Warhammer 40,000 - [Weekender 02] Read online

  The courtesan turned her fury back on the commander.

  “I don’t know what Archon Myzrioch expected of you but he is dead—by my hand—and his expectations died with him. You live for your mistress, Lelith Hesperax, now. You and your turncoats face possible death in the night forest or certain death here. You choose.”

  The commander looked from the courtesan to his wych mistress. Lowering his head uncertainly he started backing out of the tent door. The sudden savagery of the officer’s disappearance was felt like a gut punch to all watching his exit. The night was a sea of shadow behind the kabalites and it was as if he had been snatched below its black waves by a submerged and hidden predator.

  “On the door!” Lelith Hesperax yelled with succubite authority, prompting the commander’s remaining sentries to set up about the entrance with their weapons trained on the opening. Outside, bleak sunlight had briefly returned.

  “You will talk!” the courtesan turned on Czevak. Slamming a bone goblet down on the desk, the courtesan poured a ruddy mixture into it from a ghoulish decanter. The liquid sizzled and spat in the cup. “Worlds like this,” the courtesan told him, “supply the kabal with slaves and beaststock. Sometimes they face the unnatural enemies of the warp and more exotic poisons are needed for our blades. They supply these also.”

  “What is it?” Czevak asked.

  “The blood of the warp beasts we have trapped in the night forests,” the courtesan told him. “Rarely does one substance have the potential to poison not only the body but also the mind and the soul. Now talk. What is your business with our portals and who are your friends outside? Tell me now and I promise I’ll kill you quickly. If you refuse, you can tell me between your pleadings for such a luxury, as the toxin warps your form. Consider... Are you ready to evolve?”

  The inquisitor licked his dry lips.

  “I’m here to destroy the warp gate,” Czevak answered honestly. “A powerful sorcerer sworn to the Dark Gods comes to this place to take possession of the artefact and mount an invasion of the webway. Nothing will stand in his way: not the seers and strike forces of the Ulthwé, nor the cult warriors of the Dark City or the roving harlequinades of the webway. He will stop at nothing until the Black Library of Chaos is his. I aim to stop him.”

  The courtesan grinned. It almost cracked her face.

  “You expect us to believe such a thing?” The courtesan picked up the chalice and snapped her fingers, prompting the sslyth to tighten its grip on the inquisitor.

  “Wait!” Czevak blurted. “Wait!”

  The poisoner hovered. “Do you have anything to go with that?” the inquisitor asked. “A chaser of some kind, or perhaps some of those little berries on a stick?”

  Grabbing the inquisitor’s face with its spare hands, the sslyth forced his mouth open. The courtesan tipped the bubbling contents of the cup into the gap between his puckered lips. The reptiloid then closed Czevak’s mouth and held his nose, forcing the corruption down his throat. The sslyth released the inquisitor and Czevak immediately doubled over, his back arched over into convulsions. The courtesan watched with satisfaction as the inquisitor struggled and a roar of agony built up inside his chest. Vomiting the ghastly liquid up onto the floor of the tent, the inquisitor sat bolt upright. The roar built into a single word.

  “Rancid!” Czevak told the courtesan, wiping blood and spit from his lips. “I told you,” he said. “It needed something.” The inquisitor stood up and tossed the wraithbone binders on the desk next to the empty chalice and the Atlas Infernal, having deftly freed himself of them under the cover of his convulsions.

  * * *

  “Kill him!” the courtesan shrieked, her words bringing a thicket of splinter rifle barrels up and at the inquisitor. As the death world’s feeble sun plummeted below the horizon, a deeper darkness settled in the tent. Shadows grew like ink blots, swallowing half of the enclosure’s occupants. There were screams and shouts of terror and alarm. Kabalites were enveloped in obscurity and taken by the deep darkness. The blackness snatched the dark eldar warriors and any of their kindred that attempted to deny the darkness its due. Even the powerful sslyth had succumbed, its long tail having been seized upon by something hiding in its shadow. Wrenched back by its serpentine length, the sslyth clawed at the tent floor with all four of its hands but to no avail. The shadows took it. As the mercenary disappeared, the hulking cultist began thrashing his great body against the grate, attempting to get loose of his restraints. The remaining warriors didn’t know where to aim their weapons: Czevak, the escaping cultist or everywhere else.

  As darkness turned to twilight with the welcome return of the death world sun, the dark eldar found that Czevak was wearing his harlequin coat, had the Atlas Infernal over one shoulder on its strap and the string of melta bombs over the other.

  “Hold!” Lelith Hesperax called as a dark eldar warrior aimed his weapon at the inquisitor’s back. The courtesan stared her defeat at the inquisitor.

