Fist of Demetrius

by William King

  Flashes of light made shadows dance madly all around us, the muzzle flicker and explosive glare of all those thousands of weapons being used in the cold night air. I froze for a moment, convinced this time that I was visible to every alien eye on the battlefield. The idea that they might have been looking for targets elsewhere never even occurred to me.

  I felt something cool beneath my hand as I shifted my weight to a new position. Looking down I saw something smooth and stone-like, too rounded to be completely natural, with a texture a little like bone. It was not as cold as the surrounding rock. When I lifted it and held it closer to my eye, I saw that it had a similar look to the battle-armour the xenos were wearing. It was clearly some sort of device and I had a sudden crazy idea of exactly what sort.

  Carefully I raised it and tossed it down the hill, already strongly suspecting it was too late.

  ‘What the…’ Anton said.

  ‘Proximity sensor,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing.’

  ‘We’ve been spotted?’

  ‘Seems best to assume that.’

  Another huge burst of artillery fire lit the night overhead. I glanced over my shoulder. Some of the shadows back there suddenly looked a lot more humanoid. They moved, and not in answer to any flickering of moonbeams through the clouds. There was a whole company of the enemy down there, closing silently. The time for stealth was obviously past.

  I rose and moved forwards in a crouching run, zigzagging to make myself a harder target, moving through the boulders towards the rampart wall. As I did so another danger became more obvious. It would be just as easy to be killed by our own side. I began to shout, ‘For Macharius and the Emperor!’ I held my shotgun over my head in the classic pose of surrender. I shouted the day’s password, and then it occurred to me that the eldar could easily have tortured that out of any captive.

  A flash of our earlier idiotic conversation came to me. I began to bellow out the words of Gone for a Soldier, the ancient marching song used by Guard regiments for millennia. A searchlight probed us. Some las-bolts turned surrounding rocks cherry red. I heard Anton and Ivan singing behind me. The las-fire surrounding us moved on behind us, stabbing through the night towards the pursuing eldar.

  Heartbeats later, breath wheezing from my lips I found myself looking up at the frontal armour of a Baneblade that was being used as a gate in the rampart wall. An officer’s head leaned over and shouted, ‘What the hell are you doing down there?’

  ‘Sergeant Lemuel,’ I said. Knowing I would only have one chance to sway him, I added, ‘Personal bodyguard to the Lord High Commander.’

  ‘I know your face,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you with Lord Macharius.’

  ‘Then let us up! In the name of the Emperor.’

  ‘What are you doing down there?’

  ‘Can we discuss that once we’re inside the perimeter?’ I said.

  A rope was dropped and I pulled myself up. Anton and Ivan followed. I don’t think I have ever been so relieved to put a barrier between myself and pursuit.

  We were held under the guns of the sentries. I don’t know whether the Lion Guard thought we were spies or suspected some strange xenos trick, but it seemed like hauling us up was the full extent of their willingness to trust us. A messenger was sent to find out what to do with us. I looked out over the wall and thought about the hordes of eldar out there. I cursed and kept very still, determined that I had not escaped their flensing knives only to be shot by some nervous, trigger-happy Guardsman.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Undertaker showed up. He took one look at us and said, ‘That’s them. I’m responsible for taking them to Inquisitor Drake.’

  Delivered as it was in his flat-monotone, that sounded just about as menacing as a massed charge by the xenos. Drake was a man who knew a few tricks of torture himself. I wondered if he was going to practise some of them on us.

  ‘Take us to him,’ I heard Anton say. His voice was full of false bravado.

  ‘Your capacity to find trouble never ceases to amaze me,’ Drake said. As he spoke his glowing hand passed over my brow. We had already been physically examined and pronounced clean. Now he was using his own peculiar powers.

  ‘We did not go looking for it,’ I said. ‘We just wanted to take a look at the Face.’

