Kanshell leaned his axe against the log and made his way to Ske Vris. ‘What did Sergeant Darras want?’ he asked.
Ske Vris straightened and clapped Kanshell’s shoulder in welcome. ‘He was asking about the nature of what we have built.’
‘It’s a temple, isn’t it?’ He was stunned by the colonists’ foolishness. The Iron Hands would never permit such a flagrant violation of the Imperial Truth.
Ske Vris chuckled. ‘There are no gods in there,’ she said.
‘Then what is it? A shelter?’
Sergeant Darras demands to know the building's purpose
‘We will use it in that way at first, yes. But it is more than that. It is a gathering place. There is where we discuss the concerns of our community. It is where we experience and reaffirm our bonds of fellowship. It is a lodge.’
‘But you don’t deny that you engage in worship.’
‘I will not renounce what I said to you yesterday, no. But we will not offend the great warriors who have given us aid. We take our bonds with them very seriously, too.’
Kanshell grunted. ‘I doubt that they feel the same way about you.’
‘In time, they will. We have a common destiny. Why else would we all find ourselves on this world in these days of war?’ That eternal smile was there still. The woman’s pleasure in the world was hard to dismiss.
The envy tightened Kanshell’s chest.
Ske Vris touched his arm. ‘Come inside, my friend. You labour and are heavily laden. We will give you rest.’
Loyalty to the rationalist creed bade him refuse. But night was coming. So he followed Ske Vris up the slight rise to the entrance. He was not committing to anything, he told himself. He was just curious. There was no harm in taking a look.
He was struck, as he neared the building, by the care that had gone into its construction. The logs that made up its walls had been cut into shape very quickly, and their dimensions were irregular. Even so, the joins looked solid enough to weather years and decades. He noticed that there was no daubing to fill the gaps where the lengths of the logs did not meet. ‘What are you going to use for weatherproofing?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ Ske Vris answered.
‘Nothing?’
‘Is the work not beautiful?’
It was. The gaps had a serendipitous pattern to them that gave the simple architecture a complexity that was invisible from afar, but dissolved into individual fragments when too close. ‘This will make a poor shelter from the first wind,’ Kanshell commented.
‘Look inside,’ Ske Vris urged.
Kanshell did. There were no windows, but there was light. The perpetual overcast of Pythos was still enough to shine through the gaps in the walls. The pattern Kanshell had seen outside was multiplied in the interior. It seemed to him that the ambient exterior light was sharpened as it passed through each slit, creating an interlocking overlap of light on light. He tried to see the pattern’s precise contours, but could not. The light was too diffuse. He was not seeing beams crossing each other. Rather, he was experiencing the layering of shades and tonalities. This was a play of light that was felt instead of seen. The effect was extraordinary.
‘How…’ Kanshell began. His sentence trailed off, beset by too many questions. How had the colonists done this work so fast? How had they done it with such crude material? How did they do it at all?
Ske Vris brushed past him and walked to the centre of the space. ‘Join me,’ she said. ‘Come and see the touch of the numinous.’
Kanshell took a step forwards. The lightweb intensified as he entered the lodge. It danced over his nerve endings. His skin broke out in electric gooseflesh. The hair on his arms stood on end. The space did not grow brighter, but he could see more clearly. He was on the verge of making out the details of the pattern. If he joined Ske Vris in the centre of the web, he would surely see it then. There would be clarity. He would understand the meaning of the pattern.
And Ske Vris promised the revelation of the divine.
No. The promise of comfort was great. It would be easy to surrender to his instincts. His mind and his heart were exhausted from the effort of clinging to rationality. But his pride would not yet admit defeat. He wanted to believe that loyalty was urging his steadfastness, but that argument rang hollow. There was no questioning Tanaura’s loyalty. She would tell him to walk forwards.
‘No,’ he said to Ske Vris, to Tanaura, to himself. ‘Thank you, but no. I have to get back to work.’ He backed out of the lodge.
‘Another time, then,’ Ske Vris called after him. ‘There is no door here. Only a doorway. Cross it when you are ready.’
The serfs were returned to the base before nightfall. The colonists kept working. The labour would not cease, they said, until it was done. More of their number had been escorted to the plateau during the day. Close to half their total numbers were now at work on the settlement. The wall was spreading its reach by the hour. Between it and the barriers from the Veritas Ferrum, there was enough protection that only one squad of Iron Hands, under the command of Sergeant Lacertus, stood sentry that night.
‘The morale of these people is high,’ he told Galba and Darras as they were about to head back to the base. ‘It’s sickeningly high.’
The atmosphere was different at the base. There was enough room, now, to shelter the remaining colonists within its walls. The grounds were crowded with them. Most of them were asleep. Those still awake were singing softly. The melody was a low, tenor, background hum, the slow sweep of its phrases like the murmurs of wavelets of a lake at twilight.
‘I think they’ve built a temple,’ Darras said to Galba as they crossed the base’s plasteel gate.
‘That structure does look like one,’ Galba admitted. ‘You made inquiries?’
‘They deny it is any such thing. “There are no gods there.” That’s what I was told. It is only a gathering place.’
