by Nick Kyme
Praxor licked his lips. It took all of his self-control not to unsheathe his rudius and smack Scipio around the head with it. ‘You were in that sus-an membrane coma for several weeks so I shall allow for your behaviour. Do not forget your place, brother.’
‘I am of sound mind, I can assure you, Praxor.’ Scipio drew back the hood. His eyes were diamond-hard. He wasn’t about to back down. ‘And we are both sergeants. You perhaps have loftier designs.’
Now Praxor let his anger show. ‘What is your issue, brother? Ever since Karthax you have carried your aggression like a clenched fist aimed at whoever or whatever displeases you. Is that anger now focussed on me?’
‘Seekers of personal glory will only ever find the means to undo themselves,’ Scipio spat.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘They are the words of Orad. You should know them, brother.’
‘What? What are you even doing here, Scipio? Were you awaiting my arrival so you could pick a fight?’
Scipio’s mouth was a hard line. He gave nothing away, so Praxor was forced to continue without his participation.
He leaned in close. ‘Do you know why I go to the battle-cages, why I seek to perfect my warrior-self? I shall tell you, Scipio, I shall do so because you and I are brothers, we are friends. I do it to become strong, in mind and in body. You cannot blame yourself for what happened. It was frailty that Karthax exposed. It was a tragedy, but one brought about through weakness.’
‘So I have heard you claim… several times.’
Praxor frowned, incredulous.
‘I awoke from my coma days ago.’ There was a grating undercurrent to Scipio’s voice. Whether it was caused by his ire or his injuries, Praxor didn’t know. He went on. ‘Venatio had me confined to the Apothecarion while my wounds healed–’
‘A pity whatever damage was done to your head and humours was not also allowed convalescence,’ Praxor interrupted. He was in no mood for Scipio’s misplaced anger, but when he went to move around him the other Ultramarine stepped in his path. ‘You are rash, brother. That’s why you spent time on the Apothecary’s table. I would counsel caution in your future actions.’ He was no longer referring to campaigning, Praxor made that much obvious with his tone.
Scipio’s blood was up, though. He would not be denied this reckoning, ‘While my wounds healed,’ he said again, ‘I heard talk of Karthax and Orad.’
‘I did not speak ill of him, brother.’ There was a warning in Praxor’s voice, one that suggested he did not enjoy the inference Scipio was making.
‘Weakness, was it? Is that why he fell?’
Praxor clenched his fists. There was no avoiding this now. Tensions had run high between them for months. It had to come out; this was as good a way as any.
‘You know the answer to that. Now,’ he added levelly, ‘do what you came here to do.’
Scipio roared and threw himself at Praxor. Anger fuelled a rain of blows that battered the other Ultramarine before he could reply or throw up any defence. Still pumped and alert from the battle-cages, Praxor blocked a frenzied punch to the side of the head, deflecting it with his forearm before planting a jab in Scipio’s stomach. An elbow-smash to follow crunched Scipio’s shoulderblade and the combination was finished by a blade-kick to the ribs.
Scipio tumbled and rolled, grunting in pain, but got his footing quickly.
‘You’re still weak from the Apothecarion,’ said Praxor, wheeling around Scipio’s flank, forcing him to rotate. ‘Let your wounds heal and we’ll settle this in the battle-cages in the proper manner.’
Scipio shook his head. ‘We do it now.’
Praxor scowled. ‘You are a fool, Scipio. A slave to your emotions and your anger.’
‘Are you afraid, brother?’ The curled lip made Scipio’s face ugly in the half-light. There was something dark inside his eyes.
Praxor shook his head – it was inevitable then – drew the rudius and tossed it aside. This was a fist fight. He would not dishonour it further by using a weapon, even a blunted one, against an unarmed combatant. ‘You want me to break you, brother, I will break you!’
Scipio charged, but Praxor was quick to avoid his battering ram of an attack.
‘Reckless…’ He slammed a fist into Scipio’s flank. A chop to the side of his brother’s neck paralysed the nerves and sent pain sparks into his eyes. ‘And ill-considered.’
