Leontus: Lord Solar, page 4
Leontus rode at the front of the makeshift column alongside the Attilan sergeant. The position served a dual purpose: firstly, he was ideally situated to see the ground ahead and to deliver orders to the riders. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly given the ordeal that they had suffered on the landing fields, he was visible to almost all of them. They could put their trust in him to lead them to safety – or at least what might pass for safety on a barren agri world infested by orks.
The sergeant, who had introduced himself as Belgutei, hadn’t argued with Leontus’ orders to send a rider ahead to scout the trail. That suggested the man had a sound tactical mind, though it could also indicate that Belgutei feared to challenge a superior officer’s orders in spite of his own instincts. In either case, Leontus knew he would need to get the measure of the Rough Rider if he was going to be able to make use of him.
More concerning was the greyish pallor that had begun to take hold over the Attilan’s rough and weather-beaten features, and the glazed look that he fought ever harder against the further they rode into the craggy foothills. The man was clearly suffering the effects of blood loss or shock, or perhaps both. Until they found a safe place to make camp, he would have to ride on, but Leontus knew enough of Attilan stoicism to trust him to stay in the saddle.
Of the other Attilans, there wasn’t much to say. Each was a hard-faced killer, toughened by a life spent in the saddle riding down the enemies of the God-Emperor. They all nursed minor wounds, and more than one of their mounts looked to be in need of attention, but they hadn’t questioned Leontus when he’d been given their fallen comrade’s horse. That showed at least a modicum of restraint, if not respect.
The Catachan medicae, Arnetz, rode at the very end of the column, ahead of their rearguard. She wasn’t a natural rider, an issue compounded by the near-dead weight of the Krieg sergeant who shared her saddle; he was drifting in and out of consciousness now, and was evidently the source of the bloodstain that half-covered Belgutei’s scout before he had galloped ahead.
‘You see something, my lord?’ Belgutei asked, turning to face where Leontus was looking.
‘No, just taking in our forces,’ Leontus said, ignoring the slight look of surprise on Belgutei’s face at his use of the word our. ‘I did not expect to see non-Attilans amongst you. That you chose to rescue a medicae was a perceptive move.’
‘I… I did not plan it,’ Belgutei said, turning away from Arnetz with a shake of his head. ‘They showed great bravery in killing an ork, one of the largest on the field. It would not have felt right to leave them there, my lord.’
‘That is reason enough. They will be useful,’ Leontus said, and pulled on the reins of his borrowed mount to turn her aside. Her name was Nashi, and she was far less responsive to his commands than his own horse, but that was hardly surprising given that he’d had decades to bond with Konstantin and only a matter of hours in Nashi’s bloodstained saddle.
The path they had taken into the craggy foothills of the mountain was winding and circuitous, designed to help mask their tracks and lose any pursuers in the tight rocky crevices that weaved through the landscape like rainwater on glassaic. They had lost sight of the massacre at the landing site not long after Leontus had joined the Attilans, but the after-images still lingered at the forefront of his thoughts the same way a tongue always finds a loose tooth.
There were questions that would need to be answered, but they would have to wait.
Leontus raised a hand to their rearguard, a young Attilan who trailed a few hundred yards behind the main column, and relaxed a little when they raised their hand in return. Still no sign of pursuit, which meant the orks’ focus hadn’t strayed far from the landing fields. That boded well for Leontus and his little warband, but not for the sorry souls who had been caught up in the massacre.
Once back at the front of the column, Leontus found Belgutei examining the walls of the next crevice. He trailed a bare hand across the grey-and-white pitted stone, then sniffed at his fingers before reaching down to tear free a clump of mottled green moss from a fissure in the rock.
‘What have you found?’ Leontus asked.
‘The ground is spongy here, the rocks smoother at ground level. And look here, moisture clings to the wall,’ Belgutei said, holding out his hand to show the water glistening on his fingertips. ‘We are nearing a water source. It would be good to rest there awhile, cool the horses and see to their wounds… And our own.’
