Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  They descended to the ground seemingly in violation of the laws of gravity, coming down slowly and steadily, grav-motors, stabilisers and thrusters bearing them sedately towards the surface of Boros Prime. They were hateful, vile things, with giant, mechanical tentacles beneath them that waved lazily in the air like sea-fronds in a current.

  The first of the massive transports touched down in the middle of a distant square, causing another violent earth tremor. Instantly, giant tentacles flailed, ripping at the armoured sides of the cylinder, tearing the armoured sheath away like it was sloughed off skin.

  Until now, the reality of the situation had not been fully driven home to Aquilius. The enemy had a foothold on his beloved home world. Worse, they had unleashed terrors of such power entire cities would be razed to the ground.

  A ululating roar echoed across the city, followed by another. Aquilius glimpsed two of the terrible engines as they loped from their cylindrical cages. They stood as tall as a five-storey building, and though he knew these were but the smallest of the enemy Titans – corrupted Warhounds – he felt again a stab of consternation.

  ‘Titans,’ hissed Verenus, his eyes widening.

  ‘They are the remnants of one of the cursed Legios that sided against the Emperor in ages past,’ Aquilius told him.

  The White Consul felt the resolve of the soldiers around him waver in the face of the daemonic Titans.

  ‘By the grace of the Emperor,’ breathed one soldier.

  ‘Titans?’ muttered another. ‘What hope have–’

  ‘There is always hope,’ Aquilius said forcefully, cutting the soldier off. ‘Always. I am a son of Boros, as are you. As are we all. Our bloodline is a bloodline of heroes, and this is our world. The enemy thinks they can take it from us, but we will show them their error. We will punish them for every metre of ground they take, striking hard and without fear, for we are sons of Boros, and we shall not falter. The Emperor is with us, my brothers, and mark my words: Boros Prime will not fall.’

  Marduk’s eyes burned with zealous fury as he picked his way through the sea of bodies left in the wake of the Warmonger. Belagosa and Ankh-Heloth were inbound, leading their warriors against the other prime targets. He smiled grimly, exposing serrated, shark-like teeth. It had been costly, but Marduk had gained their foothold on the planet.

  Now its corruption would begin.

  BOOK FOUR:

  THE TAINT

  ‘A man can be convinced to do anything, no matter how abhorrent, with the right motivation.’

  –First Chaplain Erebus

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The clear blue skies of Boros Prime were long gone. In their place, the atmosphere was thick with rust-coloured haze, choking pollutants and vile toxins. The twin suns, bright and clear before the arrival of the Word Bearers, were now barely discernible, hidden behind the festering cloud. The temperature and humidity of Boros soared. An ever-thickening pall of smoke hung low over the war-torn cities of the Imperial world, heavy with cinders and ash that caught in the throat and made breathing for the unaugmented difficult and painful.

  Tens of millions had already perished, and the corruption of the planet and its occupants was well underway.

  Legatus Verenus, acting regimental commander of the Boros 232nd, slammed the butt of his lasgun into the face of the cultist, splintering the traitor’s nose across his face. The man refused to go down, growling and hissing like an animal, hands like claws scrabbling for Verenus’s eyes.

  The traitor’s face was so twisted with hatred that it was barely human at all. Fire-blackened hooks pinned the man’s eyelids open, and an eight-pointed star had been cut into his forehead, leaking blood. He was a vision of depravity, but what sickened Verenus most of all was that the man wore a breastplate of the Boros Guard; once, mere weeks or days past perhaps, this man had given praise to the Emperor of Mankind and fought alongside him. What had the enemy done to him to make him fall so low?

  Verenus smashed away the man’s clutching hands and again slammed the butt of his lasgun into the man’s face. The savage cultist staggered back a step, giving Verenus the space he needed. He reversed his grip on his weapon and shot the man in the chest. The traitor collapsed with a gargled sigh, a searing black hole burnt through his chest. The stink of melting plastek and charred flesh stung Verenus’s nostrils.

  More cultists were rushing his position, a veritable flood of heretics that bayed for blood like wild dogs.

  ‘Back!’ roared Verenus, snapping off shots into the mob as he walked steadily backwards. ‘Move to the fallback position!’

