CHAPTER 3
A THOUSAND SOULS TO QUENCH
‘What could be finer than the soughing kiss of blade on flesh? Come to me and I will love you with such strokes as will make you swoon. We will dance and caress with edges so fine the very stars themselves are sundered by their divine movements.’
– Qa’leh, Mistress of Blades, to Duke Vileth, in Ursyllas’s Dispossessions
Among the spires of High Commorragh the great citadel of the Blades of Desire Kabal held a special place in the dark hearts of many Commorrites. Its gigantic arenas played host to elaborate displays of fighting prowess unmatched anywhere in the universe, carnivals of blood and suffering honed to artistic perfection. The arenas fulfilled a vital role in Commorragh society. The miasma of pain and fear they generated, the excitement of murder and wanton slaughter witnessed at close hand invigorated and rejuvenated the spectators. This is no mere pastime or simple diversion for the jaded hosts of the dark city. Without the crimson displays of the arena Commorragh would soon collapse in upon itself to slake its eternal thirst for suffering. The archons had a term for it: Llith’antu Klavu, the knife that stays the blade.
Many spires featured arenas of their own – toroidal raceways, multi-layered platforms or specialised environments – but few rivalled those of the Blades of Desire for sheer scale and complexity. Archon Xelian, mistress of the Blades of Desire, conducted endless realspace raids to fill the slaughter pits with fresh victims and offered patronage to any wych cult or hellion gang of sufficient stature to meet her famously high standards. Every day thousands of slaves and beasts flowed into her arenas to be gorily sliced apart for the pleasure of the crowd, but today was different.
Today’s events marked the culmination of a six-day orgy of carnage fuelled by Archon Xelian’s most recent raid. The foray had netted unexpected jewels in the form of Imperial Guard troopers. Commorraghan experience of the human warriors of the Imperium’s shield could be divided into two flavours: terrified conscripts unable to quite believe the nightmare they had fallen into, and seen-it-all veterans that didn’t realise the nightmare they had fallen into until it was too late. The latter variety were much more entertaining.
Xelian herself was already fully recovered from her taxing sojourn in realspace, her body firm and supple beneath hooked breastplate and razor-edged greaves, her lips full and red beneath her half-masked helm. She strode through the training complex beneath the arena primus with an ornate agoniser whip gripped in her hand. Anyone crossing her path was lashed aside with a wordless snarl, the agoniser’s neuronic circuitry leaving a trail of writhing, screaming victims in her wake. She forged her way to the confinement cells in a fury, barely sparing a glance for the wyches at practice in blade-filled chambers and gut-wrenching gravity anomalies all around her. Her beastmaster, Varidh, quailed at her coming, as well he might.
‘You said they were ready!’ Xelian thrust the agoniser whip at him accusingly.
‘They will be, my archon! I swear it!’ Varidh yelped.
‘That’s not what I was told. Explain!’ The whip lowered to her side but still lashed like the tail of an angry cat.
‘The scenario will still be played out, it is only that the turncoat became unreliable and had to be replaced. Please, my archon, observe if you will.’ Varidh turned and touched the wall before gesturing towards it in an expansive fashion as he quietly backed out of lashing range. The wall shimmered and vanished to reveal the interior of a large confinement cell where they could observe the inhabitants unseen from outside.
A group of hairy, lumpen-looking humans were in the act of rising from equally lumpen-looking beds as a door opened to admit a human female bearing a tray. An eldar warrior in armour stood in the doorway as the sow distributed some sort of disgusting food to the others. Xelian smiled to see the simple plot playing out. The guard was lax and disinterested – in point of fact he was a drugged-addled criminal recruited specifically for the task. The sow exchanged little knowing looks and whispered words of encouragement to the brutes as she moved among them.
The men were suspicious and wary but they couldn’t seem to quite quell the tiny spark of hope that she kindled in them. Eventually the sow withdrew and the guard shut the door, leaving the brutes huddled together croaking and grunting in their crude tongue as they doubtless planned their imminent escape. Xelian’s full red lips smiled cruelly.
