Legion by Dan Abnett Read Free Book Online Page A

threw himself sideways.
    The falx swung by the echvehnurth concealed behind the inner tent flap missed the hetman by a matter of centimetres. The blade chokked through the groundsheet into the dirt beneath. Soneka rolled and came up on his feet. The Nurthene yanked his long blade free and charged him.
    ‘Alarm! Alarm!’ Soneka began to shout. ‘Enemy in the camp!’
    He dived headlong over the desk to avoid the lunging blade, and fell into Koslov. Koslov toppled backwards off his seat, his camp table collapsing under Soneka’s weight. Blood ebbed slackly out of Koslov’s nose and mouth. He continued to stare, in mild surprise, at the roof of the tent.
    Soneka rolled off the still-warm corpse, and fumbled frantically to release Koslov’s service pistol from its holster.
    The Nurthene whirled his falx so high it ripped a slit in the tent roof. He swung it down. Soneka threw himself to one side. The descending blade cut clean through Koslov’s left shoulder.
    ‘Alarm!’ Soneka yelled again, diving away. Outside, he heard shouting, and the sudden, sporadic bark of las weapons.
    Soneka threw a saddle bag at the advancing Nurthene, and the whispering falx struck it aside. He scrambled backwards, hurling a writing case. The falx splintered it, and a shower of pens, nibs and blotting patches spilled out. Soneka ducked again, and the falx tore a wide gash in the tent wall.
    Geno training took over. As he landed, Soneka groped for a weapon, any weapon, and found a writing quill that had fallen out of the writing case. Soneka seized it, tested its weight automatically, and threw it like a dart, underhand.
    It embedded itself, nib first, in the echvehnurth’s left cheek. The Nurthene yelped and lurched backwards. Soneka leapt up and grabbed the haft of the falx. He kneed the Nurthene in the groin. Now the bastard really staggered. He howled. His grip on the falx weakened.
    Soneka tore the weapon out of the echvehnurth’s hands and swung it. The echvehnurth’s head rolled clean off his shoulders in a puff of blood. The body folded up, and the head bounced off the ground sheet beside it.
    Gripping the falx, Soneka strode across the habitent to the master alarm control. He smacked it, and sirens began to wail all across the Visages post.
    He walked back to Koslov’s body, staked the falx blade down in the ground, and pulled out the service pistol, a heavy las model.
    Two Nurthene raiders burst in through the habitent mouth and Soneka shot them both in the face. They walloped over on their backs, their silver plates dotted with droplets of blood.
    Pandemonium had erupted outside the command tent. The waking Imperial troops, roused by his shots and the blaring sirens, were scrambling to fight off the Nurthene intruders. The dawn air whizzed with gunfire and the sumkk of impacting blades. Soneka heard awful wails of pain.
    With the pistol in his good hand, he went outside into the baking air. A Nurthene ran at him, falx raised. Soneka blew the man’s throat out with a single shot and dropped him on the sand. All around him, las carbines rattled on auto. The shouts and yells were deafening. He ran towards the cold store.
    Bodies littered the ground outside the mud brick building: Imperial soldiers, mostly half-dressed, sliced into pieces. He went inside, and shot down the two Nurthene he found there. One fell forwards against the stacked, frozen bodies in their shrouds, and wrenched off his breastplate as he slid down. The breastplate landed in front of Soneka, rattling to a stop. He saw the engraved reed emblems and the snapping crocodilia.
    ‘Get. Out,’ a voice gasped. ‘Run.’
    He turned. Medicae Ida stood behind him. She clutched at the falx that stapled her through the chest to the cold store wall. Her gown was soaked in blood. Her own, for the first time.
    ‘Medicae!’ Soneka yelled.
    ‘Too late for me,’ she wheezed, and died.
    A Nurthene raider burst in behind them, and Soneka spun around, firing a shot that