Hand Of Abaddon, page 37
Scrape… pause… scrape. Over and over, like a cripple dragging an injured limb.
It was large, the figure, its silhouette nearly filling the corridor. Moving slowly and heavily, the scrape… pause… scrape punctuating every step.
‘Holy Throne…’ gasped Kesh, as she saw the figure properly for the first time.
Rostov and his party reached the deck plate and the deep plunge down to the level below. He eyed it warily, conscious of his own physical limitations.
‘My lord?’ asked Nirdrangar, noticing his hesitation.
‘I’ve come this far,’ said Rostov, after a short pause. Like the storm troopers, he was wearing a grav-chute, a compact propulsion device commonly used in drop assaults but utilised here in quick controlled bursts to effect a safe descent. In short order Nirdrangar was leading the line into the beckoning darkness, his men jumping over the edge.
Syreniel had no need for such a device. She leapt into the great nothing with acrobatic confidence, landing on each step with feline poise before springing off to the next. As Rostov followed, his own trajectory less certain and much more functional, he marvelled at the Silent Sister’s brutal elegance.
Gratefully he made it to the ground, though the pain had intensified, and found the Silent Sister waiting for him. She had evidently gone ahead to scout the way. Another shot of morphia barely touched his pain, but it kept him upright, at least. Several openings presented themselves, leading off into a veritable labyrinth of corridors, and Rostov looked to Syreniel, who nodded to one of the openings. In they went, moving fast and surefooted in spite of the terrain.
She is here, signed Syreniel after a few moments, hanging back to stay with Rostov, who was struggling with the pace.
‘Your former comrade? With the Militarum?’
Syreniel nodded. We must reach her. Something is near.
‘The Hand?’
A monster in the labyrinth.
Chapter Forty
the gods bear witness
a sacrifice
prophecies
A monster lurked in the well below. Its silent agonies trembled the blackstone around her, a dying leviathan willing for its end.
Yheng had been staring into the depths, into churning black and tentacular horror. It felt simultaneously huge, a being of ancient and dread majesty, and yet also pitiable and small to have been brought so low. She had suffered in her life; she had been subservient to cruel and uncaring masters; she had felt her potential stymied, her faith abused. Perhaps this was why the fortress had chosen her.
‘How can I…?’ Yheng began. She had her staff, her knife and her knowledge of sorcery, but this was small magic, crude against the task before her.
‘The gods bear witness, Yheng,’ said Augury, the strange amorphous creature standing behind her with their face hidden by a deep hood.
At these words, Yheng looked up into the vaulted ceiling and she remembered the ritual and the supplicant, what felt like aeons ago, his genhanced body hex-marked by each of the Eight, the shards pushed into his flesh. His burden. One that could only be borne by a warrior of the Traitor Astartes. And she remembered the gods and their eager regard. It was upon her again now, only this time she did not quail before it – she welcomed it.
At a murmured incantation, she fed power into the head of her staff. It crackled in a dark nimbus, a tempest confined to the thrice-cursed wood.
‘A sacrifice demands a blade, Tharador Yheng,’ uttered Augury, and with a slow nod of understanding Yheng drew her knife as well. She regarded the morass below, the dying core of the Blackstone Fortress.
‘It has no heart to pierce, no neck to slash,’ she said.
‘Intent, Yheng, there can be no true sacrifice without intent. You must offer this kill to the gods… and please them.’
A mote of fear fluttered in her chest but Yheng quashed it.
‘Enter the darkness, Yheng, and make your kill. It is ordained, you are ready.’
Yheng looked back at Augury, but they merely nodded, urging her to proceed.
‘What will happen?’ she asked.
‘The fortress will die, its anima extinguished. It has served its purpose as a place to hide us, and our purpose with the shards. The others depart already, though some remain to hold our enemy’s attention. That is why we are still here, Yheng, to pull the Imperium’s eye towards us so that my agent can finish his journey. It has drawn our enemies in, the fortress, a black candle flame in the outer darkness. They are here, Yheng, within these halls. Far away for now, but the servants of the Corpse-Emperor are coming. Do this, devote your soul to the gods, and be rewarded. Receive apotheosis.’
