Текст книги "The Outcast Dead"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

‘Why would you do something so self-destructive?’ asked Hiriko. ‘This augering is killing you every day. You must know that.’

Kai nodded. ‘I know it.’

‘Then why do it?’

‘Aniq Sarashina bade me tell what I know to one person, and one person alone.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Kai, scooping up a handful of sand and letting it spill between his open fingers. The wind snatched the falling grains, sending them out over the dunes to be lost among the endless desert. Kai imagined himself as one of those grains, carried away by the warm sirocco, to be lost beyond any hope of ever being found.

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Hiriko.

‘It doesn’t have to,’ said Kai. ‘But a promise is a promise.’

‘Do you want to die here?’

Kai considered the question, wondering if death was truly what he wanted. A release from the nightmares and constant guilt at his survival would be welcome, but he was too much of a coward to let death claim him with such ease. Or was it strength that kept him struggling for life and the chance to give his survival meaning?

‘No,’ said Kai at last, as the answer came to him. ‘I don’t want to die here.’

‘Telling me what Sarashina told you is the only way you will live,’ promised Hiriko.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said, without knowing how he could be so certain. ‘I am going to pass on what I was told.’

Hiriko shook her head. ‘Saturnalia will kill you first.’

THE BLEED WAS tempestuous, but what else could he have expected after so potent a psychic burst as the arrival of the Crimson King? Magnus himself had manifested on Terra from half a galaxy away, and Evander Gregoras could not even begin to imagine what an expenditure of power such a feat had cost him.

How had he done it?

Magnus was a primarch, true, but even a god-like being with such mastery of the psychic arts surely had limits. No psychic discipline of which Gregoras was aware could transport the physical body of an individual over so great a distance, so how had he done it? Legends told that the cognoscynths could open gateways through space and time, but even the most outlandish tales only spoke of travel from one side of the planet to another. To travel between worlds would require the greatest mind the galaxy had ever seen…

Gregoras had told Zulane that the cognoscynths were all gone, but might the Emperor have created another in the form of Magnus? Had that been the figure Zulane had met in his dream?

But to travel from Prospero to Terra!

Such a feat spoke of powerful sorcery, and it boded ill for the Imperium if Magnus had unlocked that forbidden door. As he had told Kai, there could only be one punishment for such blatant disregard for the Emperor’s decree.

The Bleed roared and seethed like an atmospheric superstorm, raging with the distilled nightmares and collected visions of thousands of traumatised astro-telepaths. Hundreds had been killed in the psychic shockwave that still echoed in the planet’s aether, and hundreds more would never regain full use of their abilities. At any time that would have been a calamity, but in the midst of a full-scale civil war, it was nothing less than catastrophic. The City of Sight was effectively blinded, an irony not lost on Gregoras, but which Lord Dorn found less than amusing.

To relive the nightmares of an entire city was no small task, and the cryptaesthesians were suffering what their fellows had suffered all over again. The whisper stones ran red with incorporeal blood, fat with the bleak visions and darkest fears of those they had saved from psychic overload. The cascade of light from the dome’s crystal lattice was bleeding its horrors down onto Gregoras, and no matter that he had steeled himself with rituals of isolation and mantras of protection, he still wept with every fresh terror that cohered in the mists of psychic debris.

He saw loved ones ripped apart, nightmares of needles and crawling things. Dreams of abandonment, nightmares of pain and fears of rejection. He saw childhood traumas, relived pain and imagined terrors that had no frame of reference. All this and more oozed from the whisper stones like pus from a wound. Only by expelling every last morsel of trauma would the City of Sight be able to function again, and only the cryptaesthesians had the skill to make it happen.

Nemo Zhi-Meng had personally tasked Gregoras with purging the city of the power that had manifested within the mindhall of Choir Primus.

‘Make the nightmares go away,’ had been his simple instruction.

Simple to say, but difficult to obey.

