by David Hair
Ramon lowered his sails and readied them for a swift release; staying motionless in the air would aid Delta’s workings. Then he and Jelaska settled into the after-deck to wait, shielding themselves from the powers radiating from the Dokken and his solarus crystal and waiting to see what would happen. In the end, all of his schemes and plans had come down to this. He hated to have no control over events, but, galling as it was, all he could do now was watch, and hope.
Jelaska’s lips brushed his cheek and she murmured, ‘It’s been a pleasure, Sensini. An adventure.’
He murmured a reply, a wordless appreciation of all she’d done, then they sent their awareness spiralling out into the pre-dawn skies to watch the show and deal with the inevitable counter-blows.
At first, all was dark, but dawn was coming, softening the blackness until shapes emerged. Kaltus’ camp was directly below, lines of tents and earthen ramparts, the dim glow of cooling cook-fires blending with the pale auras of the guardsmen and the sleepers, and the thousands of beasts. People seldom realised how many beasts supported an army, and this one had more than most; thousands of warhounds and khurnes, over a hundred of the massive hulkas, and dozens of venators. And two drakken, smouldering mounds of heat. That was before you started counting the ordinary horses and mules. The soldiers were vastly outnumbered by their own beasts.
Ramon attuned himself to Delta’s calls and felt him calling his fellow Dokken. All were bound, as he had been. And all bore one of the fatal solarus crystals. Delta was waking them one by one in the pre-dawn gloom. He sensed dim responses that became sharper, more alert and intense as the situation unfolded to them.
‘During our captivity, we were gnostically conditioned to obey,’ Delta had told him, ‘but it was never complete, because it could never control the links we have with each other. We’re all tethered, but we’ve not forgotten what it was like to be free.’
The notion of freedom was rekindled in the Dokken below by Delta’s unexpected intrusion. He sent them information: the gist of the plan. Ramon sensed the pent-up rage of those Dokken, and felt them weigh that against the likelihood of death if they rose up. He caught their unanimous assent and exhaled in relief: the first hurdle of the night had been leapt.
The moment Delta snapped the gnostic bounds controlling his kindred, everything would happen with frightening rapidity – for good or ill.
Delta turned to him. ‘Are you ready for this?’
When Ramon nodded wordlessly, the Dokken grinned fiercely and a pulse of energy surged along the links uniting Delta to his brethren, a powerful pulse that snapped the bonds of control. It was like a tear on a loom weft: suddenly hundreds of threads were blowing free. Below them, eighteen Souldrinkers woke from bondage in the camp of their enemies and reached for their deadly crystals.
*
The Souldrinker’s name had been Edan Bretou, but the Inquisitors had shaved his head and branded him with the Lantric sigil ‘Lambda’. They now called him Lamb. He was thin, and rather pretty for a young man – he had suffered abuses others of his kin hadn’t. He hated certain of the Inquisitors with a transcendent passion.
When Brother Delta went missing, Lambda had mourned, as they all had. So when that same Brother Delta spoke into his mind that morning, his heart and head thudded with excitement as he announced, ‘Our time has come, brothers and sisters. The abomination we suffer will end now.’
Brother Lambda trembled with the terror and enormity of what was required. It would end in death – his death, and all of his kindred here. It was clear none could survive the spell-work required.
‘But what a toll we shall take in our passing,’ said Sister Rho, bitter and angry, her words echoed by Brother Tau and Sister Zeta, equally enraptured at the notion.
What a conflagration we shall raise in our leaving! What a path we shall burn to Heaven on High!
Softly, gently, they all began to sing, a hymn to Kore, the real Kore, the God who loved even them. And as they sang, they gently, slowly, helped each other unlock the binding spells confining them to their tents, moving with patient precision to avoid detection. Then, robed and hooded, they slipped out into the shadows. Lambda looked up and saw that Heaven on High was strewn with stars. Somewhere up there was Brother Delta; he saluted him silently.
His senses were heightened, by adrenalin and the portending grace of freedom. It was as if every scent was new, every sound music. Such a beautiful night. A shame to die before dawn.
