‘The expedition to the stadium required a display of pageantry. Grun and Thol did not greatly appreciate their garb of heavy robes and various cultish accoutrements, but I permitted them to retain their lucky scalps and jawbone clubs under the folds. Maskelin, who in his youth had been an enthusiastic musician earning coins in the slums of Devlan, went ahead of us playing a set of pipes to herald our approach. As the member of the warband with the greatest personal gravity and natural authority, I garbed myself as a high priest of some obscure splinter warp religion with Talaya as my bearer of sacrificial implements.
‘Grunvelder has been plagued by visions, and when I ordered him to spend several hours writing out scripture to cleanse his soul, the result was reams of pages scrawled in a dark tongue I did not know. I left him back at the tower we used as our base. By then we were all aware of what would be his fate, not least Grunvelder himself, though none spoke of it aloud.
‘The stadium rose ahead of us, a magnificent crown of carved ivory. The donor creature was an immense leviathan, perhaps hauled out of the blood ocean I had seen when first landing on Malodrax, its vast and misshapen skull mounted above the main gates. The gates of whalebone were etched with intricate scenes of sacrifice and mutilation, all carved with the bloodied fingerbone stubs of a caste of worshippers who gouged the carvings into the stadium’s ivory. These souls gave their lives to the art, wearing their hands away until the few who reached a great age had worn their arms away to the elbow. I wondered how many of them ever knew what it felt to have the Veiled One’s eye on them, or if they had all slaved, suffered and died without earning their lord’s attention.
‘But those hapless, forgotten souls were not inquisitors.
‘Sildyne had preceded us to the stadium, and had concealed himself among the rafters. By our secure vox-link he informed me that the spectacle for that day was to be the construction of a living monument to Shalhadar. This suited my purpose well, for the Veiled One had been known to attend such acts of mass devotion in person. At the very least those who watched the city for their lord’s benefit were sure to be in attendance.
‘What can I say of what we saw there? A bald and workmanlike description will have to suffice. I cannot count the numbers who crowded the stadium’s galleries, and while among them was a multitude of strange sights, they were not the true spectacle. No, that took place on the sand of the arena.
‘Ten thousand men and women entered through the archways at stadium level. They had shed their various devotional fashions and wore silks of purple and light blue, which were among the colours of Shalhadar’s patron powers among the warp. Their feet were bare upon the sand. Many among them wept with joy. A great cheer went up when they made their entry, and yet there were angry mutterings beneath the sound for the crowds watching all wished they had the honour of serving in the spectacle.
‘Sildyne joined us, making his way like a ghost through the throng, and whispered in my ear that a covering of silk in the stands opposite housed a great dignitary searching for useful subjects to beautify or scandalise the court of Shalhadar. Thus I was assured my journey, and the risk it entailed, were not for nothing.
‘The spectacle itself was as grand and awe-inspiring as it was appalling. The supplicants clambered together into a great living statue, an approximation of the icon I have seen scrawled in forbidden texts and carved into the skin of madmen – the sigil of the Lord of Pleasure, the warp power whose will Shalhadar served. Hundreds upon hundreds heaped themselves up to form its base, the shape growing higher, like an organic thing spreading branches, until I recognised with a note of horror in my soul what I was watching.
‘Those at the base were crushed. Their blood stained the sand pink. Beneath the cheers and chanting of the crowds I could hear the weak screams of the trapped, and the sigh of bones snapping by the dozen. Some fell, dashed to death on the sand. Some faces I could see, eyes and tongues bulging as their midriffs were compressed beyond the point of survival. The living statue did not keep its shape for long, but in the moments it did I felt the eyes of the warp on me, its raw malice bathing that stadium and its cold fingers probing for my soul.
‘In the warp, the Lord of Unspeakable Pleasures was looking on. I knew he must see me there, and know I did not belong. I saw then how quickly my work in the city must be done.
