“No doubt? You do not sound so certain.”
The sage was shaking. His old man’s eyes were wet. “Very little is certain any more, my lady. The Slaughtersong has been above the horizon for weeks. Strange things are being born in the city.”
“The city is full of strange things already, sage.”
“My lady, do not misunderstand us, Slaanesh would never desert you, but… but there are many prophecies, and many of them are coming true. A calf with three heads, as the seers of the Crimson Knights foresaw, and a litter of half-devils with tentacles for hands such as was written by the prophets of the undersea kingdoms. They are omens of destruction and mistrust, the oldest there are. They say that something has returned that means the Pleasure God ill.”
“Indeed it has. The Blood God’s spawn walk Torvendis again. Prophecies can come true all they like, sage, no number of daemons can hope to breach the city and hold it against us.”
Demetrius laughed, a rasping, throaty sound. “You have fully one quarter of the Violators Chapter on your walls, lady. They could throw the whole Maelstrom against us and we would hold.”
“Indeed. Mape?”
Mape started, as if he had been woken from a nap.
“What can we pull from the population?”
Mape scrabbled around inside his oversized, filthy dark brown robes, pulling out sheafs of yellowed paper. “The… the able-bodied population stands at rather more than a million, of whom half are suitable for the press, with the same again in raw slave manpower…”
“Can they be mobilised?”
Mape scrabbled some more, spilling paper onto the flagstoned floor. “Three hundred thousand useful troops, at the last census.”
“Good for dying at the barricades,” said Caduceia.
“Then that is what they will do, if necessary. And the slaves?”
Mape continued, speaking faster and faster. “They will walk into battle like they work on the mine face. Under lashes and dying. An obstacle, nothing more, but there will be hundreds of thousands of them…” Mape’s speech degenerated into rapid mumbling.
“Have the slavemasters ready,” said Lady Charybdia. “They must be able and willing to put up a wall of slave flesh at a moment’s notice. But do not let their labours cease, the city must not starve of pleasure while we wait for our enemies to move.”
Lady Charybdia stood up, drawing herself to the full impressive height that her elongated spine would allow. “You have your orders. Seal my city and butcher this foreign infection.”
As her advisors left the chamber, the sage scuttling, Demetrius stomping heavily, Caduceia loping like an animal of prey, Lady Charybdia left the holomat image shimmering over the table. Her city was beautiful, a glittering jewelled scab over the surface of Torvendis’s largest continent, an open wound bleeding grace into a benighted world. Lights glimmered and silver threads of suspended walkways shone against the velvet black of the mine pits. The keep was a diamond on a silver mount, perfect and precious.
How could anyone harm such a masterpiece? No one could understand the ways of the Blood God, but his lust for destruction was to Lady Charybdia the utter opposite of the most basic logic. He was a god who refused true worship and embraced only heresy—slaughter and ruination in his name. His followers were the basest and most bestial. The times when Torvendis had been in the grasp of the Blood God’s followers had seen tides of warfare wash over the planet like waves of flame, destroying anything worth ruling, butchering any population worth subjugating, leaving a world of ash to be reconquered. Those times had left battlefield strata redolent with hatred and pain, heady pleasures for Lady Charybdia to refine from the earth but a vivid reminder of the hell the Blood God called power.
The holomat image flickered and grew dim, letting the black pillars of the room show through against the milky night sky. Then it shuddered and shut off, its old circuits burned out.
The city would not fade out and die. Slaanesh would keep his most diligent servant drawing worshipful pleasure from Torvendis in his name. She vowed that no barbarian or daemon would stop her. She was, after everything, a high priest of Slaanesh, and the city was her church. She would do her sacred duty, and the final pleasure of death would be an ironic gift to anyone who stood in her way.
Golgoth had never truly thought, in all his days, that he would ever actually set foot on soil like this. Lady Charybdia’s realm was holy ground, and he was not invited. He felt like a trespassing child. He felt like he had done when he went to kill his first men, creeping onto the battlefield before his years.
