Even then, had Skitteka led the battle against the slaves he might still have saved the mine. The humans were desperate but compared to the guards they were slow and clumsy, and their makeshift weapons were no match for the razored perfection of the guards’ own poisoned blades.
But Skitteka hadn’t led the battle against the slaves. Instead he had locked himself into his burrow, sweating and stinking and waiting for others to save him.
They hadn’t.
And now he sat, terrified and alone. Although the mine still rang with the sounds of battle, he ignored them. Instead he had withdrawn into the paralysing cocoon of his own cowardice. He was only shaken from it when, heralded by the squeal of a guard who had chosen to skulk rather than flee, one of the slaves slipped into the room.
Skitteka hissed and scrabbled for the handle of his blade, but then the slave stepped into the pool of light and he recognised the blonde of her hair and the meek expression on her face.
‘My lord,’ Adora said, padding forwards. ‘Thank the gods you are still alive. Can I wait with you until the fighting is over?’
Skitteka’s fur bristled, and suspicion wrinkled his snout.
‘Why aren’t you with the other slaves, little cat?’ he said, gesturing towards her with his sword. The murderous sliver of steel gleamed with the venom which coated it.
‘They are mad, my lord,’ Adora said as she closed the distance between them. ‘They think that I am a traitor because of my loyalty to you.’
Skitteka started to speak, then jumped as the door crashed open behind her. The men who charged into the chamber were as filthy and starved as all the humans, but there was a terrifying lack of fear about them. Compared to that, their lack of shackles seemed almost secondary.
‘Save me, lord!’ Adora cried and rushed towards Skitteka, who had no intention of saving anybody but himself. He leapt out of his chair and turned to flee to another exit.
But Adora was even quicker than his panic.
As he turned his back on her she lunged forwards, slicing through first one of his hamstrings and then the other. He collapsed with a squeal and Adora reversed her grip. She punched the steel between his vertebrae with the thoughtless accuracy of a seamstress pushing thread through the eye of a needle.
Skitteka shrieked and spasmed on the cold floor. He tried to make his crippled body work. He failed.
‘Stand back,’ Adora barked at the men who were closing in on their crippled tormentor. They paused uncertainly, their picks and shovels raised for the killing blow. Adora turned on them, and when they saw the rage on her face they retreated.
‘Go and finish off the others,’ she told them as she closed in on Skitteka. ‘This one is mine.’
His spine severed, he was thrashing his limbs as uselessly as a cockroach Adora had once seen nailed to the wall of an inn. She had been a serving girl at the time, and although she didn’t know who had visited the cruelty upon the creature, she had never forgotten it. Between her duties she had watched it dying for almost a week, its struggles getting weaker and weaker. Eventually, when it could manage no more than the occasional twitch, its fellows had returned to devour it.
Unfortunately she didn’t have the time to organise a similar fate for Skitteka.
Never mind. She would make do with what time she had.
‘See this?’ she told him, holding up the bloodied dagger. He rolled his eyes and hissed an entreaty.
‘Please help me,’ he said. ‘I will give you clothes, lots of clothes. And meat! As much meat as you want.’
Adora felt her control tearing.
‘What I want,’ she said softly, ‘is for you not to touch me anymore. Instead,’ she lifted the dagger, ‘I’m going to touch you.’
So she did.
It took a long, long time. When she had finished and the last of his screams had bled out she turned to find that some of the men had stayed to watch her. Their open mouths and wide eyes made them look like startled cattle.
‘Go,’ she said, and tried to ignore the horror on their faces as they fled from her.
Sunlight played upon the rippling surface of the stream. A breeze whispered soothingly through the branches of the trees. There was the smell of jasmine and fresh sap and something that might have been a distant ocean. Even the remains of the fire smelled clean, fresh ash and burned fish bones. Adora enjoyed the fragrances of freedom as she sat in the shade and waited for her rags to dry. She had washed them as thoroughly as she had washed herself and now she was working on her nails, cleaning beneath them with a gnawed twig.
