25 For 25

by Various

  Then the Tyrant turned his gaze on Honsou and he felt the blood drain from his face and a chill touch of fear run the length of his spine. It was a sensation new to Honsou and he liked it not at all. The Tyrant of Badab’s thin, lipless mouth smiled, exposing teeth sharpened to razor points, and Honsou found himself helpless before the warrior’s gimlet gaze.

  The warriors parted before the Tyrant as he strode towards Honsou, the claws of his huge gauntlet alive with baleful energies and the Hamadrya hissing in animal rage.

  Huron Blackheart was a giant of a warrior, his already formidable physique boosted by cybernetic augmentation and the blessings of the Dark Gods. Honsou’s head came to the centre of the Tyrant’s chest plate and though it galled him to do so, he was forced to look up to the lord of New Badab.

  He felt as though he were a morsel held helpless before some enormous predator or a particularly rare specimen about to be pinned to the board of a collector. The Tyrant stared at him until Honsou felt he could stand no more, then transferred his gaze to the Newborn and Ardaric Vaanes.

  ‘This one is touched by the raw power of the warp,’ said the Tyrant, lifting the Newborn’s head with the tips of his claws. ‘Powerful and unpredictable, but very dangerous. And you…’

  This last comment was addressed to Ardaric Vaanes and with the Newborn forgotten, the Tyrant turned Vaanes’s shoulder guard with the blade of his axe, nodding as he saw the red cross of the Red Corsairs.

  ‘I know you,’ said the Tyrant. ‘Vaanes. Late of the Raven Guard. You fight for another now?’

  ‘I do, my lord,’ said Vaanes, bowing before his former master.

  ‘This half-breed?’

  ‘The last person who called me that ended up dead,’ snarled Honsou.

  Without seeming to move, the Tyrant’s claw shot out and punched into Honsou’s breastplate, lifting him from his feet. Honsou could feel the cold, dark metal of the claws digging at the flesh of his chest, the force of the Tyrant’s blow precisely measured.

  ‘And the last person who failed to show me respect in my own throne room suffers now at the hands of my most skilled daemonic torturers. They tear his soul apart each day then reclaim its soiled fragments from the warp and the process begins anew. He has suffered this agony for eight decades and I have no inclination to end his torments. You wish a similar fate?’

  Honsou’s life hung by a thread, yet he still managed defiance in his tone. ‘No, my lord, I do not, but I am no longer the half-breed. I am a Warsmith of the Iron Warriors.’

  ‘I know who you are, warrior,’ said the Tyrant. ‘The immaterium gibbers with your slaughters and the corruption you have wrought. I know why you are here and have seen the path of your fate. You will wreak havoc in the realm of the Corpse-Emperor’s worshippers, but those you have wronged will shake the heavens to see you dead. Yet for all your arrogance and bitterness, you have something most others lack.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ spat Honsou.

  ‘You have a grand vision of revenge and the chance that you might succeed is all that stays my hand.’

  Huron Blackheart then turned his attention back to Vaanes and said, ‘You wear my marking upon your armour, Ardaric Vaanes, but I sense that you serve a power greater than this half-breed. Just remember that the Dark Prince is a jealous lord and suffers no other masters but he.’

  Blackheart sheathed his blades and Honsou dropped to the floor of the throne room, breathless and chilled to the bone from the touch of the Tyrant’s claws. The breath heaved in his chest and he felt the nearness of death as a cold shroud upon his heart. He looked up, but the Tyrant had already moved away.

  As Honsou picked himself up, he saw the Tyrant’s sorceress stare with naked interest at the Newborn, her eyes lingering long over the stitched nightmare of its dead fleshmask. Blackheart climbed the dais to his throne and turned to address the gathered champions with his axe and claw raised above his head.

  ‘Any warrior who dares to bare his neck in the Skull Harvest should present his blade upon the Arena of Thorns when the Great Eye opens. Blood will be spilled, the weak will die and the victor shall benefit greatly from my patronage.’

  The Tyrant lowered his voice, yet its power was still palpable and Honsou felt as though the words were spoken just for him. ‘But know this: the gods are watching and they will rend the souls of the unworthy for all eternity.’

