Path of the Renegade

by Andy Chambers

  ‘My apologies for interrupting your little soirée, children, the necessity for tiresome public rudeness is one of the burdens I was forced to shoulder when I became custodian of this peerless city. I can assure you that scheduled events will proceed momentarily.’

  A deathly silence hung over the arena. Vect hadn’t come to spectate, he had come for someone there. A traitor had been named and Vect had come to punish them. Every archon present felt a momentary gust of fear that some disloyal scheme of theirs, real or imagined, had come to the attention of the great tyrant. By long habit each of them strove to cultivate an attitude of nonchalant disinterest. Such tests of nerve were frequent steps on the path of the archon. The coward and the fool did not prosper in Commorrite society for long.

  Vect evidently decided to be true to his word and did not keep the crowd in suspense for long. The stab-lights flicked out again, this time focused on a single point on the terraces.

  ‘NARTHELLYON! You stand accused!’ the god-voice roared.

  Ninety-nine per cent of the arena’s occupants allowed themselves to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Narthellyon’s retinue closed around him protectively but it was looking to be a futile display. Hundreds of Vect’s followers, warriors of the Kabal of the Black Heart, had already surrounded them in response to some hidden signal from their overlord. The renegade archon made some unheard reply to Vect, prompting a terrifying rumble of laughter from the great tyrant.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s anatomically possible, Narthellyon, but my haemonculi will be perfectly willing to test the theory on you. Seize him – alive, if you please.’

  Xelian watched in helpless fury as fighting erupted in the baleful glare of the stab-lights. Wickedly curved blades flashed and poison-laced splinters whickered across the pale stonework. Vect’s black-armoured warriors struggled to bring their superior numbers to bear against the tight knot of Narthellyon’s followers immediately, forming a dense thorny ring as they fought to close in. Shots flew wild, bystanders were hit and soon several more battles broke out elsewhere on the terraces as the retinues of different archons took the opportunity to even old scores amidst the resulting chaos.

  It appeared that Narthellyon had been expecting some kind of trouble during the day’s events and had come prepared – so he thought – for it. Energy weapons suddenly flared through the struggling mass of warriors, the vivid emerald stars of disintegrators firing on full automatic. Screaming, kicking bodies could be seen as glowing after-images as they burned like candles in the hellish glare. Gaps were torn in the ring of Vect’s kabalite warriors and the struggle hung momentarily in the balance.

  A Raider craft bravely swept in to try and pick up Narthellyon. Lances of dark energy stabbed out from the ziggurat and crucified the sleek craft before it even got close. It was unclear whether they hoped to drive it off or to exact some measure of revenge for the fallen Raider, but Narthellyon’s disintegrators targeted the ziggurat next.

  Livid green sparks of high-energy plasma ricocheted off the imperturbable dark metal without so much as scorching the surface. Despite the lack of visible effect the feeble attack was apparently enough to exhaust Vect’s patience. Disintegrators and dark lances studding the ziggurat abruptly swept the terrace with the fury of an angry god. Entropic darklight beams and plasma bolts rained down and obliterated the scene. All that was left of Narthellyon, his retinue and the Black Heart kabalite warriors fighting them, was a patina of blackened holes punched into the stonework. The awesome display of firepower did much to quiet the fighting in other parts of the arena. The tyrant’s visage appeared again, leering at the carnage with a cruel smile on his lips.

  ‘Such a shame,’ the glacial tones said without any hint of regret. ‘Now we shall have to wait to rebirth Narthellyon before we can have any fun together. Enjoy the rest of your event, Xelian, I do hope I didn’t disrupt things too much.’

  The black metal ziggurat rose silently and drifted away. As the shadow slid back across the sands the torn bodies of the deathworlders came into view. Xelian bowed again and attempted to keep her face impassive as she boiled internally with impotent rage. It was possible, just possible, that the deathworlders had been accidental victims of the crossfire, but Xelian felt sure that there was nothing accidental about their demise. Vect had timed his arrival and triggered the fighting specifically to upstage the culmination of Xelian’s entertainment in the worst possible way.

  She turned back slowly to her two allies. Yllithian met her gaze unflinchingly, a supercilious smile playing about his lips as he tried his best not to bait her when she was in a killing mood. Kraillach quailed backwards in his throne at what he saw in her eyes.

