Kol Badar was the first to step forward, still chanting, and Marduk reached up to the warlord’s forehead with a bloody hand. He drew the four intersecting lines that formed the Chaos star in its most basic form across the Coryphaus’s brow with his thumb. The huge warrior then closed his yellow, hate-filled eyes, and Marduk placed a bloody thumb mark on each eyelid.
‘The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,’ Marduk intoned, and Kol Badar wheeled away. The next in line was Burias, the warrior’s vicious, handsome face framed by his slick, black hair. He dropped to his knees before Marduk, an aspect of the ceremony that Kol Badar had been unable or unwilling to perform in his bulky Terminator armour. Marduk drew the star of Chaos upon his forehead and placed his thumbs to his eyelids.
‘The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,’ Marduk intoned, and Burias filed away. The entire Host was to be marked, blessed by the gods before they entered sacred battle once more.
He felt the daemon stir within the chainsword at his side as blood dripped from his gore-slick forearms onto the hilt. Marduk smiled as he applied the blood to the face of a towering Anointed warrior. Soon, dear Borhg’ash, he thought.
Over the course of the next hour, Jarulek slashed the throats of hundreds of slaves, their sacrifice offered up to the glory of the gods of Chaos, and the stench of blood and death was strong. The droning chants of the Host continued unabated, and the last warrior-brother was blooded.
Jarulek descended imperiously from the altar, drenched in blood, and stepped lightly down the stairs, his long, ceremonial skin cloak flowing behind him. The entire Host dropped to one knee as the Dark Apostle reached the ground, and even the raging daemonic engines were cowed by the powerful figure. He walked towards Marduk, and the Dark Apostle raised the First Acolyte’s head with gentle pressure under his chin. Jarulek drew the lines of the Chaos star upon Marduk’s forehead and placed his bloody thumbprints against the skin of his eyelids.
His skin burned where the blood was smeared, pulsing with energy and potency. Opening his eyes, he saw that colours appeared more vivid than before, and he could clearly see a shimmering aura, the power of Chaos, surrounding the Dark Apostle like a ghostly, gossamer shroud. That power could always be felt when in Jarulek’s presence, but it was rarely seen.
‘The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,’ intoned Jarulek, his voice silken. Marduk rose to his feet and followed Jarulek as he strode back in front of his gathered warriors towards the altar steps. Kol Badar fell into step alongside Marduk, and without missing a word, Burias took over leading the ponderous chant of the Host.
Solemn and in silence, the Coryphaus and the First Acolyte followed the Dark Apostle back up the altar stairs. The Dark Apostle turned to face the gathered Host, and the pair stood a respectful distance back from him.
A chirurgeon shuffled forwards, accompanied by hunched, robed figures dragging a stepped platform behind them. The platform was placed before the Dark Apostle, and the chirurgeon climbed awkwardly atop it. Hissing steam, the platform rose until the robed figure stood at chest height to the Dark Apostle.
The chirurgeon then set to work, the blades and needles of its fingers piercing the flesh of Jarulek’s face. Biting claws gripped the skin, holding it taught as the black robed figure sliced through Jarulek’s pale flesh, cutting a neat strip from first one cheek, then the other. Blood ran freely from the wounds, before its flow was staunched by the tainted cells within its make up. The chirurgeon bowed and handed the two strips of flesh to the Dark Apostle.
Jarulek stood, holding the two rectangular, bloody ribbons high in the air for all to see. The pounding of mechanical drums ceased and Burias led the chanting of the warriors to a close.
‘I honour these two warriors with passages from the Book of Lorgar, carved from my own flesh,’ Jarulek said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the gathered mass. Already the red-raw rectangles on his cheeks were healing. Within a day the skin would be smooth and unmarked: two small patches of pale skin amidst a sea of scripture.
Marduk stepped forwards in front of Kol Badar, smirking at the flash of anger in the Coryphaus’s eyes, and the skin of his left cheek was cut away by the chirurgeon. Speaking a blessing, Jarulek placed the scripture carved from his own skin upon the wound. There was a tingling, painful sensation as the flesh of the Dark Apostle knitted to his own. Bowing his head, he stepped aside.
‘Go forth, my warrior-brothers,’ said Jarulek once the second scripture had been fused to Kol Badar’s cheek. ‘Go forth, and kill in the name of blessed Lorgar, and know that the gods of Chaos smile upon you!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Icy winds whipped at Marduk as he stood silhouetted atop the mountain ridge watching the approach of the Imperial scout vehicles below. The two-legged walkers, each manned by a single crewman, were climbing along a rocky ravine, making far faster progress than could be achieved by a man on foot. Clearing over three metres with each step, the walkers were making good progress, stepping easily over cracks in the rocky ground that fell away beneath them for hundreds of metres.
He had no concern about being spotted. A mere human eye would be unable to pick him out at such a distance, and the rocky terrain and gale force winds would make the crude sensors of the sentinels almost completely ineffective.
‘Shall we gun the fools down?’ asked Burias. ‘The havocs of the VI Coterie have lascannons trained on them.’
‘No, let the dogs down there take them,’ said Marduk, indicating with a nod towards the figures waiting in ambush.
The three sentinels continued along the ravine, completely unaware of the cultists waiting in the rocks. A screaming rocket streamed through the air, slamming into the exposed cabin of the rearmost walker, which was annihilated in the billowing explosion.
The cult warriors wore pale cloaks as camouflage against the densely packed rock salt that was as hard as any stone, and they billowed out behind the men as they peppered the sentinels with las-fire.
