[Grey Knights 03] - Hammer of Daemons

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

“Of course, and I will end it, duke. If you and Arguthrax continue to waste this planet’s armies on killing each other then I will finish the job for you. I will kill you both. You are not too proud to be flayed into a banner, Venalitor, and Arguthrax is not too great to avoid a banishment to the coldest wastes of the warp at my behest.”

  “None of this surprises me, my lord,” said Venalitor smoothly. “That is why I have let this war boil down to a few skirmishes between bands of minor cultists who will not be missed. I believe Arguthrax is letting the same thing happen. Neither of us will back down before the other lords, but neither is foolish enough to defy you.”

  “Flattery again,” sneered Ebondrake.

  “It is also the truth.”

  One of the scaephylyds was approaching. It was a truly huge and ancient example of the species, the size of a tank, its carapace swollen and gnarled. It was covered in colonies and hives, like barnacles. As it aged, it had grown more and more eyes, and its head was just a set of chipped mandibles below a nest of dozens of eye sockets. Each eye moved independently, some settling on Venalitor, and some on Ebondrake. Its like had not been seen on the surface of Drakaasi in the current age. It carried a traditional scaephylyd weapon, a pair of hinged blades like an ornate pair of shears, operated by the two forelimbs on one side, to denote its rank.

  “General,” said Venalitor, “the tribes answer my call.”

  “Of course, duke,” said the general in an accent so thick it was barely comprehensible. Its mandibles forced themselves into painful configurations to pronounce human speech. “How else could it be?”

  “Explain to Lord Ebondrake,” said Venalitor.

  Most of the general’s eyes turned to Lord Ebondrake. The ancient creature lowered its thorax to the ground in a bow, laying its shear blade on the ground in front of Ebondrake. “Oh great dark one,” the general began, “Duke Venalitor is our deliverance and our glory. He brought the Blood God to us when all others had forsaken our kind. He taught us that even we, the lowest of creatures, can be beloved by Khorne if we serve. He led us in that service, promising us lives and deaths given over to the Blood God’s worship.”

  “I see,” said Ebondrake, “and now?”

  “Now we have proven our worth,” continued the general, “and all of us have the chance to serve. This army has lain beneath the earth for centuries, waiting for a Champion of the Blood God to bring us to the surface. Now that has become reality. I rejoice that I have lived to see the scaephylyd nation take its place among Drakaasi’s armies.”

  Ebondrake regarded the general with curiosity. “How long, duke, have you been hiding these?”

  “I made use of a few of them,” replied Venalitor, “and they came to me begging for more of them to serve. Is that not true?”

  “We begged,” said the general, “and we grovelled. Scaephylyds are not proud. We seek only our place in the universe.”

  “And you are all pledged to my crusade?” said Ebondrake.

  “Every scaephylyd that lives,” said the general. “The infirm have been put to death. All those that remain are fit to fight.”

  “And you?”

  “No honour could befall me greater than dying for the Blood God,” said the general, raising his shear blade in a salute.

  “Very well,” said Ebondrake. “Go back to your… to your creatures. Make sure they are ready to leave. The crusade will take flight soon, and all must be prepared.”

  “This is your will, my duke and my lord?”

  “It is,” said Venalitor.

  “Then it shall be so.” The general raised itself from the ground and returned to the scaephylyd army. “Quite devoted,” said Ebondrake.

  “They are.”

  “To you.”

  “To their god, my lord. They are troops to be herded beneath the enemy guns, who will not be missed, and there can always be more. At my command the tribal elders will begin the scaephylyds’ breeding cycle, and thousands more will be hatched. They can fight almost as soon as they are born, if all you want are bodies to be thrown forwards.”

  “You would have this be your part in the crusade, Venalitor? Lord of the vermin? Most would consider the greater honour to be among the elite warriors, those who win the battle, not the masses who die before the battle truly begins.”

  “Blood is blood, my lord,” said Venalitor.

  Ebondrake smiled. “So it is, duke, so it is. I have heard much of your Grey Knight, too.”

  “His holy work is only just begun,” said Venalitor with a hint of pride. “Truly, he has become a part of this great engine of worship.”

