Hammer Of Daemons Part 23

'For the Emperor!' echoed Corporal Dorvas, raising the axe he had taken from a dead arena slave.

The Hathrans yelled and charged. Alaric went with them, because he was their figurehead now, and if he faltered, they would too.

The scaephylyd line was not yet fully formed, but there were plenty of the creatures to spare. Alaric had not known that Venalitor commanded so many of them, but it did not matter. He had always known that the slaves would not do this without a fight.

The two lines collided. Gearth whooped as he leapt into the air and landed directly on top of the largest scaephylyd he could see.

The greenskins followed him, One-ear bowling the closest alien over and pulling its legs off. The other side of the line hit a moment later, Erkhar's faithful charging, in as disciplined a line as they could muster. They had swords, and the scaephylyd had spears, and several of them died in a few moments to the aliens' longer reach, but they had faith and the weight of the charge behind them, and the aliens were forced back.

It was bedlam in the centre. There was no room for skill. A ma.s.sive press of men heaved down on the scaephylyds. Alaric was face-to-face with one of them, its mad asymmetrical eyes rolling in hatred. His spear was useless in the crush, so he let it go and rammed a fist into the scaephylyd's mandibles, feeling chitin crunch under his fingers. He pulled, and the thing's mandibles came away.

It reared and screeched, spraying foul blood everywhere. Alaric drove an elbow into the top of its head, clambered onto its armoured abdomen, and ripped off a limb that stabbed at him. He grabbed a spear that another alien tried to transfix him with, stood up on the body of the creature he had knocked out and stabbed all around him at the sea of insect bodies.

The Hathrans were scrambling all over the scaephylyds. Alaric could see them dying, torn apart or trampled to the ground, but they were also winning. Scaephylyds were weighed down with men and stamped to death in the throng. Others were stabbed dozens of times, their carapaces pierced and broken, spilling blackish organs onto the ground.

Alaric led the way. All the slaves looked up to him. Without him, they were just a crowd of dead men. With him, they were a fighting force.

'Forward! Arm yourselves and leave the wounded!' Alaric tore a malformed alien blade from the claw of a dead scaephylyd, and held it up so that the Hathrans and other slaves could see him. He pointed it towards the palace. 'For your Emperor! For freedom!'

The slave army heaved forwards, and the scaephylyds were pushed back. Scaephylyds were breaking and trying to regroup away from the crush. One-ear and his greenskins, along with many of Gearth's killers, howled war cries as they ran the broken aliens down.

There was no time to pause and finish the job. Alaric led die way right through the middle of the scaephylyds, cutting them down or battering them to the ground. He was covered in their viscous blood and had to wipe it from his eyes to see. 'Leave them! Forward! All of you!'

The slave army rolled over the scaephylyds. Alaric broke into a run, the few knots of scaephylyds still in his way struggling to get away from him. Ahead of him was the short run to the palace of Lord Ebondrake. Vel'Skan rose in sinister bladed shapes on either side, fantastic buildings constructed around the core of a sword hilt or along the blade of an axe. How much of the city was dedicated to hunting down Alaric and the escaping slaves? At least most of the inhabitants would be a.s.suming that they were headed out of the city. If the slaves reached the palace quickly enough, and everything went to plan, there was a chance that they might actually succeed.

There was hope, then, but Alaric could not let it dull his senses.

Many more of them would die before they escaped Drakaasi. Alaric knew full well that he could be one of them.

'With me! Bring the fight to them! For freedom!' Alaric charged towards the palace steps, and the army charged with him.

TIRESIA THE HUNTRESS, who had taken the heads of all seven Brothers of the Nethermost Darkness in her youth, loved nothing more than a bow in her hand and a cunning quarry to hunt. The slaves escaping Vel'Skan's arena were ideal.

Her mount, one of her flying creatures akin to a spiny stingray, swooped low at her mental command, weaving between the giant sword tips and spear shafts of Vel'Skan's skyline. She spied one of the arena slaves cowering among the ragged banners of a forgotten lord, clinging to the crossbar of a giant spearhead.

Tiresia drew her bow from her back, and shot the slave through the neck with an arrow tipped with snake venom. She circled as the slave, a skinny pale thing no more than arena fodder, seemed to dance with joy at being shot. It was the toxin sending his muscles into spasm, the same toxin filling his lungs with foam. He lost his balance and fell from the spear, breaking his body against the marble battlements of a fortress mansion below.

Tiresia added another head to the trophy room in her mind.

Arguthrax the bloated daemon and his train of mutilated slaves were making their way, in the direction of the arena, across a plateau formed by a discarded s.h.i.+eld. This surprised Tiresia.

Arguthrax wasn't a hunter of her prowess, but he still enjoyed killing for sport as much as the next daemon. Throughout Vel'Skan, stray slaves were being chased down and dismembered, or handed over to Khorne's priests to serve as future sacrifices. It was not like something as venal as Arguthrax to miss out on the fun. She swooped low over him, yanking the head of her beast up so that it hung in the air over him.