  ‘No more games. No more bickering and manipulation. We move forwards with Yllithian’s plan immediately.’

  ‘I... I–’ Kraillach stammered.

  ‘If you are not with us on this you are against us. Kraillach, are you against us?’ Xelian spoke with cold precision. If Kraillach objected he would not be leaving the dais alive, bodyguards or no, and he knew it. The wizened old archon wisely kept his silence. Xelian turned around to survey the smoking ruins of the terraces.

  ‘Vect must die. Everyone that supports him must die. I don’t care if we have to burn the whole city to do it. The tyrant must be destroyed.’

  CHAPTER 4

  THE HUNTERS

  ‘In the time before the fall of Shaa-dom, it is said that El’Uriaq’s favoured concubine Dyreddya had seven handmaidens all of unsurpassed youth and purity. Each complemented El’Uriaq’s mistress in one of the arts, and assisted by their tender ministrations Dyreddya was always able to quicken her lord’s heart to flame. Some say that when disaster befell Shaa-dom the handmaids’ souls were carried off directly to She Who Thirsts, such choice and delectable sweetmeats were they. Others say that She was so delighted with their delicate promise that She clasped them to Her bosom and remade them into something as dark as they were once light. Some even believe that the handmaids were carried away not by daemons but by the Dark Muse Lhilitu and escaped the wreck of Shaa-dom to become part of her strange pantheon. All the legends agree that the cleverest handmaid hid herself by stitching shut her eyes and mouth to thwart the searching daemons. The hellish minions returned to their mistress and shamefacedly admitted they could find no breath nor sight of the one they called Angevere.’

  – Veslyin the Anchorite, The Sudden Fall of Shaa-dom

  Some days after the events at the arena of the Blades of Desire, Bellathonis summoned one of his wrack servants to him: an individual named Xagor, a promising and earnest pupil in the arts of pain. Xagor duly appeared, breathless and pleasantly apprehensive at why his master might call for him personally. Unmasked the wrack showed a pale, haggard face to the world, with red, staring eyes, a heavy jaw and a determined scowl that looked to be a permanent fixture. The thick brows beneath Xagor’s glistening, naked skull were knotted with worry. A long, ribbed coat of dark hide flapped from the wrack’s shoulders as he rushed into Bellathonis’s cluttered quarters with unseemly haste to grovel before him.

  Bellathonis was busy feeding a selection of his carnivorous plants, the last survivors of hybridisation experiments on behalf of Archon Pyrllivyn a number of years ago. Although the experiments had generally been another of many disappointments Bellathonis had grown attached to the fleshy little monsters it produced. He continued to drop fragments of raw meat into their snapping mouth-parts as he talked to Xagor, his long fingers too quick and sure to be caught by their thorn-edged jaws.

  ‘Ah, Xagor, there you are. Is everything all right? You seem a little… rushed,’ Bellathonis smiled. He did so enjoy the earnestness of the young, and tormenting them for it. In truth his wracks had good cause to fear him. Each of them had sworn themselves to him utterly in exchange for their apprenticeship in the arts of flesh. Part of that apprenticeship was to experience Bellathonis’s cruel skills at work on their own bodies. As he always told them, a would-be haemonculus had to first know pai
n before they could bestow pain.

  ‘M-master, your faithful servant Xagor came as quickly as he could!’ the wrack gibbered with his face pressed into the rich carpets.

  ‘Oh don’t worry, Xagor, I haven’t called you to punish you, do get up. In fact I have a reward for you, isn’t that nice?’

  ‘Yes-yes, very nice!’ squeaked Xagor in confusion as he struggled to his feet.

  ‘Yes, you have been so diligent of late that I have a special task for you. Complete it to my satisfaction and I will look upon you with favour, do you understand?’

  Xagor understood all too well what that really meant – pain and death would attend any failure to fulfil the task to Bellathonis’s complete satisfaction. The wrack nodded frantically.

  ‘Excellent. My first instruction is that you are to tell no one else of this task either now or later. You will proceed to the flesh markets of Metzuh in Low Commorragh and go to one of the most reputed exchanges there, a place known as the Red House, close by the Street of Knives. Do you know the place?’

