Glaive shoved the dying drukhari to the ground. ‘Somewhat. It’s less spongy than ork. More brittle than a human’s.’ He wiped his blade on his trousers and tasted the air. There were more of them on the way. This was the third scout they’d taken in as many hours, but those were not the only ones they’d seen. Most were too fast – zipping along on jetbikes, or in their anti-gravity vessels. They’d made no attempt to intercept those.
But some were on foot, navigating the craggy contours of the webway with inhuman grace and skill. Unfortunately for the drukhari, Glaive and his packmates had been all but raised in the webway. They had been taught its dangers from birth, and hunted its corridors with only a knife for protection as a means of proving themselves.
Spar drew her knife and knelt beside the twitching xenos. ‘I look forward to the experience.’
The drukhari’s eyes widened as she began to saw through the top of its head. Even dying and paralysed, it understood what was happening. That made the meal all the sweeter, in Glaive’s opinion.
‘Scouts?’ Spar asked, around a mouthful.
‘Scouts,’ Glaive said, chewing thoughtfully. Though their omophageac abilities were not so refined as that of the Space Marines, they could make some small use of their prey’s thoughts and feelings. He closed his eyes. Dim impressions of many vehicles, following in the wake of… something. Something vast. Too large to be a simple transport. Something so large that the reverberations of its passing could be felt for leagues in all directions.
Without opening his eyes, he touched the ground. As ever, he felt the soft susurrus of the psychoplastics – the movement of souls, the hum of psychic energy. Whatever one called it, it was a constant pressure on his senses. Almost comforting.
But overlaying that was something else. A distant tremor, growing stronger.
‘What do you think it is?’ Spar asked, in a soft voice.
Glaive shook his head. ‘Only the Benefactor knows.’ He sniffed. ‘Do you smell that?’
She sniffed. The others did as well. A new scent – or an old one. It itched at the back of Glaive’s mind, like a half-forgotten memory. Something – someone – was watching them. He reached for his autopistol, but stopped when he saw that Spar already had her autogun up. Targeting lasers flashed across the walls of their hideaway. It had been an outpost of some kind, once. A way station for aeldari travellers. Now it was little more than a crevasse.
Glaive signalled for the others to stay where they were and leapt lightly for the wall. Instinctively, he found handholds and began to swing himself up. Swiftly, he scaled the wall, following the scent. The others tracked him, waiting for him to flush their observer out of hiding. He hauled himself up onto a wide ledge, and paused.
There were ashes. A campfire. He touched them, feeling how cold they were. There was a clatter above him. He leapt aside as something heavy crashed down where he’d been standing. It took him a moment to realise it was a drukhari – a kabalite warrior, skin and armour smudged with powdered psychoplastics as a crude form of camouflage. The drukhari was dead, its neck broken.
Something sharp pressed itself to his neck a moment before he heard Spar’s bark of warning. He froze. Again, the familiar scent invaded his nostrils.
‘G-great-grandmother?’ he said.
The knife slid away from his neck.
‘It was waiting for you. Tracking your movements. Watching you pick off its fellows. They do not know the loyalty of pack, only the loyalty to self. It was hunting you, even as you hunted its comrades. And I was hunting it.’
Glaive turned and looked into the weathered features of his great-grandmother. Of Igori. The renegade. He froze, torn between instinct and duty.
She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the brow.
‘You will take me to him, boy. Now.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Last Orders
‘Benefactor.’
Fabius set down the dataslate he’d been studying. ‘Ah, Mayshana. You have something to report?’ His laboratorium was mostly empty now. Even the vatborn were all but gone. He had not seen them leave, but knew that they would find their way to Omega Redoubt somehow.
‘The scouts have returned.’
‘Casualties?’
‘None. They collected a good number of ears.’ She sounded pleased. Fabius felt some satisfaction as well. The drukhari were often skilled combatants, one on one. A kabalite warrior was often more than a match for any human soldier.
‘And what did they collect beside ears? Some useful reconnaissance, I trust.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. And something else as well.’
Fabius caught something in her expression. ‘Something is upsetting you, my child?’
‘You have a… visitor.’
‘Ah.’ He was silent for a moment, considering. Then, ‘Show her in.’
Mayshana frowned. She wanted to argue. He could read it in her eyes. But she would not. Mayshana was not Igori. She had not been born beneath his knives, but naturally. She was a child of the third generation, and she did not feel the gratitude of a creation for a creator. He suspected that she viewed him as somewhere between a pack-leader and a god. She was loyal because loyalty was bred into her, not out of her own free will.
Instead, she bowed and turned, signalling to her warriors, waiting outside. The hatch slid open, admitting a tall figure. Igori was much changed since he’d last seen her. But the look in her eyes was all too familiar.
‘Benefactor.’
Her face was seamed by experience as well as age. It bore nearly a century of new scars. But it was the same face.
‘I remember you as a child,’ he said softly. He tried to smile, but felt it turn to a grimace. ‘So lethal, even at that age.’ He reached for her, and she stepped back. He frowned. Even now, even after all that had passed between them, her reticence hurt worse than any wound.
‘I am not a child.’
