He saw champions slain, and victims hurled to the crowds.

Sometimes he tasted blood and flesh in his mouth, and there was just enough of his mind left to pray that it was his own.

He saw a thousand places, a million victims, and horrors beyond his imagining, but mosdy there was only darkness and cold.

SEVENTEEN.

VENALITOR WATCHED THE skyship land. The desert was rocky and cold, as bleak a place as existed on Drakaasi, and Venalitor hadn't even been certain that Ebondrake would agree to meet him there. It did not do for the Lord of Drakaasi to answer the summons of an underling. Far away from Drakaasi's cities and without even a blood river crossing it, the desert was one of Drakaasi's least sacred places and it was a wonder that Ebondrake would grace it at all.

Lord Ebondrake emerged from the hold of the skyship. The Ophidian Guard who surrounded him were rendered all but invisible beside his majesty. The skyship was one of the small fleet that remained on Drakaasi, relics of an earlier age, and Ebondrake owned them all. It looked like a galleon loosed from the ocean, sails spreading out horizontally like the wings of a dragonfly.

'You do me a great honour,' said Venalitor, 'to join me here.'

'I trust you have something to show me,' said Ebondrake, a note of danger in his voice. Venalitor had come to the desert meeting alone.

He looked completely out of place in that barren landscape in his red and bra.s.s armour.

'Of course, my lord,' he said.

'Nothing can take up my time save for the games and the crusade.

If this is some irrelevant flattery, Venalitor, the limits of my patience shall be revealed.'

'The crusade is foremost in my mind, too,' said Venalitor. 'This world is too small to contain us all. If we do not grow beyond its boundaries we will wither away, all the while letting potential sacrifices grow old and die away from the Blood G.o.d's sight.'

'Well?' asked Ebondrake.

'Observe, my lord, and it will become clear.'

A storm was building up on the horizon. Dark clouds piled on top of one another, heavy and purple with blood. A colder wind whispered across the desert, kicking up plumes of dust from the broken land.

Venalitor drew his two-handed sword. The sky darkened, and the blade shone like a streak of caged lightning. He held the sword high.

Tiny dark shapes emerged from the closest tear in the ground, like ants fleeing a nest. More and more of them emerged. Darkness was staining the land, more scuttling forms in the distance. They were clambering out of every cave and fissure.

The desert was home to something after all: Scaephylyds, thousands of scaephylyds, more than had ever been seen in one place on Drakaasi before. They were still emerging from their underground caves, covering the desert in their beetle-like bodies.

They glinted in the lightning flashing in the gathering clouds.

They began to organise themselves into ranks and files. Standards were raised, each one bearing an ancient totem of Drakaasi's oldest tribes: a predatory bird, long extinct, that was once the scourge of the desert skies; a black tree, with heads and hands impaled on its branches; a bra.s.s claw, reaching down from a red sky; a mne shaped like a blinded eye; an axe, and a scaephylyd skull wreathed in black fire.

Ranked up, the scaephylyds formed an army bigger than any that fought in Gorgath. In terms of numbers alone it was the greatest force Drakaasi had seen for centuries. There were a million scaephylyds at least, and they were still clambering to the surface.

'So,' said Ebondrake, 'this is what you bring to my crusade.' He peered across the desert, sizing up the force arrayed before him.

'All devoted to me,' said Venalitor, 'sworn to me in their entirety.

These native tribes of Drakaasi have waited long to play their part in Khorne's great slaughter.'

'I see,' said Ebondrake. 'It is fascinating to me, duke, that you sought out the lowest of this planet's low, baser even than the filth of Ghaal, and built from them the army that you believe can put you at my side: from the deepest pits of this planet to the heart of its power.' Ebondrake turned to Venalitor and looked at him with narrowed eyes. The Liar G.o.d would be proud of such a champion.'

Venalitor smiled. 'He would not appreciate me, my lord. I manipulate others to get what I want, but I will not be lied to. We would not get along.'

Ebondrake smiled. 'So, how many of these creatures will be spent in your feud with Arguthrax?'

