by Ian Watson
The driver recoiled at the sound of standard Imperial Gothic, a stranger’s speech.
‘You were deflating your tyres in anticipation?’
‘Yes.’ The reply was terse and defensive. Might this armed giant covet the vehicle?
‘Doing well, fellow!’ How many other drivers would have thought of this? Ten per cent? Five? That would still amount to thousands.
‘Place of safety being here,’ declared one of the driver’s passengers. He sounded simple-minded. ‘We will be hiding all but our noses under the water.’
Perhaps he was ingenious, but insane.
‘Place of safety being further on,’ said another passenger. He spoke patiently, as if it was necessary to reason with the canny madman or else they would break some social bond which had brought them this far. ‘Being the haunted stone labyrinth, remembering? First we must be passing the hermitage I was describing.’
‘Haunted?’ cried a rawly sunburnt young woman who had been riding upon a camelopard. ‘How being haunted?’
‘What hermitage?’ asked her companion, a stouter older woman whose long black hair was stringy with oily sweat.
‘Ghosts howling in that labyrinth,’ declared the informant. ‘Being a former resident of Bara Bandobast, I am knowing this. Labyrinth being taboo, yet we must be braving it. On the way we must be passing the Hermitage of the Pillar Ascetics.’
‘Who?’ asked the simple-minded soul.
The reply came: ‘The Secluded Solitary Stylites are praying for His face to appear in the sun so that our Sabulorb will become the prime pilgrimage planet in the whole cosmos.’
‘Excusing me,’ interrupted Grimm, ‘but how many hermits praying?’
‘Hundreds.’
‘Excusing me again, but how being hermits if such a crowd?’
‘Each hermit sitting alone atop a different pillar of rock!’ Was this dwarf stupid?
‘Huh, so they’ll be praying twice as hard today! Or falling off their pillars like flies.’
From behind a low rise there lurched a tall figure in pale green armour, without any helmet. Although pinkly burned, his features were still graceful and achingly handsome. A plume of black hair spread out like a pathetic tattered toy parasol. One of the eldar guardians. He cradled a lasgun.
Inflamed skin pouched around his slanted eyes. He was squinting. He seemed half-blind. He tripped. Using the long-barrelled gun as a crutch he rose again. Then he pointed the gun in the direction of the fountain, the little crowd, the steaming white limousine. ‘Being alien—!’
Out came a stub gun. A bullet flew towards the guardian, missing him entirely. To most ears what difference was there between the crack of that gun and the noise of another stone bursting? The keen-sensed eldar must have perceived a distinction. Shouldering his lasgun, the guardian fired towards the source of the sound.
He missed the gunman, but the energy packet erupted against the rear of the limousine. Bodywork tore open. Fumes gushed from a ruptured tank, igniting. Briefly a flame-thrower was spouting into the air. And then flame flashed back. The whole rear the vehicle exploded. Quickly the limousine was engulfed in an inferno.
How the driver howled. How he shredded his silks in despair at the sight.
RAAARKpopSWOOSHthudCRUMP spake Lex’s boltgun; and the half-blind guardian died. Already Lex was remounting. Already he was gesturing urgently to Jaq and Grimm and Rakel to get into their saddles before the stranded passengers could recover from shock. The two women resumed their saddles even quicker than Grimm. They had arrived at the same conclusion. The passengers were stranded. Mounts were available.
Lex brandished the bolter and roared hoarsely, ‘Hut-hut-shutur! Tez-rau! Yald!’ A chorus of Hut-hut and Yald, and the burning limousine and its former occupants were being left behind. At least they were left at an oasis – until such time as the sun might boil the water away. When that time approached would the ingenious madman lie underwater, scalding and boiling?
THE TWO WOMEN were still tagging along with Jaq’s party. Well and good. Thus the group might appear more normal – if anything was normal any more.
‘Gaskets would have blown in any case sooner or later,’ remarked Grimm airily. ‘Cylinder block would have cracked. Best efforts don’t always produce the best butter.’
‘Spare us your squattish cookery mottoes,’ said Jaq. ‘I wish to meditate.’
‘You could have been leaving them your spare mounts,’ called out the younger woman.
‘You two were hopping in your saddles fast enough!’ retorted Grimm.
Rakel glared at the young woman. ‘Don’t be messing with us,’ she warned. Perhaps this was indeed a helpful warning. ‘I,’ she continued, ‘being an Imperial assassin.’ Was she oscillating between sanity and insanity?
PILLARS OF DARK stone. Thousands of flat-topped rocky columns, ranging from three or four metres in height to upwards of fifty metres. These rose from the gritty desert over an area of many square kilometers.
This region seemed like the ruins of some prodigious temple. In the interior loomed a vaster hump of rock, honeycombed with cave-mouths. That might have been the inner shrine of the temple.
Atop a column knelt a white-robed hermit. What could be seen of his face beneath his cowl was brown leather. How the heat had baked him, exposed there up on that solitary height. Surely he had mummified.
Carved in the base of that natural column was the inscription: HIS GREAT RED EYE WATCHING US.
Further on, another hermit knelt high upon another pillar. This time the inscription read: PATRIARCH OF ALL.
Numerous other refugees were moving through the area. Some were on camelopards or balloon-wheeled trikes. Others were exhaustedly pedalling rickshaws. Many were reduced to pedestrianism. Every now and then, someone sprawled and did not rise. Tired tormented eyes barely glanced at the spectacle of the hermits on their pillars.
Many were the places in the Imperium where piety and insanity were indistinguishable. Insanity could often be contagious and persuasive. Pilgrims who had visited the holy city of Shandabar over the years, and been inspired with fervour, may well have been attracted subsequently to this desert hermitage. How many hermits there were, up on their pillars! The extent of the hermitage only became apparent as Jaq’s group rode deeper.
All of the hermits were leathery corpses, desiccated by the heat or by the recent dust-storm – mummified into gargoyles in their positions of prayer.
Ordinarily these hermits would have sat high enough to escape storms of grit and sand. Yet during a dust-storm would they not be obliged to retreat inside that honeycombed central shrine to escape asphyxiation? From that place, indeed, their daily food and drink must emerge, transported by servants. Over the centuries or millennia that great rock had probably been extensively excavated, resulting in chambers and storerooms and maybe widespread catacombs beneath.
Obviously the hermits had sheltered from the dust-storm! When the storm passed, they had resumed their places. Then the rising heat had begun to kill them. The rules for these anchorites must include an exemption for dust-storms – yet not for a pernicious rise in temperature. Sabulorb was a cool world, was it not? Consequently the hermits had remained kneeling atop their pillars in ever more fevered prayer.
Within that central shrine-rock were servants grieving impotently? Maybe they were rejoicing to be free of duty. Maybe some mourned while others celebrated. Deprived of a rationale, the servants might even be at each other’s throats – as the heat began to invade what may formerly have been a very cool abode.
Camelopards had slowed to a trot, partly because of the many pillars. Hereabouts a gallop might literally be breakneck. Yet this place also seemed to exert a certain charm over the snooty animals. How silent the area was. All pebbles with flaws must have cracked a while since. The ’pards padded circumspectly and refrained from snuffling, as if loath to disturb the serenity.
Again, the inscription: PATRIARCH OF ALL.
Why not “Father of All”
? That was the more common usage.
Cold terror tiptoed down Jaq’s spine. Upon a stubby spire a hermit opened his eyes, to glare down. Such mesmeric violet eyes those were. Cracked lips parted, revealing pointed teeth.
On other columns other hermits were stirring. Jaq kicked his camelopard in its ribs to urge it past that particular pillar. He hissed to the others, ‘These are genestealer hybrids!’
Growling oaths, both Grimm and Lex were readying their boltguns.
The young woman called out, ‘What being happening?’
From Rakel: ‘What will they do?’
Something inside Jaq seemed to snap. Hoarsely he cried, ‘My true assassin knew what genestealers and their hybrids do. She took on their inhuman form. She tore hybrids apart with her claws.’
Genestealers would kiss their seed into a human victim, male or female. Human parents would give birth to baleful offspring, upon which they could not stop themselves from doting, since they had become slaves to their spawn. Some hybrids were monsters. Others almost seemed human, big-boned and bald, though their teeth were usually sharp and their eyes hypnotic. Such as these hermits upon the pillars.
