‘Every warlord that comes in here thinks he’s got a big plan,’ said the man. ‘What’s so special about yours? Most of them never come back, so why should I fight for you?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Pettar. Hain Pettar.’
‘Because I’m going to win, Hain Pettar.’
‘They all say that,’ said Pettar.
Honsou shouldered his axe and said, ‘The difference is I mean it.’
‘So, who you planning to fight if you live through the Skull Harvest?’
Honsou grinned. ‘The worlds of Ultramar are going to burn in the fires of my crusade.’
‘Ultramar?’ said Pettar. ‘Now I know you’re crazy; that fight’s suicide.’
‘Maybe,’ said Honsou. ‘But maybe not, and if it’s not a fight worth making, then this galaxy has run out of things to live for.’
THE MOUNTAIN CITY simmered with tension and threat. Warriors of all size and description thronged the paths, squares and narrow alleys that twisted between the city’s ramshackle structures of brick and junk. This close to the Skull Harvest, the city’s inhabitants were on edge, hands hovering near the contoured handles of pistols and skin-wrapped sword grips. Honsou could read the currents of threat as clearly as the transformed magos, Adept Cycerin, could read the currents of the empyrean and knew violence was ready to erupt at any second. Which was just as it should be.
The sky was the colour of a smeared borealis, swirling with unnatural hues known only to the insane. Lightning flashed in aerial whirlpools and Honsou tore his gaze from the pleasing spectacle. Only the unwary dared stare into the abyss of such skies and he grinned as he remembered his flesh playing host to one of the creatures that dwelled beyond the lurid colours.
The streets were sloping thoroughfares of hard-packed earth, and Honsou scanned the crowds around them for an old enemy, a new rival or simply a warrior looking to make a name for himself by killing someone like him.
Hawkers and charlatans lined the streets, filling the air with strange aromas, chants and promises, each offering pleasures and wares that could only be found in a place this deep in the Maelstrom; nightmare-fleets, blades of daemon-forged steel, carnal delights with warp-altered courtesans, opiates concocted from the immaterial substance of void-creatures and promises of eternal youth.
In addition to the swaggering pirate bands, mercenary kin-broods and random outcasts, lone warriors stood at street corners, boasting of their prowess while demonstrating their skills. A grey-skinned loxatl climbed the brickwork of a dark tower, its armature weapons flexing and aiming without apparent need for hands. A robed Scythian distilled venom before a gathered audience, while a band of men and women in heavy armour demonstrated sword and axe skills. Others spun firearms, took shots at hurled targets and displayed yet more impressive feats of exceptional marksmanship.
‘Any of them taking your fancy?’ asked Cadaras Grendel, nodding towards the martial displays.
Honsou shook his head. ‘No, these are the chaff. The real warriors of skill won’t show their hand so early.’
‘Like we just did?’ said Vaanes.
‘We’re new here,’ explained Honsou. ‘I needed to get my name into circulation, but I’ll let Pashtoq Uluvent build it for me when he comes against us.’
‘You had me kill that man to provoke an attack on us?’ queried the Newborn.
‘Absolutely,’ said Honsou. ‘I need the warriors gathered here to know me and respect me, but I can’t go around like these fools telling people how powerful I am. I’ll get others to do that for me.’
‘Assuming we survive Uluvent’s retaliation.’
‘There’s always that,’ agreed Honsou. ‘But I never said this venture wouldn’t be without some risk.’
THEY MADE THEIR way through the streets of the city, following a path that took them through areas of bleak night, searing sunlight and voids of deadened sound where every step seemed to take a lifetime. Coming from Medrengard, a world deep in the Eye of Terror, Honsou was no stranger to the chaotic flux of worlds touched by the warp, but the capricious nature of the environment around the mountain was unsettling.
He looked towards the mountain’s summit, where the mighty citadel of this world’s ruler squatted like a vast crown of black stone. Hewn from the rock of the mountain, the entire peak had been hollowed out and reshaped into a colossal fortress from which its master plotted his sector-wide carnage.
Curved redoubts and precisely angled bastions cut into the rock dominated the upper reaches of the mountain and coils of razor wire, like an endless field of thorns, carpeted every approach to its great, iron-spiked barbican.
