With their cover thus diminished the vindictors were easy prey. The remaining Salamander had tasked itself with knocking out the las-crew that had so decimated its shattered fellow, and its futile tracer sweeps of the balconies above had taken it away from the action on the ground, leaving the Preafects vulnerable.
Sahaal saw the trap an instant too late.
'Stay back!' Sahaal roared to the Shadowkin from his vantage. 'Stay in the shadows! Spare no one! Spare nothing!'
The warning was too late. Flushed by the excitement of victory, led by Condemnitor Chianni, the shrouded warriors rushed forth through the ring of corpse-dotted wreckage to smash against the vindictors.
In the face of a direct assault the Preafects released one final devastating volley before lowering their shotguns, raising instead the power mauls holstered at their sides. There was something of the parade ground in their synchronous movements: thumbing activation runes together, striking combat stances in a perfect circle of glossy armour and fizzling maces. The Shadowkin rebounded from their flanks like bloody waves against a cliff, and every failed swipe of a notched blade or jab with a tarblacked dagger was followed by the precise, deadly swing of an energised club. Sparks burst in bubbles of light, flesh charred and skulls popped. Here a black-robed man staggered clear with a scream, his eyeballs gone, there a young woman limped to escape, the bones of her leg jabbing at ugly angles from her flesh. With no space to put their numbers — or their stealth — to their advantage, the Shadowkin were being massacred. Sahaal found himself swooping to join the frenzy when the lascannon crew fired their third — and final — blast.
This time, perhaps recognising that the remaining Salamander had found its range and was already tilting its autocannon towards them, they eschewed the obvious target presented by the vehicle and tilted their scripture-pocked weapon towards the vindictor ranks, resolving to inflict as much damage as possible before the end.
Had their actions not been undertaken in his name, Sahaal would have derided their sacrifice. A true warrior, he had learned, values his own life at least as much as he values the loss of his enemy's. There was little room in his heart for martyrdom — beyond that, of course, of his dead master.
His betrayed master, who had died for his principles — and so forged a bitter vengeance in his own blood.
His master, whose memory he served.
His master, whose mantle he had inherited...
...and then lost.
At the centre of the killing ground, where the lascannon's discharge slid like an arrow into the earth, the vindictors fell apart at their joints: swallowed in a torus of iridescence that incised bone and sinew like a blade through water. They found themselves blasted up and out on the cusp of a Shockwave, meaty slabs parting along torn seams, shredded alive. This was no great pyrotechnic spectacle, no flaming tumult, no smokeless firebalclass="underline" merely a sooty chrysanthemum of uncontainable energy, blindingly bright, that dismantled its targets like dried leaves before a storm.
As if in reply, the autocannon found its target. The lascannon crew died in fire and lead, tumbling to the earth like rag-dolls, dead of their wounds long before they struck the ground.
A stunned silence settled.
Through the shifting smoke and lapping fires, beyond the charred bodies and shattered armour-plates, now only the single vehicle remained of the convoy The Shadowkin stared at it with weapons brandished, skeletal trophies on proud display, as if daring it to advance.
And then their warrior-angel, their black/blue lord, their benighted messiah, dropped like a stone from above, plunging bright claws into its ablative sides and rising up its flanks: a hawk taking a dove.
This close, beyond the smoke and dust, Sahaal could finally see what manner of beast manned the autocannon.
It was a giant.
It raised its arms as he slunk near and clenched iron fists, face contorting with a challenge-roar. Sahaal extended his claws and laughed, gratified at the prospect of a worthy opponent. He would enjoy killing this mutant, he decided, this ape-faced freak, and in so doing would secure the loyalty of his xenophobic little slaves forever. He imagined himself surging forwards, claws snickering, blood raining around him.
And then a head appeared at the hatch into the tank's interior: an unarmoured female, as lowly an opponent as he could imagine. She was beneath his attention — unworthy — and he returned his focus to the hulk, claws flexing.
'I know what you are,' the woman said, startling him. Her eyes were wide and her skin bleached with fear, but her voice sounded strong and certain, resonating somewhere deep, transcending his ears. 'Go back to the shadows,' she hissed, lips curling. 'Go back to the warp, Night Lord!'
And then a great dagger punctured his mind: an inelegant swipe of immaterial force that took him by surprise and detonated a bomb within his skull, and he slipped from the Salamander's back onto the floor.
Darkness swallowed him up like an old friend — like the mother whose face he could no longer recall — and it was only on the very edge of his consciousness that he could hear the sound of heavy tracks clawing at soft earth and an engine, dwindling away into the distance.
The witch and her pet giant were gone, and as unconsciousness clouded around him he recalled her words with a start.
Go back to the warp, Night Lord!
She knew what he was.
She had recognised his heraldry.
She had spoken his Legion's name.
In that instant, on the cusp of waking reality, galvanised by his own discovery, he reached a decision: secrecy was futile. He would summon his brethren. No matter what had happened to them, no matter what glories and solemnities ten thousand years had inflicted upon them, he would summon them to his side, and he would greet them with the Corona in his possession, so that they would know, without doubt — Zso Sahaal, Captain of the Night Lords Legion, chosen heir of the Primarch Konrad Curze, had returned from his slumber to claim his throne.
Ave Dominus Nox!
Mita Ashyn
He — the great, the holier-than-thou, the Scourge of Namiito Ophidius, Deliverer of the Claviculus Ultimatum, lord high-and-fragging-mighty Inquisitor Ipoqr Kaustus — was waiting.
Mita half expected a red carpet.
That he had deigned to leave the crystal towers of Steepletown and the comfortable decadence of the governor's palace, that he (and his retinue, of course) had swarmed to the unfashionable depths of Cuspseal, was an indication, she reflected, of just how much trouble she was in.
He received her in Commander Orodai's quarters, and where before she had faced him with the retinue circling behind, now they stood arranged around her, glaring as she entered.
It was a little like stepping onto a stage.
She noted without much surprise that Sergeant Varitens was standing to the left of Orodai's desk. Of the nineteen vindictors and two staff-drivers who had failed to return from the Steel Forest, she found it particularly galling that he hadn't been amongst them. Doubtiess he'd filled Orodai's head with tales of his own heroism and her — Mita's — mistakes, leading his men into a massacre. She could imagine the bureaucratic paper trail that followed: from here all the way up to the inquisitor himself—