Anarch - Dan Abnett

by Warhammer 40K

  It was Yerolemew. The Saint went forwards to support him.

  ‘Sit,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘We… we have to keep going. Keep the doors shut…’ the old bandmaster murmured.

  There were others. Trooper Luhan crawled out of cover, put down his rifle and started to cry. Sobs and murmurs spread through the darkness behind him. Shapes stirred. Gaunt saw the terrified faces of women and a few children, all members of the retinue.

  ‘How many did you save, Mach?’ he asked.

  Bonin shook his head, his eyes lifeless.

  ‘Twenty… maybe thirty…’ he said. ‘Any we could.’

  Gaunt squeezed his shoulder.

  He rose and faced the cowering survivors.

  ‘The Saint’s here,’ he said. ‘The darkness is going to end. We’ve come to get you out.’

  ‘There are no stairs…’ Yerolemew mumbled.

  ‘There are now,’ the Beati assured him. ‘Stairs, a door, and light above. You have endured great horror, but you have remained strong. The Emperor has protected you.’

  ‘Not enough,’ said Bonin. ‘Not nearly enough. We tried, but…’

  ‘I need these people led up out of here,’ said Gaunt. ‘Fast. Now. Sancto?’

  The Scion frowned. ‘I will serve your word without question, my Lord Executor,’ he said, ‘except in this one way. My primary oath is to protect you. I will not leave your side.’

  Gaunt looked him in the eye. Sancto did not flinch. Gaunt didn’t like him, but he had to admire the man’s steel discipline and devotion.

  ‘Can they all walk?’ he asked. ‘Can you all walk?’

  He was answered by moans and weak affirmative noises.

  ‘All right,’ said Gaunt. ‘Perday, Beltayn? Lead them out and up the stairs. Have them link hands. Take them all, one of you at the front, one at the rear. Yes, like children, Bel. Get them out and get them to the nearest medicae hall.’

  ‘Level three,’ said Hark.

  ‘Now, while the walls stay where they are,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘Mach? Sergeant major? Luhan?’ Gaunt looked at the three shell-shocked Ghosts. ‘Bel’s in charge. Just follow him. No arguments. Follow him, and do as he tells you. You’re walking wounded. You’re also brave as feth.’

  Bonin nodded dumbly.

  Beltayn took his hand and began to lead the line of shuffling, blank-eyed survivors out.

  Daur looked at Bonin as he passed.

  ‘Elodie?’ he asked.

  ‘She… she was on the stairs,’ said Bonin in an empty voice. ‘I didn’t see her after that.’

  The long line of survivors snaked out. Sancto’s team covered them until they had cleared the hallway.

  ‘It didn’t get them all,’ said Laksheema. ‘It’s still hungry, then.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said the Beati.

  They waited until the survivors had walked clear, then exited the chamber where Bonin and the others had concealed and protected them, following the hall deeper into the undercroft. Blood stains flecked the whitewash in places, bloody hand prints smeared across the stonework.

  The hall narrowed and dropped down by way of six stone steps. Flood water lapped at the steps, knee deep. The saint didn’t hesitate. They waded after her through the chill water and through an arch into another large billet. This one was vaulted, with stone pillars supporting the bowed ceiling. Pieces of bedding and splinters of wood floated on the gently rocking surface of the flood. An empty mess tin. A child’s toy.

  ‘It’s close by,’ said Laksheema.

  The scratching and buzzing had grown louder. Curth looked down at the water around her legs, and saw that the surface was trembling as if subject to microvibration interference patterns.

  They fanned out, weapons ready, leaving little frothing wakes behind them. Curth stayed with Daur.

  Sancto suddenly swept his weapon around, aiming.

  Yoncy was standing ahead of them, several metres away. She stared at them with big, frightened eyes. The water came up to her thighs and she was soaked, her clothes clinging to her. She hugged herself for warmth, her flesh pink with cold.

  ‘Papa Gaunt?’ she said.

  Gaunt pushed Sancto’s aim up.

  He stepped towards Yoncy.

  ‘Yoncy? Are you all right? Are you alone here?’

  Yoncy nodded, her teeth chattering.