Leontus nodded as Belgutei’s hand drifted down to his bloodstained thigh, and the Attilan let out a soft breath as he pressed the cold moss against the wound.
They followed the path of the crevice floor around a twisting turn, then rose up a short shale incline to find Belgutei’s scout waiting for them at the top. His horse was dripping wet, and his features were split by a wide grin.
‘Belgutei, my lord,’ he said in heavily accented Low Gothic as he nodded to each of them in turn. ‘It seems our luck is turning.’
Leontus looked out over a vast lake, its waters rippling in the cool wind that drifted down from the mountain. The peak’s looming, sentinel-like presence was far closer now, its ragged edges having grown sharper as they lost the haze of distance. Its summit was lost behind dark clouds that promised rain where they were split by the snow-blanketed shoulders of the mountain and the glacier that Leontus supposed must be somewhere beyond.
He rode alongside Belgutei to the water’s edge, but neither gave the order for the other riders to come forward.
‘Did you check the water, Nomak?’ Belgutei asked his scout, resting his hands on the pommel of his saddle as he looked out over the lake.
‘Taku walked straight in. I trust his nose,’ Nomak said, slapping his horse’s neck affectionately.
Belgutei said something in guttural Attilan that robbed Nomak of his self-satisfied smile.
‘Arnetz, do you have a water kit?’ Leontus shouted. The Catachan passed her horse’s reins to another rider, then slid from the saddle and made for the lake’s edge, pulling a small plastek phial from her bag. She returned a few moments later, the phial filled with a faint pink liquid.
‘Microbial contamination, my lord,’ she explained, holding up the plastek tube to the light. ‘It’s not safe to drink, for us or the horses.’
Though they showed no outward sign, he knew that this news would be another unwelcome blow to the Attilans, more so for the effect it would have on their mounts than themselves.
‘Xenos taint perhaps?’ he asked.
‘Unlikely, the markers would be different,’ Arnetz replied. Belgutei held out a hand and she passed him the phial to examine. He tossed it to Nomak a moment later, glaring at the younger rider as he turned his horse reluctantly from the shore.
‘Standing water, then,’ Leontus mused aloud, raising himself in his saddle to take in the lake’s surroundings. ‘But where there is water, there is a source…’
The lake stood on a natural plateau, overlooking the western, southern, and eastern approaches to the mountain, and its waters must have created the maze of crevices in the surrounding topography over thousands of years of flooding and refilling. To the north, where the plateau met the base of the mountain, he could just make out a point where the surface roiled and foamed beneath a dark void, and he thanked the God-Emperor under his breath.
‘All of you, follow me,’ he ordered, then set Nashi off at a reluctant trot to the north. She was more stubborn now the water was within sight, but he pulled her away sharply each time she made to head for the lake. The others had similar issues, but were able to master their mounts with a lifetime’s experience; Arnetz was less successful, and more than once she had to wrench at the reins to keep her horse from drinking.
Fortuna Minor’s sun was nearing the western horizon before they reached the lake’s northern edge, and the point where meltwater from the mountain ran into it via a wide channel. The river’s source was further to the north, and Belgutei sent Nomak ahead once more to scout the ground in the hopes that it would be less tainted further from the lake.
‘What are you hoping to find, my lord?’ Belgutei asked.
‘Somewhere that we can rest out of sight of the orks. Something defensible,’ Leontus said, pointing up the river to where Nomak lingered on the threshold of a slot canyon cut through the sheer rock of the mountain, the water sloughing around his horse’s hooves as he led the way into the half-lit interior.
The river had pierced through layers of dark volcanic rock through thousands of years of erosion, its walls slick with moisture and thick with plant life. The canyon’s roof was a tangle of looming stone and dangling roots, resembling the stooping claustrophobia of a forest canopy cast in dead stone. They followed the twists and turns the water’s path had carved all the way to its source: a void-black cavern, a bleeding wound in the foundations of the mountain. The cavern’s mouth was almost as wide as the canyon, large enough for mounted riders to enter three abreast without their helms touching the ceiling.
