Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  Meros threw a glance over his shoulder to see who had aided him and found a skull-mask glaring back. The Warden, Annellus, spared him a nod; standing with the warrior in black were Redknife and his Space Wolves, the muzzles of their guns still smoking.

  The captain walked past and gave the dead monster a desultory kick. ‘They die easily enough. Stinks like spoiled meat, though.’ Already, the fiend’s flesh was softening, becoming gooey and molten. A strange, perfumed vapour rose off it, curling away into the air as if something were escaping from the prison of its cooling corpse. The body decayed with sickening rapidity, like all the other enemy dead. Robbed of the grotesque life-energy that animated them, they disintegrated almost immediately. It almost felt like it wasn’t a kill at all.

  ‘Stay with the advance,’ snapped the Warden, and Meros moved with the group, his battle-brothers cresting a low ridge a short distance ahead.

  The shaven-headed Space Wolf, the one with the skin covered in runic tattoos and arcane symbols, shook a knurled staff in his hand and said something in Fenrisian. The words were unclear but the tone revealed enough. A warning, he thought.

  Meros followed the skald’s gesture and felt the ground tremble under him. Through the mist, a massive shape easily the girth of a Rhino transport was approaching, lurching from side to side on thick, flexible legs. Light blinked off dirty, blood-smeared brass. It moved fast, advancing by bounds.

  The thing resembled a deep ocean cephalopod, but that was only Meros’s mind grasping toward the nearest logical equivalent in his thoughts. Thick rounded body segments slick with mucus protruded at wrong angles through plates of metal strapped about its girth, and there were odd numbers of legs that stamped and cut the ground. Vestigial wings and quivering antennae buzzed at nothing, and its powerful bulk swung this way and that, knocking down warriors with violent flicks of motion. Blood Angels went flying as it ploughed into them. It did not have a head and neck; the amalgam of bilious skin and muscle ended in a stump, and on that wedge of meat there were dozens of lop-sided mouths with dagger teeth and beards of stinger-fronds.

  It was suddenly upon them, ploughing through their advance, and Meros leaped out of its way. He fired as he ran, unloading the rest of the shells in his pistol clip into the glutinous flanks of the monster, and when the slide locked back, he made desperate cuts at a flailing tentacle-leg with the braying head of his axe. Oily matter choked the spinning teeth and the limb was cut, dropping to the sands to slither and twitch where it fell.

  Meros was aware of one of the Space Wolves nearby, but then another sinuous feeler broke the skin of the creature with a wet pop and lashed out at them. The Apothecary was hit and he saw the world turn around him. He struck the ground and felt gore spray across his face. He scrambled back to his feet, spinning about to see the beast pull the unlucky Space Wolf apart, ripping off a leg and an arm as a callous child might pull the wings from a fly. He shook off the blurring of his thoughts and heard the flat concussion of a bolter firing on full automatic. A few steps away, Sarga shouted in wordless rage as he poured shells into the snapping, hooting mouths of the creature. Great chunks of sizzling, rotten meat blew out of the creature’s torso as the mass-reactive rounds punctured it and exploded inside dense, gelatinous flesh.

  But Sarga didn’t see the other leg-snakes swarming up toward him, lost in the flash and fury of the bolter’s shrieking muzzle flare. Meros shouted his name, but it was too late. One tentacle struck like a serpent, coiling about Sarga’s thigh; another, skin at the tip peeling back to reveal a serrated bone arrowhead, came up behind him and plunged down into his neck.

  Blood fountained from the wound, from Sarga’s lips, and his body stiffened. The tentacle lashed and spun him about, thrashing inside the cavity of his body before letting him go. Meros’s battle-brother went down on his chest, the sand beneath him quickly becoming rusty mud.

  The white light of a lascannon shot came from somewhere else in the Blood Angels attack line and burned a crater in the flanks of the monster. It screamed loud and high, then rolled away, dragging itself back toward its own kind on what limbs it still had. Meros let it go, running to Sarga’s side, turning him over. His comrade’s face was a ruin of cuts, his grinning mouth now a savaged parody of what it had once been.

  And yet he still lived, although the span would not be long. Sarga’s eyes flicked to the Apothecary as Meros bent over him. He spoke, and pink spittle frothed from his ragged lips. ‘Brother,’ he managed.

