Since then, they had waited for hours in the stinking twilight as their captors – or brethren – debated whether to kill them or not. The creature Uriel had fought in the outflow pool was one of their guards, though it still appeared not to care about the weapon lodged in its flesh.
‘Damn it, but I wish I knew what they were doing,’ said Uriel, turning from the creatures that surrounded them.
‘Do you?’ said Pasanius. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘We can’t stay here. We have to get back to that fortress.’
‘Back to the fortress?’ laughed Ardaric Vaanes. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Deadly serious,’ nodded Uriel. We have a death oath to fulfil, to destroy the daemonculaba or die in the attempt.’
‘You’ll die then,’ promised Vaanes.
‘Then we die,’ said Uriel. ‘Have you heard nothing I have said to you, Vaanes?’
‘Don’t you dare lecture me about honour and duty, Ventris,’ warned Vaanes. ‘I have seen enough of what your honour has to offer. Most of us are already dead, and for what?’
‘No warrior ever died in vain who died for honour in the service of the Emperor.’
‘Spare me your borrowed wisdom, Ventris,’ sneered Vaanes. ‘I have had my fill of it. If we survive this, there’s no way I’m going anywhere near that fortress again. I am done with your heroics and will leave you to die.’
‘Then I was wrong about you, Vaanes,’ said Uriel. ‘I thought you had honour left within you, but I see now that you do not.’
Vaanes ignored Uriel and stared sullenly at the lumpen, misshapen beasts that watched over them.
Uriel turned to Pasanius and said, ‘Then we are on our own, my friend.’
‘So it would seem,’ agreed Pasanius, slowly, and Uriel could see that his friend was struggling to speak – burdened by the terrible weight of guilt.
An awkward silence fell between the two friends, neither knowing the right way to break it or how to begin to say what needed to be said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Uriel at last.
‘How could I?’ sobbed Pasanius. ‘I was tainted. Touched by evil and corrupted!’
‘How? When?’ asked Uriel.
‘On Pavonis, I think,’ said Pasanius, the words, now undammed, pouring from him in a rush of confession. ‘You remember that I hated the augmetic arm the moment the artificers of the Shonai cartel grafted it to me?’
‘Aye,’ nodded Uriel, remembering how Pasanius had complained that the arm could never be as good as one grown strong through a lifetime of war.
‘I didn’t know the half of it,’ continued Pasanius. ‘After a while I got used to it, even began to appreciate the strength in the arm, but it was when we fought the orks on the Death of Virtue that I first realised something was wrong.’
Uriel well remembered the desperate fighting to destroy the ork and tyranid infested space hulk that had drifted into the Tarsis Ultra system and heralded the great battle against a splinter fleet of bio-ships from Hive Fleet Leviathan.
‘What happened?’
‘We were fighting the orks, just before you killed their leader, you remember? One of the greenskins got behind me, nearly took my damn head off with his chainsaw.’
‘Yes, you took the blow on your arm.’
‘Aye, I did, and you saw the size of that blade. My arm should have been hacked in two, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even scratched.’
‘But that is impossible,’ said Uriel.
‘That’s what I thought, but by the time we got away and were back at the Thunderhawk, it was as good as new, not a scratch on it.’
‘I remember…’ whispered Uriel, picturing Pasanius’s arm reaching down to haul him to safety when their demolition charges had begun to tear the space hulk apart. ‘It shone like silver.’
‘I know,’ agreed Pasanius, ‘but it didn’t register on me until we were back aboard the Vae Victus that my arm should have been pulverised. I thought maybe I’d imagined how hard I’d been hit, but now I know I didn’t.’
‘How is it possible? Do you think the adepts of Pavonis had access to some form of xeno tech?’
‘No,’ said Pasanius, shaking his head. The silver-skinned devils we fought beneath Pavonis, the servants of the Bringer of Darkness, they could do the same thing. No matter how hard you cut, stabbed or shot them, they could get back up again, their bodies putting themselves back together right before your eyes.’
‘The necrontyr,’ spat Uriel.