They flitted into position, utilising their gnosis freely for the first time in their lives, to conceal themselves from the sentries and the sleepless, until each was in position. Mentally they wished each other farewell, pledging to meet again beyond the skies. Then they turned away, to concentrate on their tasks.
For Lambda, that meant a tangle of giant reptile forms, thirty venators dreaming their bird-dreams amidst the gory remains of the cattle they’d feasted on the previous evening. The pen stank of rotting meat and hummed with flies, even at night. The mind of each flying reptile was tethered to their master . . . but each still, in some dim recess, remembered that once they’d been something else. Once they’d been free, living very different lives. Like Lamb and his kin, they were unwilling slaves. And they too could be freed – though the power to do it all at once would be beyond even the strongest pure-blood. But it wasn’t beyond a Dokken wielding a solarus crystal, one who had no fear of whatever damage he might do to himself.
All around the camp, the freed Souldrinkers began their great task, to unleash freedom and devastation with the construct-beasts of Kaltus Korion’s own army.
Lamb raised his crystal, and became a lion.
*
That eerie cry went on and on, growing, not fading. Kaltus Korion looked at Hestan Milius.
The camp was waking to a low hum, emanating from all sides. Voices cried out, the involuntary calls of frightened men pulled from a nightmare. Then came a rumble that set the sand beneath Kaltus’ feet trembling, as if twenty thousand hooves had struck the bedrock at once, and that was followed by a rhythmic scraping and pawing and scratching. Behind that thumping heartbeat, thousands of mouths were panting, air gusting through bared teeth, the low growl of many, many beasts. It filled the air, at the edge of hearing, somehow maddening.
Suddenly apprehensive, Kaltus kindled shields and walked towards the nearest khurne-pen, where his own mount was housed. Three of his stable-hands were inside, facing a row of the creatures who’d torn loose from their pickets and were snarling, more like wolves than horses. Their deadly horns flashed.
Kaltus opened his mouth to warn them, but he was too late.
As one, the khurnes leaped forward with blinding speed, plunged their horns into the chests and bellies of the stable-boys and tossed them aside, then the whole herd of them, more than forty beasts, battered at the gates until they crashed down. They thundered out into the camp as screams and the sound of slaughter rose on all sides. He blasted down a khurne that came at him and leaped to evade another, which erupted in flames and went down screaming.
Kaltus whirled and found Milius at his side, blue gnosis-fire in his hands.
‘General, what the—?’
Milius got no further. He was ripped almost in half from behind and tossed aside by another khurne that had flashed through the rear of the tent at full gallop, followed by more. They stamped on his carcase – deliberately, Kaltus thought, then as one, they turned on him.
He slammed fire into them, charred the front one and drove the rest away. But all around him, men and equipment were being torn apart. He had to roll aside as a madly out-of-control hulka slammed through a group of rankers, crushing three and scattering the rest like broken dolls. He shafted light into its skull and it collapsed, but now there were warhounds flooding in, tearing and ripping at the fallen, bearing down any who tried to fight.
Even as he thought, I’ve got to get abov
e this! he was levitating above the tents and out of reach of the warhounds, then used kinesis to surge towards the venator pens, already in fear of what might be happening there. His elevation gave him a terrifying view of the night being torn apart by bestial shrieks and cries, of men panicking, running hither and thither, of fires raging out of control among the tents. It was a scene of Hel itself.
A dark shape flew out of the night, jaws wide open: a venator, as maddened as the beasts below. He blasted it backwards in a blaze of lightning, sending it plummeting into the chaos below, but other venators were rising, then peeling off into shallow dives, plucking men from the ground and biting them in two, spitting out the bloody pieces.
The responses came from all sides: his battle-magi, experienced men all of them, levitating out of the destruction below, many bloodied, some half-naked, torn from their beds into madness. But he took heart at the sight of the familiar faces.
Young Tonville appeared, admirably cool in the face of chaos.
