The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  She was moving long before it fired, rolling beneath the tear the construct’s strange weapon ripped in reality. Her twin splinter pistols were in both hands in the same instant as she came up, lithe as an angry felid. The pistols spat, and there was a shuddering clatter as a thousand tiny, wicked barbs perforated the construct’s wraithbone shell. It stumbled backwards, half of its long, smooth helm riddled with shards. A second salvo at point-blank range caused it to slump, the spirit stone inset into its breastplate growing dim.

  They were no fun, these ghosts. They didn’t scream. The thought had barely entered Skalorix’s mind before she heard the revving of engines, reverberating around the amphitheatre’s sides. She whipped around, both pistols raised and primed, in time to see new arrivals tearing into the blood-slashed arena from beneath the vault of the primary gateway. Mon-keigh warrior-breed, plated in white, splattered in the blood of her warriors.

  Skalorix couldn’t resist a shriek of bitter laughter. Things just kept getting better.

  Joghaten saw her the moment Whitemane roared beneath the amphitheatre’s gate and into the main arena. It was impossible to miss the archon – while surrounded by heavily armoured drukhari bodyguards, she cut a lithe, simple figure. That, and she bore the cracked helm of Arro’shan hanging from her belt. The sickening laughter that she greeted the Space Marines with only sharpened the khan’s hate.

  Joghaten charged her where she stood, near the burning remains of her raider at the amphitheatre’s centre. Whitemane roared across the arena, kicking up grit, while his bondsmen and Qui’sin followed. The tactical squad’s Rhino had slewed to a halt beside the gateway, the squad within dispersing and opening fire on the dark eldar shooting down from the amphitheatre’s sides. It was chaos, and the Master of Blades was at the heart of it.

  His assault bike slammed into one of the archon’s bodyguards. The eldar crumpled with a wet crunch, but its death was enough to arrest Whitemane’s motion. Joghaten was already out of the saddle before his mount hit the bloodied dirt, a blade in each hand. The archon met him with a burst of splinter pistol fire, still laughing viciously as she skipped back from him. Joghaten grunted as he felt multiple impacts, and his armour told him what his flesh already knew – the barbs had cut deep in half a dozen places, drawing blood that couldn’t clot while the razored metal remained lodged.

  He lunged at the archon, a snarl of pure hatred twisting his face. She was nowhere near where his blow fell, however, her speed outstanding even for the natural abilities of her race. Joghaten’s tulwars cut only air, and another spray of barbs hammered him from his left, the damnable creature’s laughter ringing in his ears.

  Then Qui’sin was at his side. The Stormseer had dismounted, his force staff raised to the maddening heavens. A blast of ­psychic energy slammed past Joghaten like a slipstream, catching the lithe drukhari. The archon’s laughter turned to a shriek of panic as she was snatched up and flung a dozen paces, bouncing in the dirt of the arena.

  Joghaten was on her in an instant, tulwars scissoring towards the pale flesh of her throat. There was a flare of energy, and the khan’s oath turned to a grunt of effort and then a bellow of frustration as the tulwars rebounded off an invisible field. Power flared for the briefest moment as the strike was deflected, and the one unbroken eye-lens in Arro’shan’s helmet glowed red before fading again.

  The helmet contained some sort of protective energy sphere installed by the drukhari. The agony of the dozen barbs studding Joghaten’s flesh faded into nothing, drowned in the sea of his fury. He flung himself at the eldar with a vox-roar that shuddered the air around him, tulwars a blur of cutting power. But the archon was up and moving again, dancing away around the arena, cackling once more as she taunted her multiple adversaries. As another maddening burst of splinters battered his armour, a distant, disconnected part of Joghaten’s mind realised that this was where his hunt ended.

  Timchet and his new brothers were pouring fire up into the amphitheatre’s flanks, trying to suppress the dark eldar before the xenos’ superior positions began to tell on the exposed White Scars. The Space Marine braced his feet and spread his arc of fire wide, armour locked as he hammered heavy bolter rounds into the upper tiers of the amphitheatre. Old stone burst and exploded as the xenos scattered, reduced to dark, dripping smears wherever the stream of firepower caught up with them.

