– Inquisitor Corvin Golrukhan
Captain Hexal held court in the city’s arena. His palace was a pavilion of flayed skins set up on the arena floor, around which crowds flocked to be bludgeoned back by the ring of mutants guarding it. The skins chosen for his pavilion were those covered in tattoos, so the whole foul creation was as obscenely decorative as Shalhadar’s own palace.
Lysander watched from the stands. The arena itself, a spectacular creation of carved bone, did not interest him. It was no surprise there was somewhere in the city for combats and death spectacles to be waged in honour of Shalhadar. His soldier’s mind worked on its own, telling him he would be unlikely to make it through the cordon of mutants with enough speed to get to grips with Hexal before he could prepare or escape. What truly concerned him was what Hexal might want.
The sound of Talaya’s mechanical limbs conveying her across the bone and stonework had already become familiar. Lysander did not have to turn around to know she was drifting regally towards him.
‘Lord Shalhadar has decided to receive Ambassador Hexal,’ she said.
‘Who is to hear his demands?’ asked Lysander.
‘I am.’
Lysander looked around at her. ‘And who will go with you?’
‘That is a matter for my own discretion. It would hardly become the herald of this city’s lord to enter the presence of a hostile power alone.’
It occurred to Lysander to wonder how Talaya would fare if she faced Hexal one on one. She was quick. He knew that, and her limbs gave her greater range. There was no telling what concoctions the generator mounted on her back could pump out – perhaps something potent enough to knock out the Iron Warrior. But if Hexal got within reach of her mechanical talons, he had the strength to tear her apart – Lysander was sure.
And what would happen if Lysander fought her? He had no idea.
Talaya gave him one of her hateful little smiles and clacked off down the seating rows towards the arena floor. Lysander stood and followed her.
The crowd parted for Talaya – Shalhadar’s city knew her well and they were afraid of her. They were afraid of Lysander, too, but then he was twice the height of many of them and clad in spectacular crimson armour, so that was no surprise. Many kneeled when Talaya went past - others tried to scramble away. Lysander, however, followed in her wake.
The mutants barred her way. One of the diminutive creatures that Lysander recognised from Kulgarde’s medical wing hurried from the pavilion and chattered away in the ear of the biggest and ugliest of the mutants. It bowed and stood aside, letting Talaya through and Lysander after her. The smell of the uncured skin hit him and he realised it had been flayed from its donor creatures only recently, without being tanned or preserved. The orderly held a flap aside and Talaya entered, her limbs letting her down onto the arena floor so her head did not brush against the raw skin.
Inside, the pavilion was dark and noisome. The uncured skin hung with scraps of fibrous muscle and organ, and dripped blood on to the sand underfoot. The stink of it was awful. The effect was rather like walking into the inside of a huge living organ. More of Kulgarde’s mutants stood as an honour guard, this time armed and armoured like a parody of a standing army, holding the banners of Kraegon Thul’s warband. Thul’s heraldry was the stylised mechanical hand of his Legion, an open book, a tower with a crack down the centre and a pair of severed hands hanging from a hook, each depicted on the various banners.
On a throne constructed from steel blocks sat Captain Hexal of the Iron Warriors. His chainsword leaned against the throne beside him and a diminutive mutant held his bolter. Hexal wore his helmet, showing only the brutal, inhuman, mechanical face worn by his Legion.
‘Lord Hexal,’ began Talaya grandly, ‘my Lord Shalhadar the Veiled One, Sovereign of this city and claimant to all of Malodrax, gives you leave to enter his city.’
‘My Legion does not indulge in your pleasantries,’ replied Hexal. Talaya did not flinch at his bluntness. ‘I am here to make demands, as befits one who speaks for Warsmith Kraegon Thul, true lord of Malodrax.’
‘Then in the name of the Veiled One, I may hear them,’ said Talaya.