The power within Aniq Sarashina that had destroyed Choir Primus was so vast that elements of it had insinuated their way into the collective psyche of the Whispering Tower. Infinitesimally small fragments of its purpose had lodged in the minds of all who heard its screaming siren song, and those fragments had been absorbed by the whisper stones.

And from there, it had bled into the shadowy realm of the cryptaesthesians.

To a mind not attuned to the secret pattern that underpinned the galaxy, such fragments would have been meaningless, a garbled hash of random images, absurd metaphors and mixed allegories.

Gregoras knew better and in every horrific image he lifted from the Bleed, he could see tiny references to the pattern, as though the madmen and prophets scattered throughout the galaxy had poured all their ravings and dreams into one mighty shout. The pattern was here, right in front of him, and the key to unlocking the mystery he had studied for the entirety of his adult life was secreted in Kai Zulane’s mind.

Sarashina had said she was passing on a warning, but a warning to whom? And what kind of warning would not be best shouted from the highest rooftop instead of being hidden away in the mind of a broken telepath?

The truth of the matter was right here, in the nightmares of the tower’s astropaths, and Gregoras was going to find it. The neurolocutors of the Legio Custodes were having no success in plucking Sarashina’s legacy from Zulane’s head, but the secret of whatever had come to the Whispering Tower was here in the Bleed, he was sure of it.

All he needed was time to find it.

TWELVE

The Enemy Within

The Fellowship of Vanity

A Promise Kept

THOUGH HIS ARMOUR insulated him from the cold beneath the mountains, Uttam Luna Hesh Udar felt an insidious chill creep into his bones as he watched the mortal soldiers manoeuvre the nutrition dispenser along the bridge towards the floating island at the heart of Khangba Marwu. A fine mist of rain drizzled from the darkened recesses of the cavern’s roof, and droplets of moisture condensed on the blade of his guardian spear. They hissed as the energy field vaporised them instantly, sounding like snakes drifting through the air.

Its power would deplete quicker, but when there were enemies all around him, the seconds it would take to energise could cost him his life. Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha stood beside him, his guardian spear also fizzing in the moist air. He looked up, droplets rolling down the golden plates of his helm like tears.

‘Rain beneath the mountains,’ he said. ‘I have never known the like.’

‘Cold in the world above,’ said Uttam. ‘What does it matter?’

‘The mountain weeps,’ said Tirtha.

‘What?’

Tirtha shrugged, as though embarrassed to continue.

‘Spit it out,’ said Uttam. ‘What troubles you?’

‘I have read the history of Khangba Marwu,’ said Tirtha. ‘It is said the mountain wept on the day Zamora escaped.’

‘No one is escaping today,’ said Uttam. ‘Not on our watch.’

‘As you say,’ agreed Tirtha, and though his face was hidden behind his helm’s visor, Uttam sensed a lingering unease in his body language.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘Do not let a coincidence of subterranean precipitation keep the warriors of the Legio Custodes from their duties.’

‘Of course,’ said Tirtha, as the soldiers eased the nutrition dispenser onto the cell-island.

The bulky container slipped as its repulsor field interacted with a stray wave emanation from the mighty generators holding the cell-island afloat. A trooper in the grey tabard of the Uralian Stormlords cursed as the intersecting fields shocked him and he lost his grip.

‘Watch what you’re doing, damn it,’ he snapped, directing his anger outwards.

‘Hold your end properly and it won’t slip,’ said the man across from him, a veteran sergeant of the Gitanen Outriders, an elite unit of flyers based in the Baikonur crater aeries.

‘I’m carrying half your weight,’ said the man. His name was Natraj, and Uttam had, until now, thought him one of the steadier members of his detail.

‘Be silent,’ said Uttam. ‘It is forbidden for you to speak while on duty.’

‘Apologies, Custodian,’ said Natraj. ‘It will not happen again.’

