“How do you know this is not just more lies?” Erkhar got to his feet. Alaric had told him that everything he believed was a fiction, and his disbelief was turning to anger. “This could be the daemon’s last curse to break us apart, to take away the only thing we have left. Or just another part of some plot to do the Liar God’s bidding.”
“I doubt Raezazel’s plan included failing to possess me,” said Alaric.
“As one who claims to fight the daemon, you trust them very easily. What proof do you have that the Hammer is even here?”
“None!” barked Alaric in frustration. “Of course there is none! But it is all we have. I believe I know what the Hammer is and where it is, and how it can get us off this planet. How much closer have you ever been to escape? Maybe this is all a lie, maybe the Hammer was never here. Maybe the damn thing won’t fly any more, but it is still the best chance you will ever get. How long are you going to wait for the Promised Land, Erkhar? Until the last of you are dead or mad?”
Erkhar shook his head. “You’re using us even now,” he said. “You need a spaceship crew. My faithful and I are the closest thing to it. Otherwise you’d leave us here.”
“No,” said Alaric. “We’re all going. I need you to fly the Hammer, that’s true, but more than that, I need to hurt Drakaasi. Think about it, lieutenant. If the planet’s best slaves disappear from under the lords’ noses, at the height of their greatest games, what will the consequences be? Think of the insult to their god. Think of the recriminations. If nothing else, imagine the looks on their faces when they realise we have fled. Sooner or later you will die here and your skull will be a part of Khorne’s throne. If you had a chance to avoid giving them that much, is your duty not to take it?”
“Survival is not enough.”
“You will defeat Khorne, is that not enough?”
Erkhar slumped back down against the makeshift altar. He looked up at Alaric, and there were tears brimming in his eyes. “I want to leave this place… I want that so much… and now that chance is here, but what if it is just another lie? There have been so many, Justicar, about the Imperium, about the Emperor. Now the lies of daemons and the desperation of condemned men have brought us here. Where can the truth be in that?”
“Think of it this way,” said Alaric, kneeling down so that his full height didn’t tower so much over Erkhar. “If we fail, we die. I believe that when we die, we join the Emperor at the end of time, to fight by his side against all the darkness of the universe. That is not such a bad thing. To die trying to wound the pride of the Blood God… well, that is quite a story to tell all the other ghosts.”
“Emperor forgive me, I want to leave here. I want to… I want to die. I cannot see my faithful suffer any more. I am just a man. The saint would stay here. The saint would suffer, and become a martyr, to show the galaxy what will-power and the Emperor’s word can do.”
“The saint would lead his followers off Drakaasi and back to the Imperium so he can preach to the rest of the galaxy what he has learned,” said Alaric. “You might be just a man, Erkhar, but that is all any of us are. If we survive this, you will be something more. If we don’t then we die a good death, which is more than most citizens will ever get.”
“It will hurt them,” said Erkhar, “you promise that?”
“I promise, lieutenant. Fly the Hammer of Daemons off this planet, and they will never forget the shame.”
“All of us will leave. Everyone you can get.”
“Everyone.”
“Then we will be with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Hecatomb was loosed from its moorings on the broadsword docks, and hauled by teams of scaephylyds through the gorget of a massive breastplate lying on its back. Inside was darkness, broken by the blinking red eyes of thousands of flying daemons roosting in the underside of the breastplate. The ship was hauled through the sump of gore lying under Vel’Skan, the detritus of endless sacrifices on the altars of the city above. During particularly holy times, so many were sacrificed that the sump of blood rose and the most ancient parts of the city were drowned in it. It was a good omen for the blood to reach the high tide marks etched onto the city’s weaponry. In anticipation of the closest fought battle for Drakaasi’s title, the blood rose very high indeed.
The Hecatomb reached the prison complex, based in a huge and elaborate nest of brass struts and steel blades that had once been a titanic piece of torture equipment. The complex was beneath Vel’Skan’s arena, and housed the city’s arena slaves, among whom were the remnants of the Hathran Armoured Cavalry.
