Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  The Warmonger opened up once again with his heavy bolters, seeing the weakling men before him ripped apart as he unleashed his deadly salvo. He began to advance once more, death roaring from his guns. One lightly armoured soldier stumbled too close, and the Dreadnought swept him up in its massive power claw, lifting the wretch high, so that all his brethren could see his demise. The Warmonger squeezed, servos in his claw whining, and the man broke. He was hurled to the ground, a bloody and very dead corpse.

  ‘For the Warmaster!’ roared the Dreadnought, and continued to kill.

  Marduk chanted from the Epistles of Lorgar as he killed, filling the Word Bearers with fiery hatred for the weakling foe as they slew. He saw the Guardsmen fall away from him in horror, and he imagined that in death they heard the truth in his words: that the Emperor was a false deity, a fraud and a traitor, and that the bearers of the truth were murdering them. They cried out to their fraudulent god for mercy, but his impotence was clear when no salvation came to save them. In death they could see that only the gods of Chaos were worthy of worship.

  The sheer audacity and arrogance of the foe astounded Marduk. Against any other foe, a combined assault of air-lifted infantry, supported by heavy weapons and timed to strike in unison with an elite force dropping from the sky, may have worked. To hammer the foe first with barrages from the air, these were good tactics against any other foe. Indeed, they were tactics that Kol Badar made use of frequently.

  But to have the misconstrued belief that these tactics would work against the Word Bearers, Chaos Space Marines, and that these pitiful men could drive them from their positions was beyond the First Acolyte’s comprehension.

  It was true that the enemy were great in number. Hundreds more troops were dropping through the storm clouds every minute, though they were not as heavily armed or armoured (he scoffed at this even as he thought it) as were the first to land. These men were regular Imperial Guardsmen. But numbers meant nothing against Chaos Space Marines, and Marduk was certain that the battle would soon be over.

  The daemon within his chainsword was feeding well. He carved the screaming blade down into the collarbone of another Guardsman, its teeth biting deep, ripping and tearing through armour, bone and soft flesh. His strength was behind the blow, and the eagerness of the daemon drove the whirring teeth deeper. The man fell to the ground, a bloody rent ripped to his sternum.

  Marduk swayed to the side and a missile screamed past him. He continued quoting from the Epistles without pause.

  ‘The favoured son of Chaos, Our lord and our mentor, The bearer of truth. He is with us today, And upon all the battlefields where we strive, Bringing faith to the faithless, And death to the heedless. Always he watches, and lends us his strength.’ he quoted.

  ‘Hear me, my brothers! Lorgar watches us! Make him proud!’ roared Marduk, blasting the head from an enemy with his bolt pistol and hacking down another with his chainsword.

  The Word Bearers fought with a fury and hatred that had been nurtured for thousands of years, and despite being heavily outnumbered, they were butchering the Imperials that continued to drop in.

  The dark shape of a possessed warrior-brother appeared atop a rocky outcrop, and it leapt through the air, smashing into a Guardsman plummeting towards the ground, his grav-chute yet to activate. Other shapes leapt from the rocks to snatch more drop-troopers out of midair, and Jarulek smiled.

  Burias-Drak’shal’s hunt had gone well.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘So, the enemy still holds the high ground. Emperor-knows how many men we lost. A formation of Marauders is missing, presumed shot down, though Throne only knows how. There are at least forty Valkyries either destroyed or needing serious repairs,’ snarled Brigadier-General Havorn, his tall, gaunt form trembling with rage. ‘And to top it all off, Colonel Emmet Boerl of the 72nd was killed in action.’

  Captain Laron stood before the glowering brigadier-general, his gaze fixed forward. Alongside him were the other captains of the 72nd. Laron was the only one of them to have been engaged in the failed attempt to take the mountain highlands. Indeed, he was the only captain to have returned of those who had attacked the mountains, and he felt that most of the brigadier-general’s ire was directed at him.

  ‘I ought to have the lot of you executed on the spot, care of Commissar Kheler here,’ he said gesturing to a black-clad officer behind him. Laron flicked a glance towards the commissar. The man returned his stare coldly.

