Nergui had led the charge, a whole company as one, firing their side-mounted bolters into the masses of orks. Smaller greenskins sped forwards on crude bikes to meet them, and Nergui had cut through the creatures like a warm blade through wax, prompting a great roar of anger and terror and exultation. The xenos seemed to love nothing more than a battle, even one in which they were destined to be destroyed.
Blackfist was a vast hulk of fangs and neck and gap-tusked jaws, riding a bike of enormous proportions and unique manufacture. He had come for Nergui through the desperate melee. The tusked giant had bellowed his fury, the great metal jaws of his power armour working crudely in time with his own. Nergui had emptied a full magazine of bolter shells into Blackfist’s machine, but the ramshackle bike had only given up fifty feet from him, slewing to a halt in a billowing cloud of burning fumes.
Blackfist had jumped free and bounded towards Nergui, still bellowing with the same long breath, chainaxes whirling. The ork’s keenest bodyguards had charged with him. Nergui rode one down, put bolter shells through the next and saved his power lance for their leader. The explosive charge caught Blackfist under the chin. A jolt went through the ork’s body, but he did not seem to notice, even when Nergui’s tulwar sliced one muscled limb down to the thick bone.
Nergui had made three passes before Blackfist understood that he was dead. He had fallen backwards, still snarling as his heels drummed the earth.
The death of their leader only drove the greenskins to a higher pitch of fury as each one tried to outdo the other, to claim the title of warchief. The fighting was furious. Nergui’s left pauldron was ripped from his armour. He had a dozen rents in his war-plate. His blood clotted in the dust of battle. In the end, Nergui had stood alone, eagle banner in one hand, tulwar in the other.
He flinched just reliving the moment. Nergui had thought himself done. His confidence had drawn him too deep into the enemy. And what point in killing the leader, if the beast had a hundred heads?
He was a blur of steel, a typhoon of fury. He was as slippery as a river dragon, made of mist and clouds.
‘Jaghatai!’ he had raged, and he had felt the power of his primarch fill him with the fury of a steppes gale. He was destruction. He was death. He was a sublime killer, and his warriors saw his stand, as the piles of greenskin dead rose up about him, and their will and drive and relentless skill with blade and bolter drove the greenskins back.
He had a moment to draw breath. Dark liquids oozed from his suit, and foul greenskin blood covered his arm from his hand to his shoulder. And then he saw how many of his warriors he had lost to the xenos, and a furious fire burned within him that would lead him eventually to this place: serving with the Deathwatch.
His charge had been foolish. It had risked too much. He had lost too many of his brothers, and Nergui felt his pride tarnished. Was his time with the Deathwatch an attempt to make up for this, he wondered? That battle had been decades ago. He had not ridden with his gene-brothers since.
The realisation hit him with a feeling akin to loss. He missed his gene-brothers.
Chapter Ten
Cadvan was flying Nergui’s Thunderhawk up to the Northwind. The Storm Giant had tried a number of times to start up a conversation, but each time Nergui had answered with a single word, and by the time the gunship arrived – a black dot alongside the vast white gun batteries of the Northwind – the pilot had fallen silent.
And silence suited Nergui.
He felt the vibration as they passed through the airlock into the upper port-side landing deck, felt the landing gear touch down. He heard the hiss as the atmosphere of the Deathwatch Thunderhawk equalised with that aboard the Northwind, heard his own heavy footsteps as he strode out of the dark into the brightly lit landing bay.
‘No one’s here to greet you,’ Cadvan voxed.
‘No,’ Nergui said. ‘Maybe they do not think one of their own needs to be greeted.’
‘Maybe they do not think you are one of them any more.’
Nergui did not answer. He had spent so long in the shadows of Picket’s Watch that the glare of the lumen globes on the plain white walls, with their lightning strike imagery, seemed too bright, too stark. But as he stepped onto the side landing ramp Nergui had the odd sense that he was home.
