[Night Lords 02] - Blood Reaver

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  “Then you shall have your blood-price,” the prophet said with a rueful smile, and severed the link.

  Talos turned back to his brothers. Cyrion stood at ease, his weapon in his hands, only his slouched shoulder guards giving any indication of his reluctance to leave the chamber. Mercutian could have been carved from granite, so dark and motionless as he stood unbowed by the massive cannon in his fists. The heavy bolter’s cavernous barrel thrust from a skull’s open maw. Xarl clutched a two-handed chainblade in an easy grip, leaving his bolt weapons locked to his armour within quick reach.

  “Let’s get on with it,” he said, and even vox-corruption couldn’t hide the smile in his voice.

  Mercutian crouched, tending to his heavy bolter. The cannon was as unsubtle as Legion weaponry could be: wrapped in industrial chains and capable of vomiting a brutal rain of fire from its fat throat. “Third Claw will use bolters over blades. If Tor Xal is dead, we won’t have much to contend with once we stand within sword’s reach. Getting into sword’s reach will see us dead, though. They’ll cut us to pieces with bolter fire.” He sounded as maudlin as ever.

  Xarl barked a laugh and spoke in his gutter Nostraman. “Smoke grenades as soon as the door opens. That buys us a couple of seconds before their preysight re-tunes. Then we’ll bring blades to a gunfight.”

  Silence reigned for a moment.

  “Free me,” the last member of First Claw snarled.

  Four helms turned to their brother, slanted red eyes judging without a trace of human emotion.

  “Talos,” Uzas spat the name as he trembled, forcing his speech through clenched teeth. “Talos. Brother. Free me. Let me stand in midnight clad.”

  Something black trickled in a wet leak from his ear. The stink of Uzas’ skin was cringingly ripe.

  Talos spoke the words as he drew the relic sword from its sheath on his back.

  “Release him.”

  V

  REVENGE

  She found Septimus in Blackmarket, and saw him before he noticed her. Through the thin crowd, she watched him as he talked to the gathered serfs and crew. The scruffy fall of his hair almost covered the bionics on the left side of his face, where his temple and cheek had been rebuilt with subtle augmetics of composite metals, contoured to match his facial structure. It was a degree of surgical sophistication she’d rarely seen outside of the wealthiest theocratic covens and noble families of Terra’s tallest spires. Even now, the other humans looked upon him with a varied clash of dislike, envy, trust and adoration. Few slaves aboard the Covenant wore their value to the Night Lords so openly.

  With the communal market chamber less crowded than it had been before the Siege of Crythe, it was also less stifling and oppressive. Unfortunately, without the press of bodies, it was also colder—as cold as the rest of the ship. Her breath misted as she watched the crowd. The attendant hunched alongside her seemed content to mutter to himself.

  “I thought we’d captured more… people,” she said to him. When he turned blind eyes up to her and didn’t answer, she qualified her statement. “The new slaves from Ganges. Where are they?”

  “In chains, mistress. Chained in the hold. There they stay, until we leave dock.”

  Octavia shuddered. This was her home now. She was an undeniable part of what went on here.

  Across the chamber, Septimus was still speaking. She had no idea what he was saying. His Nostraman came in a whispering flow, and Octavia could make out maybe one word in ten. Instead of trying to follow the thread of what he was saying, she watched the faces of those he spoke to. Several were scowling or jostling their fellows, but most seemed placated by whatever he was telling them. She smothered a grin at his impassioned sincerity, the way he turned to people with a gentle gesture to make a point, the way he argued with his eyes as well as his words.

  The smile died on her lips as she saw one of the faces in the crowd, darkened by weariness. It was a face in mourning, and coping by wearing a mask of grim anger. Rather than interrupt Septimus, Octavia moved through the crowd, apologising softly in Gothic as she made her way closer to the grief-stricken man. He noticed her as she neared, and she saw him swallow.

  “Asa fothala su’surushan,” he said, dismissing her with a weak wave of his hand.

