The Relentless Dead, page 8
Colonel Graven remained in the doorway. He introduced himself and asked if Idelax was fit to travel. ‘Colonel Petrakov is keen to speak with you, inquisitor, and I believe our work here done.’
‘No witch has aught to gain by returning to this hamlet,’ Idelax agreed.
‘Nor were there any spectres in the night. With your assent, I plan to move out at ten-thirty local time, which is eighty-six minutes from now.’
‘What of the prisoners?’
‘I leave them in your hands, inquisitor. Should you wish any kept for interrogation, the Attilans will take them to the tower.’
‘No. I want them dead,’ snarled Idelax. His handsome face had hardened, his blue eyes no longer haunted but piercing and cruel, and now at last the watchmaster saw in him the Emperor’s wrath personified and was heartened to be one of the devout.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘one of them led us to you.’
‘None are to be spared,’ the witch hunter reiterated.
Graven nodded, turned and left the room.
To the watchmaster, Idelax said, ‘All have been touched by Chaos. They pray to the green fire now, that one day they might wield its power. From the cult to which they have pledged their allegiance, there is no return – and we have nothing more to learn from them.’ He took another drink.
When he had finished, the watchmaster prompted him, ‘They spoke of a creature in the catacombs?’
‘I never set eyes upon it, only heard its bestial roars. I couldn’t tell you what it was, only that my captors spoke of it with fearful reverence. They made sacrifices to it, among them my retinue’s survivors. I believe it may have taken cultists too, on occasions when they failed to sate its hunger.’
‘They never took you to it?’
‘No. The witches had other plans for me. A darker purpose. They chained me to their altar and they…’ The witch hunter took a breath. ‘You know about the incident that brought me to Oleris III? The lord and lady?’
‘The witches tried to place a spectre in your body?’
‘I thank the Emperor that my heart and mind were pure, my will sufficient to resist their incantations.’ Idelax’s eyes faded for a moment, but he hardened them again. ‘No, watchmaster, not a spectre, but something far more vile.’
They set light to the old barn with the remaining cultists in it.
Graven had had each cultist shot first, an act of mercy. He hadn’t wished to hear their screams as they burnt. His Korpsmen had used the workers’ own autoguns, conserving Imperial resources.
Some had died with curses on their lips, some pleading, others accepting their fates with quiet dignity. His informant had been among this final group, to his surprise. He had no sympathy for her, nor for any of them. They had made their choices in full knowledge of the price. Even the youngest of them. Everybody had to die, but they had squandered the lives they had been given.
Graven no longer doubted that there were others like them, many others. Other cultists, other witches. He had been right to insist on coming here. He took no pleasure in that fact; it only made his mission harder, thus more probably his last. His regiment’s last chance to earn its name.
The Chimera’s tracks had sunk into the mud. Korpsmen dug busily around them, sliding duckboards under them for traction.
Inquisitor Idelax stepped out of his hut, wearing plain grave worker’s clothes but standing tall in them. He basked in the heat from the burning barn. Then he turned to survey his surroundings, located Graven and approached him. ‘I hear my Land Raider is out of commission.’
Both glanced towards the nearby half-dug pit. ‘When we’ve time, I shall send a squad back here, equipped to salvage all we can,’ said Graven.
Idelax waved away the offer, turning back to the Chimera. ‘I’ll ride in the turret with you. It will give us time to talk.’
‘Are you sure that’s best, inquisitor? You have been through a punishing ordeal. We can make you more comfortable in the troop compartment.’
Deep blue eyes rested on the colonel. ‘I believe a spectre tried to take you over.’
‘Yes, inquisitor, two nights ago.’
‘Why do you imagine it chose you?’
Graven had asked himself the same question and so had an answer ready. ‘They targeted our leader, as they did the workers’ leader.’
‘Hmm. They did not target me,’ said Idelax.
‘Perhaps because your psyker posed a greater threat to them. My watchmaster tells me that was your assumption too.’
The witch hunter pursed his lips in doubt, but said no more.
The watchmaster saw off Sergeant Batu and her mounted squad.
Wistfully, he watched them cantering along the muddy tracks until they were only specks to him. He had hoped to ride with them – ostensibly to make space for Idelax in the Chimera – but they weren’t returning to the compound. They had business in another hamlet, from which Graven’s call had diverted them.
The watchmaster turned to find the witch hunter standing behind him. He blinked. ‘May I help you, inquisitor?’
Idelax said bluntly, ‘Tell me about your commander.’
That was unexpected. ‘The colonel?’
‘You work most closely with him.’
‘For almost five months, sir, since he took command of the Four Hundred and First Regiment and assigned me to his command squad as his deputy.’
‘For many Krieg, that would be a lifetime of service.’
‘Indeed.’ The watchmaster realised that Idelax was waiting to hear more. ‘The colonel is… efficient. Pragmatic. Dedicated. He is…’ He struggled for the words. ‘He is a Death Korps officer.’
‘You trust him?’
‘With my life. I know he will make it count. Colonel Graven has sworn to make each life in his regiment count, to compensate for prior losses. Sir, if I may ask, has my loyalty been called into question?’
