by Various
This time, he gave them what they wanted.
He kept the wriggling, spitting gladiatrix pinned down, her agility no use to her now. He drove his free fist into her, shattering the rest of her bones and pulping her flesh. When the creature could take no more and passed out, Krom tore her still-beating heart from her chest and displayed it to his audience defiantly.
His gaze remained fixed on the queen and her hovering throne. He bared his fangs and snarled at her, conveying the unmistakable message: You’re next!
She raised the axe to her mouth, unperturbed. She ran her tongue along its blood-encrusted edge, seeming not to care that she cut herself in the process. Then, casually, she snapped the wooden haft in two and tossed the parts back into the arena.
Blood was spurting from Krom’s neck. Even his Larraman’s organ couldn’t staunch the flow entirely. He was forced to clamp his gauntlet over the wound. He needed the ministrations of a Wolf Priest. There were no priests here, however.
The dark eldar slave masters were moving in around him with their whips. Fatigued and weakened by blood loss, he was unable to resist them.
Ulrik blinked and remembered where he was.
He felt as if he had been trapped in a waking dream for weeks, but his chrono informed him that it had been less than a minute.
He wrenched his gaze away from the viewport. Still, tendrils of harsh, white light streamed through it, tearing at his eyes. When men look upon the unfiltered warp, he thought, it drives them mad. Perhaps the same is true of this realm?
His brothers were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, some of them cradling their heads in their hands, shrinking away from the light. He almost ordered the viewport blocked, but he had to be able to see what was out there.
Leoric Half-ear, the Rune Priest, was sitting in a meditative pose, his eyelids flickering.
‘I see… I see the pathways, but they’re tangled together,’ he said, ‘and I see…’ Whatever Leoric saw, it was so terrible that he could not speak of it. His face was pale and clammy with sweat.
Olav Brunn was staring out of the viewport, in a trance. Ulrik leaned forward, seized him by the shoulders and shook him. He waited for the Wolf’s eyes to focus. ‘Have faith,’ he commanded, augmenting his voice to reach all of them, whatever their states of mind. ‘Remember, the dark eldar endure in this realm. They build their cities here. Are we, with the Allfather’s light to guide us and protect us, not stronger than they are?’
He opened a vox-channel to Rogan Bearsbane in the cockpit. Ulrik couldn’t imagine how he was coping up there, with no respite from the realm’s madness. Indeed, he sounded confused, distracted, on edge. The High Priest talked to him, trying to reassure him and keep him focused. It was only because of Rogan’s piloting skills that they were still alive.
‘If you can find a place to land…’ he suggested, hopelessly.
Rolling Thunder was buffeted fiercely, and a series of violent cracks – like the shifting of massive quantities of ice – reverberated through its structure. The Space Wolves looked to the hull above their heads, anxiously.
‘No place… there’s no place for us here,’ murmured Leoric. ‘We’re not welcome… We should leave before… before we are…’
Then, suddenly, they were flying straight and level again, and the hateful light had faded. It was like a weight had been lifted from Ulrik’s soul. He heard Rogan Bearsbane’s breathless voice: ‘The storm… Thank the Allfather, the storm is lifting.’ Ulrik looked through the viewport again. Have we found our destination, after all? he wondered. Or have we somehow blundered our way back into realspace?
All he could see was blackness.
Then, he felt gravity tugging at his stomach, and realised that Rolling Thunder was in a vertical dive. Rising up to meet her were the ruins of an ancient city that looked like it was constructed from a lattice of bones, suffused with a soft internal light.
‘I can see them sheltering behind their walls.’ Leoric whispered. ‘I see them dancing, laughing, feasting… but they are dust.’
Ulrik blinked and suddenly the city was bright and young again, its streets teeming with shadowy phantoms. Then it dropped away rapidly as Rogan raised the gunship’s nose. The tendrils of the icy storm ensnared them once more and the city was gone.
Some of the others had seen the phantoms too. Beregelt turned to Ulrik, his incomprehension written on his face.
