On the inside face of the dome there were patterns of lines and discs that seemed to go on forever, baffling the eye with illusions of depth and movement where there was none. Then there was the light and the sound, the same discordant noise he had heard on the headset. It was coming from the apex of the construction, rolling down the steep sides of the pyramid in slow, punishing waves. There was a figure up there, floating—
Red lasers stitched the air around Decius’s head, tearing his attention away from the ziggurat and back to the battle at hand. The Death Guard force was large, but they had underestimated the number of turncoats clustering inside the main dome. He heard Rahl’s voice on the vox, furious with tension. ‘Encountering heavy resistance at objective!’
Decius slammed an enemy trooper to death, the blow sending the dead man into a ring of his comrades and in turn taking them off their feet. Captain Garro sliced through the Isstvanian lines with Libertas shining with gore, the bolter in his other hand banging with each kill-shot it released. Solun kept pace with his commander, gathering Rahl and Sendek to him. Hakur and his squad had the flanks as they pushed in towards the foot of the arcane construction. Decius laughed, the rush of the battle coursing through him, making a dozen more close-range kills with his bolter, blood flicking off his wargear. They were at the base of the ziggurat when a dull concussion rumbled through the dome and a set of blast doors caved in with an agonised creak. Muscled giants in purple and gold punched through the entrance and laid into the black hoods.
‘Fulgrim’s boys have decided to grace us with their presence,’ said Garro, baring his teeth. ‘Let’s not let Eidolon say he made the peak before the Death Guard!’ The moment of confusion in the defenders caused by the new arrivals was enough to give the men of the Seventh the opening they needed, and swiftly the battle-captain led the squad up the rough-hewn face of the pyramid.
Decius’s gaze ranged up the steep, peculiar little mountain and found the apex again. Yes, he saw it clearly now. A woman was up there, and by some means she hovered, suspended in a cowl of glitter. Light popped and writhed around her shimmering form, each tiny sun-bright flash accompanied by more sound, more shrieking, lethal noise that pounded into his eardrums.
‘Blood’s oath!’ he shouted, barely loud enough for his words to carry over the horrific dissonance. ‘What in the name of Terra is she?’
Garro threw a look over his shoulder and spat out a name. ‘Warsinger.’
SIX
To the Brink
Triad of Skulls
New Orders
GARRO STOLE A glance down the sheer slope of the ziggurat and saw the wild play of the battle spread out beneath him. All around the interior of the dome there was a churning sea of men engaged in the business of killing one another. Figures in black hoods swarmed at the white and purple shapes of the Astartes, laser fire flashing in chains of red lightning among the flares of yellow flame from bolter muzzles. Emperor’s Children were scaling the pyramid beneath them, following the path his men were forging with every heavy boot step. Dust and stone fragments crackled with each footfall, the peculiar patchwork construct resonating with each tortured stanza of the Warsinger’s song.
Garro pressed on, using the thick fingers of his gauntlets to dig handholds from the stonework and haul himself upward. He saw red granite, crumbly limestone and strange chunks of bifurcated statuary as he climbed. The mess of bricks seemed to have no regularity in its design or purpose. They were close to the woman now, and the Astartes could vaguely sense voices on his vox, but the deafening operatic screams of the enemy champion flattened them under an indecipherable roar. The Warsinger was steady and unmoving, and strange etches of colour and light drifted around her, just as the lazy snowflakes had drifted out on the plains. She had her hands to her chest, her head back, throwing a keening dirge to the roof. The song was endless, without pause for breath or meter, each note locking to the next, cutting through Garro’s attempts to think clearly. It was unearthly. No human throat should have been able to voice it, no human lungs able to give it breath. Some force about the razored melody was ripping and picking at the very air, cutting into the flesh of the real. The top of the dome rippled like water, warping.
Indolently, as if it were something done out of boredom rather than directed cruelty, the woman flicked her wrist and sent coils of shimmering aural force humming away down the lines of the pyramid. The waveforms caught around Pyr Rahl and hoisted him off the stone, flipping him over in mid-air. Ash came off him in wreaths, his armour puckering and bending in the wrong places. He released a strangled cry that ended in a crackle of bone as he imploded. The Death Guard’s crushed remnants bounced away into the melee below. Garro snarled in anger at the casual manner of his battle-brother’s death, charging upward.
