Текст книги "Vulkan Lives"

Автор книги: Ник Кайм

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Penumbra

His breathing gave my brother away.

‘Ferrus, leave me alone…’

Since my last encounter with Curze, I had sunk into a deep melancholy, struggling to put together what was real and what I only imagined. Each time I returned from death, I felt a piece of my mind slip away like a shed scale or flake of ash. And the harder I tried to grasp at it, the more it fragmented. I was breaking – not physically, but mentally. Yet I was not alone in that. Curze too had showed me some of his inner doubt, his pain. Whatever he had witnessed in the visions he described had disturbed an already fragile mind. The sadistic tendencies, his obvious nihilism, were both symptomatic of that. I didn’t know if he meant to share his trauma to make me pity him or somehow lull me into trusting him as part of some longer torture, or whether his mask had simply slipped and I had been treated to his true image. Both of us had been reflected in the obsidian glass and neither of us liked what we saw.

‘Ferrus is dead, brother,’ a voice answered, prompting me to open my eyes.

The cell of volcanic glass hadn’t changed. In its walls I beheld my reflection, but could see no other, despite the fact that whoever was in here with me was close enough that I could hear them whisper.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded, standing. My feet were unsteady but I held my ground. ‘Ferrus, if this is some trick–’

‘Ferrus died on Isstvan, as I once thought you had done.’

My eyes widened, I dared to hope. I recognised the voice of my unseen companion.

‘Corvus?’

From the darkness, I saw a shadow that bled outwards into a silhouette before finally resolving into Corax, my brother. It was as if the Ravenlord were wearing a long cloak that he had suddenly cast off to reveal his presence. Despite the fact that he was standing in front of me, he still portrayed no reflection in the glass, and as I regarded him I found it difficult to pinpoint his exact location in the room. He wasshadow, always within the penumbra even in the harshest daylight. It was his gift.

I reached out to touch his face and whispered, partly to myself, ‘Are you real?’

Corax was clad in black power armour of an avian aspect. With two taloned gauntlets he disengaged the locking clamps that affixed his war-helm to his gorget. The beaked helmet came loose without a sound. Even the Ravenlord’s power generator from which sprouted his jump pack’s incredible wings functioned almost silently. It was only by the virtue of my primarch’s hearing that I could detect the lowest, residual background hum.

‘I am as real as you, Vulkan,’ he said, lifting the war-helm to reveal a slightly aquiline face framed by long, black hair. There was a quiet wisdom in his eyes that I recognised, as well as the greyish pallor common to inhabitants of Kiavahr. A pelt of raven feathers ringed his waist and there was a large skull that rested above his armoured pelvis from some great prey-bird that he had once stalked and killed.

‘It isyou, Corvus.’

I wanted to embrace him, to embrace hope in the form of my brother, but Corax was not as tactile as Ferrus had been. Like the bird from which he took his name, Corax did not like his feathers to be touched. I saluted him instead, pressing my clenched fist against my bare chest.

Corax saluted in return before replacing his helm.

‘How?’ I asked. ‘We are aboard Curze’s ship.’

‘I can explain how I found you later.’ He clapped me on the shoulder, a rare concession for him, and for the first time in what felt like years I experienced a lost sense of brotherhood and comradeship. ‘Now I need you to come with me. We’re getting you out of this place.’

As he spoke, my eye was drawn to the half-light spilling into my cell. Through the open door, I saw a dimly lit corridor and a strike team of Raven Guard surrounded by dead Night Lords.

‘Can you fight?’ Corax asked me, glancing over his shoulder as he led me to freedom.

‘Yes,’ I replied, and felt some of my faded strength returning. I had been a long time from earth and beaten constantly as I was, my fighting prowess was far from its height. I caught a bolter in mid-flight. It felt good to wrap my hand around the trigger, feel its heft. I racked the slide. It was Corax’s own weapon, not his favoured armament but a back-up. I was glad to receive it.

