02 - Blood Reaver

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  Lucoryphus crouched down once the deed was done, returning to all fours. His weapons were still sheathed, but his claws ran red. With an impatient grunt, he shook his ankle, dislodging a gobbet of meat between his taloned toes. The corridor was an abattoir, decorated with scraps of cloth. When he listened closely, he heard sounds of approaching mortals; their tread too light to be anything more. Hunt-lust surged through him as he crouched in the gore, chilled by anticipation, his limbs trembling with unsated needs.

  He said “Preysight”, though it left his helm’s vocaliser just as it left his lips—a snarled, wet clicking from his throat. In his fury, the Raptor’s Nostraman suffered similarly to Vorasha’s. He felt saliva, thick and sticky, stringing between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

  Through his preysight, the wide corridor blurred into a world of tremulous greys. Even the bodies around him were bleached of detail, little more than vague shapes in the colourless nuance. Only when the enemy came around the corner did life and movement flicker through his eye lenses; jagged flashes of white against the dullness. Many of the Eighth Legion rigged their helms to track by heat, or to home in on movement. Lucoryphus of the Bleeding Eyes preferred to do things his own way. He tracked by the visualisation of sound. The humanoid flickers painting over his eyes were formed from the percussion of footsteps and heartbeats, strengthened by voices and the crack of gunfire.

  He met them with a shrieking charge of his own, drawing his weapons as his thrusters lifted him off the ground.

  Talos picked up the severed head by its hair, ignoring the pissing trickle of its hewn neck. His blow hadn’t been clean enough, and the stump wasn’t cauterised by the power sword’s chop—when the woman’s head rolled from its perch, it was still free to bleed. Her body was an ungainly rug of tan flesh and twisted robes, sprawled across the floor.

  He was no judge of these things—and the dead woman’s slack-jawed, eye-rolled expression hardly made a judgement easier—but she seemed to have been attractive. Using the memento’s hair, he tied it to one of the chains at his waist. The head thumped and bumped against the skulls already bound there. More blood seeped down the Night Lord’s thigh and knee guard. He paid it no heed.

  He rolled another body over with the edge of his boot. The young man’s face gazed up at the ceiling, seeing through his murderer. Talos was turning away when his retinal display gave the tiniest flicker. Tilting his head, he looked back down at the dead man. A heartbeat?

  A blood bubble burst at the corner of the serf’s closed lips. Ah, so he still breathed. Not dead after all.

  “You,” Talos told him, “have earned yourself a place of honour.” He hauled the dying man across the room, dragging him by the ankle, their trail marked by a glossy arterial smear along the stone floor. Slaying these menials granted little joy, at least not to the prophet, beyond a short thrill of a successful hunt each time he cleansed another chamber or corridor of their lives. He was wondering again how his brothers were faring, when footfalls outside the chamber stole his attention.

  Talos whirled, bolter up and aiming at the doorway. Uzas lowered his own weapons—the gladius and chainaxe were both burnished with slick red.

  “Brother,” Uzas greeted him. “Such hunting. Such prey. The blood-stink is almost enough to drown the senses.”

  Talos lowered his own weapon, though not immediately.

  “What do you plan to do with that?” Uzas gestured with his axe at the dying man.

  “He was just about to help me make a blood condor.”

  “Few still alive in this subdistrict…” Uzas was swaying slightly, though Talos doubted his brother was aware of it. “No sense in making a blood condor. I killed many, Cyrion killed many. No one left alive to see it.”

  Talos let the ankle drop. With a gentility born of inattention, he crushed the man’s throat beneath his heel. All the while, he watched Uzas in the doorway. “Where is Cyrion?”

  Uzas didn’t answer.

  “Where is Cyrion?”

  “Gone. Not here. I saw him before.”

  “How long ago?”

  “We killed together for a while. Then he left to go alone. He hates me. I saw him strangling, and cutting, and eating the dead. Then he left to go alone.”

  Talos snorted, the breathy, grunted challenge of a baited predator. “I have something to ask you,” he said. “Something important. I need you to focus on my words, brother.”