‘No. And yet, to me you always will be.’
‘Then why did you abandon us?’
Fabius paused, trying to find the words. ‘I thought – I wanted…’ He shook his head. ‘No. I did not think of you at all. That is the truth. I assumed that you would be here when I returned. I did not consider the alternative.’
‘Why did you not come for me, when you returned?’
Again, silence. Rationalisations and explanations chased each other through his head. How to explain – how to condense something so complex?
‘Because I understood,’ he said finally. It sounded weak. Almost plaintive. As if he could not bear to say the words. ‘I understood. And I hoped you would come back.’
She stared at him as he loomed over her, ill at ease. He imagined that for the first time she saw the weakness in him. Not of the body, but of the spirit. The need to be in control, the need to be loved, feted for his wisdom and kindness. To be the perfect father and god in one. Whether he admitted it to himself or not, it ate at him like acid. And it would kill him in the end, as surely as a blade or a bullet. He touched his chest, feeling the bite of the stone knife.
‘Is that why you sent Arrian to me?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I have enacted the Omega Protocols. You will take your… tribe and enter the webway. I–’
‘No.’
Fabius stared at her. ‘What?’
‘No. We will not abandon our kingdom. This world is ours.’
‘I do not think that you understand the gravity of the situation. You have never faced a foe like this. You are unprepared…’
Igori bowed her head. ‘Then prepare us. We are your weapons, Benefactor. Sharpen our blades. Ready us for war.’ She looked up at him. ‘It is all we have ever asked of you.’
Fabius shook his head. ‘No. No, I have made arrangements. You will go. You must. Someone must see to your people in my absence. I can think of no o
ne better than you.’ He did not look at Mayshana as he spoke, but he felt her eyes on him.
‘And I have said that I will not go.’
‘You will not obey him?’ Mayshana barked.
Igori glanced at her, and a slow smile curved across her face. Her hand rested on her knife. ‘Do you remember when I spoke to you of my dream, granddaughter?’
Mayshana hesitated, and bowed her head.
Fabius looked back and forth between them. ‘Dream? What dream? What are you talking about?’
Igori turned. ‘I saw you in a garden, Benefactor. I saw you kneel before a silver serpent, and I saw your face as it struck.’ She spoke slowly, deliberately. ‘You taught us to behead such serpents. And yet you let it strike you.’
Fabius stared at her, unable to find his voice.
She touched his chest, her face solemn. ‘She warned me of this, though I did not understand at the time.’
‘She – Melusine?’ Fabius said hoarsely, trying to understand. He shook his head. ‘You do not understand. It was necessary.’
She turned away. ‘As is this. Goodbye, Benefactor.’
She was gone a moment later. Fabius stared at the hatch for long moments. His chest ached as the memory of the knife grew sharp. He looked at Mayshana.
‘I have a new task for you and your pack,’ he said.
‘You wish me to bring her back.’
‘Yes. Bring her to the evacuation point by any means necessary.’
‘She left us,’ Mayshana said hesitantly.
‘So she did,’ Fabius said. ‘But she is my child. As you are, and all your brothers and sisters. Some bonds cannot be so easily broken.’
‘She tried to cut my guts out.’
‘And you tried to do the same to her, I’m sure.’
Mayshana growled softly. ‘Are we dogs, then? To forget because you demand it?’ The question was almost – but not quite – a challenge. Fabius sighed. She stepped back, eyes narrowed. Tense.
He stroked her cheek. ‘Yes,’ he said gently. ‘You are dogs. Hounds. Bred for purpose. Spoiled, perhaps. I have coddled you and your kind for generations, while others of your species have clawed their way to power on a hundred worlds.’ He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It is past time to remind you of your place.’
As he’d expected, her hand went to her knife. But she didn’t draw it. She had that much control. He released her.
‘Homo novus has exceeded my expectations in almost all regards. Your genetics are a work of sublime artistry. With each generation, you grow stronger. But that strength is not often accompanied by wisdom.’ He paused. ‘Save in one case. She is the best of you, even now. And I will not see her – or you – wasted in useless battle. So you will find her and you will take her where she must go. Those are my orders.’
He looked at her and smiled sadly.
‘Do me the courtesy of following them, one final time.’
‘He’s mad,’ Savona snarled. ‘But I thought you at least had some sense, Arrian. To open the armouries to the beastkin? What’s possessed him?’
Arrian tried to concentrate on feeding the flowers, but it was hard. He scratched at his cortical implants. They’d begun to itch more, as if sensing what was to come.
‘This facility will be abandoned whether we win or lose. Most of the resources we’ve gathered will have to be abandoned as well. Why not show largesse in these final hours?’
‘Because they’re just as likely to use those weapons on each other – or us – as they are the enemy!’
She talks too much, Briaeus said. All these petty hedonists do. They use words like slaves use arrows… talk, talk, talk.
Arrian ignored his brother. ‘And that is why we will see to the proper and orderly dispersal of weapons and ammunition.’ Arrian paused. ‘They worship him. They love him. They will die for him. He knows this and that is why he chose to do this – to ensure their loyalty in these final hours.’
She shook her head. ‘Will that be enough?’
