by Nick Kyme
SCOUT ZATORI COULDN’T help but be reminded of the words of Rhetoricus, who long centuries before had codified the Rites of Battle by which the Imperial Fists guided their actions. In the estimation of the Chapter, Rhetoricus was surpassed only by the Primarch Rogal Dorn himself. Rhetoricus had penned any number of tracts, codices, and lexicons, but principal among them was The Book of Five Spheres, the catechism of the sword. In it, Rhetoricus had stressed the importance of knowing the advantages and shortcomings of each weapon in a warrior’s arsenal. He had spoken of the importance of ranged weapons in the open field, of flame weapons and meltas in entrenched defence, of heavy ordnance for bombardment and of blast weapons for barrage. But more than any other, he had sung the praises of the sword in close combat.
It was seldom, if ever, that a battle-brother of the Imperial Fists Chapter went into the field of battle without a sword in his fist or at his hip, and not uncommon for Fists to enter the fray with no weapon save his trusted blade. Some, like Captain Eshara of the Third Company, even went into battle with a sword in each hand, testing his skill with the blade against all enemies of the Golden Throne. Even the Master of the First Company – to say nothing of being First Captain, Overseer of the Armoury, and Watch Commander of the Phalanx – the legendary Captain Lysander had wielded nothing but a sword in the undertaking on Malodrax, scouring the Iron Warriors from the planet and reclaiming his master-crafted thunder hammer, the Fist of Dorn, which had been first given to him by the martyred Captain Kleitus more than a millennium before Zatori was born.
In The Book of Five Spheres, Rhetoricus wrote, “The sword is at its most advantageous in confined places, or in the melee, or in close quarters – any situation in which you can close with an opponent”. And later, “The soul of the Imperial Fist can be found in his sword”. Also, “When the odds are innumerable against you, and there is little hope for victory, still a holy warrior with a sword in his hand can prevail, if his intent is righteous and pure”.
So as the greenskin warbiker with the massive axe barrelled towards him, Zatori tightened his grip on his sword, his other hand gripping his bike’s handlebars, and silently repeated the Litany of the Blade. As the ork swung his axe overhand at Zatori’s bare head, just as their two bikes were about to careen into one another, the Scout muttered a prayer to Dorn and the Emperor that his parry would be sufficient to the task.
ROTGRIM BROUGHT HIS axe down in a one-handed swing, right at the human’s naked head. But before the blade bit into skin and skull, the human managed to turn the axe away with his sword, sending up a shower of sparks. Just as their blades struck, their two bikes collided off one another with a bone-crunching jar. As the two riders fought to maintain their balance, offsetting the force of the impact, they veered away from one another once more, each readying for another blow.
Teeth bared, Rotgrim hurled abuse at the human, who suddenly let go of his handlebars. It would have been funny, seeing a human riding a little bike hands free, if that hand hadn’t come back up another moment later with a big gun in it.
Rotgrim yanked his forks to the right just in time to miss the torrent of heat that poured out of the gun, hot enough to fuse the sand on the ground into glass.
With a grim snarl, Rotgrim couldn’t help but chuckle. The human wasn’t the only one with a holdout.
Steadying his bike’s forks with his knees, he let go of the handle and then yanked his dakkagun out of its holster.
THE MELTA GUN was a temporary deterrent at best, Zatori knew. It was only useful anyway over the shortest of distances, the promethium it excited into a sub-molecular state impossible to aim more than a few metres; but it was difficult to use any ranged weapons at high speed, anyway, so the trade-off between range and firepower for the Bike Scouts was deemed well worth it. As it was, between the melta guns for ranged firing and their swords for close combat, Veteran Sergeant Hilts had told the Scouts not to expect much opportunity to use their twin-linked bolters. After all, the bolters were designed to be fired at a target the bike was heading towards, and this mission would require them to head away from the enemy until the race was over. There would be enemies aplenty when – and if – they reached their goal, but even then the bike’s bolters would be of little use, if all went to plan. When he’d parried the greenskin’s first blow, Zatori had known he’d need to reposition before he took another, or he’d be off his seat and sprawled in the dust. Though he’d trained to use the blade in either hand, still he was far less proficient with his left, and with the ork approaching from the left rear, he didn’t have the option of switching the sword to his right. His defensive options would be limited, perhaps fatally so, if he had to cross his body to parry and block, and offensive options would be reduced to virtually nil, and so the sword in his left hand was the only option. But while his left arm was no less strong than his right, the level of skill was simply not the same in both, as he’d learned to his shame in duels on board the Phalanx.
