snow, raising his hands futilely to ward off its attacks.
A beam of pure darkness stabbed through the air and slammed into the daemon’s body,
smashing it to the ice, and it roared in fury and pain.
The daemon writhed on the ground. A searing hole had punched through its side just above the
hip, passing clean through its body, and as it thrashed around, hot blood splashed across the ice and
snow, causing steam to rise where it landed.
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Solon spun to see where the blast had come from, and blinked as he saw several dark vehicles
gliding smoothly across the ice. They looked similar to the skiffs that the first colonists on Perdus
Skylla were said to have used, long thin boats with blades on their undersides that had used the
power of the winds to propel them across the ice flow. These were not touching the ground at all,
but hovered two metres above the ground, and slid forward with phenomenal speed.
Another lance of dark light stabbed from one of the vehicles, striking one of the daemonic Space
Marines’ battle tanks, which exploded spectacularly, the immense fireball throwing the shattered
vehicle high into the air.
Dark figures leapt from the sides of the skiffs. Somersaulting from the decks and landing
effortlessly on the ground, they began running lightly towards the Space Marines.
“Ghosts,” breathed Dios, his eyes wide with fear and panic.
Grabbing the boy around the waist, Solon lifted him and ran.
Burias-Drak’shal pushed himself to his knees, growling and spitting. The shot had gone clear
through him, passing between his hip and the base of his fused ribcage, leaving a gaping aperture of
weeping flesh and internal organs exposed to the air. Already his enhanced, daemonically infused
physiology was sealing the wound, his blood flow clotting and his flesh beginning to re-knit, but it
would take some time before he was fully healed, and no amount of healing could repair his
sundered power armour.
Pushing himself to his feet, Burias-Drak’shal hissed in pain and staggered, falling back to his
knees before once again rising. All thought of the pair of humans was gone, and he scanned the
landscape, focusing on the dark shapes of the eldar as they darted towards his comrades.
Wincing in pain, the icon bearer began to stagger back towards the shuttle, when his enhanced
senses picked up a familiar scent on the air. He threw himself forward into a roll as he registered the
appearance of the shadow-eldar behind him, and came up facing the being, teeth bared.
That the creature was of eldar origin was clear, for its frame was tall and slight, its limbs long
and elegant, but that was where the similarities ended. Its skin was as black as the night, and runes
of twisted eldar design were inscribed into its flesh. These runes glowed with cold light, pulsing
brightly as the creature entered fully into the material realm.
Burias-Drak’shal felt the power of the warp within the creature, but it was not possessed in the
same manner as he was. It was almost as if the daemon within the eldar shade was at once there and
not there, its will and individuality gone, but its strength tapped.
The shadow-eldar hissed at him, elegant, alien features contorting to reveal an array of small,
sharp teeth, and its milky, elongated eyes, shockingly white against its black skin, flashed its
murderous intent a fraction before it moved.
The creature disappeared, leaving a smoky outline in its wake, before it reappeared beside
Burias-Drak’shal, the blades emerging from the back of its forearms slashing towards his wounded
side.
Burias-Drak’shal was ready for it this time, swinging his arm around in a brutal arc that would
have decapitated the slender eldar had its reflexes been less than preternatural. It swayed backwards
from the blow, the possessed Word Bearer’s talons passing just centimetres from its face.
Burias-Drak’shal pushed his advantage, throwing a stabbing blow towards the eldar’s torso,
seeking to rip its heart from its chest. The shade threw itself backwards and disappeared again, only
to reappear to the icon bearer’s left, and the twin blades protruding from the back of its arm stabbed
deep into his body. The blades of its other arm slashed across his pauldron, slicing monomolecular
cuts through his power armour and drawing blood from his bicep.
Burias-Drak’shal snarled and spun, lashing out at the shadow-eldar, but his claws merely passed
through a dark mist as the creature leapt away once more. It reentered the material plane to his other
side, its blades flashing again, and the icon bearer felt hot blood begin to flow from another trio of
wounds.
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His anger grew as the eldar continued to prey upon him, taunting him with its speed, and Burias-
Drak’shal roared in frustration as once again his claws found nothing but air.
For all his anger he could sense that there was a pattern forming in the creature’s attacks. It
attacked and jumped away, always moving, and always attacking from a different angle.