  The Guardsmen of the 2nd Cohort fell back along the war-torn street, gunning down scores of screaming heretics as they moved. Explosions from grenades and rockets rocked the ground beneath Verenus’s feet, and aircraft screamed overhead through the smoke and fire. Heavy stubbers positioned behind shuttered windows above opened up, providing covering fire for the retreating soldiers. Muzzle flare spat from barrels of the clattering weapons, and empty shells fell down to the street below in a deluge, the sound of them hitting the ground like the jingling of wind-chimes. In the distance, the heavy thump of siege mortars and Whirlwinds could be heard, followed a few seconds later by the shriek of incoming artillery.

  The street was a shattered ruin, lined by the skeletal shells of buildings. Rubble was piled high, and the dead littered the ground, piled in gutters and at the base of crumbling walls. An all-pervading stink hung in the humid air, rancid and foul, like rotting meat. Verenus blinked soot and sweat out of his eyes as he backed away, snapping off shots with his lasgun, too busy just trying to keep his soldiers alive another day, another hour to allow the direness of his situation to press upon him.

  It had been two months since the enemy had first descended upon Boros Prime, and the beautiful cities of Verenus’s home world were almost unrecognisable. They had been turned into a living hell, once majestic tree-lined boulevards reduced to scorched rubble, the clear blue skies thick with black smoke and wheeling creatures that defied description.

  The once proud citizens of Boros Prime – or at least those that had not yet been slaughtered or taken – now bore haunted, hunted expressions. Every citizen of Boros Prime of eligible age, no matter his or her standing or profession, underwent years of military training. Every able man, woman and child had been issued with a lasgun and formed into auxiliary units to support the PDF and Guard units.

  Nevertheless, it was one thing to know how to arm and fire a lasgun, another to face an enemy such as they faced, day in day out, and to see one’s home world torn apart by warfare. The enemy’s corrupt presence could be felt everywhere, a vile, malignant touch that plagued the minds of every one of the Imperial world’s defenders.

  Verenus had not had a decent night’s sleep since the enemy’s arrival, plagued with violent nightmares filled with blood and malevolent, skinless daemons that had him awake and screaming minutes after closing his eyes. It was the same with everyone and Verenus knew that these were no normal dreams – they were an insidious weapon of the enemy, designed to sow terror and despair amongst the regiments. And damn them, but it was working, Verenus thought.

  It had become so bad that Verenus was starting to see those skinless daemons while he was awake. He saw them leering at him from the corner of his eye, but whenever he turned towards them there was nothing there. Sleep deprivation, he told himself. You are imagining things. And if he, a veteran with decades of fighting against the minions of the Ruinous Powers under his belt, was becoming unnerved by the dreams, then he could only imagine what it would be doing to the minds of those not trained for war. Indeed, suicides had already accounted for one man in twenty within the Guard units, a staggering total when one considered how many soldiers were fighting here on Boros.

  Tens of millions had been killed in battle. Millions more, the unlucky ones, had been taken by the enemy. Verenus grimaced to think of their fate. He’d put a lasround in his head before he allowed such a fate to claim him.
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  He could hear the enemy chanting as they approached. It was a deep, mournful sound, filled with hatred. An even worse sound accompanied them – a hellish blare of insanity that made Verenus’s flesh crawl. It felt as though something was scratching painfully behind his eardrums, penetrating his head and reverberating within his mind. It made him feel sick, and his gorge rose.

  The infernal chanting was deeply unnerving, and he had already seen more than a dozen soldiers succumb to its madness, men that the commissars were forced to put down as insanity claimed them.

  It sounded like a faulty vox-unit, amplified a hundred times louder, deafening static overlaid with screams, whispers, roars, the sound of children crying. The pounding industrial clamour was overlaid with the sound of women screaming in unwholesome pleasure, of bones breaking, of animals howling in pain and terror.

  Verenus had come to associate it with Chaos itself, the sound of bedlam and despair. He heard it when he slept, insinuating itself into his dreams, and it was always there in the back of his head, even when the hideous floating machines that projected the discordant sound were nowhere nearby.

