Khârn: Eater of Worlds

by Anthony Reynolds

‘Come here, human,’ said Ruokh. ‘Serve your purpose.’

  Skoral made her way cautiously towards the Destroyer.

  Ruokh reversed into a metal, legionary-sized chair, and sat. He slammed his right arm onto the bench in front of him. It was bloody, with flesh gaping open from palm to elbow, exposing muscle, sinew and tendons. The blood flow had ceased, courtesy of the hyper-coagulants in his engineered bloodstream. A regular human would have bled out had such a wound been left untended, as this one clearly had. His hand was grey and bloodless. It was also missing two fingers.

  Skoral placed her hands into a box-like unit. They were blasted with a chill antibacterial gas and sprayed with a quick-drying synth-film. She retracted them, now encased in a thin blue synthetic skin, and began gathering what she needed. There wasn’t much to choose from. The Legion was critically low on supplies.

  ‘What happened?’ she said, turning the arm slightly, getting a better look. She was familiar with the jagged wounds – too familiar. Chainaxe. It had torn the arm to pieces.

  ‘Does it matter?’ said Ruokh. ‘My hand does not work. Fix it. Here,’ he added, slamming down his good hand on the table. When he lifted it, two severed fingers were revealed. They were smoking slightly and skinless. Skoral picked one of them up. It looked as though they had been doused in acid.

  ‘I cut them from Khrast’s stomach,’ said Ruokh, by way of explanation. He nodded to the ruin of his arm. ‘He resisted.’

  ‘These are not salvageable,’ said Skoral, putting the finger down. ‘They are too damaged.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Ruokh. He swept them aside with the back of his hand. They fell to the deck floor. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘This is not an insignificant injury,’ said Skoral. She gestured. ‘Look. All these tendons are shredded. I’ll need to graft new ones. These muscles here and here are useless and will need to be re-cultured. These ligaments need reattaching. Your arteries are severed here, here, here and here – I’ll need to attach replacements before your hand regains circulation.’

  ‘So get started.’

  Skoral sighed and stood up, moving to a glass-fronted refrigeration unit. She opened it, letting a waft of icy vapours fall to the floor, scanning for what she needed. Finding it, she pulled two vials from a rack. Both contained liquids; one clear, one amber. She let the door to the refrigeration unit close, and came back to Ruokh, shaking both vials vigorously.

  ‘You can make the hand work again, yes?’ said the Destroyer.

  ‘I can,’ said Skoral, unscrewing the two vials and carefully adding the amber liquid to the clear. She disposed of the empty vial, dropping it into a recyc-drawer, and shook the combined liquids together until she was satisfied they were adequately mixed. ‘But it will take time.’

  ‘How long?’

  Skoral shrugged. ‘For the initial operation, an hour. Maybe two.’ She pulled open a drawer, and retrieved a large, pistol-gripped syringe. With practised efficiency, she fitted it with a new needle, and slotted in the vial of mixed liquids.

  ‘And the recovery?’

  ‘You should regain full strength in your hand in less than a month.’

  That answer did not seem to please Ruokh. His expression darkened. ‘Better to hack it off then,’ he snarled. ‘Fit me with an augmetic.’

  ‘We don’t have a Techmarine aboard the ship,’ said Skoral. ‘Once we enter real space Dreagher can request that Master Jareg come aboard to perform the operation, but I cannot do it alone.’

  ‘Khurgan could,’ growled Ruokh.

  ‘He could,’ said Skoral. ‘I can’t.’

  Ruokh grunted. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have killed him.’

  Skoral glared at Ruokh for a moment, but made no response. She set the loaded syringe on the steel-topped counter within easy reach and sat, pulling her stool in close to work on the legionary’s arm.

  ‘The coagulation has stopped the bleeding, but I need to get your blood flowing again to clean this wound out properly. I need to clear away these clots, then I’m going to inject you with an anticoagulant, before I clip these arteries and get to work.’

  She picked up a scalpel and clippers.

  ‘Hold still,’ she said, leaning in close. On her wrist, exposed, her bracelet blinked. Inwardly, she cursed. The scalpel blade caught the light, glinting.

  The change came over him faster than she could have imagined. One moment he was sitting there, compliant. The next he was lurching up, overthrowing the table and sending her tools scattering.

