Malodrax

by Ben Counter

  ‘And what do I get for satisfying your curiosity?’ said Lysander.

  ‘You get what everyone desires on Malodrax,’ said the Cadaverous Lord. ‘You get to pull some strings instead of just being the puppet. So tell me, Lysander of the Imperial Fists. Just what is it that you hate more than the blasphemy of my court?’

  ‘I hate Kraegon Thul,’ said Lysander.

  ‘I see.’ The Cadaverous Lord seemed to ponder this for a moment, the void of his face churning. ‘And what do you intend to do about it?’

  ‘Kill him. And rescue my battle-brothers he holds captive in Kulgarde.’

  ‘And you have come to my city to ask for my help.’

  ‘Your help? You have never helped anyone or anything. It is not in the nature of the daemon. No, I am here because the creatures of the warp are jealous. You want to rule the whole of Malodrax. Your kind hunger for power and domination. One look at this city shows me that. You crave worship. This place is one huge church you built to yourself. Kraegon Thul stops you from building that church across half of Malodrax. You hate him just like I do, and through me you can wipe him off the face of this world. You will betray me, I do not doubt. You will make of me an offering to your god, if you can, once I am no longer useful to you. If, of course, I do not destroy you first.’

  ‘You are not the first to have tried,’ said the Cadaverous Lord.

  ‘I have no doubt,’ replied Lysander. ‘Kulgarde was built for a reason. I dare not guess how many have been lost trying to breach it. But remember, Veiled One – none of them were Imperial Fists.’

  ‘I left most of the decisions to Agent Sildyne, who while serving as my favoured assassin and spy had shown exceptional skill at reading the customs and perils of urban environments. At his suggestion my warband took over the home of a musician, evidently one of a class of performers and artists constantly competing for the attention of Shalhadar and the chance to enter his court. In spite of my losses myself, Sildyne, Grun and Thol, Talaya, the pilot Maskelin and Archivist Grunvelder still represented more than enough of a fighting force to despatch the occupant without any trouble. Thol and Grun squabbled over his scalp, but I talked them down from settling matters with a knife fight.

  ‘From this base I set about exploring and cataloguing the nature of this city. It was an impossible task, for like all things touched by Chaos it did not obey the rules that a saner place might cleave to. For instance, there was no economy to speak of, not as we understand it. How was the city’s population fed? How did it maintain a population at all given the sacrifices and random blossomings of bloodshed that took place hourly? Who kept the gleaming spires and gilded streets clean of filth, so it met every day’s dawn with a blaze of reflected gold and silver? Archivist Grunvelder was most perturbed by the lack of answers to these questions, and by now I was most aware of the decline of his mental faculties. But Sildyne understood. The wily assassin knew that only life and death are constant, for to him they were the defining features of every level of existence.

  ‘The function of the city, if not the intricate details of its various interactions, became apparent to me. Though I ventured out little, leaving Sildyne and the feral worlder brothers to roam abroad for information and supplies, my perceptiveness is such that I beheld the most important truths. The pyramid was at the centre of the city, both physically and in the hearts and minds of its people. They lived, and the city existed, to fuel the need of the palace for beauty and talent, even though such beauty was often abhorrent to a sane mind. From the deprevations and devotional displays of the population were made apparent the most devoted and capable of celebrants, who might then be granted entry to the palace. Artists, musicians, actors, singers and dancers were in great demand, as were playwrights and those who were merely beautiful (by whatever strange standards of beauty applied there). The most depraved seekers of new sensations could also be plucked from their opiate-drenched dens to continue their debauchery at court. The means by which the power in the palace, this Veiled One, discovered the most talented citizens was obscure to me. I imagine he had agents in the city observing, much as Sildyne and the feral worlders served me.

