It made his dog-ugly features even more unpleasant to look at and he never stopped clawing at his flaking, mottled skin.
'Damn it, Trask, you gotta pay more attention,' said Snowdog.
Trask made an obscene gesture and turned away, heading back into the noisy interior of the warehouse. Snowdog put Trask from his mind and made his way to where those men he'd deemed relatively trustworthy were guarding the remainder of his purloined supplies.
Still plenty left and there were more people coming in every day. His stash was growing steadily as desperate people gave him all they had for what they needed. Analgesic spray? That'll cost you. Ration packs to feed your children? That'll cost you.
It was simple economics really, supply and demand.
They wanted his supplies, and he demanded their money.
When this was over, he was going to be rich, and then there'd be nothing he couldn't do. Take the Nightcrawlers legit or dump them and move on - he didn't know which yet, but with his pockets bulging with cash, there was no limit to the opportunities. Maybe even get off this planet and hit some virgin territory that was just waiting for a man with his talents to open it up.
Satisfied that all was as it should be, he slung his shotgun and made his way back into the warehouse. Crammed in tight, nearly three thousand people covered virtually every square metre of floor space. Smouldering braziers kept the worst of the night's biting chill away and stolen, high-calorie Imperial ration packs designed for winter operations were stretched to feed entire families. Ragged tarpaulins offered a little privacy to those who could scavenge them. Only the cold kept the stench of so many unwashed bodies from stinking the place up.
Tigerlily made her way through the crowded warehouse and, though he knew she was giving away firewood without taking anything in return, he let it go, figuring it was as well to keep her sweet. There was no one better with a knife and he'd seen her handiwork often enough to know that pissing her off wasn't a good idea. Soft sobbing and low voices filled the warehouse. Glares of hostility followed him everywhere, but he didn't care.
They might hate him, but they needed him. Without him, they were all as good as dead. It was that simple, and if he made a killing along the way, well that was just fine and dandy.
As he made his way to the front of the warehouse he heard a strangled cry from behind a tied-down tarp.
It was a common enough sound in here and Snowdog ignored it until he heard a familiar voice hiss, 'Shut your mouth, girl. Your man agreed to this, so shut your damn mouth and lie still.'
Immediately, Snowdog spun on his heel and racked his shotgun. He ripped aside the tarp, snarling in rage as he saw Trask holding down a weeping girl, her dress hitched up over her knees.
'Trask, damn you! I said no more of this!'
'Frag you, Snowdog,' snapped Trask, rising to his feet. 'They ain't got no money!'
'I said no,' repeated Snowdog. He stepped forwards and hammered his shotgun into Trask's face. The thick wooden stock broke his nose with a sharp crack. He followed up with a boot to the groin. Trask dropped, hands clutched to his crotch and blood spurting from his nose. Snowdog spun the shotgun and jammed the blue-steel barrel between Trask's legs.
'I even think you've done this again and I pull the trigger next time. You get me?'
Trask coughed a wad of blood and phlegm.
'I said, "do you get me?".' bellowed Snowdog.
'Yeah, yeah,' coughed Trask. 'I get you, you bastard.'
'Get out of my sight, Trask,' snapped Snowdog.
His face a bloody mask, Trask painfully picked himself up and lurched away, shouting at sniggering people to shut the hell up. Snowdog took a deep breath and held out his hand to the crying girl. She shook her head, tears cutting clear streaks down the dirt on her face.
'Whatever,' shrugged Snowdog, fishing out a couple of crumpled bills from his trousers. He tossed them to her and said, 'I might be many things, but I won't stoop that low. You understand?'
The girl nodded hurriedly, tucking the cash into her dress and scurrying away.
Snowdog watched her go as Silver came up behind him and slid her arms around his waist.
'He's gonna kill you if you don't kill him first,' she said.
'Not Trask,' said Snowdog, 'he ain't got the guts to come at me face to face.'
'I know, that's why you'd better watch your back.'
'I will,' promised Snowdog.
Lord Inquisitor Kryptman shivered, despite the thick robes he wore and the thermal generator burning brightly beside him. His breath misted in the air and the stench from the huge pile of corpses gathered on the esplanade behind the wall on the orders of Magos Locard was beginning to make him nauseous. He had studied, dissected and killed tyranids for over two centuries, but could never get used to their disgusting alien smell. The sooner this race was exterminated the better.
His personal retinue of Storm Troopers as well as two members of the Deathwatch led by Captain Bannon formed a cordon around them, hellguns and bolters pointed outwards into the night.
'Anything?' he shouted to Locard, who was waist-deep in tyranid viscera. His robes were filthy, his mechadendrites sifting through the organic waste and a genoprobe chiming softly in his hands.
'No, my lord. All the creatures I have examined so far are at least sixth generation iterations and therefore useless.'
'Damn,' swore Kryptman. 'Very well, burn them. Burn them all.'
Concealed by the night's darkness, the lictor slid through the darkness of the city, making its way towards where the pheromone signature of its alien kin was strongest.
Drawn towards the valley mouth, the lictor moved with stealth and speed, like a flickering shadow that darted from cover to cover, unseen and unheard, even by those it killed. On occasion it had encountered prey and killed them to bolster its energy reserves before moving onwards.
The lictor rounded the corner of a ruined building, feeling the scene before it wash through its sensory receptors in a heartbeat. It sensed heat, dead kin and a pheromone signature that surely indicated a leader beast of prey.
Captain Bannon's eyes scanned from side to side as Inquisitor Kryptman and Locard performed their grisly autopsies on the tyranid corpses they had been ordered to gather. For what purpose, Bannon didn't know and didn't care, so long as it helped the defenders exterminate these xenos. He and his men had travelled the length and breadth of the city's armed forces, instructing every squad in the best methods of combating tyranids, pointing out weak spots in their natural armour, vulnerable organs and the correct hymnals to recite both prior to and following combat.
It was slow work, but it was paying off, as the daily casualty rosters, while still horrifying, were not as high as they might have been. Bannon understood that this could partly be accounted for by the weakest men having already fallen and the strongest remaining, but the men of Erebus had learned quickly and he knew that alien losses were much higher.
He had been impressed by the Ultramarines and the Mortifactors, though he found it hard to believe that both were descended from the same gene stock. His proud lineage came from the blessed Rogal Dorn and he briefly wondered how many of the successor Chapters of me Imperial Fists had deviated from their original teachings. Not many, he surmised, if the Black Templars were anything to go by.
'Captain Bannon,' said Inquisitor Kryptman.
'My lord?'
'There is nothing here of value. Burn it all.'
Bannon said, 'Aye,' and nodded to Brother Elwaine, originally of the Salamanders Chapter, who raised his flamer and sent a sheet of burning promethium over the mound of cadavers. His mouth twitched in a smile of satisfaction as he watched them immolate.