Hammer and Bolter Year One
Page 42
“I am Captain Quetzal Carthach, Crimson Consul,’ the Alpha Legion Space Marine told him, ‘and I have come to accept your unconditional surrender.’
‘The only unconditional thing you’ll get from me, Captain Carthach, is my unending revulsion and hatred.’
‘You talk of ends, Chapter Master,’ the Legionnaire said calmly. ‘Has Guilliman blinded you so that you cannot see your own. The end of your Chapter. The end of your living custodianship, your shred of that sanctimonious bastard’s seed. I wanted to come here and meet you. So you could go to your grave knowing that it was the Alpha Legion that had beaten you; the Alpha Legion who are eradicating Guilliman’s legacy one thousand of his sons at a time; the Alpha Legion who are not only superior strategists but also superior Space Marines.’
Artegall’s lips curled with cold fury.
‘Never...’
‘Perhaps, Chapter Master, you think there’s a chance for your seed to survive: for future sons of Carcharias to avenge you?’ The Alpha Legion giant sat back down in Artegall’s throne. ‘The Tenth was mine before you even recruited them – as was the Ninth Company before them: you must know that now. I lent you their minds but not their true allegiance: a simple phrase was all that was needed to bring them back to the Alpha Legion fold. The Second and Fourth were easy: that was a mere administrative error, holding the Celebrants over at Nedicta Secundus and drawing the Crimson Consuls to the waiting xenos deathtrap that was Phaethon IV.’
Artegall listened to the Alpha Legionnaire honour himself with the deaths of his Crimson Consul brothers. Listened, while the Black Legion Space Marine looked down the spiked muzzle of his bolter at the back of the Chapter Master’s head.
‘The Seventh fell fittingly at the hands of their brothers, foolishly defending your colourfully-named fortress-monastery from a threat that was within rather than without. The Eighth, well, Captain Vladivoss took care of those in the Sarcus Reaches – and now the good captain has earned his prize. Szekle,’ the Alpha Legion Space Marine addressed the zombified Chaos Space Marine. ‘The Apothecarion is now in our hands. You may help yourself to the Crimson Consuls’ remaining stocks of gene-seed. Feel free to extract progenoids from loyalists who fought in our name. Fear not, they will not obstruct you. In fact, the completion of the procedure is their signal to turn their weapons on themselves. Captain Vladivoss, you may then return to Lord Abaddon with my respects and your prize – to help replenish the Black Legion’s depleted numbers in the Eye of Terror.’
Vladivoss bowed, while Szekle fidgeted with dead-eyed anticipation.
‘Oh, and captain,’ Carthach instructed as Artegall was pushed forwards towards the throne, ‘leave one Legionnaire, please.’
With Captain Vladivoss, his depraved Apothecary and their Chaos Space Marine sentry descending through the trapdoor on the marble platform with Bohemond and Faulk’s bodies, Carthach came to regard the Chapter Master once again.
‘The Revenant Rex was pure genius. That I even admit to myself. What I couldn’t have hoped for was the deployment of your First Company Terminator veterans. That made matters considerably easier down the line. You should receive some credit for that, Chapter Master Artegall,’ Carthach grinned nastily.
A rumble like distant thunder rolled through the floor beneath Artegall’s feet. Carthach seemed suddenly excited. ‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked. The monster didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he activated the controls in the bone armrest of Artegall’s throne. The vaulted ceiling of the Tactical Chancelorium – which formed the pinnacle of the Command Tower – began to turn and unscrew, revealing a circular aperture in the roof that grew with the corkscrew motion of the Tower top.
The Alpha Legionnaire shook his head in what could have been mock disappointment.
‘Missed it: that was your Slaughterhorn’s defence lasers destroying the strike cruisers you ordered back under their protection. Poetic. Or perhaps just tactically predictable. Ah, now look at this.’
Carthach pointed at the sky and with the Chaos Space Marine’s bolter muzzle still buried in the back of his skull, Artegall felt compelled to look up also. To savour the reassuring bleakness of his home world’s sky for what might be the last time.
‘There they are, see?’