  “Vaya vey… um… I…” she felt a blush rising to her cheeks as the words stuck in her mouth. “Vaya vey ne’sha.”

  The people surrounding her were backing away now. She paid them no heed. Given what was hidden beneath the bandana around her forehead, she was used to being ostracised.

  “I haven’t seen you since… the battle,” she forced the words to her lips. “I just wanted to say—”

  “Kishith val’veyalass, olmisay.”

  “But… Vaya vey ne’sha,” she repeated. “I don’t understand.” She said it in Gothic in case her halting Nostraman hadn’t been clear enough.

  “Of course you don’t.” The man made the dismissive gesture again. His bloodshot eyes were ringed by the dark circles of a mounting sleep debt, and his voice cracked. “I know what you wish to say, and I do not wish to hear. No words will bring back my daughter.” His Gothic was rusty from disuse, but emotion lent meaning to the words. “Shrilla la lerril,” he sneered at her with a whisper.

  “Vellith sar’darithas, volvallasha sor sul.” The words came from Septimus, at the heart of the crowd. He pushed through the people to stand before the other man. Although the other slave was surely no older than forty, privation and sorrow had aged him far beyond his years—Septimus, as ragged as he was, was almost youthful in comparison. A brief flicker of greeting passed between Septimus and Octavia as their eyes met, but it was gone as soon as it showed. The artificer looked down at the hunched slave, anger in his human eye. “Watch your tongue when I can hear the lies you speak,” he warned.

  Octavia bristled at being defended when she still had no idea what had been said. She wasn’t a bashful maid, needing to be protected to stave off a fainting attack. “Septimus… I can deal with this. What did you say to me?” she asked the older man.

  “I named you a whore that mates with dogs.”

  Octavia shrugged, hoping her blush didn’t show. “I’ve been called worse.”

  Septimus stood straighter. “You are the heart of this unrest, Arkiah. I am not blind. Your daughter was avenged. As poor a fate as it was, that is all that can ever be.”

  “She was avenged,” Arkiah answered in Gothic as well, “but she was not protected.” In his hand, he clutched a Legion medallion. It caught the dim light with treacherous timing.

  Septimus rested his hands on the pistols at his hips, hanging in battered leather holsters. “We are slaves on a warship. I grieved with you at Talisha’s loss, but we live dark lives in the darkest of places.” His accent was awkward, and he struggled to find the words. “Often, we cannot even hope for vengeance, let alone safety. My master hunted her killer. The Blood Angel died a mongrel’s death. I watched Lord Talos strangle the murderer, witnessing justice done with my own eyes.”

  His own eyes. Octavia glanced automatically to see his human eye, dark and kind, next to the pale blue lens mounted in his chrome eye socket.

  “Tosha aurthilla vau veshi laliss,” the other man gave a mirthless laugh. “This vessel is cursed.” Murmurs of agreement started up. It was nothing new. Since the girl’s death, talk of omens and misfortune were running rampant among the mortal crew. “When the new slaves walk among us, we will tell them of the damnation in which they now dwell.”

  Octavia couldn’t understand Septimus’ reply as he slipped back into Nostraman. She withdrew from the crowd, waiting for the gathering to finish, and at the edge of the huge chamber, she sat on an empty table. Her attendant trudged after her, as unbearably loyal as a stray dog she’d made the mistake of feeding.

  “Hey,” she nudged him with her boot.

  “Mistress?”

  “Did you know the void-born?”

  “Yes, mistress. The young girl. Only child ever born on th
e Covenant. Dead now, to the Angels of Blood.”

  She lapsed back into silence for a while, watching Septimus arguing to quench all talk of rebellion. Strange, that on any given Imperial world, he would probably be a wealthy man with his skills in great demand. He could fly atmospheric and suborbital craft, he spoke several languages, he knew how to use and maintain weapons, and worked with an artisan’s care and a mechanic’s efficiency on reconstructive artificer duties. Yet here, he was just a slave. No future. No wealth. No children. Nothing.

  No children.

  A thought struck her, and she gave the little attendant another nudge.

  “Please do not do that,” he grumbled.