After deflecting the ork’s first blow, their bikes collided and then spun slightly apart, with the greenskin a short distance behind Zatori’s bike. The next attack, Zatori knew, would be coming from that angle. Poorly braced as he was, there was simply too great a chance that the greenskin would unseat him, and then Zatori’s race would be at an end, far too soon.
It was necessary, then, to change the parameters of the engagement. Or, as Rhetoricus put it in The Book of Five Spheres, “When facing defeat or deadlock, seize the advantage by ascertaining the opponent’s state and changing your approach.”
So as the greenskin readied for his next attack, Zatori risked letting go of his handlebars, pulled out his melta gun, and sent a blast of superheated gas shooting over. Then, when the ork responded as Zatori anticipated he would, by drawing his own firearm and returning fire, Zatori slammed the melta gun back into his holster, and yanked hard left on his handlebars, sending his bike careering towards the greenskin’s. Damning the imprecise but no less deadly fire of the ork, Zatori’s path took him barrelling right past the greenskin’s, the Scout’s forward tyre just missing the ork’s rear wheel as they zoomed past, Zatori’s sword swinging across his body as they drew near.
When Zatori felt the sword tug in his hand as he whizzed past the ork’s rear, he hoped for a moment that he might have scored a hit against the greenskin, who’d been unable to raise his axe in time to parry. Glancing back Zatori now saw that the ork was unharmed, but that the stanchion that had held the banner aloft had been cut clean through, the grimacing red ork emblazoned on it now fluttering down to the churned earth.
In that instant Zatori’s gaze locked with the greenskin’s, and he saw murder in the ork’s flashing eyes.
FUN WAS ONE thing. Rotgrim couldn’t blame a human for taking a few potshots in battle, or for trying to stick Rotgrim with his pointy blade. It was only fair, after all. Rotgrim’d kill him, sooner or later, but the little guy had a right to fight back. Wouldn’t be any fun, otherwise.
But knocking the Evil Sunz standard down into the dirt? Now that, that just wasn’t right.
Rotgrim jammed his dakkagun back into its holster. He wasn’t going to use bullets or shells for this one. He was going to take care of this one with his hands.
ZATORI WAS STEERING back around so that his front forks were aiming towards the mountains when he heard a voice buzzing over the vox. ‘Zatori, on your right!’
The next instant, Scout Kelso rammed by at top speed, crossing Zatori’s path from right to left, barely avoiding a collision. ‘Want to trade?’ Kelso voxed as he slewed around, dust flying in a wide arc. He jerked a thumb back the way he’d come, at the flame-belching warbuggy following a short distance behind him.
Zatori glanced over his own shoulder at the ork warbiker following in his wake, a murderous scowl on his green face.
Before he could answer, though, Kelso gunned his engine and went racing right at the warbiker. ‘My thanks, Zatori. I was getting bored.’
In the next moment, the warbuggy
that previously had been pursuing Kelso roared behind Zatori, between him and the warbiker, the flamethrowers’ attention now turned to their new target. In the dance of death between the Scouts and the orks, Zatori and Kelso appeared to have traded partners.
Zatori still found Kelso’s manner difficult to understand. All Imperial Fists found some measure of satisfaction in carrying out their holy duty, but Kelso seemed to find some strangely manic joy in battle, and often conducted himself in a way that the more choleric Zatori found all but impossible to understand. It was perhaps not as noxious to him as the laconic attitude of du Queste, nor the seemingly emotionless reserve of s’Tonan, but still and above all Zatori found Kelso’s joyous abandon in battle difficult to reconcile with the sombre duties of an Astartes.
Blistering tongues of flame lapped at the ceramite of Zatori’s armour as the warbuggy veered in pursuit, and the Scout poured on speed to keep from getting roasted alive.
