Path of the Warrior (16 page)

“I—” began Korlandril, but Elissanadrin cut him off.

“It was I that brought Korlandril to the Deadly Shadow, as was right,” she said forcefully. “Kenainath teaches us well.”

“I do not dispute that fact, but that is not all, there is more to life than war.”

“He allows us to learn those lessons for ourselves,” countered Min.

Aranarha smiled pleasantly and waved for them to sit themselves down.

“You have come here on your own, without your exarch, so enjoy our company.”

Korlandril glanced at the others for guidance.

“Here is as good a place as any,” said Arhulesh, taking a place between two of the Fall of Deadly Rain warriors. He helped himself to a few morsels from the plate of the warrior to his left. “We have little else to do.”

“We will join you shortly,” said Elissanadrin, turning towards the nearest food counter. Korlandril trailed slightly behind her, bemused by the exchange.

“I detect some enmity,” he said. “Do you have some issue with Aranarha?”

Elissanadrin shook her head, taking an oval platter from beneath the heated food station. With dextrous flicks of her wrist, she transferred a pile of steaming multi-coloured grains to the plate. Korlandril took up a bowl and wandered to a stand of low bushes growing from a patch of spongy floor. With quick fingers, he twisted the berries from the living branches and then moved on to a small pool where fragrant blossoms floated on the surface. He plucked a couple of blooms and scattered their petals across his food.

“Aranarha and Kenainath have been rivals for some time, but there is no hostility there,” said Elissanadrin, as Korlandril used a slender knife to fillet slices of meat from the carcass of a shadow-horn. “Kenainath is old—very old—and he does not approve of Aranarha’s methods sometimes. But we are all warriors here, and that is a bond that cannot be broken. For all their differences, they still respect each other.”

“But that does not explain your tone and actions,” said Korlandril, filling his dish with a generous helping of split seeds and twists of angel-resin. He was ravenous and had to stop himself over-filling the platter.

“Kenainath sees his entrapment as an exarch as a curse, but Aranarha takes it as a blessing. The older would rather have no pupils, the younger proselytises his cult, actively recruiting new warriors.”

“Why does Kenainath want to be free of pupils? Is he that disdainful of us?”

Elissanadrin gave Korlandril a sharp look.

“If Kenainath had no pupils, it would mean that there is no need of him—that others were free from the taint of Khaine’s Gift. If you think that Kenainath disdains you, then you see something I do not. Perhaps it is merely a reflection of some residual shame you feel.”

“He does not seem to care too much about me,” Korlandril said with a shrug. “Perhaps I confuse indifference for disdain.”

“Kenainath digs deep, reaching into the very heart of what takes you to him.” Elissanadrin kept her voice quiet as they moved back towards the table with the other Striking Scorpions. “Aranarha teaches the rituals en masse, taking no personal interest in each warrior. Which of the two do you think cares more?”

Korlandril considered this as he sat down to eat with the rest. Soon his plate was empty and he returned for more. And then a third helping.

“This fire indeed burns brightly, a feast of Kurnous, would not satiate his need,” remarked Aranarha.

Korlandril looked down at the food piled in front of him. He saw no wrong in it. Min had warned him to eat as much as he could while he felt hungry.

“It would be better that I do not go to my first battle weak with hunger,” he said, before setting to his latest course with relish.

“At least our armour is polymorphic,” laughed Arhulesh. “It won’t feel any tighter!”

Korlandril grinned and reached for a goblet of spiced lodefruit juice. He raised it in toast to Arhulesh and downed its contents in a long gulp. Smacking his lips, he thudded the goblet back onto the table.

“If battle tastes so sweet, the greater banquet is yet to come!” he declared.

The wayseer stood in front of an oval, gold-rimmed portal, one of several such gateways extruded from the wraithbone floor in the webway chambers at the rear of the warship. She was swathed in a voluminous robe of deep purple. Her white hair was parted in the middle and fell in two long locks in front of her shoulders, weighted with rings of a metallic blue. About her extended hand orbited five white runes, twisting gently in the psychic breeze of her magistrations as she aligned the entrance with a temporary webway strand into the material universe. The mirror-like skein of energy within the portal’s frame shimmered occasionally, causing the runes to dance with more agitation for a moment before settling into their tranquil circling.

