‘And so it is,’ said Nargalax. ‘For all your books and chanting... you know nothing, little man.’
‘There has been no treachery,’ said Enusat. ‘You are mistaken.’
‘I am not,’ said Nargalax. ‘The treachery... is being enacted even now.’
‘Marduk,’ snarled Nahren. ‘What has the fool done?’
‘Killed you all,’ said Nargalax, and everything changed.
There had been a disconcerting lurch, something akin to the dislocation felt during warp transit. A wave of nausea crashed over Enusat, and he felt his gorge rise, acid burning the back of his throat. Then it was past, and the First Acolyte saw that they were no longer standing within the hold of a ship.
‘What in the names of the gods?’ he said, staring around him.
They were in the depths of a rotting jungle – a true jungle. Twisted boughs of decaying trees, of a size and design that defied rationality, curled around each other overhead, forming a nigh impenetrable canopy, hanging with an overabundance of lichen, vines and fungus. In the few gaps in that impossible canopy, sulphuric yellow skies could be glimpsed.
The air was thick with flies, many bloated to gigantic proportions, and the ground was deep in rotting mulch, worms and crawling insects. A foetid river filled with drowned corpses could be glimpsed through the undergrowth, and doleful bells tolled in the distance, as if summoning the devout to a requiem mass.
A spray of blood splattered across Enusat’s faceplate, blurring his vision as combi-bolter fire took one of the Bloodsworn in the side of the head. He went down, the bolter in his now dead hands firing wildly. Enusat grunted as a bolt ricocheted off his chestplate and detonated in beneath his left pauldron. Warning icons indicating the extent of the damage to his armour and body flashed before his eyes, but he blinked them away angrily.
Nahren turned, bringing his heavy crozius around in a lethal two-handed arc, but Nargalax met the blow with his left arm. It would have had as much effect had the Dark Apostle struck stone – the weapon was stopped dead.
Nargalax’s tentacle curled around the haft of Nahren’s holy weapon, trapping it. The Death Guard pulled the Dark Apostle in close with a violent jerk, and rammed his wide-bladed sword into the Dark Apostle’s side.
‘No!’ roared Enusat, levelling his autocannon on the pair of combatants. He did not fire, however, as Nargalax had turned Nahren, shielding himself from the First Acolyte. Enusat could see the tip of the powered blade protruding from Nahren’s lower back. It dripped with noxious poisons.
Nargalax twisted the blade, and Nahren hissed in pain, still fighting for control over his crozius. The last remaining sworn brother of the Bloodsworn was circling left, his plasma gun raised to his shoulder.
‘You brought this on yourself, Word Bearers,’ Nargalax said in a loud voice, his blue eye burning coldly. ‘You seek to take that which was not yours. And now you will never leave the Garden.’
The Dark Apostle spat in his face. The acidic saliva dripped down the Death Guard’s face, and steam rose from the welts it formed in its passage. The Dark Apostle released the grip of his right hand from the haft of his crozius, and in the blink of an eye he had his bolt pistol drawn. He pressed the barrel up underneath the foetid rolls of Nargalax’s chin.
‘You are not walking away from here, Death Guard,’ said Nahren.
‘You are right, Word Bearer,’ said the Death Guard captain with a gargling laugh. ‘I am not.’
Nahren squeezed the trigger of his bolt pistol, firing up into the Death Guard’s rotten brainpan.
The bolt should have blown the Death Guard captain’s skull to fragments, but even as the shot was fired, Nargalax’s body was transformed into a million crawling, writhing bugs, worms and beetles. They held the shape of the Death Guard captain for the briefest of moments before they collapsed to the forest floor, a seething pile of foulness that dissipated into the undergrowth and was gone.
Nahren slumped to his knees, clutching at his stomach.
‘Damn,’ said Enusat.
Something scratched at the back of Kol Badar’s mind, and his eyes narrowed as he sought its source. There was something very wrong here.
‘Coryphaus!’ came a warning shout, and he turned to see a vast pile of foulness made up of millions of worms, beetles, bugs and roaches resolving into the shape of a heavy-set, plate-armoured warrior. Nargalax. Blood dripped from the tip of his plague sword. Word Bearers blood.