I had questions, many of them, about the war and Horus. But this was not the time.

As my brother reached the doorway, he said something to his Raven Guard in Kiavahran that I didn’t understand before unfurling his power whip and letting the three barbed tips crackle with energy as they touched the ground. Four silver claws extended from his other hand, their blades wreathed in actinic fury.

‘Our ship is close, but these corridors are swarming with Eighth Legion filth. Wecan bypass them easily enough but we’ll need to take a different route with you, brother.’

Corax was about to lead us out when I gripped his forearm.

‘I had almost given up hope,’ I said quietly.

Corax nodded. ‘So had I, of ever finding you alive.’ He held my gaze for a second, before turning towards the corridor. ‘Follow me, brother.’

He swept out of the cell and though I was close on his heels, I almost immediately lost in the gloom. The corridor was wide, but low and well enough lit, yet Corax and his kin were hard to locate.

‘We cannot wait, Vulkan,’ my brother whispered.

‘I can barely see you.’

‘Make for the end of the corridor. Kravex is there.’

My eyes narrowed and I found the legionary, just as Corax had described, waiting at the end of the corridor. His appearance was a fleeting shadow, for when I reached the point where he had been standing, Kravex was gone again.

It continued like this for what felt like hours, moving unchallenged and unheeded through myriad tunnels, vents and ducts. Sometimes the way led us down or crawling through some narrow conduit or climbing up some claustrophobic shaft. Always Corax was nearby but never close enough to actually feel like he was there. He was a shade, moving through the darkest fog, cleaving to the shadow’s edge and never quite stepping into the light.

I followed as best I could, catching glimpses of Kravex or one of the other Raven Guard when my sense of direction faltered and they had to put me back on the path. I think there were five in all, not including Corax, but I could not swear to that. The XIX were experts in subterfuge. Ambuscade and stealth fighting were an art form to the Ravens. I felt woefully under-schooled.

Several times I was stopped suddenly – my brother, though still occluded, hissing a warning to make me pause. Legionaries were looking for us. We heard their booted feet, caught snatches of their passage, through the vents and iron grilles of the vast ship.

Deeper now, into its bowels, we found ourselves in the ship’s bilge. Effluence ran in a thick river and the walls were crusted with grime and other matter. It was a vast and cyclopean sewer, wrought of dark metal, crosshatched with girders and hanging chains. Heat from the enginarium decks wafted down through slow-moving turbine fans, churning up the vile stench of the place. The toxic air would have killed lesser men, and I suspected that the uneven floor underfoot was actually bone.

‘Through this channel,’ said Corax, stepping down into a sloping aqueduct and keeping his voice low as a search team rattled the deck grille far above our heads, ‘we can bypass a heavily guarded part of the ship. A hatch at the end leads out to an ancillary deck where we breached.’

‘And what if your ship has already been found?’ I asked, following my brother and his warriors as they waded into the murky sewer. It was dark in the tunnel, only illuminated by the fizzing glow of phosphor lamps.

‘Unlikely,’ Corax answered. ‘It is masked beyond the means of this vessel’s sensorium to detect. Come on.’ His warriors were ranging ahead, and I soon lost them in the gloom.

We tramped on through the filth in silence, the disturbed waters only making the fumes more noisome. As above, below it was a labyrinth and I had the distinct feeling we were heading down towards its core. A part of me yearned to find Curze waiting there, so I could inflict upon him every act of retribution I had dreamed about since being incarcerated at my mad brother’s pleasure.

It would be so easy… His skull in my hands, the bone cracking as I slowly crushed it.

The long stretch of straight bilge pipe was finally giving way to a sharp bend when I caught the stark muzzle flash in my eye line and heard the grunted accusation of discovery.

Corax was already moving, several metres ahead of me, power whip cracking in his gauntleted fist. ‘They have found us!’

