by Nick Kyme
‘It’s coming from this direction,’ said Haukspeer. Through the drumming of the blood in his head, I wondered if he had heard my brother.
We would never find out. When he set off after the chanting sound, we followed.
Blade wounds, both old and raw, crosshatched the stooping warrior’s skin, which was also pockmarked with scabbed-over bullet holes. Patches of what looked like entire continents of bruising fashioned a map of scarification that stretched across his broad back. He was over-muscled, even for a legionary, bulked out obscenely, sunk to his haunches and scratching incessantly at the cloven skull gripped by his meaty fingers. A great mane of black, wiry hair crawled from beneath his battle-helm and ran down his spine to the top of his greaves. Chains wrapped his wrists in place of vambraces and, though he worked at the skull with a slaughterman’s fervour, he also possessed a butcher’s skill.
We had descended into the dark valley, where once Haukspeer had set foot during better times. How they had changed that this brute overseer was now the valley’s only occupant. And he was a brute. I knew the World Eaters were rabid dogs, but Angron’s Legion had fallen far indeed if they were flensing the flesh of their brothers and displaying their efforts as macabre trophies.
An axe was planted in the earth nearby, its blade stained rustred. Next to it was a pile of bodies, stripped clean of armour and trappings, naked for the butcher’s block. On the World Eater’s opposite side was his incarnadine harvest, bones ready for the fresh mound he was building.
It was ritual, any casual observer could see that, and it turned my very stomach to witness it. Revulsion quickly gave way to wrath, as I felt my blood stir in bizarre empathy with the red deeds before me.
Haukspeer was already up from where we had hidden, igniting his lightning claw in a burst of azure energy.
Sniffing, seemingly scenting the sudden wash of ozone, the World Eater arose. He was a head taller than me, which put him head and shoulders above Haukspeer and just above Usabius. The skull he had been working was discarded, clattering to the ground like forgotten offal, and the World Eater seized his ruddy axe instead. In the other hand, he still clutched his fat-bladed flensing knife.
So fevered had the butcher been in his labours that his naked torso was painted red, so too his horned war-helm, the familiar white and blue legionary colours almost obliterated by blood. I saw marks etched on it, an eightfold tally on either temple and a strange device emblazoned upon the forehead. It was tribal, old beyond reckoning – a snarling, angular face.
The bestial World Eater echoed the mark in his expression. He had ripped off the mouthpiece of his helm and I could see his sharpened teeth as they spread in a feral smile.
It was uncharacteristic of Haukspeer to attack so brazenly; it went against the tactics of his Legion, but then nothing about this encounter was typical. Even as I embraced my own anger, I could not shake the sensation that we were being manipulated by something in this valley, something that had been bubbling beneath the surface and that was now awakened thanks to our presence. I did not know how I was aware of this, nor why my companions seemed ignorant of the fact, but I could not deny the nagging feeling.
It did not matter. I just wanted to kill.
Haukspeer attacked like a madman, springing at the World Eater with an avian curse screeching from his lips.
The World Eater parried the lightning claw, an all-or-nothing strike that sheared the warrior’s axe in two but left him unscathed. He replied with a heavy punch to Haukspeer’s gut that doubled the Raven Guard over as it cracked his plastron, lifting him a few centimetres off the ground. He staggered back, gasping noisily through his beak-like mouth-grille.
Stunned and winded, Haukspeer grunted and flew at the World Eater again but the heavy warrior moved with surprising speed, ducking the hasty blow and smashing his thick forearm across the Raven Guard’s throat, flattening him.
Before the World Eater could claim his kill, I leapt to aid Haukspeer, who had stayed prone and was fighting for breath.
Close up, the World Eater stank. Blood, sweat, metal – it was a heady odour that sent black sparks spitting through my brain. Heat haze shimmered at the edge of my sight, red-hued and angry. I swung, making contact with the warrior’s shoulder even as I felt the bite of his flensing knife under my ribs. He grunted as his clavicle collapsed beneath my attack, and I felt his left arm go limp. The right, in which he held the knife, sawed. The knife chewed through battleplate, the burring teeth of the savage blade as hungry as the warrior wielding it.
