Hand Of Abaddon, page 3
Kesh stepped inside, about to begin her search when the alarms started ringing. She shared a weary glance with the tunnel fighter and about-faced.
Sleep would have to wait.
Chapter Two
kith and kin
heralds of the hand
a prisoner
Yamir had not the fortitude of his stocky hosts, and greatly desired to sleep. Fatigue dragged against every sinew and bone in his body. He was not built for such rigour, Yamir decided to himself, as a particularly savage battle played out in the background. His fine trappings, his frock coat and trousers would need a thorough cleanse. As soon as he was able to return to the Buccaneer he would take a bath too. Even the mere thought of it was a balm. He doubted the Kin, in which he had made company, were as fastidious. They looked at home in the dust and the blood. Not that he would voice it; he was far too experienced a diplomat for that. A rogue trader in service of a distant master, he had come here to this barren moon to gain favour with and potentially form an alliance between the doughty warriors of the Omrigar Kindred, many of whom were still fighting amongst themselves.
Automatic weapon discharge and the shrieking refrain of more exotic firearms laced the air. The low, bellowed oaths of the Kin contrasted with the death-rattle defiance of the cultists, who fought like zealots but without any hope of victory. They were outgunned, outmatched. Undone.
A largely barren expanse characterised the battlefield, where the Kin had arranged their vehicles and mass extraction engines in efficient camps around their find. The moon was dead, perhaps inhabited once, but its seams of titanium and metathane still ran deep. It was this that the Kin coveted, their kâhl most of all.
Her name was Vutred and she stood just ahead of Yamir, a small cohort of her finest and most heavily armoured warriors around her. She had taken a prisoner, a wretched thing in the ragged garb of a Navy captain, his Imperial sigils besmirched or removed and those of the gods of Ruin daubed in their place.
Vutred gave a curt signal, the chopping motion of her armoured hand like a blade.
‘Don’t let it fall unconscious, Utri,’ she growled.
The Kin leader was a stout figure, broad-shouldered as an auroch and skin cracked with scars like fissures through rock. She was clad in a suit of heavy powered plate, the edges worn to sharp silver in places and begrimed with dust, her weapons disengaged, her trappings flecked with enemy blood. Some of it had dried in an interrupted scythe-blade curve across her cheek. A deep scar above one eye stopped at her crest of flaxen hair.
One of her Einhyr stepped forward at her gruff command with a grind of servo-driven exo-armour, like an anvil had been miraculously animated and turned into flesh and blood, and slapped the prisoner across the cheek.
Already dazed, the prisoner hissed in pain but became instantly focused as Utri’s crackling gauntlet drew close. Faint lightning arced over the knuckles, picking out the cultist’s face in the glow. His countenance had been noble once but now it was disfigured, like so many of those who worshipped the Dark Gods, with crude sigils seared into his dark skin as if by a torturer’s brand. An eight-pointed star, a three-tined fork, a sickle moon and a fiery eye, amongst other less identifiable runes. The wounds looked angry, almost raw.
The Einhyr pulled back his arm for another blow, his red-bearded face framed in a snarl.
‘Enough, Utri.’
He paused, before withdrawing silently to join the other warriors. They stayed close, a cordon around their kâhl, though in truth she needed no such protection.
The battle surrounding them continued.
Given how badly the cultists were faring, Yamir felt confident they regretted their decision to attack the seemingly vulnerable Kin.
Not long after landing, drawn by the esoteric readings of their augurs, the Kin had set to work establishing a mine-head. Rigs had been fixed in place, harvesters primed. Then drilling and extraction had begun. The mineral-rich heart of the moon was where the real treasure lay, but the Kin wrenched every iota of material from the site, always gauging their efforts against the potential rewards to the extent that the expenditure of resources in having to fight the cultists appeared to have offended them.
The cultists had come upon the Kin as they were closing up their operations. Seeing only a modest band of prospectors, their stout voidship at low anchor above the moon, they must have appeared easy pickings to the cultists, who had launched landing craft in abundance.
What the attackers hadn’t known was that Vutred and her other warriors had been deep inside the primary borehole they had made in the moon’s core, surveying extraction and carefully tabulating yields. Every grain and particle accounted for.