I heard one of the Raven Guard fall, but didn’t see it. Our vanguard was beyond the bend; so, too, was Corax now, and I could only hear the battle. There was a loud splash and I assumed that the warrior had sunk into the water.

I reached the turn but found only darkness in front of me. Even with the phosphor lamps, spitting and flickering in the rank air, I could see neither friend nor foe.

Another flash set me to purpose, a fleeting pict-capture of monochrome grey lodged in my retina of two legionaries clashing with blades. I roamed towards them, finding sludge under my feet and progress slow. The next section of pipe was equally as long as the first and my allies fought some way down it, far from my aid.

I stopped, trying to ascertain how many enemies we were facing, and where. Without the muzzle flash my sight was hindered again. I set the bolter I had been given under my chin, resting the stock against my cheek as I slowly panned it around the sewer. Weapons fire reverberated off the vaulted ceiling, echoing loudly, making it difficult to pinpoint. I realised the pipe in this part of the sewer was far from straight. Columns supported it, their foundations beneath the rancid waterline. There were alcoves and sub-ducts, maintenance ledges and antechambers. Without a bearing I could quickly lose my way, and my rescuers with it.

Somewhere in the distance, Corax was fighting. I heard the crack of his power whip, and could smell the ozone reek of his lightning claws even above the rancid fluid slowly riming my waist. I broke through the viscous skin that had started to encircle me, wading quickly through the morass as I fought to reach my brother.

In shuddering silhouette I saw another Raven die, his wings bent outwards as a bolt shell tore him open.

‘Corax!’ I called out, still panning with my bolter, concerned that any snap shot might hit my brother or one of his sons.

I heard the clash of steel, a burst of bolter fire, but got no answer.

‘Corax!’

Still nothing. The tunnel yawned in front of me, a diseased and gaping maw, and the darkness closed like a storm. I caught flashes, muzzle fire and the ephemeral flare of power weapons. Nothing more than silhouettes greeted me, the after-image of a blow already struck, a kill already made.

In the foulness sloshing around my waist, I caught a brief sight of an armoured corpse. In the dark, face down, it was hard to discern who it belonged to. I forced my way over to it through the mire, but was too slow. Trapped air escaping from the gaps in its armour, the corpse sank without trace. I plunged my hand into the filth, reaching and grabbing for it. I needed to see it, to touch something undeniably real. Something scraped against the tips of my fingers. Delving deeper, the rank waters lapping at my face, I grasped the object. Bringing it up into the light, I saw a skull. Sewer-filth peeled off bleached bone like a sloughing skin. It grinned, as all skulls do, but I found some familiarity in its macabre visage.

Ferrus Manus’s cleaved head stared up at me.

Recoiling, I dropped the skull and was about to reach back down for it when I heard Corax shout out.

‘Vulkan!’

A small spherical object, its activation stud flashing, arced overhead. Its parabola took it down into the waters, almost on me.

I turned, taking a sharp breath and closing my eyes as a concussive blast pushed me down into the mire. Skin stinging with the host of shrapnel embedded in my back, I touched the floor of the tunnel, my head and shoulders completely submerged. The spike of a rib, a jutting femur, the ridged line of a spinal column – I scratched at the underwater boneyard in a desperate attempt to gain purchase and rise above the water.

Then I was rising, carried along in the sudden swell caused by the explosion, before breaching the surface. Thrown into the air, chased by a gush of filth, tendrils of it clinging to my body, I hit the wall hard and slid down against it.

I had lost my bolter, the weapon slipping from my grip during the fall. Gagging, coughing up filthy water from my lungs, I heard approaching footsteps splash through the mire.

Dazed, my vision blurring, I looked up and saw a hand proffered towards me.

‘It’s over,’ said Corax.

‘I didn’t even see them,’ I gasped.

‘Trust me, brother, they’re dead, but more will be coming after that explosion. We have to move.’

With Corax’s help, I got to my feet and together we reached the end of the sewer tunnel, where a maintenance ladder led up and out.

