Wild Rider - Gav Thorpe Read online

  And his foes… Their polished bones were a palatial beauty, laid before him in appeasement of his anger. No slight went unanswered. Those that had scorned him, had brought low his clan, were laid upon the pyres of perfumed flames, the flesh of the wrongdoers consumed for his delight. The meekest insubordination was crushed; only those utterly loyal to the Wild King endured.

  But the cooked flesh of his enemies was ashes in his mouth. The praises of his followers were hollow shrieks of despair begging for mercy from a deity that cared nothing for them. Friend and family alike fell beneath his ire, for he would suffer none to eclipse him. Even Druthkhala was torn apart by his fanatics, for daring to look upon him with anything other than abject adoration.

  The emptiness gnawed at him, demanding more praise to fill the hollowness of his soul. Immortality was his, but it stretched before him like an endless waste, a wilderness of his own creation in which to lose himself. There was no sustenance, no stimulation, for all that had been worthwhile was rendered into dust. There was no adversity to overcome, no challenge against which he might define himself.

  The frozen wastes permeated his being, creeping in where the fire of passion had once burned. Like the glorious star that must still succumb to the turning of aeons, his life stretched out beyond all mortal measure. The pain of existence consumed him atom by atom until nothing but a cold heart of resentment remained.

  Weeping tears of his family’s blood, he begged for forgiveness, for the misery to end, and truly knew that he was damned not blessed. This was the horror of the Great Enemy. Not to be devoured and come to an ending, but to endure ever after as part of the ravening entity that had been created out of the warped psyche of the aeldari. A god of inevitable self-consumption that did not seek to destroy its creators but embraced them in the depravity of their own demise.

  Wretched and immortal, he slew himself again and again, only to be revived by the power that sustained him, thrown back into a universe that was agony to inhabit.

  Death. He yearned for it. Amid his own incensed shrieking he longed for the silence of oblivion. Alight among the fire of his own tortured senses he craved the stillness of nothing.

  And then came the power that would carry him to that shadowed place. A breeze that became a wind, that became a hurricane, ripping him free from the grasp of She Who Thirsts. Tossed upon its currents, he abandoned himself to the merciless elements, finding release in the embrace of the Whispering God.

  The golden light faded, replaced by the image of Yvraine bathed in a white fire. The Opener of the Seventh Way levitated beside Eldrad’s crumpled body, buoyed by a whirling mirage of spirits, the flicker of vacant faces curving about her.

  Swallowing hard, blinking back hot tears, body trembling with sensation and fatigue, Nuadhu looked again into the opening vault.

  He knew what he would see. The visions that had struck him still burned through his thoughts, even though the piercing cold of Yvraine’s intervention robbed them of their seductive power.

  A single figure stepped from the arch of golden power that stretched over the pyramid, no taller than an aeldari, and as slight of build. The creature was neither male nor female, possessed of delicate features and a single breast, the face an almost perfect oval with slit nose and eyes like black gemstones. One limb ended in a claw, long and serrated, the other a three-fingered hand with spindly, multi-jointed digits that moved in disturbing ways. It was almost white of skin, below the surface not a tracery of veins but a glittering energy, feeding from the auric pulsing of the opening vault.

  A daemonette, lesser servant of She Who Thirsts.

  The abomination raised its claw, beckoning, and distended its mouth, tongue licking out as a ululating call sounded.

  And from the glow of their prison, a daemon horde poured forth.

  Chapter 21

  A TERRIBLE REVERSAL

  The plaza resounded with the scratch of claws and pound of cloven feet as the tide of immaterial creatures burst forth from their confinement, spilling towards Nuadhu and the other aeldari. A chorus of lilting voices sang hymns to the Prince of Pleasure, simultaneously horrifying and uplifting, incomprehensible daemontongue yet thrumming upon the spirit of all that heard them. Riders emerged bearing horns and harps, their keening and strumming forming the rhythm to which the host marched. Yet ‘march’ was too formal a word, for though the daemonettes and the serpentine steeds of the musicians moved in time, they did so not as formal units but with shared undulating grace, as though choreographed. The host of nightmarish beasts and daemons moved with effortless swiftness like a spreading pool that threatened to encircle the bedazzled aeldari.

