Lords of Blood, page 113
‘Sure,’ said Idrin.
‘We shouldn’t do this,’ blurted the woman to Idrin. ‘We got back in yesterday. We’re due leave for a day. I don’t want to go out again right now.’
‘My, what strong-willed people they breed here,’ Dolomen said.
‘Your Emperor commands it,’ said Bedevoir.
‘They’ll pay you too, Cellew. I’ll ask nicely for you, I promise,’ said Idrin.
‘Don’t care about money!’ she said. ‘Out there’s bad enough normal times, especially this season when the blood bugs are out and the eels start a-breeding, but now? With those things in the air, coming down on everything unawares. At night it is, mostly, they drop out of the dusk, you don’t see them, then you’re theirs. Everywhere but the city, they are. They’ll get you. They’ll get all of us.’
‘What about the barges?’ asked Dolomen. ‘Work is going on outside. This should stop, all of it.’
‘The lord commander’s reasoning is that the psyrens have restricted themselves largely to Mainrig,’ said Gaheris. ‘When they do attempt to take one of the barges, they’re easy targets, slow moving, vulnerable to las-fire and promethium flame, provided you see them soon enough. Every ship that leaves this place is guarded. Every ship that comes back is carefully checked. We’ve no psychic screening, but there are other ways to tell. We have psy-augurs, even a basic bioscan will reveal them, if skilfully executed.’
‘Those are not your words,’ said Dolomen.
‘No, they are not,’ said Gaheris. ‘I would have closed it all down. Tyndall is fond of money, however. He doesn’t like to upset his populace.’
‘It’s almost like he’s worried they don’t like him,’ said Dolomen.
‘He is the lord commander here,’ said Gaheris. ‘There is only so much we can do.’
‘How many ships are being lost?’ asked Dolomen.
‘Six per cent so far,’ said Gaheris. ‘Three of the rigs are gone. Rest assured, brother Blood Angel, these will be the last barges. The latest harvest is in. Tyndall’s greed has been curtailed by Lord Astorath’s command. The next time these vessels leave this port will be tomorrow, in the morning, and they will be going to aid the evacuation.’
‘Good,’ said Dolomen.
‘Tyndall’s right about one thing,’ Gaheris ventured. ‘I believe we’ll beat them. They lost their element of surprise coming out in such numbers. Whenever we discover a knot of xenos, the Joyous Garde speaks the language of guns, and they are eradicated.’
‘Except at Mainrig.’
‘Except at Mainrig,’ Gaheris conceded. ‘Your help would be most welcome, if you can spare yourselves.’
‘Our duties lie elsewhere, but be wary, brother. I have faced the psyrens before,’ said Astorath. ‘This is not their normal behaviour.’
‘I am no biologian, my lord,’ Gaheris said apologetically. ‘But we shall keep them out of the city until you are done and the world is evacuated.’
‘Good,’ said Astorath. ‘Very soon, Tywell will become the last safe place on this planet.’
‘It’s always been that way,’ said Idrin. ‘Nowhere’s safe on Dulcis.’
‘You don’t understand, it’s getting worse,’ said Cellew. ‘Much worse.’
‘That is not of concern to us,’ said Astorath. ‘We depart now. Take us to your ship, Cellew.’
Cellew frowned. ‘We’ve assigned duties. There are permits to be filed, and supplies, and…’
‘None of that is important,’ said Dolomen.
Cellew’s shoulders sagged. She peeped at them with frightened eyes. ‘Where are we headed?’
‘Where this started,’ said Dolomen. ‘You will take us to Mainrig.’
CHAPTER TEN
THE NIGHT PARADE
The patrol boat more resembled a fishing scow; it was large enough, but it was flat, shallow of draught with only the hint of a point at the squared-off prow. Indeed, Idrin and Cellew used it for fishing as much as patrolling. Its bow gun was crowded by crustacean pots to the point of uselessness. Its paint was bleached to a nondescript khaki. They were not, as Dolomen remarked quietly to Bedevoir, a crack military unit.