‘Where are the others?’ I asked, not seeing Kravex or any of the other Raven Guard.

‘Dead,’ Corax replied grimly, and kept his eyes front. ‘Here,’ he said, gesturing to the ladder. ‘I’ll go first. Follow me closely.’

I nodded and tried not to think about what my brother was feeling at that moment.

Halfway up the ladder, Corax said, ‘They knew the nature of this mission, and accepted its risks.’

I didn’t reply, merely followed in silence.

Though thick with fumes emanating from the enginarium decks, the air beyond the sewer was almost cleansing by comparison.

Another large chamber stretched out before us. It was cluttered with machinery and packing crates. Cranes loomed overhead and a gantry overlooked the space on one side. It appeared to be empty.

‘Ancillary deck,’ Corax explained, breaking into a steady run, ‘mainly used for storage and repairs. Relatively small. Difficult to breach.’

‘Your ship is close?’ I asked, keeping pace.

‘This way…’

Corax reached the junction first. As he stopped dead, I knew something was wrong. When I caught up to him, I realised what.

Pressure vented from a tear in the Thunderhawk’s fuselage. A jagged hole punched inwards, scorched marks radiating from the breach. It was still seized in its locking clamps, though one of its stanchions was twisted. The glacis plate in the nose cone was shattered, its prow-mounted guns wrecked.

‘Looks like your flight will have to be aborted,’ a low voice declared from the shadows.

The lumen strips overhead were extinguished with the sharp thunkof a thrown switch.

Darkness prevailed for a few moments until twin ovals of crimson light from a warrior’s retinal lenses pierced the gloom. He was joined by twenty more, fanning out from alcoves and behind the scuttled gunship where they had been lying in wait, assembling in front of us to block off the deck.

Corax and I stood our ground.

‘So few of them…’ he remarked to me.

Ten more legionaries clanked into position behind us.

‘So very few,’ I agreed.

A warrior in Terminator armour, one of the Atramentar, stepped forwards. ‘Lay down your arms.’

I recognised his voice as belonging to the one who had addressed us earlier.

‘I don’t take orders from Nostraman gutter scum dressed as soldiers,’ Corax replied.

Behind us, a further ten warriors cut off our escape.

I glanced at them, smirking. ‘Only forty? Curze has overestimated your ability to stop us.’

The Atramentar laughed; it sounded dull and grainy through his vox-grille. Spikes protruded from his shoulder guards and painted-on lightning bolts livened up the drab metal of his midnight-blue armour. In one gauntleted fist, he clutched a heavy-looking maul.

‘Night Haunter told us to take you alive,’ he said. ‘He didn’t say you were to be left unscathed.’

All around the four Night Lords squads, blades and cudgels were drawn.

‘His mistake,’ muttered Corax, soaring into a turbine-boosted leap. A shriek ripped past his lips, an avian war cry that stunned the Atramentar for a precious half-second. Steel wings spread, an angel of death’s shadow bearing down, Corax impaled the warrior on his lightning claw, and I saw the Atramentar’s body slide to the deck where the Night Lord died, gurgling blood.

The Ravenlord lashed out with his whip as he landed, snaring a charging legionary around the waist, yanking him off his feet and smashing him into the wall.

I turned, tearing down a tower of crates that crashed into the path of the warriors behind us. It would hold them for a few seconds, but it was all I needed.

Barrelling into the Night Lords coming at us from the front, I met two legionaries in mid-charge and swept them up off the deck with my sheer bulk and momentum. I hurled one like a discus, my arm around his waist, and saw him pinwheel into three others. The second of them I seized around the head and pile-drove into the floor. The deck bent and split under the impact, several of its rebars impaling my opponent through the back to jut out from his chest.

Panicked, some of the remaining Night Lords drew bolters. I felt a shell score my side, leaving a burn. It barely even slowed me down. I backhanded the shooter, snapping his neck at an awkward angle before hoisting another above my head and bringing him down across my knee, breaking his back.