  The rest of his adopted tactical squad were laying down similar fire support from the shadow of the Rhino, parked just inside the arena’s entrance. The high arch of the gateway offered the squad some protection from the return fire, but it was coming in from all angles. The dark eldar had turned the arena into a kill zone, and they were filling it with splinter death. One of the Tactical Marines, Ughan, had already fallen with a shard through his visor, while Timchet had taken three penetrating strikes to his left ­pauldron. The barbs were agonising, overcoming even his enhanced ability to subdue pain, but he forced himself to focus. He tracked left and right with his heavy weapon, dispersing or cutting down the largest concentrations of darting xenos warriors, even as the air around him hummed and whizzed like a living beast, given voice by the passage of a thousand deadly shards.

  ‘Supporting fire, right side,’ Uygai voxed. A moment later Timchet saw the dark eldar firing down from the amphitheatre’s crest start to convulse and fall, their spiked armour riddled with shuriken. They were replaced immediately by more eldar figures, but these wore bold blue-and-yellow heraldry, like the larger constructs battling at the centre of the arena. They opened fire on their dark cousins on either side as more reinforcements joined them, scaling the amphitheatre’s outer flanks.

  ‘Only target them if fired upon,’ Uygai said, indicating the new arrivals on the visor display. ‘We must support the khan.’

  ‘Enemy reinforcements to the centre,’ Janggi observed. A fresh rush of drukhari warriors had abandoned their shooting positions on the tiers and rushed towards the melee swirling across the arena, locked around the crashed remains of the dark eldar raider. Joghaten, his bondsmen and Feng’s bikers had been swallowed up by the vicious three-way combat and there was no way of offering them fire support without risking hitting them.

  ‘Blades,’ Uygai said. ‘For the Khagan and the Emperor.’

  Timchet uncoupled his heavy bolter and set it down in the dirt before drawing his kindjal.

  ‘Guide me, brother,’ he murmured, his mind on Wind Tamer and Hagai, on better times in a now-distant place.

  Fourth Squad advanced.

  Lau Feng had lost himself to the fury. He was no longer aware of where he was or what was happening around him. All he knew was that his brothers – his slain brothers – were screaming for vengeance, and their killers were before him.

  He’d dismounted, when or how he couldn’t recall. How many had he killed? Not enough. He slammed his dao down, the charged blade slicing through a raised alien rifle, then its crested helm, then its skull, parting it from head to groin. He was shouldering through the bloody remains before they’d even slumped, dao now cutting into another’s flank as it struggled with a blue-and-yellow automaton, gutting it with a furious twist. Feng then turned the dao on the construct, hacking into wraithbone, toppling it like a felled tree. He carved open its smooth, elongated helm and, finding nothing inside, turned his dripping blade on a glaive-wielding warrior with a horned white helm. The two energised weapons clashed, the discharge forcing them both back. They re-engaged, Feng keening a mindless, frenzied scream.

  This one was faster. It parried Feng’s stroke deftly and turned his recovering jab with the flat of its long blade. In the same fluid movement it spun inside his guard and brought its long weapon down in a stroke that almost cut the White Scar from collarbone to abdomen. Feng twisted his own body, and the blade instead bit into his left pauldron, jarring off the bloody white ceramite.

  What was meant to have been the alien’s killing stroke had brought it too close. Feng la
shed out with the back of his gauntlet, smashing the creature’s twisted white mask and knocking it to one side. Before it could recover he slammed a boot into its shin. There was a gristly snapping sound and the xenos went down. It tried to roll in the dirt, lashing out with its blade as it did so, but there was no force behind the blow and it scarred harmlessly off Feng’s leg. The White Scar pinned the dark eldar with one foot, raised his dao, and brought it down like a lightning bolt. The drukhari’s horned head was severed, the dao impaled in the ground.

  Feng bellowed his victory. Around him the revenants of Ajai, Tenjin, Oyuun and Tayang screamed with approval, the sound drawing further agony from Feng. He plucked up his weapon and flung himself forward once more.

