Ghost of Nuceria Read online

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  Ghost of Nuceria – Ian St. Martin

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Heralds of the Siege’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Ghost of Nuceria

  Ian St. Martin

  Jochura woke, if the brief, shivering yield to his exhaustion could be called sleep. The smell of ash and stale sweat greeted him, along with the coppery tang of blood, all blunted by intense cold. Claustrophobia set in as the rest of his senses cleared, and he began the slow, aching process of separating himself from the mound of his brothers and sisters in the darkness of the cave.

  Huddling together for warmth, none of them ever truly slept. You were either on the outside, half-frozen and fighting to reach the centre, or fighting to stay there. Jochura had passed from one role to the other half a dozen times, never awake but never fully asleep either. Considering their options, though, he was grateful for whatever rest he could get. Hozzean had taken half of their number, and the cliffs of Desh’ea were swiftly seeing to the rest.

  Fylaete was at the edge of the huddle, still and not squirming inwards for warmth, and Jochura shut his eyes for a moment as he knelt by his friend’s side. Every time they slept, fewer and fewer awoke. They were too cold, too hungry, too hurt from when they had broken free from the pits and the maddened, joyous slaughters that followed. They had cut the high-riders a deep scar they would not soon forget, but after Hozzean had burned, the cost in blood had begun to take its toll.

  Brotherhood had sustained them, though. The hot dust had bonded their rebellion stronger than any iron. The high-riders’ laughter had quickly faded as their lines shattered and their cities burned. But Jochura knew the final day was coming, even with the Eater of Cities at their head.

  The thought of him sent Jochura peering into the darkness of the cave, gently tugging at the chains wound around his arms to loosen them from where they had frozen to his skin. He looked to the cave mouth, seeing someone there just clear of the howling wind and stinging snow. It was not his leader, not the brutal giant who had bled with them, his rope unbroken red.

  ‘Klester,’ said Jochura, his voice a hoarse croak.

  She turned to look at him, the chains rattling from where they bound the stump of her right leg to the barbed chassis of her shriekspear. The blades of the wicked thing were still dark with high-rider blood, and she had refused to clean it from them.

  ‘Jochura,’ she answered, her fingertips tapping against her spear. Cold and hunger had drained her, as it had them all, yet the fire of the huntress still blazed undiminished in her eyes.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked, coming to her side to stare out of the cave mouth with his sister. ‘Where is Angron?’

  ‘He is hunting.’

  There was only one of them that he could see through the blizzard, and none could see further or better than he. It had come up to the cliffs from the riverbed below, where the blood spilt was only now vanishing beneath the new snow. The lone figure slid through the storm on its silver vines, cast out beneath it like some mechanical sea creature so that its feet need not touch the ground.

  A hateful name formed in his tortured mind, flaring down his synapses, cursing him for watching and not snapping, not rending, not killing.

  Kin-guard.

  They were the iron fist of the high-riders’ armies, the tool they wielded to keep all of Nuceria beneath their feet. The silver vines were everything to the kin-guard: their transport, their armour, their weapon. He had seen them used as shelter, wound into cones around their bodies to keep out the wind and the snow. He had seen the vines form bridges to span chasms, pull a pit fighter into quarters, and take a blow from a berserker’s axe full bore without breaking. They were formidable, strong and versatile, yet the warrior within their confines was still a man, just a man.

  Men could bleed. Men could die.

  The wailing gales masked his footsteps as he stalked, any trace of his path quickly disappearing in the storm. The kin-guard slowed. He closed to within a leap’s distance, every muscle coiled like a spring and screaming for violence. He stopped, still as the dead, watching as the silver tendrils ceased their undulation.

  There had been honour, back on the hot dust. Nobility had existed, a martial brotherhood between the warriors of the pit even though they spent their short lives bleeding and killing one another. There were salutes, and declamations of kills. You would bear your triumph rope for them to see, and they would show you theirs, each of you bellowing that you would twist red that day, while your opponent would twist black in defeat.

