Dark Imperium: Plague War

by Guy Haley

‘Him,’ she said.

  ‘Who’s “he”?’ he asked.

  She stared at him silently.

  ‘Do you remember coming to the front?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I remember the blessed Sisters asking for me. They came into our basement and said they heard what I did with the well, and that I had to come with them and see you.’

  ‘Do you remember purifying the well?’

  ‘A little. I remember light. And something moving through me.’

  ‘After that?’ asked Devorus.

  ‘Just like normal.’

  ‘Until today. When you came to the front. You don’t remember anything?’

  She shook her head again. ‘Nothing, until I woke up here.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘How are things in the city? I have not had chance to go within the walls recently.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘What will happen to me?’ she asked. Only now did she look a little afraid.

  Devorus leaned over and patted her knee. It should have been a natural gesture, but it felt awkward, and he regretted doing it as soon as he had. He was out of practice, and had never had the paternal knack. His girls had their mother for that. He had seen them so rarely.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. The hollowness of his promise ashamed him. He couldn’t guarantee that. ‘You get some rest,’ he said.

  He looked at Iolanth. She nodded. They went outside the room. Devorus strode, grim-faced, down the dusty corridor. He stopped beneath a broken light panel.

  ‘What exactly are you going to do with her?’ he asked. ‘I understand this showing her to me is a courtesy.’

  Sister Superior Iolanth’s yellow eyes stared at him hard. She didn’t blink much.

  ‘It is. Although you are the interim governor of this city, in these matters of the sacred and the unholy the Adeptus Ministorum hold preeminence. I brought you here to tell you that, as commander of the chamber militant, I will oversee the girl’s assessment.’

  ‘What are you going to do with her?’ he repeated.

  Iolanth looked away, complex emotions seething beneath the surface of her beautiful, scarred face. ‘There are two possibilities. The first is that the girl is possessed by a holy power. Her actions in the city suggest so, when she cleansed the well and made the unwholesome pure again. She remembers that, but there were more. Strange lights, predictions of missile strikes, and the annihilation of a daemon imp that had come within our defences.’

  ‘When did that happen?’ said Devorus with concern. The girl’s actions at the well had been reported to him a few days since. He’d been too busy to chase it up. This other news was fresh, and alarmed him. There were strange creatures the Death Guard had brought with them, vicious insects and the tittering fat things like malevolent children that infested the land they took. If only one of them got onto the island…

  ‘Eight days ago,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said.

  ‘Do not be angry. I found this out myself yesterday, when I went to bring the girl out of the city. Her people kept it a secret until we came. I had no time to pass on this information. You will remember the attack, and her turning back the engines of the enemy from the defence line.’

  Was that a joke? thought Devorus. He doubted Iolanth capable of humour. ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘These phenomena are concordant with a holy influence.’

  They looked at each other for a long moment, the man in his dirty uniform, the woman in her pristine crimson armour.

  ‘The other option is that she is a witch,’ Devorus said. ‘That’s the only other one, isn’t it? A rogue psyker, or worse, a pawn of the enemy.’

  Iolanth nodded. ‘Regrettably so.’

  ‘If not, she’s what, a saint?’ He couldn’t believe that. Not on Parmenio.

  ‘I do not think so. I have seen with my own eyes the blessed Saint Celestine. I have read the chronicles of the lives of the holy saints who have arisen at times of peril in the name of our most divine lord, the God-Emperor of Terra. This is something else. At the worst, it could be our undoing. Many times there have been beings who claimed to be saints, but who were not. The enemies of the Emperor are devious. This could be one of their tricks. It pleases the false gods to conjure hope in despairing hearts and to use our faith against us. We must be wary.’

  Devorus narrowed his eyes. ‘You spoke of something wondrous.’

  ‘I did. If she is not a witch, and this is not a trick…’ She paused.

  ‘Then what?’

  She would not say. ‘Hope overthrows reason. Fact must be determined.’ Iolanth’s face hardened. ‘She must be put to the test. She must pass the Probos Mallefica.’