Yheng murmured a few words of power and a macabre wind blew up around her. Slowly she rose off the ground, buoyed by the souls of the damned, their stretched faces fashioned by the wind and screaming in muted torment. Her staff held aloft like a flaming brand, she drifted over the gaping mouth of the well and descended into blackness.
Abject and all-consuming. A silent tempest. An obsidian desert. An ocean of ink. The azure flame at the head of her staff guttered and died. She gagged as the darkness swept over her, suffocating, sending her mind reeling – and then her nerves steadied and she felt the overburdening presence.
It saw her.
Something brushed against her ankle, her shoulder, the back of her neck, like the touch of fish swimming through a river. Yheng fought the urge to recoil, and merely stood and closed her eyes. The staff’s flame rekindled, the lightning across the haft crackled back to life. She wove it around her, expanding the energies into a terrifying storm. Lightning arcs stabbed outwards and the formless darkness spasmed, as if stung. It shrank, and Yheng felt its weakness.
Something coalesced amidst roiling shadow. A mass, withered and diseased, emitting a soft beat.
You will bare your neck to me…
She raised the knife, and plunged it down into the black mass.
There was no scream, no obvious reaction of any kind. As she opened her eyes again, the writhing darkness in its many forms had simply gone, and the well was empty. The fortress was still. Inert.
Yheng drifted upwards and back out of the well. Her skin tingled, and like a night-rose opening up inside her, she felt it. Power.
‘Gods…’ she breathed, and saw cinder crackle on the air.
Augury watched her quietly. Yheng smiled, her eyes wide and eager.
‘I feel it,’ she said, her voice deeper now, and oddly resonant. ‘I feel the favour of the gods.’
Augury bowed, all of a sudden the supplicant. ‘It is yours, Mistress Yheng. You are to be their priestess, their sorceress.’
‘Tell me what they would will of me.’
‘All in good time. First, we have an errand. Our departure from this place is long overdue.’
Augury threw open their cloak and Yheng beheld the warp in all its wondrous horror. It wrapped around her, enfolded her in a sea of unreality. Her mind was suddenly awash with prophetic visions: of a throne in flames, of the corpse-lord her gods so despised.
Chapter Forty-One
the butcher king
as one
something has changed
Not all of the hanging bodies were corpses. One of them detached itself from the chains above and fell upon Areios with a manic cry. It stabbed with a heavy knife, two-handed, but Areios threw it off and into one of the columns. The bone shattered audibly.
More crazed cultists were dropping from the chains, like chiropterans diving for prey. They landed on the backs of the Astartes, hacking with axes and swords and chainblades.
‘Eyes up!’ shouted Areios, raking the hanging bodies with a burst of bolter fire. Torsos exploded over the Ultramarines in a grisly rain.
Cicero cut down another flock, blasting them apart in midair. Limbs pinwheeled, ripped from their bodies. Drussus caught one as it descended and slammed it into the ground. Bones cracked. He hauled it up again straight away, leaving a red smear in the ice, and proceeded to fling the wretch across the room to collide with three others. The cultists went sprawling, lost to the frozen mist.
Some of the Militarum soldiers were screaming, less durable than the Astartes, attacked in a frenzy of hatchets and knives. Their blood ran in rivers across the frozen abattoir floor.
Amused, the Butcher King raised his cleaver and gestured to Areios and his brothers.
‘Skulls for the Skull Throne,’ he growled.
They charged.
Violence erupted across the abattoir. The grim torrent of falling bodies was like a flesh shield for the charging Traitor Astartes, though Areios shot one in the shoulder guard and saw the warrior spin on his heel. Bolter fire thinned out the cultists quickly, turning them into chunks of exploded meat, but it gave the Traitor Space Marines a short reprieve and time enough to gain ground. Spurring himself into a run, batting aside anything that fell into his path, Areios took the lead. He felt a body carom off his battle plate but kept moving. A cultist sprang onto his shoulder guard, clinging on with an embedded axe, but Areios tore them off, blade and all. The heady thunder of war drummed in his ears, beating out a belligerent tattoo in his hearts. He trampled a cultist underfoot, running and gunning now, determined to reach the true foe.
