by Ian Watson
Simultaneously his senses scrutinised that vault, every grim shadow of which was luminous to him, pierced by a light of purity which Rogal Dorn focused through the lens of his being…
BIFF ROUSED FROM the split-brain trance.
He was still pure animal. For a moment longer, raw gaze and taste and smell were his sole sources of wisdom.
He was scumnik devolved into beast.
Then words trooped back into his reunifying consciousness. Unmangled, resurrected words.
“Someone else here,” he warned. “Someone been here all along.”
Mustn’t over-educate myself, he thought. Else I’ll rob myself of those animal-like perceptions, of the old scum instincts… I’ll cheat myself of the patterns that a beast can register, with its robot-wired mind alert to supernatural vibrations.
Perhaps the swank had been right in that one respect when he jeered at Biff’s diligent efforts in the scriptory…
DEEP IN THE cellar they found a quadruply amputated prisoner. Bereft of arms and legs, his massive torso was planted upright in a heavy bronze cauldron. He was sealed into that ample vessel with lead – the metal must have been poured whilst molten, then had hardened around his butt.
His eyes were wired open so that he must stare unblinkingly at a giant Sagramoso head, and his own body had been reduced to roughly the same contours. His former arm sockets were mere stumps of cinnabar. His lips were sewn shut with the thong of a thin black leathery whip, the tied ends of which drooped like a moustache.
As the Scouts approached the amputee, he was attempting to rock the weight of the cauldron. The faint grating caused by that supreme effort was what Biff had detected in his beast-brain.
The man – or what had been a man – was staring; he was breathing. His mastiff jaw jutted.
A faint feathering of ancient surgical scars on his trunk… Three holes in his forehead where studs had seemingly been pulled out with pincers…
This was – must once have been – a Marine.
The man’s cheeks were tattooed with little vermilion chalices brimming with gore.
Sergeant Juron demanded Biff’s combat knife. The looping whip that shoelaced the mouth of the mutilated Marine was branded with a frieze of miniature cabalistic hexes. Muttering a prayer to render those impotent, Juron slid the monomolecular blade between the man’s lips and sliced the edge easily through the whip.
The mouth yawned open. Canines and incisors were long sharp fangs, the canines hollow like hypodermic syringes carved of ivory.
The man croaked a few hardly comprehensible syllables. His tongue had not been cut out – it loomed thick and purple behind those savage teeth and the thick whiskers of severed whip – however his throat was dry as dust.
Juron squirted his water canteen into that arid gob again and again. The man stretched his head forward, teeth wide now, as if impelled to fasten those upon the sergeant’s gauntlet and pierce right through to bite; but he desisted.
“Who are you?” demanded Juron.
Painfully the answer came: “Blood Drinker… Marine… Lieutenant… Tezla…”
Biff glanced at his sergeant, who nodded confirmation.
“An honourable Marine Chapter – I’ve heard tell of them. How did you come here… Sir?” he asked the amputee whose buttocks and groin were embedded in grey plumbum.
The Blood Drinker struggled to talk.
“Exploration ship… Squad of ten… Alien battle damage… Navigator dying… We land on this loyal world for salvation… World not loyal… They hoax us… They pit us against a Titan… in an armour-glass arena. Titans! Have Titans here!”
Juron murmured an oath. “How many Titans?”
“I think… six Warlord-class, and one Emperor Titan… You don’t know of this?”
“Damned right we don’t.” The sergeant clutched the ruined communicator on his equipment harness, muttering anathema. Of course as a shepherd of Scouts he wore no helmet, with inbuilt primary communicator… “Mea culpa!” he swore. “Dorn forgive me.”
Thanks to study in the scriptories, Biff appreciated the seriousness of the situation as fully as Valence may have done. Titans were those heavily shielded, fearsomely armed mechanical warriors seventy feet tall and more, whose crews of three or four marched the armoured robotic monsters and targeted their heavy weapons by mind-impulse… Now seven such dire devices lurked within Sagramoso City, ready to erupt against the Marines when the hundreds of suited Fists came flooding in – to a trap.
