by Nick Kyme
A second thrust almost wrenched away my sword, the strength behind the blow horrific enough to rock me on my heels. I rolled again, old bones and tired muscles beginning to work. This time I came up faster, inside the chrono’s guard and well within the reach of the spear. I hacked at the crease in the chrono’s arm, at the elbow. It wasn’t a bad wound, but his armour was weak in that spot and my blade bit deep. The chrono howled and his grip on the spear faltered. Hard to hold on to something that long and heavy when your tendons are screaming.
He swung the haft crosswise, and though I had prepared for the riposte, it still stung like the impact from a shock grenade and I was smashed across the arena floor.
Cheers erupted from the crowd. I ignored them.
My blurring vision fixed on my enemy.
Bleeding oil and blood, the chrono stomped towards me. He held the spear close to his body and used his other hand to steady it. That would impede his reach. He was two metres away, about to thrust, when I flung my broad-blade. It spun in the air, the slightly curved edge and weighted pommel enhancing the velocity of the throw. It struck the chrono’s centre mass, breaching the gold breastplate and making a mess of whatever was beneath.
He stared dumbfounded, the spear still poised, as if recorded via a pict-feed abruptly set to pause, before slumping to his knees and dropping his weapon. Scooping up Kabe’s sword, I stepped in and swiftly cut off the chrono’s head. The death clock struck zero, presaging a now impotent cardiac impulse that would have killed him on the spot were he not already headless.
As the crowd went insane at the spectacle, hollering and spitting vicarious fury, I retrieved my blade and then knelt beside Kabe to return his.
I looked down at the blood pool and saw myself reflected there. Tall, thickly muscled and wearing leather half-armour, I had a warrior’s bearing. Facial scarring gave me character some said, and shaved blond hair spoke of a military background. My body was unmarked, apart from the lightning bolt tattoo on my left shoulder. My blue eyes flashed with some of their old vigour. I have been told I am handsome by conventional standards. Vanity was never my curse. I have seen it affect others, allies and enemies. It didn’t change how they died. Death is ugly. It makes no allowances for appearance.
‘Brother…’ I said, gently putting the falchion in Kabe’s grasping hand. He seemed to settle, though his mouth still worked in a futile parody of speech.
‘There’s blood in your lungs, Kabe. Don’t try to speak. Be still. It’s almost over now.’
He looked at me and the fear in his eyes changed to something approaching peace.
I placed the tip of my sword against his heart. With my other hand, I touched the faded lightning bolt tattoo inked onto his left shoulder.
‘The honoured death…’ I whispered. Kabe gave a near imperceptible nod. I thrust, and it was done.
Tarrigata met me on the other side of the arena wall. He looked thin in the stark lights, as if his flesh were partly translucent. He sniffed at the air as I clambered over, head tilted to the side so his left ear angled towards me.
‘Is that Kabe? He stinks. Smells dead already.’
I leaned in close, grimacing with Kabe’s dead weight across my right shoulder.
‘Show respect for the Thunder Legion,’ I hissed through clenched teeth.
Despite my massive advantage in both height and weight, Tarrigata looked untroubled.
‘Pah! You’re gladiators now, Heruk.’
‘Old man, I swear I’ll–’ I began.
‘Fewer customers today,’ remarked Tarrigata, breezing past my hollow threat as if it were a fly landed on his collar to be swatted away. ‘A quieter mob.’
‘Fewer everyone,’ I said. ‘Even the great Thunder Legion can’t draw a crowd, eh?’
‘No crowds to draw,’ said Tarrigata. He sniffed, his withered old nostrils flaring. ‘Fear is in the air. Dark dealings abound.’
I snorted at that, having heard Tarrigata’s conspiracies many times before.
‘Besides,’ the old man went on, a cruel smile on his face, ‘you’re not Legion. You haven’t been Legion since Ararat.’
‘He’s right, Heruk. We are nothing now. Just arena fighters, and Tarrigata our dominus.’
‘We are more than that, Vez,’ I said, looking into the eyes of the bearded giant who had just stepped in front of me.
Vezulah Vult carried more scars than any warrior I have known or killed. He wore them proudly. As big as I was, he stood a head taller, his torso and shoulders like an inverted triangle.
‘Are we, Dah?’
