by Guy Haley
The tanks drove on, mowing down daemons beneath their tracks. The enemy were much reduced in number, and seemed to have lost coordination. Their great blocks had broken up into directionless knots that stumbled about. Still they were dangerous. One then another of Odrameyer’s tanks was stopped, and rotted to pieces by the daemons’ fell touch.
‘Onward!’ he cried. ‘For the Emperor! For Cadia! For the Imperium!’
The wall of the medicae facility was ahead. Odrameyer gripped the edges of the turret as they drove right at it.
Plaguebearers erupted from everywhere at once. Justinian and his last Space Marines joined with the remnants of the task force and fell into a circle around the priest, blasting at anything that moved. Justinian’s armour was no longer breaking down. His bolt pistol fired smoothly. There was a light at his back, coming from the priest, blazing from the eyes of the skull he took everywhere with him, and shining around his head.
‘Stay by the priest,’ Justinian commanded. ‘He shields us from harm.’
‘The Emperor shields you,’ said Mathieu, his voice distant. He clutched his servo-skull. ‘Take me to the cauldron. The Emperor commands it.’
‘Do as he says,’ said Justinian. He believed it, for he had no other choice.
The cauldron was only a few yards away, but plaguebearers pushed at them from every side, pouring in through the broken walls and sagging doors in something approaching panic.
‘I am out of bolts.’ Maxentius-Drontio threw down his gun, drew his pistol and his combat knife. He blew out the bulging eye of a daemon, and it collapsed like a sack full of offal.
Soft hands reached for them. Black swords swung at them slowly, easily parried, but too many to stop all of them. They pushed in against the ring of Space Marines. One of their battle-brothers fell.
Mathieu was muttering prayers.
‘Oh Emperor! I give myself to you to use as your instrument, to break this most wicked vessel of pestilence, and to release Iax from its suffering. Oh Emperor, deliver me to where I may best serve you!’
The press of daemons thickened, though they recoiled from Mathieu, and whatever psychic power the priest was manifesting weakened them, and protected the Space Marines from their fiendish maladies.
But plaguebearers were not the sole threat the Space Marines faced.
The jostling of the plaguebearers lessened, and they parted. The cauldron was close, not quite within touching distance.
Justinian thought they would not reach it.
The Great Unclean One who had slain Edermo lumbered towards them. Though it was gravely wounded, it was still deadly.
It brought up its sword. It was panting. Black blood leaked from its mouth; nevertheless it scowled.
‘I would ask that you step back, mortals, from the cauldron of Grandfather. There’s good fellows.’
The Space Marines answered with gunfire. Bolts smacked into the body of the daemon. Its scowl deepened.
‘Unwise choice,’ it said, and vomited a torrent of slime, maggots, bile and half-digested bones at them.
‘Oh Emperor, oh Emperor, watch us now,’ Mathieu murmured.
The daemonspew hit an invisible force surrounding the Novamarines, and vanished into wafts of cold vapour free of taint.
‘Fine,’ said Ku’Gath irritably. ‘Let’s just do this the physical way then.’ It hefted its sword.
‘Split!’ shouted Justinian, and he grabbed the priest and hauled him forward, smashing down a muttering lesser daemon with his pauldron. The daemon’s blade hummed through the air, and hit Vasilon, crushing rather than cutting him, and leaving him dead.
‘One down, seven to go. How apposite,’ said the daemon.
Justinian turned, forcing the priest behind him, firing until his bolt pistol clicked dry. To his dismay, the wounds Edermo had inflicted on Ku’Gath were closing up.
‘You next, little spawn of the Corpse-God,’ the daemon said, and pointed a warty finger at Justinian. ‘You’re far too feisty.’
‘Get back!’ Justinian said, shoving the priest towards the cauldron.
The sword came up. Justinian reloaded and continued to fire.
His preparations for death were rudely interrupted.
