Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,26

its presence on the nape of her neck.

It no longer tried to talk to her, its intent had become singular. It hit her hard from behind, knocking her down the hill, sending her rolling down the rocky slope. She came to a jarring stop as the creature loomed over her. As it reached down to seize her, Abena thought about Ashwana, lying in her hut alone. How long would it be before these ghosts came for her?

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CHAPTER FIVE

BARSABBAS WOKE FROM his sleep to an aching in his left primary lung. Abruptly uncomfortable, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of his cot. Grimacing, he rubbed his lower ribs slowly. It was not real pain, not real damage, but it seemed real to him nonetheless.

‘Your lung is troubling you again?’ Barsabbas called out.

Sargaul appeared in the door frame, dressed in a bodyglove for early sparring. ‘The same. I feel it most in the mornings. The Chirurgeons were not thorough in purging the residual shrapnel.’

Barsabbas nodded thoughtfully. He was feeling the old wounds of his blood bond, a common experience between pairs. After all, it had been Barsabbas’s left primary lung they had excised and transplanted into Sargaul in their rituals of pairing.

Years ago, as a young neophyte, Barsabbas had not fully understood the rituals performed upon him. He remembered vaguely the surgical pain. The multiple waking horrors as the Chirurgeons sheared his bones for marrow and opened his muscles like the flaps of a book. There were not many memories from that time, but those were the ones he recalled.

Now, as an older, wiser battle‐brother, Barsabbas still knew little of the secret bond.

The process itself had become blurred with folklore and mysticism, to the point where effect and placebo became one. Paired with the veteran Sargaul, Barsabbas would become strengthened by their shared experience. He would inherit not only Sargaul’s genetic memory, but also his bravery and ferocity. There was an element of witchcraft in this, but whenever Barsabbas felt that twinge in his lung, he was convinced there was substance to their ritual.

‘How is your knee?’ Sargaul asked, flexing his own.

Barsabbas stretched out his right leg, the thick cords of his thigh rippling. ‘Better today,’

he shrugged.

‘I thought so,’ nodded Sargaul, flexing his own right leg. ‘They were ferocious, those tau.

Much better at war‐making than I expected.’

Barsabbas had almost repressed the memory of defeat but Sargaul’s words invoked the images back to wakefulness. Just ten lunar cycles ago they had deployed on the tau world designated ‘Govina’ – a planet targeted for its lush natural resources and relatively weak military presence. It should have been a simple plunder raid for Squad Besheba: hit hard and retreat with a mid‐grade quota of slaves. But they had underestimated the aliens, and the tau military presence proved entirely capable.

They engaged on the tundra, trading shots between dwarf shrubs and sedges, low grasses and lichens. By the hundreds, the tau had come, their firing lines disciplined and their shots overwhelming in sheer volume. Pulsating blue plasma hammered them so hard their armour systems had been pushed to failure, and Barsabbas’s suit had reached seventy per cent damage threshold within the first few volleys.

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The squad had fought with customary aggression and speed. They had burst amongst the tau infantry squares, ploughing through their chest‐high adversaries, splintering their helmets and bones. They had killed so many.

But it was the tau’s home and they did not flee. Squad Besheba had been driven back, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. In the end, they had fled, chased by ground‐hugging tau hoverers. They escaped, but without dignity and their wounds were many. Like Barsabbas’s disintegrated patella and Sargaul’s collapsed lung, the shame had stayed with them, agonising them for the past ten months.

THOUSANDS OF SLAVES woke to the pulsating itch in their left cheekbones, scratching their scarred faces. It was an urgent, pressing discomfort that could not be ignored.

Beneath each scar could be seen the outline of a flesh burrowing thrall‐worm. Agitated during sleep cycle, when the slaves were at a distance from their masters, the thrall‐worms bulged against their cheeks like distended tumours. With clockwork precision, at the six-hour mark, the parasites would rouse their hosts by feeding on the rich fat beneath their skins. Sleepy‐eyed, fatigued and forlorn, the slaves would wake to their daily work.

The workforce were of all kinds and pasts, both strong and feeble, soldiers and clerics, shift workers or merchants; here an artisan, over there a human Guard colonel, all of them slaves