Around me, the command deck had broken into a miasma of activity. Crew shouted and raced between stations. Legionaries demanded answers. Machinery thrummed and clanked. But I was watching the oculus, ignoring the jostles I received from standing in the way.
I watched the last asteroid spinning away into space after missing the Skies of Wrath. They were more than mere dead rock. They echoed with familiar whispers, familiar cries, as though the asteroids were alive – or had once been.
The other fleet approached from the storm, sailing far calmer tides than those we had endured. Whatever forces had oppressed us offered no such resistance to these newcomers. They lingered at the very edge of our firing solutions, at a distance not only invisible to the naked eye but requiring intensive calculation to even lock weapons.
Only their weaponised meteors could reach us. More of them streamed through our spreading formations, but with our ships moving, there was no chance of striking at such a range with unguided projectiles. Only our own complacency and poor luck had allowed the deaths of the Scarred Crown and Oath of Knives.
One of the lead battleships ignited with a procession of successive lights along its backbone. Not damage, but a harnessing and release of energy. Another meteor burst forth from beneath the vessel’s hull.
‘They’re using mass drivers,’ I said.
Ilyaster, pale and parched as ever, stared at the oculus with his sunken gaze. Wearing our Legion’s black only highlighted his emaciation and cadaverous pallor. He spared me a rheumy, unhealthy glance that still blazed with life.
‘But why?’ he asked.
I had no idea. ‘They are not even aiming,’ I replied.
The next asteroid speared past us, parting the misty matter of Eyespace. I felt it again, that murmur of familiar voices.
Ceraxia stalked closer to me, her bladed legs clank-clank-clanking on the deck. The dim light of battle stations cast her hooded features into absolute blackness. All I could see of her face was the faintest glint off the edge of one eye-lens.
‘You sense something,’ she accused me.
‘Those asteroids. They sound like… They feel like…’
Like Maeleum. The same whispers I had heard on that dead world. The same choruses of ghosts.
‘Blood of the Gods,’ I swore, turning and ascending Abbadon’s dais. He was watching another fusillade of vast rocks slash past us. ‘Ezekyle. Those asteroids.’
‘Their mass drivers won’t hit us at this range. Not now we’re ready for them.’
I waved his reassurance aside. ‘Those aren’t just void rocks. They’ve shattered the grave world. They’re throwing Maeleum at us.’
Abaddon spat a curse. ‘Thagus Daravek.’
I could only agree. Leaving our dominion behind had meant sailing far from the reach of our astropathic relays and telemetry beacons. The forces we had left to garrison our territory were pulled tight to the most critical regions, with skeleton fleets and warhosts around our primary fortresses, leaving the rest of our domain at the risk of invasion. We knew this was a risk. We accepted it as necessary.
And thus, we had no conception of what was transpiring in our absence. For all of our suspicions that Daravek might pursue us, we had no way of knowing what form that pursuit would take.
Now we did. Daravek had levelled Maeleum from orbit, and was hurling the planet’s bones after us.
‘As insults go,’ Abaddon admitted through clenched teeth, ‘I almost admire the bastard.’ He called up to the Anamnesis in her containment chamber. ‘Ultio, can we kill that fleet?’
She had already processed a multitude of estimates and probabilities. ‘Yes,’ she replied, watching the motionless armada that faced us. ‘Casualties will be catastrophic on both sides but… Yes. We can kill them.’
Abaddon stared at the oculus, the same calculations firing behind his narrowed eyes. ‘Daravek can’t intend to fight here.’ He spoke of the storm’s instability around us, but also, I suspect, the fact that our fleets were so evenly matched. Forcing the issue here would be definitive, but practically suicidal.
‘They have nothing that can match the Spirit,’ Telemachon urged as he appeared at Abaddon’s side. ‘We should fight.’
‘And if they cripple half of our fleet while we’re beating them?’ I countered. ‘You ate that Templar’s brain, the same as I did. You know what lies beyond the Eye’s borders. We cannot afford to limp our way out of here with the real battle yet to come.’