Purestrain genestealers were so strong and resilient. Their claws could rip through steel. Hybrids shared enough of that vigour and robustness to endure a rise in temperature. The leathery appearance of the hermits must be due to the emergence of some mature stealer characteristics – the horny purplish hide – in response to environmental disaster.
If all the hermits out in the open were hybrids who could pass as human, what monsters might lurk within the central shrine? Hermits and monsters alike would all be brood-bonded in empathy to a hideous armoured hog of a patriarch! Sabulorb had not been successfully cleansed after all. Survivors of a brood had subverted this desert hermitage and multiplied...
If Meh’lindi were only here. If only she were still equipped with genestealer implants, whereby to confuse the hybrids on their pillars. No, that was a vile wish! Her implants had been an abomination.
‘She tore hybrids apart with her claws!’ repeated Jaq.
Exhausted and almost demented, Rakel shuddered convulsively. ‘You have high expectations of your mistresses, my lord inquisitor!’
Shame whelmed Jaq. His voice shook. ‘Your imitation of her is sacred,’ he declared.
Yet no: it was profane.
Yet no again: Rakel’s imitation of Meh’lindi would become sacred when Meh’lindi was reincarnated within Rakel – and when the Chaos Child stirred in the womb of the warp, sanctifying Rakel’s sacrifice of herself and Jaq’s baptism of the new soul within her! ‘I apologize on behalf of the Ultramarines,’ declared Lex as he surveyed pillar beyond pillar, upon which white-clad shapes stined slowly. ‘That the genestealers should have regained such strength so soon! Truly it is better that this world be scorched.’
A hermit had risen slowly to his full height the better to survey the sluggish advent of the residue of the migration. His cowl fell back, revealing a bald head glossy in the glare of light, and the bony ridges of his brows. He stretched out muscle-corded arms. He was inviting that advent onward, blessing it.
The scattered mass of refugees must have seemed like manna – or cause for imminent mania. Other hermits were rising. In time of crisis the absolute imperative was to pass on the genetic heritage of stealers. Here came so many human cattle, to be inseminated. Maybe this trek of human cattle was also welcome for the nourishment it could provide, if the heat died down rather than increasing. This desert was so barren. Did the hermits’ servants grow food in the catacombs? Did hens cackle and lay underground? Were there tanks of algae? A feast of human flesh might be welcome; carcasses for pickling or smoke-curing. Grimm sniggered hysterically. ‘Pad along softly, beast,’ he told his mount. ‘Keep up the pace, there’s a good ’pard.’
They passed another pillar, from the top of which a hybrid regarded them with magnetic eyes.
Thousands of flies were entering a web. The hybrids were like toads whose tongues are awakened by an appropriate flicker across the retina as prey moves within reach.
How soon would hybrids begin to descend? Maybe just as soon as mature stealers empted from the mouths of those tunnels in the shrine-rock.
This had been a hallucinatory, sun-struck journey – yet now the worst hallucination of all was real.
‘TROTTING A BIT faster, there’s a good ’pard...’
To break into a gallop or even a canter might precipitate the onslaught. Alas, their informant had not supplied the command for trotting. Grimm urged his mount with his knees.
‘Hey,’ he called softly to the women who accompanied them, ‘what being the name for trotting?’
‘Be saying asan,’ was the reply from the younger woman. ‘Easy riding being the meaning.’
‘Asan, shutur. Asan!’ This word was like a prayer. Grimm’s mount picked up some speed. Others followed suit. How Grimm yearned to be riding a power-trike rather than this lolloping quadruped. His rump was so stiff and sore.
In all directions hermits had arisen. All seemed to be straining to hear some sound. Were they awaiting an audible signal from the shrine-rock – or a psychic cue to attack? Yet their attention was focused northward from where the migration came.
‘AIRCRAFT!’ ANNOUNCED LEX. Soon anyone could hear the drone of engines.
Into sight in the glowing sky came a large troop transporter, flying slowly. Lex shaded his eyes and stared as the plane began to bank. It was intending to circle the hermitage.
‘Imperial emblems, I think.’
How alert the hybrid hermits were now.
