He was lying flat, the scouring ash wind raking his power generator and shoulders as he propped his rifle beneath his chin. His eye had not left the scope since he had found his position on the dune. It was a good vantage, high enough to allow for decent coverage but low so that he didn’t stick out. It was solid too, a ridge of bedrock sitting under all that ash.
He first tracked Hriak, then Numeon, and finally Grammaticus, allowing the crosshairs of his targeter to settle on the human’s hooded head. Then he moved the scope back across the wastes to see if they were being followed.
So far, so good…
By his reckoning, the landing site wasn’t far, and once there they would find the gunship they had secreted upon planetfall. The other operational vessel didn’t matter now. It was far from their reach, but Pergellen had plotted a return route to it in case an emergency exfiltration was still possible.
A brief blizzard of ash squalled across him, muddying the lens of the Iron Hand’s scope. He maintained position, but as he peered through the now occluded scope he thought he caught sight of three large humanoid shapes moving against the storm. Visibility was already poor, but it was made worse by the dirty lens. Pergellen considered raising the alarm but decided against it in case vox-traffic was being monitored in any way. He doubted it was Leodrakk or any of his men, but had to be sure if he was going to make a kill. Lifting his body up onto his elbows, he went to clear the lens when he heard the faintest crunch of displaced sand behind him.
‘Stand and turn, I won’t shoot you in the back,’ ordered a gruff voice. It was the first time he had heard it, but Pergellen knew instinctively who it belonged to. With that information in mind, he relaxed the grip on the bolt pistol strapped to his hip.
‘Honour?’ queried Pergellen, rising. ‘I understood that the Seventeenth had long abandoned such scruples.’
‘I serve my own code. Now turn.’
Pergellen did so and saw a warrior armoured in red and black. His trappings were battered and stained. He remembered him from the ambush site, the attack on the manufactorum and the skirmish at the outflow. Seemed the Word Bearer remembered him too.
‘You are the scout,’ he said, nodding.
Pergellen wondered if he’d done it out of respect.
‘And you the huntsman.’
The warrior nodded again.
‘Barthusa Narek.’
‘Verud Pergellen.’
‘Your skill is impressive, Pergellen,’ Narek admitted.
‘I don’t think we’re here to compare notes, though, are we?’
‘Correct. I would have preferred to match myself against you rifle to rifle, but there is no time for that now.’ He sounded almost regretful. ‘Instead, we are left with bolt pistol or blade.’
Upon first sight of him, Pergellen had logged and gauged the threat of each of the huntsman’s weapons. They seemed to consist mainly of blades, but he also had a bolt pistol and the sniper rifle currently aimed at the Iron Hand’s heart.
‘Are you agreeable to these terms?’ Narek asked.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘I assume you’re not asking about the acts of my Legion, or my fealty to that Legion. If what I think you’re asking is why did I not just execute you where you lay and why now am I allowing you a chance to kill me, the answer is simple. I need to know… who is the better?’ Crouching down, his eyes never leaving Pergellen for a second, he unhooked the rifle’s strap from over his shoulder and set it down on the ridge in front of him. Then he stood. ‘Now we are even, so I shall repeat, bolt pistol or blade?’
The ash wind was howling and the grit lashing around the two legionaries facing one another across the dune. Pergellen estimated there was little more than four metres between them. He had to end it quickly. Enemies were converging on Numeon and the others. If nothing else, he had to issue a warning, but not before he dealt with this. He made up his mind.
‘A fair offer,’ said Pergellen. ‘Blades?’
‘Very well.’
Each legionary grabbed for his pistol, knowing that the other would do the same. A single shot rang out. Narek was faster.
Numeon looked over to the ridge, tracking the report of a pistol heard even above the storm. A lightning bolt cracked the earth in front of him and sent the Pyre captain crashing down onto his back, armour drooling smoke.
In the same instant he turned and saw the warriors behind them. He counted three, and they were moving swiftly through the churning ash. They flickered, like a mirage shimmer, first distant, then closer, and closer still. It was warp-craft.
‘Hriak!’ he bellowed, slow to rise. On the far ridge, the one where Pergellen was meant to be keeping watch, he saw a slumped shadow and another, this one standing, disappearing into the storm as it backed away.
‘Prepare yourself,’ the Librarian hissed at Grammaticus. Then he was running, but not to Numeon’s aid. He passed the Pyre captain without a second glance, having sensed the psyker in their midst. ‘It’s the cleric,’ he shouted. ‘I’m sorry, Artellus, he must have followed my psychic spoor into the wastes.’
Numeon was back on his feet and rushing over to Grammaticus, who was struggling through the storm. Without the kine-shield he was being battered, and only the drake hide was keeping him alive.
‘Where is your fugging ship?’ he snapped, irritated, from inside the cloak.
‘Close.’
‘You hid a ship out here?’ asked Grammaticus.
‘Not I – my brother Ravens,’ said Numeon. ‘It was undetectable.’ He turned his attention to Hriak, who had begun to describe arcane patterns in the air before him. ‘Brother?’ Numeon called out. He blink-clicked a proximity icon that had recently flashed up on the part of his retinal display that was still working, and gestured into the storm.
Looking in the direction that Numeon had pointed, Grammaticus noticed a bulky silhouette looming through the ash-haze.
Hidden in plain sight, using the storm as cover, thought Gramma-ticus. How like the XIX.
‘Go, get him out,’ said Hriak. ‘I’ll deal with this. The raven’s feast has been long overdue for me. Victorus aut Mortis.’
Numeon turned back to the human. ‘Are you all right, are you–’
Grammaticus aimed his fist at him. Something sparkled on the ring he wore.
‘Better than you, I’m afraid.’
The las-beam stabbed into Numeon’s retinal lens, burning out his eye and searing his face beneath. He cried out, clutching his eye, the trauma of it putting him on his knees. The bolt had struck him, and split part of his armour. It wasn’t clotting properly, Numeon’s enhanced physiology undone by something in the storm, something the cleric had incepted. It made the eye burn all the more painfully.
Half blind, he snatched for the human, meaning to crush him this time.
Grammaticus had hit him with a potent charge. Whilst the legionaries were plotting their assault on the space port and this cunning feint to get him to another ship, he had been altering the tech in his ring. The blast had exhausted it. The digital weapon was done and wouldn’t charge again, but it pierced the legionary’s defences and put him down long enough to scurry from the warrior’s grasp.