‘Right here,’ said a voice below, and they all looked down to see a slim figure in plain robes: a young woman with a shaven head and the Lantric sigil Rho branded onto her forehead. Between her breasts pulsed a blue light that was hard to look at, and her face was lined with veins, like the roots of redweed growing inside her.
Tonville raised a hand to send mage-fire at her, but she struck first.
Kaltus Korion had seen an Ascendant only once in his life: one of the Keepers had dealt with a rebel mage during the Noros Revolt. He’d been a withered old man, but the fire that had poured from him had turned stone to liquid.
That was as nothing to the explosion of energy that tore through the sky from the hands of the slight young woman below him.
It was directed at Tonville: a torrent of energy so pure it was like a fragment of the sun. It cut through the young man and he was gone, then it sprayed left and right as she spread her arms, engulfing his senior magi and plucking them from existence. Kaltus didn’t stop to think; he fled, and only his speed saved him. As it was, the heat and the flame that burned through his shields were enough to send him spiralling though the air in agony. His elite magi, men and women who’d blazed through Noros and Argundy and Kesh like comets, winked out like fireflies.
He spun back, planning to try and assail the Souldrinker, when suddenly Rho combusted with a cry like a priestess in rapture and simply ceased to be. The concussion hurled blazing tents and weapons and debris into the air, sending him spinning away so hard that he ploughed into the ground beside a wagon.
Then the pain hit him, and he looked down to see his whole right side was burned away – to the bone in some places; the rest was a melted, weeping horror like a half-cooked chicken fallen from the spit. He almost blacked out, as much at the sight of it as the pain. Only the iron will of decades of command kept him conscious, kept him semi-sane, as he poured all the healing-gnosis he could into his tortured flesh, then began to crawl for the shadows beneath a wagon, to hide.
*
Ramon’s scrying eyes were filled with images of horror as the giant living organism that was Kaltus Korion’s army tore itself apart. Hulkas were rampaging through the wagons, stamping their handlers into pulp. Khurnes were spearing their riders, venators ripping the flesh of their Inquisitor masters. The warhounds were a seething mass of terror, hunting in giant packs, tearing ruthlessly into any prey they found. It was an awful, incredible insanity.
Here and there resistance formed: the remnants of a Fist regrouped, or a battle-mage found enough of a cohort able to form up and defend him. Crossbowmen gathered in small groups and managed to bring down a few of the raging construct-beasts. With courage and resourcefulness the common rankers sought ways to live, banding together to fight, or inching away to survive.
But the freed Dokken were stalking across the battlefield, blasting any functioning units apart using their diabolical crystals, even though they were tearing their own souls free of this life as they did. Ramon was attuned to Delta’s mind and he felt each Souldrinker perish, one by one, in a roar of energy and release, until there were only two or three left still seeking prey. It was mesmerising, almost enticing, to watch a person wink out in self-immolation; he gripped Jelaska’s hand to anchor him here, to remind him to live.
The unknown mental shout drew him back to the here and now. He looked down and saw four skiffs and a pair of venators were spiralling up towards his skiff. Worse, a greater shape had risen from the darkness below: a mighty drakken, with a pair of armoured men on its back – its riders must somehow have regained control, enough to get it aloft and keep it reined to their will.
‘Here they come, Sensini,’ Jelaska said. ‘Now it’s our turn.’
They readied their sails, working carefully around Delta. Now that he’d set the events below in motion, his role was largely done. They could see how badly the immensity of power required to break the controls on his kin had harmed him: his veins were engorged, glowing a deep radiant scarlet through his fragile skin. He was clearly dying, but holding off his last moments for as long as he could.
‘Take me down,’ he croaked.
Ramon looked at Jelaska, then shrugged. The Dokken had given everything. He began to power down the keel and began a controlled descent towards the skiffs and reptiles rising to meet them.