  ‘But I will not, as I find the 72nd has a sudden lack of officers,’ said Havorn.

  He towered over Laron by half a head, though what the captain lacked in height he made up for in brawn. The brigadier-general was a lanky man, and he truly was one of the ugliest individuals that Laron had ever seen.

  Where Captain Laron represented physically everything that the Elysians were famed for, the muscular build, the blond hair and the grey-blue eyes set in a handsome, chiselled face, Brigadier-General Havorn was the polar opposite. Tall, thin and dark haired, his eyes were as black as sin and his face was narrow, long and just plain ugly. His hair was clipped to the scalp, and scars riddled his face and head, curling his lip into a permanent sneer. His one extravagance was the long, grey moustache hanging to either side of his scowling mouth.

  ‘Captain Laron, I am instating you as acting colonel of the 72nd,’ said the brigadier-general. Laron felt a flutter of pride rise within him, but he tried hard to make sure it didn’t reach his face.

  ‘With an emphasis on the word acting,’ continued the brigadier-general. ‘You are only in that position because there is no one better, for the time being. Once we are done with this cursed planet and return to the main crusade fleet, I will request a more suitable replacement for Colonel Boerl.’

  The taller man leant down and forward so that he was looking directly into Laron’s eyes, his hooked nose only centimetres from the captain’s face.

  ‘I don’t know you well, Laron, but Colonel Boerl rated you highly. Do not dishonour his memory,’ said the brigadier-general quietly, before turning away.

  ‘I am assigning Commissar Kheler to keep watch over you. He has been a trusted advisor of mine for over a decade. His grasp of tactics and morale is strong. If there is ever a moment when it looks as if your arrogance or your pride are going to make you do something stupid that will get good men killed, the good commissar here will take steps to rectify the situation, with a bullet through your head.

  ‘Do I make myself clear, acting Colonel Laron of the 72nd Elysians?’

  The muscles in Laron’s jaw clenched and he felt his cheeks redden.

  ‘Yes, brigadier-general, I understand your meaning perfectly, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ said the tall man, turning and walking around his desk before sinking into his leather chair.

  ‘You are dismissed, officers of the 72nd. Not you, acting colonel.’

  His face burning, Laron stood motionless as the other men filed out of the room.

  ‘Now,’ said the brigadier-general, ‘we need to establish how to get a victory after your devastatingly average attack against the highlands.’

  They had awoken him and the other surviving members of his worker team from their allocated two-hour rest break by throwing a bucket of warm water over them. Or, at least Varnus had thought it was water at first, until he tasted it on his tongue; it was blood, fresh and human. The overseers coughed vilely, what passed for laughter amongst them, and jerked at slaves’ neck chains to get them to their feet.

  The dreams were getting worse. The blaring of the Discord never ceased, and he heard it as he slept, the hideous sound seeping into his brain like a vile parasite, twisting and corrupting within him. It was no release from torment when he closed his eyes and fell into fitful sleep. No, if anything, his dreams were worse than his waking life. He saw a world utterly consumed by Chaos, its sky a roiling miasma of fire and lava. The land was not truly rock or soil, but a pile of skinless, moaning bodies that stretched as far as the eye could see in all
directions. For all he knew, the planet was made entirely from these mewling, bloody wretches. Every one of them had a metal star of Chaos bolted to its forehead, the same mark that he also bore. Endless, monotonous chanting filled his head, intoning words of worship and praise. He saw this place every time he closed his eyes, not just when he slept, but every time he even blinked his eyes against the sulphurous, polluted air.

  Praise ye the glory of Chaos screamed the Discord in his mind, blurred with hateful screams, words and bellows. Kill him! they said. Traitor!

  Varnus stumbled along with the other slaves. He looked around in confusion as they turned off the well-worn path leading towards the tower that rose nearly a hundred metres into the air and headed off in a different direction. He saw his confusion mirrored in Pierlo’s wild eyes, his only true companion here in this living hell.

  Someone is here already, he said to himself. He could feel it in the air. Liberation was at hand. He prayed to the Emperor, curse his name, that his hated captors would soon be blasted from the face of the planet by the force of the Imperium.

