by Graeme Lyon
‘He’s been dead for months.’
Alia hurried to follow the Space Marine through the twisting corridors of the towering fortress, struggling to keep up as she told her story.
‘It was my dad that got sick first,’ she said. ‘He fell over in the fields. We brought him in and put him to bed. He had a fever and got pale. And then my mam got it too. And the farmhands, and then… Felip.’
‘Felip,’ repeated the Chaplain. ‘Your brother?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get sick. I don’t know why. I looked after them all, but they just got worse and then they died, one by one. And I was alone. And then…’
‘And then they got up,’ said Sentina grimly.
She nodded, then realised that he was focused on the route to the shrine and couldn’t see the motion. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was so happy for a moment, until Dad went for me. He was trying to bite me.’
‘You fought him off?’
‘Yes. I’m strong, you see, from working the fields, and he’d been sick and was weaker. I pushed him away and ran out. Got to the barn where he kept his rifle. And…’
She didn’t want to tell him the rest.
‘You did the right thing,’ said the Chaplain, stopping and looking down at her. ‘You were in danger and you ended it. Like burning the bodies of the dead serfs here.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t kill him. Felip. I had one bullet left after… after the rest. But I couldn’t. I got out and ran. Just ran.’ She paused for a moment and then confessed the last. ‘I still have the bullet. Just… Just in case.’
‘You survived. You continue to survive. That is the first and greatest thing that the Emperor demands of us, Alia. Our lives. Our service.’
They continued moving, and Alia fell silent as she struggled to keep up. They came to the shrine chamber, with the great spiral on the floor and the aquila on the wall.
‘You see?’ she said. ‘I followed him in here, and he touched the eagle in those three places and vanished. See the blood?’
‘I see only a stone eagle,’ said Sentina. ‘Nothing more. No blood. No handprints.’ He turned to leave. ‘This was a fool’s errand.’
‘Was it?’ came a voice from the doorway. The priest, Andronicus.
‘There is nothing here, priest. Alia is overtired and hallucinating.’
‘I’m not,’ she protested. ‘I saw him. I saw my brother.’
The priest shuffled over and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I believe you, child. The Emperor works in mysterious ways.’ He guided her over to the eagle. ‘Show us where the handprints are, Alia. Show us where your brother touched.’
Alia slowly reached out to the bloody smear on the left wing. Wincing slightly and closing her eyes, she touched it. It was cold and dry, just stone. When she opened her eyes again, the blood was gone, though the other two remained. She heard a noise, like stones scraping together.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
Sentina looked around, then down. ‘It came from below,’ he said. He looked at her, and at the priest. ‘Touch the next handprint,’ he said. She did so, and it vanished before her eyes, receding to nothing. Again, she heard the noise, sounding louder and closer. Taking a deep breath, she reached out and put her palm against the third tiny handprint.
‘Goodbye, Felip. I’m sorry,’ she said. The blood disappeared, and she heard a loud rumbling behind her. Turning, she saw the pattern on the floor falling away, each intricately carved section becoming one step in a gigantic spiral staircase. She stepped over and looked down. The steps stretched away into darkness. Astonished, she looked up at the Space Marine.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘I do not know,’ replied the Chaplain. ‘It’s not on the schematics for the fortress and not mentioned in any of the logs or reports.’
‘The Emperor works in mysterious ways,’ piped up the priest. ‘I think you’re about to find out what happened to your Doom Eagles friends, Chaplain Sentina.’
The Space Marine was silent for a time, though Alia thought she heard a clicking and low speech from within his helmet.
‘My brothers are coming,’ he said at last. ‘You two return to the serfs’ quarters. Get some rest. I’m going to find out what secrets Fort Garm is hiding.’
The priest took Alia by the elbow and guided her carefully around the great staircase. As they left the room, she looked back and saw Chaplain Sentina beginning to descend into the darkness.
SEVEN
Akal Netesh ground his heavy boot down on the chest of the silver-armoured Space Marine.
‘Your brothers are dead,’ he gurgled gleefully. ‘Your duty is over. You have failed. You have a choice. Join me and help me to bring this world to ruin… Or die.’
