01 - Path of the Warrior
Page 13
It was a precautionary measure, unlikely to be used, but the designers of the pistol perhaps had lived in more turbulent times, when even the craftworlds had raised their weapons against each other. The viewfinder was useful at range but distracting at close quarters. Korlandril dismissed it with a thought and his vision returned to normal.
The faint padding of boots caused him to turn towards the arched entranceway to the chamber. Seven figures entered, shadowy and indistinct; rangers swathed in cameleoline coats, now the white and pale green colour of the chamber, outlines barely discernable. One pulled back her hood revealing a beautiful face, a tattoo of a red tear beneath her left eye, and winked at Korlandril. Yet for all her charming looks and frivolity, there was something about the ranger that disturbed him. His gaze fell to her waystone and he sensed something otherworldly there. She was not on the Path, her senses and spirit free to soar to whatever heights it could, and to plunge to whatever depths awaited.
Like Aradryan, thought Korlandril. Free, but vulnerable.
“You’ll be following us onto Eileniliesh,” she said, turning her attention to Kenainath. The exarch nodded without comment.
The other rangers were unrecognisable. Korlandril wondered if one of them was Aradryan. He surreptitiously angled his pistol towards the rangers and activated the Scorpion’s Eye, hoping to see their faces. Flicking through various spectra, both visible and invisible, he discovered the rangers’ cloaks dissipated not only ordinary light, but also heat and other signatures as might be detected by an enemy. With a disappointed sigh, he switched it off again and turned back to the portal.
The flat plane was now slowly swirling with colours, mostly blues and greens, with occasional twists of red and black. It was mesmerising, and Korlandril felt himself drawn towards it. Out of curiosity he raised his pistol towards the portal, but Min stepped in front of him, placing a hand on his arm.
“Not wise,” said the warrior with a shake of his head.
Korlandril took the warning at face value and lowered his arm.
“The portal is open,” declared the wayseer. The runes floated in a vertical line above her open palm.
The ranger pulled up her hood, her exquisite features disappearing from view. With a gesture made vague by her long coat, she strode into the miasmic plane of the portal and disappeared. Unslinging rifles almost as tall as themselves, the other rangers followed her.
Kenainath moved his gaze from one Striking Scorpion to the next, as if gauging them. He could see nothing of their expressions, but Korlandril wondered if the exarch had senses beyond those of a normal eldar. With no word of instruction, Kenainath plunged in after the rangers.
Korlandril spared a glance at the rest of the squad, but none of them looked back at him. He wondered if they shared the same sense of achievement as he did, about to embark on his first foray into battle. One-by-one they walked into the webway.
His excitement at a crescendo, Korlandril stepped after them.
The webway passage cut towards the surface of Eileniliesh between the real universe and the otherworld of the warp, a flattened tube cutting through what at first appeared to be roiling water. It was impossible to tell the true colour of the tunnel through his lenses, but he would not have been surprised if it had been a sea green or blue. He half-expected to see the red flashes of a firefish going past, or the silver shimmer of a starfin shoal.
The one thing that was strange was the sense of motion, in that there was not any. Though he stalked forwards at some pace behind the others, nothing changed in his surrounds. It felt like he was walking on the spot. The web-tunnel undulated occasionally, but Korlandril could not tell whether this was due to movement in the warp-passage or simply a shift in the energies that were kept at bay by its immaterial walls.
Peering hard through the invisible force wall, Korlandril could make out the indistinct threads of other webway passages, twisting about this one and each other, coming together and parting like the strands of a thread. Of the squads using these other tunnels, he could see nothing.
“How long is this?” he asked, his voice relayed to the other members of the squad.
“Just a temporary burrowing,” replied Arhulesh. “We’ll be down on the surface in a few moments.”
Korlandril peered past the shoulders of those in front, hoping to see something. In his imagination it would be a shimmering veil through which he would be able to see the trees and grass of Eileniliesh.
Instead, the others flickered out of sight as they passed a certain point, and taking another step, Korlandril found himself walking on soft turf. He was vaguely disappointed.
“Ready your weapons, battle will be soon at hand, Khaine’s bloody playfield.”
Korlandril fell into position at the centre of the squad just behind Kenainath and looked around. Above, the sky was filled with clouds, the light of two huge moons dimly pushing through their gloom. They were on a hillside, gently sloping upwards in front of him, and at the summit there stood a narrow, solitary tower. Light burned within its pinnacle, casting long shadows from the scattered rocks and trees. Korlandril scanned the hillside for the rangers but they were already gone, or so well hidden from view that he could no longer see them.
His mouth was dry and he licked his lips, while he flexed his fingers on his weapons to keep himself relaxed, dissipating a tiny fraction of the energy burning inside him. He wondered how close they were to the orks, but refrained from asking. His question was answered as they crested the hill, revealing a swathe of black smoke hanging low over a forest that grew in the valley beyond.
Korlandril heard a growl of anger from one of the others but he was not sure who had made it. It might have even been himself. The sight of the crude billowings of the orks swathing the beautiful trees darkened Korlandril’s spirit. Thoughts of glorious battle dissipated and all that remained was a desire to destroy the creatures that assailed this world.
