Pariah: Eisenhorn vs Ravenor

by Dan Abnett

  I think the sword may have been cursed, or blessed, or otherwise invested with some power. I do not understand such things. These technologies are ancient and arcane. Certainly, his weapon was a singular thing. The physical force of the blow – which, incidentally, would have cloven through and brought down one of the stone columns of the basilica, in my opinion – was entirely beside the point. It was, I am sure, the interaction of materials, the clash of energies, the admixture of warp properties that do not comfortably co-exist in the same plane of the universe. The spectral essence of the thought-form and the foetid energy smoking off the edge of the sword were materials in utter, irreconcilable conflict.

  The universe screamed as it tore. It is not a sound that the human mind is comfortable hearing. I have heard its like a precious few times in my life, and just once would have been too many. The universe shrieked. It squealed with inarticulate pain as its fabric ripped apart. Sword and thought-form tried to occupy the same space and, through some esoteric function, reality would not bear it, as with some substance and some reactive anti-substance.

  As I ran through the door, shoulders down against the wind and pressure blasts coming from behind me, I glanced back in time to see the Traitor Marine thrown back from the impact, and the thought-form lose its coherence and spill out across the room as a bright, wild storm of light. The thought-form tried to resolve itself, its jagged shape spitting out colour and heat. Its bloodshot light had stained and grown darker as though it was wounded, or angry. The Traitor Marine found his footing again and resumed his attack, ploughing the wretched blade into the hellish light once more.

  The Traitor Marine turned briefly and yelled something at his helmed companion. His fellow glanced around, sighted me at the door, and turned to pursue me. Two of the wardens got in his way, more by accident than design. Without breaking stride, he slapped the back of his left fist upwards and sent one flying away, neck broken and skull pulverised. The immense bolter weapon in his right fist clubbed the other down, so that he lay mangled and bloody from the one blow as though he had been run over by a cargo transporter.

  The helmed warrior was almost at the door. His size to speed ratio defied reason and common sense.

  I was outside, beyond the old rusted hatch. There was no sign of the mendicant. Ahead of me, in the darkness and the cold, lay the grand staircase, its candlelit bone treads extended luminously up and away from me towards some notion of safety.

  I took the stairs at a run, two at a time, three even. The thousands of candles glued and wedged onto the banisters on either side of me flashed by like fireflies, and the breeze of my flight made some of them go out and trail grey threads of smoke from their last embers. I ran on. I would not stop unless something stopped me.

  Yet the staircase seemed even longer than it had done coming down it. The top was still so far away, a candlelit path stretching up into the cavernous dark.

  And something was behind me. Something was going to stop me.

  The Traitor Marine emerged from the reading room into the darkness at the foot of the staircase, spotted me, and launched himself up the steps after me. He accelerated. He came up like a bull ape, almost pounding on his hands and feet, his legs and arms hurling his body mass forwards in a gallop that shook the staircase and shivered all the candles. He came six or eight or ten steps at a time. He had clamped his bolter to his back. From that I took some consolation, for it indicated that he did not simply intend to shoot me, or kill me, which he could so easily have done without giving chase.

  He wanted me alive.

  The more I thought about this, the less it seemed like consolation.

  I could not outrun him. I was fit and motivated by fear and self-preservation, but even so I was only, at best, two-thirds of the way up the staircase. The Traitor Marine was closing fast.

  I lost my footing once, and went down on one hand, recovered, and then fell again. I fell onto the edges of the stairs, bruising my hands and arms, but leapt to my feet again and kept running.

  It was hopeless.

  He was just metres behind me. The bone staircase was shaking under his weight as though the earth was quaking. I think I screamed at that point, though it was more a furious expression of helplessness and frustration than a cry of mortal dread. I threw the force pole behind me, and it bounced ineffectually off his shoulder. Fists clenched, arms pumping, I ran on, up, three stairs at every bound.

