Black Gulch

by Ben Counter

  It was only when Midnias smelled his own skin burning in the rising sun that he paused. The recruit did not move. His face was split open and gushing blood. If he was not dead, he would be soon.

  ‘We are here for punishment,’ said Midnias through cracked lips. ‘Yours is over. The next I shall endure.’

  He crawled on his belly into the fold of rock. The shade was barely any relief at all, but the sizzling from his burned back stopped.

  Midnias’s life from now on was punishment. The other recruit had deserved only death. Midnias deserved more.

  The battle-brothers from the Darkest Hour hammered into the orkish lines. Where their drop pods landed, great plumes of pulverised rock and ork bodies were flung into the air. Some pods split open to reveal deathwind missile launchers and hurricane bolters blasting fire at everything that moved around them. Most, however, carried Obsidian Glaives.

  These battle-brothers had been too late to fight in the siege of their fortress. They owed the greenskins death.

  Midnias was just able to see the ripple of the drop pods’ impact running right across Black Gulch before he landed again. He had aimed his last jump at a patch of blood-streaked rock momentarily free of orks. He landed running, impaling the nearest ork with his blade. His fellow Obsidian Glaives landed a moment later.

  ‘There!’ cried Midnias. ‘The warlord! We are nearly there, my brethren!’

  Warlord Grukk had leapt into the fray as the battle-brothers from the Darkest Hour made landfall. A drop pod had slammed into the gulch a short run from the xenos leader. Grukk threw other greenskins aside to get at it. The pod was the size of a tank with grav-dampened restraints inside to hold a full squad of ten Space Marines. Grukk leered bloodily as it reached the drop pod before its explosive bolts fired to split it open. The warlord clambered on top and wrenched one of the steel plates aside.

  Midnias sprinted into the wall of orks between him and the warlord. The mass of flesh gave but did not break. He threw one ork aside even as he cut another clean in two. Cleavers hacked at him – he caught one on a shoulder guard, spun in place and drove a reverse thrust into the belly of the alien trying to kill him.

  Grukk laughed. He reached into the drop pod and ripped out a handful of mangled ceramite and flesh. Bolter fire stuttered up at him from inside but the impacts didn’t seem to register on the enormous ork. It roared in anger and delight and crammed a handful of Obsidian Glaive into its mouth. It tore another side off the drop pod and dived into the battle-brothers inside. It ripped at them in a fury, its claws throwing chunks of armour and meat into the air as the other greenskins cheered.

  There was no room in Midnias’s mind for anything but hatred. For an alien to kill an Obsidian Glaive was an obscenity. For it to do so as sport, with thousands of other xenos cheering it on, was blasphemy.

  And it was a failure. Every Obsidian Glaive who fell was a crime laid at Midnias’s door. As Chapter Master it was his responsibility and he would be punished. But the ork would be punished first.

  Midnias left the other Obsidian Glaives behind as he roared through the orks. He swung his blade two-handed, ignoring the blows that came his way. Grukk tore out another handful of broken limbs as Midnias rose on a rampart of butchered orks to reach level with the top of the drop pod.

  Grukk clambered out, spattered with the gore of ten dead Obsidian Glaives. It turned greedy eyes on Midnias and pointed a talon at him.

  ‘Are we but sport to you?’ demanded Midnias, not caring if Grukk understood his words. ‘Then take this prize, alien! Wear this corpse on your armour! But cut me down first!’

  Grukk bellowed a war cry in the orkish tongue. The other orks nearby cowered back, for Grukk had marked out Midnias as his to kill alone.

  A punishment would be meted out here. The Emperor alone knew which one would suffer it.

  Midnias ran right at the towering ork. The ork charged, horns down like a bull. In the heart of the swirling bloodshed of Black Gulch, they collided.

  Every drop of shed blood was a failure. That counted no matter which Obsidian Glaive shed it, from a newly-inducted scout to one an ancient with a thousand years of battle experience. But some, when they fell, put a greater stain on those responsible than others.

  It had been thirty years before, when Midnias fought in the Chapter’s First Company, that he last walked the labyrinth of passes and gulches that led to the foothills of Penumbral Spike. Three other brothers of the First Company walked alongside him, their armour stripped off, as they carried their burden on their shoulders.

  ‘I should have taken the bullet myself,’ said one, Brother Varas.

  ‘I should have warned him,’ said Brother Madrilar. He walked with a limp, as a stray round in the battle for the Hargraven Basilica had hit him in the meat of the thigh.

  ‘His wounds were too grave,’ said Brother Kess, the First Company’s Apothecary. ‘There was more shrapnel than I thought. I should have saved him.

  ‘I killed the traitor who took the shot,’ said Midnias. ‘But I was a second too late.’

  Ahead of them, the peak of Penumbral Spike broke through among the mountain peaks. A flock of predatory birds circled the peak as if waiting for the four penitents. The sun was directly overhead, baking the rocks with radiation.

  ‘It is noon,’ said Varas. ‘Set down your burden and pray.’

  The four Obsidian Glaives set down the litter they were carrying. It was covered in a black silken shroud. Midnias flexed his hands – even now, after so many years, he felt the pain of the fingers he had broken when he had killed the other recruit. Every time the ghost of that pain rose in his hands he remembered what he had done to survive, and every one of his failings since then.