They faced off, circling one another. Despite the inappropriate setting, the hangar deck made for a perfect arena. Their audience, the servitors, continued their labours without pause or regard. The long shadows of the Thunderhawks bathed the combatants in darkness. Scipio was breathing hard, belaboured by his injuries. Praxor had yet to break sweat.
‘Where is the warrior Torias Telion has spoken so highly of?’ he goaded.
Scipio came on again. He feinted, drawing Praxor’s guard, and landed a heavy blow on the other sergeant’s cheek. A head-butt brought white dagger-flashes to Praxor’s eyes and he staggered.
‘He’s right here,’ Scipio promised and hit him again.
Despite his earlier advantage, Praxor was being worn down by his brother’s fury and was forced back a step. Sensing his superiority, Scipio leapt and came at Praxor with his fists linked in an overhead smash. Had the blow connected it would have probably shattered his clavicle but Praxor side stepped out of harm’s way, punching Scipio hard in the gut with the same motion. The other sergeant grunted then choked as the air blasted from his lungs.
Expecting that to be the end of it, Praxor relented but Scipio whirled around and caught him with a wild haymaker. He felt the bone crack and reeled at the force of the impact. An uppercut from Scipio’s other hand glanced Praxor’s chin. He had enough presence of mind to retreat defensively, so the blow was telling. Throwing up his arms, Praxor hit the side of Scipio’s head with the flat of his hands, stunning him. Dizziness made the other sergeant sluggish and Praxor used it to his gain, blocking another all-or-nothing swing and driving a knee into his brother’s stomach. Seizing Scipio’s wrist, he bent it around and used his weight to push him down to his knees. The other arm he wrapped around the neck and squeezed.
‘Yield!’ He was breathing hard, partly from exertion, partly from anger.
Scipio still struggled.
‘You’ve lost, brother. Give it up.’
Still Scipio fought. He made enough room for an elbow strike to Praxor’s gut and drove it back hard.
Praxor grunted, hurt, but held on.
‘Weakness,’ he hissed between clenched teeth, spitting phlegm. ‘Yes, you’re right, brother. It was weakness.’
Scipio roared, anger lending him strength, but Praxor didn’t let up. Rather, he pressed further.
‘But who is weak, now?’ He wrenched Scipio’s neck when he tried to move. By now the air was being cut off to his lungs, though a Space Marine could last much longer than an ordinary man in a choke-hold – even one made by another Space Marine.
Praxor leaned in so he could speak directly into Scipio’s ear, ‘You are a patrician son of Ultramar, an inheritor of Guilliman,’ he said, almost pleading. ‘This does not befit your Chapter or your heritage. Don’t dishonour that any further.’ His grip lessened, allowing Scipio to speak, albeit in a rasp.
‘I have no honour left.’
Praxor loosened his arm further. Scipio had stopped struggling now and hung like dead weight in his arms. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Do you know what happened on Karthax?’
Praxor’s eyes narrowed in confusion. ‘A tragedy, the death of a hero – we lost Orad.’
‘It was more than that. No one else knows… No one but the captain and maybe Daceus.’
‘What happened?’ A strange sensation was working its way up Praxor’s spine as he asked the question. He couldn’t quite place it; it had been a long time since he’d experienced the
emotion or one similar.
Scipio’s confession was delivered with sobs for a fallen brother. ‘I killed him, Praxor. I killed Orad.’
‘We need to move, now!’
Scipio was waving the human guerrilla fighters farther down the mountain pass, but his attention was fixed on the upper slopes behind them.
It was Largo who had spotted it, skulking in the peaks, concealed by the drifts. Not content with its feast, it still craved their skin and had come to claim it. What was more, the flayed lord was not alone – it had brought its cohorts with it. Like slavering dogs, ruddy with the life-blood of others, they galloped down through the icy crags on all fours. A wave of sheer terror had swept through the humans upon the first sighting. Men and women, those that were left of Captain Evvers’s group, had fled wildly. One had even pitched off the side of the mountain in his haste to escape. The scream only lasted a few seconds before it was lost to the wind or snuffed by the razored flanks of rocks.
