The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  Timchet responded to his co-pilot’s directive, snapping out of the horror that Spear’s annihilation had brought and swinging his pintle weapon in an angle around and down towards Chokda’s advance. The steedmaster and Chaplain Changadai were racing one another towards the heart of the xenos swarm, the glowing golden aura of the Chaplain’s crozius arcanum competing with the actinic blue of Chokda’s power lance. The rest of the assault bike squadron were close on their treads, twin-linked bolters hammering, but none of them had got far. Progress was slowing visibly as swarms of gaunts threw themselves suicidally at the White Scars’ lance formation. Hundreds had likely already perished, ground apart beneath spinning tyre treads, smashed to pieces on armoured engine housings and blast shields or cut apart by bolters and blades. Still they came, utterly devoid of fear or independent consideration, driven to self-sacrifice by the overriding imperatives of the hive mind. The White Scars were becoming weighed down, slowed by the sheer weight of bodies pressing in on them from all sides.

  Timchet cleared them a path. Hagai brought Wind Tamer in low and hard over the bike squadron’s advance, allowing Timchet to hammer the xenos ahead of Changadai and Chokda with a barrage of heavy bolts. The White Scar’s jaw was locked, finger stiff on the firing stud as he dragged the bucking weapon back and forth, clearing a bloody channel ahead of the bikers’ advance.

  Their progress barely increased. The part of the swarm attacking Subodak’s Devastators had peeled away, disengaging under fire with an ease and surety that would have been impossible for any other species in the galaxy. Identifying the bikers as the greatest threat to their leader, the entire weight of the freshly birthed swarm was now being directed at Chokda’s riders. Even with the support of Wind Tamer, the xenos’ numbers were too great. As Timchet lined up his heavy iron sights once more after another pass, he saw one of Chokda’s hunt-brothers fall, his bike stalling beneath the weight of bodies heaped around it. He was dragged from the saddle, stabbed through again and again by talons as long as a man’s arm, before being lost beneath the mass of hard black carapace. A second rider followed soon after, a clutch of borer beetles fired from a termagant’s bio-weapon finding the weak electro-sealant strips over his armour’s joints. His bike ploughed on for twenty more yards, thudding and jarring over scuttling xenoforms before finally tumbling to a wheel-spinning halt.

  ‘We are overrun,’ Chokda’s voice came back over the link. Timchet could see him, power lance a lightning blur as he scythed through one lunging gaunt after the next, his white armour and bike plating befouled by xenos ichor. ‘Subodak, rejoin the khan-commander. We cannot afford to lose more brothers here. Commend myself and the brother-Chaplain to the wind and earth.’

  ‘That may not be necessary, steedmaster,’ Hagai cut in over the link. ‘There is still time to disengage.’

  ‘You dream, wind rider,’ Chokda replied, voice strained as he fought. ‘We cannot turn back in this press.’

  ‘Not back,’ Hagai said. ‘Turn to your right. Ride south now, with all haste.’

  Timchet twisted in his restraining harness to see what his co-pilot was suggesting. As the Land Speeder banked sharply round, he understood.

  ‘We will all be wind-brothers today,’ he said.

  Juben’s Gorge, Darkand

  The Beged turned east. They had broken camp during the dark hours, at Feng’s urging. The steedmaster had told them, in no uncertain terms, that they would all die if they did not leave behind their most overburdened wagons and take the track back to the slope-city immediately. If the presence of the lone, ichor-splattered Sky Warrior towering in the light of the camp’s fires was not enough to make them obey, the severed head of the monster grasped in one of his ceramite-clad fists certainly was.

  Feng had mounted the lictor’s head on the front of his bike’s shield guard, lashing it between the twin bolters. He’d cut out the creature’s eyes with the hooked tip of his kindjal, so that the creature could not find its way and continue to hunt in the afterlife. After that he’d ridden on ahead of the Beged column, scouting the route. Word was coming in over the uplink – reports, orders, confirmations. The brotherhood was riding to war, and he had still not returned. Jakar had taken command of the squadron while Feng remained absent. The urge to race away and rejoin his squad was curiously muted – the ghosts of his true brothers were with him still, even out here.

