by Various
‘Name it.’
He slams a fist against his war-plate, an outmoded gesture that Sedd does his best to ignore. The apostle’s eyes are like balefires behind the lenses of his skull helm. ‘Follow them.’
‘Into the rad-desert?’ Esra looks perplexed. ‘Without full armour…’
‘You will sicken and die, but you will last long enough to catch our prey. Think of it as motivation.’
‘But my lord, I–’
The blow is swift, severing Esra’s neck and parting head from shoulders before anyone has even glimpsed the blade drawn from Kurtha Sedd’s vambrace.
He hisses. ‘Kaeloq.’
Another warrior steps forward from behind the Dark Apostle. He has the good sense to still wear a battle-helm. A curved horn arcs from his left temple.
‘Yes, my lord.’ His voice is not one but two, overlaid and just slightly out of synch with one another.
‘Noble Kaeloq. Will you also refuse this honour?’
Kaeloq draws himself up. ‘Do you want their heads or their tongues?’
Behind his rictus mask, Kurtha Sedd smiles.
A hot wind is whipping across the scorched ruin of a city. The solar flare has left fires in its wake. Some are small, flickering at the edges of roadsides or within the shells of blasted buildings like tiny funerary candles. Others are vast conflagrations that burn across entire districts, leaving black soot behind them.
Thiel looks to the horizon, then back to Rowd. ‘Mercius District South. See, that statue belonged to the landmaster.’
Before the fires, before Veridia turned Calth into an arid wasteland, there were north, east and west districts too. Agri-farms on an industrial scale, all of them. Carefully cultivated vine forests, tree-lined avenues and great arboreal domes, all now just dust and ash. Over fifty-thousand workers, with only this skeletal monument to mourn them.
Thiel knows of Mercius, and he knows of the landmasters. Before he returned to the surface, his tactical briefings on all of Calth’s major cities and districts were very detailed. Now they are little more than historical documents, footnotes to describe a broken world.
Rowd coughs into his mask, fogging up the visor with his spittle-breath.
‘Are you injured, trooper?’
‘I’m fine, sir.’
Thiel’s gaze lingers on him for a moment before he turns his attention back to the ruin. ‘Eyes open then. There could be anything lurking in those shadows.’
Rowd frowns. ‘What kind of a man could endure out here?’
‘It’s not men we need to worry about.’
Since arriving at the outskirts of Mercius South, they have not met a single soul. Corpses do not count – or rather the charred, blackened bone remains of what were formerly corpses that litter the ground in every direction.
Thiel advances slowly, ordering Rowd to remain twenty paces behind him. He watches every shadow, every fissure and crack, all of which deepen the further in they move.
Silently, he holds up a clenched fist.
Rowd halts at once. Looking ahead, he sees what has caught the Ultramarine’s attention.
A tank, specifically a XIII Legion Rhino APC, is blocking the road.
‘Hold here,’ Thiel’s voice crackles through the vox-link built into Rowd’s rad-suit.
The Ultramarine advances alone, an unslung bolter cradled in both hands, held at waist height. No good for the tunnel fight, out here in the open its extra range could prove useful. His pistol is holstered, his gladius sheathed, a combat knife at his knee and the electromagnetic longsword strapped to his back.
Though his auto-senses are fouled beyond usefulness by radiation, his internal chrono counts down towards the next predicted solar flare. Caution is a commodity he can ill afford, but recklessness might also prove costly.
Reaching the armoured transport, Thiel notices that the rear hatch is open. Bolter leading the way, he steps inside. There is some superficial fire damage but the interior is largely unscathed. A driver sits slumped at the controls, certainly dead. A hole is gored into his helmet, rimed with dark, encrusted blood.
Thiel has seen injuries like this before. ‘Not a blade wound.’
A shout from outside alerts him. He comes running in response to Rowd’s cry.
‘Up there…’
The soldier is pointing, jabbing the muzzle of his lasgun like a finger.
Thiel follows it to a graven-looking statue, like an ecclesiastical gargoyle, perched and shrouded by its wings atop the remains of a tower.
Rowd sounds concerned, and has yet to lower his weapon. ‘What is that thing?’