He looked down, and saw himself reflected in the lenses of the Doom Eagle’s helmet. He saw armour that was pitted and cracked. Where once, a long time ago, it had been the colour of polished bone, bearing the proud heraldry of the Death Guard Legion, it now looked like rotten flesh. It was bloated and swollen where the body within had expanded and the majestic powers of Chaos had warped the battleplate to fit the glory of his new form. Vile liquids oozed from the various cracks, and a great hole torn in the side – the result of a bolter shell from this pathetic Space Marine’s now-dead comrade – revealed flesh the colour of marble and bloody sores that dripped pus.
Truly, he was blessed by Nurgle.
He saw the great manreaper scythe that he gripped in one fist, its long ceramite haft adorned with arcane sigils and its blade enhanced with a power field generator. Once, long ago, he had carried another weapon, a relic of the office he had once held within the Death Guard Legion, but no more. The other symbol of that long-forgotten role though, that he still had, and it stared back up at him from his reflection – a helmet in the shape of a skull.
It wasn’t the one he had been granted ten millennia ago, after the Council of Nikaea and the Chaplain edict. That had begun to decay and corrode like his armour after that dreadful period when the Lord of Plagues had stalked the Death Guard through their becalmed ships. No, that mask he had abandoned, unable to stand seeing it so corrupted. On Terra, he had hunted through the corridors of the Imperial Palace until he had found another Chaplain, of the VII Legion. He had killed him, and taken his mask. Pristine. Perfect.
It hadn’t lasted long. It had been months, maybe, before the perfection of the helmet’s form had been marred in the same way as the first. Blood. Thin trickles of blood running from the lenses down the face of the skull. He couldn’t stand it. When he took the helmet off and hung it from the armour racks in his chamber, as the ships of the Legion fled the wrath of the Emperor’s forces, as they fled to the Eye, he couldn’t look at it. Yet when he closed his eyes, it was there, haunting him. He had to get another.
In the Eye, as the Legions fought one another, none willing to take the blame for the loss, for the Warmaster’s fall, he had abandoned his brothers and hunted other fallen Chaplains across the impossible, insane vistas of the worlds they now called home. He became a dark legend, the Skull Hunter. And every time he took one, eventually, it would weep blood. Sometimes it took mere days, sometimes years. Sometimes he couldn’t tell, because time was different in the Eye.
Eventually, he heeded Mortarion’s call and returned to the bosom of the Legion, what remained of it. They became bold, venturing back into the decaying Imperium. To Netesh’s delight, where once there had been just twenty Legions – eighteen by the end – there were now an infinite array of Space Marine Chapters, all with Chaplains. For millennia, he had sought them out wherever the Death Guard waged war and killed them, taking from each their skull masks.
The last had been on Kulos, some whelp of Rogal Dorn’s bloodline, from a Chapter who called themselves Invaders. Netesh had taken great delight in stalking their Chaplain through the ruined streets of the city, picking off his comrades one by one until he alone rem
ained. Then he had taken him, broken his limbs and tortured him. He liked to break them before he took their helmets. He liked them to see the power of Chaos. This one hadn’t broken, but he had died bloodily and messily, little resembling the warrior he had once been.
His helmet adorned Netesh’s head now. And gazing down into the lenses of the Doom Eagle, he saw the thin trickles of blood running down the bone cheeks.
He needed another.
‘You will not bring this world anything other than your death, traitor.’ The voice boomed through the chamber, echoing off the strange alien instruments that lined the walls. Netesh looked up and almost cried out with joy.
The Ruinous Powers had brought him a Chaplain.
The descent had been long, the spiralling stairs opening onto a cramped corridor that wound its way down deep beneath Orath’s surface. Sentina knew that whatever he faced down here, he would face alone. His brothers in their Centurion warsuits would not fit down the passageway, and once they left the cocoons of the suits, they would be unable to get back in them without the attentions of Techmarines and Chapter-serfs. With the growing threat, their firepower would be sorely needed.
