A blow on his helmet brought his attention rudely back to the combat. His head shivered from the impact of a las-rifle butt. How rude, he thought, smashing the man's skull with a downward sweep of his bolter muzzle and then pumping some shells into the spasming corpse to drive the lesson home. Oh well, he had work to do anyway. It was time to capture the mage.
He strode forward, batting aside friend and foe indiscriminately, determined to take the farseer prisoner. How well will he sing when he's tied to the autorack? The thought amused him. He smashed another man down and found himself in striking distance of the mage. At that moment, an eldar woman stepped out of the crowd to confront him.
She was a blurred figure of black and white, but he guessed her hair was long, and she was armed with a pistol and some sort of blade. She was tall and willowy, like all eldar women.
'Surrender at once. I will put you on a silver leash and train you to be my pet,' he informed her pleasantly. 'You shall be fed tidbits from my own hand, and learn to please me in the manner your ancestors did.'
It seemed a perfectly reasonable offer to Zarghan, and infinitely preferable to the boredom of death but she apparently was having none of it. She smiled nastily at him.
'Perhaps I shall make you the same offer,' she said. 'Then again, perhaps not.'
The blade swept toward Zarghan and he parried it easily, too late realising that it had been a feint. Her armoured boot smashed into his helmet, sending him reeling backwards, his armour flaring a bruised purple.
'I like a woman with a sense of humour,' he said and advanced to the attack once more.
Janus unclipped a grenade from his belt, and lobbed it at the onrushing mutants. It landed in their midst and detonated. A tidal wave of blood and broken bone flew everywhere. The Chaos worshippers did not stop, but came racing on. Most continued towards their original objective but a few of them detoured to attack him. Judging by their expressions, they had forgotten any orders they might have had to take him alive.
Janus snatched up his bolter and pumped a stream of shells into his attackers. A head exploded, a second human went down clutching at a huge hole that had suddenly appeared in his stomach. Three more came up the stairs and he met them with his blade.
The leading man chopped at him with an enormous cleaver, and he ducked. The second stabbed upwards with a power-axe that Janus barely managed to parry. The third waited behind his compatriots, unable to find a gap to attack through, for which Janus was profoundly grateful.
He pushed forward with his sword, hearing its blade grind against the swiftly rotating teeth of the axe, and then punched forward with the barrel of his bolter. The man's nose broke and he fell backwards into the man behind him, both tumbling headlong down the stairs. Blood spurted where the out of control axe bit flesh. Janus smiled triumphantly.
The last man took advantage of the moment to aim another blow at the rogue trader. Janus leapt back up the stairs, his heel catching on the lip of the topmost step. It saved him by sending him tumbling backwards to land sprawled on the dais. The man's cleaver passed clean over him. Janus stabbed upwards, catching him in the crotch with his blade. The man gave an eerie high-pitched wail; its tone rising as Janus viciously twisted the blade.
The castanet clicking of claws behind him warned him that the daemonettes had arrived on the dais. He tried to roll to his feet but a claw bit into the flesh of his shoulder. At first the pain almost immobilised him, but he realised the claw must contain some form of narcotic venom, for the pain swiftly vanished, replaced by a wave of pleasure that left him utterly relaxed and just as incapable of movement.
With a strength that belied her slight form, the daemonette hauled him to his feet, like a man lifting a puppy by the scruff of its neck. He wanted to resist but the drug left him immobile. He gazed into the smiling faces of his captors and responded in kind as they licked their lips lasciviously. The smell of their musk was almost overpowering, and threatened to sweep away all his self-control.
At this range he could study them closer. They were tall and well made with one bared breast. They were garbed in shiny black leather but looking closer, he could see that at least one of them was wearing what appeared to be garments made from tattooed human flesh. He had seen similar tattoos with the names of sweethearts and children on the arms of sailors, and he did not want to speculate on where these had come from. One patch of skin showed an anchor and the word 'Sengha'. A name or perhaps a brand of beer, he wondered dully?