I scowled. ‘At least we’re surviving. Here,’ I gently set Kabe down, ‘help me with him.’ Around the arena, a few of the crowd had lingered to catch a glimpse of the fallen gladiator but most had already begun to disperse, back to the Maw, back to their own personal misery.
‘Such a waste,’ spat Tarrigata, and rattled the coin purse that he carried looped to the belt around his waist. He shook it three times, listening.
‘It’s light,’ I said.
‘Don’t need you to tell me that!’ snapped Tarrigata, whirling on me. He jabbed a wizened finger to the hollow sockets of his eyes. ‘I might have lost my eyes, but I still see plenty. Touched by Him above, I was,’ he said, gesturing to the thickening smog that blanketed our sky. I followed with my eye and saw the vague shapes of statues looming like gods.
‘Your eyes were burned as an astropath, Tarrigata,’ I said.
‘That’s why you should listen when I say dark things are afoot, even here in the Maw. I have seen them… from the beyond.’
‘And you are hunted just like the rest of us vermin,’ I added.
Tarrigata showed his yellowed teeth with an ugly smile. ‘Aye, but you still serve, don’t you?’
‘The Legion ever serves,’ Vezulah replied. His voice sounded different as he reached for the axe tethered at his waist.
I seized his arm. ‘Hold, brother,’ I told him firmly. ‘The war is over.’
He looked through me at some latter day battlefield, his eyes clouded and unblinking.
‘Kalagann has mustered a host on the wastes…’ He struggled against my grip and I clenched tighter, my old Legion ring biting into his skin. ‘The hordes of Ursh will fall this day!’
A few stragglers amongst the crowd had turned to look at what was going on.
‘The butchers of Sibir will yield to the Emperor!’
‘They already did. Long ago,’ I said. ‘Take hold of your senses, Vez. Look at me. Look at me.’
He turned, blinked once and released his grip on the axe. I released him.
‘Did I drift again?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Where to this time?’
‘Ursh, the Sibir ice plain.’
Vezulah looked down as if to calculate what this fresh slip of his sanity meant for the long term.
‘Are you back, brother?’ I asked. ‘In the here and now?’
‘I am… I am.’
I felt Tarrigata relax behind me, and heard the rad pistol he carried under his robes powering down. He’d never fired it and I wondered how much of its degrading energy coil was leaking lethal radiation into the old man, but he wouldn’t be parted from it. The last of the crowd moved on, seemingly disappointed.
A timeworn shanty town lay just off the outskirts of the arena. Known as the Swathe, it stretched for kilometres across the Outer Palace districts, an agglomeration of broken ships, industry-grade cargo containers, armour plate and anything else that fell from the smog-choked sky. Tarrigata’s hab was the largest in the underbelly, and built to impress. Like the man who owned it, the hab had seen more prosperous times. He was a beggar-king rapidly reverting back to just a beggar.
‘Get him up,’ said Tarrigata, meaning Kabe’s corpse. ‘Take what you can use and burn the rest. I don’t want scavengers coming around.’ He turned, listening again, sniffing at the air.
‘And for frek’s sake, where is Gairok? I should smell the stink of unref
ined alc-grain by now. He’s bloody due.’
Underneath an awning outside a granite stoop was a heavy wooden slab. Wood is rare, especially in the Swathe. Tarrigata used it as a mortuary block. He said the wood soaked up the blood, which it did. The slab was run through with dark stains, like a patchy veneer.
Vezulah and I set Kabe’s body on it.
‘The next fight isn’t for a few hours yet,’ I said, breaking out the saws and other surgical tools from a caged rack set up next to the mortuary block. I handed one to Vezulah, who began to cut. ‘He’ll be here.’
‘He had better be,’ said Tarrigata. ‘A death and a no-show… I’ll be ruined!’
‘Down here, how will any of us ever tell the difference?’ I muttered, watching Tarrigata climb up the stoop and into his hab.
Vezulah worked. He had already cut away Kabe’s armour, his trappings, and was harvesting the organs now. We were ghouls, those of us who remained. Our continued existence depended on the deaths and successful appropriation of the parts of our former brothers in arms.
As well as being our dominus, Tarrigata possessed the means and craft to transplant those parts. In that respect at least, the relationship was mutually dependant.
