The front lines collided with a thunderclap. Bodies were thrown into the air. Heads parted from bodies. Torsos split open. Men swarmed over a brute mutant, dragging it down to cut it to pieces. A tide of bodies heaved up as the dead piled on top of one another, and soon the armies were battling atop a rampart of the dead.
Alaric the Betrayed was at the heart of it all. With his bright silver axe and ornate armour, he cut a more dramatic figure than any other gladiator. He kicked enemies and friends aside as he drove his way through the battle. Other slaves of Venalitor’s followed in his wake: an eldar swordsman cutting enemies apart with his chainblade, a host of human butchers who despatched wounded foes on the ground. It seemed that Alaric had finally lost his mind, and had become one with the Blood God’s will. Here was a hunter of daemons, the Emperor’s finest, out-slaughtering Drakaasi’s most brutal for the glory of Khorne.
Alaric drove for the closest edge of the arena. A tentacled monster tried to snare him and drag him down, but Alaric stamped down on its torso, crashing its ribcage before slicing through its tentacles with a sweep of his axe. One of the captive witches lurched towards him, lightning crashing from its eyes. Alaric took the first bolt, letting it discharge through his armour and arc into the earth. A single step brought him face to face with the witch, and he slammed the blade of the axe through its skull. There was nothing the spectators of Gorgath loved more than seeing the weak-bodied psykers put to death. Some of them began chanting Alaric’s name.
One of his side’s standard bearers was fighting near Alaric. It was an armoured warrior from the bodyguard of one of Drakaasi’s lords. The warrior was badly hurt, blood pouring from the shoulder joint of his armour, his helm split and gory. Alaric pushed him to the ground and took up the banner. He held it up so the whole stadium could see the image of the stylised skulls emblazoned on it. Alaric ran up to the edge of the arena’s seating, which sloped up above him along the curve of the crater’s edge.
He hurled the banner into the stands. Dozens of soldiers leapt up to catch it.
“What are you waiting for?” yelled Alaric.
The crowd responded by chanting his name ever louder as they poured down past him, off the stands and into the arena.
This was war, and suddenly watching wasn’t enough.
“Clever boy,” said Ebondrake as he watched the crowd around Alaric break ranks and pour down into the arena.
“My lord,” said Venalitor, “this is… this blasphemy is…”
“You have said enough, duke,” said Ebondrake. “Commander?”
One of the Ophidian Guard, hulking and sinister behind the visor of his black armour, turned to Ebondrake. “My lord?”
“Kill the Grey Knight,” said Ebondrake.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Alaric fought against the tide. His head was forced under the sea of bodies, and he fought to breathe. His own name, chanted over and over again, was like the dim crashing of the ocean.
His was not a complicated plan. Khorne probably would have approved. The bloodlust of Gorgath’s soldiers, ingrained by generations of carnage, only needed the right kind of impetus to send them swarming into the arena to join in.
All Alaric had to do was get out. He had been sent a message, and to discover its meaning he had to break out of the arena and into Gorgath.
Alaric kicked his way out of the crowd, clambering over them until he found the top of the arena floor wall. He hauled himself up onto the seating that had been erected around the sides of the arena crater. The battle swarmed beneath him, all battle lines now lost in a swirl of violence.
The lords would be angry. There was plenty of blood, of course, and Khorne would have his due, but a free-for-all wasn’t what the lords of Drakaasi had wanted. Alaric’s riot was an insult to the planet’s ruling order.
Lord Ebondrake was ahead of Alaric, advancing behind a line of Ophidian Guard.
Alaric’s hearts sank. All he had to do was get out. Ebondrake was not part of his plan.
“Grey Knight!” roared Ebondrake. “Betrayed of the Corpse God! Puppet of Khorne! Is this the vengeance you seek? To face me, and slay me, in my own domain?”
The Ophidian Guard were moving towards him, black swords drawn.
Alaric wouldn’t get his vengeance. Ebondrake wouldn’t roll over and die for him, but he was human, and that meant fighting on.
