Malodrax

by Ben Counter

  ‘You!’ it growled. ‘Who is your god?’

  Lysander did not know the answer. Presumably there was some power of the warp he could name that would satisfy the taskmaster, but a sane man did not seek to know their names.

  ‘I am here to work,’ said Lysander. ‘I am strong.’

  The taskmaster drew a barbed whip and lashed it at Lysander. The bladed tip cut a deep gash into Lysander’s shoulder and Lysander dropped to one knee. The pain was like nothing to a Space Marine, but Lysander knew that tyrants loved to see supplication from those they made suffer.

  ‘To work?’ demanded the taskmaster. ‘You who have no brand upon him? What creature is this that knows not his place! Overseer Gortz will cut out your guts and twist them into ropes for the catapults!’

  Lysander glanced up at the closest mutant worker, who was deliberately focusing on his work and not watching the taskmaster berating Lysander. Lysander could just spot the raised skin on the worker’s face, almost lost among the fronded gills around his neck. A brand was scorched deep into the mutant’s features. Lysander had no such brand. It was the mark of the taskmaster’s work-gangs, and anyone without it was an intruder.

  ‘It was Gortz who sent me,’ said Lysander, invoking the name of whatever creature he hoped was lord of this forge hall.

  The taskmaster spat a wad of bloody phlegm into the floor. ‘If your body is as weak as your lies,’ he said, ‘you could lift no hammer for me. And I have no use for the weak.’ The taskmaster gripped Lysander’s chin and forced his head up, so he had to look into the taskmaster’s bestial face. ‘Except,’ it said, ‘as food.’

  Lysander knocked the taskmaster’s hand aside and grabbed it by the throat. He stood up to his full height, lifting the massive mutant up off the floor. For the first time the taskmaster was able to appreciate Lysander’s full size, as his feet kicked out half a metre above the flagstones.

  The taskmaster drew its whip hand back and lashed the weapon at Lysander, who caught the strip of leather with his free hand and threw the taskmaster down to the floor. Before the mutant could get back to his feet Lysander planted a foot in its back and looped the whip around its neck.

  Even as he was hauling on the whip to tighten it around the mutant’s throat, Lysander was looking up and gauging the consequences. The mutant workers were well aware of what was happening, but they did nothing – most of them wouldn’t even watch. They were so used to being the slaves of the taskmaster, so used to being punished for looking it in the eye, that it did not occur to them to defend the mutant. Even so, the taskmaster fancied itself important, and it would be missed sooner or later. Lysander had played his hand. He had to get out of the fortress now, here, before the Iron Warriors learned of the Space Marine-sized intruder killing their underlings in the shadow of the war machines.

  The taskmaster had fallen still. Lysander dropped the whip, kneeled down and wrapped an arm around its throat, wrenching its neck and snapping its spine to make sure it would not wake up.

  Lysander hurried towards the war machine ahead of him, the enormous siege-idol. He ignored the workers around him as he reached the foot of the idol, where the huge spiked roller had sunk into the flagstones of the floor. Lysander found a handhold among the battered steel plates and began to climb towards the war machine’s idol.

  He climbed quickly. It was not a usual mode of transport for a Space Marine, but an Imperial Fist had to be ready to climb, leap, swim and crawl as the battle demanded it. The idol was easy to climb, with plentiful handholds among its armour plates and carvings, and in a few minutes Lysander had reached the altar. The surface of the altar was already scored and stained with evidence of past sacrifices, and doubtless many more would be required before this war machine could be permitted to rumble out of the fortress into Malodrax.

  There was, realistically, only one way out of the fortress of Kulgarde. Lysander had known from the start that he would not simply walk out. It was a risk, this way, but less of a risk than staying in the fortress waiting to be hunted down by the Iron Warriors. If he died here, he would die seeking to escape, because only by first escaping could he avenge whatever happened to his battle-brothers at the hands of the Bone Sculptors.

