Shoving his body up with a grunt of effort, Meroved hacked at the daemon’s ankle and was rewarded with a discordant shriek of pain.
He smiled grimly. ‘Old weapons… They leave a mark.’
He jerked, a bone spar suddenly jutting from his chest where the daemon had impaled him.
Slow, Meroved. Too slow.
Cutting down with the vibro-blade, he severed the wretched limb and left the end of it sticking in his body like a piece of shrapnel.
Rusty too…
A savage kick sent Meroved sprawling, pain lancing up his back as he struck the wall.
‘I remember this being easier with the gilded arsenal,’ he said through gritted teeth, hauling himself to his feet as the daemon paraded in front of him.
‘We have fought before, you and I,’ it said, and Meroved was all too willing to let it talk. Daemons liked to talk. It was one of the attributes of mankind that they adopted with some relish. To taunt, to beguile, to mock and to promise… These were the daemon’s tools as much as any bony blade or sharpened tooth.
Grimacing, Meroved wrenched out the bone spur sticking in his chest. The end of it was thick with dark blood and he realised it had gone in deep.
‘Possibly… I don’t remember.’ He took a shuddering breath. Any one of the blows he had sustained would have killed a lesser being. ‘My mind isn’t what it used to be. Either that or you’re just not very memorable.’
It smiled, revealing crocodilian teeth.
‘Trying to wound me with words. There’s only one word that can hurt me, and you don’t know what it is.’
Meroved sneered. ‘I don’t need your true name to kill you.’
The daemon struck with viperous quickness, and Meroved cried out as it lacerated his chest and left a ragged gouge in his flesh. He only just clung on to the vial of silver liquid he had taken from a pouch on his belt.
‘As I was saying…’ he rasped, shaking the vial hard before tossing it at the daemon. It hissed as the vial shattered, bathing it in some kind of holy acid that burned at its emaciated flesh and sent it reeling.
‘Sanctus lamenta,’ snarled Meroved, feeling the pain of his injuries. ‘It means “saint’s tears”, you ignorant piece of filth.’
Foul-smelling smoke coiled off the daemon’s body and left it raw and bleeding.
Meroved charged, swinging his sword two-handed. He closed fast before the daemon could recover, stepping between its gangling limbs and hacking up into its groin.
It writhed and staggered with every blow, emitting a porcine squeal from its overlarge mouth. Stabbing down with its arms, it tried to pierce Meroved’s shoulders and back, but he weaved and turned and stayed out of harm’s way. As long as he stayed beneath it, it could not bring its superior reach to bear.
But Meroved was tiring. The wound to his chest had taken more out of him than he had at first realised. Blood flowed freely over his armour, pooling at his feet. He almost slipped in it, and as he hastily regained his footing the daemon arced its neck and spat a fusillade of sharpened teeth, as though it were blowing Meroved a kiss.
He recoiled, but dared not release his hand from his weapon to clutch at the wound to his face. If he dropped his sword, it was over. Blood now streaming down his face as well, Meroved swept out the vibro-blade in a wide arc. He cut through the daemon’s legs at the knee and it collapsed, a spider flailing without its limbs.
Meroved cut a second fusillade of teeth out of the air with the flat of his blade and advanced. With the daemon screaming curses, he severed one arm then the other, and then began hacking at its neck. It took several blows, each one releasing a welter of stinking ichor that gummed up his armour and burned his scalp and exposed skin. Meroved did not relent. The only way to vanquish a daemon was to disassemble it. The screams of its death throes reverberated around the cavern, but Meroved was resolute. Limbs burning, dizzy from the blood loss, his attack became urgent and frenzied. His grief found expression in a final roar of triumph and retribution. When he was done, he sagged and almost fell. He dug the sword into the ground, using it as a crutch.
Nothing remained of the daemonhost but a rancid puddle of bubbling ichor that was evaporating into even fouler smoke. Meroved took care not to breathe it in. He blacked out for a few seconds, dark flashes invading his vision, and realised he was blind in one eye. He reached up with trembling fingers to find the wound and felt a ragged eye socket instead. Spitting a gobbet of blood he found the stimm-injector amongst his trappings and did not stint on the dosage. Bright fire lit up his nerve endings. He knew the effects would be short-lived and that medical attention would be needed, so he used the time he had to raise Zatu on the vox.
The servitor’s response was swift.
‘Have you found the relic, my lord?’
‘No, but I am convinced it’s here, Zatu. I have found something much, much worse.’
‘You sound injured. Should I–’
‘I am and yes, despatch the gun-cutter. Make sure there’s a full medical array. I am sending you my location. The Throne must be made aware, Zatu. A threat is here in Vorganthian. It is real and it is dire beyond imagining. The cult of the Illuminated lives. I must contact the captain-general immediately.’
He gasped for breath, clutching the wound at his side. Then he glanced at the foetid remains of the daemon, almost incorporeal to the point of absolute dissolution.
‘And try to reach Gedd. She has no idea what she’s walking into.’
Chapter Fourteen
City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light
The warehouse was large and as black as an ocean without moonlight. Gedd’s last flare had faded, fizzling to smoke, but the roof was more dilapidated here and enough ambient light came in from above that she could see fairly well without it.
She had yet to draw her sidearm, but felt the urge to now.
It was ahead. Something framed by the light. It reminded Gedd of a roadside shrine, an effigy mounted on a crude frame.
As she drew closer, she felt an instinctive urge to turn around. To not look at the shrine. Nothing good could come of knowing what the shapes were, silhouetted in the light, or why it smelled like it did. She brandished the smoking flare like a warding charm, despite how ridiculous she knew that was.
She was only a few feet away when the wind ripped loose a roof tile and the grey light fell upon the thing in front of her.
Gedd’s knees buckled and she fell hard. She was vomiting violently, the urge to do so almost subconscious. She stayed like that, on all fours, head down with one hand still on the flare and wanting the other to draw her gun but unable to.
‘Holy Throne,’ she murmured, surprised at her sudden piety. ‘Emperor… gird my soul against all evil.’
She tried to rise but couldn’t. It was as if a heavy weight had been looped around her neck. It pressed against her and made it hard to breathe. Gedd’s heart was pounding much too fast. A cardiac arrest felt imminent.
‘Breathe…’ she told herself, and in her head her voice sounded small and insignificant, like it had been when she was a child and her father had gone off to ply the deeps. A memory imposed itself in her mind, of a cold hab, of a weeping mother, of a drowned father…
‘Breathe…’ she snarled, and her voice sounded older, and the memory faded, consigned to the mental compartment where Gedd locked away all of her fears and doubts.
‘Now, get the hell up,’ she said through gritted teeth, anger lending her much-needed strength. ‘Get up!’