Across the long wall were four Thunderhawks, all emblazoned with the lightning strike of the White Scars and the crossed tulwars of the Fourth Company. Two servitors were loading missiles into the underwing hard points, while across the flight deck a trio of tracked servitors were attending to an ancient Fire Raptor, Obos. Steam vented from its engine exhausts as the turbofans wound down, and a wheel-track servitor moved across the chevroned landing deck with a fuel hose connector where its right shoulder should be.
Nergui had flown Obos once, long, long ago. He crossed the deck and reached out his hand to the Fire Raptor’s fuselage. He could feel the hum of the machine-spirit, fierce and eager, and he felt it recognised him as one of its own. He patted its ablative armour in a way that reminded him of his father stroking the muzzle of his black stallion. It shocked him, for a moment, to see the black of his glove against the white of the White Scars craft.
He had barely noticed the colour of his armour for years. But here, he saw himself in a new light. Black, not white. Secretive, not exultant.
A White Scars Apothecary entered the deck. His long black hair was pulled back in a knot so tight it pulled the skin of his forehead up.
He had a steel jaw and three ritual scars down what remained of each cheek. A voice sounded but hismouth did not move, and for a moment Nergui thought that there was a third interlocutor somewhere, but it was this warrior who spoke.
‘I am Khulan,’ he said. ‘Announce yourself, stranger in black.’
Nergui turned full towards him. ‘I am Nergui Khan, of the White Scars.’
‘Khan no longer,’ the words came, and as Nergui strode towards the Apothecary, he saw the speaker inside the steel mouth.
‘No,’ Nergui said, ‘but still a White Scar. And as a brother I seek your khan.’
‘Batbayar Khan?’
Nergui nodded.
‘Your hand, brother.’ As Nergui let him take it there was a sharp prick. Nergui pulled his hand back and saw blood. ‘Forgive me,’ Khulan said, lifting his arm to see the readings on his narthecium. ‘I was sent here to see if you were really who you claim to be.’
Nergui gave a humourless laugh. ‘The Tulwar Brotherhood have sunk low if this is the way you greet brothers now.’
‘Forgive me. Dealings with the Deathwatch are never straightforward. I do not like to expose my khan to unnecessary dangers. He does that well enough for himself. You bear the gene-seed of the White Scars so I shall trust that you are indeed Nergui.’ The Apothecary bowed. ‘Batbayar is my khan and he asked me to greet you.’
‘And this is his greeting?’
‘This way,’ Khulan said. ‘Welcome to the Northwind, home of the Fourth Company, the Tulwar Brotherhood, scourge of the enemies of Mankind.’
‘What was that about?’ Cadvan voxed.
‘It’s how we do things,’ Nergui voxed back. After a moment’s thought he added, ‘Leave me to it now,’ and closed the link.
Nergui followed Khulan through corridors that could have belonged to any of the ships within the White Scars Chapter. The walls were plain and white, adorned with occasional tapestries of felted yak hair, woven totems in niches, scroll paintings, bells of cast bronze: all the symbols of Chogorean power.
Nergui remembered the days when he rode on the front of his mother’s horse, and felt a strange pang at the thought of riding with his people again.
Nergui followed Khulan along the corridors, to the Hall of the Warriors. His palms were clammy and he could not tell what exactly it was that made his hearts beat so fast.
The great brass doors were shut, their ring-handles – e
ach a ton in weight – tied with red and white silk scarves. Two bronze dragons were emblazoned into the wall on either side of the gateway. One devoured a greenskin, the other held a necron pyramid in its claws. Beneath them was a stylised image of the Empty Lands of Chogoris, where the wild tribes lived and warred and supplied the new recruits, and where Nergui and Batbayar had grown up as children, Nergui from the Chaoge, Batbayar from the Tufan.
By the time the doors swung open his eyes had become used to the bright glare of white, but through the doors he saw that the Hall of the Warriors was dark, except for the low light of yak-butter wall lamps, the single flames reflected in the wide bowls in which they burned. The ceiling hung with coils of unlit incense. Embroidered banners covered each wall, the images lost, only the glint of silver and golden thread revealing depictions of massed armies of white-clad warriors.
The vast hall echoed as Nergui strode inside, Khulan at his shoulder. The unpolished marble flagstones rang as he paced into the centre of the room and stopped as the main doors shut behind him.