‘Take them!’ he bellowed.
He claimed the first kill, a bolt from his combi-bolter detonating one of the corrupted Guardsmen’s heads. Other mortals were ripped apart as the Word Bearers unleashed their firepower on the move, heading for cover, but the enemy were firing now too.
Eschewing any form of cover, the Death Guard planted their feet and began pumping shots at the Word Bearers. Three shots pummelled one warrior-brother backwards, cratering his chestplate, before a fourth took him in the throat. Another dropped to the ground, a stray shot taking him in the side of his knee and almost tearing his leg off. Returning fire, the Word Bearer struck one of the Death Guard, blowing chunks from his chest, but the legionary hardly even rocked backwards, and his return fire dropped another Word Bearer. Truly these were Mortarion’s sons.
Another warrior-brother was cut down by Nargalax, his corroded power blade hacking from collar bone to sternum. The wound festered in seconds, turning rotten and foul, and the Word Bearer died with a scream on his lips.
Kol Badar moved towards the Death Guard captain, determined to avenge his brethren. A bolt struck him in the left shoulder, and he growled, more in irritation than pain. He snapped off a burst of shots, killing two of the gasmask-wearing mortals.
He saw two of his Word Bearers round on a single Death Guard warrior, flanking him. They pounded him with bolt-rounds, but he took it all, even as gobbets of flesh and chunks of his armour were blown from his body. The legionary killed the first of the Word Bearers, pumping him with shells, then turned on the second. The Word Bearer ducked into cover to reload, and the Death Guard walked steadily after him, sliding a fresh drum of ammunition into his own bolter.
Kol Badar ripped the Plague Marine’s head off, and at last it slumped to the ground, liquefying as it did so. He snarled in frustration as he saw that he’d lost sight of Nargalax.
He heard a mechanical roar, and glanced across the embarkation deck to see one of his warriors pinned against a wall by his throat, held aloft by the three-metre tall abhuman. The roar he heard was the immense rock-drill that had replaced the creature’s right arm, and it turned to a screaming whine as it was thrust up into the Word Bearer’s body, shearing through armour, bone and flesh with frenzied ease, as well as drilling half a metre into the adamantium wall behind him.
A targeting matrix locked on to the abhuman, and Kol Badar let the Death Guard’s severed head slip from his talons. Snarling, he strode towards the towering ogryn brute, unleashing a torrent of fire as he went.
His bolts embedded themselves no more than a centimetre into the hulking abhuman’s flesh before they detonated, spraying plenty of blood but doing only circumstantial damage. Armour plates had been inserted into its body, the Coryphaus realised.
The wounds got the brute’s attention, however, and it swung towards him, the thick, ribbed pipe of its mask swinging around like a grotesque proboscis. Kol Badar stalked directly towards it, still firing, ignoring the bolt-rounds that streaked by him. He unloaded a full clip into the huge abhuman, halving his rate of fire. The idiot creature swatted at his shells as if they were flies, its roars of pain and rage muffled by the thick black rubber mask it wore strapped over its head. Its beady eyes stared out through green-tinged glass goggles, and he saw them narrow to points, realising at last the source of its pain.
With a muffled roar, it broke into a lumbering run towards him, its drill-arm spinning. It lowered its shoulder, intending to
slam him off his feet. That suited him just fine.
Using all the power in his gene-enhanced frame, augmented by the strength of the servo-muscles and fibre-bundles of his armour, he struck the charging brute a backhanded blow with his power-taloned fist, sending it crashing to the ground. Its momentum gouged a deep furrow through the deck before it came to rest against a bulkhead, which crumpled inwards against its weight.
Kol Badar closed in, stamping after it. It tried to rise, staggered and fell again. Its gasmask had been half ripped away and hung limp from one side, and its brutish jaw was hanging loose, broken in a dozen places. Its maw was a repulsive, toothless cavity, and it had no nose to speak off, just a pair of slits from which protruded a cluster of mucus-slick cables and pipes. Its eyes were wet and dribbling.
It tried to rise again, this time succeeding, but Kol Badar was on it then, clamping his power talons around its neck. With a savage yank he tore out its throat. The creature tried to bellow, but nothing came from its mouth but a splatter of blood. It stubbornly refused to fall, though; too inured to pain or too stupid to realise that it was already dead.
