Slumped against the white plaster wall of one of the farm’s hab-blocks, the woman and her five children huddled together, still weeping, still unable to break free of the terror that had gripped them, unsure of what would happen next. They did not watch the burning of the foe. They had seen more than enough of burning bodies tonight.
“Daybreak is but three hours away,” said Kantor. “I had hoped to be much closer to the Azcalan by now. Tell the others we leave as soon as the last of the bodies is on the fire.”
With this, he left Cortez and strode towards the woman and her children.
Cortez watched him go.
With the ork dead now crisping on the blaze, there was only one more matter to attend.
“The woman’s name,” reported broad-faced Brother Galica as the Chapter Master stopped beside him, “is Jilenne.”
“Jilenne,” Kantor repeated with a nod. “Thank you, brother. Make ready to leave.”
Galica saluted, turned and strode off towards his squad who were running quick armour and weapons checks in preparation for moving out. Kantor looked down at the cowering civilians. They were huddled together in a knot. Galica had given the woman a canteen of water and she was trying to coax her still-shaking children into taking small sips.
How wretched they looked. No child should see what they had seen. No Rynnite civilian was supposed to endure this. It was the responsibility of the Crimson Fists to protect mankind. How did this woman judge him? He had failed in that task. Her husband had been burned alive not more than five metres in front of her. The man’s own children had heard his screams. It seemed impossible to Kantor that any of this, any of it at all, was really happening. War had come to his world despite everything, despite the fact that his very presence should have prevented it. How much had his own decisions precipitated this?
The woman looked so small and fragile, and yet she held her arms round her children as if she might somehow spare them further horrors by her own meagre power. She did not look up at him, but whether that was out of fear or respect, he could only guess. Was she as terrified of the Astartes as she was of the orks?
He had removed his battle helm before speaking with Cortez, and had left it off deliberately so as to make the woman feel more at ease while they spoke, but he wasn’t sure now that it would make any difference. With a conscious effort to soften his voice, he said to her, “Have you or your children suffered any wounds?”
The question sounded foolish to him the moment he said it. Of course they were wounded, though perhaps not physically. In their eyes, the universe had changed forever. No night would ever again bring peaceful, restful sleep. Vision of green horrors would torment every last one of them until the day they died. The Imperial records spoke for themselves. Many who encountered alien races went mad, no longer able to believe there was any safe place in a galaxy that tolerated such abominations. Others committed suicide rather than face the grim truth.
“We will be leaving you soon,” he told her. “My Astartes and I have far to go. Is there anything you need before we depart?”
The woman murmured to her children, and slowly, reluctantly, they untangled their arms from around her.
Kantor watched.
When her children had drawn back, the woman crawled forward on her knees and, sobbing quietly, pressed her forehead to Kantor’s right boot.
“You saved us, lord. By the Golden Throne, by the God-Emperor’s light, you saved us. I beg you, in the name of Holy Terra, don’t abandon us now. The beasts will come back, won’t they?”
I did not save you, thought Kantor. Alessio did.
She was right about the orks. More would come. Many more. It was as inevitable as the sunrise. The ork bikers often rode at the head of a much larger contingent. When that contingent arrived, there would be no saviours a second time. The woman and her little ones would provide a brief moment of entertainment before they were butchered like the livestock they had once depended on.
But if we take responsibility for these people, Kantor thought bitterly, where does it end? Are we to save every other man, woman and child we happen across? They will slow us down when our greatest need is to move quickly.
He grappled with the most human part of himself, fighting to lock it away behind walls of resolve. He needed to crush these feelings of pity. They would do him no good now.
The Chapter must endure, he told himself, repeating it like a mantra. The Chapter must endure. Nothing else comes close. Good intentions will undo us. They will lead to our destruction. If that happens, we might as well have died with the others when the missile hit.
It was hard to do, but he stepped back and pulled his boot from under the woman’s head. Only now did she look up at him, and her large brown eyes, wet with tears, sought his.
“Please, lord!” she cried out. “What hope do we have alone?”
What hope, indeed, thought Kantor. I could say the same for my brothers and I. What hope do sixteen have against a Waaagh?
He turned from her and called out to his men to make ready for their departure, then he marched towards the fire where his three squads had finished their checks. The sound of her weeping followed him, clawing at his resolve.
He heard his inner voice say, “Turn from those who need you, and you will lose everything that defines you.”
Master Visidar had spoken those words to him just a decade before his death.
Kantor cursed, knowing them for truth.
When he was ten metres from Jilenne, he turned and looked over his shoulder. He felt himself speak to her, heard the words in his ears as if they were someone else’s. They seemed to pass from his lips automatically.
“I will not stop you from trying to follow us,” he told her. “But you will not be able to keep up. Not for long. While you can, however, no greenskin will take you, nor any of your children.”
He turned his eyes forward again, adding, “This is the best I can do for you.”
To Jilenne, it was enough. The timbre of her sobs changed from sorrow and fear to gratitude.
