THIS TIME IT was pain.

Consciousness rushed back to Alaric so fast that it almost knocked him out in the volley of sensations. Raw, screaming pain coursed up his spine, strangling his brain so that sensible thoughts refused to form. There was coldness against his back, and a sense of being trapped, locked down, crushed.

The smell was of blood and sweat.

Alaric gasped and forced his eyes open. White light pounded against his retinas and he thrashed. Something clattered to the ground, a tinny sound just above the white noise of the pain.

Alaric kept himself from going under again. It was an art of will-power, and he didn't have much of that left.

The memories of the daemon still churned in his mind. He tried to strangle them, choke them down, clean out his mind with faith. His chest heaved, and he nearly blacked out.

Then, he could breathe again.

He knew the truth. He wanted to tell someone, but first, he had to know that his mind was intact.

His eyes adjusted rapidly. The chamber was dimly lit, but it had been almost unbearably bright, so he must have been in darkness for a long time. It was a small, hot, filthy room, in the familiar, life-stained ironwork of the Hecatomb. He guessed that he was somewhere below the cell block deck.

Kelhedros stood in front of him, stripped of his green armour to the waist. There was blood on the eldar's pale chest. The alien was not wounded, so Alaric surmised the blood must be his, the same blood that coated the sliver of sharpened metal that Kelhedros was holding.

Alaric looked down at his arm, from which the waves of pain were emanating. His consciousness had kicked off the endorphins in his brain, which were dulling the agony, a typical physiological response for a s.p.a.ce Marine, but the pain was still tremendous. The skin of his forearm had been slit and pulled open from the wrist to the elbow, and several pins were sticking from the exposed muscle, piercing nerve centres with such precision that there was no room for any more pain.

Alaric tried to speak. He gasped dumbly. His nervous system wouldn't respond properly. An unenhanced body would have died of shock, he thought vaguely. One again, he was alive because he was a s.p.a.ce Marine.

Kelhedros plucked a couple of the pins from Alaric's arm. Alaric was able to think again, and he exhaled raggedly, chest heaving! He realised that he was chained to the wall of the room with his arm strapped down more firmly than die rest of him, so that Kelhedros could work without Alaric's thrashing disturbing his precision.

'There you are,' said Kelhedros.

'What... why am I here?'

'You were delirious. You have been for some time. I was attempting to bring you back to a level of consciousness where you could be dealt with. Have I succeeded?'

'Yes,' said Alaric, hoping it was true. Where am I?'

'The Hecatomb! '

'I know. Where on Drakaasi?'

'A week or so out of the Scourge, ' said Kelhedros.

Alaric looked down at his arm again. For all the work that had been done on it, there was very little blood. 'Did they teach you this in the Scorpion Temple?' he asked.

Kelhedros regarded Alaric with curiosity in his liquid alien eyes.

We walk many paths,' he said simply.

'Are you going to release me?'

'When the wound is closed,' said Kelhedros. 'Premature activity could render the damage permanent.'

'And you wouldn't want that.'

Again, the strange look; Kelhedros had evidently not had enough experience of human mannerisms to recognise sarcasm. 'I would not. It does us no good for you to be incapacitated.'

'Why did you wake me up?'

'Soon we will be at Vel'Skan. Many believe that our survival at the games depends on you being able to lead us. There was some debate, I believe. Gearth wanted you left as you are. Many of his men have come to idolise you, Alaric. They have followed you on the first steps.'

'Steps to where?'

'Oblivion, Grey Knight. They see you as an example of how a man may lose his mind, and with it all the impediments to becoming a true killer. I believe they speak of this with the same fervour with which Erkhar speaks of his Promised Land. Gearth did not get his way this time, and so I offered to bring you back to your senses.'

Kelhedros removed the remaining pins from Alaric's arm. 'I understand you heal quickly.'

'That's right.'

Then the st.i.tches need not be small.' Kelhedros produced a needle, threaded with cord, and began to sew Alaric's arm closed. Alaric was almost glad of the pain. It was something real, something he could experience honesdy without wondering if it was another stage in his becoming something terrible.

'What have I done?' he asked. While I was... when I was not myself?'

'You have killed many,' said Kelhedros, 'including Lucetia the Envenomed, the Void Hound ofTremu-lon, and Deinas, son of Kianon. Some of them were quite the spectacle, and then there were many lesser slaves, of course.'