  Uzas stopped swaying. His chainaxe stuttered at random intervals, as the Night Lord’s finger twitched on the trigger. “Ask.”

  “The Void-born’s father. The crew found him dead. These last weeks, I believed it was the deed of nameless members of the old crew. But it wasn’t, was it?”

  Uzas barked out something close to a cough. Whatever it was, it wasn’t an answer.

  “Why did you do it, Uzas?”

  “Do what?”

  Talos’ voice showed nothing of anger, or even resignation. His tone was as neutral and plain as the dead rock remnants of their home world. “I know you can hear me. I know you’re in there.”

  Uzas let the chainaxe whirr for several seconds. At last, he shook his head. “Mortals die, sometimes. I am not always to blame.” He turned to look down the corridor. “I go to hunt.” And he did, without another word.

  The sirens still rang. Across the fortress-monastery now, the Claws were beginning to turn the lowest chambers into charnel houses, shrieking, roaring, doing everything they could to draw attention to themselves.

  Talos stared at the empty doorway for several seconds, trying to decide if the conversation with Uzas was over.

  With a murderer’s grin, he decided it wasn’t.

  Xarl didn’t share his brothers’ idiotic pleasure at being tasked with a duty so devoid of glory. To haunt the fortress’ lower levels and butcher the indentured servants was one thing—someone had to be given that lamentable duty—but for First Claw to be ordered to do it was quite another.

  He mused on this as he cleaned a meat clog from his chainsword’s mechanics. This one was bad enough to jam the damn weapon, but given the harvest of life he’d reaped around him, it was to be expected. Seventeen Chapter serfs lay in pieces, spread over the corridor. Xarl couldn’t grasp the mindset that allowed unaugmented humans to charge at him with nothing more than solid-shot pistols and knives, but that was ignorance he could easily live with. Evidently, those who could understand such things just ended up dead. Truly, not the most useful knowledge, then.

  Distraction. The word itself was almost a curse. The Claws will spread throughout the fortress-monastery, the Exalted had ordained in its high and mighty drawl, serving as distractions to allow the Bleeding Eyes to infiltrate the generatorum.

  And Talos just took it. He’d stood there, nodding his head, while the Bleeding Eyes were tasked with taking the prize.

  Xarl shook his head at the memory. “I don’t like this,” he said aloud.

  Mercutian had forgone his heavy bolter in favour of a simple chainsword. “That can only be the fortieth time you’ve said so.”

  The two had crossed paths before the alarms started ringing, both chasing humans through the catacombs of this immense and loathsome fortress. Mercutian admitted he’d tracked Xarl’s rampage through the hallways, hoping to link up with Talos.

  Xarl’s blade restarted, sprinkling blood from its wet teeth. “You’re usually the miserable one. It’s not like you to be so sanguine.”

  “I am far from sanguine, but anything is better than being on the ship. And here, at least, we can hear the screams.” He seemed somehow abashed by the confession. “We’ve been out of battle for too long. I needed this. I needed to know we were still fighting the war.”

  Xarl’s two-handed sword cycled down, idling at the ready. “Fighting the war. You even sound like Talos now.”

  Mercutian reacted to Xarl’s tone in subtle, telling ways. His blade rose slightly, and his helm lowered into a glare. “And what of it?”

  The other warrio
r chuckled. “It’s bad enough with him whining about faded glories and the Legion’s demise. If you commit to his delusions about a noble past that never happened, I’ll kill you myself in the name of mercy.”

  Xarl ventured down the corridor, beneath the skeletal arches of dark basalt that rose to the ceiling. Mercutian followed, ill at ease. He considered, though only briefly, plunging his sword through the back of Xarl’s neck. Such treachery was beneath him, but the temptation was not. Xarl was a vicious soul, despite the trust Talos placed in him. The prophet considered him his most reliable brother, but Mercutian had always believed Xarl reeked of betrayals yet to come.

  The thought of murdering his brother triggered a grimmer one: how many times had Xarl thought to do the same thing to him? He knew he wouldn’t like that answer. Some questions didn’t need to be asked.

