Kraillach wanted very much to blink now, to turn his armada for home and flee for his sanctum while he still could, but he was trapped. Quite apart from the loss of face involved in backing down, the skies were full of hostile Reaver gangs. If they were harried every step of the way back to the Realm Eternal’s fortress, the losses would be catastrophic. Retreating would be a disaster, attacking would be a worse disaster and waiting to be attacked could be a disaster. Kraillach opted for the only course that held just the seeds of disaster instead of its ripe and bitter fruit. He waited.
Xelian clutched the curved rail on the open rear platform of a Venom jetbike as its rider, hunched beneath his crystal canopy, accelerated out of the pits beneath the arena floor at blistering speed. As they rose above the fortress she gazed out at the distant cloud of Kraillach’s armada shining like motes in a sunbeam.
It was an impressive-looking array, hundreds of individual craft stacked high and deep to maximise their interlocking fields of fire. There would be little manoeuvring on Kraillach’s part once battle was joined; the Blades of Desire would have to drive the action by tearing into their formation like a pack of predators plunging into a herd of prey. The Reavers and hellions would swirl around the lumbering barges to distract their fire while Venoms ran in close and dropped their deadly cargoes of wyches onto their open decks. That was the plan.
Xelian had instructed her wyches to attack and move on quickly, or to at least to turn captured guns on their former owners if they could not reach another craft. The wyches on a single Venom could easily overwhelm a single pleasure craft, but there were far too few Venoms to go around. Xelian didn’t really care; her craft was flanked by two more sleek-bodied Venoms armed with dark lances to knock down the shields on Kraillach’s chariot. As long as she got within arm’s reach of Kraillach the rest of the battle was irrelevant to her.
Off to one side a tight wedge of speeding grav craft breached the jagged horizon and raced towards the fortress. Xelian paused from giving her final orders to study the newcomers. The leading craft bore the icon of the White Flames. So here was Yllithian at last, come to join Kraillach for the final battle.
Interestingly he wasn’t heading toward Kraillach’s armada but for a point halfway between them and the fortress. Requests began to flood in from the fortress guns for permission to open fire as Yllithian came with range. Xelian angrily denied them all; it seemed that Yllithian was uncommitted for now. No sense in driving him into Kraillach’s arms just yet.
Kraillach watched the arrival of Yllithian with unmitigated relief. He was slightly nonplussed when Yllithian’s flight of Raiders steered a course keeping well clear of his armada and slowing to a stop midway to Xelian’s fortress. A single sleek-hulled vessel detached itself from the formation and glided down to land amid the ruined training grounds. Image enhancement showed Yllithian dismounting from the craft and wandering alone for a distance before settling himself to wait at the foot of a shot-scarred statue.
The implication was obvious enough. Yllithian wanted to parley. It could be a ploy to draw him out, but right now Kraillach was desperate enough to take that chance. Besides, he had considerable confidence in the defences of his own craft. Neither Xelian’s fortress guns nor Yllithian’s vessels would be able to stop him reaching safety, and if the whelp Yllithian intended treachery the trap would rebound back on him badly.
Kraillach brought his golden sky chariot gliding down to join Yllithian with the fiercest of imprecations to his minions not to follow.
Yllithian waited patiently beneath the colossal shadow of the statue. The titanic carving had been blurred by age even before Kraillach’s followers had hosed it with weapons-fire. Now it was impossible to tell if the wych it had portrayed were even male or female. It had been posed heroically with one arm thrust upwards and legs akimbo. The arm was broken off at the elbow lending an unspoken mystery to what the monumental wych had originally held aloft. A weapon? A severed head? An enemy’s heart? There was a kind of irony to the dramatically posed form being robbed of its focal point. Yllithian felt as if he were witnessing some form of allegorical warning.
A single craft, rendered egg-shaped by its layers of protective energy fields, was descending from the golden cloud of Kraillach’s forces. Before it had reached Yllithian a single hornet-like Venom peeled off from the swarm buzzing protectively around Xelian’s fortress. The Venom plummeted down towards him in marked contrast to the sedate descent of Kraillach’s craft. It pulled up sharply and flared to a stop a second later, the shapely form of Xelian vaulting from it to land lightly in the dust a short distance away.
