Bone worshippers. Scalp hunters.
Corpse-bearers.
Further, finding themselves surrounded by filth and hedonism, hemmed in by false worshippers and iniquitous licence, they had elected themselves to a divine mission, reasoning that they alone must execute the Emperor's law.
They were pious vigilantes, these quiet warriors, and in them Sahaal saw echoes of his master's youth, stalking the streets of Nostramo Quintus, judging and striking from the shadows.
They reminded him of himself, and were it not for their misplaced reverence he might whole-heartedly have accepted their hospitality, told them the truth, secured their obedience for all the right reasons...
But no... No, they were the Emperor's sons and daughters first, and creatures of the night second. He could seek sanctuary amongst them but could never fully lower his guard. His dark beliefs would be anathema to these pious fools, and the irony of the situation was not lost on him: such similar disciplines, such reflected methods, such matching values, but such opposite causes.
So it was that when their priestess scrambled towards Sahaal's mediation platform on her hands and knees, her heart hammering like a drum in his ears, he was awake before she had even opened her mouth.
'Why do you disturb me?' he said, and he smiled inside his helm at the shiver that rattled through her.
'F-forgive me, my lord, I did not intend to discomfort you...'
He dismissed her cowering with a flick of his wrist, tilting his head to regard her closely. 'By what name are you known, child?'
This request seemed to confuse her. Whatever news she'd rushed to divulge, a personal introduction had not been amongst it. 'Chianni, my lord.'
'You are the leader of this band?'
'N... I... I was the second, my lord. B-beneath Con-demnitor Kalriian.'
'And where is he?'
Her eyes, if possible, bulged wider still.
'Y-you... you killed him, my lord...'
Sahaal recalled that first simpering figure, approaching from the shadows outside Herniatown, cut down in mid-exultation. He smoothly extended his duplicity: 'He was remiss in his devotions. It was a mercy to cut him down.'
If she doubted the excuse she gave no sign of it. 'A-as you wish it, my lord.'
He pointed a long claw at her heart, enjoying her squirms. 'You shall be the new condemnitor.'
She dipped her head in shivering gratitude, sweat glistening in the dark. 'You honour me, lord, but I—'
'You may leave me. I would continue my meditation.'
For a second she seemed torn, as if her body would love nothing more than to comply, but her brows dipped and she remained where she was, struggling to speak. Sahaal watched her with interest.
'It is... please, lord. The scouts sent up flares. There are intruders abroad. Judge-men from the city.' She cast her eyes upwards towards the distant struts of the hive-bottom. 'Vindictors from above. We... we seek your counsel.'
'What do they want?' Sahaal's voice contrived to indicate that such tedious announcements were beneath his interest.
'I do not know, lord. T-they share our cause — in the main — though their laws are lax in the Emperor's eyes. Is it not said tha—'
'Spare me the lesson. Are they your enemies?'
She swallowed hard and shook her head, eyes bright in the gloom. 'They have never sought our ruin, lord. They would not enter our territory without cause.'
'I see.'
'T-there is something else...'
'Yes?'
'They... they travel with a mutant. A... a giant. The scouts have seen it. It is... unchained!'
She spoke this last word as if it wounded her to say it, and Sahaal marvelled at the depth of hatred in her voice. Here, even in the filth of the underhive, the Imperium's contempt for all that was 'impure' had found ample representation.
'A mutant?'
'Yes my lord. An abomination in the eyes of the Emperor! I... I have prayed for guidance but—'
'That is unnecessary. I am the Emperor's voice here.'
For a moment she looked as though she might cut her own throat. Sahaal found himself gratified by her discomfort.
'My apologies, lord. I did not mean offence...'
'These "vindictors". They are in the employ of the Imperium?'
'Y-yes my lord.'
'And they have no reason to come here?'
'No, my lord.'
The truth sagged into Sahaal's mind.
They are hunting me. They have my trail.
Something akin to nervousness passed through him, then, but seemed mixed perversely with a measure of excitement. After so long, after such care and secrecy, it was almost a pleasure to face enemies openly.
