by Braden Campbell, Mark Clapham, Ben Counter, Chris Dows, Peter Fehervari, Steve Lyons
He maintained as steady a heading as he could, tearing carelessly through vines and branches. He ran until the strands of grey smoke ahead of him parted, giving way to dappled sunlight. His armour’s sensors could tell him where he was now: not far from where he had left the Imperial Guardsman, as he had intended.
He looked back towards the fog cloud to see the fiery trail of a flare streaking out of it. The flare exploded as it struck the forest canopy, sending tendrils far and wide. The surviving warlocks had sounded the alarm. Soon, too, the cloud would dissipate, and they would be able to use their senses – all of their senses – to find him.
He had made it easy enough for them. He had let them hear him running, and left a trail that even a neophyte could follow. Setorax didn’t have much time.
He made his way back to the guardsman. He was in a highly agitated state, almost firing on the Space Marine when he saw him. Setorax waved aside his garbled apologies.
‘You want to get out of here?’ he asked him, brusquely.
The guardsman nodded.
‘What happened back there?’ he whispered, breathlessly. ‘I thought I heard–’
Setorax talked over him. ‘When I give you the word, run as far as you can in that direction.’ He pointed eastwards. ‘Do not engage the eldar, but do not stop or deviate from your course for any reason. When you can run no further–’
‘But I thought you were taking me back to–’
The Space Marine pressed a small, metallic disc into the guardsman’s good hand, which was trembling.
‘When you can run no further,’ he repeated, ‘activate this. Then hide it as best you can. After that, you may defend yourself if you wish.’
‘What is that? Is that a–’
‘You will be doing the Emperor a valuable service,’ said Setorax, gravely. Then, before the guardsman could speak again, he barked at him, ‘Now, go!’
The guardsman hesitated for a second, as if trying to decide which frightened him more, his enemies or his nominal ally. He decided to take his chances, such as they were, with the former.
As the man scurried off eastwards, Setorax slipped away in the opposite direction, a silent shadow once more.
It wasn’t long before he detected the first signs of pursuit.
The eldar weren’t close enough for Setorax to hear them, but he felt the ground trembling with the footsteps of their dragon mounts. At least two beasts had joined the hunt, he judged. That was good. The more the better, as long as they were hunting the wrong quarry – which they were. The tremors were lessening in severity as the hunters headed further eastwards, away from him.
‘When you can run no further,’ he had said. He had meant, ‘When the Exodites catch up to you, intent upon bloody revenge.’ He wondered if they would torture the guardsman before they killed him – could they resist the temptation? They might suspect that he hadn’t been working alone. They would find no evidence to confirm this suspicion, however, and with luck they’d have more pressing concerns by then.
Setorax had gone far enough west. He veered northwards again, then north-east, coming around behind his foes. He found another crystal formation, this one with the look of a stunted tree about it, but it was unattended. His auspex informed him that he was nearing his target coordinates.
An icon flared red inside his helmet. He allowed himself a grunt of satisfaction. The Imperial Guardsman – likely the late Imperial Guardsman – had served his purpose. He had activated the locator beacon that Setorax had given him. He must have hidden it well, too, or simply flung it far away as the dragon riders pounced on him, because a full minute passed before its signal cut out.
Long enough.
Setorax’s auto-senses had a fix on the beacon’s position. That meant his kill team knew where it was, too. And that changed everything.
Another pair of dragon riders thundered across Setorax’s path.
They were clearly in a hurry to be somewhere. He waited for their footsteps to die down. In their rush, they had left a clear trail for him to follow, back to their point of origin. The Exodite encampment. He knew he was close to it now.
He almost ran into several more eldar hastening up the same trail in the dragons’ wake. He hid from a group of eight of them. Most of them were warriors, but there were two among them that he judged to be warlocks, from their dress.
The encampment was where he had expected it to be, based on Astra Militarum reports and a strike cruiser’s orbital scans of the forest. It was small, so the scans had been unable to pinpoint it precisely. It comprised a mere half-dozen tents – though each of these was an elaborate, multi-layered pavilion, woven from the dyed fur of some beast or other, supported by an intricate web of external ropes and timber poles. The tents stood in a rough circle around the ashes of a recent fire.
This was only a temporary base, erected by the Exodites upon their return to this world. The portal that had brought them here was probably close by. It hadn’t shown on the orbital scans either, so was likely no more than a sliver, only wide enough to step through. Setorax knew he could search for it for months and never find it.
He could hear no sounds, just the flapping of the tents themselves in the breeze. The camp appeared to be deserted. He knew better than to believe that, of course.
It did seem, however, that his strategy had proven successful. The Exodites, their farseers, had seen his kill team coming. They had been prepared to greet them. Then, a beacon had been activated behind the Exodite lines, and the kill team – after wasting much time with discussion, he didn’t doubt – had altered their heading.
Whatever they thought of Setorax, they respected his abilities. They would have identified his beacon’s unique signature and known he had employed it for a reason. They were no longer marching into an eldar ambush. And the eldar themselves knew this – their farseers would certainly have divined it – and were scrambling to adjust their tactics accordingly.