Honsou’s Iron Warrior soul swelled with pleasure at the sight of so formidable a fortress.
Mighty defensive turrets protected the fortress, armed with guns capable of bringing down the heaviest spaceship and smashing any armada that dared come against this place.
Even in its prime, Khalan-Ghol could not have boasted so fearsome an array of weapons.
Ardaric Vaanes leaned in close and pointed to a nearby gun emplacement aimed at the heavens. ‘Big guns never tire, isn’t that what he always says?’
‘So it’s said,’ agreed Honsou, ‘but if what happened on Medrengard taught me anything, it’s that fortresses are static and it’s only a matter of time until someone attacks you. This place is impressive, right enough, but my days of fortress building are over.’
‘I never thought I’d hear an Iron Warrior say he was tired of fortresses.’
‘I’m not tired of fortresses, Vaanes,’ said Honsou with a grin. ‘I’m just directing my energies in bringing them to ruin.’
HONSOU HAD BASEDhis warriors on a northern promontory of the mountain, a site that offered natural protection in the form of sheer cliffs on three sides that dropped thousands of metres to the valley floor. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a poor site for a fortress, as it could easily be blockaded, but Honsou had no intention of staying for any length of time and his warband had cleared the promontory of its former occupants in a brutal firefight that had seen them hurling their captives to their doom as an offering to the gods.
The Iron Skull flew over Honsou’s temporary fortress, a graceless collection of gabions fashioned from linked sections of thick wire mesh lined with heavy-duty fabric and filled with sand, earth, rocks and gravel. A line of these blocky gabions stretched across the width of the promontory, and yet more had been stacked to form towers where heavy weapons could be mounted.
In truth, it was more of a defensive wall than a fortress and wasn’t a patch on even the lowliest Warsmith’s citadel on Medrengard, but it was as strong as he could make it and should suffice for the length of the Skull Harvest.
An adamantine gate swung outwards as Honsou and the others approached, the guns mounted on the blocky towers either side of it tracking them until they passed inside. Two dozen Iron Warriors manned the walls, their armour dusty and scored by the planet’s harshly unpredictable climate. The remainder of Honsou’s force was spread throughout the camp or aboard the Warbreed, the venerable ship that had brought them here and which now moored uneasily among the fleets in orbit around this world.
Honsou marched directly to an iron-sheeted pavilion at the centre of his camp, itself protected by more of the blocky, earth-filled gabions. His banner snapped and fluttered in the wind, the Iron Skull seeming to grin with a mocking sneer, as though daring the world to attack. Grendel, Vaanes and the Newborn followed him past the two hulking warriors in Terminator armour guarding the entrance to the pavilion. Each of the giant praetorians was armed with a long, hook-bladed pike and looked like graven metal statues, their bodies as inflexible as their hearts.
Inside the pavilion, the walls were hung with maps depicting arcs of the galaxy, planetary orbits, system diagrams and a variety of mystical sigils scrawled on pale sheets of skin, both human and alien. An iron-framed bed sat in the centre of the space, surrounded by bare metal footlockers filled with
books and scrolls. A trio of smoking braziers filled the pavilion with the heady scent of burning oils said to draw the eyes of the gods.
Honsou set his axe upon a rack of weapons and poured himself a goblet of water from a copper ewer. He didn’t offer any to his champions and took a long draught before turning to face them.
‘So,’ he began, ‘What do you make of our first foray?’
Grendel helped himself to a goblet of water and said, ‘Not bad, though I didn’t get to kill anything. If this Pashtoq Uluvent is as mad as all the other followers of the Blood God I’ve met, then we shouldn’t have to wait too long for his response.’
‘Vaanes? What do you think? You’ve fought in one of these before, what happens next?’
‘First you’ll be summoned to the citadel to pay homage,’ said Vaanes, idly lifting a book from the foot-locker nearest the bed. ‘Then there will be a day of sacrifices before the contests begin.’
‘Homage,’ spat Honsou. ‘I detest the word. I give homage to no man.’
‘That’s as may be,’ said Vaanes. ‘But you’re not so powerful you can break the rules.’
