Wild Rider - Gav Thorpe

by Warhammer 40K

  Those warriors that had been protecting Meliniel broke aside to allow the Warshard to charge free. Anaris swept low and long, slashing through the bodies of half a dozen foes, flame-coursing body turning the remains to cinders as it thundered through them. Daemonblades shattered against its immortal hide while Anaris blazed again, its black fire swallowing another handful of enemies, turning them to howling smoke. Others were crushed underfoot as the avatar strode on, occasionally backhanding a wailing daemonette or seizing a fiend by a long neck to dash it against the flagstones.

  A screech of challenge echoed from above and the serpentine daemon prince dived, hands becoming long claws of serrated silver. The Warshard turned, blade leaping up to meet the incoming monster, the edge of Anaris crashing against the immortal talons aimed at its chest. The impact of the creature’s attack sent them both skidding across the plaza, crushing daemons and necrontyr beneath their bulk as they rolled, a flaming, scintillating mass of mutual hatred.

  They parted, the daemon flitting acrobatically upright, the Warshard rising with more purpose, the tip of Anaris scoring a flaming furrow in the ground between them.

  Hissing, the daemon prince darted forwards, lashing a claw into the face of the Warshard. Droplets of lava flew from the blow like blood, but the First Avatar remained resolute.

  ‘Puny prince,’ the Warshard laughed, and hammered its bloody fist into the daemon’s face, almost splitting the creature with the force of the blow. As it reeled backwards the Warshard hacked Anaris into its midriff, sinking the deadly blade into incorporeal flesh, eliciting a shout of both of agony and rage from the lord of the Great Enemy’s warhost. The avatar kicked the creature off the blade and raised Anaris high. ‘Now you face a king!’

  Silver-barked trees reached up to a brilliant violet sky, the blue leaves of the canopy swishing in mesmerising fashion against a backdrop of scudding ruby clouds. Light glimmered everywhere as though each surface were dusted with tiny particles of glass, and the cream-coloured ground underfoot was soft and welcoming like a mattress. The air carried a delicate perfume that was both relaxing and rousing, like the musky closeness of a mate.

  Alorynis froze, taken unawares by the change in surroundings. The sound of the undulating leaves was a calming whisper, soothing away the clamour of battle he had just left.

  In the branches above small shapes slithered and flittered, moving in one direction from treetop to treetop. Waves of tiny winged figures and fluffy worm-like creatures moved along the branches, skipping from one bough to the next, their miniscule voices adding barely heard laughter to the song of the breeze.

  The gyrinx looked back and saw one of the great trees had been split, from arching root to soaring branches, the trunk opened like a gateway through which a dull grey vista moved jerkily across the gap. Everything beyond the opening seemed ponderous and slow and sharp-angled, hard to look upon.

  Alorynis fixed upon his purpose in coming here and flicked his ears, hoping to catch a note of the dead-song he was seeking. He thought he caught fleeting moments of the harmony in his mistress’ soul and stole forward slowly, seeking the source.

  He stopped again, not recognising his surroundings though it seemed he had only taken a couple of paces. Turning about, the gyrinx sought the split-trunk tree, but could see nothing through the arboreal giants around him. The trees seemed even larger than before, but their trunks were close-pressed, their canopies overlapping and intertwined so deeply that there was no sight of the sky.

  It was a lot darker than he remembered. The figures on the branches emitted their own aura, fireflies of purple and green and white and red, dancing along the twisted branches. After-images left strange shapes cut upon his thoughts, further confusing him.

  With a disconcerted hiss, he pushed on and quickly came upon a clearing. Above there was no sky, the heavens bounded by a flat-mirrored surface that reflected a distorted image of the paradise woodlands. Although it seemed so distant, the gyrinx felt that if he stared hard enough he might find himself among the azure leaves looking back.

  The movement of the grass drew his thoughts. There was no wind upon his fur but the slender blades swayed back and forth. Yet each charted its own rhythm; they did not move together.

  Eyes narrowed, the gyrinx saw that each leaf was fixed upon a minute figure, budding from the head of a diminutive individual trapped waist-deep in the pale earth. He recognised immediately the slight faces and pointed ears of his mistress’ people and his heart thrummed as he felt the despair of the trapped souls, thousands of them.