The outer wall of the cauldron chamber burst in. A Leman Russ battle tank bearing the personal heraldry of Colonel Odrameyer roared through the wall and straight at the Great Unclean One. Before Ku’Gath could react, the rusting cannon barrel speared the monster right through the chest, and the tank reared at the impact, shoved the daemon off its balance and carried it backwards, the treads ripping swathes of foul, rotting flesh free before they bit into the paving slabs. Ku’Gath was pinned to the wall, its fat head wobbling and gaping in a manner that would have been comical in any other circumstance.
Black filth poured over Odrameyer’s tank. It was simultaneously falling to pieces and mutating under the touch of Ku’Gath’s blood. Patches of it throbbed as plasteel transmuted to sore flesh. Puckered orifices opened below the turret and belched moans of stinking gas. The power of the warp was on it. A heavy bolter fell and hit the floor mount with a soft thump, turned soft and began to crawl away. The engine coughed black smoke and died. Streaks of rust and fleshy growths spidered over it, running up onto the colonel himself.
Justinian and his men were firing. Plaguebearers were dying. Odrameyer pulled free his hand, ripping flesh that was melding to the metal. His skin was running like wax, but he crawled doggedly on, leaving crimson streaks of blood behind.
He got to his feet, somehow, and stared into Ku’Gath’s remaining eye.
‘My, my, my, what do we have here?’ said Ku’Gath, and ichor sheeted down its chins.
‘A loyal servant of the Emperor,’ said Odrameyer. With the last of his strength, he thrust his power sword into Ku’Gath’s empty eye socket. A final burst of power from the failing generator cooked Ku’Gath’s brains.
‘Praise be,’ Odrameyer whispered, then he died.
With a sorry sigh, Ku’Gath’s soul fled back to the garden and his Grandfather’s disapproval.
The plaguebearers wept to see their lord banished, but fought the harder. Maxentius-Drontio was beset, Achilleos nearly dragged down.
On hands and knees, Mathieu reached the cauldron. Even he, guided as he was by his faith in the Emperor, could not resist its power so close, and his skin blistered under its evil magic, yet he dared reach out to one of the great artefacts of the Plague God.
‘For you, my Emperor, I perform my final service,’ he said.
His words cut through the tumult of war. Justinian turned to see him touch the iron skin of the cauldron.
Mathieu screamed in ecstasy.
Light engulfed him. His servo-skull shattered. From everywhere came soul-rending shrieks. The plaguebearers evaporated in the face of the light. The Space Marines were flung away from the cauldron as if caught in the overpressure wave of a macrocannon shell.
Justinian hit the wall hard.
He fell down, and saw Mathieu and the cauldron disappear behind a wall of shocking luminance. For a moment he thought he saw a golden giant bringing down a flaming sword onto the cauldron, his eyes full of sorrow, yet his face determined.
There was a tolling of a great bell. A sense of release tore out from the epicentre of the psychic maelstrom. The sensation was close to deadly, but pure, and carried away before it every manner of corruption, and thereafter all touch of the warp ceased.
Overcome, Justinian’s mind fled for the safety of unconsciousness.
Upon the command deck of the Macragge’s Honour, a young officer leapt up from his station, voice excited.
‘My lords, psy-augurum indicates dropping levels of warp interference with the realspace frame of Iax. The storm is disrupted.’
Colquan leaned forward a little.
‘Invoke main tacticaria displays, now,’ said Khestr
in.
Above the central hololithic pit, an image of Iax’s polluted globe formed. It seemed uncertain at first, almost coy, as if hiding. Then it shivered, and undecided continents took on solid form. Lightning burst away from a central point. Howling faces dissolved, becoming nothing more threatening than clouds. The churning of the atmosphere quietened.
From the vox-centre and the strategic command nexus, from Khestrin’s command dais and the gunnery control, from every quarter rang out a cacophony of voices, chimes and target locks. A rash of data spread across the globe. Around First Landing, in Ephoris, Arteria and other places, Imperial signum transponder signals gathered thickly.
‘The artefact is destroyed,’ said the chief magos of the psy-augury. ‘Repeat, the artefact is destroyed. Massive reduction of warp overlap registered, and decreasing.’
‘Did we hit it?’
‘Negative impact, my lord,’ gunnery command reported. ‘It must have been the Space Marines. I have transponder signums coming through now.’
