by Andy Hoare
The super-heavy tank would have to be halted, permanently. Gritting his teeth, the Master of the Hunt hunched over Moondrakkan’s handlebars and brought his mount alongside the thundering behemoth.
Though the tank was not moving fast, Kor’sarro was painfully aware that one slip would see him ground to a red smear beneath its wide treads or caught up in its running gear and torn to shreds. Tensing every muscle in his body, Kor’sarro waited a heartbeat and then rose in his mount’s saddle. Pushing off, he cleared the three metres between bike and tank and grabbed onto a handhold. As if the tank’s commander had seen the manoeuvre, the behemoth swerved hard to its left and Kor’sarro was forced to hold on as his body was thrown violently into the air. Yet his grip was true and the super-dense fibre bundles of his power armour lent him the strength to drag himself up and onto the tank’s upper deck.
The horde swarmed kilometres in every direction, the bulk pressing into the huge breach in the wall of the defence installation. The Alpha Legion traitors had fallen back, well clear of the rampaging tank, and Kor’sarro’s battle-brothers were pushing on, piling the pressure on the enemy to force them back still further. Kor’sarro noted with a savage grin the number of blue-green-armoured bodies littering the ground about and knew that even if the battle should be lost, the toll on the traitors would have been fearful.
Kor’sarro’s attentions were snapped back to the task at hand as a burst of fire stitched across the Ironsoul’s armoured flank, missing him by scant centimetres. He saw that the Alpha Legion’s heavy weapons squads were opening fire on him, reasoning that their weapons would not harm the huge war machine but could tear him to pieces.
Fighting for balance, Kor’sarro located the commander’s hatch atop the main turret. He activated his mag-locked boots, which were more often used in zero-grav boarding actions. One heavy step at a time, he worked his way across the bucking deck and up the side of the turret.
More shots thundered in from the traitors’ heavy weapons, sending up a riot of sparks and metal fragments which stung his cheeks. Ignoring the pain, Kor’sarro plucked a krak grenade from his belt and with a flick of his thumb set it to a three second delay and activated its mag-clamp. Kor’sarro thrust the grenade onto the hatch, and then ducked below the level of the turret.
The resulting explosion was near deafening, yet even before the smoke had cleared Kor’sarro had thrown himself back over the edge of the turret. Knowing that he would have no space inside the cramped innards of the super-heavy tank to bring Moonfang to bear, Kor’sarro bunched his gauntlets into fists and dropped down through the wrecked, smoking hatch, fully intent upon rending every traitor crewman inside limb from limb with his bare hands.
Kor’sarro dropped down through the opening, expecting his armoured boots to strike metal deck plating below. Instantly, he knew something was seriously wrong.
Instead of a metal deck beneath his feet, Kor’sarro felt his boots sinking into something soft and yielding. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he looked around for the crew. As he turned, a blur shot across his vision and before he could react a coiling limb lined with a million tiny, rasping hooks had enveloped his entire head and was soon constricting around his windpipe.
Kor’sarro roared his denial, refusing to yield to such a death. His mouth was instantly stuffed full with a hundred questing pseudopods seeking the back of his throat and forcing their way down his gullet. Reacting entirely by instinct, Kor’sarro bit down hard upon the writhing tentacles, severing them as he ground the vile flesh between his teeth. Despite the severing, the pseudopods still thrashed within his mouth, but he could not spit them out for the larger coil which had birthed them was still wrapped tightly across his face.
With a titanic effort of will and strength Kor’sarro gripped the coil in both hands and dragged it clear of his head, spitting out the smaller tentacles the instant he was able. As vision returned he saw that the interior of the tank was not at all what it should have been. Instead of machinery and instrumentation, the Ironsoul’s innards were a mass of writhing intestinal coils.
Fighting back a wave of sheer revulsion, Kor’sarro glanced upwards and saw the hatchway above him sucking closed, the metal constricting like puckered flesh. All was plunged into darkness and a sickening groan assaulted Kor’sarro’s ears. The sound came from all about, the interior quivering and shaking with its droning. Kor’sarro spat, seeking in vain to clear his mouth of the vile taste the pseudopods had left there. He knew then that he had but two choices. Be consumed in the gut of a daemon-machine, or plunge for its heart and rip it out from within.
