by Nick Kyme
‘When an enemy seems unbeatable, do not attack it head-on,’ the sage words of Telion came back to him. ‘Instead, devise another strategy that turns its strength into a weakness and balances the odds.’
It was massive, a hulking monster of a necron. Judging by its size and the strength behind its blows, Scipio reasoned it probably weighed more than him and Largo combined. He remembered how it had leapt from the plateau, the power in its servos, and saw the raw need in its eyes to take their skin.
‘Are you ready, Largo?’
They were barely a half-metre from the edge where the escarpment curled like a clenched finger and was at its weakest.
Largo nodded.
The flayed lord’s shoulders were heaving up and down with the movement of its chest. It had no lungs, no way of dragging air into its body even if it needed to. It was emulating a remembered behaviour.
Scipio was reminded of a rabid dog. He’d holstered his bolt pistol, and pulled out his gladius as he called to it. ‘You want our faces,’ he said, drawing a shallow cut across his cheek with the blade. ‘Come and take them.’
The flayed lord threw back its head, emitting a shriek of machine-noise, and sprang off the boulders.
Scipio waited until it reached the apex of its jump and then shouted to Largo. ‘Now!’
The Ultramarines threw themselves aside a split second before the necron crashed down in their wake. It whirled around when it realised its prey had gone, skin-robes flecking the snow with blood and matter.
Cracks veined the ice, but the escarpment held.
Largo had rolled onto his back. ‘It’s not breaking!’
‘Give it some encouragement,’ Scipio bellowed.
Largo unleashed his bolter against the cracking ice. The effect was instantaneous.
A massive chunk of the escarpment sheared away from the rock face and took the flayed lord with it. Their last image of the creature was its hellish eyes, blazing, thwarted.
Largo got up and punched the air. ‘Ha! Bastard!’
Scipio grabbed his shoulder. ‘Now we go.’
Both gave a last look to the plateau where Renatus’s headless corpse was lying unmourned, without honour. The destruction of the flayed lord would have to do as tribute.
Then they ran back towards the camp and the command tent where Scipio hoped the rest of his squad were waiting.
The sun was warm against his tanned skin. It felt good to be out in the mountains, alone and unshadowed. Sahtah couldn’t remember the last time he’d been climbing, he couldn’t remember…
He couldn’t remember…
…Anything.
Reality came crashing back like a cold wave. The sensory illusion faded and he was clinging to the rock face again, his talons lodged in the sheer-sided wall of the mountain. Sahtah had been broken for a moment, but his mechorganic body had healed him. He blinked, though it was an android interface rather than a physical one – he had long since surrendered his eyelids. Even during the long sleep he had not closed them. His awareness during those aeons had been fleeting, confusing, as if he were only partially alive and a passenger in someone else’s body.
He didn’t know how far he’d fallen but the ice-gorge was dark and deep. The spines of rocks scraped and broke against his body. His robes were being torn. Sahtah moaned, climbing faster, but the damage only worsened. A false sense of urgency filled him. He wanted to be out of the chasm and back amongst the peaks. Reaching the lip of rocky plateau, he pulled himself up and found the feast he had left behind.
It had no face.
Sahtah wanted a face. The one he wore now was virtually gone; his robes were in tatters too. He regarded the semi-armoured carcass lying in front of him.
It would have to do.
When he saw the glistening ribbons that bound it, the redness inside, the pallor of its succulent organs, he was overcome. Like the ghoul he knew he was but inwardly reviled, Sahtah sprang onto the corpse and continued to feed. And as the red matter inside splashed across his borrowed face and drizzled down the cage of his ribs and amassed in his joints, he was visited by such horrific visions.
Flesh palaces resolved in his ancient mind, infinite realms devoted to the skin. Corpses hung from hooks and ringed the vaulted ceilings on chains like gruesome chandeliers. Blood ran in rivers, thick with viscera and carrying chunks of bone. Piles of offal, threads of muscle and intestine formed incarnadine sculptures that decked the stinking halls. And everywhere the feast of the flayers went on indefinitely, lost to madness, lost to flesh.