Honsou nodded, though it sat ill with him to bow and scrape before another, even one as infamous as the master of this world. He snatched the book Vaanes held and set it down on the bed.
‘And after all this homage and sacrifice, what happens after that?’
‘Then the killings begin,’ said Vaanes, looking in puzzlement at him. ‘The leaders of the various warbands challenge one another for the right to take their warriors. Mostly their champions answer these challenges, for only when the stakes are highest do the leaders enter the fray.’
‘These challenges, are they straight up fights?’ asked Honsou.
‘Sometimes,’ said Vaanes. ‘The last one usually is, but they can take any form before that. You almost never know until you set foot in the arena what you’ll be up against. I’ve seen clashes of tanks, bare-knuckle fighting to the death, battles with xenos monsters and psychic duels. You never know.’
‘That mean I’ll maybe get to kill something?’ said Grendel with undisguised relish.
‘I can as good as guarantee it,’ replied Vaanes.
‘Then we need to know what we’re up against,’ said Honsou. ‘If we’re going to get ourselves an army, we need to know who we’re taking it from.’
‘How do you propose we do that?’ said Grendel.
‘Go through the city. Explore it and find out who’s here. Learn their strengths and weaknesses. Make no secret of where your allegiance lies and if you need to crack some heads open, then that’s fine too. Grendel, you know what to do?’
‘Aye,’ agreed Grendel, with a gleam of anticipation in his eye. ‘I do indeed.’
Honsou caught the look that passed between the Newborn and Ardaric Vaanes, relishing their confusion. It never did to have your underlings too familiar with your plans.
‘Now get out, I have research to do,’ said Honsou, lifting the book he had taken off Vaanes from the bed. ‘Amuse yourselves as you see fit until morning.’
‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ said Grendel, drawing a long-bladed knife.
Honsou was about to turn away from his subordinates when he saw the Newborn cock its head to one side and the inner light that lurked just beneath its borrowed skin pulse with a shimmering heartbeat. In the months they had fought together, Honsou recognised the warning.
‘Enemies are approaching,’ said the Newborn, answering Honsou’s unasked question.
‘What? How do you know?’ demanded Grendel.
‘I can smell the blood,’ said the Newborn.
THE GROUND BEFORE Honsou’s defensive wall was littered with bodies. Gunfire flashed from the towers and ramparts, a brutal curtain of fire that sawed through the ranks of flak-armoured warriors who hurled themselves without fear at the gates. Sudden darkness had fallen, as though a shroud of night had been cast over the promontory, and stuttering tongues of flame lit the night as the two forces tore at one another.
The Newborn’s warning had come not a second too soon and Honsou had massed his warriors on the crude walls in time to see a host of screaming men emerge from the darkness towards them. They were an unlikely storming force, a ragged mix of human renegades of all shapes and sizes. Most wore iron masks or skull-faced helmets and their uniforms – such as they were – were little more than bloodstained rags stitched together like the Newborn’s skin.
They came on in a howling mass, firing a bizarre mix of weapons at the defenders. Las-bolts and solid rounds smacked into the walls or from the ceramite plates of the Iron Warriors. What the attackers lacked in skill and tactical acumen, they made up for in sheer, visceral ferocity.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
Disciplined volleys barked again and again from the Iron Warriors and line after line of attackers was cut down. Their primitive armour was no match for the mass-reactive bolts of the defenders, each a miniature rocket that exploded within the chest cavity of its target.
Heavy weapons on the towers carved bloody gouges in the attacking horde, but the carnage only seemed to spur them to new heights of fanaticism, as though the bloodshed were an end in itself.
‘Don’t these fools realise they’ll never get in?’ said Ardaric Vaanes as he calmly snapped off a shot that detonated within the bronze mask of a flag-waving maniac as he ran at the gate without even a weapon unsheathed.
‘They don’t seem to care,’ said Honsou, reloading his bolter. ‘This isn’t about getting in, it’s about letting us know that we’re being challenged.’