‘Time means nothing here,’ the High Priest growled, and the thought could have driven him – even him – to despair. Not only did this realm span known space, its passageways crazed between the layers of reality like capillaries – they extended into past and future too. He lacked the knowledge to navigate it.
He recalled the legends he had heard of those – such as Jaghatai Khan – who had tried before him and been lost. We could fly for centuries, millennia, Ulrik realised, and never find our captured battle-brothers, never meet another living soul, never find a way out.
He suppressed a shudder. Perhaps we already have.
A disturbance rippled through the gladiatorial cells.
Krom felt his hackles rising. He clambered to his feet and strained at the bars, trying to see outside. He hadn’t slept for as long as he had been a prisoner, but he had shut down his brain one section at a time to rest it. This allowed him to remain alert, but he knew it also left him prey to waking hallucinations.
Am I seeing things now? Krom wondered, as a familiar figure stalked towards him through a sickly green haze. If he was, then his brothers were seeing the same. They were on their feet in each of the surrounding cells, unleashing howls of protest. The eldar queen paid them no heed. She had locked gazes with Krom, and they held each other’s eyes until she came to a halt – a step away from the point at which he could have reached through the bars and gutted her. She addressed her entourage of grovelling serfs and slave masters in their own language, in a voice like splintering ice that made Krom’s teeth itch. He spat curses at her, to drown her out as much as anything. The slave masters snarled at him and brandished their whips in threat.
The queen hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Krom felt, as he had in the arena, that she found him amusing – which enraged him all the more. She spoke curtly to her escorts again, then turned on her heel and stalked away from him, the howls of the captive wolves echoing after her.
The slave masters came back for Krom a short time later. They normally gave him longer to recover between contests – his neck still throbbed as his body struggled to heal the gash in it, and any strenuous activity was likely to tear it open again. They beckoned to Jormund Thunderclaw too, who rose with difficulty in his crippled suit of armour.
The journey took longer than it had before. Jormund moved slowly and unsurely, and no amount of threats or punishment could make him go any faster.
‘You should feel honoured,’ a slave master told Krom as they walked. His words emerged from a vox-grille slung around his neck. ‘Janaera herself is impressed with your prowess in the arena.’
‘I couldn’t care less what your bitch queen thinks of me,’ Krom snarled.
‘She has named you favourite of her warriors.’
Krom bridled. ‘A Wolf of Fenris belongs to no one, even less so a–’
The slave master talked over him. ‘Impress the Grand Archite and she may choose to extend your life.’
‘Tell your “Archite” to face me fairly in combat herself. Let her see my prowess close up instead of watching like a cringing cur from the shadows.’
‘You will end your days here all the same, but you could see more of them. The ruling succubi arrange the arena bouts, and for a favourite of theirs they will–’
Krom spat in the dark eldar’s face. It snarled and its whip lashed out at him. Brother Jormund started forward, affronted by this slight to his lord, but Krom motioned him to stand down. He wiped a trail of blood from his cheek with the back of his gauntlet, and bared his fangs in a grin. Getting under his captors’ skins may have been a
tiny victory, but still he savoured it.
In the muster area, he was handed a double-bladed frost axe, its keen edge gleaming. Wyrmclaw! He looked at it in surprise, expecting some trick. He took the proffered weapon all the same. It felt good, it felt familiar – it felt right – as his fingers closed around it. It felt like an extension of his hand. He had missed it sorely.
‘There is some advantage in being the Grand Archite’s favourite, after all,’ said Jormund, wryly. ‘She wishes to see you at your best, evidently. Perhaps she will return my missile launcher to me too. Then she will witness a spectacle.’
The slave masters said nothing to that suggestion. Instead, one of them produced a skeletal key, unlocked the massive shackle that encircled Jormund’s left arm and began to unravel the heavy chains that bound him. Krom saw the relief in his battle-brother’s posture as he was able to straighten his back and square his shoulders.
The next thing he knew, the trailing chains were being wrapped around him.
Krom tried to protest, but the slave masters tightened their cordon around him. They clamped the shackle around his left forearm, tightened and locked it. He was bound to Jormund now, a triple length of chain stretching barely more than an arm’s length between them. Whatever was waiting for them out in the arena, they would face it together.
