Kelhedros slid silently across the chamber, weaving his way between the shadows of the room and the flickering light of Kruulskan’s eyes.
“I know,” said Kruulskan, “you’re made of shadow.”
Kelhedros slipped out of the darkness and leapt up onto the slab, behind Kruulskan. Kruulskan whirled around, pick held high ready to bring it down through Kelhedros’ skull.
Kelhedros snatched up a blade from the slab, a wickedly curved thing, like a miniature sickle, and threw it at Kruulskan. The blade ripped through Kruulskan’s eye and flame sprayed like blood from an artery. Kruulskan stumbled back, roaring.
Kelhedros grabbed a steel spike and threw it after the sickle, and it buried itself in the meat of Kruulskan’s shoulder. Another speared the possessed creature’s wrist, and sheared through the nerves controlling his hand, forcing him to drop the pick. A fourth got him in the throat.
With his free hand, Kruulskan pulled the blade from his eye. Half of what remained of his face was gone, consumed by the burst of flame, and inside the charred hollow of his skull, Kelhedros could just see the unholy features of the daemon in the fire.
Kruulskan charged, head down, to bowl Kelhedros to the floor and crush him to death. Kelhedros jumped, flipping over Kruulskan with such ease that it was as if he was taking flight. Kruulskan slammed into the slab, spilling torture implements everywhere, and Kelhedros landed behind him. Kruulskan turned around, took a deep breath and vomited flaming bile at Kelhedros. The eldar leapt again, this time flipping up onto one of the torture frames mounted on the wall. He balanced carefully between the machine’s blades and spines as liquid fire washed across the floor below him.
Kruulskan grabbed the slab with his remaining good hand and ripped it from its moorings. He spun once, like a hammer thrower, and hurled the slab at Kelhedros. Kelhedros dived out of the way as the metal slab crashed into the wall, crunching through the torture device. The flame was still covering the floor, and Kelhedros angled himself upwards. His hand caught the corroded metal of the ceiling, and his many-jointed fingers wormed their way into a handhold. Kruulskan stumbled forwards under his own momentum, directly under where Kelhedros was clinging to the ceiling.
Kelhedros’ free hand drew the black dagger from its scabbard. He was glad that Alaric had given it to him. Clearly, an old-fashioned length of steel wouldn’t be enough to kill the possessed Kruulskan, but the venom just might.
Kelhedros dropped from the ceiling and landed on Kruulskan’s back. He punched the dagger between Kruulskan’s ribs. He felt the blade pierce the tough flesh of the heart. Kruulskan roared and swung around, trying to throw the alien off him. Instead, Kelhedros pivoted and dropped down in front of Kruulskan, planting a foot on the possessed monster’s prodigious gut as he drove the blade into his chest.
Kruulskan’s heart was pierced from both sides. Green flame drooled from his tusked mouth and spurted from the wound around the dagger blade. Kelhedros twisted it for good measure, and more fire spurted out. The eldar flipped away as Kruulskan’s human body began to come apart at the seams. The dagger stayed in Kruulskan’s flesh, fire fountaining around it.
“I’ll find you!” hissed Kruulskan, his words almost lost in the torrent of flame. “I’ll come back from the warp, shadow-skin, and I will find you!”
Kelhedros paused for long enough to rip the heavy brass key from around Kruulskan’s neck. Then he fled from the room just before the possessed gaoler’s earthly body exploded.
Regimaiah the Iron-Hearted killed the twin swordswomen known together as the Blood Serenade. Aethalian Swifthammer, a cudgel held in each of his three hands, cracked open the skull of the disgraced Commander Thaall, once a member of Scathach’s army, now cursed and thrown down to fight in the arenas. His curse was lifted at last as his brains spilled down over the lowest step of the pyramid.
Beside him died Sokramanthios the Scholar, the fire-breathing witch mutant, slain by an unlikely and very temporary alliance between Thurgull’s champion Murkrellos the Venomous and the skeletal Skin Haunter. Xian’thal, in his intricate segmented armour, wielding a pair of blades connected by a chain, found himself surrounded by clamouring mutants trying to drag him down and butcher him. He killed six of them in a few seconds, but was himself killed when the mutant warlord Crukellen impaled him on spines of bone.