Artegall watched a meteorite shower in the sky above: a lightshow of tiny flashes. ‘I brought the Crimson Tithe back to finish off any remaining frigates or destroyers. Don’t want surviving Crimson Consuls running to the Aurora Chapter with my strategies and secrets; the Auroras and their share of Guilliman’s seed may be my next target. Anyway, the beautiful spectacle you see before you is no ordinary celestial phenomenon. This is the Crimson Consuls Sixth Company coming home, expelled from the Crimson Tithe’s airlocks and falling to Carcharias. The battle-barge I need – another gift for the Warmaster. It has the facilities on board to safely transport your seed to the Eye of Terror, where it is sorely needed for future Black Crusades. Who knows, perhaps one of your line will have the honour of being the first to bring the Warmaster’s justice to Terra itself? In Black Legion armour and under a traitor’s banner, of course.’
Artegall quaked silent rage, the Chapter Master’s eyes dropping and fixing on a spot on the wall behind the throne.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Carthach informed him. ‘As I have all along, Crimson Consul. You’re pinning your hopes on Captain Borachio. Stationed in the Damocles Gulf with the Third and Fifth Companies… Did you find my reports convincing?’
Artegall’s eyes widened.
‘Captain Borachio and his men have been dead for two years, Elias.’
Artegall shook his head.
‘The Crimson Consuls are ended. I am Borachio,’ the Alpha revealed, soaking up the Chapter Master’s doom, ‘and Carthach … and Alpharius.’ The captain bent down to execute the final, astrotelepathically communicated move on Artegall’s beautifully carved Regicide board. Blind Man’s Mate.
Artegall’s legs faltered. As the Crimson Consul fell to his knees before Quetzal Carthach and the throne, Artegall mouthed a disbelieving, ‘Why?’
‘Because we play the Long Game, Elias…’ the Alpha Legionnaire told him.
Artegall hoped that the Black Legion’s attention span didn’t extend half as far as their Alpha Legion compatriots. The Space Marine threw his head back, cutting his scalp against the bolter’s muzzle. The weapon smacked the Chaos Space Marine in the throat – the Black Legion savage still staring up into the sky, watching the Crimson Consuls burn in the upper atmosphere.
Artegall surged away from the stunned Chaos Space Marine and directly at Carthach. The Alpha Legion Marine snarled at the sudden, suicidal surprise of it all, snatching for his pistol.
Artegall awkwardly changed direction, throwing himself around the other side of the throne. The Black Legion Space Marine’s bolter fire followed him, mauling the throne and driving the alarmed Carthach even further back. Artegall sprinted for the wall, stopping and feeling for the featureless trigger that activated the door of the Chapter Master’s private armoury. As the Chaos Space Marine’s bolter chewed up the Chancelorium wall, Artegall activated the trigger and slid the hidden door to one side. He felt hot agony as the Chaos Space Marine’s bolter found its mark and two rounds crashed through his ruined armour.
Returned to his knees, the Chapter Master fell in through the darkness of the private armoury and slid the reinforced door shut from the inside. In the disappearing crack of light between the door and wall, Artegall caught sight of Quetzal Carthach’s face once more dissolve into a wolfish grin.
Throwing himself across the darkness of the armoury floor, the felled Crimson Consul heaved himself arm over agonising arm through the presentation racks of artificer armour: racks from which serfs would ordinarily select the individual plates and adornments and dress the Chapter Master at his bequest. Artegall didn’t have time for such extravagance. Crawling for the rear of the armoury, he searched for the only item that could bring him peace. The only item
seemingly designed for the single purpose of ending Quetzal Carthach, the deadliest in the Chapter’s long history of deadly enemies. Artegall’s master-crafted boltgun.
Reaching for the exquisite weapon, its crimson-painted adamantium finished in gold and decorated with gemstones from Carcharias’s rich depths, Artegall faltered. The bolt-rounds had done their worst and the Chapter Master’s fingers failed to reach the boltgun in its cradle. Suddenly there was sound and movement in the darkness. The hydraulic sigh of bionic appendages thumping into the cold marble with every step.
‘Baldwin!’ Artegall cried out. ‘My weapon, Baldwin… the boltgun.’
