‘Who are you?’ shouted Leonid over the roar of the wind.
‘I am Ardaric Vaanes of the Red Corsairs,’ said the warrior, drawing a pistol. ‘Get behind me.’
Leonid and Ellard scrambled across the roof, hugging its rough surface closely. Leonid risked a glance over the edge of the roof and experienced a moment’s sick vertigo as he stared down into the abyss the daemon engine was crossing. He rolled onto his back in time to see Obax Zakayo clamber onto the roof, his lashing energy whip coiling above his helmeted head.
‘Look out!’ shouted Leonid as the whip cracked.
Vaanes brought up his arm to deflect the blow, the crackling lash ensnaring his limb and discharging a powerful corona of blue light. Ardaric Vaanes grunted in pain, his pistol clattering to the roof of the boxcar and skidding to the edge.
The Space Marine backed away from the giant Iron Warrior, risking a glance at Leonid and Ellard.
‘Get to the front!’ he shouted. ‘You have to stop this daemon-thing before we reach the gatehouse. Go now!’
Obax Zakayo’s whip lashed again, driving Vaanes to his knees as Leonid and Ellard scrambled along the roof to peer over the bladed front of the boxcar. The Iron Warrior took a ponderous step towards the convulsing Space Marine, his mechanised claw reaching out to snap his neck.
Vaanes roared and thrust with his lightning-sheathed blades. Obax Zakayo batted the blow aside with his axe as his mechanised claw clamped on Vaanes’s gorget.
‘You renegades dare try to steal the slaves of Warsmith Honsou?’ snarled Obax Zakayo. ‘For this you must die.’
The claw tightened on the Space Marine’s neck, and Leonid heard the crack of ceramite over the rushing wind. White sunlight glinted off metal and he saw the Space Marine’s pistol juddering at the edge of the boxcar’s roof.
He reached over and dragged the heavy gun closer, amazed at its bulk and weight. Too heavy for him to fire one-handed, he rolled onto his back, cradling the gun to his chest and supporting its weight on his forearm.
He pulled the trigger, the recoil hurling the gun from his hands. He rolled and grabbed the pistol’s oversized grip before the weapon could tumble into the abyss below.
But his shot was accurate, or at least accurate enough to matter. It struck the visor of Obax Zakayo’s helmet and spun him around. The claw choking Ardaric Vaanes released its grip and the Space Marine leapt to his feet to face the Iron Warrior.
‘Go! Quickly!’ he bellowed, pointing further along the bloodtracks. ‘I told you to stop this thing before we reach the gatehouse!’
Leonid turned and gazed through the dark smog ahead, not truly believing the sight before his eyes.
Emerging from the darkness ahead was a fortification built into the mountain from dark madness, standing in defiance of all reason. Its steepled towers wounded the sky, its massive gateway a snarling void that swallowed the tracks the Omphalos Daemonium travelled upon. Its walls were darkened, bloodstained stone, veined with unnatural colours that should not exist and which burned themselves upon the retina. Lightning leapt between its towers and the clanking of great engines and machines echoed like thunder from beyond its walls. And this was but a gatehouse?
‘Blood of the saints!’ whispered Ellard.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Leonid.
The clash of weapons behind them and the sight of the monolithic fortress drove them on and the two Jourans slithered forwards on their bellies to the end of the boxcar. A miasma of evil and uncounted aeons of torment pulsed from the howling daemon engine, and Leonid felt blood drip from his nose and ears the closer they crawled.
He pushed himself up, ready to make his way onto the daemon engine. A horrifying, bloodstained tender was coupled between it and the boxcars, filled with dismembered corpses. Red steam trailed from the thundering engine, spinning like bloody streamers as the Sarcomata feasted on the cadavers.
‘We’ll need to move quickly,’ said Ellard.
Leonid nodded and swallowed his disgust, dropping into the oozing carpet of bodies. The tender lurched on the bloodtracks and he fell, throwing his arms out before him and sinking knee deep in gore and severed limbs. Ellard dropped next to him and pulled him upright. Together they waded unsteadily through the bodies, corpse gases and semi-coagulated blood misting the air with every step. The tendrils of bloody steam slithered around them, more solid than smoke had any business being.
‘Emperor forgive us,’ said Ellard as a slack, dead face rolled over under his boot.
Leonid gratefully reached the end of the tender, keeping an eye on the circling smoke.
He hauled himself over the lip of the tender, turning back to help his sergeant.
A ghostly face swam out of the smoke, a fleshless patchwork of musculature with no features save a fang-filled mouth.
‘Hurry!’ shouted Leonid, dropping Ardaric Vaanes’ pistol behind him and dragging Ellard forward. Wraith-like arms wrapped themselves around the sergeant’s shoulders and began pulling. Only partly formed, the Sarcomata’s strength was not the equal of the two Jourans, and Leonid hauled Ellard from the tender with one last desperate heave.
The two men collapsed on the iron deck at the back of the Omphalos Daemonium, a bronze doorway rattling in its frame behind them. Leonid could see no handle, tasting ashes and the scent of burning flesh gusting through an iron grille at its top. Solidifying smoke-trail bodies of the Sarcomata began climbing from the tender, hissing with hunger at these fresh morsels.
The two Jourans backed into the door, Leonid dropping to one knee to recover the fallen pistol. One of the Sarcomata pounced towards him, clawed arms reaching for his neck.
The pistol boomed and ripped the top of the daemon’s head off. Daemonic blood splashed the door, the metal undulating as the blood hissed and vanished like droplets on a hot skillet. The entire doorframe rippled and, as Leonid fell back against the door, it opened as though freshly unlocked.
He sprawled into a blisteringly hot engine room, Ellard wasting no time in following him inside and slamming the door shut behind him. The door buckled in its frame as the Sarcomata hurled themselves against it, desperate to feast on the cancers within them. Leonid could feel their hunger as a physical thing as he groggily pushed himself to his feet.
As he saw where their desperate flight had taken them, he wondered whether they might have been better off taking their chances with the Sarcomata. The interior of the daemon engine defied geometry, impossibly stretching beyond the limits of vision to either side, a sweltering, red-lit hell cavern, larger than the forge temple of Obax Zakayo. A wide-doored firebox roared and seethed, tended by a giant in a clanking, mechanical suit of riveted power armour and thick, vulcanised rubber. Over its ancient iron armour, it wore a blood-stiffened apron, and a crown of metal horns sprouted from a conical helmet with a raised visor.
Muttered doggerel and guttural curses spat from beneath the helmet as the figure approached a long line of dangling chains and pulleys, each with a limbless human torso skewered on a rusted hook. The figure stabbed a long billhook into a headless torso and thrust it into the firebox. He stoked the daemon engine with flesh and blood, and belching stacks spewed ashen bodies into the air.
‘There…’ said the figure, its voice rasping and hoarse. ‘What need I incantations or words? Word magic is poor man’s sorcery; it is flesh magic that is strong. Flesh powers ye, blood sustains ye and I bind thee.’
‘What the hell is this?’ said Leonid, casting uneasy glances over his shoulder at the rattling door.
Though his words were spoken in a whisper, the armoured giant stiffened and turned quickly to face them, its butcher’s blade held out before it.
‘Well then, what’s this? The Sarcomata come knocking at my door and flesh comes to throw itself in the fires? Good flesh, helpful flesh. Much better than the deadmorsels we get…’
Leonid raised the pis
tol and said, ‘Who are you?’
‘Me?’ said the giant, swinging his blade from side to side. ‘I’s the Slaughterman. Iron Warrior true. Cut and slice, cut and slice. Flesh for the machine. Blood for the cogs and flesh for the fires.’
The firebox growled, clawed tongues of flame slashing in vain at the giant’s turned back. He chuckled, the sound sending shivers up the Jourans’ spines, and shouted over his shoulder.
‘No, no, no, you won’t be eating my skin and bones, daemon. Thrash and struggle all you want. Bloodmeat for me, deadflesh for you.’
‘You feed this thing bodies?’ said Ellard, his revulsion plain.
‘Yes, deadflesh feed the daemon, two hooks ready for you two. Fresh meat for me. I will cut you up nicely, dress your flesh with reverence, and sup your blood as it spills onto me. Now come here like good flesh so I can chop you.’
The Slaughterman beckoned with an encrusted gauntlet.
Leonid raised Vaanes’s pistol and said, ‘I don’t think so. Just stop this thing and I won’t kill you.’
The Slaughterman laughed, and shook his head as he advanced towards Leonid. ‘You kill me? No, you are meat, nothing more. We will talk no more and you will die.’
Leonid fired the pistol, the bolt striking the Slaughterman square in the chest. Sparks flew and a frothing gruel of fluid and matter dribbled down his filthy apron. The giant snarled, his blackened features twisted in rage.
‘You shot me,’ he said. ‘I cut you to death slowly now. Cut your flesh screaming into morsels that I will feed you. I will feed you your feet, your legs and then your arms. And then I will give you to the Omphalos Daemonium and you will know true pain.’
Leonid fired again, but this time the bolt was smashed aside by the Slaughterman’s billhook.
With a roar, the Slaughterman charged, his giant blade sweeping down to cleave Leonid in two. Leonid ducked and rolled aside, the billhook scraping a flaring gouge in the floor.
Ellard ran behind the Slaughterman, desperately searching for a weapon, as Leonid stood and fired again. The bullets went wide, smacking wetly into the hanging torsos and blowing them apart from the inside.
‘No!’ shouted the Slaughterman. ‘Not the deadflesh. Bad flesh must stop. Needs to be chopped quick.’
The giant Iron Warrior turned as Leonid backed into the swaying cadavers, firing into the butcher’s rack of meat, ripping them from their hooks in a hail of bullets.
The Slaughterman wailed and roared, his billhook slashing a path through the meat towards his prey. Leonid kept the trigger pulled until the hammer slammed down on an empty chamber. Bloody hooks swung and jangled before him, scraps of meat still sliding down the dark metal. One hook slid to the floor, a looping pile of chains rattling down from the winch above. As the Slaughterman pushed the last cadaver aside and stood face to face with Leonid, he saw Ellard standing beside the levers that controlled the chain pulley mechanism. The firebox seethed in hunger behind the Slaughterman.
Leonid reached down and grabbed the hook, holding it before him like a weapon.
‘Bad flesh, you. No reverence for you now. Chop, chop, chop. Deadflesh.’
The Slaughterman leaned down, and Leonid could finally see his face beneath the conical, horned helmet. Vacant and puffy, his features were curiously child-like, with a rotten-toothed grin and rheumy eyes that spoke of an unthinking cruelty.
One meaty gauntlet reached down, scooping up Leonid before he could dodge aside and lifting him from the ground. He grunted in pain as the giant lifted him up.
‘Bad flesh,’ said the Slaughterman. ‘Won’t even wet my blade with you. Just bite you into pieces.’
The Slaughterman’s jaws cracked as they opened, stretching and swelling as if to swallow him whole. Foetid breath, reeking of decomposing matter, wafted from the depths and Leonid gagged, kicking at the Slaughterman’s gut in desperation.
As the Slaughterman’s jaws reached down towards him, Leonid swung the butcher’s hook upwards in a vicious arc.
Bone splintered as the iron point punched through the giant’s jawbone before exploding through his eye-socket.
Leonid fell to the floor as the Slaughterman howled in pain, the chain attached to the end of the hook pulling taut as Ellard frantically cranked the winch. The Slaughterman dropped his weapon and scrabbled at the barb, black blood spraying from the wound as he sought to pull some slack in the chain.
But Ellard was having none of it, reeling the Slaughterman in, winching the chain screechingly along its rails and dragging the wounded giant towards the firebox. His howls were piteous, but Leonid had no sympathy for the monstrous cannibal.
Daemonic flames leapt from the firebox, blazing claws slashing at the Slaughterman’s back. He screamed, fighting to get clear, but the tormented daemon had him and was not about to release its grip. Incandescent flames enveloped the Slaughterman and he was dragged into the inferno of the daemonic firebox. Soon he was lost to sight and the heavy iron door slammed shut behind him as the maniacal daemon within wreaked its terrible vengeance on its captor.
No sooner had the firebox’s door shut than the vast bone-pistons slowed and the hissing machineries released scalding bursts of steam. The orange glow that pervaded the engine room faded and the impossible geometries of the chamber began returning to those dimensions that did not baffle the senses.
Leonid dropped to his knees, exhausted beyond words as the horror of the past few days threatened to overwhelm him. Ellard stumbled over to him and offered him his hand.
‘I can’t believe it. We got him.’
‘Yes, sergeant, we did. Well done.’
‘Now what do we do? Is this thing stopping?’
‘Certainly feels like it.’
Leonid glanced over at the bronze door they had come through. Strangely, the thudding booms of the Sarcomata had ceased. Was their very existence somehow linked to the daemon within the firebox or even the Slaughterman himself? Even as he formed the thought, the door exploded inwards and Ardaric Vaanes stood framed in the white light of the sky.
‘You did it,’ he said, sounding surprised.
‘Yes, we did,’ agreed Leonid. ‘Did you kill Obax Zakayo?’
‘No, but he’s gone. Gone with the rest of the boxcars.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Leonid, limping towards the door.
As he and Ellard left the Slaught-erman’s domain, they saw that the tender was all that was left attached to the Omphalos Daemonium. Battered-looking Space Marines filled it, but the boxcars were nowhere in sight.
‘What the hell did you do?’ screamed Leonid. ‘I thought you came to rescue us?’
‘No,’ said Ardaric Vaanes. ‘We were never here to save you. We came to stop the Iron Warriors getting more slaves for their weapon shops. Without slaves they cannot make weapons to fight us.’
‘You killed them,’ said Ellard, looking down the tracks for any sign of the boxcars.
‘Trust me, if they truly understood what awaited them in Honsou’s citadel, they would thank me for my mercy.’
‘Mercy! You bastard, those were my men,’ shouted Leonid. ‘I fought shoulder to shoulder with them and you betrayed their courage.’
‘They were not the men you fought beside any more. You know this. They were broken. But you have steel in you, I can see it plain as day. If you wish, you may come with us and strike back against the Iron Warriors. But decide now; we are through the gatehouse, and its guards will be upon us soon if we are not away.’
Vaanes climbed into the tender and held his hand above the coupling mechanism.
‘Are you with us?’ he asked.
‘Go with you? We don’t even know what you are,’ said Leonid.
‘We were once Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes and fought for the Emperor, but now our only allegiance is to each other,’ said Vaanes. ‘Our former battle-b
rothers would call us renegades, but right now we are the nearest thing you have to friends.’
Leonid started to reply, but felt Ellard’s hand on his shoulder.
‘Sir, he may be right.’
‘He killed our men, sergeant!’
‘I know, and we will never forget that, but as Castellan Vauban used to say “the enemy of my enemy…”’
‘…is my friend,’ finished Leonid.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written a host of SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Graham lives and works in Nottingham and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website.
Join the ranks of the 4th Company at www.graham-mcneill.com
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Karl Kopinski
© Games Workshop Limited 2011. All rights reserved.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Enemy Of My Enemy Page 3