Pasanius nodded. ‘Aye, necrontyr. I think maybe part of the Bringer of Darkness went into me when it cut off my arm, something corrupt that waited and then found a home in the metal of my new arm.’
‘Why did you say nothing?’ said Uriel. ‘It was your duty to report such a thing.’
‘I know,’ said Pasanius, dejectedly. ‘But I was ashamed. You know me, it’s always been my way to deal with things myself. I’ve been that way since I was a boy on Calth.’
‘I know, but you should still have reported it to Clausel. I will have to report it when we get back to Macragge.’
‘You mean if we get back,’ reminded Pasanius.
‘No,’ said Uriel, emphatically. ‘When.’
Uriel turned as he heard footfalls approaching. Colonel Leonid, his face gaunt and worn stood behind him and said, ‘Sergeant Ellard is dead.’
Uriel looked over to where the big man lay, and stood, placing his hand on Leonid’s shoulder. ‘I am sorry, my friend. He was a fine man and a good soldier.’
‘He shouldn’t have had to die like this, alone in the darkness.’
‘He wasn’t alone,’ said Uriel. ‘You were with him at the end.’
‘It’s not right though,’ whispered Leonid. ‘To have survived so much and then to die like this.’
‘A man seldom has the choice in the manner of his death,’ said Uriel, ‘It is the manner in which he lives that is the mark of a warrior. I did not know Ellard well, but I believe he will find a place at the Emperor’s side.’
‘I hope so,’ agreed Leonid. ‘Oh, and you’re wrong, by the way.’
‘About what?’
‘About having to get back into Khalan-Ghol on your own. I will come with you.’
Uriel felt his admiration for Leonid soar and said, ‘You are an exceptional man, colonel, and I accept your pledge of courage. Though you should know that Vaanes is almost certainly right, this will, in all likelihood, be the death of us.’
Leonid shrugged. ‘I don’t care any more. I have been living on borrowed time ever since the 383rd was ordered to Hydra Cordatus, so I plan to spit in death’s eye before he takes me.’
A slow clapping sounded and Uriel’s anger flared as he saw Vaanes sneering at them. The renegade Raven Guard shook his head.
‘You are all fools,’ he said. ‘I will say a prayer for you if we don’t get killed by these monsters.’
‘Be silent!’ hissed Uriel. ‘I will not have any prayers from the likes of you, Vaanes. You are not a Space Marine any more, you are not even a man. You are a coward and a traitor!’
Vaanes surged to his feet, hate flaring in his violet eyes and his lightning claws snapped from his gauntlet. ‘I told you that people never called me that twice!’
Before blood could be spilled, a great shadow fell across the company and the mighty form of the Lord of the Unfleshed blotted out the light. A coterie of hideously deformed creatures accompanied him, and a hunchbacked monster with its head fused into its spine limped towards Ellard’s corpse.
It dipped a long talon into the sergeant’s torn belly and raised its bloody digit to its slit of a mouth.
‘Deadflesh,’ it said. ‘Still warm.’
The Lord of the Unfleshed nodded its thick head. ‘Take it. Meat for Tribe.’
‘No!’ shouted Leonid, as the hunchback effortlessly lifted the sergeant’s body.
Pasanius reached out with his remaining arm and held Leonid back, hissing, ‘No, don’t. That’s not your friend any more, it
’s just the flesh he wore. He’s with the Emperor and there’s nothing these monsters can do to him now. You will only get yourself killed needlessly.’
‘But they are going to eat him!’
‘I know,’ said Uriel, standing before the struggling man. ‘But you have pledged yourself to our death oath and if you break it, you break it for all of us.’
‘What?’ spluttered Leonid.
‘Aye,’ nodded Uriel. ‘We are all bound to this quest now. Pasanius, me and now you.’
Leonid looked set to argue, but Uriel could see that the fight had gone out of the man as he realised the pact he had made with the Ultramarines. He nodded numbly and his struggles ceased as the Lord of the Unfleshed loomed above them.
‘You come now,’ said the monster.
‘Where?’ said Uriel.
