[Night Lords 02] - Blood Reaver

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  The hunter hesitated. Lord? Begging, he was used to. The honorific, he was not.

  This time the pain started at his temples, a pressing, knifing plunge to the centre of his skull. The hunter roared and raised his axe. As he moved closer, the humans cowered, embracing one another and weeping.

  “A fine display,” the hunter drawled, “of Imperial soldiering.”

  He swung at them, and the axe-blade’s grinding teeth met shining metal with a ringing crash.

  Another figure stood before him—the whining prophet himself. Their weapons were locked, the blade of gold risen in defence of the cowering Imperials. His own brother was barring his bloodshed.

  “Talos,” the hunter spoke the name through blood-wet lips. “Blood. Blood for the Blood God. Do you see?”

  “I am done with this.”

  Each crash against his faceplate jerked his head and jarred his senses. His vision blurred over and over in quick succession, his neck snapping back hard enough to send him staggering. The corridor rang with the echo of metal on armour. Disoriented, the hunter snarled as he realised his brother had struck him in the face three times with the butt of his bolter. His mind was so slow. It was difficult to think through the pain. He sensed rather than felt his hands losing their grip on his weapons. The axe and the gladius fell to the ground.

  As he regained his balance, he beheld the chapel, and… No. Wait. This was no chapel. It was a corridor. A corridor aboard the—

  “Talos, I—”

  The dull clang of steel on ceramite echoed again, and the hunter’s head was wrenched to the side, the force pulling at his creaking backbone. Talos spun the blade of gold, while the hunter crashed down to the grilled decking onto his hands and knees.

  “Brother?” Uzas managed the word through bleeding lips. It was spinal torment to raise his head, but there—behind an overturned table, the floor strewn with home-made trinkets and curios of scavenged metal—two ragged, filthy humans were recoiling from him. An ageing male and female, their faces streaked with grime. One wore a blindfold in the ever-present darkness. A Covenant tradition.

  The hunter turned his head as his brother’s footfalls drew closer. “Talos. I didn’t know I was on the ship. I needed…” He swallowed at the cold threat of judgment in his brother’s emotionless eye lenses. “I thought…”

  The prophet aimed the point of his golden blade at the hunter’s throat.

  “Uzas, hear me well, even if only once in your wretched life. I will kill you the moment another word leaves your viperous lips.”

  The smell of old blood and unwashed metal stained the air around them. Servitors hadn’t been directed to clean this chamber in many months.

  “He has gone too far.” Mercutian made no effort to hide the reprimand in his voice. “When I stood with Seventh Claw, we didn’t avoid gathering for fear of tearing out each others’ throats.”

  “Seventh Claw is dead,” Xarl grinned. “So however they governed themselves, it didn’t pay off in the end, did it?”

  “With respect, brother, watch your mouth.” Mercutian’s up-hiver accent was clipped and regal, while Xarl’s swam in the gutter.

  Xarl bared his teeth in what would, in a human, have been a smile. In his scarred Legionary’s features, it was a predator’s challenge.

  “Children, children,” Cyrion chuckled. “Isn’t it lovely when we gather like this?”

  Talos let them argue. He watched from the side of the chamber, his eye lenses tracking every movement, his thoughts remaining his own. His brothers clashed with the banter and baiting so typical of warriors who struggled to keep each other’s company away from the battlefield. Each of them wore their hybrid armour: repaired, repainted, re-engineered and resealed a thousand times since they were granted ownership of it so many years before. His own armour was an efficient mess of conflicting marks, formed of trophies taken from a century’s worth of slain enemies.

  Chained to the interrogation slab in the centre of the room, Uzas twitched again, a reflexive muscle spasm. The joints of his armour whirred with each tremor.

  Sometimes, in rare moments of silence and introspection, the prophet wondered what their gene-sire would think of them now: broken, corrupted, wearing stolen armour and bleeding through every battle they couldn’t flee from. He looked at each of his brothers in turn, a targeting cross hair caressing their images in silent threat. The bleached skulls and cracked helms of Blood Angels hung from their armour. Each wore expressions that melded bitterness, dissatisfaction and directionless anger. Like war hounds close to slipping the leash, they barked at one another, and their fists forever strayed near holstered weapons.