'Frog-beast!' she called down. 'No hunt for you? Does the warp scorn even sporting death now?'

Arguthrax looked up at her. Like many of Drakaasi's lords, he was spectacularly ugly. Tiresia fancied that the other lords, even the daemons, were on some level jealous of her attractive near-human form. Few could become as corrupt as her and yet stay relatively unblemished by the touch of the warp.

'Faugh! Pretty child. What do you know of death? What do you know of anything? To you, this is just a game!'

'As is all death,' replied Tiresia, 'for the Blood G.o.d plays dice with our souls. Blessed are those who play by the same rules as him!'

Arguthrax spat on the ground. The game? What game is this?' He brandished the obsidian shard in his paw.

Tiresia guided her mount down and hopped off it to the ground, shouldering her bow. She walked closer to Arguthrax to get a look at the shard.

The blade of an Ophidian Guard,' sneered Arguthrax, 'used to kill the chief gaoler of the arena.'

The Ophidian Guard? This cannot be, hideous one.'

Why not? Are you as dense as you are decorative, hunter of worms? I have prosecuted a war against the deceitful cur Venalitor for months. Surely even you are aware of this?'

'Of course,' said Tiresia. A few of her attendant hunters had seen that she had alighted, and were guiding their own mounts to the ground. They flew blunt nosed skysharks, less impressive than her flying ray, but dramatic nonetheless. You defied Lord Ebondrake.

There were few who did not see a reckoning for both of you.'

'And this is it! Think on it, girl. Ebondrake wants us united for his crusade, and what better way to unite enemies beneath him?'

'Give them a common enemy,' said Tiresia.

'So you are worthy of your lords.h.i.+p after all. Of course! A common enemy! Something that even dukes and daemons can indulge in destroying together! This! The escape!'

Tiresia's hunters gathered around her. They were not accustomed to seeing their mistress surprised by anything, but she was definitely taken aback by Arguthrax's words. 'Can this be true?

With as much honesty as you can muster, daemon. Is this thing possible?'

'It is not only possible, it is inevitable. What more proof do you need?' Arguthrax held out the shard again. 'Dying proof, huntress!

The truest thing on this planet! Lord Ebondrake wants his crusade and he profaned the very games of its celebration to ensure that we were of one sword! This blasphemy is his doing! This abomination unto Khorne will be revisited on him! The warp will have its justice!'

"We cannot make such an accusation,' said Tiresia. 'No matter how certain we may be, we are but two lords among many.'

Then find others!' retorted Arguthrax angrily. They will unite behind us! Bring them together, the Traitor Marine and the thing from die deep, the walker of dogs and all the rest of them! Together, we will make Ebondrake pay! Mark my words, I will dine on lizard before the sun sets!'

Tiresia shouted orders to her followers in clipped hunter cant. The hunt was forgotten and they took to the air to seek out their fellow lords and spread the news. Arguthrax's cauldron was borne aloft again, and the slaves continued their procession towards the fortresses and parade grounds of Vel'Skan.

Ebondrake had tried to manipulate them towards unity, but if there was one thing that could truly unite the lords of Vel'Skan, it was news of treachery.

TWENTY-THREE.

THE SKULL THAT formed the pinnacle of Lord Ebondrake's palace grinned down as if antic.i.p.ating the bloodshed. The slope of axe blades leading up to the entrance in its throat was still stained brown-black with the blood of recent sacrifices. Nothing in Vel'Skan, it seemed, could be considered holy or worthwhile if it was not regularly covered in blood. The dagger through the skull's eye cast a long, jagged shadow over the palace approach.

It was silent. The skull's remaining eye socket was dark. The balcony in front of it, from which Lord Ebondrake presumably took flight, was empty. The entrance, a tall narrow archway built to accommodate Ebondrake's wings, was also deserted.

'Looks undefended,' said Corporal Dorvas.

'Maybe,' said Alaric. The riots at the arena are buying us time.

Ebondrake won't be back until the slaves are captured or dead.'

'You know of Ebondrake well?'

Alaric shrugged. 'I tried to kill him once.'

'You tried to kill that? Throne alive.'

'It was not part of the plan at the time.'

The slaves were up ahead, nervously approaching the palace's great bra.s.s doors.

'What do you think it was?' asked Dorvas, nodding up at the giant skull.

'A prince of daemons, perhaps,' said Alaric. 'Or something we've never heard of. I feel Drakaasi has a complicated past.'

'Ebondrake likes maintaining an image.'

'That he does, corporal, and if I may say so, that was an impressive move with the explosives at the arena. I had my doubts as to whether it would succeed.'

Dorvas opened his uniform s.h.i.+rt. On his chest was burned a mark in the shape of a serpent, denoting him as Ebondrake's property.

