Valedor, p.22
Valedor, page 22
Iyanna came into herself, her sense of being rushing to alertness.
The minds of the dead were waking. A sharpening of perception swept through the army, as ripples from a stone cast into water.
‘Wait!’ said Iyanna into her comm-bead. ‘There is something wrong. The dead are stirring. Wait! We must stop.’ No one responded, and Iyanna could not be sure whether she had spoken aloud or not. Her mind was weak. The strain of directing so many of the dead for such a long march had taken its toll. She forced herself to greater wakefulness.
‘Wait!’ she shouted.
‘Halt!’ shouted Taec by her side, and the army halted. ‘What is it?’ he said to her.
‘Something is wrong.’
Taec shut his eyes, delving into the skein. They flew open, and he gasped at what he saw.
A terrible sound echoed up the corridor. Scout Vypers came speeding back from the front of the column, guns spitting. One impacted on the wall of the tunnel and spun out of control, crashing into a group of wraithkind.
The noise drew closer, a rattling sound, hollow stalks knocked together.
‘No,’ said Iyanna. ‘It cannot be.’
‘Voidspawn! Voidspawn in the webway!’ The cry went up, alarm sweeping through the Phoenix Host. That the most sacred of grounds should be so invaded was abhorrent to them. Iyanna and Taec struggled with the eldar’s dismay. The army’s ranks fell into disarray, the dead and living alike paralysed by shock.
The noise burst upon them, the clacking noise of hard alien limbs, underpinned by hissed vocalisations. A wall of psychic pressure came next, a division of the hive mind, exhilarated at its discovery of the Phoenix Host.
The alien horde rounded the corner, filling it from side to side with hideous bio-constructs.
War walker pilots, momentarily stunned by the unexpected sight of Far Ranging Hunger within the webway, found their purpose and opened fire. Heavy weapons blazed as they stalked backwards from the threat. Aspect Warriors pushed their way to the front, forming firing lines.
Taec recovered his wits. ‘We’ll never prevail against them trapped like this,’ he said. ‘Fall back!’ he called by voice and telepathy, his powerful psyche pushing back against the hive mind.
Quick response pulses clicked in his ears as the autarchs and exarchs responded to his command. He looked down the tunnel, the slight rise allowing him to see down onto the fight at the front of the column. Living tanks came to the front of the horde. Working in packs, the beasts trapped war walkers, preventing them from fleeing, then butted the fragile machines with their massive heads, smashing them to pieces. Laser and shuriken fire streaked across the dwindling gap between the armies.
‘I must go,’ said Althenian. ‘Forward I am needed now, remain here.’
Iyanna raised her hand, then faltered. The giant construct stalked off, forcing its way roughly through the throng. Other wraithlords went with him to join the rest of their kind at the front.
‘Fall back now!’ shouted Taec, empowering his words with a psychic pulse strong enough to be felt over the hive mind’s racket. This woke the army from its collective shock. Grav-vehicles lifted into the air to fire over the host, Guardians streamed backwards. Taec dipped again into the skein, hunting over possibilities. ‘Why did I not see this? Why?’ he muttered to himself over and over. In his mind, and upon the skein, he found no answer.
He called up the images of the autarchs in his helm’s viewing orb. ‘The skein is clear, many futures end badly, the best threads bring delay. Hope comes from unexpected quarters.’
‘We should go to the nexus, hold them there at the tunnel mouth, and await the armies of Biel-Tan,’ said Autarch Culthain.
‘I concur,’ said Autarch Jethlesar.
‘And I,’ finished Autarch Herinim.
‘No,’ said Taec. ‘We cannot fight into them, we will lose all advantage of our ranged weaponry. We must fall back and bring them to battle across a wider front.’
A pause, and then Jethlesar spoke. ‘We shall see to it, crystal father.’
Taec turned off his images of the others, but listened in to their chatter as they set their plans, checking them over in the skein and offering advice where needed.
‘Come, Iyanna, we must go back.’ He pulled at her robe. Now was not the time for social nicety; Iyanna was as one drugged, half in the world of the dead.
‘I… The dead…’ she said.