She had left the other survivors as soon as they had emerged from the mine. They were too wild and starving to be of much further use, so she had abandoned them. That had been two days ago, and she was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake. She had no idea where she was, and there might be anything in this forest.
She was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear the hoof beats until they were almost upon her. With a startled glance upwards she sprang to her feet and hurriedly pulled her damp slip over her nakedness. A moment later, an apparition of coloured silk and burnished steel emerged from the forest. It rode a towering warhorse and carried a lance that was twice as long as she was tall. Adora padded towards the knight.
‘Excuse me, kind sir,’ she said bowing her head so that her hair tumbled forward from her shoulders. ‘I wonder if you might help me?’
The knight stopped and lifted his visor. His dark features were hard with arrogance but as he took a closer look at Adora the expression turned into something else.
‘I would be honoured to, my lady,’ he said and bowed towards her. ‘But first we should leave this place. The enemy are not far behind. Would you ride with me?’
‘I would be honoured, my lord,’ Adora said as he swung her up into the saddle behind him and carried her, sweet and smooth and lethal, back into the world of men.
An Exclusive Extract from Fall of Damnos
Nick Kyme
779.973.M41
The vox-transmitter was wretched with interference, so Falka hit it again.
‘Keep doing that and you’ll break it,’ said a deep and sonorous voice behind him.
When Falka turned, his smile was broad and bright enough to light up the whole mine. ‘Jynn!’
He seized the woman in a bear hug, lifting her off the ground. Even in her environment suit, she felt the steel of his girder-like arms.
‘Easy, easy!’ she warned, mock-choking.
Falka put her down, ignoring the questioning glances from the rest of the shift. Riggers, drill-engines and borer-drones advanced towards the darkness of the vast ice-shaft like an army. They were accompanied by menial servitors and heavy-set chrono-diggers. Like Falka and Jynn, the human contingent of the labour force wore bulky environment suits to stave off the cold and make the twelve-hour cycles possible.
‘Where’s your rig?’ asked the big man. He’d stripped back the thermal protection on his arms, revealing faded gang-tats and wiry grey hair. ‘I didn’t see it.’
Jynn pointed to a docking station, one of many in the massive ice cavern. Like most of the mining vehicles it was squat, decked out with plates and protective glacis and only partially enclosed. A crew of three menials and a pair of chrono-diggers stood around it awaiting her return.
‘She’s all mine,’ she said proudly, adjusting the thermal-cutters, flare-rods and chain-pick fastened to her tool belt from when Falka’s bear hug had dislodged them.
A klaxon sounded and an array of strobe lamps filled the cavern with an intermittent amber glow. They started walking.
‘You look good,’ said Falka a moment later.
Jynn gave a wry smile. The ice concourse underfoot crunched as they moved. It was hard-packed by industrial presses to create a serviceable roadway for the mine entrance. Most of the light was artificial, though some natural light filtered down from the bore hole above them at the entrance’s threshold.
‘What I mean,’ Falka struggled to say
, ‘is it’s good to see you back at the ice-face. I thought after Korve, you might–’
‘Honestly, Fal, I’m fine,’ she said, brushing a strand of errant hair behind her ears and pulling down her goggles.
Falka did the same – close to the vent a fine spray of ice chips saturated the air. Environment suits managed the worst. Get one in the eye and you’d know about it, though.
‘Just with the ’quake and all that…’
She stopped and glared at him. The other workers flowed around them to their riggers and crews. The first few cohorts had already begun descent.
‘Seriously, Falka – just drop it. Korve’s dead and that’s it.’
The big man looked distraught. ‘Sorry.’
She lightly gripped his shoulder. ‘It’s all right. I under–’
‘Rig-hand Evvers,’ a shrill, imperious voice interrupted.
Jynn had her back to the speaker and groaned inwardly before she turned. ‘Administrator Rancourt,’ she replied politely.
A hawkish man, trussed up in thermal gear and flocked by a retinue of scribes and aides, approached them. Despite the cowl drawn up around his small head and the padded mittens he wore, the administrator still shivered.