  ‘I concluded that entry to the pyramid, or at least the placing of an agent within, was of the greatest importance. Sildyne observed a beast guarding the pyramid’s gates that, going by his description, resembled the centauroid half-feline beasts common from the myth-cycles of primitive worlds. Legend among the people, picked up by Thol who had proven able at sharing in a friendly drink with the locals while keeping his ears open, suggested the sphinx was the gatekeeper and decided who was permitted entrance. It is unlikely our strength could despatch such a beast. I determined that subterfuge, not force, was the key that would unlock the palace of the Veiled One to this agent of the Emperor’s Inquisition.’

  11

  ‘That lies are the very substance of Chaos is a truth that need not be taught to anyone with the capacity to read and understand these words. Yet in our arrogance we assume that we alone are lied to, and that every movement and utterance of the daemon is intended solely to deceive us. Indeed not, for it is my belief that the greater part of daemonkind concern themselves not with humanity, but with other creatures of the warp. Among themselves they make war, forge pacts, make bargains, bind one another into servitude, and destroy. And among themselves, they lie.’

  – Inquisitor Corvin Golrukhan

  The ambassador’s entrance had its own grandeur. It was at odds, deliberately so, with the aesthetic of Shalhadar’s city, but was no less crafted for all that. It entered through one of the city’s main gates and was preceded by a host of mutant slaves, chained together with links fixed to their iron collars, their feet shackled so they could only shamble at walking pace. The procession had to be seen, just like the city’s own revellers and works of art.

  The mutants wore their status on their skin, not just their many deformities, but the scars and brands that covered them. They were the image of servitude, of subhumanity – living, sentient beings crushed down to something far less than that by the will of another. Some were xenos – some could have been, if they were not hugely mutated humans. Among them were the lipless, gangly creatures that survived from Malodrax’s native species, and a few other more exotic things beside – a couple of greenskinned orks, their flesh covered in scar tissue as deep as the bark of a storm-lashed tree. A quadruped with dextrous mandibles, harnessed like a beast of burden. An avian with the feathers fringing its arms and torso ripped out, leaving a few wisps of plumage hanging from its torn and pinkish skin. They all walked in time, as if to the beat of a silent drum.

  They hauled spiked chains attached to a war altar that slid along the ground on rollers. The altar was set on a slab of gleaming obsidian, and was crowned with smokestacks belching out columns of grey-black fumes. A pit of bubbling molten steel sent out waves of heat haze, and set into it was a slab of stone. A blade was laid out on the stone, a broadsword of exceptional ornateness and size. Standing over the altar, like the smith about to start work, was the ambassador himself – an Iron Warrior, in the brutalist armour of his Legion, dark gunmetal with black and yellow warning flashes at the joints.

  Behind the altar was another mass of mutants, pushing it from behind. These were brute-mutants, swollen masses of muscle grinding beneath the scars on their backs and shoulders. Some of them were implanted with banner poles grafted onto their spines, flying standards depicting the iron mask symbol of the Legion. They left footprints in blood and filth on the gilded flagstones.

  Thousands had emerged from their homes to watch the ambassador’s arrival. The ugliness of the spectacle was a rare experience in Shalhadar’s city. The stench of sweat and misery was even rarer. Nobles and aesthetes held nosegays to their faces. Others just gawped, and shuddered when the visor-slit of the ambassador’s helm fell upon them.

  Lysander watched from a high balcony, adjoining the tower floor assigned f
or his use. He could smell the greasy smoke from the forge-altar from his vantage point. He felt a spark of fire leaping in his chest as he recognised the ambassador’s armour – it was the one Kraegon Thul had named Captain Hexal, the leader of the raiding party that had boarded the Shield of Valour.

  Captain Hexal’s hands were soaked in the blood of Brother Drevyn.

  The sound of metallic clacking came from below the balcony. Talaya, the herald of Shalhadar, climbed up the wall, her steel talons digging into the stone. She stopped level with Lysander and cast a bored glance down at the ambassador’s parade.

  ‘You know him?’ she asked.

  ‘In passing,’ replied Lysander.

  ‘He is here to demand tribute,’ continued Talaya. ‘Kulgarde loves to remind us that we are not the only power on Malodrax. In a few moons we might send our own demands. These things ebb and flow.’ A cruel smile came across Talaya’s face. ‘You could kill him,’ she said.

