Sons of Corax

by George Mann

  Trust them, brother,+ said Theseon, talking to Aramus, but allowing Koryn to hear his words. +The brother of the Raven speaks the truth. The enemy once again draws near. Prepare yourselves for battle.+ He paused, as if considering his next words. +Leave me. I will do what I can.+

  Koryn shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, decidedly. ‘Grayvus, how long do we have?’

  ‘Minutes, captain.’

  ‘Long enough. Brother Theseon, continue your work here. The Raven Guard will defend the outpost. Aramus?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We would be honoured if you and your brothers would join us and fight by our side.’

  ‘I would consider it a privilege, Captain Koryn,’ replied the Brazen Minotaur.

  ‘Then let us prepare,’ said Koryn, moving towards the doorway. ‘It seems as if you’ll have your chance to spill traitorous blood this day after all, Grayvus.’

  Koryn hung from the tree like a watchful predator, scanning the forest below for any sign of the approaching enemy.

  He was at least twenty metres above the forest floor, hanging upside down by the crook of his legs. He was perfectly still, his lightning talons folded across his chest like the wings of a bat.

  He craned his neck, studying the trees as they shimmered in the breeze. He could hear the traitors now: their feet stirring the earth; their ragged, laboured breath; the thumping of their beating hearts. To Koryn, these sounds emerged from the background ambience of the forest as clear as warning sigils on the inside of his helm. He was a hunter, and the traitors were his prey.

  Amongst the ruins of the outpost he could see the glinting power armour of five Brazen Minotaurs, their bolters at the ready. They would stand their ground until the last, Koryn knew, defending the outpost with their lives.

  The enemy would come from the east. They were bold – arrogant, even – to assume not even the pretence of stealth or strategy. Koryn wondered whether they were merely toying with the Brazen Minotaurs, wearing them down slowly as sport, knowing that they could overwhelm the small loyalist contingent with sheer weight of numbers at any time. This misplaced confidence would be their undoing. Koryn and his Raven Guard would buy their bull-headed brothers some time. Most importantly, they would buy Theseon some time.

  The first of the hulking monstrosities lumbered into the forest glade below. It resembled in every way the grotesque traitors Koryn had encountered on the mortuary world of Kasharat. Its skin was ruptured and covered in pustulant boils that wept angrily like so many sorrowful eyes. Its mouth had been replaced with a metal grille from which dribbled acidic spittle, slowly eroding the thing’s lower face.

  Its ancient armour had cracked and splintered, fusing with its flesh to become part of its atrocious body, and although the armour had been painted in the colours of the traitor’s foul master, it had been done so crudely that Koryn could still see the iconography of the former Death Guard Legion on its left pauldron. It carried a pistol and a dripping chainsword.

  Behind this thing that Koryn refused to recognise as a Space Marine marched a small army of human militia. These cultists of the rotten god had given themselves over to the Sickening. Their bellies were bloated and bulbous, and buboes covered their exposed flesh. Their mouths, too, had been replaced by mechanical vents that belched noxious gases in place of breath. They bore the insignia of the Imperial Guard, but they had daubed their bodies and wargear with the blasphemous triple-circled seal of their dark god.

  They fanned out as they entered the clearing, forming a peri­meter around the outpost building. There were six more of the Traitor Marines, forming a squad of seven, and at least three further squads of seven humans. At no point had any of them looked up into the canopy, where Koryn and his Raven Guard hung in silence, waiting.

  One of the traitors, whom Koryn took to be the leader of the small force, turned to address his gathered troops. ‘Remember, we want the psyker alive,’ he said in a burbling voice that sounded thick with mucus. ‘You can do what you want with the others.’ He laughed darkly and hefted his chainsword, and his foul comrades raised their own weapons in salute.

  The traitor took a step further towards the outpost building, and bolter-fire erupted suddenly from behind a spar of broken wall. The rounds thudded into the putrid torso of the lead traitor, showering rancid flesh and body fluid over the troops behind him. The Plague Marine simply laughed, however, continuing to march forwards, ignoring damage that would have felled a Raven Guard. The pact these traitors had made with their dark god rendered them almost impervious to harm, in a similar fashion to the infected birds that Koryn and his brothers had fought earlier. The plague they welcomed into their bodies imbued them with a kind of living death, leaving them trapped in a state of perpetual decay. They were no longer sustained by flesh and blood alone, but by the infernal powers of the warp itself.