  “After all he has resisted, he has taken quite suddenly to the ways of Khorne. His fame grows, as does the speculation as to just what brought him into our fold. Did you break him, Venalitor? Or did trickery rob him of his wits?”

  “I am a persuasive man, my lord.”

  “There is more to it than that. A Space Marine would be remarkable enough, but a Grey Knight? Come now, do not tell me some petty torture or temptation could break such a creature.”

  “He was introduced to an ally from the warp. His mind did not survive the encounter.”

  “I would have heard of this from the warp. Flaying the mind of a daemon hunter would be a matter of great celebration among Khorne’s daemons.”

  “I called upon the services of an old friend.”

  Ebondrake raised a scaly eye ridge in surprise. “Raezazel? So that story is true?”

  “Indeed. It was Raezazel who drove Alaric insane.”

  “The liar spawn lives?”

  “After a fashion. Life, for a daemon, can be a matter of interpretation.”

  “I see. One of the Liar God’s own flesh amongst us! I had not thought such a thing possible. Do you have any more secrets to reveal, duke?”

  “The scaephylyds and Raezazel were the last of them, my lord. You know all there is to know.”

  “I take it that Raezazel will not live on long to trouble us? I do not need the likes of him disrupting the crusade.”

  “He has been a prisoner of mine since I defeated him. He is just a shadow of what he was. He will never be free, and he will never oppose the Blood God’s will. He serves me now.”

  “See that it is dead before the crusade launches,” said Ebondrake.

  “I shall see to its execution myself.

  “Good. It will have been well overdue.” Ebondrake looked out again across the scaephylyd nation, still assembling on the desert plain. The desert was dark with their teeming bodies, and the sky above had turned a grim purple-grey in response. “After Vel’Skan, duke, make sure that the crusade is your only concern.”

  “Of course, my lord,” said Venalitor.

  Ebondrake stomped back towards his sky-ship with his Ophidian Guard. Venalitor watched the great dragon go.

  Perhaps Ebondrake believed him. Most of what he said had been true, after all. Or perhaps the creature would never trust him. It didn’t matter either way. Once the crusade got underway, everything would change. Venalitor was rather looking forward to it.

  It was appalling. It was terrifying, but it was the truth.

  Finally, Alaric understood.

  Alaric was there, in Raezazel’s place. The faces of his congregation were looking up at him, hypnotised by his beauty. He had to fight to keep Raezazel’s alien personality from taking over his own. This flesh was foul, these believers doomed. Raezazel was revolting. Alaric’s disgust propelled him out of Raezazel’s body.

  He was outside Raezazel, looking on. He saw a man of such beauty that he lit up the walls around him. Alaric looked away. He could see the daemon underneath.

  He looked around: deep blue inlaid with gold, sirens, panic. Something had gone wrong. Alaric tasted Raezazel’s anger at the intrusion. The place became dim, and the image of the planet with the eight-pointed star shone down suddenly from overhead. Raezazel raged, almost knocking out Alaric with the force of the emotion.

  Alaric knew where he was. This was ho
w Raezazel had come to Drakaasi.

  The lie unravelled. Alaric, finally saw everything that Raezazel had tried to hide from him.

  In attempting to possess Alaric, Raezazel had let his mind touch Alaric’s. In that mind was locked the secret of Raezazel himself, of Drakaasi and of the Hammer of Daemons. Alaric saw it now, shining in front of him, unrolling like a chronicle of years.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  This time it was pain.

  Consciousness rushed back to Alaric so fast that it almost knocked him out in the volley of sensations. Raw, screaming pain coursed up his spine, strangling his brain so that sensible thoughts refused to form. There was coldness against his back, and a sense of being trapped, locked down, crushed.

  The smell was of blood and sweat.

  Alaric gasped and forced his eyes open. White light pounded against his retinas and he thrashed. Something clattered to the ground, a tinny sound just above the white noise of the pain.

  Alaric kept himself from going under again. It was an art of will-power, and he didn’t have much of that left.

  The memories of the daemon still churned in his mind. He tried to strangle them, choke them down, clean out his mind with faith. His chest heaved, and he nearly blacked out.

  Then, he could breathe again.