  As they walked, the sirens continued their plaintive whine around them, singing of excitement up in the higher levels.

  Xarl’s mood soured as he passed empty prayer chambers, bare of furnishing and even barer of prey.

  “Answer me something,” he demanded, apropos of nothing.

  Mercutian kept turning to watch for any approaches from the rear. The corridor, replete with its mutilated inhabitants, remained as silent as the tomb they’d made of it.

  “As you wish,” he said quietly.

  “When was this grand and noble era that Talos describes? I was there, as were you. I fought in the Thramas Crusade, beating myself bloody against the Angels in Black. I was there when we pacified 66:12. I was there when Malcharion executed the king of that backwater pisshole, Ryle, and we broadcast his daughter’s screams for three days and three nights, until his army threw down their arms. I remember nothing of glory. The glory came in the decades after Terra, when we finally slipped the Imperial leash. Our father was honest then—we crusaded because we were strong, and the enemy was weak. Their fear tasted fine, and the galaxy bled when we struck. So when, brother? When was this golden age?”

  Mercutian looked back at the other Night Lord. “It’s perspective, Xarl. What’s wrong with you? The venom in your voice borders on wrath.”

  “Talos.” Xarl injected the word with acid. “I wonder lately, just how far he can fall into his own ignorance. He wearies me. If he wishes to lie to himself, then he may do so, but I cannot take another lecture about a noble Legion that never existed.”

  “I fail to understand why this anger surfaces now.” Mercutian stopped walking. Xarl turned, slowly, his voice brought low by ugly emotion.

  “Because after this moronic siege, we will fight the battle that matters: the Echo of Damnation. And what happens then? Talos will begin his new duties. The Exalted wants to rebuild our forces. Who will control that gradual resurrection? Talos. Who will indoctrinate the newbloods after implanting them with gene-seed? Talos. Who will fill their minds with sour lies about how the Emperor demanded that we, the great and glorious Eighth Legion, became the Imperial weapon of fear that no other Legion dared to be? Talos.”

  Xarl gave an uncharacteristic sigh. “He will breed a generation of fools that share in his delusion. They will rise through our ranks, championing a cause that never existed, inheritors to a legacy that was never real.”

  Mercutian said nothing. Xarl glanced at him. “You feel as he does, don’t you?”

  “I was there as well, Xarl. We were the weapon humanity needed us to be. I cherish those memories, when entire worlds would surrender the moment they learned it was the Eighth Legion in orbit. Whether the Emperor demanded it of the primarch, we may never know. But we were that weapon, brother. I take pride in that.”

  Xarl shook his head and carried on walking. “I am surrounded by fools.”

  XIX

  MERCENARIES

  The Exalted leaned back in its throne, listening to the sounds of the strategium filtering through a veil of distracted thoughts. Around it, the sickening orchestra of human existence played out in its entirety: the grotesque, wet sound of moisture-laden respiration; the rustling hisses of clothing against flesh; the sibilant dryness of whispered words, spoken in the eternally misguided belief that the Legion masters couldn’t hear.

  Vandred had fallen blessedly silent again, and taken his lingering emotions with him. The Exalted only prayed it was a permanent oblivion this time, but held out little hope for such beneficence. The host body’s former soul was likely folding back in on itself, hiding in the deepest recesses of their shared mind in the futile hope of making another attack.

  Such desperation.

  The Exalted let its gaze slide to the occulus, where a turbulent moon of methane oceans turned in the void. The moon was a shield, an aegis against the fortress-monastery’s broken scanners somehow managing to detect them in orbit. Rather than linger in the upper atmosphere and risk discovery, the Exalted erred on the side of caution, withdrawing the Covenant to a safe distance after releasing the Legion’s drop-pods.

  Musing in the calm before the storm, the daemon immersed itself within its own mind, seeking any memory-scent that might lead it to Vandred. When it discovered nothing, not even the ghost of a trace, it turned its amused senses back to the world below.