They were taken to the farthest stage, as Krom had expected.
It took them an age to reach it. He and Jormund struggled to coordinate their movements. More than once, Krom was almost pulled over by the larger, heavier Terminator. Some members of the crowd laughed and jeered at them. A fat, rotten, purple-skinned alien fruit burst against Krom’s pauldron.
They rounded a stage that was bordered by bone-carved pylons, like fangs around a daemon’s mouth. The podium came into view and Krom’s eyes darted to it. Sure enough, the Grand Archite was draped across her throne.
He and Jormund had found a rhythm now and made better progress, though Jormund’s right foot dragged behind him. They clambered awkwardly onto the circular stage and their escorts withdrew to the shadows. Jormund reached for a giant, spiked mace, almost yanking Krom off his feet again in the process, to the crowd’s amusement.
Krom took out his anger on the eldar queen. ‘Come down here and fight me,’ he bellowed up at her. ‘You enjoy the taste of pain? I will treat you to agonies like you’ve never before imagined. I will tear out your black heart with my teeth.’
His words were likely unintelligible to her, but his tone and gestures certainly conveyed his meaning. Still, the arrogant expression on the Archite’s pale face didn’t flicker. Krom considered hurling his axe at her again.
He was distracted, however, by a sudden flurry of activity behind him. Half a dozen dark eldar, led by a beastmaster, were hauling a new combatant across the arena. It was fighting them all the way. Even their whips couldn’t subdue the raging creature. They had been forced to bind it, as they had Jormund, with chains.
Krom saw a spiny carapace and six powerful limbs, and knew right away that he was looking at a tyranid organism. ‘A genestealer,’ he muttered, darkly.
‘A broodlord,’ muttered Jormund, ‘to judge by its sheer size and the shape of his head.’ His voice sounded strained, which boded ill.
With much pushing, lashing and cursing from the slave masters, the creature was dragged up onto the stage, whereupon it immediately grew calmer. Krom saw a glint of intelligence in its beady eyes. It seemed to understand that the two armoured figures across from it were being offered up to it as prey.
The beastmaster had the broodlord’s chains removed, and its captors hastened away from it. It dropped into a crouch. A slobbering, spiny tongue, as blue as its hide, flicked out between its fangs. Krom felt a palpable wave of dread washing over him, almost strong enough to freeze his feet to the stage. Jormund stepped in front of him, thinking to shield his Wolf Lord, but Krom pushed him aside.
The monster sprang at them – and rebounded with a high-pitched screech as Wyrmclaw sliced into its hide. Its clawed feet skittered on the stage’s smooth surface, and it leapt at Krom again. This time, he splintered its exoskeleton. He would have done more, had the chains that bound him to Jormund not snapped taut.
Still, the monster flew at Krom a third time, a fourth and again, until Wyrmclaw inevitably missed its mark – glancing off the monster’s shoulder. Then it was upon him. Razor-sharp claws shredded his armour and gouged at his face. The monster’s jaw dropped open, wider than Krom would have thought possible, and he recoiled from its unholy breath. He couldn’t fight it on so many fronts at once.
He thanked the Allfather, then, that he wasn’t fighting alone.
Krom was wielding his axe two-handed, tugging on his battle-brother’s arm with every swipe. That had made it difficult for Jormund to join in the fight thus far. Now, however, the Terminator delivered a crushing mace blow to the broodlord’s spine. When that didn’t deter it, he tried to drag it off his Wolf Lord by its throat, which at least afforded Krom some respite from its breath. The monster’s claws continued to tear at him, however, as it thrashed in the Terminator’s grip, tearing up his greaves with its hind feet.
Krom wrenched himself free of it at last, though he lost his right pauldron and a clawful of flesh in the process. The broodlord squirmed out from between Jormund’s massive arms to slash and snap at him. Krom had no time – and could gain no space – to lick his wounds. Jormund staggered beneath the monster’s vicious onslaught, and so the Wolf Lord staggered too. Then the broodlord turned and flew at him again. It thinks me the weaker of the two of us because I am smaller, he realised, and bridled at the insult.
