Dark Imperium

by Guy Haley

  Giggling nurglings vied with the flies in number. The vicious imps of the Plague God poured in tittering avalanches from the flanks of the void whale. Upon the ground, they plucked at the mud and drew out the smaller lifeforms of Iax, those creatures that work beneath man’s notice but which are necessary to a world’s survival. With nimble figures, the nurglings twisted these terrestrial beasts into agents of decay and set them free with coos of encouragement to do Nurgle’s work.

  From inside the void whale, gangplanks of rotten wood poked through the curtains of flesh and landed with wet cracks on the dying ground. Down these bridges walked plaguebearers, lesser daemons of Nurgle, the tallymen who were damned for all eternity to enumerate whatever caught their god’s attention. One-horned and doleful, they came mumbling their litanies of diseases gifted to the mortal universe by their generous father, or else counting the flies, or the nurglings, or the plagues that were turning the blades of the dying grass black. For them, the impossible task of keeping order in Nurgle’s unruly hordes was an eternal torment. Their heralds led them in sonorous war-tallying, encouraging them into battle with drones of maddening repetitiveness.

  The plaguebearers kicked and squelched their way through the nurgling tide, arranging themselves into muttering cohorts. Standards were lifted up and shrill music played, and they began their advance. In a great parade, seven hundred and seventy-seven strong, the daemons marched, more of them spilling from the carcass ship onto the clean earth of Iax like maggots from a corpse’s belly, dull bells knelling, broken pipes wheezing, all the while counting and counting and counting their war tallies.

  The cavalcade was in high spirits; even the miserable plaguebearers had a lightness in their shuffling as they descended over the ragged-edged wounds of their landing craft. Dilapidated carts were heaved out and down onto the pristine grasslands, rattling with their contents, their brightly coloured sides smirched with every manner of filth.

  The second ship passed through the gap. Like the first, it lost its ability to fly as soon as it was free of the strange non-physics of the empyrean, and it slipped from the air with obese grandeur to skid across the poisoned swamp. It came to rest by the first. Hundreds of daemons perished under the bulk of this second carcass ship, but once its sides split, it replenished the horde with thousands more. The soil was rapidly turned to a stinking quagmire by the admixture of putrescent liquids and the tread of soft daemon feet.

  The third meatship came down with the elegance of a decrepit palace collapsing, followed by the fourth, and then the fifth. When the sixth ship came down, the marsh was full of daemons, and the land bordering it already turning into a diseased quagmire.

  It was then that the first of the daemonic lords emerged, those who would lead Nurgle’s efforts upon the mortal world of Iax.

  A daemonic herald emerged in the vast dome of a dead void whale’s eye socket and stood upon the stinking lip. It was a daemon, but it might once have been a man. It lacked the sour countenance of the plaguebearers and their single eyes. It had two, and mirth glinted in them so brightly that the layers of rheum caking the lids could not hide it.

  The herald cleared its throat with some considerable effort, scowled, and then waved behind it. A plaguebearer carrying a rusting horn shuffled to its side and blew into the mouthpiece. Its effort was a wheezing raspberry, but from the gaping funnel a mighty blast sounded, and ten thousand diseased faces turned to the whale-ship’s empty eye.

  Pleased to have the horde’s attention, the herald puffed out its distended belly, straining filthy silks across its body and adding to their stains with leakage from its sores. It pushed down the goitre at its neck so that it might speak, giggling merrily and shouting out as loudly as the horn.

  ‘Septicus, Septicus! Seventh Lord of the Seventh Manse!’ wailed the herald. Greening bells clonked dully in response. The daemons shrugged and turned away to continue their muttering, droning, buzzing egress from the Realm of Chaos.

  ‘Septicus comes! Lord of the Seven Hosts! Keeper of the Seven Codes of Life! Untwister of skeins, straightener of mortal coils! Septicus the Mighty! Septicus Seven of the Many Plagues! He comes, he comes, he comes!’ bellowed the herald.

  In the whale’s cheek, a flap of skin was cast aside as dramatically as the curtains in a lyceum, and there came forth a titan of pestilence: a great unclean one, huge and jiggly in its ampleness of flesh, beneficent in disease and all morbidities. He smiled and waved and hallooed at his servants, full of bonhomie, even though his guts hung in sickly grey ropes from the ragged skin of his open belly. They dangled so low that the infected nails of his great feet snagged in them as he walked and tore them into shreds, whence leaked black humours and squirming worms.

