The door slid open with only the faintest hiss. "Greetings, Ceiban. What brings you to my quarters?" The young eldar entered through the portal, glancing around the room as he did so. Hluwe's suite reflected his profession as an abstract mathematician. Wraithbone sculptures of complex geometrical shapes adorned every table, drawing the eye inwards towards their centres where Hluwe had placed a small runestone. Ceiban leaned forward to get a better look, recognised the rune of Adorne which represented both self and the Waystone. He smiled at his former mentor's subtle humour. " As always, sibhan, I come seeking counsel". Ceiban's use of the formal word for friend/mentor did not go unnoticed.
"And a favour."
"Something serious?"
Ceiban flopped into one of the comfortable couches that proliferated the room, his face contorted in mock pain at the pretended discomfort. "It may be."
Hluwe devoted his attention to a calculation he was involved with, involving the intersection of two warp tunnels. He had seen enough to know what the young poet would say. Seen the spring in his step, the finely toned profile of his young body, the confidence that only military training can give. And the gleam in his eye. It was always the eyes that told the most.
But still he played the charade through.
"Perhaps your latest creation is to blame? A problem with prose, my friend?"
"You jest, sibhan. I haven't written anything of worth in two years. No, it is not poetry that concerns me. Quite the opposite."
Hluwe turned from the fractal display he had been considering. "A great pity, my friend. Many times have you been ranked as the craftworld's greatest writer. "
"As I say, I have not touched pen to paper for over two years." Hluwe took a seat opposite the young eldar and flicked him a bulb of jelat. He squeezed his own, feeling the spiced wine fill him with warmth.
"I have noticed this. What have you been doing with yourself? Spending much of your time in the high gravity room, it appears." He gestured at Ceiban's arms, noting the muscles that rippled whenever he moved.
"It seems that that is the only place in the entire craftworld that can offer me solace. The only place that can quell my restlessness."
Hluwe leaned forward, more interested. A frown crossed his forehead, marring the smooth face, but disappeared almost immediately.
"What is it that drives you there? You used to take all your pleasure from your writing. You teased words like the Bonesingers teased these." He gestured at one of the ornate sculptures, a torus set with swirling abstract patterns.
"No longer. Writing doesn't offer me what it used to any more. I seem to have run out of experiences. I need more."
It was more of a declaration than a statement.
"How much time are you spending in the combat chambers?"
Ceiban looked up in surprise. Hluwe had seen much with remarkable speed. "It used to be only a couple of hours a week, but more and more I am drawn there. About six hours a day, now."
Hluwe sat back, his face a mask. Service in the Guardian squads would not be enough for this one...
"And so you seek a change in the Path."
Ceiban seemed to ignore him.
"My nights are plagued with dreams of combat. More and more they come to me. Scenes I have never experienced... shining deserts, seas unknown. And over all, the smell of blood. They both terrify and excite me. So I come to you for advice."
Ceiban leaned back, and Hluwe noticed the excitement in his eyes. It has gone to far with this one, he thought. The Avatar has called him, and he must respond.
"Your next action seems simple, my friend. Your path is changing,a nd I guess that the new direction is one you already know. The bonesingers wait for you already, I would guess. They always know when one of the People have turned themselves to war."
Ceiban sighed.
"Would that this not be so. But it seems that my whole life is changing, and my only stability is what I feel within me. And it seems that my change is already known to you."
"So you came here to tell me. Anything else?"
The cycle had come full circle.
"To give you this."
Ceiban passed a crystal over, the kind used to store large volumes of data on their variable lattices.
"I want you to keep this, sibhan Hluwe. It is my life's work, and my final literary creation. No more will I serve the craftworld as a creator of prose. In the event that I do not return from my stay in the Warrior Quarter, I want you to keep it as a memory of me. I would have you give it to another aspirant as a hearthstone."
"As if I could ever refuse you, Son-of-my-Daughter."
Ceiban turned to leave, to gather the few belongings that he would take to accompany him as he took up the aspect of warrior.