The decision was stolen from us when the Anamnesis laughed, the sound resonating in tinny majesty from her damaged vox-gargoyles. She twisted in her blood-streaked fluid, her laughter bitter and dark. A moment later, voices rose from the crew consoles responsible for the vox-array.
‘They are hailing us,’ Ultio called out over one of the human officers saying the same thing. ‘Daravek wishes to meet on neutral ground.’
Abaddon added his laughter to the tempest of amusement already taking hold of the bridge. ‘And what terms does he offer for this truce?’
The communications officer in his tattered finery replied, still holding one hand to his earpiece. ‘You and him, Lord Abaddon. Each may bring ten warriors. You may choose the neutral ground upon which to meet.’
Ezekyle was still chuckling. ‘Tell him I do not need ten warriors. Inform him that I will bring three.’
‘Yes, Lord Abaddon.’
Abaddon turned amused eyes back to me. ‘Is something amiss, Khayon?’
‘Three warriors?’ I asked. My disapproving tone spoke for me.
‘I am Lord of the Black Legion,’ he said, and it was the first time I ever heard him speak those words, naming us as our enemies named us. ‘No one dictates terms to me. Let the coward bring his ten for protection. I will bring three, and we will smile throughout his tawdry truce.’
He bared his filed teeth in the ugliest of grins. ‘And if the chance arises, Khayon, I want you to kill him.’
A Garden of Bones
There were no worlds nearby to use as neutral ground. At least, none that we could reach from where we were becalmed in the heart of the storm. It was Nefertari who gifted us with an idea. She came to us, with Ashur-Kai at her side. They approached the rest of the Ezekarion as we stood around the stellar-cartography hololith presenting its unreliable imagery of the flux of nearby Eyespace.
Ashur-Kai spoke first, his voice softer since he had sustained the host of psychic stigmata wounds that had healed scabbily across his features. From his discomfited movements and the ripples of pain radiating from his thoughts, he was wounded within his armour, not just on his face. Injuries of psy-stigmata and war affliction are wounds to the soul as much as to the mind and body. They are notoriously agonising, enough to drive unaugmented humans far beyond reason. Worse still, I suspected that the lacerations to his flesh were mirrored on his muscles and internal organs. He was fortunate to still be alive.
‘The alien,’ he said with his typical distant politeness, ‘has an idea.’
‘Taial’shara,’ she said. And she gestured at the hololith, to a patch of shifting Eyespace devoid of planet or moon or sun.
‘Tulshery?’ Lheor grunted. He had never deemed it necessary to learn any of the eldar tongues. ‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Taial’shara,’ Telemachon corrected him, murmuring with no small reverence.
Nefertari closed her eyes for a moment – an eldar gesture of agreement and trust – at Telemachon’s perfect pronunciation. ‘It was slain in the exodus begun with the birth of She Who Thirsts,’ the eldar continued. ‘You need somewhere to meet your foes? There lies Craftworld Taial’shara, its bones cold in the tainted night. Use its grave for your neutral ground.’
Abaddon spoke through a fanged smile. The idea seemed to appeal to him. ‘Can we reach it, Ashur-Kai?’
‘I believe so, lord.’
And so it was deci
ded.
Abaddon was true to his word, taking only three warriors. Arguably the three most calculated to challenge Daravek’s temper.
We arrived first, at Abaddon’s choice. Around us rose the shattered arches and broken domes of wraithbone architecture, absent of the usual psychic thrumming that teased the senses in the presence of the alien material. As Nefertari had promised, Taial’shara was dead. Even daemons left it alone. Every shred of nourishment had been sucked clean from its husk, down to the plaintive whispers of its ghosts. All was cold. All was silent.
Have you ever walked through the deep-void palaces and spires of an eldar craftworld? They defy easy imagining. Each craftworld is an artificial city, born through alien ingenuity and pushed out to sail the dark heavens like a life raft. They are constructed of psychically resonant wraithbone and shielded against the touch of space. Domes are given over to habitation, others to inhuman hydroponics and agricultural cultivation, others to the eldar’s many temples of war.