  His arms were long and disproportionate to his fat frame. The seven fingers on each of his hands were tipped with poisonous talons. On his back hung a long, filthy sword, dull of blade but envenomed with diseases to moulder the soul. Septicus’ baldrick of failing leather was lost amid his folds of skin, and he wore no other clothes or harnesses other than his weapon and its gear, but under his left arm he cradled the glistening stomach sac of some unfortunate creature, its top criss-crossed with thick, distended veins that pulsed still. Pipes of hollowed antlers had been set into the gut, and they clacked together as he shouldered his way out past the curtain of skin. He stopped at the brink and leapt to the ground, trusting to the bodies of his lesser kin to cushion his fall.

  He cackled madly as he dropped, landing with a splattering impact that sprayed daemonic foetor everywhere, then rose up from the mud of Iax with a broad yellow grin. As he adjusted them, his pipes slipped around in the crook of his arm, letting out an ungodly wail. The music was of the most dreadful kind and pained the spirits of his daemonic host. They cringed from the racket, and the great unclean one laughed uproariously at the reaction of his servants.

  ‘Septicus is arrived!’ he announced. ‘I have come to guide you, my little ones. The others will be here soon, so I shall play you a merry song, children of Papa Nurgle, to speed you from your vessels and on your way! Tread with joy, for we do great work here – great work!’ And he set the long mouthpiece to his blistered lips, filled his rancid lungs and began to pump at the stomach pipes with one bent elbow. His rotten fingers danced with marvellous dexterity upon the sounding holes of the instrument, and he smiled as he made his music, but what came forth was as jolly as a dirge, and so redolent of fever pain and toothaches it agonised all who heard it.

  The last plague ark touched down. It rolled onto its side as it landed and its jaws flopped open on mushy sinew. Grumbling at the poorness of the landing, the seventh and final legion came out, their cymbals and bells merging with Septicus’ jig. Other daemons joined in with his tune, and soon his playing was swollen by an accompaniment of piercing flutes played by seven hundred lesser pipers.

  Such a display was a sight to please Nurgle’s sore eyes, and a rare thing it was. The creatures mustering upon the garden world were among his very best: his most revolting, his most contagious, his finest warriors and his most skilled accountants of ailment. They were the Plague Guard, and they were the vanguard of the great invasion of Iax. A more dread legion could not be found anywhere in Nurgle’s Garden or beyond.

  Cohorts of daemons marched out to the sound of Septicus’ pipes: plaguebearers, beasts of Nurgle, rot flies, maggoths and drooling daemons of every degree. Nurglings continued to tumble like rain from the holes and pores and orifices of the stinking whale-ships, flooding the land long after their larger kin had grumbled their way free.

  There were other greater daemons there besides Lord Septicus. They were the leaders of this filthy host, fragments of Nurgle himself, each given will of their own to go out and do mischief. There were but seven of them in total, one for each of the plague legions arriving, for they were rare even in the Garden of Nurgle. One by one, they forced their way out from the plague arks. The whale-ships were alread
y dissolving into putrid liquefaction, their fluids poisoning the world, and the greater daemons stepped onto Iax slicked in these juices, smiling widely.

  They were the lords of the Plague Guard.

  There was Bubondubon the Smiler, jolliest of all, who laughed and joked as he capered past Septicus, receiving a friendly wink in return. Then Pestus Throon emerged, chewing his way through the stomach wall of his whale-ship. He gobbled down slick strips of rotten meat as he joined the stream of daemons, belching loudly. He looked too fat to move, but he was mighty, very mighty. After all, it was Throon who had brought low the ancient empire of the Dravians so successfully that no mortal history now remembered them, an accomplishment he regaled his fellows with often.

  After him came the Gangrel, who was tall and thin as the others were rotund and squat. He knuckle-walked on stilted arms, dragging useless legs through a trail of his own filth. Then came Squatumous, the Pestifex Maximus, and then the one called only Famine, who in keeping with Nurgle’s boundless sense of humour was fatter than all save Pestus. Septicus Seven, their lieutenant, made six.

  Their general had yet to emerge.