“Follow the river,” came the voice of the lead ranger from the communications crystal just beside Korlandril’s right ear.
Kenainath cut to the right and brought them to a narrow, fast-flowing water course, birthed somewhere within the hill and gushing forth along a rocky defile. The exarch and squad crossed easily at the river head, and moved swiftly down the hillside and into the sparse trees at the edge of the forest.
Aside from the gurgling and splashing of the river, Korlandril could hear the rustling of the leaves overhead and the sigh of the wind through the lush grass at his feet. Of his companions, he could hear nothing, moving as silently as shadows. In the distance, as yet barely audible, there sounded a greater disturbance—the noise of rough engines and cruel laughter.
“The orks have occupied Hirith-Hreslain,” reported the ranger.
Another voice came to Korlandril’s ear. He did not recognise it, but it spoke with sombre authority.
“The settlement straddles the river,” intoned the speaker. “The majority of the enemy are on the web-ward side, closest to our positions. Their leaders are on the opposite bank. Firuthein, position your warriors along the river behind and prepare to disable any transports crossing from the far side. Kenainath, move your squad towards the bridge to deal with any survivors of the Fire Dragons’ strike.”
“It shall be, as you command, with Khaine’s will,” replied a sonorous voice, presumably the exarch Firuthein.
“The Scorpions wait, we will strike from the shadow, none will survive us.” Kenainath’s tone and cadence were instantly familiar.
“That was the autarch,” explained Min when Korlandril asked who he had been listening to. “He’s coordinating the main attack, and we’re to stop any enemy reinforcements.”
“An ambush,” said Arhulesh. “Exactly our type of fighting.”
The river widened and shallowed rapidly as it reached the valley floor. The trees grew close to the banks, but now a wide expanse separated the two sides, the dim light of the night sky a deep orange to Korlandril’s eyes. The further the S
triking Scorpions advanced, the more they were separated from the rest of the army, which was angling towards the greater concentration of orks on the other river bank. Korlandril glanced over his left shoulder and saw the squad of Firuthein’s Fire Dragons striding purposefully along the opposite side of the river.
A sudden movement—or rather the sudden stillness of the rest of the squad—alerted Korlandril to something amiss. He froze in place, poised in the stance of Leaf that Cuts.
A ripple disturbed the placid surface of the water, trailed by a thin stream of bubbles. Something was moving towards the squad, just under the waterline. With a thought, Korlandril brought up the wide-spectrum view of his helmet and gazed beneath the water’s reflective surface. The “something” was large and snake-like, five times as long as an eldar is tall, with three pairs of flippers and a wide-fluked tail.
Two large hearts beat beside each other in its chest and Korlandril could see strings of cartilage running the length of its body overlaid with a labyrinth of arteries and strange organs. Korlandril could see the flow of heat from these out to the extremities as the creature swished lazily past, within easy pistol shot.
It gave not a first glance towards the Striking Scorpions swathed from the moonlight by the trees shrouding the bank. Korlandril watched it glide behind him and nodded to Kenainath, signalling that it was safe to continue.
Under the cover of the thickening cloud—the light of the moons now all but gone—the squad made swift progress and were soon within sight of the arcing bridge that connected to the two parts of Hirith-Hreslain. On the far bank—the webward side closest to the eldar army—tall towers rose from amongst the trees. Smoke billowed from narrow windows and soot stained pale walls. On the nearer side the buildings were more widely spaced and a great clearing had been cut into the forest. This had once been pastureland for the grazing beasts of the Exodites. Now it was a ruin, the carcasses of the great reptilian herbivores heaped onto roaring pyres or left in the trampled mud where they had been slaughtered. Crude standards of flat metal icons and ragged banners had been driven into the soil and lashed to the cracked tiled roofs of the outbuildings.
Ramshackle, wheeled vehicles rumbled across the turf, their thick tyres churning up swathes of dirt, cutting gashes into the fertile ground. The air was choked with their fumes. Metal-sided and roofed sheds had been erected over the ruins of farmsteads and barns, where clanging echoed through the night sky and the bright spark of welding torches mingled with the flicker of naked flames and the stark light of artificial lamps. Piles of junk littered the open ground: twisted mechanical workings, badly hewn logs, shredded tyres, the bones of dead food and heaps of steaming dung. Haphazard chimneys jutted from the worksheds spewing oily smoke, leaving a cloud of smog lingering over the filthy campsite.
Through the murk, with the aid of his lens-filters, Korlandril could see the orks, the first he had encountered though he had heard tales from the others of the squad. If anything, their horrific stories did not do justice to the brutal aliens.
There were several dozen of the green-skinned monsters. Most of them were far larger than Korlandril, even hunched and crouching around the fires. Some were enormous, perhaps half again as tall as the Aspect Warriors, and three or four times as broad. They growled and cackled to each other in their brutish tongue, striking out to emphasise their points.
Around and about the encampment scurried a host of smaller creatures, carrying food and weapons, or simply scrabbling about with each other in petty conflicts. Their higher-pitched voices added a dissonant cut through the rumble of the orks’ bellows and roars, jarring in Korlandril’s ears.