‘To the Emperor. He decide whether you die or not.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE EMPEROR’S ARMOUR was filthy, stained with the residue of uncounted millennia of industry, the eagle on his breastplate a series of rusted bronze strips. Beaten metal shoulder guards hung from his mighty shoulders and a pair of beatific wings of stained metal flared from his back. Over twenty metres tall and suspended by thick, iron chains within the great pit at the centre of the manufactory, it was a creation of supreme devotion.
Uriel felt like a child against its immensity, remembering the first time he had seen a statue of the Emperor in the Basilica Konor on Calm. Though the statue there had been masterfully carved from beautifully veined marble quarried from the deep wells of Calth, this one – for all its crudity – was no less impressive.
The Unfleshed’s Emperor hung over the blackness of the pit, its armour and limbs fashioned from whatever scrap and machinery had been left behind when the manufactory had been abandoned.
Whereas some zealous preachers of the Ministorum might find it blasphemous that such hideous creatures had created such a crude idol of the Emperor, Uriel found it curiously touching that they had done so.
‘May the Emperor preserve us!’ hissed Pasanius as he laid eyes upon the suspended statue.
‘Well we’re about to find out,’ replied Uriel as he realised his first impression had been correct when he had felt like a child before this idol.
Who knew how long the Unfleshed had lived beneath the surface of Medrengard or what their memories were of the time before their abduction and implantation within the horror of the daemonculaba?
But one thing was clear: of the innocent children who had been transformed into the Unfleshed, one memory had survived – constant and enduring: the immortal and beneficent Emperor of Mankind.
Through all the vileness that had befallen the Unfleshed, they still remembered the love of the Emperor and Uriel felt an immense sadness at their fate. No matter that they had been horrifically altered to become monsters, they still remembered the Emperor and fashioned his image to watch over them.
Uriel and the others were pushed roughly to the edge of the great pit as the Unfleshed painfully drew near. Uriel saw that there were hundreds of them -many unable to walk on their mutated legs, corkscrewed bones or fleshy masses that had once been limbs, and so were helped by their brethren.
‘God-Emperor, look at them!’ said Vaanes. ‘How can such things be allowed to live?’
‘Shut up, Vaanes,’ said Uriel sadly. ‘They are kin to you and I, do not forget that. The flesh of the Emperor is within them.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ said Vaanes. ‘Look at them. They’re evil.’
‘Are they? I’m not so sure.’
A ripple of hunger and self-loathing went round the pit as the Lord of the Unfleshed turned and drew himself up to his full height. He reached back and pulled Uriel forwards, lifting him easily from the ground. Powerless to resist, Uriel felt the ground beneath him fall away as he was dangled over the bottomless pit.
‘Smelled mother’s meat on you,’ roared the Lord of the Unfleshed. ‘You washed out from mountain of iron men, fell from the Wall. But you not look like us. Why you have skin?’
Uriel’s mind raced as he tried to guess what response would not see him cast into the pit. The yellowed eyes of the monster bored into his and Uriel saw a desperate longing within them, a childlike need for… for what?
‘Yes!’ he yelled. ‘We came from the mountain of the Iron Warriors, but we are their enemies.’
‘You are Unwanted too? Not friends with iron men?’
‘No!’ cried Uriel, shouting so that the Unfleshed around the pit could hear him. ‘We hate the iron men, came to destroy them!’
‘Saw you before,’ snarled the Lord of the Unfleshed. ‘Saw you kill iron men in mountains. We took much meat then.’
‘I know. I saw.’
‘You kill iron men?’
‘Yes!’
‘Mother’s meat on you, yes?’
Uriel nodded as the creature spoke again. ‘Iron men’s flesh mothers made us ugly like this, but Emperor not hate us like iron men, he still love us. Iron men try to kill us. But we strong and not die, though dying be good thing for us. Pain stop, Emperor make pain go away and make us whole again.’
‘No,’ said Uriel, finally understanding a measure of this creature that, for all its massive strength and colossal size, was but a child within its monstrously swollen skull. It spoke with a child’s simplicity and clarity of the Emperor’s love, and as Uriel looked into its eyes, he saw its deathly craving to atone for its hideousness.
