Mark of Calth

by Edited by Laurie Goulding

  They marched through the dust – some staggering, some managing to make a stumble into something resembling a run. Kaurtal’s bolter kicked and boomed, slamming explosive shells into the closest figures. The Word Bearers burst and shattered, falling into the dust, naming him a traitor even as they dropped in withered ruin. It made no difference. Their hands rose from the ground, trailing dust as they clawed over his boots and greaves. Sparks flew from scraping fingertips. They came on in a choking, gasping tide.

  Kaurtal turned, took three running steps to shoulder-barge his way through the husks blocking his path, and launched skyward with another roar. This one sounded dangerously close to a cry for help.

  He crashed back into the dirt, colliding hard with the debris miring the ground. His helm struck rockcrete, painting it red, and a lance of cold metal rebar pounded through his collar, leaving him choking on rusted metal, gagging for air that would not come.

  Any scream he would have voiced in shame was stolen by the iron impaling his throat. The only sounds he made were gurgling grunts as he jerked his head back, trying to wrench himself from his impaling.

  The fire in his wings started a second later, as his nervous system caught up with the reason he had fallen from the sky. One of the dead warriors had cut a wing clean from his back. Kaurtal could hear the insectile buzz of an active power sword.

  He knew no fear. He knew no fear. He knew no fear.

  ‘Wait,’ he growled from a blood-bubbling throat. The iron-on-bone grind of pulling himself free felt worse than the smacking kick of impact. ‘Wait.’

  Such a weak host, the daemon said again. Destined for treachery. Your resolve will break. Must I be strong for both of us?

  Nerkhul–

  In that moment he was swallowed, somehow, inside his own mind. He felt it as a compacting of sorts, an enclosing.

  You betray your brothers, and now you would beg me for succour? You are more maggot than man, Jerudai Kaurtal of the Seventeenth. Not a warrior, but a worm. I have no desire to be bound within such a feeble vessel.

  Kaurtal screamed with no mouth and cried out with no voice. He was still trying to shriek when the walking dead fastened their rusted fingers upon his armour-plating, and pulled him down into the blackness.

  Jerudai Kaurtal never stood back up.

  Argel Tal waited with the body for almost an hour, pacing the ornate chamber with his weapons sheathed, arms folded across his breastplate. His boot-steps sent tremors along the deck grating. The servitors were too mind-locked to pay him any heed, and the chanting thralls too lost in their fever-dream vision quests, but a few of the robed menials flinched back when the Crimson Lord glanced in their direction. The Word Bearer had nothing of anger or irritation upon his features, but since Isstvan he had noticed few humans could stand to look into his eyes. They sensed the daemon within his body, lurking behind his gaze, and his second soul fed upon their fear.

  It could have been the same with Kaurtal. It should have been.

  But Sergeant Jerudai Kaurtal remained dead on the deck. Not without regret, Argel Tal nudged the body with his boot.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said a gentle voice from the chamber’s doorway. Too gentle to be mistaken for human, yet too resonant ever to be called weak. Argel Tal turned to the unexpected intruder, lowering his head in reverence the moment he caught sight of the filigreed red ceramite armour. ‘Truly dead, that is.’

  ‘My lord, I cannot do this.’

  Lorgar Aurelian, primarch of the Word Bearers, rested a fatherly hand upon his son’s shoulder. The last time Argel Tal had seen him, that scholarly, reserved, gold-inked face had been decorated in the blood speckling of a hundred dead Raven Guard. Now, it was warmed by a patient smile.

  ‘You have walked the roads of Heaven and Hell, my son. You can do anything. What troubles you?’

  Argel Tal nodded down at Kaurtal’s slain form. ‘They keep dying, father.’

  ‘So this is not the first?’

  Despite himself, Argel Tal gave a rueful little smile. ‘No. This is the thirteenth.’

  ‘I see.’ Lorgar lowered himself into a crouch, his black cloak trailing over the decking. With delicate care, he closed Kaurtal’s staring eyes. ‘How many have lived?’

  ‘Three,’ admitted Argel Tal.

  ‘The daemons are rejecting them as hosts,’ Lorgar postulated, rising to his feet again to tower above his son.

