Iron Warriors - The Omnibus

by Graham McNeill

  One lifted a sobbing man from the ground, wrapping itself around his body like a snake. Like quicksilver, the other tendrils whipped over, latching onto the body and attacking it like predators in a feeding frenzy until there was nothing left.

  Leonid blinked, too numb with horror to react as he saw the tendrils of smoke vanish and eight figures appear standing in their place. They wore grey, featureless boiler-suits and knee-high boots with silver buckles along the shins. Each carried a fearsome array of knives, hooks and saws on their leather belts.

  Their faces were human in proportion only, flensed of the disguise of skin and glistening with revealed musculature. Crude stitches crisscrossed their skulls and, as they turned their heads as though hunting by scent, Leonid saw they were utterly featureless save for distended and fanged mouths. They had no eyes, nose or ears, only discoloured, cancerous swellings that bulged and rippled beneath their fleshless skulls.

  The daemons circulated through the slaves, selecting men at random and lifting them from the ground to snap their spines and fasten fanged jaws to the blackened and swollen melanoma on their necks. Leonid pressed his hands to his ears as the daemons suckled on the cancers that grew and multiplied within the bodies of the Jouran slaves.

  One passed within a metre of Leonid and he felt a suffocating fear rise up in him, though he could barely believe that his terror could rise to greater heights.

  He saw its patchwork face swing towards him the tumourous tissue in its neck bulging with a horrid appetite as its blackened fingers reached for him, gripping his tattered uniform and hauling him upright. Its touch felt like rotted meat, wriggling with the suggestion of maggots and freshly hatched larvae. Its dead skin mask was inches from his face, its breath like a furnace of cadavers. It moved its undulating face around his, as though tasting his scent.

  ‘The Sarcomata favour you,’ hissed Obax Zakayo. ‘Corruption of the flesh given form and purpose, the malignancies devouring your body are the choicest sweetmeats to them.’

  Leonid waited for death, but the Omphalos Daemonium had greater purpose for him than mere murder, roaring in impatience as the Sarcomata’s mouth descended to the swellings on his neck. The daemon hissed in submission before tossing him through the doors of the boxcar directly behind the Omphalos Daemonium. He landed on a carpet of decomposing matter that stank of excrement and blood.

  Their loathsome hunger sated for the moment, the Sarcomata herded the rest of the slaves into the boxcars, packing them in tightly before shutting them in the darkness with nothing but their terror for company.

  ‘Where do you think they’re taking us?’ said Ellard.‘I don’t know, sergeant,’ replied Leonid, ‘but I heard that bastard Obax Zakayo mention a name. Honsou, I think.’

  ‘Honsou?’

  ‘Aye, that’s what it sounded like.’

  ‘I’ve heard that name before,’ said Ellard.

  ‘You have? Where?’

  ‘On the prison hulks that brought us here. By the sound of it, I think he was their war leader on Hydra Cordatus.’

  Leonid shivered, remembering the sight of the Iron Warriors’ leader as he stood before the walls of the citadel. Captain Eshara had called him a Warsmith and Leonid remembered the blasted rune standard and the nauseous terror that settled in his belly at the sight of such an ancient and terrible warrior.

  If they were truly to be delivered into the hands of such a monstrous being, then perhaps death at the hands of the Sarcomata would have been preferable to this stinking hell. Nearly a hundred men were packed tightly into a boxcar made to carry half that number, and the stench was an assault on the senses. So crammed were they that each man was forced to stand upright, pressed tightly against his comrades, unable to make more than the smallest movement. Men wept and wailed, slatted shafts of bright light dopplering through the warped timbers of the boxcar as the daemon engine rattled and clattered its way up into the mountains.

  Leonid could taste smoke in the air and an acrid tang of electrical build-up, like he’d felt deep in the Machine Temple of the citadel. He pressed his face to a blade of light, peering out into the bright day. Ash-stained rocks flashed past, green sparks flaring from the soul wheels as they carried the Omphalos Daemonium higher.

