Lords of nocturne, p.98
Lords Of Nocturne, page 98
Tsu’gan formed a grimace, the only evidence that he was fighting to resist the mental bypass. His body was still not his own.
He was running, snap firing at his brothers on the battlements, his every instinct screaming at him to turn his weapon on the traitors in his midst instead. Solid shot spanged off his shoulder guard and plastron, and he grunted. That at least had been of his own making. Tsu’gan’s return fire forced the shooter to cower, whilst a second burst clipped him and he disappeared amidst gouting blood.
Lorkar ordered the advance and was first to lead the line. The renegade kept Tsu’gan close, perhaps to keep an eye on him, or maybe he was considering trying to slay him during the battle.
I am surrounded by enemies.
He wondered if his mind-shackled body would protect him, or would he submit to the murderer’s knife without resistance?
Another of the Techmarine’s tracked engines launched grappling lines up onto the crenellations. Six flanged hooks bit hard and deep, burying adamantium teeth into Hesiod’s outer wall. He fired another six as the machine’s launcher recycled its cargo and the Marines Malevolent sprinted to grasp the dangling wire-weave lines.
An ambitious kroot went for Tsu’gan’s line, but the once-Salamander wrestled the alien off and snapped its neck before pushing into the climb. Three of its brethren shrilling vengeance went for his back. With one hand wrapped around the wire, Tsu’gan swung out from the wall and gunned them all down with his bolter.
Backstabbers dealt with, he continued his ascent in earnest.
Though he railed against every metre, Tsu’gan quickly reached the apex of the wall and was confronted by a pair of Scouts. Too close for bolters, they went for their combat-blades.
‘Die, traitor!’ one of them yelled, trying to fix his gladius into the gap between rerebrace and plastron. Tsu’gan turned the thrust aside with his arm, the blade raking a groove along his gauntlet and vambrace, before punching the Scout in the face.
He shattered the neophyte’s cheek, using the stock of his bolter to block the frenzied hacking of the other one. Tsu’gan shoved him back and stepped into the space he’d created, drawing his chainsword at the same time.
Traitor…
Tsu’gan was no traitor.
Heed me, brothers! he pleaded. I am trapped by another’s will. Help me!
The screaming voice echoed within him but only Tsu’gan could hear it. Though his face was swollen and lathered with blood, the Scout with the shattered cheek came on again. This time, Tsu’gan batted down his clumsy thrust and swatted him so hard he fell off the back of the battlements and pinwheeled to the ground below. The crunch of bone was lost to the sound of combat.
Turning his full attention on the other one, Tsu’gan pushed the muzzle of his bolter into the Scout’s chest and pulled the trigger. The close-range burst scorched his armour, turning it black from the discharge flare, but ripped open the neophyte’s torso.
Tsu’gan let him crumple in a bloody heap as he went to engage the next combatant.
He was back-to-back with Rennard, a warrior of Lorkar’s brood, who was crouched down laying incendary charges. It seemed the Marines Malevolent meant to forge a breach from the inside out.
Glancing at his retinal display, Tsu’gan noticed Iagon had gained the wall too. His ident-rune flashed red, unlike the others which were yellow. The traitor-dog was in his crosshairs now, but he was powerless to slay him. The only upside was several other warriors separated them so at least Iagon couldn’t plant a blade in his back like he’d done to N’keln. Nine renegades had reached the summit of Hesiod’s defensive perimeter and were fighting hard along it to make room for the others coming after them. Elsewhere on the wall there were similar breaches.
Impulse drove Tsu’gan on into the Salamander Scouts. Most mortal fighters, the troopers of the Imperial Guard, the crusaders of the Holy Ecclesiarchy, would find even Space Marine neophytes tough combatants.
To Tsu’gan, it was like fighting infants. Having cut his way through the initial press of defenders, he found he had room to manoeuvre and could bring all of his ruthless combat-training to bear.
