The Killing Ground

by Graham McNeill

'I don't know,' admitted Uriel. 'Emperor help me, but I hope so.'

  Uriel and Pasanius watched them as they vanished from sight, swallowed up in the darkness of the dead city.

  'Now what?' asked Pasanius.

  Uriel turned to his sergeant and said, 'Now we talk.'

  TWO

  NIGHT CLOSED IN on the dead city as Uriel and Pasanius sought shelter from the drizzling rain and biting wind. Pasanius was still clad in his stained blue power armour, albeit severed at the elbow, while Uriel's skin was largely bare to the elements. Portions of Uriel's armour had been stripped from his upper body by the brutal ministrations of the Savage Morticians, and though fragments remained of his breastplate, the armour was essentially useless.

  Without power feeding the fibre bundle muscles that augmented the wearer's strength, it was heavy and cumbersome, impeding where it was designed to enhance. Without conscious thought, both Space Marines gravitated towards the Imperial temple. Of all the buildings around the square it was the most intact and therefore the most defendable.

  The city felt dead and abandoned, but it did not pay to take such things at face value. A fuller exploration of the city could come when the sun rose, but for now, shelter and somewhere to lie low was Uriel's priority.

  The doors lay twisted and melted on the ground, and Uriel recognised the telltale impact striations that spoke of a melta blast.

  'Someone barricaded themselves in here,' said Pasanius, following Uriel's gaze.

  'Looks like it,' agreed Uriel.

  'Now why would someone do that?'

  'If you were a citizen of this city and you were under attack, where would you seek refuge?'

  'I wouldn't be seeking refuge,' said Pasanius. 'I'd be fighting, not hiding while others fought for me.'

  Uriel said nothing in response to the simple, yet wholly understandable sentiment, recognising the same lack of empathy for the fears of mortals in Pasanius's tone as he had heard in so many others of his kind. To be so elevated above ordinary men brought the risk of arrogance and though he had heard that egotism given voice by many other Astartes warriors, he had never thought to hear it from Pasanius.

  The temple's vestibule was cold, a chill that reached out to Uriel beyond the sensations pricking his skin. He had stood in many temples from the most magnificent to the most humble, but even the least of them had a sense of the divine in their architecture and sense of scale, but this building had none of that.

  It felt empty.

  Uriel pushed open the splintered remains of the doors that led to the nave, the echoes of his footsteps thrown back at him like those of a shadowing twin. Dust motes spun in the air, but his vision easily pierced the gloom of the temple's interior as he made his way inside. A vaulted ceiling arched overhead and thick pillars of fluted stonework marched the length of the nave towards a toppled altar.

  Fallen banners that reeked of mould lay curled on the flagstones and broken wooden pews filled the floor between the vestibule and the raised altar. The walls were faced with dressed ashlar and the last of the day's light illuminated thousands of scraps of paper fastened to every square inch.

  Intrigued, Uriel made his way towards this unusual sight, breaths of wind through the empty window frames making it seem as though the wall rippled in anticipation. The papers were old and faded and many had rotted away to fall on the floor, piled up like snowdrifts. Of those that remained, Uriel saw they were a mix of scrawled prayers for the dead, scraps of poems or simple lithographs of smiling men, women and children.

  'What are these?' whispered Pasanius, his voice loud in the stillness of the temple as he made his way along the wall and peered at the sad pictures and words.

  'Memorials,' said Uriel. 'They're prayers for dead loved ones.'

  'But there're so many... Thousands. Did they all die at once?'

  'I don't know,' replied Uriel. 'It looks like it.'

  'Emperor's blood,' hissed Pasanius. 'What happened here?'

  A cold breath whispered across Uriel's neck.

  You were there.

  Uriel spun on his heel, his hand reaching for his sword.

  'What?' said Pasanius as Uriel's blade hissed into the air.

  'Nothing,' said Uriel, relaxing when he saw there was no threat.

  He and Pasanius were the only trespassers in the temple, but for the briefest second, Uriel could have sworn that there had been someone behind him. The temple's crepuscular depths were empty of intruders, and yet...