Pulling first one foot, then the other from the sucking mass of flesh of the deck, Kor’sarro pressed forwards. No battle drill or tactical meditation could have prepared him for this moment, but Kor’sarro knew the beast inside the Ironsoul must have a heart, and if it had a heart it must have a weakness. Judging that such an organ must be located to the rear of the vehicle where otherwise its engine should have been, he turned in that direction and pressed forwards.
Instantly, Kor’sarro felt another writhing tentacle reach out to grasp him, this time about the waist. Though no natural light entered the interior and no artificial source illuminated it, Kor’sarro soon became aware of a lambent red glow emanating from within the very stuff of the coiling limb. That was enough for his genetically enhanced senses. He quickly got his bearings and located the thing that was assaulting him. Reaching for his belt with one hand, Kor’sarro used the other to hold off the coiling loop of flesh. He drew his combat knife and with a savage war cry hewed the flesh in two and the section that was attacking him dropped away with wild, thrashing convulsions.
Kor’sarro plunged onwards. A dozen more of the vile, questing limbs grew from the pulsating, fleshy interior of the tank. The Master of the Hunt felt the wild savagery of his ancestors welling up inside him, reason threatening to desert him as he threw himself forwards. Yet, some part of him was ever aware that to abandon himself to the berserk madness would be to unleash something terrible upon the galaxy. The Storm Seers of the White Scars often spoke of the precipice the greatest of warriors sometimes walked along. Some warriors believed themselves strongest if they resisted the urge to look down, while the truly enlightened knew that to look and to face the truth is the mark of the true warrior.
As he forced himself forwards through walls of heaving flesh, Kor’sarro knew that he was well and truly walking that path right this moment, and to surrender to the berserker within would be to become one with the daemon beast itself.
Kor’sarro hacked all about him with his combat knife, the pulsing wet flesh pressing in against his face. His muscles strained against all-enclosing walls of meat. He bit down upon writhing pseudopods as they sought his throat. And then, with one last heave, he reached the core of the beast of muscle and iron.
In front of him, casting a hellish inner light, was the thundering heart of the daemon war machine.
Bellowing a prayer to Jaghatai Khan, the revered and lost primarch of the White Scars, Kor’sarro drove his combat knife deep into the flesh of the daemonic heart. As the blade penetrated, the heart exploded outwards in an eruption of blood and anger. Kor’sarro’s world turned in an instant to utter, all-consuming blackness.
Kor’sarro’s eyes snapped open and he was instantly awake. He was on his back looking up at the smoke-stained skies of Quintus.
For a moment, not a sound reached Kor’sarro’s ears. Then a high-pitched whine arose, turning into a muted roar just audible at the edge of his hearing.
The savage cacophony of battle returned, a torrent of sound breaking upon Kor’sarro’s senses.
Kor’sarro was battered but not badly wounded. He was lying on the black ground in front of the walls of the defence installation, and the earth was trembling with the footsteps of tens of thousands of combatants.
Turning his head at last, Kor’sarro’s eyes focussed on a black form
rearing before him, smoke belching from a dozen wounds. Pulling himself to his feet, Kor’sarro saw that the form was the blasted shell of the Ironsoul, the innards blown out at the instant he had destroyed the daemon within.
The act of killing the thing at the heart of the Ironsoul must also have thrown him clear, Kor’sarro realised as he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Looking down at his white and red armour, Kor’sarro noted that he was covered in the viscous fluids exuded by the vile appendages he had fought to reach the daemon’s heart, and his armour was black with burns and riven with dents.
Now standing fully upright, the Master of the Hunt saw another figure standing atop the smoking wreck of the Ironsoul.
‘Spat you out, did she?’ Kor’sarro recognised the leering, sibilant voice instantly. It was unmistakably that of Nullus, champion of Voldorius. Kor’sarro reached his right arm across his body and took hold of Moonfang’s grip. ‘I knew you would come,’ Nullus continued. ‘I knew you would not let me down, not after my little message on Cernis. What a tireless bloodhound you are…’
‘Nullus,’ said Kor’sarro, knowing then that Nullus had planted the four-starred shoulder pad so that the White Scars would follow his trail to Quintus. ‘Let us end this. Now.’
