Zaur was pale, the pale of pristine marble. Not that Seth had been expecting much overt humanity in the oversized body and face of an Astartes warrior, but the ice-white skin tone was another layer of surprise. And his eyes were black. That unnerved Seth to no small degree. He’d never heard of such an… alteration.
Zaur’s scalp was shaved bare – so bare that the Cadian was sure the Astartes had either shaved only hours before, or was genetically modified so that no hair would grow. A few sockets stood out on the white skin, polished chrome showing an edge of redness where they aggravated the surrounding skin: the implants for the codicier’s psychic enhancing technology. Seth had no idea what equipment the Astartes psykers used and wasn’t about to ask, no matter how fiercely his curiosity burned.
The amplifying band of psychoactive metal implanted across his forehead suddenly itched abominably. He kept his augmentations clean and disinfected them twice daily, but they were the fruits of crude surgeries. Sanctioned psykers deserved no better in the eyes of the Guard; the majority were destined for a messy death before they earned any long-service medals. The polished bionics punctuating the Astartes’s skull were almost artistic in comparison to the cheap bronze plugs that bored into Seth’s flesh and bone.
‘You seem discomforted,’ Zaur said. His real voice resonated, deep as distant thunder, but wasn’t unkind.
‘I have never seen an Astartes without his helm. Not once.’
‘Ah,’ Zaur smiled. That unnerved Seth even more. Even the Astartes’ teeth were overlarge, though everything about Zaur was in proportion to the giant’s physique. ‘You wished my counsel?’ the codicier reminded him.
‘Yes. Yes, over matters of the Emperor’s Tarot. Do you read the cards?’
‘Are you asking if the Astartes as a whole practise the tradition, or are you asking if I do?’
‘Both.’
‘I suspect our methods are not dissimilar, Cadian. But come, this is not a matter to be discussed on a landing zone. Even in the shadow of my Thunderhawk, some ears are not to hear of what we speak.’
Zaur led Seth into the waiting maw of the gunship, clanking up the gang-ramp. Once inside the internal hangar, Seth scanned the rows of chained combat cycles and archaic thruster backpacks that waited in secure wall housings for use by the Astartes. Zaur thumped a black fist against the door lock panel, and the gang-ramp whined closed, ending with a metallic slam.
‘Now,’ said the codicier, his voice echoing eerily around the empty hangar. ‘What are the cards saying to you, Cadian?’
Seth took a deep breath. ‘The Archenemy is not done with Kathur.’
‘And what if I told you I had seen the same?’
‘I would be… reassured. Reassured that my talents were not flailing wildly. But if you are seeing the same, then perhaps we can–’
‘Be at ease,’ the Astartes said, cutting the air with his hand. ‘I have seen dark portents, but the specifics matter above all. And I wonder if they align. Speak clearly.’
‘A grave threat, as yet unmet,’ Seth’s eyes unfocused, losing their strained intensity, and his voice took on a dreamlike quality. ‘The echoes of heresy ring out across the shrineworld’s sky. Something is coming. Some resurgence of the Archenemy. Something familiar.’
‘I have read the same fate in the tarot. And yet what is familiar to both the Cadians and my Chapter? I am not as gifted as many of my brethren among the Librarium of the Raven Guard, but I know to trust my talent. The evil that draws near is utterly familiar. The hatred that rushes to eclipse us is personal. I felt that surging from the cards, and it is in no doubt. The only answer that fits is, of course…’
‘The Death Guard.’
‘The Death Guard.’ Zaur nodded. ‘The traitorous XIV Legion. The scourge of Scarus, at the Despoiler’s right hand. They carve wounds that take decades to heal, if they will ever seal at all. The infection. The taint. How many worlds in this segmentum have been lost to the Curse of Unbelief in Abaddon’s thirteenth war?’
The question was obviously rhetorical. Seth nodded slowly, his thoughts coalescing.
‘The Cadian Shock are the guardians of Scarus. But forgive me, brother-codicier. I do not see the ties between my home world and your Chapter. What are the Death Guard to you? How grave are their sins, that no other evil can match them in your eyes?’