ROTGRIM ROARED IN annoyance as the skorcha trundled between him and his prey, but when the other human biker came racing towards him, sword swinging overhead and a joyous smile on his face, the Nob figured this new human would serve as an adequate appetiser. If he could not take vengeance on the one that had dishonoured the Evil Sunz standard just yet, he could first colour his axe with the blood of this one.
The human was riding straight at Rotgrim, and the ork wasn’t sure if it was playing dare, to see which of them would veer away first, or else wanted to joust like horseback warriors on some feral world. The strange thing was that the human almost looked like he was laughing.
Well, if it was the speed that was tickling him, Rotgrim could almost understand it.
Of course, in another second or two, it would be Rotgrim’s axe that would be tickling the inside of the human’s brainpan, and he wouldn’t be laughing so much after that.
THE GROUND BENEATH Zatori’s tyres was getting rougher the farther east they raced. Where there had been only scattered rocks and small promontories breaking the level horizon of the salt flats to the west, as they moved eastward there were increasing numbers of larger rocks rising like the tips of icebergs above the salty ground, some almost as large as Zatori’s bike. With these obstacles in his path, he was no longer able simply to open up the throttle and thunder ahead, but was forced to zigzag to keep from colliding with stones large enough to arrest his forward motion in a bone-smashing crash.
The warbuggy pursuing him, unfortunately, was raised on four fat tyres, its supercharged engine powerful enough to push it up and over the smaller rocks with scarcely any loss of forward momentum. So while Zatori was forced to bleed off speed as he zigged and zagged back and forth, the warbuggy ploughed on ahead at full tilt, closing the gap between them.
The promethium-fuelled torches at the back of the warbuggy bathed Zatori in a cascade of flame, and he grit his teeth against the searing pain. He could feel the skin at the back of his neck blistering and cracking, the close-cropped hair on his scalp singing off, and while he knew his blood would already be flooding with Larraman cells from the implant in his chest, creating instant scar tissue and staunching the flow of blood to the affected area, that knowledge did little to lessen the agony itself.
Fortunately, Zatori had spent his time in the Pain Glove, as Initiate, Neophyte, and Scout, and had cleaved to the sacred words of Rhetoricus: “Pain is the wine of communion with heroes”. If he could learn to endure prolonged periods with that tunic of electrofibres, suspended for what seemed an eternity within the steel gibbet deep within the Phalanx, meditating on the image of Rogal Dorn and learning to focus past the pain, remaining fully conscious throughout – if Zatori could do that, then he could endure the mere discomfort of having his flesh cooked off the bone by burning promethium.
He knew that, if the greenskins were in close enough proximity for their flamethrowers to paint him, then they were also close enough for Zatori’s own melta gun to return the compliment.
With a silent prayer for forgiveness to the spirit of his blade, Zatori slammed his sword into the sheath on his back in one smooth motion, and then whipped his melta gun out of its holster on the side of his bike. Without wasting a moment, he twisted at the waist as far as he was able, swung the melta gun around and sent a blast of superheated gas back at the pursuing warbuggy.
ROTGRIM AND HIS human prey were less than an eye blink apart now, each with their blades on high. At the last possible instant, the human jinked to the left, swinging his sword at Rotgrim’s broad chest. But Rotgrim had seen the swing coming, and just as the human pulled to the left, the ork slammed on the brakes for the briefest instant, arresting his speed just long enough for the swing to whistle by harmlessly, while at the same time whirling his axe in a wide arc aimed at the soft meat of the human neck rising above the neck of his armour.
Rotgrim punched his bike to speed almost immediately after braking, and so could scarcely feel the tug of resistance as his axe sliced through the human’s neck. But glancing back he saw the human’s bike careening off, veering wildly left and right, as the headless rider flopped back on the seat, sword still held in his lifeless hand, the head bouncing and skipping along on the ground behind.
Rotgrim noted the incarnadined edge of his axe with satisfaction. It was a nice shade of red now. But it needed to get redder.
ZATORI’S MELTA BLAST struck the greenskin driver head on, all but vaporising him instantly from the abdomen up, leaving only a pair of dismembered hands dangling lifeless from the steering wheel and an oozing puddle of viscera pooling atop the burnt remains of his hips and legs.