And in a moment of inspiration, slicing into his consciousness like a blade from the heavens, the solution came to him.
'They are corrupt,' he said, standing. Chianni staggered backwards, dwarfed.
'M-my lord?'
'Listen carefully. You will struggle to believe me.'
'I... I will believe what you tell me, my lo—'
'I was sent here at the Emperor's own command, condemnitor. Do you believe that?'
She sunk to her knees as if struck, mouth agape.
'Ave Imperator! ' she shrieked, overcome.
'Stand, child. We haven't much time.'
She glanced upward with the look of a drunkard.
'I was sent here because this world has fallen from the light of Terra. It is consumed by corruption. From tip to base, only impurity remains.'
'But... but this is...' She gasped for air, like a fish removed from water, and for a brief instant Sahaal found himself pitying her. Her entire universe must be crumbling around her.
'Equixus has fallen to Chaos, child, and there are few of the Emperor's faithful that remain.'
She vomited, clutching at her belly, moaning in horror.
'No...' she whispered, drool sagging from her lips. 'It's not true... it's not true... it's not true...'
'Stand!' Sahaal gripped her collar and yanked her upright like a heap of rags, leaving her tottering in a fugue of terror and misery.
'I don't understand, my lord! T-there was no war! No invasion!'
'You underestimate the ruinous powers. There was no invasion, only infection. The taint spreads like disease. The governor is corrupted. His house and barons are lost to the dark. And piece by piece the purity of this hive is sundered.'
'But... but...'
'I was sent to assess the extent of the corruption,' he said, lies pouring so easily from his mouth. 'I was sent to discover if any of the Emperor's faithful remained.'
'We do, lord! We do!' she almost sang the words, arms raised above her head, delirious with shock.
'You do,' Sahaal nodded, 'and I have found you. And now... now these false servants of the Emperor, these "vindictors", who make a mockery of all that was pure, have descended to crush us all. We must stop them. Do you understand, condemnitor? The Emperor Himself has spoken! We must stop them!'
The intruders' vehicles were familiar, at least. Coiling their way through the Steel Forest, they made light work of the debrisflows around the ducts' bases: Chimera-class chasses, albeit lacking the artillery mounts and dozer-scoops of their forebears. He had once orchestrated the advances of legions of their kind, savaging the enemy with his Raptor packs whilst the guns of the Chimerae battered their flanks. It seemed somehow ludicrous that he should now find himself opposing such familiar machines, accompanied only by a mob of zealots devoted to his enemy's worship.
This time his master's voice echoed almost whimsically through his memories, and he fought a brief surge of affront in its implied disapproval.
How the mighty are fallen, it said, over and over, like a mantra in his soul.
The intruders rounded the final corner in their approach to the Shadowkin lair and Sahaal returned his mind to the present: there was an ambush to oversee.
Forewarned, the Shadowkin attack was as devastating as any Sahaal h
ad seen. Dressed for war, cloaked in tattered rags of black and red, with bones stitched to collars and stolen knuckles swinging on cords from sleeves, they were a grim sight: wraiths that slunk in the dark, skeletal trophies adorning their brows.
Sahaal waited until the first two vehicles had passed below before giving the signal to attack, a single swipe of his clawed fist, reflections flickering like a galaxy in the half-light.
The first hint of danger, a roiling pulse of electric sound and the shadow-stitching flare of a discharge, came far too late for the vindictors.
That first carefully gauged blast from the Shadowkin's solitary lascannon, positioned at the edge of a high balcony, punched through the trailing vehicle's tracks like a fiery blade, gobbets of molten metal sputtering from the wound. The pilot's attempt to brake was as doomed as the vehicle itself: its track peeled, thrashing at the hull as it sluiced away, whipping back on itself at the last instant to slice the vindictor riding shotgun into two ragged halves.
First blood. Time seemed to stop.
Then the Shadowkin howled, like wolves after a kill.