‘What do we do?’ asked Brakkius. He was kneeling down by the edge of the pass, bolter aimed at the peaks where the silhouettes of necrons were steadily gaining ground on them.
‘Look how it moves,’ added Cator, a little incredulously. These things were not merely the automatons the Ultramarines had first suspected them to be; they were so much more than that. ‘An automaton should not be that agile.’
‘We can’t outrun them,’ said Scipio, once all of the humans had passed him. ‘So we fight.’ He turned to Cator. ‘Have Garrik and Auris get Herdantes back to the camp. Brakkius, Largo and I will hold back the necrons for as long as we can.’
Brakkius went to protest, as did Cator, but Scipio silenced them with a glance. ‘See it done,’ he said.
Neither Ultramarine would see their sergeant endangered but they were dutiful soldiers and followed orders.
Only Largo made no reaction. He still had unfinished business with the flayed lord – the blood of Renatus was on the fiend’s talons and he would make it pay for that. He eyed the storm intently, tracking each shadow as it moved through the drift, a patch of grey on white.
‘I’ll return as soon as Garrik and Auris are on their way,’ promised Cator. The others were at the front of the column, scouting the way ahead, all except Herdantes who was only able to limp alongside the guerrillas. His wounds were healing but it would take time. A ready bolter filled his grasp and Scipio didn’t doubt his purpose, only his combat effectiveness.
‘See that you do,’ said Scipio, clapping a hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘We’ll need all the bolters and blades we can get.’
Cator saluted and set off down the pass in search of the others.
‘That leaves the three of us for now,’ said Brakkius, somewhat redundantly. He checked the load of his weapon – the ammunition count was low. Scipio saw it flash red in the darkness. He had a similar number of shells remaining in his pistol.
Largo wasn’t watching, but breathed deeply. ‘The air is crisp and clean. I like it up here,’ he added. ‘I think I will be happy to lay my gladius down in this place.’
Scipio didn’t bother to reprimand him. It wasn’t fatalism. Largo had simply come to terms with his probable death and embraced it. If anything, Scipio admired him for it. He racked the slide of his bolt pistol. ‘Hold them off for as long as you can,’ he said, the whipping wind adding drama and sorrow to his words. ‘Let’s give our brothers every chance to reach the sanctuary of the camp.’
Brakkius nodded. His weapon was already primed.
‘Brother-sergeant,’ he said. ‘It has been an honour to cross blades and shed blood with you.’
‘I could not be prouder of the Thunderbolts,’ Scipio replied. ‘You are my warriors, my brothers.’
‘Courage and honour,’ added Largo in a level voice.
Brakkius echoed him.
‘And to the hells of the warp if we fail in this task,’ said Scipio at the end.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, bolters ready, they waited for the flayed lord to come. There’d be no precipice to send it over this time, no cunning ploy to trap or destroy it. Scipio was as proud as any warrior of Guilliman. He was one of his patrician sons, something a friend had told him long ago – a shame it took his imminent demise to realise that. But he was not dragged down by hubris, either. He knew this creature had the beating of them. He avowed he would make it work for its feast. While there was blood still pumping in his veins and the veins of his brothers, there was hope. A keening cry split the rushing of the wind, giving it a sharp edge that felt as if it could shear steel. Death was coming.
It would reach them soon.
Anger and shame warred with excitement in the mind of the Enfleshed. Since his apotheosis, a need had arisen in his jagged psyche. It was a wholly unnatural hunger. He had railed against it at first, but now he embraced it and let it consume him.
If I am damned then so be it…
His slaves scurried on all fours like pack hounds on the hunt. He resisted the urge to prostrate himself like that; he was still a noble lord of the necrontyr despite how debased his form had become. He was not an animal yet, not quite.
He revelled in his agility, leaping rocks, darting around crags and racing down the icy slopes towards his prey. Flashes boomed in the darkness below, framing the genebred humans in orange, as they unleashed their weapons.
The Enfleshed felt no fear, only anticipation of the kill, of the skinning to come. His talons clacked and scraped of their own volition at the prospect.