I struck again, hammering the World Eater with my fist, the blow hard enough to crush bone and split several fused ribs.
Still the World Eater sawed and I could smell my meat cooking with the frenzied action of his knife.
‘Usabius!’ I cried out, not knowing what had happened to my brother but catching a glimpse in my peripheral vision of the Salamander on his knees, holding on to his head and screaming.
That confirmed it – something dark had a hold of us here in this valley and we needed to get away from it as soon as possible.
I rained blow after blow against the World Eater, pummelling his body, mashing his torso to paste. At last the pressure eased, the knife stopped churning and I was able to sag down to my knees, my enemy lying dead before me.
No, not just dead… Destroyed.
So much blood, the World Eater was barely humanoid any more. His face and upper body were gone, reduced to fragments of gore-spattered bone. I had killed many times, sometimes brutally, but never like this. I scarcely recognised the damage inflicted as caused by my own hand and looked down at my bloodied fingers in sheer disbelief.
‘He’s de–’ I began to say when Haukspeer smashed me off my feet.
Snarling incoherently, the Raven Guard bore me down. Even one-handed, he was ferocious and I felt the sting of his lightning claw as it caressed my right flank. I twisted as we fell, using my superior weight to turn us and throw Haukspeer clear as we landed.
He scrambled to his feet first. I had barely got to one knee, his claw casting lightning arcs as it flailed.
‘Desist!’ I shouted at him, barely dodging a thrust and only able to because the Raven Guard’s usual finesse had been usurped by frenzy. That, and he was also still dazed from the World Eater’s savage assault. He seemed to want to continue the brawl but with me as his opponent.
And for a few seconds, I wanted that too. I wanted to gut the Raven Guard, to snap his fragile wings and feed them to him, to crush his bird-like skull in my fist, to pulp his limbs, to–
I shook it off. Literally, shook it off. The angry haze did not dissipate, but it lessened so I could see without looking through a red-rimmed lens.
‘You are not yourself!’ I cried, adopting a defensive stance and trying to find Usabius.
Haukspeer screamed, crafting a wild swing with the intention of removing my head.
I countered, pushed into the blow and used my arm to break the attack. With my off-hand, I cuffed him, denting one side of his battle-helm and smacking him sideways across the ground.
‘Haukspeer,’ I bellowed, ‘you are fighting an ally. It is me. It is Ra’stan,’ I pleaded. Not because I was afraid he would kill me, but because I did not want to kill him.
But the Raven Guard was not listening. He tore off his damaged helm, optics fizzing and useless on the right side, to reveal a mask of pure anger over his alabaster face.
‘Merciful Vulkan…’ I breathed as he came at me.
If I could not bring him back from this rage, I would have to kill him.
This time he jabbed, using his claw like a quartet of gladius blades. I shifted my weight, stepping aside at the last moment, taking a flesh wound because of how late I left it to move, and smashed my elbow into his exposed back. The power generator crumpled. With a second blow I ripped away some of its housing, and took a clump of cables with it. The effect was instantaneous, as Haukspeer’s armour was no longer buoyed up by this external power source. The sudde
n mass dragged him down, slowed him down, as it exerted pressure and hard gravity.
I used my weight to bring him to the ground, used my knee to hold down his claw arm, my forearm across his throat.
‘Usabius!’ I cried out again, calling for help but also wary that my brother might have succumbed to a similar violent affliction. There was no answer and I could not see him, nor look around properly to find out what had happened to him either.
Now incapacitated, Haukspeer was calming. With the end of battle, his biology was slowing again, returning him to the ‘ready position’ all us legionaries remain poised at when not in combat.
‘Cease,’ I said, trying to soothe with my tone and cadence.
His chest was not heaving so rapidly any more, the spittle on his mouth was draining away, his eyes were not so wide and narrowed by the second.
‘Cease,’ I repeated, easing up a fraction to gauge whether Haukspeer could be trusted.