'That wasn't me,' said Alaric. 'I wasn't there.' He winced as Kelhedros drew his st.i.tches closed.

'That is good to know. You were unlikely to seek escape in such a state.'

'That's why you agreed to being me back.'

'Of course. I wish to escape this world, Grey Knight. You are the most likely among the prisoners to seek freedom, and certainly the most able to achieve it. I dare say that Vel'Skan will be our last chance.'

Kelhedros finished sewing up Alaric's arm. Considering how the eldar must have had to improvise his medical implements, it was a good job. Alaric wondered just what paths the alien had walked, before one of them had led to Drakaasi.

'How long until Vel'Skan?' asked Alaric.

'Some days,' said Kelhedros. The games will be great. Many of the best gladiators will compete for the t.i.tle of Drakaasi's champion.'

'I see.'

'You will be one of them.'

Alaric smiled. 'Of course I will. The crowd loves me.'

'Oh, they do, Justicar. To them I am just Kelhedros the Outsider.

Or the Green Phantom, sometimes, but that did not really catch on.

You, though, are Alaric the Betrayed, the Crimson Justicar, the Corpse-G.o.d's Bloodied Hand. When you are gone there will be statues of you. They will tell stories of how the Emperor sent his best to defeat the warp, and how one of those best became a legend in the arenas. You will inspire champions of the future. Sc.u.m of Ghaal will kill their way into the ranks of the elite gladiators because once a Grey Knight did the same thing. You will never be forgotten here, Justicar.'

You sound like an enthusiast of mine, alien,' said Alaric bleakly.

'Fame is one of the routes to survival on Drakaasi,' replied Kelhedros, unfastening Alaric's restraints. 'It is not the one I would choose to follow, for becoming something I am not is inimical to the path I walk. That is not to say, however, that it is an inefficient or futile way to stay alive. Truly, you are the only slave who has a meaningful life expectancy. You may even one day be more than a slave. That freedom would be earned at the expense of your personality, but it would be freedom of a sort.'

'I would rather die than become a champion of the warp,' said Alaric.

'So I understand, but perhaps you will not have that choice.'

We will know for sure after Vel'Skan.' Alaric's restraints were free, and he struggled to keep from slumping to his knees. Every muscle was sore. He must have been tied there at Kelhedros's mercy for a long time. He looked down at himself. He was stripped to the waist, and there were countless new scars on his chest and arms. He had a brand, too, a deep angry welt in the shape of Khorne's stylised skull burned into his pectoral.

'When did I get this?' he asked.

'After the sacrifices,' replied Kelhedros matter-of-facdy. You were rewarded.'

The hateful symbol seemed to stare out at Alaric. 'So I am marked,'

he said to himself.

'You took it as a great honour. Gearth and his men now aspire to receive the same mark.'

Alaric touched the brand. It was still healing, and it still hurt. He felt unclean to have the symbol on him. When he got back to t.i.tan, he would have it cut out of his skin.

t.i.tan had never felt so far away.

The winds are low,' said Kelhedros, who was placing his improvised scalpels and nerve pins neatly into a roll of cloth. It looked like he took great care of his implements of torture. Alaric was impressed that Kelhedros had hidden them from the scaephylyds for so long. The alien had far more freedom than any other slave on the Hecatomb, able to operate in secret and go where he pleased. It was the dangers of Drakaasi, not the Hecatomb's structure, that kept Kelhedros a prisoner. The slavemasters will order us to the oar deck soon. Were you not there, suspicion would be raised.'

Alaric moved his arms, testing his shoulders and back. They hurt.

It felt like he had been sparring for hours, as he once had against his friend Tancred. It wasn't just the restraints, he had been fighting constantly for days with few breaks. He must have won great glory for Khorne. He must have taken dozens of skulls for the Skull Throne.

'Then I must be ready to work,' he said. 'It would not do for Alaric the Betrayed to be late.'

VEL'SKAN!.

Did some ancient G.o.d demand that glory be, and did Vel'Skan spring up in response? Did some t.i.tan desire an altar to bloodshed, and did he build Vel'Skan in the image of his madness? Did some battle between the G.o.ds of the warp take place there, and scatter their weapons upon Drakaasi, a steel rain that left the mighty heap of war gear to be inhabited?

Vel'Skan's form drives men mad to look at it. Swords and shields, helmets and spear shafts, every thing that one man might use to maim another in t.i.tanic proportions heaped up upon the blood sh.o.r.e. Here is a temple in the palm of a gauntlet! There is a dock forged from a broadsword blade. There spins a stirrup, hung with the dead of a hundred executions.

