Battle for the Abyss

by Ben Counter

  ‘It is the truth,’ Zadkiel persisted, ‘but you are not alone, brother; yours is not the only Legion to have been thus forsaken,’ he continued. ‘The Word Bearers worshipped him, worshipped the Emperor as… a… god! But he mocked our divinity with reproach and reprimand, just as he mocks you.’

  Skraal ignored him. His faith in his Legion and his primarch would not easily be undone. This Word Bearer’s rhetoric meant nothing. Duty and rage: these were the things he focused on as he sought to escape from the chamber.

  ‘Look before you, World Eater,’ Zadkiel began again. ‘There you will find what you seek.’

  Despite himself, Skraal looked.

  There, within an ornate glass cabinet, forged of obsidian and brass and once wielded by Angron’s hand, was a chainaxe. Decked with teeth of glinting black stone, its haft wrapped in the skin of some monstrous lizard, he knew it instinctively to be Brazentooth, the former blade of his primarch.

  The weapon, magnificent in its simple brutality, had taken the head of the queen of the Scandrane xenos, and cleaved through a horde of greenskins following the Arch-Vandal of Pasiphae. A feral world teeming with tribal psychopaths had rebelled against the Imperial Truth, and at the mere sight of Brazentooth in Angron’s hand they had given up their revolt and kneeled to the World Eaters. With the forging of Gorefather and Gorechild, the twin axes Angron now wielded, Brazentooth had been as much a symbol of Angron’s relentlessness and independence as it was a mere weapon.

  ‘Gifted unto Lorgar, it symbolises our alliance,’ Zadkiel told him. ‘Angron pledged himself to our cause, and with him all the World Eaters.’

  Skraal regarded the chainaxe. Thick veins stuck out on his forehead, beneath his skull-helmet, exacerbated by the heat of his impotent wrath.

  ‘It is written, World Eater, that you and all your brothers will join with us when the fate of the galaxy is decided. The Emperor is lost. He is ignorant of the true power of the universe. We will embrace it.’

  ‘Word Bearer,’ Skraal said, his lip curled derisively, ‘you talk too much.’

  The World Eater shattered the cabinet with a blow from his fist and seized Brazentooth. Without pause, he squeezed the tongue of brass in the chainaxe’s haft, and the teeth whirred hungrily. The weapon was far too heavy and unbalanced for Skraal to wield; it would have taken Angron’s own magnificent strength to use it. It was all he could do to keep the bucking chainblade level as he put his body weight behind it and hurled it into the nearest wall.

  Brazentooth ripped into a fresco depicting Lorgar as an educator of the benighted, thousands of ignorant souls bathing in the halo of enlightenment that surrounded him. The image was shredded and the weapon, free of Skraal’s hands, bored its way through, casting sparks as it chewed up the metal beneath.

  ‘You’re doomed, Zadkiel!’ bellowed Skraal over the screech of the chainblade. ‘The Emperor will learn of your treachery! He’ll send your brothers to bring you back in chains! He’ll send the Warmaster!’

  The World Eater hurled himself through the ragged tear in the museum wall and fell through into a tangled dark mess of cabling and metal beyond.

  Zadkiel’s laughter tumbled after him from the vox-caster.

  ZADKIEL SWITCHED OFF the pict screens adorning the small security console at the rear of the temple. ‘Tell me, chaplain, is everything prepared?’

  Ikthalon, decked in his full regalia including vestments of deep crimson, nodded and gestured towards a circle, drawn from a paste mixed from Colchian soil and the blood that had been drained from the body of the Ultramarine, Antiges.

  The Astartes inert body lay at its nexus, his cuirass removed and his chest levered open to reveal the congealed vermillion mass of his organs. Symbols had been scratched on the floor around him, using his blood. His helmet had been removed, too, and his head lolled back, glassy-eyed, its mouth open as if in awe of the ritual he would facilitate in death.

  ‘It is ready, as you ordered,’ uttered Ikthalon, the chaplain’s tone approaching relish.

  Zadkiel smiled thinly and then looked up at the sound of shuffling feet. An old, bent figure ascended the steps at the temple entrance and the candles on the floor flickered against its cowl and robe as it entered between the pillars.

  ‘Astropath Kyrszan,’ said Zadkiel.

  The astropath pulled back his hood, revealing hollow sockets in place of his eyes as inflicted by the soul-binding.