Sahtah threw back his head and emitted a keening that reverberated around the mountains. It signalled his desire, his terrible anguish and the certain knowledge that he was damned.
In the distance his slaves heard the call of the master and echoed it.
‘Why have they stopped fighting?’
Across the encampment, the flayed ones had shuddered to an abrupt halt. As one, they squatted in the dirt and growled – a dirge of machine-noise that hurt Jynn’s ears.
Only the Space Marines seemed unaffected. The one Scipio had called Brakkius was standing stock-still and peering into the darkness. He moved at some unseen disturbance ahead – Jynn had no idea what – and signalled to the others who had recently joined them.
‘Is it Scipio?’ she asked.
Brakkius regarded her as a disapproving mentor would his student. His eyes were two ovals of blood-red. ‘Brother-Sergeant Vorolanus is still absent.’
Clearly the cobalt giant didn’t approve of first name familiarity.
‘Who then?’
Jynn’s question was answered when three of her guerrillas emerged from the blizzard supporting one of the Ultramarines. His injuries looked bad but he was walking, albeit with help.
‘Herdantes…’ There was an edge to Brakkius’s voice, an undercurrent of suppressed anger that frightened her. She also felt something else at the sight of the stricken Space Marine.
She realised it was anxiety.
For Scipio.
At Brakkius’s command, two Ultramarines went to their wounded comrade and took his weight off Jynn’s men. The three guerrillas looked exhausted when they finally reached her.
‘The metal-heads are no longer killing us,’ said Sia. She had a small cut on her forehead and the arm of her jacket was slashed, but otherwise she was unharmed.
‘Glad you made it,’ said Jynn, exchanging a brief embrace with all three of them. Of the twenty-four guerrillas she’d started with at sun-up that day, only nine remained before the night was out. Doc Holdst was amongst the tally of the dead. It was hard to be grateful for anything when confronted with such wasteful loss.
Jynn turned to Brakkius. His attention was on the Space Marines dragging the one called Herdantes to the command tent. ‘We need to move. My people, or what’s left of them, are all here.’
Brakkius didn’t bother to look at her. ‘Mine are not.’
She tugged on his vambrace to get his attention. It was like trying to move a mountain. Brakkius didn’t shift. Jynn went on anyway. ‘Look, those monsters have stopped for whatever reason. Maybe they’re fallible after all and there’s a malfunction in their wiring or something – I don’t care. I’ve lost nearly two-thirds of my people and the rest of us won’t last much longer once those metal-heads come around again. We have to move!’
This time Brakkius met her gaze. It was impossible to tell through the lenses of his battle-helm but she hoped there might have been a measure of respect in his eyes. He held her gaze for a few seconds before looking back at the darkness.
Another Space Marine approached him and stopped by his side. ‘Herdantes is badly wounded.’ He glanced at Jynn. ‘The human is right, we must leave this place.’
‘I won’t leave him, Cator. You go – lead the others back to Lord Tigurius if you can. I’m staying.’
Brakkius resumed his vigil.
In the end, Cator didn’t have to decide. Two more cobalt giants came running through the blizzard.
Jynn recognised Scipio – the other one she’d heard him call Largo.
Now they could go.
‘I’m pleased you’re alive, Jynn Evvers,’ said Scipio upon reaching the command tent.
‘So am I.’ It was a truthful answer at least. She was about to say more when the low growl emitted by the dormant flayed ones grew into a shrieking cacophony. Several of Jynn’s men were sick, some wept openly. It took all of her resolve not to break down too.
‘What is it?’ she asked, her hands pressed to her ears.
Scipio exchanged a knowing look with Largo and said, ‘Time for us to leave.’
He recognised that sound and as they fled back down the mountain, headed for what she assumed was an army of Space Marines somewhere below, she heard Largo mutter to himself.
‘It’s not dead.’
Chapter Thirteen
Fear saturated Damnos. It permeated its air, its rock and ate away at its people like a cancer. Their screams, their plaintive moaning, their abject grief was an urgent throb at the back of the Librarian’s mind.