  Koryn knew from first-hand experience, though, that the traitors were far from impossible to slay. He had fought them on the mortuary world of Kasharat, and he had learned that they could be slain. Taking their heads from their shoulders was the swiftest and cleanest of kills, and despite the vile pestilence that coursed through their veins, it had proved effective against their grotesque kin.

  Beneath him, a gaggle of humans were blown apart by the detonation of a frag grenade, tossed from inside the shell of ruined architecture with the utmost precision. It obliterated four of the men, leaving a fifth wounded and writhing amidst the mulch on the forest floor.

  That’s right, thought Koryn. Take out the humans first. Leave the traitors to us. He would enjoy sending the Plague Marines to their death.

  The chatter of bolter-fire filled the air like a thousand raw voices, each of them barking death. The Traitor Marines lumbered for cover while the scattering militia were cut down in great swathes, their torsos ripped apart by piercing bolter-rounds, unprotected heads exploding where they were caught in the barrage. More of them were tossed in the air by the force of further grenades, limbs raining down amidst the flora in a bloody cascade.

  All seven of the Traitor Marines were still standing.

  Koryn glanced across to where Grayvus and Kayaan were hanging from a tree in similar fashion to himself on the other side of the clearing. All around, his brothers were waiting for his signal, waiting to join the fray.

  Just a moment longer, he thought, watching the scene unfold below. Just wait until they’re all in position...

  The bolter-fire ceased abruptly, and the silence seemed almost unnatural after the furore of a few moments earlier. Most of the humans lay dead or dying, joining their fallen kin on the killing field.

  Laughing, the seven traitors emerged from their cover, brandishing their own bolters. It was clear they had used the humans as cannon fodder, there to soak up the bolter-rounds as the Brazen Minotaurs attempted to thin their numbers. Little did they know that silent death awaited them in the trees above.

  Koryn slowly unfolded his arms, poising his talons above his head and locking his arms so that they pointed directly down at the ground below. One of the Traitor Marines was shambling beneath him. Koryn measured each ponderous, ungainly step.

  Just a little closer…

  He straightened his legs, releasing his grip on the branch. He fell, dropping like a dart, closing the ten-metre gap in a single heartbeat. He speared the traitor in the back, just behind the neck, plunging his talons deep into its chest and impaling both of its febrile black hearts.

  Koryn pivoted, using the traitor for leverage as he brought his legs down and around, landing gracefully on his feet. He rocked back on his heels, using his momentum to lift the enormous Plague Marine wholly into the air, still impaled on his sparking claws.

  The traitor cried out in shock, just before Koryn closed his fists and wrenched his claws up and out of its chest, ripping its ribcage open from the inside out and tearing its head off in the process. The corpse fell shudde
ring to the floor, the still-helmeted head rolling away and clanging against the trunk of a nearby tree.

  Koryn, claws dripping with gore, glanced up to see each of his brothers drop from their perches in turn, falling upon the remaining traitors. The Death Guard turned, weapons rising, but they were too slow, their cumbersome, bloated bodies unable to react in time.

  The Raven Guard tore them apart in a matter of moments, rending their heads from their shoulders with combat knives and gauntleted hands.

  Grayvus, on the far side of the glade, was mopping up the last half dozen of the humans, silencing their whimpering by crushing their skulls with his fists as they attempted to flee into the forest.

  Within moments it was over, and the traitors lay dead at their feet.

  ‘To our enemy, we are death incarnate,’ said Koryn, standing over the corpse of the traitors’ leader, his talons still dripping blood. ‘We are living shadows, the ghosts that walk. These traitors shall not have the privilege of knowing our faces, but they shall feel our wrath. We honour our dead by smiting their enemies.’

  ‘For Borias!’ intoned Kayaan.

  ‘For Siryan!’ echoed Korsae.

  ‘For Corax!’ bellowed Argis.

  Koryn stood for a moment, regarding his brothers. Their black armour was splashed with the polluted blood of the traitors. It would not be the last blood they spilled this day. He was sure of it.