‘Were you being lied to?’
Darras hesitated. ‘The curious thing is, I don’t think I was. And yet…’ He gestured, taking in the resting colonists and their song.
‘Yes,’ Galba agreed. ‘Superstition has deep roots in them. It has not been eradicated.’
They found Atticus standing outside the command unit. At first, Galba thought he was surveying the colonists. But as they approached, he saw that the captain’s gaze was elevated. He seemed to be watching for something. ‘Well?’ he asked.
Darras briefed him on the plateau and the lodge.
‘Should we demolish that structure?’ Galba asked.
‘No,’ Atticus said after a moment. ‘Not unless there is a direct violation of Imperial Law. There are a number of pacified worlds whose cultural traditions are very close to the edge of theism, but have, for strategic reasons, been allowed a provisional measure of tolerance. We have taken on more than enough with these wretched mortals already. We are not engaged in a crusade. We are fighting for the life of the Imperium. If the Salamanders wish to spend their time educating the savages, let them. For now, if these people can be of any tactical use to us in stabilising this region, then I would have them do so. I will not spend any more time and resources on them than is absolutely necessary. You say the plateau is becoming secure?’
‘It is,’ Galba confirmed.
‘Is our presence required at all?’
‘Minimally, for now,’ said Darras. ‘They should be able to fend for themselves, properly equipped, within a few days. Some continued losses are to be expected, but…’
‘They have the numbers to sustain that. Good.’
‘Has Mistress Erephren found another target?’ Galba asked. He understood his captain’s frustration. Every day spent on Pythos was another small victory handed to the traitors.
‘No,’ Atticus grated. ‘The warp storms continue to intensify. But I will have us ready to depart the moment action again
st the enemy becomes possible. Then all this flesh,’ he waved his hand in contempt, ‘can learn its strength or weakness on its own.’
Galba was walking past the serf barracks, heading for the wall, when he saw Kanshell hovering by the door. ‘Lord,’ Kanshell said, bowing low.
‘Hello, Jerune. You should not be alone.’
Kanshell glanced back into the dormitorium. ‘I’m not.’ His voice shook.
‘Were you watching for me?’
The serf nodded. ‘Forgive me for presuming…’ he began.
‘That’s all right. What is it?’
‘Those things I saw the first night–’
‘The hallucinations.’
Kanshell swallowed. He began to tremble. His eyes reflected the arc lights of the base. They were shining with terror. ‘I’m sorry, lord. I tried to believe that I was seeing things. Please believe me. I have tried and tried. But I know it was real.’
Galba shook his head. ‘This is precisely why the warp is so dangerous. Of course it seemed real. It–’
Kanshell fell to his knees, his hands clasped in supplication. ‘But it’s happening again! Now! Right now! Please, oh please, in the name of the Emperor, tell me you can sense it too!’
Galba was so startled that his serf had dared to interrupt that he did not respond immediately. The hesitation was long enough for his own certainty to crumble. The memory of the taste of shadows assailed him with renewed venom, strength and conviction. And then it was more than a memory. The taste was there again. The shadows that were darker than any absence of light reached tendrils into his being. He tried to shake them off. He fought them with reason. He was not immune to the mental depredations of the warp. There was nothing real in what he was experiencing.
The shadows gripped harder, sank deeper. They insisted on their reality. They took Atticus’s declarations of rationalism and shattered them, leaving Galba exposed to their black truth.
Kanshell suddenly put his hands over his ears. ‘No no no no,’ he whimpered. ‘Can you hear? Can you hear them?’
Galba did. Though the shadows were smothering his senses, some perceptions were sharpened. They were the allies of the shadows, more claws of the warp. Barely audible beneath the quiet chanting of the colonists came the sounds from inside the serf barracks. The people inside were murmuring in their sleep. Their words were slurred, inarticulate. The noise was the mumble of stones, the insinuation of breeze, the whisper of the night stream.
‘I can hear them,’ Galba said. His own words were muffled, as if he were speaking through a cloud of lead. But the act of speaking gave him some agency. He moved towards the doorway. More shadows waited there, coiling, ready to spring. ‘How many?’ he asked.
‘All of them,’ said Kanshell.
It was absurd. Every one of the hundreds of mortals asleep in the rows of bunks could not be sleep-talking. Galba stepped inside, leaving Kanshell at the door.
He saw right away that the man was wrong. Not all the serfs were whispering. A few were awake. They were weeping, curled up into balls of terror on their cots. All the others had joined the nocturnal choir. Their words were unintelligible, but Galba could tell that each person was reciting a different litany. The voices came together in a struggle of syncopation and layering. The whispers piled up on top of each other, a different hiss rising to the surface with every passing second. The murmurs ceased to be human. They were no longer the product of lips and vocal cords. They were rasping sound-shapes unto themselves. They coiled around Galba’s hearing. They were serpentine fragments twining into a whole. They summoned the shadows closer. The darkness squeezed. Galba began to choke. The moaning, rattling, snickering choir became more intense, though the volume remained barely above a grave’s silence. The fragments joined and moulded, joined and laughed. As before, Galba felt an unveiling loom over sanity’s horizon. It was not enough that he be assailed by a truth made of butchered minds and desecrated corpses. It was not enough to feel the presence of the truth pressing against his mind like an expanding tumour. He must be shown the nature of the truth. He must hear it speak. He must know what it had to announce.
