One of the dust-covered Argentum corpses grasped at his boot with a bleeding hand.
Commodus went to his knees, rolling the body over. Not only was it not dead, it also wasn’t one of the Argentum.
“Commodus…” the old man said, “don’t leave me here.”
A voice that had bellowed orders on hundreds of battlefields now left Slaydo’s cracked lips as a strained whisper.
With the walls down, it was difficult to see through the dust. Commodus cleaned the Warmaster’s face with trickles of lukewarm water from his canteen. Little blood showed through the filth on his uniform, but the whistling rasp in Slaydo’s breathing told enough of a tale.
The sergeant lifted Slaydo’s silver breastplate, and there it was. A knife-sliver of sharp rock, stabbed into the old man’s stomach. A chance thing; no doubt ricocheted from the ground as the walls tumbled down.
Commodus was already drawing breath to shout for a medic when a fierce claw latched onto his wrist with a talon’s grip.
“Don’t you dare,” hissed the old man. “Think of morale, you fool. We’re inside now. It’s almost over. Now shut your mouth and bind that wound, or… or I’ll find a new senior sergeant.”
Commodus spoke as he obeyed. “As soon as the rock shard came free, blood followed in an eager flow. This is straining your heart,” the sergeant said. “The trauma first, and the blood loss will—”
Warmaster Slaydo spat dust onto the grass, his lined face the very picture of impatience. “I like you, my boy, but you’ve always talked too much. Now tighten it up, and get me to my feet.”
“Sir, you need to—”
Defiance gave the blow strength, and the sergeant flinched back as Slaydo’s backhand crashed against the side of his helmet.
“I need to finish the hunt, Commodus. And so do you. Now get me to my feet!”
IX
The Warmaster’s weary stagger soon became a lurching walk, then a subtle limp, and then nothing more than clenched teeth and a shine in his eyes. Spite and defiance drove him on where the pain should have driven him to his knees. Better than any of the memorials to come when this day was done, these hours exemplified Slaydo’s life in the eyes of the men and women serving him.
In his hand was Liberatus, the silver-wrought sabre granted to him by the High Lords of Terra at the Crusade’s commencement. With it, he carved down the enemy when he could reach them, and pointed the blade to aim the Argentum’s weapons when he couldn’t.
The palace’s corridors, once the halls of the reverent and decadent alike, had fallen into disgusting disrepair during the Archon’s occupation. The Imperials battled through ruined halls that reeked of piss, great corridors once home to works of religious art, used as latrines by the Archenemy’s forces and populated by wreckage where statues once stood.
Slaydo’s voice grew stronger with every step he took. Blood ran from the curved blade at his side and his eyes glittered, as though he stared at sights unseen by any of his men.
“Clear,” Commodus called to the seven Argentum troopers with him. At the other end of the corridor, which had once housed masterpiece landscape paintings from twelve other worlds, the last enemy soldier fell dead.
“Good shot, sarge,” said Yael. Commodus had nailed the bastard in the throat from at least seventy metres away. “If you’d been doing that the whole time, we’d be done by now.”
The sergeant just nodded, his usual banter nowhere in evidence.
“The stairs ahead lead up to the Western Palisade battlements,” Commodus said to the Warmaster. “Or we can move around to the Central Cloister, cutting left through the servants’ passages.”
“The Palisade,” Slaydo ordered. “He will be seeking us, just as we seek him. No retreat now. No flight off-world. He knows this is the end.”
“Are you s—”
“The Palisade.” The Warmaster raised his sabre high, as if declaring a cavalry charge from antiquity. “It happens under the open sky. She told me herself. It’s time to end this.”
X
The eighteenth hour of the tenth day, and the Western Palisade reached out for a kilometre—a wide rampart of gun emplacements, dead bodies and annihilated walkways along the palace walls. The bombing had taken its toll here, as had long-range shelling from Imperial artillery.