  He turned at the sound of movement to his left and saw a human crawling away across the muddy ground, raking the leaves with his fingers, pulling up great clods of mud as he sought purchase. One of his legs had been sheared off at the knee in an explosion, exposing a still smouldering stump of burned bone.

  He raised his claws, about to spear the pitiful creature through the skull, when a bolter-round did the job for him, spattering skull fragments and brain matter across the ground. One of the creature’s eyeballs landed near Koryn’s boots, and he kicked it away in disgust, disturbing a plume of wet leaves.

  He looked up to see Aramus approaching, the muzzle of his bolter still smoking. ‘Thank you, captain,’ said the Brazen Minotaur, and Koryn could hear genuine admiration in his voice.

  Koryn nodded. ‘Let us hope that it provides Brother Theseon with a few hours of respite.’

  ‘Theseon?’ echoed Argis, overhearing Koryn’s words. ‘He of Kasharat?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Koryn, noticing Cordae standing on the edge of the small group, watching him intently from behind his bird skull mask. ‘I have spoken with Theseon, and I know what we must do. There is a control room within the bastion that will open the gun emplacements in the carapace,’ he continued. ‘We must find our way inside and locate it.’

  ‘Inside the bastion?’ asked Avias.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Koryn. ‘But first we must find Captain Daed. This is his battle, and his war. We must work alongside him so that together we might achieve our aim.’

  Thank you, brother of the Raven, + came Theseon’s voice, faint now inside Koryn’s mind. +May the Emperor’s Light guide your path.+

  And your own, thought Koryn in reply.

  Aramus reached out and clasped hold of Koryn’s arm. ‘For Tauron,’ he said. ‘For the Emperor.’

  ‘For the Emperor,’ repeated Koryn. He turned to signal to his squad to move out into the forest, but when he looked, they had already gone.

  The battlefield was as much wasteland as warzone, Koryn considered, as he picked his way carefully amongst the muddy craters and heaped remnants of barely distinguishable engines of war.

  Corpses were strewn everywhere like tattered dolls, their limbs broken and frozen in poises they were never meant to achieve in life. Green mist clung to each of them like a cloying funerary shroud, obscuring their faces from view. It rendered them anonymous and unknowable, reduced them to nameless collateral, alongside those countless other billions of souls consumed by the relentless war machine that was Koryn’s universe.

  The nameless dead, fighting to protect the souls of their kin from the ever encroaching darkness.

  The battlefield was marked with occasional glints of golden armour, now half buried in the clinging, churned earth, which told Koryn the battle had been fierce, and that the enemy had proved difficult and unyielding.

  In the distance he could see the siege was still raging. He watched for a moment, reading the battle. The muted lights of muzzle flares and the percussive crump of detonating munitions told that the fighting was still just as ferocious, still just as desperate. Nevertheless, the walls of the bastion remained unblemished and unbroken. The Brazen Minotaurs had yet to even penetrate the first line of the Death Guard’s defences.

  The Raven Guard had to find a way in. They couldn’t go around the wall, as it circled for kilometres, curving away in both directions. Nor could they go over it, as it had been built into the carapace itself, towering up into the gloom as high as Koryn could see. Only the heavy weapons turrets punctuated the grey, plascrete surface, and from these spewed not only barking fire but torrents of enemy troops. The sheer number of them meant that even the Raven Guard would find it impossible to batter their way through.

  Koryn understood now why the fortress here represented such a strategic stronghold; from the battlefield it appeared unbreachable, built to withstand even the most powerful of bombardments. The insidious taint of Chaos, however, recognised no such barriers.

  ‘We’ll have to go through it,’ said Argis, quietly. He was picking his way around the ruins of an enemy vehicle ahead of Koryn, but his thoughts were clearly on the problem ahead.

  ‘But how?’ said Corvaan. ‘They’re not about to simply open the doors and welcome us with open arms. The Brazen Minotaurs have not been able to force an entrance, even with this amount of concentrated firepower.’ He indicated the blooming flashes in the near distance, where Razorbacks and heavy weapon emplacements were still battering ineffectually against the wall. ‘They knock, but the doors do not open.’

  ‘We shall find a way,’ said Koryn, firmly. ‘We have stealth on our side. We can get closer to the target than our bull-headed brothers, and we can exploit the enemy’s weakness.’

