Plague Harvest

by Cavan Scott

  All he wanted to do was run and sing.

  The song was everything to him, driving him on, drowning everything else out. The grind of the thunder, the cries of the rest of the pack as their bodies continued to change; to purify in their decay. They were blessed. Truly blessed.

  In front of him, a woman stumbled, almost sprawling to the ground before righting herself. In the past he would have stopped to catch her. No longer. He simply barged past, feeling brittle bones crack as she spiralled away. He didn’t look back as she tumbled in the muck of the perished crops, didn’t see the pack trample over her.

  A memory tugged at his mind, somewhere beneath the song. He’d known the woman once. Yes, he was sure of it. Her skin had been strong and supple then, her head covered in lustrous curls.

  He remembered her voice, the excited tremor when she had shared the news. Good news. The kind that made him pick her up and spin her around.

  Laughter and joy, tempered with doubt and uncertainty. How would they cope? Would he be able to support them? Would he be a good… a good…

  What was the word?

  He couldn’t remember.

  Didn’t care.

  That life meant nothing to him now. There would be no more doubts, no more uncertainty – only the song and his god and the hunger. Throne, he was so hungry.

  Soon, he wouldn’t remember any words at all. He wouldn’t be able to reason, to make choices, to have regrets. All he would have was his instinct – and the song. Always the song.

  A rattle broke out, followed by screams. The sound should have meant something to him, should have inspired fear, should have him running for cover. For safety.

  He couldn’t remember why. He couldn’t remember anything. His past. His name. Even the fact that he’d ever had one.

  He looked up, confused, angry, scanning the skies with rheumy eyes. There it was, the source of the noise, a giant, metal bird, swooping angrily towards them.

  The creature that used to be Dain Bridgeman howled at the blazing cannons, the sting of the gunship’s shells ripping through his arms, his chest, knocking him onto his back.

  There was no pain, even as the heel of the woman he had once known came crashing down on his face.

  There was nothing, save for the song.

  Artorius scowled at the hololith of Fort Kerberos on the table, weighing up the defensive possibilities. The structure was fairly standard. Four sloping ramparts, each cornered by large gun-turrets. The keep sat at the centre of the courtyard with the serf’s barracks located near the north-west turret, opposite the squat building he used as his command quarters to the east. The Stormtalon hangars hugged the west wall, while the armoury and apothecarion were housed in heavily-armoured, one storey buildings in front of the keep’s south-facing entrance. The entire place was ridiculously large for such a small company, and now he knew the reason. Kerberos wasn’t there to protect them, but the shrine hidden beneath its foundations.

  But would the defences be enough?

  Kerna’s voice sounded tinny over the vox, the report of the Heart’s cannons punctuating the pilot’s report.

  ‘Have engaged the damned. Engines holding. For now.’

  ‘Take as many of them as you can,’ Artorius ordered, extinguishing the hololith and marching from his chambers, the stink of rotting vegetation hitting him the moment he stepped into the courtyard. He flexed his hand, his chainfist revving in response to the gesture. He knew many considered the weapon unwieldy and slow, best left to Terminator units, but it had served him well in the past and would do so today, if the Emperor willed.

  He thumbed the vox control, opening a channel to his other pilot. ‘Brother Meleki, what is your situation?’

  More gunfire filtered through the feed.

  ‘En route to Kerna, Sir.’

  ‘And the damned?’

  ‘Streaming out of every deathbottle swarm.’

  And heading for the bastion, Artorius thought. A rune flashed across his visor. Incoming message from Fort Garm, on the other side of the planet.

  ‘Artorius.’

  ‘This is Hura, Fort Garm.’

  ‘I know who you are, brother,’ Artorius barked impatiently, hurrying past the aircraft hangers. ‘Report.’

  ‘Our Stormtalons have been scrambled as ordered, sir.’

  ‘E.T.A?’

  ‘They will arrive at your destination in seventeen hours, local time.’

  Seventeen hours. An eternity if the situation worsened. Artorius banished the thought. You worked with what resources you had.

  ‘Any sign of contagion around Garm?’

  ‘Negative sir. Have dispatched Land Speeders to sweep the area.’