  He grinned stupidly at the thought.

  Dully, he came to his senses to find that the line of slaves had stopped.

  ‘On your knees, dogs,’ said an overseer in his grating voice, the translator box over its mouth vibrating.

  Without thought, he dropped to his knees. The overseers produced long, rusted metal spikes, and walked behind the line of slaves. They pulled the chains backwards violently, dropping the slaves onto their backs. Standing on the chains to either side of each slave, they hammered the heavy chains to the ground with the thick spikes.

  Within moments, Varnus heard screaming from other slaves, but from his position he could not see what was happening. All he could see were the slaves directly to either side of him. On one side, a man cried, his eyes tightly closed as he mouthed the silent words of a prayer. The star upon his forehead was clearly visible, and steam seemed to rise from the skin around it, forming blisters. The stink of burning flesh reached Varnus’s nostrils. Needle-tipped fingers plunged into the man’s neck abruptly and he convulsed frantically, his prayer forgotten. His head stopped steaming and Varnus realised that it must have been the prayer that had caused the reaction.

  Turning to the other side, he saw Pierlo looking at him closely with his crazed eyes.

  ‘What now?’ hissed the man. He didn’t seem overly distressed to Varnus, but perhaps that was his way of dealing with this horror. He envied the man, briefly. Kill him, came the voice within the blare of the Discord.

  ‘What new torture is this?’

  The dark figures of chirurgeons loomed over Varnus. They were loathsome creatures, their hunched forms covered in shiny, black material. There was an unholy stink about them that made him gag, and their arms ended in arrays of needles, clamps and syringes.

  Something was writhing in the hands of the hateful surgeons and he felt sickness pull within his gut at the sight of the vile, wriggling thing. It was a small, mechanical, flat box that looked somewhat like the translator machines that the overseers spoke through. However, the thin sides of the box were coated in a smooth, black-oily skin that pulsed with movement from within. Four short, stubby tentacles waved from the corners of the box, fighting at the chirurgeon’s grasp. His gaze was forcefully removed from the vile blend of mechanics and daemon spawn as a further pair of black-clad chirurgeons pulled his head around.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ came the voice of an overseer at his ear, but Varnus resisted. Pain jolted through him as the overseer ran one of its needle fingers along his neck, and he opened his mouth wide in a cry of pain. The chirurgeons darted eagerly forwards with their mechanical hands, whirring power clamps gripping his front teeth. Without ceremony, the teeth were ripped from his jaw. Blood poured from the holes in his gums and he groaned in pain.

  Yet the chirurgeons had not finished their brutal surgery. Gripping his head tightly, one of them leant forwards with another mechanical device, and Varnus tried to pull away from it desperately, blood running down his throat and spurting over his chin. He could not escape the attentions of the twisted, hunched chirurgeon, however, and as its partner hit Varnus’s lower jaw to close his mouth, the first sadistic creature slammed its mechanical device into the side of his face.

  A metal, barbed staple, half a hand-length wide, punched through the bone of Varnus’s jaw and cheek, pinning his mouth closed. The metal bit deep into the bone, and Varnus gargled in agony. A second staple punched into the bone on the other side of his face.

  That was when the black, tentacled thing was brought towards him. The chirurgeon thrust the fighting thing at his face and Varnus screamed, his jaw stapled shut, in pain and terror. He tried to turn away, but his head was held tight and the box was placed over his mouth.

  He screamed and screamed as the four questing tentacles probed his skin, the touch stinging and burning his flesh. The tentacles felt their way across his face, and with horror he realised there was a fifth, thicker tentacle pushing through the gap in his front teeth and into his mouth. No, it wasn’t a tentacle, he realised as his tongue touched the vile thing. It was a hollow, fleshy tube, and as it entered his mouth it began to expand and push itself down into his throat, flattening his tongue against the base of his mouth.

