We all remained like that for the space of many thoughts. The Four pointed at me. The man wreathed in light walked toward me, never seeming to come any closer.
Drink, they told me.
I lifted the cup to my lips. I took a sip. The liquid had a complex taste: sweet to begin with, then bitter. I felt it flow down my throat, hot and vital. As soon as I had started, I felt an urge to keep drinking. I wanted nothing more than to swallow it all down, to drain it to the dregs.
Drink, they told me.
After that one sip, I put the cup down, crouching carefully and resting it on the earth before me. For all my care, it spilled a little, staining my fingers. Then I took a step away from it.
I bowed to the Four, not wishing to give offence. I spoke, not really knowing where my words came from.
'It is courteous to take a small amount,' I said. 'That is enough for us.'
The Four lowered their arms. They did not command me again. The man stopped walking, still just where He had been when I had first seen Him.
I felt that I had disappointed all of them. Perhaps, though, I had disappointed Him less than I had them.
The vision began to fade. I could feel the hardness of the real world reasserting itself. The sunlit plain before me rippled like water, and I saw gaps of darkness under it.
I wanted to stay. I knew that my return to the world of the senses would be painful.
I looked again at the man, hoping to make out something of His face before the dreaming ended.
I saw nothing but light, flickering and wheeling around a core of brightness. There was no warmth in that light; just brilliance. He was like a cold sun.
When His light was taken away, though, I felt the loss of it.
* * *
I WOKE, FOR real that time, shuddering from the chill. My limbs ached, and were as red as raw meat. I tried to move and felt spikes of agony in my joints. Everything hurt - I felt flayed.
It was dawn. Below me the plains were milky with mist. I saw an arrowhead of birds scud across them, moving just like our formations of mounted warriors did. Pale lines of smoke rose up through the mist, the last remnants of the fires that had burned through the night.
I forced myself to move. After a while, the worst of the pain began to ebb. I jogged and waved my arms, unstiffening my knees and my elbows. Blood started to flow around my body again. I was still very cold, but movement helped.
I could still remember my visions. I knew what they were. Uig, the khan's old zadyin arga had told me to expect them. That was the test of heaven - once the visions came, they would never leave.
I didn't know how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was confirmation of what I had always believed about myself. On the other, it presaged a life of loneliness.
A zadyin arga was not a warrior. He did not travel the plains in lacquer armour fighting for his khan: his life was a solitary one, shackled to the gers, protected at all times and forced to root through entrails and scry the stars. The position was one of honour, but not of the highest honour. Like all the boys of the tribe, I had dreamed of riding the steppes, taking war to the enemies of my brothers and of my khan.
As I stood, shivering upon the slopes of the Ulaav, watching the mist boil away from the plains, I contemplated telling them that the test had failed; that my golden eyes were nothing more than a strange, harmless affliction.
I even began to wonder whether the things I had seen had been nothing more than dreams, the kind that everybody has. I tried to make myself believe that.
Then I looked down at my hands. The ends of my fingers were still stained red.
I stuffed those hands into the sleeves of my clothes, unwilling to look at them. Slowly, I started to walk back the way I had come.
I had passed from one way of being into another during that night. The change was profound, and over the wearing years I would gradually learn just how profound - back then, though, it felt like almost nothing had changed. I was still a child, and I knew nothing of what powers had been stirred into life within me.
Even now, more than a century later, I am still a child in that respect. We all are, those of us with power: we know so little, we see so imperfectly.
And that is both a great curse and a great blessing, for if we knew more and saw more perfectly then we would surely go mad.
IT TOOK ME longer to travel down from the heights than it had taken me to climb them. I stumbled often, slipping down loose banks of scree with my numb limbs. When the sun came up fully my pace improved. I stopped only as I neared the level of the plains, back at the head of the valley I had walked up the previous day.
I saw what remained of my escort's camp from a distance, and immediately knew that something was wrong. I crouched down beside the trunk of a tree and screwed my eyes up, peering down a long, meandering river-course to where the khan's warriors had left me.
The aduun were gone. I saw bodies on the ground in awkward poses. I felt my heartbeat quicken. Twelve warriors had come with me into the mountains; twelve bodies lay on the ground around the remains of the fire.
I moved closer to the trunk. I had no idea what to do. I knew that I needed to get back to the khan's side, but also that I was now dangerously exposed. The plains were no place to travel a|one - there were no hiding places out on the Altak.
I would have waited there longer had I not heard them coming for me. From somewhere higher up, I heard the snap of branches and the loud, careless voices of soldiers singing in a language I didn't know.
A single word flashed through my mind, chilling my blood.
Khitan.
Somehow I had passed them on the way down - they must have been hunting for me up in the highlands, and only dumb luck had carried me past them undetected.
They were close, rooting through the undergrowth. For all I knew there were more of them, crawling across the Ulaav like ants out of a kicked nest.
I didn't stop to think. I ran, darting out of the cover of the trees and tearing down to where the khan's men had been killed. Even as I skidded and slipped down the steep path I could hear the cries of the Khitan as they caught sight of me and lumbered into pursuit.