  There was a man in front of me. He was standing on the bone stairs in my path looking down at me, framed by the receding lines of candles. His craggy face was scarred. He was dressed in black, but his long, heavy coat was shot through with green thread and had an elegant golden trim.

  He had a large, old sword in his hand.

  It was the mysterious man from the pews, the one I had taken to be a veteran officer of the Guard.

  He looked me straight in the eyes as I ran towards him, apparently oblivious of the monstrous crimson horror that was right at my heels.

  His face was expressionless.

  His eyes found mine and he said, ‘Get down.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Near to death

  It was not an order, or even advice. It instantly became what I was doing. In some way that I could not explain, he had enforced his will upon me with those words. I immediately fell flat on the stairs at his feet as surely as though I had tripped. I remember seeing his black-booted feet three or four steps up the staircase from me. The boots were secured to heavy, black augmetic frames that shored up the man’s legs under his coat.

  Nevertheless, he was not limited in motion.

  I landed flat at his feet, but rolled aside almost at once so I would not be trampled by the Traitor Marine behind me. I rolled fast, banging my back, elbows and the back of my skull against the wood and bone banisters. Hot wax showered down on me from the hundreds of rattled candles.

  As I rolled, I saw the man leave the stairs in a great, dauntless bound. He cleared me entirely, leaping off the stairs into the face of the oncoming monster, to meet it head-on. He was in mid-air above me, his sword scything through the darkness in a single-handed stroke as he leapt, heading for the inevitable impact.

  They struck. From his mid-air leap, the descending man, big by human standards, met the ascending giant. I was all but underneath them when they connected. The mutual impact stopped them both, and slammed them off each other. Only the old, broad sword in the man’s fists refused to rebound. It simply finished its arc.

  The man fell backwards onto the stairs, almost crushing me beneath his ironbound mass. The bone treads of the stairs cracked under his impact, and I heard him grunt in pain. He thrashed, sword in hand, to get back on his feet.

  The Traitor Marine was thrown backwards down the staircase. He did not fall far. In truth, I think he was surprised that a man, even a large one, had been able to check him in his tracks at all. The Traitor Marine fell clumsily, striking the banister rail and half-sliding down it, sending candles and fragments of wax exploding out from under his armoured body. Some of the candles were still alight. He cleared four or five metres of banister rail of the candles that had been stuck to it forever.

  But he was Adeptus Astartes. He regained his footing. He stopped his half-fall, half-slide. He sprang forwards again, coming back up at us.

  Then he stopped. He had suddenly realised something.

  There was a slit in his armour. It started at the base of his neck and went across his chest and out under his right arm. It was only a hairline crack, a barely noticeable fissure. But it was clean through his armour. As he moved, we could see the two edges of the slit moving against each other, as if they were independently articulated segments. We could see the bright lips of the sheared metal and ceramite.

  Then the blood came. It jetted out of the slit, great squirting gouts of black blood that stank in the cold darkness.

  The Traitor Marine roared in pain or outrage, and staggered back down a step or two, his huge left hand clamped to the thin but
astonishing slit. Blood spurted out between his fingers and streamed down the belly and flanks of his armour.

  Back on his feet, the man assumed a braced position, his sword ready in a two-handed grip. His shoulders were hunched. He glanced back at me.

  ‘Get out,’ he said.

  Once again, I had no choice. His will compelled me. I leapt up and started to run up the stairs again, though my legs were on fire, my lungs were straining, and my heart was bursting out of my chest.

  I ran. I ran, and I left him to face the Traitor Marine. I ran because he had made me run. But he had not willed me not to look back, so as I ran, I did just that.

  I saw the Traitor Marine roar. I saw the black blood stop its atrocious jetting and squirting as the transformed biology of the Adeptus Astartes made repairs, clotted the bleeding, and closed the wound. I saw the Traitor Marine unclamp his bolter and bring it up to aim at the man with the sword.

  It fired once, and the sword swept to swat the bolter round aside. The round exploded in the darkness off the right-hand side of the staircase.

