Apothecary Selenus gently lifted the man's leg, unwrapping bandages soiled with seeping blood and pus, and applied soothing balms to the scraps of seared flesh that still clung to his wasted frame. The apothecary worked by the light of a dozen sputtering candles and the sickening stench of atrophied, burned meat filled the room with choking pungency.
Caernus IV was the site of the most recent attack by the eldar raiders and information provided by the governor had indicated that one person had survived the butchery.
Looking at the man, whom the town's alderman had called Gedrik, Uriel felt nothing but pity at his survival.
They had come to this world to glean information from a living eyewitness, and Uriel had a strange sense that it was vitally important he talk to Gedrik.
Sergeant Pasanius leaned close to Uriel and whispered, 'Will he live much longer, do you think?'
Uriel shook his head. 'Selenus says not, but this one is a fighter. By rights he should be dead already. Something has kept him alive.'
'Like what?'
'I do not know, Pasanius, but the town's alderman tells me that he would not allow their physician to grant him the Emperor's Peace. He kept saying that he was waiting for the angels. That he had a gift for them.'
'What does that mean?' scoffed Pasanius. 'The pain must have made him delusional.'
'No,' whispered Uriel. 'I believe he was waiting for us.'
'For us? How could he know we would be coming?'
Uriel shrugged. 'It is said that those who feel death's touch yet live are sometimes granted visions and wondrous powers by the Emperor. His survival is a miracle and perhaps that is reason enough to believe it.'
Pasanius looked unconvinced. 'I always said living underground on Calth all these years couldn't be good for you, captain. You really think that just because this poor wretch is not dead means that he was touched by the Emperor himself?'
'Perhaps, I don't know. They say the blessed Saint Capilene lived for three days after the bullet that killed her entered her heart, that the Emperor would not allow her to fall until she had led the troops to victory against the Chaos-scum on the shrine world that now bears her name. I can't give you a sound explanation, my friend, but my gut tells me that something has kept him alive for a reason. I can't explain it, I just have a feeling.'
'Now you are starting to sound like Idaeus,' grumbled Pasanius. 'I always knew that when he had "one of his feelings" it meant we were heading for some real trouble.'
Apothecary Selenus rose from the bed and bowed to Uriel. 'Brother-captain, there is no more to be done for him. I have applied unguents that will prevent evil vapours from infecting the wound and dressed them as best I can, but it is wasted effort. He will die soon. Nothing now can prevent that.'
'You have done all that you can, brother,' said Uriel. As Selenus moved past Uriel, he placed his hand upon the apothecary's shoulder guard and said, 'Remember, Selenus, helping those in need is never wasted effort. Rejoin the men: I would speak with the boy now. I believe he has waited for us and that he has a message for me.'
Selenus nodded. 'As you wish, brother-captain.'
The apothecary ducked his head below the lintel and left the stinking room. Uriel and Pasanius approached the bed and knelt by the Gedrik's head.
Uriel removed his helmet, setting it on the tiled floor, and ran a hand across his scalp. He leaned in close to Gedrik, trying not to breathe in the awful scent of cooked human meat.
The young man's eyes fluttered as he felt Uriel's nearness and his chest heaved, drawing in a great sucking breath.
Gedrik's head lolled towards Uriel. His cracked and swollen lips leaked a clear fluid as he formed his words.
'I knew you would come,' he hissed, the words barely audible.
'Yes, we came. I am Uriel Ventris of the Ultramarines.'
Gedrik nodded, a weeping smile creasing his lips. 'Yes. I saw you when I stared into the night yet to come.'
'You saw me?' asked Uriel, throwing a puzzled glance towards Pasanius.
The practical-minded sergeant merely shrugged, his disbelief plain.
'Yes - you and the Death of Worlds. Light and Dark, two avatars of the same angel.'
Uriel struggled to make sense of the man's words. Death of Worlds, Light and Dark?
Was Pasanius right? Had the boy been driven insane by the things he had seen and the pain he had endured?
'Do you know why you were attacked?' pressed Uriel. 'Can you tell me anything about who did this to you?'