‘We are as one,’ added the Outrider, but Uttam suspected that whatever ill-feeling existed between them would be taken up once they were beyond the confines of the mountain.

‘When we are done here you will return to the surface and collect your dismissal papers. I have no use for men who cannot follow orders,’ said Uttam.

‘Custodian?’ said Natraj.

‘My lord, please–’

‘Hold your tongues, both of you,’ said Uttam. ‘I do not tolerate dissent. You fail to understand what it is you do here, the danger of the prisoners you attend. Your commanding officers will hear of this lapse in discipline.’

Both men glared at him, and Uttam’s stim glands swelled with trigger chemicals as his combat reflexes instinctively recognised anger and the threat of imminent violence. His grip tightened on his spear, but just as suddenly the anger had surfaced it vanished without trace, cut off as suddenly as though a switch had been thrown.

‘Follow me,’ said Uttam, turning and leading the soldiers between the cells. The lingering traces of combat stims danced in his veins, and Uttam scanned the spaces between the cells for enemies. The only enemies on the island were locked up, but the brief exchange between the mortals had disquieted him. He was no believer in omens, but taken together with the drizzling rain, it had set him on edge, combat ready and instinctive.

Not a good state to be in when caution and thoroughness was key.

‘Which one first?’ asked Tirtha.

‘Tagore,’ said Uttam, indicating a cellblock to his right.

Uttam despised Tagore, he had killed three hundred and fifty nine men before he had been subdued, and that made him almost as dangerous as a Custodian. The soldiers hauled the nutrition dispenser around as Uttam took position in front of the door.

The warrior inside paced the length and breadth of the cell like a caged raptor, tension knotting his muscles and keeping his jaw clenched like a rabid wolf. The prisoner’s physique was enormous: a giant clad only in a tattered loincloth. It had once been a standard issue prison bodyglove, but the inmate had torn it to shreds. His body was a lattice of scars layered over gene-bulked muscle and ossified bone, while his flesh was a canvas of linked tattoos. Axes and swords mingled with skulls and jagged teeth that swallowed worlds whole.

The back of the man’s head was a nightmare of metal plates embedded in furrowed grooves cut into the bone of his skull, and there was a demented look to the warrior that no amount of self-control could quite mask.

‘Back away from the door, traitor,’ ordered Uttam.

The warrior bared his teeth, flinching at the word traitor, but complied. His back was to the far wall, but his muscles were bunched in anticipation of violence. Tagore was a World Eater, and Uttam had never seen him in anything less than an attack posture. The others of his Legion were just the same, and Uttam wondered how they could stand to be so highly poised at all times. Some called the World Eaters undisciplined killers, psychopaths with tacit approval to be mindless butchers, but Uttam knew better. After all, what kind of discipline must it take to maintain such a level of aggression so close to the surface on so tight a leash?

The World Eaters were more dangerous than anyone gave them credit.

Tagore eyed him with a feral grin, but said nothing.

‘You have something to say?’ snapped Uttam.

Tagore nodded and said, ‘One day I will kill you. Rip your spine out through your chest.’

‘Empty threats?’ said Uttam. ‘I expected better from you.’

‘You are more foolish than you look if you think I make empty threats,’ said Tagore.

‘And yet you are the one in confinement.’

‘This?’ said Tagore, as the nutrition dispenser dropped a pair of foodstuff bags into the cell. ‘This won’t hold me for long.’

Uttam smiled, amused despite himself by Tagore’s posturing. ‘Do you really believe that, or is it just that abomination hammered into your skull that makes you think so?’

‘I am World Eater,’ snarled Tagore proudly. ‘I do not deal in abstracts, I deal in the reality of absolutes. And I know that I will kill you.’

Recognising the futility of further discussion, Uttam shook his head and moved deeper into the prison complex. The other inmates gave him cold glares or venomous hostility, but as always it was Atharva who perturbed Uttam the most.