Ebondrake inhaled, his wings spreading behind him.
Alaric hit the floor. Ebondrake breathed a sheet of black flame that flowed over Alaric like water. It scorched him down one side, and he rolled away from it, trying to smother the flames before they caught on his flesh. The sound was like a hurricane of fire roaring in his ears. The Ophidian Guard kept advancing straight through the flame, their armour proof against it.
Alaric couldn’t fight Ebondrake, not without being immolated by black fire again. He was going to die.
He jumped to his feet. The Ophidian Guard were upon him, and he lashed out at them, smashing one black, eyeless helm apart with his axe. Another forced forward, trying to bull him to the ground, but Alaric slammed a knee into his face and threw him aside.
“What victory do you believe you will win, little creature?” growled Ebondrake, black fire coiling from between his fangs. He loomed up over the line of Ophidian Guard protecting him, and cast off his cloak as his wings unfurled fully. “What can you take from me?”
The Ophidian Guard around Alaric closed ranks and raised their swords like executioners waiting for the word so they could take his head.
“Kill me, and you kill Drakaasi. Is that correct?” Ebondrake grinned horribly through his anger, his eyes, slits of yellow fire. “Is that the sum of your imagination?”
Ebondrake looked past Alaric suddenly. The roar behind Alaric grew like a wave crashing through the arena. He risked a look behind him.
Tens of thousands of Gorgath’s soldiers swarmed up the seating behind him. At their head was the banner Alaric had thrown them. They wanted to fight, and perhaps to die, and for that they needed the best opponents in the arena. All the finest gladiators were tied up in the melee on the arena floor, and that left the Ophidian Guard.
“Kill him!” shouted Ebondrake as the spontaneous army charged. “Close ranks!” A sword came down. Alaric was faster.
He brought his axe up through the visor of the helmet looming over him, and rammed an elbow into the throat of the Ophidian Guard behind him. His would-be executioner fell, head split apart, and the second guard tumbled as Alaric cut a leg out from under him.
Ebondrake breathed. The flame rippled over Alaric’s head into the army charging the Ophidian Guard. Men disappeared in swathes of black fire.
Alaric was only half aware of being carried up onto the shoulders of the army, even as they burned and vanished beneath Ophidian swords. He saw the banner still held high, and realised that he, like the banner, was a symbol of rebellion and war for these people. The broken creatures wanted nothing more than to follow Alaric to their deaths, because they knew that no one on Drakaasi could die as well as a Space Marine.
Somewhere amid the carnage, Ebondrake wolfed a clawful of Gorgath’s soldiers down his gullet to quench his anger. The lords had lost control of Gorgath’s arena completely. He turned from the carnage in disgust. The rioting soldiers were too lowly a prey for him. Alaric had disappeared into the rioting mass, and there was nothing worthwhile for him to kill any more.
Alaric watched the fire starting to burn, and the drifts of dead building up at the edges of the arena, until the tide of soldiers carried him through the dimness of an archway and out into the war city of Gorgath.
Gorgath’s nights were cold. They killed off the day’s wounded, so that only the worthy and fit could fight in the morning.
Alaric did not feel the cold as men did. He knew that this night could kill a weak man, but it meant nothing to him. He wished that he could feel it and fear it, because that would be something he could understand, something he could grasp. It was an enemy h
e could defeat: find shelter, build a fire. Drakaasi was an enemy he could not face like that. There was no simple solution to it. If he could feel the cold, at least he could take some pride from the fact that he was still alive.
If Ebondrake had died, what would have been achieved? Ebondrake himself had seen through that. If the dragon was gone, something else would take its place, perhaps Venalitor, perhaps Arguthrax, or perhaps some ancient horror of Drakaasi that Alaric hadn’t even heard of.
Alaric had reached the siege works a few hours after the army escaped from Gorgath’s arena and took the carnage out into the city. He had left the army behind as he made for the twin fortresses. He didn’t care what happened to the rioters. They were probably being put down to avenge the insult of the failed Gorgath games.