Rain slashed down in a torrent, the kind of cold downpour that so easily penetrated clothing to leave skin feeling greasy. Slaydo advanced along the stone battlements, Liberatus in an ungloved hand, the elegant gold etching along the silver blade turned to flickering amber as it reflected the burning city below. The coiled engravings shimmered in the caught firelight, weaving like serpents along the steel.
“I was so certain,” the old man whispered. “So very sure.”
The Argentum storm-troopers fanned out around him, powered backpacks buzzing in the rainfall, hellguns thrumming in ready hands. Several squads had linked together in the last advance. Commodus stayed at the Warmaster’s side.
“They’re all dead up here, sir.” He kept his voice neutral, masking both disappointment and concern.
“I was so very certain,” the old man repeated. Slaydo looked out over the razed city, then down the long rampart with its population of broken weapons batteries and slaughtered enemy soldiers. “She told me it would end like this, you know. In the rain.”
Commodus cast a worried glance at the others. The Warmaster leaned against an unbroken section of wall and took a shuddering breath. “I’m tired now,” he said. “And I ache like you wouldn’t believe.”
The sergeant had seen the wound now eating at the old man’s life, so he could indeed believe it. Gut wounds killed slowly, but they killed with a vengeance. The Warmaster would never leave Balhaut unless he fell back to proper medicae facilities soon.
“What are your orders, my Warmaster?” asked Trejus, a sergeant from another Argentum squad. Commodus waved him away.
Slaydo wasn’t listening, anyway. The fight had bled from him. In a palsied hand, he clutched a small bronze relic formed into the shape of a young woman. The figurine was no larger than a finger, and the old man’s knuckles whitened around it in his fervency.
“Not like this.” He hissed the words as he stared at Balopolis in flames. The fires raged through the parts of the city still standing, savage enough to resist the rainfall.
He closed his eyes and listened to the rain. Liberatus steamed as water hissed against the live blade.
“Gunfire,” said Commodus behind him.
“Contact, contact,” Argentum troopers were calling to each other. “There, contact, dead ahead.”
Slaydo turned in time to see his most loyal bodyguards raise their weapons and stream beams of energy down the ramparts. A raw, roughshod pack of robed figures was emerging from an arched tower doorway, moving onto the battlements, returning the welcome with las-guns and solid-slug rifles of their own.
Three of the Argentum were punched from their feet by the first barrage, where they died with faces upturned to the oily rain. The others scrambled for cover, laying down a curtain of fire that ripped through the mob’s ranks.
Slaydo saw none of this. He saw only that the mob of enemy warriors—clad as priests and worshippers rather than soldiers—were led by a creature that may once, perhaps, have been human.
A toothless, howling maw opened far too wide in a face flayed down to bare muscle and bone. It saw the old man and screamed, birthing a hundred voices from its rippling throat.
How it saw him, he didn’t know. The creature had no eyes in its empty sockets—no eyes in any of its three faces, all of them howling, bellowing wordless bile through their cavernous jaws. Fingers with too many joints grasped at the air in twitching need, and the thing broke into a disgusting run on legs that seemed too scarecrow-frail to support it.
All three faces kept shrieking as it sprinted through the rain.
Slaydo surprised his men by bursting out into raucous, genuine laughter. He shouted an oath to the Emperor and
His beloved Saint Sabbat, and ran towards the daemon that seemed to breathe by howling.
“Sir!” Commodus cried out. “Sir!” The old man didn’t even look back.
After a decade of crusading across conquered worlds and billions of lost lives, the Warmaster and the Archon met at last on Balhaut, in the eighteenth hour of the tenth day.
XI
Everyone held their fire.
The old man and the robed creature met between the warring sides, their blades clashing and sparking as they cut against each other. There was no hesitation, no careful assessment of the opponent’s fighting style; the human and the once-man hurled themselves at one another with no thought beyond seeing a nemesis finally dead.
Several Argentum soldiers, Commodus among them, tracked the battle through their gunsights. Each one ached for the chance to take one clear shot, while the mob of enemy soldiers bayed and whined like frightened dogs—some chanting, some weeping, some merely panicking. None raised their weapons, as if even risking to aim in their master’s direction was some great sin.