  Verenus ducked around the corner of a building and pressed himself back against the wall. Weapon lifted to his shoulder, he glanced around the corner. Most of the cultists his cohort had ambushed were dead, but it was not them that drew his attention. Through the fire and smoke he saw first one, then more of the hellish, red-armoured enemy, their faces obscured behind horned helmets fashioned into the horrific visage of beasts and daemons. The huge figures moved forward steadily, bellowing their hateful catechisms as they came.

  ‘Move it, soldiers! Move,’ Verenus bellowed. Then the enemy Astartes began to fire, and his words were drowned out by the noise.

  A dozen soldiers of the 232nd were gunned down before Verenus’s eyes as they raced for cover, their bodies ripped apart as bolter fire raked across their backs. One of his men stumbled only metres from the corner as a ricochet clipped the back of his knee; the soldier fell with a cry.

  Verenus swore and ducked back around the corner, snapping off a pair of shots as he moved to the soldier’s aid. He saw one of his shots strike an enemy square in the forehead, but it did not even slow the warrior. The wall behind Verenus collapsed as a bolt struck it, showering him with dust and rock. Verenus kept moving, and dropped to one knee before the fallen soldier. He fired off another hastily aimed shot, and gripped the soldier by the scruff of his uniform, hauling him back into cover.

  Heavy stubbers ripped across the advancing enemy, buying the retreating soldiers precious moments, but the traitors kept advancing steadily, gunning down more Boros Guardsmen with every burst of fire. One of the Word Bearers fired up at a window, almost casually taking out one of the heavy weapon operators. His head exploded, spraying blood and brain matter across the face of his shocked comrade, reams of ammunition still held in his hands.

  There was only a handful of the traitor Space Marines, Verenus saw. Even so, it was enough. He had learnt the hard way that each of those cursed giants was easily the equivalent of thirty or forty of his own battle-hardened veteran Guardsmen, or more than a hundred auxiliary draftees. More, perhaps. Each one of the bastards that his regiment took down was cause for celebration.

  He had been engaged with the enemy in constant battle for the past two months, and though the war had devolved into a horrid, bloody grind, he knew that they were winning.

  Tank companies and hundreds of millions of soldiers fought the enemy toe-to-toe, day in day out, and it had become an exercise of military logistics, a constant rotation of regiments to and from the front in order to maintain pressure. The Word Bearers could not keep up this pace forever, and would eventually be ground down, or at least Verenus prayed that this would be so, but how many Imperial citizens would be lost in the meanwhile? And what would be left of Boros Prime once the dust settled? Nothing worth salvaging, he thought darkly.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the soldier that he had just hauled to safety, and he nodded to him. A pair of Guardsmen lifted the man from the ground, and hurried him away from danger.

  Verenus signalled, and broke into a run, his soldiers scattering into the ruins at his order. He threw himself over a smashed low wall into what had once been a beautiful garden, and propped himself behind it, keeping his head down. Blackened skeletons of trees stood sentinel above him. With curt hand signals, he moved his troops into position. Soldiers hefted heavy tripod-mounted autocannons into cover, slamming them down behind low walls and piles of rubble and hurriedly loading them with fresh spools of ammunition.

  ‘Come on, you bastards,’ said Verenus.

  He was lathered in sweat and grime, the unbearable Boros Prime heat only emphasised by the oppressive black smoke filling the sky. There was a horrible stink in the air, something akin to burnt flesh and bones. Verenus thought again of the men and women that the enemy had forced into servitude, slaving away upon the horrific construction works that were sprouting up all across the continent, corrupting them into base creatures that spurned the light of the Emperor.

  There seemed to be some form of pattern to the location of the enemy’s construction, but Verenus was damned if he knew what it was. He snorted without humour as he realised he probably would be damned if he understood.

  A corrupted Guardsman was the first around the corner, diabolical symbols of the Ruinous Powers smeared in blood and faeces across his helmet and breastplate. He held a standard-issue lasgun in his hands, but was gunned down before he could raise it. Another heretic appeared, his face contorted with hatred and loathing, his blackened cheeks streaked with tears. He too was shot down, smoking burns riddling his chest and face.

