The Ebonite Archymsts 8 страница

His chest heaved with the effort of storytelling, as though he had played host to the spirit of Thalia herself. Perturabo saw through the fiction of his exhaustion, knowing his brother was playing to the crowd’s expectation and the grandeur of the amphitheatre.

‘While the Angel Exterminatus sleeps, we will storm Asuryan’s gaol and take for ourselves the weapons forged in ancient times!’ roared Fulgrim.

Perturabo saw the tiny puff of blood appear on Fulgrim’s skull a second before he heard the crack of the shot. Fulgrim’s black eyes rolled back into his skull.

‘No!’ cried Perturabo as his brother dropped to the flagstones of the arena, his ashen face masked with blood.

‘Go!’ shouted Sharrowkyn, already moving and collapsing the long-range scope of the carbine. He turned and ran for the shadowed cloister of statues that ringed the outer circumference of the great amphitheatre as pandemonium erupted behind them. Baying cries of horror and anger echoed all around them, amplified tenfold by the structure’s acoustical genius, but neither Sharrowkyn nor Wayland had time to savour them.

The hunters would already be on their trail.

‘Did you kill him?’ asked Wayland as they reached their exit point, where coiled lengths of high-tensile wire were hidden in the shadows.

‘I hit him where I meant to,’ said Sharrowkyn, looping his wire around the neck of a goddess statue before attaching it to a metal ring on his armour. ‘Whether that’s enough to kill him is another matter. Drop now, talk later.’

Both warriors turned back to face the centre of the amphitheatre, balancing on the lip of a carved stone ledge hundreds of metres above the ground.

‘Ready?’ asked Sharrowkyn.

‘Ready,’ confirmed Wayland.

‘Drop.’

Sharrowkyn pushed out from the ledge and fell in a curving parabola down the face of the building. He controlled the rapid descent with his heavy-duty gauntlets, slamming back into the face of the structure halfway down. Marble cracked beneath his boots and fell in a splintered white rain to the ground below. Wayland was still higher than him, his jumps shorter. Sharrowkyn jumped again, turning in mid-flight to face the ground as it rushed towards him.

Crowds were already flooding from the amphitheatre in a panic. Perhaps they feared Imperial retribution, a warfleet that had approached in secret and not fallen foul of betrayal.

Would that were the case, thought Sharrowkyn.

Shots rang out, blasting chunks from the carved bas-relief above him, and he saw three warriors in the dull, unpainted armour of the Iron Warriors with their weapons trained upwards. Sharrowkyn arrested his descent as he snapped the wire from the metal ring. He fell the last twenty metres to the ground, landing with his weapon unlimbered and ready to fire.

He dropped to one knee and put a burst of needles through the visor of the nearest Iron Warrior. The traitor fell without a sound and Sharrowkyn put a single tox-round through the grilled faceplate of the next before rolling aside as a tearing blast of bolter fire chewed up where he’d landed. Another rapid spray of needles punched through the thin neck joint of the third Iron Warrior and blood sheeted down his bare metal breastplate as he toppled.

Wayland crashed to the ground next to him, and Sharrowkyn winced at the awkwardness of the Iron Hand’s landing.

‘A Corrivane novitiate has more grace in the air than you, brother,’ said Sharrowkyn.

Wayland grunted a reply and ran south as the sounds of panic spilled from the amphitheatre with the baying mobs of enemy followers and warriors. Sharrowkyn set off after him, following the course they had plotted en route to their clandestine observation of the two traitor primarchs. What had been planned as a fact-hunting mission had become one of assassination.

They moved through the debris of the theatre’s ultra-rapid construction, a city of vast spoil heaps, trenches, material stores and towering construction engines. Abandoned worker camps and supply depots flashed past on either side as they made their escape. Amid the sounds of terror surrounding the amphitheatre, Sharrowkyn heard the unmistakable sounds of pursuit. A life lived behind enemy lines had given him a preternatural sense for being hunted. For all that he hated the traitors and all they had done, he didn’t forget that these were warriors of the Legions. They were just as deadly and just as proficient as any of the Emperor’s warriors.