I seized the generator of a fifth, dragging him towards me and caving in his stomach with my fist. With the blade of my hand, I shattered the clavicle of a sixth. Someone got a sword thrust in and I felt it pierce my midriff with a sudden sawing motion. I snapped the blade off at the hilt, and scooped up my attacker by the chin, gripping his jaw before swinging his flailing body overhead and slamming it into a heavy crate. The legionary’s head punched right through it and I left him there, hanging by his neck, dead.

Killing was not akin to revelry for me, but I revelled in this. Every torture I had endured, every injury against my men, I visited back upon the Night Lords. As the barricade broke down behind us, I welcomed my enemies. A host of corpses lay around me. Blades and bolters were within easy reach, but I had no need of them. Clenching and unclenching my hands, I wanted to tear these warriors apart in the most intimate way possible.

‘Come unto my anvil,’ I challenged, a feral snarl curling my lip.

The fact that the ship was gone, our only means of escape lost with it, didn’t even enter my mind. I craved this violence. I desired nothing more than to break these warriors, who would suffer for the deeds of their father.

My fists were like hammers, my fury blazing like forge-fire.

One by one, the Night Lords died and I rejoiced in their destruction.

By the time it was over, I was breathing hard through clenched teeth. Spittle flecked my trembling lip. My entire body quaked with the violence that was slowly bleeding from my every pore. In my mind’s eye I beheld an abyss. It was red-raw, the colour of blood and death. I stood upon its edge, looked down into the chasmic black at its nadir. Madness waited there for me. I heard its calling and reached out to touch it…

Corax brought me back.

His hand upon my shoulder. The urgent tone in his voice.

‘Are you all right, brother?’

It took me a few seconds to realise he was referring to the sword still impaling me.

I yanked out the blade. A welter of blood came with it to paint the deck, soon lost on an already blood-soaked canvas.

‘Believe me, it’s nothing,’ I said, steadily regaining my composure.

Corax nodded, betraying no sense of what I had shown to him, expressed in the charnel leavings on the deck around me.

‘What now?’ I asked, the wrecked Thunderhawk before us.

‘Delve deeper, penetrate the ship’s core. There’ll be other vessels we can commandeer.’

It was a small hope at best. I knew Corax realised that, but chose not to say it out loud.

‘Failing that, we could fight our way to the bridge,’ I replied. ‘And take our wrath out on whoever we find enthroned upon it.’

‘Agreed.’

Corax jerked his head up, listening.

‘More are coming.’

‘Let them.’

His cold retinal lenses regarded me. ‘Does it end here, or on the bridge with Curze’s beating heart clenched in your fist?’

I nodded, though I thought our chances of reaching the bridge and Curze were remote at best. ‘The bridge. Lead on, brother.’

Leaving the massacred Night Lords in our wake, Corax took us through several more chambers until we entered a warren of sub-tunnels reached through a service hatch. The confines of the tunnels were close, and my brother was forced to leave his beloved jump pack behind. Despite his efforts at obscuring the trail, our pursuers were always close behind us. Snarled Nostraman curses followed us down vents and pipes, the din of scraping power armour echoed. I imagined Curze’s men on their knees and elbows, crawling after us.

But however deep we went, however many the turns we took, the Night Lords stuck to us like our shadows. They knew this ship, its every inch. I felt the trap again, its rusty teeth closing around my neck. Escape or capture, there was no other way for this to end for me. I feared for Corax, though. Curze would not be kind to him for this affront.

After an hour of scurrying through the service tunnels like rats, Corax found another access hatch. Kicking it through, the grate landing with a clatter below, my brother dropped from sight for a moment before calling up to me to follow. I went after him and plunged from the lightless warren into a barren chamber. It was dimly lit, fashioned of dark iron like so much of this desolate place, and I discerned blade marks in the floor. There were bloodstains too, but it was empty. It was strangely familiar, though I had never been here before.