Otherwise, Dolomen and Bedevoir both held their tongues at what they saw, though their attitude made it clear what they thought of Idrin’s discipline when they ripped most of the equipment from the deck. Off went the pots and net winches, life raft and harpoons. On went a couple of large boxes holding the Space Marines’ supplies. When they were done with the scow, the heavy stubber could be traversed and elevated properly again, and it looked more like the military vessel it was supposed to be. There was enough room for the three Space Marines to stand, even sit, on the deck, and despite initial appearances it was stable enough that even their great weight did not disturb its equilibrium in the water. Cellew took position in the tiny wheelhouse, finding refuge in a small space no Space Marine could enter.
‘We’re going upriver first,’ Idrin said. ‘It’s quicker to cut across the meres directly to the coast proper. Going downriver takes the long way around. Cellew doesn’t agree, but time is of the essence, right? And I’m in charge of how we get to where you want to go.’
After that, Idrin curled up under his cloak tight against the gunwales and promptly went to sleep. The Space Marines took him at his word. Cellew sank into a sullen quiet after he made his pronouncement, and said nothing more for several hours.
The boat’s electric motor whined with the effort of pushing its passengers against the river’s current. The dockworkers looked upon this strangest of excursions with expressions of such incredulity Dolomen chuckled all the way to the northern river gate.
From time to time, the discharge of multi-lasers crackled over the city’s noise. Less often they heard the short-period thunder of a lascannon. In both cases, the weapons fire was becoming more frequent as small swarms of psyrens drifted over the city.
At half a mile across, the river was too broad for the walls of Tywell to bridge. There the circuit of fortifications broke, with the walls on either bank finished by a pair of twinned bastions. A line of buoys was strung between them. Below the water line, just far enough to avoid the hulls and propellers of Dulcis’ flat-bottomed merchant navy, a web of chains barred the river to the local wildlife. Poles topped with warning lights projected a mild energy field across the gap to further dissuade the planet’s creatures. It crackled on the Space Marines’ armour in miniature displays of lightning as the boat passed through.
Bedevoir spent time on the vox with his comrades. A few of the Red Wings were visible in the crenels of the tower parapets as bright splashes of crimson and white. Guns mounted in the walls tracked their progress out of the city.
When they were clear, Bedevoir spoke to the others.
‘My brothers report that there is a large swarm of psyrens coming in on the wind,’ he said. ‘They expect them to be here by nightfall.’
‘They come at night,’ said Cellew again, to herself.
‘Then we shall have some pyrotechnics to light our way in the marsh,’ said Dolomen.
Cellew turned the boat into the wide moat that ran around the outer face of the walls. The giant footings of rockcrete that supported the fortifications had been partly exposed by repeated flooding. Beds of oily shale bled rainbows into the water, the scum of man’s rubbish and pollution adding further colour to the surface.
The walls ended and the space port drifted by, ancient and dilapidated, its landing fields giant plates of ferrocrete slowly sinking into a sea of peat. Ships lumbered skywards, bearing their cargoes of eel flesh, as if nothing untoward were happening on Dulcis – no flares, no xenos.
‘A last summer,’ said Dolomen. He turned around to look in the opposite direction. His movement sent the boat rocking. The engine whined unevenly and dark waves slapped at banks of black peat.
Unlike most cities, Tywell had not spread beyond its walls. There was only mud outside, and nowhere to drain the water to. Instead, mankind made ever more ingenious use of the space inside. Away from Tywell, marshland stretched to the horizon. Mud and grasses were dotted with rusting installations abandoned to the caprices of shifting creeks, and boats left high, though not entirely dry, by the same waters.
‘It is remarkable how clear-cut mankind’s influence on this world is,’ said Dolomen. ‘There, the wall marks the end of it.’ He held one hand out to the space port and city, whose outermost precincts were petering into bog. ‘There, the trackless marsh, too unstable to build on.’
‘Nothing but mud and more mud on this planet,’ said Idrin. ‘That and the eels. The little ones live in the reeds. They eat people, you know.’
‘I thought you were asleep,’ said Dolomen.
‘I was half-asleep. There’s plenty of time for sleep when you’re dead.’ Idrin sat up. ‘Which you will be if you fall asleep in the wrong place on this world.’