  Uriel's warrior instincts had been honed on a thousand battlefields and he had not stayed alive this long without developing a fine sense for danger. Though he could see nothing and hear nothing within the temple, he had the definite impression that they were not alone.

  'Did you see something?' asked Pasanius, bracing the bolter between his knees and racking the slide. The noise was ugly and harsh, and both warriors felt a ripple of distaste at the sound. The weapon was from the battiefields of Medrengard and had once belonged to an Iron Warrior. Though he held it before him, Uriel saw that Pasanius was reluctant to employ a weapon of the enemy.

  'No,' said Uriel. 'I felt something.'

  'Like what?'

  'I'm not sure, It was as if someone was standing right behind me.'

  Pasanius scanned the temple's interior, but finding no targets for his weapon he lowered the bolter. Uriel could see the relief on his face and the sense that they were not alone in the temple receded.

  'There's no one here but us,' said Pasanius, moving along the length of the wall towards the altar, though he kept a firm grip on the bolter. 'Maybe you're still a little jumpy after Medrengard.'

  'Maybe,' said Uriel as he followed Pasanius, walking past a procession of smiling faces, votive offerings and fluttering prayer papers.

  So many had died and been remembered on these walls. Pasanius was right, there were thousands of them and Uriel thought the scene unbearably sad. The opposite wall was similarly covered in sad memorials, and stacks of fallen papers clustered around the base of every column.

  They reached the altar and Uriel sheathed his sword.

  'We should study these papers,' said Uriel, pushing the fallen altar upright and beginning to unclip the few broken pieces of the armour encasing his upper body, not that there was much left of it. 'They might give us a clue as to where we are.'

  'I suppose,' said Pasanius, placing the bolter on the ground and pushing it away with his foot.

  'Are you all right, my friend?' asked Uriel, placing a shorn sliver that was all that remained of his breastplate on the altar. 'We are on our way home.'

  'I know, but...'

  'But?'

  'What's going to happen when we get there?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Think about it, Uriel,' said Pasanius. 'We've been to the Eye of Terror. No one comes back from there unchanged. How do we know we'll even be welcome back on Macragge? They'll probably kill us as soon as they see us.'

  'No,' said Uriel, 'they won't. We fulfilled our Death Oath. Tigurius and Calgar sent us there and they will be proud of what we did.'

  'You think?' said Pasanius, shaking his head. 'We fought alongside renegade Space Marines. We made a pact with cannibal mutants and freed a daemon creature. Don't you think Tigurius might take a dim view of things like that?'

  Uriel sighed. He had considered these things, but in his heart he knew they had made every decision with the best intentions and for the right reasons.

  The Masters of the Chapter had to see that. Didn't they?

  It had been Uriel's wilful deviation from Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes that had seen them banished from Ultramar in the first place. Penned by the Ultramarines primarch ten thousand years ago, the Codex Astartes laid out the precise organisational tenets by which the Space Marine Chapters would arise from the mighty Legions of the Great Crusade.

  Everything from uniform markings, parade drill and the exact means by which warriors should deploy for battle was described within its hallowed pages, an
d no Chapter exemplified its teachings better than the Ultramarines.

  To conform to the principles of their primarch was seen as the highest ideal of the Ultramarines and so to have one of its captains go against that was unacceptable. Uriel had willingly accepted his punishment, but having Pasanius condemned with him had been a shard of guilt in his heart for as long as they had marched across the surface of Medrengard.

  In his time on that hell world, Uriel had often doubted his worth as a hero, but with the casting down of Honsou's fortress and the destruction of the daemon creatures that had birthed the Unfleshed, he had come to see that they had been instruments of the Emperor's will after all. Now, with their Death Oath fulfilled, they were going home.

  How could such a thing be wrong?

  'We have done all that was required of us,' said Uriel, 'and more besides. Tigurius will sense that there is no taint of the Ruinous Powers within us.'

  'What about this?' asked Pasanius, holding up the severed end of his arm. 'What if there's some lingering remainder of the Bringer of Darkness left in me?'

  'There won't be,' said Uriel. 'Honsou took that from you.'

  'How can you be sure it's all gone?'