‘A daemon, once. Now it’s just a shell.’
As if to confirm it, a strong gust of wind erodes the statue into mere flakes of ash.
At last, Rowd lowers his lasgun, but keeps staring at the pair of clawed feet left behind on the shattered tower. ‘What’s happened to them?’
Thiel shrugs.
‘The veil thickened again, I suppose. Daemons went with it. Tough for them to anchor to the mortal plane. There are no true daemons left on Calth anymore.’
Rowd meets the Ultramarine’s gaze. ‘How can you know that?’
‘Have you seen any?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Just the Unburdened left now…’ Thiel exhales, a long reedy breath, and reaches out to the Rhino for support. Something dark is trickling between the joints in his war-plate.
Rowd sees it.
‘You’re still bleeding.’
‘I can barely stand. Help me to the tank.’
Together, they struggle inside. Thiel slumps against the interior wall, his breathing ragged.
‘What should I do?’ asks Rowd.
‘Stay in here,’ Thiel rasps. ‘If we are being hunted, we may be ignored inside this wreck, but they’ll kill us if we’re out in the open. I’ll recover, just need a moment…’
He grunts in pain, hissing through his mouth grille.
‘And you can hope my recovery doesn’t take too long. Solar flare’s not far off.’
Rowd scowls. ‘Anything practical?’
Thiel laughs at the attempted sarcasm.
‘Tell me about your life on Calth, soldier. Remind me what we fought for after our kinsmen betrayed us.’
Rowd shrugs, staring at the ground. ‘Not much to tell. I was a farmer, and worked in the Vollard Meadows, or harvesting grain for the silos.’ He pauses, fiddling absently with the seals of his suit. ‘I killed my overseer when he tried to assault my wife. Shot him through the heart. Dead instantly.’
Thiel’s head sinks back, touching the metal of the interior wall. He lets out another pained breath.
‘You were convicted of murder.’
Rowd nods. ‘I had no proof of the assault. I was a harvester, he was an overseer.’ His voice changes, becomes embittered at the memory, the loss. Thiel can empathise.
‘With me gone, my wife and infant daughter were alone. They perished before the war – a blessing, I suppose. I thought I’d die in my cage. Instead I was pressed into service as part of the military. Marked for censure, if you like.’ Rowd gestures to Thiel’s helmet. ‘Just like you were.’
Thiel’s mirth is forced, because of pain rather than disagreement.
Afterwards, a charged silence descends. Rowd waits a minute to break it.
‘We aren’t getting out of this tank, are we sir.’
‘Maybe we can get the tank moving. It might have self-repaired.’
Rowd looks around. ‘They can do that?’
Thiel doesn’t answer. He is under, mind and body making the necessary repairs for him to function again. Ultramarines are particularly good at this recovery. They do it efficiently, rapidly, better than other Legions. It is one of the reasons they are so hard to kill. Of late, they have also had a lot of practice.
The dull glint of armour, seen through the open ramp of the Rhino, makes Rowd start. He realises that he has been daydreaming instead of keeping watch. Without a chrono, t
here is no way of telling how long Thiel has been out. Certainly, the horizon line is brightening and the stench of heat and fire is growing in the air. Neither is a good sign. He slowly shuffles over to the hatch, trying for a better look.
A hunting party have seen them, or at least the possibility of their hiding place. They are advancing on the wreck, four cultists and a legionary with an ugly battle-helm mask; a single horn protrudes from the side of his head. Spiked iron chains rattle against his war-plate. His arms are bare brawn, slabs of cuneiform-inscribed meat, baked brown by the radiation. In one hand he grips a saw-edged ritual knife. The other holds a snub-nosed boltgun, with a second blade attached to the stock.
Rowd estimates that they have scant minutes before the hunters descend into the shallow crater where the Rhino is languishing. Scurrying over, he is about to reach for Thiel’s vambrace when the Ultramarine’s hand snaps out and seizes his wrist.
Suppressing a yelp, Rowd gestures to the open ramp.
Still a little groggy, Thiel grunts. ‘How many?’ He reaches a vision slit, and shakes his head. ‘They’re close.’
Then he notices the fiery line of the horizon.
‘But that’s even closer.’