The Chamber Castellan slipped the beautiful bolter from its cradle and stomped around to his master. ‘Thank the primarch you’re here,’ Artegall blurted.
In the oily blackness of the private armoury, the Chapter Master heard the thunk of the priming mechanism. Artegall tensed and then fell limp. He wasn’t being handed the weapon: it was being pointed at him through the gloom. Whatever had possessed the minds of his Neophyte recruits in the Carcharian underhive had also had time to worm its way into the Chamber Castellan, whose responsibility it was to accompany the recruitment parties on their expeditions. Without the training or spiritual fortitude of an Astartes, Baldwin’s mind had been vulnerable. He had become a Regicide piece on a galactic board, making his small but significant move, guided by an unknown hand. Artegall was suddenly glad of the darkness. Glad that he couldn’t see the mask of Baldwin’s kindly face frozen in murderous blankness.
Closing his eyes, Elias Artegall, Chapter Master and last of the Crimson Consuls, wished the game to end.
Virtue’s Reward
Darius Hinks
‘In the city of his sisters he will return to us on wings of fire.’
– The Cantos of Maccadamnus. Verse CXXVI
‘What was that?’ said Frederick with a sniff, plucking a thick clot of blood from his nose.
‘What?’
‘I thought I heard something.’
He leant unsteadily on the shattered doorframe, still weak from the fight, and looked up and down the street. Like most of the city, it had seen better days. The colourful stalls of Hauptmarkt Strasse’s famous market were long gone. All that remained were a few pitiful-looking shreds of awning hanging from the blackened timbers.
‘I can’t hear nuthin’,’ Otto replied from within, straining and huffing as he tried to shift the corpse.
‘Leave that for a minute, you idiot. I heard something.’ He squinted, trying to see through the perpetual gloom, but his head was still spinning from the blow that had shattered his nasal bone and the darkness seemed sickeningly animated. ‘Sigmar,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘Who am I kidding? If there is anything out there, I’d rather not know.’ He lowered his lantern with a shudder. ‘Probably nothing,’ he called out, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him and, as he stepped back into the theatre, Otto eyed him suspiciously.
The impressive bulk of the creature still lay sprawled across the stage with a stream of blood flowing slowly from its monstrous head.
‘Haven’t you moved it yet?’
‘Maybe if you helped,’ gasped Otto as he attempted to turn the body over with a broken rafter.
Frederick ignored the request and shook his head slowly. ‘Have you looked at the thing? Where else could spawn such a horror? Is it man… or beast?’ He knelt to examine it closer. The massive, pockmarked body was vaguely human in shape, but the grotesque head was almost completely bovine. Gnarled horns twisted from beneath its matted scalp and where its feet should have been there were two huge, battered hooves. Frederick studied the body for a few moments in silence, then laughed suddenly, kicking a lifeless arm that jutted out from beneath it. ‘Reinhard may have been a worthless layabout, but I’ve got to give him credit where it’s due. I thought we’d met our match, but he showed it. That blow to the head must have killed it. What a catch!’
Otto turned and grasped him roughly by his jacket, his eyes feverish. ‘If we don’t go soon we’ll be the catch.’ He looked around at the ruined theatre. Rows of charred stalls and boxes reared up all around them, reaching out of the darkness like claws towards the vaulted ceiling of the amphitheatre. The heat of the cataclysm had warped the furniture into a tableau of sinister shapes and Otto had the unnerving feeling that not all of the seats were empty. ‘We need to take what we came for and get out of here, before…’ he paused to scratch nervously at his scalp, ‘well, before anything happens.’
‘All right, all right,’ Frederick replied in a soothing voice, patting Otto gently on the shoulder, ‘let’s shift this brute then.’ They grasped the monster by its broad shoulders. ‘On the count of three: one, two, three.’ There was an exhalation of stale breath as they rolled the beast off the flattened remains of their former partner.
‘That,’ said Frederick, stooping down beside the creature’s face, ‘is beautiful.’
Otto knelt down beside him with a sigh of pleasure and clapped his hands together like a child.
Hanging around the thing’s neck was a stone – about the size of a plum, and glowing faintly with an inner fire. Frederick’s eyes widened as he stretched a trembling hand out towards it. ‘After weeks of crawling around this stinking nightmare of a city, we finally have it. A piece of weirdstone. Can you believe it Otto?’ Then his hand froze, and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You must have heard it that time,’ he said, looking back towards the door.
Otto didn’t reply, but nodded his head slowly, and as he followed Frederick out onto the street the colour was draining from his face.
‘There,’ Frederick said with a note of panic in his voice, ‘what’s that?’ As they watched with growing horror, a shadow across the street elongated, split into three and moved slowly towards them.
They readied their weapons and Otto stepped nervously back towards the theatre. ‘What is it?’
As the shadows moved nearer, they gradually solidified until the men saw that they were actually three hooded women – draped with chains and spikes – but women nonetheless. ‘Thank Sigmar,’ said Frederick, exhaling with relief and lowering his sword. He began to laugh. ‘Now what have we found?’
‘Absolution,’ replied the woman nearest to him, and slammed a two-handed warhammer into his face.
Frederick’s head snapped backwards with a click, and he dropped heavily to the ground.
Otto stood, frozen with shook, then howled with pain as a steel whip licked across his face. His eyes ran down his cheeks like tears and an agonising blackness engulfed him.
‘I’ll pray for you,’ said a soft voice in his ear, as a quick blade at his throat finally released him from the City of the Damned.
‘Gutless worms,’ said novice sister Wolff, spitting on one of the dead mercenaries. ‘I won’t pray for them.’
Von Stahl looked over at the young girl. Beneath her hood, her pale aristocratic features could just be seen, and as she rifled through the corpse’s pockets her face was twisted in a sneer of disdain.
‘They barely seem worth the effort,’ – Wolff gave up her search with a sigh – ‘and they don’t have so much as a speck of weirdstone on them.’
‘You didn’t seem to think them so gutless a minute ago,’ said von Stahl quietly.
‘What do you mean by that?’ replied Wolff.
The third woman – novice sister Elsbeth Faust – stifled a laugh.
‘Well, you seemed happy for me and Elsbeth to waste our energies on them, but I couldn’t seem to spot you when the fighting started.’
‘Fight? I’d hardly call that a fight.’ Wolff’s eyes were wide with emotion as she stepped towards von Stahl. ‘If you want to waste yourself on such worthless prey as this’ – she spat on the corpses again – ‘then go ahead, but I haven’t forgotten why we’re here. There is the small matter of a trial to be considered.’ Her face was now almost purple. ‘Anyway, how dare you accuse me of cowardice? Remember your place, wastrel.’
Stepping into the theatre was like stepping into a fractured mirror of the past. Broken marionettes lay scattered across the stage and faded, peeling faces smiled sadly down from the shattered balconies.
‘I came here as a child,’ said Elsbeth as they picked their way through the wreckage, ‘to hear Giotto Vasari. It was beautiful. I remember–’
Von Stahl silenced her with a wave of the hand. They carried no torches and the darkness was almost complete, but she thought she could see movement on the stage. As they crept silently through the shadows, each taking a different path through the stalls, von Stahl noticed Wolff nervously lagging behind again and frowned. Is she ready for this, she wondered?
The dusty boards creaked loudly as they stepped out onto the stage, and von Stahl winced at the noise. Then she stooped to examine something. Sprawled before the broken footlights lay the corpse of a man. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘he seems to have been crushed somehow.’ Wolff and Faust crouched next to her. ‘It’s as though a great weight has fallen on him.’ She prodded his chest with a grimace. ‘His bones have been completely destroyed.’
‘It’s another Marienburger,’ whispered Wolff, noting the man’s flamboyant outfit. ‘More gold than sense, the lot of ’em.’
Von Stahl raised her eyebrows.
‘What?’ replied Wolff, raising her voice a little and blushing again, ‘a blood-tie to Lady Magritte doesn’t lower me to the level of these dandies.’
Von Stahl ignored the petulant tone in her voice, and simply put a finger to her mouth. ‘Look,’ she whispered and gestured to the area of stage next to the body. ‘Something was there. The dust has been disturbed. And all that blood didn’t come from our friend here.’