Every craftworld is home to a different eldar culture, each realm its own unique jewel in the night. Taial’shara, like so many others, did not escape the death of the species in time. As it fled the birth of the Youngest God, it was torn open and swept clean of life, trapped forever within the grip of the Great Eye.
After securing the landing area, we gathered together to wait in the shadow of our gunship. Its black hull showed the golden Eye of Horus set in the heart of the Eightfold Path; a reminder of our origins in rebellion, set now amidst the pathways of the future.
Abaddon came to me as I crouched by the edge of what had once been a reflecting pool, doubtless where the eldar of this botanical garden once meditated. I tossed a broken chunk of wraithbone into the dry, empty pond where only the ashes of plants remained. The hank of curved bone disturbed a smoky cloud of grey powder.
‘Brother?’ he asked me. His good mood was holding. If there is one thing Ezekyle has always loved, it is a challenge. He lives to test himself against worthy foes.
‘All is well,’ I assured him, rising to my feet. I cast my gaze across the shattered dome’s landscape. If I let my senses drift and my eyes unfocus, I could see wraithly after-images of the alien jungle realm that had once thrived here. ‘I was merely thinking.’
‘Thinking of what?’
I gestured to the wraithbone ruins. ‘This place. The serenity here. The silence. It tempts me.’
‘I’ll never understand your fascination with the eldar,’ he said, thudding a hand against my back-mounted power pack in fraternal warmth.
‘There is no mystery to it,’ I said sincerely. ‘They are a warning of what happens when the Pantheon controls a species, as opposed to a species showing caution in its dealings with the divine.’
Little did I know as I spoke those words just how familiar Taial’shara would become to me in time.
I was preaching to the choir, of course. His smile told me that.
Daravek and his cohort arrived in the fat-bellied mass of a Sykri-pattern Stormbird gunship, eclipsing our sleeker Thunderhawk. Death Guard symbols marked its scored hull, and its turrets tracked us in a display of tedious, unnecessary aggression. We remained still, and if unsurprised disappointment at needless posturing could be weaponised, I believe Abaddon’s sigh would have slaughtered the Stormbird there and then, dragging it out of the air.
He alone seemed at ease. Ilyaster and Telemachon, as dispassionate as they could be, betrayed their tension in their stances. For my part, I could not look away from the descending gunship, feeling the dread gaze of its cannons, suspecting Daravek would simply end the truce by taking this chance to eradicate us. I could shield us with a barrier of telekinetic force, but a kine shield would avail us little if the craftworld crumbled around us.
The Stormbird’s landing claws crunched onto the wraithbone platform. The gang-ramp slammed down, disgorging the eleven warriors we had been expecting.
They came in a clash of colours – every one of the Nine Legions was represented, even the Sons of Horus. I sensed Abaddon’s amusement sour to annoyance at the sight of that warrior, though he let nothing show on his face. The bitterness was fleeting; it seemed little could dampen his mood of righteous confidence.
Daravek led them. Each was a warlord in his own right, but Thagus Daravek held their allegiance, either by willing oath or the servitude of thraldom. He strode forwards, boots sending cracks through the wraithbone floor.
The Gods hate us all – I have told you this – but they craved Thagus Daravek’s attention. The warp murmured in the air around him, ripe with the spirits of disease and creatures of mutable fate, all of them chittering promises of golden futures and life eternal into their master’s aura.
He furled his wings tight to his body. Those mutated pinions were surely too weak to lift him skywards in all his rot-crusted Terminator regalia. The metallic spines that thrust from his skin and bone alike were sheened with blood as thick and dark as unrefined promethium oil.
He stood opposite Abaddon, the two of them ten metres apart. On the ground between the warlords was a shattered pictograph of coloured glass, its original artistry long since destroyed, its meaning long since lost.
I confess, there was something kingly about Daravek that day. Abaddon looked as he always looked: a lord of war, a leader of men, a warchief. He was one of us, and first among equals. Daravek was something more, something that held itself above the warriors he led. In the Eye, where thoughts become reality, one could almost see the chains of submission from the legionaries’ throats, bound to Daravek’s clawed hands. I wondered what hold he had over their souls, whether it was a lord’s mastery or something deeper.