Zaur stood in silence for some time. When he finally moved, it was to place a gauntleted hand, cold as fresh snow, on Seth’s head. When he finally spoke, it was in a buzzing voice contained within Seth’s own mind.
See, Cadian. See what they did to us…+
The vision began. A vision of a war – The War – that began ten thousand years before. In a distant solar system, one hundred centuries ago, Seth witnessed the betrayal that scourged the hearts of the Raven Guard against their Astartes brothers.
It was soon over. When the vision faded, Seth felt pale and weak. He bolstered his strength to speak his last question.
‘Zaur…’
‘Yes?’
‘Since coming to Kathur… Do you hear the voice, too? Something has awoken on this world. It cries for aid.’
Zaur nodded once, very slowly. ‘I hear it. I hear it even now.’ The codicier looked down at the Cadian. ‘Have you heard the reply?’
‘No.’
‘That is my true fear, and the reason I have taken such stern heed of the Tarot’s warning. Because I not only hear the voice crying for aid, I also hear something out there answering.’
‘This second voice, what does it say?’
‘It is wordless, much like the plea for aid we both hear. A simple, powerful projection that conveys a single message.’
‘What message?’
Zaur opened his mind once more, letting his sixth sense envelop Seth’s surface thoughts. He could feel the rhythms of the mortal’s body, beating and bubbling in their short lifespan. The Astartes knew, just for a moment, how frail and mortal it felt to be truly human. He feared nothing in his service to the Throne, yet he felt himself fearful of that incredible weakness.
‘Listen,’ said Zaur, letting the voices flowing through his psychic sense wash gently into Seth’s lesser mind. It was a simple diversion of mental energies, the equivalent of a man damming one river to form another.
Come to me, the first voice said without words.
We come, was the equally-wordless reply.
We come.
Part II
The Herald
Chapter VIII
Echoes of Heresy
Within the warp
We come.
It pulsed this wordless reassurance in a relentless stream of subconscious telepathy. We come. We come. We come.
Sometimes it would forget its own name.
It knew this was because of the warp. Travelling in the domain of its master brought the creature close to its god’s touch, and all that was still human within it would slip into unremembered darkness.
On these occasions, occasions which might last a mere hour and might last anything up to a decade or more, it would simply self-identify by the title its various minions used when addressing it.
The Herald, they called it. The Herald of the whispering god they all served.
The Herald had not moved from its throne in many months. Barnacle-like scabs, crusty blooms of dried blood and calcified pus, now bound it to the bone and corroded metal of its command seat. The Herald felt the encrusted gore connecting him to the throne, and by extension, to the ship all around it.
The Herald knew its strength, its incredible might. It knew it would take little effort to move and shatter the solidified filth, but it wanted to enjoy the serenity of its repose for a few more moments. It breathed deeply within the decayed shell of its armour, feeling the silent rumble of its vessel spearing through the warp. Daemon-things in the darkness beyond the ship’s hull shrieked and cla
wed at the vessel, desperate to enter and prostrate themselves before the Herald. They left streaks of diseased flesh along the rancid hull as the great ship powered on, ignorant of the would-be supplicants.
The Herald chuckled.
Some of the creatures populating the bridge – the weakest ones, whose lives meant nothing – cowered and whimpered at the sound. It was the first time the Herald had made any noise in weeks.
One of the bridge crew, long deprived of its legs, crawled up the steps to the Herald’s throne. Once, it had been a man. Now it left a viscous trail in its legless wake, and had too many mouths.
‘We draw near, Herald,’ several of the thing’s mouths said.
Now the Herald stood. The crusted gore binding it to the throne shattered into powdery, infected shards, many still sticking to the Herald’s armour like warty protrusions.
With the Herald’s sudden, albeit slow, activity, the hollow bone spines jutting from its back began to emit a low buzz. The Herald was awake, and the hive within its body awakened as well. The first flies, bloated and sticky, skittered from the flared holes at the tops of the hollow spines.