The tank slipped from its line, wobbled across unstable debris, hit a bank of shapeless scrap and flipped onto its back, trailing oil and dust. The screams from within filtered quickly through its mangled shanks.
And then the lasguns opened fire, the volley of grenades from above rattled down on the stricken convoy, the Shadowkin rappelled from their balconies with a chilling shriek, and the battle of the Steel Forest began.
To their credit, the intruders were swift to react. The remaining vehicles about-turned, tracks shifting in awkward patterns, to circle their stricken fellow. Their passengers tumbled out in short order, using their vehicles as cover and firing thunderous shotguns into the shapeless shadows, shouting terse orders. To Sahaal, watching from above, they seemed like miniature parodies of Space Marines — their glossy carapaces shaped in obvious reflection of the Astartes' power armour, helms open below the nose, solid gauntlets clutching at stocks and mauls. He sneered in contempt and launched himself from his platform's edge, following the whooping Shadowkin towards the ground, jump pack slowing his descent.
A killing ground had quickly formed between the remaining tanks and the gangers slunk forwards with weapons blazing, pinning the vindictors in their places. Already a gaggle of armoured bodies thrashed and moaned in the circle, blood staining the spongy ground, and the remaining lawmen struggled to find return targets. The Shadowkin were more than adept at stealing about the perimeter of the ring like sharks, snapping off shots then melting away. Even the auto-cannons on the Salamanders' spines seemed useless, hammering their ammunition into the wastes in near disarray, their bright flares dazzling the vindictors further still, rendering the darkness all the more impenetrable.
A frag grenade, dropped almost casually from the gantries above, split apart an exposed Preafect, showering his comrades with whirligig shrapnel and gore. His shriek lasted a fraction of a second, aborted on a froth of viscera and clutching limbs. His comrades hollered and regrouped, more and more of their armoured fellows tumbling from the safety of the Salamanders to confront the threat, and in reply more of the death-masked Shadowkin slipped along black ropes to surround them, lasguns shifting shadows and colours across the distant walls.
Sahaal set himself down at the periphery of the ring and drew his bolter. Rushing into the face of a shotgun salvo would be a folly, but there were... other ways. Whooping his hawk-like shriek, kicking himself into the air, he crossed the deadzone in a single bound, glaring down on the besieged vindictors with trigger depressed. Through gunsmoke and airborne ash bolter shells kicked sticky craters in muscle and sinew, encased bodies jerked as shells detonated and helmeted faces craned up to observe this new threat, gliding on darkness overhead.
Somewhere, lost to the rushing of his blood, Sahaal heard a cheer blossom in the gloom. The Shadowkin were saluting their master.
He savoured their awe, and each discharge of his bolter was an offering to his master, each scarlet-splattered scream a guilty intonation to the Chaos Gods that he neither worshipped nor denied. The sight of his victims' wide eyes and pale faces, gaping up as they realised what they faced all too late, warmed him to his core, and he shrilled as their bodies dissolved in fire and smoke and blood.
'Ave dominus nox!'
His arc complete, he set down on the opposite boundary and spun in his place, eager for a second pass. His feet had all but left the ground when the las-cannon fired its second pulse and the world went white.
A dagger of light punctured the ablative guts of the overturned Salamander, a wound that lanced thick armour and stabbed deep into its fuel reserves. The vehicle seemed to judder and draw a breath, swelling, before detonating in a storm of shattered light.
The metal carcass lifted high on a spout of flame, breaking apart and littering the air, razor fragments blizzarding outwards. At its apex it slouched onto its back like a dying whale, flames running off its scars like water, then crashed — ruined — to the earth.
The Shadowkin roared their approval, weapons brandished high, and the vindictors crawled and bled in the wreckage. Only the hammering of the remaining autocannons swelled the silence, and for every lead gobbet that found a target in the dark — flipping some nameless zealot to his knees with a jet of crimson — a hundred chattered uselessly against the mangled surfaces of the debris flows. Such was the madness of the scene that Sahaal went unnoticed as he clawed his way vertically along a rusted duct, a monstrous lizard adhering to a wall.