Nullus’s scar-traced visage twisted as he scowled down at Kor’sarro. ‘Perhaps it is indeed time, White Scar,’ Nullus replied. ‘I have hated you for so long, I grow weary.’
Kor’sarro was struck by the depth of the bitterness the Alpha Legionnaire harboured for the White Scars. He had laid his trail, and the Master of the Hunt had followed, and all so that he could enact his bitter vendetta against the sons of Chogoris. The traitor’s eyes were deep wells of pure hatred, windows behind which something other than human lurked.
Then it came to Kor’sarro. Perhaps it was his recent proximity to the daemonic heart of the Ironsoul, or maybe it was simple intuition. Perhaps he had known it all along.
‘Daemon,’ spat Kor’sarro, drawing Moonfang as he hauled himself up a ruined track and onto the rear deck of the wrecked tank.
Nullus stood upon the twisted and blackened foredeck, the smoking hole where the Ironsoul’s turret had been blown away separating him from Kor’sarro. The warrior gave a low, guttural chuckle, a sound that no living throat could have issued. ‘You have no idea…’ Nullus growled.
‘And neither do I have any desire to know,’ replied Kor’sarro. ‘Your very existence condemns you.’
‘You really are an arrogant little runt,’ Nullus sneered, his black eyes mocking. ‘So typical of your kind.’
‘Speak not of my people,’ spat Kor’sarro. ‘Even the least of them is above you and your kind.’
‘If only that were so,’ said Nullus. ‘But I have seen your people, more times than you can imagine. I know them well. Better than you, perhaps.’
Heed not the words of the daemon, Kor’sarro told himself, reciting the teachings of old. Do not allow yourself to become entrapped in his web of deceit. ‘Enough!’ Kor’sarro shouted.
‘Your petty existence may well end, hunter,’ Nullus crowed. ‘Mine cannot. I am the whisper upon the night wind that your people call “djinnu”. I am the stealer of maidenhead the priestesses call the “ghall qan”. I am the taint of disease and the dry riverbed at summer’s height. I am all of these things, and many more.’
At Nullus’s words, ancient fears not felt since long before his ascension to the White Scars stirred unbidden in Kor’sarro’s soul. The Alpha Legionnaire was invoking the malevolent spirits of the Chogoran steppes, the beings the tribal shamans spoke of only under the full light of the midday sun. Were they to do so by night they might be dragged screaming into the shadows.
‘You are naught but a liar,’ Kor’sarro replied, raising Moonfang before him and activating the sacred weapon’s power field. ‘You speak plundered words and expect me to quake in fear at your false knowledge of my people.
‘I know thee,’ Kor’sarro spoke the opening words of the rite of exorcism, ‘filthy as thou art.’
Nullus hissed, his scar-laced features twisting into a hideous mask of anger and bitterness. He brought his black-bladed halberd across his body and whispered profane words of power that Kor’sarro could barely hear, but recoiled from in disgust, to his blade.
The smoking chasm where the Ironsoul’s turret had once been yawned between the two combatants. Kor’sarro looked down at the hole, and knew that it was too wide for him to leap easily. He would have to work his way around its perilous edge to engage his enemy.
Nullus leapt high into the air, propelled by something other than mortal strength. The move took Kor’sarro entirely by surprise.
Kor’sarro barely had time to raise Moonfang to parry the inevitable downward blow. But Nullus powered through the air to land directly behind the White Scar.
It was all Kor’sarro could do to raise his blade over his shoulder, utilising by raw instinct a parry used by the steppes nomads of Chogoris when two mounted warriors pass one another at speed, each swinging at the other’s back. Kor’sarro made the parry blind, but instantly felt the jarring impact as Nullus’s weapon struck his own. Before Nullus could strike again, Kor’sarro twisted his body around and at the same instant leapt backwards, passing over the edge of the smoking hole and landing three metres away at its very lip.
