Suddenly, Jonas’ staff fell silent and the father Librarian staggered slightly, taking half a step forward before catching his weight. In a moment of concern, Gabriel lurched to the side and caught his old friend’s shoulder, steadying him in the face of the enemy, worrying that he had been hit. But Jonas shrugged his captain’s hand away.
“Gabriel. It’s Rhamah.” There was a sinking horror in the Librarian’s voice.
Without knowing where to look, Gabriel scanned the blue and gold Prodigal Sons. Charging out of their formation was a single Space Marine. For a moment, Gabriel failed to recognise the difference in his insignia and markings; the smoke and commotion of combat obscured more than proximity revealed. But after a second of stunned concentration, Gabriel realised that the sword-wielding Marine was a Blood Ravens Librarian. He was brandishing the broken sword of Vairocanum and charging directly at him.
Another second passed before Korinth and Zhaphel realised who it was, and they also froze in shock and horror, letting their force weapons die in their hands, unable to process the scene before them.
In the lull, Sorcerer Lord Ahriman brayed with laughter and lashed out with renewed violence against the Blood Ravens, coating them in an agonising wave of warp fire. His ghostly features were alive with the pleasure of power and combat. He seemed to thrill in the confusion that wracked his foes.
At the same moment, Rhamah broke his charge, coming to a standstill in the centre of the stage with Vairocanum still held aloft. He froze, as though suddenly wracked with indecision, staring at Gabriel and Jonas, then shifting his eyes to Korinth and Zhaphel. His body trembled, as though he were fighting with his own instincts and struggling to control himself. Then, all at once, it seemed as though his strength deserted him and he sank down onto his knees.
“Brother Rhamah!” yelled Gabriel, taking a step towards the desperate and immobile Librarian. “Brother Rhamah, we have come to take you home!”
A dramatic melody rose suddenly from under the stage, echoing around the arena with psychic resonance. And, as though conjured by the music, Karebennian shimmered into being at the front of the stage, flanked on both sides by a gaudily coloured troupe of Harlequin warriors. They struck theatrical poses then advanced up the stage directly towards the kneeling Rhamah, spinning and rolling and ducking around the hail of fire that continued to rain down from the balconies behind them.
Rhamah stared into Karebennian’s face, as though transfixed, rising to his feet as the Solitaire closed on his position. With a movement of dramatic grandeur, the Librarian raised Vairocanum over his head and poised himself ready to strike, but it was not clear in which direction his blade was going to drop. His face scanned slowly from side to side, taking in Ahriman on one side and Gabriel on the other, before returning it to the hideous visage of Karebennian himself.
Without missing a step, the Solitaire sprang past Rhamah, spinning into a whirl as though rolling around him on his way to confront Ahriman. But there was a flash of metal in the roll, and Karebennian left death in his wake. Before Rhamah had the chance to move, one of the Solitaire’s arm-mounted riveblades had sliced into his stomach and the other had parted his head from his neck.
As Karebennian bounded on without looking back, Rhamah’s decapitated body slumped to the ground and his head rolled gorily off the front of the stage, leaving a trail of thickening blood behind it.
A great cheer arose from the stands and a rhythmic beating started to thunder and resonate through the stonework as the audience thumped its feet in appreciation and awe.
Seeing one of his Blood Ravens cut down, Gabriel roared his fury into the performance and charged forwards, casting his bolter aside and ripping his chainsword into life. Jonas, Korinth and Zhaphel responded simultaneously, each storming towards the centre of the stage to engage the Prodigal Sons at close range.
However, by the time that Gabriel had taken the few steps needed to place him stage-centre, Karebennian had already leapt into the path of Ahriman, placing himself between the sorcerer lord and the Blade Wraith. His troupers had deployed around them, separating them from the rest of the fray as though defining a distinct and exclusive theatre of combat for the great heroes.
Gabriel paused, unsure about how to proceed. The Solitaire’s actions seemed to make no sense. First it had led the Blood Ravens to this stage, then it had killed Rhamah with breathless ease, and now it was engaged in a duel with the Sorcerer Lord Ahriman. The Commander of the Watch could not understand the alien’s motivations.