  Panicked, he turned and ran, forgetting any hope of finding the voice of his mistress’ power. Following instinct alone he headed back to where he thought the rip-gate lay, darting through the trees until his lungs were burning.

  Tiredness forced him to pause, pushed against the arched root of a tree, eyes trying to pierce a darkness that had become thick and cloying.

  He recalled a time when he had rushed back to the mothernest after a foray as a youngster, when he had become separated from his siblings on a mock hunt. He had been lost among the life-paths, beset by fears that started to manifest, unable to see the way back.

  Closing his eyes he ignored the noises of the forest and the scents that now carried a hint of burning flesh and acrid sickness. Instead of physical senses, he let his mind lead, following just the faintest trail left by his own passing, acting on pure thought alone.

  A splintering of wood forced his eyes open. Something was coming up behind him, fast and huge, and its approach was heralded by a wave of pure terror that set his whiskers quivering, tail lashing.

  Closing his eyes, he bounded forwards again, thoughts turned upon a single goal – safety. But it was not the mothernest that he conjured to guide him, but the embrace of his mistress. He imagined the touch of her hand on his fur, the strength of her arms beneath him. He even populated the fantasy with the red warrior, always close at hand like a sour shadow. Yearning for her company as though it were life itself, he sped blindly on.

  Chapter 26

  A LOST SOUL RETURNED

  On occasion fate changes with the slightest of sighs, a whispered word or halted breath. In absence of something, the universe changes, unaware that its trajectory was anything but the course it now follows. At other times the blare of clarions and crash of thunder announces the ending of one age and the commencement of another. So often in bloodshed is the catalyst for a path laid; fate demands sacrifice for its uncertain favours and in sorrow rather than joy do hearts turn inwards and alter destiny.

  About the pyramid of the necrontyr one epoch-defining clash built to its climax. The greatest strengths of the woken dead and aeldari were pitched together against the abominations of the abyss, and the outcome hung in the balance. Ruin and damnation lay upon one side of the scales, a step towards eternal freedom from the Great Enemy had been placed in the other.

  Watching the gigantic apparition of the Warshard exchanging blows with the daemon prince, Yvraine pressed forwards with flashing strokes from the Sword of Sorrows. Around her the Bloodbrides and Coiled Serpent cleaved into the baleful host, cutting down fiends and daemonettes to either side.

  Eldrad and the Saim-Hann seers had formed a cabal, conjoining their powers to hurl purple bolts and white flames even through the null field of the necrontyr. Though it swallowed the Whisper and hampered the craftworlders’ psychic might, Eldrad had been clear that if the field were to be raised, the entirety of the vault’s impossible contents would be vomited forth. With the aeldari seals breached, only the null-pylons were keeping Agarimethea in any semblance of reality.

  The incarcerated sun-eater continued its rampage, its very presence anathema to the incorporeal foe, every swing of extruded energy-blades and snaking coronal tendrils ripping asunder a daemon-creature.

  Closer at hand, Druthkhala’s reavers and Nuadhu’s Wild Riders whirled, their slashing attack runs like scalpe
l cuts parting flesh in the body of the daemon army. With Naiall and the rest of Clan Fireheart and their allies at her back, she finally felt that they might reach the pyramid and seal the vault.

  Splitting the head of a pouncing daemonette, she stood before the wound in reality, a gaping rift of silver that burned the eyes and caused a sweat of fear to stand chill upon her flesh. It was as though she looked into the gaze of She Who Thirsts, a slit into the naked ether that bound the souls of every aeldari to the Great Enemy.

  Her unease became a sharp pang of terror, emanating from the portal itself. She realised it was not her own dread but the horror of Alorynis that stirred her.

  A heartbeat later the gyrinx burst from the silver band, ears flat, eyes narrowed as he darted through the legs of the daemons towards her, fur trailing warp-sparks. Yvraine slashed the birdlike legs from the closest adversary and stepped towards her familiar, but Alorynis scurried past, slinking close to the ground.

  Waves of abject terror washed into her from the gyrinx, almost causing her legs to buckle. The feline’s dread was very specific, focused entirely upon the breach from which he had emerged – or more specifically something inside the breach.