‘I had not expected to see you on shift,’ he said, fashioning a poor smile. It was meant to convey warmth but only exuded his awkwardness.
‘Nor I, you…’ she muttered.
‘I beg your pardon. I’m finding it hard to hear under all of this.’ He gestured to cowl and thermal coat.
‘I said it’s rare to see you, administrator… at the ice-face, I mean.’
Rancourt moved in close to Jynn.
‘I’ve told you before,’ he said. ‘You may call me Zeph.’
Falka broke his stoic silence to grunt.
Rancourt’s gaze moved to the giant. ‘And Rig-hand Kolpeck. Don’t you have shift to go to?’
‘We both do, administ… ah, Zeph.’ She tugged lightly on Falka’s arm, urging him to join her.
The big man looked like he’d rather stay and squeeze Rancourt’s neck, but he followed anyway.
‘Of course, of course,’ the administrator blathered, shooting a dark glance at Falka. ‘I have much work to attend to. In the Emperor’s name,’ he added, pretending to look at a data-slate proffered by one of his toadies.
‘May His glory watch over us all,’ Jynn replied.
Heading in the direction of the vent, the air suddenly felt as if it were actually getting warmer.
‘He still stalking you, then?’
‘Leave it, Fal. I can handle it. He’s harmless enough.’
Falka grunted again. He was prone to doing that. ‘Eyes and ears,’ he said, peeling off towards his rigger and crew.
‘You too,’ said Jynn, diverting to her vehicle. She’d put one boot on the boarding stirrup when the concourse trembled. She slipped, snatching a holding rail to steady herself. A second tremor shook some debris from the roof. More violent than the first, it sent men and servitors sprawling.
‘What the feg was–’ she muttered over the vox-bead.
A high-pitched keening cut her off.
She fell, the intensity of the sonic burst forcing her to press her palms to her ears. ‘Throne!’ Jynn gasped, grimacing against the auditory pain.
The keening became a hum, throbbing at the back of the skull, but at least she could stand. Around the ice cavern, the walls were shaking. Sections of the ceiling rained down on the labourers in a cascade. The cries of one man ended abruptly when a slab of permafrost crushed him.
Jynn staggered. It was just like with Korve. Memories came flooding back, but she suppressed them, focussed on surviving instead. ‘Not yet, dear heart,’ she muttered, finding some resolve. ‘Not yet.’
Falka was on his feet too and rushing over to her.
‘You hurt?’ He had to shout to be heard above the ice-quake.
Jynn was about to answer when a massive cold cloud ripped through the vent in a bright white bloom. The rig-hands closest to the shaft were shredded by the host of shards within the cloud. Snow crystals fogging the air were tainted a visceral red.
A burst of hard, emerald light followed, refracted from the angular descent shaft beyond the vent. Shouting echoed from the icy dark, injured and desperate men trying to control some unseen catastrophe. The shouts became cries, and then screams. There was something else too… a sort of discharge, as of an energy beam or perhaps a heavy generator.
The winches slaved to the adamantite descent lines at the vent threshold started to retract. Someone was coming up.
‘We have to get out,’ said Jynn, then with greater urgency as the emerald light issuing from the vent intensified. ‘All of us – right now!’
Falka nodded.
‘No!’ she cried, seizing the big man’s arm as he made for the vent.
He looked back at her nonplussed. ‘People are down there, our people. They might need help.’
Jynn was shaking her head. ‘They’re gone, Fal. This way, come on.’
‘Wha… but…’
‘They’re dead! Now, come on!’ She heaved and he followed, reluctant at first but then with more conviction. Something was scurrying up the shaft. It sounded like a horde of giant, mechanical ants.
The first of the rig-hands from below made it to the ice cavern. He was dead. Men screamed, terrified, when they saw the flesh of his partly flayed corpse. Surgical, precise, horrific – it was as if the layers had been stripped anatomically.
More followed, equally gruesome.