  In days that followed, Honsou’s warriors explored the city on the flanks of the Tyrant’s mountain, learning all they could in preparation for the violence to come. Warbands were identified and their warriors observed, for each warlord was keen to display the prowess of his fighters and champions.

  Ardaric Vaanes watched the sensual slaughters of Notha Etassay’s blade dancers, a troupe of decadent warrior priests to whom no sensation of the blade was unknown and whose every kill was performed with the utmost grace and enjoyment. Notha Etassay, an androgynous beauty of uncertain sex, bade Vaanes spar with them and, upon tasting his blood, immediately offered him a place within the troupe.

  With every battle he fought, Vaanes felt the vicarious thrill of the kill as every sensation of the graceful ballet of blades was channelled through every warrior priest. It was only with great regret that Vaanes declined Etassay’s offer of a bond ritual with the troupe.

  Unimpressed with the delicate bladework of Notha Etassay, Cadaras Grendel left Vaanes and the Newborn to their sport and spent his days watching the blood games of Pashtoq Uluvent’s warriors as they hacked their way through naked slave gangs. Their victims were armed with little more than knives and raw terror, and such brutal murders were more to Grendel’s liking. Soon he found himself wetting his blades with blood in Uluvent’s arena. Such was his bloodlust that within the hour he was granted an audience upon the killing floor by Pashtoq Uluvent himself.

  Those battle machines of Votheer Tark that could be brought up the mountain roared and rampaged, their engines howling like trapped souls as they crushed prisoners beneath their tracks or tore them limb from limb with clawed pincer arms. Kaarja Salombar’s corsairs staged flamboyant displays of marksmanship and sword mastery, but Vaanes was unimpressed, having seen the exquisite bladework of Notha Etassay’s devotees.

  Honsou himself ventured little from behind his walls, his every waking moment spent in contemplation of the ancient tomes he had brought from Khalan-Ghol. What he sought within their damned pages he would not reveal, but as the days passed, his obsession with the secrets contained in the mad ravings committed to the page grew ever deeper.

  The Newborn stayed close to Ardaric Vaanes, watching the killings and displays of martial ability with a dispassionate eye. It was stronger and more skilful than the majority of the warriors here, yet only recently had it begun to take pleasure in the infliction of pain and death. Differing angels warred within its mind; the teachings of its creator and the buried instincts and memories of the gene-heritage bequeathed to it by Uriel Ventris.

  Of all the warrior bands gathered for the Skull Harvest, the Newborn was most fascinated by the loxatl, a band of alien mercenaries that laired in burrows hollowed from the sides of the mountain. Vaanes and the Newborn watched the fighting drills of the loxatl on a patch of open ground before these caves.

  The leader of this brood-group was a kin leader who went by the name of Xaneant. Whether this was the creature’s true name or one foisted upon it by human tongues was unclear, but the Newborn was impressed by the alien mercenaries, liking their fluid, sinuous movements and utter devotion to the members of their brood.

  Something in that kin-bond was achingly familiar and the Newborn wondered where the sense of belonging it felt came from. Was it responding to a memory buried deep within its altered brain or was this a fragment of the psyche the Daemonculaba had stamped upon it?

  ‘They are all related,’ said the Newborn, watching as the loxatl spun like fireflies through a series of lightning fast manoeuvres designed to showcase their speed and agility. ‘Would that not hinder them in batt
le?’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Vaanes.

  ‘Would there not be grief or horror if a kin-member died?’

  ‘I don’t think the loxatl think that way,’ said Vaanes. ‘It sounds obvious, but they’re not like humans. It’s a good observation though. I remember reading that in ancient wars, kings would sometimes raise regiments formed by men and women from the same towns, thinking it would create a bond of loyalty that would make them stronger.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘Before the killing started, yes, but when battle was joined and people began to die, the sight of friends and loved ones torn up by shellfire or cut to pieces by swords and axes destroyed any fighting spirit they might have had.’

  ‘So why do the loxatl do it?’ asked the Newborn. ‘If such groupings are so brittle, why do it? Surely it is better to fight alone or alongside those you do not care about.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Vaanes, slipping back into the role of mentor and instructor. ‘What keeps many fighting units together is the warrior next to him and the desire not to let your battle-brothers down. Shared camaraderie gives a fighting unit cohesion, but that needs to be alloyed to an unbreakable fighting spirit in order to avoid being broken when the killing starts.’

