Incarnation - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Negative on targets by movement, heat and light, my lord,’ said one of the arbitrators.

  ‘They will come,’ said Covenant. Koleg saw his master look down at a small device of brass and spinning crystal, then he replaced it in a pouch and nodded to the dark end of the bridge beyond the falling snow.

  ‘Movement, three hundred metres front!’ Koleg’s visor zoomed in. He saw it then – a staggering shape, hunched and blurred by rags.

  Koleg clicked his visor to infra-sight. The world became blue with cold. He looked at the figures walking towards them on the far side of the bridge. For a second they were cold blue smudges against the black.

  ‘Confirm hostiles,’ said one of the arbitrators.

  The advancing figures flared white with heat. Koleg clicked back to normal vison. The falling snow froze in mid-air. Red rags burned on the nearest figures. Ash spiralled up to the night sky. The bodies beneath were hunger-thin, stitched and cut with scar patterns. Hooks had been bound in place of their hands and their lower jaws torn free of their heads. The first steps they took were unsteady on the iced stone, but then they changed. Heat poured out of their wounds and eyes. Flesh charred and elongated, growing even as it cooked. Horns and quills and hooves pushed through their skin. They blurred with speed, limbs stretching as they uncoiled into a run.

  ‘Hostiles confirmed,’ called Koleg, and fired. The grenade punched out of the launcher with a dull thump. The wind yanked it but Koleg had accounted for its shear. The grenade struck the bridge just in front of the charging creatures. Splintered stone and shrapnel flew out, then slowed, spinning in the dark like snow caught in a breeze.

  The arbitrators opened fire. Shots ripped out, overlapping, hammering into the creatures as they came forwards.

  The clouds of shot burned as they flew. Hundreds of steel spheres became a glowing cloud. The creatures did not slow down, but ran on. Molten shot punched into them.

  Koleg switched the setting on his grenade launcher and pulled the trigger twice. The two grav-bombs hit the two closest creatures with enough force to make them stagger. The compact gravitic generators in each grenade triggered a second later. The creatures slammed down into the bridge. Bones broke. Burning flesh was crushed to ash and jellied meat. The creatures behind them dropped to all fours and scuttled over the side of the bridge. And behind them, more were coming.

  Even inside his mask, Koleg could taste ash and burning hair.

  ‘Forward,’ said Covenant, and stepped to meet the burning creatures. He had drawn his sword, and its field lit with a growl of static. Snowflakes exploded to steam as they kissed the power field. The nearest creature leaped at them. In shape, it looked like a canid fused with an unfeathered bird, back jointed, long limbed, blood drooling from the maw that had split wide down its chest. The features of its human host remained only in the terror of its eyes as it leapt towards Covenant, hooked arms raised.

  The psycannon on Covenant’s shoulder rotated up and fired. Its round punched into the creature’s chest and exploded. Sacred silver and grave-dust gathered from executed witches ripped through its flesh. The thing screamed as it fell, and Covenant was moving, sword rising to take the next one as it leapt.

  Koleg swung his grenade launcher onto his back and drew his macrostubber pistol. He pulled the trigger as the gun came free. Micro-rounds, each no wider than a needle, hosed into the horde of creatures rolling up the bridge. Limbs and torsos came apart. Shotgun fire was lashing into them from the arbitrators. The creatures shrieked, and the tide of them parted over the edge of the bridge as they scuttled onto its underside like spiders.

  ‘Look to the flanks!’ shouted one of the arbitrators.

  Covenant paused as more creatures swarmed into the space left by his latest kill. Cords of ghost light gathered around his temples. A thing with a mouth as wide as its chest jumped forward, black teeth sharp in a hungry smile. A wall of invisible force slammed out from Covenant. The creature flew backwards, limbs and skin torn off as it struck those behind it. The wall of telekinetic force ripped onwards, throwing bodies into the air and tearing others to red shreds.