At the appointed time the turncoat would return and open the cell. From that point the drama could be orchestrated in many ways: the heroic escape might begin there and degenerate into a nightmarish pursuit through the training complexes, the slaves might seem to fight their way through impossible odds to reach a portal or a ship. The turncoat might be taken away and tortured to induce guilt, or given a weapon and instructed to slay the leader of the escapers to induce horror and a sense of betrayal. In every one of the well-worn scenarios the escapers eventually found themselves emerging into the arena proper to meet their final fate.
So simple yet so glorious. It always worked the best with veterans as they were the ones with the arrogance to truly believe that they could escape in the first place. The enormity of the jest being made at their expense always hit them the hardest of all.
Xelian felt satisfied enough to leave the quailing Varidh to complete his preparations in peace and moved on to terrorise her other beastmasters. In truth the trip to the confinement cells had only been a diversion to take her mind from the imminent meeting with her allies. The thought of dealing with Kraillach always drove her into a vindictive frenzy that could only be quenched with suffering.
As the hour of the games approached deep-throated horns and sirens began to sound high above to summon the highborn citizenry to the feast. Xelian cursed and abandoned the gibbering slave she was scourging, stalking off to a bank of gravitic risers that would bring her to the observation tiers. While the invisible energies of the riser pushed her upwards Xelian tried to centre herself and bring her irritation under control. Kraillach was a disgusting worm, but he was a necessity. Without the backing of Yllithian’s White Flames and Kraillach’s kabal, the Realm Eternal, Xelian’s most recent raid could never have succeeded. Much as it galled her to admit it the wonderful events she was staging today were as much to honour the Realm Eternal and the White Flames as the Blades of Desire.
The observation tier felt cool and clinical after the heat and sweat of the training complex below. Curving terraces of pale stone reared up, like frozen waves caught breaking over a floating central platform with thirteen surrounding satellites. At present the platforms were empty save for a few slaves scattering shovelfuls of glittering white sand over their surface. The sand was a traditionalist touch that Xelian insisted on despite the inconvenience; nothing else quite showed the loops and whorls of spurting arterial blood so artfully. Xelian took a pipe of vreld and settled herself into an unadorned throne of black metal to watch the spectators assemble.
Elegantly sculpted grav craft and darting individual skimmers were already arriving in some numbers. They settled on to the terraces like a rapacious flock of predators descending on a kill. The approaching culmination of the past six days of carnage was a highly anticipated event and a febrile thread of excitement ran through the growing throng. Kabals from all across High Commorragh were in evidence: preening catamites of the Baleful Gaze reclined beside ornately armoured mechanicians of the Obsidian Rose, masked terror-scions of the Broken Sigil claimed their places alongside steely-eyed warriors of the Last Hatred.
The icon of Vect’s lackeys, the Kabal of the Black Heart, could be seen everywhere, outnumbering all the other kabals present. Xelian’s delicately pointed teeth ground in impotent fury at the sight of the swaggering warriors so proudly bearing the supreme overlord’s mark. She would have slaughtered them all if she could.
Rank upon rank, row upon row of fantastically armed and armoured warriors from a hundred different kabals flowed into the arena. Nowhere else in Commorragh would so many kabalite warriors lay a
side blood feuds and honour debts to gather for a single purpose. Nonetheless quick, bloody duels, stealthy murders and acts of perfidy still occurred, thrilling the growing crowds as their tiny tableaux played out against the backdrop of the greater event. It was to be expected that the crowd would entertain themselves while they were waiting; nowhere in Commorragh was ever truly safe.
The horns and sirens sounded again with a higher, sweeter pitch that was redolent of howling madmen and screaming infants. The second summons was for the archons and their cliques to enable them to arrive at the last possible moment with fashionable tardiness. The rapidly filling terraces quieted in anticipation of their coming. The notes still hung in their air as the first arrived.