Steps sounded on the stairs behind him as more of the mutants had come into view. He recognised the man whose nose he had broken. His head was shaved and tattooed and small horns emerged from his forehead. Blood streamed down his nose.
'Datz da basturd,' he said, pain blurring his words. 'Hold 'im while I gut him.'
The daemonette smiled and shook her head, but the man advanced anyway, the blade of his axe sending out an eerie high-pitched whine. A look of brutal cruelty passed over his features. The daemonette did not warn him a second time. Instead, a claw flickered out almost too fast for the eye to follow and snipped closed around the man's neck. Blood fountained and the severed head rolled down the stairs. The bright, pleasant expression on the she-daemon's face never changed although now both she and Janus were splattered with droplets of blood.
In a moment, her long serpent-like tongue flickered out to lick her lips and cheeks clean. Janus shuddered. There had been nothing even remotely human in that gesture.
He let himself go limp in her grip, and brought his heel down very hard on the instep of her foot. Had he done this to a human, there would have been a crunch of breaking bone. The daemonette merely shook him a little, and short spasms of agony from the movement fought against the anaesthetic effect of the poisoned claw.
It came to him that he had more effective weapons. He turned the bolt pistol around, slid it through the gap under his armpit and pulled the trigger. The blast of muzzle flare seared his flesh, for his body armour did not cover that area completely. He felt flesh tear and blood begin to flow as the force of impact blew the daemonette backwards, sending her sprawling obscenely back against the dais.
Her two sisters shrieked their displeasure and clicking their claws advanced towards him. The creature he had shot pulled herself to her feet and began to advance again too. It appeared her sorcerously-tainted flesh was immune to his weapons.
At that moment, Janus found himself wishing that he could tap into the psychic powers that had so threatened his sanity, but it appeared that the eldar gem still prevented it. He shook his head, wondering whether the thought of using his powers had even been his own. Surely in the presence of the daemons and an experienced Chaos sorcerer they would be much more likely to work to his undoing than his advantage.
Not that it would make much difference if he did not staunch the flow of blood from his open shoulder. So far the daemon venom had dulled the pain, but he could see, even at a cursory inspection, that his armour had shattered and shards had been driven bone deep into his flesh. Such things could go very bad very quickly, he knew, back peddling towards the stairs, all the while keeping his eyes upon the advancing she-fiends.
One of them paused and made enticing motions with her hips, gesturing for him to come back. With the cloying influence of the musk still in his nostrils, part of him wanted to obey. He fought for control and they sprang covering the distance in one easy fluid motion. This time two sets of claws bit into his flesh immobilising him. The one he had shot caressed his face with the edge of her claw. It was a motion that promised an eternity of hideous pain.
Then as one they turned and bore him back to the great mandala atop which the floating sorcerer waited.
* * *
'They have Janus Darke!' Zarghan heard the eldar woman shout. Her words had a reddish tinge, he noticed, as she chopped into his shoulder with her blade.
'I know,' the eldar psyker replied. 'Now comes the moment of maximum peril.'
Zarghan considered the farseer's words.
It sounded like he had anticipated this happening and had some sort of plan. Zarghan supposed that it was only to be expected. The eldar seers were supposed to be spectacularly gifted prophets, although it had not saved them when the Great Lord of all Pleasures came for them.
The woman moved into a strange whirling dance, her blade swirled around her, driving Zarghan back among his men. Almost incidentally the whirling storm of death cut down two beastmen. It was all Zarghan could do to prevent her from cutting him down. In truth, he had to admit she was extraordinarily skilled.
As Athenys moved the farseer fell into step behind her, drawing a foul-looking black crystal blade around which trapped lightning flickered and danced. The sight of it filled Zarghan with sudden fear. He knew that whatever that weapon cut would suffer a fate worse than death. The sword sang to him, the flickering along its length being transformed into wild music by his crossed senses.