  The first of the Word Bearers rounded the corner, a hulking traitor encased in gore-splattered plate. Curving horns of obsidian rose from his helmet, which had been fashioned to resemble a snarling beast. Verenus fired. His lasgun beam struck the immense warrior in the chest, to little effect. From all around, dozens of blue lasbeams were fired as more of the hated traitors appeared. The heavy thump of autocannons joined the fusillade, spraying bullets across power-armoured foes.

  One of the enemy went down, peppered with bullet craters and covered in lasburns. Verenus grinned savagely. That grin turned into a grimace as he saw the enemy warrior push himself back to his feet, blood and oil leaking from his wounds.

  A handful of the Boros infantrymen were cut down with short bursts of enemy fire. The man next to Verenus was struck as he raised his lasgun to fire, the shot tearing his arm off and creating a gaping hole in his chest. He gaped up at Verenus in the second before he died, a look of shock on his blood-drenched face.

  The enemy were moving steadily forwards, conserving ammunition as they took their shots with robotic precision. Few of their bolts did not find their mark, and any of his warriors that were hit suffered horrendous injuries. He fired another shot then ducked into cover as one of the enemy swung a bolter in his direction. Verenus dropped flat and began to crawl arm over arm to a new position as bolter fire smashed into his cover, blowing it away in explosive detonations.

  ‘Armour in position, sir!’ shouted one of his sergeants, a heavy vox-caster unit strapped to his back.

  ‘Finally,’ said Verenus. He turned and shouted, ‘Back! Fall back!’

  His soldiers responded instantly, slipping back into the rubble of the shattered buildings, snapping off occasional shots as they scrambled into heavier cover. Verenus pushed himself to his feet, and began running, keeping his profile low. A man further along the street turned and shouted something, but Verenus couldn’t make it out. Then the man was killed, his torso becoming one huge, bloodied crater, and he fell without a sound. Glancing back, he saw the enemy perhaps halfway along the street. Verenus hurled himself over a fallen statue and dropped in behind it, his heart pounding, and gunfire zipped past him.

  He heard the grind of engines nearby, followed closely by a crash that shook the ground. There was a whoop of joy from one of his soldiers
, and he peered over the top of the fallen statue. His fire-blackened face broke into a smile as he saw a wall collapse, brought down by the dozer blades of three tracked armoured vehicles.

  The tanks, a support division of the 53rd armoured company, were Hellhounds, close support vehicles based on the Chimera STC chassis. Armed with their flame-throwing Inferno cannons, they had proven themselves invaluable in the brutal, close quarter fighting on Boros Prime in the last months. While some battle tanks had proved unwieldy within the tight confines of the cityfight, the Hellhounds had excelled.

  They rumbled through the dust and smoke, crunching over the rubble of the fallen wall. A half-cohort of the 232nd swarmed in their wake, scrambling to take position amongst the debris. Inferno cannons spewed liquid fire across the Word Bearers, who stoically refused to back away, bolters roaring even as they were consumed in flame.

  Their armour cracked and blistered, but still they gunned down almost a score of Guardsmen before they fell. Their resilience and their absolute refusal to back down even in the face of certain death never ceased to stagger Verenus. One of the Hellhounds exploded in an incandescent plume of fire as krak grenades ignited its fuel reserve.

  Only two of the enemy Astartes were still standing, bolters blazing in their hands when there came a hideous screeching sound from overhead.

  ‘The sky!’ shouted one of his men.

  Verenus panned his weapon across the smoke-filled heavens. For a moment he saw nothing, then a blood-red flock of skinless, winged horrors swept over the rooftops, screaming towards the Boros soldiers.

  ‘In the name of the Throne,’ breathed Verenus, seeing his nightmares come to life.

  The daemons, for they could have been nothing else, descended in a screeching rush, leathery wings tightly furled as they dropped towards the ground. They were horrific creatures, their glistening exposed musculature a perverted mockery of humanity. Lipless mouths were twisted into feral grins, exposing needle-like fangs, and barbed, serpentine tails of wet muscle trailed behind them as they hurtled towards the horrified soldiers below. Their forms shimmered like a mirage, as if they were at once there but not there, or perhaps existed simultaneously in more than one realm.