"Have you any inclination as to what guise your apprenticeship to the Bloody Handed One will take?"
Hluwe dropped his gaze as Ceiban turned to answer, not wanting his young friend to see the tears in his eyes. He too remembered the fire in his blood at the call of the Bloody Handed God.
"Yes, Sibhan. As my words once lifted my readers to heights of passion, so now will hawk wings lift me to greater heights."
"Go in peace, Ceiban." And remain in one too, he thought.
It was a hot and dusty world, and the plains of veld stretched as far as Ceiban could see. He drifted a little to the right, into the thermal that the infra red imaging he had selected for his helmet had identified for him. As he soared higher, he scanned left and right, his lasgun following his eyes by habit. His wraithbone warsuit responded to his every move like a second skin. A mental flick and the lenses in his helmet realigned, magnifying his view ten-fold. Nothing as far as he could see. He turned slowly, his Swooping Hawk wings fully extended behind him to maximise the thermals. To his left and right and a little below him were the other Hawks in his squad, circling faster, getting more impatient. Ceiban felt it too, the growing tension. They had come here to kill orks, and so far they had found nothing. And yet SOMETHING must have destroyed the Craftworld's colony. And that something was still here. The plumes of smoke curled into the horizon behind him, the fires only a day old. Below him all was brown and gold, the long grass and small thorny trees undulating in all directions. The communication rune appeared before him in the air, actually projected onto the inside of his eyepieces. He gave the mental command and his earstud chimed.
"Prepare yourself, Skyhunters. Our enemy is upon us."
Where?
And then he saw them, rising out of the veld. Hundreds of orks, tufts of grass tucked into armour and headgear. The orks had painted themselves with mud to reduce their heat signatures to background levels, and some had taken this further, sculpting gaudy mud designs onto their exposed skin. He focused on the small green figures, his helmet magnifying automatically, noted the lack of sophisticated equipment, the proliferation of crude hand weapons. Snakebites, or some other primitive tribe. The attack rune appeared before him, and Ceiban felt his blood quicken as the urge to kill swept over him. He smiled to himself and folded his wings back to dive.
He fell from the sky like the raptor he was, his Skybrothers on either side. The orks raced up to meet him, gnashing and waving their ferocious bladed bolters, some of the more technically competent starting to fire. All before him seemed tinted with blood and the song of battle sang in his soul. Ceiban snapped his wings out at the last possible moment, converting all his vertical speed into horizontal. His wings screamed in the dry air as he sped over the orks, dropping grenades at irregular intervals. Several fired up at him, but he was long gone when their bolts clawed the sky. He arced up into a graceful loop as the first of the grenades exploded, the shockwaves like some dreadful drum beat in the rhythm of the battle. All below him, the fight was joined, the orks matching themselves against the pride of the Craftworld. Striking Scorpions scuttled forward to sting again and again, the Howling Banshees preforming their ballet of death in the centre of the stage. Ceiban exalted and sighted his lasgun on a particularly large ork leading a group of the crazed creatures forward. The sighting rune glowed once as he fired, and the creature fell forward, a neat hole in the back of its head. A confirmed kill, and another kill-rune glowed on his leg. He slipped to the right and sang for the joy of battle, hearing the roar of the rockets from the Dark Reapers, the hissing of the heat beams from the Fire Dragons and the cries of the other Swooping Hawks. Again and again he soared over the orks, spreading death and destruction with grenade and gun. To his right he saw a flash of psychic fire as one of the Warlocks unleashed his terrible powers.
All of Ceiban's soul, his body and mind were focused on the battle and the joy of destruction. The call of the Bloody Handed One had lead him to explore depths of passion he had never dreamed existed, and had given him the perfect opportunity to satisfy the dark desires they had wrought. His body was at its physical peak, his mind full of the focused ruthlessness of the hunting bird whose name he bore. When he had donned the helmet of his Aspect in the Hawk Shrine hours before, all his normal compassion, all his gentleness had been subverted beneath the boiling, almost sexual thrill of battle, the hatred of all enemies of the Craftworld that is the mark of all eldar Aspect Warriors. Again he dropped, seeing the ugly orange flash of pulsa rokkits, and correcting the aim of his grenade targetter to place the next run of grenades over that area.