It rammed its rock-drill into Kol Badar’s thigh, whirring madly. His ornate Terminator armour resisted for a moment, then gave way, and the rotating drill ripped through fibre-bundles and flesh, tearing at muscles and churning through bone.
Closing his talons around the abhuman’s mechanised arm, Kol Badar forcibly withdrew the drill from his leg, and dark blood gushed from the wound. He fired his combi-bolter into the beast’s face, pounding its adamantium-like skull, blinding it and pulping the flesh there; but still it fought on.
Balling its massive hand – a hand that could enclose a mortal man’s body in its grasp – into a giant fist, the brute struck Kol Badar in the side of his helmet. The blow dented his helm and snapped two of its tusks, and he reeled back a step, staggering. It was like being hit by a solid artillery shell.
It was on its knees now. Kol Badar mag-locked his combi-bolter to his thigh and limped forwards. He grasped the huge monster’s head in his hands and gave a brutal twist, eliciting a sickening crack, and it slumped, finally, to the ground.
Calmly, ignoring the pain of his leg and the gunfire spattering around him, Kol Badar reloaded his combi-bolter.
Marduk’s voice came to him then, crackling through the vox-network.
‘I have what I came for,’ he said. ‘It is time to leave.’
‘Nahren is still within the ship,’ said Kol Badar.
‘Leave him,’ came the crackling reply. ‘He is of no consequence.’
‘Enusat is with him.’
This time there was a delay before Marduk answered.
‘How far away are they?’
‘I don’t know – we’ve had no contact with them.’
‘Go,’ said Marduk. ‘His is a noble sacrifice. He will be remembered.’
Kol Badar was about to argue, but the battle was faring poorly. It had only been under way for minutes, but bodies were strewn across the deck floor. Their spilled blood had attracted the attention of flying insects, which were busy feeding and laying eggs in ravaged flesh. Six of his Word Bearers were already down, as opposed to only two of the Death Guard. The number of human mortals was inconsequential.
‘Word Bearers,’ he roared. ‘We are leaving!’
Thousands of rotting, flyblown heads hung by their hair from the lower branches above them, like so much rotting fruit. They looked down upon these new arrivals, eyes dripping with mucus and pus, and their mouths gaped open.
‘The blightwood grows,’ they said, as one.
Daal’ak’ath mel caengr’aal.
Already, foetid vines and crawling ropes of roots and stranglethorns had grown over the body of the fallen Bloodsworn. Tiny mushrooms burst from the flesh of his face, and insects and maggots already filled his mouth and eyes. Within moments, he was subsumed into the undergrowth, feeding the decay.
Enusat moved to the Dark Apostle’s side, and helped him to his feet.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Nahren said.
Something grotesque fell from on high suddenly, crashing down through rotten branches to fall before Enusat, Nahren and the last of the Bloodsworn. It was a foul, membranous birth sac, and it hit the ground with a wet thump. Something squirmed and writhed within. Enusat lowered his autocannon, but Nahren pushed the barrel of his weapon aside.
‘No,’ said the Dark Apostle. ‘It would not to do raise the ire of the Plague Father, not here in His realm.’
‘Did the tainted one speak the truth, then?’ he replied. ‘Are we truly within the Garden of Nurgle?’
‘Look around you,’ said Nahren. ‘We stand in the presence of greatness.’
A single, curving horn pierced the birth sac flopping around before them, and amniotic fluid, blood and mucus spilled out in a flood. A swarm of insects flocked to the disgusting feast, but Enusat’s eyes were locked on the creature rising before them.
The single horn rose from its forehead, and it clawed its way free of the clinging membrane, its spindly limbs slick with birth fluids. It was a gangrel creature. If it stood straight, it would be fully two heads taller than any of the Word Bearers, yet its back was twisted and stooped, its spine clearly visible, protruding through its drowned-man flesh. It had the bloated stomach of a plague victim and the open sores of the diseased. A single great cyclopean eye blinked in its head, filled with cataracts and oozing styes, and its chest heaved as it took in its first, heaving breath.