But they had never fought a Raven Guard and an Iron Hand like this.

‘They’re coming,’ he shouted to Wayland.

‘Blowing the first charge.’

A thunderous detonation shook the ground as Wayland triggered the first of many explosives seeded along their escape route. A cascade of dirt and broken body parts rained down as the echoes of the thermic charge faded.

Sharrowkyn skidded to a halt behind an overturned skip-loader, resting his rifle on the battered metal lip of the hopper. A mob of men and women in garish robes emerged from the shadow of a heap of discarded rock debris, and Sharrowkyn put the first six down with as many shots. The rest faltered in their advance, but kept coming even as he killed another five.

‘Displace!’ ordered Wayland. Sharrowkyn snapped up his rifle and ran.

Screams of hate erupted at the sight of him and a ragged volley of poorly aimed shots chased him down. A chugging blast of bolter fire ripped through the mob, tearing a handful to shreds and blowing limbs from yet more. Where Sharrowkyn’s fire was more efficiently lethal, the savage roar of Wayland’s bolter cowed the mortals more effectively.

Sharrowkyn reached Wayland’s position behind a piled heap of steel rebar cages and slapped his shoulder guard, taking up a covering position as he heard the roar of engines and the thunder of booming footsteps that shook the earth.

‘Rhinos,’ he said.

‘No, Land Raiders,’ answered Wayland.

‘They’re looking to box us in,’ said Sharrowkyn. ‘We need to keep moving.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Go,’ said Sharrowkyn, shouldering his rifle as the weight of fire intensified around them.

Wayland ran for the narrow cut between two pyramidal heaps of broken stone and loose rubble. Shots burst around Sharrowkyn, and fragments scored his armour as the angry roar of a madly revving engine echoed from somewhere nearby.

‘Sharrowkyn!’ shouted Wayland as another buried explosive ripped through their pursuers.

‘Cover me,’ he shouted back.

Bolter shots punched through the screaming mob, and Sharrowkyn ran to join Wayland.

He risked a backwards glance in time to see a pair of Land Raiders crest a metallic dune and crash back down with earth-shattering slams of iron. Their hulls were maddening swirls of purple and pink, organically scaled as though clad in serpent skin. Glistening banners trailed from their topsides and smoke dispensers trailed a mist of iridescent fumes in their wake. The sight of them was so bizarre that Sharrowkyn’s step faltered at their appearance.

It was a hesitation that saved his life.

Flaring beams of incandescent las-fire pulverised the stack of rubble ahead of him, sending a column of ash and steel mushrooming skywards. Sharrowkyn was hurled through the air and landed hard on stacked entrenching tools. He rolled back to his feet and set off again as another syncopated blast blew out the ground behind him.

Sharrowkyn dropped into a wide trench bedded with rail tracks as shots spanked from the stone and earth and the rapid spray of heavy-calibre bolters sawed the air. One shot clipped the edge of his breastplate and spun him around. He rose, kept running. He looked up to see bulky figures in Legion warplate moving along the top ridges of stone and excavated earth either side. Mass reactive fire stitched the earth around him, but the stealth upgrades worked into his battle armour were throwing off the targeting mechanisms of the enemy guns.

That’s what happens when you rely on machines and not a good eye.

A shot punched down into his shoulder guard, and he stumbled, weaving left and right as the screaming roar of the Land Raiders swelled behind him. He heard steelwork groan and buckle, the screech of tracks tearing over debris and the coughing howl of engines. The wide trench opened out into a circular materials depot, heaped with blocks of shaped stone, permacrete in moisture-proof vacuum sacks, steel reinforcement towers and rows of giant pipes the size of a Titan’s gun barrels.

‘Find cover,’ said Wayland’s voice in his helmet. ‘Now.’

Sharrowkyn ran for the wide-mouthed pipes, each twice as tall as his stooped-over height, and threw himself inside. He pressed himself flat against one curved wall.

‘Boom,’ said Wayland.

A cataclysmic detonation shook the world with seismic force. Atmosphere compressed and burst as a pressure wave pummelled its way along the pipe, crushing Sharrowkyn to the wall. Hammering echoes of secondary explosions crackled and thumped, and he felt the autosenses of his armour resetting in the wake of the pounding soundwaves and blinding glow. The pipe was concertinaed and warped as though it had been stepped on by a battle engine, and light broke in through cracks in the steelwork.

Sharrowkyn picked himself up and ran towards the far end, checking his rifle was clear of obstructions. A shape appeared silhouetted at the end of the tunnel: bulky, armoured and post-human. Sharrowkyn’s weapon was already at his shoulder and he put a single toxin shot into the target’s centre-mass. The warrior crumpled with a strangled cry and Sharrowkyn vaulted the body, only vaguely noticing the hideous facial disfigurements and the strange, long-necked weapon he carried.

Reaching the end of the tunnel, Sharrowkyn backed up against the buckled steelwork of the pipe, ducking a head out to see what was going on.

It wasn’t good.

The enemy had reacted far faster than they’d expected. Iron Warriors and Emperor’s Children were circling around to form an unbreakable perimeter. Gangs of soldiers in khaki uniforms spread methodically through the construction site, sweeping the area with a thoroughness that surprised him until he saw they were Selucid Thorakites.

Here and there, Sharrowkyn saw the bulkier shape of traitor legionaries, bellowing orders or directing their charges with a clubbing blow. Sharrowkyn took a moment to listen, trying to gain some sense of whether he had the dubious honour of being the first Imperial servant to succeed in killing a traitor primarch. Some wailing voices claimed to have seen Fulgrim’s head split open by the killer’s bullet, while others claimed the wounded primarch himself was leading the hunt for his would-be assassin.

The truth was impossible to know, and he didn’t have time to stick around and sort fact from fiction.

The enemy couldn’t have closed the noose just yet; he still had time.

But only if he moved now.

Sharrowkyn ducked out of the pipe and made his way farther from the amphitheatre, moving where the darkness aided him, embracing shadows where the harsh beams of searchlights passed over him. Every metre he gained was a victory, but he was running out of space and time to manoeuvre as more and more warriors flooded the construction yards.

‘Wayland, are you there?’ he hissed over the vox. ‘I could use some more back-up here.’

Static buzzed from the speakers in his helmet, and he wondered if Wayland had been caught and killed in the moments since triggering the charges. The Iron Hand didn’t have his flair for stealth work, nor had he trained in Raven Guard escape and evasion techniques. Sharrowkyn owed Wayland his life after he’d pulled his wounded body onto a gunship on Isstvan V, and the thought of that debt going unpaid left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Sharrowkyn pushed onwards, crawling through pools of stagnant oil-polluted water, beneath heavy lifter rigs and between stacked building materials. He ran along the edge of a high-walled ravelin, its interior stacked with coiled razorwire, bladed sawbucks and other tools of the besieger. He heard the creak of a footfall an instant before he realised there was someone behind him, and dived forwards as a squealing blast of sonic force blasted a metre-wide hole in the modular plascrete wall. He rolled and brought his rifle up, pressing down on the trigger and emptying the solid needle magazine in the time it took to aim. His shots pierced the Emperor’s Children warrior’s breastplate and misted his chest in a mass of pulped flesh.

The legionary laughed hysterically and brought his weapon to bear again.

‘You only get one chance,’ said Sharrowkyn, dropping his rifle and drawing his two shoulder-sheathed gladii. Each black blade was a slice of utter darkness, non-reflective and near frictionless. Sharrowkyn leapt, and his first blade sliced through the warrior’s sonic weapon, the second buried itself in his neck.

And still he wouldn’t die.

Sharrowkyn wrenched his blades clear as the warrior opened his distended jaws impossibly wide. He’d thought the warrior’s monstrous appearance was a hideously carved helmet, but now saw the error of that assessment. Nightmarish surgeries had transformed his enemy into something less than human, a parody of what evolution had wrought over millions of years and deemed fittest for survival. He screamed with deafening volume, and though Sharrowkyn silenced him with a blade thrust that punched through the back of his plasticised skull, the damage was done.

The enemy had a fix on his position.

