Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  Snow billowed in through the hatch, blinding him for a second, before Solon urged the boy through the hole.

  ‘Go, boy. Now! I’ll be right behind you,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, casting a quick glance behind him. A shadow was stalking into the engine room, a bladed pistol of alien design in its hand.

  Solon pushed the boy through the hatch, receiving a kick in his face for his troubles, almost making him lose his grip on the ladder. With a shove, he pushed the boy clear, and scrambled his way through the hatch. His hands slipped on the ice-encased metal exterior of the crawler, and he could not get any purchase. He kicked his legs awkwardly, half in the hatch and half out, expecting a hand to grab him at any moment and drag him back inside. The boy tugged at his arm ineffectually.

  Awkwardly, he managed to squirm through the hatch onto the small balcony outside from where running repairs could be made to the exhausts. He cast a glance back through the open hatch to see a lithe figure looking up at him. In an instant, it raised its pistol, and Solon threw himself to the side, dragging the boy with him.

  Splinters of rapidly propelled metal hissed through the open hatch and sliced through the steel exhausts as if they were made of synth-paper. Lifting the boy, Solon threw him over the edge of the crawler, and vaulted the balcony railing, praying he wouldn’t crush the boy.

  He hit the ground hard, and winced as shooting pain lanced up his left leg. He could hear screams on the wind, and he dragged the boy with him as he ducked beneath the crawler, squeezing himself between its massive tracked units.

  He was already shivering uncontrollably, having discarded his thermal undershirt. There was little room in the cramped space beneath the crawler, but he managed to struggle his exposure suit up over his body, and he pulled its hood down low, securing it over his face. The boy too had pulled his exposure suit hood over his head, and he stared back at Solon through its two circular goggle-lenses.

  Together, they crawled beneath the massive undercarriage of the tracked hauler. Solon saw the slumped form of one of the Skyllan Interdiction soldiers and his hopes were raised for a moment before he saw the blood.

  Drawing the boy away from the grisly sight, Solon squirmed further beneath the hulking vehicle, moving towards the darkest recesses, the boy crawling silently behind him.

  They froze as a weight crunched down into the snow nearby, and Solon looked into Cholos’s terrified face. The crewman had landed on his hands and knees, and his exposure suit hung half off down his back. Solon gestured swiftly for him to crawl under. Clearly not having seen them in the darkness beneath the crawler, Cholos scrambled to his feet, and began running blindly into the storm.

  Solon almost shouted out to him, but a pair of slender shapes dropped down into the snow, silent and deadly. They landed lightly, and took a few unhurried steps towards the fleeing man. Their glossy black legs were all that was visible, but Solon stared at them in horrified fascination. The spiked, overlaying plates of armour flexed as easily as synth-fabric, moulding to the contours and muscles of the figure’s legs.

  Cholos continued his mad flight into the storm, but Solon knew that he would not escape, and his heart wrenched as he heard the cruel laughter of the black-clad raiders as they watched his plight. They will gun him down any second, Solon thought.

  They didn’t.

  Instead, a sleek shape hurtled out of the darkness, its form blurred by speed and the howling gale. A missile, was Solon’s first thought, but then he saw that there was a figure hunched upon the rapidly moving object, and he realised that it was a bike propelled by anti-grav technology.

  The rider leant down and slashed with a blade as the jetbike streaked past.

  Cholos was spun by the impact, blood spraying out onto the snow. Still, the wound was not fatal, and he leapt back to his feet, a hand clutching at his shoulder. His assailant was nowhere to be seen, lost in the darkness and the storm, and Cholos turned around on the spot, eyes wide. Solon felt sick as the raiders laughed once more, the sound making his skin crawl with its cruelty.

  The bike roared out of the darkness behind Cholos, streaking past him, knocking him down before being once again swallowed up in the storm.

  Cholos was slower to rise this time, and blood gushed from his arm. Solon didn’t want to watch any more, for the raiders were toying with the man, but he found that he couldn’t look away.

  Again, the bike came out of nowhere, and Cholos fell with a scream as one of his hamstrings was slashed. He couldn’t rise from that blow, but still he tried to escape, crawling forward desperately, leaving a trail of blood in the snow.

