“Inquisitor.” Kyrlock was doing a passable imitation of a man who has just been struck by lightning, and is amazed to find himself still standing. “I didn’t mean to challenge your authority, of course, that goes without saying, but after what we’ve seen tonight, we wouldn’t give up our weapons to anyone.”
“I can imagine,” the tall man said, “but explanations will have to wait. Right now, I believe, we have a rather more pressing matter to deal with.”
“That’s right,” Drake said, eager to regain a little of the initiative. “We saw your shuttle coming down, and came to warn you. There’s an army of witches loose, and they’re heading this way.” He turned to look past the small group of Inquisition agents, and felt his mouth go dry. Behind them, the forest was ablaze from end to end, and any hope of further retreat had completely gone.
FIVE
Forest of Sorrows, Sepheris Secundus
088.993.M41
Like practically everyone on Sepheris Secundus, from the Queen right down to the lowliest mutant in the Shatters, Barda had spent his entire life surrounded by a comforting cocoon of certainty, his place in the social order as fixed and immutable as the Word of the Emperor. He was a pilot because his parents were and his grandparents had been, he still lived in the same room in the guildhouse of the Honourable Company of Cloudwalkers where his lungs had first drawn breath almost twenty-seven standard years ago, and every single decision that had ever affected him had been taken by someone else, who knew better than he did what was right and proper.
Every moment of his life since his education had ended had been spent either in the cockpit, the star-port, or the guildhouse which abutted it, in the company of other guilders or, very rarely, a client who’d wanted to speak personally to the pilot they were entrusting their lives or property to.
In a handful of minutes that comfortable, settled existence had been utterly overturned, pitching him into a new and terrifying world where nothing seemed to make sense at all. His surroundings were all wrong, the environment wild and uncontrolled, the air darting randomly around him, freezing and wet.
The people with him were beyond his comprehension too, moving and talking with evident purpose, but employing words and phrases he didn’t understand. They were worried, though, he’d picked up enough to grasp that. Well, fair enough, so was he. He’d have to explain to the guild masters how he’d come to lose one of their precious shuttles, a bond debt which, if they found him culpable, his descendants would still be paying off ten generations from now: if he ever had any descendents. Certainly no guilder woman would want anything to do with a man who’d lost his ship, even if the conclave of examination did eventually exonerate him.
So, bewildered and terrified, he did what any Secundan would do under stress, he gravitated to the most senior member of the party, and waited to be told what to do.
“Can you guide us to the containment facility?” the grey-haired man was asking as he edged closer, and the shorter of the two soldiers nodded.
“It’s over that way.” He pointed. “The real problem’s going to be getting to it.”
“If the entire population’s at large, that’s something of an understatement,” the dark-haired man Barda had spoken to before put in. He seemed confident and determined, though, which the young pilot found reassuring.
“Perhaps,” the inquisitor said, “but a lot depends on how many of them came this way. I don’t suppose they’ll have remained particularly cohesive, once the fact of their liberation has sunk in.”
“Good point,” the blonde woman interjected. “Chances are they’ll have scattered pretty much at random.”
“Highly probable,” the inquisitor conceded. He turned back to the Guardsmen. “How spread out did the crowd you saw seem to be?”
“A fair amount,” the taller soldier said, after a moment’s thought. “It’s hard to be sure, with the blizzard and all, but the trees seemed to be splitting them up.”
“If they’re just trying to get away from the facility,” the girl with the funny coloured hair said, “then most of them will be moving the other way by now.” She gestured towards the forest fire, with an expression curiously close to rapture. “Can’t see many being able to walk through that.”
“A few powerful pyros might try it,” the blonde woman said, “but I wouldn’t fancy their chances.”
“Then we’re agreed,” the inquisitor said calmly, although Barda couldn’t understand what sort of consensus the peculiar people around him might have come to. “Our best option is simply to punch our way through, and seek refuge at the facility.”
“If there’s any of it left,” the tall soldier said, not disagreeing exactly, but clearly far from happy.