‘The sculpture dissolved as if in a rain of acid, its points and edges blurring as the bodies keeping its shape died. Those in the outermost layers, relatively low down, tumbled to the sand alive. Bodies fell after them crushed or suffocated. I did not watch, save to make sure that their sacrifice did not bring forth some monster from the warp. It is more awful to me that it did not. They went to their deaths willingly, not to bring about a great revelation or the birth of some patron beast, but solely to create a monument that lasted seconds for the benefit of a daemon prince not even in attendance.
‘I travelled through the crowds, taking on the air of someone who does not expect to be stopped while going about his vital and sacred business. Thus the crowds parted for me tolerably quickly, with the feral worlder brothers shunting the stragglers out of my way. When I came within sight of the pavilion’s inhabitant I called forth Talaya and asked her if, in the many works of mine I had ordered her to read, I had before recorded its like. She said I had not, which came as some relief, for it meant that the creature did not know me, either, and would not have encountered me in a guise other than the one I was wearing.
‘A court of daemons lounged there amid sumptuous furnishings and clouds of opiate incense. Various beautiful citizens lay alongside them, each one with a mark of ownership on them, a disfigurement that was only visible from one angle. Thus a beautiful woman might have one eye burned out, and so appear hideous if she did not lie on one side as she did among the daemons. The skin of a youth’s back was scorched and pared away, so he lay on his back. Thus the possessions of this particular daemon were both marked as his property, and rendered useless for anything other than the very specific need he had of them to lie just so. The daemons were like those of the court I had glimpsed before in the city, lithe and athletic of limb, with pallid mauve skin and a hermaphroditic allure that, thankfully, my studies had prepared me well to resist. I saw in them the ugliness of their true nature. Nothing is so foul as that veneer of beauty stretched over corruption incarnate.
‘The champion was something like them, sporting six arms and a rack of antlers like those of a fine stag. He went barely clothed, showing off the details of his anatomy which, while humanoid, were inhuman enough to turn the stomach. He dripped with jewels, gold and silver, and his eyes were ovals of inky black.
‘“So one among us has fought off the tedium,” it said as I approached its pavilion. “I feared I would waste away from boredom. These insects truly believe they create something wonderful with their fumblings.” He waved a hand at the arena, where hundreds of cultists of some funerary church were hauling away the bodies across the bloodstained sand. “What magic could be wrought that would instil some imagination into them? Always they throw themselves upon our altars and expect us to act as if a million have not done so before.”
‘My heresy had equipped me well with the means to converse with creatures abhorrent to the soul. “It held my interest,” I said, “for among the worshipful of my world the form is to take the life of another, not give one’s own. The sentiment is novel to me, if crudely articulated.”
‘“Oh, to witness something new!” the champion sighed. It breathed deep of the heavy air and exhaled a stream of smoke from gills that opened in its neck. My own respiratory implants kept the opiate from affecting my faculties, though the odour of it was hard to stomach. Talaya, standing by my side, had similar enhancements, though the feral worlder brothers did not and had thankfully remained outside the silken enclosure. “Do you bring with you some diversion that can illuminate these tedious hours? I wonder that my lord does not despair of it. All he wants is something original, something that has not been see
n before, and yet all he gets is…” He waved one of his six hands at the arena again by way of illustration.
‘“The city needs new blood,” I said. “Literally, and figuratively.”
‘“And you have come to me,” replied the daemon, examining the back of a hand, “because you are that new blood?”
‘“A hundred thousand men fought on the cliffs above the Sea of Suffering, until but ten stood by the edge and the rocks foamed red. Those ten roamed the galaxy for a thousand years, and each brought back the skulls of a nation to the throne of our god.”’
‘These were the ramblings from the mind-journey of a madman whose memoirs were written on the walls of a cell. That cell was in the depths of my coven’s Inquisitorial fortress, and I had studied them at leisure while recovering from a troublesome xenos lung-rot. I was thus armed with a whole catalogue of such blasphemies.
‘“A little crude,” said the herald.