  He had a hold of her arm. Then she was on the far side of the room. Tables and chairs had been knocked over. She was on the ground, lying in something warm.

  She was gaping at him – how was he so far away? He had something in his hand. He tossed it aside and came at her, roaring, smashing aside tables and chairs.

  She tried to scramble back away. Something wasn’t right. Her arm wouldn’t respond. No… her arm wasn’t there.

  She was lying in a growing pool of her own blood. It was an arm that Ruokh had been holding, that he’d tossed aside disdainfully. Her arm. It lay on the floor. She could see her bracelet. It was still blinking.

  Ruokh leapt at her. His face twisted with the fury of the neural implants in his brain.

  There was a flash of purple and gold, and a newly arrived figure hit him, tackling him in midair. Instead of landing on her, Ruokh was slammed sidewards, crashing into one of the apothecarion’s walls.

  Skoral rolled onto her back. She lay there in the pool of her own blood, gulping air. She could hear the roar and crash of the two combatants nearby, but it was fading away, becoming strangely distant, as if she were being rapidly transported away to a quieter, more serene place.

  She could hear her own gasping breath. She stared at the lumen globe directly above her. It was buzzing loudly.

  The buzzing got louder, until it blotted out everything.

  ‘Is this the way it is going to be, brother?’ said Baruda, his hand on the hilt of his chainaxe. ‘You’ll let us spill blood on account of Ruokh?’ He practically spat the name, his voice filled with contempt.

  ‘I have already lost two warriors today,’ said Dreagher. ‘One of them was my lieutenant, your friend. We are few enough as it is. These loses are not sustainable, and they cannot continue. We are bleeding ourselves dry. I will deal with Ruokh. Go against my order, and the consequences are on you.’

  ‘Honour demands it, Dreagher. It is our way.’

  ‘Honour,’ spat Dreagher. ‘Don’t use that word as justification for slaking your anger, Baruda.’

  ‘Reopen the pits,’ hissed Baruda. ‘Let me face him on the red sand. That is all that I ask.’

  ‘No,’ said Dreagher. ‘A line must be drawn. This is that line. I will see no more blood spilt on Ruokh’s account.’

  ‘Blood demands blood. If not Ruokh’s… then someone else’s.’

  Baruda unhooked his chainaxe and dropped his other hand to the bolt pistol at his hip.

  Bolters and plasma guns were suddenly cocked and readied, aiming at Baruda. Chainaxes growled. Servos whined as the World Eaters readied to kill one of their own.

  Dreagher’s expression tightened, his jaw clenching and the veins at his temples bulging. The Nails were pounding. He gritted his teeth, but refused to reach for a weapon of his own.

  ‘Dreagher,’ said Argus Brond, from behind the standoff.

  ‘What?’ snapped Dreagher, not taking his eyes from Baruda.

  ‘Ruokh,’ said Brond. ‘He has been found. He’s… there’s been another casualty.’

  Dreagher stabbed a finger at Baruda. ‘Keep him here,’ he barked, and turned to leave.

  Baruda snarled and took a step forward. Fingers tightened on triggers.

  ‘Let me take him!’ Baruda growled. ‘Let me claim his skull!’

  Dreagher glanced at his old comrade ove
r his shoulder, angered and resentful of the changes that he had seen wrought in him over the past decade. But then, had he himself not changed, as well?

  With a snarl, he swung away.

  ‘Not today,’ he said.

  Chapter 4

  Dreagher’s face was thunderous, and the Legion’s servants stood hurriedly aside, lowering their eyes, as he stormed past them. The pulse of the Nails was a grinding throb in the back of his head.

  ‘You’re a stubborn bastard, Dreagher,’ said Brond, marching alongside him. ‘Tensions are high. A challenge might have done some good. Why not just give him to Baruda and be done with it?’

  ‘He wouldn’t last a minute against Ruokh,’ said Dreagher. ‘It would not solve anything. It would simply weaken the Legion further. Baruda is too important, especially now that Khrast is gone. I have no other officers I can rely upon. All are either dead, or lost to the Nails,’ said Dreagher, ignoring the mortals scrambling to get out of his way.

