Текст книги "The Outcast Dead"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

TWENTY-TWO

Living History

Temple of Blood

A Worthy Foe

THE WARRIOR BEFORE him should not have been possible. His kind were all dead and gone, slain in the last battle of Unity. It was a measure of their heroic sacrifice that they had all died to win the last and greatest victory for the Emperor. Yet here he was, towering and magnificent, terrible and shocking. The skin of his face was grey and dead, his eyes blood red, and his aura too bright to look upon. His presence had a gravity all of its own, demanding all attention and fear.

‘You are Babu Dhakal?’ said Atharva, though the question was unnecessary.

‘Of course,’ said the Thunder Lord.

As though Babu Dhakal and Ghota projected some form of force field before them, every man, woman and child retreated to the back of the temple, huddled in the shadow of the faceless statue. Atharva caught sight of Kai and a blonde-haired woman with a bandanna tied around her temple. He saw what she was immediately, and wanted to smile at the fortune that had sent him an astropath and a Navigator. Truly, the cosmic puzzle of the universe was revealing itself to him little by little.

Tagore bristled at his side, and he felt the spiking anger that threatened to boil over at any minute. Subha and Asubha followed their sergeant’s lead, though their battle-rage was nowhere near as volatile as Tagore’s. He could not sense Severian’s presence, and hoped he had been able to escape the temple already.

‘You killed a warrior of the Legiones Astartes,’ said Tagore, the words a guttural bark towards Ghota. ‘I’ll have your heart for that.’

Ghota grinned and bared his teeth. ‘I beat you once, I can do it again, little pup.’

Babu Dhakal raised a hand to forestall Tagore’s anger.

‘I did not come here to fight you, Legiones Astartes,’ he said. ‘I came to offer you something. Would you be prepared to listen?’

The unexpectedness of the warrior’s words took Atharva by surprise. He had not sensed any desire to parley in Babu Dhakal, but then he could barely stand to turn his psychic senses upon him without fear of being overwhelmed.

‘What is it you want?’ he asked in a voice that didn’t betray his unease.

‘There are men beyond this building who wish to kill you,’ said Babu Dhakal.

‘I know this,’ said Atharva, and Babu Dhakal laughed, the sound turning into a wet, animal gurgle in his ruined throat.

‘You know it because I now allow you to know it,’ said the warrior.

‘Once I have broken you across my knee, I will kill all of them too,’ promised Tagore.

‘There are a hundred at least, a Custodian, a clade killer and a man who carries something more deadly than anything any warrior here can face.’

‘A weapon?’ asked Subha.

‘No, the truth.’

‘Who are you?’ demanded Atharva. ‘I know your name to be meaningless. Babu simply means “father” in the ancient tongue of Bharat. And Dhakal? That is simply a region of this part of the mountains. So who are you?’

‘I have had many names over the years,’ said Babu Dhakal, ‘but that is not what you mean, is it? No, you want my true name, the one I bore in the battles to win this world?’

‘Yes,’ said Atharva.

‘Very well, since I am here to trade, I will offer you my name as a gesture of good faith. I no longer remember my mortal name, but when my flesh was reborn into this new form, I was named Arik Taranis.’

The name had a weight all of its own, a silencing quality that stole the anger from the World Eaters and dumbfounded Atharva with its historic resonance. There was not one among them who did not know that name, the battles he had won, the foes he had slain and the great honours he had earned.

‘You are the Lightning Bearer?’ asked Tagore.

‘A title given to me after the Battle of Mount Ararat in the Kingdom of Urartu,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘I had the honour of raising the Banner of Lightning at the declaration of Unity.’

Atharva could barely believe his eyes. This warrior was history wrought into living form: the Victor of Gaduaré, the Last Rider, the Butcher of Scandia, the Throne-slayer…

These and a hundred other battle-laurels earned by this warrior tumbled through Atharva’s memory, finally culminating in the end of that great warrior’s legendary life atop a once-flooded mountain.

‘History says you are dead,’ said Atharva. ‘You died of your wounds once the banner was raised. You and all your warriors fell in that battle.’

‘You look like a clever man,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘You should know better than to take what history says literally. Such tales as are told of us come from the mouth of the last man standing, and it would not do for the Emperor to have to share his victory with others. Where is the glory when you conquer a world with an unstoppable army at your back? To begin a legend, you must win that war single-handedly, and there must be no one left alive to contradict your version of events.’