  “How?” she said.

  Czevak slapped the armoured side of the Atlas Infernal.

  He took pity on the poisoner with an explanation: “The pages exude a field of nullification. It sanitised the corruption in the cup and offers some protection against the pollutive environments of the Eye. It’s also what killed your parasite.”

  The courtesan turned to find her chained voyeur dead on the ground behind her.

  “The brainfruit!” she screeched in panic, descending on the corpse with one of her kris knives. She proceeded to butcher the host, harvesting the precious brainfruit of the medusa with its preserved memories, sensations and horrors.

  “Time’s up,” Czevak told the wych mistress. “Are you ready to deal?”

  “You think you could trust me?” Lelith Hesperax marvelled. The inquisitor ignored her.

  “You will send one of your warriors to free the slaves in the cage-compound and escort them to the drop-freighter stationed near the portal. There is a merchant officer among their number who can pilot the ship.”

  “And why would I do that?” Hesperax said with predacious allure.

  “Because in return I’ll tell you how to save your own lives,” Czevak said.

  The wych glared at him. Czevak pointed to the roof of the tent. “Tick-tock” he told her.

  “What about him?” Hesperax said, pointing at the cultist.

  “What are you doing?” the courtesan interrupted, clutching a transparent container of harvested brainfruit.

  “He stays,” Czevak insisted.

  Lelith Hesperax hesitated for a moment and then directed the warrior watching Czevak to carry out his instructions. As they waited and the frail sunlight ebbed away, the courtesan approached her lover.

  “Don’t do this,” she begged. “Mistress, I can make him talk.” Her continued entreaties met with stonewalled silence and in the distance Czevak heard the powerful engines of the cultist drop-freighter rumble to life. As the inquisitor had hoped, Master Huggan and the prisoners were wasting no time getting off the death world.

  “Talk,” Hesperax ordered the inquisitor.

  “You mentioned that some of your warriors belonged to Archon Myzrioch.”

  “This is not treachery,” Hesperax replied, sweeping her hands about the gathered kabalites and the shadowy corners beyond them.

  “Oh, but it is,” Czevak asserted. “Archon Myzrioch is dead?”

  “By my hand,” the poisoner piped up with dark pride before turning back to her lover. “For you...”

  “Did you pay off all of Myzrioch’s warriors?”

  “They could not wait to serve the Lady Hesperax.”

  “What about his mercenaries?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the mandrakes?” Czevak put to her.

  “Myzrioch worked with shadow-kin?” the courtesan asked.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” the inquisitor replied.

  “So?” the succubus said. “So what? Even if Myzrioch was fool enough to engage half-daemons a
nd shadowspawn, his bargain with the darkness has nothing to do with us.”

  “They might be living shadow,” Czevak said, “but they still expect to be paid. When you took out Myzrioch, you took up his debt. They have followed you far from the Dark City here. They will not give up.”

  “What do they want?” Hesperax asked, the sharp edge of her words dulled with uncertainty. Now she knew her enemy, things were less straightforward.

  “How would I know?” Czevak asked with a smile

  “What then?” the courtesan demanded. Czevak hesitated.

  “Let them die,” the cultist rumbled behind him.

  “You said you would tell us,” Hesperax snarled in accusation.

  “Mistress!” the dark eldar warrior called, freshly returned from escorting the slaves to the drop-freighter. “Night is falling.”

  “Tell us!” the courtesan screamed. Czevak nodded slowly to himself.

  “I have read of the shadow-kin demanding the more archaic as part of their payment,” the inquisitor told her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rather than slaves and preyflesh, they sometimes ask for a heartbeat or true name.”

  “How are we supposed to supply those?” the wych mistress seethed.

  “I don’t know what they would do with them, but a number of times I have read of them demanding an engager’s last words.”

  Hesperax looked to the courtesan, Myzrioch’s torturer, poisoner and murderer. The courtesan’s eyes were dark with panic. She reached up and touched the succubus lightly on the cheek, a delicate gesture for such a monstrous aberration.

  “Mistress,” the courtesan said fearfully, “I cannot remember.”

  “You don’t need to,” Czevak said. “You’re holding them in your hand.”

  Looking down, the dark eldar beheld the transparent container the courtesan was holding, with the bloody brainfruit within. The courtesan had carried out her dark work—as she always did—with the parasite watching.

  “I’m sorry,” the courtesan told the succubus. “I wanted you to enjoy his end.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Lelith Hesperax told her lover. “Sorry that you failed me.”

  In one fluid motion, the succubus landed an athletic kick on the courtesan’s chest. The poisoner screamed as she fell back, still clutching the brainfruit. The kick carried her into the black depths of the shadowy corner behind.