  ‘Excellent. Report back if…’

  ‘ARTORIUS!’

  The scream came from everywhere and nowhere. It felt as if the sergeant had taken a mace to his head, a burst of brilliant colour pinwheeling across his vision.

  ‘Vabion,’ he gasped, collapsing to his knees.

  ‘Sir?’ Hura buzzed in his vox. Artorius tried to swat his concerned voice away as if it was a bug. ‘Sir, what has happened?’

  And then the shout was gone, rushing past him like a sandstorm, scouring his mind, leaving him raw.

  ‘Kerberos, please respond.’

  Artorius shook his head, trying to make sense of the world again. ‘It was Vabion. He cried out to me.’

  ‘I do not understand, sir…’

  ‘Neither do I, Hura. Artorius out.’

  He killed the channel, pushing himself back up. He toggled his helm control.

  ‘Vabion, come in.’

  There was no response, save for the thunder that rolled in the distance.

  ‘Repeat: Vabion. Are you there?’

  Nothing. For all he knew, Artorius had just experienced the psyker’s death throes. Whatever it had been, the answer lay in this damned Key. The sergeant would find it and protect it, laying down his life in the process if necessary.

  ‘Duty forever,’ he murmured, running through the litany as he set off for the keep. ‘To our dying breath and beyond. Emperor protect me.’

  Emperor protect us all.

  Plasma-fire echoed around the courtyard. Artorius’s head snapped around. That had come from the serf’s barracks on the other side of the fort. He changed direction, circling around the central tower.

  He wasn’t alone. Behind him, he heard footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder to see Brothers Blasius and Sedeca barrelling out of the hangers. A muscle on the side of his eye twitched. No sign of Ritan. Usually he would be the first into the fray, desperate to show his worth to the Chapter.

  ‘With me,’ he shouted, banishing the thought. They came around the keep, more plasma-fire greeting them, accompanied by the hiss of hydraulics and the cry of something not quite human.

  ‘By the warp,’ Artorius cursed as the scene came into view. It was Jerius, fighting what appeared to be a horde of daemons. Artorius looked again, taking in the thick cloaks wrapped around their bloated bodies. They were serfs, or rather they used to be, their bodies contorted out of shape. Limbs had been replaced by ribbed flails or curved blades fashioned out of their very bones. He counted eight, two of their execrable brethren already dead at the Techmarine’s feet. Jerius’s plasma-cutter, mounted on one of his whirling servo-arms, dispatched another, torching its swollen head.

  His Doom Eagles didn’t wait for the order. They opened fire, their bolts peppering the monstrosities. Artorius brandished his chainfist, blades that could bite through a tank making short work of tainted flesh. As he ploughed through a second corrupted serf, he could hear Jerius praying. Impressive. Even in the midst of battle, the Doom Eagle was petitioning the spirits that drove his artificial legs and servo-arms.

  In response, the heavy pincers at the end of the servo-arm clamped around the head
of one of the rampaging serfs and crushed it like a ripe fruit.

  ‘May all our prayers be granted,’ Artorius snarled as he used the butt of his bolt pistol to slam the head of another of the serfs into the wall. The former servant slid to the floor leaving a trail of pulsating brain matter. Artorius delivered two bolts into its head. You could never be sure with the damned.

  ELEVEN

  The temperature inside the shrine was stifling. Or maybe it was the fever. Vabion couldn’t tell.

  ‘Librarian…’

  All he knew was that the sound of that voice was making his head spin faster than before. That unnatural voice, like everything else in this Emperor-forsaken place. A profanity.

  ‘Look upon me.’

  Even if Vabion wanted to, he doubted he could raise his head. The spear was still lodged in his chest, countless infections running through his veins. He had tried to call out telepathically to Artorius, to warn him, but the sadist holding the spear had twisted the shaft, the razor-sharp barbs slicing new wounds to add to his growing collection. The pain had been enough to cut short his cry for help, robbing him of his psychic abilities. He would never have believed it possible. For so long, his powers had defined who he was, how he served the Emperor. To be so reduced, that was the real agony, no matter what they did to his body. He was nearing the end, that much was certain. The moment would have to be chosen carefully.

