Meroved heard Cartovandis murmuring.
‘Emperor… I am Your blade. Guide my hand, oh Master of Mankind…’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the Grey Knights stirring…
‘Bestow unto me Your will and see it enacted.’
Bloodied, crawling on his hands and knees, the Paladin reached for the book that had spilled from his grasp. His fingers trembled…
‘Forsake me not, oh Emperor… For I am Your willing servant…’
The Bloodthirster roared, a prelude to violence. It hacked at Cartovandis, a flurry of life-ending blows, but exposed its flank as the Custodian withdrew. Meroved lunged, but the Bloodthirster turned and his guardian spear only raked the black iron breastplate, spitting sparks as it skidded off hell-forged metal. The axe’s backswing took him by surprise, a glancing hit that sheared Meroved’s hastily proffered shield in half and punched him off his feet. He spun, pain coursing through his chest and arm. Bones broke, auramite cracked and he blacked out before he hit the ground.
He came around a few seconds later, groaning in pain as he heaved himself onto his hands and knees. Seizing the haft of his spear, he eviscerated a bloodletter seeking to take advantage, before lurching to one knee and beheading two more as he swept his weapon in a wide arc. The daemons’ headless bodies had yet to fall as Meroved’s eyes alighted on his brothers.
Cartovandis fought alone. He had lost his shield and wielded a sentinel blade two-handed, turning and cutting and stabbing. Adio was some distance away. He had lost his weapon and wrestled a massive flesh hound with his gauntleted hands. A clutch of Shadowkeepers had seen his plight but had been waylaid by bloodletters and fought to make a path.
Meroved could only reach one and he chose Cartovandis. His fellow Custodian was a consummate swordsman, but a Bloodthirster was a lord of battle incarnate. Alone, he would not survive.
Spitting out a gobbet of blood, Meroved staggered uncertainly to his feet.
Wounds gaped in the Bloodthirster’s flesh and its breastplate had a ragged crack across it, but the daemon had lost none of its fury. After each thrust or cut, Cartovandis faced a frenzied counter-attack. Every blow he parried raked a cascade of black sparks from the edge of his sword, his body trembling with the impacts, and he moved with desperate haste.
Seeing an opening, Cartovandis hacked down onto the Bloodthirster’s wrist. The hand clutching the whip separated from the arm, but the spurting wound splattered Cartovandis in boiling, viscous ichor. He gagged as his armour was bathed in the filth then staggered, barely turning the next blow. A second attack opened up his defence, putting him on the back foot as his sword spun wide, and he only just held on to it with one hand. The axe swept down, blistering the air… A spear embedded in the Bloodthirster’s hand pushed the blow wide. The axe sheared into the ground instead, missing Cartovandis by a hair’s breadth. He had yet to fully recover when the Bloodthirster thrust with its snout and gored Cartovandis on its horns, razor-sharp bone tearing through auramite and splitting it apart. He cried out, the agony catching in his throat as he hacked off the horn. The daemon roared and smashed Cartovandis aside, having raked his body from shoulder to groin.
He fell, his sword slipping from loose fingers, and did not rise again.
Meroved only had his knife but drew it anyway as the daemon bore down on Cartovandis’ prone form. A rare battle cry escaped his lips, intended to draw the daemon to him and purchase a few vital seconds. He was only moments away from death when he heard chanting.
‘Khak’akaoz’…’
The Bloodthirster faltered as if struck. It visibly shrank, the skin flaking off its body like ash.
The chanting came from the Paladin. He leaned against the bodies of his fellow Grey Knights, the book of true names he was reading from aglow with psychic potency.
‘…khyshk,akami…’
Every syllable brought the daemon fresh pain. It sank to one knee as its indomitable will began to fail. A guardian spear pierced its side. It howled, flailing ineffectually as another blade found its mark. And then another. A host of Custodians jabbed at the Bloodthirster from every quarter, thrusting and stabbing with spear and sword as the Paladin’s chanting grew fiercer and more determined.
‘Khak’akaoz’…’
The daemon fought on but diminished with the Paladin’s every utterance.
‘…khyshk,akami…’
Its limbs already withering, the daemon’s stiff fur grew grey and piebald. Its wings sagged, torn ragged and moth-eaten.
Satisfied, Meroved left the daemon to its fate and made for Cartovandis.
He was dying, ripped open with his entrails spewed like so much offal.
A horn sounded, this time a clarion he knew. The Shadowkeepers had signalled a retreat in the face of the daemonic onslaught, their dark-hulled gunships strafing the enemy but descending to extract them from the field.
Meroved spared a glance for Adio, the flesh hound’s jaws clamped around his wrist and more of the Neverborn bearing down on him.
‘Hold on, brother…’ he murmured, but knew he had to deal with Cartovandis first. Meroved pushed his guts back into his body and told him to hold them there as he grabbed hold of the stricken Custodian’s gorget and began to drag him towards Adio. Pain burned white-hot as his own wounds tore open and widened, but Meroved kept going.
Adio had snapped the flesh hound’s neck. He had also drawn his misericordia and used it to cut apart the bloodletters that had flocked like carrion birds eager for his skin. The banner lay broken at his feet but he was unbowed as he regarded the departing gunships. He found his castellan axe and cut down another swathe of daemons before the three Custodians were reunited.
Meroved limped with every step, and Adio quickly took the burden he carried in his stead.
‘It’s a miracle he’s alive.’
‘How much longer he stays that way depends on whether we can get him to a chirurgeon,’ Meroved replied.
In the distance, the Grey Knights and Custodians were finishing off the Bloodthirster. Almost nothing remained, just a shrunken and flaking husk until even that was gone, broken apart and turned into smoke on the wind.
‘I thought you were dead…’ admitted Meroved, wincing as he clutched his side.
Adio looked skywards. His fist clenched.
‘And yet still you came.’
‘They must have had good reason…’
Adio lingered on the gunships until they had turned into little more than specks on the blood-red horizon, but said nothing.
Chapter Nineteen
City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light
A teardrop of light fell through the darkness, trailing fire. At first it looked like a candle flame flickering against a night without stars, but as the drop-ship drew closer to the tower it was clear a figure writhed in those flames. Flailing limbs became visible until the drop-ship swept by so close that those aboard could see burning hair and a mouth stretched in the agony of a soundless scream.
An astropath plummeted from the Tower of Sight, but he was not alone. A second light followed the first – another astropath, awash with shattered glass from the window she had just broken through. A third followed the second and then a fourth, dying fireflies spiralling to their doom. After almost half a minute, the first astropath reached the smog layer and his light dimmed, glowing for a few more seconds until it was gone. Until they were all gone, lost to the dark.