The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  So Qui’sin began to chant. He beat the base of his staff against the defiled Darkand rock, slowly and rhythmically, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he found his rhythm. Kemich had gone still, seemingly as lost to the trance as her master. Abruptly, the Stormseer’s hand shot out and gripped the farseer’s slender shoulder. For a second it seemed as though the Space Marine’s strength would snap her bones, but she did not resist, and Qui’sin did not remove his hand. Instead, force staff raised in his other fist, he let out a bellow of exertion. Lightning sparked and coruscated around the horned skull topping the psy-reactive haft, before exploding with whiplash force across the cavern. It struck the base of the stalactite with a boom that made the entire cavern shudder, the actinic flare accentuated by a burst of sparks that scattered across the chamber. Before the echoes of the thunderclap had faded, the sound of collapsing rock heralded the stalactite’s fall. It struck the dominatrix left of its spine ridges, crunching through the thick chitin and causing it to hunch its arched back and shudder.

  ‘We have to hit it again,’ the farseer panted, reaching out once more towards the cavern’s roof. Qui’sin couldn’t respond – he was lost, mind overcome by the ancient tribal energies surging through the rock beneath his feet. Lightning lashed out once again, this time leaping between three of the jagged rocks. The farseer’s groan of exertion rose to a scream as she ripped another of the weakened shards away. It struck one of the tyranid’s weapon limbs with a gristly crack, shearing it to the bone. Another stalactite followed, and then another, the great spears of Darkand bedrock lancing the huge creature’s carapace in half a dozen places. It wailed, and was answered by a fresh uproar from its children. They were scrambling up the sheer face of the outcrop Yenneth and Qui’sin occupied, a rising tide of berserk talons and fanged maws.

  ‘One more,’ the farseer panted, her whole body shaking. But Qui’sin no longer had the strength. Kemich rose from his shoulder with an agitated shriek as the Stormseer collapsed.

  ‘No!’ shouted Yenneth as she felt his grip on her shoulder disappear, their psychic link broken. The presence was replaced a second later, however, by the sensation of talons digging into her wraithbone armour. The Space Marine’s familiar, the cybernetically altered raptor, had alighted on her shoulder. She felt the immaterial locus contained within its altered form, a bond with the warp that she could grasp on to, if only for a moment. In that fraction of calm, a time within time itself, she reached out once more and channelled her will into Darkand’s bedrock.

  There was a cracking noise, greater than all the ones that had come before. Qui’sin’s lightning had weakened the structure of the cavern’s roof. Now the largest of the remaining stalactites, like a great stone fang, was crumbling beneath the pressure of Yenneth’s efforts.

  With one last scream of exertion, the farseer tore the stone free.

  You are not lost. The tide of time has merely carried you away, but all tides must come back in. The next one will return us to ourselves, and right the wrongs heaped upon us by this cruel existence.

  – Jaem Pulvar-Jorrow, Scion of Navigator House Jorrow

  Chapter Twenty

  THE BEGINNING ENDS

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 9 HOURS.

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

  The catacombs, Heavenfall

  Fighting at the base of the rocky outcrop, the genestealer that finally caught Timchet came from above. It had dug its diamond-hard claws into the cliff face at his back, scaling halfway up and then crawling sideways, like some vicious insectoid. It dropped onto him with a hiss, its claws gouging great, bloody rents in his shoulders and scalp as it bore him to the ground.

  He managed to roll, trapping two of its six limbs beneath his armoured bulk. That pinned it enough for a quick, clinical slash across its throat with his kindjal, but the damage was done – a cut above his right eye had not only shorted out his auto-senses, but had also left him half-blind with his own blood.

  Somehow he managed to find his feet, dragging a hybrid down onto his blade as he did so. He left the Chogorian steel lodged in its windpipe and smashed his gauntlet into the snapping maw of the next genestealer to come at him, shattering fangs and pulverising translucent, newborn flesh. His fall, however, had carried him away from the rock at his back, and a hybrid managed to work his way in behind him with a lasrifle. It hit him on full auto from a range of three paces, punching through his armour in half a dozen places and causing his backpack’s generator to enter shutdown. He stumbled, even his enhanced physiology unable to stem the flow of blood from the wounds now covering him.