  Koleg moved up to Covenant’s side, firing without pause. The barrel of his pistol was glowing. Covenant struck a creature with an overhead blow, and split it from head to crotch in a shriek of lightning. The psycannon on his shoulder spun and fired behind them as the first creature came up over the side of the bridge. The psy-active round ripped its elongating skull off and sent its corpse pitching back into the dark drop, down to the roofs and spires below.

  The macrostubber clicked empty in Koleg’s hand. Limbs and torn flesh carpeted the stone in front of them. A thing with bloody stumps for legs thrashed a clawed hand at him from a pile of flesh. He kicked it back, stripped the glowing barrel and empty cylinder-mag from the pistol, drew replacements from his harness, snapped them into place and kept shooting.

  A fresh wave of figures was surging up the bridge. Red rags hung from them, and blades glinted in their hands. The creatures were clawing up onto the bridge around and behind Covenant’s arbitrators.

  An arbitrator spun his shotgun around, as a thing that had been human and was now a mass of tentacles and stingers flopped over the parapet next to him. He fired as a barbed tentacle whipped out and smashed through his visor in a spray of mirror glass and bone. Koleg stitched a line through the thing’s main mass. Mouths opened in its skin, yellow human teeth around red tongues, and howled in human voices. Covenant turned, spun his sword so that it was point-down in his hands, and plunged it into one of the open mouths. The creature split, tentacles thrashing as Covenant ripped the sword free and kicked it off the edge.

  Koleg sawed macrostubber fire across the figures charging up the slope of the bridge. Shot blasts ripped through them. Inside his skull he watched the rag-wrapped people fall. He saw their faces in the muzzle flare, men and women, strong and weak. He heard the hate pouring from their lips, and the blood spray up, black in the flash and roar. He noted how old some were, how weak some seemed, how their eyes were still human behind their masks and still-bloody scars. He saw all this, and felt nothing.

  ‘More are coming, lord,’ he called to Covenant.

  The inquisitor paused, but did not look at the horde. He was lifting the device from the pouch at his waist again, and it caught the battle’s light. The psycannon on his shoulder twitched, spitting rounds into warped creatures and the charging throng alike. Koleg glanced at his master as he reloaded again, then looked closer at the brass instrument he held.

  Spheres of crystal were spinning at its heart, and Koleg could see light gathering and scattering as they whirled faster and faster. Covenant’s eyes were fixed on it, staring, while around him fire and blood touched the cold dark.

  Koleg flicked his attention back to the space beyond the muzzle of his gun as one of the arbitrators shouted.

  The crowd of figures swarming up the bridge was draining back, leaving the dead and dying like flotsam on a shore. As swift as smoke blown by the wind, they were gone. The firing slowed and then ceased.

  ‘What is this?’ hissed one of the arbitrators.

  The wind breathed into the silence.

  The arbitrators began to reload and pull their casualties back. Covenant was still looking at the brass disc in his right hand, his sword – still skinned with lightning – held low in his other hand.

  ‘Lord,’ called one of the arbitrators, ‘are we withdrawing?’

  Covenant looked up, blinked once, and replaced the brass disc in a pouch. The sword’s power field snapped off, and he sheathed it over his shoulder as he turned and began to stride back towards the end of the bridge that connected to the inner cloisters.

  ‘Remain,’ he said to the arbitrators, as he moved through them. ‘Hold until you can’t, and then pull back to the inner door.’

  Koleg followed him, falling in at his side in silence.

  Covenant looked at him, face set.

  ‘It is coming,’ he said.

&nbs
p; ‘Down!’ hissed Agata. Josef gritted his teeth as fresh pain jolted through him when he dropped behind a pile of snow-covered debris. Gald and the two arbitrators that were still with them flattened themselves into shadows amongst the tangle of ramshackle buildings. They had lost the other two in the time that it had taken them to get from the attack site to… wherever they were. Somewhere deep in the Western Drift, he knew that much, but he had slipped out of consciousness a few times. The second time he had dimmed out he had woken to find one of the arbitrators gone. He had asked what had happened.

  ‘Wounds,’ Agata had said, and left it at that. She had talked less and less the further they went. He had walked using his hammer or one of the arbitrators for support, but then the pain would begin to rise, and Agata would loop herself under his arm and drag him on.