‘Xelian,’ Yllithian said equitably.
‘Yllithian,’ Xelian replied tensely.
Kraillach’s craft glided to a halt and layers of shields and armour slowly peeled back. When she caught sight of the wizened archon Xelian took a half-step forwards before checking herself. A wild notion of killing both Yllithian and Kraillach kept skittering through her mind – it was seductive and unworkable but now that her blood was up the pleasing idea simply wouldn’t go away.
‘Kraillach,’ said Yllithian as if greeting an old friend.
Kraillach’s gaze darted between the dapper little black-clad figure of Yllithian and the intimidating warrior-woman Xelian. She looked ready to kill him right now.
‘Someone,’ Yllithian began, ‘is trying to make fools out of all of us–’
‘A small achievement in Kraillach’s case,’ Xelian snapped.
Kraillach started to object but Yllithian confidently overrode his words with silky platitudes that broached entirely new heights of patronising intent.
‘Please, Xelian, poor Kraillach here has been the victim of an assassination attempt in his own house by attackers that entered under your name. Then I was assailed on my way here to play the role of negotiator in the resulting little spat. Someone has been playing us, and I don’t need to tell you who.’
‘You were also attacked?’ Xelian’s feline gaze was suddenly locked onto Yllithian.
‘They were waiting for me to come riding to your rescue, dear heart. I suspect the attack on Kraillach was only intended to set the pieces in motion,’
‘You think you were the intended target? They released the glass plague in my palace!’ Kraillach shouted the words, unable to contain his repugnance and outrage any longer.
‘And your best response was to attack me? You’re a fool, Kraillach!’ Xelian spat.
‘And you’re naïve, Xelian!’ Kraillach replied. ‘They came under your name! If you had even the vaguest sense of etiquette you’d know I had no choice but to act as I did!’
‘Just so you see,’ Yllithian purred, ‘by Vect’s laws someone has to pay the price for an attack, and they have to do so publicly. That’s how the strong must rule.’
Yllithian looked significantly out over the training grounds. Rows of slave pens were still burning nearby and pathetically huddled mounds in the dust marked the bodies of their occupants.
‘Harm has been duly inflicted on both sides. I think we can all go home now,’ he said. ‘Honour has been satisfied. Perhaps we can turn our energies to raiding a certain maiden world before any other misfortunes befall us.’
Kraillach was maintaining a pose of slightly shaky hauteur but there was a look in his eye that signalled desperate agreement with Yllithian. Yllithian enjoyed a warm glow of success at manoeuvring Kraillach into a tacit compact to join the raid.
‘No,’ said Xelian distinctly.
‘No?’
‘No, I am not satisfied. I made no attack on Kraillach and I won’t be a scapegoat for his own bungling incompetence.’
‘I suppose you want compensation,’ Kraillach blustered. ‘Well, I–’
‘I demand blood! Here and now! If you will not fight my kabal then you must fight me. Kraillach, if you want to quote laws and traditions I invoke my right to challenge you to a duel – for my honour!’
Kraillach took a step back, appalled. Yllithian was afr
aid he was going to bolt straight for his chariot and flee. Fortunately Kraillach had more sense than that and quickly mastered his fear. Once challenged to a duel before a witness of equal standing there was no backing down for an archon. They might cheat in any number of ways, have their opponent assassinated or exploit the event in the most perfidious fashion to emerge victorious but they couldn’t back down once challenged, not without losing every shred of status. This was Vect’s law, survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle. There was a long pause before the old archon spoke again.
‘Very well…’ Kraillach began. ‘At a time and place of–’
‘No. Here and now. Yllithian can bear witness, and we have–’ Xelian gestured to the swarming skies above them ‘–plenty of seconds on hand.’
Kraillach’s lips compressed into a thin line. He was trapped.