  The idol itself was a more difficult climb, with its overhangs and smooth expanses of stone. Lysander made for the head, for he knew the conceit of the builders would probably have put any command systems there. Whoever drove it would look through the eyes of the idol so they could fancy themselves the equivalent of that huge stone god, and see the fear of the soldiers in their way as they looked up at its hideous face. He was aware of a commotion below him as word finally spread of the taskmaster’s death and workers from other gangs were gathering at the foot of the siege idol to watch the intruder whose death would surely win them a higher status in the forges.

  Lysander reached the face, finding useful handholds among the fangs and twisted lips. Above him was an eye socket and sure enough it was glazed with the winking lights of a cockpit or bridge beyond. Lysander forced his way up into the eye socket and kicked at the glass, feeling it crack and bow under him.

  Gunfire stuttered below him and shots flew wide, pinging off the stone face. The glazing collapsed and Lysander fell through into the interior of the siege idol’s head.

  In the cramped bridge were four or five human forms, merging with the baroque technology and ironwork of the siege engine’s interior. It was difficult to tell how many there were for they were fused with the metal and the machinery of the siege idol’s command systems. Their faces, glazed-eyed and barely conscious, rolled towards Lysander as he fell down on top of them, their brittle bones crunching under his weight.

  ‘War machine!’ demanded Lysander. ‘Answer me!’

  More gunfire was spattering up at the shattered eye socket. Lysander could see through the banks of machinery to the cavity beyond the second eye socket, similarly crammed with fused human forms. Gunshots punched through the glass. Lysander could hear more shouting voices below. Soon the Iron Warriors would know, and then Lysander would be trapped here.

  ‘War machine!’ he repeated. ‘Whatever you are, however you were created, I am Lysander of the Imperial Fists! I can lead you out of this place! I can give you freedom!’

  The siege idol lurched. Lysander planted a hand in dried, stringy flesh to find a handhold and keep himself upright. Machinery ground deep within the war engine with a sound like an avalanche. The eyes of the fused corpses opened, revealing their dried-out eyeballs, their mouths working as if trying to speak.

  The rear wall of the cockpit split and receded, revealing a dark maw of iron beyond. Shards of metal split off from the wall, hovering in front of Lysander as they spun and converged.

  Lysander’s stomachs recoiled. He was in the presence of witchcraft. The whole fortress of Kulgarde was a foul place, corrupted right down to the stones of its foundations – but this was pure darkness, warp-magic worked right before his eyes.

  The metal formed twin pits, where bright silver shards glinted in place of eyes. The lips of a mouth. Two slits in place of a nose. It was an inhuman face, somehow more grotesque for being an indistinct result of the metal fragments as they spun and flitted.

  ‘Freedom?’ said a voice that took its form from the grinding of the siege idol’s engines far below. ‘There is no freedom. What is this thing? A dream? A lie? Nothing of the warp is free. You cannot offer me that, strange fleshy thing, Lysander of the Imperial Fists.’

  ‘Daemon,’ said Lysander. He tasted bile in his mouth and his skin crawled such that it was a wonder it did not tear itself from his back.

  ‘What,’ replied the siege idol, ‘did you expect?’

  ‘Move from this place,’ said Lysander. ‘Start your wheels and break out of this fortress. Seek your own destiny on Malodrax. Do not serve the Iron Warriors.’

  ‘And in doing so, save you from Kulgarde?’ replied t
he daemon. ‘So you might ride me to your own freedom as a bird rides the wind? And why would I do such a thing, Lysander of the Imperial Fists, when Warsmith Thul can give me a thousand years of war? A million bodies ground beneath my tracks? An ocean of blood in which to wallow? What is it that you can grant me that I might desire?’

  Lysander forged his way back to the idol’s eye socket and risked a glance down. Hundreds of menials were surrounding the siege idol, jostling to get a look at the strange intruder who had killed the taskmaster and forced his way into their war engine. There were other taskmasters among them, cracking menials’ heads to make their way through the crowd, or arguing with one another about what to do.

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’ taunted the daemon, the note of its engines rising in amusement. ‘This slave of the dead god, this whelp of mankind. Your tiny mind cannot comprehend what one such as I could possibly desire.’