  ‘I got lost,’ she said. ‘The bad shadow was here.’

  Curth splashed over to join Gaunt. They approached Yoncy together.

  ‘How is she still alive?’ Laksheema called out.

  ‘Same way as Bonin and the others,’ snapped Hark.

  ‘Alone?’ asked Laksheema.

  Gaunt waded towards Yoncy, who held out her hands to be picked up.

  Curth caught his arm.

  ‘She was giggling. We heard her,’ she said.

  ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘The offspring of the Great Master,’ said Curth. ‘What Laksheema said. A daughter. Born on Verghast.’

  Gaunt looked at her, and then back at the child stretching out its arms to him.

  ‘This is Major Kolea’s child?’ asked Laksheema suddenly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hark.

  ‘It is possible the signal may be interpreted in a number of ways,’ said Laksheema. She strode forwards, the water rippling around her long gown. ‘Lord Executor–’

  ‘Yoncy,’ said Gaunt. ‘Listen to me, Yonce. Why were you laughing? What made you laugh?’

  ‘Because it’s time, silly,’ she said. ‘Papa says it’s time. I didn’t want it to be, but he says it is. The bad shadow won’t wait any longer.’

  A low whine began, like a bone saw cycling up to full power. Violent ripples radiated out across the water from Yoncy Kolea, and out through the air around her as subspace membranes cracked and buckled.

  Curth screamed. Gaunt just put himself in front of her.

  Yoncy was no longer Yoncy. A stifling darkness whirled out of her as though a dead star had blinked anti-light. She fractured and rearranged in a neat but complex fractal fashion, folding like some intricate, hinged puzzle. Her smile was the last thing to disappear.

  What took her place was still her. It was also the most abominable thing any of them would ever see.

  Fourteen: Truth and Other Lies

  ‘This is grim, there’s no way to pretend it isn’t,’ said Kolea as they waded along.

  ‘Your little girl, she’ll be all right,’ said Blenner beside him. ‘I’m sure of it, major.’

  He didn’t sound convinced. In the half-light, Kolea could see Blenner’s stressed body-language, as if he was trying to flee into himself because there was nowhere else left to go.

  ‘I appreciate you trying to sound encouraging, Vaynom,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that’s what commissars are for,’ said Blenner, his laugh empty.

  ‘That and other things.’

  Blenner sighed. His breathing had sped up. ‘Comes with the territory,’ he said.

  ‘Must be hard though, that first time?’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Blenner.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kolea. ‘We should keep our chins up.’

  Blenner nodded. ‘I’m… I’m finding that hard these days, major,’ he replied.

  ‘Sometimes you just need someone to talk to,’ said Kolea. ‘A friend. You know? Otherwise, those things can build up inside. Lock a man’s mind down. Make him do stupid things.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘I’ve known men fall apart,’ said Kolea. ‘Turn to drink. Or abuse pharms. Just to keep the daemons inside.’

  ‘Pharms?’

  ‘There’s always a way back, Vaynom. You just have to open up and talk.’

  ‘I wish–’ Blenner began.

  ‘Wh
at?’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t just said “daemons”,’ he said.

  Kolea smiled. ‘Vaynom?

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Earlier on… you remember? When I first came down into the billet. You were going to tell me something.’

  ‘Was I?’ asked Blenner. ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘I do,’ said Kolea. ‘If I ever saw a man who was going to lift a burden off his shoulders, it was you then. What was it?’

  Blenner didn’t reply for a moment. Then a little crushed squeak came out of him.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. Kolea could barely hear him. ‘The guilt. It’s the guilt, you see? Just on me, on me all the time.’

  ‘Talk to me, Vaynom.’ Kolea had dropped his voice to a low hiss. They had slowed down, and the rest of Baskevyl’s squad was pulling ahead slightly.

  Blenner looked at Kolea. His eyes were puffy and red. A little tic was making his left cheek twitch.

  ‘Low Keen,’ he said. ‘It was stupid. So stupid. I… I was just trying to hold it together. They had their claws on me. I mean, I was properly screwed. They had dirt on me that would have… it would have been the end.’

  ‘Who?’

  Blenner gulped, and wiped his eyes.