'They came for the metal… The machine man ripped out its heart and now it dies.'
Uriel was mystified. Caernus IV was an agri-world. According to the Segmentum records, there were no metal deposits worth mining here. Certainly none worth slaughtering an entire community for.
'I don't understand, Gedrik. What machine man? A cyborg? A servitor? What metal?'
'The metal that flows. It dies now. My sword… I forged it myself. Now it dies.'
Pasanius lifted a leather scabbard from beside the bed and gripped the wire-wound hilt of the weapon. He pulled a rusted sword from the scabbard and held it close to the candlelight.
Uriel and Pasanius shared an amazed look as they beheld the blade of the sword. Its outline exuded a faint bluish radiance, dimly illuminating the room's interior. Only the very edges of the blade remained silver, for a throbbing vein of leprous brown buried in the heart of the sword pulsed with a loathsome necrotic life. Worm-like tendrils of blackness infested the translucent metal and Uriel could see them slowly spreading throughout the weapon. He ran his gauntlet across the flat of the blade and flakes of dead metal fluttered to the floor.
'Gedrik, what is happening to the sword?'
'It dies. The white-hair and the machine man came and killed the Hill of the Metal, and now it all dies. They killed Maeren and Rouari,' wept Gedrik. 'I don't know why - we would have shared it.'
'The white-hair? Did he come with the machine man?'
'Yes. The machine man, the priest of machines.'
Uriel and Pasanius reached the same conclusion together. A priest of machines could mean only one thing. But an adept of the Machine God, a tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus working with aliens? The very thought was preposterous.
'He can't mean—' began Pasanius.
'No, surely not,' agreed Uriel. 'Gedrik, I think you may have been mistaken.'
'No!' hissed Gedrik, shaking his head feebly on the stained pillow. 'The angel you serve bade me pass on these words. The Death of Worlds and the Bringer of Darkness await to be born into this galaxy. One will arise or neither, the choice is in your hands.'
'What does that mean? Did the… angel tell you what it means? Please, Gedrik.'
Gedrik sighed and his breath rasped in his throat like a dead thing. His head rolled back on limp tendons.
He whispered, 'Please, bring a priest. I want to make confession…'
Uriel nodded and said, 'Sergeant Pasanius. Fetch Chaplain Clausel, a servant of the Emperor awaits his ministrations.'
The sergeant bowed and left the death room as Uriel sat with the dying man. His mind was reeling with the possibility of a priest of the Machine God working alongside the eldar. Who could have imagined such a thing? And the Death of Worlds, the Bringer of Darkness. What were they?
Uriel heard the massive footfalls of Chaplain Clausel and turned to face the scarred warrior-priest.
'He has served the Emperor well, brother-chaplain. Hear his confession and, if he so desires, administer the Finis Rerum. I shall await you outside.'
'It shall be done, my captain.'
Uriel gazed into the death mask of bandages that was all that remained of the young man's face and snapped to attention, slamming his fist into his breastplate.
'Gedrik of Morten's Reach, I salute your bravery. The Emperor be with you.'
Uriel about turned, ducked through the doorway and left the building.
Pasanius and thirty warriors of the Ultramarines awaited him in the centre of
the settlement. Beyond the edge of the settlement, Uriel could see the boxy form of their Thunderhawk gunship. Clusters of frightened townspeople watched from the township's edge.
Pasanius had collected his flamer, its bulk slung across his back, and now marched towards him.
'We're ready to move out, captain. Just give the word.'
'Very good, sergeant.'
'Can I ask you something, captain?'
'Of course, Pasanius.'
'Did you believe him? About the angel, I mean?'
Uriel did not answer Pasanius immediately. He stared into the mountains surrounding the settlement. They soared into the clouds: the achievements of mankind insignificant beside their majesty. It was said that a man's life was a spark in the darkness, and that by the time he was noticed, he had vanished, replaced by brighter and more numerous sparks.
Uriel did not accept that. There were men and women who stood against the darkness, bright spots of light that stood in defiance of the inconceivable vastness of the universe. That they would ultimately die was irrelevant.
