by Gav Thorpe
In the distance a second Behemoth trampled through the woods. The flickering of witchfire could be seen as its cannons aimed directly at the toppled wraithknight.
VIII
Clad in grey rags, Illiathin ascended the steps of the temple, his sack of precious forage over one shoulder. Casting a haunted gaze behind him, he slipped his hand into the hidden recess in one of the pillars of the vast portico, unlocking the small door to one side of the imposing entrance to the shrine. He slipped inside, glad to be out of the ever-present glare that bathed the city.
Bare feet slapping on the stone floor, he followed a narrow corridor around to the main entrance hall. Mosaic tiles underfoot, he cut across the antechamber to the half-hidden stairwell that led up to the priests’ chambers. He ascended, muscles moving out of memory more than conscious thought. Dumping the bag on the bundle of sheets that served as his bed, he crossed the chamber to his meagre stash of belongings. Rooting through the frayed and torn clothes, he unearthed two gleaming jewels, one red, the other blue. He clasped them to his chest and fell onto the bed, exhausted.
‘It’s getting worse,’ he told the gems. ‘Most have fled into the webway but I fear to follow them. Not only are they depraved, the webway is no longer secure. The daemons that stalk the city have broken the wards that kept the warp separate from the interstellar network. Who can say how much of it is compromised?’
He sat up, the stones in his lap.
‘Food is getting scarce. I found fresh bodies by the orchard alongside Raven’s Plaza. The remnants of the gangs are fighting over what’s left. I can’t go out any more, it’s too dangerous. I found a passageway beneath the second crypt that leads to the Gardens of Isha on the neighbouring square. There appears to be no taint there, perhaps I will be able to nurture fresh food.’
He stopped, a moment of realisation caused him to stand up, tossing the stones onto the bed.
‘What’s the point?’ he cried out. His voice echoed back to him from the vaulted ceiling of the main shrine, mocking as it diminished.
Illiathin strode to the mezzanine at one side of the chamber, overlooking the temple floor a distance below. Shafts of red light illuminated the temple from windowed domes above. To his left was the statue of Asuryan, rendered in red and grey stone, on one knee, a hand outstretched to his worshippers. From his open hand spilled water into a pool, symbolic of the blessings and wisdom of the lord of the gods.
It was the water that had brought Illiathin here. The temple was defunct, the gods had died long ago during the War in Heaven, but the shrine had been maintained out of duty and respect for the past. Even the looters and desecrators that had ravaged the city since the anarchy had begun had passed it by and the daemons shunned the district of shrines.
Fresh water and shelter. It seemed a fitting benediction from the lord of the heavens, but it was wearing thin. Comfort, company, hope. These things Illiathin desired but did not have.
It was simple enough to climb up onto the stone balustrade, one hand on the wall to steady himself. He looked at Asuryan’s stern but caring face.
‘Why? Why carry on?’ Illiathin whispered. The words disappeared into the gloom. He glared at the statue of the Lord of Gods. ‘Show me you still care.’
He stepped off the rail.
Something snared the back of his robe and he swung, crashing into the wall. Looking up, he came face-to-face with a scowling youth. She was probably half his age, but the look in her eyes was ancient. There was grime across her face and the mane of hair that framed it was knotted and matted. Despite her apparent frailty she held his robe in an iron grip. She took hold of him with her other hand and hauled.
He grabbed the rail and helped her, pulling himself back to the mezzanine.
‘What’s your name?’ the girl asked. It seemed an odd question.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied.
‘I followed you in, thought it looked safe. You looked safe. That was a very stupid thing to do.’
‘Was it?’ Illiathin sat up, pushing the girl aside. ‘And who are you to judge?’
‘I’m Faraethil. And you’re welcome.’
‘You’re not,’ he growled back, standing up. ‘This is my home, I didn’t invite you.’
The girl looked hurt, but turned and left. Illiathin listened to her footsteps descend the stairs and then heard the thud of the side door closing. He turned back to the temple, about to repeat his actions, but he slowed and then stopped as he reached the rail.
Perhaps Asuryan had reached out beyond the veil as he had asked. He thought about the girl, and wished that he had not sent her away. She could have let him fall and taken his few possessions for herself, but had saved him.
He looked back at the bed, to the two gleaming stones amongst the blankets. A sudden wave of disgust welled up inside him – disgust at himself. Billions had died but he had been spared. Many that had survived were the worst of the cultists and hedonists.
But he still lived, and so did the girl. There had to be others who would do something more with the legacy of a whole civilisation.
He returned to his contemplation, the stones in his lap as he stared at Asuryan’s noble features. Hope had not returned. This world allowed no hope to flourish.
There was purpose instead.
18
Night had fallen but the tracery of las-beams and glow of flames lit the sky as bright as day. The flickering illumination hampered the humans’ night vision but Asurmen suffered no such weakness and strode the battlefield dispatching his foes with cold demeanour. His vambraces spat shurikens that cut down the hapless humans by the score. The few that survived the hail of monomolecular discs were met by the gleaming blade of the Phoenix Lord’s power sword – beheaded or eviscerated, all slain by a single stroke.