The Herald turned its horned helmeted head, seeking something. It could barely see. Its eyes were gummy with bloody tears, having been closed for too long. Sight pained it.
‘Weapon,’ the Herald growled in a low, burbling voice. The bridge crew shrank back, some pressing against their consoles in fear, some because their own organic corruption bound them to their stations just as the Herald had been bound to its throne.
One of the figures flanking the great throne stepped forward. Its armour was that of an Astartes, but swollen, corroded and cracked through ten thousand years of plague and battle. It was the same gangrenous colour of the Herald’s own armour.
‘Herald.’ Blood-caked respirator pipes thrust into the front of the Astartes’s helm vibrated as the second figure spoke. ‘I bear your blade.’
At these words, the corrupted Astartes held out a colossal scythe in his swollen fists. It was over three metres long, the pole as thick as a man’s thigh, the curving crescent blade glinting in places under a patina of bloody rot.
The Herald took the scythe in its own gauntleted hands. A memory swam up through the warp-holy murk of its thoughts. A name.
Its own name?
No… Manreaper. The name of the weapon it now held. With a psychic nudge, the Herald activated the antiquated power weapon. Its scythe blade hissed as energy flooded the ancient metal. The organic decay taking root on the blade itself crackled and popped as it burned away. The stench was cancerous, but that was far from unusual in the Herald’s presence. The entire ship itself reeked of the egg-like shit-smell of a terminal wasting disease. The air within the vessel was poison to all but the creatures that dwelled within.
The Herald took a deep breath within its enclosing armour, savouring the holy scent that reached its acute olfactory senses. Vision returned with increased clarity now, shapes resolving clearly to make out the scene of the bridge all around. A great screen faced the throne, showing the beautiful chaos of warp flight. It was like looking into the mind of a madman, seeing all his thoughts as colours.
‘Near?’ the Herald growled. ‘Soon?’
Speech was also difficult. The Herald swallowed to clear its throat. Whatever had been lodged there wriggled as it went down.
‘We are only hours from our destination, Herald,’ the Traitor Astartes said.
‘The Legion?’ snarled the Herald.
‘The Legion stands ready, great Traveller.’
Traveller. Another of its titles. And… tied to its name…
‘My ship,’ purred the Herald wetly. Its scabby gauntlets stroked the corroded throne. ‘My ship. Terminus Est.’
‘Yes, lord.’ The Traitor Astartes was used to the warp-sickness affecting the Herald. He knew it would pass soon.
The Herald grinned behind its horned helm, facing the screen ahead and clutching its scythe in a greedy hand. The bulk of its Terminator plate would have been immense anyway, but the scabs, buboes and bone spines thrusting from the off-green armour swelled it to four times the size of a mortal man.
‘Kathur,’ it said. ‘We draw near to Kathur.’
‘Yes, lord.’
And then, like a bolt from the chaotic storm outside, the Herald recalled its name. Who it had been. What it had become. It smiled again, and began to give orders to its wretched crew.
In life, ten thousand years ago as the galaxy had descended into the war that would never end, he had been the First Captain of the Death Guard.
Now, the Scourge of Scarus, the Traveller, Host of the Destroyer Hive, Herald of the Grandfather of Decay, prepared to do battle once more.
‘Kathur,’ smiled Typhus through his black lips. ‘Their… little… shrineworld.’
Seth met with Thade as the captain was in his tent, performing the rites of maintenance on his chainsword. The smell of purified oils flavoured the air. Thade was on his bedroll, wearing his grey fatigues with the blade in his lap. It was the first time the psyker had seen Thade without his body armour on in weeks.
‘Sir?’ He stood at the tent’s canvas entrance, looking in through the open door curtains. Thade was using a hand-pick to scrape dirt from the High Gothic runes etched into the blade’s flat.
‘Come in,’ he called.
Seth stepped in and froze at the sudden growl. The sound was mechanical and very, very angry. Seth knew it well. He turned his head slowly to see Thade’s cyber-mastiff, its bodywork of chrome and iron restored to its undamaged gunmetal grey. The size of a bloodhound, the shape of a wolf with particularly vicious jaws, the cyber-mastiff glared at him with black eye lenses.
