that he followed the scent and trail.
When Barsabbas regained his senses he did not know how long he had been walking.
The trail petered out, soaking into the sand. He found himself in a field of cenopods. The heat was fading from the day, and the burning light of the sequential twilights had begun, shading through white, red, orange and purple. If he looked to the dune crests behind him he could gauge the hours of remaining light. Already the dune faces were in shadow, the driftwood blue of canegrass contrasting with the sepia of the desert sands.
But he no longer needed light to guide his way. He could see boot prints in the sand, the unmistakable prints of steel‐shod boots like small craters made by giant feet. The wind had barely disturbed them yet, tracing fine whorls into the griddled prints, which meant they were fresh.
SQUAD SHAR‐KALI DID not receive. Squad Yuggoth did not receive. None of the squads responded. Only Squad Brigand made contact with a two‐second signal burp. They were ambushed and dying.
Finally, Barsabbas blanked his vox‐bead and consigned himself to its soft static. His vox-systems were far too heavily damaged, and even the armour’s self‐repair systems could only rewire the transmission to other non‐damaged but already overloaded data fibres.
As far as Barsabbas knew, he was on his own.
73
CHAPTER NINE
HEPSHAH WAS A capricious one who did not fear the mon‐keigh. He did not even fear the hulking war machines those mon‐keigh called the Space Marines. No. Hepshah was too fast, too clever to ever feel the delight of an adrenal dump when confronting the hairy, ponderous anthropoids of humanity.
He certainly did not fear them now, as they ran from him. There was a shocking honesty to a human’s terror that Hepshah found strangely endearing. When a man was pushed to the absolute limits of desperation, when the horror of death became impending, a human acted in comical ways. Arched eyebrows, gaping mouth, facial muscles contorted, limbs stiffening as they ran. Hepshah did not laugh often, but their fear was irresistibly amusing.
That was how he came to be hunting humans through the burning settlement, playing with them and extending his victims’ misery to the heights of uncontrollable panic.
Hepshah even held aloft his aperture, a crystalline shard prized amongst the kabal. Upon exposure to light the warpstone would record sounds and images, so that he could relive this day’s festivities in luxury, much later.
He held up his aperture shard, panning it to record a clear panorama of the settlement.
There was not much of the settlement left. The road train was upturned and twisted, its silver belly ruptured and spilling bloodied furniture. Its sacred engine was wisping with fire. The tents and lean‐tos that cuddled around its protective girth had been flattened into the dirt. The settlement had been camped at the edge of a saltpan and many of the occupants had tried to flee across its basin. Their bodies still lay there now.
Hepshah made sure to catch images of the dead, focussing his warpstone to record close‐up shots of their slack faces. Here and there, amongst the livestock pens, rubble and caravans, survivors still hid. Hepshah caught glimpses of his fellow dark eldar hunting in the ruins. They were dark flashes, quick movements that seemed to elude a clear image.
Hepshah’s victim suddenly ran across a caprid pen. He was hunched over and sprinting.
His skin was dark and his woollen shawl was bright red. Hepshah had never seen the man before, but he had decided there and then that he was curious to see the man die by his hand.
Hepshah scuttled behind low rubble and ran parallel to the man. His indigo carapace was almost weightless and he easily outpaced the human with long, bouncing strides. As if sensing his danger, the human looked up. He was an older man, his skin prematurely aged by sun. He was crying, his thin shoulders bobbing in the supplicating way that seemed habitually human. Fire burned around him. The bodies of his kin poked out from beneath scattered furnishings and dismantled homes. Hepshah took a moment to savour the carnage.
Suddenly, the man sprinted in the opposite direction. Sensing an end to his pursuit, Hepshah armed his splinter pistol with one hand and held up his aperture for a clear recording. He fired. The splinter barb impacted against a wooden pen‐post, punching a nail-sized hole through the wood. The man was still running, weaving between the narrow gap of two punctured train carriages. Laughing, Hepshah