Lysander had stayed near the back of the pavilion, wary that Captain Hexal might recognise in this crimson-armoured warrior something of the bearing of an Imperial Fist. Seeing Hexal again this close gave him an empty, dead feeling, and he recognised it now as the knowledge that his duty was not being done. Hexal had taken the lives of his brothers and stood for a Legion whose very existence was an insult to every Imperial Fist – and yet Lysander was standing back and letting Hexal speak. Lysander forced the feeling down, with its mingled threads of anger and shame. Hexal was going to die. Lysander would be the one to kill him. He was letting Hexal live for the time being, because if he tried to take him on now Lysander would die in the attempt and Kraegon Thul, the true enemy, would live on.
‘Ten thousand sacrifices,’ Captain Hexal was saying. ‘Dominion over the Kalinik Reach and the passes through the Vorn Mountains. The mutants of this city as slaves for our forges. The fealty of Shalhadar the Veiled One, expressed in obeisance to the throne of Warsmith Thul.’
‘I see,’ replied Talaya. ‘I shall convey your suggestions to the Veiled One. Now I believe this is a fine opportunity to communicate the demands Shalhadar has of your Warsmith.’
At this Hexal held out his hand and the mutant cowering beside his throne handed him his bolter. The mutants standing at guard closed in around Talaya. Talaya’s face changed, from unflustered and diplomatic to a violent scowl. Noxious fog billowed around her, filling the pavilion with a toxic darkness. Lysander heard the bellowing of mutants and the sound of metal talon through flesh. Bodies pressed around him and he drew his blade, hacking at the mutant hands trying to drag him down.
He turned and cut a long slit through the skin of the pavilion’s side and forced his way out. A billow of poisonous fog followed him. Outside the people were panicking, shoved back and clubbed to the ground by the cordon of mutants. They were already fleeing across the stadium’s seats, or crying out as they were trampled beneath the feet of their neighbours.
One mutant rounded on Lysander. It was huge, half again as tall as a Space Marine, larger than any Lysander had spotted in the depths beneath Kulgarde. Lysander ducked under its swinging paw and cut up at its bull neck. The sword sliced through skin and sinew, lodging in the spine – Lysander twisted it and the vertebrae parted, sending the mutant tumbling to the ground with its partially severed head flopping over one shoulder. He reminded himself this was a mundane blade, not a chainsword.
Talaya emerged through the torn pavilion behind him, clambering on her talons up the side of the tent. Her double-headed halberd was in her hands and her armour’s mask had slid up over her face. She spun the halberd in her hands, the sweep of the weapon passing over Lysander’s head and slicing off the arm of a mutant lumbering towards her. Before the arm had hit the arena floor the blade had carved down and split the mutant’s head in two.
Talaya dropped down onto the sand of the arena. Still her feet did not touch the ground – instead her clacking mechanical legs carried her.
‘That went well,’ she said.
Lysander was not sure if Talaya was being sarcastic and did not pause to ask her. He forged into the gap in the mutant line and was among the fleeing people in a handful of seconds. Mutants tried to pursue but were caught up in the cultists scrambling to get out of their way. One mutant, with the body of a giant and a multi-legged, spiderlike growth taking up everything above its shoulders, picked up a cultist and threw it aside, its compound eyes swivelling to focus on Lysander. He ran on, reaching the edge of the arena seating, before clambering onto the first row and turning. The mutant was almost on him, a trail of trampled bodies behind it.
Lysander leapt at the mutant. Its segmented upper limbs unfolded to catch him. Lysander rammed an armoured foot down into the centre of where its head should have been – bristly, gnarled flesh c
runched where he hit. He grabbed a leg with his free hand and grappled himself upright, the mutant’s huge humanoid hand reaching up to grab him and throw him off. Lysander cut off a handful of spider’s legs and crushed one of the compound eyes with a stamp – it broke like glass, the individual facets raining down. The mutant reeled and Lysander was finally able to reverse his grip on the sword and drive it down.
He did not take a chance this time. A chainblade would have made a gory mess but he had to make sure this normal blade hit something vital at first blow. He drove the hilt down hard, feeling the tip punching through insect organs, collarbone and heart. He pulled the blade out half its length and plunged it down again. This time he could hear the juddering heartbeat vibrating up the blade, hammering haphazardly as the muscle of the heart was torn open.