‘They cannot operate here,’ said Taec urgently. ‘Imagine the calamity that would occur should their wraithcannons breach the webway. In this confined environment, they would slay us all. We would all be lost, and the labyrinth dimension damaged. No, this must be done with blade and fire, but with care! We must go.’ He looked back towards the nexus. ‘Perhaps there it will be safe enough to make use of our phoenixes, but not here!’
He tried to call for a transport, but the way was choked with floating battle tanks shooting down the slope of the tunnel. The armies had met, and ferocious fighting marked the thin seam between blue and yellow, and red and bone.
A flight of jetbikes rushed overhead, dodging through the crammed airspace, Jethlesar at their head.
‘Fighting withdrawal. Fall back by unit on my command,’ the autarch said, his laser lance already blazing.
‘Now, Iyanna! Now!’ said Taec.
A group of Guardians formed up around them. Taec scanned the surrounding area for threats. As yet, the voidspawn were distant.
‘Spiritseers! Bring the dead with you, bring them back into the nexus!’ he called.
They went as fast as they could. Reports from the battle line were not encouraging to Taec’s ears. How many eldar were dying he did not like to think. Despair lapped at the edges of his consciousness. To not foresee this… How much else had he not seen?
Within the tenth-cycle they had made it in good order back to the nexus. Culthain was dead, he heard, cleft in twain by a blow from a monster’s claw. Jethlesar fought in the air still. Herinim greeted Taec in the nexus. Together they deployed their forces as best they could, ranging heavy weapons upon the platform, barrels pointing at the webway tunnels.
‘Wraithblades upon the wings,’ said Herinim. ‘Place the wraithguard in the centre. They will be the breakwater that lessens the ocean’s power. From above we will rain death upon them.’
Taec rode the skein, testing what threads he could see through the Dragon’s shadow, seeing those that depicted the collapse of the line and the destruction of the host, others where they were victorious. All were ephemeral and uncertain.
‘I cannot see,’ he said. ‘Either I am blinded by the tumult of the alien mind, or…’ He was unwilling to voice his thoughts.
‘Farseer? You have grave concerns.’ Herinim’s helm plate was impassive, white framed by dark red, his flight pack wings folded behind his head.
‘Or I am being actively blocked, and that is why I did not see this incursion into the webway,’ Taec said. ‘We cannot rule anything out. This is a far more cunning foe than any of us could ever have guessed. Our arrogance once again trips us. That, or…’ He let his fears of Slaanesh’s involvement go unsaid.
‘But now, what do you see?’
‘Hold the wraithknights in reserve. Should the voidspawn break through the wraithguard, only they will hold them back.’
‘We cannot hold for long, perhaps we should consider withdrawing from the webway?’
‘And let Dûriel fall, and all I have seen come to pass, the voidspawn nesting in the webway into the bargain?’ said Taec. ‘No. Our undertaking is to prevent the merging and we must attempt to with all our will and might.’ He looked off into the tunnels. The sounds of fighting were coming closer. ‘Besides, we do not have to prevail, merely slow the tide. Help comes from unexpected quarters. From where is hidden to me, but it comes.’
‘Farseer…’
‘You echo my own reluctance, Herinim. Tell me, what troubles you?’
‘If this foe is so mighty and so wise, strong enough perhaps to interfere with your vision, then is it not conceivable that your hopes are false? All we can do is trust in fate, as we have for a thousand arcs, but if we no longer can, what does the future hold for us?’
Taec frowned within his helm. He had had the same fear himself. ‘Then we will have to wait and see, as all mortals ultimately must. Bladecraft and gunfire will see us through, or they will not. We have no choice but to try.’
They waited, as orders were sent out to the troops at the front to fall back in earnest. They trickled back in small groups. Transports, freer to operate in the nexus, swept down upon the shattered units and whisked as many as they could to safety. Others ran for their lives.
Wraithlords erupted from the tunnel, sprinting hard for the lines of silent wraithguard. Behind them were the wraithknights, moving easily backwards, ceaselessly scanning the tunnel mouths.
The horde flooded from the main tunnel to Dûriel, the last eldar firing desperately into them before they were overwhelmed.
‘Do not commence firing! Wait until our warriors are clear!’ shouted Herinim.
