When they’d first entered the palace, leaving the fire-blackened Astartes drop-pod behind, Ishaq had wondered how they’d know which way to go. It turned out to be a needless worry. They just followed the bodies.
Evidence of the Astartes’ passing was everywhere. This wing of the palace was swept clean of life, with ruptured corpses left in place of traditional decoration. One of the other remembrancers, a whippet-lean imagist by the name of Kaliha, would pause every few minutes and compose a pict around the dead bodies. It was clear from the angle of her picter that she sought to avoid any real focus on the slain, perhaps leaving them as blurred images in the foreground.
Ishaq had no interest in chronicling this butchery – artfully, tastefully or otherwise. The ambitious, mercenary part of his brain knew there’d be no point: such work would never enter the most treasured archives. Truly morbid pieces rarely did. People on Terra wanted to see what was humanity was capable of creating, not the aftermath of what it destroyed. They wanted to witness their champions in moments of glory or struggling in righteous strife, not slaughtering helpless humans that resembled Terrans far more than the Astartes themselves did.
It was all about presentation, about presenting what people wanted to see, whether they knew it or not. So he left the bodies unrecorded.
He tried not to look at the corpses they passed. Their ruination was so brutally complete it was difficult to imagine that these gobbets of meat had ever been people. They hadn’t just been killed, they’d been destroyed.
One of the soldiers, Zamikov, caught Ishaq’s eye. ‘Chainblades,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The look on your face. You’re wondering what does this to a body. Well, it’s chainswords.’
‘I wasn’t wondering that,’ Ishaq lied.
‘No shame in honest horror,’ Zamikov shrugged. ‘I’ve been with the Serrated Sun twelve years now, and I puked my way through the first two. The Crimson Lord’s lot do messy work.’
They took a left, stepping through another broken barricade that had failed to do its job. Gunfire in the distance hastened their strides.
‘I’d heard the Word Bearers always incinerated their enemies.’
‘They do.’ Zamikov hiked a thumb over his shoulder, at the corpses arrayed in various pieces around the furniture barricade. ‘That’ll come afterwards. First they kill, then they purify.’
‘They come back to burn the dead after a battle? They actually do it themselves?’
Zamikov nodded, no longer looking over at the imagist. Ishaq noticed the shift in the soldier’s stride – as soon as they’d heard the gunshots, each of the Euchars moved lower, faster, their lasrifles clutched tighter. It was like watching hive-street cats on the hunt for rats.
‘They do it themselves. No funerary serfs or corpse-servitors for the Word Bearers. They’re a thorough lot, you’ll see.’
‘I can already see.’
‘That a fact?’ Zamikov spared him a quick glance. ‘What do you see here?’
‘Bodies.’ Ishaq raised an eyebrow. What kind of question was that?
‘It’s more than that.’ The soldier looked ahead again. ‘This entire wing of the palace is cleaned out, but we’ve doubled back on ourselves more than once following the trail of dead. The Word Bearers aren’t racing to the throne room. That’s not how they do things. They’re killing everyone in the palace first, room by room, chamber by chamber. That’s punishment. That’s being thorough. You understand now?’
Ishaq nodded, not sure what else to say.
The sound of gunfire was joined by the guttural whine of motorised blades. He felt his heart quicken. This was it: battle, seeing the Astartes fight. And hopefully, not getting shot at himself.
‘Look alive,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘Rifles up.’
Ishaq didn’t have a rifle, but with his face set just as stern as Zamikov’s, he raised his picter.
When they caught up to the Word Bearers, the scene was nothing like he’d expected. Firstly, it wasn’t a squad of Word Bearers, it was just one. And secondly, he wasn’t alone.
The picter clicked and clicked and clicked.
They were twins in movement, a single weapon with a single intent. Neither led the other, neither moved any more or less than his twin. It was not competition. It was the perfection of unity.
They stopped as one, ending their advance to take stock of their surroundings. The city was in the throes of evacuation, for whatever good it would do the populace, and the air was a wailing morass of conflicting sirens audible even here within the palace. Platoons of defenders stood at every corridor corner and junction, armed with solid shot rifles that cracked and pinged harmlessly off Astartes armour.
The vox-network was calm. No cries for reinforcement. No demands for orders. The monotonous chanting so typical of Word Bearer squads was absent from the Gal Vorbak. Forty warriors, drop-podded into four sections of the royal castle, immediately splitting up to slaughter with muted grunts and growls.
Another barricade stood before the two advancing warriors, manned by dozens of the rifle-armed defenders in their ostentatious white and gold garb. Puffs of smoke preceded the click-clack-click of their bullets sparking harmlessly aside.
Both warriors broke into a run, boots crunching into the stone floor. Both vaulted the barricade of smashed furniture in the same moment, both grunting in effort as they leapt. Both landed at the same time, and both let loose with abandon, their weapons lashing out to shed blood. The defenders fell in pieces around them, chopped and carved faster than the eye could follow.
Ruthless familiarity with each other was all that made this possible. When one would weave low to thrust, the other would aim high to slice. Their movements were a blurring dance around each other’s forms, forever watching and anticipating the other’s movements even as they focused on slaying their enemies.
Around the two warriors, nineteen defenders were twitching human wreckage. The last to die had been disembowelled and decapitated by both warriors in the same heartbeat.
Now blood ran from the sword’s blade, just as it ran from the eight talons. Back to back, the warriors glanced at the ruination around them, took half a second’s note of the Euchar escorting the remembrancers down the hallway, and moved on in the same second.
Aquillon ran.
Argel Tal staggered.
Surprise froze the Custodian’s movements dead. As he turned, he saw the Word Bearer take another flawed step and crash to his knees among the corpses they’d created.
Aquillon span his blade – a deflective propeller to ward off any assassin’s shot. He wasn’t connected to the Legion’s networked data-stream, and couldn’t read Argel Tal’s life signs on a convenient retinal display. But there was no blood. No sign of injury, beyond the collapse and spasm.
‘Are you hit?’
Argel Tal answered with wordless rasps. Something wet and black dripped from his helm’s mouth grille, thinner than oil, thicker than blood, hissing like acid as it fell to the stone.
Aquillon stood above the prone Word Bearer, sword spinning in his gold hands. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t gain a target lock. There was no assassin – at least none that he could see. He risked another glance down.
‘Brother? Brother, what ails you?’
Argel Tal used his claws to rise, digging them into the wall and dragging himself to his feet. Black bubbles, silvered by saliva, swelled and popped at his mouth grille.
‘Rakarssshhhk,’ he said, in a greasy blurt of vox. The twitching was subsiding, but the Word Bearer seemed in no hurry to move.
‘What struck you down?’
‘Hnh. Nothing. Nothing.’ Argel Tal’s voice was a breathy wheeze. ‘I... Tell me you hear that.’
‘Hear what?’
Argel Tal gave no answer. The scream in his mind went on and on, a sound of sorrow and anger somehow ripened by amusement – a meaningless melange of incompatible emotion, curdled into a single scream. Each second it lasted, his
blood boiled hotter.
‘Let’s move on,’ he growled at Aquillon through chattering teeth.
‘Brother?’
‘Move on.’
Torgal screamed in unison with the distant cry, sending human defenders panicking before him. The Gal Vorbak warriors by his side dropped their weapons, hands clutching at helms, wordless shouts of anguish vox-roaring throughout the throne chamber.
Psychopomp Shal Vess Nalia IX watched this sudden madness through tears in her eyes. The ruler of the planet Calis had, before this moment, been curled in her oversized throne – a mess of rich robes containing rolls of fat – weeping and wailing for all to hear. The last survivors of her royal guard, those who’d not fled to leave her to die at the hands of the invaders, were similarly taken aback now as the red-armoured slaughterers howled and ceased their butchery.
The guards’ ceremonial blades were worthless against Astartes armour, as were their solid-shot rifles. Instead of pressing the attack, they used the momentary respite to fall back to the psychopomp’s throne.
‘Highness, it’s time to leave,’ a house-captain told her. This was a refrain he’d been trying for days, but if it wouldn’t work now, at least he’d never need to try again.
She blubbed in response. Her chins jiggled.
‘Forget her,’ one of the others said. All of their faces were taut under the pressure of the invaders screaming so loud. ‘This is our chance, Revus.’
‘Defend me!’ the matriarch wailed. ‘Do your duty! Kill them all!’
Revus was fifty-two years old, and had served most loyally as house-captain to the current psychopomp’s father, who’d been a charismatic and effective ruler beloved by his people – everything his fat bitch of a daughter was not.
But he couldn’t leave. Or rather, he wouldn’t.
Revus turned to the prone invaders, watching them kneel and cry out in the sea of carved corpses around them, and made the last decision he would ever make. He would not run. It was not in him to do so. Instead, he would defend his sire’s indolent daughter with his life, breaking his blade upon the armour of his enemies, making sure his final words would be to spit defiance in their faces.
‘Turn and run, dogs,’ he snarled at his own men. ‘I will die doing my duty.’
Half of them seemed to take that as an order, for they fled immediately. Revus watched their dark-armoured forms slipping into servants’ passages, and despite himself, couldn’t wish harm upon them for their cowardice.
The house-captain remained in the screaming maelstrom with eight men: all too proud or too dutiful to run, and all on the veteran side of forty.
‘We’re with you,’ one of them said, his voice raised to make it above the shouts.
‘Defend me!’ the hideous girl wailed again. ‘You have to protect me.’
Revus spoke a small prayer of reverence, wishing the shade of her father well, and promising to see him soon in the afterlife.
The invaders rose again. The screams faded to moans and grunts. They reached for weapons that had fallen into the gore.
Revus yelled ‘Charge!’ and did exactly that.
He cared nothing for slaying one of the invaders, for he knew he couldn’t. All he wished to do was break his blade upon their red armour – to land a single blow, when so many of the royal guard had died without even striking once.
One moment he ran and roared, the next, he was crashing to the floor. There wasn’t even any pain as his legs went out from under him, just a moment of dizziness, before looking up to see the crimson warrior towering above. His blade remained unbroken. His last wish, denied.
The invader stepped on the dying man’s chest, crushing every bone in his torso and pulping the organs. House-Captain Revus died without even knowing his legs and waist were three metres away, severed from his body by the red warrior’s first blow.
Torgal dispatched the last of the ardent defenders, reaching the throne before the other Gal Vorbak. Acidic bile still stung his throat, but control and strength alike had returned to his limbs. The vox was a frenetic exchange of squads all reporting the same crippling pain and the sound of laughter.
‘Leave my world!’ the psychopomp squealed from her chair.
Torgal plucked her up by her fat neck. The weight was considerable, even for Astartes battle armour. He felt gyros in his shoulder and elbow joints lock to deal with the strain.
Next to him, Seltharis was replacing his helm after spitting black bile at one of the dead bodies. ‘Just kill the piggish creature. We need to return to orbit. Something is wrong.’
Torgal shook his head. ‘Nothing is wrong.’ He did his best to ignore the girl’s weeping protests. ‘But we must commune with the Chaplain at once. If this is the ordained hour, we must–’
‘What?’ Seltharis was almost laughing. ‘What must we do? I am hearing a spirit laughing inside my skull, while my blood boils hot enough to burn my bones. We have no plan for this. None of us truly believed it would ever come.’
‘Leave my world!’ the matriarch insisted. ‘Leave us in peace!’
Torgal sneered at her behind his faceplate, loathing her down to the wretched, alien fish-stink of her sweating skin. What abominable event in this world’s past had led to such deviancy? What could make such desecration – the corruption of the human genome with alien genetics – a necessary reality? These people seemed no stronger, no more enlightened, no more industrious than any other human culture. In truth, they were less advanced than most.
‘Why did you do this to yourselves?’ the Astartes asked.
‘Leave my world! Leave!’
He threw her aside. The fleshy pile crashed to the ground, her dynasty ended by a broken neck.
‘Burn everything,’ ordered Torgal. ‘Burn it all, and summon a Thunderhawk. We stand at the ordained hour. I will report to the Crimson Lord.’
