Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,6
oil of human skin, there was something organic that stung Gammadin’s olfactory glands.
He realised that they were not here simply hunting for slave samples any more. Without a doubt, there was something purposeful manifesting itself. Something knew of the Blood Gorgon presence and was prepared for it, this Gammadin could feel. He knew.
Gammadin’s helmet optics were already scanning the surrounding area for danger. The banks of the lake were wide and flat, covered in clumps of dry grass and semi‐aquatic rushes. There could be danger there. A fluid stream of information was filtered from his helmet’s sensors into his neural relays – wind current, visibility and metallic resonance.
Hammurabi sank into a squat beside Gammadin, leaning on his sword. ‘I feel it too, Khorsaad. There is a background roar in my ears.’
Probing psychically, Gammadin attempted to expand his consciousness into the surrounding environs, but he found himself mentally disorientated. The air and slight buzzing of insects made him listless, almost distracted. He had felt the same way ever since Muhr had invoked his black arts.
Muhr. Gammadin growled deep within his blackened hearts. What did he know of the events here?
‘Khorsaad!’ Hammurabi began, rising suddenly.
They came over the crest, hugging the line where the water met the earth. Slashing, frothing and flailing as they went, a stampede of people.
It was unclear who fired the first shot. A bolt‐round exploded in the midst of the rapidly advancing human tide, but they ran undeterred. Closer now, Gammadin could see their faces, contorted in fright and utterly unaware of the Blood Gorgons in their path of flight.
‘Formation!’ Gammadin shouted at his Impassives.
The Impassives tightened into a defensive shell around Gammadin. In a circle, they fired into the oncoming avalanche of thrashing limbs, flashing bursts of ammunition into the 9
mob. The horde rushed into and directly over the Blood Gorgons. Naked bodies collided against the anchored warriors, bouncing off their solid weight and swarming around them like an estuary.
‘We are being fired upon,’ voxed Bond‐Brother Carcosa as he placed a hand to his suddenly bleeding neck.
‘We are receiving fire,’ Khadath affirmed as panicked bodies drummed and bumped against him.
From the distant slopes, a high‐pitched whistling could be heard as high‐velocity missiles whipped through the grass. They came from every direction at once, slicing into the enamel of his armour. It was an indiscriminate volley, slicing down the fleeing humans as it ricocheted against their plate.
Gammadin magnified his vision threefold towards the slopes. He saw thin humanoids in dark blue carapace standing up from the grass, darting from position to position. They raised long rifles and moved with the fluid coordination of trained marksmen. Gammadin recognised their attackers as dark eldar and knew there was treachery on this world.
He threw the tulwar blade in his palm underhand; the heavy dagger shot out in a wide arc before meeting a dark eldar almost forty metres away, sending it sprawling into the grass. Before his blade had found its target, Gammadin had already picked out several shots with his combi‐bolter. The mag scope of his vision lens spun and whirled as it tracked multiple targets before seeking a new one as Gammadin put them down. His rage was building. A xenos round, a crystallised shard of poison, sliced through the back of his knee joint. The toxin tingled in the wound, potent enough to have immediately paralysed any normal human being. The wound only enraged Gammadin further, his killing becoming methodical as he picked target after target.
The eight Impassives fanned out to lay down a curtain of fire. Like Gammadin, they were not pressured to shoot wild. Even as a constant shred of dark eldar weaponry hummed through the air, they picked their shots. The Blood Gorgons refused to give ground, despite the fleeing humans who were adding to the confusion. Growing bold, the dark eldar emerged from the grass to charge down the sandy gradient in a ragged line. A grenade went off at close range, shaking the world and jetting up sheets of mud.
Gammadin’s withdrawal was being cut off. The dark eldar hooked around their flanks as the stampede of captives blocked and hemmed in the Impassives. Gammadin nearly lost his footing in the treacherous mud as the storm of xenos weaponry thickened considerably.
Splinter rifles rippled shots across the mud flat, steaming up a fog of dirt particles. The airborne mud hung in swirls and lazy drifts, choking the Blood Gorgons’ targeting systems.
‘We must withdraw,’ Gammadin voxed over the squad link.
As they fell back, the dark eldar