[Warhammer 40K] - Daemon World

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  Kron watched a new day dawn and another one end. He watched the city, glimpsing the daemons running wild through the corpse-choked streets. He saw straggling bands of refugees, civilians from the battle preyed on by escaped slaves and vagrant warriors fleeing from Sh’Karr’s daemons. Torvendis itself seemed lazy and sated with blood. But the daemon world would become thirsty enough soon, Kron knew. One battle was never enough.

  The bridge of the Slaughtersong was a shining armoured sphere several hundred metres across, in which hovered circular platforms lit brightly from within. Instrumentation appeared as ghostly lines of light in the air, traced out by hidden holoprojectors, and scanners fed through to broad flat screens that hung everywhere and followed at a command.

  The Slaughtersong seemed composed of silver and light. It was a world away from the ugliness of the Maelstrom outside, where there was only madness and bloodshed.

  Kron stood on the central platform, watching the Canis Mountains as two tiny figures trekked along the upper foothills and into the rugged valleys of the mountains themselves. Soon, he told himself. Soon.

  There was a bleeping from one of the scanner screens. The image it showed was filled with static, and Kron knew from experience that the internal scanners must be warped by psychics or sorcery. The screen was tuned in to one of the scanners in the maintenance ducts, and was picking up movement—shadowy forms, shaped like men but far bigger, that were stalking carefully towards the bridge sphere.

  A military unit. He caught a dull hint of scarlet—Word Bearers, then. It was to be expected that they would manage to follow him here. A shame that this beautiful ship would have to see violence before this was all done with. But if that was the way it had to be, then Kron would see it through to the end.

  Kron waved a hand and a dozen screens clustered around him, each showing one of the approaches to the bridge. There were many—every passage on the ship led here eventually. Gradually the interference was spreading, meaning the Word Bearers had probably brought a sorcerer with them. It seemed the Word Bearers were organised into a coven, composed of specialists who could deal with any eventuality. They would have a commander, a scout or two, someone with heavy firepower. Highly-trained and motivated better than any other troops in the Maelstrom, they would be utterly determined to see their mission through. It was not lost on Kron that this mission probably involved killing him.

  “Ready?” Kron said quietly.

  The lights of the Slaughtersong flickered in reply.

  “Good. Open the armoury and prepare.”

  “Hold,” ordered Amakyre. “We’ll go in guns first.”

  Feorkan sent an acknowledgement over the vox and, together with Makelo and Phaedos, flanked the closed circular portal that lay ahead of them, waiting for the others. Amakyre and Prakordian moved as silently as possible up behind him as Vrox lumbered into position. Massive-bore guns extruded themselves from Vrox’s forearms, mouth and eyes, heavy chains of ammunition writhing beneath his skin like thick, dark veins.

  The Obliterator stood in front of the door into the bridge, armoured legs planted wide for stability. Amakyre gave a hand signal and Makelo and Feorkan took high-explosive krak grenades from the belts of their armour, planting the dull metal discs around the edge of the door. Phaedos unhooked two bulky cylindrical melta-bombs and mag-clamped them to the door, where their ultra-high temperature detonations would cook off the krak grenades.

  Silently, Amakyre counted down the seconds on his fingers. Three. Two. One.

  The grenades went off in unison, blasting the door into a storm of metal shards. Instantly Vrox opened up, every gun blazing massive calibre shells, red-hot casings fountaining. Chains of gunfire ripped through the air, sending bright points of light streaming into the brightly-lit, spherical room beyond, and the noise was truly terrible.

  Vrox took a step into the room, muscles straining between the plates of his armour as he forced himself forward against the recoil of his guns. Phaedos ducked the streams of bullets and sidestepped into the room, chainblade held low, bolt pistol held out in front to shoot anything that still moved. Feorkan followed, Makelo crouched in the doorway scanning with his sniper-stripped bolter. Then, Amakyre charged through.

  The room was flooded with light. It shone from the circular platforms that floated in the air like leaves on water, and seemed composed entirely of light that was reflected and re-reflected from the polished interior of the spherical room. Amakyre’s enhanced senses instantly picked out the one potential foe—high above, standing on the central platform, was a man.