  Once more, the bike appeared, but this time it slowed as it approached him, dropping its speed with remarkable swiftness. It hovered in the air alongside Cholos as he tried vainly to stand. The rider of the anti-grav vehicle was garbed in a skin-tight glossy black suit with bladed plates of armour over its chest and shoulders, and a long topknot of blood-red hair streamed from the back of its elongated helmet.

  The gleaming, blade-like bike sank towards the ground, and the rider reached out and grabbed Cholos by the scruff of his undershirt. Then the bike accelerated sharply, and Cholos was dragged behind it, his legs smacking into the ground every ten metres. He was dropped unceremoniously in front of the waiting pair of reavers, and the bike zoomed off into the storm once more.

  The pair of reavers laughed again, and dragged Cholos away. It was the last time that Solon would ever see him, and he knew that the image of the terrified man, covered in blood and with both legs twisted horribly beneath him would be ingrained in his mind until his dying day.

  Horrified and sick to his stomach, Solon slunk backwards into the concealing darkness, dragging the boy Dios with him. They cowered in the darkness behind the shadow of one of the main drive-wheels of the tracked crawler. Solon didn’t know how long they hid there, but for the first time since he was a child he prayed.

  Marduk grunted as a line of splinters struck his left shoulder plate, embedding deep into the ceramite-plasteel alloy, but not penetrating. He replied with three quick shots of his bolt pistol before ducking back into cover as more fire was directed towards him. With a practiced flick, he discarded the spent sickle-clip, and rammed another into place.

  ‘Jetbikes,’ warned Kol Badar, and again the rapidly moving vehicles screamed out of the darkness of the north passage. The heavy weapons of Namar-sin’s

  Havocs roared, and two of the accelerating bikes were taken down, one as a gout of hot plasma turned its elongated faring molten, and another as heavy bolter rounds ripped through its drive mechanics. The bike struck by the heavy plasma gun struck the floor, nose first, and flipped end over end, sending its rider flying. The other bike veered sharply to the left, spinning uncontrollably and impacted with the tunnel wall, disintegrating in a shower of sparks and flame.

  Then the other bikes were screaming through the main access tunnel, banking sharply as they roared overhead. A shower of splinter-fire raced along the floor and peppered one of the Anointed, but the Terminator-armoured warrior brother stood against the fire pelting him like a man bracing himself against the wind. His twin-linked bolters roared, ripping head-sized chunks from the front of one of the bikes, but it did not fall, and continued to slice through the air in tight formation with its peers.

  Marduk and the warrior brothers of the 13th were caught with their backs vulnerable to attack from the bikes, and they spun around and unleashed the fury of their bolters.

  One of Sabtec’s warriors was caught in the fire of two bikes, and though the splinters could not fully penetrate his thick armour, dozens of the cruel barbs sank through the gaps between the plates of his Mark IV armour, and he fell without a sound. Splinters had pierced the small gap between his breastplate and his helmet, filling his throat with slivers of metal, and two other splinters shattered his left eye lens, driving into his brain.

  Another bike was brought crashing down by the combined fire of the 13th, and Marduk blew the head off another rider with
a carefully aimed shot of his bolt pistol. The headless rider was ripped from the saddle of his bike and hurled backwards, and Marduk threw himself into a roll as the rider-less bike speared towards him, skimming across the surface of the floor like a stone hurled across still water.

  The bike smashed into the remnants of the ruined Imperial armoured vehicle that Marduk had been crouching behind, the force of the impact spinning it sideways. The last bike was gone, screaming away into the distance as its rider accelerated.

  A flurry of splinters struck him in the back, and Marduk was knocked forwards as he rose. He cursed, and pushed himself to his feet, swinging around and firing in one motion. With satisfaction, he saw the frail chest of one of the advancing black armoured eldar explode as the mass-reactive tip of the bolt-round detonated.

  ‘Thirteenth, advance on me,’ roared Marduk, having had enough of cowering in cover.

  Burias hissed in hatred as the last remaining jetbike banked around once more, chased by bolter rounds that pinged off the debris scattered around the access tunnel. It moved so fast that it was little more than a shadowy blur, and he narrowed his eyes and allowed the daemon Drak’shal to rear up within him.