“I can hit the son of a bitch,” Yael murmured, staring through his targeter. “I swear I can.”
Commodus was certain he could, too. But he still ordered “Don’t” in a quiet voice. “Don’t risk it.”
“Is that him?” one of the others asked. “That thing is the Archon?”
The Imperials watched the skinless creature lashing at the old man with a sword that moved too fast to betray any detail. Its robes were a beggar’s rags, streaming from its skeletal body in the wind and rain. Exposed veins formed webways of tension along its flayed limbs and three skinned faces. Worst of all was the way it moved—with something insectile in its jerking grace, limbs with too many joints lashing out like a praying mantis.
The old man had never looked more alive. Age forced him to block blows rather than duck them or weave aside, and sweat beaded his flushed face, while mist left his panting mouth. And yet, he exuded vitality in a way none of them had seen since before Balhaut began. Throne, he was even laughing.
The creature that called itself Nadzybar snapped its seven-fingered hand at Slaydo’s throat, gripping for long enough to hurl the old man off-balance. Its serrated blade sliced out below Liberatus, tearing across Slaydo’s thigh and ripping silvered armour plating clear, scattering it over the stones.
The old man sagged and struck back, favouring his injured leg. As he doubled his efforts, his blood wasted no time, escaping from his body in a flooding stain down his thigh. “Femoral artery,” said Yael softly. “Shit, this’ll be over fast.”
“Stand your ground!” Slaydo called back to them. He couldn’t spare them a moment’s glance, such was the Archon’s ferocity. “I am the Emperor’s will! I am the sword of His Blessed Saint!”
Sparks lit up their faces as both man and monster duelled in the midst of their men. Both blades glowed a dull orange as they heated up, their crackling power fields abused almost to breaking point.
“Fix bayonets,” Commodus ordered. “To hell with this, I’m not going to stand here and watch him die.”
XII
Before the Argentum could even draw close, Nadzybar let fall the blow that would end the Warmaster’s life.
With a three-mouthed howl, the creature hacked its serrated sword into Slaydo’s side. The old man breathed blood through his slack lips, almost vomiting redness onto his uniform.
“Kill it!” Commodus screamed, and broke into a run, his hellgun lowered like a lance, tipped by his silver bayonet. Nadzybar was stroking Slaydo’s features with its long fingers, nail-less fingertips running over the old man’s lips and unshaven jawline. As it stroked the dying man, a breathless, wheezing purr rumbled from its open maws.
It turned to regard the Argentum as they charged, staring sightlessly with its three faces. It still didn’t release the old man from its possessive, gentle grip.
Worshippers streamed past the Archon, flooding either side of the creature, screaming and stabbing with spears made from furniture, shooting at close range with stolen rifles. The Archenemy’s forces were down to the very dregs.
Yael swore as a spear-tip gashed open his cheek and ripped his helmet free. He killed his attacker with a hell-round to the face, and followed up by ramming his bayonet into the next cultist’s throat. Commodus, similarly engaged, spat blood and lost a tooth, hewing left and right with his rifle, clubbing the scum from their feet and letting his squadmates stab them as they lay prone.
He managed a single glance through the melee, seeking out the Warmaster.
The momentary glance tore laughter from his lips, and he screamed something that was almost a cheer.
XIII
Slaydo ended the embrace when he pulled his sword from the monster’s stomach. The creature’s fingers left his rain-wet face, twitching in the air before Slaydo’s eyes. Organs, blackened by cancer, slipped through the tear in Nadzybar’s belly, flopping to the stone floor in puddles of bloody juice. Ropes of intestinal tract looped out in sloppy pursuit.
Nadzybar licked at its lipless maws, trembling, sinking to its knees.
The old man’s blood-scented breath washed over the Archon’s faces as Slaydo rested Liberatus on the creature’s skinny neck. Consecrated steel kissed pale, quivering flesh.
It was a trial just to speak, but the old man managed three words.
“For.
The.
Emperor.”