  From here the man looked almost harmless, for he was old and slim, with a beard and straggly hair. His clothes were many layers of dull brown robes, dean but frayed with wear. Yet his face had a look to it that Amakyre was very familiar with, the look of man who, like Amakyre himself, had lived for so long and seen so much that he could hardly be called a man at all.

  Karnulon had shed his armour, and a sorcerer of his power would be able to assume any form he wanted. This unassuming shape was the sort of body he would have to wear if he was to hope to act on Torvendis unnoticed.

  Bright bolts were already spattering up towards the platform from Makelo’s bolter and Phaedos’s pistol. Amakyre added his own bolter fire as the old man gestured and the platform sped upwards and to the side. Phaedos was leaping onto the nearest platform, intent on making his way up the chamber to take on the enemy face to face.

  The old man was unarmed. Amakyre switched to the squad vox.

  “Cease fire!” he yelled. The din of Vrox’s gunfire halted, replaced by the tinny patter of shell casings still hitting the floor.

  “I have a shot, captain,” voxed Makelo quietly.

  “Hold your fire, Word Bearer,” ordered Amakyre. Then, out loud, he called up to the distant figure.

  “A brother Word Bearer deserves a proper execution!” he shouted. “Not this animal’s death. We have come to kill you, Karnulon, but you will have some choice over how it happens.”

  The old man held up a hand and one of the lower platforms drifted down to Amakyre’s feet. Amakyre stepped on to it and was carried slowly upward.

  Darkness began to overcome the light. Gradually, the silver walls were turning black, and Amakyre realised they were projecting the image of the Maelstrom around them onto the chamber’s walls. It was as if the whole ship was turning translucent, or disappearing and leaving the occupants of the bridge suspended in space.

  “We know you abandoned your Legion, Karnulon,” continued Amakyre. “We know you took your ship and fled from the authority of Lorgar and the commanders of the Word Bearers. You ignored all the orders transmitted to you. You eluded our pursuit ships and forced us to follow you to Torvendis and confront you here. What we do not know is why. If you will tell us what business you had on Torvendis, it will not be painless and it will not be quick, but it will end. But if you do not, we will be forced to extract what we can from your soul, and then hand what remains over to blessed Lorgar himself and the arch-sorcerers of the Legion.”

  Amakyre was level with the old man now. The man was clearly unarmed, and his posture seemed slightly stooped and weary. He knew he was defeated, and that his lifespan was measured now in seconds. It was a pathetic end for a Space Marine who had done the work of the Chaotic pantheon for so long, but it was no more than he deserved for plotting against his Legion.

  “I have been alive for ten thousand years,” continued Amakyre, determined to break Karnulon before he killed him. “I have seen untold variations in the terrible things that can befall the unworthy. But even I am unable to comprehend the sheer torment they will keep you in. I have glimpsed the court of Lorgar and heard the screams of those who have wronged him, but I cannot know what they suffer. But you will know, Karnulon, if you force us to show you. I can take your head and Prakordian will interrogate your soul, but the Legion will have its due. You can stop it, if you wish. Tell us what you were planning against your Legion, and what force compelled you to d
eviate from the command of Lorgar, and we can end it here. You will suffer, but that suffering will end with your final death. Tell us, and you can die with at least the honour of knowing your brothers can understand your penance. Choose, Karnulon.”

  The man straightened, and his face hardened. Standing against the background of the swirling maelstrom and silhouetted by its pale starlight, he didn’t look as frail as he had done a moment before. He looked Amakyre right in the eye, and it had been a long, long time since anyone had been able to do that.

  “Karnulon is dead,” said the old man. “My name is Arguleon Veq.”

  Golgoth and Tarn made it into the shadow of Arrowhead Peak just as the sun was setting. The journey had been cold and often agonisingly slow, but they had never been in any doubt as to their direction. All they had to do was follow the harpies.