A single archway led further, though it was beyond the weak corona of light cast by the lumen orbs ensconced in the walls, and therefore heavily shadowed.

‘See, the way is unobstructed,’ Corax hissed, gesturing to the archway and the darkness beyond it. ‘I’ll make sure we were not followed. Here.’ He tossed me his gladius, the last of his secondary weapons. I caught it and nodded, hastening to the archway, but could see and hear no danger.

‘There are steps leading down,’ I called. ‘And I can feel a breeze.’

It was artificial of course, and the air was musty, but it could indicate that we were close to a deck with atmospheric recycling, which almost certainly meant a human presence.

Corax waited under the gaping hatch for a few more seconds before joining me.

‘What of your helm sensors?’ I asked, knowing that my brother was already cycling through the visual spectra of his retinal lenses.

‘Shadows…’ he hissed, his tone leaving me slightly unnerved.

If I didn’t know my brother better, I would swear he sounded concerned about that.

‘Only way is down,’ I muttered, levelling my gladius at the darkness as though it were a foe I could engage.

Corax agreed, unsheathing his talons, and together we descended the steps.

At the bottom, the darkness was just as thick and abject. It was like trying to see through pitch. I knew it wasn’t an ordinary absence of light. Our eyes would have penetrated that easily and left us in no doubt as to our surroundings. This was different. Viscous and congealing, here the shadows clung to us like tar. As I stared into the oily depths, I saw the vague adumbration of what appeared to be a coliseum. We were standing back to back in its arena. Beneath our feet were sand and earth.

‘It’s a trap!’ I cried, but too late.

Corax was halfway up the steps when a sliding blast door sealed us in. A step behind him, I turned to face the arena as the unnatural darkness bled away through vents in the floor and a chill I hadn’t realised was affecting me melted from my body. Flaming torches delineated an eight-sided battleground where the skeletal remains of gladiators and their shattered trappings still lingered like unquiet spirits. I recalled where I had seen the antechamber before. It was in Themis, a city of Nocturnian warrior kings who engaged in gladiatorial contest to prove their prowess and choose their next tribal leader. Before each fight, the combatants would wait in barrack rooms to sharpen their blades or their minds before the upcoming contest. Corax and I had done neither. I suddenly wondered what our gaoler had in mind for us.

‘It’s a little archaic, I admit,’ said Curze, our attention drawn to him. He was standing above us, looking down from the pulpit of an amphitheatre. ‘But I think Angron would have appreciated it. A pity he isn’t here to see it. Your paths almost crossed on Isstvan, didn’t they, brother?’

I arched my neck, meeting Curze’s gaze in the highest echelons of the amphitheatre. He was not alone. Thirty of his Atramentar Terminators encircled the arena, the threat of their reaper cannons obvious.

‘A pity oursdid not,’ I replied.

‘You had your chance on Kharaatan and didn’t take it.’

‘You will wish I did when this is over.’

Curze smiled thinly. The two Atramentar flanking him proffered arms, a sword and trident.

‘On Nostramo, we had no grand theatres like this. Our gutters and hives were our arenas, but offerings of bloodsport were plentiful.’

He tossed the sword down to us. It impaled itself in the ground, up to a third of its blade deep.

‘Gang culture ruled our streets and everyone wanted to be a part of the strongest gang.’

The trident followed, striking the earth with enough force to send vibrations all the way down its haft.

‘Even murderers and rapists have ritual,’ Curze went on. ‘Even to scum like them it’s important. Opportunities were always limited, often only enough for one. First thing,’ he said, looking down at Corax, ‘the fight must be fair. Remove your armour, brother. Vulkan stands unequal to it.’

‘I didn’t think you approved of holding court, Konrad,’ I replied, stepping forwards as I challenged him. ‘Isn’t that why you butchered your world’s overlords and spire nobles?’

