Sons of Corax

by George Mann

  Something stirred in the swirling mist, but Daed was unable to get any real sense of bearing, of how far away the thing might be. He trained his bolt pistol on what he took to be the epicentre of the disturbance, but refrained from opening fire without knowing exactly what it was he would be shooting at. He felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickle in anticipation. The mist began to churn.

  Daed waved his hand to signal the others to remain silent. He could hear the buzz of rotary engines now, drawing closer by the second. Bast had heard them too, and he raised his bolter in readiness. ‘Incoming!’ he called.

  Targus strafed left and dropped to one knee, swinging the heavy bolter up onto his shoulder.

  Seconds later, Daed saw the hellish machines that were responsible for the sound. They burst out of the bank of green vapour – strange, hovering contraptions about the size of a man, with twin rotary engines and bulbous fleshy torsos that hung from the metal casings like the bodies of fat maggots. The drones were half machine, half rancid flesh, and they bristled with winking lights and strange mechanical weapons.

  There were two of them, and they shot down the passageway, propelled at speed by their whirring engines. Daed hefted his axe, preparing to make a swing for one if it came close enough.

  Beside him, Targus squeezed the trigger on his heavy bolter and it boomed with explosive force in the confined space, belching an explosive shell at the lead drone. Targus’s aim was true, and the bolter shell pierced the soft, fleshy tissue of the machine’s torso. It exploded in a shower of glistening pus and mechanical components, its rotors clattering to the floor.

  The reverberating sound of the explosion was enough to stir the other Brazen Minotaurs into action. Bast sent a spray of bolter fire arcing into the air, clattering off the walls as the other drone slid noisily out of the way, churning the green miasma as it shot forward and into their midst.

  ‘Keep away from its poisoned blades,’ Daed barked. He raised his bolt pistol and fired a number of shots into the flank of the bizarre thing, opening puckered wounds that wept like silent, screaming mouths.

  Targus was furiously loading another round into his heavy bolter, while the others continued to pepper the drone with shot after shot, holding the thing at bay.

  ‘Hurry, Targus!’ Daed bellowed, glancing over his shoulder to see Targus raising the weapon onto his shoulder once again.

  A spray of the machine’s pustulant innards spattered over Daed’s arm brace then, and too late he realised their error. The gloopy stuff began to corrode his power armour almost as soon as it came into contact with the ceramite, chewing a series of deep pockmarks where it had landed.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ he screamed, but it was too late. Targus had already pulled the trigger of the heavy bolter.

  The blight drone exploded in a fountain of acidic pus, showering Bardus in a concentrated burst, covering his golden armour in a spray of the nauseating yellow fluid. He staggered back a few steps as he tried to clear the stuff from his helm, and then realised what was happening as it began to chew its way into the crevices between the armour plating. He held his hand up and cried out in pain as his flesh began to disintegrate inside his armour.

  The drone itself was a trap, Daed realised, like a deadly, hovering land mine. The corrosive filth inside it was a weapon, and it was eating away at the joints in Bardus’s armour, seeping beneath the ceramite to burn his flesh. There was nothing they could do, no way for them to save him without succumbing to the poison themselves. All they could do was watch as Bardus was slowly, inexorably overcome, until the poison had consumed his body. He staggered back against the wall, issued a long, pained exhalation and collapsed into a crumpled heap upon the ground.

  What was more, the noise of the heavy bolter fire meant they had given themselves away. Now the traitors would know they were there, and so would whoever was responsible for the trail of corpses that had led them this far into the complex.

  Targus lowered his weapon and pushed past the others to stand over the corpse of his fallen brother. He turned, wordlessly, to look at Daed.

  ‘Bardus is lost, brothers,’ said Daed, ‘But we will honour him.’ He reached up and unclasped the black lion’s pelt that hung around his own shoulders.

  Foul vapour was now issuing from inside Bardus’s armour as the poison burned through his corpse. A section of his helm had been eaten away, and beneath it Daed could see the damaged, half-disintegrated remains of his brother’s face.