Krom smashed his axe blade into the monster’s head with all the strength he could muster. He thought he might have snapped its neck – but if he did, it barely noticed. Its claws ripped into him again, and Krom knew his only hope now was to fight in the manner of the monster – with desperate abandon, surrendering himself to the feral part of his own nature, clawing, biting, kicking, gouging.
The red mist descended upon him, and he welcomed it.
Krom wrestled with the broodlord on the ground, though he had no memory of falling. There was blood in his eyes, his nose, his mouth; his armour had been rent, his regal red cloak was in tatters and the gash in his neck was gaping open again.
Jormund came to his rescue once more. Krom heard the repeated impact of metal against flesh, the broodlord snarling and spitting, and suddenly its smothering weight was lifted from him. The wolf part of him didn’t want to let it go, and it howled in thwarted anguish as the creature was wrenched out of his hands. He reached after it, but blood rushed to his head and made it spin.
The stage was sticky with blood that was definitely, at least in part, his own. His fingers found Wyrmclaw’s haft and closed around it. He hadn’t even been aware that he had dropped it. His auto-senses screamed warnings in his ears, but he muted them. His auto-medicae was running dry of painkillers. Slashes from the broodlord’s claws criss-crossed his armour and had cut searing trails into his flesh.
He could hear Jormund and the monster fighting, but the sounds – like the roar of the crowd – seemed somehow distant from him. He tried to use the chains that connected him to Jormund to haul himself up. They were slack; he didn’t understand why. Somehow, he managed to get his knees underneath him and clambered laboriously to his feet. He stood, unsteadily, blinking, and realised that the fight was behind him.
Jormund was on top of the broodlord. He was holding it down with one knee and the ragged stump of his right arm. Incredibly, Krom realised, it had hacked off the Terminator’s forearm, divesting him of his mace and the chain’s shackle alike. Jormund’s left hand, however, had a grip on the monster’s head, his index finger sunk up to the knuckle in its eye socket. He slammed its head into the stage repeatedly, sending splinters of bone and gobbets of brain tissue flying.
Krom lurched towards them, a defiant roar rattling in his chest, his axe raised. The broodlord’s claws were tearing ope
n Jormund’s sides. Krom aimed for its elbow joint – an arm for an arm, he thought – but his blade hewed into the stage instead. He couldn’t tell if his target had moved or if he had simply misjudged its position. He was struggling to focus past the dark red blotches in his vision.
Jormund Thunderclaw sagged, and his limbs splayed out underneath him. He was at least comatose, if not dead – either way, the dark eldar would burn his body.
The broodlord was faring little better. Its remaining eye rolled back into its head, and Krom heard it struggling to breathe. Its claws twitched weakly and it couldn’t drag its mangled body out from beneath the Terminator’s crushing weight.
He sagged to his knees beside it. He took over where Jormund had left off, hammering at the monster’s head. He blotted out everything else, blotted out the arena crowd and thoughts of his brother’s demise. It took all his focus, all his strength, to cling to consciousness, to raise his axe and bring it down, beating out a steady rhythm.
Krom felt heavy hands on his shoulders. He shrugged them off, but they returned in greater numbers, rougher and more insistent. It was over. His enemy was dead. It had died some minutes ago. He had pulverised its skull. He had lost his left gauntlet and pulverised his knuckles too. The crowd had grown tired of him, seeking out other spectacles. The slave masters had come for him, to return him to a cell. Until the next time.
It took four of them to carry him, and he struggled against them all the way. The portal to the cells swam ahead of him and, belatedly, he remembered the Grand Archite. Is she still watching me? He was sure he could feel the creature’s cool gaze on his back. He could imagine her smirk as she enjoyed his humiliation, drank it in.
At least she saw, at least they all saw, that I won, he consoled himself. With that thought, he allowed the beckoning darkness to claim him; and, for the first time in more days than he could count, Krom Dragongaze passed out.
Time had become elastic. Seconds had stretched into days and weeks, while months and years had passed by in the space of minutes.