  ‘And yet somehow trouble found you,’ Drake said. His voice was cold and clear, as always. If he were bothered by me talking back to him he gave no sign of it. Apparently it was a privilege I had earned over the past ten years. ‘You go for a walk, you spend an evening behind enemy lines and then you casually wander back into camp. I can see why Macharius thinks you are lucky.’

  ‘There was nothing casual about it, I can assure you,’ I said.

  ‘And now as we are being assaulted I have to waste my time examining you because of the value the Lord High Commander places on your continued existence.’

  Drake had a gift for talking about you as if you were not there, or some sort of specimen he was examining. I suppose that level of detachment was an advantage in his vocation. He gave a cold smile, shrugged and said, ‘I believe you can return to active service with Macharius. I will accompany you. I have matters to discuss with the Lord High Commander.’

  The eldar attacks had stopped for the moment. Outside it was quiet except for the occasional scream of the eldar’s captives.

  We wait in the darkness beneath. The humans know we are here. The fear of us will paralyse them. They know that within their lines of defence a ruthless enemy waits. They are assailed on many sides, from the heights above the valley, from the access points and from below, from within the fortifications they thought would protect them.

  I have given the order that teams of warriors are to emerge when the opportunity arises; they are to take prisoners and devour them, and leave the corpses where they can be found by our foes. Humans are weak. They will know fear. They will give in to it.

  I have selected a new chamber to act as my headquarters in the labyrinth. It is positioned with easy access to the routes that lead to the gate so that when the time comes I can easily make my way to my ultimate goal.

  I have deployed rings of warriors in a defensive perimeter to make sure that none of the Space Marines hunting us can reach me. These are the very best of my soldiers. Each is individually a match for a Space Wolf.

  I study my surroundings. They reveal the obsession of my distant forebears with complex carvings. Thousands of masks have been embossed on the wall; each one of them shows the expression on the face of a forgotten god. It is difficult to tell whether they represent the thousand moods of a dozen gods or the dozen moods of a thousand feeble deities. All I can see are faces that show simpering joy, witless grief, dubious happiness and on and on. I block out the distraction.

  Outside my chamber I hear a faint sound, slightly worrying, like a body falling. I draw my weapon just in case. It is not possible that an enemy could have reached me here, but perhaps there is a traitor within the ranks of my own guards. It would not be the first time such a thing has happened to an eldar commander.

  I look outside and I see a fallen body indeed. The head is twisted at an odd angle that tells me the neck has been broken. I look around for Bael and see that he is not there. He should be. He was in charge of this detachment.

  I step outside, ready to strike in any direction. The corridor is empty, although in the distance at either end I can see a guard. I raise my hand and each of them responds in turn.

  I walk over to one and ask if he has seen Bael. He says no. It is the same at the other end of the corridor. It is not possible for Bael to have vanished without them seeing him, or is it?

  I walk back along the corridor, this time keeping my eyes on the ceiling, and I notice at one point that there is an opening there, some sort of ventilation system. I spring up and inspect it, and I see that it has been recently removed.

  Someone has been here. Someone has entered the very heart of our position without being noticed and managed to kidnap one of my own
officers without the sentries seeing it. I realise it can only be one of the Space Wolves that has done this.

  I call the sentries and tell them to keep watch. I tell them to be particularly careful in checking the ceilings for ventilation access hatches. I move my command position again, thinking about how worryingly close I came to being captured myself. It seems that these vermin are more dangerous than I had thought.

  Twenty-Two

  The door swung open and Grimnar walked into Macharius’s command bunker. He was casually dragging what I assumed was an eldar corpse by the neck. Then I realised it was more than that.

  ‘I have a prisoner for you to interrogate,’ he said, looking at Drake. My eyes widened. He had not only come back alive from a labyrinth haunted by xenos, he had brought one of them with him.

  ‘Very good,’ said Macharius. The xenos lay limply, but I remembered the other one that had been faking back on the spacecraft. I held my shotgun ready, feeling jumpy as a felid that had lapped up Frenzon in its milk. Anton and Ivan looked just as nervous. The Undertaker looked blankly on.