He swooped low, dropped his cluster and rolled left. Suddenly he was thrown to the side as a bolter round punched through his left wing. His empathy with the warsuit meant incredibly fine control, but he also felt its pain as his own. Two more orks, seeing his erratic passage across the sky, fired again, and Ceiban winced as one of the bolts was deflected off his shoulder armour. The other punched through his abdominal plate.
Time slowed down. Ceiban's senses were super-focused.
He felt the bolt enter his stomach.
Felt it deflect downwards off one of his ribs.
Felt it come to nestle next to his hip.
Then the terrible wait as the fuse burned.
Below him, the battle field.
The fires and craters.
The screams and cries.
The bolt exploded.
It seemed to Ceiban that the entire horizon suddenly erupted in white hot gouts of pain as the fragments of metal tore through his body. He screamed only once as the pain overtook him, a great shockwave that twisted his body and flung him to the ground. His last thought was of the golden grasses, sprayed with his blood as they bent over him in the wind, the sky on fire above.
He awoke into unbearable pain, clawing his way back to consciousness against a tide of nausea. Twice he blacked out trying to free the small medipack from his belt, finally managing to swallow some of the drugs it contained. And then slipped back into darkness.
He awoke some time later, looking up at the sky through the waving grass. The pain was almost completely gone, masked by the drugs which had induced his hypnotically implanted resistance to it. Everything was tinted red, but the blood this time was real, covering his helmet in irregular blotches. Ceiban reached up and unclasped it, took it off. All his other emotions came flooding back as he did so, waves of fear and sadness sweeping over him on his return to reality. The helmet represented the warrior in his soul, and without it he was no longer Ceiban Skyhunter, but only Ceiban.
Ceiban looked around and took a few minutes to ponder his situation. The fact that he was still here meant one of two things: the eldar host had been almost completely destroyed, or the battle still raged. Either way, no-one had come for his Waystone, and the eldar would not have left the planet without scouring all the battlefields for lost troops. He turned his attention outwards. If they still fight, I must find them. And so he listened and looked.
The wind sighing softly through the grass. Insects, birds. Not the sounds of a battlefield. The sky, slightly darkened by smoke, but smoke with no direction and no origin. Ceiban lifted himself onto one elbow and considered himself. The bolter's blast had been contained by the armour and had not resulted in too much of an open surface wound. Internal? His right hip was shattered, the bone having absorbed most of the shrapnel. He felt shards of it through the drugs, grating as he shifted his weight. The internal bleeding had not been too bad. His warsuit had applied a coagulant as soon as it had registered the wound. Ceiban again marvelled at its elegant simplicity, the clean lines filled with wondrous miniature mechanisms. Ribs cracked, and most of the pieces of the bolt still inside him. He coughed, seeing drops of blood arc through the air. A lung punctured. His left leg seemed unhurt, but he felt lances of pain even through the drug as he attempted to stand. It would not bear his weight. Not alone. An idea. He reached down to the manual flight controls on his belt, turned the antigravity drives in his backpack up full. Normally he could have flown, but the crash had seen to that as well. One was obviously damaged, and he only drifted up a meter before it stabilised itself. He twisted himself into a standing position, his left leg now only carrying a fraction of his weight, and had his first proper view of the battle field.
Nothing. Unbroken grass as far as he could see. Smoke in the distance, but the dust in the air made judging the distance difficult. And silence. No, not complete silence. There was something... something that he could almost hear. It came again, grunting and snorting, and the rattle of a chain. His hand went for his pistol, drawing and arming it in one fluid movement. An adjustment to the belt and he sank lower into the meter- high grass. He folded his wings back, having to break off part of the damaged one to do so. The noise again. Every sense was alert... discovery by orks would mean a quick death at best. He became silent, the hunter. Moved forward, picking his steps with care, trying not to disturb the grass he passed through, to be one with its shifting waves. Silent as eldar normally are, Ceiban was a ghost. The fallen hunter, the crippled hawk onto which his enemies would fall to tear to pieces. If they found him. Every swish of grass held a threat now. All things on the land were threats to a creature of the air. Threats... or prey. I am out of my environment in a hostile world, he thought. And realised just how true that was.