Archon Khromys of the Obsidian Rose, the self-styled Queen of Splinters, rode in upon a heavily beweaponed and razorthorn-encrusted Ravager craft to be greeted by a thunderous cacophony from her warriors clashing their weapons together. Archon Xerathis of the Broken Sigil swept over the arena on a spoked wheel festooned with the mnemonic projectors and psychic amplifiers he used to convey his messages of terror and discord to the trembling populations that fell beneath his hand. A succession of other fantastic, threatening and sometimes gaudy craft slid into view across the open top of the arena, each archon greeted by a bestial roar of approbation from their followers.
Some of the craft hung motionless in the air while others descended to debouch their passengers onto terraces. The dimension-warping properties of the observation tiers would ensure that every viewer in the arena could witness the action from scant metres away. Some preferred to do so from the isolation of their personal craft, while others trusted their bodyguards sufficiently to rub shoulders with their kabalite warriors on the terraces. After the archons had settled into their places two final craft nosed their way over the rim of the arena. From one hand came the sleek barque of Yllithian of the White Flames, from the other the mollusc-like golden chariot of Kraillach.
Xelian stood up from her throne as Yllithian stepped nimbly from his craft surrounded by a small cadre of incubi. She stood up straight as a rod to force him up on to his tiptoes in order to kiss her cheek in ritual greeting.
‘Xelian, you are as magnificent as ever,’ Yllithian murmured appreciatively.
‘Yllithian, you remain… unchanged,’ Xelian replied coldly.
Fans of golden metal slid back on Kraillach’s craft to reveal a sumptuous interior of silks and exotic fur before the view was obscured by disembarking incubi. Kraillach’s chief executioner, a giant incubus warrior known as Morr, led his brethren as they spread out and suspiciously eyed Xelian and Yllithian. Only when Morr was satisfied did the emaciated figure of Kraillach himself emerge from the opulent depths of his craft.
Kraillach was so wizened that he looked like a dried-out mummy. Deep lines and creases marked skin stretched so thin it seemed a miracle it didn’t tear open and spill his yellowed bones onto the ground. The impressive vermillion robes he wore only served emphasise the tremulous decrepitude of their occupant. His eyes seemed to be the only part of him that were truly alive, glittering chips of onyx trapped in a crumbling face of shale.
Kraillach was old, one of the few members of his noble house that survived when Vect took control of the city. Eternal, unblemished youth was the aim of every Commorrite but even for one so wealthy and powerful as Kraillach the growing weight of years could not be easily turned aside. Over the centuries more and more suffering was needed to fill the unceasing hunger inside, and the restorative properties of the process became increasingly short-lived. Kraillach lived his life in an unceasing cycle of orgies and debasement, feeding almost continuously on wretched slaves and unsatisfactory underlings. His current state had no doubt been induced by the lack of sufficient stimulation during his journey from his palace.
Unsurprisingly Kraillach was keen for events to begin and eyed the still-empty display platforms hungrily.
‘Xelian, Yllithian,’ he acknowledged each of them with the barest nod.
‘Kraillach.’
‘Kraillach.’
Two identical black thrones were brought forwards and Xelian’s guests seated themselves to each side without further ceremony. Xelian strode to the front of the dais to address the restless crowd, her presence carried before every viewer with perfect clarity. She had posed the scene carefully, herself standing tall and magnificent between trailing banners with Yllithian and Kraillach lounging in their thrones behind her.
‘Welcome, friends!’ She kept her voice low and thrilling. ‘Be most welcome and partake in the fruits of the labour of our three kabals: the Blades of Desire, the White Flames and the Realm Eternal.’
Xelian allowed that to sink in for a moment. By presenting a solid front the kabals that had grown out of the old noble houses were reaping rich rewards. It was a fact that was pulling not only wych cults but whole kabals into their orbit. Xelian raised her voice as she continued. An atavistic sense of hunger and anticipation was filling the giant arena, an almost palpable tension that crackled in the air.