A trap: yes. Biff thunk… Biff thought he could perceive the pattern well enough. The thousands of invading Imperial Guard and the possible tens of thousands of Planetary Defence Force troopers loyal to Fulgor Sagramoso would pretty much neutralise one another. Led by Lord Pugh, the Fists would punch their way through into the city, the treacherous city which would reconfigure itself like a machine so as to funnel them unwittingly. The seven Titans would be loosed from ambush, rising up like volcanic doom on a vitrodur platform or else stepping from behind some giant black wall that slid slyly aside.
How many Marines could seven Titans destroy with their plasma guns, macro-cannons, missiles, even with their power fists alone?
Perhaps too many… The Marines would be like fire ants attacking a cudbear. The cost even of victory might be far too great.
“How well do they operate their Titans?” Juron demanded.
“One Battle Titan… easily killed nine Blood Drinkers in armour… Me, it simply seized and held… out to Lord Sagramoso… as an offering… My armour was stripped…” Juron made to squeeze more water into the Lieutenant’s mouth, but the Marine shook his head. “Too much… I cannot urinate… With power swords they sawed off my limbs…” The man grinned crazily. “Difficult, even so! Thirty seconds each, it took them… Brought me here… Sewed my lips with hexes so I should not blaspheme against their godling… Poured molten lead to fix me… Left me solitary to adore his ancestors and starve…”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Don’t know… They’re ignorant of… Sus-An. After they left I suspended my animation… till my sub-mind, dreaming of blood, sensed the odour of your wounds… and roused me.”
“How did they come by Titans… Sir?”
The Blood Drinker shook his head. “Not from the Collegia Titanica!”
“Of course not… Who could have serviced Titans? Who has the tech here?” The sergeant frowned. “That’s irrelevant. We’ll have to leave you here, Lieutenant. An invasion’s under way. But we’ll free your eyes. So you can shut them. So you shan’t have to watch Sagramoso.” Juron shook his communicator in a fury of frustration.
“Maybe I can fix that,” suggested Yeremi. “I know a litany. I’m of tech stock.”
“The thing’s too injured, Valence. Mea culpa! We must fight our way to meet our Brothers to warn them.”
“We’re deep in the city,” said d’Arquebus, licking his lips. “Maybe we’re behind those Titans.”
“Can you describe exactly where they’re kept in relation to here, Lieutenant?”
Tezla could. Tezla did. He had kept his eyes peeled. And yes, d’Arquebus’ guess was correct.
“An obsidian arena that opens and closes…” mused Juron. “Waiting to gape once our brothers appear…”
“Could we try to sneak in there and reach a Titan?” interrupted d’Arquebus. The sergeant stared at him disbelievingly. “To disable at least one, Sir – or even make use of it?”
“Make use of…” Obviously d’Arquebus was oblivious to the training of the elite Moderati who controlled a Titan.
“How many of you… Scouts… are there?” moaned Tezla.
“Four here,” said the sergeant, “and there’s myself.” Tezla laughed throatily.
This offended Juron. “We’re Imperial Fists… Sir. We aren’t suicide zombies. We’re a Chapter that calculates carefully.”
“You didn’t calculate Titans.”
“Cousin, kindly describe the arena to me in detail.�
�
Tezla obliged, and Juron digested the information, glazed-eyed like some lexomat, some data-sponge.
He thought. He envisaged. He calculated.
At last he said slowly, “Maybe there is one way we could use a Titan. If only we can reach it stealthily… It’ll be disguises and knives, lads, no noisy bolts… No antics. Silks and blades. We’ll need the luck of Dorn Himself. We’ll almost certainly die. Almost certainly. Ninety per cent.”
“Death in the Emperor’s name,” hissed Biff. Or did he say, “Death is the Emperor’s name”?
“Knowing what we know, do we have any other choice but to go there? To sacrifice ourselves, even if we only buy our brothers extra moments?”
Tezla stared at Juron, still wide-eyed.
“You, Lieutenant: shall we kill you? Since no one else may find you?”
Tezla considered. “No,” he decided. “I may yet be of some temporary use to my Chapter if I can be salvaged. I’ll wait, with my eyes shut.”