The humans rallied behind her and in a wedge began to cross the chamber. Under normal circumstances their bravery would have been suicidal, for the rest of the Chaos force was just arriving to take them in both flanks, but these were not normal circumstances. The farseer's blade flickered out to touch the foremost mutant. The man's skin split and blackened. At the point of impact the flesh seemed to curdle and lose all moisture and then flake away to reveal the bone beneath. The man barely had time to scream before his entire body was mummified, drained of all life. Zarghan wondered briefly if even his sorcerously reinforced armour could protect him from such a weapon and decided that on the whole he would rather not find out just yet.
'To me!' he bellowed, seeing how his men wavered when they saw the fate of their comrade. The eldar struck out again and two more men were gone in as many instants. Mortal armour appeared to provide no protection against the ravening power of that evil eldar weapon.
I wonder if I could get someone to make one of those for me, Zarghan pondered? It would certainly prove useful the next time I meet Khårn the Betrayer. Then he had no more time for such thoughts as the eldar woman pressed home her attack and he had to give all his attention to keeping himself alive.
TWENTY-FOUR
FARSEER'S DOOM
Janus found himself being hauled across the Chamber of Faces and onto the great mandala. The daemonettes were very strong and they were not gentle. Not even the narcotic effect of the venom in their claws could drown out all of the pain, although it did mingle a bizarre euphoria with his sense of hopelessness and defeat.
He knew that the only thing keeping him alive as they moved was the presence of the she-daemons. The mutants glared at him with death in their eyes. They would strike him down in an instant if given the chance. Despite this, he writhed in the grasp of his captors knowing that a clean death at the hands of the raiders would be preferable to what waited him when he reached the sorcerer.
It seemed that Auric had been wrong, all of this time. His vision of the future was flawed. Janus was certainly going to be taken now and it looked as if the eldar himself would be swiftly overwhelmed. Janus risked a glance back to see how things were progressing. He was surprised. Following the two eldar his own men had broken out of the vault, and were smashing a path through their foes.
Even as he watched, Athenys broke through the guard of the Chaos Space Marine who led the beastmen and knocked him to the ground. Auric stood in the forefront of battle and killed anything that got within the reach of his blade. He did not need to inflict a wound: the merest touch of that crystal sword was enough to destroy anything it came into contact with.
In a swift burst of speed, the farseer covered the ground that separated him from the daemonettes. Two of the she-daemons broke off to oppose him. They moved with eye-blurring swiftness, moving to flank the eldar, one approaching from each side, so that whichever way he turned, the other would get a clear attack at him.
Auric did not wait for this to happen. He leapt forward swinging the deathsword two-handed in a great figure of eight. It struck the right hand daemonette full on the breast, but something protected her from the full fury of the weapon. Perhaps it was some mystical force, perhaps it was the unearthly composition of her own flesh, but where a man or mutant would simply have collapsed into a swift-shrivelling pile of dust and bone and ashes, the Chaos daemon came on.
Her claw clicked closed where the farseer's head had been mere moments ago. Only a swift last second duck saved him from decapitation. The other daemonette made a grab for him, but Auric blocked the blow with the deathsword. Somehow it became lodged in the daemonette's claw, and for a moment it looked like she might wrest it from him, but then the flares of chain lighting dancing along the blade increased, and she let out an unearthly scream that froze everyone within hearing.
It was worse than the wail of a soul in torment. It was the death cry of a being that had lived since the dawn of time and who knew the moment of its end had now come. It was the call of someone who was dying in the utmost pain and terror.
Everyone, Chaos worshipper and human mercenary alike, halted when they heard that terrible cry. Even as Janus watched the daemonette's claw turned red and cracked revealing the pale but swiftly putrefying flesh within. The darkness passed on up her arm, which became black, puffy and swollen and burst with a shower of horrid, sweet-smelling pus.
