Lucius: The Faultless Blade Page 2

  The fallen angels had come to free those wretches from the captivity of XII Legion shackles. Their liberators had an entirely different fate in store for them. A fate that was sublimely, excruciatingly worse.

  Direnc clutched the length of rusted iron pipe to his barrel chest, the thunderous tremors around him crashing in concert with the pounding hammer of his heart. He had torn the pipe out from the wall of a long-abandoned maintenance duct four months ago, and since that time it had helped him in killing eight men and three women in the lightless expanse of the Pit Cur’s lower decks. Direnc had sought none of them out, but he had not had to. From murdering over debts incurred gambling in the fighting pits to struggling for the meagre supplies necessary to eke out a threadbare existence aboard the ship, killing was a way of life for those in thrall to the War God, from the lowliest slave to the Red Centurion who ruled the warband and the Pit Cur as its chieftain.

  Rounded up with a dozen other slaves, Direnc had been herded into the depths of the ship, to guard against potential invasion. Most of the other slaves were armed in a similarly pitiful manner to Direnc, white-knuckled claws gripping sharpened bits of plasteel tubing or battered industrial tools. Looking around the near total blackness of the corridor in which he found himself, he wondered what the ragged collection of serfs could possibly do to stop any hostile demi­gods intent on cutting their way into the ship. Even against a single one of them, the slaves would do little more than serve as a meat shield to cake their boots.

  Only one man present in the corridor was armed with anything that was ever originally intended to be used as a weapon. The overseer flicked nervous eyes from slave to slave, cradling the dented stock of a beaten combat shotgun against his hip. He had positioned himself behind the pack of terrified thralls, to serve more as a means of keeping them from fleeing than to repel any boarders himself.

  Wiping grimy sweat from his brow, Direnc pushed a deep breath from between his teeth. The entire situation was insane. The idea of anyone coming close enough to be boarded by the Pit Cur and its cohort of geneforged killers was as good as suicidal. The very notion that anyone would board such a ship themselves was beyond ludicrous. Direnc was strong enough to survive aboard the Pit Cur. His large, muscular frame ensured that he could keep himself alive as well as haul the fuel lines and ammunition hoppers used to rearm and refuel the masters’ war machines housed in the primary landing bay. He stood a head taller than most of the other men and women around him, but he was still a child in comparison to one of the legionaries.

  The walls around Direnc heaved as a shell struck the hull nearby, filling the air with the sonorous screech of protesting metal. Another, greater impact followed, right at the end of their corridor. Direnc managed to seize hold of an exposed pipe threading the wall to remain upright, just keeping him from joining several of the slaves around him who were dashed against the walls and deposited on the deck. Dazed men and women pushed themselves shakily back to their feet, while others, their bodies bent and folded at unnatural angles, remained unmoving on the grate.

  Deep, resonant clunks issued from the end of the corridor, underpinning the shriek of shearing hull plating. Faint pinpricks of light appeared against the far wall, multiplying and merging together as the metal began to glow. Acrid smoke billowed down the corridor as the wall melted into slag, slopping down onto the deck in hissing, golden lumps.

  Direnc’s blood froze. He had spent enough time maintaining the warband’s attack craft to recognise the tell-tale effects of a melta cutter. The enemy had attached a boarding ram to the Pit Cur. Right here.

  The slaves began to look behind them, instinct and the animal urge to flee for their lives taking hold over their minds. The air grew thick with the sour reek of adrenaline. Panicked chatter broke out, as more and more of the thralls backed away from the rapidly growing breach in the wall at the end of the corridor.

  The overseer standing behind them with the shotgun barked a threat, firing his weapon into the crowd. A man thudded to the deck, his chest ripped open by the blast. The mob reeled, looking back to see the last of the wall boil away.

  Silence filled the corridor for a handful of moments. The slaves jumped as a low hiss issued out from the site of the breach. A thick, rolling mist billowed down, a deep rose in colour. Slowly it filled the corridor, curling towards them in soft pink tendrils.

  The slaves began to see shapes form in the depths of the mist. Large things clad in spiked armour. Legionaries. And these were not their masters.