‘Are there others like you?’ said Subha.

Babu Dhakal shrugged. ‘Perhaps others escaped the cull, perhaps not. If they did, they are probably dead by now, victims of their own obsolescence. Our bodies were designed to win a world, not conquer a galaxy like yours.’

Atharva listened to Babu Dhakal’s words, amazed at the lack of bitterness he heard. If what the warrior was saying was true, then he and all his kind had been cast aside by the Emperor in favour of the Legiones Astartes gene-template. Yet Babu Dhakal appeared to bear his creator no ill-will for this monstrous betrayal.

‘So how is it that you are still alive?’ asked Atharva, now beginning to suspect what Babu Dhakal might want from them.

‘I am a clever man,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘I learned what I could from my creator in the years of war, and I came to know much of his ancient science. Not enough to halt my deterioration, but enough to cling onto life long enough for fortune to smile upon me.’

‘Speak plainly,’ ordered Tagore. ‘What is it you want?’

Babu Dhakal raised his right arm, and Atharva saw a boxy device attached to the armoured plates of his vambrace. It had none of the elegance of the devices employed by the Legion apothecaries, but it was unmistakably a reductor. Alongside the narthecium, it was an essential piece of an apothecary’s battle gear.

The narthecium healed the wounded, but the reductor was for the dead.

Its one and only purpose was to extract a fallen Space Marine’s gene-seed.

‘I want you to help me live,’ said Babu Dhakal.

KAI READ THE shock in Atharva’s aura, but before the Space Marine could answer, the roof of the temple imploded in a series of detonations that sent timber beams and limestone tiles tumbling to the floor in a rain of flaming debris.

‘Watch out!’ shouted Kai as a piece of burning rafter slammed down in front of him, crushing an aged man beneath it. He and Roxanne backed away in panic from the tumbling wreckage as black-armoured soldiers dropped into the temple on ziplines in the wake of booming stun grenades.

The throaty grumble of heavy vehicles and the chatter of automatic gunfire sounded from beyond the temple doors. The hard echoes of heavy calibre shells impacting on the canyon walls were punctuated by the screams of terrified people.

‘Down!’ cried Kai as one of the soldiers loosed a sawing blast of fire from his weapon. Solid rounds tore up benches and chewed the marble walls. Kai pulled Roxanne to the floor and dragged her away from the soldier, but screaming people blocked every avenue of escape through the overturned benches. A man toppled to his knees before Kai, his chest blown out and his head burned by a las-blast.

‘What’s going on?’ cried Roxanne, blinking away the after-effects of the grenade flashes and covering her head as pulverised marble fragments rained down on them.

‘Those are Black Sentinels,’ said Kai. ‘They’re here for me.’

He risked casting his mind-sense beyond his immediate surroundings, flinching with every rattle of gunfire and disorientating thunder of grenade detonations. Smoke and expanding banks of smoke rolled through the temple, but such obstacles to sight were no barrier to an astropath’s blindsight. He saw soldiers fan into the temple, gunning down anyone they encountered with ruthlessly efficient bursts of fire.

A knot of soldiers moving in perfect concert were coming his way, but no sooner had one shouted a warning than a hulking warrior bearing a broken guardian spear was among them. Tagore hacked three men down in as many blows and gutted another two before the others could even react. Two more died with their skulls caved in, and another fell with his neck broken.

Subha fought at his sergeant’s side, killing with artless fury as he strove to imitate Tagore’s furious destruction. Kai shifted his gaze, seeing Asubha moving like a ghost through the clouds of thick smoke. Unlike his brother, Asubha was a methodical killer, picking his targets with a clear precision. A Black Sentinel with an auger was killed first, then another with a plasma-coil weapon. There was clear order to Asubha’s kills, a methodology that was quite at odds with the seemingly random violence of his brother.

Other figures moved through the confusing flares of psychic light. The red of violence filled the air as surely as grenade smoke, and it became harder to pick out individuals amongst the pulsing anger that allowed combat soldiers to function.