  His single footstep thudded an echo around the confines of the torture chamber.

  “Enough.”

  They fell silent at last, but for Uzas, who was mumbling and drooling again.

  “Enough,” Talos repeated, gentler now. “What do we do with him?”

  “We kill him.” Xarl stroked a fingertip along his own jawline, where the jagged scar from a Blood Angel gladius had refused to heal cleanly. “We break his back, slit his throat, and kick him out of the closest airlock.” He pantomimed a slow, sad wave. “Farewell, Uzas.”

  Cyrion took a breath but said nothing. Mercutian shook his head, the gesture one of lamentation, not disagreement.

  “Xarl is right.” Mercutian gestured to the prone form of their brother bound to the table. “Uzas has fallen too far. With three nights to indulge his bloodlust on the station, he had no excuse for losing control on board the Covenant. Do we even know how many he killed?”

  “Fourteen human crew, three servitors, and Tor Xal from Third Claw.” As he spoke, Cyrion watched the prone form chained to the table. “He took five of their heads.”

  “Tor Xal,” Xarl grunted. “He was almost as bad as Uzas. His death is no loss. Third Claw is little better. They’re weak. We’ve all seen them in the sparring circles. I could kill half of them alone.”

  “Every death is a loss,” said Talos. “Every death diminishes us. And the Branded will want retribution.”

  “Don’t start that.” Xarl leaned back against the wall, rattling the meat-hooks that hung there on corroded chains. “No more lectures, thank you. Look at the fool. He drools and twitches, after slaughtering twenty of the crew on a deluded whim. Already, the serfs are whispering of rebellion. Why is his life worth sparing?”

  Mercutian turned black eyes to Talos. “The Blood Angels cost us a lot of crew. Even with the menials from Ganges, we must be careful in rationing human life to a madman’s chainblade. Xarl is right, brother. We should cast the serpent aside.”

  Talos said nothing, listening to each of them in turn.

  Cyrion didn’t meet any of their gazes. “The Exalted has ordered him destroyed, no matter what we decide here. If we’re going against that order, we need to have a damn fine reason.”

  For a while, the brothers stood in silence, watching Uzas thrash against the chains that held him down. It was Cyrion who turned first, the servos in his neck purring smoothly as he regarded the door behind them.

  “I hear something,” he said, reaching for his bolter. Talos was already sealing the collar locks on his helm.

  And then, from the corridor beyond, came a vox-altered voice.

  “First Claw… We have come for you.”

  With Tor Xal dead, Dal Karus found himself shouldering an unexpected burden.

  In better days, such potential promotion would have come with a ceremony and honour markings added to his armour. And in better days, it would have also been a promotion he actually desired, rather than one he fought for out of desperation. If he did not lead, then one of the others would. Such a catastrophe was to be avoided at all costs.

  “I lead us now,” Garisath had said. He’d gestured with his chainsword, aiming the deactivated blade at Dal Karus’ throat. “I lead us.”

  “No. You are unworthy.” The words were not Dal Karus’, despite how they echoed his thoughts.
/>   Vejain had stepped forwards, his own weapons drawn, and started circling around Garisath. Before he realised what he was doing, Dal Karus found himself doing the same. The rest of the Branded retreated to the edges of the chamber, abstaining from the leadership challenge either from caution, prudence, or the simple knowledge that they could not best the three warriors that now advanced upon one another.

  “Dal Karus?” Garisath’s laughter crackled over the vox. Each of them had donned their helmets as soon as they’d learned of Tor Xal’s demise. The action demanded retribution, and they would deal with it as soon as their new leader was affirmed. “You cannot be serious.”

  Dal Karus didn’t answer. He drew his chainsword with one hand, leaving his pistol holstered, for these ritual challenges were made only with blades. Garisath hunched low, ready for either of the others to attack. Vejain, however, was edging aside, suddenly hesitant.

  As with Garisath, Vejain hadn’t expected Dal Karus to move into the heart of the chamber. He was more cautious, stepping away and casting red-lensed glances between his two opponents.

  “Dal Karus,” Vejain turned the name into a bark of vox. “Why do you step forward?”

  In answer, Dal Karus inclined his head towards Garisath. “You’d let him lead us? He must be challenged.”