The mutant lurched to one side, then the other, and toppled over. Lysander jumped off onto the front row as it crashed to the sand.
The arena was in bedlam. The mutants were rampaging through the crowd, clubbing and butchering at random. The sand was wet with blood. Fleeing citizens were streaming to the arena exits or swarming over the seating.
It was, Lysander realised, its own form of worship. Just like cultists hurling themselves to their deaths or the dark rituals held hidden from the city’s eyes, this was an act of devotion. The citizens had come here in no small part hoping that violence would break out, so they might die as martyrs to Shalhadar and his city, or that their deaths would illustrate the treachery of Kraegon Thul and demonstrate Shalhadar’s right to rule Malodrax.
Talaya was already on the stadium roof, watching the carnage from a safe vantage point. She had killed her way to safety even more quickly than Lysander, and her halberd blades were slick with mutant blood. Her armoured mask slid down and Lysander was sure she was smiling, not the sly smirk she used with him but an expression of true joy. To her, this slaughter was beautiful. The death of the city’s people pleased the Veiled One, and so it pleased his herald, too.
The palace was hung with the colours of mourning. White was the chosen colour, with accents of red, representing desolation and bloodshed. Mourning banners hung over the frescoes and tapestries, and a singer wailed a funeral dirge from the upper balconies.
Shalhadar wore the veil of a broken old man, the last of his line, surrounded by the keepsakes and heirlooms of the family he had lost. It was an obvious role to take but the one the palace entertainers and artisans expected of him. His face was long and wrinkled, the features almost lost in the weight of its age, his shoulders hunched, his clothes long-faded velvet finery. His eyes should have been watery but instead they were hard and black, the one feature that reminded an onlooker that the old man was not truly what he believed him to be.
‘Come,’ said Shalhadar. ‘Sit. Mourn with me.’
Lysander had entered the palace to find Talaya waiting for him. He paused only to clean his blade at the palace threshold before following her to the inner rooms of the palace, the layout of which he was sure had changed since he had witnessed the blasphemous opera here. Lysander obeyed Shalhadar’s command and sat on an upholstered bench covered in torn diary pages, while Talaya settled on her mechanical haunches beside a broken clock and a pile of mouldering dolls and toys. Lysander wondered where the trappings of this veil had come from. Was there a storeroom with all these symbolic knick-knacks waiting for an appropriate occasion? Were they illusions conjured by Shalhadar’s will?
‘No doubt,’ said Shalhadar, ‘sorrow fills your hearts at the offence done to this city by Ambassador Hexal. Alas, he escaped the city by force while the wounded were yet crying out for succour. And so our thoughts must turn not only to the suffering of our people, the woes of our city, but to the restitution of balance. I speak not of the healing of our scars, of the interring of the dead. I speak of revenge.’
The old man’s fist balled up and the veins stood out on the back of his hand, a gesture of defiance all the more powerful for the ancient body’s weakness.
Shalhadar looked Lysander in the eye, and there was no trace of true sorrow there. ‘Good?’ he asked.
It was Talaya who answered. ‘Convincing enough for the citizens,’ she said. ‘But then they live in the story. We who live outside it know the truth.’
‘And what is the truth?’ asked Shalhadar. He held up a hand before Talaya could answer. ‘Lysander?’
Lysander still felt an internal shudder to hear his name spoken by the daemon prince. ‘It is a cycle,’ he said. ‘No power on Malodrax can permit any other to exist without trying to impose its superiority. This turn of the wheel, it was Kraegon Thul who sought to remind you. Next it will be you who sends an envoy to antagonise the Warsmith, or whatever other power might have risen on Malodrax. It is its own sort of performance. Hexal probably thinks he is truly striking a blow against your city but Kraegon Thul knows the game he plays.’
‘And are the Iron Warriors content to play the game, do you think? Your kind know them well. The Imperial Fists have history with Perturabo’s brood. Is he a creature of Malodrax, content to perform his role until his story ends?’
‘No,’ replied Lysander. ‘He plays it as long as is necessary. He has a plan in place to win all of Malodrax. He will turn the whole planet into a forge for his war machines, or just mine it dry and move on. This world alone cannot satisfy Thul’s ambitions. I doubt anything truly would.’