  Argel Tal nodded again. ‘Physicality alone is not tempting enough for them to incarnate. They desire strong vessels to enter into symbiosis. Kaurtal babbled as he died, speaking of Calth, prophesying nonsense through the blood running between his teeth.’

  That raised Lorgar’s immaculate eyebrow, and brought a shine to the edges of his tawny eyes.

  ‘He saw one of the many paths of the future?’

  Argel Tal could only shrug. ‘I believe so. It seems to be how the daemons test their hosts – letting glimpses of the future unwind, and judging the warriors’ reactions.’

  Lorgar was silent for several moments, his armoured fingers tapping on the skin-bound book chained to his hip. The stretched, cured faces stared at Argel Tal in eyeless, slack horror.

  ‘Perhaps it is a blessing that Sergeant Kaurtal died. It seems that he may have made some foolish choices in the future.’

  Argel Tal drew breath to agree, then pulled up short. ‘Father,’ he said. ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘You are already doing it. Give me three Gal Vorbak for every thirteen dead, my son, and I will thank you until the stars themselves die as icy cores in the void. We are demanding more than any legionary has ever been forced to bear. Let us not weep at the weaklings falling by the wayside.’

  Argel Tal fell silent, looking down at the corpse. He had been sure of Kaurtal.

  Kaurtal, who had no mundane, military ambition, beyond pride in his prowess. Kaurtal, who had slaughtered countless dozens of Raven Guard on the killing fields. Kaurtal, who had knelt in prayer, scourging his flesh for not killing enough, chanting amongst the dead in the hours after Isstvan. He had had palpable humanity beneath the iron of his faith, beneath the ceramite of his Legion. Not in the sense of a humane soul, or the capacity for mercy – Kaurtal was far past such weakness. It was merely that he possessed a measure of human foundation at his heart, and Argel Tal had hoped that it would appeal to the Neverborn, to mesh into symbiosis with such a spirit. A brutal warrior that had never known defeat, with a vulnerable soul. What better fodder for the children of the gods?

  ‘I wonder what he saw,’ Lorgar mused.

  ‘One of the survivors saw Calth – a war in the tunnels beneath the surface. Another saw the night we stood chastised before the Emperor. The other claims that he saw nothing at all, and I allowed him that one white lie, given what I’d made him endure.’

  Lorgar chuckled at that. ‘I suppose they will all see what every prophet sees – lies and metaphors, hopes and promises, all seeded with the ghosts of truth. Such is the way of all prophecy.’

  Argel Tal could not disagree with that. He gestured to a pack of cowled menials.

  ‘Arrange for lifter servitors to remove this body, or drag it yourself if you can muster the strength between you.’ His dual voices held a dissonant harmony, almost meshing, but never quite becoming one. ‘Take it to the apothecarion for gene-seed removal, and have the rest incinerated.’

  They approached – bowing, scraping, whispering a stream of mumbled reverence in Lorgar’s direction – without raising their eyes.

  ‘Do not look amongst the ranks of our best warriors,’ Lorgar said, once the thralls were gone, with the corpse dragged away between them. ‘That’s where you’re going wrong.’

  Argel Tal looked up at his father, lost by the words. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I want two thousand of these daemon-souled warriors, my son. Two thousand, before we reach Calth, one year from no
w.’

  Two thousand. Two thousand.

  Argel Tal gaped. ‘Lord Aurelian, I can’t...’

  ‘You can.’ Lorgar’s eyes were flint. ‘I do not want our best warriors to be thrown at Calth. We will need the strongest and finest Chapters to reeve our way through the rest of Ultramar. Do not use our best blood for this game, Argel Tal. Use the ones that loathe the Ultramarines beyond balance, beyond reason, beyond sanity. Let the daemons come, drawn by the hatred in the hearts of wrathful men. Emotion attracts them as much as devotion. Remember that.’

  ‘Practically half the Legion still prays for the Thirteenth’s annihilation, my lord.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lorgar nodded. ‘Use that emotion. Use them. We can perfect the process later, before we begin whoring our best warriors’ souls away.’

  Understanding dawned in Argel Tal’s mind.

