The Carnac Campaign: Nightspear Read online

  The Carnac Campaign: Episode One

  Nightspear

  Joe Parrino

  They waited for three days and three nights. They waited while the snow fell, while the darkness consumed, while the moon pierced the clouds and the sky. Cold light illuminated cold ground, set shadows to dancing, roiling and writhing. Geometric stones rose and fell all around them, the evidence of past geological upheaval. The stones were silent now, carved deep with the warding superstitions of exodite clans. The world spirit’s song was silent in this place, cowed by the taint of death that hung metal-heavy on the air.

  Those gathered, hidden, interspersed among snowdrifts, overhangs, clawed into ambush points, rifles pointing, hidden in the whisperquiet.

  One hundred eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworlds, clan-blooded exodites of Carnac, gathered, waited, and prepared for death. Nigh invisible, they hid as the snow crawled around them, as the moonlight caressed the rocks.

  Prophecy called the eldar to war. The ringing words of Eldorath Starbane, farseer of Alaitoc, wisewitch, deathfriend, bonecaster, led them to this place. The ancient foe, the deathless ones, the souldark, waited in slumber to march out from the nightblack depths.

  Illic, called the Nightspear, took it upon himself to halt this. This was his doom, his destiny. He was the voice that cried to his people, that warned of ancient foes. He was the messenger of the past. He would deny the necrons their vengeance.

  He nestled deep between the crags. His rifle, Voidbringer, rested lightly in his long-fingered hands. The snow felt cold against his cheek, pale skin blending with pale snow, with pale rock. The discomfort was momentary. He had endured it for three days. He would have endured it for three months more were it necessary.

  It was not.

  The souldark were fated to descend on this night, fated to gather, fated to blight the maiden world of Carnac.

  Starbane, eyes red in mourning, stained with the ashes of Somonor, blazing with revenge, had spoken. This war had become an obsession for the farseer. The anger of Khaine burned bright in his heart. Vengeance; deep, throbbing, emotions steeped far from those offered by any Path save that of the Bloody-Handed One. The exodites and their plight were merely another tool to be used in the war against the souldark.

  Illic accepted this, for this drove him too. He knew, perhaps better than any other eldar alive, the threat posed by the souldark to his people. The mon-keigh, the Lost Kin, She-Who-Thirsts, all these foes paled before the soulless evil of the necrons.

  He walked the Hidden Paths, sought the ancient truths. He spoke with ancient voices, the warnings of eldar long since passed to dust, long since passed out of the memory of his long-lived race. Illic, those few who followed him, and scattered others among the craftworlds knew the threat posed by the souldark. They knew and they raged against it. They sought the places once claimed by the souldark, pushed the lesser races towards conflict, towards their own destruction of the necrons.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Illic came to Carnac to serve his once-home, to answer the call of Eldorath Starbane the Onehanded. To answer the call of Alaitoc. With him he brought his followers, outcast sons and daughters of the craftworlds, peerless rangers and pathfinders in his service.

  This night would see the souldark gather, descending to tear this jewel from the crown of the eldar. Illic, decisive, swift, gathered his rangers and pathfinders and struck for the north.

  The clan-blooded exodites of Carnac, joined them on the path, their barbaric faces scarred and painted, tattooed and menacing. Illic greeted them as friends, knowing well their worth.

  Now they waited, sons and daughters of the craftworld, of the exodites. The souldark would die, decapitated by the swift vengeance of the eldar.

  Illic Nightspear let slip a breath, snow melting before him, cameleoline cloaked against the chill, against sight. His eyes, the arctic blue of glacial melt, glanced to his right, to the nearest eldar. It took his eyes no time to see her. She was hidden, this was true, against the prying eyes of lesser races. To Illic’s practiced gaze she was as obvious as a mon-keigh. She was no expert at this craft, no wanderer on the Path of the Outcast.

  Catritheyn, farseer, adept of Eldorath Starbane, was draped in the same cameleoline Illic was, camouflaged against casual observance. Her breath steamed in the chill night air, her eyes crackled with witchlight as she read the skein. Orange and purple, the skein bled from her eyes. Words, the hissed and hunched words of the skein itself, boiled from her mouth. A smile played along her lips.

