‘This is hopeless, Apostle,’ Enusat said.
That was when the dead Word Bearer grabbed him.
‘The blightwood grows,’ it said.
Daal’ak’ath mel caengr’aal.
PART TWO
The darkness was absolute. All but the barest of life support systems had been shut down on the Infidus Diabolus months earlier. The over-recycled air was low in oxygen and stale. Without the hum of engines or the chanting of the Host, the halls were silent, haunted only by the groan of the ship’s hull.
‘We should never have stepped foot aboard the Vox Dominus,’ said Marduk, a voice in the darkness. ‘You advised me against it. Would that I had listened.’
There came no reply. Indeed, the Dark Apostle had expected none.
‘Nahren would have insisted he go aboard regardless, to see the truth of the Death Guard’s claim for himself. That was his right. It was not for me to dissuade him. But we should not have followed. The warning signs were there. I was just too blind to see them.’
He let out a slow, hissing breath. His hands turned to fists in the darkness.
‘We should have rained fire upon the rotting hulk of the Vox Dominus, and sent the Death Guard to damnation along with it. They will suffer for this. This is not our fate.’
The words sounded hollow and empty.
‘This is not our fate,’ he said again, more quietly this time.
Silence was his only answer.
Enusat hadn’t seen the figure slumped in the control seat, for it was so covered in fungal growth and moss that it had become one with its surroundings. Nevertheless, he saw it now.
It had no eyes – those had long since decomposed – but its head turned, and it stared up at him nonetheless, empty sockets boring into him like drills. Its face was wasted and shrunken, the skull clearly visible beneath waxy, pallid skin. Its lips had drawn back, giving it a corpse-grin.
It had hold of his arm. Beneath the covering of moss and a cluster of limpet-like fungus, he could see that that hand was encased in gore-red plate. This was a brother of the Third Host.
Enusat tried to jerk away, but its grip was cold and deathly strong. It held him like a vice. Its brown, rotten teeth parted, jaw moving, and it spoke.
‘The blightwood grows, thew-clod, weirwood, horedew, noth.’
Daal’ak’ath mel caengr’aal, gol’akath, mor‘dhka, jakaeh’esh.
The first voice emerged from the throat of the creature that had once been a Word Bearer, and a cluster of beetles scrabbled from its mouth, disturbed by the creaking vocal cords. That voice was low-pitched and hoarse, like a heavy creaking door. The other voice was something far more disturbing; it was the voice of a daemon, something older and more powerful than anything Enusat had ever encountered. It made his flesh creep and his stomach coil.
It grinned at him then, and began dragging him towards it.
‘Copse and corpse, corpse and copse.’
Grink’ah’tok mal daeth’ma’gol, daeth’ma’gol mal grink’ah’tok.
Marduk smiled. The head of his holy crozius was embedded in the head of a mortal, and he pulled it free with a wet sucking sound. He gave it a shake, dislodging the worst of the blood and brain matter.
He surveyed the carnage around him. The ambush had been perfectly executed.
The ship had been drastically undermanned, crewed mostly by mortals that had either been picked up off-world or bred on board. Only three of the Death Guard had been left behind – doubtless their captain had taken most of his warriors with him in a pathetic attempt to impress or intimidate.
They had boarded the ship within a minute of discovery, and were killing moments later.
Sabtec pushed a corpse off his blade with a boot, and it slumped lifeless to the floor with the others.
‘How many?’ asked Marduk.
‘Thirty-two kills,’ answered Sabtec, kneeling to clean his blade on his last victim’s shirt.
‘Any injuries of our own?’
‘Nothing of note,’ said Sabtec.
‘I sense her nearby,’ said Marduk. ‘With me.’ Sabtec rose instantly, moving with the Dark Apostle deeper into the ship. There was not much to it, and it did not take them long.
The strode into a darkened storage deck, and Marduk halted, listening. Lengths of chain hung from plasteel crossbeams overhead, and they swung languorously, clinking musically. Water dripped from somewhere. Marduk turned around on the spot for a moment, then dropped his gaze to the grilled flooring.
‘There,’ he said, nodding towards a handle set into the floor.
