"You know the plan," said Dorvas. "Get to the arming cages, and then to the branding chamber. If you get hurt, you"ll get left behind."
The sound of shouting echoed from down the cell block. The light of blazing eyes glinted off the blades that made up the prison"s structure.
"Now!" shouted Dorvas.
The prisoners rushed the oncoming guards. There were fifty of them in the throng by the time the guards reached them.
The possessed were figures of fear, the daemons inside them unfathomably cruel, but the Hathrans were driven by something more than fear now, something more, even than the hope of freedom.
They could bring the fight to their foes at last. They could seek revenge instead of cowering, hoping to be spared. The Hathran Armoured Cavalry charged again.
ALARIC WRAPPED THE chain around the throat of Vladamasca Wrathbringer and crushed the life out of her. The fleshy dreadlocks adorning her head writhed as she fought to breathe. Alaric stamped down on the back of her leg, forcing her to her knees, and she stiffened and died as the chain cut off the blood to her brain.
Alaric wondered for a split second how much had been wagered on her, and what the odds had been. By the Emperor, he hated this place.
Alaric threw the mutant"s body off the pyramid. Her corpse slithered down the blood-covered marble. He caught a glimpse of Venalitor"s slaves, back to back as they fought. One-ear and the orks were taking the chance to put on their own sideshow, leaping and hacking at the slaves attacking them. Gearth was somewhere lower on the pyramid, fighting his way up. Alaric didn"t know if he would make it. He hoped not.
He also saw the crowd. They were chanting the names of their favourite champions. Alaric heard his own name: the Betrayed, the Fallen Knight, the Emperor"s Disobedient Gundog. Others howled their dismay that Vladamasca was dead. The lords were as enthusiastic as the crowds, because those were their slaves and their champions dying. Ebondrake"s balcony was wreathed in black fire, and Alaric was sure he could make out the red armour and gleaming blades of Duke Venalitor.
The sight of Venalitor filled him with hate. He had never thought he could despise a place like he despised Drakaasi in that moment.
Hatred was holy to a Grey Knight and, yet he had never felt it as he did for the vermin who populated the stands. He let it roar through his veins and silendy hoped that it would not turn him into one of them.
Alaric forced his way onto the penultimate step of the pyramid. A cloven-hoofed creature lay on the step holding its guts in. Alaric barely paused to break its neck. The beastman had been carrying a spear with a barbed head. It was a more practical weapon than the spiked chain that Alaric had taken off the third fighter he had killed, a red-skinned daemon which had tried to vomit caustic blood over him. Alaric picked up the spear and made it to the top step.
Half the crowd cheered to see Alaric the Betrayed make it to the square of marble at the pinnacle. Alaric was exhausted. He fought to remember how many champions of the Dark G.o.ds he had killed, but their faces and mutations swam in his mind, and he couldn"t focus.
He could have let the noise of the crowd in and taken strength from it, but that was not who he was. He was not a gladiator fighting for glory, but a servant of the Emperor fighting first for survival, and then for justice. The crowd would not keep him going.
He had a weapon in his hand and an enemy to kill. That was all a citizen of the Imperium ever needed, that and the hate.
The crowd was roaring in antic.i.p.ation. The bloodletting had been to get them worked up. The real event was here. The champion would be crowned.
Alaric knew, before he ever saw it, what would come slithering up onto the pinnacle; the tiny glinting red eyes and the fork-tongued smirking mouth, the ma.s.sive four-armed torso, the kill tallies, and the obscenity of its oversized snakelike body. The sound of reptilian scales on marble was a confirmation that Alaric didn"t need.
"I am so glad it is you," said Skarhaddoth, gladiator champion of Lord Ebondrake, slithering onto the pinnacle. "I have developed a taste for your kind."
Skarhaddoth was even bigger up close. He had new kill marks branded into his scaly chest, and one of the hands hanging around his neck must have belonged to Haulvarn. Skarhaddoth had abandoned his shields, and each of his four hands held a well-bloodied scimitar.
"I tend to stick in the throat," said Alaric.
The two circled slowly. No doubt Alaric didn"t look like much of an opponent. His steps were heavy and his breathing laboured, and his magnificent armour was ragged and battered. Skarhaddoth looked as if the blooding on the pyramid had been no more than a pre-match ritual for him. He was sheened with foul-smelling sweat, and he grinned with malice. He had been looking forward to this.
