‘The… what do you call them? Tyranids?’ said the eldar. Baranov nodded.
‘Your pronunciation is perfect,’ commented Baranov. The eldar stared at him for a moment, and he felt himself shrink under his unfathomable gaze.
‘The tyranids might well exterminate all of the lesser races, in time,’ said the eldar casually.
‘They are a menace,’ agreed Baranov, unsure where the conversation was leading, and uncomfortable making small talk with the deadly eldar lord.
‘If all of your kind are eradicated, where then will my lord find such slaves?’ asked the eldar, gesturing towards the guilders being dragged away. ‘Your race breeds like vermin. Your race is vermin, but you have your uses, don’t you, Ikorus Baranov?’
‘I… I believe we do, my lord. Or at least some of us do.’
‘I am glad that you believe so,’ said the eldar. He gestured more of his warriors forward, and they began to surround Baranov and his crewmembers.
‘Ah,’ said Baranov, ‘I think we should part ways now, honoured lord. I won’t press you for the payment for this last group. Consider it a gift, a gift to honour the friendship between us.’
‘Friendship?’ said the eldar slowly, as if savouring the word. ‘A curious, irrelevant mon-keigh concept. And honour? Where is the honour in betraying your own kind? Delivering them to an enemy, albeit superior, race? That is honourable in your eyes?’
Baranov felt the sweat running down his back, and his throat was suddenly dry. He flinched as the eldar walked behind him, but he felt rooted to the spot, unable to think, unable to move.
‘You are a detestable race,’ said the eldar. ‘Your very stench offends me, and yet, you have your uses. Your soul-fires burn so bright, and your fear… your fear is delectable.’
The eldar spun away from the petrified mon-keigh worm.
‘Enslave them,’ he said in the eldar tongue.
Marduk took careful aim at one of the frenzied eldar wyches as it darted towards him. Squeezing the trigger, the eldar’s head disappeared in a mist of blood. The eldar warriors were almost naked, their flesh covered only by totemic war paint and ritual piercings, and they moved like deadly dancers as they cut into the warriors of the XVII Legion. Their strangely fashioned weapons wove dazzling patterns through the air, their movements at once enthralling and deadly.
A score of them had died as they approached, ripped apart by the murderous swathe of fire that the Word Bearers had laid down. More had perished when one of their hovering skiffs had been shot from the air, the fragile vehicle tipping onto its side, throwing its occupants onto the ice before it smashed down upon them, impaling several on its bladed sides and crushing more beneath its weight.
Now the wyches had engaged them in melee combat, and the odds were tipping towards the greater numbers of the eldar warriors.
Parallel beams of incandescent light speared through the night as a Land Raider fired upon the knife-like shapes of the dark skiffs that circled the battle, searing a pair of holes through one of its barbed, sail-like uprights. The raider vehicle veered to the side, moving with remarkable speed and grace as it avoided another pair of shots directed towards it, and another of the vehicles returned fire, a beam of darkness stabbing into the front of the Land Raider, which was rocked by the blow.
Jetbikes streamed out of the night, screaming low through the fight, peppering the Word Bearers with splinter fire. Marduk spun, his chainsword roaring, and cut the arm from one of the jetbikers as the vehicle screamed past him. Blood pumped from the wound and the rider lost control of his jetbike, which flipped into a sudden dive, skidding into the ice and smashing headlong into Kol Badar.
The Coryphaus saw it coming out of the corner of his vision and braced himself, leaning his shoulder into the careering jetbike. It shattered against him, breaking apart as it knocked him back a step, and the rider was catapulted over the handlebars, blood spraying in a wide arc from the stump of his arm.
Marduk fired his pistol into the chest of another of the wyches as it closed on him, and the painted figure was hurled backwards by the force of the shot. He spun, targeting matrices lighting up around him, and saw another of the wyches, her gaudy dyed red hair swinging behind her as she ducked under a swinging blow from one of Sabtec’s coterie brothers and slashed a blade through the warrior’s leg, cutting it off at the knee.