  ‘None of it matters now,’ he said. ‘It all seemed so important then, but now? Here? Feth! It’s so ridiculous! The horror here, our lives… death coming for us, and no way out.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Kolea.

  ‘What?’ Blenner uttered an empty laugh. ‘A death bed confession?’

  ‘Think of it as absolution,’ said Kolea. ‘If this is going to be the end of us down here, then how do you want it to go? Don’t you want to pass from this duty into the next life with a clear conscience?’

  ‘Only in death, eh?’

  ‘That’s where they say it ends. Duty, that is. I don’t know about guilt.’

  Blenner hesitated.

  ‘I can’t remember whose idea it was,’ he said softly. ‘Gendler, maybe? Wilder jumped at it, and they pulled me in because they knew, they knew, they could blackmail me into assisting. It was just money, major. Just money. Gaunt’s boy had so much, I mean, so much. Access to House Chass accounts. We didn’t know, not then. We didn’t know that the boy was… not a boy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Gendler was supposed to jump him in the showers. Put the scares on him, and force him to transfer a little funding our way. That’s all it was supposed to be. But Gendler, that feth Didi Gendler, he was heavy-handed. Knocked the boy down. That’s when we came in. That’s when we realised that the son was actually a fething daughter. Then Gendler fething improvised. Decided she couldn’t talk if she was dead.’

  He looked up at Kolea.

  ‘Ezra found them. I think he was watching Merity, shadowing her. He went in and he killed Gendler. Wounded Wilder. Then we came in and pretended to help him, though we’d been in on it all along. He killed Ezra. Said we could say that Wilder had done it. And that I’d found them and executed Wilder on the spot. No loose ends, you see? You see how that worked? He made me kill him, Gol. He made me shoot Wilder. Wilder was begging me not to, and I just–’

  ‘Vaynom? Vaynom, listen. Who made you? Who was the other man in your group?’

  ‘Meryn,’ said Blenner.

  Kolea clenched his jaw tight.

  ‘That little shit,’ he whispered. ‘It was him? He killed Ezra?’

  Blenner nodded. Kolea wanted to punch him in the face and then keep punching. But he held his rage back.

  ‘You’ve done the right thing, Vaynom,’ he managed to say. ‘The brave thing. You feel better now, right?’

  Blenner nodded again.

  ‘Good. All right. Let’s deal with this, and if we survive it, we can deal with Meryn. You’ve done the right thing.’

  ‘I just couldn’t do it any more,’ said Blenner.

  ‘Vaynom, I need you to give me your weapon now. Your sidearm. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blenner, and handed his pistol to Kolea.

  ‘Good. I–’

  ‘Gol!’ Baskevyl’s voice echoed back down the hallway. ‘Problem?’

  ‘No!’ Kolea called back.

  ‘Close it up! We don’t want to lose the pair of you!’

  ‘All right!’ called Kolea.

  He took hold of Blenner’s arm and began to move him along the hall. There’d be time for anger later. He couldn’t let it weaken him now. He couldn’t let it break his concentration. There was too much at stake.

  They had just caught up with the others when the bone saw started shrieking. It sounded very close, as though it was just on the other side of the thick and unending stone wall.

  ‘Oh Throne!’ Baskevyl cried. He raised his weapon.

  ‘Move!’ he said. ‘Move! With me, now!’

  Luna Fazekiel started to tremble uncontrollably when she heard the bone saw howling again. It was very close, and persistent this time. The long, drawn-out shrieks of destructive wrath echoed down the hallways.

  She shoved her pistol into her belt to stop herself dropping it, and then clenched one hand around the other in an effort to control the trembling.

  Meryn looked up in fear, twitching with every echoing shriek.

  ‘Feth,’ he whispered. ‘We’re so fething done. Just done. You know what? Feth him. Damn him. Screw him to hell! Fething God-Emperor, he does this to us?’

  ‘Captain,’ Merity said, trying to hold her own terror back.

  ‘What?’ he snapped, rounding on her. ‘It’s true! It’s true, you stupid little high-hive bitch! We serve him, serve him all our days, following his fething light, because he’s the way and the truth and all that bullshit! And for what? This? This shit? If we are his children, and he’s our god, then he’s a fething monster!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Fazekiel said, her voice not much more than a stammer.