  He knew the truth. He wanted to tell someone, but first, he had to know that his mind was intact.

  His eyes adjusted rapidly. The chamber was dimly lit, but it had been almost unbearably bright, so he must have been in darkness for a long time. It was a small, hot, filthy room, in the familiar, life-stained ironwork of the Hecatomb. He guessed that he was somewhere below the cell block deck.

  Kelhedros stood in front of him, stripped of his green armour to the waist. There was blood on the eldar’s pale chest. The alien was not wounded, so Alaric surmised the blood must be his, the same blood that coated the sliver of sharpened metal that Kelhedros was holding.

  Alaric looked down at his arm, from which the waves of pain were emanating. His consciousness had kicked off the endorphins in his brain, which were dulling the agony, a typical physiological response for a Space Marine, but the pain was still tremendous. The skin of his forearm had been slit and pulled open from the wrist to the elbow, and several pins were sticking from the exposed muscle, piercing nerve centres with such precision that there was no room for any more pain.

  Alaric tried to speak. He gasped dumbly. His nervous system wouldn’t respond properly. An unenhanced body would have died of shock, he thought vaguely. One again, he was alive because he was a Space Marine.

  Kelhedros plucked a couple of the pins from Alaric’s arm. Alaric was able to think again, and he exhaled raggedly, chest heaving! He realised that he was chained to the wall of the room with his arm strapped down more firmly than the rest of him, so that Kelhedros could work without Alaric’s thrashing disturbing his precision.

  “There you are,” said Kelhedros.

  “What… why am I here?”

  “You were delirious. You have been for some time. I was attempting to bring you back to a level of consciousness where you could be dealt with. Have I succeeded?”

  “Yes,” said Alaric, hoping it was true. “Where am I?”

  “The Hecatomb.”

  “I know. Where on Drakaasi?”

  “A week or so out of the Scourge,” said Kelhedros.

  Alaric looked down at his arm again. For all the work that had been done on it, there was very little blood. “Did they teach you this in the Scorpion Temple?” he asked.

  “Kelhedros regarded Alaric with curiosity in his liquid alien eyes. “We walk many paths,” he said simply.

  “Are you going to release me?”

  “When the wound is closed,” said Kelhedros. “Premature activity could render the damage permanent.”

  “And you wouldn’t want that.”

  Again, the strange look; Kelhedros had evidently not had enough experience of human mannerisms to recognise sarcasm. “I would not. It does us no good for you to be incapacitated.”

  “Why did you wake me up?”

  “Soon we will be at Vel’Skan. Many believe that our survival at the games depends on you being able to lead us. There was some debate, I believe. Gearth wanted you left as you are. Many of his men have come to idolise you, Alaric. They have followed you on the first steps.”

  “Steps to where?”

  “Oblivion, Grey Knight. They see you as an example of how a man may lose his mind, and with it all the impediments to becoming a true killer. I believe they speak of this with the same fervour with which Erkhar speaks of his Promised Land. Gearth did not get his way this time, and so I offered to bring you back to your senses.” Kelhedros removed the remaining pins from Alaric’s arm. “I understand you heal quickly.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then the stitches need not be small.” Kelhedros produced a needle, threaded with cord, and began to sew Alaric’s arm closed. Alaric was almost glad of the pain. It was something real, something he could experience honestly without wondering if it was another stage in his becoming something terrible.

  “What have I done?” he asked. “While I was… when I was not myself?”

  “You have killed many,” said Kelhedros, “including Lucetia the Envenomed, the Void Hound of Tremulon, and Deinas, son of Kianon. Some of them were quite the spectacle, and then there were many lesser slaves, of course.”

  “That wasn’t me,” said Alaric. “I wasn’t there.” He winced as Kelhedros drew his stitches closed.

  “That is good to know. You were unlikely to seek escape in such a state.”

  “That’s why you agreed to being me back.”

  “Of course. I wish to escape this world, Grey Knight. You are the most likely among the prisoners to seek freedom, and certainly the most able to achieve it. I dare say that Vel’Skan will be our last chance.”

  Kelhedros finished sewing up Alaric’s arm. Considering how the eldar must have had to improvise his medical implements, it was a good job. Alaric wondered just what paths the alien had walked, before one of them had led to Drakaasi.

