The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  ‘Quite. I applaud your wisdom. But tell me, your battle against those insects…’

  ‘I do not believe it was a directed attack. Simply more of this world’s general malignity.’

  ‘You don’t sound entirely sure.’

  Ptero grimaced. ‘Not entirely, no. Our enemy, whoever it is, uses the powers of the immaterium. That much is clear from the attacks on our base. There have been such currents in the warp during the nights… Keeping my abilities in check has been painful. Today, I detected no more than a faint ripple. Not enough to direct an attack on that scale.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But Sergeant Galba warned us of the assault just before it happened. Before there was the slightest sign of the insects’ approach.’

  ‘Is he…?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘How is this possible?’

  ‘It should not be.’ Even in the dark, Khi’dem could see how troubled Ptero’s face was. ‘How this came to pass does not worry me as much as why.’

  The fire was done. There were no power generators in the settlement, and its only light now came from the torches scattered over the grounds. An oily, putrescent smoke drifted over the plateau from the chasm. It carried the stench of a rancid sea. Khi’dem thought of cancers eating at dreams, hope and brotherhood. ‘All we are doing is watching and waiting,’ he said. ‘If we are not careful, we will watch and wait until doom is inevitable. We both know something is going very wrong here. We must take action.’ Even as he spoke, he thought, Grand words, you poor fool. Go ahead, then. Take action. Oh, and what action would that be, exactly?

  But Ptero was nodding. ‘There is sorcery at work. We must counter it.’

  ‘Careful,’ Khi’dem cautioned.

  ‘I will not disobey the Emperor’s will. But there is one among us who is a sanctioned psyker, and who might be strong enough to do some good.’

  ‘The astropath,’ Khi’dem said.

  The night was a bad one. Again. So were the ones that followed. Terror had been Kanshell’s shadow since the arrival on Pythos. He could not shake it. It clung to his heels. It capered at his back and stretched its darkness before him. He did catch broken shards of sleep, exhaustion plunging him into unconsciousness, where he wrestled with nightmares that mirrored the ones that slithered through the night of his waking life.

  He was not alone in confronting the horrors of the dark, but this was no comfort. The people around him had the same haunted look, the same sunken features, the same taut, nervous energy. They would be running, if only there was a refuge to which they might run. There was no comfort, because when the night came, and reached for them all with its terrors, they could not reach for each other. Kanshell, like all the others, curled into a tighter and tighter ball, as if he might curl into nothingness and so avoid the gaze of the thing that walked behind the dark. There was nowhere to hide. There was no way to fight. There was nothing to do but tremble and whimper and hope that this night was not his turn. Nothing to do but pray that the following morning, he would not be the one found mad or dead.

  His prayers were answered, yet each day someone else’s were not. No matter what precautions Atticus ordered, no matter how many guards were posted, or how frequent the security sweeps through the camp, the deaths continued. Always one or two serfs, never more, but also without fail. It was as if the curse that haunted the camp were taunting the captain, dancing a macabre waltz to its own tune and paying no attention to the futile efforts of the Iron Hands.

  There was nothing the legionaries could do to stem the slow attrition. And so the fear spread. It grew. It intensified. It was a venom of deep, complex vintage. Its vines grew from the toxic soil of Isstvan V. The fact of defeat formed a rich loam and there festered the anticipation of more terror and grief. The nights did not disappoint. They were the consummation of dark expectation, and each dawn was another forced drink from the poisoned chalice. Day after day, the chalice filled higher. When it overflowed, Kanshell knew, the likes of him would drown in the horror. There would be nothing left of the mortal psyches. The base would become an asylum. Then a sepulchre.

  If the Iron Hands were helpless against the cancer, what could its victims do? All Kanshell asked was the chance to fulfil his duty. But there were no actions to take against the terrors. The visitations stalked the shadows on spider limbs. They brought the worst dreams of madness to the surface, and made them real. But the visitor itself was not real, and so could not be fought.