  ‘You do not want warriors that know no fear. You want warriors that know no forgiveness.’

  ‘Delightfully phrased,’ Lorgar finally smiled, ‘and true to the last word.’ The primarch turned to leave, but hesitated. Ripples waved their way down his sable cloak. ‘The entity that judged Kaurtal an unfit host. What was its name?’

  ‘Nerkhulum, sire. Why do you ask?’

  Lorgar waved away his son’s concerned tone. ‘Because I can hear the creature laughing in the warp’s song, and this chamber still rings with the echoes of its power. That makes me curious, Argel Tal. Butcher one of the injured men in the apothecarion and bind him into a Dreadnought shell. I want to see if Nerkhulum can be enticed with stronger bait.’

  Argel Tal, to his credit, needed several moments before he committed himself another step further along the road to his own damnation.

  ‘It will be done, my lord.’

  ‘If you need me,’ the primarch turned away, ‘I will be on the Conqueror, with my brother.’

  MESSAGE #3314157.883 AUTHENTICATED:

  ALCAEUS, F. (Captain, XIII Legion)

  RECEIVED AS NARROW-BEAM DATA PACKET AT

  VERIDIAN MANDEVILLE RELAY STATION TERTIUS,

  on 7854007.M31 VIA SOTHAN ORBITAL.

  Have arrived ahead of schedule.

  Forward recon elements currently initiating planetfall.

  Orbital augurs confirm presence of greenskin forces though numbers are significantly lower than earlier tactical projections.

  Require confirmation of mission parameters for Ghaslakh campaign and have received no reply to previous transmissions.

  Awaiting response.

  ‘The bullet that killed a king, and murdered a generation; what was it when it was metal in the ground, when it was one amongst many, clinking in a box, shining like so many others? Was it the death of millions then? Did those that touched it feel blood on their hand? Did they know what it would become?’

  – from a sealed report to the High Lords of Terra, author unknown

  If you were alive then I would forgive you for what is to come. Your end seems certain but it is not. If I believed the future could not be changed then I would think everything already lost to darkness and the laughter of atrocity.

  How can I forgive what might not be? So instead of forgiveness I will give you truth, I will tell you of how you came to be, and how you passed through the hands of history. You have no eyes to see, so I will see for you, and tell you of yourself – of those that held you and how they ended.

  I will tell you of things that you cannot know…

  First

  You are only a few minutes old. You came from the loose chalk as a blackened lump, and were formed by a hundred blows of stone on stone. The sun beat down upon you as your shape emerged like a face rising though dark water. You are no more than a black spike of flint, edges tapering to a point like a willow leaf. You are sharp, and the light splinters as it catches your edge.

  A shadow falls over you, and your maker looks up to see the stranger standing against the sky at the top of the chalky incline. Your maker has a name, but time will forget it. He is insignificant in all ways but one: he made you.

  A cloak of black and grey fur hangs from the stranger’s shoulders. Other than the cloak he is naked, his skin smooth, as if the hair has been scraped away, or perhaps never grown at all. Soot tattoos cover his body – rows of straight lines marching down his arms and thorny spirals winding over his chest and face. He has come a long way under the hot gaze of the sun and the cold eye of the moon; not eating, never drinking, and always seeking.

  His name is Gog, and he knows things that can only be seen in the mirror of still water, or in the dance of shadows upon a cave wall. He has seen many more winters than is his due and he walks without fear of the night.

  Your maker’s grey eyes meet Gog’s bloodshot blue stare. A dry wind blows into the lengthening moment. Sunlight winks on other shards of flint scattered in the pale dust.

  Gog’s eyes flick from your maker to you. His gaze is fever-hot. Your maker takes a step back and his foot sends a scatter of stones down into the dry stream bed below. He holds Gog’s stare.

  Gog leaps down the slope. Your maker is ready and jumps backwards. Gog lands on all fours like a beast. You slash out and kiss only the air, as Gog scrabbles down the incline, quick as a lizard. Your maker takes another step back, but his foot turns upon a broken lump of flint and he stumbles. Gog jumps from the ground, his hands extended like claws.

  You slice into Gog’s arm. Blood falls from your edge as you rip free of skin and muscle.