  The eldar vehicle speared through the air like a dart, jinking around the burnt-out hulls of Imperial vehicles, dodging the blanket of incoming fire.

  It straightened and gunned its engines, accelerating directly towards Burias-Drak’shal and Magos Darioq, who stood immobile behind him, apparently unconcerned by the carnage.

  The cannons, under-slung beneath the chassis of the jetbike, roared, spitting a stream of splinters towards the possessed warrior, but he was already moving, springing into the air, the heavy icon of the Host held in one hand as if it weighed nothing at all.

  The fire of the jetbike’s cannons flashed towards Darioq, but a glowing sphere of light surrounded him, and they rebounded off the energy barrier to leave him unscathed.

  Burias-Drak’shal leapt over the elegantly tapering faring of the jetbike, his taloned hand locking around the eldar rider’s throat and ripping him from his saddle. The rider-less bike veered sharply and flipped, exploding against the tunnel wall as Burias-Drak’shal landed in a crouch, the eldar warrior helpless in his grasp.

  Lifting the eldar as if he was a child, Burias-Drak’shal slammed its head into a corner of scrap metal, once part of an Imperial vehicle. Its head splattered, the frail skull splintering like porcelain.

  ‘Weakling thing,’ commented Burias-Drak’shal, flicking the corpse away from him.

  A blade rammed into his back, and Burias-Drak’shal roared in anger and pain. The blade was wrenched agonisingly against his spine and he twisted, swinging the icon around in a lethal arc.

  The blow didn’t hit anything, indeed, there did not seem to be anything behind him. With his witch-sight, he registered a shadowy shape in the corner of his vision, and then twisted away as a blade stabbed towards him once again, putting some space between him and his nigh-on invisible assailant.

  His eyes narrowed as they locked on a lean, ghostlike figure. It became visible for a second, taunting him, and he saw a slim figure, its skin as black as pitch, with arcane sigils cut into its flesh. Its eyes were milky white, with no pupils, and it snarled at him, exposing a maw filled with tiny, barbed teeth.

  Then the figure was nothing more than a shadow again, a vague ghostly shape that surged towards him in a blur of motion. Burias-Drak’shal swung his icon like a hammer, the spiked tip humming as it arced through the air. The shadow-creature ducked beneath the blow and came up inside his guard, and Burias-Drak’shal hissed in pain as a blade rammed into his side.

  Burias-Drak’shal connected with a heavy backhand blow that sent the shadow-creature tumbling backwards. It came to rest on all fours, and its form once more became visible as it snarled up at him in hatred. Then it was gone, disappearing into thin air as if a veil had been drawn over it.

  Burias-Drak’shal experienced an unfamiliar emotion: unease.

  The creature had seemed at once familiar and alien. He thought he had scented the power of the warp within its being, but the creature had been no daemon, nor truly one of the possessed.

  His slit eyes flicked from side to side, wary for another sudden attack, but none came. He slammed the butt of his icon into the floor, cracking the plascrete platform, and roared his defiance.

  Marduk heard the roar, but pushed it out of his mind as he drew his chainsword, feeling the ecstatic bond as the daemon weapon melded with him. Thorns in the hilt burrowed into the flesh of his palm through the plugs in his gauntlet, and he surged towards the eldar warriors.

  The disciplined warriors of the 13th coterie responded instantly to his rallying cry, rising from cover with bolters thumping. They began to advance on the enemy, bearing down on them, moving in two unstoppable phalanxes, the zones of their fire-arcs overlapping.

  Each of the coteries had been joined by one of the Anointed, and these behemoths of muscle and metal stomped forwards, shaking off the fire directed against them and snapping off bursts from their twin-linked bolters.

  The closest enemy was less than twenty metres away, and still, foolishly Marduk thought, advancing towards the Word Bearers.

  ‘Slaughter the unbelievers!’ roared Marduk, breaking into a run, his bolt pistol bucking in his hands as he fired.

  The warriors of the 13th moved up in support, snapping off shots as they bore down on the enemy.

  Marduk saw two of the enemy ripped apart by bolt fire. One-bolt round detonated in the shoulder of one of the eldar figures, ripping its arm clear in a spray of blood, and another was torn in two as a burst of fire caught it in its slender midsection.