Iyanna and the other spiritseers, stationed back on the platform, drew themselves closer to the world of the living, dragging the minds of the dead with them.
The wraithguard raised their weapons in a single movement.
‘You will wait,’ said Taec, his eyes half-lidded, his mind half in the world of now, half upon the skein. ‘You will wait, you will wait. You will not hit the fabric of the webway.’
The voidspawn were coming closer fast. Taec could feel Herinim’s anxiety growing.
His eyes snapped open. ‘You will fire now!’
A dreadful drone set up as the reactors of the wraithcannon activated. With a sickening psychic backwash, they opened fire.
Five hundred glittering points of light opened among the voidspawn’s front line. The monsters carried on regardless as the lights grew into glowing spheres, then collapsed in on themselves to leave balls of glowing blackness crackling with purple lightning. Taec drew his breath sharply. Through the gaps in reality, malicious eyes burned, and they coveted his soul.
Alien monstrosities imploded and exploded, their shapes warped out of true by the pull of the warp. By the hundred they were drawn into the howling maelstrom as miniature portals pierced the veil between the worlds. Wind blew over the host as the atmosphere of the labyrinth realm was sucked away.
The wraithcannon shut off. The warp breaches snapped shut with peals of thunder. Great bites had been taken from the alien army, but such were their numbers that the gaps were filled in an eyeblink, and the wall of bone and red surged onwards.
One more volley from the wraithcannon, one more volley where Taec felt his soul shrivel a little more, and the aliens were on them, a spearpoint of twelve towering assault beasts breaking into the line of wraithguard, bowling them aside like game pins. The psychic shockwave came with it, the ravening hunger of the hive mind, and Taec staggered under its onslaught.
‘Destroy the leaders!’ shouted Herinim. ‘Bring down those that lead, and the rest will fall!’
The line of Guardians opened fire. Laser light, shuriken, plasma packets, clouds of monofilament wire – all the terrible arts of killing the eldar had perfected over the aeons – poured into the horde, picking out the larger creatures, those that, even to the non-seers, glowed with psychic power. Where they fell, Taec felt the densely woven synaptic network of the swarm ping apart like the strands of a spiderweb cut. But there were so many of them, thousands, and the directing will remained strong.
The voidspawn pushed deep into the ranks of wraithguard at the front of the army. The ghost warriors were tough, sung from the hardest wraithbone, and did not perish easily. Few of the great beasts fell, but so did few of the wraithguard, and all the while a great tally of lesser aliens was accounted for by the guns of the living and their armoured vehicles.
Taec saw opportunity. ‘Now, Herinim, it must be now. We have them trapped, crush them!’
Herinim relayed a complex series of orders. Wraithblades swung in from the wings, attempting to isolate the initial assault.
At the same moment, the wraithguard parted. The wraithknights of Iyanden came forward, the Avatar at their head. Towering over even the great warrior beasts of Far Ranging Hunger, they smote all about them with crackling blades, their shields glimmering as they deflected return attacks. The Avatar howled with uncanny fury, the rage of the god-fragment invigorating all the eldar, making the sluggish dead quick and the living eager to spill blood. Its burning sword howled and whooped as it sliced through the ranks of the aliens.
Slowly but surely, they were pushing the horde back.
‘Plug the tunnels! Keep them contained!’ shouted Taec.
More tyranids were joining the fight, spilling from subsidiary tunnels that must link with the main way. Either that, or more than one gate on the planet had been compromised and that Taec could not countenance.
Battle raged on. By the middle of the cycle, as the eldar reckoned it in the timeless webway, the aliens’ advance had been blunted. Wraithknights stooped to enter tunnels heaving with the beasts. Still the voidspawn appeared endless, and slowly the numbers of the Phoenix Host were being whittled away.
And then, a slow smile spread across Taec’s weary face.
‘Aid,’ he said. ‘Aid comes at last.’
‘I see nothing,’ said Herinim.
‘Wait. Now. Look.’ Taec pointed to a tunnel where several thousand smaller tyranids were throwing themselves madly against an implacable wall of wraithguard. For every wraithguard that died, a hundred or more of the leaping creatures were slain, but they had the numbers, and the time.
Herinim zoomed in with his helm lenses. ‘I see nothing still, farseer,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Watch.’