  The bolter fired again. Another slice of the blade, and the next round stung away to explode in the darkness to the left.

  The Traitor Marine made to fire again. By whatever means the man was deflecting the shots, it was an astonishing trick, but it was not one he could keep repeating for a whole magazine of shells. Whatever his enhancements, strengths and gifts, the man was human, and he was limited by his humanity in ways that the Traitor Marine simply was not. The man was facing the apogee of martial technology, a fighting form developed and perfected ten thousand years ago and never improved upon. The Traitor Marine was a post-human being with weapons and armour beyond anything a man could hope to wield.

  The Traitor Marine made to make his third shot. The man cried out. This time, he used his will on his enemy instead of on me.

  He yelled, ‘Stop!’

  It didn’t hold the Traitor Marine for very long – probably no more than a second or two – but it made the monster hesitate before firing again.

  In the tiny window of opportunity that he had constructed for himself, the man leapt forwards, brought the old sword down in a vicious two-handed chop, and split the Traitor Marine’s helmed head in two.

  The man yanked the blade out. Blood and organic tissue sprayed out with it. The Traitor Marine stayed on his feet for a few moments. His beaked helm remained on his shoulders, but the two halves of it, severed down to the level of the chin and neck seal, knocked and ground against each other like two parts of a nutshell.

  The Traitor Marine fell over backwards and collapsed down the staircase in a series of heavy, resonating impacts, falling like a hefty item of furniture. Eventually, about six metres down from the place where he had been killed, the Traitor Marine’s body came to rest on the stairs, on its back, head towards the foot of the staircase. Black blood streamed out of his wounds and ran down the yellowed bone steps of the staircase like a peaty forest spring, or oil from an overturned can, cascading from one step to the next like a cataract.

  His back to me, the man lowered his sword, and then slumped, one hand on the banister to support himself, as if entirely exhausted and spent.

  I did not stop. I did not go back. I kept running. He had willed me to do so and, unable to argue, that’s what I did.

  I left him behind in the candlelit dark, and headed for the surface.

  CHAPTER 29

  Which concerns an escape from imminent dangers

  The cutros worn by the saint-masked wardens of the basilica were broad, twin-edged swords about the length of a grown man’s femur. The wardens had drawn them from their copper scabbards, ready. As I came out through the recessional under the high thrones, armed wardens were spreading out through the precinct and the space around the great altar to establish a cordon.

  The disturbances below ground had been enough to set off alarms. Bells were ringing, some of them furiously, and garbled public broadcasts were issuing through the vast, distorting speaker network. Down the canyon of the altar processional, I could see a great disturbance moving through the vast assembled crowds of worshippers and pilgrims as they were urged to leave the building.

  Nearer at hand, hundreds of clerics, scribes, rectors and other junior attendants of the basilica were hurrying out under the high thrones. There was a chatter of voices, of questions, and a distinct level of agitation. Smoke was wisping from the mouths and eyes of some of the great graven faces above us, and there was the unmistakable stink of psychomagic in the air. At least, I felt it was unmistakable. I could not believe that afterburn reek of psyker energy was not immediately detectable to all.

  My pulse was racing. I was out of breath from my exertions, and dazed by the circumstances I had experienced. I left the recessional, brushed past some of the gathering wardens, and tried to slow down.

  The man’s will was leaving me now. I was my own person again. The compulsion he had planted in me to run, and keep running, was ebbing away, but it left a residue behind, an impression in my mind of his. I kept seeing him. In the most vivid manner, I kept seeing the astonishing feats he had accomplished: inhuman feats. How does a man face down one of those beasts? Not just in terms of pitting his strength against one, utterly outmatched, but in terms of his resolve? How does a man overcome the hindbrain terror of confronting one of the Traitor Marines in full cry and stay planted in its path, let alone strike a blow?

  And how does a man wield a sword, any sword, to cut one? To knock aside the unholy fury of bolter rounds?

  Beyond the immediate terror of the moment, a greater, more existential terror filled me. What was he? What manner of creature had he been that he could even begin to do those things?