He cut down the first two Scouts that raced to oppose him with contemptuous ease, though his mind was railing at their slaughter and burning with impotent rage at what Nihilan’s technomancy had forced him into doing.
A third took a bracing stance and swung around a heavy bolter to rake the gap between them.
Tsu’gan reached back and seized Rennard. The Marine Malevolent wasn’t expecting the move and by the time he fought it he was being used as a meat shield and struck by mass-reactive shells.
The dense impacts rocked the warrior’s body and Tsu’gan pushed forwards behind it all the way to his opponent, causing horrendous damage to Rennard in the process. At almost point blank the sheer force of the heavy salvo knocked them both off their feet.
Tsu’gan landed hard on his back but was quick to roll the groaning Marine Malevolent off him as he led with his chainsword. He rose from prone into a crouch just as the next round of shells came chugging from the Scout’s belt-fed cannon. Tsu’gan threw his blade, hilt over tip like a hand axe. It embedded in the Scout’s body, impaling him. Spitting blood, the neophyte stopped firing and collapsed to the ground.
Wrenching his chainsword loose with a dirty schluck of engrained gore, Tsu’gan thumbed the activation stud and leapt over the body. Blood was thumping in his ears, like a wave battering the shoreline. He heard his breath, rapid in his chest, not from combat-exertion but from his efforts to break the fetters around his free will.
This was Hesiod, once his home. These Scouts, they were the Chapter’s lifeblood, its next generation.
And he was killing them.
Tsu’gan was weeping now, tears of fire running down his face inside his battle-helm, but he couldn’t stop. Leaving Rennard to bleed out, he went hunting for more enemies. The hapless warrior’s incendiaries went off behind him, issuing a defeaning boom and filling part of the wall with fire and frag.
He glanced back. It had barely made a crack.
Inside Tsu’gan, the part of him that was fighting the mind shackle scoffed at the idiocy of the renegades. Nocturnean stone, especially stone hewn for the Seat of Tribal Kings, was not so easy to break.
The troops on the wall were thinning out as they struggled to defend it with reduced numbers. Attrition for Nihilan’s army had barely made a dent; every casualty was felt keenly by the Salamanders, though.
Ahead of him, Tsu’gan saw a Scout fumbling with a snub-nosed grenade launcher. He looked up, half focused on reloading and half on the warrior rushing him.
Another easy kill.
Tsu’gan fought it but his chainsword came around in a butchering arc just as the Scout was bringing up his arms to fire.
Sparks spilled off the grinding teeth as they whined and growled against a rival blade blocking the route to the neophyte’s neck.
A bulky warrior in artificered battle-plate hauled the Scout aside, shouting something to him that Tsu’gan didn’t catch. He then twisted his arm, pushing Tsu’gan’s chainblade away and out, exposing his chest where he stabbed a spatha that had appeared miraculously in the veteran’s other hand.
Pain made Tsu’gan back off, and the spatha’s serrated edge chewed up flesh and battle-plate as it was forcibly withdrawn.
‘Fight me then, traitor,’ the Salamander veteran invited, adopting a fighting stance that Tsu’gan vaguely remebered through the mental fug of the mind shackle.
‘Master…’
The words actually issued from his throat but were lost behind his battle-helm and the veteran’s fearsome renewed assault.
Tsu’gan went on the defensive at once. He tried to bring up his bolter for a close range burst to wing his opponent but the flash of a spatha sent the weapon spinning from blade-stung fingers.
‘You are strong and skilled,’ said the veteran, pressing his advantage and pushing Tsu’gan back across the battlements to negate the gains he’d made.
He knew this warrior. He had learned from him, been his student.
Tsu’gan fashioned a riposte that cut into the veteran’s shoulder guard, but was hacked in turn against his flank. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew he was hurt. It rimed his vision, the edges of his sight burning black and the darkness creeping closer over it.
Parrying an overhead from the veteran’s chainsword, he aimed a punch at his head but missed and hit the upper arm. It was enough to loosen the veteran’s grip on the spatha, which Tsu’gan exploited with a chainblade smash of his own, disarming him. He’d used the flat metal of the weapon’s casing but it was enough to send the secondary blade clattering away uselessly.