  ‘The witch testing? She’s just a child. Does she deserve this?’

  ‘Does anybody deserve any of this?’ retorted Iolanth. ‘Some of the worst monsters in history have been born of children. Innocence is no protection against evil. Be thankful I have told you. You cannot stop me. I do not require your blessing or your permission. That I inform you is another courtesy. You should be grateful.’

  ‘You could at least ask her,’ he said.

  ‘Who said I have not?’ said Iolanth.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘She agreed.’

  ‘She’s frightened,’ said Devorus. ‘She’d probably agree to anything.’

  ‘With good reason. Tell me, major. If you were in her position, would you rather not know if you were a source of corruption? Would you rather die cleanly or become the means of destruction of all you care for? If she is pure, if what I pray for is happening, she could save us all. If it is not, then the least we can do is save her soul. A little pain and the death of one’s mortal shell is a trifling price to pay to avoid eternal damnation.’

  Devorus felt uneasy. The ruthlessness of the Adeptus Ministorum’s excrutiators was well known.

  ‘It’s easy to say that when it’s not your pain,’ he said, surprising himself. He couldn’t quite grasp why the suffering of this one child was so important to him.

  Iolanth stared at him in contempt. ‘I shall inform you of what we discover. Do not interfere.’

  Devorus was very tired. He didn’t want to argue, but his morals had him rebel against lassitude. ‘Sister,’ he began. It was as far as he got.

  The bastion shook. Dust sifted from the ceiling.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  Iolanth was already moving faster than he could hope to match. He chased her down the corridor. She was out through the open fortification airlock before him. The door hissed shut behind her, and he hammered fruitlessly at its control panel while it went through its cycle. Another tremor shook the tower, and another.

  The airlock door opened, and he hurried in. ‘Come on, come on!’ he muttered as the machines burbled to themselves, checking and rechecking for contaminants. A fourth tremor, stronger than the last, rattled both him and the devices in the airlock. Their operating lights shivered from green to red and back again at the shock.

  ‘Purity maintained,’ said the machines. A chime. The outer door slid back into its housing. Devorus shoved his way around it before it was fully open.

  Iolanth stood on the battlements with a crowd of people. They had abandoned their tasks and were looking towards Hecaton.

  Devorus arrived in time to see the fifth and final lance strike stab down from orbit. Multiple beams at various angles, probably coming in from different vessels. They were well placed, and struck so close in time they may as well have been simultaneous. He flinched at the searing light. Clouds raced away where the beams crashed through the air, heavy as hammers, flattening Hecaton’s corrupted spires. An instant was all the measure of time they required to deliver Guilliman’s judgement. They snapped off before the noise of impact had time to reach Devorus’ ears. Rings of plas
mic discharge rolled out from the impact site, the luminous gasses expanding and dissipating into the yellow fog. Finally sound caught up with light, and the false thunder of impact drummed its way over the plains.

  Hecaton was an orange splash on the mountains. Brief flows of lava had replaced the rivers of filth.

  All along the wall and in the defence lines below, weary men ripped off their respirators and cheered.

  ‘And lo! The Emperor did judge His enemies unworthy of redemption, and smote them from the void and the ground and the warp,’ said Iolanth, quoting text Devorus was unfamiliar with. ‘Full wrathful did His anger wax, so that all who beheld Him trembled at His righteousness, and fell upon those who may be traitor, and the slaughter did grow by His will and His action.’ Several men nearby got to their knees, whispering prayers over hands spread wide in the sign of the aquila. Several of the most devout called to the holy warrior, asking for her blessing.

  ‘Back to your feet,’ said Devorus, blinking after-images away. ‘It’s not over yet. Back to your duties.’

  Iolanth looked at him triumphantly. ‘The primarch has spoken, and before he comes here, I will be ready to offer him the head of a witch, or the means of salvation.’

  She left the battlements, calling loudly into the vox pick-up mounted in her collar for her excrutiators.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The path of flesh

  Sludgy rain drizzled from green skies. The belches of war rumbled around the world, rolling from one side of the horizon. The servants of the Corpse-God were close at hand. Time was running out for the invaders.