  Hagai’s name was on his lips as the final stalactite fell, the sound of crashing rock drawing his gaze even as a xenos blade punched up beneath his fused ribcage, and another broke the seal beneath his helm. Darkness took him.

  Joghaten saw the final moments of the combat via his auto-senses, the scene picked out with flares of colour and heat recognition mapping. The stalactite struck the master of the tyranid cult, the patriarch meshed into the flesh of the dominatrix’s upper back. It pulverised its bloated skull before splitting its body in half, a shard of rock twice the height of a man cutting deep into the symbiotic beast. Even unattuned as he was, Joghaten felt the ­psychic death knell wash over him, a sickening sense of dread and loss that was accompanied by a fresh wailing from every xenos in the cavern. The horrific clamour painted a broad grin across the khan’s face. He struck out again, cutting the talon-limb from one purestrain at the same time as his second tulwar took the eyes of a hybrid attempting to bring its lasrifle to bear. Even with their master’s death, the creatures around the khan fought with a bestial fury, their animalistic instincts bent towards slaughtering the intruder violating their nest. The khan fought on, still smiling.

  He would be with the Khagan soon, he was sure of it.

  Feng’s dao had shorted out, its disruptor field overloaded. The steedmaster did not care. Its blade was wicked enough to pierce xenos carapace without the cutting technology, especially when wielded with the force he now exerted. Unlike Timchet he hadn’t backed away to the rock where Qui’sin had fallen, but had planted both boots in the open space beside it, defying the creatures that came from every corner of the cavern. Great swings of his glaive were keeping the tyranids at bay, any that came within range of the constantly moving arc of death being cut down in an instant. A hybrid in the uniform of a Pinnacle Guard guardmaster had almost led a rush that would have seen him overwhelmed. Now the creature’s twisted head lay at the White Scar’s feet, and the blood of its brood kindred slashed in thick droplets from his dao with every swing.

  Feng felt calm now, calmer than he had in a long time. He could no longer see his long-dead hunt-brothers, or feel their presence. They had finally gone. Or perhaps he had joined them. Perhaps he was already dead.

  The thought seemed curiously irrelevant. He wondered how Jakar, Oda and Sauri fared in the webway. Were they even there still, or here on Darkand, above where he now battled? Did they exist at all?

  He had given up wrestling with such questions the moment he had glimpsed himself for the second time in the devotarium. He had always known that the secrets of the galaxy were beyond the wisest of the Zadyin Arga, let alone a hunt-brother such as himself. Let others strain their minds. His purpose was to honour his khan and his Emperor with the blood of their enemies. That was what he did, right up until the earth shifted beneath him and he found himself flying through the dark, dank air. Bones snapped wetly as his heavy body slammed into those seeking to kill him, followed by a wall of dirt. His hands went out, finding alien claws and carapace instead of purchase, and he realised his dao was no longer in his grasp. He didn’t have time to unclamp his kindjal before a genestealer’s claws punched through his breastplate, puncturing flesh and scraping off his ribs.

  He snarled with frustration, blocking ou
t the pain. It wasn’t time, not yet. He hadn’t killed enough.

  His fist shot out, gripping the twisted, alien features of the genestealer. With a bellow he forced two fingers into its ­sockets, jellying its eyes before forcing its head back until it snapped. The thing collapsed on top of him, pinning him down, while its own kin savaged and tore at its remains in their frenzied desire to get at him.

  Feng barely noticed their efforts. Head pressed forcefully to one side by the stinking alien corpse, he was aware of the earth-

  churning motion of a great, serpentine body, seconds before its shriek split the air.

  The mawloc had returned.

  The vast, burrowing tyranid caught Joghaten as it ploughed upwards from Darkand’s ichor-slick soil. The khan felt the earth shifting and threw himself forward, but he was already being lifted up, his armour grating against the dirt-caked shell of the mawloc as it burst up in the swarm leader’s defence. With a lurch, Joghaten realised he had been snagged by its maw.

