[Grey Knights 03] - Hammer of Daemons

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  What majesty is in this place, the capital of all Drakaasi, seat of its greatest lords? What glory to the Blood God, what oath to death, what image of slaughter and the hells that follow, is encompassed by the war forged city Vel’Skan?

  —“Mind Journeys of a Heretic Saint,” by Inquisitor Helmandar Oswain

  (Suppressed by order of the Ordo Hereticus)

  Alaric saw Vel’Skan for the first time from the Hecatomb’s oar deck. The ship was making a stately approach to the capital, saluted by the ranks of warriors who stood guard on the banks of the blood river.

  The slaves around him had their heads bowed, concentrated on keeping the rhythm beaten out by the scaephylyd slave master. Alaric, however, wanted to see what was waiting for them.

  “Justicar,” said a voice behind him. Alaric risked a glance around, and saw that Haggard was sitting behind him. The old sawbones had suffered greatly recently. His eyes were hollow and his skin was an unhealthy pale. He had fought, too, for he sported several fresh scars and wounds that he must have dressed himself. Venalitor was sparing none of his slaves in the run-up to the Vel’Skan games. “It is good to have you back.”

  “Thank you, Haggard.”

  “You… are back, aren’t you?”

  Alaric smiled. “I was not myself for a while. Venalitor tried to have one of his pet daemons take control of me. I did not cooperate, but resisting cost me my mind for a while.”

  “You did some terrible things,” said Haggard.

  “I know, but then that was true before I ever came to Drakaasi.”

  “They are talking about you as a challenger for the title.”

  “Who is?”

  “Gearth’s men. They are… not really with us any more. Venalitor has promised them something if they fight well, and the scaephylyds, too. We… Erkhar and I, and some of others… we talked about killing you. The scaephylyds found out, and they were pretty descriptive about what would happen to us if Venalitor’s best prospect got hurt.”

  “Then I am grateful that reason prevailed.”

  Haggard smiled weakly. “I suppose I already betrayed you once. Twice would just be rude.”

  “No, Haggard. You did what you had to do to survive. I cannot begrudge anyone that, not after what I have done on this planet. At least it will end here.”

  Alaric glanced again at the city passing by. He saw the palace of Lord Ebondrake, built into a vast human skull with a corroded dagger thrust through one eye. The skull was from the remains of one of the titanic warriors that had fought over Drakaasi, and it grinned monstrously down over the city.

  “We break out here,” said Alaric.

  “Why here?” asked Haggard warily. “What is here in Vel’Skan?”

  “The Hammer of Daemons,” answered Alaric.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ten thousand soldiers of Vel’Skan fell on their swords in the city’s greatest parade ground. The bowl of the upturned shield began to fill with blood as the armoured bodies slid down their blades, grimacing as they refused to cry out in pain. Not one of them did, and in perfect disciplined silence, they died to anoint the Vel’Skan spectacle with blood.

  The final body stopped spasming. The priests of Khorne wet the hems of their bronze-threaded robes as they wandered among the sacrifices. They scraped through the pooling blood with their ceremonial blades, and pored over loops of entrails. They examined the angles at which the soldiers’ swords had pierced their bodies. They lifted the visors of their helmets, taking careful note of the final expressions on their mutated faces. For several hours, they pursued their divinations, until swarms of insects descended on the fresh corpses, and the blood began to congeal in fascinating patterns on the surface of the bronze shield.

  Finally the priests convened at the shield’s rim. They discussed the matter for a long time, sometimes arguing, and sometimes letting the more venerable of them address the others. They licked blood idly from their blades as they debated.

  Finally, they came to an agreement. One of them, the most ancient, was sent to deliver their pronouncement to the palace of Lord Ebondrake, the giant skull with the dagger through its eye grinning down at them from its place atop the city.

  The divinations had proven encouraging. Blood had flowed in such a way that promised more blood would soon follow, that Lord Ebondrake and all the armies of Drakaasi could not have stemmed its tide had they wanted to. Every torn sinew suggested blood and carnage on a grand scale.