Asurmen did not understand how so many humans could have come to the world. The ships in orbit were not sufficient to bring such an army. He had to conclude that they had risen here perhaps, emerging from a human population that had unwittingly colonised the ancient eldar world and then been corrupted by the influence of the Chaos gods.
It did not matter how many the eldar killed, there seemed always to be another deranged cultist ready to take up the fight. The humans battled with little semblance of strategy or cohesion, making them easy prey for the psychically coordinated eldar counter-attacks. But for all their brutish simplicity, they outnumbered the defenders of the battleship by a significant magnitude. Though ten might die for every eldar casualty inflicted, there were enough humans to weather such a storm.
The tanks in particular and the huge armoured beasts were coming closer and closer. Fire Dragons with thermal guns and anti-tank bombs had done their best to support the heavy-weapons fire of the Guardians and the grav-tanks, but inexorably the humans’ armoured vehicles were creeping into range. They would soon be able to fire directly on the Patient Lightning, and for all that its hull could withstand significant damage, it would only be a matter of time before some potentially fatal hull breach was made by such an attack.
‘Hylandris, can you hear me?’ Asurmen knew the farseer would be monitoring the communication. ‘We cannot hold the open ground. It is a killing zone.’
What do you suggest we do? Sacrifice our only way to leave the planet?
‘Where is the pilot? Can you lift off?’
She is still resting, while the last repairs are made.
‘Then we have no choice, we have to narrow the field of conflict. Order the army to withdraw onto the Patient Lightning.’
They will rain down a storm of shells upon us! We cannot risk such a foolhardy plan. No, you must fight to keep the humans at bay until we are ready to leave. Sometimes fate demands sacrifice.
‘We cannot keep back the humans, no matter how many lives we give for the cause. We must draw them onto the starship and use the situation to our advantage. Their vehicle
s will not be able to follow and their numbers will choke their advance. We must draw them onto the ship and negate their numbers. Now!’
While he waited for Hylandris’s next response Asurmen unleashed a hail of shurikens at a gang of humans scuttling past the flaming wreck of a grav-tank to his left. Three of them fell. The others stopped to return fire, but the Phoenix Lord was already running towards them and only a handful of shots sang past him and ricocheted from his armour before his sword ended the lives of the others.
What if they do not follow?
‘They will come. There is madness in them, do you not feel it?’ Asurmen could sense a churning of emotion that rose from the human horde like the thermals of the forest fire that surrounded them. The air was thick with the stench of Chaos, a scent Asurmen knew far too well. ‘They want us dead, nothing more. Not the Ankathalamon, not the webgate, not the battleship. Us. We shall be the bait in the trap.’
We cannot leave with humans on board the ship. It is too dangerous.
‘We will not have to,’ Asurmen said. ‘None will survive long. If we do not do this, the Patient Lightning will be destroyed on the ground. You must get Neridiath ready to pilot the ship the moment the assault relents.’
There was another pause. In the following few heartbeats of silence Asurmen slew a dozen more humans with blade and shurikens. Their tattooed skin was flayed into tatters like the rags and uniforms they wore. Dismembered corpses lay sprawled in bloody puddles at his feet. Others in the eldar host had followed the conversation and without any overt order or agreement, more than a dozen squads of Aspect Warriors were falling back, the exarchs heeding the call of Asurmen.
Very well. Hylandris’s tone was curt, edged with tension. Lead them aboard and cut them down. I will wake the pilot and have her ready to take off the moment the repairs are complete and the humans thrown back.
‘It shall be done.’
There was no need to issue commands, to marshal the war host with verbal communication. Guided by the farseer, the new strategy passed at the speed of thought through the eldar army, and within moments the holding attacks and counter-assaults ceased, giving way to a rapid withdrawal.
The heaviest weapons fell back first while a cordon of Aspect Warriors and Guardians held the humans, until they in turn could retreat under the supporting fire of Dark Reapers and grav-tanks. The humans filled the void like air encountering vacuum, swarming into a deadly crossfire between the smaller guns of the battleships, the Falcons and encircling squadrons of jetbikes and Vypers. They died by the dozen while Asurmen led the retreat.
Squad by squad they fell back along the boarding bridges that arced down to the ground from the Patient Lightning. Broader docking bays in the lower decks of the ship were opened for the grav-vehicles to enter.
And then the gunfire stopped.
The humans surged like a tidal wave, charging up the ramps after their foes. They poured onto the battleship uncaring of what lay in wait for them, spreading into the Patient Lightning like poison in a creature’s veins.
And then the eldar struck, and the killing started again.
IX
He felt her rather than heard her. His time alone had honed not only his physical senses but his psychic intuition. The new universe was a place of emotion and feeling, a halfway state between the real and unreal. This much he had observed and deduced, watching the world unfurl from the heights of the temple and spending long days and nights allowing his thoughts to wander, his mind to stray as though ascending the dream-tree again.
She ran.
She ran hard, without purpose at first, several streets away. Those that chased were close, filled with the fire of the hunt, their greed and desire burning like a flame that lit the city with its heat.