Suddenly the hall was filled with the growl of fifty bikes sweeping in from side doors. Within moments he and Khulan stood in the centre of concentric circles of bikers, each going about in opposite directions. Nergui felt the sudden proximity of so many of his gene-brothers exhilarating, almost overwhelming. The roar of engines, the stink of promethium fuel, the acrid scent of the yak-oil they used to tie back their hair – all this woke the White Scar within Nergui and he longed to leap on a bike and ride.
‘They have not forgotten Nergui,’ he thought. ‘And Nergui has not forgotten them.’
One of the warriors veered suddenly out of the circle and accelerated towards him, his rear tyre skidding as he braked to a sudden halt, and the front of the bike, where the bolter muzzles jutted out, tapped gently against Nergui’s black knee pad. The rider tore off his helmet. This was not Batbayar but a young warrior with a face that was proud, arrogant and ugly beneath thick black brows that met in the middle.
His mouth was harsh.
‘Who summoned us?’ he demanded.
‘I am Nergui.’
The other warrior gave him a contemptuous nod. ‘What is your tribe?’
‘Chaoge.’
The other warrior snorted and slammed his fist into his power-armoured chest. ‘I am of the Red Tangut.’
This was Batbayar’s doing, Nergui knew. Chaoge and Red Tangut tribes were blood enemies. Nergui knew he would have to fight.
‘What is your name, Red Tangut?’
The other warrior punched his chest-plate with his left fist. ‘I am Ganzorig.’
Nergui grinned. ‘First blood,’ he said.
Ganzorig put out his hand and another of the warriors with the Red Tangut scars on his cheeks pulled a Chogorean power axe from his back and put it into Ganzorig’s hand.
‘That is a big weapon for a duel,’ Nergui said and conspicuously left his tulwar sheathed.
Ganzorig pressed the activation stud, and the blade of the power axe crackled blue. ‘It is typical of a Chaoge to try and wriggle from a fight.’
Nergui felt more alive than he had done for years. He was a child again, on the steppes, with the smell of wood smoke in his nose, flocks to guard, and a constant threat of wolves and enemies. He dropped into a fighting stance. ‘Come, Ganzorig of the Red Tangut.’
Ganzorig leapt at him, power axe already swinging down in a terrifying blow. Nergui twisted and the blade slammed into the slabs he had been standing on. He made no effort to strike back, but let Ganzorig of the Red Tangut swing backhanded, overhead, body swipes, face-butts.
‘Draw your weapon, Chaoge!’ Ganzorig snarled, but Nergui did not need a weapon to beat a Red Tangut. He was a black blur, always just out of reach of the swinging blade. Ganzorig grunted and cursed, sweat starting to spray from his bald pate. His face grew uglier with anger as his frustration grew.
‘Fight!’ he hissed. ‘Are you a coward?’
Nergui skipped back out of his range. Ganzorig swung wildly at his head and Nergui ducked in low, caught the axe haft in one hand, and drove the other fist into Ganzorig’s face.
The other warrior was thrown backwards. He cursed, spat a piece of tooth onto the ground as he lifted the axe, and readied for another swing.
Nergui pointed to the flagstones at their feet.
The spittle was red.
Sometimes it was the precision blow that killed the foe. The shot of a lone sniper, not the rage of a hundred warriors.
‘Don’t bring an axe next time,’ Nergui said as he held out his hand. Ganzorig cursed and bowed stiffly.
‘Well fought, Chaoge,’ he said, in a manner that implied there was no honour in Nergui’s win.
There was laughter like a clap of thunder. A Land Speeder descended from the dark heights of the hall, where the incense coils hung.
A white-clad warrior stood on one of the Land Speeder’s vanes. It flew down along one side of the hall and banked sharply to come around the other side. As the Land Speeder made its third pass the warrior leapt from its vane and landed with a heavy thud that cracked the marble flags at Nergui’s feet. It was Batbayar Khan.
He had aged, of course. His moustaches now hung to his chest, and they were shot with steel grey, but his face still looked youthful, and the light in his dark eyes glittered.