  They turned a corner, and passed a trio of legionaries walking the other way. He saw the tell-tale twitches of the Nails in them, the barely suppressed anger simmering behind their eyes. Dreagher inclined his head to them as he passed, acknowledging them.

  ‘And it would not have stopped at one death,’ said Dreagher. ‘When Baruda fell – and he would – another would step forward, one pledged to their Brazen God, then another. They’d have killed Ruokh in the end, but how many would he take with him? Five? Ten? No. I will not permit it.’

  ‘You could reopen the pits,’ said Brond. ‘The other echelons still allow it. Let your men fight once again.’

  Dreagher himself had had a formidable record in the pits, before he’d chained the combat arenas shut, leaving them as a haunted, empty expanse.

  ‘No,’ said Dreagher. ‘We cannot control ourselves any more.’

  ‘The pressure on this ship is palpable. The pits are a release valve for that. Yes, there would be some deaths. There always were. That is our way.’

  ‘Our ranks have been decimated, Brond,’ said Dreagher. ‘We don’t have any neophytes coming in. We can’t afford self-inflicted casualties during warp transit. The other echelons can do as they wish – but on this vessel, the pits stay closed.’

  ‘There will be more deaths before long, then. I’m surprised there haven’t been more already. If we cannot release our fury in the pits, then the violence in our souls will be enacted elsewhere. It cannot be contained. Not for long,’ said Brond. It was an old argument.

  They marched the rest of the way in silence. As they walked, Dreagher’s anger began to build. It was an amorphous, unfocused rage.

  A pair of hulking, vat-grown monsters stood guard before the blast doors. They were immense, slab-muscled abhumans, bigger even than Dreagher and Brond, with oversized arms and immense iron-knuckled fists. Ribbed cables jutted from their thick, leathery skin, like parasitic, mechanical worms.

  Each of them bore a lance-like shock-prod, the jag-bladed tips crackling with energy. Those weapons were wired into generators embedded in the flesh of the creatures’ shoulders. Dim-witted brutes who felt little in the way of pain, they were gene-bred for obedience and aggression. As well as helping the World Eaters repel any fool insane enough to board the Defiant, they served as the ship’s gaolers.

  They lowered their heads in subservience, shuffling out of the way of the two World Eaters. One of them keyed a code sequence into a wall panel and the heavy reinforced cell block doors ground open, allowing Dreagher and Brond to continue through without pause.

  ‘Come,’ said Dreagher, and the two abhumans fell in behind him.

  They passed through another two armoured blast portals that ground open before them, and through the firing arc of ceiling-mounted sentry guns. They were dormant, but even so, Dreagher tensed as he walked beneath them. The Nails twisted, readying him for combat.

  A cacophony of sound rolled over them as the final blast door lifted before them and they stepped through into the cell block. Muffled screams and inhuman roars accompanied repetitive booms and echoes, the rattle and pull of chains, and reverberations that made the deck shudder.

  There were three levels of cells in the block, linked by raised gantries, leaving the central corridor shaft empty. Immense abhuman gaolers walked the perimeter, and more sentry guns tracked overhead.

  Two company veterans stood halfway along the bottom tier of the cell block, one to either side of a sealed door. These were the World Eaters that had brought Ruokh in. Dreagher marched towards them. They straightened at his approach, crashing their fists against their chests in the old Legion manner. The door between them reverberated with repetitive booms, making the deck shudder. It matched the pounding of the Nails in Dreagher’s head, souring his already foul mood.

  Egil Galerius of the III Legion stood nearby, leaning casually up against a girder, partially concealed in the shadow of the gantry above. His immense, single-bladed falchion was strapped across his shoulders.

  Dreagher nodded curtly to the swordsman, who returned the motion with a flourish, a half-smile on his lips. The scars on his face bothered Dreagher. He pushed the Palatine Blade from his thoughts, however, and turned his attention to the cell.

  ‘Open the door,’ he snarled. ‘If he goes for me, shoot him.’

  Dreagher stood unarmed, hands clenched into fists. The two veterans stepped back away from the door, pressing their bolters to their shoulders. The two abhuman gaolers stepped protectively in front of Dreagher, sending power into their shock-prods.