  This was a far more difficult sending, requiring protracted, painful focus. The Exalted bared its fanged maw, acidic spittle drizzling from its gums.

  Lucoryphus, it pulsed.

  Maruc cleaned the rifle with practised ease, vaguely listening to Septimus answering Octavia’s endless questions.

  As far as gifts went, the lasgun was a considerate one; the weapon of a Guardsman, for someone who’d always wished to be in the Guard, but he wasn’t sure exactly what Septimus expected him to do with it. His eyes were bad, and that was the beginning and end of the whole situation. He doubted he could hit anything past twenty metres or so, and he wasn’t going to be earning any sharpshooter medals any time soon.

  Hound sat close to Maruc, clutching a dirty shotgun in his lap, his hands wrapped in even dirtier bandages. The former station worker couldn’t tell where Hound was “looking” exactly, but if the angle of his face was anything to go by, the little blind man was watching Septimus and Octavia, brazenly doing what Maruc feigned disinterest in.

  Meanwhile, Septimus and Octavia were doing what Septimus and Octavia always did best.

  The seventh of Talos’ slaves didn’t look up from his work, tending to the engraved details on Lord Mercutian’s heavy bolter. The file in his fingers made soft rasping sounds as it cleaned minor corrosion from the curving runes etched into the metal.

  “Our Claws are nothing but distractions, moving upwards from the lowest levels.” Still, the file scratched. “Vilamus has thousands of human defenders, but the Claws will go through them like sharks cutting the sea. The only concern is that the Marines Errant still have a skeleton garrison in place. Although they’ll be unprepared for a strike at their home world’s heart, they’re still Imperial Space Marines, and they’ll defend their monastery to the death. They have to be led away from the main objectives for this to work. That’s where our Claws come in. They’ll cleave through the monastery’s population, drawing the Marines Errants’ ire.”

  Octavia, with nothing to do since they’d arrived in the Vila system, was lounging around Maruc and Septimus’ workshop. She flicked a worthless Nostraman copper coin across the room. Hound shuffled after it to pick it up and return it to her.

  This was a game she played fairly often. Hound didn’t seem to mind.

  “What about the ones who hiss and spit?” she asked. “With the…” She curled her fingers into claws.

  Septimus stopped to sip a cup of lukewarm water. “You mean the Bleeding Eyes. The only thing that matters is shutting down the secondary generatorum. That’s what the Bleeding Eyes have been ordered to do. Once they disable that, the orbital defence batteries will fall offline. Then we attack. The Covenant, and the rest of Huron’s fleet, moves into the atmosphere. The siege can begin.”

  “What if the Marines Errant attack the B
leeding Eyes, and not the Claws?”

  “They won’t.” He glanced up to read her expression, checking to see if she was merely trying to be difficult and contrary with this interrogation. For her part, she looked curious enough, but he couldn’t be sure. “They won’t,” he continued, “because the Claws will be attracting attention to themselves, while the Bleeding Eyes are sneaking in undetected. Have you seen the size of it on the hololithic? I’ve seen smaller hive cities. It’s unlikely any of our warriors will see an Imperial Space Marine until the second phase of the siege. Even the distractions are likely unnecessary, but Talos is trying to be cautious. They need everyone to survive for what comes after.”

  Octavia mused for a few moments. “I almost feel guilty,” she admitted. “If the ship was easier to fly, I’d not have wrecked it in the warp’s tides, and we wouldn’t need to take part in this madness.”

  Septimus switched to a different scraper, scratching at another set of runes. “The Claws don’t care. The siege is meaningless, and they will do as little as possible while they’re down there. Even in the siege, watch how the Covenant behaves. The Exalted will save almost all of the ship’s ammunition for what comes after. Talos doesn’t care about anything except retaking the Echo of Damnation.”

  “But we’ve only just managed to build a crew large enough to run one ship. Why do they want two?”

  “Why do they want anything?” Septimus shrugged, looking over at her. “For skulls. For the fact they find it amusing to shed an enemy’s blood. For the simple act of revenge, heedless of cost and consequence. I obey them, Octavia. I don’t try to understand them.”