Yllithian coolly appraised the unexpected turn of events, wondering what Xelian intended. She was a deadly swordmistress in her own right, magnificent and pantherish, but she wore only the scantiest mockery of armour, with the porcelain flesh of her thighs, arms and midriff bare. Kraillach was fully armoured in a gleaming panoply that Yllithian knew from his own spy reports was full of its own tricks and traps in addition to its augmented musculature. A single strike from the ancient weapon that Kraillach bore and the mistress of the Blades of Desire would be no more.
‘Take your places and we’ll begin,’ Yllithian said.
The duellists stood ten paces apart in the drifting dust. Overhead the skies were filled by the whirling insect swarm of Xelian’s followers on one hand and the drifting pleasure craft of Kraillach’s on the other.
‘Begin,’ Yllithian said.
The two began to circle warily, first one way and then another as they sought a weakness in poise or balance that would provide an opening. Kraillach attacked first, suddenly triggering his doppelganger images and driving forwards with his crackling blade swinging in a deadly arc.
Xelian darted back out of range, momentarily confused by Kraillach’s defences. Then she laughed and bounded back into the fray, whirling her knives into steely fans. The deadly brand of Kraillach darted at her in a dozen hands but she evaded them all, spinning beneath their reaching blades to deliver eviscerating blows that flashed through the incorporeal images like lightning.
Kraillach recoiled and cut at her wildly. Xelian made the instinctive mistake of parrying the myriad of slashing blades. There was a peal of thunder and one of her knives shivered into fragments, hurling Xelian backwards into the dust. Kraillach croaked in triumph and pressed his attack.
Xelian rolled in the dirt and back to her feet so smoothly it looked like part of a dance. Kraillach’s thrusts seemed slow and clumsy as they quested after her, as if she occupied a skein of reality a beat out of phase with his own. Wherever his blade was, she was not. Her single knife kept slicing, darting out to touch one image after another as if she were counting them.
At least until she struck sparks from an image and found the real Kraillach.
The darting Kraillach phantoms swirled desperately around her trying to obscure their master, but it was all to no avail. Xelian ignored them as she concentrated on the true Kraillach, clinging to him doggedly as he retreated. He fought harder and more skilfully now, his blade weaving a shimmering web about him. Xelian stayed close, ducking and diving with her knife held ready as she waited for him to tire.
Kraillach’s offensive slowed down inexorably like a clockwork toy. The augmentations of his jewel-bright armour could grant him speed and strength but not true stamina. With a sudden twist Xelian lashed out. Armour split beneath her flashing blade and Kraillach’s hand fell away with a welter of blood as she severed it at the wrist. His ancient, deadly blade fell to the dust still gripped in his spasming fingers. Kraillach cried out in horror and staggered back, almost falling. Xelian pounced and drove her knife into his torso up to its ornate hilt.
Kraillach swayed, held up only by the eviscerating blade. Xelian laughed cruelly and twisted the knife, carving through heart and lungs in a crimson spray. She jerked the blade free and stepped back with a satisfied air. Kraillach coughed blood and collapsed, writhing, into the dirt. Xelian knelt on his chest and pressed the bloody knife to his face.
‘I want you to know you’re going to need help coming back from this, Kraillach,’ she whispered venomously as she started cutting. ‘You’re going to need more help from Yllithian’s “pure heart” to come back than El’Uriaq himself!’
By the time Xelian stood back Kraillach was left as red ruin, a raw, squamous meat thing that still somehow writhed with hideous life. Kraillach’s haemonculi hurried forwards from his sky chariot. The hunched, hide-clad figures squatted over their master like vampire bats as they pinched off veins and arteries, collecting the pieces left scattered around by Xelian as she slaked her bloodlust. Overhead the satiated cloud of pleasure craft was breaking up, drifting away between the spires to seek other diversions.
‘Very nice, Xelian,’ Yllithian said, applauding gently. ‘Did you mean what you said?’
She tossed her head back provocatively, the blood still slicking her pale limbs and full mouth. If he was aroused by her he did not show it. The murderlust was strong on her, seductive and dangerous as a razor’s edge. She smiled, white teeth on red.
‘Kraillach was never going to agree to our plan on his own. Now he has an incentive. His own haemonculi can bring him back but it’ll take too long. They’ll come crawling to us and asking for our help as soon as he grows his tongue back.’