  Pandemonium gripped the serfs. Frantic, they turned upon the overseer en masse. He issued a command to halt, his voice cracking from panic, and fired the shotgun into the crowd again. Aiming was unnecessary against the frenzied press advancing on him. Men and women were flung back, shredded by the booming blasts, and all the while the mist crept closer.

  Direnc leapt at the overseer, twisting himself aside just as the shotgun fired again. The bulk of the shot missed him, but a handful of razored pellets stitched across his side in puffs of dark blood. Pain exploded, ripping out from Direnc’s ribcage and spreading like fire over his body. Rage willed him to his knees, and he grabbed the panicked overseer around the waist and hauled him to the ground. The man thrashed and kicked, struggling to level the shotgun at Direnc’s head as the mist drifted nearer.

  Direnc smashed into the overseer with a brutal headbutt. He felt his nose break, mashing flat to his face in a starburst of black, hot pain, but also felt something shift in the overseer’s skull. Dazed, the man loosened his grip on the shotgun, and Direnc wrenched it from his grip. Reversing his hold on the weapon, he smashed its buttstock down into the overseer’s face. He brought it down again, and again, and again, until what he was hitting lost any semblance of having ever been human. Blood, spongy globs of flesh and splinters of bone covered the buttstock, slippery in Direnc’s grip as he stood, whirling around and bringing the weapon up to his shoulder.

  The mist had reached him. It rolled forwards like a living thing of rosy smoke, surging up and into his mouth and nostrils. It filled his lungs, passing through the membranes to spin through his bloodstream.

  For a moment, Direnc was perfectly still. The shotgun clattered to the deck, utterly forgotten as he fell to his knees. His pupils dilated, growing so wide that his eyes appeared to have no irises at all. His hands shook. Tears streamed down his face, carving lines through the gore as he both laughed and sobbed at the same time.

  Bliss enveloped Direnc, utter, unrestrained and complete. He felt it pass into his heart and radiate out in ripples of ecstasy with every pulsing beat. It felt like being wrapped in warm silk, like the kiss of a roaring fire in the ship’s freezing lower decks. It felt like love, honest and asking nothing of him. It only gave, true and unending.

  The dark, rust-pitted corridors of the Pit Cur, slathered with blood and sweat and curses, melted away. The stale, earthy scent of poorly recycled air was replaced by rapturous perfume. Direnc’s pain, his fear, his loneliness, all evaporated. A song filled the air, the purest, most beautiful music he had ever heard. Direnc wanted to drown in it, forgetting everything but the unimaginable pleasure he was sinking into.

  Nothing else mattered. Nothing could ever matter as much as the waves of elation washing over his senses. Curled into a ball beneath the mist, Direnc giggled softly as pinkish foam boiled from between his lips. To him, the clanging tread of armoured boots felt kilometres away as they passed him by, barely registering in his mind as they crushed corpses into paste on their way to the heart of the Pit Cur.

  I.II

  Krysithius sighed as broken flesh tore and squelched beneath the claws of his boots. There was a time, the swordsman remembered, when such a thing would have sent a thrill of giddiness crawling up his spine. Worship of the Youngest God had brought him and his brothers to the well of never-ending pleasure, and they had drunk deeply from it.

  So deeply, that after millennia even the sublime
physiology of the Legiones Astartes had grown numb to the world of the senses, their nerves overloaded so completely that they could only hope to render a fraction of the pleasure they once provided. So now, he experienced sensations that had once brought him such joy as muted, distant things. It was like hearing an echo, but never the true sound that had birthed it.

  Twisting his painted features of gold and indigo in a snarl, Krysithius cast aside his melancholy thoughts. The crystal claws of his gauntlets clicked against the hilt of his sword in anticipation. It had been too long since the Cohors Nasicae had slipped the leash. Too long since the last indulgence of blood and pain.