Breathing slowly, he gave a small nod, licked his dry lips and swallowed back a mouthful of saliva to moisten his razor-raw throat.
‘I’m all right,’ he rasped. ‘Let me up.’
I needed to be sure.
‘Who is your primarch?’ I asked, maintaining pressure.
‘Corax.’
‘And where is your home world?’
‘Deliverance.’
‘And who are you?’
‘Morvax Haukspeer, Apothecary, Eighteenth Company Raven Guard.’
‘Good enough.’
I let him up, Haukspeer refusing my proffered hand out of pride. He struggled with his malfunctioning power generator. It sputtered, a vibrating hum clearly audible where once it was cloaked and silent. I had robbed him of that, taken away his advantage.
‘I’m sorry, brother.’
‘You had no choice,’ the Raven Guard replied, but I could tell he was bitter at the loss of his stealth and saw how he grimaced when he tried to move in his armour. ‘Feels like lead,’ he muttered, grunting with effort.
I caught a glimpse of Usabius in my eyeline, also recovered, when Haukspeer asked, ‘Help me remove some of this. It’s just dead weight now.’
Malfunctioning generator, vambrace and pauldron were all removed. He did not go back for his helmet either, content to take a fistful of the dark earth and rub it into his pale features to obscure them.
After it was done, I watched Haukspeer test his new range of motion and encumbrance. Incredibly, he was still swift and as quiet as the grave.
‘You have a gift,’ I told him, meeting Usabius’s gaze as he approached from behind the Raven Guard. My brother gave me a look that said all was well, but that the experience had drained him. I decided that my questions could wait.
‘Then let’s not waste it,’ Haukspeer replied.
Before we pressed on, knowing we could not linger, I stooped to regard the skull that the World Eater had been inscribing. I did not pick it up or touch it – some innate sense of self-preservation, some primal warning instinct stopped me – but I saw the mark scrimshawed into the bone. It was the same one the dead traitor wore upon his helm: that angular, snarling face.
‘Destroy it,’ Usabius hissed in my ear.
I stood up and brought my boot down, rendering the skull into fragments.
Nascent rage dogged my thoughts and demeanour. Even this act of simple, emotionless destruction brought with it a burgeoning desire to do more harm.
‘We should leave,’ said Usabius.
‘Yes, let’s be gone from this place,’ I replied.
Haukspeer nodded. ‘I never want to see it again.’
There was only death here now, seeped into the earth; death and hate and rage.
Gratefully, hastily, we left the valley of bones behind.
I crouched atop a pillar of rock, watching Haukspeer approach the edge of the crash site in the distance. From my vantage, I had an excellent view of the Urgall region including its hills, volcanic ash plains and the Depression itself.
I could also see the warbands to the west, for I can think of no other way to describe them; of traitors migrating outwards in a horde. Something had roused their interest and, when they appeared to be headed north, I wondered if Sulnar had put his sacrificial plan into action.
‘Our encounters on this journey have been mercifully light, brother,’ said Usabius, sitting on his haunches next to me. It was as if he could read my thoughts, and I nodded at his remark.
‘But at what cost? How many legionary lives will be lost to this cause?’
Across the plains, like ants forming a colony, the traitors began to converge. Some strode silently, purposefully; others chanted or rode on the backs of armoured columns. It was a massive force, one brutally capable of destroying any lingering loyalist resistance hiding out in the mountains. Mercifully the Dies Irae had long since quit the planet, doubtless slaved to another of the Warmaster’s fell causes, but the Titan’s absence would provide no stay of execution for our brothers.
Usabius took on a conciliatory tone, as if he could sense the guilt and anguish I felt at leaving our allies to their deaths. ‘Those lives were already lost, Ra’stan. They were lost the moment the traitors turned their guns on us and started shooting.’
I knew Usabius was right but it did not make the sight of my brothers’ gleeful killers any easier to take.
Averting my gaze, I concentrated back on the crash site.
Without his armour, the Raven Guard was not quite the wraith he used to be but he still moved with incredible stealth, and I lost track of him on several occasions as he picked his way through the wreckage.
