Death Mask Page 3

Anya could barely breathe, the stench of her fellow prisoners becoming more overpowering by the day. She had no idea how long they’d been crammed in these cages, suffocating in their own filth. The survivors of Big Bruvva’s purges. The lucky ones.

  A bony elbow jabbed her in the ribs, but she’d taught herself not to react. Cause a scene and you’d be pulled out of the cage. Cause a scene and you’d die.

  And so she kept quiet, watching their two guards inhaling spores from the mould they heated in a small metal bowl, their bodies shuddering with every ragged breath.

  ‘Blades,’ the thinner one of the two called out, his rough voice catching on the smoke. ‘You’ve got to try this stuff. Think I just saw Gork.’

  Beside him, his obese companion half-choked on the fumes. ‘Where is Blades anyway?’ he hacked, his abnormally stretched earlobes joggling.

  Anya knew exactly who they were talking about – the largest of their three guards. Tall, muscular and cruel with the habit of clanging his knife blades along the bars of the cages, not caring if he cut the terrified prisoners within.

  ‘Who cares?’ grinned the first guard. ‘All the more for us. Gork be praised.’

  He raised his gaunt face, a dozy smile stretching across his tattooed features before his eyes went wide. He didn’t even have time to shout a warning before something heavy crashed wetly down between them, guttering the small fire and sending the bowl clattering across the floor.

  In her cage, Anya gagged as she realised what had fallen from the access panel high above their heads. A slab of meat that had once been a man, his green-inked skin covered in blood, the arms that had once carried long wicked knifes missing, ripped off at the shoulders.

  The fat guard gaped before a jagged hole opened in his forehead, as another figure leapt down from on high, landing heavily on Blades’ corpse, gun still smoking. The thin cultist jumped back, grabbing his own weapon, but couldn’t even drag it from its holster before his face was shredded by the newcomer’s claws.

  The guard hit the floor, limbs jerking as what was left of his features started turning black.

  Anya looked up, locking eyes with the living nightmare that had so proficiently dispatched her tormentors; furious red orbs glaring back from a bone white face.

  There were shouts from behind, the sound of running feet. She glanced over her shoulder, trying to see through the gaps lefts by her panicked fellow prisoners. A mob was running towards them, more cultists than she’d ever seen, guns already up and firing.

  A shot thudded into their skull-faced saviour’s chest, followed by another, but it didn’t fall. It didn’t even make a sound, simply swinging up its own weapon and firing a single bolt – not at its aggressors, but at the lock on Anya’s cage. The door was open in an instant, the prisoners pouring out of the corridor and straight into the path of the approaching gunfire.

  Anya didn’t run. She shrank back into the cage and watched as the former captives were struck down, those who escaped the hail of bullets running in every direction, blocking the cultists’ view of their skull-faced target, a perfect shield.

  And then it was in the midst of them, moving so fast Anya could barely see. She slid down the bars, pressing her palms over her ears, trying to block out the rattle of bolts and the shrieks of those breathing their last. She screwed her eyes tight, expecting any minute for one of those shots to find her, cringing in the corner of her cage like an animal.

  But the shot never came. After a while, Anya realised the sounds had stopped. Her hands dropped from her ears as, still shaking, she turned to see a carpet of bodies on the floor – prisoners and cultists alike. Limbs were at awkward angles, blood running in rivulets down rapidly cooling flesh. Somewhere someone was weeping, faint sobs that ended abruptly with a wet cough and a dry rattle.

  She’s seen enough massacres in the last few weeks, but nothing like this, cultists and prisoners alike united in death.

  One body was missing as Anya nervously stepped out of the cage – a body with a bone-white face.

  Big Bruvva’s fist piled into the screen.

  For the first time since the revolt, Vinter wanted to live, if only to witness their beloved leader’s despair as his forces were diminished level by level. It couldn’t be stopped now.

  Any perverse enjoyment the cult leader had been deriving from the bloodshed was gone. As Big Bruvva turned to the vox his face was a mask of pure hatred. The heretic hunched over the desk, thumbing open a vox-channel that could deliver a message to every speaker in the structure simultaneously. The new lord and master of Hive Vinter was about to address the masses.