His friend didn’t seem too pleased about the turn events had taken either, but nodded anyway. “It gives us a better chance than freezing or burning to death out here,” he said, his words punctuated by the muffled crump of the explosion the tech-priest had warned everyone about. A hot, scorching wind hit the back of Barda’s neck, and he willed himself not to turn back, to see how little was left of the majestic vessel he’d once soared through the Emperor’s realm with.
“Might as well get on with it then,” the dark-haired man said, swinging the gun in his hand to aim at the space in front of him as he took a step towards the shadowed bulk of the trees in the distance. Then he seemed to recollect himself, and glanced deferentially at the inquisitor. “I assume you’d like Keira to take point?”
“She seems the obvious choice,” the inquisitor said, and to Barda’s amazement the girl smiled eagerly. She wore the colour of royalty, he noted with some surprise. Perhaps she was a princess, scion of some off-world dynasty, although why someone so exalted would be part of an inquisitor’s warband he had no idea.
“Thought you’d never ask,” she said, springing from her perch and bounding away, her silhouette seeming to shimmer faintly as she moved.
“Are you all right?” the older woman asked, an expression of faint concern on her face, and Barda became aware that she was addressing him.
“Yes, my lady,” he replied automatically, before honesty impelled him to add, “just a little confused by all this.”
“I’m not surprised,” the woman said kindly. Then to Barda’s horror she drew a gun from the recesses of her gown, and held it out to him. “Here, you might need this.”
“I don’t know how to use it,” Barda said, taking the thing anyway, as to refuse even an implied request from a social superior was anathema to his Secundan soul.
The woman nodded encouragingly. “It’s easy. That’s why I carry one.” She pointed, as he fumbled his fingers around the pistol grip, vaguely surprised by how comfortable it felt in his hand. “That thing next to your thumb’s the safety catch. Flick it up to release the trigger, down to make it safe. Just point and squeeze, don’t snatch, and pray to the Emperor to guide your bolt. It’s a las weapon, so there’s no recoil to worry about.”
“I see.” Barda nodded, as if he did. “But I can’t take it, my lady, not if it leaves you defenceless.” To his astonishment, the woman laughed.
“Oh, I’m far from that. Just trust in the Emperor, and you’ll be fine.”
The whole group was moving, and Barda broke into a stumbling jog to keep up with them, sticking as close to the inquisitor as he dared. The tall soldier glanced at him with an expression of amused contempt as his feet slithered in the slush, and muttered something that sounded like, “City boy.”
The group was spreading out a little, taking on something reminiscent of the formation adopted by the migrating birds Barda had so often seen from the cockpit, presumably so they could watch one another’s backs more easily. He, the inquisitor and the blonde woman were in the centre of the line, the muscular dark-haired man with the big pistol a handful of metres ahead of them and to the left, the tech-priest ahead and to the right. He too was holding a handgun as if he knew how to use it, and a few fragments of prayer floated back towards them
on the wind. “Blessed be thy primer that it might spark cleanly, thy firing pin that it may strike home with the surety of thine own perfection.”
A little further back, and slightly further out, the two Guardsmen paced the main group, the tall one with the long-handled thing slung across his shoulder on the left, and the shorter one with the pockmarked face on the right, both holding their lasguns at the hip, ready to fire. Barda felt a rising tension in the pit of his stomach, although he couldn’t have said why, other than the fact that all these people who seemed so used to violence were clearly expecting more.
It didn’t help that the weather was worsening as they left the artificial heatwave of the forest fire behind them and began to plod grimly into the teeth of the gale. Stinging sleet began to pepper their faces, and their feet began to lose purchase in the thick, clinging snow.
The shorter soldier raised his voice a little. “Vos, is it me, or is it easing off a bit?”
The tall one nodded. “A bit, I think.” He shrugged. “Either that, or we’re getting used to it.”