  'I can't,' said Uriel, 'but once we get back to the Fortress of Hera, the Apothecaries will know for sure.'

  'Then I will be punished.'

  'Perhaps,' allowed Uriel. 'You kept a xenos infection from your superior officers, but whatever the senior masters of the Chapter decide, you will be back with the Fourth Company before long.'

  'I wonder how the company is doing,' said Pasanius.

  'Learchus promised to look after the men of the Company in our absence,' said Uriel. 'He will have done us proud, I'm sure.'

  'Aye,' agreed Pasanius. 'As straight up and down a sergeant as you could wish for, that one. Bit of a cold fish, but he'll have kept the men together.'

  'What few were left after Tarsis Ultra,' said Uriel, thinking of the terrible carnage that had seen much of the Fourth Company dead as they defended the Imperial world against a Tyranid invasion.

  'That was a tough one, right enough,' said Pasanius as Uriel placed the last of the broken pieces of his armour on the altar. His upper body was left clothed in a simple body sleeve of faded and dirty khaki, the toughened fabric pierced with holes where his armour's interface plugs had meshed with the internal workings of his body.

  'I'm sure Learchus will have been thorough in raising promising candidates up from the Scout Auxillia,' said Pasanius. 'The Fourth will be back to full strength by now, surely.'

  'I hope so,' agreed Uriel. 'The idea of the Ultramarines without the Fourth does not sit well with me.'

  'Nor I, but if you're right and we get back soon, do you think it will be yours again?'

  Uriel shrugged. 'That won't be up to me. Chapter Master Calgar will decide that.'

  'If he knows what's good for the Chapter, he'll appoint you captain the day we get back.'

  'He knows what's good for the Chapter,' promised Uriel.

  'I know he does, but I can't help but feel apprehensive. I mean, who knows how long we've been gone? For all we know, hundreds or thousands of years could have passed since we left. And this place...'

  'What about it?'

  'The Lord of the Unfleshed... He's right, something bad happened to this city. I can feel it.'

  Uriel said nothing, for he too could feel the subtle undercurrent in the air, a feeling that the imprint of terrible calamity had befallen this city, that it hadn't simply been abandoned.

  'And another thing,' said Pasanius, 'just what in the name of the Primarch are you hoping to achieve with those monsters?'

  'They're not monsters,' said Uriel. 'They have the blood of Astartes within them.'

  'Maybe so, but they look like monsters and I can't see anyone with a gun not shooting as soon as they lay eyes on them. We should have left them on Medrengard. You know that don't you?'

  'I couldn't,' said Uriel, sitting next to Pasanius. 'You saw how they lived. They may look like monsters, but they love the Emperor and all they want is his love in return. I couldn't leave them there. I have to try to... I don't know, show them that there is more to existence than pain.'

  'Good luck with that,' said Pasanius sourly.

  THE MOON HAD risen and pools of brilliant white light reflected a ghostly radiance around the temple's interior by the time the Unfleshed returned. Uriel was loath to use the memorials as fuel and thus they had built a fire from the kindling of the shattered pews in an iron brazier they discovered at the rear of the temple.

  The Unfleshed dragged the carcasses of three of the mountain grazers into the church, each beast's body torn and bloodied with fang and claw marks. The dead beasts were covered in a coarse fur, with bovine heads and long, burrowing snouts of leathery hide. Their legs were slender and powerful looking and Uriel imagined they would be swift on the hoof.

  'They've already fed then,' said Pasanius, seeing the bloody jaws of the Unfleshed.

  'So it appears,' replied Uriel as the Lord of the Unfleshed dragged one of the larger kills over to the altar. The carcass was dropped before him.

  'We eat meat on mountain,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'This meat for you.'

  Without waiting for an answer, the hulking creature turned away, his eyes dull and lifeless. Curious as to what was the matter, Uriel reached up and placed a hand on the Lord of the Unfleshed's arm.

  No sooner had Uriel touched the arm than it was snatched away and the Lord of the Unfleshed turned to face him with a hiss of pain. Uriel flinched at the suddenness of the reaction and the violence he saw in the Lord of the Unfleshed's eyes.