  No, not real yet, a slithering promise whispered to the back of Kanshell’s neck. Not quite yet, but oh, how close, how very, very close. A little more effort. A little more patience.

  Sometimes, he thought he heard hissing during the day. Sometimes, during the grey noon of Pythos, a chuckle like the scrape of a spade on dry skulls would make him start. He would turn and look, and there would be nothing there.

  Not yet. Not quite yet.

  There was nothing to do but pray. He had abandoned his faith in the rational. It lay in blackened ruins. It could not stand up to the nights of Pythos. He could draw no strength from it. Hewing to it would be an act of mortal foolishness. He would be hanging on to a lie, rushing headlong into the jaws of the coming evil. He no longer felt any shame in his apostasy. And truly, was it not supremely rational, when confronted by the proof of the daemonic, to turn to the divine for succour?

  He attended his first meeting the morning after he spent the night behind the shield of the Lectitio Divinitatus. Tanaura led a group prayer in a corner of the mess, snatching a few moments for communal comfort just before the serfs plunged into their allotted tasks. Kanshell approached the gathering tentatively. He was not sure if there were rituals he should observe, or if the worshippers were even aware of his presence.

  He needn’t have worried. ‘Jerune,’ Tanaura said as he came near. ‘Join us.’

  The circle parted, then embraced him. He looked at faces as ravaged by terror as his own. They also shone with a desperate hope, one for which they would fight and kill. Their smiles were as tentative as his, but their welcome was fervent. He understood why as he took part in the worship.

  Tanaura took them through the prayer. ‘Father of Mankind,’ she said, ‘we seek your guidance. We beseech your protection.’

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ the other worshippers responded, Kanshell among them.

  ‘See us safely through this time of trial.’

  ‘The Emperor protects.’

  ‘In our despair, we say that surely the darkness shall cover us, and the light about us become night.’

  ‘Yet even the darkness is no darkness with thee,’ came the answer.

  ‘And the night is as clear as the day,’ Tanaura finished.

  Now the smiles were far less tentative. Kanshell felt stronger. This was the glorious truth he had never known about these meetings. There was power in brotherhood. It gave him comfort during the day, because he was not alone. None of them were. They had each other, and they had the Emperor. That night, there was no less terror, but he had more strength. He was able to face the dying of the light with greater resolution, and though he still trembled, though he still curled into a tight, paralytic knot of fear, he had the strength to withstand the trials. There was hope. And the next morning, with more prayer – and a circle grown a little larger yet – there was the renewal of strength, the flaring of that spark of hope.

  These were the only things that sustained him as the nights marched on, and the toll rose.

  During the day, he continued to work at the settlement. The labour of serfs and colonists was divided between construction and excavation. The palisade was complete. Yurts were appearing now, scattered about the centre of the plateau. Actual shelter had come to the colonists. They seemed hardly to notice. The yurts were afterthoughts, thrown together only once the lodges were built. There was now one on each of the mounds that marked
the buried structures.

  The digging carried on at the base of the mounds. The wedges of four deep pits now bit into the plateau. The upper halves of the structures were exposed. The Iron Hands had ventured into the depths three more times. They had found nothing, and there had been no further attacks. Atticus was not satisfied. There was still an enemy present, and he declared that it would be found. Rubble blocked all the tunnels that led towards the interior of the plateau. Atticus ordered it cleared.

  The colonists cheered the command. They volunteered by the hundreds. Far more stepped forward than could be put to use. Kanshell was glad. He knew that a monstrous foe stood against the Imperial forces. He did not think it would be found in a den beneath the ground. But he heard about the vast chambers, the twisted pillars and the glow of rotten blood. The ruins were the space of further nightmares. He was visited by enough. He did not need to go looking for more.