  The Emperor’s Children swordsman remained leaning against the base of the girder, a sardonic smile on his snow-white face. At a nod from Dreagher, one of the abhuman gaolers lumbered forward and hit the cell door release.

  It retracted sharply into the ceiling. Ruokh was revealed, hunched over in the sudden opening, his tattooed, hairless face twisted and bestial. One of his hands was flexed like a talon. The other was limp at his side, his arm a mangled ruin of bared flesh and tendon. He took a threatening step forward, then checked himself as he registered the weapons levelled at him. The abhumans growled in warning, energy crackling upon the tips of their shock-prods.

  Dreagher’s lips curled and he felt an overwhelming urge to rip those gaolers limb from limb. It was an affront to even think of these sub-humans applying shock-prods to once proud legionaries, but then someone had to act as the Legion’s gaolers, and that was not a task that any warrior of the XII should have to do.

  Ruokh looked past the hunched brutes, his gaze settling on Galerius, at the back of the group. The Destroyer’s lips drew back in a savage smile, exposing banks of sharp, black, metal teeth.

  ‘You took me unawares, Son of Fulgrim,’ he said. ‘Next time will be different.’

  Galerius smiled broadly, with genuine amusement.

  ‘I’ll gut you like I gutted–’ Ruokh began, but he was cut off as Dreagher stepped forward and slammed a boot square into his midsection, hurling him back into the cell. Before he could recover, Dreagher was on him. He moved fast for a being so big. He drove Ruokh back against the far wall, his armoured forearm pressed hard against his throat, restricting his air flow.

  ‘Enough,’ he snarled, his face only centimetres from Ruokh’s.

  Fury sparked in Ruokh’s eyes, but he held it in check; he did not resist, or attempt to break away from his captain’s grip. Brond and the others had followed him into the cell, weapons aimed at his head. He swallowed, forcing back the bile and anger that was surging within him.

  ‘You’ve become a liability,’ hissed Dreagher. ‘Baruda wanted to call you out for the death of Khrast, but I refused him.’

  Ruokh’s yellow gaze stared back at Dreagher. ‘I’d relish the chance to kill the sanctimonious dog. He’s always hated me. I would rip his still-beating hearts from him and eat them before the life faded from his eyes. If he is so enamoured with his beloved Brazen L
ord, then let him go and join him in hell.’

  Dreagher slammed Ruokh back into the wall again, arresting his attention.

  ‘I refused him, but that was before I learned what you did in the apothecarion,’ snarled Dreagher. Keeping the Destroyer pinned to the wall, he reached back and drew one of the blades at his side – a jag-toothed monomolecular knife that had cut more threads than he had bothered to remember. He pressed the blade against the warrior’s throat.

  ‘You’d kill me for the life of one human?’ snarled Ruokh. ‘How many innocents have you killed, Dreagher? Your hands are as stained as any of ours.’

  ‘I do not claim otherwise, brother,’ spat Dreagher. ‘She is different.’

  ‘More important than one of your own blood?’ said Ruokh.

  ‘More important than yours.’

  Ruokh grunted. He licked his lips.

  ‘Does she live?’ said Ruokh, his voice raw, but calmer.

  ‘If she didn’t, you’d already be dead,’ said Dreagher. ‘But she may yet die. We do not have an Apothecary any more. You killed him. Remember?’

  Ruokh’s eye twitched. ‘That was a fair fight,’ he growled.

  ‘It was to first blood,’ said Dreagher.

  ‘I only hit him once,’ said Ruokh.

  ‘You decapitated him.’

  ‘There was a lot of first blood,’ admitted Ruokh. His expression turned into a grimace as Dreagher exerted more pressure on his knife, drawing a neat line of red. ‘The Apothecary was weak,’ croaked Ruokh. ‘Such weakness could have been exploited on the field. He should have blocked my strike. He didn’t.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ agreed Dreagher, ‘and the Ninth was left without an Apothecary. You weakened us, Ruokh. Skoral is all we have now. She was Khurgan’s assistant and the only one on this ship with anything more than field medicae training. And you ripped her arm off.’

  ‘The blood rage was upon me–’ began Ruokh, but he was interrupted by his captain holding up his hand.

  ‘Enough,’ said Dreagher. ‘You don’t think things through, Ruokh. You never did, even before the Nails.’