‘No. But the armouries also contain stores of combat-stimms and other narcotics. We will dole those out as well. That will buy us all the loyalty we might need.’
‘And when the drugs run out?’
‘By then, we’ll have won – or be dead. Either way, it won’t matter, sister.’
She looked at him. ‘You called me sister. You’ve never done that before.’
‘You’re standing with us when the better option is to flee. I think that earns you the right, whatever anyone else says.’
‘If I’d known all it would take is a bit of suicidal nonsense, I might have done it years ago.’ She frowned. ‘If it comes to it, though…’
Arrian held out his hand. ‘I wish you luck, if that is the case.’
Savona looked at his hand, and then at him. She took it in a warrior’s grip. ‘Try not to die, World Eater. The galaxy is more interesting with you in it.’ She turned as Fabius entered the atrium. ‘You, on the other hand, can’t die soon enough.’
Fabius laughed. ‘You are not the first to say that. Nor will you be the last.’ He gestured with Torment. ‘The others are seeing to the gates. You will remain with me in the strategium chamber. The Twelfth Millennial have been given the honour of guarding the central node.’
‘Oh, I’m sure Varex and the others will be overjoyed at that.’ Savona swung her maul up onto her shoulder.
Fabius stepped aside. ‘Then I leave it to you to tell them the good news.’
When she’d gone, he looked at Arrian.
‘Well?’
‘The armouries are being emptied, as per your orders.’
‘So I heard.’ Fabius looked out over the flowers. ‘I did not come to speak about that.’
‘No. I thought not.’
‘The evacuation goes as planned. But slowly. And Mayshana’s scouts have reported that the drukhari are close. They will attack soon.’
Arrian nodded. ‘The others will be pleased to hear it. Gorgus especially.’
‘Yes. But they will not be enough. Not if what I fear is coming.’
‘Which is?’
Fabius was silent. Then, ‘A weapon. One I helped them construct. Even Gorgus’ pack may be no match for it.’ He looked at Arrian. ‘We must stall them and stymie them for as long as possible. I will throw everything I have at them to accomplish that.’
The World Eater hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘What is it you wish of me?’
‘The node beneath us. It must be defended – outside as well as in – if we are to slow them. There are bulwarks in place, and weapons, but I need more than servitors at my threshold when they come knocking.’
‘Isn’t that what the Twelfth is for?’
Fabius shook his head. ‘I need someone who will not break. Someone who will trade blood for blood without flinching.’
Arrian was silent for a few moments. He looked out over his garden. ‘What will happen to all of this?’ he asked finally.
‘They will destroy it, I imagine.’
‘A shame.’
‘Yes.’ Fabius turned away. ‘I will not order you to do this.’
‘But one of us must do it nonetheless.’
‘Yes.’
And there it is, eh, dog-brother? Briaeus said. The reason he’s kept you around all these years. So that you might die for him at a moment of his choosing.
Arrian tapped the skull, silencing his fallen brother. ‘Do you remember when I first joined you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I swore to serve you for as long as you could teach me.’
‘I remember.’
Arrian let the more aggressive vines wrap about his fingers. He played with them for a moment. ‘I have learned much.’
He extricated his hand and turned.
‘I will
take a cohort of war-mutants and as many of the beastkin as will rally to me. A substantial force, but not a particularly hardy one. It will serve to occupy them for a time, I think.’ He looked at Fabius. ‘It was an honour to study with you, Chief Apothecary.’
Fabius met his gaze.
‘It was an honour to teach you, Arrian Zorzi.’
Fabius found Saqqara in his quarters. He moved slowly, weighed down by exhaustion and pain. Perhaps guilt as well. Arrian had accepted his death sentence well enough, but that only made it worse. He stopped as he entered.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Preparing myself for the slaughter to come,’ Saqqara said. The Word Bearer sat cross-legged amid a circle of smouldering incense bowls. Beside him was a smaller tray of sacred oils and a stone knife. As Fabius watched, he dipped the knife into the oils and ran the blade over his pate, scraping away at the bristle of hair there. ‘A better question is why are you interrupting me?’
Fabius looked down at the Word Bearer. ‘I require your services.’
‘Tell me, what was it like?’ Saqqara said. He tapped his bare chest. ‘Does it still hurt? I imagine that it must.’
‘Is this… gloating?’ Fabius asked. ‘Are you gloating?’ He looked around Saqqara’s chamber. The room was empty, save for a stack of books and scrolls in one corner and a threadbare pallet in the other. Saqqara’s armour hung from a rack near the door, and his daemon-flasks were set in a second rough circle outside of the one he sat in.
Saqqara paused in his shaving. ‘No. A pilgrimage is a symbolic act. A sign that you are true in your need, and true in your belief. That you undertook one is evidence of both.’
‘Are you pleased?’
‘It is not for me to be pleased or displeased. Why do you require daemons?’
‘I was promised aid.’
Again, Saqqara paused. ‘And who promised you this aid?’
‘Who do you think?’ Fabius said, his voice hoarse.
Saqqara nodded. ‘I imagine it must have been upsetting to see him. And her.’
Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Page 35