Kantor heard her urge her children to stand and follow as she fell into step behind him. He continued towards the fire, not slowing his pace, but not increasing it, either.
All the same, as he and his Crimson Fists left the farming settlement with their gaggle of refugees in tow, Kantor couldn’t escape a feeling of deep foreboding. He had crossed a line. The woman would soon realise he had given her false hope. She and her children would tire quickly and the Astartes would begin to pull ahead until they disappeared from view altogether.
What would she think of her saviours then? And what would he think of himself?
The sky turned from blue to purple to red in the east. The Hellblade Mountains looked like black saw-teeth against the backdrop of the lambent dawn. Small puffs of pink cloud scudded overhead on a light westerly wind, but the season was changing and the clouds would be boiled off by mid-morning.
The Azcalan rainforest had been but a dark smear on the far north-western horizon when Cortez and the rest of the survivors from the fortress-monastery had set off on their journey towards the capital. Now they were closing on its south-eastern edge. The land was far greener here. There were crowns-of-gold and snap-thistles everywhere, and spiny cyclacore trees stood in groups of twos and threes, already starting to turn their blood-red plates towards the glow of the new day.
Cortez led the rearguard, following five hundred metres behind Kantor and Squad Segala, eyes alert for any sign of pursuit. Throughout the night, flaming streaks had continued to cut across the sky, a clear sign that the orks were still landing more of their number with impunity. It seemed there was nothing left to stop them. The global defence batteries were either spent or overcome. There was no further sign of Rynnsguard aircraft. Even if Scar Lake had been overtaken, surely there should have been something from the spaceport at the capital… unless that too had been overcome.
The thought of it chilled Cortez. If New Rynn Spaceport was lost, the
orks would be landing forces directly on the outskirts of the capital without challenge. He couldn’t imagine Drigo Alvez allowing that, but, if the spaceport was still in friendly hands, where in blazes was their air support? Where were the reconnaissance flights? Surely Alvez would have sent someone to discover why he had lost all communication with Arx Tyrannus?
Brother Fenestra’s voice broke over the link. “They are flagging badly, captain. We should abandon them now.”
Cortez turned and looked back the way he had come. Tired figures staggered after him. The woman and her children were falling further and further behind.
Damn it, Pedro, he thought. You should have left them at the farm.
But he could hardly absolve himself. It was his actions that had denied them a quicker death in the first place. Perhaps Pedro had been mistaken in giving the woman permission to follow, but it was he, Cortez, who had drawn out her suffering in the first place. Might it not have been more merciful to let the ork warboss kill her before he had intervened? She could have followed her husband into the Emperor’s light. It would have spared her the torment she was going through now.
He watched her for a moment, stumbling on weak legs while she desperately tried to carry her two youngest ones. The other three, between the ages of nine and thirteen, traipsed along in a line abreast of her, heads bowed with exhaustion, eyes fixed on the ground. None of them spoke. They had no energy for that. In the hours they had tried to keep up with the Crimson Fists, they had been forced to run for short periods to make up ground, and still they fell behind bit by bit.
Cortez was sure the woman would collapse soon. The children she carried were small, but even a small weight took its toll on a long hard march. It was a pity. He found that he respected her a great deal. Her arms and shoulders must have been burning with lactic acid, not to mention her legs and the muscles of her lower back. But she kept putting one step out in front of the other.
Then, just as he was about to turn around, he saw her left leg crumple under her and she went down, turning to protect her little ones from impact with the ground even as she fell. It looked like her foot had snagged in a clump of grass. Her other children shuffled to her side and crouched there, urging her to stand.
Fenestra had seen it, too. “It is over, then,” he said. “About time. We can move at speed.”
Cortez opened a link to the Chapter Master. “Pedro, it’s me. The woman has fallen. I don’t think she’ll be getting up. I just wanted to let you know.”
There was a moment before Kantor replied. “She fought hard to hang on. Impressive that she lasted as long as she did, is it not?”
“It is,” said Cortez after a beat. “But it ends here. Her burden is too great to continue.” Again he paused. “I… I should not have saved her, Pedro. I merely postponed the inevitable and prolonged her torment. Perhaps I should…”
“…grant her the final mercy?” said Kantor, finishing Cortez’s sentence for him.
“Yes.”
There was such a long pause this time that Cortez started to think the Chapter Master had cleared the link. Then, finally, Kantor said, “Hold position and wait for me, but tell the rest of your men to keep moving towards the tree line. I want our squads in cover before the suns are visible.”
Cortez was unsure what his old friend was up to, but he said, “As you wish,” and, a second later, cleared the link. He relayed the Chapter Master’s orders to his men, and they pushed ahead, Fenestra striding away faster than the others. He watched them for a moment until they disappeared down a shallow decline. Close to where they vanished, the tall figure of Pedro Kantor appeared, walking back towards him.
Even though Kantor’s armour was scratched, chipped, dented and burned black in places, he still looked like a figure of legend, still everything a Chapter Master should be. His golden halo shone in the growing light.