Gearth killed Furanka the Red Dog by stabbing the bestial mutant in the back with his pair of short swords. The crowd didn’t know his name, but they loved the savage joy on his face.
Alaric killed a scrawny human slave, who scrabbled towards him with a dagger in his hand. Alaric kicked him off the first step hard enough to shatter the side of his skull, and he was dead before he hit the ground. Alaric hesitated, staring down at the body while the other champions eagerly killed one another. Some watching thought that Alaric the Betrayed was gone, his spirit broken, but then Lethlos son of Khouros leapt on him, and Alaric rammed the beastman’s head into the marble, until Lethlos went limp and three of its eyes popped out of their sockets.
Dozens of feuds were settled and arena careers begun and ended in the first couple of minutes. Some died with a flourish, others had bad deaths laid low by a mistake or a sucker punch. Some killed with raw power and others with a moment of skill, or just with pure luck.
The lesser slaves fought around the pyramid for the right to follow the real killers onto its first step. Venalitor’s slaves were surrounded and besieged by half-naked tribal warriors with the brand of a six-fingered hand on their chests. Erkhar and One-ear led Venalitor’s slaves in a bizarre alliance. They were fighting for time, and their struggle formed a curious sideshow to the main event.
The crowd was only just finding its true voice, and ancient hymns roared around the arena. Already there had been enough stories and enough blood to satisfy the altars of Khorne. The bloodshed today would be good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“You again,” said Dorvas.
The door banged open to reveal Kelhedros coalescing from the shadows, Kruulskan’s key in his hand. “Of course.”
The prison beneath the arena was a dark and foul place. Its cells were each home to two or three Hathrans, with the possessed gaolers patrolling constantly.
“You killed pig-face?”
“It is dead.”
Dorvas banged a fist into his hand. The other Hathrans in the cell behind him hissed their delight. Kruulskan was dead. They had often dreamed of hearing those words.
“Move fast,” said Dorvas.
Kelhedros headed down the cells, opening them one by one. The corpse of a possessed guard still smouldered on the walkway outside the cell where Kelhedros had killed it. Dorvas and the Hathrans rummaged through the body, grabbing whatever they could use as a weapon. More freed Hathrans gathered outside the cells. The feeling of elation was mixed with fear, and the men crouched in the darkness, knowing that they would be found out soon enough.
“You know the plan,” said Dorvas. “Get to the arming cages, and then to the branding chamber. If you get hurt, you’ll get left behind.”
The sound of shouting echoed from down the cell block. The light of blazing eyes glinted off the blades that made up the prison’s structure.
“Now!” shouted Dorvas.
The prisoners rushed the oncoming guards. There were fifty of them in the throng by the time the guards reached them.
The possessed were figures of fear, the daemons inside them unfathomably cruel, but the Hathrans were driven by something more than fear now, something more, even than the hope of freedom.
They could bring the fight to their foes at last. They could seek revenge instead of cowering, hoping to be spared. The Hathran Armoured Cavalry charged again.
Alaric wrapped the chain around the throat of Vladamasca Wrathbringer and crushed the life out of her. The fleshy dreadlocks adorning her head writhed as she fought to breathe. Alaric stamped down on the back of her leg, forcing her to her knees, and she stiffened and died as the chain cut off the bloo
d to her brain.
Alaric wondered for a split second how much had been wagered on her, and what the odds had been. By the Emperor, he hated this place.
Alaric threw the mutant’s body off the pyramid. Her corpse slithered down the blood-covered marble. He caught a glimpse of Venalitor’s slaves, back to back as they fought. One-ear and the orks were taking the chance to put on their own sideshow, leaping and hacking at the slaves attacking them. Gearth was somewhere lower on the pyramid, fighting his way up. Alaric didn’t know if he would make it. He hoped not.
He also saw the crowd. They were chanting the names of their favourite champions. Alaric heard his own name: the Betrayed, the Fallen Knight, the Emperor’s Disobedient Gundog. Others howled their dismay that Vladamasca was dead. The lords were as enthusiastic as the crowds, because those were their slaves and their champions dying. Ebondrake’s balcony was wreathed in black fire, and Alaric was sure he could make out the red armour and gleaming blades of Duke Venalitor.