  The dark layer of clouds drew nearer, parting every now and then to reveal a tantalising glimpse of a jagged spire, a bladed bastion or a gun-studded redoubt. As the daemon engine began turning in a long, lazy curve, Leonid saw that their route carried them across an impossible bridge of dizzying proportions. Thousands of girders and beams were laced together in a gravity-defying structural lattice that spanned a gorge of gargantuan proportions. Its bottom was lost to sight, roiling mists and screeching beasts swooping through in its lightning-filled depths.

  ‘We have to get out of here, sergeant.’

  ‘I know. But how?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but we’re all dead men if we stay.’

  ‘Most of the men I know who would have been handy in a fight died in the forge temple. We don’t have much in the way of forces.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that, Ellard?’ snapped Leonid. ‘Even if we die trying it’s got to be better than what we’re being taken to. The forge of Obax Zakayo was bad enough. I don’t want to find out what this Honsou’s going to be like.’

  Ellard nodded and rested his head wearily against the wall of the boxcar, staring out into the desolate landscape. Deep lines ringed his eyes and Leonid noticed for the first time how haggard his sergeant had become. Like most officers, Leonid had relied heavily on his sergeants to run his company, and none more so than Ellard. To see a man of such formidable physical presence reduced to such a wasted creature was dispiriting in the extreme.

  Leonid yawned, suddenly bone-deep tired and felt his eyelids drooping. Dimly he heard a series of dull cracks, like gunfire, but was too weary to react.

  ‘Get down, sir!’ called Ellard, leaping forward to drag Leonid to the floor of the boxcar. Tightly-packed bodies hampered his efforts, but the sergeant’s strength, though diminished, was still prodigious, and he was able to bundle his commanding officer to the ground.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Leonid.

  ‘Stay down!’

  Leonid rolled onto one elbow as the sides of the boxcar exploded inwards with fist-sized bullet impacts. Shafts of light speared in as the bullets stitched a path across the side of the boxcar, slashing bloody paths through the packed slaves. Blood and screams filled the air as men jerked like mad things under the fusillade.

  Gunsmoke drifted through the bedlam-filled car. Dead men slumped against one another, held upright by the press of bodies. Blood pooled on the floor, swilling out the doors as Leonid heard a thunderous impact on the roof of the boxcar.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘I think we’re under attack, sir. Or being rescued. I’m not sure which.’

  A crackling trio of blades punched through the bronze roof of the boxcar and a massive fist tore the sheet metal back as though it was no more than paper.

  Silhouetted against the dazzling whiteness of the sky was a huge figure in midnight black power armour. A Space Marine…

  Sudden hope flared as the figure shouted, ‘Slaves! Rise up and fight! Fight the Iron Warriors!’

  Leonid clambered to his feet, fresh energy filling his limbs at this answer to his prayers. The Space Marine looked up along the length of the train and said, ‘Hurry. The Sarcomata will gather soon.’

  Laughing hysterically in relief and released fear, Leonid began climbing to freedom, the splintered holes in the side of the boxcar providing ample hand and foot holds. He pushed his head above the level of the roof, relishing the cleansing feeling of the wind whipping through his hair. He hauled himself through the hole the Space Marine had torn in the roof and pushed himself to his knees, reaching down to help Ellard.

  The sky blazed white above them, the black sun beating down with greasy dark tendrils to somewhere beyond yet another range
of mountains. Leonid forced his gaze from the sight as the energy claws retreated into the Space Marine’s gauntlet.

  Looking closer, Leonid saw that the warrior’s armour was a far cry from the gleaming brilliance of the Imperial Fists he had seen on Hydra Cordatus; ravaged with dents, scarred and patched in dozens of places with crude grafts and filler. Hot vapours vented at his shoulders from the nozzles of a massive jump pack, and a white symbol – a bird of prey of some kind – had been painted over with a jagged red cross. His helmet bore a similar symbol across his visor.

  Looking along the length of the boxcars, Leonid saw yet more of the Space Marines. Clad in an eclectic mix of colours and styles of armour, almost all of them bore a different Chapter symbol on their shoulder guards. They pulled slaves from captivity and herded them towards the rear of the daemon engine’s boxcars and, glancing down into the filthy prison he had escaped from, Leonid saw that he and Ellard were the only two to follow the Space Marine’s order to climb out. Perhaps forty men remained, staring up with terrified eyes at the armoured warrior.

  ‘Who are you?’ shouted Leonid over the roar of the wind.

