He gauged his release with precision, snapping free his claws and tumbling with a cry to land, as elegant as a cat, on the cab of the nearest tank. The pilot's wordless shriek filtered from within, and it was only when Sahaal lunged at the autocannon pintle — severing its plinth and blasting its gunner's head from his shoulders — that the shrill exclamation found words: a rush of curses and prayers. Sahaal leaned inside with a hiss, snipping at the pilot's thrashing arms, spraying the interior with arterial muck.
The shrieks increased in pitch and volume.
Sahaal leapt clear, snagging at an oily overhang and swivelling to watch the vehicle caper out of control, skidding on its axis and ploughing through the diminishing knot of vindictors. Gore-splattered, it rushed into the darkness and quit the battle, dust and waste lifting from its tracks, vanishing to topple to its doom in some forgotten corner. The dismembered pilot's screams dwindled with it into the shadows.
With their cover thus diminished the vindictors were easy prey. The remaining Salamander had tasked itself with knocking out the las-crew that had so decimated its shattered fellow, and its futile tracer sweeps of the balconies above had taken it away from the action on the ground, leaving the Preafects vulnerable.
Sahaal saw the trap an instant too late.
'Stay back!' Sahaal roared to the Shadowkin from his vantage. 'Stay in the shadows! Spare no one! Spare nothing!'
The warning was too late. Flushed by the excitement of victory, led by Condemnitor Chianni, the shrouded warriors rushed forth through the ring of corpse-dotted wreckage to smash against the vindictors.
In the face of a direct assault the Preafects released one final devastating volley before lowering their shotguns, raising instead the power mauls holstered at their sides. There was something of the parade ground in their synchronous movements: thumbing activation runes together, striking combat stances in a perfect circle of glossy armour and fizzling maces. The Shadowkin rebounded from their flanks like bloody waves against a cliff, and every failed swipe of a notched blade or jab with a tarblacked dagger was followed by the precise, deadly swing of an energised club. Sparks burst in bubbles of light, flesh charred and skulls popped. Here a black-robed man staggered clear with a scream, his eyeballs gone, there a young woman limped to escape, the bones of her leg jabbing at ugly angles from her flesh. With no space to put their numbers — or their stealth — to their advantage, the Shadowkin were being massacred. Sahaal found himself swooping to join the frenzy when the lascannon crew fired their third — and final — blast.
This time, perhaps recognising that the remaining Salamander had found its range and was already tilting its autocannon towards them, they eschewed the obvious target presented by the vehicle and tilted their scripture-pocked weapon towards the vindictor ranks, resolving to inflict as much damage as possible before the end.
Had their actions not been undertaken in his name, Sahaal would have derided their sacrifice. A true warrior, he had learned, values his own life at least as much as he values the loss of his enemy's. There was little room in his heart for martyrdom — beyond that, of course, of his dead master.
His betrayed master, who had died for his principles — and so forged a bitter vengeance in his own blood.
His master, whose memory he served.
His master, whose mantle he had inherited...
...and then lost.
At the centre of the killing ground, where the lascannon's discharge slid like an arrow into the earth, the vindictors fell apart at their joints: swallowed in a torus of iridescence that incised bone and sinew like a blade through water. They found themselves blasted up and out on the cusp of a Shockwave, meaty slabs parting along torn seams, shredded alive. This was no great pyrotechnic spectacle, no flaming tumult, no smokeless fireball: merely a sooty chrysanthemum of uncontainable energy, blindingly bright, that dismantled its targets like dried leaves before a storm.
As if in reply, the autocannon found its target. The lascannon crew died in fire and lead, tumbling to the earth like rag-dolls, dead of their wounds long before they struck the ground.
A stunned silence settled.
Through the shifting smoke and lapping fires, beyond the charred bodies and shattered armour-plates, now only the single vehicle remained of the convoy The Shadowkin stared at it with weapons brandished, skeletal trophies on proud display, as if daring it to advance.
And then their warrior-angel, their black/blue lord, their benighted messiah, dropped like a stone from above, plunging bright claws into its ablative sides and rising up its flanks: a hawk taking a dove.
This close, beyond the smoke and dust, Sahaal could finally see what manner of beast manned the autocannon.
It was a giant.