  The Death Guard had their camp in a shallow valley in the mountains to the north of Hecaton. It was a miserable, dreary place. At its centre a rusting platform of three interlocked circles had been raised high over the ground. Upon it were gathered three hundred and forty mortal wretches under the dull white eyes of Mortarion. They were the Cult of Endless Proliferation, a seercult dedicated to the service of Nurgle. Every one of them was a psyker, and some were of no mean talent. Their blighted lives lived out for the glory of the Plague God, they were meek, and keen to please their immortal lord. Though they had power of their own it was nothing to that of Mortarion. Beside the might of the lord of the Death Guard, their gifts were feeble corpselights next to the sun.

  Mortarion sat upon a high-backed throne fashioned from stacked, greening bones. His armoured hands gripped armrests made of columns of inverted skulls. Around him were seven Deathshroud Terminators, their enormous, armoured bodies dwarfish near to the immensity of their daemonic lord. Their giant scythes were miniature compared to the great weapon Silence, hung on rusting brackets above Mortarion’s head. The power of Chaos had swelled Mortarion well beyond his original dimensions. Made twice the size of a mortal man by the Emperor, Nurgle had stretched him further, so that he was thirty feet tall, a stature befitting his exalted status in the Plague God’s court.

  Up a long rug made of rotting man skins stitched together, the High Thaumaturge of the seercult made his wheezing way to Mortarion’s feet. He was blessed with Nurgle’s abundance of flesh. A tall, pointed hood decorated with a dull brass fly pin covered all but his scabby mouth. A long kilt covered his lower portions, but his chest was bare, and his distended stomach swung ponderously over his belt.

  A skinny being, covered head to foot in dull green robes, accompanied the thaumaturge. He bore a dirty dry flag roughly daubed with Nurgle’s fly.

  The High Thaumaturge stopped before Mortarion’s throne and kneeled with obvious effort. His faceless minion stood behind him, the standard of the cult flapping in the moist plague wind.

  ‘We are ready, my lord,’ said the man. Among his own ranks he was feared. Hundreds plotted against each other in order to please him the most. He was arrogant, cruel, well versed in the dark arts, and blessed by his god. Kneeling at the feet of the daemon primarch, he shook like a beast before slaughter.

  Mortarion’s breathing mask hissed plumes of toxic vapour. The lord of death’s lungs rattled in a deep draught.

  ‘Then proceed,’ he said. Mortarion stared over the supplicant’s head at the storm on the horizon. Lance beams stabbed at the surface. Munitions plummeted like meteors. His hated brother was going to destroy Hecaton. Explosions thudded from positions around the city in persistent beat. There was not much time. ‘Bring forth Ku’gath and his Plague Guard before the fane and its clock is lost, or you shall suffer such torments that even the most sincere faith in the Plague God cannot blunt.’

  The man’s hood quivered, amplifying his fearful shaking.

  ‘My lord!’ he said. For a man so fat and ill, he positively sprang to his feet. He bowed and scraped back down the rug of flayed skins, turning only when he had reached a respectful distance.

  ‘In the name of Nurgle, all powerful god of life and death, let the ritual commence!’

  A brass gong boomed dully. A chant began. The sorcerers made a hollow circle around the point where the three platforms intersected, leaving but one break in their wall of scrofulous flesh so that Mortarion, sitting at the extreme edge of the northernmost circle, could look into the centre with his view uninterrupted.

  Seven of the three hundred and forty walked forward to the centre of this circle, their paces set to match the solemn time of the chant. They took up equidistant station, forming a smaller ring within the larger. At once, they reached up and cast down their hoods, then unpinned their cloaks and let them fall to the floor, leaving them naked in the rain.