Rowd is back at the edge of the ramp, sighting down his carbine. ‘I can kill two before they’re close enough to see us.’
Thiel cocks his head slightly. ‘You say you were a grain harvester?’
‘Lot of time to waste, out in the fields. Used some of it picking off vittle-cans with my father’s long-las. He was a sniper in the Army.’
‘Didn’t skip a generation then. I feel sorry for the cans. Two it is, soldier. I’ll take the others. Legionary dies last.’
Rowd nods. The plan is set.
The trooper waits another five seconds before taking his first shot. He blows out the eye of the closest cultist, feeding brain and skull through the back of the head with his las-bolt. The second one dies with a burn across the neck, good as a slit throat. Both crumple within seconds of one another.
Two boltgun shots boom out from the opposite end of the Rhino, magnified by the close metal interior, heralding the explosive deaths of the other two cultists. Then Rowd sees what is coming up behind them, and realises that their time has just run out.
Thiel is about to draw a bead on the legionary when the first flare of light blinds him. Coursing over the desert, roaring across the ruins and the ash dunes comes a curtain of brilliant fire. It rolls in waves, one atop the other, undulating, coruscating. It is beautiful and terrifying – a living, breathing embodiment of destruction, and it is coming for them.
Thiel shouts through to Rowd. ‘Get us moving. Now!’
Rowd obeys, scrambling to the Rhino’s command console as the bolter fire begins again.
‘How does it…?’
He trails off, the controls foreign and overlarge for his human hands.
‘No different to a grain harvester,’ calls Thiel over the crash of arms. ‘Put it into drive, then ram the accelerator as hard as you can.’
It’s hot in the Rhino now, furnace-like with the approaching firestorm.
Rowd hears Thiel shouting, and the solid thunk of shells striking the hull. Another voice invades the chaos, deep and guttural. He doesn’t need to turn to know that it’s the Word Bearer.
Finding the drive lever, he hauls it back, punches the ignition panel. Incredibly, the wrecked tanked sputters… then dies. He tries again. Something heavy lands in the troop hold behind him. A shout from Thiel makes him glance in the rear-view reflector.
The Word Bearer is on board, and the two of them are fighting hand-to-hand.
‘Seal the compartment,’ snaps Thiel, his attention focused elsewhere.
Rowd tries, but the hatch is buckled and won’t slide across. Desperately, he hammers the ignition panel again, sweat stinking in his rad-suit, hot breath fogging his goggles, the heat threatening to overwhelm him.
It turns over, the Rhino coughs and its engine judders into life.
Something is happening behind him. The fight is changing. He hears grunting, snarling, catches a glimpse of something inhuman and bestial. It reminds Rowd of the statue, the daemon-husk. He realises that this creature is the Word Bearer.
‘Hellspawn!’ Thiel roars, drawing the electromagnetic longsword from his back. It hums with feral energy, as fierce as the monster unveiling itself before him.
The Word Bearer laughs, his two voices mocking.
‘Chosen, Gal Vorbak… Unburdened. So many names, none of them true. How petty your mortal flesh is.’
Armour splits, shifts and remoulds around pinioned wings. A crest of dew-wet bone spurs punches out from the legionary’s spine. Skin darkens, brown all the way to black. Pin-prick pupils visible through the monster’s vision-slit blaze with a malignant light.
And in that moment of transformation, his injuries weighing him down as surely as any anchor, Thiel knows that he is outmatched.
Snatched glimpses in the rear-view reflector reveal little of the fight between Thiel and the Unburdened. It is brutal, a blur of rapid blade thrusts and claw slashes underpinned by the snarling, growling dual-voice of the monster.
The Rhino is moving through the solar fire. Rubble beneath its rolling tracks makes it violently buck and shift. Dwarfed by the driver’s seat, Rowd is almost thrown when he smashes through a wall of heavier debris. He clings on, the temperature in the hold rising, the metal now almost scalding to the touch. All he has to do is hold on, keep moving.
Keep moving.
‘Just keep on moving…’ he mutters.