  Nuadhu’s breath came in choked gasps as packs of bipedal jewel-eyed fiends burst from the throng of daemonettes, lash-tongues tasting the fear of the aeldari on the warming air. Snake-like manifestations writhed through the mass of incorporeal foes, their bodies flexing gilded scales, gusts of perfumed breath issuing from puckered spiracles along their flanks. Glittering, moth-winged figures with blades for arms and whiptails ascended above the growing host, flitting back and forth while the whispers from their needle-fanged mouths joined the orchestral chanting.

  Yvraine stood over the fallen shape of Eldrad, the Sword of Sorrows burning in her fist. The Visarch arrived at her side as two of the Coiled Blade dashed forward to lift the seer upon their shoulders, the Staff of Ulthamar clattering from his weak grip. Another of the scarlet-clad incubi scooped up the farseer’s staff and together they withdrew towards the Wave Serpents.

  Seeing a cluster of long-snouted fiends galloping towards his father, Nuadhu broke into a run, shouting a warning. The others of Clan Fireheart turned their weapons on the dashing monstrosities, meeting them with a hail of shurikens and the whine of the Fire Dragons’ fusion guns, while behind Nuadhu the air buzzed with anti-grav motors as the handful of Wild Riders that had followed him into the inner complex raced skyward. Across the plaza the Ynnari unleashed the ire of their weapons, splinter rifles hissing their wrath alongside the snap of scatter lasers and shriek of focused plasma.

  Reaching Naiall, Nuadhu stooped to pick up the chieftain while the others of the household formed up around them.

  ‘Let me.’ He turned to discover one of the Fire Dragons reaching out an arm, her fusion gun held in the other hand. He refused, before realising that it was Marifsa. Nodding, he helped Naiall to almost fall across the shoulder of the chieftain’s sister and she retreated to the company of her shrine-kin, gleaming beams of condensed radiation from their weapons cutting down handfuls of daemons.

  With Drake’s Fang in both hands, Nuadhu stood with legs braced waiting for the next enemy. He heard a rustle of cloth beside him and felt the chill presence of Yvraine at his shoulder, the crimson shadow of the Visarch just beside her.

  ‘Brave, but pointless,’ said the emissary’s bodyguard to Nuadhu.

  Already a hundred and more daemons had breached through from their containment and there seemed no end to their numbers.

  ‘I cannot see that the necrontyr would go to all of this trouble to contain a few score of daemons,’ said Yvraine, eyes narrowed against the golden gleam of the open vault. ‘We might face thousands or tens of thousands.’

  An extra-sensory impulse alerted Nuadhu to the rapid approach of B’sainnad aboard Alean. He gave a nod to Yvraine and leapt without looking, somersaulting backwards onto the platform of the Vyper as it swooped past. His last sight of the Opener of the Seventh Way was of her withdrawing towards the Wave Serpents, the Bloodbrides like a ring of red about her, while Ynnari squads fell back alongside, their guns obliterating any daemon that came too close. Overhead, Swooping Hawks levelled their lasblasters at the whirling daemons above the encroaching host, fending off their darting forays.

  B’sainnad accelerated while banking hard, forcing Nuadhu to cling on to the rail lest he be dropped to the hard ground rushing below. Ahead, the pylons crackl
ed with their barely contained power, fronds of green energy licking along their flanks and arcing across the great divides between them.

  As they flew directly towards the insubstantial barrier, still gaining speed, the clan heir fervently hoped that the ethereal wall was more a barrier to the daemonic than the mortal.

  From outside the tomb complex the full effect of the breached warp-vault was clear to Nuadhu. The spreading umbra that had fallen upon the surrounding woods flickered and churned, lit from within by multicoloured streaks. The lightning that had danced between the tower peaks flared into the skies in constant streams, like beacons projected towards the heavens.

  As the Wild Riders raced along the tomb-lined valley, Nuadhu noticed the lack of enemy fire. In the skies, scythe-ships that had duelled with the aeldari craft turned back towards the vault complex, while the low-altitude skimmers that accompanied them swept through the trees, making all speed for their catacomb city. The legion of warriors had turned about, expanding their ranks to broader lines that started to encircle the inner edifices.