Tigurius was a supreme psyker, the most accomplished of his Chapter, perhaps of any Chapter. There were others with power, of course: hooded Ezekiel, enigmatic Vel’cona, dreaded Mephiston. All were masters of their art but Tigurius was of the Ultramarines, the purest of all Space Marines, and his abilities were prodigious. Even so, he struggled to find a path through the necron shroud and the fear they propagated.
His mind had touched that of the necrons. It found only infinite darkness and endless hate. There was something buried in that well of nothingness, a warning; he felt certain of it. Without knowing why, he realised it was important and that by not seeking the truth of that vision he would be allowing some heinous evil to pass. Tigurius had fortified himself, performed the many rituals and psychic mantras designed to steel his mind against any potential aggressors. The Herald was strong, far more potent than he had first realised. Tigurius resolved that this time he would be prepared.
Inscribed in the ice with the pommel of his force staff were three concentric rings. Double-banded, he had also wrought sigils of warding and aversion to bind them together. Tigurius crouched down in the centre, his eyes closed, and tried to ride the darkling waves of his subconscious.
Everlasting night filled his mind, the fearful voices of the humans pushed to the fringes and no longer a distraction. He went deeper and fashioned a psychic beacon that he attached around the Hood of Hellfire like a halo. Still, the darkness would not yield. Landscapes resolved below him as he soared across Damnos as a mental projection of himself. It was grey and bland, the life had left it.
Was this a vision of the future? Was he witnessing their ultimate failure?
Something glowed up ahead and Tigurius soared towards it. Psychic winds buffeted him, tried to throw him off course and dash him against the rising mountains on either side. He renewed his efforts, making his body into an arrow that sliced the air apart and cut through the tempest.
For a moment, a tiny light shone below him but it was fleeting and quickly snuffed out. The glow ahead intensified, turning from a phosphorescent white into a sickly emerald. Too late, Tigurius realised the danger he was in and tried to flee. The light became a blazing green orb that reached for him with the tendrils of its light.
One caressed the Librarian’s arm and pain, hot and incandescent, fed into his body. His heart was thundering, a dull ache filled his head and a keening wail deafened his thoughts.
Must return…
All his efforts were focussed on getting back but something was stretching the psychic landscape below, reshaping it so the distance became lightyears instead of leagues. Behind him, the baleful sun rose further and its tendrils grew with its influence.
They lashed at the Librarian like the appendages of some ocean-borne beast, a kraken or leviathan of old. Tigurius was forced to weave and pin wheel and dart as the sparrow eludes the eagle. Though he had not moved from his chosen spot since the vigil began, he still felt the physical exertion of his efforts. Mind and body were concomitant aspects of most beings – one affected the other. At that moment as he angled through the mental sky, his mind was being put to the sternest test and it visited that self-same tension upon his body.
Back at his vigil point, Tigurius had blood in his mouth and a tremor in his limbs.
Maintain focus…
Below, grey mountains and cities became monuments of emerald and obelisks of necron devotion and servitude.
Death…
The wind promised a certain end should he let the green light touch him.
Only light can outrun light and in so doing bend the laws of time. That revelation prompted a response. Tigurius fashioned his arrowing form into a beam, pure and focussed and so thin it left the baleful sun in its wake. The crouching form of his physical body loomed before him, solace for his mind at last.
Tigurius came to swathed in a feverish sweat. It took a moment to regulate his breathing, another to ensure he had awakened in the physical world and this reality he inhabited was not merely verisimilitude.
The vision was beyond his grasp. It lay behind the emerald sun and the Herald was preventing him from seeing it. With that obstacle alone, Tigurius might have triumphed but combined with the darkness shroud, it was near impossible. He did witness something, however. The snuffed-out light – it was a glimpse of the future. Prescience was guiding him to something, some event yet to transpire. It must be close; otherwise he would not have seen it. Somehow, the keening he had heard was a component of that possible future.
