by Various
‘You are a savage creature!’ he snapped. ‘But do not think you are more brutal than I. This is an infirmary and I am the chirurgeon, cutting out weakness, flensing doubt and disloyalty. Tell me whelp, whom do you serve? With whom do you forge your bonds of brotherhood?’ Elysius burned the prisoner one final time, finishing the mark, ending the rite of pain.
The prisoner did not struggle. He was too beaten for that. He let the burning in, allowing the brand to scorch his skin.
‘I am fire-born,’ croaked the prisoner, all defiance leaving him. ‘I forge my bonds with the Salamanders.’
‘And whose flame ignites your fury?’
‘Vulkan’s fire… beats in my breast. With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor.’
Elysius backed down, allowing his breathing to return to normal. He ached. The rite had taken as much out of him as it had the prisoner before him. He put the brand down and held out his hand.
‘Then rise, and be my brother.’
The figure touched the scar upon his chest. It was shaped in the head of a drake. He let Elysius help him up and felt his anger draining away, to be replaced by something more lasting, permanent… He felt a sense of belonging.
‘How do you feel?’ Elysius asked.
‘Raw… but strong.’
‘You are fresh-forged, that’s why. Your armour is waiting for you, as are your other trappings.’
The prisoner snarled, ‘Then to war.’
There was a glint in Elysius’s eyes, a stoking of the fire within at hearing that word.
‘Indeed, Brother Zartath. To war.’
The disrobing chamber was shrouded in a thick, comfortable silence, broken only by the skritch-scratch of a knife tip working insistently back and forth across ceramite, and the distant, tortured sigh of the battle-barge’s warp engines.
Captain Aremis Koryn of the Raven Guard sat alone, observed by the dead stone eyes of a hundred primitive statues, each of them peering down at him from one of the shadowy alcoves that lined the edges of the chamber.
All around him lay the carefully placed pauldrons, vambraces, and chest panels of his venerable armour, every inch of its surface etched with the names of the long-dead veterans who had once worn it before him. A little pool of corvia – the bleached skulls of ravens, carried to honour those who had died in combat – lay beside the armour, bound by fine silver chain.
Koryn was wrapped in a loose-fitting cotton robe, the ghostly-white flesh of his chest, shoulders and arms exposed as he sat on the cool marble floor, hunched over one of the pauldrons, worrying away with his blade. His black eyes flicked towards the open doorway at the sound of movement from the passageway outside.
‘Come, Cordae. Your loitering makes me ill at ease.’
The Chaplain stalked slowly into the room, his heavy boot steps ringing out like bolter fire in the empty space. ‘I thought you had come here to make preparations for the deployment?’ said Cordae, standing over Koryn so that his shadow fell across the captain’s work.
Koryn stilled his hand and glanced up at the Chaplain. Cordae was still clad in his full battledress, his ebon armour adorned with the skeletal remains of a giant Kiavahran roc. The creature’s ribcage formed a brace across his chest, its wings were spread upon his jump pack as if in stilted flight and its skull leered at Koryn like a grim, jutting death mask. Cordae cocked his head in a gesture that mimicked the creature whose spirit he claimed to share. Koryn could not recall the time when he had last seen Cordae without the macabre totems.
‘I did,’ replied Koryn simply, and returned to his work.
Cordae did not move. After a moment, he spoke again. ‘I fear you place too much trust in Captain Daed and the Librarian, Theseon. They have all but taken us captive upon this barge. We labour under the illusion of freedom, captain, but this place is, in truth, a prison.’
‘We must place our faith in our brothers, Cordae,’ replied Koryn, his voice low and even. ‘They fight in the name of the Emperor. Their methods may seem brittle and unfamiliar – ignorant, even – but nevertheless, their motivations remain sound.’
‘Can you be sure?’ asked Cordae, and it was clear he was not.
Koryn glanced up at Cordae. ‘I am sure,’ he said, sharply. ‘I will hear no argument. We do what we must. Gideous Krall and his foul cadre of traitors must be destroyed, before the whole of the Sargassion Reach succumbs to their blight, their sickness.’
Cordae made a gesture that might have been a shrug, or a nod of acquiescence. ‘I understand that Krall has fashioned a floating cathedral from bone and rotten flesh,’ said Cordae. ‘It sits amongst a flotilla of smaller warships, formed from the lashed-together remains of bloated plague corpses and the abandoned vessels of daemons that have returned to the warp.’
‘They shall all burn,’ said Koryn, with conviction. ‘The light of the Emperor shall banish them.’
‘We are few, captain,’ said Cordae, with a note of warning. ‘Even counting the Brazen Minotaurs amongst our allies.’
‘Then we shall fight harder, and longer, and with greater conviction than our enemies,’ replied Koryn.
‘You speak with the confidence of one who foresees the future, with the certainty that we will triumph. And yet, here you sit, alone and stripped of your armour, scratching your name into a pauldron with the end of a blunted dagger instead of preparing for war. Your actions do not mirror your words.’
Koryn glowered at the Chaplain. He knew what Cordae was doing. Koryn was being tested. This was Cordae’s way of preparing him for the trials to come.
‘I am etching my name alongside those of my ancestors. It is an honourable pursuit,’ said Koryn. ‘This is how I am preparing for battle.’
‘Aren’t the artificers supposed to do that when you’re dead?’ asked Cordae, bluntly.
‘We’re about to mount a boarding action against the enemy’s orbital fortress and attempt to smuggle a living bomb deep inside their leader’s palace of flesh and bone,’ replied Koryn. ‘None of us are coming back, Cordae. The artificers won’t ever lay their hands upon my armour.’
‘Yet you speak of victory and the light of the Emperor,’ said Cordae.
‘I speak the truth. I am nothing if not pragmatic. I do not wish to die without adding my name to those of my forebears. My honour demands it. Their spirits walk with me, Cordae, just as you share your armour with the spirit of the roc whose bones you wear. I cannot lead our brothers to victory unless I know that my ancestors are by my side. Unless I know that when I die, I cannot join them in honour.’
‘It is not your ancestors that worry me,’ said Cordae, ‘but our allies.’
‘I will hear no more of this, Cordae,’ said Koryn, sternly. ‘You shall not shake me from the path I have chosen.’
‘Then my work here is done,’ replied Cordae. ‘We shall die together, brother, side by side in glorious battle, as we smite the enemies of mankind.’ He placed a gauntleted hand upon Koryn’s naked shoulder. ‘I shall leave you to your preparations,’ he said, then turned and quit the chamber.
The test was over. Koryn was unsure whether or not he had passed.
He waited until the sound of the Chaplain’s footsteps had died away, before making the last few strokes with the tip of his blade.
He placed the pauldron on the floor beside its twin and stood, tucking the knife into his belt.
‘Calix. I wish to dress for battle!’ he called, and immediately heard the serf scuttling along the passageway vacated only moments before by Cordae.
Soon he would be ready. It was, he knew, going to be a glorious death.
He glanced at the pauldron, at the words AREMIS KORYN roughly hewn into the black ceramite, and smiled.
Brother Grissan dreamed of his death. He always knew how it would be. Chainsword in hand, the din of battle in his ears. From the moment he had been initiated into the ranks of the Death Spectres, Grissan had been convinced that when he was finally struck down, he would take his enemy with him. A glorious day
. The stuff of legends.
Then he awoke, every pain-receptor on fire. A fevered groan slipped past his chapped lips, the blistered skin tight across his face. Without a functioning Mucranoid, all sons of Occludus were susceptible to extreme heat, but exposure was the least of the Space Marine’s concerns. He could barely move, his body hanging limply from the tree. For a second he couldn’t remember where he was, what had led him here – or why pain was lancing through his back.
Then it all came flooding back.
Grissan forced his sunburnt eyelids open, grimacing at the sudden glare. A face stared back at him, closer than expected. He recognised it immediately. Old craggy features and tattooed skin. A native of this accursed world.
The Space Marine stared into the eyes of the dead man.
His name had been Matana.
‘Leave now,’ Grissan ordered, his bolter’s sights resting between the tattooed man’s eyes.
The native just laughed, the sudden noise sending birds flapping from the jungle canopy. The maniac was going to ruin everything.
‘You same as me, yes?’ the tribesman asked, placing a gnarled, arthritic hand against his narrow chest. ‘Same as old Matana?’
‘I am nothing like you,’ Grissan insisted, his finger tightening around the trigger.
Matana chuckled again, leaning heavily on his staff and look around the clearing. Grissan followed the interloper’s gaze, his eyes flicking to the bodies of the gutted dire boars.
‘You set bait,’ the man observed, waggling a bony finger at the Space Marine. ‘You hunter, like Matana. You want trophy.’ His abnormally large eyes narrowed. ‘You want sanilu.’
Matana had been correct. Grissan had wanted a trophy, but not for himself. From the moment he had heard of the sanilu, Grissan was obsessed. The creatures had spread throughout the Ghoul Stars eons ago, terrorising the indigenous people. Children lay awake at night, having been told that the sanilu would take them unless they were good, but even the adults watched the skies. Hideous, chimera-like beasts, the sanilu were more than just a cautionary tale. With the body of an ape, leathery dragon-like wings and a barbed, poisonous tail they had been hunted to extinction – or so everyone thought. Grissan had heard whispers to the contrary, nothing more than rumours at first. The last sanilu in existence was said to stalk the primitive forest world of Ashon. It swept down silently from the treetops to grab its prey, spiriting them away to its nest, high in the mountains of Kapec Tarn. Grissan had pledged there and then that he would travel to Ashon and slay the alien. The eradication of an entire xenos species in the Emperor’s name. The holiest of quests.
Tracking the creature to its hunting ground was simple enough, as was capturing the dire boars. He had opened the animals with his combat knife, daubing the glistening entrails over his power armour. Matana had been right – he was setting bait.
Himself.
The savage had appeared from nowhere. Grissan was almost impressed. No one ever crept up on him. It was the only reason that he had given Matana the chance to walk away.
‘Many come,’ Matana babbled, leaning on his staff. ‘Many hunt sanilu. Many die.’
‘Not I,’ Grissan spat. ‘The last of the sanilu will be mine. It is the Emperor’s will.’
Matana’s thin lips drew up into a wry smile.
‘The last?’ he repeated, before snorting with derision. ‘You want last of sanilu?’ The wizened native threw back his head and rocked with laughter. ‘You not like Matana at all. You are fool.’
A bolt through the brain had finally silenced the idiot.
But it had been too late.
The sanilu had struck before Matana’s body even hit the ground. Grissan had twisted, bringing his bolter to bear, before grunting in pain. The Death Spectre had removed his helm earlier in the day, wanting to rely on his own senses rather than the power armour’s many instruments and auguries. A mistake. The sanilu’s barbed tail had scraped across Grissan’s cheek, his body immediately dropping into convulsions as the toxins had ravaged even his augmented physiology.
Holy Terra, the beast was as tenacious as it was strong. Each beat of the gargantuan wings was accompanied by an animalistic snort. Remarkable as it was, who would have thought the sanilu could fly the dead weight of a Space Marine up the side of a mountain? Grissan’s muscles twitched, his limbs no longer responding, so focused instead on their destination. At least he could still move his eyes.
Shrubs covered the mountainside, but there was something odd about the narrow trees that jutted out of the crags. The branches had been stripped away, leaving nothing but stake-like trunks, each crowned with a jagged, vicious-looking point.
As they drew nearer, he could see why. The trunks were far from empty. Each was lined by the impaled carcasses of the sanilu’s victims. Some were nothing more than skeletons, blackened by the sun. Others had flesh still clinging to their bones. It was a larder, high above the forests – but that wasn’t the end of it.
The bodies were more than just food.
They were trophies.
The pain of the spike puncturing his back had been unbearable, but was nothing compared to the trunk pushing a path through his innards. The point bursting from his left shoulder had almost come as a relief. The animal had been lucky, the spike slipping between his armour’s plating. A human would never have survived the trauma, but Grissan was a Death Spectre, the personification of death itself. His moment would come.
He had no idea how long he hung from the tree, drifting in and out of consciousness as his augmented organs fought the sanilu’s poison and repaired the damage caused by the impaling. The fact that Matana’s corpse had yet to discolour told him that it hadn’t been long. The sanilu had obviously retrieved the hunter while Grissan was sleeping. No use in letting meals go to waste. Good. Let it wear itself out flying its spoils back to the nest. In the meantime Grissan needed to try to keep himself awake. If his Sus-an Membrane sent him into a restorative coma, no one would be on hand to administer the chemicals needed to bring him out of hibernation. All would be lost.
Wings beat in the thin air. The monster was returning. Grissan let his head loll forward, gambling that the sanilu wouldn’t expect its prey to survive the impaling. It had never encountered a Space Marine before.
Grissan’s nostrils filled with the creature’s pungent musk, the sound of flesh being ripped from Matana’s bones telling him why the sanilu had returned. Time to feed. He had guessed right. The sanilu had made straight for the native. No ceramite armour to prise away from the old man’s corpse.
No lightning claws.
Clenching his teeth, Grissan forced his left arm up, grabbing the spike covered in his own dried blood. He couldn’t help but cry out as he swung his body around, his power-gauntlet’s adamantium claws cracking with energy as they arched through the air. The sanilu reacted, but too slowly, the blades slicing deep into its hair-covered side.
The creature bellowed in pain, its pronged tail lashing out, but this time Grissan was ready. He let go of the trunk, grunting as gravity shifted his body an inch or two back down the spike, and grabbed the tail, holding it tight with gloved fingers. The end of the deadly appendage curled around Grissan’s forearm, but this time the quills found only armour, impervious to their toxins.
Panicking, the sanilu threw itself into the air with just one beat of its wings. Grissan retracted his claws but refused to let go of the tail, even as he was yanked roughly from the spike.
‘No pain,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘I am death incarnate. I will feel no pain.’
The sanilu screeched, its wings thrashing frantically, kicking at Grissan with curved talons. The Death Spectre considered striking again, dealing the killing blow, but could see there was no need. His weight, and the injury he had already hammered home, was all that was needed. Above him, the creature was gasping for breath, blood running freely from the four wounds in its side, dousing Grissan’s face.
‘All shall fall beneath the Emperor’
s might,’ he barked, spitting the creature’s foul cruor from his mouth. ‘From the daemons of the warp to the devils of the air.’
With a final cry, the sanilu faltered, its wings missing a beat and it tumbled, pulled down by Grissan’s sheer bulk. The stake pierced its stomach before bursting from its back in a red haze. It slid down the trunk, wings flapping desperately before slowing and falling still, the creature’s breath rattling in its chest.
And then it was over, Grissan swinging from the lank tail, staring into the creature’s lifeless eyes.
‘Victory,’ Grissan grunted, although the word tasted worse than the sanilu’s blood in his mouth.
It took an age for Grissan to make his way down the mountain, scrabbling down the scree-covered slopes. His injuries meant he had to keep stopping, gasping for air in the thin atmosphere.
And all the while he could hear mocking laughter in his ears.
He could remember the glee on Matana’s face as the old hunter revealed that there was another nest, maybe two hundred kilometres to the east. The sanilu Grissan sought hunted alone, but was far from being the last of its kind. There were others. Possibly an entire family group.
‘Fool, fool, fool,’ Matana had chanted until Grissan had pulled his trigger.
‘I will have the last laugh,’ the Death Spectre yelled down at the forest, letting his body slide down to rest on a ledge. ‘My quest shall continue, the last of the sanilu will die at my hand.’
He just needed to recover first. The sun was blazing down and his body was so, so tired.
‘It will be a glorious day,’ he croaked, his head pitching forward. ‘The stuff of… stuff of…’
Grissan’s bloodstained chin rested on his chestplate and he slept, forever.
Though the Purifiers had been prepared to stand in solemn vigil for as long as necessary, the xenos arrived after only thirty-seven days.
Their sleek craft ghosted out of the void like silent hunters in the night. The strike cruiser Argent Sceptre hung at anchor above the glittering false horizon with its weapons trained and ready, but her serf crews did not open fire. Instead they allowed the eldar vessels to cut graceful lines across her prow and flanks, circling in an aggressive but carefully postured void-dance.