The Crimson Lord surveyed the courtyard. Empty, but for the grounded gunship.
He lowered his claws.
Torgal reported the monarch’s downfall almost an hour before, but Argel Tal’s fervour had faded even before the announcement. With the echo of that silent scream still drifting through his skull, he stood in the shadows of his Thunderhawk, Rising Sun, abstaining from the final slaughter within the palace. With flamers and incendiary grenades, the Gal Vorbak were erasing all evidence of royal life, gutting the pillared palace from within.
Most were voxing questions to one another, coating the communication network in a buzz of aggressive, amused voices. The words Ordained Time surfaced with sickening frequency. Their blood was up, for it seemed the gods had called.
Aquillon had followed him, which was the first thing he expected, and the very last thing he needed. The four Custodes were scattered among the Word Bearers assaulting the palace. They had surely seen everything, and that was going to become a problem sooner rather than later.
Argel Tal watched the man he would soon be ordered to kill, and wondered if he were capable of the act, both physically and morally.
‘I have no answer for you,’ Argel Tal told him. ‘I do not know what happened. A momentary weakness played over me. I forced it back. That is all I can tell you.’
The Custodes sighed through his helm speaker. ‘And you are well now?’
‘Yes. My strength returned quickly. There has been no moment of similar weakness.’
‘My men report similar incidents,’ the Custodian said. ‘Many of the Gal Vorbak fell as if struck by unseen hands, at the same moment you lapsed yourself.’ Aquillon removed his helm in a gesture of familiarity. It was a gesture that went unreturned. ‘We have detected no enemy weaponry capable of creating such an effect.’
He could only meet Aquillon’s gaze with his own eyes guarded by the lenses of his helm.
‘If I knew what had afflicted me,’ Argel Tal said, ‘I would tell you, brother.’
‘We have to consider that this is some previously unknown flaw in your Legion’s gene-seed.’
Argel Tal grunted a v
ague noise that may or may not have been affirmation.
‘You understand,’ the Custodian continued, ‘I must report this to the Emperor, beloved by all, at once.’
Behind his faceplate, Argel Tal was drooling blood again.
‘Yes,’ he said, licking his lips clean. ‘Of course you must.’
At first, he believed the scream was returning. Only after listening to its ululating wail for several moments did he turn back towards the palace walls.
‘Do you hear that?’ he asked.
This time, Aquillon nodded. ‘Yes. I do.’
When the siren started, almost all of the Word Bearers requested confirmation of its origins. The Colchisian rune flickering across hundreds of retinal displays told a blunt, stark tale, but it was a story that made no sense.
Even among the Gal Vorbak, the red-clad warriors hesitated in their fire-bearing purges, voxing to the orbiting fleet for immediate confirmation and explanation.
In the courtyard, Argel Tal and Aquillon boarded the Rising Sun, ordering their warriors to return to their dropships without hesitation. The psychopomp’s palace no longer mattered. This entire compliance was now meaningless.
‘All Word Bearers, all Custodes, all Imperial Army forces of the 1,301 st Expeditionary Fleet – hear these words. This is Argel Tal, Master of the Serrated Sun. Word has reached De Profundis from Terra itself, bearing the seal of the Emperor. The Isstvan System is in open rebellion, led by four of our own Legions. Rumours are rife, and facts are few. It is said the Warmaster has renounced his blood-oaths to the Throneworld. True or false, we will not go to war blinded by ignorance. But we will answer the primarch’s call, for Lorgar himself demands we respond.
‘Disengage from the surface attack, and regroup at your transports. Return to orbit at once. We are ordered to Isstvan, and we will obey as we were born to obey. The Word Bearers will cut to the heart of this betrayal, tearing the truth out from within. Officers, to your stations. Warriors, to your duties.
That is all, for now.’
Aquillon stood with the Crimson Lord in the gunship’s crew bay. ‘I cannot give this even a moment’s belief. Horus? A traitor?’ The Custodian ran his fingertips over the flat of his sword’s blade. ‘This cannot be true.’
The First Heretic Page 32