A host of figures blazed amid the crimson fog, individuals whose energy and vitality were undimmed and untouched by this unleashed violence. One he knew to be Atharva, another two as Babu Dhakal and his lieutenant. Blinding flares of psychic energy streamed from Atharva, and dozens of soldiers died in the fire he drew forth from the Immaterium. Babu Dhakal moved swifter than any man Kai had ever seen, slipping through the chaos of the fighting as though simply willing himself from one place to the next. Where men came at him, he killed them effortlessly, but where they ignored him, he returned the favour and let them live.

The barrage of gunfire was unrelenting, and the slaughter of the temple’s supplicants was indiscriminate. Kai and Roxanne crawled towards the back of the temple, scrambling over torn up bodies and overturned benches in their desperation to escape. Kai turned to look over his shoulder as a giant in heavy plates of polished armour strode into the temple. Where others were sheathed in crimson or gold, his aura was a pure and lethal silver. Kai felt his entire body flinch as he recognised the baleful, unrelenting purpose of Saturnalia.

Another man came with him, slighter than the Custodian, but no less bright and dangerous. Kai’s stomach lurched in sudden pain as he felt the presence of something abhorrent, something that made him think of every shameful deed that had ever troubled his conscience. Kai stopped his crawling and put his head in his hands as his entire body began to shake with unreasoning horror. He perceived nothing that could explain this feeling, but he instinctively curled into a ball as the colour and life bled out of the world.

‘Kai!’ shouted Roxanne, sounding far away. ‘Where are you?’

At the mention of his name, the smaller man with Saturnalia whipped around and unsheathed a sword whose blade was limned with the purest light Kai had ever seen.

‘Kai Zulane!’ shouted Saturnalia. ‘Come forward!’

In response two shapes moved from the red mist, twin smudges of vicious light and fury whose light was the equal of Saturnalia. Where the Custodian was a controlled flame, they burned like the fires that swept over the Merican plains when the summers were long and hot. Subha and Asubha attacked Saturnalia together, their fury and control mingling into the perfect combination to face so disciplined a warrior.

Kai swallowed his sickness back as the swordsman moved deeper into the temple with steps that were swift and assured. He ignored the battle between the World Eaters and Saturnalia. He was here for Kai, and seemed desperate to reach him before anyone else. Kai retched and rolled onto his side. He had to get away, but to where? Black Sentinels filled the temple with gunfire as they fought the Outcast Dead. Kai lost track of his former protectors, now regretting his desire to be free of them.

Kai took a deep breath and pushed himself to a crouch. He followed the amber light of Roxanne’s presence. A hand took hold of his shoulder and he tried to shrug it off, but the grip was implacable. Kai was hauled to his feet, and found himself face to face with the warrior bearing the white-lit sword.

He could hear another man next to the swordsman, but he was utterly invisible to Kai’s blindsight. The skin-crawling revulsion Kai felt told him there was somethingthere, but he sensed not simply an absence of life, but a presence that actively repelled life. Whatever it was, it was a void in the colour of the world, and Kai finally understood the source of his bone-deep horror as his blindsight guttered and slid inexorably into darkness.

‘Pariah…’ he said.

The swordsman gave him a short bow, the gesture so ridiculous in the face of such slaughter that Kai wanted to laugh.

‘I am Yasu Nagasena, and you are coming with me,’ he said, the words clipped and precise.

A vast shadow moved in the mist of light and smoke beside Kai. Though his blindsight was virtually extinguished, he instantly recognised the iron taste of shadow’s aura.

‘No,’ said Tagore with a growl that sounded like an avalanche. ‘He’s not.’

ROXANNE COULDN’T SEE anything. Her eyes streamed and her throat was raw. The caustic banks of smoke obscured anything beyond a metre or so away, but she kept crawling because it was better than staying in the same place. She’d lost Kai, but didn’t dare turn back. The noise of rattling bursts of gunshots and the zip-crackof lasfire was frightening, but not as terrifying as the softness of bodies she crawled over in her eagerness to escape.

Tears poured down her cheeks, partly from the grenade fumes, but mostly for the dead who now filled the temple. These were her people, and they were being slaughtered. She could hear heavier gunfire coming from outside the temple, and knew that even those who gathered in the canyon beyond were being killed.

