Honour Among Fiends - Dylan Owen
Page 3
Demetros shook his head slowly. 'You are insane.'
Around the duellists, Scaevolla's warriors had formed a defensive ring. Berserkers and Space Marines lay in a crimson circle at their feet.
'Shield the captain!' yelled Larsus as a howling tide of berserkers and mutants flowed into the plaza.
'Fresh meat!' cried Surgit with satisfaction, swinging his power sword above his head.
The fighting was chaotic, Imperial Fists and berserkers hacking at each other, and mutants caught in the melee, chopped into a crimson spray. Amidst this tumult, Scaevolla's warriors cut down any that attempted to breach their circle. As they fought, Opus sang, Icaris wept, Manex roared and Sham slew silently.
Scaevolla and Demetros stood undisturbed in their arena.
Demetros frowned. 'You defend me against your own kind. You are jealous for my death. Why?'
'For the sins of your father,' replied Scaevolla. 'He did my liege lord a great disservice once. But fortune smiles on you, Demetros. You are the one who will win back your father's honour. Let us finish this. My men are strong, but they cannot hold out against two armies.'
Scaevolla tipped his runesword to his forehead in salute. Demetros stood motionless. Blades blurred, then the two were statues. Neither betrayed exertion. A feint from the Space Marine, a retort from Scaevolla, swift attack and counterattack blocked and blocked again. Scaevolla twisted his blade and his opponent's sword flew from his grasp, to land with a clatter between them. Scaevolla's runesword glowed, as though excited by the impending kill, but Scaevolla dipped his blade and flipped the fallen power sword back at Demetros, who deftly caught it.
'A hero should never be defenceless,' said Scaevolla.
Demetros replied with a lightning thrust, but Scaevolla parried. Then Demetros executed a brilliant side step, and his sword was beyond Scaevolla's guard.
The world stilled around Scaevolla, the blade hovering a second away from his heart. At this, the final moment, he felt alive; fear and elation mingled in one delicious cocktail. His vow was broken; at last he would sleep.
But if Scaevolla shifted his torso a fraction to the right, the blade would slide parallel to his armour, cutting a flesh wound, deep but not mortal.
Scaevolla remained still.
Reality surged back with a sucking roar, and the blade plunged through black power armour. Scaevolla smiled. The power sword had punctured his heart and split the back of his armour. When the blade slid free, Scaevolla was still standing.
'A fine blow, my friend. A blow worthy of my death.'
Scaevolla wondered how a dead man could speak. There was no pain. The tumult of the surrounding battle did not ebb away.
Demetros backed off, enraged. 'How can this be? Daemon!'
Scaevolla looked down at the gash in his chest. Where there should have been spilling gore, there was instead a hole. As though torn through the fabric of space, a thousand stars swirled like gloating eyes within the wound. Laughter echoed madly in Scaevolla's head: four terrible voices. He opened his mouth, but it was their voice which spoke.
'You think a scratch can fell a champion of the Dark Gods? It will take more than a cur of the Dog-Emperor to cut this puppet's strings!'
Scaevolla struggled to control his tongue. 'You cannot kill me. Run, brother. Save yourself!'
Demetros scoffed. 'Run? I am a Space Marine of the Imperial Fists. I do not run.'
Scaevolla's runesword glowed hungrily. He cried out to the sky. 'I will not slay him! There is no honour in this fight!'
As Demetros closed in for the kill again, Scaevolla tried to bare his neck to the oncoming blade, but his runesword wrestled his will, and it blocked the strike with a clash. Scaevolla swiped again, his limbs not his own, and Demetros shuffled backwards, a thread of scorched flesh lining his throat. The Space Marine fell to his knees, expressionless, his power sword clattering to the ground.
Over the noise of the Imperial Fists' battle hymns, the wild canticles of the berserkers and screams of dying mutants, Larsus cried out to his captain. 'It is finished. We must leave - now!'
Scaevolla gazed at the corpse of Demetros. He would order Sharn to incinerate the body, destroying the progenoid glands, ending the hunt here.
Suddenly, onto the plaza tore a mass of pulsing muscle straining within a black carapace fused to flesh. A voracious eel-like member gnashed and swallowed. Ferox had been rewarded with the warp's ultimate boon: the gift of spawnhood. He would slaughter mindlessly for the pleasure of the gods.
Scaevolla's order died on his lips. Watching what once had been Ferox whine and gibber as it slew, Scaevolla realised what fate awaited him should he attempt to renege on his oath. He chilled. The gods would never allow the chase to end. Sullenly, he bowed to his dead foe. It was better to embrace enslavement than have the remnants of his humanity eaten away. 'Until next we meet, my friend.' The words left a bitter taste.
With his sword, he sheared off Demetros's head and picked up the trophy by the hair: one more skull for the floating altar.
Larsus yelled an order. 'Squad, converge! We return to the Talon!'
The defensive circle tightened to a knot around Scaevolla, who flicked a device on his belt, and the squad shimmered and disappeared, the maelstrom of battle flooding into the space they left.
The apothecary darted among the corpses of his fallen battle-brothers, ignoring the violence swirling around him as he harvested their precious gene-seed. He knelt over the body of Captain Demetros.
'Emperor's tears,' he exclaimed. 'They've taken his head!' With a heavy heart, he muttered the orison of passing and extracted the vital fluid from the progenoid gland in the corpse's chest with his reductor. 'Your line will live on to avenge this atrocity, my captain.'
Somewhere in the ether, laughter rippled. The game would continue.
About the Author
Dylan Owen is one of Black Library’s newest authors, and the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘Honour Among Fiends’ is his first. He is freelance graphic designer, writer, proof-reader & project manager. He lives and works in Nottingham.
Heroes of the Space Marines is an anthology of stories about these brave champions and their dark counterparts, the Chaos Space Marines.
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2009, in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology.
This eBook edition published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Hardy Fowler.
Honour Among Fiends © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2011. Honour Among Fiends, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-84416-731-9
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
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