  A shout from one of her companions alerted her to a change in the rift above the heads of the screeching daemonettes and cawing fiends. Golden flecks coloured the gout of energy, coalescing into something that dwarfed even the towering Warshard and its many-limbed foe.

  As though a three-dimensional creature pushed itself along a two-dimensional plane, the fourth manifestation-of-intemporal-psychic-deceit, as the Phaerakh had termed them, exuded into the realm of mortals.

  The first thought was that a giant aeldari warrior had stepped from legend, a gold-armoured incarnation of Khaine perhaps. Though it stood many times Yvraine’s height, the daemon possessed two legs, two arms and an enchanting but otherwise normal face beneath an ancient-styled helm crowned with curling thorn-barbed stems. Slender limbs were garbed in vambraces and greaves; a breastplate adorned with perverse runes of nightmare clasped a single-breasted chest. In one hand the daemonic noble carried a flickering whip and the other a spear that split into two tines, the blades carved with runes that smoked as they touched the mortal air. Only upon closer look did Yvraine see that the whip was in fact made of intertwined writhing figures, each an aeldari figure no bigger than her thumb, limbs entwined with others to shape the flex of the impossible lash. The haft of the spear was the same, forged from the spirits of dead aeldari.

  She felt the screams of tortured souls vibrating through her even as the arm drew back and the whip coiled like a living serpent.

  The Visarch tackled her to the ground an instant before the screeching tip of the lash snapped through the air where she had stood. The blow sliced the head from Narizha, one of the Bloodbrides, sending it tumbling through the air.

  A storm of fire from the accompanying Aspect Warriors and guardians met the incarnation of the Prince of Pleasure, but Yvraine knew that it would not be enough.

  ‘There are still two others within!’ she gasped, pushing herself up as the Visarch rolled to his feet. ‘We cannot defeat them with weapons alone.’

  ‘There is no Whisper to draw upon,’ said the Visarch. ‘The souls of our dead lie among their fallen carcasses, locked to their mortal forms.’

  She knew the truth of his words and yet railed against them. Like fingers scratching on panes on the other side of a craftworld, she felt the tiniest tremors of their spirits, but could not reach out to them. No matter how hard she tried, she could not prise the dead from the grip of their physical forms.

  Desperate, she hacked her way through the daemonettes, heading directly for the latest daemon prince. It was busily lashing and striking at the Wild Riders, who darted to and fro with whickering shuriken fire. Nuadhu struck with his spear, but even the ancient Drake’s Fang raised not even a welt upon the daemon’s incorporeal flesh.

  And then her questing thoughts touched upon the mind of Naiall and the passenger that rode with him.

  Caelledhin fired her pistol into the face of another daemonette, turning its angelic features into a tatter of daemonic blood and false flesh. She ducked beneath the claw of another, drawing her blade across the inside of its knee to send it tumbling to the hard floor among the sparkling corpses of its companions. From beside her, Neamyh’s fusion pistol incinerated its chest.

  ‘Give her to me!’

  She turned at the sound of the cry, expecting to see some daemonic apparition falling upon them. Instead it was Yvraine, aloft on the whirling spirits that sustained her, drifting towards her family like a banshee of legend. She pointed her sword at Naiall and repeated her demand. ‘Give her to me, lord of the Firehearts.’

  ‘No!’ Naiall shouted back, clutching a fist to his chest as though protecting something. ‘She is not yours.’

  ‘Nuadhu!’ Caelledhin’s panicked thoughts leapt to her half-brother for help, calling his name over the messenger-waves. ‘Come quickly!

  ‘I am coming.’ She saw his Vyper in the distance angle back towards them.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Caelledhin demanded, moving protectively between her father and the Opener of the Seventh Way. She glanced at Naiall. ‘What is she talking about?’

  ‘Stand aside, child, or I will cut you down,’ warned Yvraine. Fey glimmer played from her eyes and the edge of the Sword of Sorrows burned with ghostlight. ‘Do not expect mercy from the Opener of the Seventh Way. We shall all die regardless, so it matters not by whose blade you fall.’