He had been called to the warrior's path only eleven months previously, and had distinguished himself in feats of arms and by the dozens of small kill-runes attached to his leg. But already the call to terrible battle was weakening in him. His grief after each battle was more and more intense as the waystones of the fallen were accounted and fed into the infinity circuit. Although still a deadly warrior once the suit was donned, he was spending more time away from the shrine. Again the path was twisting.
And yet now more than ever I need the blood of the warrior within me. Truly, I am out of place here. His abilities were the craftworld's to use, and he had derived much joy in using them. But he sensed that this would be the last time.
Again the noise, and Ceiban spun. He had been getting closer rather than further away. Why do I move towards the danger? He was keenly aware of the grass ahead of him, how it parted in ranks like an endless golden curtain as he moved forward, how it silently closed up after him, admitting no trace of his passage. He moved on, towards the sound. And heard it again. Snuffling grunts and the clank of the chain. Not eldar sounds. Enemy sounds. Touched the belt, dropped lower. Closer now. Maybe ten metres. The chain rattled, and there was a hoarse barking cough and some words in ork speech. Ceiban froze, all senses focused forward. How many? Definitely armed, but with what? He had no illusions concerning the ability of his laspistol to stop an armoured ork, but if they were scavengers... His arm extended, parting the last of the grass with the barrel as he desparatly resisted the urge to cough, to empty his damaged lung.
A clearing, of sorts. A crater. And three orks on the perimeter opposite him. No, only one. The other two were dead. The third.... Ceiban's eyes widened in surprise, one eyebrow arching at the scene before him. The two dead orks were fairly typical. Big, heavily muscled. Faces tattooed. The remains of a gaudy banner was strapped to the back of one of them, too shredded for Ceiban to read. The third ork was small, even by eldar standards. A wiry little greenskin with a frazzled shock of blue hair. It was filthy and unwashed, and a necklace of small bones was tied around its neck. That and a rough tunic and loincloth seemed to be all it wore. Someone had draped a crude sign around its neck, too. "FACE TO ENEMEEZ". The little one appeared to be chained by an ankle to one of the dead orks, and this chain rattled as it tugged vainly at the clasp. Ceiban's attention was so focused that he almost missed the fourth ork until it was too late. He heard the rustle behind him, the knife being drawn from its sheath and instinctively rolled forward into the clearing. The roll brought him up facing the new threat, and the pistol was firing before he had even identified the target. The ork stood still with a surprised look on its brutish face, amazed at the speed at which the eldar had reacted. It then looked down to consider the three holes in its chest, and keeled over sideways. Ceiban didn't even notice. Blood rushed into his ears. The roll had twisted his wounded leg, and his world had exploded into pain. He heard screaming through the haze of agony, and dimly wondered if it was him. As the pain subsided a little, he realised it was the other ork, and turned to face it, bringing the pistol up as he did so. He cursed himself for allowing his back to be turned, and gave thanks that the chain had prevented the ork from taking him from behind.
The little ork was screaming, but not in anger. In terror. It was tugging the chain frantically, and trying to hide behind the body of its fallen comrade at the same time. Tears of despair coursed down its face as it strained to get free, and several resounding flatulent noises accompanied these vain efforts. Ceiban could sense the fear coming off the creature in waves, and he relaxed his aim a little. Not a threat, this one, his senses told him. He was racked with coughs which sent bright tendrils of pain throughout his body.
The two stood facing each other for some minutes, the eldar immobile and upright as he considered his opponent, and the orc, who had by this time stopped his loud screams and replaced them with a more enduring and sustainable whimpering, cowering as far from the eldar as the chain would allow it. Finally Ceiban spoke.
"Do not attempt to harm me, and I will not kill you."
