain her blind balance any more. Gabriel lurched forwards, vaulting over the armoured panels that provided his cover and rushing forwards through the flames.
“Gabriel!” yelled Jonas in disbelief. “Gabriel, what in Vidya’s name are you doing?”
The Commander of the Watch ignored the father Librarian and strode on through the flames and the clouds of sand. Out in the desert, he could see a leaping figure dart out from the Harlequin line and dance towards the fallen seer. It flipped and tumbled, moving with exquisite ease over the sand as though it were weightless. Gabriel ploughed through the desert, raising plumes of sand from the impacts of his heavy boots. Before he reached her, Gabriel saw Taldeer fall forwards onto her face in the desert. By the time he knelt at her side and rolled her onto her back, she appeared dead. There was a shimmer of light, like a corona around her body, and then she simply faded away.
You have done this, human. The thoughts were cold and heavy, like ancient ice.
Looking up, Gabriel saw the contorted and terrible features of death projected on the rictus mask of the Harlequin Shadowseer staring down at him. There was pure hatred and terror held in that expression, as though it had been conjured as a weapon in itself.
As he rose to his feet, towering over the slender form of the Harlequin, Gabriel could not wrest his eyes from the alien’s mask. But the mask swam and shifted as he watched. Then it seemed to split into two, cracking the Shadowseer down the middle as though he were multiplying by fission or mitosis. Two Shadowseers split into four and then four into eight, until Gabriel thought that he would be surrounded. He shook his head, knowing at some level that this was a trick, but it was not being played on his eyes. Somehow, the Shadowseer was playing tricks directly on his mind.
Ripping his chainsword from its holster against his leg, Gabriel roared and thrashed it into a crescent, pushing it through the multiplying images. His head was beginning to throb and pound. Glittering lights swam in front of his eyes, but he couldn’t tell whether they were actually dancing in his head. His spluttering chainsword hacked through a couple of the Shadowseers, making them flicker and falter, but they sprung backwards with the others, leaping out of range.
Roaring again, trying to force the intrusion out of his mind by sheer power of will and volume, Gabriel lurched forwards again, thrashing at the leering faces of the menacing aliens. At the same time, volleys of bolter fire lashed past his head, shredding the multiple images, which flickered but remained in place. Behind him, Gabriel could faintly hear the stampede of boots as the other Blood Ravens broke cover and stormed to support their beleaguered captain. But he heard them as though they were in another world. Ahead, behind the growing wall of Shadowseers, Gabriel could sense the movement of the other Harlequins dashing towards him. Clusters of grenades detonated all around, sending sparkling fields of colour and spiralling images erupting through the desert, like hallucinations.
“For the Great Father and the Emperor!” he yelled, struggling to focus his mind and bring his roiling thoughts under control. As he charged towards the central figure in the line of Shadowseers, conscious that he was leading his Marines in their attack, a grenade fell through the alien’s immaterial body from behind. It detonated in the air just in front of Gabriel and he dove to the ground, throwing himself flat. But he never hit the sand. In place of an explosion of fire, a wave of gravitational disruption crashed over the captain, leaving him struggling to maintain his balance and holding him fractionally above the ground. His mind swam, riddled with sparkling lights and a single, silvering voice that he thought he recognised. For the first time in nearly a century he felt helpless and lost, and his mind reached for the security of the silver tone.
For a moment it was like he was swimming in the air, and then the Harlequins were upon him.
CHAPTER NINE: ASCENSION
A volley of bolter fire punched into the rear of the rapidly retreating Venom. Its holo-field flickered and crackled intermittently, as though it were shorting out as it pitched and shook through the desert, weaving erratically through the smoking remains of the other skimmers. The triple suns of Arcadia started to dip below the horizon in front of it, and a sudden blast of cold air rippled through the desert.
Korinth lowered his staff and yelled into the wake of the fleeing skimmer, sending a jagged spear of warp energy cracking into its rear vents, making the image splutter and flash violently. It pulsed and convulsed, as though bursting into darkness, and then vanished completely as the warp field ruptured and exploded.