It was that they stood at all which mattered.
'Did I believe him?' repeated Uriel. 'Yes, I did. I don't know why, but I did.'
'Another feeling?' groaned Pasanius.
'Aye.'
'What do you think he meant? The Death of Worlds and Bringer of Darkness? I do not like such concepts. They cannot bode well for the days to come.'
'Who knows? Perhaps Adept Barzano can shed more light on the subject when we return to Pavonis.'
'Perhaps,' grunted Pasanius.
'You do not like him?'
'It is not for me to criticise an adept of the Administratum,' replied Pasanius stiffly. 'But he is not like any quill-pusher I have ever met.'
The black-armoured form of Chaplain Clausel emerged from the town's small infirmary and rejoined the captain of Fourth Company.
'It is done, my captain. His soul is with the Emperor now.'
'My thanks, chaplain.'
Clausel bowed and moved to stand beside the rest of the men.
'What are your orders, captain?' asked Pasanius.
Uriel looked back at the infirmary and said, 'Fetch the boy, sergeant. We leave for Morten's Reach and will bury him with honour in his home.'
'I still can't believe it, Kasimir. She should be out on her ear and I should be sitting in the palace,' filmed Vendare Taloun. 'All those years of negotiation with the smaller cartels wasted. Wasted!'
Kasimir de Valtos handed his fellow cartel head a crystal glass of uskavar and sat across from him in the wood-panelled drawing room of his estate house in the Owsen Hills. Taloun took the glass without looking up and continued to stare into the roaring fire in the marble hearth.
'She'll be gone soon enough, Vendare. She cannot hold on forever.'
'The bitch should be gone now!' roared Taloun hurling his glass into the fire, where it exploded into shards. 'Emperor damn her soul. We were so close. What does it take to get rid of her? We had every one of the smaller cartels in our pocket and even allowing for that buffoon Abrogas we still had a dear majority.'
'Well, if she won't fall, she can be pushed,' offered de Valtos.
'What are you talking about? We got a vote against her, but that damn Barzano pulled the rag from under our feet. Damn him, but I thought him to be a foppish numskull.'
'The adept is not a problem.'
'Really?'
'Indeed. Should he prove troublesome, we can dispose of him at our leisure.'
'Don't be foolish, Kasimir. You can't just kill an adept of the Imperium.'
'Why not?'
'Are you serious?'
'Deadly serious,' assured de Valtos. 'And in any case, who will miss him? He is merely one of millions of feather-licking scribes.'
'That Ultramarines captain might have something to say about his vanishing.'
'Do not concern yourself with him, my dear Taloun.'
'I am still not sure about this, Kasimir.'
'Is it any worse than what we plan for the Shonai cartel? Your tanks as well as my guns await in the mountains, Vendare.'
'That's completely different, Kasimir. We do that for the good of Pavonis.'
De Valtos laughed, a hollow, rasping sound, utterly devoid of humour. 'Don't play the innocent with me, Vendare Taloun. I know too much of your dealings. Your idiotic son has a loose tongue and his future wife has one even worse. She wags it in all the wrong places to all the wrong people.'
Taloun flushed and rose from his chair to pour himself a fresh glass of uskavar. His hands shook and the glass clinked as he poured a generous measure of the amber spirit from the decanter.
'Whatever you think you know is a lie,' he said finally.
'I believe you, Vendare,' soothed de Valtos, smiling at Taloun's back. 'But there are many people who would enjoy seeing the Taloun cartel, and especially you, fall. And you know how allegations can stick to a man's reputation, even though they may later be proved false. Just look at what happened when you allowed word to leak out about the Honan and his… liaisons.'
'But that was all true.'
'Admittedly, but my point is no less valid. It would be a shame if certain allegations regarding your brother's death were to enter the public domain. It would mean the termination of our arrangement as I could not be seen to be allying with a man guilty of fratricide.'
'Alright, dammit, Kasimir. You've made your point. So what do you intend?' asked Taloun, returning to his seat.