  A shadow fell over them, and somehow Meros knew who it would be.

  ‘His wound is grave,’ said Annellus, with an executioner’s solemnity.

  Meros paid no heed to the Warden and bent low over his fallen squadmate, the sounds of close battle fading from his ears. ‘Brother,’ he said, giving voice to the most difficult task of his cadre. ‘Do you desire peace?’

  Sarga nodded, and it was an effort. ‘I… will live on,’ he said, the words almost a question.

  A slender silver needle – the medicae carnifex – slid soundlessly from Meros’s medicae gauntlet. ‘You will live on,’ he told his brother. The Apothecary placed the point upon Sarga’s flesh where it would make the mercy kill most swiftly, and did the deed cleanly. The legionary died with a low gasp then there was the business of recovery, and Meros set about it with mechanical, careful precision. In moments, he had harvested Sarga’s gene-rich progenoid glands from his corpse and secured them for later return to the home world.

  Sarga’s genetic legacy would survive. Still, that was hollow comfort to his comrade, as Meros stood up, locking his sorrow away.

  Annellus had watched him through the whole process. ‘The time to mourn our brothers will come later. For now, take solace in the fact that he gave himself in service of the Legion, in the Emperor’s name.’

  The colourless platitude ground on Meros’s choler and he turned on the Warden, an angry riposte forming on his lips, but he never uttered it.

  A colossal impact sounded across the battleground, as loud as the concussion of a field cannon; something huge had fallen from the sky amidst the deepest concentration of the fighting. Meros looked toward the clash, glimpsing the flicker of angelic wings and golden armour.

  Smoke was rising in a thick black pillar, and in the churn of it, the Apothecary saw glimpses of a towering form, of massive dragon wings, barbed black horns and chains of shimmering silver.

  Meros broke into a run, sprinting toward the leading edge of the battle line, obeying the raw primal instinct that told him that he and all his brothers would be needed to meet this new foe.

  Every warrior on the Red Tear’s battlements bled anger and frustration into the auras of their thoughts to such a degree that Kano could sense it even without trying. He walked stiffly away from the warriors in the hastily-assembled missile pit, trying to put their thoughts out of his mind. Grim-faced, he marched along the northern face of the grounded battle-barge, watching the light of the distant engagement.

  Kano knew without looking back that the legionaries at the cannon were brothers of the 221st Company, and they looked upon the duty of guarding the base with the same dislike as he. The warrior also knew that it would take little for him to press deeper, draw their names and memories from their surface thoughts. The skill and power were still inside him, even without the guidance of his psychic hood to harness it. The encounter with the hell-creature, the horror of its mind-touch on his psyche, had reminded him of that.

  He hesitated, reaching out an arm to steady himself on an exhaust vane. The optics of his helmet could easily bring the fight to him if he wished to use them, but he had no need. The telepathic farsight he had once used in the Emperor’s name would do far better, it would place him there in the thick while his physical form remained here.

  Kano had that power, and more. It seemed foolish to deny it. Foolish–

  ‘No!’ The denial snapped from his lips and he shook the thought away. Where had this sudden doubt come from? After so many months in obedience to
the edict, after swearing to Legion and primarch never again to use his preternatural skills, why now did Kano find his resolve beginning to crumble?

  He closed his eyes and withdrew into his own thoughts. It is this place, he told himself. These worlds. They were tainted by forces that hid behind the curtain of the visible. Insidious powers worked upon him, even as he stood here. Perhaps the daemon-thing on the ship had deliberately let him live for that very reason. Perhaps it was the whisper-voice on the vox, forever there even when comm-links were disconnected.

  ‘I will not give you a foothold,’ he said to the air.

  As if in answer, a kind of silence fell about him. Not the death of sound, not so literal – but a sudden tranquillity in his thoughts, a stillness that he had not known before.

  ‘My lord?’ A woman’s voice. ‘You are Brother Kano?’

  He turned to find a slight, pale female with henna-red hair and a fearful look upon her face. Standing behind her was a loose group of humans, clad in cast-off crewman’s clothes and other scraps.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out here,’ he said immediately. ‘It isn’t safe.’

  ‘It’s not safe anywhere!’ spat a gruff, thuggish man. Kano eyed him and tried to gain a read, but he felt nothing. It was like losing a sense, but not so shocking or painful, only peaceful.

