The walls were lost. The Violators had withdrawn into the keep itself, leaving a trail of heaped bodies—Lady Charybdia could hear the ugly barking of their bolters from the dome, and feel the bloating as the keep’s doors and staircases were choked with the dead. Imprisoned spirits were being set free by the destruction, flitting away into the night like wisps of smoke. The sky above was bleeding like the city, nebulae weeping sores that oozed torn stars, comets falling as if fainting in horror. Only the Slaughtersong was unmoved, its cold light a hard jewelled pin stuck into the sky.
There was commotion directly below the observation dome. Something was scrabbling angrily at the hatch in the floor.
Lady Charybdia looked around the lavish decorations of the dome. She caught sight of a jewelled dagger, maybe a gift or a tribute, or something her armies had captured—there were untold thousands of such things all over the keep. She picked it up and drew its blade from the scabbard. It was sharp, at least.
Lady Charybdia had been, at one point or another, almost every type of sensualist that a devotee of the Pleasure God could name—including a warrior. She had fought in battles that had raged across the whole world and taken her place in the armies of Chaos. But that had all been long ago. How much would she remember? Was her elegant, perfect body any use for fighting now?
The noise was louder now—something had got a purchase on the hatch and was trying to wrench it free. Lady Charybdia backed against the crystal wall of the dome, and for the first time in a very long time, she felt fear. Her city was in ruins. Her armies were reduced to tiny pockets of doomed resistance. And though she glanced in hope at the sky outside, there was no sign of Demetrius or his Thunderhawks.
The floor collapsed and something reached through the hole. Its stench came before it—fire and blood, anger and revenge. A hand followed the reek, grey and gnarled with talons of brass.
The misshapen, hulking thing that clambered up into the dome had once been a daemon of the Blood God, but it was now something less. The machinery torn from its body had left hideous puckered scars in its unnatural flesh and its twisted limbs had been broken many times and not set—but it was healthier now than it had been, for it had been immersed in blood and had gorged itself. Its muscles bulged wetly, even as hot gore ran from the many scars re-opened. Slits of red anger marked its eyes, and they were fixed on Lady Charybdia.
A chain hung from one wrist. A chain with links of human tongues. There was a recent, weeping spear-wound in its side.
“You,” said Lady Charybdia.
The beast did not answer. It took a step forward, the razor-sharp claws on its feet slicing through the cushioned floor of the dome. Lady Charybdia held the dagger out in front of her, gripped tight in her delicate, spiderlike hand.
It was faster than her. It was faster than anything mortal. She slashed at it as it charged and cut a deep slash in its chest, ducking its snapping jaws. But its hand clamped onto the back of her neck and picked her up, slamming her against the wall of the dome.
Her sculptured skull cracked, and hollow bones shattered. Lady Charybdia glanced crazily through a gauze of blood as the daemon lifted her again and hurled her against the far wall. The crystal cracked. So did her spine.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Her body was a mass of pain, porcelain-delicate bones reduced to sharp splinters. The dagger dropped from her broken fingers. The daemon reared up and punched a fistful of claws through her stomach, sending a hot tide of agony washing over her.
She could hear the gunfire of the Violators, and the war-cries of the enemy as they charged. She could hear the tide of blood washing against the foundations of the keep, and the splintering of stone as another tower fell. In those last few moments, her heightened senses brought her the sound of a city dying of a mighty temple falling. And the smells hit her, too—the burning wreckage and the overwhelming stench of congealing blood. A hot wind of suffering blew over her and she could see the pale light of death dawning over her city.
It was the final sensation, the ultimate blessing promised by Slaanesh. Even in death, his followers were to worship him with the experience of their death. But this was no act of piety—this was pain, and sudden cold, and utter futility. Lady Charybdia had failed Slaanesh, and as her punishment her death was no ultimate thrill but a wretched flash of pain followed by emptiness.
Lady Charybdia was still suffering the betrayal of her god when the daemon began to eat her.