  Out here in the wider world, free of his chains, Angron fought a different way. For there was no camaraderie between master and slave, between tyrant and rebel. There was only hate, the letting of blood and a vengeance dreamt of after a lifetime languishing in the pits.

  The kin-guard was quick to react when Angron struck, to his credit. Angron pounced through the whirling curtains of snow, suddenly upon the Nucerian without making a sound. A portion of the silver vines tightened reflexively around the man’s body to protect him from the blows that were sure to come, while others lashed out to ensnare Angron’s limbs and strangle his throat. But they only found air.

  Angron was too quick, and he was too strong. The kin-guard’s snapping mechanical tentacles could not turn him away no matter how they lashed and stabbed at him. Even the vines could not withstand his rage, and the axe in his hands hacked deep, buried to the haft in the kin-guard’s hip, nearly splitting legs from torso. The deadly controlled dance of the vines became a spasmic flail, their lethality withering away to nothing as their wielder succumbed to agony.

  Wrenching the axe free sent a torrent of dark blood spurting onto the snow, crimson pools that sank down in curling whorls of steam. The kick to the Nucerian’s chest that followed flipped the man onto his back, helpless to do anything but stare up at Angron as he glowered down.

  ‘Hnng,’ Angron snorted, spitting bloody phlegm onto the snow as he sank to his haunches over the kin-guard. The Nails had turned his blood to acid, burning him alive from the inside unless he fed them more violence. He reached down, clawing away the vines shielding the Nucerian’s face, and snarled in revulsion at what he found beneath.

  The kin-guard was young, little more than a boy. He could not have made war in the high-riders’ name for more than a summer. Angron had been fighting since the day he was captured, snared and cast into slavery by those whose way of life this man fought to uphold.

  ‘I expected more,’ Angron whispered, his voice soft for all its guttural brutality. ‘Once, when I was still growing down in the pits, I thought you all were gods, divine beings who shaped the lives and fates of us who lived in chains. Then I tore your gates down, and what did I find? Men. Weak, paper-skinned little men did this,’ he jabbed at his Nails, ‘to me.’

  Angron traced a grubby finger along the man’s skull, sneering as the Nucerian cried out at his touch. ‘But there are no gods. Nothing to stop me from vindication, and nothing to save you from it.’ He lowered his face, until the breath slashing from his nostrils made the man beneath him squirm. ‘Make plenty of room, in whatever darkness I am sending you to. All of your masters shall be joining you shortly.’

  A twist, a cry cut short, and Angron rose to his full, towering height. He turned at the sound of blades carving air, as little Klester darted towards him on her shriekspear. She hung beneath the two-metre spar of bladed metal and its armoured anti-grav generator, holding on with one hand as she flew. Angron had witnessed her wield the spear in several ways, utilising any combination of her hands, her fr
ee leg, or the length of adamantine chain that connected it to the stump of her other leg. Seeing her brought a smile to Angron’s face, the steel plugs that replaced his teeth flashing from within a lipless maw. Oh, the magical violence she had wrought with that spear. His sister had made sure their former masters cursed the day when they had taken her leg and bound her to it.

  Klester skidded to a halt beside Angron, disabling the anti-grav unit of her spear and spinning it to drive it point down into the snow. She looked down at the Nucerian kin-guard, summoning up a wad of phlegm to spit onto him. Her eyes flicked to Angron, as he looked at the man’s severed head in his frost-bitten hands.

  ‘A scout?’

  Angron nodded. ‘More will come.’ He wrenched one hand back, tearing the silver lace from the Nucerian’s skull. He dropped it, immediately forgotten, and wound the still bleeding neural implants around his fist. ‘We need to go back, now. They know we are here.’

  Back within the cave, Angron took stock of what remained of his rebellion. Fifty-six gladiators were left alive, from the hundreds he had freed from the pits. He remembered every one of their names, their faces, their victories. He remembered fighting with them, and against them, turning their triumph ropes together and never gloating as they twisted black and he always red.