Ever since he killed Haulvarn, he had been waiting to finish the job.
"Two Grey Knights," said Alaric, letting his muscles slide into a familiar combat stance. "Quite a tally. What will that get you?
Freedom?"
"Who needs freedom?" hissed Skarhaddoth. "What is this fiction that devours your human mind? What more is there in the universe than this? Blood and death and metal through flesh? More of everything, that is what I will be given. More blood!"
"In the crusade," said Alaric. "Ebondrake will give you everything you want there. If you kill me."
"The first wave," sneered Skarhaddoth. "First through the breach.
First onto land. Blood upon virgin earth. The warp will hear my blades, betrayed one! Khorne will smell the blood I let!"
Alaric smiled. It was a strange thing to feel, some humour, some joy, up there amid the blasphemy and death, but it was there, because Alaric was human, and being human meant dragging hope out of h.e.l.l. There will be no crusade," said Alaric. "I know what Ebondrake wants. I know what you want. Neither of you will have it. I want you to know that before..."
"Before what, betrayed one?"
The pause lasted a fraction of a second, but in that time so much went through Alaric"s mind that he couldn"t see anything beyond Skarhaddoth. The arena, the crowd, the fighting, the menagerie of Drakaasi"s lords and daemons, they all became a crimson blur.
Angles of attack and best guesses about Skarhaddoth"s anatomy, die weight of the spear in his hands and the blood slicking the marble beneath his feet were all coursing through his head. Then it was enough. There were no more guesses to make.
Alaric lunged. He had a long reach, long enough for the point of his spear to punch through Skarhaddoth"s chest and out through his back.
Skarhaddoth gasped. For the first time, the smirk was wiped off his face. He looked down at the spear in his chest, and then up at Alaric.
"Your guard is too low," said Alaric. Skarhaddoth slumped forwards, pushing the shaft further through him as he tried to take a ragged breath. His face was close to Alaric"s, and Alaric only had to whisper. "I noticed it when you murdered my friend. Such a thing tends to focus the mind."
Skarhaddoth slumped to the floor, still with a look of surprise on his face.
The crowd was quiet for a moment. Alaric had done what no other man on Drakaasi could have done. He had shut them all up.
Lord Ebondrake leaned over the battlements of his pavilion high up in the huge mask mounted on the arena wall. His eyes were slits of yellow fire and his nostrils flared. His wings spread out behind him, and for a moment Alaric was sure the old lizard would swoop down to devour Alaric himself.
The relative silence was broken by the explosion that blew a crater in the arena floor. Alaric was battered back by the force of it, and bloodstained sand rained down.
Uproar filled the silence after the blast. Angry spectators clambered over barricades towards the arena floor. Ophidian Guard stormed from their posts to keep order. The lords began demanding to know who among them had dared to defde Khorne"s spectacle.
Then, a figure emerged from the cloud of dust and dirt, tall, lean, armed with a sword and moving faster than a man. It was Kelhedros.
Behind him were four thousand arena slaves in the uniforms of the Hathran Armoured Cavalry.
EVERYTHING THAT ALARIC had learned about the Vel"Skan arena told him that the only way out was across the arena floor.
From the arena, the slaves and the Hathrans could make it to the seating areas, hopefully a.s.sisted by the chaos caused by Alaric"s victory and the breakout itself. Many gates led out of the arena, but only one of them interested Alaric, since it would point the escaping slaves towards their ultimate objective.
As a plan, it was flawed. The brother-captains and grand masters of the Grey Knights would have admonished him for suggesting such a mess, but it was the only chance Alaric would ever have to take the Hammer of Daemons. It was also the only chance the slaves would have of escaping the planet, but if Alaric was honest with himself, truly honest, he had to accept that their escape was a secondary objective for him.
Many of them would die. Alaric knew he was sacrificing them for his own ends, but that was the way the galaxy worked. It was a cruel place, and that meant that, sometimes, he had to be crueller.
"WHAT ARE YOUR orders, my lord?" asked the captain of the Ophidian Guard.
"What do you b.l.o.o.d.y think?" snarled Lord Ebondrake through coils of black fire. "Kill them all."