Breathing hard, Kor’sarro raised his sacred blade. The weapon’s power field stuttered, as if part of it had been stolen by his opponent’s sorcerous blade, then flashed back to life. The otherwise flawless edge was notched by Nullus’s strike. He took a step backwards, seeking to gain space to manoeuvre, one foot coming perilously close to the hole’s edge.
Nullus pressed forwards, his halberd lunging towards Kor’sarro’s left shoulder. The strike was easily turned, but Kor’sarro found himself forced backwards still further while Nullus came on.
‘Not so sure now, are you, spawn of the cold steppes,’ Nullus leered.
Kor’sarro knew well that Nullus sought to anger him in order to gain further advantage. His pride and honour demanded he answer the daemon’s jibes, but he forced such notions to the back of his mind as he sought an advantage of his own.
‘No?’ Nullus crowed. ‘You have no proud boast, Scarred One?’
As his opponent pressed forwards again, his black-bladed halberd held ready to strike at any moment, it occurred to Kor’sarro that he might find some advantage in Nullus’s tirade. ‘What boast would you have me make?’ said Kor’sarro.
Nullus chuckled. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘What of the deeds of your beloved primarch?’
Forcing himself to calm as he allowed his enemy to berate him, Kor’sarro took the brief opportunity to gauge the progress of the larger battle. The traitor horde still surged all around, the White Scars driving a wedge into them. The banner of 3rd Company waved proudly nearby. The Alpha Legion were advancing upon his brethren and above it all, smoke stained the sky and gunfire stitched the air. Explosions and screams rose on the wind, mingled with the wild outpourings of the cultists and the mournful cries of the traitor militia.
All of this Kor’sarro discerned in but an instant, but there was nothing he could do to influence the strategy of his army. His cold eyes snapped back to his opponent. But in that instant, Nullus had raised his weapon and was making another lunge. There was no time to move, only to bring Moonfang up for another parry. The black halberd struck the base of Moonfang’s blade, and the two combatants matched their strength against one another, before pushing apart and stepping backwards. The blade’s power field flickered again, and Kor’sarro offered up a silent prayer that its blessed generator might withstand the halberd’s fell sorcery.
In that brief moment of contact, Kor’sarro had gained some measure of Nullus’s unnatural strength. The Master of the Hunt had pitted himself against every foe the universe had thrown at him, from tyranid carnifexes to cthellian ur
sids. The raw power behind that black halberd was as strong as any he had faced.
‘Where is your primarch now?’ Nullus pressed on, once more seeking to force a mistimed lunge or vengeful strike from Kor’sarro.
‘The blessed Great Khan hunts,’ Kor’sarro spat, seeking in turn to draw some misjudged response from Nullus. ‘He hunts the likes of you.’
Nullus advanced around the rim of the smoking hole in the top of the wrecked Ironsoul, Kor’sarro giving ground before him, if unwillingly. The proud banner of the 3rd came into view again, far closer this time. ‘How do you know he lives at all?’ Nullus sneered. ‘Perhaps he just hates that stinking mire you call a home world as much as I did.’
Nullus was turning his tirade back to the subject of the White Scars’ home world of Chogoris. He had claimed to be the whisper in the night, a spirit feared by many tribes, but vanished from Chogoris since before Jaghatai Khan had united the nations. The words of the Storm Seers came once more to his mind…
…and then Nullus lunged forwards again, a mighty two-handed blow coming from nowhere. Kor’sarro dived aside as the black blade arced past. As it closed, the halberd emitted a piercing scream, the sound of a caged predator giving voice to a thousand years of bitterness and torment. The tip of the halberd scored a jagged line across his left shoulder plate, and tore his flowing cloak in two. Power bled from his armour’s systems, sucked into the halberd’s blade, and Kor’sarro’s movements became sluggish as his actuators whined. Kor’sarro rolled across the wreck’s upper deck, pulling himself to his feet upon a buckled and blackened grille that groaned in protest at his weight.
Nullus came on, the halberd scything, its shrill scream growing ever louder. His face was a twisted mass of scar tissue, forming into new and vile configurations as his expressions shifted. Kor’sarro fought with every ounce of his warrior skill and ferocity to fend off the champion of Voldorius, but with each blow, the Master of the Hunt was being pushed back towards the edge.
