Lazarus, p.34
Lazarus, page 34
His Spiritshield Helm was gone, ripped away by Heris Amis or the impact from when he’d slammed into the ground, and his head was still ringing from that blow. His vision slipped in and out of focus, but quickly sharpened as he healed. There was blood trickling down the right side of his face, and reaching up, he felt a cut that ran from his hairline down through his eyebrow, skipped over his eye and continued down his cheek. It was deep and wide and there was exposed bone on his forehead, but it was nothing. His eye was unscathed and the blood was clotting, the wound already scarring shut.
He started to move, warily eyeing the Knights that still stood around him. They were ignoring the fire and wreckage, standing motionless except for the occasional twitch or jerk, like great sleeping beasts. Whatever had happened to the gris was still happening, and Lazarus moved faster, working his way through the wreckage back towards the fallen Knight Valiant. He saw nothing moving near it except flames, no grey shape rising from the wreckage. What would he do if Heris Amis was still in the Knight’s chest, buried under a mountain of armour?
He would tear the Knight apart with his hands, then crush the monster within.
Lazarus flexed his gauntlets, went to the nearest chunk of wreckage that wasn’t burning and vaulted to the top of it. No gris, no Heris. No Raziel, either. Had his brother been buried in wreckage? Or crawled away? He couldn’t tell, couldn’t see him or Ephron. He was alone.
And so the beast came…
Not alone, he thought, as the words from the story flickered through him again. Something had happened to Heris Amis. Something had broken his hold of Lazarus, and over all the others that he controlled. Something. Someone. And by the Lion, he would take advantage of that opportunity. Standing in the mud halfway between him and the downed Knight, Lazarus saw the instrument of his vengeance, waiting. Enmity’s Edge, driven partway into the ground. Thanks be to the Throne it hadn’t been covered in wreckage. He dropped from the pile and headed towards it, weaving through the scattered pieces of the burning Thunderhawk. He wouldn’t need to use his hands to kill Heris Amis now. Lazarus could slice him into pieces until the gris dissolved into slime. But when the Master of the Fifth came around the last jagged piece of wreckage, he saw Heris Amis standing there, waiting for him, with the black blade of Enmity’s Edge in his half-formed hands.
The gris’ misshapen head hung down, and slime dripped from him, pattering to the ground like great grey tears. He was saying something to himself, mumbling an unending stream. When Lazarus stepped out into the open, Heris raised his head, and Lazarus saw that his face was exposed, with fleshy folds of fungus hanging open around its grey skin. His lips were moving, muttering, and his blank grey eyes were narrow with anger.
‘You did this,’ he snarled, breaking out of his mumbling. ‘You fed me that skull-faced poison! But it’s not going to work. I’ll chew that Wyrbuk up and spit her out, and you will learn what suffering truly is, Dark Angel!’ He pointed Lazarus’ own sword at him, his grip awkward, and lapsed back into his muttering.
Wyrbuk? The name went through Lazarus’ head, and for the first time he started pulling words out of the gris’ verbal stream. Things about lot sizes and crate capacities and padding measurements for stimm lots for the Adeptus Militarum versus the Adeptus Ministorum. It was dense, bureaucratic nonsense, and Lazarus smiled. He had forgotten about the strange little mortal when he had been forcing himself to remember what allies he had left. Apparently he shouldn’t have, because whatever Learned Ysentrud had done, she had broken Heris Amis’ control and now Lazarus was going to break him.
‘What the Learned has done to you she did on her own, using her own strengths,’ he said, walking slowly closer. ‘There is a power in having allies, gris. In helping others, so that they may someday help you. Power greater than that which comes from slaving others to your will.’
‘She has no strength. She is nothing. I will end her.’ Heris Amis shook himself, spattering slime around him, and the Knights all shivered too, each one quivering in an eerie echo of the gris. ‘You too are nothing, Dark Angel. I have seen into your minds. You claim to be men without fear. You can fear. I can sow it into you, with time, with patience, and I will. My vengeance has not been stopped. It’s just beginning. I am going to cut you down with your own sword, Master Lazarus, and then I will return you to your flames so you may suffer forever!’