The death of Lady Charybdia, for those who were attuned to such things, was every bit as loud as the awakening of Ss’ll Sh’Karr. It was a pathetic thing, a distant, despairing whimper. The wave that rippled across Torvendis at the shock of her death carried a cry of abandonment and pain, and then silence.
Kron heard it, far south in the depths of the jungle. He marked the passing of Lady Charybdia with some satisfaction that she did not have a heroic death. Then, he ignored it for the time being, because he had matters of his own to worry about.
The jungle was thick around him. Moving was like pushing through a solid wall—every plant had spines and every creature had a stinger. Kron’s body was covered in scratches and puncture marks—he could heal them quickly enough, but pain was pain and it seemed the whole jungle was determined to inflict as much of it on him as possible.
He risked a flash of sorcery, and held out a palm wreathed in black flame that caused the malevolent plants to wither and die in front of him, opening the way into a clearing. The wan starlight filtered down through the canopy and mottled a circular patch of rocky ground.
It was familiar, this clearing. Of course, when Kron had last seen it the jungle had yet to encroach, but there was no doubt about it. The rocky ground sloped down into a depression that Kron recognised as an impact crater. He picked his way across the broken stones and headed downwards, lizardlike creatures slithering out from under his bare feet.
At the bottom of the depression was a patch of earth. Kron dug at it with his hands, until finally he touched cold metal. A word of sorcery carried the soil away and revealed a curved metal surface with blistered paintwork and a small round hatch.
Kron passed his hands over the hatch. Gene-sensors beneath the surface bleeped and the locking mechanism clicked into place. The hatch swung inwards and old air, carrying a smell of machinery and fuel, rolled out. A light flickered inside, revealing a single grav-cushioned seat with a life-support hood bolted in front of a bank of controls and readouts, crammed into a tiny space barely large enough for one man.
Kron smiled. It was good to see that the saviour pod was still where he had left it—as if Torvendis, sensing that the pod was a foreign object, refused to swallow it and left it near the surface.
Kron eased his old body through the hatch and into the seat. The hood lowered itself over his head with a hiss of hydraulics and the hatch closed above him. The readout began to flicker on—temperature, air mix, hull integrity. A topographic map of the area appeared on one screen and the view of the night sky, straight up, on another. Kron checked the fuel counter and saw there was still plenty. Back when this pod had been built, they made things to last. The pod was still spaceworthy, and while intended as a one-man lifeboat, it still had enough thrust to carry its small payload back into orbit.
There wasn’t enough to bring it back down. But Kron had already reached a point where he couldn’t go back—the events he had kicked into motion were approaching their climax and he couldn’t have stopped them if he had wanted to.
The control stick unfolded from the central console and Kron grasped it, gunning the single large thrust engine and feeling the pod lurch up out of the earth. Another firing and the pod was airborne, slashing up through the jungle carapace, and hurtling up towards the night sky.
Amakyre watched the city aflame. It had been clear for some time that Lady Charybdia’s forces were doomed. The surprise assault over the ocean of blood had cut the defending army into pieces, isolated and crushed by mobile barbarian forces that attacked
from everywhere at once. The barbarian leaders were evidently rather more astute than Lady Charybdia had suspected—even the Violators had been overwhelmed. There were no better troops in the Maelstrom (save, of course, the Word Bearers) and it took a stroke of tactical brilliance to force them into fighting a losing battle. Ss’ll Sh’Karr had broken down what obstacles were beyond the barbarians, and the resistance in the city had been squeezed until the keep was in the invaders’ hands. The last of the fighting might take weeks to conclude, but it was clear that, as night descended, the city of Slaanesh had fallen.
From the ridge overlooking the north of the city, the Word Bearers’ coven had seen the battle unfold in all its beauty. But their immediate purpose was unfulfilled—there had been plenty of explosions of sorcery, but nothing that might lead the coven directly to Karnulon. They weren’t even sure he was in the city at all, and even if he was it would be all but impossible to find him in such a place.