Like the vision, he knew deep down that it was important. That he must act. Though his limbs protested, Tigurius got to his feet and let his instincts pull him. The mountains beckoned. Drifts that had yet to fall upon the lower regions swathed the peaks in a storm. He headed upwards, leaving his battle-brothers behind. They were deep in the valley, monitoring the Thanatos Hills. Urgency governed the Librarian’s step – there was no time to summon the other Ultramarines, no time at all.
Praxor advanced through the ruins slowly and carefully. He crushed something underfoot and looked down.
It was a bent piece of flat metal, frozen solid and cracked down the middle. Frost-edged letters were described on it in Gothic script.
‘Arcona City,’ said Etrius. His voice was low and sombre as if he were touring a mausoleum.
In many respects, he was.
Praxor assembled the fractured letters into a more meaningful arrangement and nodded. Kellenport really was the last human bastion on Damnos.
The Ultramarines line was well dispersed. Each of the cobalt giants kept a wary eye on the way ahead, watching the ruins for hidden threats. According to reports, too many had already fallen to necron ambush. Sicarius led from the front, as he always did, his Lions of Macragge alongside him. The stretched battle line was a deliberate strategy from the captain. Not only did it make it easier for the Ultramarines to pick their way through the rough ground, they’d also present a harder target for the mass fire of the necrons. Once the storm hit, it would present the illusion that a larger force was arrayed against them too. Engagement would happen soon, but they kept the pace even so Atavian and Tirian could keep up.
The Devastator squads occupied one end of the line. Heavy bolters and plasma cannons were low-slung on their cumbersome rigs. Too weighty for a human to bear alone, the Space Marines hefted them with relative ease. The missile launchers and lascannons, being shoulder-mounted, were pointed down and steadied by the gunner’s other hand. Ponderous but implacable, the Dreadnoughts marched with the Devastators. Their cannons were simply a part of their bodies, whirring and auto-targeting as they scanned the immediate area. As soon as battle was joined, these heavy guns would clo
se ranks and present a concentrated volley of fire to hold the necrons’ attention.
Just as Sicarius had predicted, the storm was rolling in. It began a half-kilometre back, the incessant ice flurries getting thicker and faster by the minute. There came a sweeping veil of finer snow in their wake, fogging the air and veneering the forlorn ruins still further.
Praxor moved on. ‘Tactica briefings suggest there was a garrison here at the start of the war,’ he said to Aristaeus down the comm-feed.
‘There was… before the city was left to rot in the wake of necron victory. Look at the earth banks around the ruins, brother-sergeant.’
Praxor did. What he had initially mistaken for emplacements and earthworks, he now saw for what they truly were. Fused by ice to the very bulwarks they were sworn to protect were hundreds upon hundreds of Guardsmen, frozen forever in the moments of their deaths.
The necrons had turned this once proud Imperial city into a bombed-out mess. It was a grim place now, inhabited by ghosts and their terrified memories. Had he been anything other than Adeptus Astartes, Praxor might have quailed at this realisation.
‘Apparently, Arcona was once a key city on Damnos,’ added Aristaeus.
Praxor’s mood was as cold as the weather. ‘Looks like every other ruin on this hollow world.’
They were making steady progress across a roadway that had suffered least in the bombardment. Only part of its surface was cratered and it was still navigable. The quiet gave Praxor too much time with his thoughts. Even the thickening snowfall failed to smother them and he railed against the doubts plaguing him.
I am Adeptus Astartes. I am without fear, unaffected by doubt!
His misgivings weren’t so easily silenced, though. Captain Sicarius was an incredible warrior, the greatest Praxor had known. In his presence, a warrior of Ultramar felt invincible, became capable of feats even a Space Marine would think impossible. He had… an aura about him that was undeniable. Yet he was relentless, even reckless. Heedless of casualties or cost, he would pursue his plans and vendettas until they were achieved or he was dead. In a perverse way, it was this obsessive, mercurial nature that made him the hero he was. It was also why he garnered voices of dissent within the Chapter.