Eventually, the corridor opened out into a wide chamber. The first thing Sentina saw was a rough barricade made from pieces of power armour and ammo crates, crudely welded together. Next were the corpses. Three bodies, clad in the silver armour of the Doom Eagles, were arrayed behind the barricade. Sentina swore quietly to himself.
Finally, his attention was drawn to the light. It was emanating from the other side of the barricade. He pulled himself over the makeshift fortification and stared into the half-orb of energy that emerged from a great circular depression. He could feel it as much as see it, a baleful aura of menace that gnawed at his soul, whispering to him of death, blood and carnage, offering him all the glories he could imagine. It would only cost his soul. Shaking it off, he looked around. Arrayed around the walls were alien devices, arcane and ancient looking, crafted from something that looked like bone and looking more grown than built. Sentina had seen their like before, artefacts of the xenos race called eldar.
Then he heard a noise from the other side of the energy sphere. A voice, low and broken, gurgling as if coming from a throat filled with phlegm and other, fouler, things. Cautiously, pistol and maul in his hands, Sentina pulled himself into the shadows that shrouded the cavern walls and edged slowly along. He wanted to see what he was facing. As he came around the sphere, which was rippling with immaterial force, he saw the bloated, corrupted figure of a Chaos Space Marine standing over the broken form of a warrior in the colours of the Doom Eagles.
‘Your brothers are dead,’ said the standing figure. ‘Your duty is over. You have failed. You have a choice. Join me and help me to bring this world to ruin… Or die.’
Sentina stepped out of the shadows and activated his crozius arcanum. ‘You will not bring this world anything other than your death, traitor,’ he said. As the figure looked up, Sentina saw that he wore a skull mask like his own. Had this accursed Chaos Space Marine once been a Chaplain? Blood dripped from the lenses of the skull mask, as if the helm wept at being worn by one so corrupt. Anger flooded Sentina and he leapt to the attack.
For all that the traitor’s armour was swollen and cracked and broken, he was fast. He kicked the Doom Eagle away, the Space Marine hitting the stone wall of the cavern with a resounding crack, and pulled his great scythe around to deflect Sentina’s blow.
‘A new toy, a new mask,’ the Chaos Space Marine gurgled. ‘How the Grandfather rewards me for my service. And soon the rifts will meet and a new eye will open in the sky.’
Sentina ducked beneath a lazy swing of the scythe and lashed out with his crozius, smashing it into the traitor’s knee. The power field melted armour and flesh alike where it hit, but the Chaos Space Marine barely seemed to notice. Pressing his attack, Sentina swung upwards, catching the traitor a glancing blow on his helm. The skull on the mask cracked, a great fissure splitting it from jaw to forehead. Sentina’s foe reeled back.
‘You break this one, that’s fine, Ultramarine. I’ll have yours soon enough.’
Sentina said nothing, continuing to press forward, blow after furious blow deflected by the Chaos Space Marine’s scythe or tearing into tainted battleplate and abused flesh that seemed to be one and the same. He was forcing the corrupted warrior back towards the great sphere of energy.
‘Lord Nurgle,’ screeched the enemy Chaplain, and at the sound of the infernal name, Sentina reeled, shaken as though he had been hit by a thunder hammer. The echo of the word crashed through his brain, bringing images of horror and decay. He felt his nose begin to bleed, and for a moment he lost control of his body as it shuddered in instinctive horror at the unnatural syllables and he fell to the floor. ‘Aid me!’ the traitor finished.
Sentina coughed, tasting the iron tang of blood in his mouth. ‘You will receive no aid, traitor, only dea…’ He trailed off as he saw shapes begin to emerge from the sphere of energy. They began as motes of power, crackling and breaking off from the sphere. Hanging in mid-air, they expanded, and took on a form that resembled humans in the basest aspect, but a broken, degraded form. Long, withered arms and legs jutted at awkward angles from bloated and swollen bodies, and large heads crowned with horns sprouted above the torsos. ‘Emperor’s mercy,’ Sentina breathed as he recognised the forms of the plague daemons he had fought on the plains far above. Seven of them were created from the immaterial sphere.