A hand reached for her and she cried out as it brushed her arm. She took hold of the hand, but released her grip when she saw the man to whom it belonged was dead. Blood stained his chest and stomach, and his grasping fingers fell away as she crawled onwards. The movement she had felt in his hand had been the result of debris from the roof falling on him.

This was senseless, the wholesale murder of innocents in the search for one man.

She could not understand the mentality of those who would kill their own people in some vague pursuit of a greater good. Didn’t they realise that by murdering their own citizens they were killing a part of themselves?

Through a gap in the smoke, Roxanne had a brief glimpse of the furious chaos engulfing the temple. The soldiers Kai had called Black Sentinels still fought the Space Marines for dominance, and were paying a heavy price to win it. Scores were dead already. The warriors of the Legiones Astartes were nothing if not thorough in their butchery.

At the centre of the temple, a warrior with plates of crimson buckled to his body killed the attackers with streaming bolts of blue fire and arcing traceries of lightning. Las-fire bent around him like refracted light, and hard rounds smacked to a halt a metre from his body as though meeting invisible resistance.

The Black Sentinels fighting him burned like pyres or erupted in pillars of boiling blood. There was madness in his eyes, a spiteful need to take decades of frustration out on those who had forced him to hide his true nature. Roxanne had never met a warrior of the Thousand Sons, and seeing the joy this one was taking in unleashing his vengeance, she never wanted to see another.

‘Roxanne!’ cried a voice over the din. ‘Over here! Hurry!’

She ducked as a flurry of lasbolts blew scorched holes in the stone beside her. Squinting through the smoke, she saw Maya and her two children huddled in a makeshift fortress of fallen blocks of stone and roof timbers. Maya beckoned to her, and Roxanne skidded and slipped over the broken flagstones towards her.

‘Here, child,’ said Maya, dragging her into the relative safety of their ad hoc refuge at the foot of the Vacant Angel.

‘Maya,’ said Roxanne, hugging the woman tightly.

Arik and her youngest son, a tousle-haired boy whose name she had never learned, lay with their heads buried in their hands, sobbing at the bloodshed unleashed around them.

‘What’s happening?’ said Maya, holding back her tears with visible effort.

‘They’re going to kill us all,’ said Roxanne without thinking. ‘No one’s leaving here alive.’

‘Don’t say that, Miss Roxanne,’ pleaded Maya. ‘My boys, they’re all I’ve got left. It’s got to be a mistake! They wouldn’t hurt my boys!’

Roxanne couldn’t tell if that was a question, and simply shook her head.

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ she said, and Maya gave Roxanne a look of such relief that she hoped she wouldn’t be made a liar by these soldiers. Though she was safer than she had been out in the open, Roxanne felt hungry eyes fastened upon her, as though a dangerous beast was poised to leap on her.

She spun around in fear, but saw nothing.

The hot jolt of fear wouldn’t leave her and she looked up into the smooth face of the Vacant Angel. The blank head of the statue seemed to regard her curiously, and Roxanne shook her head at the strangeness of the notion. She reached up with outstretched fingers, and it seemed as though the head of the hulking statue leaned in towards her. The sounds of battle grew faint and Roxanne’s lips parted in a soft sigh as she saw the suggestion of a pale face swim into focus in the infinite depths of the polished nephrite.

Roxanne rose to her knees, drawn in by the mesmerising allure of that impossible face.

‘Are you mad?’ hissed Maya, grabbing her robe and dragging her back to the floor. The deafening crescendo of battle swelled, and when Roxanne looked back up to the Vacant Angel, the pale face had vanished.

‘Do you want to get that pretty head shot off your shoulders?’ demanded Maya.

Roxanne shook her head and pulled herself tight to Maya. She was a big, motherly woman, and Roxanne felt safer just being near her. She saw Arik turning the gleaming silver ring over and over in his fingers.

‘They’re going to kill us,’ said Arik, and though he was only whispering, the words flew to Roxanne’s ears with the poignancy of their simple desire. ‘Please help us, please help us!’

A shape moved in the swirling fog, and Roxanne grabbed hold of a piece of broken bench with a sharp tip. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it would have to do.

She relaxed as Palladis Novandio emerged from the smoke, his face spattered with blood and his eyes streaming with tears. He staggered like a drunk and Roxanne felt anger overtake her fear at the thought of what was being done here.