  ‘Yes-yes, master!’ Xagor stammered. ‘Xagor has visited the Red House many times. Matsilier, who is a gourmand there, is my batch-brother.’

  ‘Excellent, I’m pleased you did not try and lie to me by denying it,’ Bellathonis murmured as he dropped another morsel of meat into the straining jaws beneath his fingertips.

  ‘I have a very important package at the Red House that must be delivered to me in person. You will collect this package – a jar – and return it to me here at the tower intact and unopened. That part of the task is simple enough but absolutely critical – intact and unopened – do you understand?’

  Xagor nodded obediently. Bellathonis could almost see the words ‘intact and unopened’ etching themselves into the wrack’s brain in fiery letters. The haemonculus nodded back in satisfaction. He’d thought of a way to implant a suitable cover story that might also serve a useful dual purpose.

  ‘The other important part of your task is to keep your ears open while you’re in the flesh markets. I need information of the kind you can only get from Low Commorragh – find out what the dabblers and charlatans are saying when they try to foretell the future, see what ridiculous rumours the slaves have been cooking up lately – there’s a grain of truth at the bottom of each one. Something’s in the wind, Xagor, I just know it!’

  Xagor nodded with barely repressed excitement at Bellathonis’s somewhat fanciful oratory. He had been elevated from courier and potential victim to co-conspirator in a single stroke, an exciting development in his young life.

  ‘All clear? Very good, then run along. Bring me the jar and any juicy rumours you hear, I’m hungry for news.’

  Once Xagor had left the master haemonculus sent some discreet messages to his agents in Low Commorragh alerting them to follow the wrack’s progress and, most importantly of all, to ensure the jar containing Yllithian’s gift arrived in his hands intact and unopened. A single wrack should not overly excite the interest of his rivals in the haemonculi covens and Bellathonis was gambling on the fact to ensure the prize would not be intercepted before it was in his grasp. Nonetheless the decrepit warren of streets and alleys around the flesh markets had plentiful predators of their own to contend with. Ordinarily the servant of a haemonculus would enjoy a certain measure of protection, but the omnipresent pulse of violence and desperation in the city had been growing stronger of late. Something bad was coming and the masses could feel it.

  Bellathonis had barely completed his arrangements and turned back to the clients on his tables when a summons arrived from Malixian. He had heard little from the mad archon since his meeting with Yllithian and wondered if this missive heralded some new burst of manic activity on Malixian’s part. After a moment’s thought Bellathonis dispatched one more message before he left, this time to agents in Aelindrach that he was normally loath to call upon. Although the cost would be high Bellathonis wanted absolute certainty that he could collect on Yllithian’s payment.

  One of Bellathonis’s sometime agents and occasional informers was crouching on a half-eroded roof beam in an abandoned slave mill when the call came. He had spent days staking out the crumbling structure deep in the sprawling inner districts of Low Commorragh waiting for his mark to show up. Now just as the overseer was finally meeting with his cronies the agent’s tell-tale pulsed with the whisper of a new and potentially lucrative mission.

  The agent, a slender young eldar named Kharbyr, cursed inwardly at his misfortune. The overseer and his little gang of cohorts were mere slaves, ordinarily dirt beneath Kharbyr’s recognition. Nonetheless someone had posted a small murder-fee for this overseer, and despite his pride Kharbyr was also very, very hungry. It was probably other slaves that found themselves under the overseer’s too-ready lash that had pooled their miserable resources to rid themselves of their oppressor once and for all. The reward for this kill was paltry, but Kharbyr had not quenched his murderlust in several days and was loath to let his mark escape him now. A victim in hand was worth two on the loose, as the saying went.

  Gazing down on the small circle of slaves below Kharbyr fancied he could take them all at once. Two with the pistol, three with the knife; it would all be over before they could wipe the stupefied expressions from their faces. A seldom-used, cautious part of his mind held him back. The slaves were wary, burly and crudely but effectively armed with metal cudgels and scrap-knives. He couldn’t be sure that one of them wouldn’t get in a lucky blow that would leave him open to getting overwhelmed by the rest. He fondled his favourite blade disappointedly. The half-metre curve of razor-sharp metal would not taste warm blood after all, just as Kharbyr would not get to quench his own unending thirst.