He gauged his release with precision, snapping free his claws and tumbling with a cry to land, as elegant as a cat, on the cab of the nearest tank. The pilot's wordless shriek filtered from within, and it was only when Sahaal lunged at the autocannon pintle — severing its plinth and blasting its gunner's head from his shoulders — that the shrill exclamation found words: a rush of curses and prayers. Sahaal leaned inside with a hiss, snipping at the pilot's thrashing arms, spraying the interior with arterial muck.
The shrieks increased in pitch and volume.
Sahaal leapt clear, snagging at an oily overhang and swivelling to watch the vehicle caper out of control, skidding on its axis and ploughing through the diminishing knot of vindictors. Gore-splattered, it rushed into the darkness and quit the battle, dust and waste lifting from its tracks, vanishing to topple to its doom in some forgotten corner. The dismembered pilot's screams dwindled with it into the shadows.
With their cover thus diminished the vindictors were easy prey. The remaining Salamander had tasked itself with knocking out the las-crew that had so decimated its shattered fellow, and its futile tracer sweeps of the balconies above had taken it away from the action on the ground, leaving the Preafects vulnerable.
Sahaal saw the trap an instant too late.
'Stay back!' Sahaal roared to the Shadowkin from his vantage. 'Stay in the shadows! Spare no one! Spare nothing!'
The warning was too late. Flushed by the excitement of victory, led by Condemnitor Chianni, the shrouded warriors rushed forth through the ring of corpse-dotted wreckage to smash against the vindictors.
In the face of a direct assault the Preafects released one final devastating volley before lowering their shotguns, raising instead the power mauls holstered at their sides. There was something of the parade ground in their synchronous movements: thumbing activation runes together, striking combat stances in a perfect circle of glossy armour and fizzling maces. The Shadowkin rebounded from their flanks like bloody waves against a cliff, and every failed swipe of a notched blade or jab with a tarblacked dagger was followed by the precise, deadly swing of an energised club. Sparks burst in bubbles of light, flesh charred and skulls popped. Here a black-robed man staggered clear with a scream, his eyeballs gone, there a young woman limped to escape, the bones of her leg jabbing at ugly angles from her flesh. With no space to put their numbers — or their stealth — to their advantage, the Shadowkin were being massacred. Sahaal found himself s
wooping to join the frenzy when the lascannon crew fired their third — and final — blast.
This time, perhaps recognising that the remaining Salamander had found its range and was already tilting its autocannon towards them, they eschewed the obvious target presented by the vehicle and tilted their scripture-pocked weapon towards the vindictor ranks, resolving to inflict as much damage as possible before the end.
Had their actions not been undertaken in his name, Sahaal would have derided their sacrifice. A true warrior, he had learned, values his own life at least as much as he values the loss of his enemy's. There was little room in his heart for martyrdom — beyond that, of course, of his dead master.
His betrayed master, who had died for his principles — and so forged a bitter vengeance in his own blood.
His master, whose memory he served.
His master, whose mantle he had inherited...
...and then lost.
At the centre of the killing ground, where the lascannon's discharge slid like an arrow into the earth, the vindictors fell apart at their joints: swallowed in a torus of iridescence that incised bone and sinew like a blade through water. They found themselves blasted up and out on the cusp of a Shockwave, meaty slabs parting along torn seams, shredded alive. This was no great pyrotechnic spectacle, no flaming tumult, no smokeless fireball: merely a sooty chrysanthemum of uncontainable energy, blindingly bright, that dismantled its targets like dried leaves before a storm.
As if in reply, the autocannon found its target. The lascannon crew died in fire and lead, tumbling to the earth like rag-dolls, dead of their wounds long before they struck the ground.
A stunned silence settled.
Through the shifting smoke and lapping fires, beyond the charred bodies and shattered armour-plates, now only the single vehicle remained of the convoy The Shadowkin stared at it with weapons brandished, skeletal trophies on proud display, as if daring it to advance.
Lord of the Night (warhammer 40,000) Page 9