Then, almost unexpectedly, he made the top, letting his bolter fall away around his hip on its sling. The battle-captain brought up Libertas in a firm, two-handed grip, and laid into the Warsinger. At his flank, he was aware of Decius giving him covering fire, grimacing as the bolt rounds whined away in ricochets from the sheer energy of the wall of music.
The Warsinger turned her notice to Garro, resentment forming on her face as his attacks invaded her sensorium. He saw her shift and turn, the long streamers of her hair drifting past her screaming face. Holding on to the fury from the cold murder of his subordinate, his sword swept across and connected with her song-shield, the noise of the impact like a knife point drawn down a sheet of glass. Effortlessly, the enemy champion drew the sound in and threaded it into her cacophony, weaving it into the mad chorus.
In a flash of understanding, the nature of his foe was revealed to him. The Warsinger could not be brought down by the energy of light and heat. Only raw sound would be enough to kill her.
From the terrible mantra filling the dome space, the Warsinger teased out a single line of screaming clamour and spun it into a fist of glowing resonance. Garro saw the blow coming and shoved Decius aside, dodging away from her. She moved at the speed of sound, and with a sonic boom shocking the air into white rings of vapour, the Warsinger hit Garro with a hammer made of hymnals.
DEAFENED. FALLING. PAIN.
Decius’s mind reeled with the edges of the impact, clinging to the simplest of reactions, barely able to process the sudden violence wrought upon him. The dome spun around and he felt the rough surface of the ziggurat rise up and strike him as he fell back along the slope of it. Decius’s power fist slapped down flat and open palmed on a jutting piece of aged gargoyle and the fingers closed around it with a snap.
The stone statuary chipped and cracked, but held, halting his ignominious descent. His head tolled like a struck bell, a strange fuzzy pressure crowding in on his eyes. Decius swore a guttural Barbarun oath under his breath and righted himself. His hyperaware senses told him of contusions and minor breaks in some of his bones, but nothing that would warrant more than passing notice. Garro… Captain Garro had saved his life up there, pushing him out to the edge of the Warsinger’s attack.
Something sparked inside, an anxious flare of emotion that was as close to panic as an Astartes might ever get. Where was he? Where was the battle-captain? Decius came to his feet, pleased to find his bolter still at hand, the strap wrapped about his wrist guard, and batted away an Isstvanian’s clumsy attack. He swept the flank of the pyramid and found his commander. Garro’s marble-grey armour was stained with the rich red of Astartes blood. A warrior of the Emperor’s Children was standing over him, Tarvitz, he remembered. Garro had spoken well of this man in the past. Still, a dart of offended pride rose in Decius’s chest at the idea of a man from the III Legion coming to the aid of a Death Guard, honour brother or not.
Ignoring the grinding pain of bone on bone in his legs, Decius sprinted back up the ziggurat, regaining some of the ground he had lost in his headlong tumble. He caught a snatch of conversation between the two captains as he came closer.
‘Hold on, brother,’ Tarvitz was saying.
‘Ju
st kill it,’ Garro coughed, blood on his lips, his head bare where the Warsinger’s blow had sundered his battle helmet.
‘I have him,’ said Decius, stepping up. ‘He’ll be safe with me.’
Tarvitz threw him a nod and then began his ascent.
The Astartes turned back to his commander and his gut knotted as the stink of fresh blood filled his nostrils. The smell was familiar and hateful to him. There were patterns of crushing damage to Garro’s torso and his arm, and somewhere up there he had lost his bolter. But in his other hand, his good hand, the battle-captain still gripped the hilt of Libertas with grim fury, clutching the sword like a talisman. Thin blades of shattered granite and obsidian punctured him, shock-gel pooling around the places where they had punched through the captain’s ceramite weave like bullets, but the worst of the wounds was the leg.
Decius’s face soured behind his breath mask and he was grateful that his commander could not see his expression. Less than a hand’s span down Garro’s thigh his right leg simply ended in a wet red scrap of fleshy rags, burnt bone and charred meat. It could only be the potent flood of coagulants, neuro-chemical agents and counter-shock drugs from his gland implants that were keeping the captain conscious.