Waste feeds the void, or so the Kin would say.
As the cultists were being blunted on the bolt cannons of the Hearthkyn left to watch the entrance, Vutred and her Einhyr had appeared from the heart of the moon. A band of heavily armed fighters in even heavier armour had followed – Yamir had learned the name for these fighters was ‘Thunderkyn’, an apt moniker considering their impressive and explosive armaments – and for the cultists, the fight went precipitously downhill from there. The Oathband were merciless in their destruction of the enemy, herding them into kill-zones, harrying them relentlessly and otherwise ending any real threat.
Little more than dregs of the enemy remained now, mainly half-armoured militia and bestial acolytes, their ship a listless ruin drifting in the upper void. Pieces of space-borne detritus followed it in a shattered wake like the leavings of a half-picked carcass. Bodies littered the ground underfoot with only a handful of Kin slain in reply. Yet, even for that there would be an accounting, as it was in all things for the Kin.
All of this Yamir had come to learn during his time with the stocky pioneers. The rogue trader had seen few braver and none shrewder. Every price paid would be measured from this conflict to the last, every expenditure, every acquisition – as the scion of the Lotha-Venz Dynasty, and with a Warrant of Trade to his family’s name, he could understand that. Though Vutred, who cast a glance over her shoulder at her warriors rounding up the last of the enemy, looked less than pleased with the cost.
‘Speak now, filth,’ she demanded of the cultist, her creased features as tanned and worn as boiled leather. ‘I give you this one chance. What did you hope to gain by attacking the Omrigar Kindred?’
The prisoner grinned, the insane look in his eye rekindled for a moment. Old scars marked his face – from his former life, Yamir assumed. His moustache, not an uncommon sight amongst the Navy elite, was lank and greasy with corruption. The defaced rank pin of the Imperial Navy shone amid his battered wargear. A golden shoulder guard shaped like an eagle had been defaced and blackened by fire. Defections were not unheard of in Imperial forces, but to see one of their shipmasters fallen to Chaos was unsettling.
‘Answer me!’ snarled Vutred, and Yamir saw the prisoner’s grin widen.
‘We are the heralds,’ he spat, ‘the splinters of dissolution, when the pantheon will reign and Ruin is ascendant. We are the disciples, those who follow the Apostle, his servants and the servants of the true gods whose eye is upon us!’ Neck bulging, he lurched forward against his bonds until Vutred kicked him in the chest, smashing all the air from his lungs and sending him sprawling back in fits of gasping agony.
‘Wretched creature,’ she said and turned to another of her company, a grey-bearded sage, his void armour draped in a charcoal-coloured hooded cloak. Still as stone this one, unmoving as a statue. ‘Othed…’
At his name, the Grimnyr’s eyes glowed as he raised an ancestral staff carved with strange angular markings. The atmosphere chilled, faint flakes of snow crystallising out of air. They had something of the warp about them, these battle-sages, but Othed was unlike any psyker Yamir had ever encountered.
A machine of some kind followed in the Grimnyr’s wake, like a robotic torso impelled by anti-gravitic technologies. It hummed as Othed approached the prisoner, his gloved hand raised in a claw.
It took a few moments, the chill of his presence seeping into bone, cooling blood to ice, before the gentle storm ebbed and the Grimnyr’s eyes faded back to grey.
‘I detect no falsehood, my kâhl,’ he uttered, in a voice like creaking oak. ‘He believes his ravings. They came here to pillage, to kill and capture. Whatever greater purpose he speaks of, this warband are no longer any part of it. They are wild dogs left to roam. And a wild dog will always piss where it is not wanted.’
‘As true as wrought,’ agreed Utri, the Einhyr eager to finish this.
Vutred rubbed her chin with a well-worn gauntlet.
‘What of you, Imperial?’ she asked, none too kindly. He had found her fair but fierce. The kâhl had problems of her own, he knew. Detail was sparse, but he had deduced her Kindred were facing something like fiscal ruin. For the Kin, this was disastrous. Vutred sought what she referred to as the motherlode, some lucrative discovery, a prospect that would change her fortunes. As such, she had little patience for becoming embroiled in petty skirmishes. ‘Is any of this known to you?’