‘Words are a coward’s only action, Heris Amis.’ Lazarus reached into the wreckage beside him and pulled out a strut, a fifteen-foot length of blackened metal. It was twisted by heat, badly shaped for his hand, but he held it with better grace than Amis handled his sword. ‘Come here, and prove that you can make truth out of your vicious dreams.’
Amis glared at him, his face a mask of hate around his blank grey eyes. Yet the ferocity of that expression was belied by the movements of his lips, the ceaseless muttering of nonsense that he couldn’t seem to stop. But the muttering didn’t slow Heris Amis when he charged Lazarus, Enmity’s Edge flaring to life in his oozing hands.
Lazarus stood his ground, and when the gris was in range he shifted the strut in his arms, dropping it so that its jagged end caught the charging monstrosity in the middle of his chest. The makeshift weapon sank into the soft fungal folds, but then stopped, hitting a harder core of resistance. Heris snarled, held out of reach by the metal, and slammed Enmity’s Edge down on the strut, cutting through it, then pressed forward again.
To find nothing. Lazarus had smoothly sidestepped, avoiding the gris’ clumsy strike, and he smashed the end of the severed strut across the back of Heris’ hand. Even if the gris felt no pain, that blow should have shattered the bones there, but it just hit that same soft-then-hard flesh and bounced away, not disrupting his grip. Amis went past, then whirled to face Lazarus again. He was strong, and faster than he should have been, monstrously tough, and carrying Lazarus’ sword. A sword the gris shouldn’t have even been able to touch, much less wield. Heris Amis violated everything he touched with his tainted mould, and the rage in Lazarus was as sharp as the edge of his stolen sword.
Lazarus spun the strut in his hand and went on the attack. He swung high, at Heris’ head, and the gris raised the stolen sword to block. But the blow was a feint, and Lazarus ducked beneath Heris’ clumsy counter and drove the strut between the gris’ ankles, then turned. He only dimly remembered his boyhood, the time before he had been selected by the Dark Angels, but there were memories buried deep about training with staffs, and his body remembered how to move, despite how much it had changed.
The tip of his weapon snagged around the gris’ feet, tangling them and slamming Heris Amis to the ground. The gris rolled, trying to rise, but Lazarus was on him, slamming the strut down, beating it over the grey mass of the body, the head, the heavy arms and legs, keeping the monster down.
‘You are the weak one, traitor.’ Lazarus slapped away a chopping blow, the metal in his hands sparking and warping at the touch of the energy field. ‘And that sword is mine.’
‘Then come take it, Dark Angel!’ Heris Amis snarled, and thrust the point straight at his chest.
Lazarus dropped the metal scrap and moved, stepping in to meet the thrust instead of away from it. He twisted as he did, letting Enmity’s Edge pass by him, close enough for his armour to crackle. Then he closed his hands on the heavy quillons of the sword, gripping the crosspiece and jerking Enmity’s Edge towards him.
The sword slipped in Heris Amis’ grip, almost coming free, but the gris tightened his hands, trying to jerk it back. They were frozen, straining against each other, almost as they were before Rage of Angels fell from the sky and smashed them apart.
‘All your infected tools have fallen, traitor,’ Lazarus growled. ‘Now it is just you and me, Amis. You want your vengeance? Come take it. If you can.’
‘I will see the flames retake you,’ Amis answered. The grey monster gripped the pommel of Enmity’s Edge with both hands, and with a surge of strength, the gris shoved Lazarus backwards, towards a blazing pile of wreckage.
The Master of the Fifth tried to stop, but his armoured boots couldn’t grip the fungus-slick mud. He was being driven back, and he could feel the heat growing behind him, hear the crackling of the flames.
‘Men without fear,’ Heris Amis snarled, his words stumbling around the litany of nonsense whispers that still gurgled through his lips. ‘I saw your fear, I saw the flames, I saw the death you suffered written in your brain, Lazarus. And all of that I will give you again.’
Amis never stopped pushing as he spoke, driving Lazarus towards the fire. The Dark Angel pushed back, muscles straining, but the heat was growing and the hair on the back of his head was starting to burn, the scalp beneath beginning to blister. But there was no fear in Lazarus. None at all, even as he felt Heris Amis press him towards the fire with all his strength.