He let his essence dissipate, becoming one with the city, hearing her panting as she sprinted, listening to the animal-like yelps and barks of the pursuing pack. Her fear was a streak of chill through the winding streets. No matter how much she twisted and turned, doubled back and looped, they were on the psychic scent, drawn to her innocence, her purity like hounds after blood.
And it was blood they wanted. Blood and terror. Her blood, her terror.
Most of them had left, retreating into the webway where the daemons were not so powerful. Here in the between world, the half-existence between life and death, the daemons reigned supreme. The city was theirs now and he had let them take it. All but the temple of Asuryan and the Gardens of Isha. They sensed the ancient power here and though the world now resided in their domain the daemons would not approach.
The city they had turned into their pleasure palace – moulding, shaping, transforming the delights of the few remaining inhabitants into torture, overwhelming the senses with debauchery and the raw energy of Chaos.
He had never really thought about the Chaos gods before. They had been a myth almost, a thing from another place. Like the War in Heaven, a half-truth masquerading as a tale wrapped in a legend and a lie.
But now the Chaos gods were horribly, fatally real. Time had brought understanding, of the nature of what had befallen his people. He lived in the heart of the creature they had birthed, a divine retribution on a scale so vast it had swept the galaxy. Even now he could feel it, suckling at his spirit, drawing strength from his life, sustained by the curse of the eldar that resided in his essence.
A god, shaped of perversity and yearning, of fulfilled and unfulfilled desire, of adoration and the adored; spawned by the laxity of a whole star-spanning empire, brought into being by a descent into self-fulfilment so swift and precipitous that none could have known the full disaster of its ending, not even those Exodites that had so long foretold the coming doom.
His thoughts returned to the girl. Her fear had changed, becoming like a spear, guiding her. He felt her intent, to find sanctuary, to seek shelter where she had found it briefly before.
She came to the column where the lock was hidden and the side door opened with a click that resounded through the temple.
Too late. They had seen her, had seen the way into the shrine.
She had brought them to his sacred place, defiled his peace.
He ran down the stairs to confront her, to send her away again, but when he reached the entrance hall and looked upon her terrified face he could not abandon her.
The others came in cautiously, wary of the rarefied air of the temple. The tranquillity confounded them and they approached slowly, sniffing the air like dogs. Clad in scraps of armour and clothing, long blades in their hands, hooks and barbs passed through skin and flesh as ornamentation.
One of them, a female with red-dyed hair stood up in spines, snarled at the two of them, eyes wild with madness and hunger.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, pointing her curved dagger at him.
He looked at Faraethil and then back at the witch-leader.
‘Asurmen.’ The Hand of Asuryan.
19
Manyia would not stop screaming. The Patient Lightning rumbled and thundered as shells impacted on the outer hull, and the corridors reverberated with shouts, gunfire and other din of battle. As disturbing as this was, there was something else that distressed the child. The ship’s matrix was alive with the thoughts of war, the murderous impulses of the Aspect Warriors, the fear and desperation of the crew. Worse still, the psychic circuitry was being overwhelmed by the crude rage and dull ignorance of the attacking humans, their minds like stones hurled at the glass of the matrix, breaking it with sheer brutality and mass.
The bestial, base desires and impulses of the lesser beings swamped the matrix, the numbers of the humans such that their effect on the psyche of the ship was akin to a tidal wave crashing against a coastal settlement. Neridiath and the other adults could desensitise themselves from the effect, blocking the interface from the Patient Lightning. Little Manyia had no such defences as the psychic network broke down,
barraging her with a succession of terrifying thoughts and savage images.
The corridor was filled with corpses. The Guardians that had been assigned to protect Neridiath were dead, set upon as they had escorted her towards the piloting chamber. Their mesh armour was torn apart by savage weapons, their attackers likewise slain by shurikens and snarling chainswords. With his last breath Faedarth, the squad leader, had opened up the throat of the final human raider. The gory remains of both sides surrounded the pilot and her daughter.
Carrying Manyia in her arms, Neridiath ran, away from the fighting, away from the encroaching nightmare of the human attack. She tried her best to shield her daughter from the effects of the psychic overload, welcoming Manyia into her thoughts, using her own barriers to mask the ruin running rife through the matrix.
She was not sure where she was running to, turning at junctions and following passages at random. It felt like the humans were everywhere. Neridiath allowed her mind to touch the matrix for a brief instant, and realised that the Chaos worshippers were breaking into the ship at several points, allowed to enter by the withdrawal of the warriors. Neridiath did not understand how the humans had managed to break through so swiftly, and why nobody had come to protect her and Manyia.
Harsh voices speaking in a crude language snapped her back to the present. The lights flickered, a sign of approaching matrix interference, and in their strobing the illuminated walls showed hunched, clumsy shadows approaching from ahead.
Manyia was still shrieking and there was nothing Neridiath could do except clamp a hand over her child’s mouth and turn around, heading back the way she had come. Her daughter’s thoughts were a mess of panic and fear, no single emotion clear enough to detect, just an agony of psychic distress that matched her vocal wailing. Unable to think, her mind bombarded from outside and within, Neridiath staggered from one corridor to the next, flailing through the ship in a desperate attempt to find sanctuary.