  Kindred sons of the perfect Legion followed behind Krysithius, filling the lightless corridor with the glow of crystal-blue helmet lenses. They strode into the passages of the XII Legion vessel encased in war-plate as shattered as their brotherhood. Gone was the clean, regal purple and precious metals they had worn when they conquered the galaxy. Those whose armour was not entirely covered in the stretched skins of their victims displayed a riotous variance of mark and colour. Some wore black, platinum and rose, while ­others were clad in iridescent plate that settled on any single hue for little more than a heart’s beat. There were a diminished few among them who still made war in armour of purple, though it was anything but royal, now the darkly organic swirl of deeply bruised flesh. The Legion of the Emperor’s Children was long dead, and the fragment of its corpse that was the Cohors Nasicae warband was united only in its degradation.

  Like the venomous sneer of Krysithius, the disdain of the other former III Legion warriors for their surroundings was unambiguous. They danced past walls of bare iron, their ears deprived of blissful melodies and clashing harmonics, smelling no perfume upon the air but the bland copper of thin mortal blood. There was no refinement, no artistry or joyful expression of the divine.

  And no soul.

  Most of the mortals they had encountered since disembarking from the boarding ram were dead, their frail bodies mashed into the deck and useless for their purposes. There were a handful who still drew breath lying jabbering upon the deck, overcome by the musk that Cesare had concocted. The warriors sucked plumes of the mist into their masks, though they quickly waved it away when it failed to arouse within them even a modicum of pleasure. It was a vastly diluted form of the ambrosia the Apothecary had created for them before the warband went forth into battle.

  Its effect on mortals, though, was quite potent. The swirling pink veil was even now slowly filling the ship, rendering the mortal crew compliant and ensuring that they could be recovered with a ­minimum of waste. Krysithius and the other warriors would be back for them, once they had dealt with their masters.

  The harsh sound of their heavy, reverberating tread filled the corridor junction ahead of Krysithius. He heard the cruel bark of Nagrakali, and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to the Dark Prince for delivering him here, to savour the bliss of battle once more.

  Two loose packs of World Eaters converged in the gloom of the junction, their hunched forms of brass and deep crimson visibly twitching from the relentless attentions of their Butcher’s Nails. The scream of chain weapons grated in such close quarters, and several of the Cohors Nasicae smiled gratefully at the shrieking discordance.

  ‘Greetings and salutations, dear cousins,’ said Krysithius as he emerged, dipping forwards in an elaborate bow. He looked up at the World Eaters, arching an eyebrow with a smile. ‘Are we unexpected?’

  The lead World Eater, his snarling helm crested by a transverse fan of dagger blades, spread his arms wide at Krysithius, a chainaxe in each battered fist.

  ‘Unexpected,’ came the World Eater’s strained reply. Pain stabbed through every syllable, and for a moment, Krysithius almost envied him that.

  ‘Unexpected, but welcome.’

  The two groups leapt into the melee. The World Eaters abandoned all sense of unit cohesion in pursuit of slaughter, as they always did. The Cohors Nasicae were similarly divided as they brought their blades to bear, making war as individual swordfighters conducting individual battles. Like hounds and vipers they struck and cleaved at one another, brawlers against dancers.

  Krysithius caught the blurred edge of the lead World Eater’s axe on his vambrace. He smiled as sparks fountained against his face, before spinning beneath with a low slash for his opponent’s gut. The son of Angron saw the attack coming, bringing down his other axe. Krysithius’ blade sliced through the haft of the weapon, severing it cleanly in two. The World Eater rammed his shoulder into Krysithius’ chest, barging him back as he threw the ruined weapon aside.

  The fighting spilled out of the junction and through a bulkhead, leading into an abandoned observation blister. The dense armourglass dome overhead, blackened and grimy from neglect, nonetheless dominated the chamber, offering a dazzling view of the Eye’s ever-changing swirl of horrors. Now with more room to manoeuvre, the Cohors Nasicae darted across the chamber, kicking off walls and flowing around their slower, plodding foe.

  Krysithius sneered with irritation as a World Eater seized him from behind in a crushing bear hug. He brought his knees to his chest and arched his back, breaking the warrior’s grip as he flipped behind him and punched the blade of his sword through the World Eater’s neck. He cut the sword free, smiling and watching the legionary’s head flop on its remaining ligaments as the stump of his neck showered the deck with blood.

