Nightbleed, Peter Fehervari [short story to read .TXT] 📗

threats, and caught the bitter glances directed his way; he had never believed they would be acted upon. Not at first. The labour-pit was a congested battery farm of human bodies, lurching in metronomic tandem. So numerous were the workers that maintaining vigilance over the entire labour cadre at all times was impossible, and yet no one man would raise hands against another for fear of reprisal. Not in the labour-pits, at least.

There were antechambers that bled off from the main pit, however, and these were less frequented. Several refectoria allowed for the taking of meals and an ablutions block served doubly as a decontamination chamber.

They had come for him here, jagged metal shivs glinting in the grimy washroom light. Three men, none of whom Cristo knew by name, though he recognised their faces well enough. The encounter had been short, brutal. He had killed them all, naked and caked in the rough, powdery scrub that served as a cleansing agent. Cristo was not a small man. He had bulk and muscle that his attackers’ strength in numbers failed to balance. It had happened quickly and almost silently. Cristo had been left with half a dozen lacerations, bleeding red into the grainy grey run-off gurgling down the drainage vent. Of his three attackers, one suffered a broken neck, another took a shiv through his jaw and up into his skull, and the third had his eyes gouged out so deeply it was possible to glimpse the inside of the back of his head through the grossly distended sockets.

Cristo had dressed quickly, sluiced the ablution cubicle down and dragged the dead men one by one to the furnace. Dull-eyed and indifferent servitors were the only witnesses to the deed.

He had never spoken of what had happened, for to do so would invite the strictest censure. The men would not be missed. Their loss, if it was noticed at all, attributed to the high attrition rate within the labour-pit. Punishment for murder would result in lobotomisation, and Cristo had no desire to join the pallid ranks of the half-alive automata that saw him immolate three corpses. To kill in the Emperor’s name was one thing, to kill those indentured to His holy service was very much another.

Cristo considered this as he waited beneath the overhang, a knife strapped to his belt and a handful of spent bullet casings clenched in his fist, and knew he would have to kill again. He stood in the shadow of Wrecker’s Curve. The old bridge between the ferro hives and the commercial district called Fallowhope had seen better days. It arched like a broken man’s spine, dilapidated and only fit for demolition. Two-thirds of the way across, it ran to a sheared cliff edge that plunged into a deep gully where the detritus of its collapse still lay in heavy ferrocrete chunks and twists of metal rebar.

Moving out from under the lee of the bridge, Cristo descended into the gully towards a ring of distant torchlight. As he drew closer, he made out a dozen drum fires arranged in a loose circle, a crowd of jeering, catcalling figures in rough leather and scavenged factorum overalls leaning in around the cordon of flame light.

The crowd were animated to the point of fervour, amped up on narco and cheap still-alcohol. Most were armed. Cristo saw cudgels, freight-rail spikes, blades. No guns though. Gaps appeared as the crowd shifted to bay or shove or hustle. Each offered a fleeting glimpse of what lay beyond them, of what was in the circle. Two urban gladiators, hands wrapped in bandages for grip, armoured in warpaint and leather. One carried a length of broken chain, her hair a fiery red and sticking up in spikes. The other hunched behind a drum lid, using it as an improvised shield, one side of her head shaved, the other left to grow long so a violet swash of hair covered half her face. Both were cut, the one with the chain hungrier for the kill. As she raised her arm to lash out at her opponent, Cristo got a decent look at her.

That’s when he started to run.

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Warhammer horror

A Black Library Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2020.

This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-421-2

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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