Lord of the Night

Could it be... could it be that he grew fond of them? Could it be that the mantle of overlord had settled upon his shoulders and grown comfortable? Could it be that he was seduced by the devotion and worship of his tribe?

Or was it simply that he enjoyed the power their worship bequeathed, and loathed the prospect of surrendering it?

Was this how the Night Haunter had felt — protectorate of the peoples of Nostramo Quintus, a dark lord who brought them peace and efficiency through fear? Had he loved the blind, empty worms beneath his command? Had it broken his heart to leave them behind him, when the Emperor came and claimed him as his own son?

Sahaal analysed his thoughts and, yes... yes, he was proud of his children, a paternal regard for their glories that flushed him with warmth and shame in equal measure. Already they had achieved so much more than he could have dreamed. 'Strike you at his hands, and he shall not cut you.'

'Strike you at his heart, and his life shall wane!'

The hands had been wrenched from their wrists: silos of surface-to-air lance arrays that his strongest Shadowkin captains had led ragtag bands to cripple. Pocking the hive like kroothair quills, it would have taken an eternity to destroy them all, but the Shadowkin had done well. Those batteries that remained. would exist in fear: their crews awaiting the arrival of whatever unseen attackers had razed the others. Desertions would be rife.

The heart... the heart had been easy. Unprotected and unwatched, the mighty vents that drew heat from the blazing heart of Equixus, feeding the city with warmth and power, were easy targets. Over the past few days, at Pahvulti's direction, they had been breached deep in the underhive — makeshift bombs strapped to metal diaphragms, thick plumes of magma and shimmering air scorching from every fractured edge. Whole tiers had fallen to darkness and cold. And now crops would wither and die as hydroponics coleria froze. The militias would find themselves quelling riots, distributing blankets, sharing out meagre rations, pacifying crowds. When the sword fell and the skies burned with Night Lords' vessels, they would be simple prey.

The city was far from crippled — Sahaal was too much a realist to believe that — but it was injured and bleeding, and in the face of such wounds the infection of fear was never far behind. When the blow came, when the city faced its darkest moment, how many of its stalwart defenders would stand in the Night Lords' way, with their morale sapped and their stomachs empty?

Not many, Sahaal guessed.

And it was all thanks to his armies. All thanks to the Shadowkin and their refugee comrades, blind little mice, who obeyed his command to assuage the guilt of the blood on their hands. He was their champion. The lord of the oppressed. The master of the dispossessed, who had taken their simmering resentment of the hive above and wielded it like a flaming sword.

He returned to the rustmud caverns by the winding, hidden entrance to the south. He would re-enter his domain quietly, he had resolved, silently, and once there he would torture the slumbering fool gripped beneath his arm to find — finally! — the identity of the one that had stolen the Corona Nox.

He returned to his territory with pride and triumph in his stomach, and he paused at the cusp of the tunnel's exit to survey his domain.

His mouth fell open.

The swamps were burning.

The tanks.

He had wondered to himself, as he soared above the vindictor crowds in the Macharius gateroom, weaving his fearful spell like an artist at work, why his enemies had committed infantry alone to his destruction. A pragmatic commander would have blasted entry into the room and bombarded him to paste with shell and mortar, grinding him to dust beneath the wheels of armoured vehicles.

He should have guessed the true reason. The vindictor commander was no fool. Whilst the hive festered and moaned with terror, whispering of nightmares in the dark, imagining him — blue-shanked and bronze coated, blood-spattered and burning with Chaotic fires — at the heart of every new disturbance that rocked the city, the Preafects' salient leader had understood that the real threat arose not from a single Night Lord, but from the army he had constructed.

Sahaal almost admired the man. He had seen through the terror-glamour, and reacted to it with a cold efficiency that matched Sahaal's own.

The tanks had come to the rustmud caverns whilst he was absent. They had come with cannons and howitzers, and as he stared out across the churning fires, and darting figures that had once been his domain, he knew he was too late. It was over.

A voxcaster voice from each vehicle's spine declared, over and over: