[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  This gave the Ice Warriors time to regroup, to start firing in earnest. The creature hardly seemed to notice. It tore the mutant’s head from its shoulders, and threw back its own head with a triumphant roar, showering the walls with blood.

  But if the Ice Warriors had hoped that one kill might satisfy its appetite, they were about to be sorely disappointed.

  “Colonel Stanislev Steele,” recited Steele, “officer in command of the Valhallan 319th regiment of the Imperial Guard — and that’s all you’re going to get from me.”

  “A regimental commander, hmm?” said Mangellan, the smirk still on his lips. “Should I be honoured that they sent you to fight me? Or should I feel slighted that, apparently, you only brought a handful of men with you?”

  Steele snarled back at his captor, baring his teeth. “You should feel afraid! When I get out of these chains—”

  “Oh yes,” said Mangellan, “you would like to be free, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that what we all want, ultimately? To be free of the chains that bind us?”

  “All I want,” growled Steele, “is to do my duty to the Emperor.”

  “And you serve him well. You have done your best. You made it a lot further into my hive than I would have thought possible. You are evidently a skilled combatant, and a great leader. How, then, does your god repay your devotion?”

  “The Emperor provides all we need.”

  “How does it feel, Colonel Steele, to know that he thinks so little of your life as to waste it on a fool’s errand?”

  “It is never a waste to fight for order, to strike a blow against your philosophy.”

  “Oh, I know why you’re here. It seems that Confessor Wollkenden’s opinion of his own importance is not quite as inflated as I had believed.”

  Steele tightened at the mention of the confessor’s name. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Oh yes,” said Mangellan, basking in the reaction, “I thought that might get your attention. Wollkenden is here. He is alive. We have spoken many times, he and I. You can see for yourself soon. I will bring you face to face with the man for whom you were prepared to sacrifice yourself. It should prove an interesting meeting.”

  “Shall I cut him, master? Shall I make him talk?”

  Steele’s glare had been fixed on Mangellan; he hadn’t noticed another arrival. It had pushed its way through the traitors outside, and stood now in the doorway to the cell: a black-robed mutant, short and stooped, with lank black hair hanging over its sloping brow, tufts of grey fur sprouting from its ears, its eyebrows, its neck. It was carrying a long-bladed, blood-caked knife, fingering its edges almost lovingly.

  “There will be no need for that, Furst,” said Mangellan. “Colonel Steele is not our prisoner, he is our guest.”

  “Then unchain me,” suggested Steele, “and let me show you how a Valhallan Ice Warrior repays your hospitality.”

  “And I have no questions to ask him,” Mangellan continued as if the colonel had not spoken. “I know why he came here, and I suspect that I know as well as he does the whereabouts of his troopers. They will be cowering out there in the city somewhere, plucking up the courage to attempt to approach my Ice Palace again.”

  Had Steele’s bionic eye been working, he would have discharged it into Mangellan’s face right then. It was a good thing, then, that it wasn’t. He might have maimed his foe, gained some satisfaction, but it wouldn’t have helped him in the long term. He had to keep Mangellan talking, await his moment — and hope that, when that moment came, he would be ready. Thirty-five seconds…

  “Then why am I alive?” he asked. “If you don’t want anything from me…”

  “You do not question the high priest!” spat the stunted mutant, Furst, hopping from foot to foot as he became agitated, panting with the effort.

  “It’s all right, Furst,” said Mangellan, sounding a little weary at the interruption. “I am quite happy to tell Colonel Steele all he wishes to know. That is why I came here, after all: to talk with him, to reassure him.”

  He looked directly at Steele, and something glinted in the black depths of his eyes as he concluded, “To invite him to join our cause.”

  “Concentrate your fire,” yelled Gavotski. “Try to burn through its hide!”

  The sewer creature had reared up again, its broad mouth stretched into a great, keening howl — of defiance or of pain, it was impossible to tell.

  It was caught, dazed, confused, swaying for an instant in a criss-cross of las-beams, and Mikhaelev dared hope that it might succumb, might fall, might at least err on the side of caution and flee — but then it chose its target, and it lashed out.

  Palinev dived out of the creature’s way. Its snout smacked hard into the tunnel wall, so hard that it seemed like its neck must have broken. No such luck, though. It hit the water on its stomach, and the head of its previous victim, the luckless mutant, was tossed on a wave born of the impact.

  The creature was stunned, immobile, its back crowning the water like a miniature island, covered in thorns. The Ice Warriors pressed their advantage, and the scales at the base of the creature’s spines began to bubble and blacken in their beams. Its tail thrashed helplessly, and Anakora moved in, thrusting her bayonet downwards at it, attempting to pin it. Her aim was true, but her broken blade too weak for the task.

  The creature was recovering, raising its head so that its scalp formed another little island, its many eyes glaring in all directions so that it was impossible to work out which way it would go, who it would target next.

  Suddenly, Anakora was yanked off her feet. As she landed heavily, Mikhaelev, behind her, caught a glimpse of the great tail looped round her ankles. The creature was twisting back on itself, with incredible agility and litheness, bending double to reach its ensnared, floundering victim.

  Mikhaelev was about to fire again when his line of sight was blocked by Pozhar, who threw himself onto the sewer creature’s back with a zeal of which the late Trooper Borscz would surely have approved of. He found an eye with his knife, and punctured it with a jab, eliciting another howl — and the creature relaxed its grip on Anakora to deal with the more immediate threat.

  It bucked and squirmed beneath the young trooper’s weight; Pozhar let out a groan as a spine slipped through his greatcoat and into his stomach. Then he slid into the water, winded, and Anakora was trying to pull him clear, to return the favour he had done for her, but the creature had reared up again, was looming over the pair of them.

  Mikhaelev’s hand was in the pocket of his greatcoat, fingering a hard, cylindrical object, one he had kept ready for just such an occasion. It would be risky to use it in this confined space — especially for Anakora and Pozhar — but, unless he did something, his two comrades were dead anyway, and he had a perfect shot.

  “Demolition charge!” he yelled as he lobbed the device. His aim and his timing could not have been better. The charge disappeared between the creature’s teeth, bounced off its tongue… and Mikhaelev was running, as were the other Ice Warriors — six of them, at least. The remaining two were still cornered, helpless.

  The blast, when it came, filled Mikhaelev’s ears, shook the tunnel around him and splattered his back with chunks of something soft and moist. But it didn’t lift him from his feet, and it didn’t bring down the roof — and when he stopped, when he turned, when he looked, Anakora and Pozhar were still alive, covered in the blood and the guts and the sizzling flesh of the monster that had menaced them…

  …the monster that, if it hadn’t swallowed his charge outright, or found it lodged in its throat, must have closed its mouth reflexively around it, and contained the brunt of the explosion, as Mikhaelev had prayed it might, within itself.

  Barreski punched the air, let out a whoop of delight, and clapped Mikhaelev on the back.

  “Well, I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” said Grayle with a mock frown, as he brushed clinging, rancid lumps of meat from his hat and his coat. “You know, after sloshing my way through this hive’s sew
er system for about an hour and a half, I didn’t think it was possible to smell any worse. Obviously, my mistake.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Gavotski grimly, “we do have a more pressing problem than your personal hygiene, Grayle.”

  Blonsky spelled it out, “We’ve lost our guides, both of them.”

  “And with them,” sighed Mikhaelev, “our way into the Ice Palace.”

  Steele laughed in Mangellan’s face. It seemed the only rational thing to do.

  “You’re insane!” he accused the high priest. “Well, of course you are, that goes with the territory — but do you really expect an officer of the Imperium to just… to…?”

  Mangellan was unfazed. “Many of us here were once officers in your Imperium,” he reminded his prisoner. “You know that. Of course, the idea of joining me is abhorrent to you. You have been brought up, conditioned, to look at the universe in one way, and one way only: the Imperium’s way.”

  “There is no other way,” Steele growled. “At least, none that bear thinking about.”

  “Ah yes,” said Mangellan, “that is what they tell you, isn’t it? That you mustn’t think about it, that the knowledge itself is forbidden. Don’t you wonder why they tell you that. Colonel Steele? Don’t you wonder if there could be more to life than following orders, being shipped from one war zone to another? Have you asked yourself what they are keeping from you, what they are so afraid you might learn?”

  “Let me cut him, master,” whined Furst, his knife trembling in his hand as if it were all he could do to keep from thrusting it between Steele’s ribs. “Let me punish him for his insolence.”

  “All I need to know,” said Steele, “is right here in this cell with us.” He jerked his head towards the mutant. “That is the price of your knowledge, Mangellan. That is what happens when we stop fighting it, when we start to question.”

  Mangellan snorted with derision. “Furst is a pawn, no more. Our gods have gifted him with physical strength, so I use him to fetch and carry for me. Look at me! I have worshipped Chaos all my life. Do you see the mark of the mutant on me?”

  “Perhaps,” growled Steele, “your mark is inside you.”

  “I used to think I had been overlooked. I used to pray to feel the touch of my gods. But now I know the truth. They have recognised my intellect, my vision, my strength of will. They do not need to make me over in their image, because I am already their perfect servant. The gods have favoured me over all.”

  “You know,” said Steele, “when I first heard about you, when I heard your name, I feared you might be a challenge. But you’re just a small man, after all.”

  Mangellan’s smile faded for the first time. Steele had touched a nerve.

  “And yet,” the high priest growled, “I am in control of my destiny. That is more than anyone can say of you. You could wield power in this world, Colonel Steele — the power to build an Ice Palace like this one, to have men grovel at your feet.”

  “I’d rather bare my backside to a Valhallan tusked mammoth,” snapped Steele, “because your gods will betray you. That is what Chaos does. That is what Chaos is. It is treachery and deceit. How many men did you betray to get here, Mangellan? You didn’t lead the invasion of Iota Hive, did you? No, you let others do that, and waited for them to die so that you could seize power. Did you even fight with them?”

  “That is where we differ, my friend. While you foolishly risk your life on the front lines, I stand back, taking an overview, waiting for my chances.”

  “Like finding a Chaos Space Marine that will throw in his lot with you? That would buy you a bit of respect around here, I suppose — for as long as it lasts. As long as it takes him to realise that, whatever you promised him, you can’t deliver on it.”

  “You will serve me too, Colonel Steele — if not as an ally, then as a sacrifice, an offering to my gods. They will be only too pleased to receive your soul, and will reward me for conveying it to them.”

  “Is that what you have planned for Wollkenden?”

  It was a bold question, and Steele didn’t expect Mangellan to answer it, to give anything away. To his surprise, however, the high priest smiled and said, “Such a pious man, your confessor; an important man, as your presence here proves. A man who, to hear him tell it, saved an entire star system for your Emperor. For him to fall from the sky as he did, into my grasp… well, my gods were smiling upon me again that day. And then, along you came.”

  Mangellan pushed himself up from his stone ledge, leaned over Steele so that his lips almost touched the colonel’s ear. Steele tried to flinch from him, but his chains held him too tightly. A feeling of revulsion shuddered through his body. He called up his bionic eye’s HUD again, but still it gave only the same discouraging report: thirty-five seconds… thirty-five seconds…

  “The irony of it,” Mangellan crooned, “is that your masters do not value you. They would snuff out your life in a second for the chance, the merest chance, of getting their important, pious man back. But I have met the both of you, spoken with you, and I know the truth of it. I know that you, Colonel Stanislev Steele, are a far better man, a far stronger man, than Wollkenden will ever be.”

  “This is it,” said Palinev, staring at his compass. “This must be it!” Then he looked at the walls of yet another nondescript tunnel, and he felt a lot less confident. “At least, I think… If the colonel were here…”

  “You haven’t let us down yet, Trooper Palinev,” said Gavotski. “If you say we’re underneath the Ice Palace, then that is where we are.”

  Grayle reached up to touch the tunnel roof, and snatched his hand away with a wince.

  “Ice burn!” he exclaimed. “And it’s been getting colder for the past half-hour, since before we ran into that creature. The Ice Palace is up there, all right.”

  “The question is,” said Blonsky, “where is this supposed entrance to it?”

  Mikhaelev shrugged. “Hardly likely to be in plain sight, is it? Maybe we should have turned back after all.”

  “We discussed this,” said Gavotski firmly. “It would have wasted too much time. No, our guides have brought us most of the way, and they assured us that there is a way into the palace from down here. We just have to find it.”

  “If we can’t,” offered Palinev, 'I could go back to the chapel. I can find my way… at least, I think I can. I could fetch us another guide.”

  “Maybe,” said Gavotski, “but only as a last resort. We’ve all seen what’s out there. I don’t want anyone wandering about down here alone. For now, I suggest we search the tunnels from root to floor. And remember what Grayle told us: the Ice Palace is at least a kilometre square. The entrance could be anywhere in that area. Remember this too: Confessor Wollkenden is in that palace, as is Colonel Steele. All that stands between us is a thin layer of masonry — and we aren’t going to let that stop the Ice Warriors of Valhalla, now are we?”

  Mangellan’s words still echoed in Steele’s head, making him feel sick.

  He imagined he could still feel the condensation from the high priest’s rancid breath on his ear, and he itched to be able to move his hand, to wipe it away.

  “I think it’s time,” Mangellan had whispered to him. “Time for Wollkenden to leave this mortal plane, to take his place as the plaything of Khorne, of Slaanesh, of Tzeentch, of Nurgle. The ceremony will take place at dawn. That is the usual time, I believe, for rituals of this kind. If you wish, Colonel Steele, I might let you watch. It may help to concentrate your thoughts.”

  Alone again, he had released a primal scream from the depths of his stomach, and had struggled against his chains, although he knew he had no hope of breaking them.

  There was nothing he could do.

  So, he had tried to sleep instead, so that when his chance did come he would be ready to take it. He had succeeded only in dozing fitfully, woken each time by the pain in his muscles and along his spine, and by the urgent ticking of his internal chrono, and the ever-present drip-drip-dripping from som
ewhere outside.

  And this time, by the creaking, squealing, scraping of his cell door.

  Again, the light of a lamp-pack spilled over him. This time, Steele didn’t flinch. His left eye closed to protect itself, but his right eye adjusted instantly to the glare. He didn’t question this at first, didn’t see anything unusual in it. It took a moment for him to realise what it meant. By the time he had, he was focused on the short, stooped figure that had come shuffling into the cell, glancing back over its shoulder, moving with what appeared to be a clumsy attempt at stealth.

  “Well, well,” said Steele, “so Mangellan’s dog has slipped its leash.”

  Furst snarled up at him, even with Steele hunched over as he was, the mutant’s head barely came up to his chin. 'You can insult me all you like, but you will regret your slurs against my master. I will make you scream for the mercy of death.” The mutant produced his knife again, brandishing it before his prisoner’s eyes — but Steele was more concerned with what he was holding in his other hand.

  “Mangellan doesn’t know you’re here, does he?” he said. “So much for loyalty among heretics.”

  “The master will be grateful that I have dealt with his enemy. He will see that I can take the initiative too.”

  “Will he? I know you’re only trying to be like him, Furst — a traitor like him — but the last thing a traitor can afford to tolerate when he gains power is the treachery of others. He will squash you, Furst, like the loathsome bug you are.”

  Steele’s goading was working. Furst was pressed right up against him, reaching up with the tip of his knife, tracing faint lines across the colonel’s face. The mutant’s breathing was excited, ragged, and Steele could see flecks of drool on his chin and feel the shape of a bunch of keys against his stomach.

  “Join us or die,” gurgled Furst, “that is the choice you were given by the master. Well, I can make that choice easy for you. I can use this blade to carve the mark of Chaos Undivided into your face.”