[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  Beyond its ash-swept threshold, the sepulchral archway was lined with tombs and crypts but only the dead inhabited its halls. The two Librarians were alone.

  “If Nihilan is truly the arch-manipulator of all that has transpired so far then he will have anticipated our return to Moribar, too,” said Dak’ir.

  Pyriel nodded, drawing his force staff once they were far enough inside the barrow-monolith and out of the ash storm.

  “There may be more than the dead waiting for us in the darkness.”

  Dak’ir drew Draugen, his force sword. His empathy with the blade was still naked and untempered but the bond would be forged soon enough.

  An army of graves and mausoleums stretched into the shadows ahead of them. The way was lit by flickering brazier-lanterns but they did little to lift the gloom.

  “We stand beneath a shroud, Dak’ir,” said Pyriel, leading them down the aisle between the tombs. “It occludes the truth.”

  “Then let us draw it back and expose what lies beneath.” Dak’ir paused, regarding the darkness for a moment. He was listening. “They are calling to me,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The dead.”

  The wind became a shriek in the Chaplain’s ears as he plummeted from the deckplate and into the beckoning void. So fast was his descent, it tugged at the corners of his grimacing mouth. The tendrils of his long, white hair flared.

  Beside and above him, the other slaves fell too.

  A shock of lightning ripped out of the dark, striking a screaming Night Devil trooper and turning him to ash. Another Guardsman hit one of the higher spires and was ripped apart like offal. A third was lost from view, his body and his flight arrested when he struck a thin spike of metal and was impaled.

  It was like descending into a forest of blades; a forest of blades wreathed with lightning. Darkness came and went, illuminated by the fury of the storm. Plateaus and what appeared to be docking platforms passed in a blur of hard edges. Deeper and deeper they fell, navigating the jutting spires and artificial razor crags of this hell-place.

  Elysius felt a jagged spark of heat flash by his face. He winced against the flare of light but sped on, somehow spared from immolation.

  “The Emperor is my shield,” he began, closing his eyes as he recited the benediction. He spied a potential landing point below him, through a web of blades, and made a mental note of the distance to it. He had, as of yet, no idea how he would arrest his descent so he didn’t break every bone in his body upon landfall. “He will protect my soul from harm. I am His watchful lantern, seeking out the darkness and bringing it to the light. With His sword I will smite the foes of mankind, bring justice to the weak and retribution to the perfidious.”

  Another lightning flash, penetrating his eyelids despite the fact he had closed them. They were descending into the heart of the maelstrom. Close now, he could almost feel the pressing spires drawing nearer and the cutting promise of their razor-edges.

  “Vulkan’s will is righteous. He is the anvil. We are his hammer. The forge is my bastion and by its fires are my enemies sundered.”

  The chill that had entered Elysius’ bones began to ebb as the heat from the spires, from venting plumes of steam and tall furnace fires warmed him. It wasn’t a pleasant heat; it was a prickling, stabbing sensation at once familiar and horribly alien.

  The Chaplain opened his eyes.

  The hard flank of a razor-spire loomed in his sight. Desiccated corpses and bleached bone skeletons clung to its spiky protrusions in deathless desperation. Angling his body into the shape of an arrow, Elysius dived headlong towards it. A distant shout above, a curt cry of anguish, signalled the death of another Guardsman.

  He knew his brothers would be behind him, perhaps not through this selfsame vent, but navigating the deadly sea of barbs and chained lighting all the same.

  As close as he dared, Elysius brought his body up, angling his feet downwards and his body towards the flat face of the spire. He struck the hard metal and bounced, plates scattering free into the void like shed skin with the force of impact. He struck again, this time snagging a length of chain that screeched as it burned through his clenched and gauntleted fist.

  Slower. That was good. The hard flank of the spire was long. Where the edge of the spire terminated, a relatively short drop beckoned and then came a jutting platform. The chain snapped and Elysius found the momentum of his fall returning. He thrust his fingers into the metal and the plates began to shed again like scale.

  Half-glanced out the corner of his eye, he saw his brothers doing the same.