  Khorne had smiled upon the battle-forged city. The Vel’Skan games could begin.

  They had very little time. In less than an hour, they guessed, they would be herded out towards the arena of Drakaasi’s capital, and then it would be too late. So they had gathered in an empty cell on the Hecatomb, with men posted to give the warning in case the scaephylyds came to search them out and administer lashes. That so many of them were together at once was enough for them to be broken up and thrown into isolation cells.

  “You,” said Corporal Dorvas.

  “Yes,” said Alaric, “me.”

  The corporal was the highest-ranked survivor among the Hathran Armoured Cavalry who had been brought to Drakaasi. The Hathran Guardsmen had found themselves moved between arenas, brutalised and murdered, until they had been boiled down to just the kind of hard-bitten survivors that Lord Ebondrake needed for Vel’Skan’s arena slaves. Dorvas was thin, his cheeks were hollow, and his remaining eye was sunken and dark. He still wore the remains of his Hathran fatigues, which contrasted with the makeshift knives he wore in a belt across his chest.

  “You killed us,” he said, “a lot of us, at the Scourge.”

  “I did,” said Alaric. “I almost fell to Khorne, but I did not fall all the way, and I was brought back.”

  “Some of us finally lost the will when they realised that a Space Marine had turned to the enemy. First you abandon the line at Pale Ridge, and then you were the executioner in the arena.” Dorvas’ voice was level, but there was so much hate in him that he was almost quivering with it.

  “You can hate me, corporal, and refuse to have anything to do with me. Or you can put that aside for a few hours and cooperate with us. If you do the latter you will have a chance of getting off this planet.”

  Dorvas sat back and looked at the other people gathered in the chamber. Erkhar, the evangelical ex-Naval captain stood on one side of Alaric. On his other side was Gearth, who even to an outsider’s eyes was obviously a psychopath, and a killer of impressive pedigree. Haggard the surgeon and the alien Kelhedros completed the ragged escape committee of the Hecatomb’s slaves. Alaric couldn’t quite imagine what it must be like seeing them for the first time. The Space Marine and the eldar in one place without trying to kill each other was remarkable enough.

  “What are our chances?” asked Dorvas, sounding unimpressed.

  “I wouldn’t have smuggled you in here,” said Kelhedros, “if there were no point in doing so.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you the moment you put your xenos hands on me,” said Dorvas to the alien.

  “Then you understand why I had to use uncultured methods,” said Kelhedros smoothly. Alaric trusted only Kelhedros to make it off the Hecatomb and back on again without detection, and at Alaric’s order he had brought the blindfolded Dorvas onto the lower decks.

  “Then what’s the plan?” asked Dorvas.

  “Kill ’em all,” said Gearth with a smirk.

  “That’s it?” asked Dorvas.

  “It’s a bit more subtle than that,” said Alaric, “but, essentially, yes. With the help of Vel’Skan’s arena slaves we can force an uprising in the arena. If it happens during the contests the confusion will be great. Believe me, the crowd can be a weapon for us if we know how to use it.”

  “So I hear,” said Dorvas. “They say a Space Marine caused the riot at Gorgath. I’m guessing it was you, since there aren’t too many Space Marines around. Except even if you’re right, there are some old boys among the arena slaves who remember the last
revolt. Every single one of the runners died. Even if we break out, we can’t hold the arena, or anywhere else, against the Ophidian Guard.”

  “The big guy here says he has a plan for that,” said Gearth. “He isn’t being too open with it, though.”

  “The fear of any revolt being crushed is what really keeps us here,” said Erkhar, “us and all the other slaves on Drakaasi. If we are to overcome that, Alaric, we need to know that there is at least a chance that we can survive the aftermath of any escape.”

  “That’s right,” said Gearth. “Golden boy here might be willing to go out with a bang for his Emperor, but the rest of us would like a couple more years to enjoy that freedom.”