  He lashed out as he felt the membranous, distending flesh stretching over his legs. There was no purchase though – he was caught in freefall, half in, half out of the huge serpentine alien’s dislocated jaw. One tulwar struck one of the monster’s great fangs, and the khan grasped it desperately as he felt its snag-teeth and digestion tendrils latching on to his armour. They were physically attempting to drag him down its open gullet.

  He snatched on to another fang as his grip began to slip. His armour was reading the corrosive bite of acidic bile rising up the mawloc’s throat. According to the battleplate’s integrity sigil, the burning liquid would eat its way to his flesh within the next thirty seconds. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on for that long anyway.

  The last sight he saw, as the alien’s fleshy maw closed over him, was the aeldari farseer. She was still atop the rock, the waystone in her hand and her runestaff raised, white light shining like a beacon from its tip. Qui’sin lay prone at her feet, while Kemich was on her shoulder, her great wings spread. Around them a sea of xenos had clambered up, the runestaff’s light reflecting from their black eyes and bared fangs as they surrounded her.

  Even in their frenzied rage, the cult would not get an opportunity to tear apart the two psykers. Fatally weakened by the blows of Yenneth and Qui’sin, the cavern roof had started to collapse. Joghaten saw it all for no more than a second, yet it seemed to hang in his mind for an eternity. It would be with him forever, he was sure. However long that was.

  Then it was all gone, lost in the darkness, and the crashing, crushing finality of a planet’s vengeance.

  Archival tunnels, Heavenfall

  They didn’t need the auspex to detect the severe earth tremors that gripped the city fifteen minutes after Qui’sin had ordered reinforcements into the catacombs. Whole blocks in the Old Town had collapsed, while cobbled slope-streets had ruptured and tiles had cascaded like hail from the roofs. An entire section of the city slumped, as though the heart of the mountain itself had given out.

  Qui’sin didn’t have time to ponder the meaning of such seismic events. He was leading Jeddah’s tactical squad through the archival tunnels below the government district’s Administratum quadrangle. They’d been encountering xenos ever since using krak charges to break into a set of natural rock passages detected on the squad’s auspex. Hybrids, many clad in Pinnacle Guard uniforms, had tried to halt them, to no avail. There had been purestrains too; their subterranean lairs now reeked of their charred meat, where the Stormseer’s lightning had flensed them. Thus far none of the xenos had attacked with any degree of coordination, certainly not that which was usually experienced when engaging a genestealer cult on the cusp of revealing itself.

  Reports coming in from elsewhere beneath the city carried similar messages. One group of hybrids, masquerading as a Pinnacle Guard security detail, had even attempted to gain access to a heavily stocked reserve artillery armoury at the rear of the Founding Wall. A combat squad redeployed to patrol the wall’s rear echelons had gunned them down as they tried to storm the bastion, demolition charges primed.

  Everywhere the White Scars had caught their enemy off guard, and seemingly without a central intelligence or driving force. Qui’sin refused to dwell on just how he’d known to give the order to strike at certain parts of Heavenfall’s convoluted underworld. That was a riddle for another day.

  ‘They’re withdrawing,’ crackled Joghaten’s voice over the vox. ‘The swarm at the wall has been thrown into some sort of confusion. They’re turning on one another again.’

  ‘It is the Khagan’s blessings,’ Qui’sin responded, knowing in his heart that there was something far more to it than that. Something had intervened on their behalf, a power beyond his current understanding. He had felt it ever since the moment on the Founding Wall, and in truth he had seen it in the weave of fate since they had first set a course for Darkand. This world had taken more than any other from the Fourth Brotherhood, but it had also given. Given in impossible, unknowable ways.

  ‘Shen is nearly in high orbit,’ Joghaten went on. ‘He reports the swarms out on the steppes have turned feral again. Whatever was driving them, it’s gone now.’