The question was supposed to catch Venalitor off-guard, but Venalitor had expected it. No amount of subterfuge and misdirection could keep the silent war from Ebondrake's eyes. The old lizard probably had thousands of spies in every corner of Drakaasi. 'History, my lord,' said Venalitor. 'It is done with. We are in a stalemate. Soon we will come to an undeclared truce. I have no wish to waste more of my troops, and Arguthrax will not risk angering the warp by sacrificing its daemons trying to kill me. I would not admit this to anyone else, my lord, but the feud is done with.'

'You expect me to believe that? When one such as you locks horns with one such as Arguthrax, it does not end until one is destroyed.

That is, unless a greater power ends it first.'

'That greater power being you?'

'Of course, and I will end it, duke. If you and Arguthrax continue to waste this planet's armies on killing each other then I will finish the job for you. I will kill you both. You are not too proud to be flayed into a banner, Venalitor, and Arguthrax is not too great to avoid a banishment to the coldest wastes of the warp at my behest.'

'None of this surprises me, my lord,' said Venalitor smoothly. That is why I have let this war boil down to a few skirmishes between bands of minor cultists who will not be missed. I believe Arguthrax is letting the same thing happen. Neither of us will back down before the other lords, but neither is foolish enough to defy you.'

'Flattery again,' sneered Ebondrake.

'It is also the truth.'

One of the scaephylyds was approaching. It was a truly huge and ancient example of the species, the size of a tank, its carapace swollen and gnarled. It was covered in colonies and hives, like barnacles. As it aged, it had grown more and more eyes, and its head was just a set of chipped mandibles below a nest of dozens of eye sockets. Each eye moved independently, some settling on Venalitor, and some on Ebondrake. Its like had not been seen on the surface of Drakaasi in the current age. It carried a traditional scaephylyd weapon, a pair of hinged blades like an ornate pair of shears, operated by the two forelimbs on one side, to denote its rank.

'General,' said Venalitor, 'the tribes answer my call.'

'Of course, duke,' said the general in an accent so thick it was barely comprehensible. Its mandibles forced themselves into painful configurations to p.r.o.nounce human speech. 'How else could it be?'

'Explain to Lord Ebondrake,' said Venalitor.

Most of the general's eyes turned to Lord Ebondrake. The ancient creature lowered its thorax to the ground in a bow, laying its shear blade on the ground in front of Ebondrake. 'Oh great dark one,' the general began, 'Duke Venalitor is our deliverance and our glory. He brought the Blood G.o.d to us when all others had forsaken our kind.

He taught us that even we, the lowest of creatures, can be beloved by Khorne if we serve. He led us in that service, promising us lives and deaths given over to the Blood G.o.d's worship.'

'I see,' said Ebondrake, 'and now?'

'Now we have proven our worth,' continued the general, 'and all of us have the chance to serve. This army has lain beneath the earth for centuries, waiting for a Champion of the Blood G.o.d to bring us to the surface. Now that has become reality. I rejoice that I have lived to see the scaephylyd nation take its place among Drakaasi's armies.'

Ebondrake regarded the general with curiosity. 'How long, duke, have you been hiding these?'

'I made use of a few of them,' replied Venalitor, 'and they came to me begging for more of them to serve. Is that not true?'

'We begged,' said the general, 'and we grovelled. Scaephylyds are not proud. We seek only our place in the universe.'

'And you are all pledged to my crusade?' said Ebondrake.

'Every scaephylyd that lives,' said the general. The infirm have been put to death. All those that remain are fit to fight.'

'And you?'

'No honour could befall me greater than dying for the Blood G.o.d,'

said the general, raising his shear blade in a salute.

Very well,' said Ebondrake. 'Go back to your... to your creatures.

Make sure they are ready to leave. The crusade will take flight soon, and all must be prepared.'

This is your will, my duke and my lord?' 'It is,' said Venalitor.

Then it shall be so.' The general raised itself from the ground and returned to the scaephylyd army. 'Quite devoted,' said Ebondrake.

They are.' To you.'

To their G.o.d, my lord. They are troops to be herded beneath the enemy guns, who will not be missed, and there can always be more.