  The opportunity for this reflection was fleeting. Several of the wardens grabbed at me, and tried to detain me. I do not know if it was simply that I was not dressed in the official robes of the Ecclesiarchy, like others thereabouts, or if my agitation and desire for flight had been very obvious, or even if they had been alerted to look for me. Several closed in around me, herding me with their force poles, or sheathing their cutros so they could take hold of my arms.

  Not far away, below the choir boxes, I could see the parties of noble and aristocratic worshippers being escorted away by wardens. The wealthy and upstanding were being treated rather less roughly than me.

  I pulled away.

  ‘Hold her!’ one of the wardens ordered. The gruff voice came from behind a placid painted face with a beatific smile.

  I could not contend with them all, but I was not going to stay put. If nothing else, I had no wish to see what might follow me up out of the depths.

  I cried out, ‘Oh help! Help me, I beg you!’ in a most timorous and exercised voice.

  ‘The Archenemy is come!’ I exclaimed, letting tears spring in my eyes. ‘He has burst up out of the ground under our feet, like the Pit Fiend himself, and he comes hither to devour us all! Run, I beg you. For your souls, run!’

  My performance was enough. They shrank from me, just for a second, unsure as to whether I was raving or not. Other persons in the vicinity looked around, alarmed by the content of my exclamation. Some of the wealthy nobles reacted in alarm. I had caused a little flurry of confusion around me.

  They were not expecting me to move, thereupon, with great purpose. With the forced tears still wet upon my face, I turned and snatched a force pole from one of the wardens, and used it like a lever to pry his grip away from my arm. I then smacked it like a cane into the knuckles of another, thus freeing myself from the second-best grip upon me. A third lunged, his cutro out. I struck him firmly across the forearms, and the cutro flew into the air as he barked in pain. I caught the whirling sword by the grip as it came back down.

  I started to run. Pole in one hand, cutro in the other, I ducked around two of the wardens, saw a gap and began to sprint. My legs were tired from the chase up the bone staircase, but I did not linger. The wardens, dismayed, gave chase with a great hue and cry. T
wice I had turned the tables on their kind, once in the brass room, once above. The wardens were, essentially, ceremonial guards. Their combat training was neither rigorous nor precise, but they were soldiers, and they were armed. Now that I was clearly identified as a hostile party, rather than merely some person to detain, they would be appreciably more resolute.

  I switched back, and then darted the length of the high altar processional, scattering a party of nobles. I burst through a straggle of choristers, who were too confused to get out my way. The pursuing wardens ran after me, and one came to grief by colliding with two of the choristers. Two more wardens closed in ahead of me. I avoided one, and then found the other lunging full-tilt at me. He swung his force pole, which was active, and I managed to glance it aside with my borrowed cutro. I side-stepped, then shocked his leg out from under him with my own pole.

  He fell heavily and awkwardly, and his saint mask skidded away across the polished floor on its nose. I leapt over him, and then swerved left towards one of the great outcrops of organ pipes that rose like black kolus trees against the side of the sacred ravine. More wardens rushed me, some with significant intent. I dodged past one, but was obliged to tackle the second. He threatened me with his drawn cutro in a manner that suggested he was intending to absolve his holy order of any accusation of incompetence by deftly eviscerating me.

  I blocked, swung and reprised, turning his sharp blade away with mine three times. He countered with a loose swipe of his pole, which I ducked. Then I was forced back by two more hard sword strokes that I barely parried.

  I had not endured years of Mentor Saur’s relentless training in the drill to be humbled in a sword match. The man was strong and determined, but, though his reach and power were both greater than mine, he was overconfident. The painted saint mask also restricted his peripheral vision.

  I feinted to the side, then turned in as he over-extended a thrust past my left shoulder. I blocked his blade with my pole, stamped on an ankle, breaking it, and raked my cutro along his inner forearm, causing blood to spray. He went down. I jumped past him and pressed on.