  Qui’sin spun his staff in a tight arc, deflecting the glaive that would have opened his stomach. With a word he channelled a wave of psychic energy into his counter-thrust, the skull tip of his staff slamming into the drukhari’s breastplate with enough force to shatter its ribcage and fling it back into those behind. The Stormseer just had time to bring the staff back up again before another blade rang off its haft, the impact shuddering up Qui’sin’s arms.

  Around him the warriors of the brotherhood seemed to have lost themselves to madness. Even the tactical squad had flung themselves into the assault, blades drawn, bathing themselves in the mania that gripped the arena. To his right Joghaten was locked in a dance of death with the drukhari archon, both warriors clashing around the small space their vicious combat had created. The khan was bleeding from a dozen splinter wounds, and his armour was scarred silver in a thousand places, but still he could not land a telling blow through the archon’s energy shield. Every time Qui’sin attempted to find his focus and lash out at the mocking alien, one of its minions would come at him in a blur of razored steel. Twice Kemich had bought him time, darting down from where she had been circling the arena to drive his attackers back in a flurry of feathers and talons. Joghaten was fading however, every fresh nick accompanied by a burst of agony that intruded into the Stormseer’s mind. He had moments more before one of the drukhari’s pistol shots proved fatal.

  A presence intruded in Qui’sin’s mind as he turned aside another attack. It was one he had felt before, though it still sickened him.

  ‘The witch,’ he voxed to Joghaten, though he doubted the khan was aware of his words. He’d barely spoken them before a shock wave blasted through the arena, kicking up a hail of dirt and staggering the combatants. The force of Farseer Yenneth’s arrival made Qui’sin’s hand go up to his cable-studded scalp, his psychic hood pulsing with painful energies. He stumbled and the next thing he knew a drukhari dagger was digging into the joint between his thigh and his groin. The agony of the monomolecular blade seared away the pain in his skull and made him lash out reflexively, crumpling his attacker’s helm. The knife remained lodged in place though, the Stormseer’s blood painting his white thick plates a bright red.

  He parried two more strikes from two separate drukhari, each coming at him from opposite sides. A third blow deflected off his breastplate, jarring away to the left. A fourth would have caught him above the gorget and cut his throat, were it not for the presence of the aeldari.

  The tall, robed warrior was suddenly at his side, its witchblade turning away the dagger stroke before a riposte of flawless perfection cut off the drukhari’s head.

  Qui’sin used the moment’s respite to drag the knife in his thigh free, grunting with pain. The wound was refusing to clot, kept open by some vile agent coating the alien blade. He tossed it angrily aside, as Kemish alighted on his backpack, her beak bloody. Around them, a sudden calm had settled, a psychic ­bubble only his attuned senses were aware of.

  The seer council of Iyanden had entered the fray.

  Fate leads those who embrace it, but pushes those who do not. Eventually it masters them all, regardless of their own will.

  – Ancient Chogorian steppe proverb

  Chapter Eighteen

  PREDESTINATION

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

  TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL [TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

  The City of Pillars, the Webway

  The City of Pillars resounded with the sound of battle, and no more so than in its ancient amphitheatre, where the strands of fate came together to form a tangled, blood-soaked knot. Joghaten did not notice the aeldari witch’s intervention until one of his blows broke through the archon’s energy field. The tulwar’s edge passed a few inches from the drukhari’s face, where before it had rebounded. The realisation that the shield had been overloaded struck them at the same time. The archon, however, was faster. As one of her pistols came up towards Joghaten’s helm there was a flash of light, and a thudding sound. The drukhari let out a shriek, no longer of delight but of raw frustration. Something, moving with a speed not even a regular aeldari could match, had impacted into her side and thrown her off balance. She was forced to turn her stumble into a dive as a witchblade shrieked from the figure who had collided with her, the wicked, psychically charged edge barely missing her pale throat. The desperate motion saved her from the robed aeldari’s blade, but it had carried her, for the briefest moment, within reach of Joghaten’s.