The witch stood in the centre of his cell, hands straight down at his side and his chin tilted slightly up, as though he was waiting for something. His eyes were closed and his lips moved as though in silent supplication. The rain fell harder here, dripping from the hard permacrete edges of the cellblock. Uttam’s eyes narrowed as the same chill he had felt upon entering the chamber grow stronger still. His combat instincts, already honed from the brief stim shunt drew in close as he sensed danger.

The spear spun in his hand as Atharva’s eyes opened, and Uttam gasped as he saw they were no longer amber and blue, but the shimmering white of a winter sun.

‘Pull back,’ he ordered, moving away from the cell door. ‘Evacuate immediately.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ said Atharva.

‘Tirtha!’ shouted Uttam. ‘Danger threatens!’

A blast of superheated air sounded like the crack of a whip, and Uttam spun on his heel. Natraj of the Uralian Stormlords held his plasma gun pulled in tight to his shoulder, the vents along its barrel drooling exhaust gasses.

Custodian Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha fell to his knees with a smoking hole burned through the centre of his stomach.

‘The mountain weeps,’ he said, before pitching onto his front.

THE INTERROGATION CHAMBER was cold, as it always was, but Kai sensed a strained atmosphere that had nothing to do with Scharff and Hiriko’s continued failure to reach the information Sarashina had placed within him. Though Kai’s physical frailty made restraints unnecessary, he was still strapped into the contoured chair in the centre of the chamber. Adept Hiriko sat opposite him, and Kai saw dark smudges under her eyes that hadn’t been there the last time they had met in the waking world. The process of interrogation was draining her almost as much as it was draining him.

Kai said, ‘Please, do we have to do this again? I can’t give you what you want.’

‘I believe you, Kai, I really do,’ said Hiriko, ‘but if the Legio Custodes cannot have the secrets in your head, they will settle for you dead. They are an unforgiving organisation. And if you won’t give me what I want willingly, then I have no choice but to tear it out of you.’

‘What does that mean?’

Hiriko fixed him with a stare that was part melancholy, part exasperated. ‘It means exactly what you think it means, Kai. You won’t survive this.’

‘Please,’ said Kai. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die like this.’

‘That doesn’t matter anymore,’ said Hiriko. ‘Others have decided that you must, but it if it is any comfort, know that you will soon be unconscious and won’t feel a thing.’

The door to the interrogation chamber opened before Kai could answer. Adept Scharff entered, looking as though he had been deprived of rest for weeks. The man gave Kai a weak smile and Hiriko looked up with a concerned glance.

‘You are late,’ she said. ‘You’re never late.’

‘I slept badly. I dreamed of a figure armoured in crimson and ivory,’ said Scharff, and something about that description tugged on a thread in Kai’s mind. ‘He was calling to me.’

‘What was he saying?’ asked Hiriko.

‘I do not know, I could hear nothing of his words.’

‘Residue from the umbra perhaps?’ asked Hiriko. ‘Should I be vexed?’

Scharff shook his head. ‘No, I believe it to be bleed off from the psychic trauma caused by the arrival of Primarch Magnus. The crimson and ivory of the figure’s armour suggests a link to the Thousand Sons after all.’

Hiriko nodded. ‘That appears likely.’

Scharff took a seat beside Kai and sifted through the many chem-shunts and canula needles piercing his pallid skin. Kai couldn’t move his head to see what he was doing, but his peripheral vision was almost as clear as his binocular vision. Scharff’s eyes were ever so slightly unfocused, like a sleeper suddenly awoken from a deep slumber. The man’s hands were out of sight, but Kai heard a soft hiss as one of the drug dispensers introduced yet another foreign substance into his bloodstream.

Expecting unconsciousness, Kai was mildly surprised to feel tingling at the extremities of his limbs. His eyes flicked to Hiriko, but her beautiful green eyes were perusing lines of text scrolling down the face of a data slate. Kai looked over to Scharff, now able to move his head as whatever chemical Scharff was feeding him began to fully counteract the muscle relaxants and anaesthesias keeping him docile.