  As Kharbyr fretted, the meeting broke up. The overseer and his friends split, each making their own way out of the decrepit structure. Kharbyr’s heart sang with joy and he ran light-footed along the corrosion-furred roof beams to get ahead of his mark. Through a shattered window he watched the overseer leave the abandoned mill and cross a filthy, refuse-strewn alley to enter a crumbling row of storage barns on the opposite side. Kharbyr slid after him soft and silent as a shadow.

  Only rats and peeling walls confronted him inside. At some point the interior of the barn had been partitioned off with sheets of a cheap, resinous compound. The walls had split in some places and fallen in others turning the place into a crumbling, unstable maze. Kharbyr crept along listening intently for a sound of his quarry. He felt sure the overseer was still somewhere in the building, but he couldn’t hear anything but his own quiet breaths. Rounding a corner he found a set of rickety-looking steps that led upwards. He crept up them cursing internally at the slight creaks and groans made by his progress.

  As his head came level with the floor above he stopped and cautiously scrutinised the part of the landing he could see. Nothing was in sight and the floor was in a ruinous state. If the overseer had come this way, Kharbyr decided, he would have heard him on the stairs anyway. The lean assassin turned and descended to the floor below as gracefully as he could.

  A slight creak made him spin around in surprise. The overseer was right behind him! The big slave had crawled silently down the steps and was stretched out preparing to plunge a rusty scrap-knife into Kharbyr’s exposed back. The overseer thrust desperately when he saw he had been spotted but the blow was weak and awkward from his semi-prone position. Startled by the sudden turnaround in fortunes the assassin leapt back and fled out of sight around a corner in a momentary panic. The overseer jumped to his feet with a roar and charged in pursuit.

  At the third twist in the maze the overseer was brought to an abrupt halt by Kharbyr’s outstretched blade sheathing itself in his guts. Choking on his own blood, the slave tried to bring his knife to bear but found his wrist gripped by steely fingers.

  ‘Not so easy, is it?’ Kharbyr whispered to his struggling victim as he dragged the half-metre of sharpened metal up to the slave’s sternum. Blood and viscera sprayed over his pointed boots
and he cursed again; he always forgot to step back at the correct moment. He ignored the momentary distraction and drank hungrily from the departing soul as it suffered on his blade, quenching but not satiating his eternal thirst.

  He used his tell-tale to burn his kill mark on the twitching corpse. He couldn’t take the time to drag it somewhere where it was more likely to be found, he’d just have to rely on someone reporting it for the finder’s bounty. The idea of collecting payment was already fuzzy and half-forgotten in his mind anyway, he’d got what he wanted when he made the kill. This job for the haemonculus though, if he could find the courier first, promised almost unbelievable riches. He wondered whether he should take the ‘important package’ and deliver it himself or see if he could sell it to someone else.

  Find the courier first, Kharbyr decided, then worry about the package once he’s dead. He licked his lips with anticipation.

  A sleek grav craft was waiting outside Bellathonis’s tower to sweep him skywards to Malixian’s eyrie. The pierced sphere atop its impossibly tall silver spike was the centre of a veritable hive of activity. A small armada of aerial craft jockeyed for position among a halo of swooping hellions and wheeling scourges. It looked to Bellathonis like the whole Kabal of the Ninth Raptrex was airborne.

  Bellathonis’s craft didn’t enter the eyrie itself, instead it angled higher still to slide in beside a large, sleek Raider craft presumably bearing the archon himself. Malixian’s war craft was slender and skeletal like the polished chromium bones of some aerial giant, and featured more open space than solid platform in its design. Malixian’s warriors ran along its palm-wide spars and curving blades to take their positions with startling agility.

  Bellathonis had long since evicted all traces of emotions akin to fear from his strictly ordered persona, but even so he felt an unpleasant instant of vertigo as he stepped across the kilometres-deep gulf between the two craft. The vessel he stepped from bobbed alarmingly as he pushed off from it, but Malixian’s Raider was as solid and immovable as a rock. Malixian himself was dangling precariously from the Raider’s spritsail as he hungrily drank in the sight of his assembled forces, and he was not alone. Bellathonis eyed the newcomer with professional discourtesy. Syiin’s round moon-face blinked back at him innocently, the crook-backed haemonculus seeming to be fully engaged in clutching at one of the Raider’s slender guard rails and not looking down.