Vrox, perched on an outcrop a short distance away, kept up a constant perimeter sweep with his many guns. Skarlan, Feorkan and Prakordian were in half-sleep, while Phaedos and Makelo took the watch. Amakyre was sitting on the rock, watching the fires of the city when the communication came.
The vox was suddenly alive with noise. Not voices—a horrible, guttural, bubbling sound, like the death-rattle of something huge.
“Makelo?” voxed Amakyre.
“Captain?”
“Wake Prakordian.”
There was a pause as Makelo scrabbled down from his vantage point and shook Prakordian from half-sleep. When his acknowledgement rune flashed, Amakyre played the sequence of noises back from his communicator.
“It’s the Multus,” voxed Prakordian as the noise finished. The sorcerer was the only one of the coven who could translate the machine-spirit’s communications without using the ship’s bridge controls. “It’s seen something.”
Amakyre had left instructions with the insane machine-spirit of the Multus Sanguis to watch the skies, in case Karnulon tried to leave Torvendis by spacecraft. It mildly surprised him that the ship had actually kept its watch and had the presence of tech-mind to inform the coven.
“Tell it to get us target details. And a trajectory.”
Prakordian transmitted, not by vox but by linking his own mind with the festering psychic lump that was the Multus’s spirit.
“It’s a spacecraft, probably a single-seater,” voxed Prakordian after a few moments. “Unknown design. It took off a few minutes ago from the southern jungles.”
“Can the Multus track it?”
“The craft isn’t shielded. It can be followed.”
“Good. Tell the Multus to pick us up at this location and take us in pursuit. If it’s Karnulon, we can’t afford to lose him.” Amakyre switched to the squad frequency. “Word Bearers?” Five acknowledgement runes flickered. “Break half-sleep and get ready to move out. Karnulon may have fled and we’re following him into orbit.”
“Can we hide the Multus?” asked Feorkan. “If we’re not supposed to be here…”
“Karnulon probably knows we’re here. Speed is more important than secrecy.” Amakyre knew the wily Feorkan would rather keep a low profile than announce to everyone on Torvendis that the Word Bearers were on the planet by launching the Multus again. But catching Karnulon overrode all other priorities and, in any case, with Lady Charybdia dead there were few forces on the planet that would be able to do anything about the Word Bearers if they wanted to.
Amakyre jogged down the ridge to where the other members of the coven were already checking their equipment ready for pick-up. Makelo was still keeping watch—Vrox had stomped down and, with Skarlan and Feorkan, was beginning to double-check the landing zone. Prakordian sat cross-legged, eyes closed as he communicated psychically with the Multus Sanguis.
“It will be here within two hours,” said the dead-speaker, eyes suddenly open.
“Good. Can it be relied upon?”
“The Multus is lucid when it wants to be,” said Prakordian. “Once it’s got something to hunt it can be very cooperative.”
“Has it found the target’s trajectory?”
Prakordian smiled. “Oh yes, captain. He’s heading for the Slaughtersong.”
Some were still fighting. But most had already begun to celebrate.
Lady Charybdia’s keep was a dull shell of the place it had been. The trapped spirits were gone and the living stained-glass windows were shattered, so their writhing images could no longer hypnotise intruders. Some areas were still impossible to enter due to the soporific musks and hallucinogenic incense that hung in the air, but those would be ventilated soon enough, and there was plenty of space for the revellers.
Golgoth had headed straight for the keep when he had learned it was taken. But it seemed Lady Charybdia had either fled or been killed and her body lost. Golgoth had longed to tear her apart with his bare hands, but at least he could console himself by tearing down her priceless tapestries and joining his brother warriors in celebrations.
The sound of raucous song echoed throughout the keep as Golgoth stumbled up a grand staircase, flagon of some captured wine still in his hand, a fog of drunkenness descending over him in the wake of the day’s slaughter. The keep was huge and there was plenty to explore and loot—most of it had yet to be ransacked, and Golgoth still hoped to find Lady Charybdia cowering in some alcove, or at least her remains that he could nail to a pole and parade as his personal standard.