The Hecatomb was moored at the prison docks, to keep Venalitor’s slaves from mixing with the arena slaves. Venalitor left, accompanied by an honour guard of scaephylyds in dramatic tribal armour, hand-picked from the scaephylyd nation, which Drakaasi was only just learning existed beneath its deserts.
Many of Venalitor’s slaves went through final training sessions to keep them sharp, carefully selecting which weapons and armour they would take into the games. Many of them prayed. A few of them wept, convinced that their end had come at last, and that they would die under the eyes of Vel’Skan’s citizens. The orks were unusually quiet, with One-ear growling to them in the crude orkish language for hours. Not all of them knew that Alaric had planned an escape. Fewer still knew the sheer insanity of what they would have to do after they got out of the arena, but all of them knew that it would suit Venalitor for them all to die, as long as it was before the eyes of the audience.
“I am ready, Justicar,” said Haggard. “I’ll fight.”
“I know you will,” said Alaric. “I couldn’t stop you if I wanted, could I?”
“And would you want to?”
“It would help us if you were alive at the end,” replied Alaric. “None of us can say what will happen, but I’d be willing to bet that we’ll need a sawbones at the end of it.”
“None of that will matter if we don’t make it at all,” replied Haggard. “I was a soldier. I can fight. It would help if you got me a gun at some point, though. I only just scraped through bayonet drill.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Haggard had chosen his weapons already, a sword and a shield, laid out on the slab he usually used for operating.
“I’m not going to be sewing anyone back together on this slab again,” he said. “It’s as if I’ve been chained to the damn thing. It’s hard to imagine no one ever bleeding on it again.”
“The Hammer of Daemons had a medical suite,” said Alaric, recalling the images of the ship from Raezazel’s memories, “autosurgeons, synthi-flesh weavers, maybe even medical servitors.”
Haggard smiled. “Don’t tempt me, Justicar. We have to get there first.”
“And we will. I just have one thing to ask of you. The blade you pulled out of me, do you still have it?”
“The sword? Yes, I have it.”
“I need it.”
“It won’t be much of a weapon for you, Justicar. It’s no bigger than a dagger.”
“I don’t need it for that.”
“Very well.” Haggard reached into one of the pouches in his stained apron, and took out a bundle, carefully wrapped in strips of cloth that Haggard used as bandages. He handed it to Alaric.
“I think it’s poisoned,” said Haggard. “I guess you can filter that out. I don’t have that luxury, though.”
Alaric unwrapped the bundle. Inside was the shard that Haggard had pulled out of his chest. He thought about the wound it had inflicted. It still hadn’t healed completely, and when it did he would stilt have a scar to remind him. The shard was an ugly green-black colour, and its dark metal sweated beads of venom. Haggard was right, without a Space Marine’s enhanced metabolism, the poison would have killed him. Alaric had died a dozen times over on Drakaasi, but being a Space Marine meant that none of them had quite counted yet.
“What do you plan to use it for?” asked Haggard.
“I’ll keep that to myself,” said Alaric,
“if it’s all the same to you.”
“Then it’s your business.” Haggard tested the weight of the sword he had chosen. It was a good choice for a relatively unskilled fighter, short with a broad blade, made for thrusting. It wouldn’t save him if he faced someone competent one-on-one, but it was perfect for stabbing into a surprised opponent’s stomach. “When it happens, Alaric, will you look out for me?”
“I don’t know,” replied Alaric simply. “I will if I can, but it will be too chaotic in the arena to make any promises.”
“Then at least, don’t leave without me.”
“Everyone’s going, Haggard. If anyone thinks you’re not among them then they answer to me.”
“I know, it’s just… I got left behind once on Agrippina. If it happens again, that’s the end. Salvation be damned, I’ll just fall on this sword and get it over with.”
“It will not come to that. I can promise that, at least. Now, I need to find a weapon, too. I left my axe buried in an Ophidian Guard at Gorgath.”