  He did not hesitate. Roaring Arro’shan’s name, he swept one tulwar from right to left with all his strength. The archon’s head left her body with such force that it sailed across the surrounding combatants and was lost in the press. The body collapsed at the khan’s feet, its twitching death-throes sending blood pattering across his boots and greaves.

  The eldar witch who had struck the archon was beside Joghaten, her alien blade vibrating with potency. The khan rounded on her without a thought. Even the aeldari, it seemed, could be taken by surprise. The farseer found herself gripped by the throat and hauled into the air.

  ‘She was mine to kill,’ the khan bellowed furiously.

  You took her head,+ the farseer responded, forcing the words directly into Joghaten’s mind as she choked in his tightening grasp.

  ‘I did not need your aid, witch. You shame me with your presence.’

  If you kill me, you will never be able to return to reality. You can still save your city and your brothers.+

  Joghaten’s grip lessened slightly as he felt something scrape against his breastplate. One of the farseer’s council had the tip of a black spear, shuddering with alien energies, planted against his side. The rest had surrounded him, and he could feel their psychic presence teetering on the edge of his consciousness, unwilling to intervene lest the slightest motion snap their leader’s neck, but ready with the speed of thought to tear his mind apart. The realisation pierced the Chogorian battle lust that had consumed him. His every instinct demanded he break the lying xenos and turn his tulwars on the rest of her kindred. After a moment’s resistance he overcame the killer urge, and released the farseer.

  The alien leader landed on her feet, gasping but upright. The battle still raged around them, but within ten paces of Joghaten all seemed eerily calm. He was surrounded by aeldari seers, with only a few of his brethren caught in the sphere of their psychic trickery. Steedmaster Feng was on his knees, dripping with xenos blood, his eyes distant. A blow had shattered his helm and left a jagged slash down the side of his face. The wind-brother, Timchet, was there also, turning in a slow circle with his kindjal held point-down as he watched for any signs of attack from the aliens around him.

  ‘So show me,’ Joghaten snarled at Yenneth. ‘Show me how I can save Darkand.’

  ‘Only a few may come,’ Yenneth said, straightening with the aid of her staff. ‘What we do runs too much risk if more intervene.’

  ‘Whatever you do witch, know that I shall hold you to account,’ said Qui’sin as he strode to Joghaten’s side, his armour painted with dark eldar blood. The khan had never seen the Stormseer looking so wrathful and battle-ready.

  ‘Your
trickery has shrouded this world for long enough,’ he went on. ‘You will atone for it now and deliver your side of our agreement, or I will break you.’

  ‘Stand close,’ Yenneth said, slipping a hand into her robes. Joghaten gestured at his brothers, bringing Qui’sin and Timchet to his side. After a moment, Feng followed. The farseer had produced a shard of stone, black, its edges sharp.

  ‘A waystone,’ the aeldari said. ‘One that I myself have imbued with guiding power. Clear your thoughts, mon-keigh. We must turn our actions in on themselves.’

  Before Joghaten could respond, he realised that sudden silence had fallen over them. The sound of the vicious combat in the arena had not faded, it had simply vanished. Joghaten looked around, marvelling at the perfect quiet, even while robed and armoured xenos danced around one another, blades flashing, blood spraying the air. As he watched, the action itself began to dissolve, the light that radiated off gemstones and sword edges, helmets and barbed armour growing until it became a brilliance so intense even the Space Marine’s helmet could not properly filter it.

  Joghaten took a step, lips parted in a snarl, one arm up and shielding his face. His boot rang against stone. He knew instinctively that was wrong, not just because it broke the other-world silence that had engulfed them, but because the floor of the ­amphitheatre had been blood-slashed sand, not stone. He realised the light was gone. He lowered his arm.

  They were not in the arena anymore, nor even in the strange, alien city the farseer had led them to. Joghaten, Qui’sin, Timchet and Feng, flanking Yenneth, were standing back in Heavenfall. They were in a deserted street in what appeared to be the temple district, an arching devotarium building lying directly in front of them.

  ‘Impossible,’ Joghaten breathed. ‘This is xenos trickery.’