‘Whatever did it, it is gone, praise be to the Golden Throne,’ the psy-augurum officer added.
A massive cheer went up across the deck. Khestrin smiled openly at Colquan.
The tribune nodded slightly.
‘Increase evacuation of all Imperial forces. The way is open,’ said Khestrin. He stood straight, some of the tension slipping from his shoulders. ‘Exterminatus command, stand down.’
‘What of the primarch?’ Colquan asked.
‘No news. His signum is erratic. Force dome holds,’ said a strategic officer.
‘We finally have teleport loci,’ said Khestrin.
‘Your hint is received and understood,’ said the tribune. He put his helm on and sealed it, and took his guardian spear from his attendant servitor. ‘I shall lead relief forces to hold back the Death Guard and speed retrieval of our men. Stand by for full planetary bombardment on my mark only. This battle is halfway won. Try to resist the temptation to blow up the primarch’s favourite world while I am gone.’
Colquan left for the teleportarium, leaving behind a frantic exchange of coordinates as Fleet Primus prepared to wipe Mortarion’s army from existence.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
FOR THE EMPEROR
He sensed the cauldron’s passing as a tolling, as of a bell’s ring felt but not heard.
The garden shook with an earthquake. The strange daemon creatures that dwelled there set up a cacophony of cries and moans. On the areas of Iax that it overlaid, reality trembled and reasserted itself, and the garden began to fade.
‘Impossible,’ Mortarion whispered.
The corpse of his brother twitched. The Armour of Fate was a corroded shell, but somehow its power pack restarted, and lights blinked on systems all over it.
Guilliman’s blackened face turned up to look at him. Mortarion felt something huge and dangerous moving through the warp. Something he had not felt for a long time.
Guilliman’s back arched. The armour was humming now, giving off a psychic signature as arcane mechanisms within it powered on throughout.
The earth shook again. A second toll of the unseen bell sent the denizens of the garden into panic. Trees cracked as they dragged up roots and attempted to lumber away. A million kinds of daemon-fly buzzed up from the corpse-grounds and flew off in gathering swarms. Nurglings shrieked and waddled as fast as their little legs would carry them.
Mortarion stood hurriedly, raised Silence and made to bring it down, to destroy Guilliman finally, take his soul as a sacrifice to the great god Nurgle even if he could not take his worlds.
But he could not move.
Guilliman’s eyes were glowing with pure, white power. The last slimes of his decayed flesh burned away, and a network of feathery capillaries spread in their place, bearing new blood unsullied by the Godblight. The metal of the Armour of Fate shimmered, impossibly remaking itself. Bright decorations appeared as tarnish cracked and fell away. Wires grew and reconnected as surely as Guilliman’s skin was growing back.
The neverground of the garden shook hard. Daemons large and small were screaming, emerging from their hiding places and fleeing in riotous stampede. Away in the distance, ever visible wherever you went in the garden, Nurgle’s Black Manse shivered, and Mortarion felt another presence, as powerful as the first, looking at him from behind its ever-shuttered windows.
The ground cracked and broke. Glaring whiteness blazed from the crevasses. Guilliman’s corpse rose up, and hung in the air, supported by a pillar of radiance, and slowly turned so he was upright. He reached out, and the Emperor’s Sword appeared in his hand, and burned with the fires of a thousand suns.
‘He speaks to me, brother,’ said Roboute Guilliman. ‘Does He not speak to you?’
The unbearable radiance enfolded Guilliman, so glaring Mortarion threw up his hands.
‘Father?’ Mortarion said, and his voice quailed like a little boy discovered in the course of some small but unforgivable crime.
‘I am His right hand, brother,’ said Guilliman. ‘I am His general, His champion. I am the Avenging Son. By His might am I preserved.’
The landscape flickered between the blasted battlefield of Iax and the Garden of Nurgle. The ground of the garden was rolling.
‘This is impossible! You should be dead!’
There was the creak of a door, faint but portentous, coming from the manse. The doors never opened to Nurgle’s house.