  Ba’ken had taken the opposite spire, the two so close they almost touched at the base but wide enough for the Salamanders to slip through the small vent between them to the waiting plateau. He held onto one of the Night Devils with his spare hand, cradling the veteran warrior like a child in his mighty grasp.

  Iagon seized the same side as Elysius with two hands, a Guardsmen clinging to the power generator on his back in desperation.

  It was the same with the others. Where they could, the Salamanders taken by the dark eldar protected the more vulnerable humans and tried to ferry them to the plateau.

  Elysius saw two Guardsmen attempt to scale the sides of the spires with grapnels. One man was bounced off into oblivion, his screams soon lost to the dark; the other crumpled against the hard metal before getting caught in a length of chain and joining the ranks of corpses spitted against the spire’s hard face.

  Elysius lamented all of their deaths. He had time for a final benediction of the dead men’s souls before the vent between the two spires loomed and he plunged over the edge.

  II

  Hunters and Hunted

  The creaking report of the doors receded into the gloom of the corridor beyond the warehouse floor. In its wake there came a new sound, a gibbering, shrieking refrain that set Tsu’gan’s gritted teeth on edge.

  “Something is moving in the shadows.” Halknarr brought his bolter up to his shoulder. The other Firedrakes took this as their cue to ready their weapons too.

  “Form two firing lines,” ordered Praetor. The warriors around him slipped effortlessly into two ten-man ranks, flamers at the front. The electrical discharge from his ignited thunder hammer lit the snarl on his face. The fires of battle within him stirred. “Daedicus…”

  The squad leader looked up from his auspex. “Over a hundred bio-signatures, brother-sergeant.”

  The chittering, gibbering noise increased in volume.

  Tsu’gan’s narrowed eyes made out figures in the void-like gloom, misshapen and grotesque figures. He wanted desperately to engage them now, to vent the fury building inside him in a single, glorious tempest of violence. Abruptly, he was aware of He’stan’s presence beside him. The Forgefather’s influence was dramatic, even though he spoke no words and gave no gestures. Tsu’gan felt immediately focussed. The reckless anger pulling at his leash ebbed and he found order to his emotions.

  “Rear rank,” He’stan’s calm voice rose over the shrieking throng, “turn and raise bolters skyward.”

  The Firedrakes obeyed without question, as a second force of dark eldar came screaming from their hiding places in the vaulted warehouse ceiling. They tore from the lofty rafters riding bladed sky-boards and barbed jetbikes, hooting and jeering. Half-naked wyches descended on lines of gossamer-thin cord, their eyes wild with lustful and violent excitement. Descending like birds of prey from their eyries, heavily armed warriors plummeted towards the Salamanders on wings of serrated steel. Fouled by some manner of arcane science, the auspex had failed to detect these ambushers. Vulkan He’stan needed no device to see the truth of the trap that awaited his brothers. He had known it since they’d entered the room. His eyes searched the deeper shadows in the vaults above and found what they were looking for.

  A shrivelled and emaciated figure hovered on a sky-board. He did not join the attack, but merely watched from the darkness. Though his mouth seemed stitched, his ancient eyes were aligh
t with glee. Parchment-skinned, the colour of stained alabaster, this thing was almost a walking corpse.

  “I see you now,” He’stan hissed. “I have drawn you out, cadaver… haemonculus.”

  At a clipped and sibilant command from the withered haemonculus, a coterie of warriors emerged on the high gantries girdling the room and proceeded to unleash splinter-like fire into the Firedrakes’ ranks.

  The Salamanders took the first salvo on their power armour before unleashing a bolt storm.

  “Unto the anvil!” roared He’stan to the sound of tearing gantries and the ecstatic screaming of dying xenos.

  A macabre rain of dark eldar warriors fell from the shadowed heavens in half-exploded chunks. In their wake came the hellions on their sky-boards and the jetbikers.

  Tsu’gan lit up one rider with a burst from his combi-bolter, burning down a second with a spurt of promethium from the weapon’s flamer attachment. A third he locked fast with his chainblade, the teeth spitting sparks as they met the hellion’s trident. The creature cackled madly before disengaging and flying off for another pass.