The flamethrower operators on the rear platform tried to direct another stream of incendiary his way, but their attempt was stymied by the warbuggy careering wildly out of control, driverless, into one of the larger rocks. With a squeal of metal on stone, the warbuggy came to an abrupt halt, and the pair of greenskins were sent hurtling through the air, tumbling end over end. The vat of promethium, jarred by the impact, spilled over, and as the liquid sloshed into the open flames of the throwers it caught fire, the resultant blast engulfing the warbuggy in a crumping black cloud of smoke and heat.
It was only as he turned his attention back to the ground ahead that he saw the headless body of Scout Kelso crashing into the dust a hundred or so metres off. Kelso’s head, bouncing along the dead seabed far behind his body, wasn’t smiling anymore.
ROTGRIM SAW THE skorcha explode, a mushroom of black smoke rising into the air as the thunderclap of the explosion rumbled through the dry air, just audible above the throaty roar of his warbike’s engine. The humans were down a rider, with only four left in the saddle, and even with the loss of the skorcha the Evil Sunz still had nearly a dozen vehicles on the move.
Scanning the horizon, Rotgrim could just glimpse the human who’d defiled the Evil Sunz standard, zipping off to the east. There were too many obstacles in between for Rotgrim to catch up quickly, and there were easier targets closer anyway, that deserved the attention of his axe first.
It was getting high time to bring this particular race to a close, though.
Drawing his dakkagun, he fired a few quick bursts into the air in a set pattern, two long, four short, one long. The noise of the shots would carry over the growl of even supercharged engines, and every biker boy of the warband would recognize the sequence, and what it meant.
Rotgrim’s orders were clear – it was time to stop racing for the sake of racing, and to start driving their quarry into the endgame.
‘HILTS TO ZATORI,’ came the voice of the Veteran Sergeant over the vox. ‘What’s your status?’
‘Kelso is down, sir,’ Zatori voxed back in clipped tones. ‘I’m still up and running towards the east’ – he glanced back, and saw the attack bike now coursing after him – ‘and am pursued by a greenskin biker. I had a clash with their leader, but I’ve lost sight of him.’
‘Acknowledged.’ Then, after a pause, ‘I think I’ve picked up the leader. Big monster in red gear on a red bike. But I don�
�t see the clan standard…’
Zatori could not suppress a small grin as he made a tight swerve around a waist-high rock in his path. ‘That would be my fault, sergeant. I cut it down and left it in the dust.’
The Scout could hear Veteran Sergeant Hilts’s short, dry chuckle buzzing through the comm-bead he wore in his ear. ‘No wonder he looks so displeased.’
‘I didn’t intend to win his pleasure.’
A small-arms round pinged off the gold and jet ceramite of Zatori’s armour, the shot thudding into his left shoulder as the pursuing attack bike attempted to pick him off with a firearm. A second shot followed, also on his left but further down, nearer his waist. Each time, he reflexively leaned to the right, pulling away from the shot.
‘Their tactics have changed,’ Veteran Sergeant Hilts voxed, after a moment’s silence. ‘They’re stopped going for kill shots, and are using nuisance tactics, instead.’
Zatori glanced to his right, and could see the sergeant angling towards him, their trajectories meeting somewhere ahead of them, and behind the sergeant the red-clad leader of the warband.
When Hilts remained silent, Zatori realized that the veteran sergeant was giving him the opportunity to divine the significance of his words. Hilts had trained Scouts of the Imperial Fists for longer than Zatori had been alive, and was always looking for a teachable moment, whether in the sparring ring or in the battlefield, an opportunity for the novices under his command to learn an essential combat lesson.
‘They are herding us,’ Zatori said at last, as confidently as he was able.
‘Yes,’ Hilts allowed. ‘Exactly as we’d hoped.’
‘Your orders, sir?’
‘Allow yourself to be herded,’ Hilts replied. ‘And try not to get killed doing it.’
ROTGRIM WATCHED AS the power fist-wearing human biker he was pursuing pulled alongside another, and a single glance was enough to tell him that this second human was the one who had cut down the banner stanchion and disgraced the Evil Sunz. Trailing the human was another biker boy, a pistol in his fist, planting careful shots on the human’s back, steering his quarry just as Rotgrim’s signal had ordered.
