Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [75]
‘It is strange,’ Nero says, cradling Cador’s helm in his hands, as if the old warrior merely slept. ‘I do not wish to leave him.’
‘That is not Cador.’ I rise from where I have been kneeling next to the body, anointing the tabard with sacred oils, before tearing it from the war plate. In better times, the tabard would be enshrined on the Eternal Crusader. In this time, here and now, I rip it from my brother’s body and tie it around my bracer, carrying it with me as a token to honour him. ‘Cador is gone. You are leaving nothing behind.’
‘You are heartless, brother,’ Nero tells me. Standing here, in this annihilated city, with the bodies of so many dead aliens around us, I almost burst out laughing. ‘But even for you,’ Nero continues, ‘even for one who wears the Black, that is a cold thing to say.’
‘I loved him as one can love any warrior that fights by your side for two hundred years, boy. The bonds that form from decade upon decade of shared allegiance and united war are not to be ignored. I will miss Cador for the few days that remain to me, before this war kills me, as well. But no, I do not grieve. There is nothing to grieve over when a life has been led in service to the Throne.’
The Apothecary hangs his head. In shame? In thought?
‘I see,’ he says, apropos of nothing.
‘We will speak of this again, Nero. Now mount up, brothers. We ride south.’
Half of the city was a wasteland, one way or the other. Some of it burned, some of it was silent in death now that the xenos had moved onto other sectors, and some of it was simply abandoned. Habitation towers stood under Armageddon’s yellow sky, lifeless and deserted. Manufactories no longer churned out weapons of war, or breathed smoke into the heavens.
Packs of orks – the jackal-like stragglers who had fallen behind the main advance – looted through the empty sectors of the city. While there was little of calculated malice in the beasts’ minds, what few human civilian survivors remained were slain without mercy when they were found.
Five armoured bikes growled their way down Hel’s Highway. Their sloped armour plating was as black as the war plate worn by each rider. Their engines emitted healthy, throaty roars that told of a thirst for promethium fuel. The boltguns mounted on the motorcycles were linked to belt-feeding ammunition boxes contained within the vehicles’ main bulks.
Priamus throttled back, falling into formation alongside Nerovar. Neither warrior looked at the other as they rode, weaving through a shattered convoy of motionless, burned-out tank hulls spread across the dark rockcrete of the highway.
‘His death,’ the swordsman began, his vox-voice crackling from the distortion of the engines. ‘Does it trouble you?’
‘I do not wish to speak of this, Priamus.’
Priamus banked around the charred skeleton of what had once been a Chimera trooper carrier. His sword, chained to his back, rattled against his armour with the bike’s vibrations.
‘He did not die well.’
‘I said I have no desire to speak of this, brother. Leave me be.’
‘I only say this because if I were as close to him as you were, it would have grieved me, also. He died badly. An ugly, ugly death.’
‘He killed several before he fell.’
‘He did,’ the swordsman allowed, ‘but his death-wound was in the back. That would shame me beyond measure.’
‘Priamus,’ Nerovar’s voice was ice cold and heavy with both emotion and threat. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘You are impossible, Nero.’ Priamus revved his engine and accelerated away. ‘I try to sympathise with you. I try to connect, and you rebuke me. I will remember this, brother.’
Nerovar said nothing. He just watched the road.
The Jahannam Platform.
Six hundred and nineteen workers stationed on an offshore industrial base. Its skyline was a mess of cranes and storage silos. Beneath it, only the deep of the ocean and the richness of the crude oil that could be refined into promethium.
A new shadow entered the depths.
Like a black wave under the