  Seven of the most blessed of Nurgle’s followers had been chosen. Their range of deformities was impressive. Not one part of them was free of blemish or disease. This one had feet swollen to gargantuan size by elephantiasis, that one limbs withered and fingers missing to leprosy. Another’s face had collapsed in on itself, its skull eaten by bone disease, leaving a puckered, whistling hole to serve as mouth and nose. All had sores, pocks, buboes and patches of garish lividity. Their skin was uniformly discoloured and slack. Parasites, revealed by their disrobing, scuttled for armpits and groins to get out of the rain. Their ailments exceeded the worst morbidities a man should bear without death. Nurgle had worked his flesh change on most. A wide maw lined with black teeth gaped in a woman’s belly. A man cradled a thrashing tentacle that had replaced his right arm, and a third was surrounded by a swarm of flies that sang out the names of lost diseases at the edge of hearing and crawled in and out of delicate cavities in the man’s skin.

  ‘O great Nurgle!’ intoned the thaumaturge over the droning of his coven. ‘In generosity you have blessed these fortunates. We thank you for their afflictions, we give praise to your munificence, we grovel in worship at your kindnesses! We offer them back to you, to take into your garden, where you may admire your work and take satisfaction in your artfulness!’

  His warbling voice rose. ‘Take back your worthy sons and daughters into the heavens of your endless garths, take up their love and their worship to your rotting breast, so that they might forever live, and be reborn in all the multiplicities of decay’s form!’

  Lightning burst overhead, a thrashing, seven-pointed trident of virulent green electricity that flicked and cracked back and forth in the sky.

  The seven held up ritual athames in fists and coiled tentacles, presenting the metal to the sky.

  ‘Take us, O Grandfather, cherish us!’ they sang.

  The lightning burst again, earthing itself into their daggers. Shaking with the power dancing over their skin, the seven rammed the tips of their blades into their bellies, and with quick, agonised, upright jerks, eviscerated themselves.

  They cried in pain and ecstasy as their entrails tumbled out. Already their god had accepted the offering, and their offal greened as the coven chanted, bursting with the squirming life of maggots.

  To death’s embrace the seven rushed, falling into the slime of their own decaying innards as life bled out of them into the p
ound of the downpour.

  ‘Open the way!’ cried the thaumaturge. ‘By the three times three times three greater names of the Plague God, I command it to be so! Open the way!’

  The corpses jerked. Lightning slashed down into them again. Their ribcages burst open with sickening cracks, wrenching themselves free of the dead flesh, tearing whipping spines behind them. Aglow with pestilential foxfire, the bones rose up, circling each other, growing in size. Black matter poured from nowhere to coat them. Tendrils grew from rib cage to rib cage, epidemic-fast, in twisting bursts. The tendrils flailed, hissed and wailed with inhuman voices, before touching and pulling at each other, linking the bones into a lopsided, elliptical archway twenty-five metres high.

  ‘Nurgle! Nurgle! Nurgle!’ chanted the crowd in feverish rhapsody.

  A sickening light kindled at the centre of the gate, growing swiftly in brightness so that it glared dangerously into the eyes of all upon the platform. Reality rippled, warping glass caught in the heat of magic, bowing outwards in violent convexities that sang a tortured physics.

  ‘Nurgle! Nurgle! Nurgle!’

  Lance beams slashed the sky to the south. Hecaton’s end had come. Nurgle had his answer to that.

  Fire burst from the gap, rooting itself in the eye sockets of the seercult. Green energies shot from their mouths and their clothes, cooking off a ripe steam from their sodden gowns. A stuttering thunder that could have been a godly laugh rolled through the boiling sky. To a terrific boom, the gate burst wide, ripping open a sore on the skin of reality.

  The seercult fell dead in one instant, leaving the High Thaumaturge and his banner bearer the sole survivors of their number. Their bodies thumped down to the brown metal like sacks tumbling from the tailgate of a cart.

  Another world, more diseased and blighted than Parmenio, could be glimpsed through the sucking warp rift. Iax, the garden world, the planet Mortarion would remake and rename as Pestiliax, the heart and keystone of his plans to drag Ultramar entire into the warp.

  The view through was suddenly obscured by a mountain of loathsome flesh, borne upon a giant palanquin carried by a horde of tittering plague mites.