The sacred earth was dry and cracked, drained of life. Here and there chunks of architecture were slowly oozing from the ground or being melted back into it, pillared arcades and flagstoned courtyards. The morning sky was bright yellow, shot through with purple streaks by the horizon, and a dozen suns burned down, competing with bright patches of nebula and the hard white spike of the ever-present Slaughtersong. In the distance rose the city, strange bulbous towers leaning at insane angles—even from this far away Golgoth would make out the lengths of chain that held some of them up, and the spindly walkways between them. The deep pits of the mines were dark stains beneath the towers—even now, in the middle of the day, points of light shone in the darkness below.
Between Golgoth and the city was the battle, if it could be called that. The barbarian horde had swarmed through the breach created by Sh’Karr, and advanced into the forbidden heartland of Lady Charybdia’s domain. The daemons had chased those who lived in the city’s hinterland, scavengers and subsistence farmers who were simply carried away on the tide of the retreating legions. The barbarians toyed with the few legionaries who were left behind, but wasted little time, eager to make headway in what had turned from a catastrophe into an invasion. Golgoth reflected that his grand attempt at suicide had shifted into something different entirely. He had brought the tribes together, but instead of destroying them to punish their weakness, had he taken the first steps in making them strong again?
Lady Charybdia’s slaves had been herded into the path of the invading force, lashed into a massive milling crowd, half of them unarmed, some dressed in rags and most little more than naked. Hath had counted tens of thousands of them, but by the time the barbarians caught up with Sh’Karr’s daemons, half the slaves were dead.
The battle was in its closing stages. The thin white line of pale, starved slaves was thinning out by the second, crushed against a swarming black mass of barbarians. Knots of grey-skinned daemons leapt about here and there, sating themselves with blood.
An extraordinary thing was happening, quite apart from the merciless removal of an obstacle thrown at them by Lady Charybdia—an alliance was being formed. Golgoth was watching from some distance behind the front line, from where he stood the battle was almost abstract, and he was hard pressed to imagine that the faint pale line of resistance was composed of human beings. But the meaning of the victory was not lost on him. Man and daemon were fighting side by side, and it was hard to tell which was the more determined to punish Lady Charybdia.
The ground shook and a shadow passed in front of the suns behind Golgoth. He turned and saw the form of Ss’ll Sh’Karr towering over him, seemingly as big as a mountain, dripping a rain of blood and oil from the machinery that clattered and pumped through his skin. His talons were thick to the elbow with gore and sheets of blood ran from his fleshy mandibles.
“You,” it said in a massive, earth-shaking voice, “are their king.”
Golgoth craned his head to look up at the daemon. They said it really was Ss’ll Sh’Karr—even Golgoth, who could not call himself a learned man, had heard that name whispered with awe by storytellers who spoke of a reign of blood-mad monsters and the tyrannical daemon lord who ruled over it. Now, a creature calling itself by that same name was towering over him.
“I am,” he said.
Ss’ll Sh’Karr’s mandibles twisted in what Golgoth guessed to be a smile. “The Blood God is pleased. Much
blood! A fine welcome, a fine awakening!” He laughed, and pistons pumped from the blood-spattered skin of his chest.
“Lord Sh’Karr,” said Golgoth, forcing his voice not to falter, “we have won more than we could ever hope. Do we have a common enemy here?”
Sh’Karr turned his many eyes past the seething battlefield, to the distant city. He spat a massive smouldering gobbet of boiling gore onto the ground. “Weak-flesh-god! Prince of cold blood! I ruled a true world. The flesh-god rules a shadow. This cancer of feebleness knows nothing of strength! Of rage!” Sh’Karr’s fists clenched and his vast metal wings flapped angrily, gears and motors screaming. “Of power! Of death!”
“We can kill them together, Lord Sh’Karr!” shouted Golgoth over the din. They could, he realised then. The barbarian horde would grow with every victory, victories made possible by Sh’Karr and his daemons.
They said that daemons were kings amongst liars, and that any alliance with them was death. But Golgoth had felt death already when the Emerald Sword was proved to be a breeding ground for slaves—if it cost his soul to fight this war of revenge, then he would gladly give it, because it meant little enough to him now. “Your daemons and my warriors,” continued Golgoth. “They fight alongside one another even now! You can have Torvendis if you want it. I just want revenge.”