Jynn and Falka were running, shouting at anyone who would listen to join them, yanking environment suits or shoving them bodily. Down tools and flee. This was not a rescue; it was a full scale evacuation.
She found Rancourt cowering behind a rigger, getting his aides to peer around its armoured flanks and provide him with updates. Several of his entourage were dead, one from fright when the keening blast had struck; another to the sudden avalanche from the ceiling.
‘Get up!’ She seized his collar and pulled. ‘Get up! These people need guidance. The surface must be told what’s happening down here.’
‘What is happening?’ he shrieked, unwilling to stand at first, casting fearful glances towards the vent where the emerald glow was now spilling into the ice cavern.
Jynn looked over her shoulder, still hanging on to Rancourt’s suit. ‘Falka!’
The big man gently moved her aside and threw the administrator over his shoulder.
‘Unhand me! I am an officer of the Imperium. Release me at once!’
‘Shut up.’ Falka smacked Rancourt’s head into the rigger just hard enough to leave him dazed.
Then they were running again. The remnants of the administrator’s retinue followed without need for coercion.
The exit shaft and the rail-lifters were just a few metres ahead. The light from the surface was like a soothing balm as it touched Jynn’s sweat-slick face. She glanced back.
Several more rig-hands from below had made it to the ice cavern. Though they were far away and her view was unsteady on account of her fleeing for her life, she made out… creatures attached to the miners. The rig-hands were thrashing and squirming. Eventually they fell and the swarm dispersed, silver beetle-like creatures the size of Falka’s clenched fist, leaving a flensed corpse in their wake.
‘God-Emperor have mercy,’ she breathed.
Larger, bulkier shadows were reaching the end of the vent shaft. A coruscating emerald beam lanced from the darkness, throwing a spider-like creature into sharp relief. Like the beetles it was metallic, but almost the size of a rigger. The beam, fired from one of the creature’s mandibles, struck a fleeing rig-hand and atomised him. The afterimage of the man’s flayed skeleton was seared into Jynn’s retinas just before it collapsed into ash and she looked away.
‘Move, move!’
They raced into the nearest rail-lifter. About sixty rig-hands had joined them on the access plate, and Falka gunned the engine as soon as they were
all aboard.
Jynn gazed to the distant surface as the heavy winches began to drone. She willed the oval of light from the ground-zero bore point closer.
Below them, the other rail-lifters started up – fifteen in total, all screaming, engines hot, towards the upper world.
One of the cables snapped, lashing wildly with the sudden slack. A beam from one of the spiders had severed it. Rig-hands screamed as they plunged to their deaths. Others, clinging on, could only watch in horror as the beetles already scaling the shaft wall sprang from their perches and landed amongst them.
Jynn saw a few of the miners let go and embrace death by falling rather than face being flayed alive.
The hard drone of a warning klaxon sounded from farther up the shaft. The oval of light was becoming a rectangular strip, narrowing by the second.
Rancourt, having recently regained consciousness, put away his command-stave. Falka saw him do it and rounded on him.
‘What are you doing? The others will never make it.’
The administrator’s pupils were dilated, his eyes wide and haunted. ‘Those th-things…’ he stammered. ‘They can’t be allowed to get out.’
‘Bastard!’ Falka punched him, a solid blow to the chin that put Rancourt back on his arse, and then ripped the command-stave from the administrator’s trappings. ‘Show me how to stop it,’ he said, bearing down on him, threatening more violence.
‘Leave him,’ Jynn wrenched the big man’s shoulder. She had a strong grip and made him turn.
‘You’re defending this worm?’
‘He’s right, Fal.’ The sides of the shaft blurred past and the displaced air snapped at Jynn’s hair.
Falka shook his head. Those men and women were his friends. ‘No!’ He was about to beat down on Rancourt again when Jynn smacked him hard in the chest with the flat of her hand. It didn’t hurt the big man but it got his attention.
‘He’s right,’ she said again, continuing in a small voice when she looked below – her mind tried to blot out the carnage and horror. ‘We can’t let them get out.’
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