  ‘Like the Adeptus Astartes?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Vaanes bitterly.

  ‘The Ultramarines?’

  ‘Yes, the Ultramarines,’ sighed Vaanes. ‘You get that from Ventris?’

  ‘I think so,’ said the Newborn. ‘I have a desire for brotherhood with those I fight alongside, but I don’t feel it.’

  Vaanes laughed. ‘No, you won’t in Honsou’s warband. It’s said the Iron Warriors were never ones for easy camaraderie, even before they followed Horus into rebellion.’

  ‘Is that a weakness?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Time will tell, I suppose,’ said Vaanes. ‘Some warbands fight for money, some for revenge, some for honour and some for the slaughter, but it all ends up the same way.’

  ‘What way is that?’

  ‘In death,’ said a voice behind them and both the Newborn and Vaanes turned to see Huron Blackheart’s emaciated sorceress. The woman’s gaunt features were even more skeletal in the daylight, the brightness of the sky imparting an unhealthy translucence to her skin and reflecting from the gold in her eyes. Her robes shimmered and her hair whipped and twisted like a dark snake with the motion of her head.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vaanes. ‘In death.’

  The sorceress smiled, exposing stumps of yellowed teeth, and Vaanes grimaced. The woman appeared young, yet the price she had paid for her powers was rotting her away from the inside out. ‘The Lost Child and the Blind Warrior, fitting I should find you observing the displays of an alien species whose thought processes are utterly inimical to humanity.’

  Vaanes felt his skin crawl at the nearness of the sorceress. Within the seething cauldron of the Maelstrom, the terrifying power of the immaterium was a constant, gnawing presence on the edge of perception, but her proximity seemed to act as a locus for warp entities gathering like vultures around a corpse. Vaanes could feel their astral claws scratching at the lid of his mind.

  He glanced over at the Newborn, seeing it twitch and flinch as though there was an invisible host of buzzing, stinging insects swarming around its face, but which it was trying to ignore.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Vaanes, gripping the Newborn’s arm and dragging it away from her loathsome presence. ‘I detest your kind and wish to hear nothing you have to say.’

  ‘Do not be so quick to dismiss what I have to offer, warrior of Corax,’ hissed the sorceress, reaching out and placing a hand on the Newborn’s chest.

  ‘Never speak that name again,’ snarled Vaanes. ‘It means nothing to me now.’

  ‘Not now, but one day it will again,’ promised the sorceress.

  ‘You see the future?’ asked the Newborn. ‘You know what is to happen? All of it?’

  ‘Not all of it,’ admitted the sorceress, ‘but those whose lives stir the currents of the warp are bright lights in the darkness. A measure of their path is illuminated for those with the sight to see it.’

  ‘Do you see mine?’ said the Newborn eagerly.

  The sorceress laughed, a shrill bite on the air that caused the loxatl to halt their martial display and screech in rage. Shimmering patterns danced over their glistening hides and they vanished in a blur of motion, slithering and skittering across the mountainside to boltholes carved in the rocks.

  ‘The destiny of the Lost Child cleaves into the future like a fiery speartip,’ said the sorceress. ‘His destiny is woven into the tapestry of a great hero’s death, the fall of a star and the rise of an evil thought long dead.’

  ‘You speak in meaningless riddles,’ said Vaanes, dragging the Newborn away.

  ‘Wait!’ cried the Newborn. ‘I want more.’

  ‘Trust me, you don’t,’ warned Vaanes, seeing Cadaras Grendel marching towards them, his armour splashed with blood. ‘Nothing good can come of it.’

  ‘The Lost Child wishes to hear what I have to say,’ screeched the sorceress, barring their way with her skull-topped staff.

  Vaanes unsheathed the caged lightning of his gauntlet-mounted claws and rammed the foot-long blades up into the sorceress’s chest, tearing up through her heart and lungs. She died without a sound, the breath ghosting from her lips in a sparkling, iridescent cloud and the golden light fading from her eyes. Vaanes sucked in her dying breath, revelling in the sensations of fear, horror and pain it contained. His entire body shook with the deliciousness of her soul and all thought of consequence fled from his thoughts at the ecstasy of the kill.