A disturbance. Flashing light came from behind the tyranids. A glimpse of blue, a tall helm. Aliens fell dead, and then, suddenly, there were none. The voidspawn had been annihilated. Eldar warriors took their place.
The wraithguard parted. Asurmen himself stepped into the cavern, surrounded by his fabled Crystal Sons. The eldar spread out, the wraithguard following his lead with no aid from the spiritseers. The living and the dead formed lines, and opened fire.
‘And there,’ said Taec. ‘And there.’
He pointed to other tunnels. From one, a dead serpentine creature fell. A tall warrior in black armour decorated by bones stepped onto its lip, levelled the scythed cannon in his hands at the milling creatures below and began to methodically cut them down. From another tunnel Jain Zar leapt, flipping through the air to land between a pair of hive tyrants. Baharroth soared into the air. Fuegan strode forwards from a dark tunnel, fusion lance blazing.
‘The Phoenix Lords… Five of them…’ said Herinim with awe in his voice.
‘Six, I believe,’ said Taec.
‘Aid from an unexpected quarter,’ said Herinim.
‘Fate is with us,’ said Taec.
Joined by their legendary heroes, the eldar fought harder. More and more of the tyranids’ node creatures died, and the swarm lost cohesion. The Phoenix Lords leapt from tunnel edge to broken wraithbone to the backs of the enemy, always where they were needed most, destroying the largest and most ferocious creatures with contemptuous ease. The psychic shocks of shattered waystones diminished in frequency, and a fervency gripped the army. The eldar scented victory. But the battle was not done.
‘There! Look!’ A panicked voice – Taec never knew whose.
A boiling mass of tyranids came from the tunnel to the front of the cavern, piling into a weak point of the eldar line.
‘An inconvenient happenstance,’ said Herinim.
Before Taec could access the skein and attempt to find a counter-move, a flight of dark-finned attack craft came speeding from the tunnel, barbarically attired eldar riding them. Black light stabbed from ostentatiously decorated weapons.
A female voice spoke over their communications network, a derisory note to it. ‘Cousins! We come to your aid in the nick of time, it seems. You are late for your battle.’
Explosions ripped through the cavern. The entire nexus was shaking. The webway here would not go unharmed by this melee.
‘Let us finish this,’ said Taec.
At Taec’s command, Herinim ordered the Phoenix Host to fall upon the voidspawn.
They were utterly destroyed.
Chapter Twelve
The Fate of Dûriel
Silent shapes slid across an ocean of stars, a mirror to the ocean of blood within Yriel’s mind. The bridge of the Flame of Asuryan was alive with activity, but the Admiral-Autarch of Iyanden saw none of it.
Yriel gripped the Spear of Twilight hard in his right hand. His left elbow rested upon the arm of his command pod’s chair. He chewed at the first knuckle of his forefinger, his eyes staring off into vistas no other could see.
The waves of blood beat harder. Iron spray filled the air. The unmoving sun had moved, sinking low to the horizon and raising sparks as bright as lance fire from the swell. All was blood red, the sky striated with clouds crimson as wounds. The fell presence of the spear was behind him, closer now than ever before, so close Yriel thought he might reach and touch it, if he were but fast enough.
The sun was hot on his face. The bubbles popped and churned in the foam on the sea, each one a short-lived screaming face.
The presence grew closer.
He turned.
‘Admiral! My admiral!’
Yriel awoke from his vision with a start. Yaleanar stood by him, his face troubled.
‘Are you well, my lord?’ asked Yaleanar quietly.
Yriel nodded dumbly. He was staring at his lieutenant with wide eyes, his face slack. He noticed his hand, knuckles raw and slick with spittle, and hid it behind himself.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘The spear…’ said Yaleanar.
Yriel nodded. Yaleanar understood. He composed himself. ‘Do we approach Dûriel, my shadow?’
‘Yes, my prince, only…’ Yaleanar’s face was worried.
‘What?’
‘See for yourself, Yriel.’ He pointed at a viewing globe. It showed Dûriel, icons and runes denoting the position of the hive fleets. Far Ranging Hunger’s was dark on the anti-solar side, Starving Dragon’s ships an albedo twinkle.
