[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  The two Salamanders were in the thick of it now. Isolated pockets of Guardsmen still held out, retreating into circle formations, hellguns held out and spitting las. Where he could, He’stan dragged the humans out of harm’s way or interceded where a splinter blast would’ve killed one. All the while he advanced, and Tsu’gan marvelled at how he balanced the taking and preserving of life so expertly.

  Gliding swiftly through the hot miasma of steam, knifing through the air with its bladed prow, the command skiff was soon upon them. It hovered a few metres away, the leader’s cohorts poised to leap from its barbed flanks and attack. Tsu’gan estimated around twenty warriors aboard, mostly clan troops but with a single, tall wych-woman wearing a strange, domino mask. She carried a pair of bloodstained daggers, held at rest against her thighs.

  Three long-nosed cannons of dark, ridged metal made up the command skiff’s frontal arc. With a shriek of xenos dialect, the leader-caste ordered them aimed at He’stan.

  The Forgefather didn’t wait for the salvo. He launched his spear with all the poise and grace of a supreme athlete and tore a hole through the skiffs engine rig. Smoke and fire plumed from the vehicle that was losing loft by the second, upsetting the aim of the gunners who clung to the railings of their stations desperately.

  An explosion followed swiftly, rippling up the long insectoid body of the skiff, tearing its mounting platforms into twisted metal and throwing its passengers skyward. The vehicle ditched, flames now wreathing its fragile hull, and went down bladed nose first into the ruddy dirt as a secondary explosion ripped what was left of it into scrap.

  Tsu’gan tracked a silhouette as it leapt from the skiffs broken back. For a moment he lost it in the scudding steam banks but then it landed a few metres from the wreckage on one knee with its head bowed.

  The dark eldar leader had avoided the blast. So too had his female concubine, though Tsu’gan had not even seen her escape and yet here she was, standing alongside him.

  Two against two. Xenos versus Astartes.

  Tsu’gan revved his chainblade. It was about to get messy.

  He’stan was already running towards them, focussed on the leader, ready to pummel the creature with his gauntlet.

  The leader rose fluidly, like a silken shadow, and raced to meet him. A two-handed glaive, crackling with dark energies, appeared in its grasp where before it had seemingly been unarmed. The long mane of hair flowing from beneath its wildly grinning battle-helm caught in the breeze and snapped like irate vipers.

  He’stan’s first swing missed.

  The xenos dodged aside, almost impossibly, and caught the Forgefather a glancing blow against his forearm. Without the spear he was at a disadvantage, one the dark eldar exploited with sharp thrusts of his pole-arm.

  Tsu’gan reached the duellists and weighed in against the wych with a swipe of his chainblade. Clad in strips of leather and metal plates, much of her body was on display. She was more muscular than the male but moved with a dancer’s grace. She avoided the attack with audacious ease before flipping away from Tsu’gan’s return blow. Then something very strange happened. She gave the leader a lascivious glance, pursed her lips in a mocking kiss and fled.

  Suddenly two against two had become two against one.

  The leader evidently didn’t like his odds and backed off, but couldn’t escape. Like desert nomads herding a recalcitrant sauroch, Tsu’gan and He’stan encircled the dark eldar and drew in close. Despite his supreme acrobatics, the xenos was breathing hard from his exertions.

  “You are doomed, alien,” He’stan told him, edging towards him with caution. “Submit now and I will make it clean.”

  Glancing at his retinal display, Tsu’gan saw his brothers were still engaged battling the rest of the horde. He alone fought with the Forgefather. His pride soared and he longed to strike the killing blow with He’stan.

  The Salamanders were less than three metres away when the dark eldar bowed and a strange sensation stole over Tsu’gan. It was akin to all of the air being sucked slowly from his body, except it wasn’t air he was losing.

  When the xenos stood up straight again, he had a speculum held between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The other still grasped the glaive, though upright and planted into the ground like a banner.

  When he made to move forwards, Tsu’gan’s footing faltered. He was weak, his vision spinning. He felt thin, thinner with each passing moment in front of that mirror. His armoured face was reflected in it, the burning light in his eyes reduced to dying embers.

