His father ignored him and strode towards the tree line where the blood-smeared tracks of the second mallahgra disappeared.
‘Sort out the retainers then follow me,’ ordered Cyprian. ‘The female’s injured, so she can’t have gone far. I’ll have her bloody head above the Argent Gate before morning, boy. And if anyone gets in my way, mark my words, I’ll have their heads up beside it.’
Cyprian walked Hellblade into the darkness beneath the bitterleaf canopy, leaving Raeven to deal with mundane business beneath his notice. Raeven turned Banelash and declined the canopy towards the circle of skimmer-bikes where the dead miners were being strapped down.
He linked with the vox-servile and said, ‘Take the bodies back to whichever hell-hole they were abducted from. Issue standard renumeration for death in service to any dependants and send death notices to the aexactor adepts.’
‘My lord,’ said the senior retainer.
‘Out of curiosity, is the survivor saying anything interesting?’
‘Nothing we can understand, my lord,’ said the medicae, one hand pressed to the side of his helm. ‘It’s doubtful he’ll live much longer.’
‘So he’s saying something?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Don’t be an idiot all your life, man,’ snapped Raeven. ‘Tell me what he’s saying.’
‘He’s saying “lingchi”, my lord,’ said the medicae. ‘Keeps repeating it over and over.’
Raeven didn’t know the word. Its sound was familiar, like it belonged to a language he couldn’t speak, but was vaguely aware existed. He put it from his mind and turned Banelash, knowing his father wouldn’t approve of his dawdling with the lower orders.
He walked his Knight into the shadow of the towering bitterleaf tree line. His mood was sour as he followed Hellblade’s tracks and the bio-sign of the wounded mallahgra.
One dead beast and another his father was sure to claim.
What a colossal waste of time this hunt had proven to be.
Hellblade was a bullish machine, without the agility of Raeven’s mount, and the trail of broken branches was easy to follow. In many ways, it was the perfect match for Cyprian Devine, a man who lived as though in the midst of a charge.
Cold beams of light shafted through the forest canopy, ivory columns glittering with motes of powdered snow. Raeven followed Hellblade’s tracks through the narrow canyons of the forest, emerging onto a windswept plateau. Patches of crushed rock and smeared blood led into a bone-strewn fissure in a cliff ahead.
‘Gone back to your lair,’ said Raeven. ‘That was stupid.’
His father’s eagle icon in the sensorium was just ahead, two hundred metres into the fissure, and Raeven remembered the last time Hellblade had fought a mallahgra.
It had been on the eve of Raeven’s Becoming, a day some forty-odd years ago, but forever etched in his mind. A rogue Sacristan had tried to kill his father by blowing out the cranial inhibitors of a docile mallahgra with an electromagnetic bomb. The pain-maddened beast almost killed Raeven and Albard, but their father had split it in two with a single strike of his Knight’s chainsabre, despite taking spars of iron through his chest and stomach in the battle.
But that wasn’t the story that caught the people’s imagination.
Raeven had stood before the rampaging monster with only his brother’s powerless energy sabre held before him, a tiny figure who faced down the beast with no hope of victory. Lyx’s carefully placed whispers lauded Raeven’s courage and diminished Cyprian’s.
Years passed, and Raeven expected to take up his hereditary position, but the old bastard just wouldn’t die. Even when Raeven fathered three boys to continue the House name, Cyprian showed no sign of letting the reins of power slip from his grasp.
Denied any power of real worth, Raeven spent the years indulging Lyx in her beliefs, even taking part in some of her cult’s rituals when the inevitable boredom took hold. Lyx was an epicurean of the sensual arts, and the nights they spent beneath the moons, naked and delirious from envenomed Caeban wine were certainly memorable, but ultimately hollow compared to ruling an entire world.
A wash of red light through the sensorium snapped him from his bitter reverie, and he immediately brought Banelash up to full stride. Threat filters filled the auspex, and Raeven heard the familiar snaps of massed stubber fire.
‘Father?’ he said into the vox.
‘The beast!’ returned a voice thick with strain. ‘It wasn’t the other’s mate!’
Raeven pushed Banelash deeper into the darkness. Dazzling arc lights unfolded from the upper surfaces of the Knight’s carapace, flooding the fissure with light. The sensorium could guide him, but Raeven preferred to trust his own eyes when death lay in wait.
Banelash strained at the edge of his control, a wild colt even after all this time. Raeven was tempted to let it take the lead, but kept his grip firm. The older pilots were replete with tales of men whose minds had been lost when they allowed a mount’s spirit to overwhelm them.
Raeven powered the whip and fed shells into the stubber cannon. He felt the heat of their readiness envelop his hands, letting the trip hammer of his heart mirror the thunder of Banelash’s reactor.
The fissure was a winding split in the mountains. Its course was thick with debris, rotted vegetation, frozen mounds of excrement and the half-digested remains of dismembered carcasses. Raeven crushed it all flat as he followed the sounds of las-fire and the shrieking roar of a heavy-gauge chainsabre.
He pulled Banelash into a widened portion of the fissure, a cavern where the walls almost met high above and all but obscured the sunlight.
The spotlight beams lit a nightmarish sight of the largest mallahgra he had ever seen; fully ten metres tall and broader than any of the largest Knights. Its fur was a piebald mixture of white and russet, and its long arms were absurd with musculature. Blood poured from a wound torn in its side, but this beast cared nothing for such hurts.
Hellblade was down on one knee at the edge of a sulphurous chasm that belched noxious yellow fog. Its right leg was buckled and his father was desperately fending off thunderous blows from the monster’s simian arms with the revving edge of his blade. Blood sprayed, but the mallahgra was too enraged to notice.
Raeven lowered his mount’s head and charged, uncoiling the whip and letting fly with a burst of stubber fire. High-calibre bolts burned a path across the mallahgra’s back and it reared at the suddenness of his attack.
Raeven blanched at the monster’s size and the grizzled, ancient texture of its hide. Now he understood his father’s last words.
This wasn’t the dead adolescent’s mate.
It was its mother.
The mallahgra leapt at him, bellowing in outrage. A clubbing arm smashed into Banelash’s canopy. Glass shattered and Raeven sucked in a breath of savage cold. The impact was monstrous, and the beast swung at him again. Raeven swayed aside, pulling the ion shield over his exposed canopy to deflect the blow. The mallahgra’s blackened claws swept past him, barely a handspan from tearing his face away.