‘Palladis!’ she cried, and he turned towards her in desperate relief. ‘Over here!’

‘Roxanne…’ he wept, stumbling towards here and collapsing just as he reached her. He fell into her arms and she felt his racing heartbeat. He sobbed into her shoulder, and held her tight as the slaughter continued around them.

‘I failed,’ he said. ‘It was never enough… I couldn’t keep it away and now everyone else has to suffer.’

Roxanne pulled him behind their flimsy barricade, and he looked up at the Vacant Angel.

‘Why?’ he demanded of the faceless statue. ‘I did everything I could to keep you appeased! Why must you take these people? Why? Take me instead, take me and let them live! I will see you again, my love! My sweet boys, father will see you soon!’

Palladis rose to his feet, screaming at the statue, his words accusing and demanding.

‘Take me, you bastard!’

Roxanne wanted to tell him to be quiet, but she knew no words of hers would dam the heartbreaking flow from the depths of his soul.

‘Take me!’ sobbed Palladis, sinking to his knees. ‘Please!’

‘GO,’ SAYS THE warrior Nagasena knows as Tagore, and Kai Zulane takes to his heels. Kartono is after him in a heartbeat, and Nagasena lets him go. He needs all his concentration for the battle to come. Tagore is a savage, deadly opponent, but Nagasena knows he must fight him. Honour demands it, and if this is the last honour he can salvage from this hunt, then that will be sufficient.

Tagore bears a long, wide-bladed spearhead. Nagasena recognises it as a broken guardian spear, and hopes its edge is no longer energised. Nagasena drops into a fighting crouch and raises his sword above his head, the tip aimed at Tagore’s heart.

‘You think you can fight me, little man?’ says Tagore, a killing light in his eyes.

Nagasena does not reply, his eyes darting over the World Eater’s enormous physique in search of some weak spot, any past hurt that might offer him an advantage: a bullet wound in his side, and traces of a yellow black bruise extending beneath the plates of armour he has taken from the dead men at Antioch’s.

‘I will break that little needle of yours then tear your head off,’ promises Tagore, and Nagasena knows he is more than capable of backing up such threats.

Tagore attacks without warning, slashing with his butcher’s blade. The blow is ferocious, but not without skill. Nagasena sways aside and lashes out with Shoujiki, landing a stinging blow on Tagore’s forearm. A return stroke is only just deflected and Nagasena reels from the incredible power behind the Space Marine’s strike. He has fought Legiones Astartes warriors before in training cages, though never with real weapons and never with any success. This will be a battle he will be lucky to live through for more than a few seconds.

Tagore reads his hesitancy as fear and grins.

They dance with thrust, slash and riposte, each gauging the other’s skill with every blow. For all his rage, Tagore is a fine warrior and a competent swordsman, but what he lacks in skill, he more than makes up for in determination and relentless ferocity. Every attack, from the first to the last, is launched with exactly the same power and desire. Nagasena avoids the most powerful blows, deflects others and launches his own attacks when he can. His bladework is superior to Tagore’s, but they have trained in such different forms of combat that it is proving difficult for either warrior to gain the measure of the other.

‘You are good, little man,’ says Tagore. ‘I thought you would be dead by now.’

‘You will find I am full of surprises,’ says Nagasena.

‘I will still kill you,’ promises Tagore as Nagasena spins around and launches a dazzling series of low thrusts and high cuts. Tagore parries some, dodges others and allows some to strike him. His armour is dented and torn, but Nagasena has not been aiming for one killing blow. Instead he has been working his attacks subtly towards the cratered bullet hole in Tagore’s side.

As the World Eater sways to the right, Nagasena sees his opening and spins low beneath a beheading cut of the guardian spear. He rams his sword forward with all his strength, plunging the blade into the scabbed wound in Tagore’s side. The metal hits hard meat and bone, but Nagasena uses his momentum and Tagore’s forward movement to drive the point deep into his opponent’s body.

Tagore grunts as the tip of Nagasena’s sword bursts from his back. His eyes widen in pain and the metal plates driven into his skull crackle with power as it counteracts the agony of Nagasena’s blow with pain-suppressants. Nagasena twists his blade to free it from the Space Marine’s flesh, but it is wedged deeper than he has strength to overcome. He lingers too long with the effort and a backhanded fist slams into his shoulder.