  “Wha…” was all could manage to say as his chain-blade and bolter fell from his grasp and he collapsed to one knee clutching his chest.

  “Steel yourself,” snarled He’stan, though the effort in his voice was all too clear.

  Was it warp sorcery? The xenos didn’t have the bearing of a psyker… Tsu’gan’s mind reeled as he tried to cling on to something as incorporeal as smoke leaking from his body.

  He’stan took a step forwards then he, too, fell to one knee. He raised the Gauntlet of the Forge, fingers grasping.

  Laughter, shrill and cruel, emanated from beneath the dark eldar’s helmet.

  “Overconfidence,” growled He’stan through ragged breaths, “will prove your undoing. I promised you a clean death if you gave in. Now you’ll suffer.”

  A bright plume of flame gushed from his gauntlet. The cackling xenos saw the danger too late and was unable to skip away as the conflagration engulfed him. The speculum shattered in the heat. Tsu’gan felt his vitality return in a rush. As he was rising, He’stan was already fully recovered and on his feet. He wrenched his spear from where it had embedded in the ground and rammed it through the flailing dark eldar’s burning torso. With a grunt, he tore it free and the xenos slumped down, blood oozing from his charred remains.

  “What was that… artifact?” asked Tsu’gan, still rubbing his chest but virtually recovered. “It felt like a piece of me was bleeding into the glass.”

  “It was,” He’stan answered simply. “Much longer and you would be a shell standing next to me, not a Fire-born at all.”

  “Was it the warp?”

  Around them the battle was slowly winding down. With the death or flight of their leaders, the dark eldar were finished. Their circle was broken, the majority of their warriors fled, the rest dead or soon to be put down by jubilant Night Devil troopers.

  “Not the warp, brother,” He’stan told him. He grasped Tsu’gan by the shoulder and looked into the lenses of his battle-helm where his eyes blazed once more.

  He held him like that for several seconds—all the while Tsu’gan felt his resolve and purpose returning—before letting him go.

  “You are whole,” He’stan added. “It was a webway mirror the fiend used against us, ancient science, not sorcery of any kind. It was your soul it was draining, Tsu’gan.”

  Tsu’gan knew the dark eldar, like all of the xenos races, had infernal technologies they used to prosecute their wars and bring man beneath their yoke, but this? To strip another’s soul? A shudder of the closest thing the Salamander could feel to fear ran down the back of his neck.

  There was no time for further discussion. Praetor and the others had joined them.

  The veteran sergeant carried a heavy gash to the right temple of his battle-helm but appeared none the worse for wear. As expected, they’d sustained no casualties.

  “The chain is broken and the xenos flee into the mists,” declared Halknarr somewhat unnecessarily. The presence of the Forgefather was affecting his demeanour.

  “Aye, but they’ll return,” said Praetor. “We should make all haste to the Capitol. Vulkan knows what Elysius’ fate might be by now.”

  “And the fate of our battle-brothers,” whispered Tsu’gan in a hollow voice. His thoughts were of Iagon. He remembered the pain in his brother’s eyes when he’d told him of his ascension, that he would not be joining him. He regretted leaving Iagon behind, but what choice did he have? Iagon had not taken it well.<
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  His manner was calm and curbed, but Tsu’gan could read the Salamander’s humours. Iagon had felt betrayed.

  Through the slowly clearing mist, a small party of men approached the Salamanders. They looked in awe of the massive warriors, who turned as one to look upon the Night Devil command group. The Space Marines’ posture and bearing was unintentionally, but unavoidably, intimidating.

  Only one of the men, a gruff-looking general who wore the black and grey of his uniform as proudly as the Fire-born wore their power amour, seemed undaunted.

  “General Slayte,” said the man, introducing himself and sketching a crisp salute. His fatigues were battle-worn, his officer’s jacket and cap splattered with dark patches of blood. Some of it was his. The bolt pistol in his holster was an heirloom but well-used. This was a man of war that stood before them, not some toy soldier more concerned with polishing his medals than fighting on campaign.

  Praetor liked him instantly.

  “Brother-Sergeant Praetor,” he said in return, extending his gauntleted hand.