Sabtec hauled the hatch open. It slammed to the floor with a resounding crash, revealing stairs that descended into darkness.
Marduk made his way down into the gloom. It was a pit, wide and deep, with no exit but the hatch. In a corner of the metal-sided pit cowered a cluster of robed mortals. They were females, a dozen or more of them, and each of them was truly ancient, with withered, frail hands more akin to talons, and matted long white hair. They were blind, their eyes milky, and they whimpered and shook, shielding their hideous crone faces.
A tingling sensation at the back of Marduk’s head told him he had found the one he sought. Sabtec hissed, and he knew that the warrior could feel it too.
‘Come out, sweetling,’ he said, grinning wolfishly. ‘I’ll not eat you up.’
The harpy flock wailed but parted, leaving just one small figure standing alone.
It was a human child, a girl, no more than four years of age. The tingling became an uncomfortable itch, an insubstantial scratching in the back of Marduk’s skull. He gritted his teeth, and blood leaked from his eyes, the only tears he could weep. The girl’s power was more than he had anticipated.
She wore a dusty grey robe that hid much of her tiny frame. It trailed across the ground behind her. Her hands were hidden in overlarge sleeves, and around her head and shoulders she wore a tightly wound headdress, charcoal grey, leaving just the pale oval circle of her face visible.
Or at least, that was where her face should have been.
Enusat slammed his brick-like fist into the deathly creature’s grinning mouth, rocking its head backwards and shattering teeth. Still it did not release its grip. Its head rolled forwards again, grinning toothlessly. He slammed his fist into its face once more, and felt bones shatter beneath the blow. The command throne turned, groaning, and the creature fell to the floor, torn loose from its seat. It left a man-shaped impression behind. Still, it held on to him, like death itself.
Enusat stamped down hard on its arm, finally breaking its grip. From the floor it stared up at him.
‘Copse and corpse, corpse and copse.’
Grink’ah’tok mal daeth’ma’gol, daeth’ma’gol mal grink’ah’tok.
It began to rise. Enusat backed away, lowering his autocannon.
The bridge was alive with movement and shouts of warning as more of the corrupted Word Bearers rose from their overgrown surroundings, rising from thrones and stepping from the walls. They were covered in fungus, perfectly camouflaged until they began to move.
Enusat had his autocannon levelled at the one that had grabbed him as it staggered towards him, grinning manically.
Unseen, another creature emerged behind him, seeming to step right from the wall. The left half of its face was completely obscured by fungal growth. It grabbed him from behind, hands closing on his neck. The one before him was closing in. He squeezed his autocannon’s trigger, hurling it backwards and splattering gobbets of flesh and skull shards out in a fine cloud behind it. Then the other one dropped him to his knees. The strength in its limbs was incredible.
Nahren was before him then, charging forwards, his face twisted in hatred. His crozius was almost as tall as him, and he drew it back in a powerful, swinging blow. There was a sharp crack of discharging energy as the spiked head of the
holy weapon connected, and the creature was hurled away. Nahren offered a hand, helping Enusat to his feet. The foe that Enusat had gunned down was rising to its feet once more, despite missing half its head. Sickly brain matter, porridge-like and foetid, was dripping down its side. Where half its head should have been there was a ghostly monotone afterimage, showing the Word Bearer’s face as it had appeared in life, untouched by disease or decomposition. This spectral ghost-image was transparent, and it fixed Enusat with a look of pure hatred.
One of the Bloodsworn leaped upon it, tackling it to the ground. The possessed Word Bearer’s huge, crab-like claw encircled the creature’s neck, shearing its head from its shoulders, leaving just the transparent face of an apparition in its place. Still, it was not slowed.
It rolled atop the possessed Bloodsworn warrior, and brought its fists together on either side of his head, once, twice, crushing his helmet. The daemonic entity that had inhabited the warrior departed instantly, returning his body to its previous, unaltered – and now very dead – state.