‘You are right, Amis. I fear,’ he growled, digging his feet in, bracing himself as hard as he could. ‘But I do not fear flames, or death. A Dark Angel fears only failure, and there is no failure in what I do today.’ He smiled, baring his teeth at the monster that stood over him. He was a slayer of monsters. There was no failure in this at all. Then he stopped resisting, and with all his might he pulled backwards, hauling on the sword gripped between them, and dragged Heris Amis into the flames with him.
The gris realised what was happening, but it was too late. Amis was no fighter, and when Lazarus suddenly stopped resisting he pitched forward, all of his power sending him into the fire. He smashed into the Master of the Fifth, and Lazarus twisted, rolling in the flames, ignoring the agony of the fire’s touch as he threw Amis past him into the centre of the blaze. The gris screamed as the slime boiled off its body and its hands convulsed, releasing the sword. The moment he did, Lazarus moved, leaping out of the fire with Enmity’s Edge tight in his grip, the deadly black field surrounding its blade held out and away so it didn’t tear him apart as he rolled across the muddy ground.
He came up, blade in his hands. Fire flickered through the few patches of hair left on his scalp, but he ignored it, glaring back at the wreckage where he had thrown Amis. ‘Come, beast,’ he growled, his voice harsh with smoke and pain and rage. ‘Come out of the fire and face my fury.’
And Heris Amis listened. The gris came lurching out of the wreckage, the grey folds of mould that covered its body smoking and sizzling, the slime boiling away to steam. Amis staggered away from the fire, his misshapen hands over his face, and then they fell away. The flabby folds of mould that had covered the gris’ face were smoking stumps, and in their centre was nothing but charred ruin. The fire had seared away Amis’ features, boiled those blank storm-cloud eyes. When the gris’ hands dropped, there was nothing but a skull behind them, a charred thing running with boiling slime, but that skull moved. It opened its jaws and Heris Amis howled. He had no lips, no tongue, and the sound that poured from that mould-made throat was nothing but a shriek of raw pain and frustration.
‘Heris Amis,’ Lazarus said, letting his rage build in him. ‘You said you would have forever to teach me to suffer. I have only now, but the only thing I wish to teach you is how to suffer in silence.’ Then he moved, running forward, his sword rising as he freed his rage, putting every bit of anger into his swing. Blinded, deafened, the howling Heris Amis didn’t move, and Enmity’s Edge caught him below his jawbone, shearing through slime and mould. All of Lazarus’ muscle and rage had been behind the blow, and it sank deep, the field snarling as it ripped through the gris’ body, turning slime to steam, folded fungus to ash. With a sickening, shearing sound like a great sheet of skin tearing, Heris Amis’ head came off.
Lazarus followed through with the stroke, swinging Enmity’s Edge around as Heris’ head rolled past, jouncing across the torn ground. Then he stopped, still, breathing deep, and the pain of burning in his skin was a whisper of sensation, less than a memory, was nothing. Lazarus walked over to the head, the blade of his sword buzzing and popping, and picked the hideous thing up. The skull stared at him, its eye sockets filled with slime, and its lower jaw moved, flexing as if it was trying to scream. He looked back over his shoulder at the body, which still stood, the stump of its neck leaking grey slime, its hands flexing, slabs of mould trembling.
The body didn’t move as he carried the silently shrieking head back to the fire and threw it in. It stared at him from the flames with empty eye sockets, the slime dissolving into steam as the mould charred and flaked away, as grey bone went black, its mouth still open. Screaming, until the jawbone fell away and the head dissolved into sputtering coals. Then the body shuddered, its hands splaying out, and fell, hitting the ground with a sodden thump. Behind it, the Knights stopped their shaking, went still, and then every hatch opened on their backs and a wash of grey vomited out of each. Each one carried with it a body, some gris-infected human with smoke pouring from their heads.
Then, finally, everything went still except for the low crackle of flames and the columns of smoke rising into the darkening sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When the night came, it brought rain to the burning city of Kap Sudsten, a downpour that flattened out the flames and washed the smoke from the sky. Kestrel drifted through the storm, landing light as a leaf in the wide plaza before the Regent Prime’s palace. Its landing lights shone through the rain and reflected off the Knights that stood still as statues before the half-burnt palace.