  Daed stepped forward, dropped to his haunches and draped the lion’s pelt almost reverently over the corpse, as if it were a death shroud.

  ‘He was Lionguard,’ said Daed. ‘His name will be recorded in the annals of Tauron.’ He stood, resting his hand upon Targus’s pauldron. ‘There is nothing you could have done. You were not to know.’

  Targus nodded, but Daed could see he was grieving for the loss of his brother. ‘I will avenge him, captain.’

  ‘On the field of battle, yes,’ said Daed, his voice low and commanding. ‘But here, now, we must focus only on the mission. Put all other thoughts from your mind.’

  ‘Captain?’ The voice that interrupted them was insistent over the vox. Daed turned to see Bast approaching. ‘We must move swiftly, captain, before the enemy mobilises. The noise of the battle will draw them to us. This foul air gives them the advantage. They know the tunnels.’

  Daed nodded. ‘Lead on, Bast. Follow the trail of the dead. One way or another, we will reach our goal.’

  He started forward, but stopped short when his boot encountered something hard on the ground, which skittered away across the stone floor, clanging off the tunnel wall. Crossing to where it came to rest, Daed was surprised to see the beaked, ebony helm of a Space Marine. He frowned when he noticed the sheared fragment of spinal column still jutting rudely from the base of the helm, and realised with surprise that the decapitated head of its former owner was still contained within. The wound looked recent. The stump of the neck was bloody and wet.

  ‘What is it, captain?’ said Throle, coming to stand beside him.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ replied Daed, turning to glance after Bast, who was already barely visible in the soupy miasma. ‘But I believe this confirms we have company on Kasharat.’

  KORYN

  The echo of heavy weapons fire reverberated through the tunnels like the crack of thunder. Koryn and his Raven Guard froze in response, each of them attempting to ascertain from which direction the sound had come. It was somewhere up above, a few tunnels away, back towards the surface.

  After a moment, Grayvus spoke. ‘What are they doing? They’ll have the whole place down upon us!’

  ‘The blight drones,’ said Argis, and the dismay was evident in his voice.

  ‘That is their way,’ said Koryn. ‘They meet their enemies head on. They look them in the eye before they take their lives. There is honour in that.’

  ‘They’ll be meeting even more of them now,’ said Grayvus, wryly. ‘The pox-ridden scum will be swarming through these tunnels in a moment.’

  Koryn nodded. ‘Yes, we must press on. We must keep the way clear. We’re near to the heart of the complex now. There our brothers will find what they are looking for.’

  ‘I hope it shall prove worth it,’ muttered Coraan. Koryn let the comment pass. He knew his brothers were still smarting from the loss of Syrus. To the Raven Guard, who were so few, every fallen brother was painfully mourned, every loss keenly felt by all. But on Empalion II, the Brazen Minotaurs had helped the Raven Guard to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They had laid siege to a city under the sway of the Iron Warriors, sacrificing an entire company as a decoy in order to allow the Raven Guard to slip over the walls of the city and destroy the enemy from within. It was that which had brought Koryn to Kasharat, that debt of honour. The Brazen Minotaurs, bull-headed and brutal, could never have reached their target alone, and without
it they risked losing the entire conflict to the enemy warband. Seven Imperial worlds had already fallen, and it was Koryn’s duty to come to their aid. He would not allow another world to succumb to the Sickening.

  Footsteps pounded in an adjacent passageway. Koryn felt his pulse quicken. They would have to fight their way through from here on in, carving a bloody path through the corpses of the corrupted. It was not, perhaps, how he might have chosen to proceed with their mission, but Koryn’s had to admit – the notion of spilling more traitorous blood had a certain appeal.

  Koryn raised his lightning claws, which crackled and sparked in readiness.

  ‘Now, brothers!’ he called over the vox. ‘Let us see how many of these vile traitors we can destroy!’