  ‘I am at your service,’ he hissed through cracked lips.

  ‘You know your role in this?’

  ‘I have studied it well, my lord,’ Kyrszan replied, leaning heavily on a gnarled cane of dark wood as he shuffled towards Antiges’s corpse.

  Kyrszan knelt down and held his hands over the body. The astropath smirked as he felt the last wreaths of heat bleeding from it. ‘An Astartes,’ he muttered.

  ‘Indeed,’ added Ikthalon. ‘You’ll find his scalp has been removed.’

  ‘Then we can begin.’

  ‘I will require what is left after this is done,’ added Ikthalon.

  ‘Don’t worry, chaplain,’ said Zadkiel. ‘You’ll have his body for your surgery. Kyrszan,’ he added, switching his gaze to the astropath, ‘you may proceed.’

  Zadkiel threw a book in front of him. Kyrszan felt its edges, ran his fingers over its binding, the ancient vellum of its pages and breathed deep of its musk, redolent with power. His spidery digits, so sensitive from a lifetime of blindness, scurried across the ink and read with ease. The script was distinctive and known to him.

  ‘What… what secrets,’ he whispered in awe. ‘This is written by your hand, admiral. What was it that dictated this to you?’

  ‘His name,’ said Zadkiel, ‘is Wsoric and we are about to honour the pact he has made with us.’

  IN THE HOURS that followed, the warp was angry. It was wounded. It bled half-formed emotions, like something undigested: hatred that was too unfocused to be pure, love without an object, obsession over nothing and gouts of oblivion without form.

  It quaked. It thrashed as if being forced into something unwilling, or trying to hold on to something dear to it. The Wrathful was thrown around on the towering waves that billowed up through the layers of reality and threatened to snap the spindly anchor-line of reason that kept the ship intact.

  The quake subsided. The predators that had homed in on the disturbance scented the corpses of their fellow warp-sharks in the Wrathful, and hastily slunk back into the abyss. The Wrathful continued on its way, following eddies left by the wake of the Furious Abyss.

  ‘HAS THERE BEEN any change?’ asked Cestus as he approached Saphrax.

  The banner bearer stood outside the medical bay, looking in at the prone form of Mhotep, laid as if slumbering, on a slab of metal.

  ‘None, sire. He has not stirred since he fell after the battle.’

  The Ultramarine captain had recently been tended to by the Wrathful’s medical staff, an injury sustained to his arm that he had not realised he had suffered making its presence felt as he’d gone to Mhotep’s aid. In the absence of the dead Laeradis, the treatment was rudimentary but satisfactory. The bodies, what was left of them, of the Astartes, two of the Blood Claws included, had been taken to the ship’s morgue.

  Cestus’s mind still reeled at what he’d witnessed on the lance decks and the powers that the Thousand Son had unleashed. Truly, there was no doubt as to his practising psychics. That in itself left an altogether different and yet more pressing question: Brynngar.

  The Wolf Guard had also been down in the lance decks, though Cestus was not aware of it until the battle was over, and had banished three of the warp spawn with his Blood Claws. The artifice of the Fenrisian rune priests, in their fashioning of Felltooth, was to thank for it. For once, reunited at the centre of the deck, Brynngar had curtly disclosed how the creatures parted easily before the blade and fled from the Space Wolves’ fury. The Ultramarine believed that some of the account was embellished, so that it might become worthy of a saga, but he did no
t doubt the veracity at the heart of Brynngar’s words.

  It mattered not. Whatever the Wolf Guard intended to do about Mhotep and, indeed, Cestus, he would do regardless. Right now, the Ultramarine captain had greater concerns, namely, that the traitor had been broken, for Saphrax had discovered his shattered body in the isolation chamber, but that whatever secrets he had divulged were denied to them while Mhotep was incapacitated. It felt like a cruel irony.

  ‘Do you know what we do with witches on Fenris, Ultramarine?’

  Cestus turned at the voice and saw Brynngar standing behind him, glowering through the glass at Mhotep.

  ‘We cut the tendons in their arms and legs. Then we throw them in the sea to the mercy of Mother Fenris.’

  Cestus moved into the Space Wolf’s path.

  ‘This is not Fenris, brother.’

  Brynngar smiled, mirthlessly, as if at some faded remembrance.