I ran as hard as I could, feeling my lungs burn as my breathing became heavy. I ran like an animal runs, fuelled by fear. I didn't look back.
My only thought was to get clear of the hunters, to get out into °Pen ground, to find the khan. He led the mightiest warband on the Altak, one that grew every day. He would be able to protect me even if the Khitan who chased me numbered in hundreds.
But I had to find him. Somehow, I had to stay alive long enough to find him.
I knew his reputation. I knew that he moved around without warning, shifting from place to place to keep his enemies guessing. Even Uig, who could see all paths, had called him the berkut - the hunting eagle, the far-ranger, the elusive.
Such thoughts did not help. I forced my mind to remain fixed on the task. I kept running, leaping over briars and swerving around boulders. The voices of my hunters followed me, and I heard their boots thud against the earth.
I had no more choices to make. All the ways of the future had narrowed down to a single course, and I could do nothing but follow it.
I ran down from the mountains and out into the plains-grass beyond. I had no plan, no allies, and little hope. All I had was my life, newly enriched with visions of another world. I intended to fight for it, but did not yet know how.
IV. SHIBAN
WE KNEW THEY would make a fight of it in the end. Once there was nowhere left for them to run, they turned and faced us.
They had chosen a good place to make their stand. High in Chondax's northern hemisphere, the endless white plains eventually crumpled into a maze of ravines and jagged peaks, a scar on the open face of the world that was visible from space. We had never penetrated far into that region, opting to clear the orks from the plains first. It was natural defensive terrain - hard to enter, easy to hide in.
When our auspex op
erators had seen it from orbit, they had called it teghazi: the Grinder. I think that was their idea of a joke.
I stood in the saddle, looking out at the first of the many cliffs rising up against the northern horizon. I could see long trails of smoke rising from the heart of the rock cluster.
I raised magnoculars to my eyes and zoomed in. Metal artefacts had been placed amid the stone, glinting in the bright sunlight. The orks had built walls across narrow ravine entrances, using material stripped from their own vehicles. Knowing that they would not need them again, they had turned their only means of movement into their only means of defence.
I approved of that.
'They are well positioned,' I said scanning across the fortifications.
'They are,' said Torghun, standing beside me and also using magnoculars. Our two brotherhoods spread out behind us in their assault formations, waiting for the order to advance. 'I see fixed weapons. They've got numbers.'
I swept my view across to the nearest of the ravine mouths facing us. Walls were clearly visible, placed further back between the jaws of the ravine and strung across the gully floor in a line of metal panels and bolted struts. I could see orks patrolling along the top of them. As Torghun had noted, there were weapon towers lodged higher up the ravine slopes.
'This will be difficult,' I said.
Torghun laughed.
'It will, Shiban.'
In the days since we had joined forces, I had not found it easy to understand Torghun. Sometimes he would laugh and I would not know why. Sometimes I would laugh and he would look at me strangely.
He was a good warrior, and I think we both respected one another when it came to blades. We had destroyed two more convoys before we had arrived at the Grinder, and I had seen at first-hand how his brotherhood fought.
They were more structured than we were. I rarely gave my brothers orders once an engagement started: I trusted them to look after themselves. Torghun gave his warriors orders all the time, and they followed them instantly. They used speed, just as we did, but were quicker to adopt fire positions when the combat became more static.
Some tactics I never saw them adopt. They never pulled back, feigning retreat in order to draw out the enemy.
'We don't retreat,' he had said.
'It is effective,' I had replied.
'More effective to let them know you'll never do it,' he had said, smiling- 'When the Luna Wolves go to war, the enemy knows they'll never stop coming forward, all the time, wave after wave, until it's over. It's a powerful reputation to have.'
I could hardly argue against the record of the Warmaster's Legion. I had seen them fight. They were impressive.
So, as I scanned the greenskins' defences, I had little idea what Torghun would propose. I feared that he would advocate waiting until other minghan reached our position, and I did not relish disputing with him. I wished to maintain our momentum, since I knew that other brotherhoods would already be entering combat on the far sides of the huge ravine complex. If we were to gain the honour of fighting alongside the Khagan - who would surely be at the heart of the action - then we would have to remain at the forefront of the closing circle.
'I do not wish to wait,' I said firmly, putting my magnoculars down and looking at Torghun. 'We can break them.'
Torghun did not reply immediately. He continued looking out at the distant cliff-faces, scanning for weaknesses. Eventually he stopped and looked at me.
He grinned. I had seen that grin before; it was one of the few gestures we shared. He grinned before he entered battle, just as I did.
I think you're right, brother,' he said.
WE CAME IN hard over on the left flank of our target, building quickly to attack speed, burning across the plains in close-packed squadrons. I crouched low in the saddle, gripping the controls of my mount, feeling the animal grind of the engines, the hard vibrations of the blazing thrusters, the violent urgings of the caged machine-spirit. My brothers spread out on either side of me, speeding across the white earth in perfect formation.