  The general took it, though it dwarfed his own, and removed his cap once his had had been released again.

  “We are in your debt, Astartes,” he said, wiping his brow with a bloodstained sleeve. He shifted his gaze to Halknarr, “and I to you personally, my lord.”

  Halknarr merely nodded, affecting an air of aloof disdain in the presence of the human commander.

  “What is the status of your force, general?” asked Praetor, making a rudimentary visual assessment of the troopers that were slowly gathering back into formation at the bellowed orders of their sergeants.

  Slayte’s attention returned to Praetor.

  “My commissar is dead. I have lost a major and two corporals. I survive by dint of the Emperor’s intervention and I’d posit just over two hundred and fifty of my five-hundred-strong battle group still live. And of those, close to another hundred are wounded. In short, my lord, we are in ragged shape.”

  Praetor exchanged a glance with Halknarr. The other sergeant had removed his battle-helm to better taste the heat on the air. His eyes were hooded but stern. They told Praetor they could ill-afford stragglers. Without the Firedrake escort, though, Slayte and his men might fall foul of another ambush. And in their current condition, they’d likely be massacred. That couldn’t happen.

  “You’ll accompany us until you can be rejoined with the rest of your forces,” Praetor decided. He sought He’stan in the throng for his silent approval but the Forgefather was gone. So was Tsu’gan. “But we are moving swiftly. Stay with us or fall behind. We are not here as liberators, general,” he added. “Ironlandings will have to look to its own protection.”

  General Slayte smiled, exposing his bloodied teeth.

  “Just get me to the rest of my men, and I’ll take care of that. You’ve broken their backs, we can do the rest.”

  Tsu’gan met He’stan a few metres away from where their brothers had gathered. His gaze was in the distance, at the looming spectre of the bastion; so too was his mind.

  “What is it, my lord?” Tsu’gan asked.

  “Something is wrong here,” He’stan replied, the Geviox sunlight bathing his armour an ugly, visceral red, “something is very wrong.”

  “Is it Chaplain Elysius?”

  “It is more than that, Tsu’gan.”

  “Is he… he’s not dead?”

  It was an impossible question. There was no way He’stan could have known Elysius’ fate, yet Tsu’gan asked it all the same. Something powerful was at work with the Forgefather, a wisdom and insight that wasn’t prescience but was also stronger than merely instinct.

  “I don’t know,” He’stan replied, facing him, “but I do not think he is even here.”

  II

  Loss and Lamentation

  A crack of lightning threw the grooves in Elysius’ armour into sharp relief. An eldritch wind pricked at his long white hair that hung low, obscuring his naked face. His back was arched, the heavy weight fastened to his neck forcing him to learn forwards. He braced his hand against the hard metal of the deck where he kneeled. The other one, his power fist, had been removed and a tangle of ragged wires sagged from the socket like intestines. There were furrows in his battle-plate where the barbs and lashes had stung him. He’d forgotten what had happened to his battle-helm. It was lost. They were all lost. Silently, surrounded by darkness and the perpetual lightning storm, he beseeched the Emperor for aid. His lips moved soundlessly as he performed a benediction over his brothers and the others not of the Chapter shackled alongside him.

  “Look, Helspereth,” cried one of the dark eldar whelpmasters aboard the great slave skiff, “the mon-keigh babbles to the night. Madness has claimed him so soon.” He laughed. The sound was shrill and sharp, like a blade drawn across a wire.

  Elysius knew the dark eldar loathed using the speech of “lesser races” but realised this remark was fashioned as a barb. It was nearly a successful one. He had to grit his teeth to stop from rising up and tossing the alien filth into the hot darkness surrounding them. But that was what the wretch wanted, an excuse to inflict further agonies. These parasites, the skulking pallid-faced creatures manning the skiff, fed on torture and pain. It was sustenance to them. Elysius resolved he would not give them another morsel.

  Starve. I’ll give you nothing but indifference, scum.

  Others aboard the vessel, those without the stoicism of the Fire-born, were not so resilient.