Sh’Karr glowered at the city. “Kill the flesh-god. Take back my world,” he rumbled to himself.
“Do we have an alliance, Lord Sh’Karr?”
There was only the sound of the daemon’s massive breathing and the clanking of his machinery as he thought. Golgoth knew that Sh’Karr was insane, in a way that all daemonkind was said to be, but he also knew that daemons responded to the basest of desires like anyone else—Sh’Karr was driven by lust for battle and blood, and to see his god’s enemies butchered. Sh’Karr could kill Golgoth where he stood, regardless of Kron’s sorcery, and Golgoth felt his stomach knotting with apprehension—but if the deal was made, it would be worth the risk. Worth it all.
Ss’ll Sh’Karr spread his iron wings, and a rain of blood began to fall. “Ss’ll Sh’Karr decrees! The king of the warriors and the legions of Khorne are one, as long as the flesh-god’s whelps draw breath!” Sh’Karr’s voice was a bellow as loud as a thunderstorm. Golgoth glanced around and saw the misshapen, loping daemons heading back from the picking of the battle, bestial faces wild-eyed and snarling. “This world shall be cleansed and bathed in blood for the glory of the Throne of Skulls! From the ocean depths to the heavens, a reign of war to purge the reign of weakness!”
They were oozing from the cracks in the ground, grey-skinned monsters, with long slick talons and faces that were tangled messes of skin and bone.
“Death to the flesh god!” bellowed Ss’ll Sh’Karr, as the blood-rain lashed down. “Blood for the Blood God!”
Daemons were all around, baying and screaming. Golgoth could smell their sickly rancid blood and the greasy smoke coiling from their smouldering skin. He was surrounded by daemons, summoned by Sh’Karr’s words, and there seemed to be no end to their number.
If Golgoth went to one of the many hells when he died, it might look something like this. But these were his allies, his to follow and command. He felt his heart swell as it had not done for many years—he could taste victory in the stench of congealing blood.
“Blood for the Blood God!” came the chant, raised from more and more daemonic throats. And then, it was sung by Golgoth himself, and the warriors returning from the battle, until the praises of Khorne on the Brazen Throne of Skulls were being sung by the whole invasion force. It was a challenge to the forces of the city of Slaanesh, an insult to Lady Charybdia herself and everyone that followed her.
Ss’ll Sh’Karr had returned. The mountain tribes were united. Nothing could stand in their way now.
War was coming. War was already here—it was just waking up, thrashing itself awake with bursts of violence. Captain Amakyre’s entire life had been one long war, either preparing for it, meditating on it, or engaging in it. He knew war inside out—he had lived for ten thousand years, since the bloody fracture of the Horus Heresy that capped the Accursed Crusade when half the galaxy had been swallowed by the Imperium, and he had followed the banner of Chaos and the Word Bearers in all that time. His memories were galleries of battle, regimented fragments of a thousand combats, a hundred burning cities and shattered planets, all like polished gems in his head. Ten thousand years of distilled battle, and every one of them bitter with the same taste of war that carried on Torvendis’s winds.
Prakordian had told him the same. The dead-speaker had thrown fits, thrashing suddenly and foaming at the mouth, as he let the voices of the dead come to him in the sundown ritual when the pantheon of Chaos was appeased. They were being consumed by daemons and ground against massive fortifications. They were being run down by monsters and trampled by their fellows under the lash. But more than anything else, they were dying afraid, convinced that millions more would follow. The slaves in the mines and the serfs in the field could feel it—they had heard the cry of Sh’Karr’s rebirth and seen the bands of tribal warriors running amok. War, thick and bloody, was descending on Torvendis yet again.
Amakyre peered through the wind and the rain that had begun to lash down. A wild storm was approaching, one that would probably have tested the ability of a normal man to survive. This was unusual because the place where Amakyre sheltered behind a pile of boulders had until recently been in the middle of a desert.