It saw them, and blinked. Its fleshy, worm-like lips parted, exposing rotten tusks and gravestone teeth, and worms writhed in its throat.
‘Onetwothreefourfivesixseven,’ it groaned. It took a lumbering step towards them, legs wobbling like jelly. ‘Onetwothreefourfivesixseven, seven, seven, seven.’
It took another step, this one more stable as it got used to the notion of walking. It lifted a hand towards them. Its nails were incrusted with filth.
A second birth sac thudded to the ground behind them, and a third fell nearby. Others crashed through the branches, bringing with them a tumble of rotting leaves and maggots.
‘I think it best we leave this place,’ said Enusat.
‘I am not certain that is going to be a simple task,’ said Nahren.
Too late, Kol Badar noticed the worms and millipedes writhing underfoot. Too late he realised that something was taking shape behind him. He turned with a snarl, talons lashing out, but he could not stop the sword thrust in time.
Nargalax’s blade took him in the shoulder, the jagged, evil weapon grinding against bone as it spitted him. His flesh burned as toxins and poisons entered his system.
‘She’s mine,’ said Nargalax. ‘You have no right.’
He twisted the blade, made Kol Badar hiss.
‘This will kill you... you know,’ said the Death Guard, almost as an afterthought. ‘But it will not be a fast death.’
Kol Badar’s vision wavered. There were shouts, and bolts whickered by him to strike Nargalax, but the Coryphaus hardly registered the cries, and the Death Guard captain merely laughed as he retracted his blade. The Coryphaus was half dragged aboard the Invisus, which was adding its own supporting fire, and the shuttle’s assault ramp slammed shut. Still the Death Guard’s laugh could be heard.
Hor hor hor.
Marduk was waiting for them as they disembarked, bloodied and battered.
Kol Badar’s face was wan and slick with sweat, and he leaned on Sabtec as he hobbled onto the deck.
A child with no face stood by Marduk, and Kol Badar glanced down at her, struggling to focus.
‘I hope it was worth it,’ he said between clenched teeth.
‘Oh, it most certainly was,’ said Marduk.
Then the klaxons began to sound, and the smile dropped from Marduk’s face.
‘Goodbye,’ said Nargalax.
/> The Death Guard stood on the deck of the Vox Dominus, surrounded by fecund growth and the last remnants of his warband. His blue eye was cold with hatred as he stared out at the Infidus Diabolus in the distance.
He did not blink as the roiling anomaly dragged the Word Bearers ship through its surging portal, nor when it snapped shut behind them.
It was done.
Enusat supported the weight of the Dark Apostle. The lone Bloodsworn remaining of Nahren’s entourage ranged out in front, scouting the way. They had been travelling for what – weeks? Months? It was impossible to gauge. The unfathomable jungle spread out before them, immense and immeasurable, and on they tracked.
They had seen such sights as to make Enusat weep in despair and wonder. But none of that mattered now.
Nahren’s wound would not close, and while they patched it frequently with the crude poultices they made, held in place with mud and leaves, it was foetid and stinking with foulness whenever Enusat inspected it. The Dark Apostle’s skin was waxy and grey, and his veins were black and throbbing.
They saw ships hanging low in orbit from time to time, inert and apparently lifeless. There were dozens of them, of all sizes and shapes. Some Enusat recognised as battleships and cruisers of human design, while others were strange and unnatural – xenos vessels. In places they were so low that the canopy had enveloped them. They looked like ancient ruins, suspended above the noxious plague world, encrusted with filth and hanging with coiling vines. Spindly branches, like reaching skeletal hands, clutched towards those ships that had not yet been claimed.
Some time earlier they had seen a pair of smaller vessels hauling one of the hulks away, dragging it free of the clinging trees and twisting sky-roots. They had not tarried to watch for long, however. A spawn-cluster of tiny, bulbous daemons had burst from an overgrown pitcher plant nearby, spilling out upon the jungle floor, giggling and gnashing their teeth. In a tumble, they had waddled and rolled towards the Word Bearers. While they were hardly threatening, they were attracting larger beings, things as large as mountains that crushed the jungle beneath their bulk, and so they had hurriedly moved on.
Treacheries of the Space Marines Page 33