Marduk judged that this was the leader of the wych troop. She moved with exquisite, savage grace, her serpentine whip writhing with a life of its own. The whip cracked out, and its multiple barbed tips lashed around the arm of another warrior brother. Energy coursed up the length of the whip and the warrior of the XVII Legion dropped to the ground, his body convulsing.
Marduk levelled his bolt pistol at the wych’s head, but before he could fire, a net of fine, razor-sharp wire wrapped around his arm, pulling his aim off target and slicing through his vambraces. A tri-forked spear stabbed towards Marduk’s chest, but the First Acolyte swatted it aside with his chainsword and hacked into the eldar’s neck, ripping his chainblade through flesh.
Untangling himself from the wire net that had cut half-through his vambrace, Marduk turned and staggered back from the furious assault of another of the wyches. It danced towards him with a pair of long-bladed swords weaving before it. Each of the swords had a guard that protected the wielder’s hands, and they had curving blades for pommels.
The blades moved faster than Marduk could follow, and he was losing ground before their flashing advance. Snarling, he leapt forwards, his hatred fuelling his servo-enhanced strength.
One of the blades slashed for his neck, and Marduk blocked the attack with his forearm, while the other sword slashed up towards his groin. He met the blow with one of his own, and for a moment the two combatants were locked together. Then the eldar flipped backwards, first one foot and then the other cannoning into the base of Marduk’s helmet, snapping his head backwards.
The two blades stabbed towards Marduk’s heart, but he twisted at the last moment, and they scraped a pair of furrows across his chest. The First Acolyte grabbed one of the eldar’s wrists, pinning it in place, and smashed the spiked guard of his chainsword into the wych’s face, pulverising its skull.
Dropping the lifeless corpse to the ground, Marduk surveyed the battle. The eldar were everywhere, darting in and out of the melee, blades flashing and pistols spitting razor-sharp splinters. Another of the Land Raiders was destroyed, its blackened hull smoking and lifeless, and jetbikes screamed around the outside of the battle, banking sharply before gunning their engines and cutting like knives through the combat. Shadowy figures appeared on the outskirts, preying upon the unwary, blinking into existence behind warrior brothers engaged in combat, and cutting them down.
His warriors were acquitting themselves well, and the ice was strewn with the eldar dead, but he knew instinctively that this was not a battle he could win. The notion of retreating was repellent to him, but he had to keep things in perspective. He had what he needed. The knowledge was locked inside the explorator’s brain, housed in the body of Darioq-Grendh’al. He had only to get away from this damnable moon, and return to Sicarus. Everything else was meaningless.
Marduk had ordered the warriors of the Host to protect Darioq-Grendh’al, but he saw now that such precautions were unnecessary. The corrupted magos was killing anything that came near him, and the first Acolyte smiled at the daemon’s bloodlust as it overcame any resistance left within its host body.
A mass of writhing, daemonic tentacles, black and oily, burst from the magos’s body to join his mechadendrites, each appearing to move with their own will and sentience. They coiled around the legs of those eldar that closed in around the magos, effortlessly hurling them through the air, while other sucker-tipped tentacles drew victims in close, where they were dismembered by Darioq’s toothed servo-arms.
Snapping mouths upon the tips of mechadendrites burrowed into xenos bodies, and fresh mutations appeared upon the magos’s flesh. More spines and ho
rny protrusions pushed out along the ridges of his servo-arms, and from his knee-joints, metal merged seamlessly into bone and horn.
‘We are leaving!’ roared Marduk, and Kol Badar instantly set about ordering the evacuation.
An arc of black light struck the side of the shuttle, and Marduk felt a stab of unease. It was not a feeling that he was used to, and it served only to feed his anger. If the eldar immobilised the shuttle, there would be no getting off the moon.
‘Move!’ roared Marduk, stepping back towards the embarkation ramp of the Idolator, holding his chainsword in both hands. His bolt pistol was gone, but it mattered not. All that mattered now was getting off this cursed world.
The Word Bearers formed a retreating arc, closing together and backing towards the shuttle, bolters blazing and chainswords roaring, and the engines of the Idolator roared to life.
Marduk stood with Kol Badar and Sabtec at the top of the embarkation ramp as the engines of the Idolator fired.