  A great stream of them poured across the sky in a mass migration, heading towards the city where doubtless mounds of stinking carrion had attracted them. The thick, dark ribbon of flying bodies led Tarn and Golgoth through the dark valleys and frozen ridges to where the many mountains of Arrowhead Peak rose, the mountainsides riddled with gaping doors and abandoned hovel-caves.

  Tarn strode on ahead, pausing every now and then for Golgoth to catch up. His leader was still badly fatigued, and it was only his determination to find what Kron had left for him that kept him going.

  Tarn had stopped at the edge of the next ridge, beyond which was the rushing sound of a river. Golgoth clambered up to him and looked down.

  It was a river of blood, foaming pink where rocks broke the surface. It flowed down the valley from a jagged-mouthed cavern some way upstream, carrying with it wispy strands of flesh that clogged around the rocks. The stench of blood welled up from it, and had Golgoth not been immersed in that same smell for so long beforehand, he would have gagged at it.

  “It must have flowed here from the city,” said Tarn, as if to himself. “There was too much to drain into the earth and it formed underground rivers that spread all over the continent. Half of Torvendis must be bleeding.”

  “Can we cross?”

  Tarn pointed downstream to where several large boulders had resisted the river’s flow. “Probably. I know I can.”

  Golgoth looked up at the pinnacles of Arrowhead Peak, where Kron might be waiting even now. To go around the river would add days. “We’ll cross.”

  The two men picked their way along the bank towards the boulders, where the blood was forming fierce rapids. Tarn went first, hopping from rock to rock with agility not dulled by his recent ordeal. Golgoth tried to follow but he felt heavy and clumsy, for the exhaustion of the flight from the city had still not left him. It troubled him that Tarn, who had been subservient to him when the Emerald Sword had existed, was now leading him along like a parent might a child.

  Golgoth reached the far bank but as he pulled himself over the last rock his grip slipped and he rolled off into the vile liquid. His footing failed him on the river bed and he fell face-first into the gore, thick freezing blood forcing its way into his mouth and nose. He pushed himself up to his knees and shook his head free, scooping blood from his eyes and hair.

  Tarn stood on the bank, looking down at him, and said nothing.

  Golgoth waded to the shore. As he clambered up the bank he saw that two whitish stones by his hand were not stones at all, but skulls. Had they been washed down here all the way from the city?

  It was possible. Maybe Torvendis had swallowed them and regurgitated them here.

  He picked one up. It was not human. The cranium was subtly tapered, as were the large eye sockets. The jaw was thin, with a slim point to the chin, and the cheekbones stood out. It would have made for a delicate, graceful, elfin face, with large searching eyes and a tiny thin nose.

  Perhaps it was from one of the strange creatures that had languished in Lady Charybdia’s dungeons? Golgoth cast the skull into the river and followed Tarn up the slope, forgetting the skull and trying to shake the congealing blood from his ears.

  The first scarps were appearing in the side of the valley, where bundles of rags still lay amid the filth of the harpies. Fragmented skeletons that had fallen from above during the battle for the peaks were lying in drifts. Crude stone steps were cut into the slope leading to grander avenues on the towering mountains above. Soon they would pass under the arches that signified the jurisdiction of the various tribes, and the wayside shrines to tribal heroes from the days when the mountain peoples truly ruled their own harsh world.

  For the first time in a great many centuries, men of the tribes set foot in Arrowhead Peak.

  From deep within the ship, a bolt of silvery light shot from the armoury doors straight into Veq’s hand. The Word Bearer in front of him had barely begun to raise his bolt gun but already Veq’s mind had snapped into the cold, heightened cast of battle. The man who had been called Kron by some, and Karnulon by others, was now content to think of himself by his first and greatest name—Arguleon Veq.

  The silver sword, sent by the Slaughtersong at Veq’s unspoken order, was warm and buzzing in his fingers. It was as if the intervening millennia had never happened. Veq and the Slaughtersong, so attuned to one another that Veq had hardly to think before his commands were answered, had one more fight to win. The blade was heavy and familiar—with a flick of his wrist he cut the Word Bearer’s gun clean in two.

  He had seen the corrupted sparks of their souls as they had entered the bridge. He knew that this one was Amakyre, the captain, whose devotion to his Legion had brought him all the way across the Maelstrom on Veq’s tail.