Shalhadar smiled, all pretence of sorrow gone. ‘Then we had better kill him,’ he said.
‘Plenty have tried,’ said Talaya. ‘Simply walking up to Kulgarde’s door would do nothing, even with the whole population of this city armed behind us. And Thul himself will not be easy to kill. In all honesty, I do not think there is a being on Malodrax that has a meaningful chance of slaying him face to face. Not to mention those he keeps close to him.’
‘The alien,’ said Lysander.
‘Ah,’ said Talaya. ‘You have met.’
‘He watched over my vivisection,’ said Lysander. ‘I am sure Thul sent him to make sure I suffered before I died.’
‘You speak of Karnak,’ said Talaya. ‘The warp alone knows his species, but he has served as advisor and castellan to Thul since the Iron Warriors laid the first blocks of Kulgarde. You are the first I have met to have seen him in the flesh and lived. Every one of the scum and vermin in that fortress answers to Karnak, and he answers to the Iron Warriors. Then, of course, there are the other Iron Warriors, Hexal and his ilk, to get through. Imperial Fist, as deep as your hate might run, I think even you would see ill sport in getting a foot past Kulgarde’s threshold.’
‘And that, dear child,’ said Shalhadar, ‘is why you will remain ever a mortal vessel, and never ascend to the glories of daemonhood. You have no imagination! Lysander, you say, has no chance of entering Kulgarde. But did not Thul’s underling, Hexal, enter my city? Did he not set up camp in my stadium, as bold as a painted whore? Thus have the enemy shown us how we might put our living weapon here into the presence of Kraegon Thul.’
‘Will not Kulgarde be closed to an envoy of ours?’ asked Talaya. ‘We could hardly dance in and start reading off demands. Kulgarde is in the ascendance, they have no obligation to receive us.’
‘But they do have a desire to humiliate us,’ said Lysander. ‘Hexal demanded you kneel before Thul’s throne. We might deign to give him the next best thing, an envoy sent to grovel and beg for mercy. Would Thul not be eager to let such an envoy through the gates, if only for the chance to execute him as he kneels?’
Shalhadar gave Lysander an evil, toothless grin, the daemon’s malice bleeding through the old man’s body. ‘And who would be the damned soul to be sent as such an envoy?’ he asked.
‘That would be me,’ replied Lysander.
‘I feel I must write of Talaya.
‘Of her qualities I have already spoken. She was a fine Inquisitorial agent in her own way. Her ambition was to carry the Inquisitorial Seal herself, and though she would never have reached those heights she ser
ved the Holy Ordos as faithfully as any of us. She was a fine shot, an outstanding swordswoman, a fearsome interrogator and a possessor of a fine analytical mind. In spirit she was pure and as close to incorruptible as any of her rank.
‘In those days when I first glimpsed the court of Shalhadar, granted access for a few hours to the library of his palace, I came to think about all the other qualities she had. The above are true and wondrous, but could apply to hundreds of acolytes that have served me or other inquisitors of my conclave. And yet it was only to Talaya that the human thoughts, those that still exist unguarded in the mind of an inquisitor, turned in my mind during that time.
‘I cannot say what she truly meant to me. I will not trot out the words of the great poets and playwrights, of which every civilised world seems to have two or three. I will say only that she occupied my mind, that part of it I permit to wander, while I laboured there in the darkness of Shalhadar’s library.
‘This was the prize for which I had given up Talaya. A lower floor of the palace housed Shalhadar’s library, and there I was taken by the herald from the arena. My task there was to seek out the sacred writings that would give Shalhadar dominion over the whole of Malodrax, and which it was certain lay somewhere in the stacks there. It was an ancient, rarely walked part of the palace, and while I was aware of obscene finery just outside my sphere I was immersed entirely in its decrepitude and darkness. I delved into the volumes held there, ancient decaying tomes each one full of fouler lies than the last. Transcriptions of madmen’s raving I found there, and collections of observations from dream-journeys into the warp.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 299