  ‘I am Ardaric Vaanes of the Red Corsairs,’ said the warrior, drawing a pistol. ‘Get behind me.’

  Leonid and Ellard scrambled across the roof, hugging its rough surface closely. Leonid risked a glance over the edge of the roof and experienced a moment’s sick vertigo as he stared down into the abyss the daemon engine was crossing. He rolled onto his back in time to see Obax Zakayo clamber onto the roof, his lashing energy whip coiling above his helmeted head.

  ‘Look out!’ shouted Leonid as the whip cracked.

  Vaanes brought up his arm to deflect the blow, the crackling lash ensnaring his limb and discharging a powerful corona of blue light. Ardaric Vaanes grunted in pain, his pistol clattering to the roof of the boxcar and skidding to the edge.

  The Space Marine backed away from the giant Iron Warrior, risking a glance at Leonid and Ellard.

  ‘Get to the front!’ he shouted. ‘You have to stop this daemon-thing before we reach the gatehouse. Go now!’

  Obax Zakayo’s whip lashed again, driving Vaanes to his knees as Leonid and Ellard scrambled along the roof to peer over the bladed front of the boxcar. The Iron Warrior took a ponderous step towards the convulsing Space Marine, his mechanised claw reaching out to snap his neck.

  Vaanes roared and thrust with his lightning-sheathed blades. Obax Zakayo batted the blow aside with his axe as his mechanised claw clamped on Vaanes’s gorget.

  ‘You renegades dare try to steal the slaves of Warsmith Honsou?’ snarled Obax Zakayo. ‘For this you must die.’

  The claw tightened on the Space Marine’s neck, and Leonid heard the crack of ceramite over the rushing wind. White sunlight glinted off metal and he saw the Space Marine’s pistol juddering at the edge of the boxcar’s roof.

  He reached over and dragged the heavy gun closer, amazed at its bulk and weight. Too heavy for him to fire one-handed, he rolled onto his back, cradling the gun to his chest and supporting its weight on his forearm.

  He pulled the trigger, the recoil hurling the gun from his hands. He rolled and grabbed the pistol’s oversized grip before the weapon could tumble into the abyss below.

  But his shot was accurate, or at least accurate enough to matter. It struck the visor of Obax Zakayo’s helmet and spun him around. The claw choking Ardaric Vaanes released its grip and the Space Marine leapt to his feet to face the Iron Warrior.

  ‘Go! Quickly!’ he bellowed, pointing further along the bloodtracks. ‘I told you to stop this thing before we reach the gatehouse!’

  Leonid turned and gazed through the dark smog ahead, not truly believing the sight before his eyes.

  Emerging from the darkness ahead was a fortification built into the mountain from dark madness, standing in defiance of all reason. Its steepled towers wounded the sky, its massive gateway a snarling void that swallowed the tracks the Omphalos Daemonium travelled upon. Its walls were darkened, bloodstained stone, veined with unnatural colours that should not exist and which burned themselves upon the retina. Lightning leapt between its towers and the clanking of great engines and machines echoed like thunder from beyond its walls. And this was but a gatehouse?

  ‘Blood of the saints!’ whispered Ellard.

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Leonid.

  The clash of weapons behind them and the sight of the monolithic fortress drove them on and the two Jourans slithered forwards on their bellies to the end of the boxcar. A miasma of evil and uncounted aeons of torment pulsed from the howling daemon engine, and Leonid felt blood drip from his nose and ears the closer they crawled.

  He pushed himself up, ready to make his way onto the daemon engine. A horrifying, bloodstained tender was coupled between it and the boxcars, filled with dismembered corpses. Red steam trailed from the thundering engine, spinning like bloody streamers as the Sarcomata feasted on the cadavers.

  ‘We’ll need to move quickly,’ said Ellard.

  Leonid nodded and swallowed his disgust, dropping into the oozing carpet of bodies. The tender lurched on the bloodtracks and he fell, throwing his arms out before him and sinking knee deep in gore and severed limbs. Ellard dropped next to him and pulled him upright. Together they waded unsteadily through the bodies, corpse gases and semi-coagulated blood misting the air with every step. The tendrils of bloody steam slithered around them, more solid than smoke had any business being.