‘Are you not a native of this place?’ asked Astorath. It was unusual of him to show interest in the lives of mortals. Dolomen looked at him askance.
‘I am, born and raised.’ Idrin stood. His dirty greatcoat puddled on the deck and he dashed dust off his trousers with his hands. ‘Been off-world though, part of the Munitorum draft. Dulcis 889th light foot. Somehow, I got to come home, gift of land, monies, a shiny medal, the full works. No one was more surprised than me. I could have taken it easy, but like the idiot I am, I decided to sign up again. My friends thought I was insane, but once you’ve been a soldier, what else is there?’ He looked at the Space Marines. ‘I think you might understand that.’
‘There is nothing for us but war,’ said Dolomen. ‘So maybe we do.’
Idrin scratched hard at his head again. ‘Throne-cursed lice,’ he said. ‘You’re not free of them longer than a day.’
‘Shave,’ said Bedevoir.
‘I like my hair. I’ll dust myself later.’ Idrin fished out his length of reed from behind his ear and stuck it between his teeth. ‘Anybody got anything to eat? I’m starving.’
Dolomen opened a box on the deck, pulled out a ration bar and tossed it at Idrin. He caught it.
‘Eat only half. That will sustain a mortal man for four days,’ said Dolomen.
Idrin peeled off the top half of the wrapper. The bar was of a soft white substance, pliant as soap. He gave it an experimental sniff, then nibbled at it.
‘It does not have much flavour,’ he said. ‘Is this all you eat?’ He took a bigger bite.
‘No,’ said Dolomen. ‘But it’s better than the alternative.’ Dolomen showed pointed white teeth. ‘Better for you.’
‘No more questions,’ said Astorath. ‘Be thankful.’
The boat whirred past lumens on slender steel poles that marked the outermost limits of the space port. There they left the moat, turned into a maze of interconnected pools, then caught a weak current and headed towards the sea.
There was a pop and crackle in the sky like plastek packing being crinkled up. Cellew was crammed at the bottom of the wheelhouse, it being her turn to rest, but the noise woke her and she stirred and looked up. She didn’t know what she was looking at, not at first.
‘What’s that?’ she said thickly.
‘Be quiet,’ Idrin said. The green glow of the boat’s instruments was turned down to minimum. Tiny numbers on dials and the tips of indicators showed as disembodied sigils. They lit nothing but themselves.
Cellew uncurled from her damp bed. Both the mortals were in the small wheelhouse at the centre of the boat. The Adeptus Astartes stood still on the deck. The lights on their helms were out. A few minor activity lumens glowed on monitoring panels on their battleplate, but they were tiny, and the light they gave bled away into the deep night of the marshes.
The crackling continued, back towards the city. A sea breeze blew onshore from the ocean, sending the reed beds they sailed through into a clamour of hissed whispers.
Cellew went out onto the deck. The sky over the city flashed repeatedly. Thread lines of laser light flickered out into the sky, connecting with their targets in blinks of dispersing energies.
The sound of the fighting was so faint the wind in the reeds was louder. It seemed so far away as to be irrelevant. Marsh life continued its noisy habits around them.
‘They are attacking the city,’ she said.
One of the Adeptus Astartes warriors looked down at her. He was so still, she hadn’t expected him to notice she was there. Having his eyes on her was unnerving, and she wished she hadn’t spoken aloud.
‘They will keep coming,’ said the warrior. She had spent as little time as possible with them and didn’t know which of the Space Marines it was, only that it wasn’t their leader. She was grateful for that. ‘They will come on the wind when it blows in the most favourable direction, or they will pull themselves along the water and creep up over the fortifications. They will drift and scheme and find a way. It may take them time, but they will get in, and when they do the city is lost.’
‘Tonight?’ she asked.
A last grand fusillade of las-shots stuttered skywards. The noise crackle-popped across the flatness moments later.
‘Not tonight.’ The Space Marine looked back to the city. Without the gunfire, only the glow of Tywell’s lumens on the underside of the clouds marked its position. ‘Be at ease. This duty is dangerous, but with the Lord Astorath, you are safer than anywhere else on the planet.’