Everywhere is Vel'Skan, maddening in its size. And this question b.u.ms like a hollow pain in the soul: what manner of slaughter could create these immense instruments of death?

What majesty is in this place, the capital of all Drakaasi, seat of its greatest lords? What glory to the Blood G.o.d, what oath to death, what image of slaughter and the h.e.l.ls that follow, is encompa.s.sed by the war forged city Vel'Skan?

- 'Mind Journeys of a Heretic Saint,' by Inquisitor Helmandar Oswain (Suppressed by order of the Ordo Hereticus) Alaric saw Vel'Skan for the first time from the Hecatomb's oar deck. The ship was making a stately approach to the capital, saluted by the ranks of warriors who stood guard on the banks of the blood river.

The slaves around him had their heads bowed, concentrated on keeping the rhythm beaten out by the scaephylyd slave master.

Alaric, however, wanted to see what was waiting for them.

'Justicar,' said a voice behind him. Alaric risked a glance around, and saw that Haggard was sitting behind him. The old sawbones had suffered greatly recently. His eyes were hollow and his skin was an unhealthy pale. He had fought, too, for he sported several fresh scars and wounds that he must have dressed himself.

Venalitor was sparing none of his slaves in the run-up to the Vel'Skan games. 'It is good to have you back.'

'Thank you, Haggard.'

'You... are back, aren't you?'

Alaric smiled. 'I was not myself for a while. Venalitor tried to have one of his pet daemons take control of me. I did not cooperate, but resisting cost me my mind for a while.'

'You did some terrible things,' said Haggard.

'I know, but then that was true before I ever came to Drakaasi.'

They are talking about you as a challenger for the t.i.tle.' Who is?'

'Gearth's men. They are... not really with us any more. Venalitor has promised them something if they fight well, and the scaephylyds, too. We... Erkhar and I, and some of others... we talked about killing you. The scaephylyds found out, and they were pretty descriptive about what would happen to us if Venalitor's best prospect got hurt.'

'Then I am grateful that reason prevailed.'

Haggard smiled weakly. 'I suppose I already betrayed you once.

Twice would just be rude.'

'No, Haggard. You did what you had to do to survive. I cannot begrudge anyone that, not after what I have done on this planet. At least it will end here.'

Alaric glanced again at the city pa.s.sing by. He saw the palace of Lord Ebondrake, built into a vast human skull with a corroded dagger thrust through one eye. The skull was from the remains of one of the t.i.tanic warriors that had fought over Drakaasi, and it grinned monstrously down over the city.

We break out here,' said Alaric.

'Why here?' asked Haggard warily. What is here in Vel'Skan?'

The Hammer of Daemons,' answered Alaric.

NINETEEN.

TEN THOUSAND SOLDIERS of Vel'Skan fell on their swords in the city's greatest parade ground. The bowl of the upturned shield began to fill with blood as the armoured bodies slid down their blades, grimacing as they refused to cry out in pain. Not one of them did, and in perfect disciplined silence, they died to anoint the Vel'Skan spectacle with blood.

The final body stopped spasming. The priests of Khorne wet the hems of their bronze-threaded robes as they wandered among the sacrifices. They sc.r.a.ped through the pooling blood with their ceremonial blades, and pored over loops of entrails. They examined the angles at which the soldiers' swords had pierced their bodies. They lifted the visors of their helmets, taking careful note of the final expressions on their mutated faces. For several hours, they pursued their divinations, until swarms of insects descended on the fresh corpses, and the blood began to congeal in fascinating patterns on the surface of the bronze shield.

Finally the priests convened at the shield's rim. They discussed the matter for a long time, sometimes arguing, and sometimes letting the more venerable of them address the others. They licked blood idly from their blades as they debated.

Finally, they came to an agreement. One of them, the most ancient, was sent to deliver their p.r.o.nouncement to the palace of Lord Ebondrake, the giant skull with the dagger through its eye grinning down at them from its place atop the city.

The divinations had proven encouraging. Blood had flowed in such a way that promised more blood would soon follow, that Lord Ebondrake and all the armies of Drakaasi could not have stemmed its tide had they wanted to. Every torn sinew suggested blood and carnage on a grand scale.

Khorne had smiled upon the battle-forged city. The Vel'Skan games could begin.