  “Sorry. I have a question.”

  “Ask, mistress.”

  “How is it that all these years, only one child was born on board?”

  The attendant turned his blinded face up to her again. It reminded her of a dying flower trying to face the sun. “The ship,” he said. “The Covenant itself. It makes us sterile. Wombs wither and seed grows thin.” The little creature gave a childish shrug. “The ship, the warp, this life. My eyes.” He touched a bandaged hand to his threaded eyes. “This life changes everything. Poisons everything.”

  Octavia chewed her bottom lip as she listened. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t human in the most pedantic sense—the genetic coding in a Navigator’s bloodline left her in an awkward evolutionary niche, close to being a sub-species of Homo sapiens. Her earliest years were filled with lessons and tutors hammering that very fact into her with stern lectures and complicated biological charts. Few Navigators ever bred easily, and children were an incredibly treasured commodity to a Navigator House—the coin with which to purchase a future. Had her life run its pre-planned course, she knew that after a century or two of service she’d be recalled to the family holdings on Terra and linked to another low-level scion from an equally minor house, expected to breed for the good of her father’s financial empire. Her capture had rather done away with that idea, and it was one of the aspects of this greasy, dimly lit slavery she actually considered something of a perk.

  Even so, her hand strayed to her stomach.

  “What’s your name?” she asked him.

  The figure shrugged with a rustle of dirty rags. She wasn’t sure if he’d never had a name, or simply forgotten it, but either way no answer was forthcoming. “Well,” she forced a smile, “would you like one?” He shrugged again, and this time, the gesture ended in a growl.

  Octavia saw why. Septimus was approaching. Behind him, the crowd was dispersing, going back to their ramshackle market stalls or leaving the communal chamber in small groups.

  “Hush, little hound,” the taller pilot smiled. His augmetic eye whirred as it focussed, the blue lens widening like a dilating pupil.

  “It’s fine,” Octavia patted the hunched man’s shoulder. Beneath the ragged cloak, his arm felt cold and lumpy. Not human. Not completely.

  “Yes, mistress,” the attendant said softly. The growling ceased, and there was the muffled click-chuck of a firearm chambering a round.

  Septimus reached forward to brush a stray lock of Octavia’s hair behind her ear. She almost tilted her cheek into his palm, warmed by the intimacy of the gesture.

  “You look filthy,” he told her, as blunt and cheery as a little boy with good news. Octavia leaned away from his touch even as he was withdrawing his hand.

  “Right,” she said. “Well. Thank you for that observation.” Idiot.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” As she said the word, her attendant started growling at Septimus again, obviously registering the annoyance in her voice. Observant little fellow. She considered giving him another pat on the shoulder. “Still talking of rebellion?”

  Septimus looked over at the diminishing crowds, masking a sigh. “It is difficult to convince them the vessel is not cursed when we’re being murdered by our own masters.” He hesitated, then turned back to her. “I missed you.”

  A nice try, but she wouldn’t let herself warm to that. “You were gone a long time,” she offered, keeping neutral.

  “You sound displeased with me. Is it because I said you looked filthy?”

  “No.” She barely resisted an irritated smile. Idiot. “Did everything go well?”

  Septimus knuckled his scruffy hair back from his face. “Yes. Why are you angry with me? I don’t understand.”

  “No reason,” she smiled. Because we’ve been docked for three days, and you haven’t been to see me. Some friend you are. “I’m not angry.”

  “You sound angry, mistress.”

  “You’re supposed to be on my side,” she told her attendant.

  “Yes, mistress. Sorry, mistress.”

  Octavia tried a change of tack. “The murders. Was it Uzas?”

  “It was, this time.” Septimus met her eyes again. “First Claw have taken him to the prison deck.”

  “He’s captured. And there’s an influx of new crew members. Maybe there’ll be some stability now. Things can return to normal.”

  Septimus gave his crooked smile. “I keep trying to tell you: this is normal.”

  “So you say,” she sniffed. “What was the Shriek like? Inside the station, I mean.”