As they descended, Jelaska began her own workings, violet light creeping around her fingers, her lined face becoming even more drawn and withered as she drew on necromantic-gnosis. As the first enemy skiff came into range, a shaft of purple light flew from her hands and engulfed the pilot. An Air-mage, likely a Thaumaturge, his defences against the Earth- and sorcery-gnosis of the Necromancer were too weak; within seconds, a skeleton was piloting the skiff as it plummeted towards the ground. The shrieking mage in the prow wailed, then leaped free and went spinning away. A torrent of mage-bolts blasted against Jelaska’s shields, turning the air around her brilliant with sparks ranging through blue to purple to red as her shields became stressed.
Ramon hauled on the tiller and turned with the wind to evade the skiff-borne magi . . . then swore as the drakken ate up the distance between them in one sudden swoop; it was almost upon them, fire spewing as it swung its head, and mage-light kindled on the lances of the riders.
Delta released the last of his reserves – not in a blast of energy, but Ramon sensed a reaching out, a struggle for control, and then—
The Dokken sagged quietly in the prow, as if the effort had been too much – but the drakken stalled mid-climb – then it turned its head and immolated itself, together with the riders on its back. The blast of its fire, as intense as any pure-blood Fire-mage could produce, charred the knights and its own wings and torso to ash, then it screamed as it lost the ability to fly. The blackened remains of the men on its back were already falling as it started to spin, head-over-tail, back down into the desert below.
Ramon stared awestruck at the falling beast, forgetting entirely that he was in the midst of a battle. Except that suddenly he wasn’t: the surviving skiffs and venators had seen enough, and were frantically fleeing away. He watched them go in disbelief.
We did it. We’re alive . . .
He blinked slowly at the scarred face of Mater Lune, Goddess of Insanity. The stars were fading and the few clouds turning pink and gold. Jelaska looked as shaken as he was. Wordlessly, they hugged, then turned to the slumped figure in the prow, huddled over a blackened crystal in his seared hands. Delta’s morose, lifeless face held just the hint of a smile, but his eyes were empty.
May your god take you home, Ramon wished the Souldrinker silently, then he took up the tiller again and began to pilot them back towards the Lost Legions’ camp.
They la
nded solemnly, to find their whole camp wide awake. Many of Kaltus Korion’s rankers had fled in their direction, only to be taken captive; any of the wild constructs that’d come their way had been driven off.
The rising sun revealed the full extent of the devastation visited upon Kaltus Korion’s army: his camp was not just wrecked; it was devastated, with construct-beasts still stalking the remains, seeking more men to kill. The tents and wagons had been mostly burned out and a pall of smoke hung over it all – ash, and the miasma of death.
Seth came to meet them and hugged them both hard, not even attempting to hide his emotion. The rest of the surviving Lost Legions magi – Fridryk Kippenegger, Lanna Jureigh, Carmina Phyl, Chaplain Gerdhart and Evan Hale – were not far behind, all lost for words as they gazed at the most destructive scene they’d ever seen: a battle won without a blow, through the sacrifice of others.
‘What the Hel do we do now?’ Evan Hale whispered, speaking for them all.
They all looked to Ramon, who looked to Seth.
‘Well,’ the general’s son said, after collecting himself, ‘I suppose we need to go over there and look around. There’ll be injured, Lanna, so get ready for casualties. And some of those construct-beasts will still be hostile, so we’ll need to move in groups. If anyone – or anything – resists, send for me or Jelaska. Remember, these people aren’t our enemies any more. Tell the men.’ He clapped his hands, a little dazedly. ‘Well done, all of you.’ He looked at Ramon. ‘And three cheers, Bastidinio. You are a miracle-worker.’
Ramon raised a nonchalant, it-was-nothing hand. ‘You should be cheering Delta. He did all that, not me.’ He paused, then grinned. ‘Though it was my idea. Si, you’re right: I really am a genius.’
*
Seth Korion stared at the fallen drakken. The rear part of its body was charred through to the bone; he could see the ribs, broken by the fall from hundreds of feet above. The other drakken was gone, having eaten its handlers and destroyed two full Inquisition Fists as they slept, then driving off another before simply flying away. All the surviving magi were fled, and the Souldrinkers were all dead, immolated by their own powers. The aether still felt wounded from the immense energy expended here.