Mortarion turned very, very slowly, and looked to the great house. A single, tiny shutter on an insignificant gable was open, a square of deeper blackness in the black wood.
‘Forgive me, Grandfather,’ he quailed.
Guilliman looked past him, and something looked through him, seeing all worlds at once. Eyes as bright as the centres of galaxies stared at the black, forbidding house.
‘You are a traitor,’ Guilliman said, in a voice that was not quite his own. ‘You have brought low all that could have been, but you are as much a victim as a monster, Mortarion. Perhaps one day you might be saved. Until then, you must go back to the master you chose.’
‘No!’ Mortarion cried, but it was too late. Some force reached for him, and yanked hard. He flew back, over and over through the garden, towards the black house of the Plague God. He felt a moment of perfect terror before he flew in through the open portal, and it slammed shut behind him, trapping him with an altogether more awful god.
Nurgle was displeased.
Guilliman looked over the Garden of Nurgle. He was between two worlds. The warp was a shifting thing, never constant. The garden was a collection of ideas. It had no true form, and through it he could see a million other worlds that underpinned it, the dreams of souls living and dead, and past that, as if glimpsed through banks of glittering sea mist that evaporated before the morning sun, the battlefield of Iax.
‘Hear me!’ Guilliman’s voice boomed through eternities. The sword blazed higher, until the fire of it threatened to burn out time. ‘I am Roboute Guilliman, last loyal son of the Emperor of Terra. It is not your destiny to end today, God of Plague, but know that I am coming for you, and I will find you, and you will burn.’
He gripped the Sword of the Emperor two-handed and raised it high. Rising waves of fire ripped into the garden. From the great manse a cry of rage sounded, as a wall of flame hotter than a million suns devoured everything in its path, finally breaking and receding within yards of the black walls of Nurgle’s house. Its infinite halls shook. Mossy tiles fell from the roof. Sodden timbers steamed.
‘This is a warning. The warp and the materium were once in balance. For too long, you have tipped the scales. Understand that it is not only the warp that is capable of pushing back. This realm is not real. Only will is real. And none may outmatch my will. Be assured, Lord of Plagues, and convey this message to your brothers, that I do not speak for myself.
‘I speak for the Emperor of Mankind.’
Then he was falling, falling, falling forever until his knee hit the ground, and he woke into reality once more.
Guilliman opened his eyes. He was kneeling on the ground of Iax. The Sword of the Emperor was buried point down in the cracked earth. Its fires had turned everything around him to glass. Burnt-out suits of armour lay around him. Only he was untouched.
Mortarion was nowhere to be seen.
He stood. Whatever presence had inhabited him was gone. The air was clean. There was no sign of taint nearby, and he knew that the Emperor’s Sword had burned the Godblight away. Natasé’s psychic shield still limned the duelling ground, but through it he could see clearing skies, and clouds heat-shocked by lance fire. A ferocious orbital bombardment was laying waste to Mortarion’s army, which retreated, leaderless and outmatched, under the cover of poisoned fogs.
The air crackled. All around him, golden giants appeared. Further out, other spikes of energy announced the arrival of more Custodians into the rear of the Death Guard’s lines. There would be a great slaughter of the traitors before the day was done.
Maldovar Colquan stepped forward.
‘It is done then?’
‘It is done. Mortarion is gone. His network is broken,’ Roboute Guilliman said. ‘The Plague Wars are over.’
And he sheathed the Sword of the Emperor.
Teleportation was an instantaneous means of travel, but there was an infinite gap between moments where one could feel the warp. Sometimes it lasted an eternity, but it was always forgotten.
Pontus Varsillian the Many-Gloried experienced this moment again, as he had many times before. Only this time it was different.
It was written in the books of his order that in the ancient days, the Emperor touched the mind of every one of His Custodian Guard. That He saw through their eyes, and that they shared of His thoughts. For ten millennia, they had been bereft of this communion – alone, without awareness of their loneliness.
For that brief, eternal moment when Varsillian hung between materium and immaterium, that gap was filled. He could have sworn something looked through him, that he had been alone all his life without realising, and now he was not.