Dwelling on the notion of what we had all become, I looked up through a ragged tear in the awning. Yellow cloud cast a filthy pall over everything, but below it I saw the screw-thread circles of the Maw, all the way from uphive to this nadir. If the Maw was the well leading down from Terra above, then the Swathe was the effluvia caught at the bottom.
Factorums and refineries and bullet farms clung to the rings of the Maw like diseased limpets attached to the gullet of a deep-sea leviathan. Occasionally, one of these structures would fall, cast down to us dregs, and so the shanties would slowly expand, colonising the basin like some septic growth.
Terra looked very different from down here.
‘I still dream of glory, Dah,’ said Vezulah. His voice dragged me back to the present. I feared he might be slipping again, but his eyes were lucid as he butchered Kabe. Machine parts as well as glistening organs sat amongst the useless offal. Work, even red work, helped to focus the mind.
He paused, the knife edge dripping, his arms crimson all the way to the elbow. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether this or the living present is my reality.’
‘I understand,’ I said softly. ‘All too well.’
Deep down, I know. In my marrow, in my cancer-ridden core, I know.
‘The old days are gone, I know that,’ said Vezulah. ‘The days of the storm, of Unity. They were killing days, red days, of war and conquest. Empires kneeled to Him, they kneeled to us…’ He paused, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the handle of the saw but making no cut. ‘I miss them.’
‘So do I, Vez. But we are not what we once were. We have lived too long. It’s just some of us are too stubborn to die.’
I took the machine parts, Kabe’s old cybernetics, and started to wash them down using an old handle-operated pump. The liquid was unfit to drink and irritated the skin, but it got rid of the blood just fine. The organs went into large apothecary flasks, and were preserved in a viscous solution of formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and methanol. This I had learned from Tarrigata.
‘You can take those, now,’ said Vezulah. ‘I can manage the burning alone.’ A furnace stood at the back of Tarrigata’s property. Kabe’s final rest.
I nodded, hefting the organ flask, then asked, ‘you are yourself, brother?’
‘I am myself.’
‘And if you are ever not?’
Vezulah met my gaze. His eyes looked steady but resigned. ‘Then grant me the honoured death.’
‘The honoured death,’ I replied, and headed for Tarrigata’s hab.
Inside the hab, the darkness took a little getting used to. It was cramped, the ceiling so low that I had to stoop. Tarrigata was a hoarder. He had shelves of machine parts from old gladiators, and jars of briny liquid filled with slowly atrophying organs. He kept everything regardless of its use. I found him sitting at a battered plastek chair, bent-backed and frowning over his counting device.
‘Radik Clev will seek recompense for his loss,’ he told me, before leaning back to take a draw of his kiseru. A plume of smoke issued from the long-necked pipe, the hairs in the bowl flaring brightly as Tarrigata sucked at them. ‘In turn, this debt shall come to you.’
‘I am sorry, dominus,’ I said, setting down the apothecary flasks wherever I could find space.
‘You killed his fighter, so there is that,’ added Tarrigata, ‘and you also illegally interrupted Kabe’s bout. For that, too, I must pay.’
‘Again, I am sorry.’
‘Sorry does not pay debts!’ he snapped, and a coughing fit wracked his body.
I went to help but Tarrigata warded me off with a trembling hand. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve when the fit was over, before taking a long, shuddering pull of his kiseru.
‘I will make amends,’ I said.
Tarrigata slowly nodded. ‘Yes, you will. Go into the Swathe. Find Gairok. Bring him here or the organ supply will dry up.’
Such things we must do to survive.
‘You have my word, dominus,’ I said, bowing as I made to leave.
‘I don’t care about your word, or your honour, Heruk. Just bring him. And do it fast.’
A vessel hovered just above the smog layer. Its sleek contours shone golden in the light of uphive. A Coronus grav-carrier. It had come from the Tower of Hegemon on a special mission appointed by Valdor himself.
A single warrior sat within the shadowy hold, alone with his thoughts until that moment, his golden battle-helm in both hands.
‘Ever since Nas’sau have we fought for Terra,’ said a voice through the warrior’s vox-link, the first he had heard in several hours.
He looked up, green eyes as vivid and bright as emerald. The hold doors began to open, admitting light and atmosphere.
