Hand Of Abaddon, page 20
They locked eyes for a moment before Rathek closed his and they broke away.
Muttering in the ranks drew Herek’s attention. Their numbers had thinned, especially amongst the cultists, the rigours of this place too much for their weak mortal constitutions. Several had died already. Some had simply wandered off, gibbering to themselves. No one had seen their bodies since, but more bones fed the osseous fields.
One of the Red Corsairs stepped forward. Zareth was an old campaigner. He had fought the aeldari at Hannokbane and the hated Imperials at Vork’s Spear. His opinion carried some weight amongst the other warband leaders.
‘We should return to the Ruin, leave this place.’
‘Our path is here,’ Herek told him.
‘No, this is our death. Our ignominy.’ Zareth rested his hand on the pommel of a serrated spatha. Not an outright act of aggression, but Herek felt Harrower stir on his back. He kept her quiescent, having no desire to slay the war veteran.
‘An impasse, nothing more,’ Herek assured him, though he could not think of a way out of it, the susurration fogging his mind.
‘It has brought us nothing but misery and weakness,’ said Zareth, prompting angry murmurings of agreement from some. At the fringes of the war party, the last of the cultists were muttering to each other, their voices strange and slightly unhinged. It only added to the sense of discord.
Grejik hacked one down, and snarled, ‘Silence!’ The burly warrior had blood across his faceplate and a smashed retinal lens revealed an eye that held the hint of madness. Grejik had a reputation as a butcher, a savage fighter always first into the fray. An expert at close-quarters boarding actions, it was Grejik who had broken the initial line of defence when the Red Corsairs had taken the Mercurion, back before all of this began. His favoured breacher shield, chipped from use, sat slung across his back.
Rathek drew one of his swords, the scrape of metal loud across the eerie plain, and Herek tensed at the sudden change in atmosphere. Another renegade backed up Grejik, a hand on the bolt pistol in his belt holster. This was Skerrin, widely regarded as Grejik’s henchman.
All the while the soul mariner murmured into the still air. And cross the Straits of Lunacy. At the Burned Spire to the Threefold Wytch and the Abyssal Nadir…
‘Shut him up,’ demanded Zareth. ‘His words have brought us to the brink of our doom. And you have allowed it, Herek!’ He jabbed a gauntleted finger at the renegade lord, the hand that had been resting on the spatha’s pommel slowly wrapping itself around the grip.
‘Straits of lunacy indeed…’ chuckled Clortho, earning a sharp glance from Herek, who could not decide if the other warlord had aligned himself with the dissenters or with him.
Pain from the susurration bit, keen as any blade, and Herek felt his anger rise in kind.
‘Sheathe your weapons and keep them sheathed,’ he said, unable to keep the snarl from his voice.
Skerrin hesitated, until he saw Grejik obey his lord.
‘And you, Clortho,’ rasped Kurgos, a bolt pistol suddenly in the chirurgeon’s hand aimed at the warlord.
The Red Corsair plaintively showed his hands. ‘Oh, I’m not a part of this.’
Several others had banded around Zareth, though, the old campaigner’s reputation garnering support. Rathek made to draw his second sword, but Herek stopped him. He addressed Zareth and the warriors by his side, and gave a slight shake of the head.
‘Do not make me do this,’ he pleaded.
‘It’s already done–’ Zareth began, ripping out his blade with a flourish, but Herek was already on him, Harrower whipping around in a savage arc to claim the old campaigner’s head. It swept around thrice more, rapid, deadly, leaving Zareth’s allies slain with him.
Breathing hard with the pain of the susurration, Herek glared at the rest of his men with a blood-flecked face.
‘This has been profligate enough already, but I will fight anyone else who disagrees with this path. Speak now and know you will die without honour.’
None did.
Except Clortho.
‘Can you feel that?’ he asked, his armoured fingers caressing the air. ‘The gods are watching.’
The scarred warlord had no interest in the drama; instead he stared at the veil. It had thinned, but the creatures beyond no longer wailed or writhed, they had stilled utterly and now merely stared.
‘The shedding of the blood, the ritual of murder, has brought them forth,’ Clortho said.
Hunger bled from the daemons like a palpable fume, and several of the cultists abased themselves in frantic, terrified worship. Kurgos went to stop them.
‘Hold on, old friend…’ said Herek, eyes narrowing. ‘I see something. Distant, but…’ He peered through the veil, to the shadow beyond, the unreal mirror that led from the material to the immaterial. Past the hellish hordes that stood in eerie stillness.
A tower, blackened by fire. A burned spire.
It hadn’t been there before.
Herek hefted his axe and advanced on the cultists.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Kurgos.
‘Making an offering…’
Chapter Nineteen
limits
a beast in chains
an old ally
She had offered to do it herself. Torture was an ugly methodology, and seldom reliable, but Syreniel was not above inflicting pain if the situation required it. But he had refused, and said it must be done his way, precisely. So she watched, unflinching, as the inquisitor unleashed his arts. He did so without relish, using tools, displaying a deep knowledge of anatomy and the precise location of every bodily nerve. She thought him reluctant, almost as if he found the practice distasteful, stripped down to his open shirt and trousers, barefoot like a beggar and flecked with the prisoner’s blood. She supposed he had no desire to sully his attire, or perhaps the toll it took upon him meant it was easier if he was as unburdened as possible.
This, precisely this, was the reason she had fallen so far from grace in the Sisterhood’s eyes. Her thoughts, her individuality, her curiosity and humanity. In truth, it was love that had seen her cast out, love that brought forth a transgression of the highest proscription. As Villenia had lain dead before her, in Syreniel’s earliest days of the Sisterhood, she had spoken.
No, she had screamed.
A lament, for love.
A sacred oath, broken.
These feelings were anathema to the Order. They made a warrior weak, impressionable. Syreniel had proven her worth since then, but the mark of her censure remained. She had fought for other agencies, a hireling more than a Talon of the Emperor. And here she was again, at the service of someone not of her Order, though she wanted bitterly to return to Somnus and the Sisterhood that had forsaken her. For now, she would do as her superiors bid, for it was the Emperor’s will, and what were any of His servants without this to follow?
Rostov followed his own path, one he believed to be his purpose.
It was killing him.
And in the end it would damn him. Perhaps that was why the Knight Abyssal had placed Syreniel here, to put the inquisitor down if and when he succumbed. His skin already bore subtle lesions, the rash of infection, a sheen of feverish sweat. No disease caused this malady, it was the warp. Only by pain could Rostov peel away his prisoner’s defences and reveal everything he knew and was unaware that he knew; this the inquisitor had confessed to her. He did it by infiltrating his victim’s mind, through visions and impressions not so dissimilar from the soulbound. This cultist, ex-military judging by the now torn and ragged uniform, carried a crucial piece of the puzzle Rostov was trying to solve. The location of the so-called Hand of Abaddon. Syreniel had heard this name in the aftermath of the Ironhold Protectorate tragedy. It was believed by her Order and others that the loss of the capital ship Fell Lord, as well as its admiral, to whom she had been indentured as bodyguard and assassin, was cunningly engineered by some agent who either served or in some capacity was the Hand.
The one she had met, the thing that wore a human face but was anything but.
She had learned more, from Greyfax – with whom her Order shared resources – that the Hand and its followers sought and had recovered pieces of an ancient and terrible weapon, one that dated back to the days of the Great Heresy, a time so steeped in myth and falsehoods that this particular piece of information held scant value.
Regardless, a plan was afoot, a potentially extremely dangerous one with a highly destructive goal, and Rostov meant to thwart it. His sanity, his life, even his soul; he would offer it all up to negate this threat.
He sagged, exhausted, washing bloody fists in a bowl of already pink water. Never had a man looked more harrowed, this dank hold of bladed instruments and half-light ill-suiting him, as he turned and faced Syreniel.
She attended from the back of the chamber, her limiter cuff fully engaged so as to almost entirely nullify her abilities. The prisoner looked worse than Rostov, its face a bloody mask, its flesh gouged and torn. Yet it smiled still through red-rimed teeth, several of which had been removed.
‘Silent…’ rasped the inquisitor. ‘I have need of your talents.’
Ah, so this was his plan.
Syreniel remained still at first, her gaze moving from Rostov to the prisoner and back again. She felt no sympathy for this creature; she barely even considered it human, for cultists and their like were to be despised and, ultimately, destroyed. They represented a cancer at the heart of humanity, an aberration of belief which was far more insidious than any contagion, and should at the earliest opportunity be excised. But she did wonder at whether its slow dismantling was worth the cost to the inquisitor.
‘His mind remains closed to me,’ said Rostov, breathy with the effort of his labours, and sounding impatient. ‘I need you now. To help me break him.’
You should execute it, she signed. We will learn little from a traitor, save more lies and betrayal. What knowledge could it possibly possess that is worth this amount of suffering?
‘Only a chosen few carry the sigil of the Hand,’ Rostov explained, taking up a rag to wipe down the back of his neck, his forearms. ‘And my gathered intelligence thus far points to this one being of some significance. He may have seen something, been privy to a secret or embedded with subconscious knowledge to accomplish a task or pass to another. The Great Enemy can be subtle in their arts, as you well know. He has been close to the one I seek and that in itself may, even in part, reveal where the Hand can be found. I am running out of time, Syreniel. The Imperium is running out of time.’
She moved, her steps loud against the cold stone floor. She wore her Vigilator’s panoply but kept her sword sheathed on her back. Rostov had not summoned her for intimidation. Nor did he need her blade.
I strongly advise you to leave this room, she told him as she approached the prisoner.
‘I cannot. It’s not his confession I need, I must be a party to his agony. I have delivered punishment, now you must finish it and I’ll cling to the hope that this isn’t all for nothing.’
As you wish, she signed.
Stepping into the cordon of light surrounding the prisoner, Syreniel disengaged the limiter cuff.
At once, the cultist writhed and Rostov fell to his knees.
She glanced at him. This is mild. There is more.
He reached out, the inquisitor, grasping the wrist of the cultist, who was almost delirious with pain.
‘Then give me more…’ he spat between clenched teeth.
The limiter turned another notch, eliciting moans of agony from inquisitor and cultist both, but Rostov hung on.
‘More…’ he snarled, fists bunched, fingers white with tension.
Another notch – Syreniel barely had to move to inflict these agonies.
A shout from Rostov. ‘Re-engage it now!’ he cried.
Syreniel did as asked and saw the relief in the inquisitor, but the toll it had taken on the weaker mind of the cultist was evident as the creature visibly sagged.
‘I see…’ said Rostov. ‘I see it! Darkness shackled, monstrous in form… A belt of stars…’ Weeping, he thanked the Emperor for His strength.
The heathen cultist had no such haven. Its faith was fickle, abhorrent. It only moaned, its voice a thin trickle.
‘Again!’ snarled Rostov, and Syreniel turned off the limiter.
At once, the inquisitor convulsed, his face ashen with pain. The cultist had it far worse and screamed its agonies to the heedless gods of the warp. Rostov held on, shaking now. At his curt gesture, Syreniel re-engaged the limiter.
‘Its shadow dwarfs the ambit of worlds… A beast, a beast in chains,’ uttered Rostov, his endurance fading.
The cultist shivered in its bonds, its eyes rolled back in its head. Bucking and thrashing, mewling and spitting.
‘Again!’ bellowed Rostov, finding a few last reserves of strength.
Syreniel turned the limiter for the last time.
A dual scream rang out, echoing through the chamber. Rostov lost his grip and twisted his body into a foetal curl, shuddering and gasping.
She re-engaged the limiter cuff, all the way, nullifying the effect.
Both inquisitor and cultist sank down. They exhaled, spent. It took Rostov several minutes to regain his composure. After he did, he vomited and dragged himself up from his hands and knees.
Syreniel’s gaze was questioning.
Haggard and still shaking, Rostov nodded. ‘I have it,’ he breathed. ‘I have what we need.’
Strapped in its bindings, the cultist was dead.
The order went out and the Omnes Videntes deployed one of its void transports, bound for the imposing cruiser Saint Aster, warship of Battle Group Iolus.
It had taken several days to locate the flotilla of Fleet Tertius and another day to secure approval for an audience, the needs and demands of the crusade paramount and this concession to Rostov’s urgent request a distraction at best. At worst, it was a grievous waste of resource and time. But he had some pull and used it without hesitation.
Standing in the hold of the void transport, Rostov had sharpened his attire considerably since the prisoner interrogation and wore his silver battle plate. The needles ravaged him, despite his silent companion’s presence behind him, and he fought to keep the pain of it from his face. Syreniel had been right about the affliction worsening, and Rostov felt acutely aware of the inexorable passage of time and the fate that very likely awaited him. He need only do this, to finish what had been started at Machorta Sound when he had first heard of the so-called ‘Hand of Abaddon’.
If nothing else, God-Emperor, he thought and prayed, let me do this.
He and he alone could avert the coming calamity, for he and he alone believed it a clear and present danger. Now he just had to convince the primarch and would take any advantage to do so. That included having a Talon of the Emperor, albeit a disgraced one, by his side – for was it not then providence that had brought him to this? Would Guilliman not interpret his father’s hand at work? Speculum obscurus, to quote the Adeptus Custodes.
Syreniel alone accompanied him, the others in his company remaining aboard the Omnes Videntes, especially Cheelche. Though she might have the protection of Inquisitorial sanction, bringing a xenos aboard an Imperial crusade vessel would be unwise and do nothing to further Rostov’s cause. He did not want to come across as a radical, with a radical’s propensity for unreliability.
Besides, he had been considering leaving the Omnes Videntes and his retinue behind. This was not subterfuge or investigative work. It was war. He had no desire to spend his companions callously. In truth, he had grown attached to some of them, and there was what was happening to him to consider. He trusted the Silent Sister’s resolve. She would not hesitate to do what was necessary, but Lacrante? Antoniato? Even Cheelche? A moment’s compassion could jeopardise everything. And if he was being honest with himself he did not want them to see him degrade further, not to the point where he was no longer Leonid Rostov.
Assuming he could convince the primarch of his claims, he would take aboard ship with part of the fleet. He had Greyfax’s mandate, if only tacit, and he had narrowed the parameters of his search to the Stygius Gilt, a region of the void served by the Exthilior Astropathic Waystation. Seven of the telepathic choir had died to behold their vision, a scrap of psychic chaff that had confounded their interlocutors.
A great black beast straining at its chains.
No orks in the region, according to Navy and Militarum reports, at least not of notable proliferation, and nothing that would concur with this specific phraseology and imagery when matched to the decipher texts. Yet every astropath had given the same testimony as they died, some in unison: the exact words, in fact, as they came out of the dreaming and to their death throes.
It matched what Rostov had seen. And the belt of stars in his vision provided corroboration, though it had taken several days poring over star maps and void captures to narrow in on the exact celestial configuration.
An investigator did not believe in coincidence. This was what Jeren Dyre had instilled in Rostov as an interrogator. He had to believe this was significant. It had to mean something. If nothing else, the aperture of his search had narrowed, though the Gilt was still a vast area.
One thing remained clear: he needed reinforcements. He was about to find out if they would be granted.
Hands clasped behind his back, Rostov watched the airlock open and admit the light and atmosphere of the Saint Aster.
He was greeted tersely but not coldly as he returned to the ever-churning war machine that was the Indomitus Crusade. A cadre of ship’s armsmen in full armour and with shoulder-slung lasguns awaited the inquisitor on the embarkation deck, an immense space of docked aircraft thronged with ratings and engineers hauling refuelling pipes and wielding acetylene torches and pneumo-drills as they effected repairs. Everything was in a state of hyper-activity, a serious and controlled sense of urgency prevailing.