  Forgoing all sense of subtlety, Koryn took the lead, charging out of the mouth of the tunnel and directly into the path of a band of seven cultists coming in the other direction. His talons flashed and three of them fell before they had even realised what was happening, torn asunder so violently that they showered Koryn’s armour in a dark, fleshy rain. He heard the chatter of bolter fire from behind him and knew that his brothers were there too, as he cut a swathe along the passageway.

  ‘Victorus aut Mortis!’ he bellowed over the vox as he opened up the belly of another cultist, before severing a fifth entirely in half at the midriff.

  ‘In the name of the Emperor!’ called Argis, whipping his combat blade around so that it opened a broad gash across the face of cultist, slicing through flesh and bone alike and felling the foul man where he stood.

  ‘For Corax!’ echoed Grayvus, loosing off a chatter of bolter shells.

  As more and more of the cultists spilled forth from the other end of the tunnel, Koryn smiled. He allowed the lust of battle to consume him, to fill his thoughts until he was barely conscious of his own actions, carried along by the ferocious rise and fall of combat, the dance of the raven. Within minutes the corridor was filled with a tide of corpses, as if they had somehow washed up here, deposited and abandoned like unwanted flotsam – a torrent of death left in the wake of the living shadows.

  Koryn, dripping blood from his talons, charged on, allowing his intuition to guide him, crushing the enemy as he led his Raven Guard deeper below ground, down towards the heart of the mortuary complex.

  When he finally came to rest a short while later, it was beside the entrance to a large subterranean cavern. Here, an ornate doorway had been erected, a vast, steepled arch, towering above even the Space Marines’ heads. It seemed incongruous to Koryn to find such a place at the heart of such a dark, oppressive structure.

  Immense statues stood proud and silent on either side of the yawning archway, their heads, hands and feet now vandalised, leaving them deformed and unrecognisable. Their blank faces stared unseeing into eternity.

  Koryn stepped to one side, pressing himself up against the wall in order to remain out of sight. He glanced round to see Argis’s helm looming out of the gloom beside him.

  ‘I sense movement inside,’ said Argis quietly.

  Koryn could tell that Argis was spoiling for another fight – he’d had a taste of battle and was now filled with the rush of it, with the desire to smite the enemy. Koryn knew, however, that it would be wrong for them to go any further. This was no longer their fight.

  ‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘This is a battle our brothers should face alone. We should allow them that, at least – the opportunity to defeat the beast in its own lair. We have done what we came here to do, to lead them to their goal, to ease their path to victory as they once did ours. Now we must leave them to finish it, to taste the blood of their enemies for themselves.’

  ‘Yes, Captain,’ said Argis, and if he was disappointed, he did not allow it to show in his voice. ‘The Raven’s way.’

  ‘And besides,’ said Koryn, grinning. ‘We need to clear them a path out of here, yet. There are plenty more of those traitorous wretches waiting for us in the tunnels above.’

  Argis raised his bolt pistol. ‘I am ready, captain,’ he said, and Koryn could tell that he was smiling with anticipation behind his respirator.

  Koryn turned and made a hand gesture for the others to follow, and then silently the Raven Guard melted once more into the shadows.

  DAED

  It had been a bloodbath.

  Whatever had happened here in this confined tunnel, it had been carnage. Someone – and having found the beaked helm in the passage­way above, Daed was beginning to form an idea of who might have been responsible – had ripped through a swarm of enemy cultists, shredding them limb from limb and leaving behind a slick mess of body parts and eviscerated corpses. It wasn’t so much a bloody trail as evidence of a massacre. There must have been thirty or more of the corrupted humans, their wretched, mutated cadavers already rotting where they had fallen. It was difficult to make out their true number – their remains were no longer whole enough to be able to judge.

  ‘What happened here?’ growled Throle, and Daed knew it was a rhetorical question, echoing all of their thoughts.

  ‘Help,’ he replied, his voice quiet and low. ‘We were wrong to assume we were being led into a trap, or that another foe was engaged in attempting to beat us to our target. Whoever did this… they are allies. Someone is clearing us a path.’

  ‘Clearing us a path…?’ said Targus, his voice incredulous. ‘But who?’