One of the aircraft’s four engines spluttered and coughed and died. ‘It’s almost out of fuel!’
That aircraft couldn’t have come from Shandabar. Shandabar was ashes and smouldering wreckage.
‘Must be from the northern continent, from the planetary army base or the Departmento—’
After the dust-storm and before the city exploded, some astropath must have sent a message regarding intrusion by aliens and renegade Space Marines. Then Shandabar had fallen totally silent. A troop carrier had flown to invesdgate. To become so low on fuel, it must have met storms en route. The pilot would have counted on putting down at Shandabar. He would have beheld the utter and inexplicable destruction of the capital city. The plane had carried on. The pilot would have seen the signs of the migration: dozens of kilometres of corpses and abandoned vehicles; then refugees still struggling along, and camelopards – and that veering in the direction of the trek, away from the obvious route to Bara Bandobast. The migration would have seemed to be heading for this place of pillars deep in the desert.
Airspeed would have ventilated the interior of the plane. Conditions on board might not have been too stifling. A hatch opened in one side of the plane. Bodies began to fall out. White chutes opened up. Bodies were drifting down – troops in mottled yellow and grey desert-camouflage, long-barrelled lasguns slung around their necks. Only one soldier’s chute failed. He plummeted directly to the ground. Body after body plunged from the door. White blossoms opened. A hundred and fifty of the troops, at least!
One after another the plane’s other engines coughed and cut out. Now it could only glide ponderously, its pilot hoping to reach open desert. An especially tall spire of rock clipped a wing. The plane promptly spun over and disappeared. The thump of impact threw up a cloud of dust but no fireball. No fuel was left for an explosion.
Troops were landing. Hermits were descending swiftly from their pillars, familiar with every finger grip. And the tunnel mouths of the shrine-rock vomited monsters!
Creatures with four arms, the upper set equipped with claws! Oh that characteristic loping gait. The speed, the sheer speed. Horns projecting from the spines. Bony sinuous tails. Long craniums jutting forward.
Behind those purestrain monsters boiled forth a mob of hybrids who were far from human in appearance. They were such vile satires upon humanity with their swollen jutting heads and jagged tee
th. Even from a distance their distortion was conspicuous. Some brandished a claw instead of a hand. Spurs of bone jutted from the backs of others.
Those hideous hybrids were armed with a motley of autoguns and shotguns and regular swords and chainswords. Of course the purestrain stealers used no weapons nor tools other than their own fierce armoured bodies.
Having reached the ground, hermits were pulling stub guns and laspistols from under their white robes. A hermit cried out, ‘Silver-tongued Father, your saliva salving our souls!’
In the largest of the tunnel mouths, to survey the massacre which his brood intended, had appeared the patriarch. Oh what a leering fang-toothed hog of a four-arms! Armour-bones protruding from its curved spine were the size of loaves. Three-clawed hooves raked the rock on which it stood. Too far to make out its rheumy violet vein-webbed eyes.
Yet far too close as well!
Grimm shot the nearest of the hermits, wrecking his chest. ‘Tez-rau, yald!’ shouted Jaq.
They cantered, they galloped. Already one stealer was racing to intercept them. The bouncing of Lex’s camelopard spoiled his aim. A bolt was wasted on destroying the inscription upon a pillar. With a prayer and a bolt from Emperor’s Mercy, Jaq halted the monster. It remained alive, writhing and ravaging the gravel.
Hermits were waylaying weary, sun-struck refugees, often killing bare-handed. Some stooped to suck blood to slake a thirst. The toughest refugees defended themselves with stub guns. Scattered all over a great area, troops in yellow and grey were firing energy packets wildly as stealers or hybrids rushed towards them. Most stealers reached their chosen victims and tore them apart. Attracted by the sight of the descending chutes – and now by the detonations of this lethal affray – a half-track vehicle came speeding. Upon it was a black-uniformed Arbitrator. He had lost or discarded his mirrored helmet. Skin was peeling from his inflamed face. A genestealer raced from behind a pillar towards the half-track. The Arbites swung the serpent-mouthed auto-cannon mounted upon the vehicle. Shells blazed towards that monster which should not have been present upon Sabulorb. A high-velocity shell took off one of the lower arms of the stealer.