  Two tentacles latched under Varnus’s jaw, burrowing into his flesh to secure a tight hold, and the remaining two leech-like appendages wriggled across his cheeks, probing at the corners of his eyes before burrowing agonisingly into the skin at his temples. He roared in excruciating pain, the sound alien and strangely mechanical to his ears, altered by the thing clamped firmly over his mouth and nose. He breathed in deeply, which was heavy and difficult, and he felt a foul, sickly sweet taste in his mouth and nose.

  White-hot pain shot through his head as the tentacles burrowed further into his flesh. They ceased wriggling within him, but the pain remained. His breathing was laboured and the figures above him went hazy, spots of light appearing before him, and he fell into the nightmare of his unconsciousness.

  The warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus stepped inexorably forwards, like a seething, relentless carpet, spread out across the hard-packed salt plain. Some amongst them were almost human, though even these were hard-wired into the weapon systems they bore, their brain stems augmented with mechanics and sensors. The Coryphaus had seen their like before. He had fought against loyalist members of the Cult Mechanicus on their Forge Worlds during the advance on Terra ten thousand years earlier. More recently, he had fought alongside those members of the Machine Cult that had long sworn their allegiance to the true gods, the powers of Chaos.

  Sheer cliffs rose up on either side of the valley, their tops hidden by dark, brooding, heavy cloud. The rumble of thunder boomed from the heavens and flashes punctuated the dark, threatening sky. The insides of the massed, bulbous clouds lit up as lightning crackled within, arcing, skeletal fingers of electricity that clawed across their surface.

  The rain had been falling for almost an hour, hard and driving, lashing down upon the servitors as they plodded forwards at the impulse of their masters. The ground beneath their feet was pooled with salt sludge. The grinding tracks of weapon platforms and hissing crawlers ripped up the ground, creating mires in their wake as they slowly advanced amongst the serried cohorts of mindless and augmented servitors.

  Visibility was poor across the open ground, as waves of driving rain were driven into the valley by the fierce winds that were picking up.

  Screaming shells descended out of the gloom, accompanied by the constant rumble of artillery that was almost indiscernible from the sound of the building storm. They fell from the high ridges to either side of the valley, obscured by cloud and rain, and detonated amongst the ranks of servitor warriors, sending flesh and mechanics flying in all direction. Red blood and pale, unnatural fluids mixed with the pooling waters underfoot. They made no cries of fear or pain as they were destroyed, though even if they had they would not have carried throu
gh the pounding torrents of falling rain.

  While visibility was poor for the Word Bearers, who were barely able to see the advancing enemy just rounding the dog-leg of the valley, the wretched slaves that Kol Badar had brought with him were virtually blind. They stood close together, weeping and terrified, shivering in the icy wind and rain that battered at them. They were chained together still, in long lines, clustered in front of the massive Word Bearers, who stood oblivious and uncaring of the hardships they endured at being exposed to the elements.

  Kol Badar ordered the advance. Confused and deafened by the sheer fury of the downpour, they looked around blankly. Word Bearers pushed them roughly forward with the barrels of their bolters. A few shots into their midst soon had them moving, and almost five thousand slaves were goaded on through the torrential downpour. Scores of them fell, bustled by their terrified comrades. They were crushed underfoot, many drowning in the pooling, ankle deep water as their desperate companions scrambled over them, their only thought being to keep in front of their tormentors. Their limp, lifeless bodies were forced along with the push of humanity and dragged by the chains secured to their necks.

  The Word Bearers advanced behind the seething mass of terrified slaves. They intoned from the Book of Lorgar as they marched through the strengthening rain, while the melancholic phrases recited by those warriors within their Rhino and Land Raider transports blared out from amplifiers on the outsides of the vehicles. Ancient, holy Predator tanks, their mighty turrets and weapon sponsons decorated with scriptures, bronze daemonic maws and icons scrawled in blood, rolled forwards at the wings of the Word Bearers, alongside Defilers and other daemon engines. The howls of the machines rose through the rain that hissed and turned to steam as it neared the infernal hulls of the hellish creations. Dreadnoughts were guided forwards by black-clad handlers, screaming insanely or reliving ancient battles long passed. Kol Badar and his Anointed warriors walked in the centre of the line.