‘First Captain Abaddon of the Sons of Horus,’ Daravek greeted my brother.
Abaddon replied with a warm, sincere laugh at his rival’s choice of words. ‘Thagus Daravek, Lord of Hosts. We meet at last.’
‘It is a change,’ Daravek allowed, ‘to face you, rather than your useless assassin.’
‘You would have faced me long before now if you would cease fleeing before my armies each time I come to kill you.’
Daravek made a show of his bleeding gums, which may or may not have been a smile. ‘I see Khayon at your side now, making this our seventh meeting. Is that not so, Iskandar?’
‘Sixth,’ I corrected him.
He gurgled his amusement. ‘No, assassin. It is the seventh. And the Masqued Prince is here as well? I’m honoured, Telemachon Lyras.’
Telemachon inclined his head in a respectful bow, but said nothing. Daravek turned to the last of our ambassadorial party.
‘And, of course, I recognise my beloved brother Ilyaster.’ He had been too canny to let anger discolour his voice so far, but poison seeped into his tone as he faced Ilyaster. ‘How do you fare, traitor?’
The former Death Guard performed a shallower bow than Telemachon, the joints of his blackened war-plate snarling. ‘I am well,’ he said with a gaunt and vague smile. ‘Thank you for asking. Forgive me, but I did not bring your ceremonial scythe, lord. It was melted down to make pisspots for my slaves.’
To my shame, I had to force myself not to show any amusement, for I knew this to be true.
Daravek licked his decaying teeth. ‘You did not deserve to wear the haloed skull, Ilyaster. I hope you wept as you tore the symbols of your true Legion from your armour.’
‘From shame and shadow recast,’ Ilyaster said, rekindling Abaddon’s smile. ‘In black and gold reborn.’
Daravek snorted. ‘Let me introduce my warriors,’ he said with undeniable condescension. He swept his hand across the gathered legionaries, but Abaddon interrupted him with a grinding scrape of the Talon’s claws closing and opening.
‘There’s no need,’ Abaddon replied, ‘for I do not care what names your slaves bear. You wished to meet and speak, Daravek. We have met. Now speak.’
The Death Guard
lord bristled, and one of his warriors stepped forwards, breaking their uneven ranks. He wore the mismatching green, black and red of the Sons of Horus’ Reaver clans.
‘I am no slave,’ he spat at Abaddon. ‘I wear my Legion’s colours with pride, renegade.’
Abaddon’s eyes never left Daravek. ‘One of your dogs is whining, Thagus. I thought you had a better leash on their behaviour.’
Daravek ordered the warrior back into the ranks with a curt gesture. The Sons of Horus legionary reluctantly obeyed.
‘Do you wish to observe the formalities before we negotiate?’ Thagus asked. He spoke of the traditional duel between champions that many warbands enjoyed before a battle or before attempts at diplomacy. When warriors gather, there will always be such contests. Reputation is everything to us. In the Nine Legions, there is no more valuable currency than renown. When I sailed alone, I usually allowed Nefertari to do the honours. A great many mutants and warriors had fallen to her alien blades.
I had expected Abaddon to laugh at the idea, but he nodded once, his lip curling. ‘By all means. Who will step forwards from the gathering of heroes that cower in your shadow?’
Daravek’s champion stepped forwards at once. I knew him – Ulrech Ansontyn was one of the Lord of Hosts’ more renowned warband leaders, and even before the rebellion against the Emperor, he was known as a gifted bladesman in the IV Legion. The light of the choked stars glinted from his filthy ceramite, as though proximity to Daravek had allowed the warlord’s Gods-given blessings to spread. His visor was a slit of red, gleaming from within.
Ulrech drew a plain, durable power sword, the same metallic hue as his armour plating. He saluted Telemachon with a sweep of the blade, and his voice emerged through the portcullis faceplate of his crested Mark III helm.
‘Long have I wished to face the Masqued Prince.’
The other warriors murmured amongst themselves. This promised to be a duel for the ages; even Ilyaster’s yellowed eyes were lit with a fever that spoke of dark excitement.
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