‘You reckon these are Uluvent’s men?’ said Grendel, clearly enjoying this one-sided slaughter. Grendel had allowed the enemy to reach his section of the walls before ordering his men to open fire, and Honsou saw the relish he took in such close-range killing. ‘Without a doubt,’ said Honsou.
‘He must have known they’d all get killed,’ pointed out Vaanes.
‘He didn’t care,’ said the Newborn, standing just behind Honsou’s right shoulder. Its unnatural flesh was still glowing and there was a hungry light in its eyes. ‘His god cares not from where the blood flows and neither does he. By throwing away the lives of these men, Pashtoq Uluvent is showing us how powerful he is. That he can afford to lose so many men and not care.’
‘Getting clever in your old age,’ said Grendel with a grin and slapped the arm of the Newborn. His champion flinched at Grendel’s touch and Honsou knew it detested the mohicaned warrior. Something to bear in mind if Grendel became a problem.
The slaughter – it could not be called a battle – continued for another hour before the last shots faded. The attackers had not retreated and had fought to the last, their bodies spread like a carpet of ruptured flesh and blood before the Iron Warriors compound.
The strange darkness that had come with the attack now lifted like the dawn and Honsou saw a lone figure threading his way through the field of corpses towards the fortress.
Cadaras Grendel raised his bolter, but Vaanes reached out and lowered the weapon’s barrel.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Vaanes?’ snarled Grendel.
‘That’s not one of Uluvent’s men,’ said Vaanes. ‘You don’t want to kill this one.’
‘Shows what you know,’ said the scarred warrior, turning to Honsou for acknowledgement. Honsou gave a brief nod and turned to watch as the newcomer approached the gate without apparent fear of the many guns aimed at him.
‘Who is he?’ said Honsou. ‘Do you recognise him?’
‘No, but I know who he represents,’ said Vaanes, gesturing to the looming citadel that dominated the skyline. ‘Open the gates,’ ordered Honsou. ‘Let’s hear what he has to say.’
DESPITE HIS EARLIER confidence, Honsou couldn’t help but feel apprehensive as he climbed the twisting, corkscrew stairs carved into the sheer sides of the rock face that led towards the mountainous citadel. The emissary led them, his sandaled feet seeking out the steps as surely as if he had tro
d them daily for a thousand years. For all Honsou knew, perhaps he had.
Honsou had met the emissary, a nameless peon in the robes of a scribe, at the gate of his makeshift fortress where he was handed a scroll case of ebony inlaid with golden thorns. He removed the scroll, a single sheet of cartridge paper instead of the more melodramatic human skin he’d expected, and read the tight, mechanical-looking script written upon it before passing the scroll to Ardaric Vaanes.
‘Well?’ he’d said when Vaanes had read its contents.
‘We go,’ said Vaanes instantly. ‘When this world’s master summons you, it is death to refuse.’
His message delivered, the emissary turned and led them through the squalid streets of the city towards the tallest peak, climbing steep stairs cut into the rocky flanks of the mountain. Honsou had brought Vaanes and the Newborn with him, leaving Grendel to finish the execution of the wounded attackers and keep the compound safe against further assaults.
The climb was arduous, even to one whose muscles were enhanced with power armour, and many times Honsou thought he was set to plummet to his death until the Newborn helped steady him. Their route took them across treacherous chain bridges, along narrow ledges and though snaking tunnels that wound a labyrinthine passage through the depths of the mountain and avoided the fields of razor wire. Though he tried to memorise the route, Honsou soon found himself confounded by occluded passageways, switchbacks and the strange angles within the bowels of the fortress.
On the few occasions they emerged onto the side of the mountain, Honsou saw how high they had climbed. Below them, the city shone like a bruised diamond, torches and cookfires dotting the mountainside like sunlight on quartz as the skies darkened to a sickly purple. Thousands upon thousands of warriors were gathered in makeshift camps throughout the city and Honsou knew that if he made the right moves, they could be his.
Any army gathered from this place would be a patchwork force of differing fighting styles, races and temperaments, but it would be large and, above all, it would be powerful enough to achieve its objective. And if the books he had taken from the chained libraries of Khalan-Ghol gave up their secrets, he would have something of even greater value than mere warriors to drown the worlds of Ultramar in blood.
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