‘You need have no worry on that score,’ said the witch hunter. ‘I have encountered Krieg before, and you, watchmaster, typify them. You do not flinch from my examination. You answer my questions directly, without obfuscation.’
‘Only the guilty fear to speak the truth.’
‘Yes, that is so. All the same, it is natural for even the most faithful, in the presence of one such as me, to find doubts in their hearts, to fear that I might see them too. Your people I have found to be exceptions, possessed of a rare self-confidence. I believe that you, that most of you, are free of doubt.’
‘Your pardon, inquisitor, but I fail to see your point.’
‘Colonel Graven is a Death Korps officer.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Efficient. Pragmatic. Dedicated. Strong enough in heart and mind to fight off a spectre’s attack.’ The witch hunter took a step closer. Something dangerous flashed in the blue depths of his glare. ‘Then why can’t he look me in the eye?’
VI
The Ecclesiarchal Tower had been retaken.
Colonel Petrakov rode to it in his Salamander command vehicle. It was a slow, uncomfortable journey, juddering over trenches and along narrow pathways cleared through rubble by heavier artillery. It ought to have been a triumphant one, but nothing had been won today.
At dawn, at the sound of a whistle, hundreds of Krieg Death Korpsmen had clambered from their trenches to swarm across no-man’s-land. Reports had quickly reached command headquarters, in equal parts expected and concerning. No fire had been drawn from the tower.
Vostroyan Guardsmen had queued at scaling ladders, awaiting the second whistle, which had never come. The Krieg had reached the tower unmolested and were searching floor by floor, but so far had found nothing but the mutilated bodies of the priests who had once ruled here.
The Salamander pulled up in a cobbled courtyard. Its walls had crumbled under shelling, the unmanned cannons behind them broken. The tower’s main body, though holed in many places, stood defiant. The Ecclesiarchal skull glowered down from its grey setting, as if resentful of its mistreatment.
Petrakov was met by a masked Krieg commissar and captain. They escorted him into the tower, told him where to safely step, showed him the vandalism wrought even before the bombardment. Not one symbol of the priesthood had been left intact. Heretical slogans were spray-painted on the walls.
The upper floors were in a similar state, he was assured. Rather than climbing, however, the colonel was led down winding, worn stone steps. Cold shadows wrapped themselves about him.
He descended for what felt like an age, until he reached the tower’s dungeons. Sconce-mounted torches provided a flickering light. He peered through the bars of a cell door and was not surprised to see bodies stacked up within. ‘The priests, I assume. Is this what you brought me here to see?’
‘No, colonel,’ said the Krieg commissar, and he recognised her husky voice, having met her in the trenches but not asked her name. ‘Not this.’
A crude hole had been battered through a rockcrete wall. Sprayed above it, in misspelled Low Gothic, was the taunt, Comme fynde us if you darre. Tentatively, Petrakov approached it. He could hear movement through it.
The captain reassured him: ‘Our people, sir. I sent two squads through to secure the immediate vicinity.’ Torchlight, spilling through the hole, glimmered off a white wall comprised of… What was that, some sort of ivory tiling?
‘We believe the witches fled this way, no less than four days ago,’ said the commissar. ‘As you can see, they broke into the catacombs, which run–’ She cut off as new sounds came to their ears through the hole. A bestial roar. A warning shout. Lasgun reports.
‘Stay here, sir – we can deal with this.’ The captain raced towards the sounds, the commissar not far behind him.
With an indignant huff, Colonel Petrakov drew his ornate, hand-tooled Vostroyan lasgun. With just a tad more caution than the Krieg had shown, he followed them into the breach.
The journey back to command headquarters felt twice as long as the outward leg had.
The difference was Inquisitor Idelax’s presence, beside Graven in the turret. The colonel felt under constant scrutiny, even when the witch hunter’s eyes were closed. Little as he had to say, he felt as if his silence were being judged.
Idelax asked questions about recent days’ events – all perfectly reasonable questions – before appearing to succumb to weariness. Graven couldn’t tell if he slept or not. However, as they neared their destination and the spires of the Grand Mausoleum appeared on the horizon, Idelax turned to him and asked, ‘What did they say to you? The spectres?’
Graven studied the road ahead of them. ‘They claimed to be the spirits of old comrades.’
‘Any comrades in particular?’
‘None I could identify. My regiment has many nameless dead.’
‘Such as the ones who perished on Maximus Arkanos?’
The witch hunter’s knowledge should not have surprised him. ‘They lamented their lives wasted. They sought to take my life in recompense. They claimed I should have died that day instead of them.’
‘Do you agree?’
The question, bluntly delivered, shocked Graven into turning. Idelax was still slumped in the gunner’s seat, eyes hooded but intense.
‘No,’ the colonel said, but he knew it was a lie. ‘Perhaps for a moment, in dreams. Upon awakening, I fought.’
‘Djallon, my acolyte, dreamt too,’ the inquisitor said. He waited for that to sink in before continuing. ‘That night, his final night, he woke up screaming. I might have probed him further, but his kind are habitually tortured. I imagine it must be the shame, the knowledge that through weakness they allowed the warp into their minds. No matter how determinedly they turn their powers to the good, they know they teeter on the edge of sanity.’