‘Here he comes,’ remarked Kol Badar as Burias-Drak’shal leapt through the press of dark eldar, crushing the skull of one of the wyches as he came. He was bleeding from dozens of wounds, the largest a gaping hole in his side, and his armour was peppered with splinters that protruded from his armoured plates like bizarre decorations.
The icon bearer staggered up the ramp, and Marduk stepped aside to let him pass.
‘One minute more and we would have left,’ barked Kol Badar, snapping off shots with his combi-bolter.
The daemon left Burias, his natural form returning, and he slumped forward unconscious, sprawling face first out on the deck, blood running freely from his wounds.
‘Somebody see to him,’ barked Marduk.
The engines roared as the plasma core came into full power, and the ramp began to close. Splinters spat up at the trio standing guard atop the ramp, and Sabtec and Marduk ducked back to avoid the deadly projectiles. A line of the fine shards struck Marduk across the side of his helmet, their tips just penetrating far enough to graze his cheek. He ripped his helmet off and tossed it into the shuttle’s interior. Kol Badar merely endured the barrage of fire, for the splinters had not the power to penetrate his thick Terminator armour.
The eldar wyches made a last charge, leaping lightly onto the ramp as it rose past horizontal. Kol Badar killed three of them, firing his combi-bolter on full auto, and Sabtec took down another two, his bolter ripping the slender warriors in half. Marduk’s chainsword killed another, the toothed blade ripping it from groin to heart.
Behind them was another wych, the tall, elegant and sneering female with flowing hair that Marduk had seen take down at least three of his warriors, and as Kol Badar and Sabtec gunned down her companions, her sinuous, serpent-like whip lashed out, its barbed tips whipping around Marduk’s throat.
Debilitating energy coursed through the length of the whip, rendering Marduk’s enhanced physiology all put paralysed, and his muscles twitched spasmodically. Fighting the energy coursing through him, Marduk dropped his chainsword and reached up to the strangling whip wrapped around his neck, trying to pry it loose. With a powerful wrench, the eldar warrior hauled Marduk towards her.
Sabtec cried out and reached for the First Acolyte, but Marduk was already falling. Kol Badar’s combi-bolter roared, but the wych back-flipped from the ramp that was now more vertical than horizontal, and the bolts missed their mark. Marduk was dragged from the ramp behind the wych.
Kol Badar’s power talons lashed out, grabbing Marduk around the wrist as he fell. The Coryphaus leant his shoulder against the closing ramp, and its motors strained against him as he held it open.
Debilitating energy was coursing through Marduk’s body from the whip lashed around his neck, but he looked up at Kol Badar with fiery eyes.
‘Don’t… let… go,’ he hissed.
Kol Badar stared into the First Acolyte’s eyes, his entire body straining to hold the shuttle’s ramp open.
Then the Coryphaus’s talons opened, and Marduk fell to the ground below.
‘No!’ gasped Sabtec as the ramp slammed closed and the shuttle lifted from the ice. ‘We must go back!’
‘Be silent,’ barked Kol Badar. ‘He’s gone.’
BOOK THREE: SHE WHO THIRSTS
‘And so from decadence, wantonness and depravity a new power was birthed into the darkness. In darkness it resides and in darkness it hungers, now and for all time.’
– Ravings of the Shalleigha, Flagellantaie Diabolicus
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marduk opened his right eye groggily as he regained consciousness. His left daemonic eye was lidless, but he could see nothing with it. Perhaps it had been ripped from his socket while he was unconscious, he thought, before he remembered the needle that had been pushed into the eye. He tried to move his limbs, but they were held fast, and he gritted his sharpened teeth as pain coursed through his body.
With the pain, his memories came flooding back to him. Again, he felt the paralysing length of the whip wrapped around his neck and the jolt as he hit the ice. He felt the Coryphaus’s grip on him slip, and saw again the blue engines of the Idolator as it roared up into the heavens away from him. Rage had blossomed as he had realised that it was not turning back.