‘Nomak, Rugen, take a look. The rest of you be ready,’ Belgutei said gruffly, looking pointedly at Arnetz as she tried to keep Sergeant Raust upright in the saddle. The two Attilans nudged their horses forward and disappeared into the gloom, leaving the others in a tense silence that was broken only by the babbling hiss of the river.
Less than a minute later Nomak reappeared, lumen in hand as he waved for the rest to follow him.
‘It’s clear, Belgutei, as far as we can see.’
Leontus followed behind Belgutei as he trotted forward into the darkness and the cathedral-like space beyond. Nomak lifted his lumen-stick and held it above his head, illuminating the high ceiling and the tool marks gouged into the stone by ancient miners who had long since abandoned their work. His light barely grazed the very tips of stalactites that hung down from the distant ceiling, high enough that a Warhound Titan could walk beneath its eaves without risking its paintwork.
The waters had worn a path through less than a third of the space, creating two large pools that fed the river beyond with a constant flow from deeper in the chamber, where a higher mezzanine-like level created a twenty-foot-high waterfall.
‘This will do,’ Leontus said to himself. He dismounted and walked to the rear of the massive chamber, past the largest of the two pools of water, to where a short slope of stacked stone led up to the higher level. There were no signs of life there – no orks or predators that had made the cavern their home. Just slick rock and shadows, untouched by light for only the God-Emperor knew how long.
It would serve his purposes perfectly, at least for now.
He turned back to the centre of the cavern and looked over his meagre forces: four Attilans, a Catachan, and a badly wounded Krieg. They were all tired, bruised, and afraid as they looked up at him – a far cry from the thousands of troops he should have had at his command, each a nameless face on the parade ground but for the workings of circumstance.
But they were alive and at his side, which made them invaluable.
‘You have all worked your own miracles today,’ Leontus said, his voice echoing over the burbling hiss of the river as he strode back down to the cavern floor. ‘You survived a massacre that should have seen each of you dead a hundred times over, and fought your way clear. You had the strength and the faith to follow the path that the God-Emperor set before you, just as He set mine before me. Tomorrow, we will see where His vision takes us, in His name and for His glory. But tonight we make camp here, bind our wounds, and give the horses some time to rest.’
Belgutei glanced over to his riders, who hadn’t moved to dismount despite Arnetz and Raust both stepping down from their saddle with difficulty. The Attilans all looked from the Lord Solar to their sergeant, clearly thinking the same thing.
‘My lord, I must ask you to reconsider,’ Belgutei said carefully, wincing as he shifted his weight in his saddle. ‘If the water’s good, we should let the horses drink and move on – we are still too close to the orks to make camp.’
‘There is good, dense terrain between us and the orks, and it’s unlikely that we’ll find a position as defensible as this one before nightfall. Besides, the horses are tired and several of you have wounds that need attention – including you,’ Leontus said. ‘So we make camp here tonight.’
The Rough Rider would make a poor politician, that much was clear. He wore his thoughts on his face far too openly, and Leontus could almost read the man’s reluctance even as he nodded and barked an order to his men in Attilan.
They dismounted at his order, and began to make camp as Leontus stepped forward to help Belgutei down from his saddle, then supported him as he led him over to the closest pool. Leontus glanced towards the cave entrance, where Arnetz was crouching by the river’s edge with another plastek phial in her hand. She was close enough to hear their exchange over the rushing of the water, and looked unrepentant as Leontus beckoned her over.
‘Is the water cleaner here?’ he asked.
‘Perfectly drinkable, if a little high in some mineral content, my lord.’
‘Good. See what you can do to triage these wounds, Arnetz. Start with Sergeant Belgutei here.’
‘But my lord, Sergeant Raust–’
‘If Sergeant Raust hasn’t bled to death already, then he will keep a little while longer,’ Leontus said, more coldly than he had intended. He looked over to where the Krieg sergeant sat in a dark corner of the cavern, his eye-lenses staring out blankly towards where the Attilans tended their horses. ‘I will assist you with Sergeant Raust later, but I need Belgutei back in the saddle as soon as possible.’