  The waking of Sh’Karr had weakened him, but now, back on home ground, Arguleon Veq felt as strong as ever. Amakyre dodged backwards and let himself fall from the platform rather than face Veq’s blade, honed from the heart of a star and white-hot to all but Veq himself.

  Gunfire erupted again from below. Veq swatted away a score of bullets from the Obliterator and caught three more with his free hand, throwing them back down to the floor of the bridge with a curse. The young one, the most dangerous, fired a well-aimed shot at his temple, but Veq flicked his head to the side and the silenced bolt flittered past him.

  Veq took two steps and leapt, dropping through the lattice of bullet trails to land directly in front of the Obliterator whose every weapon was blazing at him from point-blank range. The star-sword cut through the air as Veq met every bullet, sending a sparkling fan of deflected fire in every direction.

  The hulking Obliterator reeled as several of its own bullets punched through its biomechanical body. The flesh of one arm became fluid, extruded, and solidified into a blade of bone with gnawing teeth at the cutting edge. Veq ducked the first blow and parried the second, shearing the first blade in two as a barbed whip, tipped with a lamprey-like mouth, lashed from the Obliterator’s other arm. Veq grabbed the lash, wrapped it round his fist, and used it to swing the Obliterator hard into the wall by the doorway. Armour split and cracked. Corrupted blood spilled. Veq paused to dodge more bolter fire from the other Word Bearers who were falling back through the doorway.

  The Obliterator tried to rise to its feet but Veq was faster by far. One swipe hacked its arm off. Another opened it up from throat to belly, spilling half-machine guts out onto the floor. Silvery, snaking entrails spattered across the swirling Maelstrom visible through the transparent floor.

  Veq knew better than to assume the Obliterator would die. A bright line sparked in the air and a twisted, half-machine head rolled onto the floor.

  One was dead. The slowest and stupidest. Now, for the rest.

  Arrowhead Peak was chill and empty. Its interior had been carved out by generations of proud tribes people, each tribe and clan and family striving to outdo one another with the imposing vastness of the architecture. Vaulted naves soared overhead. Hand-hewn chasms joined amphitheatres with throne rooms. Artificial harbours loomed on the shores of lakes gathered in the heart of the mountain. The harpies’ filth ran down the walls and lay
like a blanket beneath their roosts, but nothing could dull the cold grandeur of the place. Strength and honour were written into the architecture. This had been a proud place, and that pride had not died with the tribes who had built it.

  The stink of the harpies’ foulness was like a hand in Golgoth’s face, but he ignored it. The vast stone tunnel they had entered echoed to their footsteps, and the rock beneath their feet was worn smooth by generations of marching tribesmen that had lived there before the city’s fall. The remnants of Lady Charybdia’s attack still lay scattered here and there—arrow-stuck skeletons, discarded spears and shields, makeshift barricades that had been overrun and pulled apart.

  This time, Golgoth was leading Tarn. Neither man had heard of the Hall of the Elders—they didn’t know if it existed, let alone where it was. They had walked for an hour, deeper into the first mountain of Arrowhead Peak, their way lit by faint shafts of milky daylight that filtered in through channels cut for light and ventilation. The wind outside was the only sound, save their own footsteps. It seemed they were the only two things alive.

  They had come to a crossroads, where a dozen paths met in a large round chamber, age-worn tribal symbols carved into the floor. This had been a place of trade and parley once, and tarnished gold thrones stood in a circle in the centre of the chamber where tribal chiefs had once sat and glowered as they debated the business of Arrowhead Peak. Now, thick cobwebs hung like banners from the high ceiling and a single skeleton was the only thing sitting on the high thrones.

  “Where now?” asked Tarn.

  Golgoth didn’t answer. How could he know? Determination to find Kron and maybe begin the path of vengeance against Sh’Karr had taken him this far, but how could he possibly find a place he had never heard of in a city his people had not set foot in for hundreds of years? He was livid with himself. A man could die down here. All he had gone through and it would end here, entombed in Arrowhead Peak or wandering lost around the mountains.