  Some of the men, the remnants of the Night Devils who had arrived to secure the bastion at Ironlandings, shivered uncontrollably against a pervasive cold that surrounded the vessel.

  “Hold firm,” the Chaplain muttered to a man beside him, a sergeant judging by his rank pins, “the Emperor has not forsaken us.”

  At Elysius’ words, the man ceased quavering. Faith had not abandoned them yet.

  “Idiot,” Helspereth snarled at the whelpmaster. The wych was reclining across the skiffs fuselage but detached herself from it to stalk with feline grace up to the Chaplain. When she was close enough, she leaned into Elysius’ ear and whispered, “He prays to his god. He prays for deliverance.” She stood up, maintaining her balance easily as the skiff bucked and jerked against the aetheric storm. “This one will try to defy us,” she promised. “Won’t you,” she hissed, raking a nail over the Chaplain’s cheek and drawing a ruby of blood.

  She tasted it and hissed with pleasure.

  “Oh, but you are strong, aren’t you…”

  “Choke on it, you bitch,” Elysius replied through clenched teeth.

  “And full of fire, too,” purred Helspereth. “I will enjoy your fire, super-man. How long before I can expend it, I wonder? How your death-throes will nourish me…”

  The harsh scrape of metal could be heard above the wind and the skiff’s engine as Elysius dragged a groove through the decking with his fingers.

  “Plenty of time for that later, my prey,” whispered the wych before returning to her languor draped across the fuselage.

  For the first time in what felt like hours, though time held little meaning in this place, Elysius raised his eyes. Through the flickering strands of his white hair he made out jagged spires in the distant dark. Boiling clouds, travelling against the wind, masked them. The mists clung to the long, razor-edged structures that were dotted with evil pinpricks of light, as if reluctant to detach themselves and surrender to the whim of this place. A cascade of lightning illuminated the spires briefly and Elysius realised there were further structures upon them and even vessels attached to the spikes protruding from their surfaces. It was a port or city of some sort. The spires were districts and quarters, but it was like no city the Chaplain had ever seen. It also meant there were people down there, more slaves like them. And perhaps other things too…

  “What is this place?” asked Ba’ken in a low murmur.

  The sergeant had also lost his battle-helm and his armour was cracked in several places. Like the Chaplain, he too was weigh
ed down by a heavy spiked gorget and shackled to the deck.

  “I know not, brother,” Elysius replied, “but wherever it is, it is not of the mortal world.” Above them, a spur of fire lit the darkness from a stolen sun. It threw a strange cast upon the scene. The Chaplain watched the solar flare fade and then looked at Ba’ken. “How is Iagon?”

  “I will live.” A choked rasp came from the other side of the deck. Three Night Devil troopers sat between him and the other two Salamanders. A fourth Salamander, Brother G’heb, kneeled on Iagon’s left.

  Elysius knew, on the far side of the long, bladed skiff, there were more. He recalled the attack on the Capitol vaguely. His memory was fogged by his injuries and what had followed after he’d been taken with the others through the portal. The dark eldar had attacked swiftly and without warning. Instantly, he had realised they’d been drawn into a trap. Somehow, the xenos had bypassed their sentries and alarms. They had penetrated the inner quarters of the bastion using webway technology and arrived in the Salamanders’ midst en masse.

  No defence, however meticulously planned, could have prepared them for that. They’d been fortified by units from the Night Devils, the holding force designed to occupy the bastion and allow Elysius and Brother-Sergeants Ba’ken and Iagon to redeploy at the Ferron Straits. With the rest of their battle group already en route, they were weakened, but it was clear to the Chaplain from the outset that the intention of the xenos wasn’t merely to slay them, though several Fire-born had lost their lives in the assault, it was to capture them. Perhaps it was to capture him, though Elysius knew not for what purpose.

  The ways of the alien were anathema to him. He did not wish to understand them, only to crush them beneath his armoured heel. The fact of his incarceration meant he was impotent to do that and this chafed at the Chaplain greatly.

  “Hold to your oaths as Salamanders,” he said, returning to gaze upon the rapidly closing spires. Through the lightning it seemed to Elysius that they were rising above the city. “Remember your purpose. Remember the words of—”