  He grinned at the memory. “It jammed the aura-scryers. Every auspex drowned in interference. Then it slaughtered all in-station and off-station vox, but there was more: it actually killed the lights all across Ganges. I have no idea if Deltrian and the Exalted planned it, or how it worked, but it was a surprise to me.”

  “I’m glad you had fun.” She retied her ponytail and checked her bandana was tight. “It was less amusing for us. The Shriek drinks power like you wouldn’t believe. The engines dimmed to almost nothing, and the void shields were down the entire time. I had nothing to do but wait while we drifted for days. I hope we don’t use it again.”

  “You know they will. It worked, didn’t it?” His grin faded when she didn’t return it. “What’s wrong? What has happened?”

  “Ashilla sorsollun, ashilla uthullun,” she said softly. “What do those words mean?”

  He raised an eyebrow. His artificial eye clicked as it tried to mimic the expression. “It’s a rhyme.”

  “I know that.” She resisted the urge to sigh. He could be so slow, sometimes. “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t translate directl—”

  She held up a finger. “If you say, ‘it doesn’t translate directly’, to me one more time, I will have my little friend here shoot you in the foot. Understood?”

  “Understood, mistress.” Her attendant moved its hands beneath its overcloak.

  “Well…” Septimus began with a scowl at the hunched slave. “It doesn’t rhyme in Gothic. That’s what I meant. And both sorsollun and uthullun are words that mean ‘sunless’, but with different… uh… emotions. It means, more or less, ‘I am blind, I am cold’. Why do you ask? What’s wrong?”

  “Arkiah’s daughter. The void-born.”

  Septimus’ hands, bound in fingerless gloves of scuffed leather, rested on his low-slung gun belt. He’d attended the girl’s funeral only five months before, when her parents had let the shrouded corpse be released through the airlock with so many other slain human crew. “What about her?”

  Octavia met his eyes. “I’ve been seeing her. I saw her while you were away on the station. And a week ago, I heard her. She called those words to me.”

  The door didn’t open. It burst outwards in a storm of debris that filled the corridor with smoke. Emergency alarms sounded at once, sealing nearby bulkheads as the vessel’s automated systems registered an enemy attack and the risk of hull breaches.

  In the smoky mist, five towering silhouettes ghosted forwards, their slanted red eyes backlit and streaming with targeting data.

  Bolter shells cracked and crashed against the walls around them, detonating with the crumpling pops of bursting grenades, showering the Legionaries with fragments of iron and burning chunks of explosive shel
l. Third Claw had opened up the moment their preysight had adjusted to the smoke.

  Talos emerged first from the mist, bolter rounds shredding the armour from his war plate, ripping chunks of ceramite overlay from the cabled musculature. He closed the distance in the span of a heartbeat, swinging his sword in a carving arc. Retinal imagery displayed the grievous damage to his armour in aggressively bright runes, and was immediately joined by the flatline sound of a slain warrior’s armour no longer transmitting life signs.—Garius, Third Claw, Vital Signs Lost—,his eye lenses warned. Such a shame.

  “You’ve been fighting mortals for too long,” Talos spoke through the stinging bite of nerve nullifiers. His armour injected the fast-acting narcotics right into his heart, spine and bloodstream, but their effects were limited in the face of this horrendous fire. Bolters suffered against Legion armour—they were weapons far better at breaking flesh than ceramite—but despite his mockery, the massed assault was taking its toll.

  He didn’t even need to wrench his blade clear. The blow had cleaved Garius’ head clean from his shoulders. Talos gripped the bloody collar guard, ignoring his brother’s life pissing out from the severed neck in red spurts all over his gauntlet. In death, Garius served as a shield of meat and armour. Detonating shells pounded into the headless corpse until Talos hurled it at the closest member of Third Claw.

  Xarl was among them a moment later, his chainblade crashing against a brother’s helm hard enough to send the warrior sprawling into the wall. Talos risked a momentary glance to see Xarl’s war plate as chewed up and broken as his own. Xarl was already leaping at another of the Branded, heedless of the damage he’d sustained.