  Lysander turned back to the daemon’s face. ‘You want blood,’ he said.

  ‘Blood?’ The daemon laughed, the sounds of pistons falling and engine chambers thundering. ‘I have all the blood I could want! A thousand men already have been butchered on my altar! My very steel was quenched in blood when it was first bent upon the anvil! Blood? What need have I of blood? Before Warsmith Thul commanded me forth, I presided over a great arena in the warp, where the blood of a million gladiators filled the place to the brim every night!’

  ‘An arena,’ said Lysander. His mind was working fast, trying to outpace his revulsion at being in the presence of such a being.

  ‘The greatest altar of the Blood God!’ cried the daemon. ‘A great ocean of hate in the warp! I stood upon the parapet and at my signal half a million men slit the throats of the other half, and at my word the survivors battled for the glory of having my eye fall upon them! And you, fleshy thing, will never know that glory, to see two great champions butcher one another in your name. Your imagination cannot stretch to such wonders.’

  ‘And you prefer this tomb of steel,’ said Lysander, ‘to ruling as lord of your arena?’

  ‘You cannot give me what I once had,’ replied the daemon.

  ‘You have doubt, daemon,’ said Lysander. ‘There is more human in you than you would admit.’

  The daemon’s face loomed larger, its metal components shuddering and spinning with anger. ‘I am not like you. My kind were ancient before your existence was even possible. Do not compare us, Lysander of the Imperial Fists.’

  ‘And yet we are in the same situation. We both want something. I want to get out of this fortress, and you want to be lord of the arena again. There might be nothing else in common between us, but we both desire. Tell me I do not speak the truth, daemon.’

  The daemon’s face receded. It did not reply. Its engines thrummed angrily, a low growl of frustration.

  Lysander knew it would do him no good to argue with this being further. He would only give it the chance to spin lies, or waste his time until the Iron Warriors came to oversee the storming of the siege engine and the execution of Lysander. He pulled himself back through the idol’s shattered eye socket and out onto the stone face.

  A cry went up from the labourers gathered to watch. Gunfire stuttered up at Lysander, wide and ill-disciplined, sparking stone chunks out of the idol’s face. Lysander let go of his handhold and fell down past the face and chest, landing in a heavy crouch as he slammed into the stained surface of the altar.

  ‘Overseer Gortz!’ yelled Lysander. ‘Lord of this vault! Will you stand by while this intruder defies you? Or will you take his head and throw it at the feet of your Warsmith?’

  A bellowed order split the crowd below. One of the huge taskmaster mutants, who could only be Overseer Gortz, shouldered his way to the front – a massive creature, bound in muscle sliding beneath skin that was a mass of scar tissue. One of its hands had been replaced with a mechanical steel claw, more like an industrial tool than a weapon, and in its other it carried a club almost as long as Lysander was tall, a length of steel square in cross-section studded with spikes and well-stained with the blood of menials.

  Gortz reached the base of the siege idol and began to climb. The crowd began to chant his name as it got closer to the altar where Lysander stood.

  Lysander was very aware he was not armed. There had been nothing in the cockpit that would have made a passable weapon. One of the bone cauldrons was within arm’s reach and Lysander grabbed the largest bone there, perhaps a femur from a pack beast or oversized mutant, long and heavy enough to serve as a club.

  Gortz reached the altar to a cheer from the crowd. Up close his face was a horror, a mask of torn and hanging skin through which could be seen the bloodied bone.

  ‘You dare?’ growled Gortz. It was all the introduction Lysander supposed he would get.

  Lysander dropped back half a step and Gortz took the bait, swinging with his club. Lysander ducked it and the club smashed shards of stone out of the idol. Gortz followed up with his claw, stabbing it down as it snapped shut, aiming to grab Lysander around the shoulder so its blades would cut down into his upper torso.

  Lysander rammed the femur up into the claw, jamming it for a moment. The blades of the claw crunched through the bone but by then Lysander had swivelled out of the way and was face to face with the mutant.