'Simple,' explained de Valtos. 'We proceed as planned.'
Rain fell in an ever-increasing deluge as the mud-caked Thunderhawk passed low over the roofs of the destroyed township of Morten's Reach. The screaming engines threw up huge sprays of muddy water as the aerial transport touched down in the central square of the settlement, steam hissing from the hot exhausts.
Barely had the landing skids touched down before the engines rumbled throatily and the armoured doors slid back on oiled runners. Three squads of Ultramarines efficiently debarked and fanned out through the town. Two sprinted to the settlement's perimeter as the third, led by Uriel, moved towards the burnt out shell of a building that had obviously once been a temple.
Uriel swept his boltgun left and right. The rain cut visibility dramatically and even his power armour's auto-senses were having a hard time penetrating the greyness.
He could discern no movement or signs of life in the settlement and the evidence of his own sense told him that there had been nothing living in this place for many weeks.
'Sector Prime, clear!' came a shout over the vox-net.
'Sector Secundus, clear!'
'Sector Tertiarus, clear!'
Uriel lowered his weapon and slid it into the restraining clip on his thigh.
'All squad sergeants converge on me. Keep perimeters secure,' he ordered.
Seconds later, Uriel's sergeants, Venasus, Dardino and Pasanius, his flamer sputtering in the falling rain, gathered at the foot of the temple stairs.
'I want this place searched from end to end, house-to-house. Assume all locations are hostile and report in the moment you find anything.'
'What are we looking for, captain? Survivors or victims?' asked Venasus.
'Anything out of the ordinary. There may be some clue as to what the eldar are doing in this system. If there is, I want it found.'
Uriel indicated the weapon impacts on the blackened walls of the temple behind him. 'Servants of the Emperor died here and I want to know why.'
Uriel removed his helmet and tipped his head back, allowing the rain to flow across his face, then spat a mouthful of water into the mud. He slicked his short, black hair back as examined the splintered remains of the temple doors: running his free hand across the burnt timber and impacts of small arms fire.
He slid out his combat knife and dug the point of the weapon into a small impact crater and worked the tip back and forth.
Something dropped from the wood into his hand and he lifted it closer to his face
. His cupped palm swam with rainwater, but Uriel could clearly see a long splinter of jagged violet crystal. There were scores of these embedded in the wall and, from their grouping, Uriel could tell they had come from one shot.
The tactical briefings he had digested on the eldar had told that they favoured weaponry that fired a hail of monomolec-ular, razor-edged discs of metal. But there had been other weapons, described as belonging to a darker subsect of these aliens, which fired just this kind of ammunition.
Some texts codified this subsect as a divergent split of the eldar race, but to Uriel they were all the same: vile aliens that required cleansing in the holy fire of his bolter.
He levered aside the doors and entered the temple, fighting down his rising fury at such desecration. The stench of scorched human fat still clung to the burnt timbers and Uriel pushed his way through to the front of the church where a blackened statue of the divine Master of Mankind lay half buried under a smashed pew. He pulled the statue clear and, though it was heavy, lifted it from the rabble.
At the open rear of the temple he saw a muddy hillside with a number of simple grave markers hammered into the ground at its base. He splashed down from the temple, still carrying the statue, sinking calf deep in the mud. Uriel was saddened at the sheer number of graves. The people who had discovered and cared for Gedrik must have dug them for the people of Morten's Reach.
'Pasanius,' called Uriel over the vox-net. 'I am behind the temple. Bring me the boy's body from the gunship. He should be buried here with his people.'
'Acknowledged,' hissed the voice of the veteran sergeant.
Uriel rested the rescued statue before him and awaited Pasanius's arrival silently in the rain.
Sergeant Pasanius marched slowly around the temple carrying the bandage-swathed body of Gedrik, the green plaid of Caernus IV wrapped around his waist and his sword laid across his chest. An honour guard of Ultramarines followed the massive sergeant as he approached the mass grave.
Ultramarines Omnibus (warhammer 40000: ultramarines) Page 16