  ‘No, it is not,’ he said, locking his gaze with Cestus. ‘You give your sanction to this warp-dabbler, and in so doing have twice besmirched my honour. I will not let his presence stand on this ship, nor will I let these deeds go unreckoned.’

  The Space Wolf tore a charm hanging from his cuirass and tossed it at the Ultramarine’s feet.

  Cestus looked up and matched the Wolf Guard’s gaze.

  ‘Challenge accepted,’ he said.

  BRYNNGAR WAITED IN the duelling pit in the lower decks of the Wrathful. The old wolf was stripped down to the waist, wearing grey training breeches and charcoal-coloured boots, and flexed his muscles and rotated his shoulders as he prepared for his opponent.

  Arrayed around the training arena, commonly used for the armsmen to practise unarmed combat routines, were what was left of the Astartes: the Ultramarine honour guard, barring Amryx, who was still recovering from his injuries, and a handful of Blood Claws. Admiral Kaminska, as the captain of the ship, was the only non-Astartes allowed to attend. She had forbidden any other of the crew from watching the duel. The realisation that the Astartes in the fleet were turning on one another was a sign of the worst kind, and she had no desire to discover its effects upon morale if witnessed by them first hand.

  She watched as Cestus stepped into the arena, descending a set of metal steps that retracted into the wall once he was within the duelling pit. The Ultramarine was similarly attired to Brynngar, though his training breeches were blue to match the colour of his Legion.

  At the appearance of his opponent, Brynngar swung the chainsword in his grasp eagerly.

  The assembled Astartes were eerily silent; even the normally pugnacious Blood Claws held their tongues and merely watched.

  ‘This is madness,’ Kaminska hissed, biting back her anger.

  ‘No, admiral,’ said Saphrax, who towered alongside her, ‘it is resolution.’

  The Ultramarine banner bearer stepped forward. As the next highest ranking Astartes, it was his duty to announce the duel and state the rules.

  ‘This honour-duel is between Lysimachus Cestus of the Ultramarines Legion and Brynngar Sturmdreng of the Space Wolves Legion,’ Saphrax bellowed clearly like a clarion call. ‘The weapon is chainswords and the duel is to blood from the torso or incapacitation. Limb or eye loss counts as thus, as does a cut to the front of the throat. No armour; no fire arms.’

  Saphrax took a brief hiatus to ensure that both Astartes were ready. He saw his brother-captain testing the weight of his chainsword and adjusting his grip. Brynngar made no further preparation and was straining at the leash.

  ‘The stakes are the fate of Captain Mhotep of the Thousand Sons Legion. To arms!’

  The Astartes saluted each other and levelled their chainswords in their respective fighting stances: Brynngar two-handed and slightly off-centre, Cestus low and pointed towards the ground. ‘Begin!’

  BRYNNGAR LAUNCHED HIMSELF at Cestus with a roar, channelling his anger into a shoulder barge. Cestus twisted on his heel to avoid the charge, but was still a little sluggish from the earlier battle and caught the blow down his side. A mass of pain numbed his body, resonating through his bones and skull, but the Ultramarine kept his feet.

  Blows fell like hammers against Cestus’s defensive stance, his chainblade screeching as it bit against Brynngar’s weapon. Teeth were stripped away and sparks flew violently from the impact. Two-handed, the Ultramarine held him, but was forced down to one knee as the Space Wolf used his superior bulk against him.

  ‘We are not in the muster hall, now,’ he snarled. ‘I shall give no quarter.’

  ‘I will ask for none,’ Cestus bit back and twisted out of the blade lock, using Brynngar’s momentum to overbalance the Space Wolf.

  The Ultramarine moved in quickly to exploit the advantage with a low thrust, intending to graze Brynngar’s torso, draw blood and end the duel. The old wolf was canny, though, and parried the blow with a flick of his sword, before leaning in with another shoulder charge. It lacked the sudden impetus and fury of the first, but jolted Cestus’s body all the same. The Ultramarine staggered and Brynngar swept his weapon downward in a brutal arc that would have removed Cestus’s head from his shoulders. Instead he rolled and the blade teeth carved into the metal floor of the duelling pit, disturbing the streaks of old blood left by the World Eater’s earlier contest.

  Cestus came out of the roll and was on his feet. There was a little distance between the two Astartes gladiators, and they circled each other warily, assessing strength and searching for an opening.