Without thought, Korlandril raised his weapons, disgusted by what he saw.
“It is not yet time, temper your anger and hate, vengeance will come soon,” warned Kenainath.
The moments crept past as the Striking Scorpions lay in wait. Korlandril watched the orks, wary of discovery, but not a single greenskin warrior or their diminutive servants spared a glance towards the river. He turned his attention back to the towers of the main settlement. Here the destruction of the orks was even more evident.
The bucket-jawed monstrosities had set up their camp in the ruins of the settlement. Walls had been smashed in to widen doorways and windows, and the detritus of the alien invaders was piled everywhere. They had been here for a short while and had made ugly repairs and “improvements” with sheets of metal riveted into the elegant stone buildings, and planks of untreated wood lashed into place to form balconies and battlements.
Hundreds of the creatures milled about, arguing and fighting, eating and shouting. With each heartbeat Korlandril came to despise them more. They were an affront to everything he had learnt to appreciate and love. They were an oafish, unsubtle, ill-disciplined rabble. They were incarnations of anarchy and violence, having nothing of culture, wit or art. Their brutality was their strength, their ignorance their armour against the darker things of the universe that preyed on more civilised species.
Though every part of Korlandril strained to unleash the wrath of Khaine, to wipe out these barbaric figures that had survived from the earliest legends of the eldar, a small, reasoning part of his brain told him that it would never be so. If the eldar had been unable to remove the blight of the orks from the galaxy when their civilisation had been at the height of its power, before the darkness of the Fall, they had little hope now. They were so few, so scattered, in comparison to the grunting, seething hordes that now held sway over so many worlds that had once belonged to the eldar.
Korlandril found comfort in a singular thought: by the time the next dawn came, there would be fewer orks to despoil the stars. With skill and determination, some would die by his own hand. The prospect renewed his thrill of being in battle, even though not a shot had yet been fired or a blade swung in anger.
He focussed on visualisations of the combat techniques he would employ against the ungainly monsters. He imagined eluding their clumsy blows while his own weapons cut them down with ease. These brutes had slain other eldar—admittedly backward Exodites, but eldar all the same—and he was in a position to exact red payment for that crime.
No more orders came or were needed. The exarchs knew their roles and the warriors knew how to fight. The only announcement of the battle commencing was a thunderous explosion on the webward side of the river. Thin vapour trails marked the passage of missiles from the Dark Reapers as blossoms of incandescent ruin engulfed the orks. The soft whickering of shuriken catapult fire was soon lost in the tumult of the orks’ alarms—blaring mechanical horns, resounding metallic drums and deafening bellows.
Korlandril wanted to join the fray and eased himself forwards to stand beside Kenainath. The water lapped gently at the exarch’s knees as he stood motionless in the shallows of the river, eyes fixed on the orks on the right-hand bank. Korlandril turned his attention there and saw the greenskins organising quickly. For all their unsophisticated ways, they responded rapidly to the attack; the promise of bloodshed roused them into a unity of destructive purpose.
Buggies with heavy weapons on pivots slewed back and forth, gathering in makeshift squadrons as they headed towards the bridge. Behind them, two clanking, half-track war engines rumbled into life, each as large as the worksheds and of similar crude construction. Huge tyres kicked up clods of dirt, tracks clanked over rusting wheels as the machines lurched towards the bridge.
The burliest orks clambered up steps and ladders onto their open transport beds while others chased behind. Belts of ammunition were slapped into large-bore guns while smaller weapons dotted across the mobile fortresses were pivoted towards the river. Some of the greenskins wildly shot their weapons into the sky in their excitement, all of them hooted and hollered war cries. The armoured carriers belched forth spumes of thick smoke from their many exhausts, the smog washing heavily towards the river on the brisk wind. The mechanical beasts ground forwards implacably, churning through the piles of rotting carcasses and debris.
The exarch stepped up to the jagged remains of a window and levelled his lance-like firepike.
A glaring burst of energy erupted from the weapon and hurtled towards the lead buggy. It caught the light vehicle on the nearside above its front wheel, exploding with the power of a miniature sun. Front axle ripped asunder, the buggy flipped dramatically, screeching along the retaining wall of the arcing bridge, trailing a storm of sparks. Korlandril smiled as he saw the buggy’s driver dashed against the wall, flopping like a child’s doll, while the gunner was broken and smeared along the white stone of the barrier.
The oncoming vehicles swerved around the smoking remnants, their heavy guns chattering, muzzle flare illuminating the orks’ yelling, fanged faces. The bullets tore chunks from the walls of the gatehouse, but Firuthein’s warriors stood their ground against the wild, sporadic fire. As the closest buggy came within range, the Fire Dragons unleashed their deadly breath, the air churning with white-hot radiation from their fusion guns.
The gunner of the next buggy exploded in a mist of rapidly evaporating organs and blood, his legs and lower torso spilling from the cradle in which he had been sat. The engine of the buggy burst into flames, swiftly followed by a detonation in the fuel tank, turning the vehicle into a careening fireball that ploughed into the ruined gatehouse before exploding into a cloud of debris and mechanical parts.