“It is almost time, the portal will be open, we are the vanguard,” said Kenainath. He signalled for the squad to don their helmets.

The red-washed taint on his vision made Korlandril think of a film of blood covering his eyes. He was full of energy; not nervous, just eager. This was the culmination of so much time, so much effort in practise, and just as the webway portal was opening, he felt a new door was opening on his life. He longed to race through and grasp whatever opportunities lay beyond.

Fighting the urge to fidget, forcing himself to stand placidly and wait for the wayseer to complete her ritual, Korlandril idly checked his armour’s systems. Rather, he allowed part of his consciousness to merge with the suit a little more deeply than usual. He felt nothing amiss.

Slightly bored, he pulled himself back from the suit’s rhythms and gently touched the trigger on his pistol, activating the psychic link. Immediately a view-within-a-view appeared in his left eye, like a keyhole in his vision. Through that small opening he could see the green-veined floor of the portal chamber. Lifting his arm, he played the pistol across the webway portal and settled on the wayseer, the image relayed by the seeing-gem of the pistol’s sight. A small rune appeared beside the wayseer—the symbol of Alaitoc—indicating she was friend not foe.

It was a precautionary measure, unlikely to be used, but the designers of the pistol perhaps had lived in more turbulent times, when even the craftworlds had raised their weapons against each other. The viewfinder was useful at range but distracting at close quarters. Korlandril dismissed it with a thought and his vision returned to normal.

The faint padding of boots caused him to turn towards the arched entranceway to the chamber. Seven figures entered, shadowy and indistinct; rangers swathed in cameleoline coats, now the white and pale green colour of the chamber, outlines barely discernable. One pulled back her hood revealing a beautiful face, a tattoo of a red tear beneath her left eye, and winked at Korlandril. Yet for all her charming looks and frivolity, there was something about the ranger that disturbed him. His gaze fell to her waystone and he sensed something otherworldly there. She was not on the Path, her senses and spirit free to soar to whatever heights it could, and to plunge to whatever depths awaited.

Like Aradryan, thought Korlandril. Free, but vulnerable.

“You’ll be following us onto Eileniliesh,” she said, turning her attention to Kenainath. The exarch nodded without comment.

The other rangers were unrecognisable. Korlandril wondered if one of them was Aradryan. He surreptitiously angled his pistol towards the rangers and activated the Scorpion’s Eye, hoping to see their faces. Flicking through various spectra, both visible and invisible, he discovered the rangers’ cloaks dissipated not only ordinary light, but also heat and other signatures as might be detected by an enemy. With a disappointed sigh, he switched it off again and turned back to the portal.

The flat plane was now slowly swirling with colours, mostly blues and greens, with occasional twists of red and black. It was mesmerising, and Korlandril felt himself drawn towards it. Out of curiosity he raised his pistol towards the portal, but Min stepped in front of him, placing a hand on his arm.

“Not wise,” said the warrior with a shake of his head.

Korlandril took the warning at face value and lowered his arm.

“The portal is open,” declared the wayseer. The runes floated in a vertical line above her open palm.

The ranger pulled up her hood, her exquisite features disappearing from view. With a gesture made vague by her long coat, she strode into the miasmic plane of the portal and disappeared. Unslinging rifles almost as tall as themselves, the other rangers followed her.

Kenainath moved his gaze from one Striking Scorpion to the next, as if gauging them. He could see nothing of their expressions, but Korlandril wondered if the exarch had senses beyond those of a normal eldar. With no word of instruction, Kenainath plunged in after the rangers.

Korlandril spared a glance at the rest of the squad, but none of them looked back at him. He wondered if they shared the same sense of achievement as he did, about to embark on his first foray into battle. One-by-one they walked into the webway.

His excitement at a crescendo, Korlandril stepped after them.

The webway passage cut towards the surface of Eileniliesh between the real universe and the otherworld of the warp, a flattened tube cutting through what at first appeared to be roiling water. It was impossible to tell the true colour of the tunnel through his lenses, but he would not have been surprised if it had been a sea green or blue. He half-expected to see the red flashes of a firefish going past, or the silver shimmer of a starfin shoal.

