The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  ‘Why?’ Kanshell shouted as he rushed to keep up.

  ‘The battle here is over. It may not be at the settlement.’

  There was no further speech, then. As before, there was the jerking, stop-start-sprint-hide race through legs and past snapping jaws. There was a difference, though. Earlier, anger had coursed through Kanshell’s blood. There had been the need to strike back at Ske Vris. He had had a target upon which to focus and block out the horrors around him. There was no such goal now. There was only horror, and the need to escape its teeth for one more heartbeat. He followed Tanaura, but to sustain him, he had but one thing: his faith in the Emperor.

  It was enough.

  He did not despair. He knew that every step he took in the service of fighting the unholy foe of the Emperor was an act of righteousness. If he died in the next second, he would die as one of the faithful. Perhaps even as a martyr, though he did not imagine anyone would ever hear of what had transpired on Pythos. Behind them came the sound of destruction and war as the god-beasts attacked the base.

  They were well down the slope when they heard the familiar engine howl of a Thunderhawk. Kanshell’s heart soared. The rout was not complete. The company still had the means to strike hard. He heard the full-throated rage of Iron Flame’s guns. He hoped punishment would pound down the length of the hill, putting an end to the terrible life that surrounded him. He would not mind dying in such a conflagration. He hoped for the dignity of death by weapon over the rending by teeth.

  There was the sound of a great impact, and the voice of the engines became a stuttering shriek. The guns fell silent. The craft passed overhead. It was streaming fire, dropping lower. Kanshell caught only a glimpse of it as he and Tanaura fled the reptilian murder on all sides. Then, ahead, a boom and a grinding crash. The night was lit by the brighter, warmer glow of another disaster. Tanaura angled her run in that direction. Kanshell did the same. He was no longer following her. They were both racing towards a new goal. The fall of Iron Flame was the site of their battlefield. Duty summoned them.

  There was a change in the current of the savagery. Some of the beasts were moving in the same direction. They, too, were being summoned, but by the call of large and helpless prey.

  Darras kicked at the buckled door to the troop compartment until it gave way. Beside him, Catigernus was struggling to free himself from the mangled controls. The legionary’s right arm hung uselessly at his side. Iron Flame had hit the ground nose first, hard enough to crumple the forward fuselage, and it had crushed his armour on one side.

  Darras paused at the bulkhead. ‘Do you need help, brother?’ he asked.

  ‘I can manage. See to the others.’

  See to the astropath, was what he meant. Their battle-brothers could withstand worse crashes than this. Even with the flight controls reduced to a farce, Catigernus had managed to bring the Thunderhawk in at a relatively shallow angle. The bulk of the ship was still in a single piece.

  But Darras smelled smoke.

  He entered the troop compartment. The Iron Hands had removed themselves from the grav-harnesses and were taking up positions at the side door. It looked as though it might still open without a struggle. Erephren was seated. She was not moving. Darras went to her, cursing.

  She startled him by speaking. ‘I am well, sergeant.’ Her lips barely moved, but her forehead was lined with effort. Darras saw that she was locked in some unseen mental combat. ‘How close are we?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps halfway there. Your connection is stronger?’

  She nodded, the gesture slight and tense. But when she spoke, it seemed that the effort to interact with immediate reality helped anchor her. ‘It wants me to become lost in the contemplation of the warp’s vistas. Its pull is strong.’

  ‘I don’t see how increasing proximity even further will help, then.’

  ‘I have a strength of my own.’ She was silent for a moment, a swimmer wrestling with a sudden riptide. Then she continued, ‘As astropaths, our training is limited to the permissible uses of our abilities. I believe I can do something more. But I cannot act over a distance. If I can touch the object, I can engage with it on my terms.’

  She was speaking of matters that did not sound in keeping with the role of an obedient and sanctioned psyker. Darras found he did not care. The puritanism he had embraced until now, that had driven a wedge between Galba and himself, no longer had a useful part to play in this war. To throw away any possible weapon against the forces that could steal the sky would be to embrace defeat.