Kai bit his lip as control returned to his body. His limbs were his own again, but it was more than that. This was rejuvenation, a stimulus that was restoring his body with vitality. He wanted to ask Scharff what he was doing, but an instinct for danger warned him to keep his mouth shut. His actions couldn’t escape Hiriko’s notice for long, and the machines monitoring Kai’s vital signs registered his increased brain activity and elevated heart rate.

Hiriko glanced over at the bio-readouts with twin lines creasing the smooth skin at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes darted from readout to readout, taking in at a glance Kai’s return from the brink of dormancy.

‘Scharff? Have you seen these readings?’ she asked, putting aside the data slate and rising to her feet. When her companion didn’t answer, she finally turned to face him and the surprise in her face was compounded with irritation.

‘Sharff? What are you doing? We need Kai unconscious for this procedure.’

‘No,’ said Scharff.

‘No?’ replied Hiriko. ‘Have you lost your mind? Stop whatever it is you’re doing.’

‘I can’t do that, Adept Hiriko,’ said Scharff, in a voice that suggested he very much wished he could. Scharff’s hands danced over an exposed keypad on the black box that had been the source of so many of Kai’s nightmares recently. Hiriko circled the chair and took hold of Scharff’s arm. Kai saw her register what he had understood only moments before.

‘Adept Scharff,’ snapped Hiriko. ‘Back away from the prisoner immediately. I believe your mind to be compromised.’

Scharff shook his head, and the veins at his temples throbbed like a heart on the verge of cardiac arrest. ‘The subject must be conscious and motile if he is to leave the facility.’

‘He’s not leaving, Scharff,’ insisted Hiriko.

Kai felt the metal restraints that bound him to the chair release with a pneumatic hiss as the blare of alarm klaxons sounded throughout Khangba Marwu.

‘Oh, but he is,’ said Scharff in a voice that was not his own.

NATRAJ WAS DEAD before Tirtha hit the ground. Uttam’s guardian spear spat a bolt from the weapon beneath the blade and the man’s body blew apart into vaporised blood and bone shrapnel. Two of the nearest soldiers went down with the force of the explosion, but Uttam was already moving as alarm klaxons and warning bells filled the cavern with noise. Natraj had been compromised, and the loyalty of his fellows was likewise in doubt. For that, all would have to die.

Uttam swayed aside from a hellgun shot and rammed his spear through the chest plate of a soldier armoured in crimson battle plate. Blood sprayed the golden visor of his helm as he was cloven from hip to collarbone. A rifle barked to the side, deflected by Uttam’s shoulder guard. He spun low, his spear sweeping in a low arc that sliced through the knees of four of his attackers. A searing blast of plasma blinded him momentarily as it flashed past his helmet and he dropped into a defensive crouch, sweeping his spear around him in a spinning blur of silver and adamantium.

Shots ricocheted from the blade, but none penetrated his defences. His sight returned a moment later, and Uttam pulled his spear in tight to his body. Diving forward he rolled to his feet and another shot punched a warrior armoured in mirror-black armour from his feet. The pulped remains slammed into the wall of the nearest cellblock.

Threat protocols picked out the dangers.

Uralian Stormlord with a hellgun. Minimal threat.

Two Vitruvian Commissars, one with an ion breaker the other with a grenade launcher. Moderate threat.

Three Crimson Dragoons: webber, plasma carbine and a mass crusher. Immediate threat.

They were firing and moving, working better as attackers than they ever had as gaolers, but even six highly trained mortals with advanced weaponry were no match for a warrior of the Legio Custodes. Uttam swung his spear around and killed the dragoon armed with the mass crusher, taking his head off with a neat cut that cauterised the wound even as it decapitated. The plasma carbine fired again. Uttam deflected the shot with a horizontal slash, sending the superhot bolt into the chest of the Commissar with the grenade launcher. He fell with a strangled scream that changed to a shrill howl as the air in his lungs ignited.