‘Very skilled…’ the veteran corrected, taking his chainsword in a two-handed grip. It was only then Tsu’gan noticed it was modified with a longer hilt and broader blade not unlike an ancient bastard sword.
Other trappings of the veteran’s war panoply came into sharp focus too – his armour plate, the holstered melta-pistol and gladius; the saurian-styled helm and the timbre of his voice.
‘Prebian…’
Tsu’gan was fighting the Salamanders Master of Arms. Small wonder he was losing. He blocked a heavy cut that staggered him. A shoulder barge to follow up dented his plastron and had Tsu’gan reeling.
‘Prebian…’ It was louder this time.
He parried, but the blow was so hard it went through his defences driving Tsu’gan’s churning chainsword into his own face. Sparks and chips of metal spilled from his gorget but the spinning teeth went higher, scoring a jagged line into his battle-helm and putting out one of the retinal lenses. One half of Tsu’gan’s tactical display was reduced to crackling static and for a few brief seconds he was blinded in one eye.
‘Here is the taste you’ve been craving, hell-kite,’ Prebian snarled, pressing the blade closer so it bit deeper into the ceramite. ‘I’ll see your face before you die,’ he promised as Tsu’gan’s battle-helm split apart under the strain and fell away from his head in two battered halves.
Prebian pulled up short, his mouth agape.
There was remebrance in his eyes and disbelief, visible even though his helmet lenses.
‘Brother Tsu’gan?’
The momentary distraction gave Tsu’gan the advantage. With a roar, he threw Prebian off and brought up his partly blunted chainblade. The mechanism was churning hard, its servos straining from when it had cut into ceramite, but he could still use it to kill.
He wanted to resist, staying his hand and putting up his blade, but the mind shackle wouldn’t let him.
Instead, he attacked with gritted teeth and rivulets of sorrowful fire trickling from his eyes.
Please, they said, please, brother…
Against his will, he fought on.
Prebian fended off each blow, holding back as he realised what was happening.
‘Fight it, brother,’ he hissed, eyeing the alien device attached to Tsu’gan’s face. ‘Give me an opening.’
Tsu’gan understood. He bored deep within himself, tried to use anything as a bulwark to hold onto, a place in his psyche where he could stand his ground and fight.
He tried to remember his first kill, when he had brought a leo’nid pelt from the dunes as a trophy; the first time he had wrought a blade and wielded it in anger; he thought about his father, the Tribal King of Hesiod, and the day he had wept before his cold tomb in the undercrofts before being taken by Zen’de. But they were, all of them, imperfect memories from a time that seemed like it belonged to someone else.
Tsu’gan was losing and soon Prebian would have to fight back with all his skill. The Master would be forced to kill the former student.
Brotherhood, honour, glory to his Chapter – they all meant something to him, but none alone was strong enough to countermand the mind shackle. He needed to focus on something vital, something powerful.
He remembered Dak’ir.
Not since Scoria had he seen the Ignean, not since he had been taken by the Librarius and Tsu’gan had ascended to the ranks of the Firedrakes had their paths crossed. Dak’ir might have slipped from his mind, but the anger had not faded. He, the low-born of the prophecy, fated as saviour or destroyer, was still the source of Tsu’gan’s distemper. He used it, fashioned his wrath into a spear and thrust its tip through the barrier between his mind and body.
He lowered his chainsword.
Do it, his silent lips told Prebian.
The Master didn’t hesitate. He struck at the mind shackle, hacking into it with his gladius and cleaving it down the middle. But as soon as the blade was withdrawn, the damage was undone. The device had repaired itself.
Tsu’gan sagged in defeat, feeling the numbness in his head again as the tendrils of bondage were remade. His brief rebellion was over. The mind shackle had reasserted its influence. He lifted his blade.
End my suffering… His mournful gaze spoke the words even if his lips could not.