  Instinctively, the Firedrakes changed their formation into an outward-facing circle. It was how they were born to fight, it was Vulkan’s way.

  Form the anvil, break our enemies upon it.

  “We are the hammer,” he heard Praetor cry. The veteran sergeant echoed all their thoughts. From the shadowed gallery beyond the warehouse the mutated beasts were shambling into a ran.

  Tsu’gan had no time to witness it. The winged warriors and the wyches had begun their assault.

  “Slay them,” he bellowed, feeling the swell of battle lust overtaking him, “slay them all!”

  He’stan thrust Vulkan’s Spear into a winged scourge, tearing out the heart. With the Gauntlet of the Forge, he put a wych coven to the torch. The lithe forms of the warrior women twisted in pleasure as they died.

  “In Vulkan’s name!” he cried.

  Tsu’gan’s heart soared.

  As the grotesques charged, the lume-lanterns flanking the gallery erupted into sudden brightness. At once, the full extent of the creatures’ deformities was revealed. They were lumpen, mutilated things. Some waddled on stumps for legs, others cantered on long reverse-jointed limbs. Claws and bone-spears, barbed tails and flesh-fused mace fists served as weapons. They were abominations, mewling and frothing through fanged mouths.

  Praetor recognised the forms of human men and women, some conjoined into one body. They had once been the populace of Ironlandings, the labourers of the bastion.

  Smiting them would be a mercy.

  As they spread out, the slower lumbering beasts giving way to the lighter and more agile, a circle of warriors appeared through the parting throng.

  “Our brothers!” cried Halknarr. The anguish in his voice touched them all. An urgent tremor ran up the line. The sense of imminent motion filled the air around Praetor.

  Lashed together with hooked chains; battered and pinioned by spikes, the bloodied remnants of the Salamanders who had been garrisoning Ironlandings were revealed. Most hung their heads, too weary to raise them. For some, their eyes were filled with a bitter rancour and still blazed in the darkness. The dark eldar had humiliated them.

  “Hold positions,” said Praetor, his voice like a rock his brothers could fasten their resolve to. He was the bulwark against reckless abandon. He stemmed the tide of the Firedrakes’ anger and honed it into a single cohesive blow.

  “We are the hammer. Unleash it!”

  Bolters screamed as the flamers spewed into the first wave of grotesques.

  They howled as they fell, curling into blackened shapes that hazed with the heat. Expressions of pain and relief warred for dominance in their altered mouths.

  The first to break through the web of explosive shells lunged at Praetor. It was a brute, with strong malformed legs, broad upper back and muscle-packed shoulders fraught with bulbous growths.

  Praetor crushed the grotesque’s skull with a single blow, before uppercutting a second creature that came in the brute’s wake with his storm shield. Hot blood struck the metal in a dense spray. A line of it streaked his face like a dagger slash. Praetor ignored it. There were more to kill.

  They were in it now. This was where it became thick and dirty. Bolters hammering around him, the flare of promethium throwing a ruddy glow on the scene, Praetor did what he was born to do—he killed in the Emperor’s name and for the glory of his primarch.

  The mesh of the flung net screeched as Tsu’gan cut through it, parting the fanged snare in two with his chainblade. The wyches were upon them, dancing and weaving around the Firedrakes’ rapid bolter bursts to close with hook and blade.

  Pain receptors slaved from his body to his battle-helm lit up in Tsu’gan’s retinal display. Granting, he took the haft of the spear that impaled his shoulder and snapped it. Aiming a downward swipe with his chainblade that the leather-clad wych dodged with ease, he then brought up his bolter like a club and smashed her across the chest and face. Daedicus brought his weapon around and finished her with a desultory burst of fire.

  Tsu’gan snarled behind his battle-helm. She was his to kill. He would speak to his over-zealous brother later, once the aliens were dead. No time now. The dark eldar were swarming them.

  Outnumbered at least three to one, the slaughter perpetrated by the Firedrakes was prodigious. As he severed a hellion’s torso, Tsu’gan wondered if this was how his brothers had fought. Perhaps not. They had been dispersed around the warehouse floor when the Firedrakes had found them. Distracted out of a desire to protect the humans, they had compromised their own lives into the bargain. No such concern existed for Tsu’gan and his company brothers. And they had He’stan.