Looking down at his feet, Gabriel saw the broken and cracked form of Vairocanum lying in a pool of Rhamah’s blood, fallen just out of the dead Librarian’s grasp. Instinctively, the captain stooped and picked up the sacred weapon, closing his grip around the hilt and feeling its power flow into his being. The blade ignited into a fierce green glow as Gabriel cast his spluttering chainsword aside and raised the force weapon into both hands.
As he held the broken blade aloft, Gabriel could vaguely hear the rapture of the audience in the stands. He could hear a swell of music erupt from under the stage, and he could make out a single, silvering note piercing the harmonious cacophony. The sound seemed to carry him away from the stage and the battle. It was a sound that he had heard before, a pristine and silvering tone that had riddled and guided his thoughts many times before. He opened his mind to the music, and let the silver note become a flood of platinum light in his head.
There was a time when he had thought that the Astronomican was reaching for him and offering him guidance, but now he didn’t know whether it was the Emperor’s light or the light of Vidya that gave him direction, calling him home and guiding his judgement.
“And so it is that hope is re-born!” The narrator’s voice was dim and almost inaudible against the din.
“Captain, there is a communication from General Sturnn on Lorn V. He reports that necron warriors are on the ground. He requests support.”
“I think the general is on his own for the time being. Send my apologies.” Ulantus smiled without humour.
Warning claxons wailed and red lights pulsed all throughout the Litany of Fury. While the space battle raged outside, with the eldar cruisers and the Rage of Erudition attacking the Shrouds while the Shadowhunters and Cobra fighters spiralled in dogfights with the impossibly rapid flecks of darkness that were the Dirge and Jackal raiders, the cross-like Harvester ship had pulled into closer proximity with the Litany.
“Concentrate all fire on the Scythe-class Harvester—torpedoes and weapons batteries,” bellowed Ulantus from the bridge. He was ignoring the proximity warnings, assuming that there was some kind of malfunction in the distancing cogitators. The Harvester was still several thousand metres away, and he could see no danger of collision or boarding from that range. Besides, given the huge mass superiority of the Litany, a collision could only possibly be to their own advantage. The main disadvantage of the closing range was that they were now too close to employ the bombardment cannons without risking damaging the Litany with explosive concussion.
Torpedoes and lasfire pummelled against the surface of the necron vessel, but somehow it managed to escape serious damage. It appeared to perform no evasive manoeuvres, and yet the punishing tirade of fire just slipped off its armour, like light bouncing off a mirror. Its hull was immaculately black, to the point of virtual invisibility; it seemed to wrap space around it, reflecting vision back on itself or bending it around the vessel so that a clear conception of its shape and size was almost impossible. Just as sensors could not quite grasp the vessel’s dimensions, so weapons failed to find much purchase against its unusual, metallic skin.
“Any word from the Ravenous Spirit?” snapped Ulantus, cursing the absent Commander of the Watch yet again. “Where in Vidya’s name are you, Gabriel?”
“They are closing on the fringes of the Lorn system, captain. Sergeant Kohath is in command. Captain Angelos is not with them. Estimated arrival: fifteen minutes.”
“Kohath is coming wit
hout the commander?”
“Yes, captain.”
Ulantus paused for thought. If Gabriel was not aboard his strike cruiser, then where the hell was he? An electric crack blew the question out of his mind as the control deck rocked violently.
“Throne! What was that?”
“Some kind of particle whip, captain, amplified to incredible power. The necrons appear to be drawing their fire-power directly from the sun.”
Another blast punched into the prow of the Litany, this time with a thunderous explosion that sent reverberations rippling throughout the massive vessel’s infrastructure.
Ulantus watched as the huge column of dark light pulsed out of the nose of the Harvester and drilled into the Litany. It was a weapon unlike any he had ever encountered.
“Bring the planetary bombardment cannons to bear!”
“Captain, we’re too close—”
“This is not a request!”