As the shade disappeared once more, Burias-Drak’shal spun around on the spot, anticipating
where its next attack would come from and lashing out. The eldar appeared where he had expected,
and even its alien speed and reflexes were not up to avoiding the icon bearer’s pre-emptive strike.
Burias-Drak’shal’s talons closed around the slender eldar neck, and he pulled the creature
sharply towards him, throwing it off balance.
“Got you,” growled Burias-Drak’shal, pulling the alien straight onto his rising knee, which
thundered into the creature’s sternum.
Burias-Drak’shal grinned as he felt the bones and tendons under his grip strain, and he clubbed
the creature in the back of its head as it bent over double. It was slammed to the ground, and Burias-
Drak’shal followed it down, driving his knee into the small of the eldar’s back.
Burias-Drak’shal pulled his right hand back, and thrust down with all his enhanced might,
seeking to drive his talons through the back of the creature’s skull.
It disappeared from beneath him, his talons spearing deep into the ice, and the icon bearer
snarled in frustration.
Flicking his head to the side, he saw that his brother warriors had been engaged by the bulk of
the eldar raiding force, and with a hiss he began loping painfully towards the escalating battle.
Baranov could barely contain his satisfaction as he hauled the bay doors of the Rapture open and the
pompous, condescending elite of Perdus Skylla gaped in horror.
Eldar warriors were standing just outside the bay doors of the Rapture. Several of the courtesans
screamed, while others whimpered in terror or merely gaped and soiled themselves. Baranov
grinned, and stepped to the side.
A screaming woman was dragged from the shuttle by her hair, and the remaining high-ranking
guilders shrank back, only to be pushed forward by Baranov’s burly crew members.
Chuckling, Baranov swung away from the spectacle. For a moment, his gaze was drawn towards
the shimmering integrity field that covered the yawning docking bay. It was almost imperceptible to
the naked eye, looking as though nothing separated the inside of the ship and the vacuum of space,
and it always made him feel slightly uneasy, as if he would be sucked out into the void at any
moment.
Ikorus Baranov stepped back alongside the dark eldar lord’s proxy, his arms folded across his
chest as the wailing, weeping guilders and their lovers were led away in glimmering manacles that
crackled with energy. He had never learnt the name of the eldar pirate, nor that of his representative.
Not that it mattered, he thought. He would be unlikely to be able to pronounce it anyway.
“You have done well for me these past months,” said the eldar, his voice as smooth as velvet.
The eldar spoke a curious form of Low Gothic, his pronunciation pitch perfect, but with a strangely
singsong inflection.
“I am glad that your lord has been pleased with my deliveries,” replied Baranov, trying to keep
his voice calm. In truth, the eldar terrified him, but they paid well. “That will be the last of them,
I’m afraid. I won’t risk another run, not with the tyranids so close.”
Baranov flashed a glance at the eldar’s face, trying to read him. Normally a good judge of
character, he found it galling that he could not gauge the eldar’s emotions in the slightest. Never
again will I work with xenos, he thought, though he knew as soon as he thought it that it was a lie.
“The… what do you call them? Tyranids?” said the eldar. Baranov nodded.
“Your pronunciation is perfect,” commented Baranov. The eldar stared at him for a moment, and
he felt himself shrink under his unfathomable gaze.
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“The tyranids might well exterminate all of the lesser races, in time,” said the eldar casually.
“They are a menace,” agreed Baranov, unsure where the conversation was leading, and
uncomfortable making small talk with the deadly eldar lord.
“If all of your kind are eradicated, where then will my lord find such slaves?” asked the eldar,
gesturing towards the guilders being dragged away. “Your race breeds like vermin. Your race is
vermin, but you have your uses, don’t you, Ikorus Baranov?”
“I… I believe we do, my lord. Or at least some of us do.”
“I am glad that you believe so,” said the eldar. He gestured more of his warriors forward, and
they began to surround Baranov and his crewmembers.
“Ah,” said Baranov, “I think we should part ways now, honoured lord. I won’t press you for the
payment for this last group. Consider it a gift, a gift to honour the friendship between us.”