Sharrowkyn sheathed his blades and scooped up his rifle, running for the edge of the construction site. More gunfire puffed the earth and more screams of the hideously transformed warriors echoed around him. Sharrowkyn climbed to the top of an earthen ridge, violating the cardinal rule of skylining himself, and looked for a way out.

There wasn’t one.

He ducked back as more gunfire punched the ridgeline and dropped to his haunches as a host of mortal soldiers and traitor legionaries converged on his position. Four glistening Land Raiders rolled into sight, followed by a dozen Iron Warriors Rhinos. Traitors disembarked with grim efficiency, marching towards their trapped prey.

Sharrowkyn slotted home his last clip of solid needles and scrambled back up the slope as more gunfire stabbed towards him. Las-burns scorched his armour, and damage indicators flickered angrily on his helmet visor. He turned and brought his rifle to bear, each shot pitching an enemy warrior to the ground.

He saw crew-served guns being wheeled into place: quad-lasers, small-calibre howitzers, tunnelling mortars. At least a thousand enemy soldiers surrounded him, intent on taking him alive and making him pay for what he’d done.

‘Damn, but they’re making sure,’ he said.

Sharrowkyn heard the roaring of engines behind him, the throaty intake of hot air being gulped into powerful vectored ramjets. A storm of dust devils blew up around him as a multi-spectrally camouflaged gunship rose up behind the ridge on throbbing banks of jetwash. Coloured a dull midnight grey, its swept-back wings bristled with cannons, and its stubby prow with linked banks of heavy bolters. Missile racks on its upper fuselage locked into place with a clatter of loading mechanisms.

The Storm Eagle dipped its tapered nose and Sharrowkyn saw Sabik Wayland in the cockpit.

Wayland nodded and Sharrowkyn dropped flat as a hurricane of shells blitzed down the slope, shredding anything living in a storm of explosive mass-reactive shells and armour-busting penetrator rounds. The traitors scattered as the nose of the Storm Eagle swung left and right, turning the ground below Sharrowkyn into a boiling cauldron of hot metal and chewed up flesh. The noise was incredible, a never-ending hellstorm of chugging bangs, rotating ammo hoppers and clinking shell casings falling in a brass rain.

The enemy Land Raiders weathered the storm of gunfire, but Wayland wasn’t done.

Four missiles detached from their mountings and slashed down at the heavily armoured vehicles. Three of the tanks detonated instantly, blooming fireballs immolating the soldiers who’d taken shelter behind them. A fourth lurched like a wounded animal, crushing Emperor’s Children beneath its flaming bulk before internal explosions blew it apart from the inside.

The quiet that followed was like the aftermath of a terrible accident, the stunned silence before true horror kicks in. Sharrowkyn used that moment to scramble up the slope towards the Storm Eagle. The assault gunship hovered on a cushion of superheated air that turned the top of the ridge to glass. The barrels of its rapid-firing cannons bled heat and drooled smoke. Its assault ramp slammed down and Sharrowkyn wasted no time in leaping aboard.

‘Go!’ he shouted as he slammed a palm into the closing mechanism.

The Storm Eagle spun on its axis, furiously nimble, and Sharrowkyn was hurled against the fuselage as Wayland punched the engines. The gunship dropped and flew close to the earth as it jinked and wove an evasive pattern through the siegeworks. Sharrowkyn struggled to reach the cockpit, dragging himself along via handholds on jutting stanchions and crew harnesses.

He dropped into the co-pilot’s seat, seeing the red earth and rocky mountains swinging wildly through the armourglass canopy.

‘You cut that one fine,’ he said.

‘If you’d kept up with me, I wouldn’t have had to,’ returned Wayland.

Sharrowkyn shrugged, unwilling to argue the point as the gunship’s wild manoeuvring threaded a path through waving streams of anti-aircraft fire. Wayland’s hands danced over the controls, flaring the engines, pumping out targeting decoys in their wake and avoiding the most predictable flight paths. The Storm Eagle’s agility was far greater than any Legion aircraft Sharrowkyn had flown in, and its stealth capabilities ensured that none of the coordinated fire patterns of the Iron Warriors came close to touching it.

As the craft powered away from the valley, its madly twisting course was replaced by something approaching level flight.