A hellgun shot impacted on the side of his helmet, and Uttam spun to face the shooter, but the two surviving dragoons obscured his aim. They fired at the same time, but Uttam was already among them. His blade sliced the first soldier’s arm from his body, and the return stroke of the haft shattered every rib in his chest.

A warm mist of sticky mucus-like liquid enveloped Uttam, and he felt the rapidly solidifying web gel hardening around his armour. Anyone not blessed with the preternaturally swift reflexes of the genhanced would have been trapped completely by the web’s ultra-rapid setting, but Uttam pulled clear before the worst of the gel had done its work. His spear arm was gummed with sticky strands of the stuff, but his left was still free and lethal.

A pistoning jab caved in the front half of the web gunner’s face and a following elbow broke the neck of the plasma gunner even as he brought his recharged weapon to bear once more. That just left the grey-clad Stormlord, and Uttam jogged in the direction the man had run, shaking the last strands of dissolving web gel from his arm.

‘You have to die now,’ said Uttam, rounding the corner of the cellblock.

Shock and horror pulled him up short as he saw the Uralian Stormlord standing before an opened cell with Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha’s bloodstained signifier ring pressed to the locking panel. A towering figure of rage and scar tissue stood by the opened door, pumping muscles bunched and writhing beneath his tattooed skin.

‘I am going to kill you,’ said Tagore of the World Eaters. ‘Rip your spine out through your chest.’

FROM A CROSS-legged position, Atharva watched the dance of his puppets with a satisfied smile. A tug of thought brought the Uralian Stormlord running towards his cell while Tagore and Custodian Uttam faced off against one another. Time was critical. He couldn’t let the World Eater kill the Custodian or this escape would be over before it began.

His other thrall was already rousing Kai Zulane, though it was proving difficult to maintain his control over Scharff. The man had some training in resisting mental intrusion, basic training compared to that endured by adepts of the Thousand Sons, but he had natural talents that ensured his will was a slippery thing. His attempts to break Atharva’s control were amusingly naïve, but he had help from his compatriot, and she was a sly little fox.

Beads of sweat trickled down Atharva’s face like tears. Though it was an uncomplicated matter to exert control over mortals, maintaining it through psychically warded permacrete and without being able to seehis thralls took great effort.

A shape appeared at the door to his cell, a man in a grey tabard marked with lightning bolts and a crude representation of a diving raptor. The soldier’s face was pale and he wept even as his hand shuddered with the effort of trying to resist Atharva’s control.

‘Don’t try to fight it, Tejas,’ said Atharva. ‘You don’t have the strength.’

Tejas Doznya had served with the Uralian Stormlords for six years, and had been passed over for promotion three times. Too reckless, his superiors said, which, in a regiment renowned for leaping from perfectly good aircraft with nothing but a flimsy grav-chute to prevent gravity working its inevitable end result on their fragile bodies, was saying something. This secondment to the Legio Custodes was intended to temper his reckless streak with the discipline of the Emperor’s praetorians, but his resentment at being sidelined had only festered until it was practically begging to be used as leverage to open his mind to control.

With a cry of impotence, Tejas placed the Custodian’s signifier ring against the lock plate and the door slid into the walls of the cell. Cut from the hand of a dead man, the ring’s skeleton key properties spoke to the arrogance of the Legio Custodes that they had never considered the possibility of one of their precious rings falling into enemy hands.

Atharva stood in a fluid, uncoiling motion, like a rearing snake poised to strike down its victim. He stepped from the cell, gasping in remembered pleasure as he felt the power of the Great Ocean swell around him. The psi-damping collar around his neck cracked and broke apart as though twisted by invisible hands. Its remains clattered to the ground and Atharva laughed as he felt the currents and tides of the Great Ocean rush to fill his body.

‘Tejas, the ring if you please,’ said Atharva, extending his hand.