  ‘Emperor forgive us,’ said Ellard as a slack, dead face rolled over under his boot.

  Leonid gratefully reached the end of the tender, keeping an eye on the circling smoke.

  He hauled himself over the lip of the tender, turning back to help his sergeant.

  A ghostly face swam out of the smoke, a fleshless patchwork of musculature with no features save a fang-filled mouth.

  ‘Hurry!’ shouted Leonid, dropping Ardaric Vaanes’ pistol behind him and dragging Ellard forward. Wraith-like arms wrapped themselves around the sergeant’s shoulders and began pulling. Only partly formed, the Sarcomata’s strength was not the equal of the two Jourans, and Leonid hauled Ellard from the tender with one last desperate heave.

  The two men collapsed on the iron deck at the back of the Omphalos Daemonium, a bronze doorway rattling in its frame behind them. Leonid could see no handle, tasting ashes and the scent of burning flesh gusting through an iron grille at its top. Solidifying smoke-trail bodies of the Sarcomata began climbing from the tender, hissing with hunger at these fresh morsels.

  The two Jourans backed into the door, Leonid dropping to one knee to recover the fallen pistol. One of the Sarcomata pounced towards him, clawed arms reaching for his neck.

  The pistol boomed and ripped the top of the daemon’s head off. Daemonic blood splashed the door, the metal undulating as the blood hissed and vanished like droplets on a hot skillet. The entire doorframe rippled and, as Leonid fell back against the door, it opened as though freshly unlocked.

  He sprawled into a blisteringly hot engine room, Ellard wasting no time in following him inside and slamming the door shut behind him. The door buckled in its frame as the Sarcomata hurled themselves against it, desperate to feast on the cancers within them. Leonid could feel their hunger as a physical thing as he groggily pushed himself to his feet.

  As he saw where their desperate flight had taken them, he wondered whether they might have been better off taking their chances with the Sarcomata. The interior of the daemon engine defied geometry, impossibly stretching beyond the limits of vision to either side, a sweltering, red-lit hell cavern, larger than the forge temple of Obax Zakayo. A wide-doored firebox roared and seethed, tended by a giant in a clanking, mechanical suit of riveted power armour and thick, vulcanised rubber. Over its ancient iron armour, it wore a blood-stiffened apron, and a crown of metal horns sprouted from a conical helmet with a raised visor.

  Muttered doggerel and guttural curses spat from beneath the helmet as the figure approached a lon
g line of dangling chains and pulleys, each with a limbless human torso skewered on a rusted hook. The figure stabbed a long billhook into a headless torso and thrust it into the firebox. He stoked the daemon engine with flesh and blood, and belching stacks spewed ashen bodies into the air.

  ‘There…’ said the figure, its voice rasping and hoarse. ‘What need I incantations or words? Word magic is poor man’s sorcery; it is flesh magic that is strong. Flesh powers ye, blood sustains ye and I bind thee.’

  ‘What the hell is this?’ said Leonid, casting uneasy glances over his shoulder at the rattling door.

  Though his words were spoken in a whisper, the armoured giant stiffened and turned quickly to face them, its butcher’s blade held out before it.

  ‘Well then, what’s this? The Sarcomata come knocking at my door and flesh comes to throw itself in the fires? Good flesh, helpful flesh. Much better than the deadmorsels we get…’

  Leonid raised the pistol and said, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Me?’ said the giant, swinging his blade from side to side. ‘I’s the Slaughterman. Iron Warrior true. Cut and slice, cut and slice. Flesh for the machine. Blood for the cogs and flesh for the fires.’

  The firebox growled, clawed tongues of flame slashing in vain at the giant’s turned back. He chuckled, the sound sending shivers up the Jourans’ spines, and shouted over his shoulder.

  ‘No, no, no, you won’t be eating my skin and bones, daemon. Thrash and struggle all you want. Bloodmeat for me, deadflesh for you.’

  ‘You feed this thing bodies?’ said Ellard, his revulsion plain.

  ‘Yes, deadflesh feed the daemon, two hooks ready for you two. Fresh meat for me. I will cut you up nicely, dress your flesh with reverence, and sup your blood as it spills onto me. Now come here like good flesh so I can chop you.’