His vision began to darken. His eyes were being covered by a membrane that was insubstantial, yet it clung, veined red, like muscle. The truth slithered closer. He divined its shape. It was a name. Behind the name, an intelligence lurked. The name took shape behind his eyes, and the shape was Madail. Its rhythm was the beat of a reptilian heart. It forced its way up his throat. It would have him speak it. And then it would claim him as its own.
MADAIL, MADAIL, MADAIL.
Galba roared. He released his anger free of all form, of all words. It was a blast of untainted fury, and it tore through the membrane. It ripped the night in two. The whispering faltered. Galba grabbed his chainsword. He raised it high and let its snarl shred the whispering. ‘Awake!’ he shouted. ‘In the name of the Emperor, awake!’
The whispering stopped. The shadows withdrew. He could breathe again. The serfs were conscious now, sitting up and staring at him. They were frightened, but not of him. They did not look confused. He saw, on their faces, the mark of a collective nightmare.
He turned on his heel and marched out of the barracks. Kanshell was still on his knees. He was limp, whether with exhaustion or relief, Galba was not sure. ‘Keep everyone awake,’ he told the serf. He gave the order so Kanshell would have a purpose. He did not think anyone was likely to sleep now.
The singing of the colonists had stopped. The atmosphere of the base was tense, as though a storm, instead of having passed, was about to break. Galba strode towards the command post. He was not the only one. Many of his battle-brothers were converging on the base’s nerve centre. He felt eyes on him. He had expected that. He had raised an alarm.
Not all the legionaries were looking at him. Their faces, in the hard illumination of the base, were grim. They had the looks of men who knew they were at war, but did not understand the foe. He had not been alone, Galba saw. Some part, at least, of what had attacked him had also touched them.
This was no hallucination. He braced himself for the confrontation with Atticus. The captain would not be receptive to those words. Galba himself did not want to speak them. They raised too many questions. They attacked the foundations of reality. They undermined the regime of truth under which they all lived. But they must be spoken. They must be confronted.
Atticus was outside the command post, as if he had not moved since Galba and Darras had left him there. He stood with his legs spread, his arms folded. He was as immovable as the column of stone. He was not wearing his helmet. His single human eye shone with a flame as cold as the void. He was staring into the night with a pure, machinic hatred. Galba’s words died on his lips as he drew near.
There was nothing to say. Atticus knew.
The captain of 111th Clan-Company, X Legion, turned his terrible gaze on the Iron Hands. ‘We have an enemy on this planet,’ he said. ‘It attacks from the shadows. Bring it into the light.’ He uncrossed his arms, opening hands that had been designed to do nothing but destroy. ‘And I will annihilate it.’
And at dawn, something rose to the surface.
Eleven
The chosen ground
Beneath the surface
The need for comfort
The shadows came for Erephren during the night. The attack was sudden, and took her by surprise. All of her defences were directed towards the empyrean itself. They were the filters through which she looked at the madness. They did nothing to protect her from the power behind the shadows. It had a half-presence on the planet. Its influence was leaking through the barriers. Reality began to suffer distortions. The madness of the warp was acquiring an empirical substance on Pythos. It did not yet walk unfettered on the surface of the planet. But the madness was coming. Its advance guard was already strong.
Erephren was watching, with growing dismay, the cour
se of the warp storms. A sea of perpetual turbulence had roused itself into a gale so monstrous, she risked everything in contemplating it. The source of the tempest was the Maelstrom. Hungry, raging with a sudden influx of power, it spread its reach to infinite horizons. Erephren saw some loyalist ships that had dared to venture into the cauldron. They foundered. Some were destroyed, and she saw every detail of their agony. Others disappeared into the heaving waves of unreality. She did not like to think what would be left of the minds of those on board, should those vessels ever reappear.
She searched in vain for the echoes of the Astronomican. There was no failure in her vision. The waves had submerged the great light.
And it was as she gazed upon the storm that the attack came. It invaded her chamber. She sensed the not-quite-presence as soon as it arrived. She was strong. She was quick. She shut her psychic senses to the warp and withdrew her consciousness from its clutches. She snapped her shield up.
Speed, strength and training did her no good. She was ready even for such horrors as bred in the zones of weak boundaries. But the dangers for which she was prepared were inchoate. They did not have volition. They were not sentient.
The shadows smashed her shield. They laughed, and the laughter was the scrape of razors over her skin. They roared, and they were the voice of a word: damnation. The voice smashed her into oblivion.
When she woke, it was to true blindness for the first time in her life. She gasped, fighting a smothering panic in the absolute winter of her senses. She felt the expansion of her chest, and that gave her back her body. She flexed her fingers. They scratched against a metal floor. So she had fallen from her throne. Her neck and the back of her head were sore; the brass antennae and mechadendrites that helped tune her mind to the warp had been torn from her when she fell.
The Damnation of Pythos Page 16