When he was three metres from Cortez, he stopped and looked east. “The suns will be up very soon, Alessio. We should have been in the cover of the forest by now. We run great risk of being spotted from the air.”
Cortez nodded. He knew the habits of the orks, knew they seldom flew at night. Their eyesight was poor compared to their sense of smell, and darkness brought a kind of malaise down on them without which they might have butchered each other in the dark, so violent were their tendencies. They only ever launched night attacks by the light of flaming torches or searchlights, which was doubly fortuitous because such lights made convenient markers for Imperial artillery fire. As soon as the suns were up, the sky would fill with noisy, ugly flying machines. Kantor was right. They had to get to the cover of the forest within the next ten minutes.
“Come,” said the Chapter Master, and he strode in the direction of the children where they hovered over their mother’s unmoving form.
The children heard the two massive Space Marines approaching, and, with fear apparent on their faces, took a few nervous steps back, conflicted between feelings of concern for their mother and concern for their own lives. Cortez saw them eyeing his weapons, especially his power fist. He wondered what they were thinking. Did they really believe he would crush them with it? In a universe as cruel as this, perhaps they did.
Come to think of it, what exactly were Pedro’s intentions? Did he plan to put the entire brood out of its misery?
Kantor crouched at the woman’s side and removed his helmet.
Cortez tried to read his face, but it betrayed no emotion.
“Jilenne,” said the Chapter Master. “Can you hear me?”
The woman’s eyes were closed, but her lips parted. Weakly, quietly, she said, “They were so heavy. So heavy…”
Kantor nodded. “Yes,” he said, “but you did well to bring them this far.”
Reaching out, he lifted the two smallest children away from her and gestured to the older children to take them. They did so, and Kantor turned back to the woman.
The Emperor’s mercy, thought Cortez. You should not have to do this, Pedro. It is my fault. It is my soul that should bear the stain.
Before he could communicate this, Kantor spoke.
“It is time,” he said, and he reached down to the woman with his gauntleted hands. “Time that someone carried you now.”
As Cortez watched, the Chapter Master lifted the woman and stood to his full height, cradling her exhausted form in his arms. She looked so small and fragile against his sculpted ceramite chest, little more than a rag-doll.
Then the Chapter Master turned to Cortez and said over the link, “Once we are among the trees, they will have a better chance. They are charges of the Chapter now, and we cannot abandon them.”
Carrying the woman as if she weighed nothing at all, Kantor began striding for the distant tree line. Over the link, he added, “Help the children, Alessio. Help them get to cover quickly The suns will be up within moments.”
Cortez looked down at the children. Their clothes were torn and stained with the dirt of their night-time trek, but, in eyes of the three eldest at least, he could see a fierce spark and recognised it as the will to live.
Very well, he thought.
His own childhood had been brutal, a daily struggle to survive in the swamps and marshes of Blackwater, where even the smallest creature represented a deadly threat, and children often killed other children over matters of hunting territory and material possessions. These children were not like him. They had been raised as farmers, not killers. At least they were healthy from working the land. They would not need to be carried. They would make the tree line in time if they moved off now.
“Do not be afraid,” he said as he stepped forward, bent, and scooped up the two smallest children. “Your mother will be fine, but we must hurry and follow her. You must be hungry, all of you. There will be fruit in the forest, and water. You can eat as much as you can find, but only if you keep pace with me. Is that clear?”
The oldest, a boy of thirteen, stammered a little and couldn’t bring himself to look up at the hard, emoti
onless mask of Cortez’s helmet, but he managed to say, “We can rest and eat there, in the forest?”
“You can,” said Cortez and he turned in the direction of the tree line. “But, as I said, you must keep up.”
He began walking at a fair clip. The two small children he carried were both crying loudly, a particularly grating sound.
Behind him, he heard the others panting hard as they jogged to keep up as well as they could. The trees loomed closer and closer, and reached out cool shadowy arms to gather them in, embracing them just as the larger of Rynn’s World’s two suns poked its head above the knife-like peaks of the Hellblades.
A new day had begun, and, all across the continent, the savage hordes were stirring.
TEN
Zona Regis, New Rynn City
“Eggs argalatto,” said a petite servant, “sliced marsh-melon, and pickled valphid hearts.” She placed three dishes on the table. With a bow, she retreated from the balcony, moved back into the shadows of the main chamber and stayed there, out of sight but close enough to swiftly answer any requests her ladyship or her two guests might make.
Shivara, the governor’s bodyguard, stood there, too.
The suns were up, and the air on the balcony was warming quickly. The sounds of heavy artillery from the city perimeter had started an hour ago, shocking and unwelcome at first, but so constant, so unrelenting, that they quickly became background noise.
No screams or battle cries could be heard at this distance. Maia was thankful for that. Despite the booming of the guns, she smiled across the table at her breakfast guests, Viscount Isopho and General Mir, and gestured at the food. “Please, enjoy.”
[Space Marine Battles 01] - Rynn's World Page 21