  Vaanes lowered his arm and let her skeletal frame slide from the blades of his gauntlet. Her corpse flopped to the ground and he set off towards Cadaras Grendel with the Newborn in tow.

  ‘What was that about?’ said Grendel, looking over at the shrivelled body of the sorceress. Whatever force had animated her wasted frame had fled her body, leaving a desiccated husk of shrivelled flesh and dried bone.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Vaanes, drawing a deep breath. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Grendel, gesturing towards the sky. ‘Honsou wants you back at the compound. The Skull Harvest is about to begin.’

  Vaanes looked up, seeing the swirling colours gathering around a toxic swirl of amber, like a cancerous epicentre of a diseased whirlpool.

  ‘The Great Eye…it’s opening,’ he whispered as Grendel made his way past him in the opposite direction. ‘Are you coming back too?’

  Grendel nodded, grinning with feral anticipation. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in the arena.’

  Vaanes didn’t like the sound of that, but let it go, wondering whose blood stained Grendel’s breastplate. The Iron Warrior looked down at the withered remains of the sorceress.

  ‘Did she try and tell your fortune?’ said Grendel, kneeling beside the sagging cloth of the sorceress’s robes.

  ‘Something like that,’ agreed Vaanes.

  ‘And you killed her for it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Too bad for her she didn’t see that coming.’

  The Skull Harvest got underway, as all such gatherings do, with sacrifice. Framed by the towering majesty of a growling Battle Titan, the Tyrant of Badab tore the heart from a captured warrior of the Howling Griffons and hurled it into the arena, where it pulsed bright arterial blood onto the gritty sand until it was emptied.

  The first day was taken up with the various champions’ warbands announcing themselves to the Tyrant, who sat upon a grand throne of bronze and amber, and the allocation of challenges. Blood feuds would be settled first and a number of champions bellowed the names of those they wished to fight in the name of avenging an insult to their honour.

  Honsou expected Pashtoq Uluvent to issue such a challenge, but the red-armoured warrior had yet to appear.

  ‘I expected Uluvent to be here,’ noted Vaanes, as though read
ing his mind. ‘Champions of the Blood God are usually the first to arrive and begin the killing.’

  ‘No, Uluvent’s smarter than that,’ said Honsou.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think he wants to wait until further into the Harvest before trying to kill me. It’ll be more of a triumph for him if he slays me after we’ve taken other warbands with our own killings. He’ll have his blood feud resolved and he’ll take all my warriors.’

  ‘Then he’s more cunning than most champions of the Blood God.’

  ‘Maybe,’ agreed Honsou with a smile. ‘We’ll see how that works out for him.’

  ‘And Grendel, where’s he?’ asked Vaanes. ‘I haven’t seen him since yesterday. He said he’d be here. The other champions will know that one of our inner circle hasn’t appeared for the beginning of the death games.’

  ‘Forget Grendel,’ said Honsou. ‘We don’t need him.’

  ‘I see him,’ said the Newborn, gesturing with a nod of his helmet to the opposite side of the arena. ‘Over there.’

  Honsou looked over and saw the ranks of gathered champions part as Pashtoq Uluvent took his place on the circumference of the arena. The red-armoured warrior with the ork-skull helmet raised his red-bladed sword and a raucous cheer was torn from thousands of throats as his skull rune banner was unfurled.

  Standing beside Uluvent was Cadaras Grendel, his armour streaked with fresh blood and his chainsword unsheathed. The Iron Warrior shrugged and raised his sword to lick wet blood from the blade.

  ‘Grendel’s betrayed us?’ said Vaanes, his voice thick with anger.

  ‘It was only a matter of time,’ said Honsou. ‘To be honest I expected it sooner.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ snarled Vaanes.

  ‘No,’ said Honsou. ‘Grendel and I will have a reckoning, but it won’t be here. Do you understand me?’

  Vaanes said nothing, but Honsou could see the anger in the warrior’s eyes and just hoped the former Raven Guard would be able to restrain the urge to strike down Grendel for now.