Contemplating the sheer agony of the wound took Decius’s breath away. The Warsinger hadn’t simply torn Garro’s leg from its socket. She had sheared it off with a serrated blade of pure sound.
‘How do I look, lad?’ asked the captain. ‘Not so pretty as the Emperor’s Children?’
‘It’s not that bad.’
Garro spat out a pain-wracked chuckle. ‘You’re such a poor liar, boy.’ He waved the Astartes forward. ‘Help me up. Saul will finish what we started.’
‘You’re in no condition to fight, lord,’ retorted Decius.
Garro dragged himself up to use the Astartes as a crutch. ‘Damn you, Decius! As long as a Death Guard draws breath, he’s in a condition to fight!’ He cast around, unsteady with the pain. ‘Where’s my bloody bolter?’
‘Lost, sir,’ Decius noted, guiding him downward.
The battle-captain spat. ‘Terra curse it! Then help me into sword range and I’ll cut these fools down instead!’
Together, leaving a trail of blood down the flank of the ragged pyramid, Decius and Garro hobbled to the floor of the dome and back into the thronging melee. Decius was aware that above them the Warsinger’s song was shifting and changing, but his mind was narrowing to the controlled murder of the close battle at hand. He became his captain’s rock, feet spread and standing firm in the roil of combat, gunning down black hoods with his bolter in one hand and punishing those who strayed closer with his mailed fist encasing the other. Garro stood to his back, holding himself up with his damaged arm and cutting shimmering arcs of death with his racing sword. Blood pooled at their feet, the captain’s mingling with that of the Isstvan turncoats.
Decius yelled into his vox pick up for a medicae, but only scratches of static returned to him. The impact from the fall had probably damaged his communications gear, and even at the top of his lungs, his shouts could barely match the screaming of the Warsinger. Finally, Garro slumped, the Herculean effort and blood loss too much for even his Astartes physiology. Decius helped the battle-captain to the ground and propped him against the ziggurat wall. ‘Sir, take this.’ He slammed a full clip of ammunition into his bolter and laid it on Garro’s lap.
‘Where are you going?’ his commander asked thickly. Garro was having trouble keeping focus.
‘I’ll be back, captain.’ Decius turned and charged into the maelstrom, using the power fist to punch his way through the enemy ranks. Isstvanian fighters were thrown and gored as he barrelled through them, cutting a channel across the dome through the figures in dark cowls. They moved like water, churning around him and pooling back into the path he made.
At last Decius found what he sought and roared as loud as he could. ‘Voyen! Hear me!’
The Death Guard Apothecary’s head snapped up from the body of a brother who had been cut apart by laser fire. ‘I can do no more for this one,’ he said grimly.
‘The Emperor knows his name,’ shouted Decius, ‘and the captain will join that roll of honour as well, unless you come with me now!’
‘Garro?’ Voyen sprang to his feet. ‘Show me, boy, quickly! The captain of the Seventh won’t perish if I can help it.’
They waded back into the morass, fighting and moving. ‘This way!’
‘He’s still my commander,’ grated Voyen, ‘do you understand that? No matter what is said and done, that will never change. Do you understand, Decius?’
‘Who are you trying to convince, Voyen? Me, or yourself?’ Decius threw him a hard look. ‘At this moment I don’t care a damn for you and your blasted lodge. Just save—’
The rest of the Death Guard’s words were lost in a final, shrieking exultation of noise from the top of the pyramid. Every man who could clapped his hands to his ears in blind reflex as the Warsinger sang her last, desperate attack, and died. Decius looked up and saw two figures in shimmering purple at the peak, saw a torn shape in diaphanous robes fall away and tumble unceremoniously down the steep face.
‘Eidolon!’ cried an Astartes at their side. ‘Eidolon made the kill! The bitch is dead!’