  Meryn sneered at her. For a notably handsome man, his face had twisted in an ugly way. ‘What? That blasphemy, is it? Not the sort of thing a Guardsman should say in earshot of his Prefectus stooge? I don’t care. Feth you. You know it’s true as well. It’s a joke. It’s a farce. We give our lives every day, year-on-year, just to serve his great and inscrutable scheme. I have marched every bloody step from Tanith to this. There’s never been any hope. There’s never been anything but the most fleeting respite. And I’ve seen horrors. Horrors no one should see. And this is the reward. Trapped in a pit with some daemon fiend. Feth Terra. Feth the God-Emperor–’

  ‘I said that’s enough, captain,’ said Fazekiel.

  Meryn looked away. ‘What’s he going to do?’ he murmured. ‘Damn me? Curse me? There’s no curse worse than this.’

  He closed his eyes and clasped his hands to his forehead.

  ‘There’s never a way out,’ he whispered. ‘Never.’

  Fazekiel swallowed hard and took a step towards him gingerly. She reached out one trembling hand in a futile gesture of consolation.

  Something black and thrashing landed on the ground between them, shrieking. They both leapt back.

  Meryn lowered his warknife.

  ‘It’s the fething mascot,’ he said. He started to laugh. Somehow, Merity felt his empty, cold laughter was worse than the echoing daemon-shriek.

  She looked down at the wounded eagle. It was shuddering, its plumage a mess. Its remaining head jerked from side to side, regarding them with wild incomprehension.

  ‘There it is! You see? There–’

  The old ayatani and Shoggy Domor appeared from a hallway beside them. They came to a halt and stared.

  ‘Throne,’ said Domor, ‘I never thought we’d see another living soul again.’

  ‘Shoggy,’ Meryn said in disbelief.

  ‘Are the three of you all right?’ Zweil asked.

  ‘Yes, fath
er,’ said Merity. ‘Glad of company.’

  Zweil looked at Fazekiel, then went over to her and hugged her tightly, pressing her head against his shoulder.

  ‘There, there,’ he said as she wept into the folds of his robe. ‘It’s all been a bit much. But we’re coming through it now. The Emperor protects. He really does.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Meryn. ‘You hear that, right? That’s the sound of death coming for us.’

  ‘Come on, Flyn,’ said Domor. ‘Father Zweil is–’

  ‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Meryn. ‘You know we’re all fethed.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone, young man,’ said Zweil, releasing Fazekiel from his embrace. He looked at Merity with a sad smile, and squeezed her hand.

  ‘Your father will be proud,’ he said. ‘You’ve kept your reserve. Must run in the blood, eh?’

  ‘I think my courage is about gone,’ Merity said.

  ‘Courage is transient,’ said Zweil. ‘Like flowers and pain and also soft cheeses. The things that matter are the things that last. Faith. Belief. And hope is surprisingly durable.’

  ‘I don’t believe in anything,’ muttered Meryn.

  ‘That would explain a lot about you,’ said Zweil. ‘I myself have belief to spare. I believe we’re getting out. I believe we’ll live.’

  ‘You mad old bastard,’ said Meryn.

  ‘Father Zweil may be mad–’ Domor began.

  ‘It’s been said,’ Zweil agreed with a chuckle. He had stooped down to comfort the eagle, cooing at it and stroking its feathers.

  ‘But I trust him,’ said Domor. ‘He’s got me this far.’

  ‘I’d hate to think what sort of shit you were in before, then,’ said Meryn.

  ‘Are you going to stay here, or are you going to follow us?’ Domor asked.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Meryn.

  The bird shook out its wings, squawked, and took off again.

  ‘That way,’ said Zweil, pointing to it as it flew off.

  ‘You’re following the fething bird?’ asked Meryn.

  ‘We’re going to the light,’ said Zweil. ‘Come on.’ He took Merity by the hand.

  Meryn just shook his head in despair.

  ‘He’s not wrong,’ said Domor. They all looked at him, even Zweil.