He heard Nargalax’s booming laughter – hor hor hor – and threw a sidewards glance towards the Death Guard legionary. Was this his doing? It seemed not; the bloated warrior ripped apart one of their corrupt attackers with a controlled burst from his twin-barrelled combi-bolter, laughing as it was sent dancing away from him under the weight of his fire. He wielded the weapon one-handed, the weapon steadied by his bulbous tentacle. In his other hand he held his short, thick-bladed sword. Its edge was heavily notched and chipped, and noxious slime dripped from its tip.
Another of the Bloodsworn was down, dragged to the ground by three of the corrupted Word Bearers. The other Bloodsworn were laying about them with talon and claw, dismembering and hacking into dead flesh, but their enemies would not stay down. On they came, ghostly power-armoured limbs replacing those that had been ripped away. One of them was more spirit than flesh, now, but still it refused to fall. It could, however, still kill.
One of the apparitions thrust an incorporeal hand into the side of the head of one of the Bloodsworn, fingertips pushing through skin and bone as if it were not there. The Bloodsworn felt its touch, though, that much was plain. Blood welled in the warrior’s eyes and ran from his nose, and he fell to the ground, twitching and jerking violently.
‘We have to go!’ shouted Enusat.
One of the unholy creatures came at him, clutching at his face, and he thrust the whirling chainblade slung beneath his autocannon into its chest. The whirring blades tore open its armour, which came apart like sodden wood, and ripped through its fused ribcage, splattering filth in all directions. Still the creature clung on. A squeeze of the trigger sent it flying.
‘Back! Back!’ roared Nahren, smashing another foe into the ground.
Enusat was walking backwards, swinging his heavy autocannon from one side to the other, pumping shots into the enemy. At the entrance to the bridge he halted, planting his feet in a wide brace position, providing covering fire for the Dark Apostle and the remaining Bloodsworn. Nargalax joined him there, his twin-barrelled combi-bolter coughing staccato bursts of fire.
At another barked order from the Dark Apostle, this time his voice tinged with a daemonic command, the Bloodsworn disengaged from the fight, blood and ichor dripping from their wounds, witch-fire flaring in their eyes.
One by one, the battered Word Bearers extricated themselves from the bridge, clambering back through the half-opened blast doors, until only Nargalax and Enusat remained. None of their ambushers now were whole. Most were lacking one limb or more, and many sported gaping holes and rents punched through their bodies – large craters formed by Enusat’s autocannon, smaller detonations from bolters, and liquefied, gaping rents from melta and plasma weaponry. All exposed pellucid grey ghost-flesh and armour, showing the Word Bearers as they were in their prime. There were more than a dozen of them, all told, and they closed in without hurry, walking forwards slowly.
‘You go,’ said Enusat, urging the Death Guard to make his exit.
‘We’ll go together,’ said Nargalax, snapping off another burst of fire, detonating another assailant’s head.
The enemy were closer now, and Enusat depressed his thumb-trigger, letting loose a salvo of fire on full auto. He swung the barrel of his weapon in a wide, sweeping arc, pumping shot after shot into the implacable advance, and empty shell casings tumbled around him, tinkling like so many tiny bells. Muzzle-flare lit up the room like an orange-tinged strobe. The sound was deafening, even through the aural dampeners of his helmet.
In the corner of his eye, Enusat saw a rapidly decreasing number clicking down as he tore through his ammunition store. It was accompanied by a small icon, a bar that was rapidly filling as his weapon’s temperature began to soar, even as the barrel began to glow red-hot.
The weight of his fire, combined with Nargalax’s and that of the Bloodsworn, who were snapping off shots from outside the bridge, ripped through the enemy, jerking them backwards and half-spinning others as shots clipped them. But the shots had no effect on their spectral forms, the storm of gunfire passing through them without effect.
The legs of one of the corrupted Word Bearers were cut out beneath him by a surging melta-blast, and the creature fell to the ground. With a jerk, the spirit pulled free of the now legless flesh body, leaving it completely behind, and commenced its advance.
With a last torrent of fire, Enusat barked ‘Now!’ and the Word Bearer and the Death Guard as one put up their smoking weapons and stepped back through the half-open blast doors, covered by the fire of the Bloodsworn.