  Brynngar didn’t wait long and, howling, hurled his body at the Ultramarine, chainsword swinging.

  Cestus met it with his blade and the two weapons came apart with the force of the blow, chain teeth spitting from their respective housings.

  Brynngar cast the ruined chainsword haft aside and powered a savage uppercut into Cestus’s chin that nearly shattered the Ultramarine’s jaw. A second punch fell like a piston and smashed into his ear. A third lifted him off his feet, hammering into the Ultramarine’s gut. The sound of Brynngar’s grunting aggression became dull and distant as if Cestus was submerged below water, as he fought to get his bearings.

  He was dimly aware of falling and had the vague sense of grasping something in his hand as he hit the hard metal floor of the duelling pit.

  Abruptly, Cestus found it hard to breath and realised suddenly that Brynngar was choking him. Strangely, the Ultramarine thought he heard weeping. With a blink, he snapped back into lucidity and smashed his fists down hard against Brynngar’s forearms, whilst landing a kick into his sternum. It was enough for the Space Wolf to loosen his grip. Cestus head-butted him in the nose and a stream of blood and mucus flowed freely after the impact.

  Feeling the ground beneath him again, Cestus ducked a wild swing and lashed out beneath Brynngar’s reach. The Ultramarine wasn’t quick enough to avoid a backhand swipe and took it in the side of the face. He was reeling again, dark spots forming before his eyes, hinting that he was about to black out.

  ‘Yield,’ he breathed, sinking to his knees, his voice groggy as he pointed to the Space Wolf’s torso with the chainsword tooth clutched in his outstretched hand.

  Brynngar paused, fists clenched, his breathing ragged and looked down to where Cestus was pointing.

  A line of crimson was drawn across the Space Wolf’s stomach from the tiny diagonal blade in his opponent’s grip.

  ‘Blood from the torso,’ Saphrax announced with thinly veiled relief. ‘Cestus wins.’

  FOURTEEN

  Hunted

  A single blow

  We are all alone

  TIME HAS LITTLE meaning in the warp. Weeks become days, days become hours and hours become minutes. Time is fluid. It can expand and contract, invert and even cease in those fathomless depths of infinite nothing; endless everything.

  Leaving the gallery and Zadkiel’s echoing laughter behind him, Skraal had fled into the pitch dark.

  Crouching in the blackness with naught but the groans of the Furious Abyss for company it felt like the passage of years
, and yet it could have been no more than weeks or as little as an hour. Heaving, shifting, baying, venting, the vessel was like some primordial beast as it ploughed the empyrean tides. Sentience exuded from every surface: the moisture of the metal, the blood, oil and soot in the air. Heat from generatoria became breath, fire from blast furnaces anger and hate, the creak of the hull, dull moans of pleasure and annoyance. Perhaps this awareness had always existed and lacked only form to give it tangibility. Perhaps the skeleton the adepts of Mars had forged provided merely a shell for an already sentient host.

  The World Eater decided that his thoughts heralded the onset of madness at being hunted for so long, the thin talons of paranoia pricking his skull and infecting his mind with visions.

  After his discovery in the gallery, he had gone to ground, questing downwards through the inner circuitry and workings of the Furious Abyss in some kind of attempt at preservation. It was not cowardice that drove him, such a thing was anathema to the Astartes: a World Eater was incapable of the emotion. Fear simply did not have meaning for them. No, it was out of a desire to regroup, to plan, to achieve some petty measure of destruction that might not at least escape notice, that meant something. Into the heat and fire he’d passed arches of steel, vast throbbing engines and forests of cables so thick that he’d needed to cut them down with his chainaxe. It was in this manufactured hell that he’d found refuge.

  Bones lay on the lower decks, pounded to dust by pistons, though some were intact. They were the forgotten dead of the Furious’s birth, sucked into machinery or simply lost and left to starve or die of thirst in the ship’s labyrinthine depths.

  During his flight into this cauldron, Skraal had seen things. The dark had played with him, the heat, too, and the endless industrial din. Glowing eyes would watch the World Eater, only to then melt away into the walls. A landscape had opened up before him, its edges picked out in darkness: a vast land of bloody ribs and palaces of bone, with mountains of gristle and labyrinths carved down into plains of rippling muscle. Humanoid shapes danced in rivers of blood as the whole world swelled and fell with an ancient breath.