  A spray of splinters embedded themselves in Marduk’s chest plate, but he did not slow his charge, and pumped another burst of shots towards a pair of eldar raiders. Displaying inhuman speed, they darted to the side and his shots went wide, ripping chunks out of the wall.

  He roared his hatred as he closed on one of the eldar, and swung his chainsword in a murderous arc that would have cleaved the frail warrior in two had it connected. The eldar swayed under the blow with a speed that, for all his Astartes genetic coding and training, made Marduk feel slow and awkward, and slashed a groove across Marduk’s thigh with the curving bayonet blade beneath the barrel of its rifle.

  The blade bit into his flesh, and Marduk hissed in anger. He threw a backhanded slash towards the eldar’s midsection, the hungry teeth of his chainsword whirring madly. The black-armoured figure dodged backwards, the very tip of the chainsword scant centimetres from its belly, and stabbed with the tip of its blade towards Marduk’s throat.

  The First Acolyte twisted his body as the blade darted towards him, and its length sank into his shoulder plate. Punching with his right hand, which held his bolt pistol, Marduk snapped the blade off, leaving the tip embedded in his armour. Dropping his shoulder, he threw himself forward, slamming into the frail xenos warrior even as it tried to sidestep.

  The force of the blow shattered the eldar’s chest, and Marduk bore it to the ground. He smashed the pommel of his chainsword into the raider’s face, driving it downwards like a blunt dagger, smashing the faceplate of its helmet into splinters and pulverising its skull.

  Rising, his chest heaving, Marduk grunted as a blade stabbed into his side, sliding between his armour plates and burying itself deep in his flesh. Dropping his bolt pistol, he grabbed the arm of his attacker, crushing the slender bones of its forearm. It struggled to get away from him, but his grip was like iron, keeping it pinned in place, and he hacked his chainsword into its neck.

  Whirring teeth shredded through black armour and blood began to spray as Marduk forced the weapon into the alien’s body. It ripped through tightly bound muscle and sinew, and tore apart the delicate vertebrae of the eldar’s neck. With a heavy kick, Marduk sent the dead eldar flying away from him, and dropped to one knee to retrieve his bolt pistol.

  Hefting the pistol, Marduk found no new target to unleash h
is wrath upon. The eldar slipped away into the shadows with ungodly speed, moving like shadows being dispelled by the appearance of a lantern. They were gone in an instant, and Marduk stood breathing heavily as he surveyed the carnage of the frantic battle.

  The fight had lasted less than a minute, all told, but the savagery, swiftness and effectiveness of the attack was staggering.

  Three members of the 13th were down, one of them not moving as blood poured from a wound to his head, too severe for the potent larraman cells of his Astartes make-up to seal. Two members of Khalaxis’s 17th coterie were dead, two more injured. Nine eldar had been slain, and three more had been injured and callously abandoned by their brethren.

  Marduk strode towards one of the injured lean warriors. Its left leg had been blown off at the knee, and it was trying to crawl away, leaving a bloody smear on the floor beneath it.

  Marduk placed his foot on the lower back of the wounded eldar, pinning it in place as Kol Badar stalked to his side. The black armour was curiously soft and pliable beneath his foot, but as he exerted more pressure he felt it strengthen and grow rigid, resisting him. He kicked the eldar over onto its back, and it stared up at him through elongated eye lenses. Its hatred of him was palpable, and its hand flashed down to its thigh, reaching for a jagged blade strapped around its lean limb.

  Its movement was crisp and precise, and the blade was flashing towards Marduk’s throat. He caught the eldar’s wrist and gave it a wrench, breaking its slender bones with a snap, and it dropped the blade to the ground, hissing.

  ‘I’ve never seen their faces,’ said Marduk, pinning the eldar’s broken arm beneath his knee and reaching for its helmet, ignoring the feeble attempts by the xenos humanoid to fight him off as he tried to work out the best way to remove it. Growing quickly frustrated, he simply hooked the fingers of both hands under the lip of the helmet around the eldar’s scrawny neck and pulled. With a wrench, he ripped the helmet in two, almost breaking the alien’s neck in the process.