  ‘You think you’re so hard,’ he growled, leaning close to the vox-bead, his voice echoing around the corridors deep below them. ‘Well, Big Bruvva is about to teach you a lesson, do you hear?’

  The doors of the cathedral blew open, blessed splinters hammering against the pews – and that wasn’t all. A figure was thrown into freshly defiled nave, knocked back by the force of a frag grenade, crashing into the ancient wooden benches.

  It didn’t get a chance to stand. Even before the smoke had cleared, cultists thronged through the wrecked doors, emptying their guns into its black armour. From his perch, high in the gallery, Hurta saw a flash of white amidst the chaos. The freak’s skull mask.

  He hated waiting. Always had. Even now, his trigger finger twitched, desperate to fire, but Big Bruvva had told them to wait for the signal. The moment had to be right.

  The assassin struggled to rear up, chips of its armour flying in all directions. One of the cultists got near – too near – and was rewarded by talons digging deep into his leg. The Gork worshipper screamed as he was dragged in front of the assassin, his own brothers’ ammo slicing through him.

  It was the opportunity skull-face had been waiting for. It was on its feet again, returning fire, kicking and swiping with those damned claws. Surely it couldn’t remain standing for long. It was surrounded. It was dead.

  A brother Hurta had never seen before grabbed the assassin’s gun arm, yanking it back, attempting to rip every ligament in the freak’s shoulder. Old skull-face just swung around, driving its talons deep into the tall man’s neck, perforating muscle and bone. Another brother lost. Another dead.

  But that was the freak’s first mistake. As the brother dropped, the assassin pulled its claws free, turning its back towards Hurta. The moment Hurta had been waiting for.

  Big Bruvva’s voice hissed in Hurta’s ear-piece: ‘Now!’

  Hurta squeezed his trigger, the harpoon bucking in his arms. The barbed spear shot forward, burying itself in the freak’s back with a satisfying crunch. So much for that armour.

  The assassin arched its back, pulling against the thick cord that stretched back up to Hurta’s harpoon. Hurta grabbed at the gargoyle that was crouched beside him, anchoring himself as the refined acoustics of the cathedral sang to the sounds of harpoons being fired from all around the gallery.

  Spears plunged into the assassin’s flesh, barbed spears impossible to pull out without doing more damage than they had caused going in. Spears dipped in poison. Big Bruvva had promised the freak a lesson. This was it.

  Within seconds, the assassin was caught in a web of cords, each reeling back into the harpoons, holding the freak tight. At first it thrashed, a couple of Hurta’s brothers losing their footing and crashing down from their hiding place.

  Not Hurta. Hurta hung onto the gargoyle, even as the freak stopped struggling, its head finally lolling drunkenly forward. A stream of red drool flowed from its slash of a mouth, the slabs hissing and steaming where it pooled.

  A cheer went out from the faithful, a roar of victory, but silence descended as a green-skinned giant swaggered into the cathedral.

  Big Bruvva reached out and, almost gently, tipped the back of the freak’s head. The cult leader smiled and then planted a pile-driving punch on the assassin’s cheek.
Its head snapped around so fast that Hurta was sure its neck must have broken instantly.

  When the head fell limply back, the side of the death mask was smashed, opened by the spikes implanted in Big Bruvva’s knuckles, dark blood oozing from the cracks.

  ‘Bring it to the Pit,’ Big Bruvva sneered.

  It was like coming home. The roar of the crowd. The rubble beneath his feet. The stench of stale blood and fear.

  The Pit.

  It had been here that Big Bruvva had pulled a bone from beneath a collapsed wall and used it to stave in the head of his first opponent. Here where his first vision had seared its path across his mind. Here where he had first heard Gork’s name, screamed across eternity.

  They were coming now. Big Bruvva could feel them. Ready to descend. Ready to crush and stomp and kill. It wouldn’t be long.

  Bombs falling. Guns firing. Bones ground into the dirt.

  The Day of Reckoning.

  Big Bruvva swayed on his feet, but no one would see. He was standing in the shadows, all eyes on the freak, hanging from chains in the centre of the Pit. Limp. Broken.