He emerged into a ballroom, a vast room with a ceiling so high clouds were gathering in the comers. The floor was polished black hardwood and the walls of plaster sculpted into sinuous, suggestive designs. Hundreds of clocks were set into the walls, each with a different set of numbers on the face, every one powered by the beating of a human heart built into the casing. Every one stopped.
Golgoth wandered across the ballroom floor, down the steps into the orchestra pit where strange instruments lay discarded, and into another room. This was a wine cellar, freezing cold, with barrels of liquid misery and distilled pain. He walked on through an art gallery whose pictures had turned black and dull with only the faint, wriggling traces of the living images they had displayed. Clouds of glowing inserts, bound in magical cages hanging from the ceiling, shone onto the pictures with a dim, pale light.
There was a little menagerie with cages and enclosures no bigger than a man’s fist, where tiny jewelled inserts and perfectly miniaturised beasts were kept. Golgoth recognised a few diminutive versions of mountain predators, shrunk by magic until they were like toys displayed for children too cowardly to seek out the real thing. Very few of the creatures were still alive. Golgoth ignored them and headed onward, aware that the singing of his drunken warriors was growing dim. The occasional report of a stolen bolt gun was distant—Golgoth had taken a bolt pistol himself, but he had discarded it soon after when foul-smelling pus had begun to leak from the workings. Everything in the city seemed tainted. There was little question of his warriors taking over the place. It would be razed, and the mines beneath filled in.
A corridor lined with statues that turned out to be petrified prisoners was next. How many of them had come from the mountain peoples, given as tribute by corrupted chieftains? They said there were dungeons beneath the upper floors where lowing beasts, once human, were imprisoned. How many good, strong men had met a worse end than death here, men who might have helped keep the Emerald Sword powerful and warlike?
Something caught Golgoth’s eye. It was a creature—a bird—flitting silently along the corridor towards him. Golgoth at first thought it had escaped from the menagerie, but it alighted on the shoulder of the nearest statue and tilted its head to one side, eying him quizzically. It had iridescent blue-green feathers and tiny, bright eyes.
Around one of its legs was tied a message ring. Golgoth reached out and the bird allowed him to remove it. He pulled a strip of parchment from the ring, and wondered idly if Tarn was still alive somewhere, so he could read it for him.
>
The words on the parchment swirled and suddenly, Golgoth could read them, as if the message was being spoken directly into his mind. He had never liked his mind being interfered with and scrunched the parchment into a ball, but the message remained, hanging in front of his eyes and reciting itself over and over in his head: Arrowhead Peak. Hall of the Elders.
Suddenly there was an image to go along with the message—a huge, dark, dusty hall, quiet as a tomb, with snarls of spiders’ webs hanging from the ceiling and… something… in the middle, distant and blurred to he couldn’t focus on it.
Then, it was gone, and the corridor swam back into view.
A final scrap of the message surfaced in his mind—a signature. Kron.
CHAPTER NINE
The Multus Sanguis was troubled. Strange groaning sounds filtered from below decks competing with the distant roar of the engines, and the bridge lights kept dimming, casting strange shadows like mottled bloodstains across the floor and walls. There were fewer deck-slaves now cowering at the edge of the bridge. Prakordian had divined that the Multus Sanguis had been calling them to its machine-spirit chamber and consuming them while the Word Bearers were away. The old ship was getting worse, as if infected by the same malice that gripped the whole of Torvendis.
From orbit, Captain Amakyre could see the city burning. The holoprojector array sent a bright image of the planet’s surface into the air in the centre of the bridge and the plumes of smoke were clearly visible, wreathing the jewelled wound in the earth. Soon, the city would be a torn, burned-out shell.
Feorkan was at the navigational helm, overseeing the machine-spirit’s calculations. Prakordian was somewhere overhead in an observational dome, watching the distant destruction with glee, opening his mind to the echoes of the dead. All the Word Bearers were at rest in their own way, because they knew that if they had to face Karnulon, it could be the hardest fight of their long lives.
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