The sight of Venalitor filled him with hate. He had never thought he could despise a place like he despised Drakaasi in that moment. Hatred was holy to a Grey Knight and, yet he had never felt it as he did for the vermin who populated the stands. He let it roar through his veins and silently hoped that it would not turn him into one of them.
Alaric forced his way onto the penultimate step of the pyramid. A cloven-hoofed creature lay on the step holding its guts in. Alaric barely paused to break its neck. The beastman had been carrying a spear with a barbed head. It was a more practical weapon than the spiked chain that Alaric had taken off the third fighter he had killed, a red-skinned daemon which had tried to vomit caustic blood over him. Alaric picked up the spear and made it to the top step.
Half the crowd cheered to see Alaric the Betrayed make it to the square of marble at the pinnacle. Alaric was exhausted. He fought to remember how many champions of the Dark Gods he had killed, but their faces and mutations swam in his mind, and he couldn’t focus.
He could have let the noise of the crowd in and taken strength from it, but that was not who he was. He was not a gladiator fighting for glory, but a servant of the Emperor fighting first for survival, and then for justice. The crowd would not keep him going.
He had a weapon in his hand and an enemy to kill. That was all a citizen of the Imperium ever needed, that and the hate.
The crowd was roaring in anticipation. The bloodletting had been to get them worked up. The real event was here. The champion would be crowned.
Alaric knew, before he ever saw it, what would come slithering up onto the pinnacle; the tiny glinting red eyes and the fork-tongued smirking mouth, the massive four-armed torso, the kill tallies, and the obscenity of its oversized snakelike body. The sound of reptilian scales on marble was a confirmation that Alaric didn’t need.
“I am so glad it is you,” said Skarhaddoth, gladiator champion of Lord Ebondrake, slithering onto the pinnacle. “I have developed a taste for your kind.”
Skarhaddoth was even bigger up close. He had new kill marks branded into his scaly chest, and one of the hands hanging around his neck must have belonged to Haulvarn. Skarhaddoth had abandoned his shields, and each of his four hands held a well-bloodied scimitar.
“I tend to stick in the throat,” said Alaric.
The two circled slowly. No doubt Alaric didn’t look like much of an opponent. His steps were heavy and his breathing laboured, and his magnificent armour was ragged and battered. Skarhaddoth looked as if the blooding on the pyramid had been no more than a pre-match ritual for him. He was sheened with foul-smelling sweat, and he grinned with malice. He had been looking forward to this. Ever since he killed Haulvarn, he had been waiting to finish the job.
“Two Grey Knights,” said Alaric, letting his muscles slide into a familiar combat stance. “Quite a tally. What will that get you? Freedom?”
“Who needs freedom?” hissed Skarhaddoth. “What is this fiction that devours your human mind? What more is there in the universe than this? Blood and death and metal through flesh? More of everything, that is what I will be given. More blood!”
“In the crusade,” said Alaric. “Ebondrake will give you everything you want there. If you kill me.”
“The first wave,” sneered Skarhaddoth. “First through the breach. First onto land. Blood upon virgin earth. The warp will hear my blades, betrayed one! Khorne will smell the blood I let!”
Alaric smiled. It was a strange thing to feel, some humour, some joy, up there amid the blasphemy and death, but it was there, because Alaric was human, and being human meant dragging hope out of hell. “There will be no crusade,” said Alaric. “I know what Ebondrake wants. I know what you want. Neither of you will have it. I want you to know that before…”
“Before what, betrayed one?”
The pause lasted a fraction of a second, but in that time so much went through Alaric’s mind that he couldn’t see anything beyond Skarhaddoth. The arena, the crowd, the fighting, the menagerie of Drakaasi’s lords and daemons, they all became a crimson blur. Angles of attack and best guesses about Skarhaddoth’s anatomy, the weight of the spear in his hands and the blood slicking the marble beneath his feet were all coursing through his head. Then it was enough. There were no more guesses to make.
Alaric lunged. He had a long reach, long enough for the point of his spear to punch through Skarhaddoth’s chest and out through his back.