An oval object arced though the air trailing white streamers and Decius grabbed it before it could impact on the ground. He turned it over in his hand and found it was a human head. ‘The Warsinger,’ he pronounced, holding it up by the woman’s long pale tresses. The neck had been severed by a single clean blow. With a grimace, he tossed it to the warrior of the Emperor’s Children and pushed on, ignoring the cries of victory. As one, the surviving black hoods stopped fighting. Some had fallen to their knees and were weeping, rocking back and forth, or cradling their headsets in their hands, mewing over the sudden loss of their precious song. Most of them just stood there, milling around like lost children, choking the dome with their numbers.
‘Out of my way, out of my way, you turncoat cattle!’ bellowed Decius, fighting against the moaning crowd. He began punching them down where they stood, cutting the Isstvanians like wheat before the scythe. Other Astartes joined in, and soon it became a wholesale cull. The Warmaster’s orders had not spoken of prisoners.
By the time they forced their way back to the foot of the ziggurat, Garro lay before them deathly pale and silent. An Apothecary from the III Legion knelt at his side, frowning.
Voyen, his face tight with distress, shot a hard look at the other medicae. ‘Stand aside. You’re not to touch him!’
‘I saved his life, Death Guard,’ came the terse reply. ‘You should be thanking me. I did your job for you.’
Voyen cocked his fist in anger, but Decius stopped him halfway. ‘Brother,’ he began, turning to the other man, ‘thank you. Will he survive?’
‘Get him to an infirmary within the hour and he may live to fight another day.’
‘Then he will.’ The young Astartes saluted in the old martial fashion. ‘I am Decius of the Seventh. My company is in your debt.’
The Apothecary gave a slight smile to Voyen and made to leave. ‘Fabius, Apothecary to the Emperor’s Children. Consider my care of your captain a gift among comrades.’
Voyen’s words dripped venom as the Astartes left. ‘Arrogant whelp. How dare he—’
‘Voyen,’ snapped Decius, silencing the other man. ‘Help me carry him.’
GARRO WAS FALLING forever.
The warm void around him was thick and heavy. It was an ocean of thin, clear oil, as deep as memory, and beyond his ability to know its edge. He sank into it, the warmth wrapping around him in gossamer threads, in through his mouth and nostrils, filling his lungs and gullet, weighing him down. Down and down, deeper. Falling. Still falling.
He was aware of his injuries in a vague, disconnected way. Parts of his body were blacked out in his sensorium, nerve clusters dark and silent while the patient engines of his Astartes physiology went to work on keeping him al
ive. ‘My wounds will never heal,’ he said aloud, and the words bubbled past him, solidifying. Why had he said that? Where had that come from? Garro wondered with elephantine slowness and pushed at the thoughts in his mind, but they were impossible to shift, large as glaciers and ice-cold to the touch.
The trance. Part of his brain eventually provided him with this small fragment of data. Yes, of course.
His body had closed its borders and sealed him inside it, all other concerns and outside interests forgotten as his implants worked in concert to stop an encroaching death. The Astartes was in stasis, of a kind: Not the artificially generated fashion, where flesh was chilled down and chemical anti-crystallisation agents were pumped into the bloodstream for long-duration, low-consumable starflight. This was the semi-death of the wounded man and the near killed.
Odd how he could be at once so aware of it and yet so unaware as well. This was the function of the catalepsean node implanted in his brain, switching off sections of his cerebellum as a servitor might douse lamps in the unused rooms of a house. Garro had been here before, during the Pasiphae Uprising, after a suicide attack on the Stalwart’s pod decks had ripped the flank of the battle-barge open and tossed a hundred unprotected men into space. He had survived that, awaking with new scars and months of missing time.
Would he live through this? Garro tried to probe his thoughts for an exact recall of his last conscious moments, and found rough, broken perceptions and spikes of brutal pain. Tarvitz. Yes, Saul Tarvitz had been there, and the lad Decius as well. And before that… Before that there was only the humming echo of white noise and heart-shrinking pain. He let himself drop away, let the agony shadow fade. Would he live through this? Garro would only know when it happened. Otherwise, he would fall and fall, sink and sink, and the captain of the Seventh would become another soul lost, a steel skull-shaped stud the size of his thumbnail hammered into the iron Wall of Memory on Barbarus.
The Flight of the Eisenstein Page 11