  ‘There’ll be time for that later,’ replied Daed, brandishing his axe before him to underline his point. ‘We are close to our goal. I can sense it. We must press on. We must make good on the fortune we have been granted.’ He turned and charged off along the passageway, his boots sloshing in the spilled blood of the enemy. The others fell in behind him, and together the four Brazen Minotaurs began their final descent into the heart of the enemy labyrinth.

  It was not long before Daed, following in the wake of his benefactors, located the entrance to the central cavern at the nexus of the mortuary complex. The path had been made clear to him by the grisly trail of fallen cultists. They were heaped against the tunnel walls or spread out upon the ground, in some instances two or three deep at a time.

  Some of them, he’d realised as he’d thundered down the tunnels, were still alive, scrabbling at his legs as they bled out from terrible wounds or tried to push their spilled organs back into their rent-open cavities. He finished many of them as he ran, crushing their skulls with his boots or spreading their infected brains across the walls with a swift shot from his bolt pistol.

  Now, in the shadow of the enormous archway, surrounded by wispy green mist, Daed stood shoulder to shoulder with his brothers, ready to face whatever – or whoever – was waiting for them in the dank cavern beyond.

  Without a word he stalked forward into the gloom, his bolt pistol tracking back and forth, his footsteps ringing out in the cavernous space. Inside, the cave had been dressed to resemble an elaborate temple, with a corridor of ornate marble columns leading to a raised dais upon which, Daed saw with a quickening of his hearts, their target rested: the supine form of Theseon, the Chief Librarian of the Brazen Minotaurs.

  Theseon, apparently unconscious, was lashed to a marble slab, and as Daed watched a number of human cultists worked strange ministrations over his power armour, splashing unguents across his chest-plate and painting runes upon his pauldrons in livid green paint. They were trying, Daed knew, to weaken Theseon so that their psykers could extract the secrets from his mind. He only hoped that Theseon had been able to remain pure during these assaults. It had been days since he’d been taken, captured alive on the field of battle, and Daed knew that he had only two options: to kill the Librarian before Theseon gave himself up to the creatures of the warp, or to save him and return him to his brothers. He hoped for the latter, but as he entered the grotesque temple he began to prepare himself for the former.

  Around them, candles flickered in sconces upon the walls
, casting everything in a dull, flickering glow. Between the pillars, the remnants of ancient statues watched forlornly as Daed and Targus strode forward, preparing to slaughter the infidels who held their brother captive.

  But Daed knew immediately that something was wrong. The cultists hadn’t so much as stirred as the Brazen Minotaurs had entered the chamber, hadn’t even looked up from their diabolical work at the sound of the Space Marine’s thundering footsteps. Where were the guards? Where were the former Death Guard, the traitorous Space Marines of Empyrion’s Blight? Surely they would not leave such a precious weapon as Theseon unguarded by anything but mere humans?

  Daed’s questions were answered a moment later as he neared the flight of stone steps that lead up to the dais. From the darkness off to his left, he became aware of a wet, rasping laugh and the sound of footsteps splashing heavily in the poisonous slurry that pooled on the floor.

  Raising his axe, Daed turned to see one of the most horrific creatures he had ever encountered emerging from between two of the pillars. It had once been a Space Marine, but now it was a disgusting, lumbering, monster. The remnants of its terminator armour hung off its twisted, gangrenous flesh, and half of its ribcage was exposed to the elements, allowing Daed to see through to one of its black, beating hearts. It had swollen to almost twice its original size, and a large, bony horn protruded from the centre of its forehead, erupting through the remains of its helm. Acid dribbled freely from the orifice that had once been its mouth, and its respirator had been almost entirely eaten away by corrosion. Necrotic flesh hung in loose strips from between the plates of its ruined armour.

  In its left fist it clutched a storm bolter, but its right arm was now a wriggling mass of tentacles – at least six of them – each of them dripping with glistening venom. Strange, repulsive creatures, about the size of rats, scuttled over its body, burrowing in and out of its flesh.