  All eyes were on Alaric. It was true. His word had got him this far. It was time for him to be honest.

  “Who among you,” he began, “has heard of Raezazel the Cunning?”

  Raezazel was ancient indeed when Tzeentch’s web of fate snared him.

  The daemon had spent thousands of years in service to Tzeentch, but of course he had not truly served the Liar God, since Tzeentch did nothing so mundane as dispense orders. He manipulated, he bled half-truths into the minds of foes and followers so that they converged at a point in space and time that Tzeentch had conceived in ages past.

  Very rarely, he spoke to the souls of his servants. It was a great honour, and yet a thing to be greatly feared, for he still lied. It also meant that Tzeentch was displeased enough to commit the great mediocrity of speaking to his servants as a god.

  Tzeentch required souls, new servants, perhaps, or fodder, or maybe playthings to be caged in a maddening labyrinth in the warp, so that Tzeentch could observe their torment with a smile on his thousand mouths. He required souls nonetheless, and the holier the better. The more they believed in the corpse-emperor, the false god entombed on Terra, the sweeter the terror and madness would be.

  Raezazel the Cunning was tasked with finding such souls and delivering them to Tzeentch. Why they were needed did not matter to Raezazel. Quite possibly, Tzeentch needed none of them, and it was merely the act of their abduction that would set in motion some impossibly complicated sequence of events that Tzeentch wished to come to pass. It was of no consequence. Tzeentch came to Raezazel in dreams and portents, and spoke to him in a thousands voices that innocents were required, and that was all that mattered.

  Raezazel had taken many forms in the past. It was inimical for one such as him to appear as any one creature for long, but for Tzeentch, he was willing to take on a face of mediocrity. He became a human. He made this human magnificently handsome, glowing with charisma. With the irony of which the Liar God was fondest, he made every word of this human seem the truth. He came to a belt of isolated worlds and proclaimed himself a prophet, flitting between these childlike worlds and beguiling their people. It was not easy. Many of them were hard-bitten missionaries of the Imperial Cult, who denounced Raezazel the prophet as a heretic, and implored the people to take up arms and burn him at the stake. A few even claimed he was a daemon from the warp come to tempt them towards some horrible fate, and it was a perverse pleasure to Raezazel that some of them should have stumbled across the truth in their anger.

  Raezazel was too brilliant to fall to the torches and pitchforks that the mobs raised against him. For every Emperor-fearing citizen who wanted him dead, there were two or three more who looked upon the bleakness of their universe and sought to find something more in Raezazel’s promises. His cult grew, and soon, without any further prompting from him, preachers spread his word. Nobles and governors fell under the spell, for they knew more than anyone how tiny and insignificant any one person was, and they yearned for something more in their lives.

  That was when Raezazel invented the Promised Land. He would take them somewhere free of suffering and hatred. There would be no more tithe takers forcing them into poverty, no preachers turning every innocent thought into sin, no law to keep them in fear. They would be free.

  They found a spacecraft and used all the cult’s resources making it warp-worthy, and making it home to thousands of followers. An altar to Raezazel was built inside it, along with countless shrines to saints and holy spirits that had sprung up in the cult’s minds without any suggestion from Raezazel. The spacecraft was holy ground, a mighty ark that was both the symbol and the means of the cult’s salvation.

  On the day when the craft was to be consecrated and launched, Raezazel appeared to them and told them how they were going to get to the Promised Land. The great warp storm of the Eye of Terror, the weeping sore in the night sky, was their destination. There, hidden among the Eye’s corrupted worlds, was a rent in this cruel universe through which the faithful could reach the Promised Land. The Eye of Terror was a test, an icon of fear through which the faithful had to pass to prove that their souls were resolute enough to deserve entry into the Promised Land. There, the true Emperor would receive them, and they would live in bliss for eternity.

