[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake Read online

  Ramlek waited pensively, as if the question still remained unanswered.

  His smile broadened, even though it pained Nihilan to do it.

  “You are an unsubtle creature, Ramlek, and your readiness to engage in carnage amuses me greatly. But execution isn’t necessary at this point.”

  A cloud of hot ash and cinder gusted from the Dragon Warrior’s mouth in what might have been displeasure.

  Nihilan laughed without mirth.

  “You really are a brutal bastard,” he said. “Disarm them and show them in.”

  Nodding curtly, Ramlek turned and disappeared into the gloom like a wraith.

  Ramlek’s footfalls were still echoing heavily around the large room a few moments later when a crack opened in the dusky confines from the chamber door. Several figures filed through, ushered by a squad of Nihilan’s renegades clad in bloody red. Ramlek led the escort himself.

  One by one, the figures fell into line before the throne. Some offered practised indifference, others outward belligerence. Many could not hide their fear of the superhuman renegades who had summoned them to this place, to this ship. Just under twenty ship’s captains, warlords, pirate-kings, renegade generals and alien lordlings bent their knee to the Dragon Warrior upon his throne.

  “Do you know who I am?” Nihilan asked, with the procession ended and his warriors in position at either flank of the delegates.

  A giant, armed and armoured similarly to the renegades, although his apparel looked worn and patched as if it had seen more than its fair share of war, stepped forwards.

  He looked about him, regarding their flanking escorts. Every one of the bloodstained warriors cradled a heavy-looking bolter in their clawed gauntlets.

  “Dragon Warriors,” he said. “You are all renegades.” His eyes, glowering behind a battered yellow battle-helm, came to rest on Nihilan. “And you are their leader.”

  Nihilan edged forwards on the throne. His crimson-lidded eyes flashed with power, evidence of the warp-craft flowing in his cursed veins. Like Ramlek, he too wore armour of incarnadine blood with a curved horn arcing from either shoulder pad. The force staff, just an arm’s length away, lay dormant in its cradle. This was his ship, the Hellstalker. Here, in this traitor’s court, Nihilan was pre-eminent.

  “Aren’t you too a renegade now, brother?”

  Though armoured in black and yellow of a slightly more archaic design, the other warrior was in many respects the mirror of Nihilan. They had a similar caste, cut from once similar cloth. Ideologically, though, they couldn’t have been further apart.

  He bristled at the Dragon Warrior’s usage of such a familiar term, but bit back his anger.

  “Hard to accept at first, isn’t it?” Nihilan goaded when met with silence. “Your cause is just, your defection is not defection at all but merely following the hard path, the one your lords and masters do not have the courage to tread—is that about right, Astartes?”

  “No. I am not motivated by any of those ideals,” the warrior replied in a grating whisper.

  “Oh, really?” Nihilan sounded amused. “What then?”

  “Hate,” the warrior said simply. “For the Salamanders.”

  Nihilan’s eyes narrowed.

  “Now that, my dear brother, is something we do have in common. What is your name?”

  The warrior slammed a fist against his breastplate. Given the circumstances, it seemed like an outmoded gesture now.

  “Lorkar,” said the warrior, “Sergeant Lorkar of the Marines Malevolent.”

  Nihilan smirked cruelly.

  The knuckles cracked in Lorkar’s gauntlets at what he saw as an insult.

  Ramlek shaped like he was about to react. The Marines Malevolent were little better than sanctioned, war-mongering psychopaths. Nihilan was amazed the Inquisition hadn’t sectioned them excommunicate traitoris yet. Their reputation was certainly bloodthirsty and uncompromising. Lorkar’s skin must be crawling surrounded by so many impure creatures around him.

  Unhinged was the descriptor that sprung instantly to mind when faced with a Marine Malevolent. Capricious, too. Nihilan wouldn’t put it past them to infiltrate one of their brethren aboard his ship on some ill-conceived suicidal assassination mission. But, no, Lorkar was not here to murder—at least, that wasn’t his intent.

  Nihilan barely had to exercise his psychic will to discern that fact. Belligerent, yes, but not murderous.

  A raised hand from the sorcerer put Ramlek back on his leash.