‘One stray thought from the abyss,’ the colonel muttered.
‘Djallon’s spectre did not cause his shame.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps they did see something in me. In unguarded moments, I might have asked myself why I was spared above so many others.’
‘Survivor’s guilt is not uncommon,’ said Idelax, with surprising equanimity.
‘But futile,’ Graven insisted, ‘as we Krieg know more than most, especially those of us long-lived enough to rise in rank. The divide between life and death can be as slender as a footstep in a minefield, the order in which we form up in the trenches.’
‘Hence you do not take names for yourselves.’
‘Only for the convenience of others.’
‘To keep you from mourning individuals?’
‘Because it matters not which of us die, so long as some survive to see that their deaths counted.’
‘Yet still you mourn.’
Graven inclined his head in assent. ‘For all that Krieg has lost and will yet lose before its debt is paid.’
‘Death can often seem capricious,’ the inquisitor agreed, ‘but I believe the Emperor sets a path for each of us to follow.’
‘I believe that, in some way I cannot know, my regiment strayed from that path,’ said Colonel Graven, ‘and was harshly punished for it. Since then, I confess, finding my new path has been a struggle, but I see it now.’
He sensed that his answers were meeting with approval, but still the probing continued: ‘Then you harbour no guilt over your regiment’s failure?’
‘No,’ said Graven, and repeated it to reassure himself. ‘No, I do not. The tribunal ascertained the truth. Krieg high command appointed me to lead this regiment, and I would not presume to doubt their judgement.’
He regretted his candour as, in a quiet growl, the witch hunter asked, ‘There was a tribunal?’
The Krieg were battling some kind of mutant creature.
Petrakov only glimpsed it through the Korpsmen pressed about it, in the narrow confines of a bone-filled tunnel, by the sputtering light of a lumen cube dropped and kicked between pairs of muddy boots. He glimpsed its furry chest, its backward-jointed legs, its horns. A beastman!
It lacked the room to wield its massive sword, whereas the Krieg made full use of their shorter blade bayonets, stabbing and rending at it. Petrakov levelled his lasgun, but doubted he would see a clear shot, nor need one. The beastman howled in pain and fury as a bayonet was thrust through its wrist, its sword relinquished.
Now he saw another like it, lying twitching, being trampled on the ground. The situation, he judged, had been well controlled.
Until he heard a snort behind him.
He whirled to see another creature, head down, charging at him on two legs, hooves pounding, the points of a pair of curved horns jutting out, threatening to gore him. He couldn’t get out of its way. Though there was a tunnel opening between them, he couldn’t have reached it in time.
That knowledge brought calm upon him. His fate in the Emperor’s hands now, Petrakov dropped to one knee, switched his gun to its full-auto setting and squeezed the trigger, filling the tunnel with a blinding light barrage that the beastman in turn could not avoid.
It had almost reached him when, blessedly, it stumbled, failing its endurance test. It planted its repulsive goat’s face in the dirt before his feet, and already the Krieg were streaming past him and falling upon it.
Standing, the Vostroyan colonel stiffened his legs. He didn’t want anyone to see how they were trembling with a delayed adrenaline release.
The battle was soon done, three beastmen dead. At their captain’s instructions, the Korpsmen fanned out through the tunnels to guard against any more approaching, but called back that none were to be seen.
‘What happened here?’ the captain asked the squad’s watchmaster. ‘An ambush?’
‘I believe not, sir. I believe the creatures heard or smelled us coming and attempted to withdraw, knowing we outnumbered them, but by a fluke of the tunnels’ layout we already had them cornered.’
Petrakov stepped forward. ‘This concerns me. How were we not aware that Oleris III had bred these abominations?’
No one had an answer for him. Never had he seen a beastman for himself before, and the sight revolted him. They dated back millennia, to the Age of Strife, their origins unknown.
‘Invariably,’ the commissar said, ‘such creatures are drawn to worlds upon which the Ruinous Powers have gained footholds.’
Petrakov feared that she was right. Along with the priests, scores of servants had lived on the tower’s lower floors, and just a handful of corpses had been found. The rest must have left with the witches – whether willingly or otherwise.
He decreed, ‘I want that tunnel entrance sealing up. I intend to relocate command headquarters to the tower, to send a message to the people of this world that the Emperor still has oversight here.’
He also intended to leave these gloomy catacombs as quickly as he could, only, when he turned to do so, he saw tunnels branching off and didn’t know which one to take. Not wishing to admit this, he reluctantly waited to be led again.
He felt as if the walls of bones were closing in around him. He found this place unnerving, a monument to death. He thought that only mutants like the beastmen, like the witches, could bear to be down here.
‘What needs to be done now seems obvious,’ said Colonel Graven.
Petrakov had assembled his army’s command staff in the war room: the old one, in the compound, as the new one was still being cleaned up and equipped.
Sister Superior Serafina had turned up for the meeting, along with the same Battle Sister as before. ‘This taint must be scoured from the face of this world,’ she agreed, ‘and from beneath it.’
‘So our saint may once more rest in peace,’ her larger comrade said.