She stood nervously by his side for some time, too afraid to speak again, too afraid to turn her back on her passengers. The breeze chilled her. Biting insects buzzed around her.
Time passed. Far out to the east, the sky flickered where the Great Rift filled the void behind the clouds, and the strange lights that had lit the night every night since the Great Rift opened pulsed. The warrior watched them.
‘Earlier and more powerful than before,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said the other Space Marine. Parts of his armour might have been paler. The night was so dark out there she might have been imagining it. If that were so, she thought he might be Bedevoir, the Red Wing. Their voices were the same to her, as was the fear they raised. In the dark, she saw how far from human they were.
‘I felt that,’ said the first. ‘It is calling to us. Do you feel it?’
‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘The need. The madness.’
The warrior looked back at her.
‘Best go back into your wheelhouse, pilot. Stay there until dawn.’ He looked meaningfully across to the third of them, their leader, the one they called lord. To her utter terror, he had moved and she had not seen; now his horrific pallid face was turned to look right at her. Two red dots marked out his eyes where his retinas caught the feeble light. He did not blink.
‘Yes,’ she said. Tears welled up, threatening to drown her. ‘I will.’
‘Now,’ said the warrior.
She retreated to the fragile box of wood and glass. She locked the door behind her, knowing it would be no protection at all.
The Space Marines remained still on the deck all through the night. She grew to fear their movement more than she feared the creatures who floated through the skies. She feared that if they did move, it would be to come for her.
Dawn on Dulcis was no spectacular affair, but a gradual infiltration of light that sneaked across the marshes until the whole world was bathed in a leaden sheen. Mist started rising during the smaller hours. A few more hours into morning, Cellew would not be able to see further than a couple of feet in front of the boat. Already the fog obscured much of the landscape, leaving tantalising passages of clear space. Cellew steered clear of them. The mist rose first over the deeper water; the clear patches were over the shallows where even the flat scow might ground itself.
Wisps of fog reached for the lightening sky, but had yet to conquer it. It remained clear, and to the west still very dark. As she was looking upwards, she saw something moving across the sky. At first she took it for a skein of waterfowl, but instinctively knew that was not so. She scrubbed moisture off the window with the back of her hand, and gasped.
Xenos things drifted on the currents of air, and though they moved with the prevailing breeze, they seemed to do so with purpose. Bodies pulsed red, blue and green. Tentacles moved sluggishly beneath tick-like bodies. Lines of light ran from tip to root and back again, pulsing in changing but clear patterns, and together they made a colourful parade across the sky. Cellew had the notion she was looking at something private, a display not meant for human eyes.
The xenos proceeded overhead by the hundreds. They were reminiscent of the sea jellies that swarmed the thermoclines at the edge of the deeper seas. But their faces, if that was the right word for the tight group of eyes and mandibles pinched in to the front of their bodies, had a more insectile look, reminding her of the fleas that infested every stand of reeds on the planet.
She hunched down instinctively, the animal parts of her brain fearing she would be seen, and peered up at them through the spokes of her ship’s wheel. The mist was rising thicker and closing over the boat, hiding them. She welcomed it as a prey animal welcomes the cover of long grasses.
She was so engrossed in the display she didn’t register the boat rocking. A rapping on the glass nearly stilled her heart. She swallowed a shriek. A huge, square, inhuman head stared through the window. The Blood Angel, Dolomen, was bending down to peer at her, his helmet off and breath steaming in the morning.
‘Don’t look at them,’ he said, his bass voice muffled by the glass. ‘They see badly, but they will feel your attention on them, then they will come for you. Turn off the engine until they have passed.’
She nodded mutely. Her hand fumbled on the activation rune, the engine cutting out on the second try. The boat turned in the fog.
‘How long to Mainrig?’
Her tongue and lips refused to obey her at first. ‘Th-three hours,’ she said. ‘Maybe less, if the wind picks up. If it doesn’t the fog will slow us down. We have to turn the engine back on, it goes without saying.’