‘We’re clear?’ he asked.

‘Their own gunships will be scrambling, but they’ll not catch us before we’re back aboard the Sisypheum, ’ said Wayland.

‘What about their orbital launches?’

The Iron Hand snorted in derision.

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Wayland. ‘I designed the Nighthawk-pattern, remember?’

Sharrowkyn grinned and rapped his knuckles on the edge of the armoured bucket seat. ‘You know, Sabik, I think the Mechanicum might give this variant their seal of approval after all,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Sharrowkyn. ‘Eventually.’

SEVEN

I Was There
The Paths Above
Flesh Tribute Fulgrim toppled in slow motion, like the mightiest tree in the forest felled without even knowing the rot was in its roots. Perturabo was at his brother’s side before anyone else in the amphitheatre was even aware of what had happened. He caught Fulgrim’s head as it struck the flagstones of the stage with a sickening crack. With a thought he summoned the Iron Circle and bellowed at the crowds now surging from their seating in horror to keep back.

‘Brother!’ cried Perturabo, scanning the upper tiers of the Thaliakron for signs of the sniper. He replayed the moment of the bullet’s impact, analysing and triangulating the shot’s origin point. He saw nothing, but any marksman worthy of the name would have already displaced.

The crashing footfalls of the Iron Circle surrounded him, forming an unbroken ring of protection. Legs braced, shields locked, the robots swathed Fulgrim and Perturabo in shadow and steel. The shot had struck Fulgrim on the right temple, a neat wound that appeared to have no twin on the opposite side. Whatever projectile the would-be assassin favoured was still inside his skull.

‘Fulgrim,’ said Perturabo. ‘Speak to me.’

‘Brother…’ said Fulgrim, his eyes like nuggets of onyx amid the streams of blood running down his face.

‘I’m here.’

‘Just think,’ whispered Fulgrim. ‘You will be able to say you were there…’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You were there the day that Fulgrim fell.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Perturabo. ‘This is nothing. You and I both have taken worse wounds than this in our time.’

‘I fear you may be wrong, brother,’ said Fulgrim, reaching up to grip his arm as though ready to deliver a valediction.

Blood continued to stream down Fulgrim’s face, and Perturabo knew that shouldn’t be happening. Even a legionary’s body should have sealed the wound by now. A primarch’s physiology should have ended this blood flow almost instantaneously. Had the Emperor stooped to using the envenomed tools of the assassin now? Perturabo’s anger coalesced into a compressed supernova at such dishonourable stratagems. Only cowards refused to face their foes in the arena of battle, and the thought that his gene-father had sanctioned such shadow killers was a stain on every memory he had of him.

Perturabo heard the growl of his automata and the whine of their hammers powering up. Artificial muscles thrummed with building power, ready to destroy whoever or whatever was approaching.

Fulgrim stirred from his repose and said, ‘It is Fabius, my Apothecary…’

‘Let him in,’ ordered Perturabo, and the Iron Circle parted long enough to allow a hunched figure in the livery of the Emperor’s Children through. Perturabo took an instant dislike to this Fabius: the hollow cheeks, the unkempt hair and the gaunt hunger in his gimlet eyes that looked him up and down as though measuring his coffin.

The Apothecary’s armour seemed out of place on his body, like the carapace of something larger worn by the parasite that had killed it. A squatting spider of a mechanised contraption lurked at his shoulders. As he set to work on his fallen primarch, Perturabo smelled a witch’s brew of evil aromas – embalming fluids, noxious chemicals he couldn’t place and an abattoir’s worth of stale blood – that no amount of disinfectant would ever conceal.

The warrior was post-human, no question of that, but the sheer number of self-administered surgical scars visible through his thinned hair and upon his exposed forearms made Perturabo question whether that was enough for this man. Had the grotesques in Fulgrim’s carnivalia been his creations?

‘My lord!’ exclaimed Fabius, examining the bright, oxygen-rich blood leaking from the wound. ‘This must be how the Sons of Horus felt on Davin. It is truly the worst feeling I have known.’

‘Shut up and heal him,’ ordered Perturabo, in no mood for melodrama and disliking the comparison with the Warmaster.