  Garisath’s mouth grille emitted another grainy chuckle. The burn markings blackening his armour—those curving Nostraman runes branded deep into the ceramite—seemed to writhe in the gloom.

  “I will take him,” Vejain grunted. His armour bore similar burns, depicting his own deeds in Nostraman glyphs. “Will you then challenge me?”

  Dal Karus exhaled slowly, letting the sound rasp from his helm’s speaker grille. “You won’t win. He will kill you, Vejain. But I’ll avenge you. I will cut him down when he’s weakened.”

  Garisath listened to this exchange with a smile behind his skullish faceplate. He couldn’t resist gunning the trigger of his chainsword. It was all the bait Vejain needed.

  “I will take him,” the warrior insisted, and charged forwards. The two Night Lords met in a circle of their brothers, chainswords snarling and revving as the blades scraped across layered armour the colour of Terran midnight.

  Dal Karus looked away at the end, which came with both inevitability and infuriating speed. The blades were almost worthless against Legion war plate, and both warriors fell into the practised, traitorous brutality of chopping at each other’s armour joints. Vejain grunted as a fist cracked his head back, and the single second he bared his articulated throat armour was more than enough for Garisath to finish him. The chainblade crashed against the softer fibre-bundles encasing Vejain’s neck and bit deep—deep enough to grind against bone. Shredded armour rained away. Blood slicked the machine-nerves that scattered across the chamber floor.

  Vejain fell to his hands and knees with a clang of ceramite on steel, his life gushing away through a savaged throat. Garisath finished the decapitation with a second swing of his sword. The helm clattered to the decking. The head rolled free. Garisath stopped it with his boot, and crunched it underfoot.

  He beckoned with his bloodied blade. “Next?”

  Dal Karus stepped forwards, feeling his blood sing with chemical stimulants—an aching song that spread from the pulse-point injection ports in his ancient armour. He had not raised his blade. Instead, he’d drawn his plasma pistol, which was met with disquieted mutterings. The magnetic coils ribbing the back of the weapon glowed with angry blue phosphorescence, painting a ghostly light over every Night Lord watching. The indrawn hiss of air through the muzzle’s intake valves was a rattlesnake’s blatant warning.

  “Do you all see this?” Garisath put a sneer into his voice. “Bear witness, all of you. Our brother defiles our laws.”

  The pistol juddered in Dal Karus’ grip now, the fusion weapon thrumming with the need to discharge its accrued power. “I will serve no law that does not serve us in kind.” Dal Karus risked a glance to the others. Several of them nodded. Due to his lethality with a blade, Garisath was the leader Third Claw expected, not the one they unanimously desired. Dal Karus’ gambit was founded upon it.

  “You break tradition,” one of the others, Harugan, spoke into the silence. “Lower the weapon, Dal Karus.”

  “He breaks tradition only because he has the courage enough to do so,” Yan Sar replied, earning several vox-crackling murmurs.

  “Garisath must not lead,” said another, and this too earned grunts of assent.

  “I will lead!” Garisath snarled. “It is my right!”

  Dal Karus kept the weapon as steady as its shaking power cells would allow. The timing had to be perfect: the weapon needed to be at full charge, and he could not fire unprovoked. This must bear at least some pretence of a righteous execution, not a murder.

  Acknowledgment runes chimed on his retinal display, as the members of Third Claw signalled their decision. Garisath must have seen the same, or else surrendered to his frustrations, for he gave a blurt of shrieking vox from his mouth grille and leapt forward. Dal Karus squeezed the trigger, and released the contained force of a newborn sun from the mouth of his pistol.

  Afterwards, when sight had returned to each of them, they stood motionless in their communal chamber. Each warrior’s armour was dusted with a fine layer of ash: all that remained of Garisath after the blinding flash of plasma release.

  “You made your point.” Harugan growled his disapproval, and even the smallest movement—a gesture towards Dal Karus’ weapon—sent dust powdering off his armour plating. “Nothing left to salvage now.”

  Dal Karus answered by nodding down at Vejain. “Some salvage exists. And we are not led by a madman. Take heart in that.”

  The others came forwards now, treating Vejain’s body with little more respect than they’d show to an enemy’s corpse. The body would be dragged to the apothecarion, where its gene-seed organs would be extracted. The armour would be machined off into its component pieces and divided among Vejain’s brothers.