Overhearing, Barda shuddered. He couldn’t imagine ever getting used to these hellish conditions. Before he had time to brood, though, a thin, wailing scream cut through the rising howl of the wind.
“Sounds like Keira’s made contact,” the dark-haired man said grimly.
The inquisitor nodded. The worst of the wind seemed to be parting around him, Barda suddenly realised, as though the hand of the Emperor was shielding him from the ravages of the elements. “With quite a large group, too, if one of them had time to scream,” he added. As if by some unspoken consensus everyone picked up their pace, hurrying towards the source of the sound.
Then suddenly, as they burst out into a small glade no more than a score of metres across, everything changed. Without warning, the swirling snowstorm seemed to part, to reveal a vista of carnage. Bodies lay on the trampled snow, two men, a woman, and something that seemed to be neither, all dressed in the slashed remains of some dull grey material, dyed red by their own blood. Half a dozen more were still standing, pressing in towards the centre of the clearing, where Keira leapt and danced, her sword reaping lives wherever it struck.
Some of the psykers seemed to have something clasped in their hands as they attempted to strike her, strange glowing energies sparking around their closed fists, but she evaded every attack with what looked to Barda like contemptuous ease. Even as he watched, she struck down a mutant lunging for her with a chitinous claw, severing its arm and sinking her weapon into its back up to the hilt as she turned. To her evident surprise the creature rose again, almost tearing the hilt from her hand as it did so, and she withdrew the blade hastily, giving ground a little as she sought to open the distance.
There was little time to take in any more, however, as, apparently sensing the approach of the Inquisitorial party, most of the group turned to face them. A couple raised their hands, the arcane energies they manipulated seeming to hang in the air for a moment, before streaking through the intervening air.
“Get down!” the blonde woman said, pushing Barda aside, and he felt the skin of his face tingling as one of the eldritch bolts hissed past him, striking one of the trees on the fringe of the clearing. It erupted instantly into a spreading mass of stinking corruption, which gradually subsided into the snow surrounding it, staining the pristine surface with bubbling filth. The other witchfire bolt slammed into a nearby bush, turning it into a pyre of blue-white flame.
Feeling as though he was on the verge of losing his sanity, Barda looked hastily away from such horrors, only to see another trio of grey-clad figures shambling into the clearing, their eyes febrile with hate. Without conscious thought, he raised the laspistol in his hand, gesturing with it like a cold metal finger.
“More of them!” he shouted. The tall soldier glanced at him and grinned.
“Oh yes. Thanks. Might have missed ’em otherwise.” He squeezed the trigger of his lasgun, spitting a hail of inaccurate fire at the newcomers. A few bolts struck home, gouging cauterised craters in flesh, blue-white from the cold, the rest whining through the air around them. Barda followed his lead without thinking, shooting wildly. He didn’t hit anything that he could see, but he felt like he was doing something, and for the first time since the strange aircraft had swooped out of nowhere to strike his Aquila from the skies, he felt that he was at least partially back in control of his own destiny.
“Fire for effect!” the dark-haired man called, beginning to shoot at the pair who’d flung the energy bolts. His skill with the heavy handgun he held seemed astonishing to the watching pilot. The first time he pulled the trigger, the ragged torso of the man who’d set fire to the bush exploded in a geyser of blood and ruined meat, falling heavily in a cloud of steam as residual body heat met the bone-biting cold of the snowstorm. The tech-priest’s gun boomed too, hardly less accurately, but with less spectacular damage to its target. One of the people pressing close to the embattled girl fell, blood spurting from a grievous wound to the head, but didn’t seem to explode.
“A little help, here, Danuld,” the tall soldier called, and with a thrill of terror Barda realised the three figures they’d been shooting at were still pressing forward, too numb with the cold, or devoid of sanity, to have been incapacitated by their wounds.
“But you’re doing so well,” the small soldier riposted sarcastically, snapping off a shot that took the psyker on the left in the head. It fell, twitching, and its two companions hesitated, glancing towards the larger group for a lead.
