Read Deathwing for Free Online

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    The bluecoats swarmed over him now. Their truncheons were as ineffective as twigs against a bear. A few tried to grab his arms and immobilise him. He shrugged them off easily, swinging killing blows with weapon and elbow. Where he struck, men died.
    As the battlelust swept over him, he felt the bound spirits slip away. He knew that he stood revealed in his true form. The last of the bluecoats turned to run. Two Heads Talking hooked an arm around his neck and twisted. There was a crunch of shattering vertebrae.
    The old man gazed on him with religious intensity. ‘The spirits spoke truthfully,’ he said, as if he did not quite believe it. He reached out and touched him, making sure he was real.
    ‘You have come at last to free the people from their bondage to the false Emperor and lead them back to the plains. What is your name, sky warrior?’
    ‘In my youth, it was Two Heads Talking, apprentice to Spirit Hawk. When I entered the service of the true Emperor, I took the name Lucian,’ He could see tears running down the old man’s scarred cheeks.
    ‘Tell me, old man, what has happened to our folk? How did they come to fall so low?’
    ‘It began when I was a buck,’ said Morning Star, wiping his face. ‘One summer night, the sky burned, and there was a great roaring. A trail of fire raced across the sky, and there was an explosion. Where we are now was a vast crater, and in the centre, where the temple of the four-armed Emperor stands, was a great, red-hot pile of metal. Some people thought the sky warriors had returned, that the roaring was the voice of their thunderbird. The shamans knew that this could not be so, for Deathwing returns only once every hundred years, in autumn, and it had been only fifty years since the red star was last visible. We were pleased because we thought that we might ride Deathwing. Most of us had reckoned on being old men when the sky warriors came again. Our visitors were not the armoured warriors of legend. They were feeble, pale-skinned men who claimed that they had come from the Emperor to show us the way to build an earthly paradise. They preached the virtues of tolerance and brotherly love and an end to warfare. The chiefs sent them packing, which was a mistake, for when honeyed words did not succeed, they tried force of arms. They allied with the hill clans and gave them metal blades which our weapons could not withstand. Eventually, clans were forced to trade for the new weapons in order to withstand their enemies. Tales were told of how witching spirits with four arms and terrible claws destroyed our warriors. Soon, the pretenders ruled the plains, taking slaves and destroying utterly those who opposed them. Then came the building of this great city, using slave labour and paying the freemen in trade tokens.’
    Suddenly, the old man’s eyes went wide with horror. He was looking past Two Heads Talking and into the night. The librarian turned, and from the mist, shapes emerged.
    One was the fat man who earlier had been riding in the palanquin. Flanking him were two huge four-armed figures. Their carapaces glistened like oil. They raised large claws which glittered in the moonlight.
    ‘We would have told you all this if only you had asked,’ said the fat man, gazing at Two Heads Talking with his dark, magnetic eyes.
    The librarian flexed his fingers, and his force axe hummed a song of death in his hand.
    ‘I T WAS IN the time of Commander Aradiel, a hundred summers gone,’ said Bloody Moon. ‘We were aboard the battle barge Angelus Morte on sector edge patrol when the alarms went off. Sensor probes indicated that a space hulk had dropped from warp space near us. Deep scanning revealed nothing. We were ordered to investigate. We crouched within the boarding torpedoes and were fired at the hulk. It was unpowered and dark when we disembarked, so helmet lights on, we moved to secure the perimeter. We met no resistance, but as per standard operational procedures, we proceeded