  On the third day after the discovery of the ruins, he was helping raise another yurt when he heard a scream. It came from the north-west, where a gate had been built into the palisade. Half the construction team was composed of colonists, and they dropped the circular wooden framework of the yurt and went running towards the gate. Kanshell and his fellow serfs followed. The screams continued from the other side of the wall. They were interrupted by reptilian snarls. After a few moments, the shrieks became softer moans of agony, then those, too, died away. The growls became muffled.

  Its mouth is full, Kanshell thought, aghast.

  There were tearing sounds, and the snapping of bones. Then a brief burst of fire, the unmistakeable deep staccato of a bolter at work.

  Silence fell. The group before the gate waited motionless. Kanshell spotted Ske Vris at the fore. A platform ran the length of the palisade, a metre-and-a-half below the tips of the pointed logs that made up the wall. Colonist guards had come running along it, and were now watching the scene below them. One of them signalled, and four colonists stepped forwards to pull open the heavy gate. Khi’dem, his helmet mag-locked to his thigh, passed through it. The corpse he carried was barely recognisable as human. It was a bag of butchered meat. But he handled it with dignity, and turned it over to the men who approached to claim it. Over his shoulder, he carried a lasrifle. He unslung it and passed it to Ske Vris. ‘This is still usable,’ he said.

  ‘Our thanks, great lord,’ Ske Vris said. She bowed.

  Khi’dem snorted. ‘Your people would thank me better by ceasing to engage in such follies. These risks are pointless.’

  ‘We have traditions to uphold,’ Ske Vris answered. ‘We have duties that are sacred. I am sure that you do, as well.’

  ‘Be it on your head,’ the legionary answered, and strode off.

  The colonists who had opened the gate now went through it themselves, disappearing down the slope of the plateau. Kanshell walked up to Ske Vris. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Why was someone out there?’

  ‘He was hunting.’

  ‘Hunting?’ Kanshell’s jaw dropped. Humans could not behave like predators on Pythos. They were only prey, and survival depended on recognising that very basic fact. There were enough supplies in the settlement. The food was rations scavenged from the landing sites. It was not enticing, but it would keep the people alive until the construction was complete and large hunting parties, who might bring individual animals down without suffering massive casualties, could be organised. A lone mortal venturing beyond the wall was suicidal. ‘Hunting for what?’ Kanshell demanded.

  Ske Vris looked at him as if he were simple-minded. ‘For the homes, of course.’

  Kanshell looked over his shoulder at the yurts, then back at Ske Vris, horrified. Saurian hides were stretched over the wooden frameworks, creating the walls and roofs. There had been no time to tan and cure the hides. They were the flesh of the beasts, cleaned and stretched. The skin was so tough that it served the purpose, though Kanshell found the material unpleasant to handle. It made the homes far too organic, as if they were alive. He would have preferred huts constructed out of sod or logs. There was enough of that raw material lying about, despite the construction needs of the lodges and the palisade. But the colonists insisted on the necessity of this form of shelter. Kanshell had assumed that the hides came from the many saurians killed during the pacification of the plateau. He had been wrong. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked.

  Ske Vris smiled. ‘Is it mad to live, and perhaps die, for one’s traditions? For one’s beliefs? Are you unwilling to make such a sacrifice?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Kanshell answered, heated. ‘But if those beliefs are irrational…’

  ‘Yours are not?’

  He had no answer to that. He was struck, even as he floundered, by the distance that Ske Vris appeared to mark between her traditions and those of the Imperium. Kanshell wondered again if the colonists were a lost people, one who had never received the benefits of the Imperial peace. He pushed the question away. The issue was beyond his station. If Atticus was not concerned with the heterodoxy of the colonists, then he would not be, either.

  He kept watch with Ske Vris before the open gate. He was anxious, expecting a saurian to come charging through. He could hear the predators in the jungle beyond the palisade. They grew louder each day. None came, though, and after a minute, the four colonists returned, dragging chunks of the beast that Khi’dem had killed. Ske Vris clapped her hands together once as the gate was closed. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Meat for food, hide for shelter. We have lost, and we have gained.’

  ‘I’m sorry for the death of your kinsman,’ Kanshell said.