In the Traitor Astartes, he saw a dark mirror-image of himself and his brothers. Their armour, though of an ancient pattern, was just as formidable. Their enhancements were not so dissimilar. But the Butcher King and his ilk had sworn pacts to the Dark Gods. They reeked of corruption. It gave them strength, resilience. He and his brothers had something the traitors did not: the absolute belief that they would prevail, and the honour to see it done.
A traitor bulled his way through the thronging cultists, his chainaxe leaving red ruin wherever it fell. The wretches were nothing to him, less than nothing. Areios shot him through the throat, and the traitor’s headless corpse collapsed bloodily a few seconds later.
He moved on, into the fray, his squad by his side.
‘For honour, brothers!’ he bellowed.
Next to Areios, Drussus cut the legs from under an armoured brute, then fired almost point-blank into the warrior’s face. Its roared invective soon fell silent. Cicero was more sparing, lining up headshots with a marksman’s skill. He took out three in rapid succession, hanging back as his brothers pushed up, fighting as a unit.
A Traitor Space Marine came at Areios from the flank, half seen in his peripheral vision. He turned to engage, a fraction late, and saw the warrior felled with a precise shot through the left eye.
Gratitude, Cicero.
But the grind was relentless, and even Areios felt his strength being taxed. ‘For courage!’ he roared, blasting apart the breastplate of an enemy, its innards spilling through the ravaged mesh beneath. He finished it with a bolt-shell to the face. As gore spattered his helm, he quickly took stock.
Uxio fell to a traitor’s savage blow, the axe blade buried in his chest. Tiberon staggered back with blood fountaining from his neck; two of his brothers brought his killer down with a coordinated attack. It was brutal, a melee of staggering violence. Astartes-on-Astartes warfare, conducted at dizzying pace and without restraint. The Astra Militarum could not hope to match it. They fought off the cultist horde, while Areios and his men kept the Traitor Astartes focused on them and them alone.
As the ranks of the enemy thinned and the fighting grew stretched, Areios felt rather than saw the champion of the Dark Gods coming for him. A heady blood-stench preceded him, fouling Areios’ olfactory sensors. A brute of a warrior stepped forwards, bellowing in incoherent fury. Ortho and Demidies engaged him, seeking to intercede on their brother-lieutenant’s behalf, but the Butcher King tore them down as though they were children, rather than warriors Areios had fought and bled beside. In two swings of the fell champion’s axe, Ortho slumped to his knees, decapitated, and Demidies was carved down the middle, his bifurcated halves parting with monstrous slowness.
‘Your skull will adorn Khorne’s throne,’ the Butcher King promised, levelling his gore-slicked blade at Areios.
Guilliman grant me strength, Areios willed, preparing to face the monster when Sergeant Trajus rushed in from the flank, his chainsword wet with traitor blood.
The blow was so swift that it almost didn’t register. Trajus appeared to stall, then staggered to a halt. When he tried to turn, the upper portion of his torso parted diagonally from the lower in a gruesome slide.
Areios cried out, ‘Avenging Son!’ and charged the Butcher King.
A hasty burst of mass-reactives exploded against the traitor’s armour but did nothing to slow him, and all too quickly Areios found himself face to face with a monster. He stared up at his foe, finding only rage and hatred in the Butcher King’s bloodshot eyes.
About to fire again, Areios recoiled as his bolt rifle came apart in his hand, destroyed by the monstrous warrior’s axe. The explosion blasted Areios onto his back but he rose to his feet immediately, letting go of the useless bolt rifle and drawing the thunder hammer. It crackled with power, a lightning arc rippling across the head. His dead captain had named it Honour, but all Areios could feel was wrath, and a desire for vengeance against the one who had slain his brothers.
Vengeance is the undoing of honour, Epathus had once said.
For now, vengeance will have to be enough, thought Areios as Drussus and Cicero came to his side.