  “I had heard a Malevolents ship had docked with the Hellstalker. I didn’t believe it until now.” Nihilan descended into partial monologue. “Puritanical Astartes like the Marines Malevolent allying themselves with renegades…” he tutted, “…what must the sons of Vulkan have done to offend you so?”

  “That’s Malevolents business,” Lorkar growled.

  “No longer, Sergeant Lorkar,” Nihilan corrected. “Not anymore. You are a Dragon Warrior now.” He spread his arms, “One of us.”

  Nihilan held Lorkar’s fierce glare a moment longer—

  His rage will be useful.

  —before letting his gaze take in the rest of the assembly. He recognised kroot, avian mercenaries little better than half-trained beasts but valuable in a fight; half-naked Chaos cultists with graven sigils tattooed into their self-abused flesh; the sinuous dark eldar, lithe and deadly, wearing torturers’ smiles; and other, stranger beasts and warriors. In truth, he cared little for any of them. The Astartes were a boon, and Nihilan would take great pleasure in their corruption. The dark eldar, too, had their part to play. But the rest were just fodder.

  Recruiting scum was easy. Every system, every sub-sector had them in abundance. Promises and offerings enticed such “enterprising” individuals easily enough. Nihilan’s own Dragon Warriors numbered in the hundreds. Together with this mercenary rabble, he would have enough bodies to execute his plan, his grand vengeance.

  Nocturne was not Ultramar. A Space Marine Chapter’s home world, yes, but it was not an empire.

  One by one, the delegates came forwards at Nihilan’s beckoning and made their pledges. The Dragon Warrior accepted them all, barring one. A hound-faced warrior, at least judging by the shape of his battle-helm, raved like a lunatic before the throne. He would spill blood in the name of his dark lord. He would visit flesh-reaping retribution on the sons of Vulkan. He would cast down their skulls in supplication to his god.

  After this tirade, Nihilan had reached for his force staff and smote the barbarian down where he stood. It served two purposes, showing not only his considerable power but also the fact that he would not ally himself with mindless, uncontrollable killers.

  The Red Rage he had called himself, another renegade Astartes no less, but a broken one. Even Lorkar’s feral anger had focus and direction; this beast was little more than a frothing zealot. Such men, such creatures were not easy to control and Nihilan desired that above all else. He ordered the Red Rage’s ship annihilated and its representatives slain immediately. A pool of slowly steaming bone and organs was all that remained of the fanatic now.

  “Obedience is not a request,” said Nihilan to the others, who were trying to mask their shock. Even the flint-hearted Lorkar flinched. Only the dark eldar seemed unaffected, a male and female, the latter dressed in little more than strips of dark leather and pieces of plate armour. While the male looked vaguely amused, she was positively aroused by the warrior’s agonising death and bit her lip, drawing blood, to suppress it.

  The xenos delegates were an important element to Nihilan’s plan, but he did not relish their presence and sadistic hedonism.

  “And we are not madmen on a bloody quest to our own destruction,” he continued. “There is but one agenda, my own. I have worked hard and sacrificed much in order to assure its fulfilment. Do your parts, you and your heinous kin, and you’ll be rewarded.”

  Nihilan leaned back in his throne, seemingly weary all of a sudden.

  The sound of cracking bolter slides inform
ed the delegates the audience was at an end. Ramlek and his warriors ushered them out just as they had ushered them in, only minus one body.

  Of the Dragon Warriors who had entered the chamber, only Ramlek remained.

  Nihilan closed his eyes. He rasped in a voice like cracking parchment, “We are close, Ramlek.” He stroked a pair of scrolls alongside him on the throne. “You have the decyphrex?”

  Ramlek patted a cylinder mag-locked to the right thigh of his scaled power armour.

  “I do, my lord. And I have summoned the others. They should be arriving soon.”

  “Good, good,” Nihilan breathed. “All is in readiness.”

  The gloom split again and this time three more Dragon Warriors entered.

  Before the throne, four dark runes had been cut into its metal dais. Ramlek had taken the first already, to Nihilan’s immediate right. A second renegade assumed the one next to him on the left. The other two stood upon the remaining runes.