It was always useful to have a distraction.
Setorax had already killed one eldar farseer. Experience suggested that there would be at least two more; including one more experienced, more powerful than the others, acting as their leader. This one, at least, was unlikely to leave the encampment, unlikely to expose itself to danger. It had sent its warriors away, however – even some of its warlocks, as Setorax had seen – to meet the approaching threat.
It would never be more vulnerable to a stealth attack than it was right now.
There were tripwires set around the clearing. They were strung through the undergrowth, invisible to anyone who didn’t know to look for them. The crystalline filaments stretched up to the branches of nearby trees, in which comparatively low-tech warning chimes were concealed.
Setorax stepped over each wire in turn, mindful not to brush against them. Then he slid across a narrow patch of open ground and took cover behind the closest tent.
He had timed his arrival well. The sun was setting. The forest was being gradually leeched of colour and its shadows were lengthening. Nocturnal creatures were beginning to stir in the brush, squeaking and rustling.
Setorax drew his knife and slowly, carefully, scored a vertical slit in the tent. He teased the flaps aside with his fingers and peered through. His auto-senses took a moment to adjust to the dimness within, to confirm that the tent was empty.
He sliced further, eventually creating a gap that he could slip his armoured form through. Setorax crept through the tent and hunkered down behind its entrance. Each time the breeze stirred it, he was able to look out across the campsite. From this vantage point, he could see into three more tents. They appeared to be empty too.
Then the flap of another tent bulged, and a figure emerged from it and stood still, straight-backed. It was another warlock; and it must have sensed something amiss. It cocked its head, alert for the slightest disturbance in the air. In its right hand it clutched a tall spear, silver and studded with gems. The spear hummed quietly, suffused with arcane power.
The warlock’s dark eyes roved around the encampment, gleaming through the round holes in its mask. Even cloaked in shadows as Setorax was, he knew its witch-sight would detect his aura. He was going to have to fight it.
An eruption of sound, from somewhere to his left, saved him.
One of the squeaking creatures he had heard burst out of the undergrowth – a small one, it sounded like, perhaps fleeing from a predator – and blundered into the tripwires. It hissed and screeched as it tied itself up, alarm bells clanging in the trees.
The warlock took three strides, turning its back to Setorax, and hurled its spear. He heard a thunk, a whimper, and both beast and bells were abruptly silenced.
By then, Setorax had darted back through the tent and was climbing out through the slit he had cut. He heard a harsh voice, raised in question. He judged its source to be the tent from which the warlock had appeared.
For all his dealings with the eldar, he had never deciphered their tortuous language, nor did he care to. The Exodites had likely evolved their own impenetrable dialect, anyway. He could judge the tone of the warlock’s answer, however, which was calm and reassuring. It was claiming to have everything under control.
Belying that sentiment, it was approaching Setorax’s tent – the one from which he had just escaped – suspiciously. Its humming spear had returned to its hand, by some sorcery that disgusted Setorax but didn’t surprise him. The sound gave away its position as surely as any locator beacon would. Setorax crept around the side of the tent, between its guy ropes, in time to see the warlock disappearing inside.
He slipped through behind it, his knife at the ready.
In the moment that the warlock saw the tear in the back of the tent, as it opened its mouth to cry out and began to turn, Setorax pulled the creature’s head back and cut its windpipe with his blade. He kept a firm grip on the body until the last of its life had bled out of it. Then he lowered it carefully to the ground.
For several minutes, he waited inside the tent, letting the silence settle. Only now did he let himself think about the peril he had been in, the risk he had taken.
The warlock he had killed had carried a rare and precious weapon. It must have been a potent psyker, perhaps on the path to becoming a farseer. In a fair fight, face-to-face, he knew it would likely have slaughtered him.
Three or more such warlocks could have given his kill team a fight, had he brought them with him. At least, they’d have held them at a standstill long enough for eldar warriors to make it back here and lend their arms to the effort. The ensuing battle would have been long and hard, with casualties on both sides.
Setorax had been caught up in many such melees himself. Too many.
He had felt the crush of armoured bodies around him, breathed in the stink of burning chainsword oil, felt the hairs on the back of his neck pricking up as psychic energy charged the air. Most of all, he loathed the noise that filled his ears – the resounding clashes of metal on metal, the percussion cracks of gunfire and bursting grenades, the roars of the victors and the howls of the defeated.
He knew that his battle-brothers, many of them, lived for those moments. Setorax had learned better. On Yme-Loc, he had spent three weeks behind enemy lines, moving always in the shadows of the craftworld. He had studied the eldar and had learned their strengths and weaknesses, and frustrated their repeated attempts to scry him out.
The eldar were fast and they were agile. He knew well the frustration of trying to land a blow on one of them, at least when they were aware of him. They weren’t especially tough, however; they favoured light armour, trading protection for mobility. The way to beat them was with a blow that they couldn’t see coming.
That was what made their psykers – with their warp-enhanced perceptions – especially dangerous. Setorax had learned their weaknesses too, however.
He emerged into the encampment again. He crouched in the leeward shadow of another tent there. His auspex picked up three heat signatures inside the occupied tent. Most likely, he thought, two more warlocks – along with their leader.