  The burden he helped carry was one such failure. Perhaps the greatest.

  Midnias pulled back the corner of the shroud. It revealed the scarred face of Chapter Master Lukal who, until the Battle for Hargraven Basilica, had led the Obsidian Glaives. He had died there, and the four battle-brothers who carried his corpse to Penumbral Spike had condemned themselves as most responsible.

  ‘We will see you to the vaults, my lord,’ said Midnias. ‘We will hold vigil at your tomb. This too we shall endure.’

  ‘This too we shall endure,’ said the other Obsidian Glaives.

  Midnias drew the shroud back over Lukal’s face.

  ‘They say,’ said Varas, ‘that you will one day wear the Crown of Obstiria, Brother Midnias.’

  ‘Me?’ asked Midnias.

  ‘I was one of Lukal’s honour guard,’ said Varas, ‘and most Chapter Masters once served there. But I am too impulsive to lead my brothers, and no other among us is suitable. A new Chapter Master will probably be appointed from among the company captains, but is any of them a strategist or inspiration as Lukal was? No, they will merely serve until one more able is found. It is said that with time, that may be you, Midnias. You will one day be Chapter Master, if your potential is realised and fate spares you death until then.’

  Midnias looked from the shrouded corpse to Penumbral Spike. The fortress was still distant. It was a long and gruelling walk.

  ‘Then my punishment has only just begun,’ he said.

  Midnias’s sword arced down in a blur, its edge aimed for Grukk’s neck.

  The ork turned at the last split-second and the blade hacked deep into the meat of its shoulder. The power field ripped through muscle and bone but the ork was so massive the wound was not mortal.

  Grukk grinned, its tiny red eyes glimmering. The foulness of rotting meat and old blood washed over Midnias. Midnias wrenched the blade free and drew it back for another strike. If he caught Grukk’s neck he could take the warlord’s head off. If he struck the same place he might cut through an organ the greenskin could not live without.

  Grukk dropped to one knee and raised a massive fist. It caught the blade in its hand. The edge sliced deep through its palm and into its forearm but the ork registered no pain – it just laughed as Midnias fought to wre
nch the blade out of the bone.

  Grukk’s other fist pistoned up in a massive uppercut that slammed into Midnias’s chest and face.

  Blackness spun around Midnias’s head. All the old pains ghosted up through his body – the burns across his back, the bullet and blade wounds across his chest, the surgical scars all over his body. His hands hurt worst of all, as if they were full of needles or immersed in scalding water.

  He took the pain and held on to it. The pain meant he was not dead. No, he was still to be punished for his crimes and his failings. He forced a hand beneath him and pushed himself up.

  Midnias’s helmet had been torn from his head. The Crown of Obstiria lay on the stone beside him.

  Grukk wrapped a massive hand around Midnias’s body, pinning his arms to his sides. The ork’s mouth yawned open, revealing rows of gory fangs leading to a hungry black throat.

  It could be absurd, the thoughts that came to even a Space Marine, even a Chapter Master, in times of crisis. Midnias was back in the cell again, before he had ever met the Chaplain who recruited him into the Obsidian Glaives. This time he was looking at himself as if he was hovering in the corner of the cell, and saw not a Space Marine but a scrawny, filthy criminal, the lowest of the dregs who plagued that spaceship’s crew. Nothing but a condemned man, waiting for a well-deserved bullet in the back of the head in punishment for…

  For what?

  Midnias no longer remembered what he had done to be put in that cell. It was the crime that had led to him becoming an Obsidian Glaive, and suffering the endless punishment that was the Emperor’s gift to that Chapter. Yet he did not remember what he had done.

  As Midnias’s head was forced down into Grukk’s maw, he tried to draw out some flicker of memory about his crime.

  The mouth closed. Fangs bored through the back of his neck and up through his jaw into his skull.

  To deserve a death like this, thought Midnias, to have served so unflinchingly and yet to be a trophy kill for an alien, he must have done something terrible indeed.

  Grukk’s jaws closed, and Midnias’s execution was carried out at last.

  About The Author

  Ben Counter is one of Black Library’s most popular Warhammer 40,000 authors, with two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the six-volume Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles he has written Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris and a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.

  The Obsidian Glaives Space Marines face the fury of the Red Waaagh!

  As the orks close in, the Chapter wake the ancient warriors that slumber below their fortress-monastery and ready them for their final battle.

  The Red Waaagh! descends on the world of Alaric Prime, intent on plunging the sector into war. Only the forces of the planet's Knight houses and their Cadian allies stand against the alien tide.

  More titles in the Sanctus Reach series coming soon.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Cover illustration by Alex Boyd.

  © Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.

  Black Library, the Black Library logo, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy logo, The Horus Heresy eye device, Space Marine Battles, the Space Marine Battles logo, Warhammer 40,000, the Warhammer 40,000 logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated brands, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, ™ and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2014, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world.

  All rights reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78251-515-9

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  See Black Library on the internet at

  blacklibrary.com

  Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

  games-workshop.com

  eBook license

  This license is made between:

  Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

  (2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

  (jointly, “the parties”)

  These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

  * 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

  o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

  o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

  * 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

  * 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

  o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

  * 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

  * 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

  * 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

  * 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

  * 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

  * 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of a
ny change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

  * 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.