  Night fell. There were screams and horror as the darkness took its prize.

  “Well, that will be me off then,” Czevak said, taking a step towards the door. Before the sole of his boot hit the tent floor, the wych’s blade was resting across his chest.

  “You thought you could trust me?” Hesperax repeated from their earlier conversation. “You have cost me dearly. There is a price to pay.”

  “Isn’t there always?” Czevak agreed. He pointed at her blistered cheek, upon which the courtesan had laid a delicate hand... and sliced her with one of her poisonous nails. “Hive spiderpede venom: blisters, delirium, necrosis, death. Time really is not on your side, mistress.”

  A shadow of doubt crossed the succubus’s face, a fear that had not existed there since her very earliest days in the battle colisea of the Dark City.

  “Antidote?” Hesperax said, lowering the blade. The word was half threat, half request. “For anything your perverse human heart could wish for.”

  “All I want,” Czevak told her, “is for you and your alien filth to leave this world as swiftly as possible.”

  “Agreed,” Hesperax said.

  “I mean it,” Czevak told her with an outstretched finger. “Time is not on your side. You will need every second to reach your destination and every one of your warriors to help find the antidote.”

  Hesperax nodded her agreement.

  “The antidote is vyxine, drunk as a tea,” Czevak told her. “The heat activates its properties. You will find it on the exodite world of Ishquiel, in the petals of the darkstar flower. They’re black and can be found growing on the foothills of the mountains near the Tal-Morai gateway. Go now, in peace. And remember, wych, that I spared you.”

  A ripple of hatred passed across Lelith Hesperax’s features. She half suspected that the wily human was still holding out on her. She didn’t have time for further intrigue, of his or her own. She prompted her remaining warriors to exit the tent and make for the portal.

  “Remember?” the succubus repeated back to him as she followed them. “Don’t worry,” she assured Czevak with menace, “I won’t forget you...”

  Listening to the xenos footsteps disappear into the night forest, Czevak turned to the cultist, still bound to the grate. Walking over, the inquisitor activated the runes that released the wraithbone fetters, allowing the huge acolyte to crumble to the tent floor. Czevak nodded to himself and went to leave.

  “What will you do?” the cultist asked.

  “Destroy the portal,” Czevak said. “With me on the other side, of course.”

  “You would leave me here?”

  “Yes,” the inquisitor told him as he reached the tent entrance. “But I was being uncharitable when I said Ahriman will never set foot here. He will see through the errors I left for him at Mount Avalox. You can still expect your rescue, if you live long enough.” The inquisitor went to leave. “And if you do, you can tell your sorcerous lord that Bronislaw Czevak pays his respects...”

  About the Authors

  Gav Thorpe is the New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Lion’, a novella in the collection The Primarchs. He has written many other Black Library books, including the Horus Heresy novel Deliverance Lost and audio drama Raven’s Flight as well as fan-favourite Warhammer 40,000 novel Angels of Darkness and the epic Time of Legends trilogy, The Sundering. He is currently working on a new Dark Angels series, The Legacy of Caliban. Gav hails from Nottingham, where he shares his hideout with the evil genius that is Dennis, the mechanical hamster.

  George Mann has written two Raven Guard audio dramas for the Black Library, Helion Rain and Labyrinth of Sorrows. He lives in Grantham, UK, with his wife, children and rather large collection of books.

  L J Goulding is the author of several short stories—‘The Oberwald Ripper’, ‘The Shadow of the Beast’ and ‘The Great Maw’ among them. In his alter ego of a member of Black Library’s editorial team, he proves that an obsessive and encyclopaedic knowledge of the Horus Heresy universe can be a useful thing after all. He lives and works in Nottingham.

  Domiciled in the East Midlands, C Z Dunn is the author of the Dark Angels novella Dark Vengeance, the audio dramas Ascension of Balthasar and Malediction, as well as several short stories. Having spent many years in the publishing industry, with a strong leaning towards genre fiction, he is an expert in e-publication, audio production and zombies.

  C L Werner’s Black Library credits include Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy and the Thanquol and Boneripper series. Currently living in the American southwest, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He claims that he was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story was ever published.

  Rob Sanders is a freelance writer, who spends his nights creating dark visions for regular visitors to the 41st millennium to relive in the privacy of their own nightmares, including the novels Atlas Infernal and Legion of the Damned. By contrast, as Head of English at a local secondary school, he spends his days beating (not literally) the same creativity out of the next generation in order to cripple any chance of future competition. He lives in the small city of Lincoln, UK.

 

 

 
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