“Choose well, Alaric. They’ll make you fight the best. You’re famous and they want a show.”
“We’ll give them a show,” said Alaric, “just not the one they came here to see.”
With their burning eyes and smouldering skin, the possessed guards were the terror of the prison. They were not so much cruel as calculating, treating the prisoners as subjects to be moulded into suitable arena fodder through fear and brutalisation. Their leader, a hulking thing named Kruulskan, who had a face crushed into a grunting pig-like snout, gave the order for the slaves to be herded from their cells into the preparation chambers.
Above them, the sound of the audience echoed down. Hundreds of thousands of voices were raised in a hymn to blood and violence. Blood began to seep down the walls as it soaked through the arena sands, freshly let from the throats of the first sacrifices. The cries of the priests cut through the crowd’s roar. They were reading Khorne’s words from the patterns of blood on the sand, and crying the resulting praises into the stands. It was a familiar sound to Vel’Skan’s arena fodder, but never had it rumbled so loudly above them, never had the blood run so thickly down the prison’s brass walls and steel blades.
The preparation chambers held the prison’s collection of weapons. Whips and cruel hooked blades were preferred. The Hathran Guardsmen took the swords that most resembled the cavalry blades with which their forefathers had fought, the horse tribes of their home world that had never seemed so far away. Other slaves, many of them Imperial citizens taken in raids throughout the embattled Eye of Terror, armed themselves with whatever looked like it would keep them alive the longest.
A few of them knew they would never be herded through those preparation chambers again, never suffer again under Kruulskan’s whip. They were getting out, or they were dying. They would have to trust a Space Marine, and many of the Hathrans blamed the Space Marines for the disaster at Sarthis Majoris. However, Alaric was as good an ally as they could expect to find on Drakaasi. This was their only chance.
“Now you die!” bellowed Kruulskan, cracking his whip. “Now you die, you lucky ones! Rejoice! Death is your servant! Welcome him! Welcome Khorne!
“Khorne is your lord! Die for him!” Kruulskan snorted jubilantly. To see the doomed men and women huddled beneath him, arming themselves ready to entertain the great and powerful of Drakaasi, seemed to give the possessed creature great pleasure.
A few of them, those who knew what was to come, simply waited for the real spectacle to begin.
One of the scaephylyds had come to Alaric and ordered him below decks. Alaric had gone with the creature, knowing that now was not the time to bring suspicion on himself by disobeying. He was herded into an arming chamber beneath the prison decks and told to make ready.
Alaric was famous. It was fitting for someone of his notoriety to look the part. He lad lost his previous war gear at Gorgath, but he would not be replacing it with the piecemeal armour of a slave. Instead, he would be wearing the armour of the Betrayed.
“I have a great many questions,” said Alaric.
“And so little time,” replied the smith.
Just as when Alaric had encountered him at Karnikhal, the smith was working at an anvil, pinching the last few chainmail links into place with a pair of glowing red tongs. His forge had been set up in one of the many chambers hidden in the Hecatomb’s hull, and the smith was silhouetted against its ruddy glow. A stand of armour stood beside him, magnificent and intricate, with hundreds of interlocking plates like the shell of a massive insect. It was obvious from its sheer size that it could only have been made for Alaric. “Who are you?”
“I am you,” said the smith, “if you ever give up.”
The smith turned around. Alaric instantly recognised the surgical scars and the black carapace just beneath the skin of his chest.
“You are Astartes.”
“No,” said the smith, and his teeth gleamed as he smiled. “I have not been a Space Marine for so long that time does not mean anything to me. I am like you, captured a long time ago by a lord of this world. That lord is dead, but I still serve.” He looked down at his hands, scarred from a lifetime at the anvil. “These hands forged the weapons that killed your comrades on Sarthis Majoris. I am your enemy. I am kept alive and sane because of the skills I still recall, so I serve Chaos as surely as Khorne’s own priests. I am not Astartes.”
“What was your Chapter?”