  Krysithius eyed the pack leader he had been duelling. ‘No manners at all.’

  The XII Legion brute snarled a short laugh through his helm as he charged. Krysithius sidestepped him, stomping down against the side of the World Eater’s knee and grinning as he felt something snap under his boot. Undeterred, the berserker pivoted with a soft crackle of tearing cartilage, gripping Krysithius by the shoulders and driving his shattered knee into the swordsman’s ribcage.

  Fresh pain surged over Krysithius’ senses as his fused ribs shifted, scraping at the periphery of his senses as if from beneath a layer of ice. He felt the barest tantalisation of floating bone scraping against his lungs. One of the organs was punctured, causing a trickle of hot blood to rise up his throat and spatter from between his painted lips.

  The swordsman grinned with pink teeth. It was sublime.

  Krysithius drove his sword up under the World Eater’s breastplate, punching through the gouged ceramite and through layers of fibre bundle musculature. The blade pierced flesh and split muscle. Krysithius levered it beneath the warrior’s sternum, seeking the thundering hearts within the Space Marine’s chest.

  The World Eater roared, driving an armoured forearm into Krysithius’ throat and throwing his weight forwards. For a moment, the two were airborne, twisted together like lovers. They crashed into the deck hard enough to crater it, and the breath was driven from Krysithius’ lungs as he bore the brunt of their weight. A mouthful of blood burst from his lips, adding more crimson to the gold and indigo painting his face. His sword sank deeper into the World Eater’s chest. He twisted the blade, and felt both hearts tear asunder.

  The World Eater raised his axe in a shaking grip, dark blood pouring over the hilt of Krysithius’ sword. Even with both hearts destroyed, the son of Angron fought on. He swung the axe down in a blur of screaming chain teeth.

  Krysithius leaned to the side, feeling the teeth churn the air as the axe glanced past, slamming and embedding into the deck just beside his head. He swung his hips out and rolled in a sweep to reverse their positions. In a welter of blood, he wrenched his blade free in a two-handed grip and drove it down clear through to the deck, ­impaling the World Eater through the left eye. The legionary twitched, the brass grille of his helm bubbling with a death rattle, before at last he went still.

  Drawing himself away from the thrill of his triumph, Krysithius frowned as he noticed that the noise of clashing blades had abated. Krysithius was a deeply, singularly vain individual, but even he doubted that the
rest of the battle would cease merely to admire the handiwork of one of, he admitted, his uglier kills. He craned his head up, following the gaze of every other warrior in the chamber, to the armourglass dome over their heads.

  From nothing, a planet had appeared. It burst into being like a ­bubble popping in reverse, right on top of the Pit Cur. It had manifested so close to them that swirls of orange and white began to sweep and wash over the observation dome. The vessel’s superstructure rattled and twisted in a scream of metal, like a bell being torn in half. The ship was already inside the planet’s gravity well and its atmosphere, being hauled down into its embrace. Krysithius did not know what manner of surface the daemon world they were crashing into had, but he knew that he would be discovering that very, very soon.

  ‘Well,’ murmured Krysithius, pulling his blade free. ‘That was unexpected.’

  I.III

  Master.+

  He slouched in the darkness upon a throne of oiled silver and skinless meat. His body was a muddled, insubstantial thing, like a figure cast from wax that a flame’s kiss had long since melted away to shapelessness. Every part of him was formless in this way, save for his face.

  It was a consumptive pink mask of intricate, lovingly self-inflicted wounds pulled tightly over a narrow, patrician skull. Eyes of stark green muddied with bloodshot jet stared unfocused out into the wan light of the chamber, while a black, serpentine tongue ran idly over teeth filed down into needle-sharp points.

  Master.+

  The tongue caught for an instant upon one of the fangs, causing a thin trickle of blood, dark as wine mixed with ash, to spill down the figure’s chin–

  –Sensations erupted across his body. His pupils dilated. The stretched mass of his chest rose and fell rapidly, soaking inhuman lungs with the spicy metallic scent of demigod blood. The tongue thrashed, coating itself and his teeth in the rich coppery tang. The spilling of blood was sublime, it was–