The ravine entrance we had chosen was narrow - two hundred metres across, as the auspex read it - and clogged with defenders. We skirted wide, using the cliffs jutting out on either side of its jaws to mask our approach. I felt my braided hair whip against my shoulder guards. We ate up the ground, devouring it, tearing it up in a blaze of furious motion.
We had timed our run to coincide with the rising of the third sun. As it emerged behind us, flaring silver, blinding the defenders to our advance, I cried out to greet it.
'For the Khagan!' I roared.
For the Khagan! came the thunderous, rapturous response.
I relished that: five hundred of us on the charge, thundering into range at searing velocity, wreathed in a dazzling corona of silver and gold, our jetbikes bucking and swerving. I saw Jochi alongside me, hurling out battle-cries in Korchin, his eyes alive with bloodlust. Batu, Hasi, the rest of my minghan-keshig, they all hunkered forward, all straining at the leash.
The first volleys of defensive fire snapped and bounced around us, a motley rain of solid rounds and crude energy bolts. We weaved amongst them, goading our jetbikes ever faster, glorying in their superb poise, rush and tilt.
The jutting cliffs zoomed up to meet us. We came around, leaning heavily, scraping the ground before racing into the mouth of the valley beyond.
We cleared the cover of the cliffs, and our senses were overrun by a crashing, coruscating storm of incoming fire. A hurricane of projectiles spiralled out of the walls ahead of us, blowing up in our faces and hurling bikes end-over-end.
A rider close to me took a direct hit. His mount disintegrated, ripped apart in a shower of metal and promethium, flying crazily across the ravine and slamming into the ground in a smear of flame and debris. Warriors were hurled from their saddles, had holes punched through their armour, were sent careering into the rock walls where they exploded in massive, blooming fireballs.
None of us slowed. We hurtled down the ravine, maintaining attack speed, ducking and swaying around the lines of fire, rising above it to widen the field before plunging back down to ground level and letting it streak over our heads.
I poured on more power, feeling my bike shudder with the strain. The land around was a mess of streaked, blurred white - only the metal walls ahead remained in focus. I felt shots graze against my bike's forward armour, nearly throwing me out of line. More of my brothers went down as the torrent of flak and shrapnel took them.
The walls screamed closer. I saw orks leaping about on top of them, waving their weapons and roaring challenges. Gun towers zeroed in on us, swivelling to let loose before we hit them.
We opened up. A pounding cacophony of heavy bolter fire snarled out, filling the ravine with a ragged hail of ruinous, withering destruction. The walls disappeared behind bursting clouds of explosive devastation. Metal plates snapped and dented, blowing apart in a hail of splinters. I saw greenskins thrown high into the air, their bodies shredded open by the flood of shells.
Just then, as he had promised they would, Torghun's heavy support opened fire. His auxiliary squads had broken off, making the most of the screen of our frontal assault and securing high ground on either side of the ravine. They possessed tools of devastation that we didn't carry: lascannons, missile launchers, barrel-cycling autocannons, even an esoteric beam-weapon they called a 'volkite culverin', something I had never seen before.
Their barrage was devastating, igniting the air around it, cracking into the barrier ahead of us and dousing it in a cataract of raging, swimming energy. Huge rents were blown open. Panels struts and spars went spinning, tearing through the curtains of flame. Missiles streaked in, angling through the storm of destruction, whistling past us and crashing into the burning ork lines beyond. Neon-bright spears of energy snapped and fizzed, sending lurid glows racing along the rock walls.
I picked my target, aiming for a fire-rimed breach in the walls. I hurtled through the inferno towards it, feeling sheets o
f flame sweep and shimmer across me. I swung over almost to the horizontal, letting an ork missile whine past. Then I rocked back upright, kicked in a final boost and shot clean through the ragged gap in the walls.
Something must have hit me as I burst through the defences. I felt a thud somewhere under the bike's undercarriage, and it spun away hard right. I grappled with the controls, barely arresting a fatal spin.
The world slurred around me, rocking and spiralling. I could hear other jetbikes streak through the gouges in the walls and turn their heavy bolters upon the defenders. I had a brief glimpse of the ravine on the far side - studded with ramshackle barricades and choke-points, crawling with whole gangs of orks, all of them teeming with brutish fury. Gunfire, thick and incessant, criss-crossed the narrow defile, broken by airborne bursts and flak clouds.
I swung around, diving under a flurry of incoming rounds before gunning my faltering drive unit again. Trailing smoke, my bike lurched and bucked before it gave out completely, throwing me into a sharp dive.
The rocky ground rushed toward me in a sickening plummet. I leapt, hurling myself from the saddle. I hit the ground hard and rolled away, hearing the sharp crack of my bike impacting on the ravine floor, followed by the whoosh and bang of its fuel tanks going up.
I jumped to my feet as wreckage rained down around me, my glaive already poised. I'd come about two hundred metres beyond the walls. I could see the barrier from the other side - the scaffolding collapsing, the ammo-lifters going up like torches, the shuddering impacts from Torghun's punishing long-range fire. Bodies were everywhere, falling from the tottering parapets, swarming over the rock. The air was dense with an incredible fog of noise - screams, bellows, jetbike engines throttling up, cannons discharging.
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