Salvation (Necromunda) by C S Goto

Author:C S Goto [Goto, C S]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

6: MAVANT

Consciousness returned slowly and reluctantly to Zefer, as he pulled the covers up around him, languishing in their warmth and security. For a while he simply lay there, his eyes firmly closed, not wanting to know what he would see when he opened them. In the darkness he could imagine that the bedding was that of the Quake Tavern, and that the commotion he could hear in the background was merely a lively night down in the bar.

Drifting on the edge of sleep, he found himself wondering whether he had left his stylus out on his desk on level seventy-three of the librarium. Despite his current situation, he was anxious about it, and he rolled fitfully because of the failure of his memory. Then, almost involuntarily, his eyes flicked open as he realised how ridiculous his concern was. A guttural convulsion gripped him and he coughed, trying to suppress it and feeling his diaphragm wrench painfully. He realised that he was trying to laugh, and that horrified him. Another convulsion pulsed through his abdomen, and he snorted painfully, feeling a thread of blood trickle out of his nose.

Trying not to draw any attention to himself, he was laughing and coughing up blood. His eyes were wide now, as his mind raced to find reasons – any reason at all – for his mirth. In a dark corner of his brain, he realised that it was probably hysteria, but an internal voice mocked him about the banality of his concerns about the stylus. It was as though his mind was being split in two by the events around him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to remember the librarium. He forced images of book stacks, candles and misty daylight into his fractured mind. He dragged the memory of the luxurious carpet in the Quake’s bedchambers before his eyes and saw the beautiful figure of the lady in the strategically ill-fitting red shirt in the bar. But, as he concentrated, screwing up his eyes with the effort, Prince Jurod roared through the scenes on the immense engine that Zefer had seen on the fresco in Gwentria’s palace. The spiked ram pierced the beautiful woman through her stomach, dyeing her red shirt a deeper shade of blood. The giant tyres ripped up the deep pile carpet and crushed the spindly desks of the libarium, knocking the candles flying into blazing fires in the bookstacks. Finally, Jurod dismounted and strode towards Zefer’s desk. He picked up the errant stylus and, turning to face directly into Zefer’s mind, he snapped it in two.

‘No!’ screamed Zefer, wrenching himself out of sleep and sitting bolt upright. The sudden movement made him wince with pain as his broken ribs ground and splintered. Tears cascaded freely down his face, but he wasn’t sure why: it could have been the pain; it could have been the sense of loss and of being lost; but a dark part of Zefer stirred in the depths of his psyche, and it could have been fear of that.

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