‘Like a ghost,’ I said to the air.
‘Isn’t that almost literally what they’ve become, what all the shattered Legions have become?’ said Usabius.
‘Except the Raven Guard have the skill and stealth to turn that into an asset.’
Haukspeer had kept his lightning claw; of all his trappings it still functioned and it was a formidable weapon. He kept it low and by his side, ready to silence any sentries. During my military career I had not had many occasions to witness the XIX Legion in combat, but if this was the lethal efficacy of their Apothecaries, I shuddered to think what their assault troops were capable of.
‘Walking amongst the shadows as if he’s part of them,’ Usabius added.
‘Fortunate, then, that we have him as our scout,’ I said, casting a sideways glance at the Urgall Hills to our right and the sounds of ritualistic chanting now echoing loudly through them. The warbands were closing. ‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘A dark seed was sown within them, brother,’ Usabius answered. ‘It took root in both their minds and bodies, and this is the manifestation of it. This evil.’
I briefly met my brother’s gaze. ‘You experienced the sheer pervasive force in the valley. Haukspeer almost killed me because of it.’
‘Yet we did not succumb to its effects, nor were we suborned by our own naturally violent instincts. If this is something that can be fought, then we did that. It is why our brothers hold true to their loyal oaths, I think.’
My eyes narrowed as I sought a truth that Usabius was skirting. ‘So you do not think this to be simple rebellion?’
‘Was what happened in that valley of skulls natural?’
‘No,’ I said, remembering the madness of it. Now I thought back, it was as though something had taken me over, or at least was appealing to my baser instincts. Perhaps it was not something foreign after all, but rather a fundamental part of my psyche that I kept hidden or shackled. Alien mind control was something the Legiones Astartes had encountered before, but it could be explained after a fashion. It was exactly that, alien, but the experience in the valley was different. It felt more like expression, like a pre-existing part of me had been unleashed and allowed its rein. Oddly, the realisation of that disturbed me more now that I thought I understood it.
I wondered whether Usabius had considered the same thing and I asked, ‘What did you feel in the valley, w
hen the rage enfolded us?’
Usabius slipped from my gaze as if shamed that he did not, or could not, come to my aid.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It was red and wet. And heat… So much heat, like it was cooking my brain inside my skull. A drone in my ears, a thousand times a thousand war shouts all at once devolving into a single unified note of pure violence.’
‘A thousand times a thousand?’
Usabius paused, as if not understanding my meaning, before he answered, ‘No. Eight times eight times eight times eight… Over and over and over. What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know, brother.’
Below my vantage point, Haukspeer signalled the all clear and we moved out.
The crash site below us was not as deep as the valley of skulls. The bulk of the damaged drop-ship’s fuselage was on the top of a flat ridge of dark stone, the lesser wreckage and debris strewn around it. I counted bodies amongst it, some Raven Guard and Iron Hands but mainly Salamanders. They were broken, burned things, scarcely recognisable as the proud Legion warriors they once were. Space Marines were peerless fighters, tough enough to take on and kill any enemy, any foe regardless of race or military strength. But that invulnerability had never been tested against itself, nor had it stood up to the rigours of a devastating crash from the edge of the atmosphere.
The evidence of just how vulnerable we all really were was stark, littered before me like an abject lesson in humility and the importance of the dangers of hubris.
All of the injured in the Purgatory’s infirmary were hard enough to bear, but this was an entirely tougher prospect to come to terms with.
Usabius knelt down by one of our fallen brothers, and tried to raise his head to see if he was still alive. When the neck lolled awkwardly and loosely to one side, I knew he was not.
‘I see no survivors,’ I whispered.
‘I found none,’ Haukspeer replied, seeming to materialise behind me as he made his presence felt.
I tried not to act startled. ‘You must teach me that one day,’ I told him, joking.
Surrounded by the dead, the Raven Guard did not see the humour. ‘We don’t have one day. Our life is measured in hours, even minutes now. We should look inside,’ he said, and started walking towards the open cargo hold.