Alaric walked carefully along the trench. It had been dug decades ago when the two fortresses had evidently been at war, and their lords had ordered the trenches dug to approach the opposite fortress and take it. The siege lines had passed one another in a web of tunnels and criss-crossing trenches, and there were still signs of the struggle: old broken bones poking from the dark earth, heaps of spent cartridges rusted into lumps of red-brown corrosion.
Each fortress was a war-scarred cylinder bristling with rusted guns and gouged by the siege engines that lay in ruins around them. Alaric could almost hear the din of their guns, and the screams of the dying. He wondered for a moment how many had died there, fighting a miniature war in the midst of Gorgath’s grand battle, but there did not seem to be room in the city for any more death.
There was a temple ahead, lying at the place where the siege lines had first met. It was built from shell casings, from massive artillery shells carved into fluted columns, the individual bullets forming the teeth of the gargoyles squatting on its roof.
Through the shattered windows, Alaric could see the abandoned forges and anvils, piles of flawed swords and rusted ingots. A forge door swung open, exposing the dark and cold inside. The temple’s altar had been used as an anvil, and was covered in deep scores. Alaric walked carefully inside. He could smell the smoke and molten metal, and almost hear the ringing of the hammer on a newly forged blade.
The place was abandoned. It had been for some time. Since he had received the axe at the gates to the arena, Alaric had believed, somewhere inside him, that the smith who had spoken to him at Karnikhal was trying to give him a message. He didn’t even know if the smith had been an ally or an enemy, or even a figment of his own imagination. However, he was a potential ally, and Alaric knew that he needed one outside the Hecatomb.
Had he really thought he would find something here? Certainly no more than he thought he could kill Lord Ebondrake alone.
Something glinted in the dimness of the abandoned temple. Alaric pulled aside a few unfinished blades, and saw a hammer propped up against the altar anvil. Its head was bright silver, and carved with images of a comet streaking down to shatter a planet, an armoured fist clutching a lightning bolt, and a dragon with a sword through its heart. Alaric picked up the weapon and felt its weight. It was as finely made as the axe. He recalled how Brother Dvorn would have dearly loved to wield such a brutal looking weapon, and wondered whether Dvorn and his other battle-brothers had made it off Sarthis Majoris alive and free.
On one face of the hammer, the face that would strike the enemy when the hammer was swung, was the image of a skull. One eye was blanked out, the other burned with an intricately carved flame. Alaric stared at the image for a long moment, trying to guess what message it held.
It had to be a message. For him to seek this place out, to risk his life escaping the arena, there had to be a point. A half-blinded skull, it had to mean something, even if the meaning came from within him.
Perhaps the skull represented Alaric. With the Collar of Khorne around his neck, he was half-blind.
“There is no Hammer of Daemons,” said Alaric aloud. “There is no sacred weapon waiting to be wielded. It’s me. I am supposed to bring this planet down. I am the Hammer.”
What if the Hammer of Daemons was another Chaos trick? It would be typical of the followers of Chaos to perpetrate such a hoax, if only to give desperate humans a shadow of hope that could be snatched away.
Alaric wanted to have faith in something, even if it was only a decent way to die on Drakaasi, but there was nothing left for him to believe in.
A sound snapped Alaric out of his thoughts. Something was moving outside: a footstep through loose rubble, weight shifting on debris. Alaric took his axe in one hand and the hammer in the other, sure, by their balance, that they had been forged by the same master smith.
He hear more footsteps, voices, and swords unsheathed.
Alaric tensed. He faced the door, his back to the altar, sure that he could cover the distance in a few huge strides, shatter the first visored face he saw with the hammer, and cut the legs out from under the next warrior with the axe. He was ready.