  The Forgefather brought down a pair of wyches, several score marks in his armour attesting to their futile efforts to kill him, and began to move.

  At first Tsu’gan wasn’t sure what was happening, only that something in the dynamic of their defence was changing. Then he realised.

  He’s breaking formation.

  He followed He’stan’s gaze to where it alighted on the graven corpse loitering above the battle mounted on a sky-board. The wretched creature’s thin lips were drawn into a tight line like a slit throat but he rubbed his emaciated, talon-like hands together. The death and carnage was fortifying him. Tsu’gan remembered what He’stan had told him earlier, of the dark eldar’s need to forestall soul death by feeding on the suffering of others, even their own kin.

  Without thinking, Tsu’gan broke formation too.

  Through his chosen pilgrim, Vulkan had shown them the way. It felt almost like divine purpose was guiding him as Tsu’gan cried to his battle-brothers.

  “Fire-born, with me. To the Forgefather!”

  A pair of jetbikes screeched out of the lofty warehouse roof, ducking beams and broken struts with calculated ease. They homed in on He’stan. His pace and urgency was such that he was caught in the open. Tsu’gan sent a burst of bolter fire into one, but the rider jinked and rolled, cackling derisively at the Salamander’s pathetic attempts to hit him. Vo’kar brought up his flamer and the promethium burst burned the rider down, turning his derision into screams of agony. Tsu’gan had corralled the xenos into the other Fire-born’s path. The last laugh was his.

  He’stan destroyed the second bike himself, driving the blade of his spear through the fuselage and splitting the rider in two. A third, buzzing in the wake of the others, fell to a blast of fire from his gauntlet. Flames ran down the vehicle’s nose in a bright bloom, igniting the rider and cooking off its fuel tank in an incendiary burst. It spiralled away from its intended trajectory, the dark eldar’s control lost to agony, and the growing fireball around the bike engulfed a pair of hellions, consuming them too.

  The haemonculus’ guardians were gathering to his defence. The xenos could see the purpose in the Forgefather’s eyes, what he intended for their depraved master.

  Tsu’gan saw it too.

  “Take them!
” he roared, arriving at He’stan’s side with Vo’kar, Oknar and Lorrde. The others were not far behind. They fought in small packs, twos and threes; sometimes back-to-back, at other times rushing headlong into the enemy. It was fluid, dynamic. It was not the Fire-born way of war at all, but then He’stan was not a typical Salamander and Tsu’gan an all-too-willing student of his art. It was a fact that Herculon Praetor had not failed to notice.

  Praetor cursed under his breath. “Hold, Kesare damn you,” he muttered. A half glance behind him revealed Brother Lorrde struck in the neck by a flung trident. He buckled, going down on one knee, before a wych skipped in past his defences and slammed a hooked blade into his shoulder and back. The injured Firedrake crumpled. The icon on Praetor’s retinal display went from green to amber.

  A second warrior, Brother Tho’ran, juddered as a whickering burst of dark-light skewered him. He fell, smoke spuming from the cauterised wound in his chest.

  Praetor snarled, returning to the fight at his front, as Tho’ran’s icon ran through green to amber to red. Their backs were exposed. Though the Firedrakes running with He’stan had torn a hole through the dark eldar throng, they had left the veteran sergeant and his rank in an indefensible position. They were already giving ground, the edges of the line bending back to form a half circle.

  Cursing Tsu’gan’s recklessness a final time, he embraced the pragmatic side of his Nocturnean heritage and gave the only order he could.

  “Firedrakes, forward on my lead. Bring the fight to the enemy! Bring them flame and fury!”

  Praetor surged out of the front rank, bludgeoning grotesques with his thunder hammer like he was an automaton.

  Haft thrust. Hammer blow. Shield smash.

  He performed the manoeuvres by rote as if in the training pits on Prometheus.

  A staccato chorus of hard bolter bangs and the aggressive whoosh and crack of spewing flamers resonated around him as his brothers followed his lead.