He loses his grip on Shoujikiand falls heavily to the floor.

Nagasena grips his shoulder, knowing at least one bone there is broken. He rolls onto his side as Tagore’s foot slams down where he lay, moving as fast as he can to avoid the World Eater’s hunger to destroy him. In his haste, he fails to spot a projecting spar of broken roof timber and stumbles as it catches the edge of his foot.

Nagasena manages to avoid falling, but his momentary distraction is the opening Tagore needs. The guardian spear stabs out, catching Nagasena on his wounded shoulder in imitation of the blow he landed on Tagore. The speartip breaks Nagasena’s clavicle neatly in two, and severs the tendons connecting his muscles to the bone. It is a precise blow, at odds with the killing fury in Tagore’s eyes, and Nagasena again realises he has underestimated the World Eater.

Nagasena is plucked from the ground, hanging suspended like a worm on a hook before his opponent. Tagore grins at him and reaches his free hand towards Nagasena’s neck.

‘I told you I would kill you,’ says Tagore. ‘And what I say I will kill, I kill.

Nagasena says nothing. He is in too much pain and there is nothing he can say that will save his life.

Tagore’s free hand reaches out and his thick fingers close around Nagasena’s neck, easily encircling his throat. All it will take is one squeeze and the bones of his spine will be powder, his windpipe crushed, and the fragile thread of his life will be cut.

But the pressure never comes.

A blinding spear of blue white light flashes past Nagasena, the heat of it burning the skin beneath his robes. He is momentarily blinded, but hears the wet drool of blood pouring from a broken body and smells the ripe, repulsive stench of seared human flesh. As his sight returns after the flash, he sees that Tagore has been eviscerated by the close range blast of a plasma weapon of some sort.

Tagore drops to his knees, a gaping crater scorched through his body. His face is contorted in agony that not even Legiones Astartes training and genetics can bear. His grip on Nagasena loosens and he slumps to the side, rolling onto his back as his body fights to keep him alive.

It is a fight Nagasena knows he will lose.

Tagore pulls Shoujikifrom his body with a grimace of pain. The blade is sticky with blood, and he offers it to Nagasena with respect.

‘You were… a worthy… foe,’ gasps the dying World Eater. ‘Fight… well. For a mortal.’

Nagasena accepts the compliment with a deep bow, and takes the proffered sword.

‘And you were worthy prey,’ he offers in return, though he knows it will be scant comfort.

‘I have… walked the… Crimson Path,’ says Tagore with a slow nod. He closes his eyes and says, ‘My war… is… ended.’

Though it goes against every creed of the swordsman, Nagasena sheaths his sword with the blood of his enemy still upon the blade and turns to see Maxim Golovko with a humming plasma rifle held at his side. The charging coils still hold a faint glow and its barrel drools liquid smoke into the air.

‘He was going to kill you,’ says Golovko with relish. ‘You can thank me later.’

KAI RAN FROM the swordsman, stumbling as the cramping sensation in his gut eased and his blindsight returned the interior of the temple to dim hues of muted colour. His skin ran with sweat at his brush with the pariah, and he dropped to one knee as delayed shock and fear suddenly swamped him.

He had heard of pariahs, in rumours and whispers that travelled the City of Sight, but never truly believed in their existence until now. The abject emptinessof that man was terrifying. The gaping, infinite void a human life should fill with memory, life and vital energies was utterly absent in him.

Even the thought of his non-presence was horrifying, and Kai felt the nausea of his soul-absence returning.

‘Oh, no…’ he whispered, spinning around and hunting the source of his sickness. He could see nothing, but knowing what he was looking for now, he sought out the emptiness of the pariah.

There, a void in the billowing red mist of violence!

Kai turned and ran, but the pariah was faster, Though Kai could perceive the emptiness of the man’s presence, he could not evade him. A hand took him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him up short with great strength. The grip was like that of a machine, powerful and unyielding.

‘That’s far enough,’ said a voice that grated like rusty nails along his spine.

Kai wanted to be sick, his entire body trembling in horror at the utter wrongnessof this man, a man who should not be.

‘Who are you?’ gasped Kai.

‘My name is Kartono,’ said his captor. ‘And now it’s time for you to die.’