Nemesis

Korda turned Tobeld in his grip, like a fisherman evaluating a disappointing catch before tossing it back into the ocean. ‘So weak,’ he offered. ‘He’s dying even as I watch. The boneseekers in the air are eating him inside.’

Sedirae folded his arms. ‘Well?’ he demanded of Erebus. ‘Is this some game of yours, Word Bearer, or is there real cause for us to torment this helot?’ His lips thinned. ‘I grow bored.’

‘This is a killer,’ Erebus explained. ‘A weapon, after a fashion.’

Tobeld belatedly understood that they had been waiting for him. ‘I… am only a servant…’ he gasped. He was losing sensation in his limbs and his vision was starting to fog from the tightness of Korda’s hold.

‘Lie,’ said the Word Bearer, the accusation clicking off his tongue.

Panic broke through what barriers of resolve still remained in Tobeld’s mind, and he felt them crumble. He felt himself lose all sense of rationality and give in to the terror with animal reaction. His training, the control that had been bred into him from his childhood in the schola, disintegrated under no more than a look from Erebus’s cold, cold gaze.

Tobeld flexed his wrist and the vial came into his hand. He twisted wildly in Korda’s grasp, catching the Astartes fractionally off-guard, stabbing downwards with the glassy cylinder. Motion-sensing switches in the crystalline matrix of the vial obeyed and opened a tiny mouth at the blunt end, allowing a ring of monomol needles to emerge. Little thicker than human hairs, the fine rods could penetrate even the hardy epidermis of an Adeptus Astartes. Tobeld tried to kill Devram Korda, swinging at the bare skin of his scarred face, missing, swinging again. He did this mindlessly, in the manner of a mechanism running too fast, unguided.

Korda used the flat of his free hand to swat the assassin, doing it with such force that he broke Tobeld’s jaw and caved in much of the side of his skull. Tobeld’s right eye was immediately crushed, and the shock resonated through him. After a moment he realised he was on the ground, blood flowing freely from his shattered mouth and nose into a growing puddle.

‘Erebus was right, sir,’ Korda said, the voice woolly and distant.

Tobeld’s hand reached out in a claw, scraping at the black sand and smooth rock. Through the eye that still worked, he could see the vial, the contents unspent, lying where it had fallen from his fingers. He reached for it, inching closer.

‘He was.’ Tobeld heard Sedirae echo his battle-brother with a sigh. ‘Seems to be making a habit of it.’

The assassin looked up, the pain caused by the simple action almost insurmountable, and saw shapes swimming in mist and blood. Cold eyes upon him, judging him unworthy.

‘Put an end to this,’ said Erebus.

Korda hesitated. ‘Lord?’

‘As our cousin says, brother-sergeant,’ Sedirae replied. ‘It’s becoming tiresome.’

One of the shapes grew larger, coming closer, and Tobeld saw a steel-plated hand reach for the vial, gather it up. ‘What does this do, I wonder?’

Then the vial glittered in the light as the Astartes brought the assassin’s weapon down and injected the contents of the tube into the bruised bare flesh of Tobeld’s arm.

2

Sedirae watched the helot perish with the slow, indolent air of one who had seen many manners of death. He watched out of interest to see if this ending would show him something different from all the other kills he had witnessed – and it did, to some small degree.

Korda placed a hand over the man’s mouth to muffle his screams as the helot’s body twitched and drew into itself. On the Caslon Moon during the Great Crusade, the captain of the 13th had drowned a mutant in a freezing lake, holding the freak-thing down beneath the surface of the murky waters until it had perished. He was reminded of that kill now, watching the helot go to his end from the poison. The hooded servile was drowning dry, if such a thing were possible. Where he could see bare skin, Sedirae saw the pallid and rad-burned meat of the man first turn corpse-grey, then lose all definition and become papery, pulling tight over bones and muscle bunches that atrophied as the moments passed. Even the blood that had spilled onto the dark earth became cloudy and then evaporated, leaving cracked deposits bereft of any moisture. Korda eventually took his hand away and shook it, sending a rain of powder from his fingertips off on the winds.

‘A painful death,’ remarked the sergeant, examining his fingers. ‘See here?’ He showed off a tiny scratch on the ceramite of the knuckle joint. ‘He bit me in his last agonies, not that it mattered.’

Sedirae threw a look at the command tent. No one had emerged to see what was going on outside. He doubted Horus and the rest of his Mournival were even aware of the killing taking place. They had so much to occupy them, after all. So many plans and great schemes to helm…

‘I’ll inform the Warmaster,’ he heard himself say.

Erebus took a step closer. ‘Do you think that is necessary?’