  “You are my Glaive, brothers,” Nihilan told them, “My most trusted warriors and the ones who will gouge out the heart of the Salamanders for all their perfidy against us and our long departed lord.” He paused, regarding each of them in turn.

  Ramlek’s eyes burned with an unslakable rage; Nor’hak, the warrior to his left, was cold like iron; Ekrine, the only one without a helmet, licked vaguely reptilian lips as his eyelids flicked from side to side; Thark’n, the most recent addition to the Glaive, folded his thick arms and nodded with quiet determination.

  “In the name of the slain do we do this,” said Nihilan. “In the name of Ushorak.”

  “Ushorak,” the Glaive intoned as one.

  “And for Ghor’gan,” Nihilan added, paying particular attention to Thark’n. “Who fell in his sacred duty, a warrior of the Glaive who we also mourn in this cabal.”

  “Ghor’gan.”

  “We may come from differing heritage, the Chapters that spurned us, that constricted and took our love and loyalty for granted. Storm Giant, Black Dragon, Iron Warrior, Marine Malevolent…” He paused before the last of the names, spitting it out as if it left a canker in his mouth. “…Salamander. These honorifics mean nothing to us. Now we are one. Dragon Warriors, all.”

  Nor’hak couldn’t suppress a snarl, baring his pointed fangs. Ekrine’s bone-blades snapped forth as he fought his anger and emotions. Great gusts of cinder spilled from Ramlek’s maw like dragon smoke, whilst Thark’n’s knuckles cracked loudly in his gauntlets.

  Nihilan smiled.

  “On Moribar we unearthed the means to wreak our vengeance.” He pulled the scrolls to his side. “On Scoria we enabled its realisation, whilst striking a stinging blow to our enemies.” This time he looked at Ramlek, who returned his lord’s admiration without emotion. “Old Kelock had no idea of the power he had chained. Scoria was nothing, a tenth of our strength. Now, we will harness all of it. Our Spear of Retribution is almost ready,” he announced to them all. “And with it we shall tear out the heart of a world.”

  Nihilan thrust out his clawed gauntlet in a fist.

  “Death to Nocturne.”

  The others followed suit, punching their knuckles together and forming a ring of red ceramite.

  “Death to the Salamanders,” Nihilan concluded.

  II

  Devils’ Bargains

  Aboard the Eternal Ecstasy the air within the portal chamber rippled. It was as if an electric current had been passed through it. Slaves, shackled to its hot capacitors, wailed as their bodies were subjected to further tortures with the portal chamber’s activation. Agonised shadows littered the barbed walls, hinted at in the ephemeral flare of power. Sunk into a deep recess, the two capacitors were like the metal horns of some unseen beast. Pallid faces, those still with eyes to see, stared piteously out of that hell-pit. None present who looked upon them saw them as anything but fuel.

  Sacrificed to stave off She Who Thirsts, they were a means to an end—nothing more. The shriek of the capacitors lowered to a dull hum and darkness swallowed them again. A portal was opening.

  It began as a crack of light, a jagged dagger thrust that tore through reality, exposing the myriad realm of the webway beyond it. Slowly the crack widened, ripples of electrical discharge raging at its edges. A dark void was revealed inside, a growing pool of blackness but not blackness, a strange un-reality that defied all laws of physics and matter. Flickering into existence like a bad pict-recording resolved into a coherent image, a figure stepped forth into the portal chamber onto a plateau of dark metal suspended above the hell-pit. He moved sinuously, abhorrently seductive, one foot overlapping the other in a perverted and suggestive mockery of grace. Eldritch wind whipped at the long dark hair that he let fall below the edge of his conical battle-helm. The strands writhed slowly like vipers, but there was only motion, no sense of air, no breeze as such, just its effects. Such was the mystery of the webway.

  Another figure followed him, a female. Lithe and tall like the male but more muscular and near-naked, barring her leather and plate battle harness. Her gait was less affected, more warrior-like and purposeful, but she possessed a killer’s poise. She wore no helm but preferred a sharply edged domino mask instead, she the player in her personal theatre of death. Her hair was white, long and bound in a tight scalp lock that fed the conjoined braids all the way down her bare back like a serpent.

  “Extravagant, Malnakor,” a grating voice issued from the gloom of the chamber when the webway transference was complete and the portal had closed. “The rest of your cohorts are still aboard ship and have yet to dock,” it added, its tone full of implication.

  The sinuous male removed his helmet. It had a double horn on the left temple, two thin barbs of flat, dark metal. The front was engraved with a wickedly grinning face, reminiscent of a daemonic jester.

  Malnakor cast his hair about, freeing up the long locks after their confinement beneath the battle-helm. “I choose better company to travel with,” he replied. The lascivious glance he gave the female who had portalled with him was blatant.

  The warrior-wych ignored him, bowing down before the voice and the silhouette framed by shadow in front of them instead.

  “Wasteful and decadent, dracon,” said the voice. “Slaves we can ill-afford to lose.” The silhouette figure stepped into the light.

  It too was male. His xenos features were cold and stark, as if cut from marble. His face was blanched as if exsanguinated. The cheekbones protruded like blades. His nose was aquiline. Where Malnakor was arrogant and sneering, this one was impassive and unreadable. Only his tone betrayed his displeasure, and even then only because he chose for it to.

  “An’scur…” the word issued from the wych’s mouth like a seduction as she bowed lower still, careful to keep her cleavage visible for her lord.

  “Helspereth,” said the archon, stepping forwards to caress her cheek with his right hand.

  Dracon Malnakor arched his eyebrow when he saw the missing digit on An’scur’s hand. His face was symmetrical, his complexion and physiognomy utterly unmarred and utterly unsettling. Every effort had been made by the dracon to become doll-like and perfect. It was as if his youth was cast in amber to endure for eternity, hinting at his surgical addiction. To behold such a deformity as a missing finger in his so-called lord and master only convinced Malnakor he had been right to try and kill him.

  Fifteen separate assassination attempts had been made against Archon An’scur. All barring three had been thwarted and yet here he was, alive and imperious, if a little gaunter than before.

  The disaffected dracon eyed Helspereth’s naked affection jealously. He wanted her. Ever since he had witnessed her triumph in the Coliseum of Blades at Volgorrah, he had desired to taste her flesh, feel the warmth of her body next to his. That night, Malnakor had bedded and murdered thirty-one slaves and still his burning lust wasn’t slaked. Only the wych queen could do that. He had heard rumours from those she had favoured. Most did not live long beyond the telling. He would gladly die at he
r torturer’s fingers. Rapture beyond measure waited there—Malnakor could feel it, could see it smouldering like hell-fire in her predator’s eyes.

  And yet, she favoured the archon.

  Unlike his minions, An’scur wore thin violet robes that suggested the wiry, muscular frame beneath. His hair, like his face, was white. His eyes were black like two almond-shaped pieces of jet with a pinprick of grey to indicate the pupils. Some within the cabal said his soul was promised to Kravex—that the haemonculus kept An’scur’s missing digit under lock and key, and through the application of his torturer’s science had resurrected the archon each time he was killed. Only a sample of biological matter was needed.

  Gaining a haemonculus’ favour was the difficult part.

  But then Dracon Malnakor had studied the path to securing such a bargain diligently. Kravex was a sadist of a particular stripe and like all the haemonculi he was old, one of the First Fallen. His secrets were manifold. The way to unlock them lay in bartering. And in the many ports and lairs of Commorragh slaves were the only currency that had value for a haemonculus.

  As Helspereth purred at his touch, Archon An’scur looked askance at Malnakor. The shadow of an amused smile passed like a wraith across his bloodless lips.

  Whoremongering bastard, thought the dracon with a twinge of jealous pride. How I covet your power, sibling.

  An’scur seized the wych’s jaw. His taloned fingers drew a little blood and she mewled with pleasure at his abusive touch. Then he released her and she retreated into the shadows.

  As she slipped away, Malnakor watched her from the corner of his eye. He knew where she was headed and fought down his anger again. What debaucheries will you commit for him, slave-whore? He was almost salivating at the thought and had to drag his attention back to his lord.

  “So, brother,” An’scur began, inspecting the droplets of Helspereth’s blood on his nails, “our pact with the Dragon Warriors is in place? They have made the slave pledges as previously agreed?”

  Malnakor showed his perfect white teeth before ripping a dagger from its sheath and plunging it at An’scur.