Skarhaddoth gasped. For the first time, the smirk was wiped off his face. He looked down at the spear in his chest, and then up at Alaric.
“Your guard is too low,” said Alaric. Skarhaddoth slumped forwards, pushing the shaft further through him as he tried to take a ragged breath. His face was close to Alaric’s, and Alaric only had to whisper. “I noticed it when you murdered my friend. Such a thing tends to focus the mind.”
Skarhaddoth slumped to the floor, still with a look of surprise on his face.
The crowd was quiet for a moment. Alaric had done what no other man on Drakaasi could have done. He had shut them all up.
Lord Ebondrake leaned over the battlements of his pavilion high up in the huge mask mounted on the arena wall. His eyes were slits of yellow fire and his nostrils flared. His wings spread out behind him, and for a moment Alaric was sure the old lizard would swoop down to devour Alaric himself.
The relative silence was broken by the explosion that blew a crater in the arena floor. Alaric was battered back by the force of it, and bloodstained sand rained down.
Uproar filled the silence after the blast. Angry spectators clambered over barricades towards the arena floor. Ophidian Guard stormed from their posts to keep order. The lords began demanding to know who among them had dared to defile Khorne’s spectacle.
Then, a figure emerged from the cloud of dust and dirt, tall, lean, armed with a sword and moving faster than a man. It was Kelhedros.
Behind him were four thousand arena slaves in the uniforms of the Hathran Armoured Cavalry.
Everything that Alaric had learned about the Vel’Skan arena told him that the only way out was across the arena floor.
From the arena, the slaves and the Hathrans could make it to the seating areas, hopefully assisted by the chaos caused by Alaric’s victory and the breakout itself. Many gates led out of the arena, but only one of them interested Alaric, since it would point the escaping slaves towards their ultimate objective.
As a plan, it was flawed. The brother-captains and grand masters of the Grey Knights would have admonished him for suggesting such a mess, but it was the only chance Alaric would ever have to take the Hammer of Daemons. It was also the only chance the slaves would have of escaping the planet, but if Alaric was honest with himself, truly honest, he had to accept that their escape was a secondary objective for him.
Many of them would die. Alaric knew he was sacrificing them for his own ends, but that was the way the galaxy worked. It was a cruel place, and that meant that, sometimes, he had to be crueller.
“What are your
orders, my lord?” asked the captain of the Ophidian Guard.
“What do you bloody think?” snarled Lord Ebondrake through coils of black fire. “Kill them all.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the captain. He raised his sword, and as one the Ophidian Guard clanked out of the pavilion to join the other soldiers gathering among the spectators below.
Ebondrake turned to Venalitor. “More blasphemy, and your boy is at the heart of it all, Venalitor. You will answer for this.”
“I have no doubt of that,” said Venalitor rapidly, “but this may not be the catastrophe it seems. Here is an opportunity to—”
“Less talk!” yelled Ebondrake. “More death! By the brass gates of hell, Venalitor, take your pretty sword and kill something down there!”
In reply, Venalitor drew the two-handed blade from his back, and vaulted over the battlements of the pavilion, dropping deftly to the seating below.
The audience was in chaos. Alaric’s victory, and the manner of it, was enough to send them into a frenzy on its own. Skarhaddoth had died at the first blow. Ebondrake’s champion had died, without a fight! A bad death indeed, and nothing stirred up hatred more than a poor death. Then the explosion, and the torrent of slaves suddenly swarming across the arena had forced any remaining sense out of their heads. The spectators were biting and kicking at everyone around them, blaming one another for the obscenity that had blighted this celebration of Khorne.
One of them ran at Venalitor, a bloodied cultist in a torn robe with ritual brass claws implanted in his forearms. Venalitor animated the blood around the man’s feet, tripped him up, and cut through his spine with a swipe of his blade. It was barely worth a flick of the wrist to kill such a lowly creature.
“My duke,” said the slurred voice of a scaephylyd. Venalitor’s slavemaster picked his way across the wounded and unconscious around the upper seats, “the scaephylyds have been gathered and await your orders. Should we descend to the arena floor?”
[Grey Knights 03] - Hammer of Daemons Page 22
