N’Kalo sat up. The children squealed and scattered. He was in a barracks or communal living space, full of empty beds. He could not see his weapons, but his armour had been left on.
He touched a gauntlet to his face as he realised his helmet had been removed. No wonder the children had fled. The burns he had suffered long ago, which he had chosen to hide under the knightly helm of his Chapter’s commanders, must have made him look even more of a monster than any other Space Marine.
‘Commander N’Kalo,’ said a too-familiar voice. N’Kalo jumped to his feet as the mutant from the forest entered.
‘Where am I? What of my brothers?’ demanded N’Kalo.
‘They are safe. I cannot permit them their liberty yet. They will go free soon, as will you.’
The mutant Space Marine was armed with his power axe and a bolt pistol, and N’Kalo had not been a match for him when he had his power sword. Unarmed, he did not fancy his chances against the mutant. Better to talk and wait for the right time than to throw his life away trying to fight here, when he was bound to fail. ‘And you did not answer my question. What are you?’
The mutant shrugged. It was seemingly too human a gesture for such a grotesque creature. ‘I am a Space Marine, like you. Well, not exactly like you.’
‘You are a witch.’
‘I am, if you prefer that term. I am Librarian and Chapter Master Sarpedon of the Soul Drinkers. And we are similar in more than just bearing the arms of the Adeptus Astartes. We are both, Commander N’Kalo, students of justice as much as of war.’
‘Justice? My brothers have fallen at your hand!’
‘Fallen, but not dead. My Apothecary is seeing to them. Two have bolter wounds and another was felled by a chainsword. Though they will not fight for a while, the three will survive. They are being held at ground level, below us, watched over by my battle-brothers. Sergeant Borasi gave us a great deal of trouble. He should be commended for his spirit, misplaced though it is. He owes us several broken bones.’
N’Kalo had heard of the Soul Drinkers. Like the Iron Knights, they were successors to the Imperial Fists, with Rogal Dorn as their Primarch. N’Kalo had never met any of the Soul Drinkers but he recalled they were famed for their prowess in boarding actions and that they had won laurels during the battle for the Ecclesiarchal Palace during the Wars of Apostasy. N’Kalo and Sarpedon should have been brothers, not just as Space Marines but as sons of Dorn.
‘Why do you oppose us?’ said N’Kalo. ‘We are here doing the Emperor’s will!’
‘The Imperium’s will,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘Not the Emperor’s.’
‘And I suppose you, a mutant, one who has raised arms against my brethren, is the one doing the Emperor’s will?’
‘Looking at it that way,’ said Sarpedon, ‘I can understand your doubts. I do not believe, however, that you know the full story of what is happening on Molikor.’
‘And you are going to tell me?’ spat N’Kalo.
‘No. I am going to show you.’
N’Kalo saw his brothers guarded by a ring of Soul Drinkers. The Iron Knights had been disarmed but, as Sarpedon had said, few of them were hurt. A Soul Drinkers Apothecary was operating on the wounded leg of one sedated Iron Knight – all the rest were conscious and, led by Borasi, started up a chorus of plaudits for their commander and insults hurled at Sarpedon as soon as they saw N’Kalo. A couple of the other Soul Drinkers were mutants, although not as dramatically malformed as Sarpedon. One had an enormous mutated hand, and N’Kalo wondered what other mutations were hidden beneath their armour.
It was a strange feeling to be led, not quite a captive and not quite an equal, through the Eshkeen forest by Sarpedon. N’Kalo’s soldierly mind sized up every chance to attack Sarpedon, drag him down to the ground or stab him in the back with a fortuitous weapon snatched from a nearby Eshkeen, but Sarpedon had his own warrior instinct and every opportunity was gone before it began. If he had a weapon, N’Kalo thought, he could kill Sarpedon and, if not complete his mission, at least rid the Imperium of this enemy – but even with a bolter or a power sword in his hands, could he beat Sarpedon when he had been defeated before?