A huge roar erupted from the turret-mounted linear accelerators as a salvo of heavy, magma-bomb warheads powered through the intervening space between the Litany of Fury and the Harvester. As they impacted against the deceptively spindly necron vessel, they detonated into massive infernos, coating the entire craft in roiling magma and blasting it several hundred metres back away from the Litany. A couple of seconds later, the backwash from the explosion crashed into the prow of the Litany itself, throwing superheated radioactivity across the thick shields and making the massive vessel pitch slightly. For ten seconds the viewscreens snowed into blackness.
“Damage reports!” snapped Ulantus, pushing one of the control deck serfs aside and studying the readouts that chattered up on his terminal. “Damage?”
Then the screens clicked back on line and Ulantus bit down on his teeth, clenching his jaw. The Harvester had moved even closer, and it appeared to have suffered only cosmetic damage. “Captain! We have a hull breach in the prow. Sector 17.a.392. Captain—we are being boarded!”
Ahriman laughed at the slender and sinister Solitaire as it flipped and danced around him, flourishing its riveblades with unspeakable elegance. The great sorcerer did not even bother to turn and track Karebennian’s movements; he simply stood unmoving and implacable, leaning slightly on the absolute lightlessness of his Black Staff. The two figures dominated the centre of the stage, ringed by a troupe of Harlequins that framed them as a dramatic focus and separated them from the ongoing fury of the exchange between the Blood Ravens and the Prodigal Sons. The battle between the Marines seemed to have been reduced to a sideshow, and the audience’s unmoving eyes appeared transfixed by the epic clash between sorcerer lord and Solitaire.
Have you forgotten already, Karebennian? Ahriman’s spectral face twisted into a mirth-ridden sneer, but the Solitaire’s only response was a spiralling leap that the sorcerer blocked easily with his staff. Do you not remember how this ended last time we met?
I remember that we live to fight today. Karebennian’s answer was accompanied by a feint and a lunge which slipped past the Black Staff and stabbed into the covers of the book of webway charts that Ahriman held in his off hand.
Ahriman sneered in indignation. You are not worthy of me, web-walker. He hefted the book into the air and then kicked out at the Solitaire, crunching his boot into the Harlequin’s abdomen and sending him skidding off over the stage. The book, still impaled on Karebennian’s riveblades, was shredded into tatters by the violence of the movement, and scraps of paper billowed up into the air like confetti.
The audience gasped.
I will not be frustrated by you again, Karebennian! Ahriman shrieked, spinning his staff and then jabbing it out towards the crumpled Solitaire, focussing all of his hatred and resentment into one strike. A vicious and intense blast of warp lightning lanced out of the Black Staff and engulfed the fallen alien.
Karebennian screamed in ways that Ahriman had never heard before. His agony cut all the Marines and Harlequins to the bone, bringing the battle to a standstill and arresting the music that had throbbed throughout the performance. Wisps of smoke and gas rose from the charred remains of the Solitaire’s body, as though his soul were seeping away into the shadows.
Finally. Ahriman turned away from the corpse of the alien and started back towards the shaft of red light in which he had seen the Blade Wraith. But in place of the sword, sitting on the podium under the blaze of red was Eldarec, the Great Harlequin himself. A wide and jovial smile played over his features and, as the terrible lord of sorcery approached, his smile cracked into a broad grin, and he threw his head back to laugh. The Blade Wraith was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE: MOCKERY
“Casualties?” barked Ulantus as the warning sirens continued to sound. Fires had ignited under a number of terminals and monitors on the control deck, and several of the viewscreens were either cracked or malfunctioning.
“Fourteen battle-brothers in the prow section, captain. They fell before we could seal off the quadrant. The blast doors into the next hull segment are holding, but will not hold forever. The boarding action has stalled, it has not be repelled.”
“And out there?” The captain turned his head to indicate the main frontal viewscreen on which the space battle was raging.
“Eleven Cobra fighters.”
“And the eldar?”
“Unknown, captain. The two cruisers are sustaining heavy damage, and a number of their Shadowhunter escorts have been destroyed. We have unconfirmed reports that one of the cruisers may have been boarded.”
“And what about the necron, officer? Are we taking them with us?”