Kinship is not an emotion common to citizens of the dark city, even less so an archon of High Commorragh, but Yllithian felt something akin to it when Xelian spoke of ‘our’ plan. A heartbeat later, well-schooled centuries of paranoia crowded in at the heels of the unfamiliar sensation.
‘All very tidy,’ he said. ‘So were you the one that sent assassins after Kraillach… and me?’
‘That would be telling,’ she mocked, smiling capriciously with sharp white teeth. ‘Would you think badly of me if I did? And if I denied it would you ever really believe me?’
‘I don’t believe that you did send them. I think that Vect did.’
‘You flatter me with your nobility, Lord Yllithian.’
‘It is my honour to do so, Lady Xelian.’
‘I feel a day of celebration of my victory is in order. Stay and… entertain me for a while.’
‘I regret, my lady, that if we have only a day before the raid occurs many arrangements need to be made so I must forbear the undoubted pleasure.’
Xelian laughed and lifted her arms to the circling Reavers and hellions. Venom jetbikes broke from the pack and dived towards her.
‘Then you should be about it, Nyos. It doesn’t pay to wait around – just ask Kraillach.’
She ran lithely and made an astounding leap, catching onto a passing Venom and swinging herself aboard it in a single fluid motion. Yllithian gazed after her as she vanished towards the fortress, looked around at the bloodied circle where the duel had been fought, and sniffed meditatively. Xelian had never thought to ask him if he had been the one that sent the assassins.
CHAPTER 7
RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW
‘You are all the children of destiny, red in tooth and claw. Do not think that their mayfly lives are less precious than your old wickedness in the eyes of the universe. Who can say who will prevail this day? Not I, and not you. Go forth and reap your souls, but beware the darts of the enemy for you are not yet immortal…’
– The red crone Hekatii to Duke Vileth, in Ursyllas’s Dispossessions
The White Flames kabal controlled docking rights along the Ashkeri Talon, reserving fully eighteen of the kilometres-long anchorage-spines for the exclusive use of themselves and their allies. Life among the crowded spires of Commorragh made it easy to forget that the city was originally built as a transit point, a nexus in the webway with hundreds of thousands of connections to skeins of that curious sub-realm.
The rise of the White Flames’ fortunes had been in direct correlation to their expansion through the Ashkeri Talon and the docking facilities therein. When Nyos Yllithian assassinated his predecessor and rose to archon the White Flames had controlled just three anchorages along the talon. One of Yllithian’s first acts had been to destroy or subvert the lesser kabals controlling the docking spines adjacent to his own. His reasoning was simple. The sprawling city consumed resources at a ravenous rate, and every day thousands of ships had to disgorge stolen cargoes to slake its hunger. By controlling even a fraction of the docking facilities around the city as he did, immeasurable wealth flowed into the White Flames’ coffers.
Ashkeri Talon was normally bustling with slavers and traders, even occasional xenos ships paying their way into the dark city through Yllithian’s domain. Today the anchorage-spines were occupied solely by warships. Gigantic, shark-like Torture-class cruisers took up entire spines all to themselves, greedily swallowing lines of warriors into their open maws. Smaller Corsair-class frigates were jostling together among other anchorages, loading their own payloads of torpedoes and strike craft.
The ships of many different kabals were present and tensions were running high, but with a sense of excitement and energy underlying it all. Slights and misunderstandings that would have brought violence on the streets of Commorragh were temporarily put aside. The kabalites were on their best behaviour, as if they were attending a party and didn’t want to embarrass themselves in front of the host.
Xagor and Kharbyr eyed one another dubiously as they slipped through the crowds together. They were hunting for the ship of the archon of the White Flames on the express instructions of Master Bellathonis, the haemonculus’s perverse sense of humour having dubbed them ideal candidates to work as a team. Kharbyr suspected he was being punished after the events at the Aviaries. He was itching to stick a knife in Xagor the moment the wrack’s back was turned, but the master haemonculus had been particularly vivid in his descriptions of the torments awaiting either one of them should they return without the other. Xagor had accepted the situation with the same dull resignation he appeared to apply to most of his life.
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