‘As one,’ said Drussus.
‘As one,’ echoed Areios.
They charged the Butcher King together. A savage swing kept them back, the cleaver carving a shallow furrow in Cicero’s armour, a near miss. He fired at close range, a snapshot, but it pranged off the dark crown the monster wore and barely made a scratch. The Butcher King blinked back sparks, snarling and frothing. Drussus leapt at the opening, and managed to stab his gladius into the meat of the monster’s thigh. A backhand blow sent him reeling and crashing into Cicero, his blade still embedded, and the Butcher King not even limping as he bore down on Areios.
A hasty parry with the hammer’s haft prevented him from being cut in half, but it was taking all of Areios’ strength to hold on. The fight against Pridor Vrakon came back to him, the last time he had fought a foe of such potency and experience. Areios had almost died that day. He had lost an arm instead. He vowed he would not be found wanting this time.
A kick to his midriff propelled him backwards. He hit one of the columns, felt his shoulder jar as the stone cracked with the impact. Still dazed, Areios swerved instinctively to avoid a beheading.
His foe reeked of blood, his body wreathed in a hot red mist that melted the ice around him. Areios found himself on the defensive, unable to land a blow, the heavy thunder hammer an anchor in his unfamiliar grip.
Another swipe of the cleaver cut through a chain attached to the wall mounting, and the body it had been holding crashed down. Areios leapt aside, scrambling. A glancing blow scraped his arm and pain lanced through the bone. He retreated up a set of low steps, mounting a dais overlooking the abattoir, the Butcher King pursuing in a relentless frenzy. The traitor was raw aggression and unfettered wrath. Wild.
Since facing Pridor Vrakon, Areios had learned never to underestimate an enemy. He had also learned patience, though it railed against the eager fire within him, and to choose his moment carefully.
The Butcher King made a reckless swipe and Areios lunged, the hammer head punching into the traitor’s chest. It staggered him, and for a moment his guard opened up. Areios swung a blow into his flank, crushing armour plate, cracking and denting it inwards. He followed up with a smash to the traitor’s shoulder, though this had less impact and the Butcher King was able to lash out with a heavy punch that caught Areios on the chin. His vision crazed through his retinal lenses and he tasted blood.
Another savage attack followed and Areios parried. His return swing caught his foe against the knee, destroying the knee plate and much of the bone. The Butcher King collapsed as his leg gave way beneath him. He lashed out, roaring his defiance, but Areios stayed back to let him rage.
A blow to the shoulder took out the cleaver. Bleeding, foaming at the mouth, the Butcher King bellowed to his god to grant him strength.
‘They’re not listening,’ Areios said, and smashed his skull with Honour, ending it.
Deranged and unhinged, the rest of the Traitor Astartes were straightforward to pick apart after that. The Ultramarines fought them in packs, taking each one down like a rabid beast, and when that was done they put the last of the cultists to the sword.
Areios was amidst the aftermath when a pale, bloody-faced Militarum colonel approached him.
‘We are victorious, my lord,’ he said, breathless. His considerably thinned ranks gathered behind him. Proud and courageous, they nonetheless looked disturbed by what they had done and witnessed.
Favouring the colonel with a nod of acknowledgement, he turned to Valentius, who had been ministering to the dying and the dead. Considering the carnage around the abattoir, the Apothecary’s work was not yet over.
‘Eight of our brothers have fallen, lieutenant,’ he reported grimly. ‘A high price, though I will take the Chapter’s due.’
‘Remain here to perform the rites,’ Areios said, and gestured to the exhausted-looking Mordians. ‘And keep them with you. They have honoured the Emperor, and I would ask no more of them.’
Valentius saluted and went to his task.
‘It feels…’ Cicero tried to catch the right word. ‘Still?’ He and Drussus had survived the slaughter and had converged on their leader, as always.
‘Quieter, yes,’ Drussus agreed. He regarded the crushed skull of the dead Butcher King, lying not so far away. ‘Is this it? Is this the great enemy we are meant to find and kill?’