The Blood Ravens were surrounded by the smoking ruins of Venoms. Behind them was the wreckage of their Thunderhawk, which had crashed into the desert, utterly ruined. Fires blazed uncontrollably in its carcass, sending shimmering heat waves pulsing over the surface of the desert, even as the Arcadian suns vanished and a hideous cold descended on the planet.
The corpses of Harlequins were scattered over the sand, broken and wretched, riddled with bolter holes and warp scars. In the midst of the battle, Zhaphel had noticed that unlike their eldar brethren, the Harlequins had made no effort to recover the waystones from their fallen kinsmen. Stooping down over one of the corpses, the Librarian rolled it onto its back and inspected its ruined armour: there was no waystone set into the chest. The Harlequins obviously had some other way of protecting their souls from the lust of their daemons. Staring after the vanished Venom, Gabriel saw the suns dip below the horizon and felt the blast of icy night roll over him. His sealed armour adjusted to the terrible cold in an instant, but the fractional delay was enough for him to realise the extent of the climatic change that had just engulfed his team.
Looking down at his feet, the Blood Ravens captain saw the indentation in the sand where the wretched and ruined body of Taldeer had fallen, before it had vanished. Her body had looked utterly violated and lifeless. The cavities that had once held such radiant eyes had been dark and vacant. Surely she had died? But Gabriel had thought that of her once before.
As he watched, a sudden blast of icy wind whistled over her imprint in the sand, and froze it into the surface of the desert, coating the indentation in an instant, delicate and glittering array of crystals.
“Which way?” asked Gabriel, turning and stomping through the sand towards Corallis. “We have to get moving.”
Sitting on the twisted remains of a skimmer, the scout sergeant nodded, looking up from his damaged augmetic arm. One of the Harlequin blades had punctured his forearm and forced its way through the bionics until it was hilt-deep. After the encounter with the eldar of Biel-Tan on Tartarus, Corallis had lost most of his right-hand side. Now the Harlequins of Arcadia had ruptured his replacement augmetic arm as well. The sergeant inspected the wound for a moment longer and then gripped the hilt of the blade with his other hand and ripped it out of his arm. An electric crackle and spark danced in the suddenly open wound momentarily.
“The rock aberrations were to the south,” explained Corallis. “If there is a settlement in this region of the desert, then it will be there.”
“And the other Thunderhawk?” asked Jonas, his voice tinged with a dark concern.
“I don’t think that it lies between us and the settlement, father,” replied Corallis, trying to remember the exact scene that he had seen from the plummeting gunship. “Do you want to investigate it, captain?”
Gabriel appeared to ignore the question. He pulled himself upright and turned to scan the horizon. “No,” he said, finally, as though struggling against his nat
urally inquisitive tendencies. “The important thing is what those Space Marines are doing now—the Thunderhawk itself is of little concern to us. If we need to know about the occupants of that gunship, we will find them soon enough—probably in the settlement you speak of. The urgencies of time must provoke leaps of faith in us all, sergeant. South, then.” Without waiting for responses from the others, Gabriel strode off through the icy desert, the flickering light of his burning Thunderhawk lapping against his blood-red armour.
The frozen desert held crisp indentations that suggested a dozen footprints. Corallis stooped and inspected them in the near darkness.
“There are three groups of prints, captain: perhaps a squad tracking an individual of similar size and weight.” He paused and looked up at Gabriel. “They look like the prints of Space Marines.”
The captain nodded, staring ahead into the outskirts of the stone city that had gradually emerged from the labyrinthine matrix of rock formations in the desert. He realised immediately that whatever intelligence had designed this city, it was a military mind: the entire city was immaculately camouflaged into its environment, and the approach through the rocks was narrow and twisting—the perfect defensive formation.
Not for the first time, Gabriel found himself struck with admiration for the ingenuity of the eldar.
“You mentioned three sets of prints, sergeant?” he asked finally, looking down at the crouching form of the scout.
“Yes, captain. But the third are completely different: much smaller and lighter—they hardly leave any prints at all. Their trail is intermittent and broken, as though they were leaping or vanishing completely from time to time.”
“Harlequins?”
“Very likely, captain.”
“What are they doing?”
“It appears that they are tailing the individual Marine. They are not distracted by the trail of the squad, which suggests that they moved ahead of that squad or that they were able to differentiate between the hunters and the prey.”
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 22