22. Ben Counter - Sammael. Lord of the Eternal Hunt (Lords of the Space Marines Short Story).pdf

(417 KB) Pobierz
SAMMAEL:
LORD OF THE ETERNAL HUNT
Ben Counter
The horizon was discoloured by a mass of noisome cloud, a churning green-
black mass leering down at the once-fertile plains of this world. Now the
landscape was torn and rotted, its fields of crops turned to foul sludge.
Corruption had come to this agri-world. Decay had crept like the onset of night
across the land.
Sammael guided his jetbike out of the Thunderhawk gunship. Once whole
companies had taken to the field on such jetbikes, but now only Corvex
remained. The rest of the Dark Angels Second Company, the Ravenwing, rode to
war on rugged combat bikes – thirty of them disembarked around Sammael,
engines thrumming.
A white-painted band of bikers roared past. Their hair was woven into braids
that whipped as they rode. Their leader had a battered, tanned face and a two-
handed power tulwar strapped to his bike.
‘What a pretty steed!’ exclaimed their leader.
‘Khan,’ said Sammael, not rising to the White Scar’s mockery.
‘Do you not feel isolated from the battle up there, my friend?’ said Kor’sarro
Khan. ‘You must decide, Master Sammael, whether you are a warrior, or a man
who does not want to feel the dirt on his face! What kind of man are you,
Sammael?’
Every Chapter was different. The Dark Angels saw war as a solemn business
of duty and sacrifice. The White Scars, on this evidence, saw it as a test of
manhood and a contest of wills.
‘You have your targets, Lord Kor’sarro?’ asked Sammael.
‘We have,’ said the Khan. ‘And there is no time to begin but the present. I shall
see you at the victory feast if you have the stomach, Dark Angel!’ Kor’sarro and
his bikers roared off.
Sammael agreed with the Khan in one thing. There was no reason to wait.
‘Ravenwing!’ he ordered over the vox-net. ‘Honour demands, and speed kills.
Let both do their work.’
In a thunder of engines, the Ravenwing streaked off across the tormented
plain.
The Imperial Guard gunners knew the enemy war engines were somewhere in
the cloud of pestilence, but could not sight their guns through the fog. So the
Ravenwing and the White Scars had been summoned to enter the cloud,
protected by their power armour’s respirators, and report back with targets for
the big guns.
Sammael guided Corvex through the darkness. Beside him the rest of the
Ravenwing were doing the same, bike-mounted bolters rattling shots at the
cultists caught out in the open.
Gun emplacements blazed at the Ravenwing as they streaked past the closest
war engine, a gargantuan machine on enormous tracks crowned with a gun fed
by vats of bubbling filth. Sammael’s bikers ducked and wove between the chains
of fire. Ahead a sally port opened and twenty or thirty horsemen galloped out.
They wore carapace plate, bare metal stained and rusted, their faces and those of
their horses hidden by gas masks hooked up to respirators on their backs. They
carried lances with scythe-shaped blades, perfect for riding down the fleeing
homesteaders who had borne the brunt of this rebellion.
Sammael drew the Raven Sword. The riders galloped straight at the
approaching Ravenwing, and the first Dark Angels gunfire knocked them from
their saddles.
Sammael pushed down on a pedal and Corvex leapt forwards. He barely felt
the Raven Sword sever the head of the closest steed, continuing through the
upper body of its rider. Sammael wrenched the yoke to one side and Corvex
slewed around – on the ground it would have been a skid but hovering just above
the ground it was an elegant arc, sweeping through the riders as Sammael swung
the Raven Sword. A head came away, an arm. A scythe-lance arced at him but
Corvex tilted and shattered the lance with its prow before the Raven Sword
finished its journey with a thrust through the rider’s throat.
A gust of wind lifted the fog for a moment, revealing the shape of the next war
machine. Sammael recognised the White Scars circling it. Hovering machines,
like enormous bloated flies held aloft by twin rotors, were pouring fire into them
from automated guns. One White Scar was blasted off the saddle, and through
the vox-net Sammael could hear Kor’sarro ordering his men to break up and
evade.
‘Ravenwing, we must assist!’ ordered Sammael. ‘Sergeant Ryvor, bring your
men in from the north. Sergeant Kess, approach from…’
‘Throne alive!’ exclaimed Ryvor, the plasma pistol still glowing in his hand.
‘The Threefold Serpent!’
Sammael followed Ryrvor’s gaze and saw a banner hanging on a war engine
far ahead. It bore the sigil of a serpent with three heads, tied in a knot and on a
dark green field.
‘Brother Skethon,’ hissed Sammael. ‘The Fallen. He lives. Ravenwing, follow
me.’
‘Master Sammael,’ replied Ryvor. ‘The White Scars…’
Sammael glanced at Ryvor. Even through the eyepieces of his helmet, a look
was all it took.
The Ravenwing roared off towards the distant banner as the drones closed in
on the White Scars.
War engine fire was falling like pestilential comets among the tank parks and
trenchworks of the Imperial line.
The assault had not yielded Brother Skethon, but then Sammael had known it
would not. Instead he had brought back a book, enshrined in a chapel inside the
war machine, that at first glance seemed to be the journal of Skethor’s journeys
since abandoning his Chapter. Sammael’s duty now was to return it to the
Chapter’s Inner Circle. He strapped the book to the saddle of Corvex and led it
up into the Thunderhawk. The gunship’s engines were already warming up and
the Ravenwing had embarked, ready to leave.
A lone bike approached. Kor’sarro Khan, his armour smeared and corroded
with filth, skidded to a halt behind the Thunderhawk.
‘Sammael!’ shouted the Khan. ‘Whatever you abandoned us for, was it worth
it?’
The ramp began to close. ‘I know not yet,’ said Sammael levelly.
‘I asked what kind of man you were,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘And I will ask it again,
Dark Angel!’
Sammael looked down at the book. The Dark Angels had a purpose greater
than any war objective in the Imperium – the hunt for the Fallen, the redemption
of their whole Chapter and atonement for their sins. And it took precedence over
everything. Everything.
‘I do not know that yet, either,’ replied Sammael.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin