Hand Of Abaddon, page 11
‘Do you remember what we took from Gathalamor, Yheng?’ asked Tenebrus, taking a seat upon a crude-looking cot where he made his bed, perhaps more injured than he was letting on.
‘Of course, my lord. The ring. Of the old heretic, the demagogue cardinal.’
‘Bucharis, yes.’
‘I thought that plan was ultimately unfulfilled.’
‘It succeeded in part.’
Yheng’s silence bade Tenebrus to talk further, as she knew it would.
‘Much remains veiled by the gods, Yheng. The ring is a tool, a means for us to achieve a lasting victory. Kar-Gatharr sought to use it to empower a weapon. Crude and unambitious, he tried to yoke the essence of the warp to his will, to direct it. To lay waste to ships, perhaps even to fleets. He overreached his ability and was found wanting in the eyes of the gods. His rotting corpse is testament to this. His small-minded ambition blinded him to the ring’s true purpose. Properly harnessed, it can pierce any aegis, whatever or whoever the source.’
Any aegis… That was interesting. Yheng felt certain Tenebrus had chosen the word deliberately. She wondered what he meant. So many secrets… If only she could crack open his skull and spill them out along with his blood and brains.
‘I believe we are on the cusp of great change,’ he continued, ‘a shifting of hierarchy and an end to old empires that should have died out long ago. There is a being that is destined to become a vessel for a power not seen in ten thousand years. I have seen it, Yheng, on Srinagar I was afforded but a glimpse. It heralds a new galactic order and whosoever controls it will be beyond reckoning, beyond any challenge. For its ascension to be assured, the current pretenders must be removed. But do not let that trouble you now.’ Tenebrus smiled then, his grin reminiscent of a shark’s mouth.
Her own smile hid a snarl. She hated how he assumed her weak. It will be the death of him, she thought.
‘And this…’ Tenebrus added, gesturing to the mural. ‘Each mark represents one of the shards of Erebus. What do you know of them, Yheng?’
Yheng shook her head. ‘Almost nothing, master. Only that rejoined, they will forge the Anathame.’
Tenebrus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the Anathame. The blade that almost killed the arch-traitor Horus himself.’
She had witnessed the fell power of the shards before, but her master did so delight in the self-aggrandisement of sharing his knowledge.
Tenebrus went on. ‘They are truly ancient, Yheng, almost as old as the decaying empire itself. And they have power… Enough perhaps to kill even a god. Or something very like one.’
At this, Yheng turned to face him, her expression suddenly receptive.
Tenebrus merely smiled again. ‘It was our purpose to gather the shards and reunite their dark glory. A supplicant was chosen for this purpose, to be their bearer.’
Her face soured as Tenebrus recounted what she already knew, but the sorcerer wasn’t finished.
‘They had other bearers once,’ he said, ‘and have since… Kor Phaeron, Morpal Cxir, Foedrall Fwel, Hol Beloth, Quor Vondar, Phael Rabor and Kolos Undil were the first.’ He winced, slightly shifting his posture, and all at once the sorcerer’s regard changed. Gone the lecturer, in its place the cold-eyed interrogator. ‘Think now, Yheng, does none of this resonate?’
Tenebrus outstretched a bony finger and suddenly Yheng felt her body seized and pulled upwards as if by invisible, psychic strings. She tried to resist but he had caught her unprepared. In his own chambers, within the runic circle he had made, he was far the greater power. Her neck strained, her limbs grew painfully stretched. She struggled to breathe, her reaching toes scraping the floor.
‘I swear, I have no further insight, master.’ Gods, she wanted to kill him.
‘Search your mind, acolyte. See the shards and their history, their legacy…’
‘There is nothing…’ She snarled, her rage a buffer against the pain. ‘I do not know what you want me to–’
And then she saw it, a war across the heavens, of gods astride the galaxy, of armies beyond counting, rebellion, of Terra benighted and the predations of the Ruinous Powers from beyond the veil. And across the gulf of millennia, they turned their regard on her, watching ten thousand years in the past. Yheng felt again the touch of destiny on her shoulder and the promise of something greater…
I am chosen…
Immense, overwhelming, her mind reeled.
The spell broke in a sudden explosion of force, casting Tenebrus across the chamber until he hit the wall. Smoke drooled off his body as he clambered to his feet.
Had that been her, or something else?
As Tenebrus wiped a bead of blood from his mouth and smiled, she realised it was the latter.
‘Good… very good.’
Trembling with unleashed power, awed by everything she had seen and experienced, Yheng ran.
He did not try to stop her, though she suspected the sorcery he had employed in his quarters had overtaxed him anyway. She had no destination in mind, only to escape, to find some quiet place to think. It led her, or so it appeared, the fortress reshaping, moulding itself into pathways that closed behind Yheng as soon as she had taken them. She quickly lost all sense of her bearings, content to plunge further, deeper, ripples of sympathetic pain dancing through her fingertips whenever she brushed against a column or archway.
Mist engulfed her, and she was scurrying blindly, hoping no chasm would open up beneath her; that she would not impale herself on some spike of black glass. She heard voices in the mist, old and young, known and unknown, a kaleidoscope of identities that merged into a single siren song, calling her onwards…
Until she reached the edge of a mirrored pool. In it she saw herself reflected, haggard and dishevelled. This place was taking a toll on her, she realised, mentally and physically. But she sensed no malice in it, merely a desire to impart revelation.
Tenebrus had said a war was coming between those of the Hand, now that their task was done and the shards had been gathered. She thought of the ghouls again, cannibal denizens of the fortress. They had only appeared when Tenebrus had revealed his presence.
Her hand had been stayed for a reason. That moment of instinct when she had hesitated.
I could have destroyed them, she realised.
And then as the mists lifted, revealing the one who had brought her here, Yheng wondered whether the creatures had been sent after her at all.
Chapter Eleven
garrovire
sons of ultramar
oracles
Through parting mist, Brother-Lieutenant Ferren Areios saw them.
His cobalt armour stood out amid the filth of the mire in which he stood, the white Ultima still resplendent on his shoulder. A giant clad head to foot in powered war plate, a warrior born and then forged. But the creatures he had fought ever since this campaign had begun were not bearing down on the Ultramarine. They had other prey in mind.
The creatures ran in packs, huffing and spitting like beasts. Long, loping strides through grimy marshland. Hungry and driven. A thin line of soldiers faced them, tired-looking men and women who had already seen battle and would soon see it again…
The soldiers had dubbed their enemies the ‘Turned’. The one in front was amongst the biggest and lumbered feverishly, hacking at roots and vines with a sharpened piece of shrapnel. A lumpen creature, swollen with muscle, a diminutive additional arm protruding from its back. Scraps of clothing clung to its scrambling, top-heavy form, its skin the colour of over-boiled meat.
It had been a man once.
It led the others of its kind, those with horned appendages or fingers melded into claws, the tumour-ridden and the scaled, a great herd of the malformed and the changed, milling and splashing through foetid water.
Thick air, turbid with marsh gas and swarms of mosquitos, clung to the troopers like a second skin. Forest-green fatigues, khaki vests beneath, wearing ranger caps, combat helms and red bandanas, they were well-muscled and clung to carbines and shotcannons. They waded through the sludge and the foetor with gruff indifference, lasguns cracking and fizzing at the first sightings of the mutants through the fog, sharp stabs of cerulean blue against cesspool brown. Across the Deromir Swamps of Arrandius, the soldiers of the Catachan 116th and the ragged hosts of the Divine Eye met and fought.
And Areios watched. Half a mile from the battle line, he watched as the enemy attacked in overwhelming force and felt his jaw tighten.
It had been one hundred and thirteen days since the first of the Turned had emerged in one of the civitas majoris. Other cities of the Arrandius region had followed swiftly, some seemingly responding to a silent siren call, whilst others erupted with spontaneous and sudden change, a biological transformation on an unprecedented scale. Entire populations became Turned almost overnight. Order collapsed. This was Garrovire, a redoubt, a world of the Anaxian Line and Arrandius its greatest continent, but even stalwart loyalty and unwavering courage was no proof against the vicissitudes of the enemy.
At first the Imperial government had tried burning the contagion out, anything to slow or stop the rot. Preachers had performed rites, watered the earth with holy philtres, spread incense to cleanse the air. Culled the weak. Pyres fifty feet high had been seen in cities the world over. Eventually the spread abated, but that had been only the beginning. The masters rose up from within the ranks of the Turned, arcanists and diabolists. From where, none could truly say. A pandemic became a revolt, revolution of the darkest stripe seemed inevitable. Holed up in their bunkers, the last remaining vestiges of the Administratum, the Imperial law on this world, had sent out a desperate plea.
And in the churning heavens of a turbulent galaxy, that plea had been answered.
‘It is here, brother,’ the calm and certain voice of Cicero assured Areios over the vox.
‘I see only Turned,’ Areios answered, a half growl. He had nothing but ire for this wretched place, its bogs and marshland. The mud and filth lapped at his armour, his bolt rifle a useless anchor in his hands. His fingers tensed, eager to be put to use.
The Catachans had dug in and created a defensive picket across the breadth of the marsh. It had stretched them; to Areios, the weakness of this strategy was plain. But the Guard were trying to tackle the sweeping horde on every front, whittle them down with their crew-served guns and rocket tubes. As if possessed of no more sentience than one of the buzzing insects that thronged the marsh, the Turned ran headlong into fire. Bodies were ripped apart. A scarlet haze hung in the air. Yet they persisted, the first ranks bullet shields for the second. Shouts were coming from the Guard as the Turned got closer, the inevitability of the Catachans’ doomed plan becoming evident.
Areios was not here for them. He could kill Turned easily enough. He already had done. He and his brothers had different prey.
‘Then we must look harder, Areios,’ Cicero told him, ‘for mark me, the Oracles are here. This many Turned, where else could they be?’
The name ‘Oracle’ had been coined by the campaign commanders and given to the masters of the Turned.
‘You are mistaken, brother,’ Areios replied, not liking what he was seeing on the line. The Catachans had been breached in several places. Order had begun to fragment.
‘We should relocate north to Landhope,’ suggested Helicio over the vox. ‘Sightings have been reported in that region.’
‘And miss the opportunity to purge this filth?’ said Drussus, his pugnacity as loud as a shell-blast. The bombastic Calthian moved up on Areios’ flank.
Together with Gravus, Helicio and Cicero, they were one half of Victus Squad, the other being stationed half a mile east. ‘Dispersed tactical deployment’, Brother-Captain Epathus had called it. Useful for hunting. Inquisitorial intelligence suggested the Oracles were puppet masters and propagators of the Turned. As such, they had been marked as priority targets. The proverbial head of the serpent.
And we the axe, thought Areios, rueful at their lack of viable enemies, though his attention had not wavered from the Catachans as their platoons were slowly being overwhelmed.
‘Helicio,’ said Areios, ‘hail the brother-captain. I request intercession.’ His gauntleted fist tightened around his bolt rifle.
‘Our orders are to hold until an Oracle is sighted,’ the officious battle-brother replied. Sometimes, Areios thought Helicio had been placed in the squad to keep an eye on him by Messinius.
That would be just like you, my old mentor…
‘Raise and send the request regardless…’
His eyes narrowed, focusing on a Catachan officer as she was gored on a Turned’s horn. She killed the creature, a point-blank shot to the head with her pistol, but others were bearing down on her. One of her men got in their way, heavy stubber blazing. It was a brief respite before he was dragged down into the mire and killed. Time enough for her command section to grab her underarm and haul her back, the officer raging but powerless to prevent the retreat. Troopers died up and down the line as their positions were overtaken. An ammo crate left behind cooked off. An explosion tore into the air, casting up limp bodies from both sides in a dirty plume of smoke and water.
‘Cicero,’ Areios said, ‘what are their odds?’ He knew the answer but wanted his brothers to hear it.
‘At the current rate of attrition, the Militarum forces will sustain eighty-five per cent casualties before they are able to successfully withdraw.’
‘A high rate.’
‘A high rate,’ Cicero echoed.