  Of the daemons themselves Nuadhu at first saw nothing. Hidden with the stasis veil of the vault precinct the pyramid appeared as it had since his first arrival on Agarimethea. It was illusion, of course, now revealed as such by the host that had sprung forth from within its towering walls.

  Yet as the Vypers ascended the slope of the valley, still twisting and turning to evade fire from the ground weapons that did not come, the Wild Riders’ commander saw movement in the barrier wall. His hope that it might contain the spreading daemonic taint was shattered when the flitting shapes of mothkin and speeding fiends broke the rippling air, forerunners of the greater part of the army yet to issue forth. With their escape the inner pylons exploded, shards of black, living metals and golden circuitry cast high into the air upon green flames.

  The veil thinned, revealing the inner precinct, thronged with thousands of daemons. Necrontyr skimmers raced back and forth raking beams of devastating light across the spreading mass, but as deadly as their weapons were to the living, the immaterial manifestations of the Dark Powers drew their energy from a source anathema to the living dead. Spawn of the warp, the daemons shrugged aside scintillating rays that could sluice apart grav-tanks, while gauss beams that would strip a mortal creature to atoms in a few heartbeats passed through them without effect.

  Even as the sight dwindled with distance, the vista took on a more abstract sense, of a silvery ring distending to the thrusts of brightly coloured energy within its circumference. Just before Alean reached the ridge and passed out of view, the clan heir saw the constricting circle broken in places, the pink and pale purple flow within bursting forth like liquid from a pierced vessel.

  ‘Where to?’ asked B’sainnad, slowing the Vyper as they descended the other side of the encircling mountain ridge. Wherever Nuadhu looked he saw the aeldari in retreat. Vampire hunters and Nightwings circled in their patrols overhead, keeping clear of the tortured penumbra that writhed above the tomb complex. Grav-tanks and transports slid back through the shattered trunks of the forest, following the artificial trails cut down by ravaging gauss weapons and energy cannons that had defended the outskirts. Flashes of red and blue, bone and black between the broken trees betrayed the presence of squads retreating on foot, their withdrawal overseen by flights of Crimson Hunters and wing-borne Swooping Hawks.

  Nuadhu searched for the crimson of the Ynnari among the scarlet of Saim-Hann, and spied a trio of Wave Serpents skimming low over the forest canopy to his right, escorted by Falcons and Fire Prisms. With them travelled a solitary Fireheart transport, his father’s personal dragon sigil emblazoned along its hull. Turning his gaze ahead of their flightpath he saw the settled dawnsails and other landers of the Ynnari fleet, a flock of Nightwing fighters darting back and forth above them. He pitched his voice in the manner that would activate his messenger-wave transmitter.

  ‘Yvraine! Are we to conclude that this endeavour has failed?’ He flinched as a convulsion of bright light scorched across the necrontyr cloud cover, almost consuming it entirely to leave a glittering haze in its place. ‘There are no treasures of the dominion to be retrieved.’

  He leaned over the rail to grasp B’sainnad’s shoulder, silently urging the pilot to turn their Vyper towards the Wave Serpents.

  ‘We cannot know for sure what is contained within the vault,’ replied Yvraine. ‘I will not give up the search without knowing for certain that it is without merit.’

  ‘A tide of the Great Enemy’s spite has poured forth from the crypt-vault!’ Nuadhu wondered that he even had to mention this overwhelming truth. ‘We cannot fight both the necrontyr and the daemons. Agarimethea is a lost cause to us.’

  ‘I never thought the lord of the Wild Riders to be a coward.’

  ‘Save your manipulation, Yvraine. It is my family that have given their lives in this fool’s errand. We were mistaken. I was wrong. You may think each death a worthy step towards the ascension of Ynnead but I would rather my kin enjoy life for a lot longer.’

  ‘There is no life beyond death, only damnation. If you truly loved your people as I love mine, you would see that only in becoming Reborn can they escape the fate of our kind.’

  Ahead, the group of Wave Serpents slowed, circling down to the summit of a broad hill studded with shattered tree trunks. Naiall’s transport followed, nestling amongst the other grav-tanks.