"Yes, my lord," said the captain. He raised his sword, and as one the Ophidian Guard clanked out of the pavilion to join the other soldiers gathering among the spectators below.
Ebondrake turned to Venalitor. "More blasphemy, and your boy is at the heart of it all, Venalitor. You will answer for this."
"I have no doubt of that," said Venalitor rapidly, "but this may not be the catastrophe it seems. Here is an opportunity to-"
"Less talk!" yelled Ebondrake. "More death! By the bra.s.s gates of h.e.l.l, Venalitor, take your pretty sword and kill something down there!"
In reply, Venalitor drew the two-handed blade from his back, and vaulted over the battlements of the pavilion, dropping deftly to the seating below.
The audience was in chaos. Alaric"s victory, and the manner of it, was enough to send them into a frenzy on its own. Skarhaddoth had died at the first blow. Ebondrake"s champion had died, without a fight! A bad death indeed, and nothing stirred up haUed more than a poor death. Then the explosion, and the torrent of slaves suddenly swarming across the arena had forced any remaining sense out of their heads. The spectators were biting and kicking at everyone around them, blaming one another for the obscenity that had blighted this celebration of Khorne.
One of them ran at Venalitor, a bloodied cultist in a torn robe with ritual bra.s.s claws implanted in his forearms. Venalitor animated the blood around the man"s feet, tripped him up, and cut through his spine with a swipe of his blade. It was barely worth a flick of the wrist to kill such a lowly creature.
"My duke," said the slurred voice of a scaephylyd. Venalitor"s slavemaster picked his way across the wounded and unconscious around the upper seats, "the scaephylyds have been gathered and await your orders. Should we descend to the arena floor?"
Venalitor looked down at the arena. The Vel"Skan arena slaves were making a break for the northern side of the arena, scrambling up onto the seating, and killing the spectators who tried to resist.
Many of the slaves of other lords had joined the breakout, and Alaric was up on the arena wall directing the fight.
"No," said Venalitor, "they"re heading for the northern gates. Have the scaephylyds gather to the north of the arena. The Ophidian Guard will pursue them. If we can slow the slaves down, they will be crushed between the two."
"And the Grey Knight?"
Venalitor thought for a moment. "I was rather hoping I could kill him, but do not pa.s.s up the opportunity should it arise."
"Where will you be, my duke?"
"Lord Ebondrake will need me," said Venalitor, "whether he acknowledges it or not."
Very well. What were his orders?"
"Kill them. Get to it."
The slavemaster raised a mandible in salute and turned to the scaephylyds gathering on the upper seating, chittering to them in their insect tongue. They scurried off towards the northern gates, ignoring the riot that was spreading around them.
Alaric was not stupid. He should know full well that a breakout in Vel"Skan would, at most, lead to a day of freedom, and several years of torture. The Grey Knight had an objective in mind, something beyond just running for his life. Venalitor wondered what it might be. There was nothing in Vel"Skan that would benefit the slaves, nothing so defensible that the Ophidian Guard could not besiege and break it.
There was, of course, one possibility, one chance for a dramatic gesture that, while it would surely cost the life of every slave who escaped, would nevertheless appeal to a servant of the corpse-emperor as a dramatic final gesture before death. It was insane, of course, but just because Alaric wasn"t stupid that didn"t mean he wasn"t insane. After all, Venalitor had put a great deal of effort into driving him mad.
That was where Venalitor would confront Alaric and kill him.
After all, even if Ebondrake considered him at fault for Alaric"s actions, Venalitor was sure that few sights would gain him more respect among Drakaasi"s lords than him standing on the battlements holding a Grey Knight"s severed head.
Some good would still come of this, Venalitor decided. Idly cutting his way through the few rioting idiots who got in his way, he headed north.
"I SEE," SAID Arguthrax. "It started here."
The daemon"s bra.s.s cauldron had been dragged through the narrow confines of the prison on chains hauled by his burliest slaves, since many of the ceilings were too low for him to be carried.
Hound-like retriever daemons snarled ahead of him, snapping at one another as they tried to find a scent. There was nothing.
Considering how the prison stank, that in itself was a sign.
The arena slaves had broken out. Many of them were dead, killed by the gaolers as they fought. The arming cages had been ransacked, and the branding room had been blown up, leaving a crater in the arena floor above. It had been swift and violent.