The smith looked up at Alaric. He had room for compassion in his old scorched face, but it had not seen anything but desperation for a very long time. Its humanity had been eroded away until only the eyes were left.
“I don’t remember,” he said, “but the Hammer, is it real?”
“Yes, the message you sent me at Gorgath was correct, the Hammer is where you said it was. It is a spaceship.”
The smith’s face cracked, as if it was unused to showing genuine relief. “A spaceship! Of course! Not some magical trinket, but a spaceship! Of all the weapons that might be hidden on Drakaasi, that is the most valuable. That could do them the most harm.” The smith’s eyes were alight. “I had heard only legends, but this is so much more. Do you still have the weapon I left for you at Gorgath?”
“No. I was recaptured and it was taken from me.”
“A shame. I was proud of it.”
“I killed a few men with it.”
“Then at least its forging was not wasted.” The smith turned to the armour set up beside him. “I am to fit you for this.”
“A lot of people will be wagering on whether I live or die, so I suppose I have to be easy to pick out from the crowd.”
“My finest work,” said the smith. “I have waited a very long time for a warrior like you. It is not merely a matter of protecting the wearer from harm, any piece of rusting iron will do that. The true craft is in bringing the soldier out of the form, to give him a metal skin like a projection of himself, a face to show to the world. It becomes an art, Grey Knight. It is all that stands between me and oblivion, this art.”
“Venalitor ordered you to make this?” asked Alaric, examining the intricate plates of the armour and the way they slid over one another like scales on a snake.
“No,” said the smith. “He ordered me to make you a suit of armour. This is not merely armour.”
“You can come with us.”
“No, Grey Knight, I cannot. I am compelled to serve. I do not even remember what it must be like to resist. It is only by serving that I have been able to help you, by forging weapons and armour for you as my lords decree.”
“You understand what may happen to this world once I have the Hammer.”
“Oh yes,” said the smith. “I am rather looking forward to it.”
Alaric began to put on the armour. It fitted him as perfectly as one of the many enhanced organs of a Space Marine, as if the armour was a part of him that he was being reunited with.
“Then this is the last time I shall see you,” said Alaric as he
buckled the armour’s flexible breastplate around his chest.
“It is.”
“You have helped me a great deal.”
“I have done nothing, Grey Knight. You are the Hammer after all, not I.”
Alaric finished fastening the armour around him. It felt as light as his own skin. When he looked up from fixing the greaves around his legs, he saw Venalitor’s scaephylyds waiting in the chamber’s doorway to escort him back to the prisoner decks.
“Will it suffice?” gurgled one of the creatures.
“It will,” said Alaric.
“Then it is time.”
Alaric glanced back once, but the smith was already bent back over his anvil hammering at a half-finished sword.
Then the scaephylyds took Alaric away, and he was gone.
“It’s started,” said Alaric. Venalitor’s slaves were in a staging area beneath the main stands, watched over by scaephylyds and warriors of the Ophidian Guard, presumably sent to make sure that Alaric did not start another riot.
“It has,” said Kelhedros. The eldar was in his familiar green armour, and had a couple of swords scabbarded on his back to supplement his chainsword.
“Then it is time for you to go.”
The slaves were being loaded directly off the top deck of the Hecatomb into the belly of the arena. The arena structure, embedded in Vel’Skan’s forest of blades and spear shafts, was like a massive, gnarled sphere festooned with blades. A passageway into the arena’s underside was lined with armed scaephylyds herding the prisoners along.
“I shall still be alone?”
“You have a talent for getting into places you’re not supposed to be,” said Alaric. “You’re the only one who can do it.”
“Very well,” said Kelhedros. “I can offer you no promises, human.”
“I expect none, eldar. There’s one other thing.”
“Make it quick.”
“Use this.” Alaric handed Kelhedros the shard of the sword that had nearly killed him.
“This?” asked Kelhedros, looking with some disdain at the dagger-sized shard. “I think my chainsword would make sure enough work.”
[Grey Knights 03] - Hammer of Daemons Page 20