  ‘He will be commemorated. He will live in our memories and in our walls, and he died in the land of our dreams.’ Ske Vris spread her arms wide in a joyous embrace of the world. ‘What is there to regret?’

  Kanshell looked at the open, shining pleasure in the woman’s face. Snatches of the colonists’ songs as they worked drifted to him. These people had no experience of the fear that tormented the base. ‘I envy you,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How can you be so happy?’

  Ske Vris cocked her head. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  The answer came in the form of a hoarse shriek from above. Kanshell and the novitiate both ducked. A flying saurian came in at a sharp angle. Claws extended, it dived straight at one of the wall guards. It had a wingspan of ten metres. Its head was almost all jaw, longer than a man. Confused lasfire rose to meet it. The beast was too fast, the defenders untrained. With a second, mocking, shriek the reptile snatched a guard up in its talons. Khi’dem came charging back, but the monster had already dropped from sight before he could fire.

  He lowered his bolter. Ske Vris bowed low. ‘Please accept our thanks once more, lord,’ she called.

  Khi’dem looked at the novitiate. His disgust was clear. ‘Why are you smiling? Do you take pleasure in seeing your people devoured?’

  ‘Not at all, lord. It is simply that we walk the earth of our destiny. Every moment is one of fruition. In the end, we shall all die here, in our home. The hope of centuries has been realised. Our joy is invincible.’

  ‘Your joy is quite insane,’ Khi’dem muttered, and left.

  Kanshell checked the sky for more of the winged hunters. There were none, but he felt no confidence in the men and women patrolling the wall. They handled their rifles like children. Did none of these people have combat experience? He was no soldier, but he could not spend his life on a strike cruiser and not acquire some basic knowledge of military craft. He was surrounded by naïve fools, but the lion’s share of the protection of the settlement fell to them. The Salamanders were few in number. They refused to abandon the people to their fate, but they could not be everywhere at once.

  The Iron Hands ignored the settlement. Atticus had his forces mounting guard in the depths of the structure, and protecting the base. The colonists had to earn their survival. Those working in th
e ruins were of direct use to the Iron Hands, so the legionaries watched over them. Every so often, the muffled, hollow echo of gunfire would rise from the chasms. There were sporadic attacks by maggots, but not on the scale of the initial one. The Iron Hands seemed to have decimated the population of the underground inhabitants. The creatures had swarmed over the invaders of their domain, and been defeated.

  But on the surface, the wildlife of Pythos was becoming bolder. It seemed to know that the prey was more vulnerable. By ones and twos, the monsters attacked the wall more and more frequently. Kanshell was grateful no pack had launched a concerted assault, but when he listened to the chorus of snarls in the jungle beyond the palisade, he grew sure that day would not be long in coming.

  Ske Vris straightened, still smiling as she watched the departing Space Marine. ‘What do you think, my friend?’ she asked Kanshell. ‘Is our joy insane?’

  ‘I think you might be. All of you.’

  ‘We are all on this planet together. We rejoice in our fate. You clearly fear yours. Are you better off for being so “sane”?’

  There was a frenzied roar, and the sound of heavy feet pounding the earth. A massive bulk slammed against the palisade. Three guards rushed into position and started shooting. They were laughing. There was something giddy about their joy, as if they were intoxicated by belief. Kanshell winced. Ske Vris looked down on him, her smile unwavering. The las-fire continued until the roars turned into howls, and then silence. The laughter continued.

  ‘Well?’ Ske Vris prompted.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kanshell whispered.

  ‘You seek strength.’

  Kanshell nodded.

  ‘Strength comes from faith,’ Ske Vris told him.

  ‘Yes. So I am discovering.’

  Ske Vris gripped his arm. ‘That’s wonderful! Perhaps the time has come for us to worship together.’

  Kanshell glanced uneasily at the nearest lodge. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Then be sure. We will be celebrating our fallen comrades shortly. Join us.’