  Septicus took the mouthpiece of his pipes from his lips and cupped a puffy hand to his mouth. ‘Oh, Ku’gath! Oh, Plaguefather! The host of sickness is assembled! We are waiting! Come lead us, might putrefactor. Bring us the blessings of your filth!’

  Septicus began to tap his foot and shout ‘Ku’gath! Ku’gath! Ku’gath!’ to the beat. He waved his free hand, conducting the others, until the place of manifestation resounded to the chants of all the daemons, calling upon their lord with foetid breath.

  ‘Ku’gath! Ku’gath!’ the daemons chanted. Septicus played his pipes, and the orchestra that had gathered by his side joined in. Bubondubon laughed loudly.

  ‘Ku’gath! Come!’ gasped the Gangrel. Every word was that being’s last. He lived perpetually on the cusp of death.

  An angry roar was their answer. An impact squelched from within the first whale-ship, then another, and a rusty broadsword the length of a battle tank carved down through its rancid hide. An arm emerged holding the sword, then a head crowned with a spread of horns, and out came Ku’gath the Plaguefather: lord of disease, and most favoured son of Grandfather Nurgle.

  ‘Enough! Enough!’ he bellowed as his wooden palanquin forced its way free of the whale-ship. Stacked high upon it were mildew-spotted canvas parcels, tied up with fraying rope. Within the damp boxes, alembics, thuribles, burners and tubes of matter clinked, for Ku’gath carried his laboratory with him wherever he went. Hordes of nurglings bore him up, but their mirth annoyed Ku’gath, who was by nature a despondent being.

  ‘No more music! No more laughter!’ He leaned violently to the left, causing the nurglings on that side to burst, but there were always more of them to carry his massive body. The palanquin shifted in the direction he flung his weight. Its sodden banners swaying heavily behind Ku’gath’s horned head, the palanquin turned and moved forwards.

  ‘Shut up! Be quiet! This is no laughing matter!’ he boomed. His shout was powerful as a pandemic, and reached as far. ‘Grandfather Nurgle’s business is a serious business!’

  Septicus smiled more broadly and played more merrily, and the horde of daemons swayed from foot to foot in the slow dance of decay.

  Ku’gath rolled his eyes so violently that one fell out from his skull. He was still pushing it back into place when his palanquin drew level with Septicus. He slapped the mouthpiece of the pipes from his lieutenant’s hand. The pipes moaned mournfully.

  ‘No more music,’ grumbled Ku’gath. ‘Why must there always be music?’

  ‘Old Father Nurgle demands joy!’ said Septicus, grinning his yellow grin at his king. ‘See what bounties are here for us to corrupt! Look at all this hateful organisation. We shall plough it under the soil and nourish it with the decay of this mortal realm. We shall raise high a garden ripe with endless fecundity! Entropy beckons! Growth without limit! Decay without reason!’

  Ku’gath harrumphed. Septicus’ pipes were momentarily silenced, but his orchestra played shrilly on, piping out his tune on the femurs of dead men. The whole army was singing, a buzzing, wheezing, droning lament that was entirely the opposite of joyful.

  ‘Never mind,’ grumbled Ku’gath.

  Septicus retrieved his mouthpiece, and raised his scabrous eyebrows in a request for permission. Ku’gath snorted, an action that sent streamers of mucous blasting from his nose.

  Tilting his bloated head ironically, Septicus played anew.

  Ku’gath belched and urged his nurglings on. He bullied his way through his Plague Guard until he reached the edge of the meadows where the ground rose up from the swamp towards a low hill. Reaching a mound, he brought his palanquin to a halt by lifting himself up and violently sitting, stunning his nurglings into immobility. A gleaming white building, hatefully clean, stood luminous not far away. It smelled of cleansing unguents and disinfectants. Ku’gath took a dislike to it immediately.

  ‘Medicine,’ he hissed. ‘Balms. Cleanliness! Oh, oh, oh, it will not do!’

  That place was the death of Nurgle’s gifts.

  A thought took hold in his rotting brain, and his doleful face almost managed a smile. The hospital was a perfect place to begin his task. He lifted his arm and gestured.

  ‘To the place of healing!’ he commanded. ‘Make it filthy! Make it stink! Make it fit for Nurgle’s work!’