‘Greetings, brother!’ he roared, his bone charms rattling as he held Nergui at arm’s length. ‘I told Ganzorig to lose,’ he said. ‘I did not know if you had forgotten how to fight. You have been away from the hunt for too long. When will you ride with us again? The wind misses your call, brother. The skies miss the wind of your passing. The hunt misses your speed. I miss you, brother!’
Nergui found himself laughing with his old comrade. It came to him again, how much he missed his Chapter – a sudden, sharp pain, the same sense of loss. He bowed his head. ‘As soon as my service here is done.’
‘When will that be?’ Batbayar roared. Nergui could not answer. Batbayar still held him by the shoulders but as he took in Nergui’s armour the khan’s face looked pained. ‘I thought you had summoned me to ask me to take you away from here. To colour your armour white. It should not be black. Black is not your colour, brother.’
‘I need your help,’ Nergui said.
The hint of a shadow passed across Batbayar’s face, but he said, ‘Speak! What Batbayar can do, he shall. But I must warn you. I have been summoned back to Chogoris. There are dark tidings, brother.’
‘I know them,’ Nergui said. ‘I have heard. But still, I have need of your help.’
Batbayar held out his hand. ‘Speak then. What is it?’
Nergui told him.
There was a moment’s pause and Batbayar turned his head to give Nergui a sideways look. ‘You want me to destroy a xenos factory?’ Batbayar’s reaction seemed to waver between insulted and disappointed. His eyes narrowed and there was a hint of anger in his voice. ‘Do you mock me?’
Nergui shook his head. ‘I do not mock.’
Batbayar’s temper flared for a moment. ‘I am Batbayar Khan! I lead the Fourth Company, the Tulwar Brotherhood. I shall not carry the eagle banner into battle against such a petty target. It is like taking a boltgun to hunt a rat.’ He spat out the last words with distaste, then called to the horde. ‘Nergui, it cannot be you. It is an imposter. Warriors! Come!’ he shouted. ‘Let us go!’
Each squad peeled away to either side. Immediately the hall was filled with the sound of bikes. ‘Wait!’ Nergui shouted, and the roar of bikes subsided for a moment as the khan turned back to face the black-armoured figure.
‘You think there is no glory here, Batbayar of the Tufan, Khan of the Fourth Company. Is that all the Tulwar Brotherhood want? Glory? These xenos are tough as steel. They are as fast as an eagle. They are as slippery as a snake, and they bite!’
Batbayar looked back
and laughed with contempt. ‘Chogoris calls me. She is under attack. I am needed where there are foes I can kill. Foes worthy of my fury! I will leave two squads. Twenty brothers. No more.’
Batbayar whistled and the Land Speeder swept in like a summoned eagle, swooping down to the centre of the room. As Batbayar set one foot on the wing, Nergui shouted once more, ‘Kor’sarro Khan has not found the tau an easy foe.’
The words hung in the air for a moment, and Batbayar turned, his foot still resting on the Land Speeder’s wing. ‘Kor’sarro Khan fights the tau… I had almost forgotten. Has he not defeated them yet?’
‘He has not.’
‘And has he not killed their commander yet?’
‘He has not.’
Batbayar paused. There was a note of expectancy in the revving engines of the bikes. Nergui took his chance.
‘Kor’sarro Khan has suffered great troubles on Agrellan. He has lost many brothers. If you win victory where he has not, then what glory would that bring for the Tulwar Brotherhood and their khan?’
Batbayar took his foot off the Land Speeder, and the roar of bike engines stilled for a moment. The khan looked at Nergui for a long time. ‘I do not smell deceit,’ he said. ‘Nor do I see it. But I feel it.’
‘I do not lie,’ Nergui said. He nodded towards Khulan. ‘I came here in good faith. I am Nergui of the Chaoge. It was your Apothecary who tested my blood, as if I were a lie clad in power armour.’
Batbayar seemed taken aback. ‘If Khulan did this thing, I did not command it.’
‘Maybe not, khan. But you did not forbid it either, and there is guilt in the absence of command.’
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