  The White Scar had turned back towards the column. Now he eased on the brakes, scraping his bike to a halt alongside a cloth-draped carriage at the convoy’s centre. One of the curtains twitched back, revealing the scarred face of the tribe’s hetman, Jara.

  ‘The path enters a gorge half a mile ahead, does it not?’ Feng asked; Jara nodded, and he continued. ‘The cliffs will hem the wagons in single file for at least two hundred yards. We will be vulnerable until the whole column has passed out the other side.’

  Jara nodded once more and vanished from the window for a moment, doubtless speaking with the rest of his family. He reappeared a moment later.

  ‘We will carry on as swiftly as possible,’ he said. ‘I will have my outriders secure the far side of the gorge as well.’

  ‘Yes,’ Feng said. ‘We are still far from the Founding Wall. My brothers are even now engaging great swarms of void-yaksha north and south of here, and there are doubtless more crossing the low hills around us. Every second is precious. Ride on, at least for the moment. I will safeguard the rear of the column.’

  The Beged passed on, drivers cracking their whips and issuing their shrill steppe whistles. Feng rode to the rear of the column, signalling for the tribe’s rearguard to close on him. Two dozen riders, clad in leathers and furs and mounted on stocky plains steeds, drew in from the column’s flanks as Feng killed his engine.

  ‘It is likely that your tribe will be trapped in this gorge,’ he said, speaking slowly and clearly so that the Beged, with their thick, bastardised Chogorian dialect, could understand him. ‘The column can only go forward or back. If the void-yaksha strike, it will be from behind. We must protect your people.’

  The warriors muttered their agreement. Some among them were young, but most of the rearguard consisted of the older, steadier tribesmen, their flesh beaten and dark from years ­riding the steppe. The fear they felt in the presence of the huge Sky Warrior was less palpable than in the wide-eyed stares of the thin-bearded youths. Khagan alone knew how they would react if the tyranids caught them though.

  ‘Stay close,’ Feng told his two dozen-strong retinue, turning back towards the column’s rear. The head of the caravan had reached the entry to the gorge, the harnessed mounts snorting and ­tossing their heads as they were urged into the long shadows of the cliffs. Feng drew up at the edge of the gorge, eyes on the track leading back to the Gates of Eternity. He had seen the rock formation behind them in the dawn light as the Beged departed, six columns of strange slender stone, like earthen fingers reaching towards the steppe sky. There had been an eerie bleakness to them, an otherness that sent a chill creeping across Feng’s shoulders. He had felt the gaze of his dead brothers on him as he had turned away.

  They were still with him now, as he waited. He ignored their dire, bloody presence as best he could. The Beged tramped past, most on foot, the elderly and the infirm mounted on those few wagons not abandoned. Nearly everyone who passed stared at him, and the warriors gathered alongside him couldn’t resist furtive glances. Feng did his best to quell the annoyance simmering beneath the surface of his thoughts. He was nothing short of a miraculous vision to these simple people, a being that far transcended the definition of either human or mortal in their minds. After so many decades, such a reaction should not surprise or discomfit him.

  ‘How many times have you drawn an enemy’s blood in battle?’ the White Scar asked the tribesmen, seeking to break the aura of silent awe that appeared to have settled over him.

  ‘We are warriors,’ said one of the rearguard eventual
ly. ‘We have all fought many times. Even the youths here, Yesui, Lao and Taichh, all took scalps two seasons past, when we forced the damned Agari to pay in blood and yat wool for the many slights they committed against our elders.’

  The speaker’s name was Gochet, and from what Feng could discern he was one of the oldest and most experienced fighters in the tribe, second only to a handful of Hetman Jara’s personal bondsmen. He bore a long beard, pepperpotted black and silver and split into three spikes using yat grease. A livid pink scar ran down the left side of his face, curling at the corner of his mouth. Feng recognised a bone-deep blow when he saw one. It was amazing the strike hadn’t split his skull.

  ‘An az,’ Gochet had said when he’d first noticed Feng’s gaze lingering on the old wound. ‘Some big bastard Drongian. I still have his hair in my scalp bag.’