‘Fabius,’ said Fulgrim. ‘I can feel it in my head.’

Fabius addressed Perturabo. ‘What manner of weapon did this?’

‘I don’t know, but the entry wound is too small for a bolt-round. There’s too much impact trauma for a las-weapon, so my guess is some kind of solid-slug rifle.’

Fabius nodded and turned back to Fulgrim, the flexing narthecium unit mounted on his shoulders obscuring the work he was doing. Perturabo wanted to step from the protection of the Iron Circle to find out what was happening beyond the Thaliakron, but he didn’t trust Fabius to be left alone with Fulgrim. Something told Perturabo that no one would be safe in this man’s company for long, their flesh a canvas upon which he would practise unnatural surgical experimentations.

Beyond the shields of the robots, Perturabo could hear the furious anger and growing terror of the crowd. They had all seen the Phoenician go down, and every second they were kept in the dark as to his fate would spawn ever more elaborate rumours. With a final suspicious glance at Fabius, Perturabo stepped from the Iron Circle’s protection.

He found the warsmiths of his Trident waiting for him, circling the artificial guardians like bull grox protecting a birthing mother. Emperor’s Children stood beyond them, scavengers waiting to pick off the weakest member of the herd. The imagery was unpleasant, but apt.

The Emperor’s Children moved with bow-taut urgency, desperate to learn of Fulgrim, but unwilling to risk the wrath of the Iron Warriors and their primarch’s bodyguard.

A warrior in thickly-ornamented Cataphractii plate strung with flayed skin and hung with ribbons of bone stepped forwards, his whole face a burn scar that had healed poorly and been inexpertly treated. The warrior’s eyes were cataracted nightmares of pink-veined fluid that wept viscous tears along the craggy ruin of his features.

‘Who are you?’ asked Perturabo.

‘Julius Kaesoron,’ answered the warrior. ‘First Captain. The Phoenician?’

‘He lives,’ said Perturabo. ‘It will take more than a poor marksman with a rifle to end a primarch.’

‘Let us see him,’ demanded Kaesoron, making to push past.

Perturabo put his hand on Kaesoron’s chest. ‘Don’t make me stop you,’ he said.

‘He is our primarch!’ protested the warrior.

‘And he is my brother,’ snapped Perturabo.

Kaesoron’s milky eyes swept over the highest tiers of the Thaliakron, his expression unreadable through his scarring.

‘So much for the vaunted Iron Warriors security,’ he said; an arrogant dismissal that made Perturabo want to smash his skull with Forgebreaker ’s head. ‘This should not have happened.’

‘No,’ agreed Perturabo, forcing his anger down. ‘It shouldn’t. And if Fulgrim hadn’t insisted on this theatricality, then it could have been avoided. Not even Valdor’s warriors could have protected him.’

Kaesoron opened his mouth to disagree, but Perturabo shut him down first. ‘You can do nothing for your primarch now. Busy yourself with catching whoever did this. Hunt him down and kill him.’

‘The hunt is already under way,’ said Kaesoron. ‘A single marksman has no chance of escaping this treacherous act. Likely he will be caught within five hundred metres of the building.’

‘And if he is not?’

‘Even if by some miracle he manages to slip the net, there is no way he can get off-world or escape the fleets of ships in orbit,’ said Kaesoron.

Perturabo tested that thought and found it wanting. ‘If your fleet assets were arranged in any halfway recognisable formation, I might agree with you,’ he said.

Kaesoron stiffened at the insult, and Perturabo arched an eyebrow as he saw the man’s gauntlets curl into fists.

‘Do you want to die, little man?’ said Perturabo. ‘Or has my brother’s Legion become stupid as well as barbaric since swearing their oaths to Horus?’

‘We swore no oath to Horus,’ spat Kaesoron.

Perturabo hid his shock, but rather than pursuing Kaesoron’s remark with a logical follow-up question, he let its implication settle in the back of his mind.

‘Then listen to me, Julius Kaesoron, First Captain. This is my world and my amphitheatre. You are just an annoyance. Irritate me again and I will kill you.’

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13