‘“That is the way the Blood God prefers his sacrifices,” I said. “I call no one warp power my lord above others, and while I understand that such apostasy is obscene to those with little imagination, I thought the city of Shalhadar would be more open-minded. I am something of a freelancer in my trade. I have travelled the breadth of the galaxy and seen every flavour of worship that can be crammed into a human mind. I would not seek to win the graces of the Lord of Pleasures with a heap of a million skulls. Here there must be art to our devotions.”
‘“I see,” said the herald. “A wandering priest, a missionary of the obscene.”
‘“I learned my trade in the Missionaria Galaxia of the Corpse-God,” I ventured. This gambit was a risk, but there was no stepping back from the brink ahead of me. “But among the stars we see the truth, and the truth resides among the powers of the warp.”
‘“Would that the choice was solely mine,” said the herald with a smile on his face. It reminded me faintly of a fish, as the mouth spread a little too wide and the eyes flickered black. “But by now you will have learned the balance that holds this world. There can be no true Chaos without some rule, no bedlam without a spark of sanity. There will be a payment for everything on Malodrax, and for me to put you in my lord’s good graces comes with its own price.”
‘“As it must be,” I replied. “Name it.”
‘“Something you love,” was the reply.
‘I had no way of telling if this was some curse or ban to be obeyed, or simply the herald’s wanton tastes finding expression. In truth, it did not matter. If I was to stand face to face with Shalhadar the Veiled One, the toll would be paid.
‘Of every million men, perhaps one might be suitable for the employ of the Inquisition. He must be prepared to do anything, starting with killing and dying and becoming ever more onerous, for reasons he does not understand and at the behest of an inquisitor he might never meet. He must murder those who do not deserve it. He must guard those he hates. And he must do all this in the necessary ignorance in which the lower echelons of the inquisitor’s network are submerged.
‘Of every million such men, perhaps one might have the qualities to serve as an acolyte in the direct employ of an inquisitor, privy to the dealings of his conclave and bearing the keys to his master’s armoury. He must take upon himself a measure of responsibility that might encompass whole worlds, entire civilisations, which might be saved or extinguished by his endeavours. He must sometimes stand by while atrocities are committed, and participate in the committing, and comprehend the great dangers and evils that might ensue if they tried to stay on the path of good. He must see the worst the universe has to hurl at him and in response, shed the shackles of morality instead of his sanity.
‘Of every million such men, one might rise to the rank of inquisitor, and bear the ultimate authority that can exist in the Imperium short of the Emperor Himself arisen. He must kill worlds, because letting them live threatens a greater catastrophe that might come to pass in thousands of years. He must have already handed his life to the Emperor’s service, and consider himself dead. He must make the survival of the human race his responsibility, and encompass the enormity of that task with intellect, willpower and hatred.
‘How many men could have turned in that moment to Talaya, who stood by my side? Only an inquisitor, I think. Only an inquisitor could have pushed her forward, to the foot of the herald’s silken throne. To register the glimmer of understanding in her face? To see the smile of agreement on the herald’s, and not drive a blade into his throat, a stake into his heart, a bullet through his brain? To let him take her in his spindly arms and pass her, just starting to struggle, into the embrace of his daemon handmaidens? Only an inquisitor.
‘“Corvin!” she cried as the daemons hauled her to the back of the pavilion. “Corvin, no! Please! For the love of the Throne, Corvin, what about… What about everything?” Her voice trailed away as she was dragged out of sight, and her words were muffled.
‘I did not glance back at my other companions. They had earned my trust and would not try to stop me.
‘A voice inside me was crying out, but I had silenced it so long ago I could no longer give it a name.
‘“Then attend upon me on the palace bridge after sundown,” said the herald. “I feel this is the dawn of a much-awaited age.”
‘I bowed and, with a gesture, bade my acolytes accompany me as I left. In the arena below the bodies had been shifted with well-practised efficiency, and only the blood remained.’
