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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.