There’s a crack in the reflector, which splits the view of the battle behind him into two jagged pieces. In the background seen through the gaping rear hatch, Calth is burning. The horizon is gone, obliterated by fire. Thiel and the monster are dark silhouettes carved in the light. Hard to tell with the movement and the violent motion of the battle tank, but it looks to Rowd like the Ultramarine is losing.
He is so engrossed by the struggle, so fearful of what it’s likely outcome will mean for him, that Rowd fails to see the steep drop opening up right in front of them.
Even with a day’s recuperation and fully-charged suit of power armour, Thiel knows that he would still be on the back foot fighting against the Unburdened. It is swift, its blows hard and resonating. Every parry of its claws, every defensive block sends a shivering impact all the way to his shoulders. Grimacing, Thiel realises that his wound has reopened. First a warming sensation in his back, then cold – a chill that numbs his nerves and slows him fatally.
The tank jolts, throwing Thiel back just as he makes a rare counter. He staggers, the electromagnetic longsword slipping in his grip. Seeing weakness, the Unburdened attacks. Brain strategising with every passing microsecond, Thiel is unable to craft a response as the monster bears him to the deck, its claws pressed against his throat.
‘Such petty, fragile mortal flesh…’
The Unburdened is laughing. His spittle reeks of decaying meat and spoiled milk, but Thiel does not gag. Struggling to the end, he shows no weakness and resolves to meet his death with fury in his heart. He feels the bite of the claw against his carotid artery, pledging his life and soul to the Emperor and Guilliman, just as the ground beneath both combatants seems to give way. Belatedly, Thiel realises that they are falling.
Then there is blood. Oceans of blood, enough to drown in.
Alone, the Word Bearer trudges doggedly along the subterranean corridors beneath this dirty little world. In his hand he carries a head: his promise. The helmet still worn by the head is covered in markings, battle strategies scored into the very metal.
He follows the sounds of pain emanating from deeper within the tunnel complex, knowing they will bring him closer to the command hub. Above ground, the inferno will be raging, scorching the earth and turning it black.
The crash saved him. Dumped in an extinct sub-arborea – the vines withered, the hydroponic systems long fallen to neglect – he found a way back.
The further down he went, the less he felt the heat. His armour is caked dark with blood.
Heaving open the last of the inner doors, barely visible in the gloom, he finds them.
One of the warriors turns, chuckling. ‘Kaeloq? We all thought you were dead.’
The two Word Bearers have an Ultramarine as their captive, a captain by his rank insignia. Vultius’s face is bruised and bloody, one eye gummed shut with congealed crimson. They have evidently been torturing him. A rusty table strewn with knives and clamps sits within their reach. A magnesium-white lumen casts the scene in a stark light. It flares intermittently, surging and dying every few seconds.
Kaeloq steps into the torture chamber. ‘Not yet.’
The two Word Bearers, who had been intent on their cruel labours, turn sharply at the sound of his voice.
Kurtha Sedd regards the pict screen with quiet interest. With the phosphor lamps extinguished, the pict screen is the only source of light. It paints the Dark Apostle a sickly green. The image crackles, crazes with static and then stabilises for a few seconds before crazing again.
‘Perfect,’ Sedd purrs, smiling to himself.
They have been digging, planting seismic beacons with every new tunnel excavated. Its pattern is revealed on the screen: a star with eight points. A tribute to the unholy Octed.
At the sound of another legionary entering the chamber, Sedd half turns. He stops himself, confident in his mastery of this place. In his peripheral vision, he sees that Lathek is still ‘playing’ with another of the surviving Ultramarines.
‘Don’t bleed him dry, Lathek. Not yet.’
They need this warrior’s blood, and the captain’s. He resists the urge to send Lathek to check on Vorsch and Methkar. All of their captives must live, for now, and the humans cowering in the far reaches of the chamber, too. Their blood will be important.
‘The veil will thin again,’ he says. ‘Is that not so, Kaeloq?’
The horned figure standing behind him takes a step forward. Kurtha Sedd sneers.
‘You reek of blood. Did you bring me their heads or their tongues, my disciple?’
Something heavy is kicked over to Sedd, rolling around to face the apostle. He stares down into the smashed lenses of an Ultramarine’s helmet. It is bloody, with a ragged stump of neck jutting out of the bottom.