Flesh…
It was as if his mind was being pulled apart, stretched taut in many directions at once – loathing, self-pity, feral abandon, ennui, self-satisfying sadism. He was Sahtah no longer; only the Enfleshed existed now.
One of the slaves was struck in the chest. The Enfleshed lost sight of it as it fell with a pseudo-scream. The storm of hot metal was intensifying the closer he came to the end of the slope. Something chipped his armoured shoulder, but he paid it no heed. To his left, another slave was destroyed. The Enfleshed smiled, or at least he did so in his mind – his rictus jaw was incapable of such expression – it meant more skin for him.
I shall devour you all…
He imagined hot blood coursing down his gullet, the succulence of ripe flesh rolling around in his mouth. It was intoxicating. A final thought penetrated the shattered remnants of his memory engrams as he leapt the final few metres to the kill,
I am lost…
The heavy shells burst hot and hard against his chest as the prey tried in vain to stop him, but the Enfleshed was not to be denied. His talons fanned in a killing arc, eager to eviscerate…
…when another figure emerged through the storm.
The light surrounding him was painful to the Enfleshed’s dead eyes. The aura seemed to expand, washing over the others in a wave of azure. It was fringed by crackling bolts of power, coursing over a growing energy dome like vipers. It struck the Enfleshed mid-flight and threw him back.
A scream tore from the Enfleshed’s throat and was echoed by his slaves who felt it sympathetically. Pain snapped at his nerves, some real, some imagined – though he couldn’t tell one from the other. Blood, dried hard by the frost, cooked off his joints and servos in a ruddy haze. He tried to stand, poised to attack this newcomer and rend his face from his skull, but another bolt arced from the figure’s fingertips – his eyes were alive with power – and now the Enfleshed felt fear.
His chest was torn apart, his living metal body sloughing into slag. Sahtah, the Enfleshed – his head was so scrambled, he couldn’t tell who or what he was any more – felt his memory engrams exploding one by one. Though he grasped at it with his melted talons, he could not seize his fading identity. Sentience shrivelled and turned to dust like bones upon a pyre. Slumping to his knees, Sahtah felt oblivion approaching. It stirred a final thought in his destroyed conscious, one that would echo for aeons.
/> Peace…
Tigurius regarded the steaming remains of the necron lord with contempt as it phased out. His storm had vanquished the other flayed ones too and the mountainside was disturbingly empty barring where his psychic lightning had scorched it.
He allowed the aura around him to fade and with the absence of the light, darkness swarmed in around them again.
‘Your intervention is timely and most welcome, Lord Tigurius.’
The Chief Librarian turned at the sound of Scipio’s voice. As he nodded, it took a moment longer for the fire in his eyes to die.
‘I was travelling the Sea of Souls when I witnessed you in peril, Sergeant Vorolanus,’ he said, motes of power still drifting from his lips and an unearthly resonance in his timbre.
Scipio bowed. ‘We are glad of it.’
Tigurius looked beyond the brother-sergeant and his warriors. ‘Who are these people?’
Drawn by the lightning storm, the human guerrillas and their Ultramarine escorts were standing a little farther down the path.
Scipio glanced over his shoulder where the humans had sunk to their knees before the Librarian.
‘They are our saviours, Brother-Librarian.’
Tigurius eyed them curiously, unconvinced. ‘Get up, all of you.’ He turned back to Scipio. ‘How so?’
‘One amongst them can lead us through the mountains, bypassing the necron picket lines.’
Tigurius considered this for a moment, before answering, ‘Bring the scout with us, the others we must leave behind.’
Scipio opened his mouth to protest, but the Librarian’s steady gaze, latent with psychic power, stopped him. He nodded then gestured to the humans. ‘Captain Evvers.’
A woman, the farthest forward in the group, who had now all got to their feet, looked up.
‘You’re with us. The others–’
‘Are coming with me,’ she said firmly, shaking her head. ‘I won’t leave them, not now.’
Tigurius glowered at her impudence. He released a little of his power into his eyes, which crackled with tiny lightning sparks. ‘You will obey. This is not a negotiation.’