  “Now you lead,” said Yan Sar.

  Dal Karus nodded, little pleased by the fact. “I do. Will you challenge me? Will any of you challenge me?” He turned to his brothers. None answered immediately, and it was Yan Sar that replied again.

  “We will not challenge you. But retribution beckons, and you must lead us to it. First Claw killed Tor Xal.”

  “We have lost three souls this day. One to treachery, one to misfortune, one to necessity.” Dal Karus’ own beaked faceplate was a Mark-VI helm of avian design, painted a dull red to match the others of Third Claw. Snaking burn scars were branded deep into the composite metal. “If we go against First Claw, we will lose more. And I have no wish to fight the prophet.”

  He didn’t add that one of the reasons he’d killed Garisath had been in the hope of avoiding the fight now threatening them. “We are no longer of Halasker’s companies. We are the Branded, Third Claw, of the Exalted’s warband. We are Night Lords, born anew. A new beginning. Let us not baptise our genesis in the blood of our brothers.”

  For a moment, he believed he’d swayed them. They shared glances and muttered words. But reality reasserted itself with crushing finality mere seconds later.

  “Vengeance,” promised Yan Sar.

  “Vengeance,” the others echoed.

  “Then vengeance it is,” Dal Karus nodded, and led his brothers into the very battle he’d murdered Garisath to prevent.

  Soon after the accord was reached, the remaining members of Third Claw stalked down the central spinal corridor of the prison deck, blades and bolters in gauntleted hands. What little light existed on the Covenant of Blood played across their armour, and shadows pooled in the black rune brands burned into the war plate.

  Voices ahead, from behind the closed bulkhead leading into a side chamber.

  “Do we ambush them?” Yan Sar asked.

  “No,” Harugan chuckled. “They know we will not let Tor Xal go unavenged. They are already expecting us, I am sure of it
.”

  The Branded moved closer to the sealed door.

  “First Claw,” Dal Karus called, taking pains to keep any reluctance from bleeding into his voice. “We have come for you.”

  Cyrion watched his auspex’s monochrome display screen. The hand-held scanner clicked every few seconds, giving a wash of audible static.

  “I count seven out there,” he said. “Eight or nine, if they’re bunched up.”

  Talos moved to the doorway, uncoupling his bolter from the mag-lock plating on his thigh armour. The weapon was bulky, rendered ornate by bronzing, bearing two wide-mouth barrels. He still felt a stab of reluctance to carry it so openly. Its bulk didn’t discomfort him, but its legacy did.

  He called through the sealed door. “We’ll settle the blood debt with a duel. Xarl will fight for First Claw.”

  In the chamber, Xarl gave a dirty laugh behind his faceplate. No answer came.

  “I’ll deal with this,” Talos said to First Claw. He blink-clicked icons on his retinal display, summoning up the runes for other squads in the vox array. The Branded, Third Claw, flashed active.

  “Dal Karus?” he asked.

  “Talos.” Dal Karus’ voice was low over the occluded vox-channel. “I am sorry for this.”

  “How many of you are out there?”

  “An interesting question, brother. Does it matter?”

  Worth a try. Talos took a breath. “We count seven of you.”

  “Then let us settle on that. Seven still outnumbers four, prophet.”

  “Five, if I free Uzas.”

  “Seven still outnumbers five.”

  “But one of my five is Xarl.”

  Dal Karus grunted reluctant acknowledgement. “That is indeed so.”

  “How did you come to lead Third Claw?”

  “I cheated,” said Dal Karus. With the words spoken as simple confession, he offered no justification, nor any excuse. Irritatingly, Talos found himself warming to the other warrior.

  “This will bleed us both,” Talos said.

  “I am not blind to that, prophet. And I did not spit on my allegiance to Halasker just to die on this crippled ship mere months later.” There was nothing of anger in Dal Karus’ voice. “I do not blame you for Uzas’… instability. I dealt with Tor Xal for long enough myself that I am all too familiar with the affliction of taint. But the blood debt must be paid, and the Branded will not settle for a duel of champions. My own actions may have annihilated any lingering worth in that tradition among us, but even before I acted, they were howling for revenge.”