At his words, the ork renewed its attempts to escape, upgrading the whimpering to a loud wail. It really was a pathetic creature, Ceiban thought. A slave, perhaps. But not a gretchin. How strange. He moved closer, lowering the gun so that it stayed pointed at the creature's head. The ork was almost paralysed with fright, chocking on sobs and screams in it's incoherent terror. Ceiban looked long and hard, and then flipped the pistol back into its holster. He addressed himself to the ork in the trade tongue.
"Are there any more orks around?"
No response. He shouted the question again, this time letting his hand stray to the pistol.
"ANY MORE ORKS NEAR HERE?"
There was a liquid trickle as the creature's bowels relaxed completely, but it shook it's head.
"What are you doing still here alone, then?" Like me, he thought.
The creature looked around, up, down. Anywhere but at Ceiban. "Minderz dead."
Minderz? This thing was an ork psychic! Realisation came flooding over Ceiban as he recalled the lectures he had received on these creatures. Shunned by normal ork society, they were regarded as freaks. No control over their powers. It was released at random at the height of the battle frenzy. Deadly opponents, their power vomits could destroy half a squad. Ceiban had to laugh. He pointed the pistol at it, and the ork blinked once and fainted.
Ceiban looked around again, and settled himself into the grass at the edge of the crater. He took the time to look closer at the other bodies across from him. The two big orks had been killed by shurikens, shards of the deadly discs all over them. The small one? Some cuts to the leg... perhaps it had hidden behind the others. It really was scrawny. Thin, undernourished. A larger skull than normal, plenty of tattoos. Self- inflicted. The chain was puzzling. Why? Perhaps they were cowards at heart. It didn't show from the effectiveness of their powers. He leaned back to rest, obscured from site in the grass, and waited for the ork to wake.
It was an hour later.
"Where are the others?"
The ork was calming a little as it began to sink in that if this bloodied apparition wanted to kill him, it would have already done so. It had taken most of an hour, but Ceiban had managed to calm the creature down enough to find out its name, which was Gruzz (or something equally guttural) and that it was alone. The ork he had killed earlier was the last of the survivors from this area, and had gone in search of a key for the manacle.
"Where are the other orks?"
"Gone. Fighting kone domes. Like you." The voice was a quiet whisper, almost a squeak.
So the battle was still on, somewhere. Hope sprang into Ceiban's heart. If he could find out where they had gone, perhaps the other eldar would be near. He shifted his weight again, trying to minimise the pressure on his damaged hip.
"Why aren't you with them?"
"Forget me. Forget Gruzz. Think me dead like minderz." The small ork gave one of the brutish corpses a kick. Ceiban saw it, noticed the pathetic defiance. Suddenly the little orc turned towards him and slowly spoke, trying hard, and almost succeeding, to keep a tremour out of its voice. "Why you no kill me?"
"Why don't you kill me?"
"Can't." The ork shook its fist in the manacle.
"I haven't killed you because.... because I don't have to."
The ork looked up with uncomprehending eyes.
"If I free you, will you kill me?" Ceiban asked.
"No. No kill. Run and hide. Run from minderz and nasty boyz."
Again a kick, a more assertive one.
"Why don't you like them?"
At first there was no answer as the weirdboy looked over the corpses. Ceiban was about to repeat the question when the orc spoke, slowly at first, but with increasing pitch and fervour.
"Nasty boyz! Minderz make me Angry. Pinch, prod. Make the Angry come out. Make me kill with Angry." The little creature's eyes blazed, its fear temporarily gone.
"Angry hurt. Don't like Angry. Don't want Angry."
Ceiban heard something, and the pistol flew to his hand. The orks eyes were saucers, and it fell to its knees in terror.
"Don't kill! Don't kill!" The rest was muffled as it tried to burrow into the earth.
"Be quiet!"
He turned, his senses scanning everywhere. The noise was some way off, and had not been repeated. He relaxed again. Maybe a loud bird call. The pistol stayed in his hand. He turned back to the ork, who had fainted again. Prodded it with the pistol and then moved back.
At last, it opened its eyes.