‘The Emperor loves you,’ he said. ‘He loves all his children.’
‘Emperor speaks to you?’ said the Lord of the Unfleshed.
‘He does,’ agreed Uriel, hating himself for such deception, but understanding its necessity. ‘The Emperor sent us here to destroy the iron men and the dae… the flesh mothers that made you like this. He sent us to you so that you might help us.’
The creature pulled him close and Uriel could sense its suspicion and hunger warring with a deep-seated desire to take revenge on its creators, those that had made it into this warped form.
It smelled him once more and Uriel just hoped that the stench of the daemonculaba that had stayed its hand at the outflow pool was still strong on him.
But the Lord of the Unfleshed roared in anguish, drawing back his arm, and Uriel cried out as he was hurled out across the pit.
URIEL SAILED THROUGH the air, his vision spiralling in a kaleidoscope of images: warped beasts that had once been children, a rusted iron chain, silvered panels of beaten metal and the black, depthless void of the pit. He slammed into the hanging effigy of the Emperor and the breath was knocked from him by the impact.
He snatched at the metal, scrabbling for a handhold, feeling his ragged fingernails break off on rivets as he slid down the rough iron. The black hole of the pit yawned before him, promising death, but his fingers closed on a panel of beaten iron, not quite flush with the giant statue’s body. Portions of its edges were sharp and he felt the tip of his middle finger slice off on the jagged metal. The panel bent and screeched, peeling away from the statue’s body, but it slowed his descent enough for him to be able to secure a handhold on the bronze eagle on the Emperor’s breastplate.
Uriel hung over the great depths of the pit, holding on for dear life with one hand, swinging above the darkness of the pit as the Unfleshed roared and – those that were able – stamped their feet, shouting, ‘Tribe! Tribe! Tribe!’
Now that he had a better grip on the statue, Uriel pulled himself up the strips of metal that formed the eagle and swung himself onto the Emperor’s shoulder guards, his breath coming in great gasps.
The Lord of the Unfleshed stood immobile at the edge of the pit, and Uriel had no idea what to do next. He watched as the Unfleshed took hold of the remains of the warrior band, dragging Pasanius, Vaanes, Leonid and the other Space Marines to the edge of the pit.
‘No!’ he shouted, risking standing upright and leaning on the swaying statue’s giant helm. ‘No!’
Then the miracl
e happened.
Whether it was some long-dormant mechanism within the battered machine forming the statue’s helmet – given a brief resurgence of life by Uriel’s movement – or the power of the Emperor himself, Uriel would never know, but at that moment, a radiant light burst from the crudely-formed visor.
A bass hum, like a charging generator, built from beneath the helmet and the Unfleshed drew back in terror from the great effigy as the glow intensified. Uriel felt the metal of the helmet grow hot to the touch and though he had no idea as to what was happening, was not about to let such a chance go by.
He shouted over to the Lord of the Unfleshed. ‘See! The Emperor wants you to help us! Together we can destroy the flesh mothers and the iron men!’
The great beast dropped to its knees, its wide jaws open in rapture as a terrible moaning and wailing built from the throats of the Unfleshed gathered around the pit.
Hot sparks leapt from the metal of the helmet and Uriel realised he was going to have get off the statue soon or risk being electrocuted by whatever was doing this. He edged along the Emperor’s shoulder guards, begging the Master of Mankind’s forgiveness for such base treatment of his image as he worked his way over to the nearest of the supporting chains.
No sooner had he clambered onto the chain, lying across its thick links and pulling himself away from the helmet – which now shone with a fierce, blinding glow j7 when a great thunderclap boomed and it exploded in an arcing shower of blue lightning.
The Unfleshed wailed in fear as the statue of the Emperor plummeted into the darkness of the pit, the chains supporting it flopping with a great clang against its sheer sides. Uriel swung on the chain, bracing his legs for impact against the side of the pit and feeling the ceramite plates of his armour buckle with the force of it.
Uriel spun crazily above the depthless chasm, knuckles white as he held onto the flaking links of the chain.
He hung there until he had got his breath back and carefully began the long climb to the top.
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