Yamir nodded, weathering her stern regard. ‘An old friend of mine was particularly adept at wrenching the truth out of scum like this,’ said the rogue trader. He risked a glance at the Grimnyr. ‘I mean no offence to your sage’s abilities.’
The Grimnyr inclined his head slightly, showing there was none taken.
Vutred barely noticed as she raised an eyebrow. ‘Is he nearby?’
‘Alas, no. Well, I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him in some time. I could reach him, but you’d be in for a wait.’
She sniffed desultorily. ‘I am not without patience, Imperial, but I need to know if this one has more allies in this region. I can ill afford further losses.’ She bit her tongue at that remark, the consternation plain as a map on her face. ‘This friend of yours, did he pass on any of his craft to you?’
Yamir tilted his head regretfully. ‘Also, no.’
‘Then I don’t suppose you’re much use to me here, are you?’ She muttered something else under her breath, but he had not learned enough of their language to decipher the phrase.
In any case, he struggled to disagree.
A tearing sound suddenly came from the prisoner, followed by a snap as he cut himself free of his bindings, a concealed knife brandished in his hand. Screaming, he lunged for Vutred.
‘Let the Dark Gods bear witness!’
Eyes shimmering with uncanny hoar-frost, Othed raised a gloved hand, fingers crackling with power…
Vutred was faster.
She seized the cultist by the neck, stopping him short, her other gauntleted hand around his wrist. With a twist she broke the bone, eliciting a cry from her would-be assassin, the knife clattering to the ground, where Othed claimed it, spiriting the blade into a force shield emanated by his robotic familiar. The Grimnyr hawked and spat, muttering the Kin word for ‘cursed’.
It happened so quickly, Utri and the other Einhyr had barely had a chance to move, much less comprehend what was happening.
‘Look to my own protection, shall I?’ snapped the kâhl, her gaze withering as it fell upon the chastened Einhyr.
Her attention returned to the cultist who was squirming in her grip. She threw the wretch down, looming like a storm. ‘I don’t know why you came here, but I’ll waste no further resource on you.’ Vutred’s plasma blade unsheathed from her gauntlet, the dormant weapon suddenly igniting forge-red.
‘Wait!’ The urgent cry came from Yamir before he realised he’d spoken.
A host of angry Kin faces fell upon him.
‘Look…’ He pointed.
There was another mark on the prisoner’s chest. Partially revealed when he had lunged for the kâhl and his already torn Navy jacket and shirt had parted. It was red raw, despite the scar tissue framing it, carved into skin, a wound that refused to heal.
Yamir thought he recognised it as something described to him years ago, not long after the outset of the crusade. He leaned in for a closer look, the Einhyr about to intervene until Vutred warned them off.
‘Let him be, but hold the wretch down,’ she said, gesturing to the prisoner.
Two of the Einhyr grabbed an arm each to prevent the cultist wriggling. He submitted readily, a flash of tapetum in his eye as the light caught it. Feral, predatory despite his obvious disadvantage.
It made the rogue trader hesitate for a moment before gingerly baring the cultist’s chest, wincing at the stench. And there it was. Unmistakable.
A hand print, its long fingers ending in talons.
The cultist started muttering feverishly.
Dour, Vutred looked on. ‘What’s he saying?’
Feeling the cultist’s rank breath on his cheek, Yamir drew closer. He half expected the wretch to try to bite him, but the prisoner appeared almost catatonic, entranced by his own rasping mantra. Discerning a single word, the rogue trader paled. A name. Yamir withdrew as if stung, turning to the kâhl, whose brows had knitted together in a thunderhead of consternation.
‘Hand of Abaddon. He’s saying “Hand of Abaddon”.’
Vutred frowned.
‘What, by the ancestors, is the Hand of Abaddon?’
Chapter Three
a return to terra
the archive
a dark discovery
This place had been grand once, during the days of Rostov’s distant ancestors. In these benighted times, it was a hollow and gilded shell, a decaying edifice, its grandeur long faded.
And yet he loved it anyway, for it was where He resided, His Throne and His crown.
Terra.