At my command the tribal elders will begin the scaephylyds'

breeding cycle, and thousands more will be hatched. They can fight almost as soon as they are born, if all you want are bodies to be thrown forwards.'

'You would have this be your part in the crusade, Venalitor? Lord of the vermin? Most would consider the greater honour to be among the elite warriors, those who win the battle, not the ma.s.ses who die before the battle truly begins.'

'Blood is blood, my lord,' said Venalitor.

Ebondrake smiled. 'So it is, duke, so it is. I have heard much of your Grey Knight, too.'

'His holy work is only just begun,' said Venalitor with a hint of pride. Truly, he has become a part of this great engine of worship.'

'After all he has resisted, he has taken quite suddenly to the ways of Khorne. His fame grows, as does the speculation as to just what brought him into our fold. Did you break him, Venalitor? Or did trickery rob him of his wits?'

'I am a persuasive man, my lord.'

There is more to it than that. A s.p.a.ce Marine would be remarkable enough, but a Grey Knight? Come now, do not tell me some petty torture or temptation could break such a creature.'

'He was introduced to an ally from the warp. His mind did not survive the encounter.'

'I would have heard of this from the warp. Flaying the mind of a daemon hunter would be a matter of great celebration among Khorne's daemons.'

'I called upon the services of an old friend.'

Ebondrake raised a scaly eye ridge in surprise. 'Raezazel? So that story is true?'

'Indeed. It was Raezazel who drove Alaric insane.'

The liar sp.a.w.n lives?'

'After a fashion. Life, for a daemon, can be a matter of interpretation.'

'I see. One of the Liar G.o.d's own flesh amongst us! I had not thought such a thing possible. Do you have any more secrets to reveal, duke?'

The scaephylyds and Raezazel were the last of them, my lord. You know all there is to know.'

'I take it that Raezazel will not live on long to trouble us? I do not need the likes of him disrupting the crusade.'

'He has been a prisoner of mine since I defeated him. He is just a shadow of what he was. He will never be free, and he will never oppose the Blood G.o.d's will. He serves me now.'

'See that it is dead before the crusade launches,' said Ebondrake.

'I shall see to its execution myself 'Good. It will have been well overdue.' Ebondrake looked out again across the scaephylyd nation, still a.s.sembling on the desert plain. The desert was dark with their teeming bodies, and the sky above had turned a grim purple-grey in response. 'After Vel'Skan, duke, make sure that the crusade is your only concern.'

'Of course, my lord,' said Venalitor.

Ebondrake stomped back towards his sky-ship with his Ophidian Guard. Venalitor watched the great dragon go.

Perhaps Ebondrake believed him. Most of what he said had been true, after all. Or perhaps the creature would never trust him. It didn't matter either way. Once the crusade got underway, everything would change. Venalitor was rather looking forward to it.

It was appalling. It was terrifying, but it was the truth.

Finally, Alaric understood.

ALARIC WAS THERE, in Raezazel's place. The faces of his congregation were looking up at him, hypnotised by his beauty. He had to fight to keep Raezazel's alien personality from taking over his own. This flesh was foul, these believers doomed. Raezazel was revolting. Alaric's disgust propelled him out of Raezazel's body.

He was outside Raezazel, looking on. He saw a man of such beauty that he lit up the walls around him. Alaric looked away. He could see the daemon underneath.

He looked around: deep blue inlaid with gold, sirens, panic.

Something had gone wrong. Alaric tasted Raezazel's anger at the intrusion. The place became dim, and the image of the planet with the eight-pointed star shone down suddenly from overhead.

Raezazel raged, almost knocking out Alaric with the force of the emotion.

Alaric knew where he was. This was how Raezazel had come to Drakaasi.

The lie unravelled. Alaric, finally saw everything that Raezazel had tried to hide from him.

In attempting to possess Alaric, Raezazel had let his mind touch Alaric's. In that mind was locked the secret of Raezazel himself, of Drakaasi and of the Hammer of Daemons. Alaric saw it now, shining in front of him, unrolling like a chronicle of years.

EIGHTEEN.