‘And yet our orders are clear,’ Helicio countered.
‘Every weapon taken from the hand of an ally is one put in the hands of an enemy,’ said Areios. ‘Have you heard that phrase, brother?’
For Areios, its meaning was simple – save as many as you can to fight another day.
Helicio remained dogged as ever. ‘Protocol states our objectives are–’
‘I am familiar with our objectives, Helicio.’
The Catachans were dying, pulled down into the dirt, cut apart where they stood.
‘The hells with this,’ Areios murmured as he broke into a run, then louder said, ‘Kill Team Exemplar, on my lead. We engage the Turned.’
None would gainsay him, and the four battle-brothers in blue war plate bounded after their leader, shouts of ‘Courage and honour!’ on their lips.
Never had the mark of the Ultima felt heavier.
Areios set a fearsome pace, his long and powerful strides eating up the distance between him and the breaking Catachan line. Tactical data overlaid his vision, delivered through his retinal lens array. It described distance and temperature, as well as biometrics, the relative positions of his kill team. As he charged through the mire, an icon lit on the left-hand read-out. Private vox interrogative.
Areios engaged it.
Cicero’s voice issued into his ear. ‘Queries inbound from Paragon,’ he said, naming the other kill team, led by Sergeant Trajus.
‘Have them stand, maintain coherency and position,’ Areios replied, not missing a beat nor a stride.
A pause, the link not yet closed.
‘Speak, Cicero,’ Areios invited.
‘I am disinclined to agree with Helicio, but the brother-captain will see this as a breach of discipline. Probable outcome will be interrogation by the Chaplaincy.’
‘Theoretical – I will face censure for my actions. Practical – if I do not act then good and loyal servants of the Imperium will die and our position on this world will weaken. Extenuation of crisis is justification enough.’
‘I will it so, Areios.’
‘Do not trouble yourself, Cicero. And when we are in combat, refer to me by my rank. As per operational procedure. Let us not add to the infractions.’ He smiled, and heard it reciprocated in Cicero’s reply.
‘Right you are, brother-lieutenant.’
The feed cut and Areios, who was two hundred feet away from his brother, reached the edge of the conflict zone.
Running and gunning, he strafed a mob of Turned, chewing them to pieces with controlled bursts from his bolt rifle. The mass-reactives shattered bone and cratered flesh. Nothing but chunks of meat and gristle remained.
Switching to a one-handed grip, he unclipped a grenade from his belt and tossed it into a group of Turned where dozens of the creatures had converged into a horde. An explosion tore up the swamp in his wake. Still running, he homed in on the Catachan officer being dragged from the fray. She still fought her saviours, but blood loss appeared to be taking its toll and her protests had weakened. The Turned had her scent, and closed in.
A Turned tried to get in Areios’ path, the mutants only just now reacting to the Space Marines’ presence. He barged it aside, shattering its ribcage and tearing off one of its arms with his sheer momentum, and never broke stride. Others split off from the growing mob pursuing the Catachan officer. Areios counted over fifty. Kill Team Exemplar destroyed them. Drussus’ roar sounded above all else.
Areios smiled grimly, glad to have his brothers by his side.
The latter half of the mob had almost reached their prey, barely a handful of fighters left protecting the Catachan officer. Areios boosted into a sprint, the servos in his power armour building to a high-pitched whine. He hit a ramp of banked earth, one of the abandoned fortifications, and raced up the incline, locking his bolt rifle to his power plant behind him as he went and drawing his sword. The weapon hummed with power, the crackle of a disruption field rippling down the blade.
‘Avenging Son!’ he cried, loud enough to shatter eardrums, and as he reached the end of the ramp, he leapt…
…and launched into the midst of the Turned. Areios killed two before he had even hit the ground, a lateral cut severing heads. He landed in a crouch, a low sweep of his blade cutting knees and waists. The Turned squealed and shrieked in pain. Rising, he stabbed a hulking mutant bloated with excess fat and flesh through its rubbery gut, cooking it from the inside out. Pivoting, he struck down two more with rapid diagonal cuts that formed a cross of aerosolised blood in the air.