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‘My coven embraced knowledge of the enemy as a weapon, a heresy of thought that invited corruption, and yet which was the only means, we believed, by which the true enemy could be fought.
‘This is the greatest strength of the inquisitor. There are men, yet, who would condemn worlds and species to extinction – but how many of them would also condemn themselves? Not to death, for everywhere we find men eager to die. No, condemnation to a spiritual oblivion, to the awful fates of corruption and enslavement to the dark power beside which death seems the Emperor’s own blessing. Not even all inquisitors can truly make such a sacrifice. It is what sets me, and men like me, apart from the greater part of humanity, and what enfranchises us to determine how humanity shall be manipulated, spent, culled and eventually saved.’
– Inquisitor Corvin Golrukhan
The petrified forest gave way, after a solid two days of marching, to the shattered delta of a land that was once pierced by a mighty river. A vast and terrible event had fallen on that land, and splintered it into a thousand islands through which the river now rushed, forming a land of rapids and swirling lakes. To the east lay the hinterland of Kulgarde, which spread across the broken land to the south – the delta was unclaimed, and had been ever since the destruction of the kingdom that once stood there. A few towers and fragments of palaces still stood, now isolated and half eroded by the hungry waters. They had been brutal buildings, the towers and walls built for siege, the palaces monuments to war. Here and there the remains of enormous armoured figures lay fallen or worn away, a helmeted head, a mailed fist gripping the black stone hilt of a broken sword.
Brother Kollus’s gene-seed was taken by Techmarine Kho in a truncated ceremony once the strike force was clear of the forest, and his remains loaded onto Dorn’s Dagger. With the prayers said and with no time now for funeral games, Lycaon ordered the strike force on across the delta.
‘If we lose another,’ said First Sergeant Kaderic as he and Lysander forded a rushing branch of the river, ‘we will have to stow them on the Talon Blade. Should the Blade be full we will be leaving bodies behind on this world and taking just their wargear back to the Phalanx.’
‘An ill omen,’ said Lysander.
‘A great shame,’ replied Kaderic. ‘I would sooner go back missing an arm or an eye than missing the bodies of all who marched with me.’
‘Do you believe we should not have come to Malodrax?’ asked Lysander.
Kaderic, who was pulling himself onto the slippery granite rocks of the next island, pau
sed to look at him. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked. ‘I am loath to leave my brothers behind on this world, but that does not mean I would not make war here. Kulgarde must fall and Kraegon Thul must die. That any Imperial Fist would say otherwise is out of the question. You know this, Lysander.’
‘Of course, First Sergeant,’ said Lysander. ‘But I have seen what doubt in one’s duties can do.’
‘Among Imperial Fists?’
‘No. Among others.’
Kaderic did not pursue the question further, for Lycaon gave the order for the strike force to draw in and make camp until the sun was up. Though a Space Marine did not strictly need to sleep, his effectiveness in combat dropped off after a certain span of hours, and though their histories were full of heroics lasting for days on end, a Space Marine commander did not let the battle-brothers under his command lose their edge through fatigue. Already the strike force had done in a few days what an Imperial Guard regiment might do in months, mostly on foot and fighting along the way.
The strike force drew into the shelter and cover of a section of city wall that sagged down into the waters, its enormous black stone blocks gradually being broken up and washed away where the waters slowly eroded its island of dressed parade ground. Three of Gorvetz’s squad took the early watch as the sun dissolved away into ruddy darkness overhead.
‘This is the kind of ground that spurred me to take us on foot,’ said Chaplain Lycaon as Lysander observed his wargear rites in the wall’s shadow.
Lysander was anointing the major components of his bolter with machine oil, scraping away dried blood and grime. His chainsword would receive the same treatment, then he could rest in half-sleep until his watch came. ‘What I saw of this world suggested that even the Land Raiders of our Chapter would find it heavy going,’ he said. ‘And over such ground men on foot are swifter than tracks.’
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