The one thing that was strange was the sense of motion, in that there was not any. Though he stalked forwards at some pace behind the others, nothing changed in his surrounds. It felt like he was walking on the spot. The web-tunnel undulated occasionally, but Korlandril could not tell whether this was due to movement in the warp-passage or simply a shift in the energies that were kept at bay by its immaterial walls.

Peering hard through the invisible force wall, Korlandril could make out the indistinct threads of other webway passages, twisting about this one and each other, coming together and parting like the strands of a thread. Of the squads using these other tunnels, he could see nothing.

“How long is this?” he asked, his voice relayed to the other members of the squad.

“Just a temporary burrowing,” replied Arhulesh. “We’ll be down on the surface in a few moments.”

Korlandril peered past the shoulders of those in front, hoping to see something. In his imagination it would be a shimmering veil through which he would be able to see the trees and grass of Eileniliesh.

Instead, the others flickered out of sight as they passed a certain point, and taking another step, Korlandril found himself walking on soft turf. He was vaguely disappointed.

“Ready your weapons, battle will be soon at hand, Khaine’s bloody playfield.”

Korlandril fell into position at the centre of the squad just behind Kenainath and looked around. Above, the sky was filled with clouds, the light of two huge moons dimly pushing through their gloom. They were on a hillside, gently sloping upwards in front of him, and at the summit there stood a narrow, solitary tower. Light burned within its pinnacle, casting long shadows from the scattered rocks and trees. Korlandril scanned the hillside for the rangers but they were already gone, or so well hidden from view that he could no longer see them.

His mouth was dry and he licked his lips, while he flexed his fingers on his weapons to keep himself relaxed, dissipating a tiny fraction of the energy burning inside him. He wondered how close they were to the orks, but refrained from asking. His question was answered as they crested the hill, revealing a swathe of black smoke hanging low over a forest that grew in the valley beyond.

Korlandril heard a growl of anger from one of the others but he was not sure who had made it. It might have even been himself. The sight of the crude billowings of the orks swathing the beautiful trees darkened Korlandril’s spirit. Thoughts of glorious battle dissipated and all that remained was a desire to destroy the creatures that assailed this world.

“Follow the river,” came the voice of the lead ranger from the communications crystal just beside Korlandril’s right ear.

Kenainath cut to the right and brought them to a narrow, fast-flowing water course, birthed somewhere within the hill and gushing forth along a rocky defile. The exarch and squad crossed easily at the river head, and moved swiftly down the hillside and into the sparse trees at the edge of the forest.

Aside from the gurgling and splashing of the river, Korlandril could hear the rustling of the leaves overhead and the sigh of the wind through the lush grass at his feet. Of his companions, he could hear nothing, moving as silently as shadows. In the distance, as yet barely audible, there sounded a greater disturbance—the noise of rough engines and cruel laughter.

“The orks have occupied Hirith-Hreslain,” reported the ranger.

Another voice came to Korlandril’s ear. He did not recognise it, but it spoke with sombre authority.

“The settlement straddles the river,” intoned the speaker. “The majority of the enemy are on the web-ward side, closest to our positions. Their leaders are on the opposite bank. Firuthein, position your warriors along the river behind and prepare to disable any transports crossing from the far side. Kenainath, move your squad towards the bridge to deal with any survivors of the Fire Dragons’ strike.”

“It shall be, as you command, with Khaine’s will,” replied a sonorous voice, presumably the exarch Firuthein.

“The Scorpions wait, we will strike from the shadow, none will survive us.” Kenainath’s tone and cadence were instantly familiar.

“That was the autarch,” explained Min when Korlandril asked who he had been listening to. “He’s coordinating the main attack, and we’re to stop any enemy reinforcements.”

“An ambush,” said Arhulesh. “Exactly our type of fighting.”

The river widened and shallowed rapidly as it reached the valley floor. The trees grew close to the banks, but now a wide expanse separated the two sides, the dim light of the night sky a deep orange to Korlandril’s eyes. The further the Striking Scorpions advanced, the more they were separated from the rest of the army, which was angling towards the greater concentration of orks on the other river bank. Korlandril glanced over his left shoulder and saw the squad of Firuthein’s Fire Dragons striding purposefully along the opposite side of the river.