He had come to a scholars’ district, one of the oldest and less well travelled, though the Via Gnosis still groaned against the mass of servitors, priests, bent-backed scribes and notaries, the passing sutlers bound for the void docks, the zealots and orators cramming its miles-long expanse. Few ever went by anything other than foot in this particular district, unless they could travel via lighter or transport ship, and here such a luxury was impossible, the many arches and bridges, the spires, the statues and lofty balconies making a labyrinth of the skyways. Not to mention the flocks of cyber-cherubim fluttering on dead wings, and held aloft by anti-gravitic motors.
The roads were equally congested, clustered also with carts and rickshaws, palanquins and auto-pulpits. The ink-fingered inhabitants dragged stacks of vellum or bore string-bound clusters of manuscripts lashed onto their backs or else cradles of scrolls.
Rostov moved steadily through the throng, his leg still stiff on account of his injuries. They had removed the metal callipers and he no longer needed the cane, but he would never fully heal. So he patiently made his journey and resisted the urge to brandish his rosette as he edged through the crowds.
Let them think me one of them, he decided. Secrecy was one of the chief weapons of the Inquisition after all. As he walked, taking in the smells of sweat and toil that were only half hidden by the cloying fragrance of incense, he rubbed idly at his hand. It had been paining him of late, worse than before and growing more problematic by the day. It was no longer just the hand, either. He felt it in his arm and shoulder too, a profound itching across his back reminiscent of scar tissue. Rostov had scars aplenty. In the Ordo Xenos of the Holy Inquisition, it came with the territory. But this was different, and not like his other injury. At times, the pain was stabbing, burning. An indelible wound.
This represented a consequence.
Or perhaps even a warning.
He put it to the back of his mind, and focused instead on the structure looming ahead. It was curved and formidable, made from sandstone and ouslite, and chromed with silver – more a fortress than a repository of knowledge. They had just turned onto a wide processional, a paved avenue lined with artificial trees and the statues of prelates, theologians and saints.
‘At the risk of sounding trite,’ a voice behind Rostov began, raising its volume to be heard above the general hubbub of the mob, ‘are we almost at our destination, my lord?’
Rostov smiled. ‘Are your feet hurting, Antoniato? I thought a veteran like you would be used to campaigning…’
The former Guardsman turned Inquisitorial agent grunted something unflattering, and shucked his plasma rifle into a more comfortable position against his shoulder. Benidei Antoniato was well-muscled, with dark brown hair, his weathered face suggesting his age. He wore a patched uniform, heavy flak armour over the top with a grenade belt around his body, and a short blade strapped to his leg. Rostov heard him clank and clack as he adjusted his pistol belt, too.
‘I told you the arsenal would not be necessary,’ the inquisitor lightly chided.
‘I prefer to be prepared, and this is Terra, and the largest hive city in the Imperium. More places to get lost and forgotten here than on some death worlds I could mention. You trust these bloody priests and scribes? I know I don’t.’
A coterie of scholars coming the opposite way dared a scowl in Rostov’s rough vicinity which he assumed was meant for the ex-Guardsman.
‘Let’s not goad them, shall we, Antoniato. Writers can be savage if spurred.’
Another grumble, the muttering fading into a long, drawn-out sigh.
‘How we must suffer in the Emperor’s service,’ said Rostov with a rueful smile.
They passed under the shadow of statues, half listening to hymns piped through numerous vox-casters stationed throughout the via. Not all functioned, and several of the statues were merely feet and ankles attached to marble plinths. Gilded but very much tarnished, Terra still bore some evidence of the incursion nigh on a decade ago when the Throneworld was besieged for the third time in its storied history. At least, the third time that Rostov knew about. Much had been lost through war and indolence.
God-Emperor, he had been through similar trials to reach this crucial point in his hunt for the Hand. All that he had seen and experienced – the Dark Apostle captured at Machorta Sound, the sorcerer he had encountered on Srinagar. Each claiming knowledge of this prey and its machinations that had so haunted Rostov’s waking nights and weary days. Every evidential shred, every scrap of information, all of it had led him back to Terra and its Grand Librarium. He had exhausted every other avenue of enquiry first, for no visit to the Throneworld came without price. Every underworld contact, every low-level heretic and recidivist, every cult and arcanist. Any with knowledge of the esoteric, the ancient. It had yielded little and taxed him a lot, so he had made the journey, although it interrupted his other plans. But he must know. He had to know.