The horrified Tejas dropped the ring onto the plateau of Atharva’s palm, and he lifted it to his lips, as if to kiss it. His tongue flicked out to clean it of blood, and the rich gene-rich flavour of the Custodian’s essence flooded his senses, an ambrosia of genetic mastery.

‘Oh, this is a wonder indeed, Tejas,’ said Atharva. ‘What secrets might be unlocked by its study? What wonders and miracles might a master like Hathor Maat work with such a palette of genius?’

Tejas didn’t answer and Atharva handed the pristine ring back to him. He placed one oversized hand upon his thrall’s shoulder, placing the images of five warriors in the forefront of his mind. Five. All that would be useful from twelve. What a waste.

‘Tejas, I want you to release these men, and these men only,’ said Atharva.

The man nodded, his mind bursting with the need to do Atharva’s bidding and the horror of what he was doing. Though every fibre of the man’s willpower was trying to fight off his control, he was a leaf in the face of a hurricane. Atharva watched him run towards the other cells, and let his mind float into the mid-level heights of the Enumerations that would better enhance his skills in bio-manipulation. Sense organs at the back of his throat struggled to assess the content of the Custodian’s blood, though they could not hope to unravel something so exquisitely constructed. Yet what understanding they could glean might be enough.

Though Atharva’s skills as a Pavoni were not the equal of Hathor Maat, he had mastered enough of the vain Fellowship’s arts to achieve what would be required to leave this place of confinement.

So long as Tagore didn’t kill Uttam Luna Hesh Udar too soon.

FISTS AND ELBOWS, knees and feet. They fought in a blur of thundering punches, bone-breaking kicks and titanic impacts. Two warriors, crafted to be the pinnacles of fighting men, flew at each other with rage and neuro-cortical implants and the finest genetic manipulation on either side of loyalty.

Tagore fought with teeth bared, eyes bulging madness. He fought without heed or thought of restraint, with no care for injury or death. Uttam Luna Hesh Udar fought with precision, grace and exacting killing blows straight from the combat forges of the Legio Custodes.

Two warriors of extremes, two warriors primed to deal death in completely different ways.

Uttam was armoured, Tagore was bare-skinned and bleeding.

The Custodian’s guardian spear lay broken between them, its haft snapped like matchwood in Tagore’s grip. Its blade fizzed and spat in the moisture drizzling from the cavern’s roof. Tagore spun around Uttam, kicking his heel into the back of the Custodian’s knee. Uttam went down with a grunt, catching the follow-up knee to the face in his blocking gauntlets. Uttam twisted his grip, spinning Tagore from his feet. He followed up, foot thundering down to crush the World Eater’s head.

Tagore rolled, came up, and punched the side of Uttam’s thigh. Plates cracked and the paralyzing nerve-impact dropped him to one knee. A right cross tore his helmet off and an uppercut threw him onto his back. Tagore scissored himself to his feet and hurled himself at the fallen Custodian. Uttam met his flying leap with a downward-bludgeoning fist that drove Tagore into the ground like a downed Stormbird. Tagore rolled aside from the inevitable head-crushing elbow and sprang to his feet in time to meet the Custodian’s charge.

They grappled like street brawlers. Rabbit-punching kidneys, legs locking and unlocking as each warrior sought a hold that would drop their opponent. The iron plates bolted to Tagore’s head spat fat red sparks as it pumped chem-stims and rage boosters into his bloodstream and electrical impulses to the anger centres of his brain. His fury had been building to critical mass ever since his incarceration, and this was just the fight to unleash it.

The first advantage went to Uttam. Every blow Tagore struck was against artificer-forged plate, hand shaped in the armouries beneath the Anatolian peaks, where Uttam hammered unprotected flesh. Pure concussive force cracked the bone shield in Tagore’s chest, and he grunted as a piledriver of an uppercut drove up into his gut. The briefest flinch, but an opening nonetheless.