  The Beged, it seemed, were frequent rivals with the Drongians, whether in bartering, fighting, drinking or copulating. Feng found approval in that – they were not so unlike the tribes of Chogoris, at least in a few respects – but it did make him wonder what would happen when Darkand’s steppe population was brought together and confined within Heavenfall. During the Golden Season the tribes tended to arrive at the slope-city at different times, and were confined to different bartering zones by Imperial authorities all too aware of the dangers of having rivals and their wares living together within a city’s walls. There would be no opportunity for such careful demarcation once the exodus was complete, and certainly neither the brotherhood nor the Pinnacle Guard could afford to spare manpower to keep the peace. Their best hope, Feng suspected, was that the gravity of the threat would keep them compliant.

  ‘We have all taken scalps for the tribe,’ Gochet went on. There were murmured affirmations from the others.

  ‘You saw the beast that struck at your families last night,’ Feng said, addressing them all. ‘Your brothers who fell by its talons fought bravely.’

  ‘My brother, Tamar, was among them,’ Gochet said, almost matter-of-factly. ‘Will he join the Sky Warriors in the eternal hunt through the void-between-stars, great hetman?’

  ‘I cannot say,’ Feng said bluntly, in no mood to pander to their bastardised beliefs. He’d caught movement on the nearest ridge line.

  ‘Do you see them?’ he asked. The Beged peered in the direction he pointed, but none could discern what the White Scar’s genhanced vision had picked out.

  ‘They are coming,’ Feng said. He looked towards the caravan. The final wagons were clattering into the gorge, their wheels jarring over broken stone and shale.

  ‘They have found us?’ one of the other warriors, Damur, asked. ‘In all the vastness of the steppes, how can it be so?’

  ‘They are more deadly and vicious than the most powerful predator,’ Feng said, though in truth he had been wondering the same thing. He had expected a minor swarm to pick up their trail, but he had hoped it would take them longer than this.

  Abruptly, he realised how they were tracking them, and cursed. Lictors were the hive fleet’s ultimate vanguard organisms, excreting a pheromone that attracted other tyranids from hundreds of miles around. He had assumed by killing the one attacking the Beged he had ended its threat. He now realised, however, that it was entirely possible the hyper-evolutionary species had the ability to continue passing its scent even after its death. The severed head lashed to Feng’s bike was what had drawn the swarm to them.

  ‘May the earth strengthen us,’ Gochet said as he finally caught sight of the approaching xenos. Now there was fear in the veteran’s eyes.

  ‘Follow the track a little further,’ Feng said. ‘Draw them into the gully, where their numbers mean nothing, rather than let them go around and cut us off, or strike down the cliff sides. That is our best hope of survival.’

  None of the Beged cavalrymen questioned him. They followed as he turned his bike into the gorge after the last wagon, their horses made nervous and skittish by the beast-like roaring of the metallic mount’s great engine. The younger warriors snatched nervous glances back over their shoulders. The distant ridge line was now covered in a glittering carpet of black carapace spreading down onto the track. The susurration of chitin and thumping hooves carried to them on the steppe wind.

  ‘We stop them here,’ Feng called out, easing to a stop a hundred paces into the gorge. The cliffs either side reached their narrowest point, just wide enough for three horsemen to pass abreast. The White Scar gestured at the youngest-looking tribal cavalryman.

  ‘You, ride back to the column and tell the hetman to keep going, no matter what. He must not stop. If he stops, he and all his people will die. Is that clear?’

  The boy nodded before sinking his heels into his mount’s flanks. Feng signalled to the other riders.

  ‘Gochet and Torman, with me, either side. You should dismount – your horses will panic when they catch the yaksha’s scent, and they are too easily struck anyway.’

  ‘What of you, great hetman?’ Gochet, apparently the only Beged who dared address Feng directly, asked.

  ‘My steed fears nothing,’ Feng said. ‘The rest of you, order yourselves behind us. When one falls, fill the gap. Aim for their throats and underbellies – their backs and heads are well armoured.’

  The tribesmen stayed close to the great Sky Warrior, nodding with each new instruction and gripping their spears tighter. They were merely humans, and primitive ones at that, but Feng was not so removed from reality to have forgotten that it was men who held the galaxy for the Imperium, regardless of the super-soldiers who had founded it. Some, like Gochet, would have made fine hunt-brothers if they’d been inducted early enough. The pride and strength of Chogoris was not wholly lost in the distant peoples of Darkand.