  The witchlights faded. She nodded towards Illic.

  ‘The souldark come,’ she whispered over the gentle hiss of falling snow.

  A subtle ripple passed along the gorge as eldar shifted, readied, focused. There was no telltale glint, no glimpse of flesh, tattooed or otherwise, no other marker or signifier to hint that the strike force was there. There was merely the drifting snow and the deep, dark night of the gorge.

  Seconds later Illic’s eyes registered a difference within the blackness. Green, unhealthy, alien, bright and unearthly light squirmed up from the depths.

  The souldark. He had seen the colours before, the evidence of their passage, on Cano’var, on Gellyk, on other worlds and other places. He remembered it all too well. He almost wished for the mon-keigh to stand beside him once more. Illic fingered the tribal fetish gifted to him by the human Space Marine.

  There was no noise. There was no sound of the souldark, no sight, merely the neon green. The light flickered, grew, deepened.

  Cold unease crawled down Illic’s spine. Where were the sounds? Where were the souldark themselves? There was only the glow to meet his eyes.

  The green light flashed. The darkness illuminated with eldritch symbols, flaring painfully bright.

  Skeletal shapes scrawled across the walls, shadows leaping, marching. The eldritch glow grew, revealing horror.

  Rank after rank of souldark, deathless, ancient foes of the eldar race, silver bones tarnished by the passage of aeons, emerged from the darkness.

  They marched in silence. They marched in ranks. Illic felt the old hatred flare in his breast, felt it burn.

  Souldark. Necrons, The ancient foe.

  At the heart of the souldark legions, at the centre, stood three figures. They alone did not march. They alone did not move. One stood hunched, cyclopean, lurking with staff clutched in clawed hands. Burnished blades rose from the head of another, axe-keen over a crested skeletal visage.

  Illic Nightspear, knew this one’s name. ‘Anrakyr,’ he whispered. An ancient overlord of the souldark. The word was a curse from the pathfinder’s thin lips, red with murder, black with anger. His finger tightened on the trigger of Voidbringer. Uldanoreth whispered into his mind, the warrior-smith’s spirit claiming assurances, vengeance, hatred.

  Emotions and memories roiled within Illic’s breast. ‘Justice,’ Uldanoreth whispered to Illic. ‘Justice for all those killed by the souldark. Justice for me. For the eldar. Kill it. Kill it!’

  The other pathfinders, the other exodites, waited on his shot.

  Imperious at the heart of their legion, the souldark were unaware of the doom that would claim them.

  Suddenly the cyclopean one jerked its head up, its single eye glaring straight at Illic. It blinked. The necrons, legion and leaders, vanished.

  Illic fired a split second too late. Voidbringer screamed, the shot punching through reality, punching through the veil, tearing open a hole into the other, into the immaterium. Non-colours spilled out, non-sounds, non-voices, non-reality. The non-void called to their souls. All the eldar
averted their gaze, not wishing to tempt She Who Thirsts. The hole in reality’s fabric lasted for less than a second before it snapped closed with a lightning crack and the screaming of the damned.

  There was a high pitched whine, a sound that lanced deep into the keen ears of the assembled eldar. Illic felt a tug at his cloak. He turned and saw a shadow standing over him.

  Lightning stabbed out from the blackness, out from the depths, cracking into stone, spearing in every direction. The gorge shuddered, great columns of rock falling into the depths. Shards of stone broke away, flash-burning through snow, and whickered like shrapnel, carving deep furrows into Illic’s face. The pain was blinding, staggering. Blood wept freely from his split features. What was more was the rage that accompanied it. The shame of exposure, of wounding by the necrons, wept freely from the wounds upon his face.

  More lightning, bright and green and blinding, lanced out from nowhere. Eldar cried out in pain. They fell, slumping to knees, falling away into the depths. Illic nearly blacked out, but clung on to consciousness with sheer willpower.

  The shadow stared down with dispassionate eyes, hidden beneath swathes of dark-patterned cloth. ‘We should leave.’ The words were soft, whispersoft, hissed in the cadences of old Alaitoc, almost deadpan. Ruterias, dubbed the Shadow by the other Outcasts, was among Illic’s first disciples, those first few who followed the Alaitocii pathfinder in search of the hidden knowledge of empire and ancient secrets.