  'Not touch me,' hissed the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Pain. This world hurts us.'

  'Hurts you? What do you mean?'

  The Lord of the Unfleshed paused, as though struggling to find the words to articulate his meaning. 'Air here different. We feel different, weak. Body not work like before.'

  Uriel nodded, though he had no real idea as to why the Unfleshed should feel different on this particular world.

  'Try to get some rest,' advised Uriel. 'When the sun comes up we'll get a better look at the lie of the land and decide what to do next. You understand?'

  'I understand,' nodded the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Emperor happy with us?'

  'Yes, he is,' said Uriel. 'You are in a place dedicated to Him.'

  'Dedicated?'

  'It belongs to him,' explained Uriel. 'Like where you lived before.'

  'This house of Emperor?'

  'It is, yes.'

  'Then we stay here. Emperor take care of us,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed, and Uriel found the simple sentiment curiously touching. These creatures may be genetic aberrations, but they believed in the Emperor's divinity with a simple, childlike faith.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed lumbered away to rejoin his fellows and Uriel turned back to the altar, where Pasanius was butchering the carcass they had been provided with in preparation for roasting it over the fire. Space Marines could, of course, eat the meat raw to gain more nutritional benefits, but after the deprivations of Medrengard, both warriors were in the mood for some hot food inside them.

  Uriel watched the Unfleshed as they hunkered down before the walls, staring in fascination at the parchment scraps on the wall. Pasanius handed him a skewered hunk of meat and placed his own over the fire.

  'It's easy to forget,' said Uriel.

  'What is?'

  'They are just children really.'

  'The Unfleshed?'

  'Yes. Think about it. They were taken as youngsters and twisted into these horrific forms by the Savage Morticians, but they are still children inside. I was placed inside one of those daemon wombs. I know what it tried to do to me, but to do that to a child... Imagine waking up and finding that you had been turned into a monster.'

  'Do you think any of them remember their former lives?'

  'I don't know,' said Uriel. 'In some ways, I hope they don't; it would be too awful to r
emember what they'd lost, but then I think that it's only the fragments of what they once were that's keeping them from truly becoming monsters.'

  'Then let's hope more of their memories return now that they're away from Medrengard.'

  'I suppose,' said Uriel, turning his skewer on the fire. 'I know they look like monsters, but what happened to them isn't their fault. They deserve more than just to be hunted down and killed because they aren't like us. We may not be able to save their bodies, but we can save their souls.'

  'How?'

  'By treating them like human beings.'

  'Then I just hope you get to talk to people before they see them.'

  'I plan to, eventually, but let's take things one step at a time.'

  'Speaking of which,' said Pasanius, lifting his skewer of meat from the fire and taking an experimental bite.

  'Oh, that's good. What's our next move in the morning?'

  Uriel removed his skewer from the fire and bit into the meat, the smell intoxicating and the taste sublime after so long on ration packs and recycled nutrient pastes. The meat was tough, but gloriously rich. Warm juices spilled down his chin and he resisted the impulse to wolf down his meal without pause.

  Between mouthfuls, Uriel said, 'Tomorrow we explore the city, get a feel for its geography and then work out where we might find a settlement.'

  'Then what?'

  'Then we present ourselves to whatever Imperial authorities we find and make contact with the Chapter.'

  'You think it'll be that easy?'

  'It will or it won't be,' said Uriel. 'I suppose we'll find out tomorrow, but we need some rest first. Every bone in my body aches and I just want one night of proper sleep before we get into things.'

  'Sounds good to me,' agreed Pasanius. 'Every time I closed my eyes on that damn, daemon engine, all I saw were rivers of blood and skinned bodies.'

  Uriel nodded, only too well aware of the nightmarish things that lurked behind his own eyes when he had tried to rest on the Omphalos Daemonium. Not since he had stood before the Nightbringer had he seen such horrors or believed that such terrible things could be dreamed into existence.

  For the unknown span of time they had spent within its insane depths, both they and the Unfleshed had been plagued by these blood dreams and Uriel knew that his mind had been close to breaking, for who could be visited nightly by such phantasms and remain sane?