  ‘Sell your lives dearly,’ Feng said. ‘Every second wins your family a few more paces, a few more moments of hope. While one of us lives to defend this passage, they will not pass.’

  No good plan is without great risk.

  – Surek Khan, hetman of the Ko-cha

  Chapter Eight

  GAMBITS

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 31 HOURS.

  TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL [TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

  Yellow River, Darkand

  Smile while you killed. That was what the great Khagan had taught his children, the White Scars, when he had still walked among them. Smile while you fought, and while you died. Smile in victory, and in defeat. There was much in a smile. Far more than in a snarl, or a scream, or even icy stoicism. That was something the other Chapters had forgotten. To see an enemy smile as he died was to know true defiance, to understand that even in death a warrior could retain pride and dignity. To see your killer smile was to know a final shame, for a smile was rarely worn by a man who was troubled or threatened. The smiling warrior showed an unsmiling galaxy that, in all things, he was triumphant, and delighted in his victory.

  Joghaten Khan had not smiled for a long time. Not truly, not the infectious, aching grin that came alongside an unfettered surge of emotion. He smiled now though, as he led his demi-ordu into the swarm clustered on the dry banks of the Yellow River. The hive tyrant was ahead, at the swarm’s heart. The first dozen gaunts protecting it were crushed by Whitemane before Joghaten had even swung a blade. His assault bike slammed into the edge of the swarm like a bolt of lightning from the spore-choked heavens, flinging broken bodies from its path as xenos skulls and spines cracked against his shield screen and front tyre tread.

  Eventually, the sheer weight of hissing, snapping bodies pressing in on him slowed the attack. The khan-commander lashed out with one tulwar, only glancing at where the blow fell, striking on instinct and allowing the weight and speed of Whitemane to see the blade through chitin, flesh and hideous alien organs. He brought his right hand back to the bike handle, steering with the ball of his fist while striking out with his left tulwar. Ano
ther gaunt fell, headless, lost instantly in the press. So Joghaten fought from the saddle, guiding his steed with his legs and twitches of one hand and then the other, always moving, always cutting. A lesser rider, even a Space Marine, would likely have already become unseated, jarred by the continual crunching impacts of the bike into and over squirming, writhing meat and bone, but the White Scars had long ago mastered such combat. Joghaten’s honour guard fought with near identical finesse, forming a wedge of white ceramite and flashing blades that parted the churning xenos horde before them.

  Progress, of course, could not be maintained indefinitely. Joghaten’s bike began taking harder and heavier hits, and there was growling reluctance in it now – the rear wheel was struggling to chew over the thick carpet of mulched alien corpses, and the density of the swarm was growing. Joghaten hit the firing stud for Whitemane’s twin bolters, opening a brief channel through the swarm and giving himself enough time to blink-click his visor’s vox-transmission rune.

  ‘Red Berkut,’ he said. ‘In the name of the Khagan, part this vile sea.’

  A green affirmative icon blinked at him over the display. Joghaten kicked forward, Whitemane’s forewheel spinning wildly as it mounted a heavier xenos corpse and ploughed through a clutch of snapping termagants. Behind and to his left and right his bondsmen were also still struggling on, bolters hammering and charged blades running with smoking xenos ichor. Hawk-eyed Bleda was chanting the Tale of Stars Descended, the ancient White Scars poem about their old affinity with their honour worlds. Khuchar was shrieking like a spitted yaksha, the brotherhood’s champion unable to contain his delight as he sliced apart leaping hormagaunts with his crackling power dao. In the centre of the wedge, Jubai held the brotherhood’s lodge pole high, horse hair plumes whipping in the wind. Veterans though they were, the honour guard was barely even aware of the rest of the strike force deploying across the rise to their backs, or the supporting fire that was keeping the bike assault from being enveloped and overwhelmed. They were the greatest warriors in the brotherhood, heroes of the blades, each with a dozen scrolls of poetic verse describing their deeds for the Khagan and the Emperor. Today, for the first time in many weeks, they carved deeds afresh.