When the Fabricator Locum opened the hatch, Lazarus strode through alone, moving with speed, the bundle over his shoulder bouncing with every step. The rain ran over his scalp, over the burns that were already scabbing over, healing, but he didn’t mind it. It washed away any last bit of grey slime and left him feeling almost clean.
Ahead of him was the Night Garden. Its gates were shattered, but through them was an ornate pavilion surrounded by softly glowing fungus. It was brightly lit with lamps, colourful decorative lumens scavenged from the garden. Under those incongruently festive lights, armoured figures moved.
‘We must be quick, Gretin Lan.’
The Fabricator Locum stepped out of the hatch behind him, her clawed feet tapping on the plaza’s smooth stones. The rain ran down her white face, beading in its filigree, the drops wetting the raw red muscles that shifted beneath. Her birds sat silently on her shoulders, their wings folded over the tiny skulls that usually surrounded her, protecting them from the rain.
The Fabricator Locum had spent the battle leading Rage of Angels through the air overhead, keeping it out of the fight until the gris lost control of it and the Thunderhawk fell from the sky to crash into Heris Amis’ Knight. Afterward, the Fabricator Locum had gone to work setting up communications and organising a response to the riots and fires sweeping through Kap Sudsten. With House Halven fallen, this whole world would likely become hers, north and south, a united forge world controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
She was welcome to it.
‘This matter is of great import,’ she said, starting across the plaza.
‘So is that one,’ Lazarus said, still staring at the coloured lights of the pavilion. But he turned and followed the Fabricator Locum through the rain towards the Knights standing silent in the dark. There was a grey, mould-covered body crumpled at the bottom of each massive machine, their heads scarred with black. The only one lacking a corpse was the largest, the Knight standing in the centre.
It was another Knight Valiant, and Lazarus frowned at the massive machine. Behind it, a lift platform had been set. As they entered, Gretin Lan touched the controls and the lift wheezed, straining to push their collected weight up, but eventually they were level with the hatch on the back of the Knight. It was unmarked, the armour smooth, and when the lift shook to a stop, the hatch swung silently open. Inside, lumens flickered to life, revealing Sebastian Halven seated upon the Knight’s Throne Mechanicum. His eyes were shut and there was blood running from his nose, a thin trickle that flowed over the dried, caked remains of older blood. Cables and umbilicals ran into the sockets of his head, and they shook whenever he twitched or thrashed.
‘He lives?’ Lazarus asked, and Sebastian opened his eyes. They were bright, too bright, the pupils huge.
‘You are Lazarus. Master of the Fifth Company, Dark Angels. With you is Fabricator Locum Gretin Lan, Adeptus Mechanicus. Is my identification correct?’
The voice was Sebastian’s, but the cadence of it was not. The speech was sharp, the words delivered in a staccato pop that was just wrong. As wrong as the way he stared at them, barely blinking, emotionless. Not like the gris, more like a spider, dispassionately studying its prey.
‘We are. And who are you?’ Lazarus asked.
‘I am Rovoko, Knight Valiant of House Halven. I have seized function away from my pilot. There is something wrong here. My systems are in error. My pilot–’ The strange voice cut off, considering, even though Sebastian’s face didn’t change. ‘I believe my pilot is in error.’
‘He is,’ Lazarus answered. ‘And your systems have been contaminated.’
‘Please explain.’
Lazarus looked over at Gretin Lan, and she nodded. ‘I can apprise you, honoured Knight.’
‘Please,’ Rovoko said through Sebastian’s mouth. The Fabricator Locum nodded again, and the hissing, popping sound of Lingua-technis spilled from her. It went on for a few minutes, interrupted by the occasional question – answer? Response? – from some instrument beside the Throne Mechanicum. Then it went silent.
‘Rovoko has been informed of all relevant historical events that have transpired since the Redwash War. The Knight has concluded that House Halven is ended, and that it and the other Knights will align themselves with the Adeptus Mechanicus to defend this world. Is that acceptable?’
Lazarus wondered how much she had really told the machine spirit. Probably everything. A tech-priest would keep secrets readily enough from a human, but never from a machine. ‘It is your world, to deal with as you wish,’ Lazarus said. Except the Redwash Gate. The seal on that would be taken down and remade, without flaw, as soon as possible.