  ‘Did you hear me, fool?’

  ‘I am no fool,’ Vabion hissed.

  The figure standing in front of the Librarian laughed. A wet, unsettling sound.

  ‘Get him to his feet.’

  Vabion screamed as the spear levered up against his damaged flesh. At the same time, hands grabbed his arms, the grip impossibly strong, bruising his skin even through his armour.

  The Librarian was forced to face his tormentor for the first time.

  A Chaos lord. The very words sickened him. A former captain who had turned away from the Golden Throne to follow the dark path that led only to damnation.

  Vabion looked the traitor up and down. His body was a bloated sack of necrotic flesh, encased in a rusty mass of armour that dripped with the acrid discharge of ulcers and boils. His bowels were exposed, writhing like glistening worms, and he wore no helm, proudly displaying his wrecked face for all to see. The Champion’s right cheek was ripped away to reveal rows of decaying teeth hanging from a yellowed jaw. While his withered eye sockets were empty, it was obvious that the heretic could still see – another daemonic gift from his foul Lord.

  ‘We have much to be grateful to you for, do we not, Pestilan?’ the Champion said, glancing over Vabion’s shoulder. He heard the bearer of the spear snigger, the laugh touching his mind as well as his ear. So, this Pestilan was a sorcerer, the Chaotic equivalent of the Librarians.

  More information. More power.

  ‘Your cooperation was vital,’ said the Champion.

  ‘I did nothing to help you,’ Vabion spat.

  ‘Granted, Falk did well.’ The Chaos lord paused, dismissively indicating Ritan’s petrifying corpse with the blade of his War Scythe. ‘The death of your brother weakened the seal, but still wasn’t enough to let us break through. For that we needed another sacrifice. A righteous one. You did the rest.’

  Vabion wasn’t going to rise to the bait, even as he watched something push itself from the Champion’s gut and scamper up its master’s chest to perch on the Chaos lord’s spiked pauldron. It was a Nurgling, a diabolic familiar created in the image of Nurgle himself. The scabrous creature plucked a strip of meat from the Champion’s ruined cheek, crammed it into its mouth and began to chew.

  ‘You will never win,’ Vabion promised, spitting in the Champion’s face. The spittle pooled in one of the empty eye sockets. The fiend leant forward, nearly dislodging the Nurgling from his shoulder.

  ‘I already have. Show him.’

  Fingers pressed against Vabion’s throbbing forehead, sharp nails digging into his flesh. Vabion tried to resist but Pestilan was too strong, pushing past his defences, plunging him into another waking dream. A nightmare.

  The shrine vanished, Champion and all, replaced by a vision of Orath stretching beneath him. But this time it was different. This time Vabion wasn’t flying, but transfixed to a gigantic tree by Pestilan’s spear, his body lifeless, unable to move.

  ‘Look upon your world,’ Pestilan hissed into Vabion’s ears, into his mind. ‘See what you have done.’

  ‘I will not look,’ Vabion insisted, although he had no choice.

  ‘You must.’

  He felt his head pushed forward, forcing him to gaze upon the planet spinning far below. As before, the blight was raging through the crops, carving paths through the withered sorghum. The channels joining together, forming giant rings in the fields – the sigil of Nurgle, writ large across an entire continent.

  The air was full of music, the disciples of the unclean one singing a tune as malformed as the god they worshipped – and there he was, lounging on a vast throne of melted bones and screaming corpses, Grandfather Nurgle himself, a mound of unholy, gurgling flesh. At his right side stood the Champion, looming over the ruin of Fort Kerberos, War Scythe in hand.

  Nothing could have prepared Vabion for the sight of Nurgle in all his infernal glory, not his years of training, his devotion to the Golden Throne. The Librarian sobbed in anguish, sickened to his very soul. If he could have gouged out his own eyes, he would have done it gladly. In that moment, everything withered and died. His beliefs. Values. Hopes for the future. Tainted forever. Rotting away faster that the crops in the fields far below. He had failed. Failed his primarch. Failed his Emperor. Only madness remained. Damnation.

  ‘Do you see, Space Marine?’ Pestilan jeered. ‘Do you see Lord Naracoth’s victory?’