  ‘Perhaps the necrontyr and warp spawn will break each other,’ suggested B’sainnad as he guided the Vyper towards the gathering aeldari host. Wild Riders and more transports settled on the long slopes of the hill and squads dispersed into the scatters of woodland to stand guard against attack.

  ‘Yet still a war we cannot win,’ replied Nuadhu. ‘For the survivors of both will quickly be bolstered by the returned fallen, whether manifested from the Realm of Chaos or teleported from the resurrection catacombs.’

  Despite his protestation, Nuadhu’s thoughts lingered on Yvraine’s words as Alean settled. He dismounted and hurried towards the Wave Serpents, calling for his father. The Wave Serpent’s ramp was open, the Fire Dragons with Marifsa standing sentry beside it. Nuadhu’s aunt stepped forward from the squad to intercept the Wild Rider lord, a hand held out.

  ‘Your father sleeps,’ she said curtly.

  Though she had always been sure in her manner, the war mask of her aspect turned her words into an aggressive growl. Nuadhu could feel the psychic heat of her anger, as though in front of a furnace with its door closed, contained but threatening to break free. She had once tried to explain the war mask to him, as had Caelledhin when she had been a Dire Avenger, but their analogies of placing their fury into a vessel to be opened only in war made little sense to one who let his emotions have free rein.

  ‘Nuadhu.’ Hearing his name spoken by the Visarch, he turned to see Yvraine’s bodyguard beckoning for him at the foot of another Wave Serpent ramp. ‘Eldrad stirs.’

  ‘Is father safe?’ he asked Marifsa, taking a half-step towards the Ynnari transport.

  ‘He sleeps,’ she repeated. ‘If he wakes, I will tell you.’

  Nodding his thanks, Nuadhu strode over to the Visarch, who gestured for him to board the Wave Serpent, the bodyguard’s boots loud upon the ramp behind Nuadhu as they entered the carriage compartment. The clan heir concluded that the heavy tread was a deliberate warning, for he had seen the Visarch move as lightly as a gyrinx.

  Inside, Yvraine looked up to them as she stooped over Eldrad, one hand to her chin, her war fan in the other. Two of Saim-Hann’s seers were also in attendance, hands clasping their staffs tight to their bodies, uncertainty washing from them in palpable waves.

  ‘Alyasa, attend to me with Yvraine,’ transmitted Nuadhu. ‘I would have my family windweaver present to counsel me.’

  ‘I am on my way,’ replied the psyker. ‘Caelledhin is with me.’

  ‘Good.’ It seemed pe
tty to think in raw numbers, but Nuadhu was heartened by the thought of more of his family being present in the discussion that was surely to come. Yvraine had already made clear her intent to remain, and it was her ships for the most part that had carried the host to Agarimethea.

  He remained at the doorway and glanced outside, searching for the Bloodbrides. A group of wych-reavers sat upon their jetbikes not far away, Druthkhala among them. One of the other Bloodbrides noticed Nuadhu’s look and directed Druthkhala’s attention towards him. Her hair rippled like a wave as she slid her jetbike across the hilltop and came to halt at the end of the ramp.

  ‘I am glad that you still live,’ said the Bloodbride. It was the first exchange between them since the abandoned duel.

  ‘A condition that may not continue if your mistress has her way, I suspect,’ replied Nuadhu, though he accompanied the complaint with a smile to dull its edge. ‘She seems determined to remain here.’

  ‘So we shall remain.’ She sat up, hands on thighs. ‘To follow the Whispering God is to give yourself over to something greater than simple mortal life.’

  ‘Ynnead cannot save you from She Who Thirsts if one of those infernal servants slays you and eats your soul.’ Nuadhu said this with more vehemence than he had intended, voicing the fear that had been gnawing at him since Eldrad had opened the vault.

  ‘Ynnead will save us all from the Great Enemy.’

  He remembered the temptation and damnation that had been visited upon him in the daemon vision. The recollection brought ice to his veins, a reminder that the Great Enemy was not a foe apart, but born in the spirit of every aeldari. Even now a piece of the Prince of Pleasure nestled within Nuadhu’s breast, nurtured by his passions; a part of him dwelt in the shadow of She Who Thirsts, bathing in the reflected glory of the god created by the aeldari Fall.