  Blood.

  Your edge tastes the salt and iron of life for the first time. Your maker never intended you as a crude weapon. He made you because he is afraid of the red in his spit and the wheezing in his chest. He made you so that he could give the lives of animals back to the earth, so that they could die in his place, that the gods might let him live. You were made for ritual, for sacrifice. You were meant to be more than just a knife.

  Your maker hits the ground, and Gog lands on top of him. White dust and rock shards spill from them as they tumble down the slope. Gog has his hands around your maker’s throat, and is crooning in the voice of a wild cat. Blood runs down his arm, liquid-red against powder-white. Your maker is on his side, and you are pinned in his fist against the ground. Gog’s eyes are wide as he squeezes, his tongue flicking over cracked lips. Your maker tries to strike with his free hand, but his wrist has broken and his fingers are twisted like trodden twigs.

  Gog laughs as they slap weakly at his face and for an instant his weight shifts. Your maker twists, you come free. Your point flashes towards Gog’s ribs.

  You stop.

  Gog looks at you. He holds your maker’s wrist in both hands. Your maker is gasping, the pressure on his throat gone, but he thrashes with panic. Gog mutters something that sounds like the buzz of insect wings, and then pushes downwards.

  You punch under your maker’s jaw and up into his skull. Thick, warm lifeblood gushes over you. Your maker twitches for a moment and then lies still.

  Your sharpness is a murder’s edge now.

  Gog stands. He is smeared and spattered. Blood is seeping from your maker’s throat and mouth. It clots and beads in the chalk dust. Gog raises you to his eyes. His breath coils with scents of perfumed smoke. The pattern of blood on your surface has a meaning for him. The wind whispers in his ears, and tells him that it is pleased with his gift. He turns away from the blood soaking into the white ground. Flies are already swarming over your fallen maker, and his flesh is already turning to black ooze under the sun with unnatural speed.

  Gog walks away. You go with him, held in his red hand.

  Second

  You age in the passing of seasons and in the blood that you spill. You kill many, and maim many more. You forget your maker’s hand, and know only the touch of the tattooed man, of Gog. He carries you close, never out of reach, but never drawn for a mundane cut. You have significance for him.
>
  He ages but does not grow old. Men change, cities rise and fall, and the tattooed man remains. Other men call their gods by many different names, but he has learned all of them and knows that they are false. The truth whispers to him in the shadows cast by fires, and he does not need to give that truth a name. Gog serves kings, betrays saints and steals secrets while bearing faces which are also lies. He travels across mountains and oceans and down the long slope of time. He is hunted but never caught. You go with him, never lost even in flight or defeat. Your edge gains notches; your handle becomes black and polished with blood and endless use.

  At last you reach a broken tower in a rain-shrouded land.

  Gog wakes from a dream to the sound of thunder and the splash of hooves in mud. He is on his feet even as his eyes snap open. Rain is pouring through the roof of the tower. Time has taken the ragged cloak from his back, and replaced it with scarred leather and black ring-mail. He has a sword in his hand. You wait at his waist, held in a sheath of tanned skin.

  His eyes dart between holes in the tower’s stone walls. His armour is heavy, sodden and cold against his skin. His breath is ragged. He is afraid. He has never faced an enemy that could harm him; he knows too much, but he can no longer hear the voice of the wind. The storm roars around the tower walls, but it has no voice – its sound is silent to his soul. He calls out, but the wind and shadows remain mute.

  He is powerless.

  A thunderbolt blinks white light through the cracks in the tower walls. Gog can hear the sound of clinking metal even over the drumming of the rain. The tower has only one door, and its wood is rotten. The light of burning torches flickers through the gaps in the door’s planks. Gog screams for the night and storm to aid him, but no answer comes.

  The rotten door bursts inwards. The dancing light of torches spills into the tower. Gog screams as he lunges at the first figure to come through the door. It is a knight. Polished metal and silver mail cover the man’s muscled body and a closed helm hides his face. Gog’s first strike staggers the knight, and the second glides through the helm’s eye slit. He falls in a clatter of steel. Blood mingles with rain upon the silver of his breastplate.