  Vabion couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even remember his name. No. It would not end this way. He was an Ultramarine. Courage and Honour. That was his creed. Nothing could take that away from him. Not Pestilan. Not the Champion. Not Nurgle himself.

  ‘What did you call him?’ he wheezed, desperate to find a fixed point in the midst of the delirium. ‘What did you call your Champion?’

  ‘Naracoth,’ came the rapturous response.

  ‘Naracoth,’ Vabion repeated, rolling the word around his tongue.

  Names were power. Names could bind.

  Names could kill.

  ‘Remember it,’ the sorcerer gloated, ‘for it will be your doom.’

  In front of them, Naracoth raised his Scythe, viscous slime dripping from its twisted handle, and brought the weapon down, cleaving the very air in two. Vabion could only scream as the daemons of the warp rushed out of the rift, creatures no words could describe, no eyes should ever see.

  ‘No!’ he yelled, pushing against the gnarled back of the tree.

  ‘Now you feel it,’ Pestilan shrieked in his ear. ‘Now you feel fear.’

  But Vabion wasn’t finished yet. His scream hadn’t been of terror, but of defiance.

  ‘I am an Ultramarine,’ he bellowed, shoving back, not in the vision, but in the shrine. ‘I feel no fear.’

  Pestilan’s mistake had been linking minds. He had sought to dominate, to mentally cripple, but all he had done was provide an anchor.

  The sorcerer wasn’t prepared for Vabion to act in the real world, but the Librarian had used the vision as an opportunity to steady his cramped limbs, to prepare. He thrust back, pushing himself along the length of the spear, ignoring the explosion of pain in his chest. The back of his skull smashed into Pestilan’s helm, causing the sorcerer to stumble, out of surprise rather than pain.

  Not that it mattered. The result was the same. Vabion grabbed the shaft of the weapon and pulled it clear of his chest. In as fluid a movement as he could muster, the Ultramarine twisted, shoving the spearhead into the neck of one of the Plague Marines that had held him,
before jabbing the pole-arm back into the exposed chest of the other. The foot of the staff sank deep into the traitor’s peccant flesh, bursting out of its back.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Vabion saw Naracoth’s War Scythe flashing down towards him. He twisted the spear, throwing the Chaos Marine into the weapon’s path. The Scythe’s blade sliced into the brute, but Vabion didn’t have the chance to celebrate. Behind him, Pestilan pulled his shattered helm away with one hand, throwing the other into the air. Eldritch energy blasted from his splayed fingers, slamming into Vabion. The Librarian bellowed in pain and crashed to the floor, his body writhing under the unholy onslaught.

  Never had he felt such pain. Every cell in his body boiled, the power of the immaterium flowed freely through his mind. Convulsing, Vabion bit clear through his tongue, his limbs caught in a macabre dance.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Naracoth ordered, Pestilan obeying immediately. Vabion moaned as his body continued thrashing of its own accord. Choking, he could only watch as Naracoth and his Marines loomed over him. The Plague Marine that had received the blow from the Scythe kicked him in the side, causing him to spit blood over the polished floor.

  ‘I said enough,’ Naracoth boomed, smashing the Marine across its helm with the back of a spiked gauntlet, drawing another peel of insane laughter from the Nurgling.

  Vabion rolled onto his back and stared up at them, unable to speak.

  ‘By Mortarion, Pestilan,’ the Champion rumbled, ‘this one is strong-willed. He will make a fine sacrifice, don’t you think?’

  The sorcerer merely nodded, tumescent maggots dropping down from a face the like of which Vabion had ever seen. Pestilan’s countenance was a mangled knot of gnashing teeth and flashing eyes, set in a bed of rotting muscle. The grubs showered down on the Librarian, wriggling into his mouth and gnawing at his eyes.

  ‘Bring him,’ Naracoth commanded, and the Plague Marines grabbed Vabion’s armour. Pestilan stepped aside to let them drag the Librarian up the steps to the Key, his head smacking painfully against the crystal he had studied for so long.

  ‘You fought well,’ the Champion admitted. ‘As I knew you would. I suspect you even believed you could win.’