“Many of the smaller raiders have been immobilised, captain.”
“That’s it? ‘Many immobilised.’ That’s it?”
“Yes, captain.”
“I see. And where is the Ravenous Spirit?”
“On route.”
“Distance?”
“She is just clearing Lorn III, captain. Arrival is imminent.” Ulantus sighed and looked around the bridge of the venerable battle-barge. He had never thought that any enemy could reduce the pride of Vidya to a smoking wreck, especially not on his watch. Part of him rebelled against the responsibility, and Gabriel’s face swam into his mind. If anyone was to blame, it was the erratic and unreliable Commander of the Watch. He had told Angelos not to go. He had attempted to force him to stay. But the famously cavalier captain had pulled rank and insisted that he should be permitted to take his strike cruiser on another of his secret eldar trysts. One day he would make Gabriel answer for his actions. If the Litany of Fury were to fall, he would make sure that the Chapter Masters knew that it was Gabriel who had abandoned it in its moment of greatest peril.
“There is nothing more I can do here,” he murmured, half to himself. “You, Sergeant Abraim.” The Marine standing sentinel by the blast doors nodded his acknowledgement. “The bridge is yours. I am needed in the prow.” Nobody will be able to accuse me of shirking my duty in the face of the enemy, he vowed to himself. “Maintain fire against the Harvester. If that blows, then this is over.”
With that, Ulantus strode purposefully off the control deck of the Litany of Fury and rushed off towards the embattled prow.
As the light and the music faded, a pulse of laughter flooded over the stage, as though the entire auditorium were united in mockery or amusement. The house lights came up slowly; it was as though the performance had ended and the Harlequins expected everyone to leave.
Gabriel blinked the silvering light out of his eyes and lowered the sword from above his head, bringing it down in front of him. In the newly constant glow of the house lights, he inspected the blade and realised that it was no longer broken. The cracked and chipped form had become whole, and the missing shard from the tip had somehow been recast.
“Hope is reborn as the sword is made whole once again.” Vaul bowed with a flourish and the Laughing God, Cegorach the Wise, chuckled with mirth. “It is always as it would be.”
A voice inside his head muttered familiar words: I am the
sword of Vidya.
That sword is mine, Blood Raven.
Gabriel tore his eyes away from the glimmering, enchanting blade and turned on his heels. The thoughts were harsh and abrasive, unlike any that he had experienced before. They hurt him.
If you give it to me, then there will be no problem between us. You can save us all much suffering, friend of Ahriman. The sorcerer lord stood further upstage, in front of the red spotlight, in which sat the Great Harlequin, rolling with laughter. Gabriel could see immediately that the Blade Wraith was gone from its podium, and he realised in that instant that he was holding it in his hands. Something had happened during the Harlequin masque, some kind of transference or homecoming; the Blade Wraith and Vairocanum had been made whole.
Everything tends towards its home, human, as you know. The thoughts were not Ahriman’s, though they were no longer Karebennian’s.
Some sort of mockery of their dance had seen the performance unite what had been broken and bring perfection out of what had once been flawed. It was as though the dance had itself been part of the forging process for the incomplete blade. It all began to make sense to the Blood Ravens captain.
“I am not your friend, Ahriman of the Prodigal Sons. I am Gabriel Angelos of Vidya’s Blood Ravens—between us is the problem of truth.”
A snigger cackled around the audience.
The sorcerer’s ghostly face was a fury of fiery eyes and fierce hostility. There was insanity flickering over his wild features as he glowered at the captain. For a moment, Gabriel thought that Ahriman was simply going to launch himself into the attack and he tested the weight of the ancient blade of power in his hands, but then a sudden calm shifted over the sorcerer’s spectral features.
We are not so very different, you and I, Gabriel. We are the same. Why must we fight when there is so much knowledge here to go around. We can share it. The real enemy here is them. Ahriman smiled smoothly and spun his Black Staff to indicate the Harlequins that were gradually appearing into a wide ring around them on the stage. He pointed up into the stands where the Death Jesters pointed back with their heavy weapons and the mannequins grinned inanely.
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 29