  ‘I am Tillyan Niobe and we are the survivors from Scoltrum. Brother Meros spoke of you,’ the woman went on. ‘He told me you would keep us safe.’

  It is her. Kano’s eyes narrowed. The silent aura was centred upon Niobe, as if she were the eye of an inverse storm, and suddenly it was clear to him. He could read nothing of her, only a psychic void that drew in the tele-pathic hush like a black hole trapped starlight.

  ‘Tillyan,’ he said. ‘Do you know this word? Pariah?’

  Her brow furrowed. Was she about to lie? It was difficult to be certain. ‘No, lord. I don’t understand–’

  ‘I do,’ he replied. ‘Do you know why you survived while all others did not?’

  She blinked. ‘The daemons did not see us.’

  He shook his head. ‘They did not see you.’

  Sanguinius beheld a beast.

  Eldritch ebon smoke coiled around a muscled torso of angry red flesh, the twitching chest and flexing arms barely contained by coils of brass links and battered bronze armour. Wicked black horns rose from an ever-snarling face that was the very expression of feral hatred, bared fangs yellow and dripping open to the air. The arrival had come like a comet, riding a plume of ash from the ruined sky above, and yet the primarch instinctively sensed that it was a creature of the underworld rather than the heavens. He had seen the old books of lore that filled the secret libraries of his father’s palace; he knew the myths of brutes and devils from the superstitious past of humankind. The humanoid that rose up before him was the dread of those long-dead men, more real and more terrible than they could ever have imagined.

  It spoke, leering at the Angel. ‘Have you enjoyed the match so far, golden one?’ The voice was like bubbling magma. ‘So many pieces spent and yet so far to go before we reach the endgame.’ It cast a sly look at the dead ranged all around them, the bodies of legionary, cultist and monster alike. ‘But then, we both adore the taste of blood, do we not?’

  ‘You speak as if you know me,’ growled the primarch. ‘But I see only a monster to be killed.’

  ‘Recognise me, then, Sanguinius of Baal.’ It laughed. ‘I am Ka’Bandha, Bloodthirster and general of Khorne, blessed is his hate.’ The creature gave a mocking bow. ‘And we are brothers.’

  Meros emptied his pistol into a pack of screeching furies and reloaded, vaulting impact craters in the blood-soaked sand as he closed on the core of the battle. He skidded down an incline and staggered to a halt. A cluster of warriors stood with weapons ready, many of them legionaries of Raldoron’s First Company. He saw the captain and the gold-armoured Sanguinary Guard, packs of Terminators from Squads Saevin and Mecallus, and before them the crimson form of Venerable Leonatus, banners snapping from the Dreadnought’s adamantium flanks.

  All of them were waiting, and across the span of the battle line the Apothecary saw the enemy array in similar pause. Packs of black-furred dogs and the lizard-wolf hellhounds he had already encountered panted and pawed at the mud, alongside crested humanoids with horned skulls and rusted swords. The ravagers grunted and salivated, kneading the grips of their blades in anticipation of their master’s command.

  Their master. It shocked Meros to look upon the hellish figure, this Bloodthirster. He heard it speak, felt the tremor in the air at the beating of the dark wings across its back. For a moment, it seemed as if a nightmarish mirror had been held before the Angel, and this black reflection exposed as the polar opposite to all that was noble and good in him.

  ‘Why do you fight us?’ it asked, cocking its head, looking at the casualties of war. ‘We are alike. We each know the joy of bloodshed. The sweet taste of the kill.’ The creature took a step forward, brandishing its weapons – a lengthy whip of coiled brass and an axe that seemed fashioned from the jawbone of a leviathan. ‘Khorne is power beyond measuring. Chaos is the end-state of all existence. You resist and merely prolong the inevitable.’ The stone-grind of the voice set the Blood Angel’s teeth on edge, as if he could hear it through the resonance in his bones. ‘Even your Emperor-Father knows this. It is why he hides from us. It is why he is afraid.’

  Meros saw the lightning-flash of anger in the primarch’s eyes, the barb striking home; but then Sanguinius smiled. ‘Get out of my way, animal, or I will cut you down,’ he told the beast. ‘I will deal only with your master, the one called Kyriss.’

  The stygian smoke wreathing the daemon rippled with sudden anger. ‘That sense-whore is not my master,’ it raged. ‘I answer only to Khorne! I am the warlord of this place!’

  ‘You are nothing to me,’ said the Angel, and he attacked.

  Star-forged metal struck iron-shod bone with a thunderous crack. Sword and axe crossed one another, throwing out fans of sparks. The daemon was fast, quicker than Sanguinius expected, twisting the weapon and reversing the swing. The axe slashed low, cutting through the ground toward his legs.

  The Angel vaulted backwards into the air and spread his wings, sails of white feathers crackling as he spun about his axis, dancing out of range of the blow. He turned the red blade in his grip, and with martial grace traced the tip across the beast’s howling face. It cut deep.

  The primarch landed solidly, but gave Ka’Bandha no time to recover. He intended to keep his promise. The Angel bolted forwards, but the daemon was ready for him. The brassy whip shrieked, tearing through the air toward his torso. Sanguinius’s wings snapped close to his shoulders and he ducked low, the barbed lashes passing over his head. Still moving, still leading with his sword, he jabbed wide, forcing the bestial warlord into defence.

  Ka’Bandha roared and refused to sway, instead bringing the axe up to parry each probing attack, giving the Angel no point of entry past his guard. They were in the heart of the melee now, the battle around them screaming full-throated as lesser daemons – the harriers, devil-dogs and ravagers – fought legionaries, Dreadnoughts and Terminators.

  Sanguinius’s innate agility gave him an edge against the Bloodthirster’s raw brutal power, but they were well matched and by turns each scored small, significant wounds upon the other. Feathers caught by the snap of the axe fell away from the Angel’s wings as they circled and charged one another.

  With a thunderous bellow, Ka’Bandha reeled back and threw out a blow with his whip, the fanged tips cracking as they arced toward the primarch’s face. Sanguinius pivoted, faster than thought, and caught the barbs in his free hand. The lash writhed as if it were a living thing, coiling around his wrist, cracking the ceramite sheath of his gauntlet.

  He gave a violent tug and pulled the daemon off balance, leading a hammer-blow punch with the pommel of his blade that shattered tusks and drew torrents of Ka’Bandha’s black blood.

&n
bsp; The beast stumbled backwards, at first hissing, then laughing. ‘You fight well,’ it said, spitting out broken teeth. ‘No ephemeral has ever cut me before. But I cannot be bested. Why do you try? Join us instead! You are a creature of blood as much as I am… You already walk the scarlet path, little angel, we both know it. Come witness Khorne’s full glory, embrace what lies within you. You could be so exalted, a champion.’

  Sanguinius sneered. ‘First the other one, now you. Are all your kind so in love with the sounds of your own voice?’ He slashed at the creature, knocking it back, drawing an angry yowl.

  ‘A curse on you, then!’ spat the daemonic warlord. ‘If you refuse my offer, then know this: I will destroy all that you hold dear and plague your sons for as long as your Legion exists!’

  ‘That is no threat,’ said the primarch. ‘My sons will always be ready to kill your kind, until the death of the last star in the heavens!’

  Ka’Bandha gave a wordless shout of anger, shouldering aside a stalled Rhino, flipping the armoured transport onto its roof. He exploded towards the Angel, howling like a banshee.

  A figure in golden armour with wings of silver flashed at the edge of the primarch’s vision, and to his horror he saw the Rhino come down on Brother Lohgos, crushing him into the ground and killing him instantly. Sanguinius shouted in fury, feeling a palpable jolt of phantom pain as his trusted honour guard died.

  He felt the death as though it were a piece of his soul cut away and burned like paper; he felt every death. The shock of it, distant or close, weak or strong, but always there. Each time a son of Sanguinius fell, it was like a cut upon his flesh, a feather torn from his wings.

  Did the others feel the losses of their sons so keenly? Did Dorn or Vulkan? Magnus or Perturabo?

  Horus?

  Ka’Bandha came at him, arms wide, intent to flatten him into the dust. The Angel closed the gate on all other thoughts and threw himself into the air, letting his wings unfurl. He easily avoided the daemon-lord’s wild assault, but only for a moment. The beast had wings of its own, and they opened in kind, beating a clarion as black smoke swirled around them.