  Lysander matched him in height. Gortz’s musculature was grotesque, more massive and powerful than a Space Marine’s build. A Space Marine was trained to see such things as an advantage in his favour instead of a weapon in the enemy’s hand. Gortz was stronger, perhaps, in a raw and brutal sense, but that slowed him down. It meant he could not react quickly enough when Lysander drove the heel of his right hand up into Gortz’s massive jaw, splintering bone as it snapped the mutant’s head back.

  Lysander rammed his knee into the mutant’s groin, not pausing to wonder what might actually be there. His left hand hooked Gortz’s forward leg and threw Gortz onto his back. The mutant sprawled onto the altar and Lysander was on him, both knees dropping into the mutant’s abdomen, right fist punching over and over down into his face. The ravaged face was a mask of gore, the bone of the eye sockets and jaw open to the air, bloodshot eyes rolling.

  Gortz’s only move was to snap the claw at Lysander’s neck. Lysander knew it was coming before Gortz did. He leaned back and the claw passed over his face. Lysander grabbed Gortz’s elbow and wrenched it, feeling the joint part and the tendons snap, the claw hanging useless.

  Gortz roared as the claw clattered to the surface of the altar. The mutant tried to raise his other arm, dropping the club to claw at Lysander’s face with his fingers. Lysander caught Gortz’s hand in his own, forcing it back down to the altar. A philosophy of unarmed combat that Space Marines learned – one among many – stressed the isolation and neutralisation of an enemy’s individual joints. The sleep-taught technique came to the front of Lysander’s memory as he forced Gortz’s wrist around and placed his palm down on the elbow, and put all his strength into forcing the hand up in the wrong direction.

  Gortz’s forearm snapped with a sound like a gunshot. Lysander took his weight off Gortz and turned him over, kneeling now in the small of the mutant’s back. He wrapped an arm around Gortz’s neck and forced his head back, so he was looking up at the stone face of the mutant looming down above the altar.

  ‘Here, daemon!’ yelled Lysander. ‘Here is the champion of your arena laid low! Do you want his head? Shall I hold it up as a trophy? Give me what I want, daemon, and you will live your glory again!’

  The crowd were silent below. They had expected to see Gortz victorious, as he must have been countless times before while rising to the rank of overseer. Now one of them cried out, a long, keening howl of sorrow and disbelief. Others joined him and in a few moments the sound filled the vault.

  The sound of the siege idol’s engines growled and thundered, and resolved into a low, grinding laughter. It echoed the cries of t
he menials below, mocking them even as they fell to their knees and tore at their skin in distress.

  The siege idol lurched forwards on its rollers, and menials scattered to keep from being crushed. The idol moved forwards towards the back wall of the vault, crunching through segments of armour and equipment laid ready to be installed on the half-finished war machines.

  The siege idol accelerated towards the back wall of the vault.

  Lysander had given it what it wanted, in return for a chance of freedom. It was a deal with a daemon – there was no way he could pretend it was anything else. But this was the way it had to be. This was the way he would avenge his lost brothers, and give himself a chance to save those who still lived down there in the guts of Kulgarde Fortress.

  The thought was broken as the siege idol gathered speed. Standing on the altar mounted on the front of the war machine, Lysander would be crushed when the idol hit the wall and the huge chunks of masonry started to fall. Lysander threw Gortz to one side and jumped off the altar, grabbing the idol’s arm and swinging to the side of the war machine.

  Lysander clambered along the armour plates covering the machine’s side, where gun ports shaped into grimacing daemons’ mouths made for some easier handholds.

  With a deafening grinding sound the rollers at the front met the wall and the siege engine rode up as blocks of masonry shifted and split. Enormous slabs of it fell and kicked up clouds of pulverised rock. The siege engine forced its way through the wall, engines screaming as they worked up to maximum rev and gouts of flame bursting from the exhaust ports on the machine’s back.

  One block of stone, the size of a building, tumbled down towards Lysander, smashing off armour plates as it fell. Lysander leapt off the side of the war machine before it could crush him, covering his head and rolling with the fall. Everything was earthquake and thunder, the heat from the machine’s engines and the battering of stone against his body.