One side of the temple collapsed with a roar of torn metal and stone, and a Rhino APC rode up through the rubble into the temple. Alaric had to vault over the altar to avoid been dragged beneath its tracks. The side hatch swung open, and a pair of Ophidian Guard emerged, not in the hulking armour of Ebondrake’s bodyguard, but wearing chainmail and leather, faces obscured by leather masks, wielding whips that shone like bright silver. They lashed out at Alaric. He let one whip twine around the haft of his axe, and yanked it out of the warrior’s hands, but the other caught him across the shoulder, and hot white pain lanced through him. He convulsed onto his knees, swinging blindly with the hammer, feeling it crunch into bone, but unable to see what he had hit.
Ophidian Guard stormed in through the doors and windows of the temple. There were dozens of them. More emerged from the Rhino, slashing with their whips. Alaric stood and fought back, pulling them into striking range, and battering them down to the floor, but there were too many of them.
He was on all fours, pain streaking down through him like lightning bolts. He caught a whip-wielding soldier with the hammer, shattering his knee, and then cut off his head as he lay writhing on the floor.
He cut up into the torso of another, and forced himself to his feet, but the Ophidian Guard surrounding him carried tower shields emblazoned with white dragons, which they used to slam him back, as he tried to break free of them.
He was on his back. His body fought on, but something in the back of his mind told him to give in. It was a part of him that had been given free rein by the Collar of Khorne, a hidden coward that had finally surfaced to tell him he was going to fail.
He reared up, one last time, silencing the coward. He roared like an animal.
A great cold weight pressed down on his back, mirrored by heat blossoming in his chest. He looked down to see the tip of a black sword emerging from his breastbone. He tried to look up, and glimpsed the Ophidian Guard, who had just impaled him, towering over him. Alaric tried to slide off the blade, but it would not move. The shock of it finally caught up with his mind, and the world greyed out.
The blade snapped, and Alaric slumped to the floor, the tip of the blade still sticking out of his chest.
It didn’t matter whether he gave in or not. The pain won, and Alaric passed out.
“I see you have thought about what I said.” Durendin’s voice was low and quiet, very different from the strident tones he used on the pulpit while reminding the Grey Knights of their duties towards their Emperor.
“I have,” said Alaric. Around him was the subdued majesty of the Chapel of Mandulis. It was built of sombre stone, the columns holding up the ceiling carved into representations of past Grand Masters, who had fallen in battle against the daemon. However, instead of having granite walls inscribed with the names of fallen Grey Knights, the chapel was open to the outside, and through its columns could be glimpsed an endless golden desert under a dark blue twilight. Strange stars winked in the sky, the same shifting constellations that bled from the Eye of Terror.
Alaric was
sitting on one of the stone pews. Durendin was a couple of rows in front of him, evidently at prayer, since he was not wearing the black trimmed power armour that was the badge of a Chaplain’s office. Alaric realised that he was without armour, too. He was wearing the remains of a badly battered breastplate in the shape of folded wings, and the point of a black sword stuck out of his chest.
“And?” said Durendin.
“You were wrong.”
“Really?”
“Some things, you can’t fight.”
“Interesting. Do you believe that these Grand Masters would have thought that? That Mandulis could have come up against a foe and said, ‘This I cannot fight’?”
Alaric looked at the column that represented Mandulis. The Grand Master had carried a sword with the hilt worked to resemble a lightning bolt. Alaric had held that sword, and tried to echo the deeds of Mandulis in vanquishing the daemon prince Ghargatuloth, but those events felt like they belonged in another man’s lifetime.
“I am not one of those Grand Masters,” replied Alaric.
“No, you are not, not if you are going to simply give up.”
“I am not giving up, Chaplain.”
“Then what, Alaric? What quality do you possess that can win you victory if not a Grey Knight’s willingness to fight?”
“Imagination.”
Durendin laughed. It was a strange thing to see the old man doing. “Really? How so?”
“It is the understanding that there is more than one way to fight.”
“I see. So, you think that bringing the bolter and the blade to them is not enough, and you seek another way.”
“Yes, I learned that against Ebondrake. I cannot fight them as I would any other enemy, not this whole planet. Even if I win, every drop of blood I spill is a victory for them. It has to be something else.”
[Grey Knights 03] - Hammer of Daemons Page 12