  Then Catigernus was at his side. The other legionary was moving well and quickly, shrugging off the loss of the use of his arm. ‘Where is this smoke coming from?’ Darras asked him.

  ‘A number of small fires. We have the ones we can reach under control.’ Catigernus looked up and nodded towards the dark smoke emerging from a vent. ‘A lot of smouldering going on with the internal systems. Nothing we can do about that.’

  ‘The engines?’

  ‘Offline, but I don’t think the damage is critical.’

  Darras gestured to the flames visible outside the viewing blocks. ‘What am I seeing there?’

  ‘I jettisoned the missiles and auxiliary fuel tanks before we hit.’

  Darras went to the door and opened it. A huge trail of flame, the result of the explosive destruction of ordnance and gunship fuel, led back up the slope. Saurians were loping down the hill, but were being held back by the fire. In the distance, the great monsters were just beginning to focus their attention on the crash site. ‘We don’t have much time,’ he said.

  ‘Can we proceed on foot?’ Erephren asked.

  ‘Too far,’ Darras told her. The reptiles would be upon them before they had gone fifty metres. At a squad’s strength, the Iron Hands could hold the beasts at bay for some time, but there were thousands of the saurians abroad. The chance of Erephren being killed by a lucky attack was too great. His mission now was seeing that she survived long enough to complete hers.

  ‘We cannot stay here,’ she protested.

  ‘We can hold out longer,’ he said. They would have, he thought, until the god-beasts reached them.

  ‘And then?’

  He turned to her. ‘We need reinforcements if we are to reach the anomaly. We need to contact Captain Atticus. He needs to know what you hope to do. And the vox still can’t break through the interference.’ He paused, letting the implications sink in. Outside, the flames were already beginning to die. The death of the Veritas Ferrum had consumed everything on the ground that could burn. The growls of the saurians were drawing closer. ‘We both know what is causing the interference,’ he said.

  ‘You think I can break through?’

  ‘I know you are the only person who has even a chance of doing so. You are an astropath. Sending messages through the warp is your vocation.’

  ‘The captain has no one with him who could hear me.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But if the interference is reduced, I can use the vox. I understand that you cannot defeat the anomaly, mistress. But fight it. Fight it just enough.’

  She nodded once, and threw herself into the struggle. She grew so still, she did not appear to be breathing. The creases on her forehead deepened. Her skin paled until it was the same pallor as the stone sun. Narrow trails of dark, rich blood trickled again from the corners of her eyes.

  Outside, the slow drumbeat of approaching annihilation began once more. It was joined by a new sound, coming from the direction of the settlement. Darras’s eyes widened.

  He could hear laughter.

  Reaching the surface was like rising up from an ocean. An ocean of blood. An ocean of monstrous flesh and horn. Atticus was no longer even thinking in terms of destinations. Twice now he had fought his way up from the depths. Both times, the foe had come in a swarm, and combat had indeed meant swimming, a grinding exercise of brawn and chainaxe.
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  There was no room to move. The only way up was through warp-flesh. But the maggots had been mindless. The new foe was sentient, eager, armed. Too eager, too numerous, for the daemons could not unleash their worst either in the frenzied crush. They were too hungry for the blood of the Iron Hands. That was their mistake, and they shed their own instead, pouring their perversion of vitae over the warriors that advanced through them, one step at a time, never retreating, one gutted body after another, always forwards, always upwards.

  Always killing.

  And then the surface. Atticus allowed himself a single moment of satisfaction at having reached the first goal. He could think ahead again. He took stock of the new battlefield.

  He saw the monument, the glowing mockery of reason hundreds of metres high.

  He saw the stone presence in the infinite void.

  He saw the air filled with flying daemons. Some of them were in combat with Lacertus’s squad and the Raven Guard. The battle had the rhythm of a sea in storm as the warriors on either side rose from the ground, dropped, then rose again. Most of the winged monsters were flying away from the settlement, cavorting and shrieking in glee as they made for some triumph he could not imagine.