  The ship was launched. Raezazel was on board, basking in the glory of an altar built to him, mocking the congregation with every word and blessing. The ship reached the Eye of Terror, and the wayward tides of the warp there were calmed, perhaps by chance, perhaps by the impossible will of Tzeentch. The ship surfaced from the warp to be confronted with a bright slash in space, the tear in reality beyond which Tzeentch waited to consume or torment the thousands of pilgrims singing Raezazel’s praises.

  The pilgrims, though, were only human, and they were fallible. Their navigation had failed to take into account one of the many worlds that drifted across the Eye of Terror on the echoes of the warp’s haphazard tides. One such planet was in their path as the ship exited the warp, and the ship was caught in its gravity well, its course spiralling down towards the surface.

  The pilgrims screamed. Raezazel raged in frustration. He had come so close to fulfilling Tzeentch’s will. He would surely have been elevated to something higher in gratitude for delivering the pilgrims, granted a sliver of insight into the great mystery of the universe. Now some mundane technical matter had forced his plan awry. Raezazel stayed on the ship, using sorcery to force it back onto its course, but Raezazel’s powers were not enough to compete with the gravity of a planet.

  Through the ship’s viewscreen, the pilgrims saw the immense eight-pointed star scored into the planet’s surface, formed by canals and rivers filled with blood, and a few of them realised what fate their prophet had truly led them into.

  The ship crashed into a city, and its structure was sound enough to keep it intact, but the minds of its inhabitants were not so sound. The madness and murder that followed were so terrible that the whole planet heard the echo of it. Raezazel slipped out of the ship and hid among the planet’s terrible, blood-soaked cities, and eventually would be challenged and defeated by the young champion Venalitor.

  This was the truth that Alaric had unravelled from Raezazel’s fevered memories.

  The name of the planet was Drakaasi.

  The name of the ship was the Hammer of Daemons.

  Some time after the conference between the escape committee, Alaric found Lieutenant Erkhar in the faithful’s hidden shrine. Erkhar was there alone. His faithful were elsewhere, silently praying for deliverance from the cruelty of Vel’Skan’s games. Erkhar was sitting with his head bowed in front of the severed statue head that served the faithful as their altar.

  “I know how you feel,” said Alaric after a while. “You try to hear the Emperor, and filter out His words from the mess of your own thoughts. He’s in there somewhere, but it’s the warp’s own job to find Him.”

  Erkhar looked around. It seemed he hadn’t heard Alaric approaching.

  “I suppose you have to speak with me, Justicar.”

  Alaric came closer. He saw that Erkhar’s face was long and pale, like a man in shock. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I do not know what to believe. I have my faith, but that is something different.”

  “You know that what I told the others is t
rue, Erkhar. The book on which you based your preaching was found on this planet, was it not? I believe it is the writings of a follower of Raezazel’s. When Raezazel’s mind touched mine I saw everything. I saw what the Hammer of Daemons really was. It is not a magical weapon after all. It’s not a metaphor for your suffering. It is a spaceship, and it is still here.”

  “So everything we believe is just the product of corruption and lies,” said Erkhar, “woven by a daemon.” He took his prayer book from inside his uniform jacket. It was tattered and torn by the years. He handed it to Alaric.

  Alaric read for a while. Erkhar sat looking at him, and Alaric could not fathom what he must have been thinking with everything he believed in shaken so profoundly.

  It was the ship’s log, written by a captain whose mind was taken up with religious visions. The daily entries read like parables. The ship was described as a metaphor for faith, its journey as a voyage for the soul. The captain’s thoughts were written down as sermons or hymns. Without knowing that there was a real ship it would have been easy to believe that the Hammer of Daemons was just one more metaphor among many.

  “The faith is not a lie,” said Alaric. “How many of your faithful would have survived without it? How many would have become corrupted?”

  “What do you care?” snarled Erkhar. “Never did you believe, never. We were a resource to be exploited, and now this daemon claims to have brought the Hammer here.”

  “I saw into its mind,” said Alaric. “It was as clear as day.”