CHAPTER NINE
AS CAMOUFLAGE THEY must obtain local clothing. Yet in quest of such, boltguns would be of no assistance. One could hardly wear garments that were ripped to shreds and spattered with blood.
Yeremi felt a flutter of perverse delight when Sergeant Juron decided that they must cache their weapons – other than combat knives and mini-grenades – in the cellar. How delightful to behold Lexandro’s chagrin as he was obliged to lay down that antique heavy bolter inlaid with antler and mother-of-pearl…
The Wolverines’ stock of blast and frag grenades would likewise be of little avail, though since each grenade hardly bulked larger than a coin the Scouts could at least retain their pursefuls of those in case they needed to kill at a distance.
If only they had some grenades of the gas of choke or knock-out variety! But then, the Scouts were lacking respirators. Mayhem had been the aim, not tranquillisation.
So as not to appear over-conspicuous they must unclip their bulky shoulder pauldrons, unstrap their greaves, and discard their eagle-plastrons.
“What if we run into Boar Squad?” asked d’Arquebus with a mad gleam in his eye.
This prospect pressed a peril button in Yeremi’s brain. The other Scouts might easily fail to recognise Lexandro and brothers; they might fire first and ask questions later, if they bothered to ask at all. They might kill Lexandro if he played the fool.
“I guess we steer well clear of our brothers,” Yeremi said.
“Oh yes!” d’Arquebus agreed fervently – and Yeremi realised how enraptured Lexandro was with the heroic fate in store for them. Now that their crazy mission was mooted, he didn’t wish it to be diluted with extra personnel.
“But the other sergeants have got communicators—” began Akbar.
“Communicators that work,” growled Sergeant Juron, in the bitter tone of one who didn’t need to be reminded. “If we do run into the others, you, Akbar, will strip naked to maximise their chance of recognising a fellow brother. You’ll go to them. First priority is to warn the Fists. But that,” and he eyed d’Arquebus levelly, “don’t mean we ain’t gonna try for the Titans too. Be better we had more Scouts and a couple more veteran sergeants on our side, is all.”
D’Arquebus wrinkled his nose, whether disapproving of Juron’s lapses of grammar in this time of stress, or simply of involving others on this enterprise, who could say?
Stripped naked, thought Yeremi. Lacking even plastrons or greaves to protect chests or calves, this part of the mission would be somewhat akin to a dash through a Tunnel of Terror…
Juron also seemed conscious of the exposure factor.
“Remember, lads,” he said, “you ain’t got chicken-ribs. You got a figging breastplate o’ solid bone inside you. And you got the carapace, an’ all.” He cleared his throat. “We have time for one quick prayer to Rogal Dorn.” Prayer would restore formality.
Henceforth they did not rampage – they sneaked. They slunk. They crept through a city that was continuing to recoil in face of invasion. Buildings, black as anthracite, were receding or telescoping down, rumbling as they moved, clearing a field for battle. Avenues broadened to lure attackers along them. Troopers of the rearguard were already falling back in reasonable order. Refugees, herded by shuriken skaters, were streaming inward. The irregular heartbeat of battle was distant as yet but throbbing closer.
A while later, the Wolverines seized their chance. Springing from behind fat fluted columns, they seized two skaters and snapped their necks.
D’Arquebus snatched one shroud of black silk as if it was his birthright. The sergeant availed himself of the other.
Those roller-boots proved to have vitrodur balls inset along the soles. Predictably the skaters’ boots were several sizes smaller than Marine footwear. So the camouflaged couple must sprint in a semblance of skating motion – to lure another shuriken-starman with urgent gestures, and snuff him. “He” proved to be something more alien: a dark-haired dusky woman. D’Arquebus sniggered as Yeremi adopted her garb. Yet then his attitude altered abruptly.
“Lordly,” he nodded approvingly. “Phantasmic!” For the moment Yeremi was a mirror he could admire himself in.
Next, the disguised trio snagged a couple of silk-clad refugees, strangled and then stripped them. Hugging the blackest shadows, all five mimers headed in the direction that the amputated Blood Drinker had outlined. Migrants flocking in panic from the battle zone provided a useful veil of confusion. Lights were dimming throughout the city, plunging whole districts into sombre murk. Scarcely any smoky sunshine from above filtered through the many dark glass shields.