The Eshkeen watched curiously as N’Kalo moved through their domain. They walked paths almost hidden in the forest, avoiding traps and dead ends sown liberally throughout the forest. In places N’Kalo could see the waters of the ocean between the roots underfoot, and glimpse Eshkeen walking there, too, wading through the waters to fish or keep watch over the coastal approaches. In other places the ground underfoot was solid, with tunnels and bunkers dug into it. The Eshkeen themselves wore patchworks of body armour and scraps of captured uniform, the most colourful belonging to those who looked the most experienced and deadly. The right to sport the captured garb of the enemy was evidently a privilege that had to be earned.
In the heart of the stronghold was a fortification of stone instead of wood, concentric circles of jagged battlements forming a huge granite maw around a pit in the centre. Sarpedon followed a complex path through the fortifications, leading N’Kalo through them even though he could probably have scrambled over them with ease thanks to his arachnid limbs. The trees did not grow here so an artificial canopy had been stretched out overhead, a lattice of vines and ropes woven with leaves, to keep it hidden. There were no Eshkeen keeping watch among the fortifications, but many of them had gathered in the trees around the clearing to watch the two Space Marines descending to the pit.
‘Like you,’ said Sarpedon, ‘we heeded the distress call from the Parliaments of Molikor. But we have learned to be circumspect. A little more suspicious, perhaps, of our own Emperor-fearing citizens. We arrived here without informing the Parliaments of our presence, and spoke instead to the Eshkeen. When we hear only one side of the story, I find we inevitably miss out on the more interesting half.’
The pit was a shaft lined with carved stones, forming a spiral frieze winding down into the darkness. The frieze depicted an endless tangle of human bodies, contorted and wounded, missing limbs or eyes, faces drawn in pain. The Eshkeen who had sculpted it, countless generations ago, had used a stylised technique that removed the subtleties of the human form and left only the pain. Winding wooden stairs provided a way down into the shaft.
‘When Imperial settlers were brought to Molikor,’ explained Sarpedon as he and N’Kalo descended the shaft, ‘they sent out explorers to tame the marshland and forge a path to the ocean. They hoped to build a port on this coast and spread to the planet’s other continents. They never managed it, mainly because the land was too marshy and the Eshkeen rather unfriendly. But one of them did find this.’
N’Kalo made note of Sarpedon’s words with one half of his mind. The other half was trying to work out how he could turn on Sarpedon. They were alone now, and Sarpedon’s fellow Soul Drinkers could not come to his aid. If N’Kalo got behind Sarpedon, and if he was quick enough, he could throw Sarpedon off the staircase down the shaft. But the fall would not be guaranteed to kill him – indeed, N’Kalo could now see the bottom of the shaft strewn with leaves and broken branches, and a Space Marine would barely be inconvenienced by the distance. He could grab Sarpedon’s neck in a choke, but his aegis collar would make that difficult and besides, a Space Marine could go a long time before his three lungs gave out. By then Sarpedon could have climbed up the shaft and brought N’Kalo to the Soul Drinkers to face retribution.
And perhaps most importantly, N’Kalo felt a truth in Sarpedon’s words. N’Kalo wanted to know what was hidden down here, what could cause a Space Marine, even a renegade one, to fight his brothers. So he held back and followed as Sarpedon reached the bottom of the shaft and headed down a tunnel that led away to one side.
This tunnel was also carved with images. Eyes and hands covered the walls, symbols of watching and warding. N’Kalo could hear, on the hot, damp breeze washing over him from the far end of the tunnel, the reedy strains of voices. They were screaming, hundreds of them, the sounds overlapping like the threads of
a tapestry.
A cavern opened up ahead, wet stone lit from beneath by a blood-red glow. The screaming got louder. N’Kalo tensed, unsure of what was ahead, one part of his brain still watching for a drop in Sarpedon’s guard.
‘Molikor,’ said Sarpedon, ‘has a curious relationship with its dead.’
The tunnel reached the threshold of a sudden drop. Beyond it was a cavern, as vast as an ocean, filled almost to the level of the tunnel entrance by a sea of writhing bodies.
N’Kalo was all but stunned by his first sight of it. The awfulness of it, the impossibility, seemed intent on prying his mind from his senses. The bodies were naked, men and women, all ages, the whole spectrum of shapes, sizes and skin tones. The glow was coming from their eyes, and from the wounds that wept bloody and fresh in their bodies. Many bore the scarring of the Eshkeen but there were countless others, from dozens of cultures.
‘Who are they?’ said N’Kalo.
‘Everyone who has ever died on Molikor,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘No one knows how far down it goes. When you die on Molikor, your body decays and is absorbed by the earth. Then it reforms here, vomited back up by the planet. Here they are, everyone this world has claimed since the Age of Strife.’
‘Why… why are you showing me this?’ said N’Kalo.
Sarpedon unholstered his bolt pistol. For a moment N’Kalo thought the Soul Drinker would turn on him, but instead Sarpedon held it handle-first towards N’Kalo. ‘Because I could not expect you to just take my word for it,’ said Sarpedon. ‘And besides, I haven’t shown you anything yet.’
The bodies heaved up, like a breaking wave. N’Kalo barely had time to close his hand around the bolt pistol before they were surging around him, a terrible flood of gasping limbs. N’Kalo saw they were not corpses, nor alive, but something else, reborn as they had been at the moment of death and filled with the same emotions – fear, anger, abandonment. Their screams were wordless torrents of pain. One wrapped its arms around N’Kalo, trying to force his head down – N’Kalo blasted it apart with a shot to the upper chest and it flowed past him, reforming in a burst of blood-coloured light.
Sarpedon grabbed N’Kalo’s free wrist. ‘Follow,’ he shouted above the screaming, and hauled N’Kalo off the edge of the drop and into the cavern.
It took a long time for the two Space Marines to forge their way through the dead of Molikor. Sarpedon’s arachnid limbs proved adept at opening up a tunnel through the writhing bodies, and their path was lit by the red glow of whatever energy animated these echoes of the dead. The screaming was muffled now, like the crashing of a distant ocean, with the occasional shriek reaching through. N’Kalo followed as Sarpedon burrowed on, winding a path downwards. N’Kalo contemplated shooting him with his own bolt pistol, but then he would be trapped in this ocean of bodies and he did not know if he would be able to climb out of it. And besides, he wanted to know what Sarpedon had to show him. That curiosity was a human emotion, not that of a Space Marine, but nevertheless it gripped N’Kalo now.
Sarpedon pulled back a final veil of bodies and revealed an opening, like an abscess, in the mass. It had formed around a spike of stone, a stalagmite, to which was chained another body.
This body was that of a male Imperial citizen, N’Kalo could tell that at first glance. He had a glowing, raw hole over one eye where a bionic had once been implanted, and the Imperial aquila had been tattooed on one shoulder. He was the only one of Molikor’s dead that N’Kalo had seen who was restrained in this way.
‘This,’ said Sarpedon, ‘is Manter Thyll. He was sent by the Parliaments of Molikor to explore the delta marshlands. He found the Eshkeen and bargained his way into the pit, to see what they were so intent on protecting. They thought when he saw this place, he would treat its protection as a sacred undertaking just like they did. But they were wrong.’
Sarpedon took a data-slate from the belt of his armour. N’Kalo hadn’t noticed it before, since his attention had been focussed on Sarpedon’s abhorrent mutations to the exclusion of such a detail.
‘This is the report he sent back to the Parliaments,’ said Sarpedon.
The image was of poor quality, only just recognisable as the face of the man chained to the rock. In life, Manter Thyll had combined an explorer’s ruggedness with a gentlemanly façade, his well-weathered face surmounted by a powdered periwig.
‘–the Eshkeen had guarded it for generations, my lords. And though at first appearance it was a horrible sight, yet upon closer examination and the questioning of my Eshkeen hosts I came to understand it is the greatest treasure this world possesses. They are not living beings, you see, but they are not dead. They do not age, they do not tire. They simply exist. Think, my lords! Think what a resource they could be! An endless source of brute labour! If they can be trained then all is well, if not then a simple system of electronics and interfaces would suffice to make them useful. I believe that the dead of Molikor are the most potent natural resource on this entire–’
Sarpedon paused the recording. N’Kalo stared dumbly for a few seconds at Thyll’s image, then at the man’s face.
‘He came back to bargain with the Eshkeen for access to the pit,’ said Sarpedon. ‘They knew what he wanted by then. They killed him.’
‘Did they chain his body here?’ said N’Kalo.
‘No. I did, so that I could show it to someone like you. What Thyll and the Parliamentarians did not realise, but what the Eshkeen have known for thousands of years, is that power like this cannot be tapped without consequences. The veil between realspace and the warp is thin here. The emotions of the dying find form in the warp and are cast back out into this pit. The ancestors of Molikor’s tribes knew it, and they sent their best warriors to guard the pit. They grew to be the Eshkeen. When the Imperium settled Molikor, the Parliamentarians learned of the pit and they decided they wanted it for themselves, without having any idea what it truly was.’
Sarpedon began to tear at the mass again, opening a path back up towards the surface. N’Kalo could only follow, conflicting emotions coursing through him. The immensity of what Sarpedon was saying, the concept of a world that regurgitated its dead as these mindless things, the claim that the Parliamentarians were the aggressors and that the Eshkeen were the only thing standing between Molikor and damnation – it weighed on him, and would not sit straight in his mind. Everything N’Kalo had believed about Molikor, everything he had assumed, was wrong.
The First Parliament of Molikor, the Father of Power, the Imperial Seat, the Font of Majesty, towered over the assembled councillors like a second set of heavens. The dome of the First Parliament was painted to resemble a sky, dramatic clouds backlit by golden sunlight echoing fanciful images of Terra’s own glories. The members of the First Parliament, drawn from the lesser parliaments of Molikor’s cities, were resplendent in the uniforms of the planet’s many militaries or the finery of their mercantile houses, wearing the symbol of the aquila to proclaim their loyalty to the Imperium.
Three thousand men and women were gathered beneath the First Parliament’s dome, the centremost place taken by Lord Speaker Vannarian Wrann. Wrann, as the mouthpiece of the First Parliament, was recognised as Molikor’s Imperial Governor. He was a sturdy and squat man, ermine-trimmed robes hanging off wide shoulders. He wore the massive gilded chain of his office around where his neck would have been had one existed between his barrel chest and shaven, glowering lump of a head. On the chain hung a silver aquila studded with diamonds and rubies, to match the fat gemstones on the rings he wore on his stubby fingers.
‘Men and women of the First Parliament!’ shouted Wrann. ‘You sons and daughters of the Imperial Will! We hereby recognise Commander N’Kalo of the Iron Knights!’
N’Kalo made his way down the aisle towards the centre of the dome. Every eye followed him. Jaded as they were by every honour and beautification Molikor could place before them, the sight of a Space Marine was something new to them. Those closest shuddered in fear as N’Kalo walked past, for even
in his knightly armour with its crests and laurels there was no mistaking that he was fundamentally a killing machine.
‘Honoured councillors of Molikor,’ began N’Kalo as he approached Wrann. ‘Many thanks for receiving me to the heart of your government. The Iron Knights, as you do, claim the will of the Emperor as their warrant to arms, and in this we are brethren beneath His sight.’
‘You are welcomed, Commander N’Kalo, and your brother Space Marines are granted all honours it is the First Parliament’s right to bestow. Truly you stand before us as saviours of our people, as deliverers of our citizens from the threats that have so gravely beset us.’ Wrann’s words were met with polite applause from the First Parliament’s members. ‘Do you come here to tell us that the rebellion has been quashed?’ he continued. ‘That the hateful Eshkeen will no longer plague our lands with their savagery, and that the Emperor’s rule shall continue on Molikor?’
N’Kalo removed his helm. In spite of the need to keep up appearances, many councillors could not help grimacing or even turning away at the sight of N’Kalo’s burned face, its skin here blackened, there deformed like wax that had melted and recooled, and elsewhere missing entirely.
‘No, Lord Speaker,’ he said. ‘I have not.’
His words were met with silence. Those councillors who did not stare in grim fascination at N’Kalo’s face glanced uneasily between their neighbours.
‘Commander?’ said Wrann. ‘Pray, explain yourself.’
‘I have seen the pit,’ said N’Kalo. ‘I have heard the words of Manter Thyll. When my Iron Knights answered the call for intervention from this Parliament, they did so without critical thought, without exploring first the history of this world and the true nature of its conflicts. Ours is the way of action, not contemplation. But we were forced into examining Molikor by allies of the Eshkeen, who also responded to your pleas for assistance, but to find out the truth, not merely destroy the Eshkeen as you desired.’
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 70