It was still growling.
‘Uh… Good dog,’ Seth said, feeling foolish for letting it slip out.
‘Down, boy,’ the captain said. ‘Sorry, Seth. One second. Rax, log target’s bio-spoor. Record name: Seth. Record status: Null target.’
The robotic dog’s eye lenses whispered as they turned – focusing, recording.
‘Acknowledge,’ said Thade.
The dog opened its beartrap jaws and its internal vox-speakers emitted a throaty machine sound. With some imagination, it was almost a bark.
‘You’re safe now,’ Thade said, going back to scraping the last traces of gore from the etched lettering of his blade. ‘When he was damaged last month, it wiped his cogitator’s targeting and recollection file.’
‘His… what?’
‘His memory, apparently. Don’t look at me like that; it was Osiron’s explanation. Rax needs to re-record everyone’s bio-spoors so he doesn’t sight them as targets.’
‘Am I a null target now?’ Seth leaned on his staff, feeling his headache pound behind his eyes. Throne take that damned dog, he’d never liked it.
‘You should be. Rax? Prime for battle.’
The cyber-mastiff inclined its head towards Thade, its jaws opening slightly. Seth noticed its steel teeth glinting in the dim sunlight coming into the tent. Each one polished like a prize dagger.
‘No need to test it, I’ll take your word for it,’ Seth murmured. ‘Great Eye, did Osiron polish its teeth?’
‘He did. If you get up close, you can see the Litany of Protection etched into each fang.’
‘I’m not getting up close.’
‘Well, I thought it was a nice touch. Stay still – let me test this. Rax? Kill.’
Seth felt his entire body tense at the command. He didn’t expect the dog to attack, but the possibility made his stomach twist and his eyes ache. The captain’s humour, such as it was, did not match his own.
Rax closed his jaws with a slam of meeting metal. Its internal speakers droned an almost puppyish whine.
‘You’re safe,’ said Thade. ‘Rax, stand down.’
The cyber-mastiff powered down, closi
ng its jaw and clamping its rows of shark-like teeth. It sat much the way a real dog would: haunches on the floor, but its head tracked left and right, slowly, like a security camera.
‘A simple “yes” would have sufficed.’
‘Stop whining, you’re still alive. Now, you wanted to talk to me,’ Thade said, ‘but first you have a question of mine to answer.’
‘Of course.’
‘An hour ago, you were with the Astartes psyker.’
‘I was.’
‘Now tell me why.’
Seth chuckled, but it became a cough that tasted of blood. ‘That’s not a question.’
‘Don’t mess me around, Seth. In the monastery last night, I refrained from chastising you when a commissar would have shot you dead.’
‘You hit me with the butt of your gun.’
‘Oh, you noticed that? Seeing as I probably should’ve killed you for how you were acting, you’re not in a position to inspire much guilt in me. Throne, we thought you were going to start speaking in tongues. What the hell is this planet doing to you?’
Seth had no answer.
‘Listen, Seth. As much as Tionenji is turning out to be far from the arsehole we might have expected, he’s Commissariat to the core. A bolt in the back of the head next time you even think about stepping out of line. No questions asked.’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘I’m just warning you. Time to start being the model soldier. So talk.’
‘The Emperor’s Tarot is aflame with portents. Dark omens. My own readings match those performed by Brother-Codicier Zauren.’
Thade looked up from his cleaning and set the sword aside.
‘It’s safe to say you have my attention.’
‘I appreciate we are not close, captain, but I respect you. And I thank you for the faith you’ve shown in my abilities in the past.’
Thade nodded, forcing a smile and wondering where the psyker was going with this.
‘You’re good at… what you do,’ he began hesitantly. ‘I’m no liar, Seth. I can’t say I’m comfortable with your talents. But you serve, and serve well. I trust you.’
Honour Imperialis - Braden Campbell & Aaron Dembski-Bowden & Chris Dows & Steve Lyons & Rob Sanders Page 13