  I took another look at the eldar. Its armour was rent in various places and spattered with dark stuff that could only be blood. It had been stripped of all obvious weapons, but still I could not help but think it was dangerous. A creature so swift and deadly could never be considered harmless.

  Drake licked his lips. A cold smile flickered across his face. There was something else there as well, an expression I can only describe as nervous as well as cruel.

  Good, I thought, remembering what the eldar had done to our soldiers. Let’s see how they endure suffering. Drake was an inquisitor, trained to get answers in all sorts of ways, some of them very nasty. Normally I would have done a lot to avoid seeing him at work but, like I said, the eldar brought out the worst in us. A small daemon of violence and cruelty sat on my shoulder and whispered that anything done to this creature was justified. I felt obscurely ashamed. I would have liked to think better of myself.

  ‘Take it to my sanctum,’ Drake said. ‘I want it stripped, scanned and chained down.’

  ‘I want to be there,’ said Macharius. ‘I have some questions myself.’

  He gestured for us to follow. Drake shrugged. With no effort whatsoever, Grimnar dragged the armoured xenos along the floor. It’s slithering made an odd sound on the stone, as if a jewelled serpent were scraping against a rock.

  Drake had converted a small antechamber into something that was halfway between a study and an alchemical lab. Divinatory engines sat on either side of a long table. Chains of the sort normally used for manacling deserters were brought. Grimnar tore off the xenos’s armour and removed its helmet. He was not gentle about the way he broke the seals.

  The eldar lay on the table. Its face was oddly sensitive and beautiful. With its eyes closed it was as serene as one of the statues of the gods out there in the valley. The connection between the creatures we fought and the original temple builders was obvious. The prisoner had the same lobeless, pointed ears and the same almond-shaped eyes. Its cheekbones were high. Its lips were thin.

  Drake opened a padded case full of vials and syringes. He considered them for a while then shook his head, dismissing them. Possibly he doubted the effects of truth serums intended for humans on the alien form before him. Perhaps he feared they might prove fatal before he could get his answers. He shut his case again and looked at Grimnar, then Macharius, then us.

  ‘Be ready for anything,’ he said. The Space Wolf nodded.

  ‘Is there danger to you?’ Macharius asked.

  ‘There is always some possibility of spiritual contamination when dealing with xenos,’ said Drake. ‘But I am an inquisitor. I can cope.’

  I wondered if he was as confident as he sounded. He rolled up his sleeves, laved his hands in water and strode forwards, placing his fingers on the temples of the eldar. For a long moment, nothing happened, then I noticed a faint nimbus of light played around each of Drake’s fingertips. The chamber seemed to grow colder, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise.

  Suddenly, the eldar sat upright, moving easily against the weight of its chains. I brought the shotgun up, and Anton and Ivan placed themselves between the xenos and Macharius. The eldar’s eyes were open now and it had lost all the serenity that being unconscious had given its appearance. Its eyes were lilac and commanding. Its expression was shockingly evil. Just looking at its countenance made me want to back away.

  Drake’s hands remained in contact with the xenos’s head. It stared into the middle distance, a grimace of frustration twisted its features. The expression was mirrored on Drake’s face. Some sort of spiritual struggle was clearly under way.

  For a moment I wondered whether the inquisitor had bitten off more than he could chew. Perhaps the mind of the eldar was too powerful and too wicked for him. Perhaps rather than Drake being the dominant partner, he would end up being corrupted or having his mind broken. As the thought occurred to me I turned my head slightly, and as if by accident brought the shotgun to bear on him. No one else seemed to notice, save perhaps Grimnar. They were too caught up in the unfolding drama.

  ‘What is your name?’ Drake asked. His voice was as harsh as stone grinding on stone, and it sounded as though he were simply vocalising the last of a series of statements that had already flickered between his mind and that of the eldar.