‘They did not lord over me, nor were they noble,’ Curze uttered darkly. ‘Now, Corax will remove his armour or condemn your own sons to death.’

From the back ranks of the Atramentar, two warriors were brought forwards on opposite sides of the amphitheatre. On one side there was Kravex, my brother’s errant son that he had believed dead; on the other was Nemetor.

Both warriors struggled vainly against their captors, not to escape but rather to make clear their defiance.

‘Nemetor…’ How one wounded son had come to mean so much… Curze had not told me what had become of the rest of my Legion, and I had not the heart to ask him. I believed they still lived, though in what numbers I could not say. Had they perished completely on Isstvan, Curze would not have passed up the opportunity to twist that particular knife. And for all the deception of his trials, Curze had not yet lied to me in anything he had said. The Salamanders yet lived. I yet lived. I had to save Nemetor.

Evidently, Corax had reached the same conclusion and quietly removed his armour until he was standing alongside me in the arena with only the lower mesh of his leggings, greaves and boots. His magnificent war-plate lay discarded on the sand like worthless chaff.

Curze had brought us low, and I felt the gnawing guilt of bringing my brother into this crude pantomime.

‘I am sorry, Corvus. For all of this.’

‘Put it from your mind, Vulkan. I made my decision free of will, as I know you would have done also.’

‘But there is something you don’t understand, brother…’

Two gladiatorial helms thrown in our midst interrupted my confession. One was black, fashioned into the likeness of a bird of prey; the other was dark green and draconian. It was obvious what Curze wanted us to do.

‘Are we to dance next?’ I said, stooping to retrieve the helmet intended for me.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Curze replied. ‘Put them on.’

The inside of the helmet was rough. It felt heavy.

‘ One lives, one dies,’ said Curze, his voice channelled to me through a reedy vox-link inside my armour. ‘ Gang culture is brutal, brothers. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that yet. You will.’

I looked up at Nemetor, my son seeming oblivious to his surroundings, then back to Corax, seeing him do the same with Kravex.

I felt the presence of the abyss again, my bare feet teetering on its edge, looking down into hell and darkness. Pain seared my skull from everywhere at once and I realised the helmet was rough because its interior was studded with a host of tiny nails. Curze had just embedded their points in my skull. The abyss throbbed in my mind’s eye, urging me to act, to step off and be lost to its heat.

I fought to stay calm, to rein in the madness threatening to turn me raving.

Corax hadn’t moved yet, though only a few short seconds had lapsed.

‘Survivor goes free, as do his men,’ Curze gave his last edict to us out loud. ‘For let me say now, I have several more drakes and ravens in my rookery. Now, fight.’

Curze had yet to lie to me. If the game was to have meaning, he would tell the truth here too. But I could not kill Corax. I would sacrifice Nemetor for that, though it would hurt me to do so. I would not bow down to barbarism and become like him. Insanity clawed at the edges of my consciousness but I refused to submit to it. Curze would not win. I would not let him.

Corax would defeat me, Nemetor would die, but at least Corvus would live. I could make that sacrifice, I could do that for my brother.

I reached for the sword.

‘ And, Vulkan…’ Curze whispered through the vox-link, a final instruction just for me, ‘ I lied. Beat Corax, render him unconscious or I kill him and his Ravens, letting you watch as I do it.’

I tried to shout out, but a wedge of steel slammed into my open mouth from a device wrought into the helm, muting me.

Corax had yet to move. I wondered if Curze had told him the same thing as me, only the reverse of the scenario I had been presented with.

‘Still reluctant to fight?’ asked Curze. ‘I don’t blame you. It’s a heavy thing to have to kill your brother to survive. But trust me when I tell you that hungry dogs have no loyalty when the prize is survival. I remember a family on Nostramo. Their bonds were tight and they fought tooth and nail for one another, gutting entire gangs that dared raise a hand against them.