  ‘I was just thinking that myself,’ said Lysander. ‘A soldier always does. It is a reflex.’ He leaned against the balcony rail, looking down at the crowds in the street. ‘The drop is potentially fatal but the crowds will break my fall. If I am still mobile after the landing I can make it to the altar before the mutants in front of it react. Their collective reflexes will be slow. They are not a factor. Once on the altar, I can vault the anvil and be face to face with Hexal in three or four seconds.’

  ‘Could you take him, if you got that far?’

  Lysander drew his blade. It was exceptionally fine, the edge so keen it glowed, the blade shimmering with the patterns of countless foldings. ‘This is a good sword,’ he said, ‘but it would still be an unpowered weapon against power armour. Hexal’s armour is of an ancient mark. The weak points are the joints at the waist and between the arms. But that is only speaking relatively. Those points are still sounder than any mundane armour. Moreover, the first blow must be fatal or debilitating, otherwise Hexal will have the time to draw a weapon and fight back, as will the brute-mutants to the rear.’

  ‘What are your chances?’ asked Talaya.

  ‘Of killing him? One in four. Of killing him and making it out of the street alive? A few per cent. Perhaps fewer than one if Hexal has a weapon to hand.’

  ‘But there is a chance,’ said Talaya, leaning a little closer, the mechanical arms mounted on her back hissing and spraying a fine mist of steam. ‘You could kill him now. It is why you are here.’

  ‘I could,’ said Lysander. ‘And a duty to the human race would be done. But even if everything went right, even if I killed Hexal and escaped in the bedlam, Kraegon Thul would still be alive and Kulgarde would still stand.’

  ‘Then Hexal will survive,’ said Talaya. ‘For now.’

  Lysander leaned back from the rail. ‘So what is the next stage?’

  Talaya pretended to think about this. There was something unwholesome about the sly, flirtatious smile on her face. ‘That depends on what Hexal demands,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, the Veiled One has a way to exploit it. He will state Kulgarde’s demands in the stadium.’

  ‘Then I will hear them,’ said Lysander.

  Below, a couple of brute-mutants were knocking aside spectators who got too close to the procession. The altar ground further into Shalhadar’s city, leaving a trail of broken mutant stragglers as it went.

  ‘It is time I write of what happened to Talaya.

  ‘Some of my work I wrote down as it happened, always assuming that I would survive to leave Malodrax and dictate this memoir of my deeds there in the comfort of my spacecraft as I returned to my conclave’s fortress. It has become apparent, however, that such a luxury may not be afforded me. Therefore I write of these events while I have yet to depart Malodrax, two days’ march outside Shalhadar’s city. Archivist Grunvelder is no longer with me – indeed, only Maskelin and Thol remain in my band – so I must write by hand in this blank volume I recovered from Grunvelder’s effects.

  ‘It was apparent to me that only by receiving an audience with Shalhadar could I acquire the understanding essential for the cleansing of Malodrax. It was always my intention that once I returned to my conclave, they would use the knowledge with which I presented them to return and sear this world of the filth encrusting it. I could hardly return to those ancient and powerful Inquisitorial heretics with nothing to show for this expedition, against which so many had argued. So I determined that I would do whatever it took to get the attention of Shalhadar, who thus far had more than earned his sobriquet of the Veiled One. Indeed, the name was coined for him purely because he bestowed a personal appearance so rarely.

  ‘How many thousands of the city’s inhabitants went through a lifetime of devotion, only to die never having laid eyes on Shalhadar? But those people were not inquisitors. Through the investigations of the city I had come to learn of the great spectacles held in the stadium, a vast structure built into an impact crater adjoining the city and around which a great curve of wall had been erected, bulging beyond the roughly circular shape of the city like an enormous cancerous growth. Therein the spectacles were held not just to entertain the people, but to exalt the greatness of Shalhadar and, perhaps, to acquire entry to his court with a particularly grand display of skill or devotion.