  Now, slumped in the deepening snow, he mouthed a prayer to the living god he had tried to serve as best he could.

  Agata put a hand on his shoulder. He lifted his head and looked in the direction she pointed. A shape was moving across the open space of a snow-choked road in front of them. It was very tall, and thin, its features hidden in a swathe of torn cloth. It reminded him of a street festival he had once seen on Scorboza. It had been the Day of Rising in the mortuary cites, and pairs of acrobats had stalked the streets on stilts, one balancing on the shoulders of the other, wearing costumes of dead saints with fireworks for eyes. The way they moved and swayed filled his mind as he watched the tall figure pause in the middle of the road. It turned its head. The shadow beneath its hood passed over where Josef and Agata lay. For a moment he felt heat prickle his skin, and then the thing’s gaze turned away and it swayed off down the street.

  ‘Abomination,’ breathed Agata.

  ‘Red pilgrims…’ said Josef. They had seen fewer and fewer of the red-swathed cultists as they had gone deeper into the drift, but then they had seen no sign of anyone else. Anyone living at least. The dead were there in abundance.

  They found the first plague house off a rough square amongst the warren of alleys. The bodies had been heaped in a single structure, stacked like wood for winter. Promethium slurry had been poured over them. They were going to burn them once there were enough. The bodies had been thin, and all of them had red welts and blisters on one of their hands, as though they had dipped their hand in whatever had killed them.

  They had found some evidence of what had happened to the rest in some of the shacks they had looked in. Only the wind and cold stopped the reek filling the air like a fog.

  ‘Have you wondered…’ began Josef. Agata had begun to rise, and paused.

  ‘What? We need to move – that thing might come back and there might be others. We need to start arcing around towards the monastery.’

  Josef shook his head.

  ‘How long has there been plague in this place?’

  ‘Weeks maybe,’ she hissed. ‘Food has been scarce and the orders have been coming out less to minister to the pilgrims. Disease followed in those footsteps.’

  ‘Enough to kill all those that this uprising did not?’

  Agata paused, then shook her head. He noticed that a fresh runnel of blood had seeped from a ragged hole in the knee joint of her armour.

  ‘There is no time to–’

  ‘Think, sister. This is a malefic uprising, one of the swiftest I have seen. If the rest of those in this drift did not die of the plague or hunger or cold, then they must be with them. They are all red pilgrims now.’

  ‘But how could so many fall so quickly?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s a good question, don’t you think?’

  He watched Agata. The wrinkles and lines on her face deepened as she closed her eyes for a second. He saw the muscle tense in her jaw.

  ‘You have an idea of how to find an answer?’

  ‘Yes, I think we stop running and start hunting.’

  ‘You think that it is out here still?’

  He pulled himself up so that he could point in the direction that the tall stalker in red had gone.

  ‘I don’t know. I doubt, though, that thing is simply wandering. I think it is guarding something. Something close.’

  ‘And so…’

  ‘We follow it,’ he said, pushing himself up with his hammer’s haft. He closed his eyes for an instant and breathed to stop himself swaying, and then took a step through the snow. ‘We follow it…’

  ‘Water.’ Iacto looked up from the sheaf of parchments he had spread across an upturned pew that had been used as a table. ‘Yes, you, abbot, Intracto, or whatever they said you were called. I need water, yes? You have enough grasp of both language and thirst to comprehend me.’

  The old man in green robes had been sitting on a wooden bench five paces behind where Iacto was working. He had been there ever since the abbot had entered the room, but had not moved or spoken. He had just sat there, head bowed, shivering to whatever dreams passed through his sleep, claw-like hands hugging his robe to his chest.

  Iacto straightened, and looked around. Apart from Glavius-4-Rho, and the statue-like presence of four arbitrators, he was alone. All of the others had gone or withdrawn to other tasks. One of the arbitrators had dragged Sul’s body away, and sluiced the blood with snowmelt-water. Pink-tinted ice crystals still floated on the puddle. He had sent Claudia to coordinate the search of the archives for the type of information the inquisitor wanted. He could have gone himself, but he had decided to stay in the House of Concordance.