  Big Bruvva would break him some more.

  He could feel the drugs burning through his veins, his muscles hardening second by second, pressing against the restraints of the exo-suit. It hurt. Gork knew it hurt, but pain was good. Pain kept you alive and when you were alive you could make others dead.

  Stomp ’em. Crush ’em. Kill ’em.

  Big Bruvva lurched forward, ignoring the pain squirming at the back of his mind.

  They are coming. They are coming. They are coming.

  The suit’s pistons hissed with every step – out into the arena, out into the light.

  Stomp ’em. Crush ’em. Kill ’em!

  The crowd went wild as soon as they saw their champion striding purposely towards the freak, his name chanted over and over again. It mixed with the cry inside his head, the otherworldly bellow that threatened to split his skull in two.

  ‘Bruv-va! Bruv-va! Bruv-va! Bruv-va!’

  He was running now, arms raised, teeth bared, ready to rip this deformity limb from limb.

  Big Bruvva roared, a single wordless howl that echoed around the arena, his followers instinctively joining the chorus, drowning out the harsh grind of the chainblades mounted on each of Big Bruvva’s arms.

  And still the freak didn’t move.

  Maybe it was unconscious. Maybe it was dead. It didn’t matter. Big Bruvva would cut it in–

  The chains attached to the post broke free, the freak ducking as the chainblade buried itself into the stone. The teeth caught, just for a second, but long enough for the assassin to brake his curved claws against Big Bruvva’s exposed chest.

  The pain didn’t even register as he brought his free arm around, cracking hard into the side of the freak’s nightmarish face. The assassin stumbled back as Big Bruvva pulled the embedded chainblade out, the momentum causing him to take a step back – far enough to avoid the boot that swung out to take his legs away from beneath him. Blood sprayed from the freak’s cracked mask, hissing as it splashed against the rubbish beneath their feet.

  Big Bruvva brought his right chainblade down, but the freak rolled out of the way, sweeping up with those claws, cutting through cables and wires to find the welcoming flesh of Big Bruvva’s left forearm. The blades did their work, cutting deep to the bone.

  Big Bruvva’s vision flared white, the pain silencing everything else, the roar of the crowd, the buzz of his blades. Even the thunder in his head.

  He had suffered worse injuries in the past, but he bawled with the agony, and Bruvva barely noticed the freak springing up to plant a boot in the middle of his blistered chest.

  The force of the blow threw him back, the hand of his ravaged arm cramping into an involuntary claw of its own.

  This couldn’t be happening. The skull-faced freak had inflicted a few scratches, nothing more, but as Big Bruvva lost his footing, it was as if his body was going into shock.

  Realisation dawned as he hit the floor. Those claws. They were poisoned, just as the spears in the cathedral ambush had been. His body felt like it was burning up from the inside – matching the flames that raged through his mind.

  Stomp ’em. Crush ’em. Kill ’em

  He couldn’t even tell if his followers were still cheering or had been shocked into silence. All he could hear was the sound of a battlefield. A single, monotonous war cry drowning out every else. He forced his head around in time to see the freak swinging a weapon down towards him. No, not a weapon. Those damned claws.

  Big Bruvva twisted, the exo-suit’s joints whining in protest, and batted the claws away with his near useless-arm. He brought it down hard, crushing the hand beneath the exo-suit’s armour plating and rolled on top of his opponent. He knew what he was going to do, even as he planted an armoured knee into the assassin’s chest, a pleasing spurt of blood spraying through those skull-like lips.

  With more effort than it should have taken, he drew his near-dead arm back sharply, twisting it so the chainblade met the freak’s own mangled arm. The teeth sliced through armour and flesh, before it reached bone. The assassin bayed, the first nose Bruvva had heard it make, scarlet eyes widening behind the mask.

  When the freak pulled its arm back to its chest, the severed hand stayed where it was, claws still twitching. It grabbed its bloody stump in shock, long enough for Big Bruvva to grab the assassin’s throat with his good hand. He pressed hard, feeling the freak’s windpipe buckle beneath his grip, heard a choked gasp behind the mask. Not such a monster now. Strip away the skull and the weapons and the armour and the freak was just another stinking human ripe for sacrifice, one more tribute to Gork.