  ‘The expedition to the stadium required a display of pageantry. Grun and Thol did not greatly appreciate their garb of heavy robes and various cultish accoutrements, but I permitted them to retain their lucky scalps and jawbone clubs under the folds. Maskelin, who in his youth had been an enthusiastic musician earning coins in the slums of Devlan, went ahead of us playing a set of pipes to herald our approach. As the member of the warband with the greatest personal gravity and natural authority, I garbed myself as a high priest of some obscure splinter warp religion with Talaya as my bearer of sacrificial implements.

  ‘Grunvelder has been plagued by visions, and when I ordered him to spend several hours writing out scripture to cleanse his soul, the result was reams of pages scrawled in a dark tongue I did not know. I left him back at the tower we used as our base. By then we were all aware of what would be his fate, not least Grunvelder himself, though none spoke of it aloud.

  ‘The stadium rose ahead of us, a magnificent crown of carved ivory. The donor creature was an immense leviathan, perhaps hauled out of the blood ocean I had seen when first landing on Malodrax, its vast and misshapen skull mounted above the main gates. The gates of whalebone were etched with intricate scenes of sacrifice and mutilation, all carved with the bloodied fingerbone stubs of a caste of worshippers who gouged the carvings into the stadium’s ivory. These souls gave their lives to the art, wearing their hands away until the few who reached a great age had worn their arms away to the elbow. I wondered how many of them ever knew what it felt to have the Veiled One’s eye on them, or if they had all slaved, suffered and died without earning their lord’s attention.

  ‘But those hapless, forgotten souls were not inquisitors.

  ‘Sildyne had preceded us to the stadium, and had concealed himself among the rafters. By our secure vox-link he informed me that the spectacle for that day was to be the construction of a living monument to Shalhadar. This suited my purpose well, for the Veiled One had been known to attend such acts of mass devotion in person. At the very least those who watched the city for their lord’s benefit were sure to be in attendance.

  ‘What can I say of what we saw there? A bald and workmanlike description will have to suffice. I cannot count the numbers who crowded the stadium’s galleries, and while among them was a multitude of strange sights, they were not the true spectacle. No, that took place on the sand of the arena.

  ‘Ten thousand men and women entered through the archways at stadium level. They had shed their various devotional fashions and wore silks of purple and light blue, which were among the colours of Shalhadar’s patron powers among the warp. Their feet were bare upon the sand. Many among them wep
t with joy. A great cheer went up when they made their entry, and yet there were angry mutterings beneath the sound for the crowds watching all wished they had the honour of serving in the spectacle.

  ‘Sildyne joined us, making his way like a ghost through the throng, and whispered in my ear that a covering of silk in the stands opposite housed a great dignitary searching for useful subjects to beautify or scandalise the court of Shalhadar. Thus I was assured my journey, and the risk it entailed, were not for nothing.

  ‘The spectacle itself was as grand and awe-inspiring as it was appalling. The supplicants clambered together into a great living statue, an approximation of the icon I have seen scrawled in forbidden texts and carved into the skin of madmen – the sigil of the Lord of Pleasure, the warp power whose will Shalhadar served. Hundreds upon hundreds heaped themselves up to form its base, the shape growing higher, like an organic thing spreading branches, until I recognised with a note of horror in my soul what I was watching.

  ‘Those at the base were crushed. Their blood stained the sand pink. Beneath the cheers and chanting of the crowds I could hear the weak screams of the trapped, and the sigh of bones snapping by the dozen. Some fell, dashed to death on the sand. Some faces I could see, eyes and tongues bulging as their midriffs were compressed beyond the point of survival. The living statue did not keep its shape for long, but in the moments it did I felt the eyes of the warp on me, its raw malice bathing that stadium and its cold fingers probing for my soul.

  ‘In the warp, the Lord of Unspeakable Pleasures was looking on. I knew he must see me there, and know I did not belong. I saw then how quickly my work in the city must be done.