  ‘I cannot!’ Thick tears flowed down Naiall’s cheeks. ‘She belongs to me.’

  ‘She belongs to Ynnead.’ Yvraine rose higher, white lightning streaming from her limbs. Forks of power struck down any daemon that approached, creating a brief respite in the fighting around them. Beyond, the fighters of the Coiled Blade and Bloodbrides continued to slash and cut their way through the horde, protecting their mistress. ‘If you do not release her, I will take her.’

  ‘Who?’ cried Caelledhin. She caught sight of a scarlet blur, which moments later resolved into Alean speeding back across the field of battle. ‘Father, talk to me.’

  ‘She wants… your mother,’ said Naiall with a grimace, again clutching at himself as though in pain.

  ‘What is afoot?’ called Nuadhu as the modified Vyper slewed to a halt beside the lord of Clan Fireheart. ‘Yvraine, do not threaten my father!’

  The Opener of the Seventh Way turned upon the clan heir, but her expression softened. The Sword of Sorrows lowered a little in her grasp. She looked at Naiall and nodded sadly.

  ‘Tell them, Naiall.’ She drifted closer. ‘Tell them how you tried to save her. And then say your goodbyes.’

  ‘Do you know what she is talking about?’ Nuadhu asked Caelledhin. She shook her head, jaw clenched in fear, wild gaze roaming between Yvraine and her father.

  Yvraine stopped a short distance from Naiall.

  ‘This should not have been concealed for so long,’ she said gently. ‘This is the wound that is killing you, Naiall. Be free of its poison.’

  The clan chieftain sagged as though stabbed in the gut, and Caelledhin threw an arm around him to stop him falling.

  ‘It is true,’ said Naiall. His gaze moved from Caelledhin to Nuadhu and back again. She had never seen him so helpless and weak even in the worst grip of his infirmity. ‘Your mother… She did not perish in the webway, not wholly.’

  ‘Not wholly?’ Nuadhu leaned over the rail of his fighting platform. Emotions warred in his expressions, settling into distrust. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I was once a spiritseer, you know this. The webway, it held her departing spirit and I could see the Great Enemy, claws about to snatch her away. I broke her waystone and took her soul into me.’

  Joy and disgust warred within Caelledhin, neither gaining the upper hand.

  ‘You did what?�
�� she croaked, throat tight as though strangled by an unseen grip.

  ‘How is that possible?’ asked Nuadhu.

  She had not been Nuadhu’s mother, he did not understand Yvraine’s intent, and his placidity angered Caelledhin even more. She turned on Yvraine, brandishing her blade.

  ‘Your deathly god shall not have her.’

  ‘Ynnead has already claimed her,’ Yvraine replied calmly. She extended her other hand and ghostly energy played about her fingers, the miasma reflected in the sheen of Naiall’s waystone upon his chest-plate. ‘Your father stole her away.’

  ‘She was going to be devoured by She Who Thirsts,’ snarled Naiall. ‘I protect her.’

  ‘Ynnead will save her,’ said Yvraine. She lifted her hand as though pulling at a rope. A golden flicker sprayed from Naiall’s waystone, eliciting a cry of pain from the chieftain.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ shouted Caelledhin, but made no move to back up her demand with action, impotent in the face of Yvraine’s power.

  ‘Listen to her.’ Nuadhu’s words were the last thing she had been expecting. She turned an incredulous gaze on her half-brother.

  ‘Druthkhala cannot hear you, you impress nobody,’ she snapped.

  ‘I told you before, this isn’t all about Druthkhala,’ Nuadhu protested. ‘If we cannot trust Yvraine in this, we have nothing left to fight for.’

  ‘She was not your mother…’

  Caelledhin turned her gaze to her father and saw resignation growing in his eyes. She stepped back from him, leaving him to stand limply on his own, not sure if she could bear to see him any longer.

  ‘Her spirit will be free,’ Yvraine said. ‘Not tethered to a corpse on this silent world. It yearns to be one with the ether again, to answer the call of Ynnead. Let her free, Naiall, and she will lead me back to the Whisper.’

  The Emissary of Ynnead pivoted slightly, a fleeting gesture indicating the daemonic beasts and huge apparitions that fell upon aeldari and necrontyr around them.