The dark, rocky landscape was streaked with black, tarry deposits that Amakyre knew from experience were congealed blood. The sky was as grey as the earth, with sporadic bursts of sheet lightning sending stark silhouettes across the ground. In the centre of a massive depression, as if some vast hollow beneath the earth had collapsed, lay a crater. It appeared as if something had erupted from beneath the earth, scattering chunks of rock like shattered mountains all around. Amakyre’s augmented senses picked out twisted metal at the edge of the hole, and the chunks of metallic architecture that had rained down with the rock. The whole landscape was an echo of destruction, a memory of the same cataclysmic event that had woken Amakyre from his half-sleep.
Amakyre spotted movement to the north, flitting over the horizon, coming closer. He drew his bolter and slipped into the shadows behind the rocks, scanning the darkness, breath held.
“Prakordian?” he voxed.
“Captain?”
“Take cover. Targets approaching.”
“Understood.”
Amakyre checked Feorkan and Makelo—all four Word Bearers had been approaching the desert in scattered formation, and only Amakyre had made contact.
More movement, about half a kilometre away, something like a man but rather larger, glinting faintly as it moved between cover. Amakyre risked dodging out of his own cover, moving from shadow to shadow, steps light, bolter raised.
“Captain? Got him.” It was Makelo.
Amakyre froze.
“To your left. Seventy degrees.”
Amakyre glanced up and saw Makelo, scarlet armour dull in the darkness, squinting down the barrel of his bolter. Makelo was amongst the Word Bearers’ younger battle-brothers, and one of the brightest—they said there would be great things in store for him if he could survive long enough to call himself a veteran. He was a crack shot, too, even for a Space Marine, and he habitually loaded his stripped-down bolter with silenced shells.
“Clean shot, captain.”
“What’s the target?”
There was a pause. Then—
“Gods below,” voxed Makelo. “You never could keep hidden, Vrox.”
A metallic growl sounded over the vox in response. Vrox hadn’t been able to speak since the Obliterator virus had overtaken him, but the emotion was clear.
“Phaedos?” voxed Amakyre on the all-squad channel.
“Greetings, captain,” came the reply. “All praises.”
Phaedos. Good. Amakyre had known it was a risk splittin
g up the coven—now Phaedos, Skarlan and Vrox had returned they were at full strength again.
“All praises,” voxed Amakyre. “Try not to advertise your presence quite so obviously, Phaedos. If Makelo had been an enemy you would have lost half your firepower.”
Phaedos clambered over a nearby knot of rocks, waving Vrox and Skarlan forward. Phaedos said nothing—but Amakyre knew Phaedos would be meditating on his error at every opportunity, as if somehow acknowledging his failure would give him strength. Phaedos had a burning ambition to become one of the Legion’s priests, a Dark Apostle leading the Word Bearers with prayers in battle. He might even make it one day. Stranger things had happened in the Maelstrom, although Phaedos wouldn’t be taking up the accursed crozius for a long time yet. He had to suffer a great deal more before he could truly begin to understand Chaos.
“We have heard many things,” Phaedos said as he approached, “from the natives. We interrogated those we came across. There is great movement between the tribes. They are even coming from the southern forests and the oceans. They have a leader now, a man called Golgoth. There is talk of daemons returning. Could this be Karnulon?”
“Possible,” replied Amakyre. “But unlikely. He must know we are here, and he would not come so far out into the open. This, however,”—Amakyre gestured at the massive rent in the ground—“is his doing. Something was let out here, and it would take a sorcerer of rare power to do it.”
Phaedos led Vrox and Skarlan over the rock to Amakyre’s position. He looked towards the huge crater and murmured a prayer to the Pantheon under his breath, realising the sort of power that must have been unleashed to create such a wound in the earth.
“A sorcerer’s stink is all over this place,” said Prakordian, emerging from the gloom. “He is haemorrhaging power. If he doesn’t stop soon, he will bleed himself dry.” He paused, considering. “He doesn’t care if he dies.” Prakordian’s pupils were dilated and he swayed as he walked, as if drunk. And he was drunk, on the sorcery that remained from the spell of release and the energy that had bled out of the tomb when it had been shattered.
[Warhammer 40K] - Daemon World Page 17