Something had given them enough hope to stage the breakout, and they must have had help from outside to even get out of their cells.
In front of Arguthrax was the wrecked torture chamber. Torment cages had been torn from the walls. Blades and spikes were scattered across the floor, and everything was burned. A charred body lay in the centre of the floor, hollowed out by flame. It had been the body of a large human, but the retrievers shied away from it.
"Daemon," said the handler, one of the few of his slaves that Arguthrax permitted to speak. The handler was a particularly cruel soul, and probably would have worked for Arguthrax whether he was a slave or not. "Sh.e.l.l of a possessed."
Yes, they guarded this place. Someone knew how to start this. I desire to know why"
The sounds of battle reached down from the arena. The other lords were fighting up there, some with each other, most to quell the rioting. Arguthrax would have liked to join them, but he had other priorities.
"If we can demonstrate that one of Venalitor"s slaves was down here," he said, "then he will be suspected of treachery. I can think up a few reasons why he might have done it: to create dissent among the lords, where he might gain Ebondrake"s confidence; to postpone the crusade because he is a coward; or to bring the freed slaves into his fold for use as fodder against me. It does not matter. So long as the link is there it will bring him down." Arguthrax looked around the chamber. Aside from the heady tang of suffering, there was little of interest. "Bring me the corpse," he said.
The handler grabbed an intact-looking limb and hauled the body over to Arguthrax"s cauldron. Arguthrax reached down and picked up the body. Chunks of burned flesh fell off it. The body was just a sh.e.l.l, the eyes and mouth burned into gaping holes by the force of the flame.
"Possessed," sneered Arguthrax. "Such a waste, a cloak of flesh to hide their beauty. This thing probably couldn"t remember either of the beings it once was." Arguthrax paused as he spotted something glinting in the caul of burned meat. He pushed his paw into the disintegrating body and pulled out a jet-black shard, glossy with corrupted blood.
It was the tip of a sword, broken off in the possessed creature"s body.
The Guard," hissed Arguthrax. The Ophidian Guard did this."
The slaves knew when Arguthrax was angry. They had seen it often enough, and they had seen their fellow slaves die as a result.
Even the brutalised cauldron slaves tried to shrink away from their master.
"Ebondrake!" growled Arguthrax. "Curses upon your scaly hide!
Deceitful lizard! Scales and claws and lies! All this to save your d.a.m.ned crusade!" Arguthrax shuddered with anger, slopping blood over the edge of his cauldron. To betray us! To betray me, the Despoiler of Kolchadon, the End of Empires, the b.l.o.o.d.y Hand of Skerentis Minor!" The blood overflowed, sloshing from the pits of the warp through the bridge formed by Arguthrax"s rage. It poured in a torrent, swirling around the torture chamber. Take me to the surface! Take me to the lords! Ebondrake will pay!"
GEARTH, WHO HAD somehow contrived to survive, plunged both his knives into the thorax of the scaephylyd who charged at him. The insectoid creature writhed on the twin blades, and collapsed.
Gearth"s blades went with it, but the killer picked up the scaephylyd"s spear. A blade, after all, was a blade.
They"re trying to block the way!" called Erkhar. He and his faithful were on one side of the slave army, safely away from Gearth"s murderers and the greenskins who took up the other flank. Alaric was somewhere in the middle, the ma.s.s of Hathrans behind him.
Alaric realised that Erkhar was right. The slaves had made it out of the arena, and already many of their number had been lost to the enraged spectators who fought back. Now the way in front of them, along an uneven avenue of blades lined with t.i.tanic shields and segments of plate armour, was darkening with the sanding forms of hundreds of scaephylyds.
Beyond them, up a flight of steps formed from a stack of axe heads, was the palace of Lord Ebondrake. Its half-blinded skull grinned down on the battlefield as if it was antic.i.p.ating the slaughter.
That was Alaric"s objective. He was going to take the palace. If it cost the life of every slave, he would take it.
Alaric turned to the Hathrans behind him. Few of them really understood what was happening, only that they had broken out of the arena, and they were at a loss to know what to do next.
"The Emperor sees us even here!" shouted Alaric. "For His glory, sons of Hathran! For your lost brothers and sisters, for the man at your side! For the Emperor!"