He had been bound with manacles that coursed with energy, sending shooting pain through his nervous system, and had endured the humiliation of being bundled from the battlefield, hovering a metre above the ground, held aloft by the vile sorceries of the eldar. He had been raised to the back of one of the eldar skiffs, and he saw that other warrior brothers had been captured. They were prodded and kicked into low cages beneath the deck of the skiff, while the hateful xenos laughed.
Marduk had stared hatefully at the female wych that had disabled him, her long, fiery hair flowing down her back. She sneered at him and slammed the solid cage door closed.
The vehicle had reached incredible speed, and at some point Marduk had felt a subtle change in the air, as if the skiff had been transported somewhere else entirely, and its speed increased tenfold. At some point he had passed out, and he had come to again only when the skiff screamed to a smooth halt. Once again, the air tasted subtly different, more cloying and close.
Marduk and the other captives had been dragged from the hold beneath the deck of the skiffs, and had looked around them angrily. They were inside a cavernous, expansive dome, with bladed ribs arching up above them, and Marduk saw scores of alien skiffs and jetbikes lined up around its sides, hovering at rest above the floor, lined up one above another. Hundreds of eldar soldiers moved through the lair, and Marduk glowered at them hatefully.
A gateway of crackling darkness hung in mid-air in the centre of the dome, enclosed by elegant bladed arches. Even as he watched, Marduk had seen a skiff emerge from the portal, appearing from the wafer-thin, vertical pool of darkness and gliding effortlessly several metres above the ground, the warriors upon its decks leaping to the floor.
Then searing pain exploded through Marduk’s body, his every nerve ending on fire as needles stabbed into his flesh. He resisted it as long as he was able, and a further set of needles stabbed into him. Still, he fought his captors, struggling and roaring his anger. A third set of needles plunged into his neck, and at last he was overcome, and everything had gone black.
Glancing down, Marduk saw that his arms and legs were spread-eagled out to either side. His blessed armour had been stripped from his upper body, and his pallid skin was puckered with tens of thousands of tiny pinpricks of dried blood. His armour had been slowly fusing to his body, and the inside of their plates were covered with thousands of tiny barbs that were growing into his flesh. Removing the armour plating was a painful and oddly distressing procedure, for it was as much a part of him as his limbs, and he had only twice removed his breastplate since the blessed Warmaster had perished.
That was an age ago, a lifetime in the past. Once his armour had been granite grey, as had the armour of all the warriors of the XVII Legion, the colour they had worn
since the Legion’s inception, but he had long ago stained it the deep red adopted by all of his brethren at Lorgar’s decree.
Marduk gazed blearily down upon his naked torso for the first time in untold millennia. It looked like the body of a stranger. His pectorals were thick and slab-like, and the muscles of his abdomen rippled as he strained against his restraints. Dozens of scars marred his perfect form and blue veins could be seen clearly through his translucent, pale flesh.
Marduk turned his head groggily to the side, looking along the length of his outstretched arms. His powerful limbs had been stripped of his power armour, exposing passages from the Book of Lorgar that ran in spirals of tiny script around his forearms. Just looking upon the tiny, archaic script gave him comfort, even though his eyes still could not focus on the individual words and characters.
Casting his gaze further along his arms, Marduk saw what was constricting his movements. A slender, tapering blade had pierced his wrists, passing through his flesh and between his bones, protruding a metre out the other side.
Marduk pulled against the restraints, trying to slide his limbs off the impaling blades, but jolting pain accompanied his efforts, making his body shudder and contort in agony. He could feel the needles, the long shards of metal that had been inserted between his vertebrae, piercing his central nervous system. They ran from the base of his spine to his skull, a slender needle inserted into every gap between the bones. Marduk ceased his struggles, and the pain instantly receded.
He was suspended, upright and hanging upon the blades piercing his wrists and lower legs. The blades shifted slightly, angling upwards, and Marduk hissed in pain as he slid further back along their lengths, the spikes grinding against bone.
As his vision cleared, Marduk took in the details of the room. It was circular in shape, and the ceiling was low. It was dim, the only light coming from the featureless floor and low roof, fading in and out in rhythmic pulses. There was a single exit from the room, semi-transparent strips of plas-like material blocking his vision of the room beyond.
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