having found some momentary peace, he unhooded the dark eldar. Blinking weakly, Sindul flinched at the sunlight. His weeks of sensory deprivation had left him dazed and psychologically depressed. The chains on his wrists, however, remained, a tightly wound knot of heavy links.
They rested in the settlement for two nights and left on the third dawn. Gumede and Sindul slept in borrowed beds, the sheets still smelling of death and their previous owners.
They ate what they could from the abandoned larders, touching only the knots of chewy dried caprid and some dry sugar fruits. Barsabbas did not sleep, nor did he eat anything more than a handful of jerked meat once a day. He spent his hours watching the distance, plotting his course and cleaning, always cleaning his weapons.
As they trekked, Gumede tried to point out the shimmering silver mirages that steamed from the hot clay ground. He gestured at the exposed coal seams that ran like black blood through the gullies and ravines. Barsabbas was unimpressed. He did not even seem to be listening. The plainsman’s attachment to his land irritated him and distracted him.
Sometimes, when the march became weary, Gumede even spoke of his kinship. His voice would be heavy with bitterness. He spoke fondly of his kinship and the pain his loss caused him every day.
The Chaos Space Marine simply could not understand how Gumede could come to feel emotionally involved with rocks and soil or other people. Home and family was not a concept his mind could appreciate. His lack of comprehension irritated him. It made him angry, and Barsabbas reacted to anger by killing and breaking.
Everything seemed to matter to these humans. Barsabbas wondered how their fragile intellects could withstand the emotional assault. The Blood Gorgon knew only training and fighting. There were events in‐between, but those things did not matter to him. His mind 118
had been sharpened to a singular focus. Barsabbas felt no remorse or guilt at the death of Gumede’s people. There was no right or wrong, it had been an act of will in achieving a goal.
He simply found no logic in the man’s reasoning.
FOUR MORE DAYS in the empty badlands brought them to a broad basin of split clay. The cracked minerals tessellated with regularity like brown tiles. The basin was endorheic, an evaporated ocean floor littered with fossil and coal.
There was a familiarity to the landscape that gave Barsabbas hope. He felt a sense of recollection, and yet he knew he had never seen this place with his own eyes. Without a doubt, Sargaul had been here before, for the feeling of paramnesia was too compelling.
Barsabbas remembered the smoke stacks that rose from the hard ground, fluted chimneys that belched smoke. When he peered at the furnaces through his bolter scope, he could see the barbed gravitational tanks of the dark eldar framed within his crosshairs. They were narrow, sword‐shaped vehicles that hovered above the ground.
‘This is the location?’
Sindul shrugged. ‘This is the only place where we strike out on raid, yes. We have herded our captives here.’
Nodding, Barsabbas breathed deep, reliving the sense of familiarity that he had not really experienced firsthand. He felt Sargaul’s presence, he was sure of it, as his heart rate began to rise.
‘My kabal will still be here,’ Sindul said, pointing with his chin.
‘Then I will kill more.’
‘Give me a blade, let me fight.’
Barsabbas rolled with laughter. ‘You think I am stupid? Let you go and you will fight for me?’ Barsabbas laughed again.
But Sindul did not. The narrow, slitted features of his face remained gravely serious.
‘I cannot allow the kabal to see me captive. I would rather be a traitor.’
‘I will not release your chains, eldar. Save your tricks.’
‘In my culture, we have a different word for traitor. Muri’vee. It means gambler, or opportunist. But its meaning is more subtle than that. It means the “warrior who outplays”.’
‘You wish to be a traitor.’
‘Of course. Otherwise I will be a slave in their eyes forever. Even when I am dead I will be remembered as a slave.’
On some level Barsabbas understood. Shame and pride were the foundations of character. Oddly, the dark eldar way of thinking made sense to him. Sindul could not return to his people a captive, a slave or a neutered warrior. The dark eldar would rather be remembered as a traitor. His people valued guile and cunning so at least there was conviction in that.
‘Then it will be so,’ Barsabbas agreed. Shame was not something that he wished his