“Allow me.” The inquisitor gestured towards the tightly packed knot of heaving bodies, and it scattered suddenly, the grey-robed abominations picked up and flung aside as casually as the wind whirled the snowflakes away. Only Barda and the blonde woman were close enough to notice the way his face paled, and how close his knees came to giving way.
“I’ve got this one,” the dark-haired man said, his bolt pistol barking again. The man who’d flung the bolt of corruption staggered backwards, a thin crimson mist seeming to thicken the air around him. Then, to Barda’s horrified surprise, he rallied, standing firm, and began to laugh. Thick, sticky fluid began to flow across his ruined chest, knitting diseased flesh together, repairing the damage almost instantly.
“Oh no you don’t,” the blonde woman said, a bolt of pure orange flame winking into existence in front of her. For an instant, Barda felt its heat beating against his face, like a fainter echo of the inferno they’d left behind them at the crash site, before it streaked through the air to burst inside the partially reconstituted ribcage of the malignant witch facing them. The man screamed, high and shrill, as the cleansing flame scoured him from the inside out, and collapsed in the snow amid a cloud of steam, where he continued to flail for a moment before becoming still.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Keira ducked under the crab-thing’s remaining arm, which looked a little more human, and decapitated it with a single fluid stroke. She flicked the blood from the blade in her hand with a practiced movement of the wrist, restoring the shimmering length of steel to its pristine state, but didn’t resheath her weapon.
“You’re one of them!” the smaller soldier shouted, an edge of hysteria entering his voice as he swung his lasgun around to aim at the blonde woman standing next to Barda. “Get away from the inquisitor!”
“She’s sanctioned, you idiot,” the dark-haired man said shortly. “Do you think she’d be with us if she wasn’t?” His bolt pistol cracked again, taking down one of the psykers that the inquisitor had felled, who was trying to clamber back to his feet, arcane energies sparking the air around him.
Looking vaguely embarrassed, the soldier switched his aim back to the pair of grey clad abominations who’d remained standing, only to find them both running for the treeline. He took the shot anyway, narrowly missing the nearer of the two, and swore colourfully.
“Better keep moving,” the dark-haired man advised, leading the way deeper into the encircling wood.
&nb
sp; “Sound advice, as always.” The inquisitor staggered a little, and the blonde woman was at his side in an instant.
“Help me with him,” she said to Barda. The young pilot hurried forward, offering his shoulder. To his proud surprise, the inquisitor accepted it, leaning against him for support, but still managing to keep up a reasonable pace despite his evident exhaustion. “Carolus, are you all right?”
The inquisitor smiled at her, in what looked to Barda like one of the affectionate moments of mutual understanding his parents sometimes shared. “I’m getting too old for all this,” he said, his faintly jocular tone immediately reassuring. “I just can’t fling spacecraft around like I used to.”
“They’re breaking,” Keira called from up ahead. “Moving aside. I guess we weren’t as easy to pick off as they thought.”
“Praise the Emperor,” the dark-haired man said, making the sign of the aquila.
The princess shrugged, a little ruefully. “Would have been nice to send a few more to His judgement,” she said, “but He’ll get round to them all in the end.”
Her words meant little to Barda, but at least she seemed to be right about the rest of the grey robes avoiding them from now on. As they hurried through the forest as best they could, he kept catching glimpses of movement between the trees, but it seemed cautious and fearful rather than aggressive. As the minutes wore on, however, he had less time to look, or to think about it. The inquisitor was leaning ever more heavily on his shoulder, clearly on the verge of collapse. The blonde woman stayed close, too, keeping a concerned eye on him.
“Almost there,” the tall soldier assured her at last, after the latest of several enquiries about the matter. “We’re just reaching the treeline.” A moment later, the entire party broke out into the open again, looking down on a scene of utter devastation.
“Throne preserve us,” the dark-haired man muttered. “What the hell happened here?”
[Dark Heresy 01] - Scourge the Heretic Page 8