"Why don't you want the ...angry? It hurts?"
Silence. This one lasted perhaps ten minutes.
"Make me sore. Boyz like." A glance at the corpses;
"Makes much fire. Very dangerous."
"If you don't like the other... boyz, why don't you use it on them?".
"Minderz." Another kick.
"Chain me, whip me. Only get me for warz."
"What do you do when there is no war?"
"Live far away. Alone. In tree. Alone. Far from minderz and other boyz. Not a lot. Always war."
The sadness washed over Ceiban as for an instant he saw the life this creature lead. Not knowing its place in the world, only wanting it to change. Another one, he thought. Out of its environment. But what is its environment? What is my own? I don't know. Not this one. No longer a warrior. He considered the situation again. What is making me feel this? If he had incountered this creature only a few hours before, he would have ended its miserable life without another thought and sung for the pleasure it would have brought him. The drugs? Or maybe the ork itself. Maybe some subliminal power. He focussed himself inwards, but saw only truth. Truth behind lies that he had been building within himself.
Suddenly, the noise again. Much closer...the calls of troops across the grass. Immediatly Ceiban sank down, the pistol darting everywhere as he looked to the long grass.
Behind him Gruzz was shaking, teeth chattering in fear.
"Silence!"
The little ork tried to obey, failed.
"Koneheads will kill Gruzz." Sobs and a half hearted attempt to break the chain. Kone... eldar?
Ceiban turned, to listen TOO the voices and not at them. Soft, fluent cries, not orkspeech. Eldar. He looked at Gruzz in amazement. "How did you know?"
"Can feel their Angry. Very Angry."
Ceiban considered this as he started to walk to the edge of the crater. Anger? Like I should feel. Warrior passion, that I do not possess. The battle must be over...he looked down at his bloodied warsuit and was suddenly disgusted with it. So this will end. He turned and started towards the noises. Time to make a new start.
"Where you go? "
"I'm going home, Gruzz."
The creature started to wail again.
"Why you go? You not kill. Others kill. Others KILL!"
The voice was starting to crack, the tremours coming again...
"No... you no go. I die. I dead. Forever. Koneheads kill, with knife."
The creature's head was leaned back, only the whites of the eyes showing.
"They still kill. All boyz that move, they kill. And they come for Gruzz."
Gruzz leaned forward and clasped his knees to his thin chest.
"I know, Gruzz." The ork looked up.
He turned and fired. The ork's eyes went wide and it toppled onto its back. Ceiban almost smiled. This way was better, he told himself.
"Ceiban Skyhunter! We sing praises at your safe return!" It was Jareth, one of the Avengers. The others were formed in a skirmish line, their bioscanners looking for waystones. All had knives out, and were finishing off any ork wounded they found, their arms bloody to the elbow in a sickening tribute to the god of war. They still wore their masks, were still feeling the passion of the Bloody Handed One, even though they had appeased his appetite for blood many times this day.
"The battle?" Ceiban was suddenly very tired.
"Won. Not a greenskin alive around here." The mask bobbed in pleasure, not yet seeing the time when it would be removed and the mourning for the dead would begin.
"Any over from where you were?"
"Only one. And I killed it."
"You are sure?"
"Yes, my friend. I am alone."
The two eldar turned and followed the retreating Avengers back to the warp portal, one to pray again at a shrine of war, the other to find a new life.
It was hours later when Gruzz awoke. The sun streamed into his eyes, and several flies were crawling on his nose. He sat up after killing and eating them. The chain on his arm was now only a manacle, sheared by the blast of the laspistol. He slowly got to his feet, unsure of what was happening to his world. First the warz with the koneheads... he shied away from that memory, the two minderz.. Then a bloodied and terrible winged konehead had found him, and not killed him. Then it had tried to kill him, and he had fainted, believing himself to be dead. Gruzz could not and would never understand what had happened that day. This did not dismay him. Especially when the implications of the blasted chain, the dead minders and the open veld started to sink home. He grinned a wide, toothy grin. And stepped into the grass to find a new life.