Lord of the Night

The tank slipped from its line, wobbled across unstable debris, hit a bank of shapeless scrap and flipped onto its back, trailing oil and dust. The screams from within filtered quickly through its mangled shanks.

And then the lasguns opened fire, the volley of grenades from above rattled down on the stricken convoy, the Shadowkin rappelled from their balconies with a chilling shriek, and the battle of the Steel Forest began.

To their credit, the intruders were swift to react. The remaining vehicles about-turned, tracks shifting in awkward patterns, to circle their stricken fellow. Their passengers tumbled out in short order, using their vehicles as cover and firing thunderous shotguns into the shapeless shadows, shouting terse orders. To Sahaal, watching from above, they seemed like miniature parodies of Space Marines — their glossy carapaces shaped in obvious reflection of the Astartes' power armour, helms open below the nose, solid gauntlets clutching at stocks and mauls. He sneered in contempt and launched himself from his platform's edge, following the whooping Shadowkin towards the ground, jump pack slowing his descent.

A killing ground had quickly formed between the remaining tanks and the gangers slunk forwards with weapons blazing, pinning the vindictors in their places. Already a gaggle of armoured bodies thrashed and moaned in the circle, blood staining the spongy ground, and the remaining lawmen struggled to find return targets. The Shadowkin were more than adept at stealing about the perimeter of the ring like sharks, snapping off shots then melting away. Even the auto-cannons on the Salamanders' spines seemed useless, hammering their ammunition into the wastes in near disarray, their bright flares dazzling the vindictors further still, rendering the darkness all the more impenetrable.

A frag grenade, dropped almost casually from the gantries above, split apart an exposed Preafect, showering his comrades with whirligig shrapnel and gore. His shriek lasted a fraction of a second, aborted on a froth of viscera and clutching limbs. His comrades hollered and regrouped, more and more of their armoured fellows tumbling from the safety of the Salamanders to confront the threat, and in reply more of the death-masked Shadowkin slipped along black ropes to surround them, lasguns shifting shadows and colours across the distant walls.

Sahaal set himself down at the periphery of the ring and drew his bolter. Rushing into the face of a shotgun salvo would be a folly, but there were... other ways. Whooping his hawk-like shriek, kicking himself into the air, he crossed the deadzone in a single bound, glaring down on the besieged vindictors with trigger depressed. Through gunsmoke and airborne ash bolter shells kicked sticky craters in muscle and sinew, encased bodies jerked as shells detonated and helmeted faces craned up to observe this new threat, gliding on darkness overhead.

Somewhere, lost to the rushing of his blood, Sahaal heard a cheer blossom in the gloom. The Shadowkin were saluting their master.

He savoured their awe, and each discharge of his bolter was an offering to his master, each scarlet-splattered scream a guilty intonation to the Chaos Gods that he neither worshipped nor denied. The sight of his victims' wide eyes and pale faces, gaping up as they realised what they faced all too late, warmed him to his core, and he shrilled as their bodies dissolved in fire and smoke and blood.

'Ave dominus nox!'

His arc complete, he set down on the opposite boundary and spun in his place, eager for a second pass. His feet had all but left the ground when the las-cannon fired its second pulse and the world went white.

A dagger of light punctured the ablative guts of the overturned Salamander, a wound that lanced thick armour and stabbed deep into its fuel reserves. The vehicle seemed to judder and draw a breath, swelling, before detonating in a storm of shattered light.

The metal carcass lifted high on a spout of flame, breaking apart and littering the air, razor fragments blizzarding outwards. At its apex it slouched onto its back like a dying whale, flames running off its scars like water, then crashed — ruined — to the earth.

The Shadowkin roared their approval, weapons brandished high, and the vindictors crawled and bled in the wreckage. Only the hammering of the remaining autocannons swelled the silence, and for every lead gobbet that found a target in the dark — flipping some nameless zealot to his knees with a jet of crimson — a hundred chattered uselessly against the mangled surfaces of the debris flows. Such was the madness of the scene that Sahaal went unnoticed as he clawed his way vertically along a rusted duct, a monstrous lizard adhering to a wall.