Empire of Lies by Phil Kelly

Author:Phil Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2020-01-07T10:49:50+00:00

VIOR’LOS

The howling, shrieking storm of soot particles that Warchief Grog Ironteef had been studiously ignoring for the last two days had suddenly got very close, very quickly. It surrounded him, in fact.

‘Boss,’ said Big Gobba, looking back at Iron Gutz. ‘Storm’s pretty close now, innit.’

‘So we push through it!’ shouted Grog, baring his tusks. He turned from examining a decapitated ork corpse in a primitive uniform, and gave Big Gobba a death stare until he looked away. ‘We’ll give any gun-runt that tries his luck a good lot of dakka, just like usual.’

‘Push through it!’ shouted Dok Toofjaw from the jar strapped to Grog’s shoulder plate. ‘Push through it! Dakka dakka dakka!’

‘You tell ’em, dok,’ said Grog. ‘We got plenty o’ fight left.’

In truth, he didn’t feel quite so much bravado as he was giving off. Some instinct in his guts said he was in real danger. The sootstorm was bringing back nasty memories, and lots of them. Memories of Orka-Gnasha, where the storms were made of rust instead of sand, and left bloodless corpses wherever they passed.

Here, on the Red Runt’s volcano planet, the storm that had been battering their outriders had left behind plenty of ork bodies. They were burned badly – there was flame somewhere, inside all that soot – but their flesh was still red inside, like a grox steak. At least they still had blood left in them, thought Grog.

Shame about their heads.

At the end of each day, Grog’s Blood Axe allies had gleefully recounted every ghoulish detail of the corpses they had found during their mechanised patrols. Yesterday they too had failed to return, just after Badrukk’s lot had left the planet with three ship’s worth of loot. Grog had just now begun to find out what happened to his Blood Axe allies. Burned clean off, the Blood Axes had said, when talking about the decapitated bodies. It was a phrase that Grog had turned over in his mind for weeks, now. Burned clean off. Now the Blood Axes had proof, but likely not in the way they would have preferred.

‘You fink the Red Runt’s hunting our mob, chief?’ said Big Gobba. ‘Ain’t heard nuffin’ from the lads for a while now.’

‘Most likely,’ said Grog. ‘Save us a job in finding him.’ He looked back at the pack of battlewagons growling along the dust-strewn road that led back to the ruins of the Imperial city. They and Iron Gutz were still his pride and joy, and he kept a close eye on them.

To be fair, there was nothing else left to keep an eye on.

‘He’s cheated,’ growled Grog, shaking his head as he trudged on. ‘He knows he can’t do it in a proper fight. So he fought like a proper git. He’s cheated.’

‘You wot, chief?’ said Big Gobba.

‘He! Has! Cheated!’ shouted Grog into the raging storm.

Something red glimmered in the soot clouds, just for a moment.

‘Zog this,’ said Grog. He ran over to Iron Gutz, hammering his power hook on its massive snowplough gut.

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