Prebian defended a hail of attacks but wasn’t ready to give in. Waiting for another opening, he thrust again recklessly with his gladius this time and impaled the device. Already the blade was being pushed out, the split it had carved reknitting as living metal flowed over it like sentient mercury.
‘Strength of Vulkan,’ he said through clenched teeth.
Dropping his chainsword, Prebian used both hands to push back. His breath came heavy through his fanged vox-grille as he pressed hard on the gladius’s pommel with the flat of his palm. His grip, wrapped around the hilt, was like adamantium.
The alien metal was stronger.
‘I cannot…’ he gasped, holding on as the device excised his blade like a splinter pushed from a closing wound.
Prebian’s eyes met Tsu’gan’s as he realised he was going to fail and be left defenceless.
‘Brother, try–’
Tsu’gan lunged with the chainsword still clasped in his hand, thrusting it all the way into Prebian’s side.
‘Where it’s weakest,’ rasped the Master, repeating the selfsame words he’d given to the aspirants on the ash plains.
Tsu’gan had been one of his best.
He fell back, first onto one knee and then the other. The sword still jutted from his body, his life blood pouring down his armour in a dark flood.
With Tsu’gan standing over him about to finish the kill, Prebian reached for the clasps on his battle-helm and then removed it.
His old face was lined, the skin turning from onyx to a charcoal grey. His hair was silvern and thin. Fire burned in the Master’s eyes still but it was fading fast.
‘My last embers,’ he said, looking up at his killer, as if he could read his thoughts.
Tsu’gan yanked the blade free, drawing a grimace of pain from Prebian. A welter of blood came with it and he held it aloft for the murder-stroke.
Horror filled his eyes as the sheer magnitude of what he about to do came crashing down.
I am no traitor…
In retrospect, it sounded like a hollow declaration now.
He was about to fell his old master in cold blood when a lance of light roared from the hell-red heavens like the voice of a god and turned the sky magnesium white.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I
A THROWN SPEAR
Nocturne screamed. The earth cracked and like a beast with its flank skewered by the hunter’s spear its blood poured forth. Deep in the bowels of the world, the lamentation song of the ancient drakes was drowned by the sound of tectonic plates breaking and grinding.
Presaged by the runnels of lava spilling out into the plains like fiery arteries, a cavalcade of massive earthquakes wracked the surface of Nocturne. Mount Deathfire bellowed, spewing up a vast pyroclastic cloud that fashioned night from day in a matter of seconds. The air thickened with ash as the red world fought to tear itself apart, thrashing and shouting with the pain of her wounding.
Crimson lightning split the smoke-drenched sky; the deep lava glow of the erupting mountain chains was like a firmament of hot amber stars in the blackness. Thunder rolled in belligerent salvos, speaking doom and an end to all things.
Chasms opened in the lands beyond the Sanctuary Cities. Entire settlements, the tented outposts of nomads, the subterranean domains of cave-dwellers were extinguished in moments. Those not smothered by ash were boiled with intense heat; the few that survived those trials were swallowed by the gaping earth or drowned in hellish lava.
A jagging line in the ground fed all the way to the gate-wall of Hesiod, thick enough to devour a gunship whole without it touching the sides. It struck the void shield first, which shimmered in a few seconds of valiant resistence before capitulating and collapsing. Then it roared on, smashing into the wall itself and sharpening its craggy teeth on the foundation stone of Nocturne. This was the planet’s bedrock, one of the seven places discovered by the earth shamans of old and where the tribal-kings had founded the Sanctuaries that would later become city-bastions.
A fissure rode up the dark obsidian of Hesiod’s boundary. It became a crack, widening farther as each second passed, tearing open the city’s defences like they were naught but clay.
As the gate-wall parted, the warriors upon it cascaded down onto the courtyard below in an armoured rain, still battling as they fell. Bodies struck the ground with the impact of mortar shells, a flesh and metal barrage where the ordnance groaned and bled and died in the aftermath.