  The eldar made an effort to resist him. Muscles spasmed, tendons became visible in its neck. Its face twitched. Its eyes went wide. It was trying to clamp its lips shut, to bite down on its tongue, to stop itself breathing.

  ‘What is your name?’ Drake repeated. His patient tone was at odds with the strain written on his own face. ‘You will tell me, you know. It is only a matter of time.’

  The eldar’s whole body flexed, but it was held down by the chains.

  ‘What is your name? I can keep repeating this all day, and it will only get worse for you.’

  Something seemed to break within the eldar. ‘Bael.’

  ‘Bael. Good,’ Drake said softly. He had won his first and most important victory, although he gave no sign of knowing it.

  ‘You will answer my questions, Bael,’ said Drake.

  ‘It matters not,’ said the eldar. It was a voice without the slightest trace of humanity in it. Bael’s lips were moving and liquid musical sounds were coming out; a moment later crystalline sounds, more mechanical than musical, spoke the words in Imperial Gothic. It was like listening to a machine speak to the accompaniment of distant, lovely, alien singing.

  I realised the singing was the actual eldar speech, the words the product of a translation engine. There was little emotion in the eldar’s voice, but his face was twisted with hatred. Clearly the xenos was not enjoying experiencing Drake’s psychic powers. ‘You are doomed anyway, mon-keigh.’

  Drake forced his lips into a cold smile. Beads of sweat appeared on his pale forehead. The experience appeared no more pleasant for him that it did for the eldar, and it appeared to cost considerably more effort. ‘Why is that, deviant?’

  ‘Because you face the Archon Ashterioth and his legions. You will die slowly, in great pain, to feed him and his warriors.’

  Macharius and Drake exchanged a look.

  ‘Feed?’ Macharius said. His voice was glacially calm.

  ‘Answer him,’ said Drake. There was a hint of the lash in his voice. The eldar’s features twisted in a rictus of pain.

  ‘We feast on the agony of lesser species,’ said the eldar. ‘Your pain is our sustenance.’

  His beautiful, inhuman features showed nothing but contempt, but I was starting to think I detected a hint of horror in his eyes. If his kind fed on pain, what must it be like for him to endure the agony of questioning at the hands of Drake? He must feel as if he were being eaten alive by an animal. I pushed the thought to one side. I did not understand his thought processes and I did not want to.

  ‘That certainly explains what you have been doing to our prison
ers,’ said Drake.

  ‘They are not prisoners. They are not even slaves. They are cattle.’ A chill of horror passed down my spine at the words. Bael really saw us this way. To him we were mere beasts, no more important than herd animals are to a farmer. It was worse than that, actually. No farmer would treat his herds the way these eldar treated humans.

  ‘You will be treated in the same way when you are rounded up. Indeed, it will go worse for you because of this.’

  Drake smiled coldly. ‘You know that is not true. Your brethren will have nothing but contempt for you for falling into our hands. I have reduced you to the status of a beast. You should remember that.’

  Clearly Drake was picking more from the eldar’s mind than the xenos was saying out loud. I knew he could lift memories and experiences directly from human minds when he brought his powers fully to bear. If he was doing that to Bael, I did not envy him. The alien’s mind must be like a pit of snakes.

  The eldar screamed, whether in agony or humiliation it was impossible to tell. ‘You did not capture me. Your hound did.’

  Grimnar laughed. His mirth had a clean, booming quality that it was good to hear amid the unwholesome monotones of the eldar’s translation engine.

  ‘We can argue about it all you like,’ said Drake. ‘But you are the one bound and treated like a beast.’

  ‘I will make you die a thousand painful, agonising deaths. You will beg for the sweet release of oblivion a thousand times, and I will say no.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Drake, an adult listening to the threats of a child. ‘Of course, you will. In the meantime, you will answer all the questions put to you truthfully and to the best of your ability, otherwise you will not live to carry out your threats.’

  ‘I do not fear death,’ Bael said.

  ‘No. You would welcome it now. Still, you will find it difficult to carry out threats with your limbs removed.’