They branded us with something caustic they kept in barrels underneath the torture block. Turns out it was flammable.'

Alaric smiled. 'I admire the improvisation.'

'Simple field craft, Justicar.' Dorvas looked up again at the palace.

'And it's here? The Hammer of Daemons!'

'If it's real, corporal, it is here, and it is real.'

Hathrans were working around the great bra.s.s doors, piling up barrels of the caustic gunk they had liberated from the prison's armoury.

'Move!' shouted one of them. 'Away from the doors!' The slaves broke from cover and followed Alaric away from the archway. A few moments later the bra.s.s doors glowed, blistered and burst, spraying molten metal as a large sagging hole was torn in the doors.

Gearth was the first through. Alaric wasn't surprised, but even Gearth's step faltered when he saw the inside of the palace for the first time.

It was dark and cool inside. The wind breathed through the dark red silks that billowed from the walls of the entrance gallery.

Overhead, shafts of light fell between the skull's teeth, the ceiling vaulted beneath the cranium.

The wind was not coming from outside. It was sighing from the throats of Lord Ebondrake's enemies. They were fused with the walls and ceiling, or with blocks of stone in the centre of the room like sculptures in a gallery. They were still alive. Alaric saw daemons among them, the brutal shapes of bloodletters reaching from the stones. The hanging silks waved around the corpulent form of a mutated human with goat legs and a second lolling mouth in its stomach, pallid flesh veined with granite where its skin met the stone. There was a treacherous Ophidian Guard, its helmet removed to reveal a face without skin, its mouth locked open and a stone tongue hanging down in front of its chest, and a carapaced creature from the seas half-petrified as if trying to swim out of die wall that encased it. One of the victims in the centre of the room was almost the shape of a woman, with a noseless face and claws for hands, her body displayed wantonly as it was consumed by the stone. There were hundreds of bodies, each a thing of Chaos: the many foes despatched by Ebondrake as he closed his claws around Drakaasi.

Haggard jogged up to Alaric. He was breathing heavily; he wasn't a young man any more. 'Flesh of the Saint, look at this,' he said.

They're alive,' said Alaric.

'Of course. It's no fun for him if they're dead.' Haggard spat on the ground. That's Gruumthalak Ironclad,' he said, indicating a creature like an armoured centaur with a scorpion's tail and huge segmented eyes like a fly, trapped in the entrance chamber's ceiling. 'I always wondered what happened to him.'

Gearth was standing by the female daemon trapped in the centre of the room. He was running the blade of a knife along the stone, testing how it felt when it got to flesh.

'Gearth!' shouted Alaric. 'Get your men up front. We need to head up.'

'C'mon then, ladies, let's move!' called Gearth, and his slaves went with him, up the grand sweeping staircase that dominated the far end of the chamber.

Where is it?' demanded Erkhar behind Alaric. The HammerV 'It's here. Head up. It's in the cranium.'

Then where...?' Erkhar paused. 'Of course. All this time.'

There will be more Ophidian Guard close behind,' said Alaric. We have to move. There isn't much time.'

The eyes of Ebondrake's defeated foes followed Alaric as he led the slaves into the palace of their captor.

'WHAT DOES THIS mean?' demanded Lord Ebondrake.

'As I said, it is still uncertain, but they are moving against you,'

said Scathach.

From Lord Ebondrake's vantage point among the daemon eyries at the top of one of Vel'Skan's spears, it was easy to see the enemy a.s.sembling. Night was falling, and countless lights of torches and possessed daemons' eyes glittered in a s.h.i.+ning host. It was gathering around a complex of barracks and parade grounds a short flight away, an excellent staging post for the thrust forwards.

'Who leads them?'

'I am not sure, my lord, though some candidates seem likely,' said Scathach. His more reasonable head was talking, since the other one was much given to battle-cries and statements of blunt intent.

'Arguthrax, certainly. I believe the Charnel Prince is with them, too.'

'That heap of rags? I gave him every corpse he ever consumed.

Base traitor. Who do we know is with us?'

'Thurgull, for sure.'

'Ha! He will be of limited use unless we need some fish spoken with. Who else?'

'Golgur, I wager, and I can bring Ilgrandos Brazenspear in, too. If the treachery becomes open, we can count on many more for certain. You are their lord, after all.'

'We will see about that,' said Ebondrake. What of Venalitor? He should be at my side. He would not miss this chance to win my favour.'

'I have not seen him.'

'Perhaps it was him,' mused Ebondrake. 'It was his champion that killed my Skarhaddoth. Maybe that was the signal for the breakout, to create the confusion necessary for the lords to ally against me. I would not put it past the duke to have arranged all this. If he has betrayed me, I shall make a point of eating him. He is too sly an opponent to consign to the walls of my palace.'

What are your orders, my lord?'