  “How long until Vel’Skan?” asked Alaric.

  “Some days,” said Kelhedros. “The games will be great. Many of the best gladiators will compete for the title of Drakaasi’s champion.”

  “I see.”

  “You will be one of them.”

  Alaric smiled. “Of course I will. The crowd loves me.”

  “Oh, they do, Justicar. To them I am just Kelhedros the Outsider. Or the Green Phantom, sometimes, but that did not really catch on. You, though, are Alaric the Betrayed, the Crimson Justicar, the Corpse-God’s Bloodied Hand. When you are gone there will be statues of you. They will tell stories of how the Emperor sent his best to defeat the warp, and how one of those best became a legend in the arenas. You will inspire champions of the future. Scum of Ghaal will kill their way into the ranks of the elite gladiators because once a Grey Knight did the same thing. You will never be forgotten here, Justicar.”

  “You sound like an enthusiast of mine, alien,” said Alaric bleakly.

  “Fame is one of the routes to survival on Drakaasi,” replied Kelhedros, unfastening Alaric’s restraints. “It is not the one I would choose to follow, for becoming something I am not is inimical to the path I walk. That is not to say, however, that it is an inefficient or futile way to stay alive. Truly, you are the only slave who has a meaningful life expectancy. You may even one day be more than a slave. That freedom would be earned at the expense of your personality, but it would be freedom of a sort.”

  “I would rather die than become a champion of the warp,” said Alaric.

  “So I understand, but perhaps you will not have that choice.”

  “We will know for sure after Vel’Skan.” Alaric’s restraints were free, and he struggled to keep from slumping to his knees. Every muscle was sore. He must have been tied there at Kelhedros’ mercy for a long time. He looked down at himself. He was stripp
ed to the waist, and there were countless new scars on his chest and arms. He had a brand, too, a deep angry welt in the shape of Khorne’s stylised skull burned into his pectoral.

  “When did I get this?” he asked.

  “After the sacrifices,” replied Kelhedros matter-of-factly. “You were rewarded.”

  The hateful symbol seemed to stare out at Alaric. “So I am marked,” he said to himself.

  “You took it as a great honour. Gearth and his men now aspire to receive the same mark.”

  Alaric touched the brand. It was still healing, and it still hurt. He felt unclean to have the symbol on him. When he got back to Titan, he would have it cut out of his skin.

  Titan had never felt so far away.

  “The winds are low,” said Kelhedros, who was placing his improvised scalpels and nerve pins neatly into a roll of cloth. It looked like he took great care of his implements of torture. Alaric was impressed that Kelhedros had hidden them from the scaephylyds for so long. The alien had far more freedom than any other slave on the Hecatomb, able to operate in secret and go where he pleased. It was the dangers of Drakaasi, not the Hecatomb’s structure, that kept Kelhedros a prisoner. “The slavemasters will order us to the oar deck soon. Were you not there, suspicion would be raised.”

  Alaric moved his arms, testing his shoulders and back. They hurt. It felt like he had been sparring for hours, as he once had against his friend Tancred. It wasn’t just the restraints, he had been fighting constantly for days with few breaks. He must have won great glory for Khorne. He must have taken dozens of skulls for the Skull Throne.

  “Then I must be ready to work,” he said. “It would not do for Alaric the Betrayed to be late.”

  Vel’Skan!

  Did some ancient god demand that glory be, and did Vel’Skan spring up in response? Did some titan desire an altar to bloodshed, and did he build Vel’Skan in the image of his madness? Did some battle between the gods of the warp take place there, and scatter their weapons upon Drakaasi, a steel rain that left the mighty heap of war gear to be inhabited?

  Vel’Skan’s form drives men mad to look at it. Swords and shields, helmets and spear shafts, every thing that one man might use to maim another in titanic proportions heaped up upon the blood shore. Here is a temple in the palm of a gauntlet! There is a dock forged from a broadsword blade. There spins a stirrup, hung with the dead of a hundred executions. Everywhere is Vel’Skan, maddening in its size. And this question bums like a hollow pain in the soul: what manner of slaughter could create these immense instruments of death?