BALLOON-WHEELED VEHICLES blocked a certain crepuscular boulevard. Macro-cannons were mounted upon those, and multi-meltas. Heavily armed troopers swarmed – outriders of Lord Sagramoso’s palace guard. At the end of that avenue rose the coaly tiers of the palace itself: a great glooming glass-petalled ziggurat with telescoping spires from which vast vitrodur umbrellas unfolded, interlocking.
An obsidian plaza close by the roadblock was almost deserted. Only a few shuriken skaters circled lazily – while refugees shunned that area as if it was ruined. Golden silhouettes of phoenixes indented the paving, suggestive of mighty, three-clawed footprints.
As promised, the nigrescent domes of the arena loomed behind that not-so-public square.
The edifice resembled an enormous clump of towering vitrified black fungi. Yet merry silver and azure pennants flew from those domes, stretched out on wires to suggest the presence of a fresh breeze. Within, that arena might well harbour some exhibition or pageant, and thus be of no significance in a war. The place was hardly cordoned by guards, as if to emphasise its innocuous character.
As the Wolverines sashayed closer, the percussion concert of battle to the north became more insistent. Amplified by the vitrodur soundboards of the city, the crackle of fire and drumbeat of explosions rolled closer – impelling a flux of refugees to eddy towards the troopers and the seeming sanctuary of the palace region beyond.
This would not be allowed.
Was it a certain gunnery officers intention to clear his field of view in Draconian style? Did he simply want to test the weapon? Perhaps he only aimed to chivvy those civilians in another direction, but was inexpert in the settings of the weapon.
A multi-melta opened fire.
Superheat surged from the quadruple nozzles, liquefying the flesh and fat of the nearest targets – boiling those liquids so that greasy steam rose from a pool of slumped steaming bones. More distant victims burst into flames. Others flared like candles as they tried to flee.
This distraction allowed the Wolverines to close in on the flanged skirts of the arena.
An access ramp corkscrewed down.
AT THE BOTTOM, a trio of guards were on duty, armed with flamers. The Wolverines’ borrowed silks lent them invaluable seconds wherein to close with those guards and sever their throats before they could fire or even cry a warning.
Branching tunnels led away underground, lit by
the occasional electroflambeau. Figures scurried in the distance. Here was a manhole down which to stuff the bodies.
And here was an inspection panel of close-set steel mesh embedded in the wall, sealed with waxen evil-eye hexes and painted with a faded inscription in the hieratic tongue: Hoc sacrificium consecrat nos muros.
Muttering some vulgar exorcism to avert the jinx, Juron tore the panel open. Behind, lay a pile of chained human bones, a slumped fettered skeleton. A shinbone was broken, twisted – as was the ulna in one arm, and several ribs.
Above, a Stygian tubeway arched upward like some intestine within the wall.
One of the slave-builders must have been incarcerated behind this hatch as a sacrifice to good fortune – with the chance of squirming his way up that curving conduit to some high exit point, a well-nigh impossible task when fettered. He must have tried in the darkness; perhaps tried many times. And slid down, unable to brake himself, breaking one bone then another. How he must have stared through the grid at freedom, and squinted hopelessly at the waxed wingnuts securing the gate of his oubliette. How he must have aspired to rise up forcefully, his yearning impregnating the walls with a similar passion.
Juron stared up the tube as far as he could see, and nodded.
“You first, d’Arquebus.”
Bones crumbled as d’Arquebus crouched upon them. He braced himself against the sides of that smooth slanting chimney in almost foetal position and began to force his way upward by flexing.
As Yeremi followed him, he breathed in the dust of death, motes from the pulverised bones.
Tundrish came next, then Akbar. Juron managed to heave the access panel back into position behind him, and what little light there had been diminished even more. Yeremi could still see the tube wall quite clearly with his enhanced vision. However, he did not bother to look. He shut his eyes – the better to concentrate upon the cramped flexing of his muscles; upon that monotonous, peristaltic thrust upwards as of some gross mutant baby ascending a vertical birth canal in defiance both of gravity and of sane obstetrics.