‘He is not what I expected,’ Belgutei said as Arnetz cut away the bloody fabric of his trouser and peeled the sodden cloth away from the torn flesh beneath. It drew a hiss from the Attilan, but he remained mercifully still.
‘What did you expect?’ she asked. She pulled a portable lumen from her bag and gave it to Belgutei. ‘Here, point this at your leg. Contrary to popular belief, we Catachans can’t actually see in the dark.’
‘I don’t know. A soft-world politician maybe, or a tender-handed Administratum clerk. He is more like a commissar.’
‘I’ve heard he spent time in the scholams in his youth,’ Arnetz said, looking over to where the Lord Solar was organising the Attilans to search the rear of the cavern for other exits, and setting a watch on the cave mouth whilst he and the remaining Rough Rider saw to the horses. ‘A good job he isn’t a commissar, though, else I think he’d have shot you for questioning an order.’
‘Give him time.’
With the caked blood wiped away and the light in place, she examined the wounds on Belgutei’s leg. Each was a couple of inches deep, the edges torn as if by a serrated edge.
‘You were bitten? I’m only seeing a top set of puncture wounds – was your horse caught too?’
‘I don’t think so, but Nomi ran away not long after that, so I can’t be sure,’ Belgutei said.
‘Nomi?’
‘My horse. The grey is Gori, she belonged to my captain.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Arnetz said, noting the Attilan’s use of the past tense. ‘Perhaps you’ll find Nomi again before this is over. Dare I ask what happened to the ork?’
‘I took away its lower jaw, but the bastard tried to bite my leg off anyway,’ Belgutei said.
Arnetz wasn’t surprised. She’d gutted, stabbed, and shot more orks in the last day than over the years she’d spent on campaign across the sector, and not one had gone down easily. They seemed to resist death by sheer force of savage will. At least on Catachan the local predators had the sense to know when they were dead.
Thoughts of home gave way to her last sight of Sergeant Artova, his skull crushed to bloody paste. Blasko cut nearly in half by a brutal ork choppa, and Strukker’s final moments as the flames consumed him. Fellow Catachans she had known and served alongside for years, all dead because…
‘Arnetz?’
‘Sorry, just… thinking for a moment,’ she said, turning away from where Leontus was soothing a fussing horse. ‘I’ll have to use some counterseptic on the bites to prevent infection, but you’ll have to keep them clean.’
Again the Attilan grunted in response, and Arnetz suspected that now their hurried flight was over, he was beginning to process the day’s events. She’d seen it before, even amongst the most hardened warriors after a fight they were lucky to survive. The vacant stares and monosyllabic responses were the most common and least destructive of the symptoms, but it was a slippery slope.
Belgutei let out a hissed curse as she shook the counterseptic onto the bites, the white-grey powder turning a deep red as it absorbed the pooling blood and brought his mind back to the moment.
‘Dwell on the past later, Belgutei. Your men still need you if they are to survive.’
‘Survive?’ Belgutei said with a derisive snort. ‘I led them from a quick death to a slow one.’
With quick, percussive snaps Arnetz pulled each puncture closed with staples, then bandaged the wound tightly. Hopelessness wasn’t an emotion that she could empathise with – her upbringing had seen to that. On Catachan, she had learned that there was always something that you could do if you kept your wits. There had been times where she had felt a bone-deep melancholy, just as any other person might, but her body had its own will to survive, and the long-learned muscle memory took over in those moments. Her people were survivors above all else, and she would do all she could to keep going and to keep those around her alive.
‘You gave them life, Belgutei. Now you need to make sure they do something worthwhile with it,’ she said as she tied off the end of the bandage and packed away her kit. She wanted to be away from the Attilan, from the aura of despair that surrounded him alongside the stink of horse sweat and counterseptic. She needed fresh, open air – to be surrounded by something other than stinking horses and cold, moss-covered stone. It was a need she had felt since she had left Catachan, when she had first experienced days of confinement in sterile corridors of plasteel and adamantine rather than the oppressive and deadly abundance of life on her home world.