  The dead had been laid in the back of the cave, their weapons taken, their rags now wrapped about those who survived to keep out whatever of the frigid cold that they could. This was neither callous pragmatism, nor disregard for their fallen kin. It was the spirit within each of them that mattered: with it fled from the flesh, those whose hearts still beat knew that more than anything else, their dead brothers and sisters would have wanted them to have whatever they could offer to keep bleeding their masters.

  Angron looked to his army, his warriors. He looked into their eyes, seeing resolve and readiness smouldering there despite the fighting that had bled them and the mountain that was starving them. More fighting, Angron could give to them. To feed their bodies, he would also provide what he could.

  He found the new scar along his palm and ran the blade across it. He sliced slowly, making sure that the cut was deep. It had to be deep, else it would clot before he had bled enough for everyone to eat.

  They had first resorted to his blood eight days ago, when the last of their food had run out. Here amongst the mountaintops, there was nothing to forage, and so Angron did what he could to keep his family alive. Many had been unable to take the richness of it, for his blood was so different to their own, more potent, more vital. Those who could stomach it used what they could to cut it, mixing it with snow from the mountain or even their own blood.

  Angron had not eaten since they razed Hozzean. For the weeks they had been in the mountains – striking out to raid and destroy whatever force the Nucerians sent for them, steadily withdrawing to their peaks and cliffs as their numbers dwindled – any sustenance they had found had gone to his brothers and sisters. They all knew Angron was different; it had always been clear to see, even if none could explain how, or why.

  When the last of Angron’s warriors had taken his blood, they sat in a circle around him, huddling together for warmth. He closed his fist, already feeling the blood clot and the flesh reknitting. They all knew what was coming, but Angron could find no fear in any of their eyes. They were gladiators; fighting and death were all they had ever known. Now, here against the Nucerians, they were killing for something that mattered. Something that was worth fighting for, and worth dying for.

  ‘It is only a matter of time now,’ Angron finally said, casting the dead kin-guard’s silver lace onto the floor of the cave. ‘They will find their scout’s corpse–’

  ‘Though not his head,’ Jochura smirked. He looked to Klester, and she rattled her shriekspear with the Nucerian’s severed head impaled upon it. The gladiators laughed together, the joyous sound echoing from the walls of the cave.

  Angron grinned, knowing that mirth warmed the body better than anything, before continuing on. ‘They will find him, and it will not take long before they reach us here on the cliffs.’

  ‘You left it for them to find,’ said Cromach, fingers dancing along the haft of his brazier glaive. ‘You wanted them to find us.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what any of us want,’ Angron replied, gesturing to all the occupants of the cave. ‘Look around you. Each day we grow weaker. Soon this mountain will steal the strength from our hands to even lift our blades. So we fight them here, now, while we still can. If we die, we die, but not to this mountain. We fall free people, fighting together as brothers and sisters, and taking as many of those paper-skinned high-rider bastards with us to hell as we can.’

  They all remembered the last night in the caves, before Angron tore the gates down from their hinges and unleashed the slave war upon Nuceria, when each of them had sworn their lives to one another. To shatter their chains and rise, a glorious revolt against the tyranny of the high-riders. There were no thoughts of victory, of how to rule over the world afterwards, only a determination to fight. To make the Nucerians suffer before they breathed their last.

  ‘Sleep now,’ said Angron as he rose and walked to the mouth of the cave. ‘And dream of high-riders screaming for the mercy they never thought to give to you. I will wake you when they come.’

  The gladiators formed the huddle once more, trading the jokes and insults of bonded brethren as they jockeyed for the centre. Angron sat at the cave’s entrance, looking out through the swirling veils of snow, towards the high-riders as they drew ever nearer to the cliffs, and their last battle.

  ‘You should rest,’ he said, hearing footsteps coming behind him along with the soft rattle of chains.

  ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ Jochura gave Angron his usual crooked grin. ‘Tomorrow.’

  Angron chuckled, and gestured for his fellow gladiator to sit beside him. It was difficult sometimes to remember that Jochura was still just a boy of barely fifteen summers. The hot dust had a way of either ageing boys into men, or never letting them age at all.

  ‘Air never tasted so good as it does up here,’ said Jochura. He had picked up the dead kin-guard’s silver lace from where Angron had dropped it, running the delicate strands through his fingers like prayer beads.

  ‘That’s because you’re free,’ said Angron. ‘The world can be– hnng,’ he snarled, fighting off a stabbing wave of pain from his Nails, ‘beautiful, when you finally get to see it without chains.’

  ‘I’ll hold on to these, though.’ Jochura wove his chains through a gap in the lace, pulling it taught and snapping the neural implants apart. ‘Need to show the masters all the new tricks I can do with them.’

  Angron smiled, his lip spasming from the Butcher’s Nails to warp the expression into a ghoulish leer. They sat for a while in silence, watching the snow twist and glitter in the air, savouring that which they had spent their entire lives dreaming of, to breathe as free men.

  ‘We’ll make them hurt, won’t we?’ Jochura looked up at Angron, appearing more than ever as a boy his age should. ‘Before it’s over?’

  ‘We already have, my boy,’ said Angron. ‘We are the Eaters of Cities, and we have feasted on them well, you and I. They’ve twisted black, Jochura, and no matter what comes, they will always carry that black twist with them. They’ll never forget what we did to them, that we made them pay for all they did to us.’

  Angron glanced down, seeing Jochura leaned against him, finally succumbing to the exhaustion that was marrow-deep within them all. He peeled off a layer of rags from his shoulders and draped them around the boy. The Nails railed against Angron being touched, as they always did, but he shoved the pain they sent him down and away. The accursed implants had stolen so much from him, but he would not let them take his brotherhood. Not yet.

  The morning was bright, the sky a light steel grey and clear of the blinding snow. Angron stood at the centre of his army
, the anchor of their shield wall, watching for their enemy to come within sight.

  He could hear the low rumble upon the mountain slopes as the armies of the high-riders amassed. Thousands of kin-guard, the ground a quivering morass of their silver vines, moving in formation to surge up the cliffs in a lashing wave. With them were mercenaries, private armies and militias – any force the Nucerians could raise, buy or threaten into fighting in their name.

  Let them come, Angron thought. A sellsword’s blood spilled just as well from his axe. He was going to paint the mountain red this day.

  When they came, they arrived riding upon a wave of terrible noise. As soon as it reached his ears, Angron’s blood caught fire, the Nails boring deep into the meat of his mind. It was a horrific sound, the sound he heard before every fight upon the hot dust, trumpeted out by his masters as they watched him and his kindred suffer and die for their amusement.

  Music.

  ‘Look at that.’ Klester gave her wolfish grin as a loose flock of grey dots grew in the sky above. ‘The high-riders finally show themselves.’

  Each of the Nucerian nobles was unique, every one of them a monument of gilded excess wholly different from their fellows. Some of them sailed through the air on great silver wings, while others were borne aloft by bulky gauntlets or reclined upon filigreed couches. They wore animal masks, horses and lions and great birds of prey, all exquisitely crafted into a gaudy overindulgence and inlaid with enough gems to feed a kingdom.

  Angron sneered up at them, the perfect manifestation of all that he had ever despised. Their mere presence alone confirmed how severely he and his Eaters of Cities had cost them. Here, on these cliffs, he would hurt them more.

  Despite their overwhelming advantages of technology, Angron saw the flaws, the weaknesses of the high-riders as they rode out to meet them. Vanity had stolen their cohesion, and they showed none of the unity possessed by his own warriors. And he knew in his soul that their masters lacked the stomach for a real fight. Once things got bloody, and they were torn down to the mud with their slaves, the real flesh-parting would begin.