  The whine deepened, thrummed, keened, howled. Catritheyn, eyes shining with the skein, turned to Illic in alarm.

  ‘The skein is changed. The souldark… They no longer wander its paths,’ Catritheyn whispered frantically.

  Illic snarled, cameleoline cloak swirling about him. The shadow-swathed eldar followed like a pet raven.

  The whine changed, transformed, rising into a crackling carrying over the snow.

  The green glow in the depths of the gorge intensified, flickering, climbing. The eldar pulled back in alarm, still stealthy, still hidden, but now frantic.

  ‘We are undone,’ Illic snarled, voice fierce and low-pitched.

  A knot of eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworlds, clan-blooded exodites of Carnac, gathered around the Nightspear.

  They turned first from the Nightspear to the farseer by his side. She offered no answer. Her face was a scowl, angry.

  Teryen Telerath, his face broad for an Alaitocii, tanned ruddy by the light of countless suns, hair a riot of greens and reds and blues, old friend of Illic Nightspear, spoke first. ‘Starbane was wrong. Where are the souldark?’

  The crackling ceased.

  A scarred exodite, an eldar known as the Fachan, one-eyed, tattooed with loops and whirls and exodite sigils spat, ‘We must leave this place. The Dead Ones are not here.’

  The exodite spoke too soon. Inrithiel, sweethearted, wanderer of Alaitoc, cried out. A green sigil floated above her head, haloing it in ghostly green. A question formed on her lips.

  Illic’s eyes grew wide. He knew the mark. He knew what it meant. He had seen it before.

  Unbidden his advice, issued centuries earlier, rose to the fore of his mind. He had told the mon-keigh, in rare words of friendship between their two races, ‘Once you are marked, there can be no escape.’ Now the souldark issued their marks once more. The sigil was one of death, a halo echoing in the chill night air.

  Inrithiel, sweethearted, wanderer of Alaitoc, crumpled into the snow with barely a cry, blood and pink matter leaking from her nose. There was a whipcrack of sound, a crackle of energy. It echoed through the gorge.

  More marks flickered. More eldar painted for death by hidden souldark.

  The eldar did not panic. They reacted swiftly, with discipline, with stealth. Illic issued a single order.

  ‘Flee,’ he said. ‘We must warn Starbane that the souldark twist the Skein of Fate.’

  The pathfinders, the Outcasts, the rangers, the exodites understood. In moments the heights were emptied as the eldar fled, swift, sure-footed. They fled singly, in groups, in pairs. Each one would seek a different path from this place, from this knot of canyons, stone and snow, back to the webway, back to the Alaitocii host.

  Afallech Maladruen turned west. A side canyon, grey stone rising through the swirling snow, offered a promising route. He took it, steps sure and swift. Three other rangers, Outcasts all, followed Afallech.

  There was no chatter between them. Their faces were grim and set. There was no fear. They were Outcasts, rangers, men and women who had left the safety of the craftworlds behind, to stride the old paths between the stars, to visit the hidden places of their old empire, to see sights that few remembered, that few dared.

  They were a hundred metres into the canyon when the first green lights began to flicker. Afallech Maladruen, outcast son of Alaitoc had no time to react to the green mark.

  Where once they were alone in the canyon, now there were skeletal souldark, hunched, vile, dead but moving. Energy crackled in the long rifles they clutched in bony fingers. Afallech and the three rangers had no time to react before the souldark opened fire.

  They fell to their knees. Fluid erupted from their eyes, their noses, their ears, their mouths, staining the snow and the dark stone red with their lifeblood.

  Amonther Numeriel, lost son of Iyanden, was a coward. His thoughts told him this again and again. Flight. Running. These were the themes of his long life. Darkness, darkness that hungered, vile and alien.

  He clutched the soulstones to his chest, five winking brightly in the moonlight. They were all that remained of kin, friends, those lost to the teeth and claws of the Doom of Iyanden.

  His tanned face, stippled with acid scars, bruised by doubt, by self-judgement, stood out against the grey rock. He ran. His footsteps left no mark. He was a true student of Illic, driven to follow the Path of the Outcast by his shame.