Janus saw that a similar thing had happened to the second daemonette. Where the blade had touched her breast earlier her skin was blighted, cracked and broken, and was weeping black tears. It seemed that whatever protective enchantment surrounded them, it only slowed the sword's effect. The second daemonette let out an unearthly shriek and sprang forward, as if determined to slay the thing that had caused her such torment. Her attack was so furious that for a few moments it looked like she might overwhelm Auric, but the farseer fell back, parrying the hail of blows with the black sword, and was rewarded by wails of purest terror whenever the blade made contact.
Within a few heartbeats it was over, the two daemonettes had already started to decompose into pools of oddly smelling slime. It was like watching the decomposition of a corpse, only thousands of times faster, and it left Janus both appalled and encouraged by the sheer power of the eldar weapon.
The surviving daemonette continued to drag Janus forward towards the stairs leading up to the great mandala. He slumped down, ignoring his pain, and doing his best to become a dead weight, hoping to give the eldar time to reach him, praying to the Emperor that the strange sorcerer above would not come down to meet them.
More of the Chaos worshippers threw themselves forward between the daemonette and the farseer. He had to say this for them, whatever else they might lack, they did not want for courage. Janus doubted that he would have gone forward against Auric with quite such ferocity, having witnessed what that terrible blade could do. On the other hand, he thought, he was not under the influence of noxious combat drugs and the strange intoxicating musk of the daemonettes.
They moved forward to protect her with the determination of men fighting to protect a wife or a child. If he had not known better he would have said that they loved this sinister thing. He supposed that maybe they did. Who could tell what such depraved cultists were truly like, and what sort of spell the evil creature had worked on them? Janus was glad that she had not had time to do something similar to his own men. Either that, or the sorcery of the eldar was protecting them.
The mutants and beastmen hurled themselves forward in a vast wave. They were met by Auric, Athenys, Kham Bell and the few surviving warriors of Darke's Company in a struggle that was bestial in its ferocity. Darke's comrades were every bit as savage and determined as their assailants, and the sheer desperation of being so badly outnumbered just added to their fury. There was no sign now of any prejudice against the eldar. They were all fighting on the same side against a common foe and it seemed like nothing was going to get in their way.
Even as Janus watched, Athenys dispatched a huge bull-headed man with her blade, while at the same time blasting with a shuriken catapult
into the nearest mutant. Beside her Auric strode confidently forward, reaching out to kill with the lightest touch of his glowing black blade. Kham Bell fought alongside them, smashing at the mutants with the butt of his rifle, stamping on the necks of the fallen, bellowing encouragement to the surviving soldiers.
The daemonette pulled him onwards. The crystal steps bruised his back and legs. He tried throwing himself forward and down the stairs, thinking that perhaps the blood slicking her claw would loosen the daemonette's grip, but it was not to be. The jagged edged claw was buried too deep, had perhaps even lodged itself in his collar bone. As he moved Janus felt the grinding of bones. Sparks danced before his vision and pain lanced through him, suddenly, sickeningly, shockingly.
A moment later he looked up at the glowing figure of the Chaos sorcerer. An amused grin spread across its rapidly aging face. Recognition glittered in its glowing eyes. It gestured and the daemon let him go. A wave of pure euphoric energy followed its gesture, and Janus watched his wound close, the flesh slurping together and knitting as if it had never been open.
'At last,' said Shaha Gaathon. 'A vessel worthy of my power. Now, let the eldar attack us with his puny toy sword.'
Janus did not like the sound of this at all.
Zarghan looked up from where he lay, and saw the figure of Janus Darke rise into the air and hover in front of Shaha Gaathon. Sparks of purple lightning flickered between them, and the human opened his mouth and let out a howl that was in its way no less frightening than the death cries of the daemonettes. Zarghan guessed that it could not be too pleasant to have your soul sucked right out of your body and used as food for daemons. The sound echoed within his bones and caused flickering yellow waves to ripple across his field of vision.