  Stomp it. Crush it. Kill it.

  The freak clawed helplessly at Big Bruvva’s arm, the cult leader lifting his prize into the air. No poison could stop him. No wound would bring him to his knees. He was the Chosen One. He was Gork’s herald. He was triumphant.

  Big Bruvva held the freak aloft, ignoring the pain. This was his moment. He threw back his head and joined in his followers’ cry.

  ‘Waaaaaag–’

  He didn’t even see the freak move. There was no warning. One minute it was hanging from his fist, like a slab of meat, and the next it was thrusting the stump of its arm through the protective cage that surrounded Big Bruvva’s head. He had no time to react. The bloody end mashed into his face, stripping the skin away in an instant. The flicker of a memory replayed through his mind. The pool of gore steaming on the cathedral floor, eating through the stone slabs like acid.

  Big Bruvva had no idea if he screamed. He saw Gork’s bloodshot eyes, painted large across a blazing cosmos, even as his own were reduced to a viscous jelly that dribbled out of melting sockets. Gork was laughing, throwing back his mighty head and roaring with mirth.

  Big Bruvva never felt his hand loosen around the freak’s throat. Never felt it press its stump deeper, burning through his skull and into his brain. Never even felt his knees buckle, his engorged body crashing forward, the exo-skeleton smashing into the jagged debris on the floor.

  As he died, the only thing Big Bruvva could hear was Gork’s mocking laughter, taunting the man who would have been an ork.

  His Chosen One.

  His fool.

  The stars were falling across Ghul Jensen. That’s what it looked like for Governor Vinter at least. New suns blossomed in the sky before fading, fire streaking through the heavens.

  This was what Big Bruvva had wanted the governor to see, why he’d kept him alive. The Day of Reckoning. The Coming of Gork.

  The idiot would have claimed that the explosions in the upper atmosphere were a sign, a portent even, if his vocabulary hadn’t been that of a child.

  He was right about one thing. It was a sign – that bombs would soon start falling. That ships would be descending t
hrough those leaden clouds, crushing all opposition.

  Not that Big Bruvva would see it himself. The cult leader had left the smashed screen operating in the office, so that Vinter could witness him slaughter the Assassin first hand. The governor wished he’d still had the strength to cheer as the brute had fallen in front of his followers, his face an unrecognisable mess – but he could hardly breathe. It wouldn’t be long now. A blessed relief.

  He didn’t know what had happened to the Assassin. As soon as the cult leader crashed to the floor, his disciples swarmed into the arena, desperate to take down the creature that had killed their so-called herald. The screen became a confused mess of bodies, gunfire crackling over the speakers, as the Gork worshippers turned on each other. Big Bruvva’s lieutenants were desperate to take control, filling the gap left by their leader’s demise, even before his body grew cold.

  The governor wondered how long the Assassin had lasted in the melee; which of the mindless drones had delivered the killing blow. It didn’t matter anymore. Soon they’d all be dead. The weakest of laughs gurgled in Vinter’s throat as he imaged the cultists welcoming real orks with open arms. He could just imagine the response, the leer on the orks’ faces as they cut the pretenders down where they stood.

  ‘Stupid humies!’

  There was movement in the corridor outside. He’d heard muffled explosions and gunfire earlier, the feuding cultists making for the spires to claim their throne. Let them have it, for all the good it would do.

  The door opened. Vinter couldn’t look up. His head was like a lead weight.

  He followed the noise across the room, booted footsteps on the carpet. It wasn’t like the heretics to be so quiet. Where were the jeers and yells, the cries of victory? Maybe they were there and just couldn’t hear them. For all he knew, his senses had finally deserted him. A blessed release.

  A shadow passed in front of him, blocking out the light of the panoramic window. Something pressed up against his chin, pushing his head back. Something that burned. The governor looked up, expecting to find himself staring at the idiotic features of a cultist, all tattoos, studs and pointed teeth. Instead, the face in front of him was bone white, albeit streaked with dried blood. Red eyes regarded him coldly, the death mask frozen in an eternal smile.