  He saw the mutilated dead. The Iron Hands had emerged from the chasm that opened at the base of the mound where the primary lodge had stood. The bodies of colonists and Space Marines were everywhere. And there was a special insult. In the centre of what had been the floor of the lodge, metal torn from the wreckage of the Vindicators had been planted. Its configuration imitated that of the tower. A legionary’s body was draped and impaled over the framework, like a torn, bloody scarecrow. It was Galba. Atticus confronted the severed head of his sergeant. He felt anger at the desecration of the warrior’s body. He added the atrocity to the tally of the enemy’s crimes.

  In the lower depths of his identity, something stirred. It was something he had starved into atrophy. He had managed to cut most of it away. It was a human response, an impulse born of generosity and empathy. As it fought to spring back to life, its form became more defined. It was guilt. It was regret.

  It was unprofitable. It was a luxury impermissible in combat. And it was weak. Atticus snuffed it out.

  Then he turned to behold his true enemy, the shadow he had been hunting since Hamartia. He saw it stride across the plateau, through the flames and smoking ruins of yurts and vehicles. He heard its name chanted by a thousand twisted throats.

  MADAIL! MADAIL! MADAIL!

  Madail held its staff high, laughing with delight as it conducted the infernal symphony. With every sweep of its arms, a huge current of daemons rushed forwards along the arc of the gestures. Madail was leading its ground troops in the same direction as the aerial daemons. It paused, its flock streaming past its legs. It turned. From its position near the gate, the eyes on its chest stared at Atticus. The daemon’s mouth opened wide. It let out a sigh of hideous pleasure. ‘Ahhhhhhhhhhtticus. At last. You are welcome to the revel. Will you join us? The feast will not be complete unless you witness it.’

  The daemon gestured with a hand, and scores of its lesser kin broke off from the main flow and launched themselves at the Iron Hands.

  ‘Fight hard,’ Madail admonished. ‘Fight well. Earn the reward of my art.’ It turned away and resumed the procession from the settlement.

  Then it stopped again, cocking its head in puzzlement. The light from the monument flickered, a slight but distinct cut interrupting its radiation of disease. And through that fissure in the chaos came Darras’s voice over the vox. The sergeant’s message was quick, clear and confirmation of Atticus’s earlier determination. Rhydia Erephren was key. She had the key. The conduct of the war became simple. Atticus doubted he heard the voice of hope. He knew that had been silenced long since, and would be heard no more by the 111th Clan-Company. But he had something more tangible: a mission.

  ‘Forward, legionaries!’ he called. ‘Cut through the foe! The means to punish him is within our grasp, and the grip of the Iron Hands is unbreakable!’

  They charged. They had lost many of their number on the long climb to the surface. They were all battered, their armour scored by blade and acid, slicked with filthy gore. There were only a few dozen warriors left of a company that had stood a thousand strong. They bore all these wounds, and yet attacked with a ferocity even greater than they had inside the dome. They were a machine that had been given a precise goal, and that made them a juggernaut.

  The daemons that rushed forwards to meet them were serpentine and insectoid, human and bovine. Their bodies were long and slender to the point that they seemed to be nothing but a tail with head, limbs and stinger. Their legs were long, jointed like an insect’s, elegant like a human’s. Their movements had a hideous grace. In the days before madness, when the Iron Hands ventured aboard the vessels of the Emperor’s Children as brothers, Atticus had, out of courtesy, sat through some of the remembrancer performances so beloved of the III Legion. He saw an echo now of those ballets. The daemons danced, and through their very art, they flew over the ground with the speed of rapiers. And they sang to each other, weaving a siren song of melody and dissonance, beauty and corruption. It was a complexity that sliced the real. It summoned the mind to the dance, and distorted the body. Atticus felt the song try to reach into his form. It wanted his bones to be water. It wanted his flesh to be glass.

  His flesh.

  That was the daemons’ mistake. They were singing for beings much closer to the human than the weapons that charged towards them. Atticus had never known the sublime in art, and as he had travelled further and further down the machinic path, his perception of music had become the cold eye of an anatomist. He rejected the song and all its works. His body gave it no purchase.