‘We come to the sixth and final day of our events. As befits any great occasion we have saved the best until last for your entertainment and delight. Today we shall finally see the so-called deathworlders find the true meaning of betrayal. Today they will see the pilgrims they sought to protect die screaming, and today they will join them!’
A low murmur of appreciation and avid desire rippled through the crowds.
‘We dedicate these gifts to the greater glory and everlasting majesty of our ancient city of Commorragh, may it ever stand eternal.
‘Let the games begin!’
The horns and sirens sounded out in a shriek that rose into ultrasonics before crashing out in a explosion of bass. White light flared on the thirteen rotating outer platforms before dying away to reveal thirteen slaves. Some wailed and gibbered, others dashed around helplessly, some prayed and others stood defiantly screaming. Young, old, fat, thin, male, female, they all swung smoothly around the central stage in their individual bubbles of captivity.
The platforms began to float higher or sink lower in response to the audience’s interest in them. Those the audience found most intriguing would be matched against combatants by the beastmasters. The least interesting would be fed to warp beasts if their platforms sank low enough, something that often increased their number of viewers markedly.
After a few seconds the occupant of the highest platform – a hook-armed, red-furred specimen – vanished and reappeared on the central stage to be met by a single wych a moment later. The nearly naked wych looked slender when measured against the brutish human but she moved with a fluid grace that made the human look positively comical. The wych picked up on the possibilities and led the lumpy human around like a shambling ogre chasing a nymph. She improvised a series of slick engagements that sliced the man up so slowly that he wound down like a clockwork toy, quick trysts that left him only kissed by the edge of the blade each time.
Before she could finish him a white flash erupted and another slave appeared. This one was a shaven-headed, tattooed fanatic that rushed straight at her with a hooked knife held low. The wych pirouetted lazily out of reach before lunging just the tip of her blade into the fanatic’s eye socket. He screamed and staggered, dropping the knife. Flash. A third slave appeared and was hamstrung a heartbeat later. Flash. The wych seemed to barely avoid the sweep of a cleaver; her counter left her opponent dragging his entrails in the sand. Flash. A second wych joined the first, the two of them leaping and cavorting together like lost lovers reunited as they ripped through the injured slaves. Flash. More slaves. Flash. More blood.
The voice of the crowd rose and fell like surf against a shore, enraptured as they drank in wave after wave of pain and suffering. The first batch of slaves had vanished from the outer platforms, one way or another, and were rapidly replaced. Five wyches were working the central stage by now and they left an ever-speeding influx of slaves leaking their lifeblood out on the sand. Xelian
felt satisfied that the opening warm-up was well under way and turned her attention to her two allies.
Kraillach looked somewhat recovered, his lined face showing patrician features instead of the death mask of a mummy. Yllithian was hunched forwards, careless of the entertainment but obviously eager to talk. The dimension-warping technologies artfully concealed within the arena structure permitted a spectator to cast their presence into the midst of the action, feeling the blood drops on their face and hearing the death-screams ringing in their ears. They also permitted Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian to converse together inside a co-sensual reality safe from outside observation.
‘I have found the key to ridding ourselves of Vect,’ Yllithian began without preamble. ‘The answer lies in Shaa-dom as I suspected.’
‘How can you know this? Are you telling me you went there yourself?’ Kraillach sniffed derisively.
‘I did go there, as you well know from your own spies.’
‘Well, I don’t believe it. You’re still alive after all.’
‘Enough,’ grated Xelian. She promised herself that one day there would be a reckoning for moments like these. ‘Speak. Tell us what you found out on your… expedition, Nyos.’
‘With the right preparations it may be possible to recall El’Uriaq from beyond the veil.’
‘El’Uriaq!’ Kraillach spat, his face blanching at the name. ‘What madness is this? The old emperor of Shaa-dom has been dead for three millennia!’
Path of the Renegade Page 6