  There were two reasons for that choice. First was the simple fact that his instinct said that this was the safest place for him to be at that moment. The second was that he had begun to suspect that there were opportunities lurking just under the surface of what was happening. When he had stopped being shocked he had started to see that, for all the horror and terror of what was happening, there were two possibilities. Either everything was going to end, or something was going to survive, but regardless of which, there was going to be chaos. And in chaos there was a chance to take what before might have been out of reach.

  He just needed to wait, and discover how to seize it.

  ‘Are you an idiot?’ asked the old man in green. ‘Water. Now. It’s a very simple request and should not tax your faculties.’

  Iacto blinked, then nodded. There was a copper ewer of water on the floor nearby and he poured a half measure into a wooden cup. The old man took it from him, sniffed, and thrust it back.

  ‘What do you think I am, some dying old fossil who can only sip a thimble’s worth? Full cup, man! Full cup!’

  Iacto bit back the retort on his tongue, and went to fill the cup.

  ‘My infinite thanks and blessings,’ said the old man, slurping the water down.

  ‘You are an astropath,’ said Iacto, watching drops of water fall from the old man’s mouth to spot the green silk of his robes.

  ‘Observant as well as stupid, how novel.’

  Iacto was about to stop himself from shaking his head, then he remembered that the old man was blind.

  ‘No need to spare my delicate feelings – I don’t need to see you shake your head to see you shake your head.’ The astropath smacked his lips as he drained the last of the water. ‘I am a witch, remember, with powers beyond that which the mundane can comprehend.’

  The old man smiled. Then he coughed, swayed, and vomited a mixture of water, bile and blood onto the floor. Iacto flinched forward, but the old man raised a hand.

  ‘No, please spare me whatever passes for your sympathy.’ He coughed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘This place… this place. It’s still growing, Emperor of all, but we can’t wait much longer.’

  Iacto frowned.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Matters beyond your understanding.’

  ‘Is it something about the uprising, about these red pilgrims?’

  The old man chuckled.

  ‘Oh great glory, you have no idea. I just wish that he could have left me out of it.’


  An idea formed in Iacto’s mind. He glanced around, but the arbitrators had not moved. He looked back at the stacks of parchment and ledgers. He looked back at the astropath, and the idea became a question.

  ‘Astropaths send and receive messages across space. It makes sense that a man of such power would want to send and receive word of…’

  ‘Ah,’ said the old man, looking uncomfortable. ‘Not as stupid as you seem, then. My mistake.’

  ‘Astropaths…’ said Iacto, suddenly cold as the last pieces of realisation dropped into place. ‘There is no astropath in the monastery. That is why the inquisitor brought you, because there is no means of getting word out – there is no way that anyone could know what is happening.’

  He looked at the old man, but the old astropath did not move or reply.

  ‘But he came here and he is fighting and sending others to fight. Why? Why did he come with so many troops if he did not know that this uprising was happening?’

  He had gone still, his mind dancing as he saw pieces of the situation afresh. He had not been thinking or seeing clearly before, there had been too much shock, too much fear, but now the truth seemed obvious.

  ‘He came here for something else…’ he said to himself. ‘The only reason he is fighting what is happening is to buy time, while he finds it.’

  ‘You know, ideas and questions around the Inquisition tend to be bad ideas.’ The old man held out the empty water cup. ‘Please could you pour me some more water?’

  Iacto barely heard; he was moving towards one of the exits from the chamber. The arbitrator guarding it pulled it open and covered the area outside. He had been right, but not in the way he had expected – times of greatest chaos were times of greatest opportunity.

  Behind him, as he hurried into the candlelit gloom of the cloister passages, he heard the old man’s voice rise.

  ‘What about my water? I even said please.’

  Memnon stopped in the lee of a half-collapsed wall and looked up at the northern face of the monastery. Its windows were pale specks behind the falling snow. Geddon paused at his side, rotating her head like a dog. The machines haloing her hissed and beeped.