Ideally, he’d have waited for the latter to show itself. It couldn’t hide forever. He would have despatched it with a shot to the head, as he had the farseer in the forest. What the creature would never see or hear, it couldn’t foresee; and what it couldn’t foresee was likely to make it nervous, afraid, prone to making mistakes.
But the psykers would miss their dead fellow soon, if they hadn’t already.
Setorax fired a blind grenade through the flap of the tent.
It was a perfect shot. Smoke billowed out through the narrow opening, between the tent’s overlapping layers, through the vents in its roof. A moment later, a masked figure stumbled out. It had thrown up a shield around itself, as Setorax had expected it would. He held his fire. If he could draw this creature away…
It swung towards him, firing a shuriken pistol. Setorax was already running. Tiny star-shaped projectiles shredded the corner of the tent behind him, slicing through its web of ropes. He made the relative safety of the forest, flattened himself behind a mighty spreading tree with needle-shaped leaves and turned to look for his enemy, but it had disappeared. It had taken to the shadows itself.
The warlock knew where Setorax was, but it was hidden from him. He had to reverse that state of affairs if he wanted to live.
He doubled back to the treeline, creeping up behind the farseer’s tent.
A thin grey haze still clung to it, but there was no sign of movement either from within our without. Setorax scanned the tent again and found it empty.
He was alone, outmatched. Perhaps he ought to have abandoned the mission, he thought, to melt back into the shadows and find his way back to his kill team. But then, everything he had done so far would count for nothing.
So he waited instead. For several minutes, he didn’t so much as twitch a muscle. He was like a dark, metallic statue. He had crouched like this for hours at a time before. When his enemies were sure he had indeed escaped into the forest, when they lowered their guards, he would still be here, a mere breath away from them.
If they didn’t find him first. Was that the breeze rustling the leaves above him, he wondered, or an eldar crawling along a branch towards him? Was that the snout of a forest animal poking out of the undergrowth, or was it a gun barrel?
A shadow flitted between the eldar tents, accompanied by a low, familiar hum. Two figures met over the ashes of the fire, and exchanged urgent whispers. Setorax eased himself forwards to get a better look at them. One was the warlock that had fired at him before, now clutching its dead fellow’s silver spear. The other carried a glowing blade.
There was something behind him.
He didn’t know what had sparked that realisation. He had seen nothing, heard nothing, he just knew. He whirled around, saw nothing still. He raised his bolt pistol all the same; and suddenly, it was as if a gauze had fallen from his eyes, as the warlock – the one that had been there all along – came at him through the trees.
It had clouded Setorax’s senses, his very thoughts. It had happened to him before; he should have sensed it. On some instinctual level, he had.
The creature sliced at him with a witchblade, which crackled as it channelled its wielder’s own psychic power. Setorax was barely able to twist out of the way of its thrust. The air around the blade rippled, as if it were cleaving reality itself. He didn’t doubt that, had the warlock been able to surprise him, it would have stabbed just as easily through his armour, into his back.
The warlock, certainly, had expected him to die – it wasn’t prepared for him to fight back. Setorax emptied his bolt pistol into its face. It reeled away from him with a howl. He didn’t stop to confirm that it was dead. He could hear its fellows running up behind him, and a familiar hum rapidly growing in volume.
He whirled around as the humming spear streaked towards him, energised as the witchblade had been. It grazed his armour between the ribs, causing startled flashes in his helmet displ
ays. Setorax lowered his head and fired his jump pack.
The remaining two warlocks leapt for cover, but his auto-senses had anticipated their trajectories. He rocketed into one of them, the one that had thrown the spear at him and thus disarmed itself. His momentum carried it clear across the encampment.
A heavy tent arrested their flights, and folded around them. Tangled up in its fabric, they wrestled furiously, the advantage clearly with the stronger of them. The warlock couldn’t scramble away from its attacker, couldn’t make use of its superior dexterity, couldn’t catch its breath long enough to bring its psychic abilities to bear.
Setorax pummelled the warlock relentlessly, shattering its bones.
He heard the spear coming up behind him again and dived out of its way.
This time, however, it hadn’t been targeting him. The weapon returned to its wielder’s hand, which closed around it reflexively. It was the last move the warlock made. The spear fell silent, clutched between its stiffening fingers.
Setorax rolled to his feet to confront what he hoped was the final warlock. It was marching towards him, eyes blazing, witchblade drawn. He had no choice but to fight it head-on. He drew his knife. He let the warlock come to him.
And it was just as it had always been.
The clamour of battle numbed his ears. There was only himself and his opponent in the world, only this one tiny patch of ground. Setorax swung, thrust, sliced at the warlock, but it danced around his attacks, in the process delivering a few expert strikes of its own. Its own blade scored criss-cross lines across his chestplate, defacing the Imperial aquila and fracturing the armour over his right hip.
Seeing the weak point it had created, the warlock smashed its blade into Setorax’s hip again, forcing his leg to buckle underneath him, driving him to one knee. He thought he heard the eldar laughing, taking pleasure in his pain, savouring the taste of vengeance.