  ‘It is,’ Qui’sin agreed slowly, as the sounds of bolter fire continued to echo through the subterranean tunnels around him. ‘It is gone. And so are we.’

  The Gates of Eternity, Darkand

  The sun was setting. It was not a Chogorian sunset, of course, not the red and gold glory of the Plain Zhou. But it brought home to mind for the White Scars who watched it, and listened to the wind singing soft and low around the rocks of the Gates of Eternity.

  The swarms were broken, scattered. Fighting still flared in Heaven­fall, but the cult there was directionless and uncoordinated. Pinnacle Guard, assisted by Darkand’s tribal warriors, had purged the temple district, while squads from the Fourth Brotherhood did sweeps of the levels below the government district. The vox-net spoke of further casualties – Shontai had fallen leading his assault brothers through the vaults of the scriptorium, while Chokda’s ­bikers had suffered in an ambush sprung by what turned out to be the hybrid’s last stand, near the centrum dominus. Governor Harren had fallen there amidst a hail of las and bolter fire, the Imperial Commander almost unrecognisable, given over to alien infection. Despite the losses, the outcome was a far cry from what had come before.

  The aeldari was still with them. Joghaten turned his back on the setting sun and faced her. She had removed her tall blue-and-yellow helm, so that the golden light fell on features that were at once disconcertingly recognisable, yet quite alien – too sharp, too slender. Try as he might, the Master of Blades could not meet her fathomless black gaze, for doing so only reinforced the impossibility of the events in which he had just participated.

  ‘I remember nothing between the darkness of the cavern and finding myself here,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Your mind rejects what it cannot comprehend,’ Yenneth replied, her voice seeming to merge with the murmuring of Darkand’s wind.

  ‘Are we dead?’ Joghaten demanded.

  ‘Perhaps, in some worlds and times, long since passed.’

  ‘We cannot stay here though,’ Joghaten went on, unwilling to slip any deeper into her race’s interminable riddles.

  ‘To do what I have already done stretches the bounds of reality to its very limit,’ Yenneth said, the barest hint of remorse colouring her words. ‘To bend it further would be to break it, at least in this sphere of existence. Besides, I see in your heart that you do not wish to remain anyway. Those in the city right now are not your own. Your brothers lie elsewhere.’

  ‘The webway,’ Qui’sin said before Joghaten could respond. ‘When we left it was in the heat of battle. What if they are already dead, in your lost city?’

  ‘Even I do not know their fate, yet,’ Yenneth admitted, turning towards the Stormseer. Kemich, perched on his shoulder, ruffled her go
lden feathers.

  ‘Then there is only one way to be sure,’ Timchet said eventually, pointing towards the arching rocks where the webway gate stood. The strange stones were not as active as they had been when the brotherhood had first ridden through, but the air between them now was rippling gently, as though caught in a heat haze.

  ‘I cannot force you to pass over,’ Yenneth admitted. ‘But I suspect you cannot stop yourselves. To remain here would be a lonely and meaningless existence.’

  ‘It would be an abandonment,’ Qui’sin admitted, then trailed off when he saw that Joghaten, his helm removed, was beginning to smile.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Khagan calls,’ the Master of Blades said softly, with all the relish he might have displayed when he was still Arro’shan’s prized bondsman, thinking only of glory. ‘Can you not hear his hunting cry, weathermaker? It echoes from the beyond.’

  ‘The eternal hunt,’ Feng said, joining the other three before the farseer. ‘It is a worthy fate for any son of Chogoris. My brothers wait for me to join them in it. I can already see them there, on the other side.’

  ‘I can accompany you some of the way,’ Yenneth said. ‘I will take you back to the City of Pillars. After that, whatever path you choose to wander will be your own.’

  ‘We will see our brothers again,’ Joghaten said, louder now, with vigour in his voice. ‘All of them. And when we are reunited, the Tulwar Brotherhood will embark on the hunt that will end all others. We will seek neither rest nor sustenance, but only our Khagan, until we are with him once again. And when we are, we will ride at his side for eternity, as we have been fated to do since the dawn of time. What do you say, weathermaker?’