  ‘Which is?’ asked Cordae, and Koryn thought he detected a hint of sarcasm in the Chaplain’s tone.

  ‘Their arrogance,’ said Koryn. ‘Their unfailing belief in their dark god. Their strategies are not unlike those of our golden-armoured brothers – they believe they can win this battle through weight of numbers, through sheer relentlessness. They send wave after wave of their foul troops from the bastion, and each time the wave breaks upon the Brazen Minotaurs they erode that steadfast shoreline a little more. The situation is a deadlock, and a deadlock buys the enemy time. That is their true purpose. But they are not expecting us to strike back at them from within. They believe the bastion to be impregnable. We must ensure that it is not.’

  ‘We stand with you, captain,’ said Argis. ‘For Corax and the Emperor. What must we do?’

  ‘Find Captain Daed,’ said Koryn. ‘Then we parlay and lay out our plans.’

  ‘Where do we even begin to look for him, here in the midst of all this?’ said Kayaan.

  ‘In the thick of it,’ said Koryn, grinning. ‘He won’t be far from the epicentre of the battle.’

  ‘I fear you put too much stock in the concerns of our cousins, captain,’ said Cordae over a private vox-link a moment later, as they trudged across the muddy wastes towards the fighting. Overhead, the thunderous roar of the orbital bombardment proved a constant companion, and the ground trembled disturbingly with every blow.

  ‘What concerns you, Chaplain?’ said Koryn, cautiously. ‘The Brazen Minotaurs are fellow servants of the Emperor. Do they not deserve our loyalty and support?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Cordae, and Koryn wasn’t sure which of his questions the Chaplain was answering. ‘Can they be trusted?’

  ‘Of course
they can be trusted!’ said Koryn dismissively. ‘Their customs may be different from our own, but they are nevertheless Adeptus Astartes. They have more than proved their honour, on Kasharat, and Empalion II before it.’ The ground shook momentarily as another thunderous barrage detonated on the carapace above.

  ‘They are blunt and ignorant. They rush headlong into battle with little concern for the consequences. They sacrifice themselves too readily, and their lust for blood and war reminds me of the traitors we fought on Cavonios Prime.’

  ‘You speak hastily and without due consideration, Cordae. I will hear no more of this. The Brazen Minotaurs made a great sacrifice on behalf of our Chapter. We will not speak ill of them or their dead. They are as far from the traitors of which you speak as you or I.’ Koryn’s tone was harsh and pointed.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Cordae, quietly.

  Koryn sighed. ‘It is true that Captain Daed employs a more direct approach than perhaps you or I would wish to adopt, but their Librarian, Theseon, understands the art of subtlety.’

  ‘Theseon who spent time in the care of traitors? Theseon who allows the spores of the plague god to fester upon his body? Theseon who invades your very mind without warning? Yes, I do believe he understands the art of subtle warfare, captain.’

  Koryn rounded on the bird-helmed Chaplain. ‘Restrain yourself, Cordae, or I will put you down myself for such treacherous words.’

  Cordae cocked his bird-like head to one side, in a gesture that reminded Koryn of the giant, carnivorous avians they had fought in the forest. ‘It seems you truly do empathise with the blunt ways of the Brazen Minotaurs, captain.’

  Koryn fought down his rising anger. ‘Save your vitriol for the enemy, Chaplain. Your counsel is not welcome if all you wish to do is spread sedition. I look to build bridges with our allies, where you look to destroy them.’

  ‘As you wish,’ replied Cordae, quietly, and he turned and melted away into the darkness.

  Around Koryn, the noise of the battle was growing in intensity. Fresh corpses – or at least, as fresh as the traitors ever got – were heaped where they had fallen, cleaved apart by power axes or peppered with the spray of bolter-rounds. To his right the wreckage of an enemy Rhino burned with a fierce glow, stinking black smoke rising in curling ribbons from the ruins of the control pit. The side of the vehicle had been gouged open, a ragged wound Koryn assumed to have been dealt by an immense power fist – probably belonging to a Dreadnought. Inside he could see the remains of at least three Plague Marines, their rotten husks now roasting and spitting amidst the hungry flames.