“Friendship?” said the eldar slowly, as if savouring the word. “A curious, irrelevant mon-keigh
concept. And honour? Where is the honour in betraying your own kind? Delivering them to an
enemy, albeit superior, race? That is honourable in your eyes?”
Baranov felt the sweat running down his back, and his throat was suddenly dry. He flinched as
the eldar walked behind him, but he felt rooted to the spot, unable to think, unable to move.
“You are a detestable race,” said the eldar. “Your very stench offends me, and yet, you have
your uses. Your soul-fires burn so bright, and your fear… your fear is delectable.”
The eldar spun away from the petrified mon-keigh worm.
“Enslave them,” he said in the eldar tongue.
Marduk took careful aim at one of the frenzied eldar wyches as it darted towards him. Squeezing the
trigger, the eldar’s head disappeared in a mist of blood. The eldar warriors were almost naked, their
flesh covered only by totemic war paint and ritual piercings, and they moved like deadly dancers as
they cut into the warriors of the XVII Legion. Their strangely fashioned weapons wove dazzling
patterns through the air, their movements at once enthralling and deadly.
A score of them had died as they approached, ripped apart by the murderous swathe of fire that
the Word Bearers had laid down. More had perished when one of their hovering skiffs had been shot
from the air, the fragile vehicle tipping onto its side, throwing its occupants onto the ice before it
smashed down upon them, impaling several on its bladed sides and crushing more beneath its
weight.
Now the wyches had engaged them in melee combat, and the odds were tipping towards the
greater numbers of the eldar warriors.
Parallel beams of incandescent light speared through the night as a Land Raider fired upon the
knife-like shapes of the dark skiffs that circled the battle, searing a pair of holes through one of its
barbed, sail-like uprights. The raider vehicle veered to the side, moving with remarkable speed and
grace as it avoided another pair of shots directed towards it, and another of the vehicles returned
fire, a beam of darkness stabbing into the front of the Land Raider, which was rocked by the blow.
Jetbikes streamed out of the night, screaming low through the fight, peppering the Word Bearers
with splinter fire. Marduk spun, his chainsword roaring, and cut the arm from one of the jetbikers as
the vehicle screamed past him. Blood pumped from the wound and the rider lost control of his
jetbike, which flipped into a sudden dive, skidding into the ice and smashing headlong into Kol
Badar.
The Coryphaus saw it coming out of the corner of his vision and braced himself, leaning his
shoulder into the careering jetbike. It shattered against him, breaking apart as it knocked him back a
step, and the rider was catapulted over the handlebars, blood spraying in a wide arc from the stump
of his arm.
Marduk fired his pistol into the chest of another of the wyches as it closed on him, and the
painted figure was hurled backwards by the force of the shot. He spun, targeting matrices lighting up
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around him, and saw another of the wyches, her gaudy dyed red hair swinging behind her as she
ducked under a swinging blow from one of Sabtec’s coterie brothers and slashed a blade through the
warrior’s leg, cutting it off at the knee.
Marduk judged that this was the leader of the wych troop. She moved with exquisite, savage
grace, her serpentine whip writhing with a life of its own. The whip cracked out, and its multiple
barbed tips lashed around the arm of another warrior brother. Energy coursed up the length of the
whip and the warrior of the XVII Legion dropped to the ground, his body convulsing.
Marduk levelled his bolt pistol at the wych’s head, but before he could fire, a net of fine, razorsharp
wire wrapped around his arm, pulling his aim off target and slicing through his vambraces. A
tri-forked spear stabbed towards Marduk’s chest, but the First Acolyte swatted it aside with his
chainsword and hacked into the eldar’s neck, ripping his chainblade through flesh.
Untangling himself from the wire net that had cut half-through his vambrace, Marduk turned and
staggered back from the furious assault of another of the wyches. It danced towards him with a pair
of long-bladed swords weaving before it. Each of the swords had a guard that protected the
wielder’s hands, and they had curving blades for pommels.
The blades moved faster than Marduk could follow, and he was losing ground before their
flashing advance. Snarling, he leapt forwards, his hatred fuelling his servo-enhanced strength.
One of the blades slashed for his neck, and Marduk blocked the attack with his forearm, while
the other sword slashed up towards his groin. He met the blow with one of his own, and for a
moment the two combatants were locked together. Then the eldar flipped backwards, first one foot