‘Death, yes,’ gurgled the Plague Marine as the daemons advanced on Sentina. ‘But not mine, son of Macragge.’ He took a step towards Sentina, scythe raised. Each of the daemons raised their rusted, pitted blades in juddering, unsynchronised movements, ready to bring them down and end the prone and motionless Sentina, who was pinned to the spot in horror at his impending fate.
A barking roar rang out and one of the daemons fell, a smoking hole where its single baleful eye had been. Whatever infernal spell had affected Sentina was broken, and he leapt to his feet, bolt pistol spitting shells into the daemons. He glanced around and saw the Doom Eagle on the ground, bolter held in shaking hands, providing further support.
The daemons fell, but more were emerging from the portal to take their place. The Traitor Chaplain moved forwards and bolter shells impacted against his armour, their detonations blowing chunks of ceramite from the plate. He crossed the chamber in a few slow strides and lifted the Doom Eagle bodily from the floor, batting the bolter aside with his scythe.
‘Think you can stop me, little bird?’ he screeched. ‘See how you fly in the Eye!’ He turned and hurled the silver-armoured Space Marine directly at the sphere – the warp rift.
‘No!’ shouted the Chaplain, rushing forward, but he was too late. The Doom Eagle vanished into the sphere of unlight, silhouetted for a moment against it like a bird against the sun. Then he was gone.
The Death Guard laughed, and the daemons made a demented, otherworldly sound.
‘I will kill you, traitor,’ Sentina vowed.
‘You may try, Ultramarine,’ said the Plague Marine, insanity gurgling from every word. ‘Bring it–’
He was interrupted by an indescribable sound from the warp rift. It was like nothing Sentina had ever heard, nothing that could exist in nature. Behind the Chaos Space Marine, the rift was expanding and changing, the colours shifting and warping, hues that defied the human eye to see breaking up and joining together to form patterns that sickened Sentina to the bottom of his soul.
He tore his eyes away from the infernal sight and ran. If the rift was growing larger, he had to escape it. Behind him, he heard the Plague Marine’s rotten voice, squealing about revenge. He leapt the makeshift barricade and ducked behind it. Looking over, he saw that the sphere of immaterial energy had expanded to almost fill the chamber. Then, with a thunderclap, it shrank, going in an instant from dangerously close to Sentina’s position to a tiny sphere floating in the centre of the chamber, above a large hole edged by
the broken remains of what looked like bone.
Where the rift had expanded, the chamber was warped and changed. The alien devices had melted, strange materials running like water across the cavern floor.
And the Death Guard Chaplain was gone.
‘Brother-Chaplain? Sentina, do you read me?’
Aeroth’s voice crackled across the vox. ‘I hear you, sergeant,’ he responded. ‘Things have taken a turn for the strange here. There is more to the situation than we realised.’
‘Quite so,’ agreed Aeroth. ‘The rift in the sky has shrunk to almost nothing and we received a brief communication from Captain Galenus’s force. They encountered heavy resistance from Traitor Space Marines in Fort Kerberos, including a daemonically altered warrior of the Death Guard. He was defeated, but Galenus was wounded. And whatever was happening at Fort Kerberos, it seems that the enemy were denied what they wanted. They may try again here.’
‘I just fought a warrior of the Death Guard here,’ said Sentina. ‘And there is a warp rift beneath the fort to match the one in the sky. And I think I know what they want.’
‘What?’
Sentina’s voice was grim. ‘To expand the rifts, to join them and create a new Eye of Terror in the heart of Ultima Segmentum.’
EIGHT
Within an hour, the rift in the underground chamber began to grow again, matched by the one in the dawn sky. It was obvious to the Ultramarines that the enemy would return, and likely in greater numbers, intent upon drowning the pitifully few defenders of Fort Garm beneath a tide of Chaos.
‘The plan is simple,’ said Aeroth. ‘We remain up here and stop anything from entering the fort. Chaplain Sentina stays down there and stops anything from getting out.’ He and his squad stood in the courtyard, the ashes of the fire still smouldering and the smell of burning flesh on the air. The civilians had been sent to the old serfs’ quarters, there to remain in safety, as long as the Ultramarines could keep the enemy away from that building. Not that it was likely to be a target as long as the Space Marines and the fort remained.