‘You know what has to be done?’ asked the voice.
The warrior nodded. ‘I am clear in my duty.’
‘Find them, Tagiomalchian.’
Tagiomalchian donned his helmet, and a flurry of systems flickered to life across the retinal display.
He stood, securing his sentinel blade and storm shield. He then attached a monofilament wire to his armour. It was fed by a long spool bolted to the hold, and mag-locked to the auramite with a dull tunk. Tagiomalchian approached the yawning hold doors, the wire unspooling as he walked. He perched on the edge, cloak whipping in the breeze, and looked down into the smog-layer. His eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his helm.
‘I will find them,’ he whispered, before stepping off into oblivion.
The Abyssna burned. I couldn’t see it, the smoke was obscuring my vision, but I could smell it and hear it. The burning flesh of the soldiers inside, the crack of stone as the walls baked in the inferno and the shrilling of screams. Unity had come.
Thick ash swept across killing fields outside a grand fortress now swollen with the prince’s dead. Their sortie had failed to break our lines and reach our siege guns. The Imperial Army artillerymen, also lost to my sight, had kept up a relentless barrage. Such violent music. My heart beat with it, soaring from its thunderous melody.
Now we pushed, and pushed hard. The Afrik sun blazed. I sweltered in my heavy armour, and the heat from my skin began to fog my visor. Vezulah stood nearby, calling the charge, summoning even greater fury from the Thunder Legion, and the heat intensified.
We ran, having left our grav-ships behind, bolters running hot with continued use.
A round clipped my shoulder guard, penetrated and bit into flesh. I snarled, using anger to quash the pain, and looked to the Lightning Banner. It was almost all I could see through the smoke that wasn’t right in front of me.
Somewhere in its vicinity fought the Emperor. Even His presence, remote and unseen, galvanised me. For a few seconds, the smoke thinned and I caught the flash of gold amidst the grey.
&nb
sp; ‘There,’ said the voice of Gairok behind me, and I felt his gauntleted hand on my arm subtly directing me. ‘Custodians… Lions in the guise of men.’
‘So it’s said.’
‘Shall we show them how the Thunder Legion fights?’ he asked, and I turned to see his toothy grin.
I had no time to admire their bloody skill at arms before the smoke swallowed them again.
‘Aye, brother!’
Gairok laughed, loud and bold, heedless of the bullets coming at us through the smoke. He gestured into the greyness.
‘Then here’s your chance!’
A deep, resounding crack announced the felling of the northern tower.
‘Let us ram a gladius straight down prince cretin’s throat, eh, Dah?’
Then we were running, our entire cohort, as Vezulah sounded a fresh charge.
‘Do you even know his name, Gairok?’ I asked.
Gairok shook his head. ‘So many petty barons, oligarchs and warlords, what does it matter? All will kneel and embrace Unity, or die. Now we show them how.’
The northern tower fell with slow, inexorable grace. It carved through the smoke like a sword, crumbling and disintegrating with every plummeting foot. The crash when it finally struck the ground shook the battlefield like an earthquake, dispersing huge swathes of smoke and revealing our enemy.
Pale-faced and sweating in grey uniforms under brass breastplates and wearing spiked helms, they looked determined but afraid. They ranked up in files and took careful aim.
Sporadic weapons fire scythed from the breach in the Abyssna’s wall. Mainly carbines and the odd energy cannon. Shields raised, our cohort advanced.
‘Let the reaping begin!’ roared Gairok, and I felt his battle fervour infect me.
I swept through the gap in the wall, leaping over rubble and the wounded trapped under it, and set about those who could still fight.
Bellowing, I cut off a rifleman’s head. I caught a glimpse of Gairok, who cried out, ‘The Afrik sun is hotter in the breach, eh, Dah!’ His blade was reddest of all. Our charge had decimated the defenders. Their ranks buckled, then broke. And then I heard Vezulah shouting. Horns were blowing. Victory neared, but the bloodletting was far from over. I killed two men with a single thrust, impaling both on my sword, but the dead dragged down my arm and I caught a glancing blow to the skull. I felt my helm crack. It had saved my life, but dizziness pushed me to my knees. I spat blood, shook off the pain and nausea, and looked up…