  The grey walls surrounded him. Alone, save for the soulstones he carried, Amonther Numeriel fled deep into the canyons and gorges, seeking safety in the webway, just as he had before.

  The Nightspear struck due south. Instinct and experience guided him. He knew the patterns of the necrons, perhaps better than any other eldar alive. Catritheyn, Teryen, Ruterias the Shadow, craftworlder and exodite alike, fled with Illic. Twenty eldar. Their group was large, but not unwieldy. They were eldar, sons and daughters of Kurnous, dead god of the hunt.

  Their gods may have been dead, but the skills they passed on to their children in the Long Ago were still remembered.

  They ran for minutes, through the falling snow, through the darkness, between looming pillars of rock. They ran without sight of the souldark, without sight of other eldar.

  Illic’s mind raced, following the paths of his feet. He sought ideas, solutions, survival. He carried the warning, the hope, the burden, clawed and taken upon himself. Survival, the thought echoed, pulled at his mind, warring with anger, shame and grief.

  The paths they took were twisting, winding. Beneath a knot of trees, Catritheyn begged they stop. Ruterias, swathed and cloaked in shadows and cloth, grunted a denial.

  ‘The skein,’ she said. ‘I will find us a path through the skein.’

  The scattered exodites spat and made warding gestures, scrawling intricate non-verbal hand sigils into the air. The craftworld eldar ignored their superstitions. Illic respected them. Gestures had power. He had learned this in the long years of his search.

  Illic gave Catritheyn a nod. Permission was granted. The shifting paths of the future might provide succour, solution and survival. She did not respond. Runes floated out from a pouch near her waist, swirling about her. Witchlight burned in her eye sockets. Her eyes closed. She saw nothing.

  Her eyes opened. She saw everything.

  She sees the skein.

  A young man, coloured in the muted garb of the… Angry, she feels anger bleeding from him, dissatisfacti
on. These are the flavours on the skein. He stands before a portal. He stands before the future. He walks through and leaves the craftworld behind.

  A book. It is full of the ancient legends, the darkest times. War in Heaven. War between two races that never should have… Illic is reading it. He is reading and he is thinking. He comes to a decision.

  A swirling wrongness in the skies. The planet is blank. No, not blank. There are ruins. Illic’s footsteps leave no prints. He is searching. He finds…

  Another world. The sky is normal. It is orange. The air feels ancient. It feels… familiar. There is a rifle in Illic’s hand. A soul lives inside. It whispers…

  Darkness. Utter black. Soul destroying. Soul dark. The walls are not black. They are worse. They hunger. A lone eldar wanders between them. His eyes are glacial blue. His cloak swirls behind him. His eyes are wide. He sees what has not been seen for aeons. Ambition burns in his breast. He is…

  He is arguing. A troupe of Harlequins, masks blank, eyes merry. Behind this eldar, behind the Harlequin wait a group of other Outcasts, hidden. Mon-keigh war in the background. Illic argues with the Harlequins. They bar his passage. Illic will not allow them to do so. His resolve is a terrible thing. A living thing. The Harlequins dance. The Outcasts open…

  Souldark. They shamble, cloaked in the flesh of the freshdead. Their eyes are hungry. Illic does not see them. He stands lost in thought. They approach. She wants to yell. She wants to scream. The souldark reach for Illic Nightspear…

  A world fallen. The world burns in green flame. There are bodies, blue with blood everywhere. Death. Death. Death. Illic stands with one of the mon-keigh. The human’s armour is white and yellow and red. The beast is cloaked in fur. His face is brutal, tattooed and scarred in the manner of his upstart race. He is fierce of aspect. Illic is fiercer. Souldark approach them. They are trapped. They cannot escape. They…

  A souldark stares. It is cyclopean, vile. It stares at her. There is no sign of Illic. It stares…

  Carnac. The depths. They wait. Eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworld, clan-blooded Exodites. They are waiting. They wait for the souldark. She hears something. Something on the wind. It…whispers. There is a green glow. Illic sights through his rifle. The voice inside whispers. Illic’s finger tightens on the trigger. The souldark vanish. Green flickers above eldar heads…