He only ran five steps before something arrested his momentum hard. His thin neck whiplashed, his laughter choking in his throat, Hepshah’s back slammed to the ground. He found himself looking up at a brown, monstrous face, a bovine snarl, branching antlers. A helmet, Hepshah realised.
The warrior towered over him, filling his aperture with images of dark armour, amour like bloodied earth pigment. ‘This is my home, little creature. These lands belong to the lineage of the Blood Gorgons.’
Hepshah gave a shrill yelp of surprise. He never realised how tall and thickly built the mon‐keigh could become. He had known Space Marines to be cumbersome flocks of tank-like infantry. Now he realised they were not.
As Hepshah struggled to regain his breath, the Chaos Space Marine gripped him firmly by the face, pinning his head with a delicate grip. His other hand darted, whisper quick, tapping him on the temple with a long mace. No more than a light double tap.
Hepshah stopped struggling. The dark eldar was no longer recognisable from the neck up. The encounter took just seconds and by the time Hepshah’s body was discovered, Barsabbas was already gone.
MORIBETH FOUND DRAAZ hung from the rafters. She found Fhaisor and Amul‐Teth reclining behind a bombed‐out dust buggy. In the open, tossed amongst the debris, was a stove boiler that leaked blood. She did not open the coal hatch, but presumed it to contain the remains of Sabhira.
She did not feel fear – only indignity. Snarling, she stalked through the ruins.
Occasionally she stopped to crack her whip meaningfully, with a belligerent pop. It was a declaratory snap and most knew to run when they heard it.
‘You can’t hide from me,’ she sang.
She had always been the predator. Ever since her young maiden years, Moribeth had accompanied her cousins on slave raids. This was second nature to her. In her free hand, hidden behind her back, was a neural blade gifted to her by her kabal’s mistress. The poison it secreted overloaded the pain nerves in living creatures. She pitied anything that crossed her path.
‘Come out, come out,’ she cooed.
‘Here I am.’ The voice sounded like slabs of rockcrete grinding together. A shadow fell across her.
Moribeth turned and her confidence dissipated. She slashed her neural whip low, but the tip snapped listlessly as it connected with ceramite.
With a speed that surprised her, the horned warrior slapped the top of her head with his palm. There was a pop as her spine compressed and vertebrae slipped out of joint.
Moribeth died still believing herself a predator.
VHAAL, SECOND‐BORN son of Gil’Ghorad Kabal, heard the death‐screams of his fellows. They were loud, even though he was inside the road train’s sealed interior. The sound rattled the iron walls, producing an eerie, acoustic vibration. In some parts, the train’s ancient glass windows had been replaced by wooden frames with hand‐painted paper awnings. The paper fluttered fitfully, the watercoloured scenery shaking ever so slightly.
75
Vhaal had been skinning trophies with a scalpel when he heard it, but the sound spooked him. Carefully he placed the scalpel on the floor and pulled a blanket over his project.
With a snap of his hands, wrist blades swung out from his vambraces like unfolding guillotines. He retrieved his splinter rifle, propped up against the iron carriage, and hopped down the short rungs. Outside he could see no signs of life. Not his father’s soldiers, and no plainsmen.
‘Show yourself!’ he commanded.
He knew something was out there. He began to fire his splinter rifle. The gun’s purr grew into a shrill whine as it spat a tight spread of toxic barbs. It threw up a line of powdered dirt to his front, knocking down the remains of a painted hand cart.
‘Come and face me! I am second‐born!’ he howled.
Pride and familial name were things most fiercely venerated in his society. Vhaal imagined himself to look quite intimidating. Hooked armour curling on his skeletal frame, swing‐blades creaking from his forearms, he was in the full regalia of a dark eldar raider.
His hair was brought up into an oiled topknot, laced through with silver filigree and virgin sinew. He wore a cape of sewn skin fashionably off one shoulder, stitched together from the faces of vanquished foes. He was second‐born of Gil’Ghorad.
‘Face me!’ Vhaal howled, raising his arms into the air in challenge.
A muzzle flashed in the distance. Low and muffled. The bolter’s bark.
Vhaal, second son of the kabal, fell unceremoniously through a screen paper window, his feet stiffening awkwardly in the air. He was already dead