  The shuffling, singing horde of daemons immediately changed course, heading towards the hospital on the hill. Swarms of plague drones swung around in the sky and buzzed through the shifting veils of smaller rot flies towards it. Urging their winged mounts on, the plaguebearers riding the giant flies outpaced the daemons on foot. At their approach, gunshots cracked, cutting through the phlegmy dirge of the host.

  Ku’gath pulled a face of contempt. They could not stop the Plague Guard! Turning around in his throne, he bellowed: ‘Pox-bearers, bring out the cauldron!’

  Seven times seven plaguebearers broke off from their march and walked to the drooling corpse mouth of the lead ship. The dead void whale convulsed, vomiting up slimy, rotting ropes of twisted hair.

  Seeing what Ku’gath had ordered, Septicus waddled to take command, his pipes honking and squalling under his arm. Squatumous and Bubondubon went with him. The latter uncoiled a filthy whip.

  ‘Get the ropes – pull them hard!’ commanded Septicus while Ku’gath looked on. ‘Heave, my pretties! Heave, my little dollops of unctuous gore, my decaying ones, my flaking fleshlings, my diseased darlings, heave!’

  To the beat of Septicus’ exhortations and the hooting of his pipe, the plaguebearers pulled. With gnarled hands and paws made soft by fungal infestation, with limbs wizened and leprous, with fingers knotted with arthritis and lessened in number by gangrene, they dragged upon the ropes, mumbling their count of sicknesses all the while.

  ‘Heave!’ bellowed Squatumous. Bubondubon cracked his whip, and the dirty glass set into its length chopped flies from the air by the gross.

  The plaguebearers slipped in the foul mud; some fell and were trampled. Strands in the rope broke and unwound violently, flinging out acidic juices before the cores of the ropes gave way and pitched whole lines of pulling daemons into the filth. But enough daemons stood and enough ropes held. Flaking rust and grinding bone, a gigantic iron cauldron came juddering out of the void whale’s depths. It clacked on the jawbones, dislodging the great feeding fans of the dead beast’s mouth. Upon the edge of the beak, the cauldron became lodged, and no amount of pulling would set it free.

  The flies had blotted out the stars. Greenish clouds rushed across the new dark, and a stinking drizzle began to fall.

  ‘Heave!’ yelled Squatumous.

  ‘Pull, you laggards!’ shouted Bubondubon.

  Septicus’ playing took on a see-saw rhythm, well suited to haulage.

  ‘Yo
u, the Flyblown! You, the Rashgirdled, aid your brothers!’ roared Bubondubon, his whip snapping over the heads of the shambling daemons. More cohorts broke from the legion. Palsied hands dragged up ropes from the mud, and they lent their strength to their fellows. Thunder rumbled.

  ‘Heave!’ yelled Squatumous.

  Bubondubon applied the lash, cutting plaguebearers down. The rain intensified as they heaved, raindrops pounding onto rotting backs. They pulled and pulled, Septicus’ braying music urging them on, until there was a crack of rotting bone louder than a tree giving out in a storm. The cauldron shifted. The daemons stumbled at the sudden release of tension, but none fell.

  ‘Take up the slack! Heave!’ bellowed Squatumous and Bubondubon together.

  A last effort dislodged the cauldron from the whale’s mouth. It rolled down onto the mud with deceptive slowness, squashing flat scores of the daemons who had pulled it free, and came to rest. Its red rusty sides turned brown as the rain soaked them. It was fat-bellied and high-lipped, with three stout pegs for legs. It was unremarkable in form, similar to cooking pots from any number of worlds and ages, except for its massive size and the three-ringed device of Nurgle repeated three times around its widest part.

  Already lords of the Plague Guard were moving to the cauldron’s side, commanding the daemon legions to set it upright. More daemons dragged a sled of bone from a second whale and placed it alongside.

  Ku’gath stared at the cauldron while it was hauled up onto the sled and made fast, remembering his own birth within its rusted interior. This was Nurgle’s own pot. Ku’gath had once been a nurgling like the multitudes who bore him, until he had fallen in and drunk up Nurgle’s most promising disease.

  So the story went, and so it was true.

  The shame of depriving his father of his prize malady dogged Ku’gath still. Nurgle had been delighted with his new son, and showered Ku’gath with paternal affection, but Ku’gath did not feel worthy of it.