  He slammed into the daemons, swinging his chainaxe in a wide, horizontal arc. In a single gesture, he severed four limbs, to either side and before him. He ruined the dance. He killed the song with the outraged shrieks of his targets. The rest of the company followed on, an engine of annihilation that savaged the daemons. None of Atticus’s battle-brothers were as transformed as he was, but if they had been injured by the song, they showed no sign. The advance did not slow. They cut the monsters down, trampling the obscenities under their boots. Atticus heard the howling of the daemons cease. It gave way to the crunching of bone.

  Do you see? he wanted to shout at Madail. Do you see what happens? This is the fate that awaits your kind. If not on this planet, on some other, at the hands of our brothers. You will not win.

  As he fought, he saw shapes drop on torn wings. Lacertus, Ptero and the other assault legionaries were carrying the day against the flying daemons. Other shapes flew away to rejoin the main swarm.

  The Iron Hands stormed to the edge of the plateau. Madail sent no other contingents against them. The daemons continued to pour in an unending flow from the chasms before the ruins of the lodges. The streams skirted the Iron Hands, rushing to the promise being enacted on the Pythos landscape. For the moment, the daemons had lost interest in the legionaries.

  Atticus paused. Spread out before him was a vista of mad carnival and absurd warfare. The daemons and the saurians met. They were two waves of monstrosity, colliding in a storm of perfect destruction. The reptiles roared their challenge to the new enemy. Their jaws parted in anticipation of new, unlimited prey. The daemons laughed. They fought the saurians, and they danced with them. Atticus saw the clash of monstrous flesh, of reptile and warp-born, of savage instinct and perverse refinement. The land itself was almost invisible. A new forest had appeared to cover it. It was a writhing forest, the slashing, bleeding, eviscerating forest of monsters vying for supremacy.

  More saurians were arriving from all sides of the plateau. More daemons raced from the depths to meet them. And in the distance, from the direction of the base, Atticus saw the giants come. The flying daemons were already swooping around the colossi. The monsters s
watted at them as if they were insects. Other, larger, more hulking daemons were moving up to grapple with the giants. They were still smaller, but there were many of them.

  ‘And these are our works,’ said a voice beside Atticus.

  The captain turned, and found Khi’dem standing beside him. The son of Vulkan had lost an arm, but seemed no less steady, no less derived of the bedrock itself, than Atticus had ever seen him. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  Khi’dem nodded at the spectacle. ‘We have been manipulated every step of the way, Captain Atticus. All of us. But we all acted in accordance with our beliefs. I don’t know if we could have done anything differently. This result was inevitable, given who we are. And though we were tricked, we have done this. We opened the way.’

  ‘Then we must atone,’ Atticus told him.

  Khi’dem nodded again.

  Atticus pointed to the guttering trail of fire about a kilometre distant. ‘We are awaited there,’ he told the company. He looked at Khi’dem. He no longer felt any animosity toward the Salamander, though he felt no kinship, either. There was nothing left in his world except the battle ahead, and the hatred for everything he would kill. He asked, ‘You will fight beside us?’

  ‘Until the end.’

  ‘I don’t think you will need to wait long,’ Atticus told him.

  The Iron Hands descended the slope of the plateau, picking up speed as they plunged into the rampaging hell.

  When Kanshell saw that the Thunderhawk was still largely intact, he was surprised. He was also surprised that he and Tanaura had survived their journey this far. His surprise gave way to a sick awe when he saw why the saurians had ignored the insects running at their feet.

  A tide of daemons was heading their way. Leaping, striding, hopping, flying, the abominations came on with a chorus of murderous joy. The stone sun looked down upon the army of its children, and the light was the blessing of death. Every fragment of hell that had haunted Kanshell during the nights of torment had become a full, monstrous manifestation. The screaming end to hope and life was here. All that the divine reality of the Emperor stood against had been unleashed. He quailed, and clutched the thread of his faith with all his strength. His instinct was to close his eyes and wait in terrified prayer for his doom. But Tanaura was still on the move, running to the side door of the gunship. He joined her. They reached up and pounded against it.