The holy blade chopped once. Flesh parted with vicious ease, releasing a torrent of stinking black blood.
Nadzybar, the great Archon—fell to the ground. Its head rolled the other way, tumbling under the boots of its worshippers.
Before the body was even still, the old man let his sword fall from strengthless fingers, and roared up at the raining sky.
His triumphant cry was answered, but not by his men.
XIV
The Archon fell, and the ragged worshippers lost their minds.
Many collapsed where they were, weeping and screaming, tearing at their hair and beating at their scabrous flesh. These were easy prey for Argentum guns, and they died on their knees, joining their master in whatever hell was reserved for the blackest of heresies. Others abandoned their melee with the Imperials, shrieking in secret languages as they ran for the staggering figure of the Warmaster. With knives and fists they fell upon him, dragging him down, and their bloodied daggers rose and fell for those precious, fevered moments before the Argentum could butcher every living being not wearing their colours.
Commodus was the one to drag the last cultist clear. He kicked her against the battlement wall, broke her jaw with the butt of his rifle, and ploughed three shots into her head.
Nothing remained above her shoulders. Lacking a face to spit into, he spat onto the medallion she wore: an emblem of the Archon’s three faces in crude brass.
“Clear,” he shouted.
Commodus turned as the Warmaster called his name.
Slaydo lay where he’d fallen, his uniform dyed with blood, most of which was his own.
“It’s done,” he said. The smile curving his lips was sincere, and his voice remained strong.
“It’s done, my Warmaster,” said Commodus. He could still hear gunfire across the palace, some of it drawing closer, and he looked away long enough to wipe his eyes. “We have to get you out of here.”
“Yes, yes,” he huffed. “Come on, then. Stop standing there crying like schoolchildren, and help an old man to his feet.”
“Make a stretcher,” the sergeant ordered Yael. “Out of whatever you can.”
“Don’t you dare obey that order, Yael.” The Warmaster rose on shaking legs, aided by those nearest to him. “I may be dying, but I’m not lazy. I’ll march out of here on two feet, like the Saint herself intended for me.”
Yael and Tiri supported the old man, keeping him between them as they walked. True enough, he walked with them, rather than letting them carry him.
“Carry my sword, Commodus. There’s
a useful fellow.”
“Yes, my Warmaster.”
XV
The building trembled in sympathy with the distant artillery.
The masked woman was unashamed of her tears—or at least felt no shame in silently crying before one such as him. She remained before him for the entire retelling, never interrupting; not to offer him water when his voiced cracked, nor to ask for any clarification. She stood above him the whole time with the knife in her hand.
“That’s what happened,” said Commodus. “That’s how your king died.”
The hook-nosed carnival mask leered in exaggerated mirth. “He was not my king. I am Blood Pact. I serve Gaur. But Nadzybar was the finest of us all, and I will mourn him for the rest of my nights.”
“He looked far from fine when I saw him last.”
She didn’t seem insulted. “It grieves me that anyone witnessed him at his panicked, hopeless end. But the Powers willed it, else it would never have come to pass.”
Commodus swallowed, trying to moisten his sore throat. “You know the rest. The battles in the palace. The Argentum rearguard. The Warmaster escaping.”
“Yes.” She came lower now, back to the half-crouching position when, last time, she’d cut into him with the dagger. “I expect you believed yourself valiant, didn’t you? To delay us, so a decrepit and dying man could escape with your brothers and sisters.”
Commodus was not a vain man, but if that wasn’t something he could be proud of, he didn’t know what else could be.
“I have one question,” she asked, and he knew she was smiling behind the mask. “What happened to your friend? Yael?”
“He was in the rearguard, next to me. I know he was hit, but I don’t know how badly. All I know is that he killed four of you.”
She leaned closer, pressing the knife blade to his throat. Here it is, he thought. Here we go.
But she didn’t kill him. She blinked, her eyes flicking to the dagger in her own hand. “Wait,” the masked woman whispered. “You carried the Warmaster’s sword. You mean… your sword…”