They backed away, still snapping off shots. The enemy stopped at the edge of the bridge, staring after them. They did not attempt to pursue them. Perhaps they were unable to cross that boundary, for whatever reason, Enusat thought.
In their centre was the warrior that had torn fully loose from his fleshy body. A fan of blades framed his bald head, rendered in monochrome tones of grey. His hands were at his sides. He stared after them. His face was devoid of emotion, but his eyes seemed to hold an accusation. You left us here, they seemed to say.
‘That was Dol Vaedel,’ said Nahren. ‘Coryphaus of the Third Host.’
As one, the dead Word Bearers spoke.
‘The blightwood grows,’ they croaked.
Daal’ak’ath mel caengr’aal.
‘Let us leave this place,’ said Nahren, bitterly. ‘There is nothing here for us. The Third Host is dead.’
Whenever Marduk tried to focus on her features, they became blurred and smudged, making them impossible to discern. It was as if they were hidden by a psychic shroud. Indeed, even to try made Marduk’s eyes hurt. If he looked at her sideways, focusing past her, he could see that she had normal, unremarkable human features, but whenever his gaze drifted back to her face, it became once more an obscured blur.
‘What is this abomination?’ breathed Sabtec. There was a tremor in his voice.
‘She is an augur, and she is marvellous,’ said Marduk. ‘Her name is Antigane.’
‘How do you know the… child’s... name, my lord?’ asked Sabtec.
‘She is telling me,’ said Marduk, a smile lighting his features. ‘She is a child in body only, this one. The souls of other augurs and skalds dwell within her. So many! Seers, witches, mystics, crones. The line is strong and pure. Before her was one named… Chattor? No, Chattox,’ Marduk corrected. ‘She was slain by bolt and fire by the gene-kin of the Imperial Fists, though they wore black, not yellow.’
‘Templars,’ said Sabtec. ‘The bastard get of Dorn.’
‘Templars, yes,’ agreed Marduk. ‘I can see them. She is showing me her deaths. Before Chattox was Demedike, and before her was Arabis of Davin. Do I understand that right?’
Marduk laughed softly in wonder.
‘Davin?’ said Sabtec.
‘Oh yes,’ said Marduk. ‘She is of the true blood.’
Nargalax stopped in his tracks, forcing Enusat to halt so that he didn’t bump into him.
‘No!’ said the Death Guard captain. ‘She is mine!’
‘What is wrong?’ said Enusat.
‘Treachery,’ said the Death Guard captain, still staring straight ahead. All of his humour had evaporated, like a lake under a rising sun, and his right hand reached towards the hilt of his corroded blade. ‘She belongs to me!’
‘Of what do you speak?’ said Enusat. ‘Whose treachery?’
Nahren and the two of his Bloodsworn that remained had become aware that something was taking place now, and were turning back. Sensing something amiss, they began to fan out around the lone Death Guard. The Bloodsworn’s weapons were not raised – not yet – but Enusat could feel their tension.
‘What is this?’ growled Nahren, turning and stamping back over the uneven ground.
‘I did not lie,’ said Nargalax. ‘This vessel was as it is now when we found it.’
‘I believe you, Nargalax,’ said Enusat. ‘But what is this treachery you speak of?’
The Death Guard captain turned his head towards Enusat.
‘You seek to take that which is not yours to claim,’ he said. His blue eye was not smiling now. All that was there was a cold, burning anger. ‘Fools. You have damned yourselves with your greed and lust for power.’
‘I like not your tone, Death Guard,’ said Nahren. ‘You are the ones that took something that did not belong to you – this ship.’
‘I did not lie,’ Nargalax said again. ‘Your precious Host was gone by the time I found this ship, claimed by the Garden. The Plague Father’s strength waxes strong... His borders expand. I was enacting my duty. A world beyond the veil has been chosen. I will send this ship into this world, furthering the spread of Grandfather Nurgle’s domain. I bore you no ill will, nor those whom the Garden has already claimed. But now you will join them.’
‘The Garden… of Nurgle?’ asked Nahren. ‘You speak of it as a sentient thing.’
Treacheries of the Space Marines Page 32