The Imperial walkers began to edge backwards and returned fire, strafing the rocks with autocannons. Several of the cultists fell back as bullets ripped through their cloaks, but they had chosen a good place from which to launch their ambush and the rocks took the brunt of the fire.
One cloaked figure sprinted across the lip of the ravine, bullets spraying at his heels, and threw himself from the high rocks. He landed sprawled atop the roof panel of a sentinel and rose to one knee, a long blade appearing in his hand.
The sentinel crewman leant from the cabin, an autopistol raised, and fired off a quick burst across the rooftop of his cabin. The cultist grabbed the man’s arm, pulling him further out of the cabin, and plunged his knife down into the man’s neck.
The autocannon on the last sentinel went quiet as a lucky shot slammed into its pilot’s head.
‘Not bad,’ grunted Marduk, as he began the descent towards the victorious cultists.
Karalos looked up sharply as he heard the shout. Brushing his long, unkempt hair back behind his ears with his blood-splattered hand, he sheathed his knife and stood atop the motionless Imperial sentinel. The mutilated, bloody corpse of the Imperial soldier was forgotten as he shielded his eyes to see what the commotion was.
His jaw dropped as he saw the two colossal, red-armoured warriors walking through the ravine towards his band of the faithful.
‘Get everyone together,’ he ordered. ‘The Angels of the Word have come, as the Speaker foretold.’
The cultists’ base of operations was high in the mountains, hidden from view from the sky by pale tarpaulins that draped over the low structures. Every member of the cult within Shinar had spent some time at the Camp of the Word, the old Speaker had told Marduk.
The Speaker was a withered man, the flesh all but wasted from his almost skeletal frame. He was blind, his vision long lost to the biting salt of Tanakreg. To Marduk he had looked pathetic.
‘Bring me a hundred of your strongest warriors,’ he had ordered the ol
d man, ‘and send the rest of your cultists out into the passes. The enemy will be soon be upon us.’
He had grown bored as the old man had babbled on, and had eventually put a bullet through his head. The one hundred men on their knees before him had not made a move as the shot had rung out, and Marduk had seen that Karalos had smiled as the old man was slain. Marduk liked the man; he had the soul of a true warrior of Chaos, even if he was just a wretched mortal.
‘You men are blessed indeed,’ Marduk said, ‘for you have been chosen to receive a great gift, a boon of the great majesty of the warp. It is the Calling, and you are to be the hosts.’
Marduk began to chant, his voice effortlessly mouthing the difficult, unearthly language of the daemon. He felt the creature Borhg’ash within his chainsword stir at his words.
The kneeling men were surrounding by dozens of burning blood-candles, the light of their flames the only thing holding the darkness of the room at bay. They flickered as Marduk continued his incantation, the flames straining in towards the First Acolyte.
Whispers could be heard, flittering around the dark edges of the room, and Marduk welcomed them, for they spoke of the arrival of the Kathartes. The flickering of the candles increased, and a howling sound began to circle the gathered group as Marduk’s voice rose.
The blood of the Speaker, pooling out on the floor of the room, began to bubble, and Marduk knelt and placed both hands in the rapidly heating liquid.
Marduk continued to speak the words of the Calling and stepped towards the kneeling figure of Karalos, placing a bloody hand on either side of the man’s head. He held onto his head firmly, feeling the skull compress beneath his hands, and continued his complex incantation.
Karalos began to writhe and twitch, but Marduk did not release his grip, holding tightly to the man’s head. The cultist’s eyes began to bleed and blood seeped from his ears, but still Marduk continued to chant and clasp the man. He could feel the power of the warp opening up, its strength pulsing through his hands into the boiling brain of the man beneath him, but Karalos made not a sound, silently welcoming the beast that was emerging within his flesh.
With a final barked stream of daemonic words, Marduk pushed Karalos away from him. The man stood for a moment twitching, blood streaming from his eyes, before he fell to the ground, writhing and convulsing. A flickering blur seemed to overlap the thrashing figure, flashing between the body of a mortal man and the insubstantial form of something distinctly other. His tongue bulged from his mouth and he arched his back unnaturally, before breaking into severe muscle contractions that threw his body across the floor. Bones broke under his exertions and his spine twisted horribly, tendons and sinews tearing and ripping. The other men stood hurriedly and backed away from the wildly jerking man, horrified fascination and devotion on their faces.
The man’s flickering flesh bulged unnaturally, as if things held within were trying to burst free, and he scratched frantically at the skin of his face, ripping bloody rents. The bones of his fingers lengthened and pushed through the skin of his fingertips, curving out into sharp talons, and he ripped at his skin and clothes, tearing them off in bloody strips.
He rolled over and over on the ground, ripping and tearing at his flesh frenziedly, every muscle of his body straining. Blood vessels bulged on his neck and at his temples, and he lacerated his skin with his long talons as he continued to spasm and convulse soundlessly. His teeth lengthened into fine points and he bit into his own shoulder, ripping off chunks of meat.
Marduk smiled and crossed his arms over his chest.
The thing that had been Karalos entered even more frantic convulsions, ripping and tearing at its flesh, until it finally went still. It lay for a moment, bloody and broken, before it picked itself up from the ground and crouched, its skinless face turned towards the First Acolyte, staring at him with eyeless, bloody sockets. Almost its entire bloodied musculature was displayed, and only patches of raw, red skin clung to its frame. The hazy flickering still overlapped the creature, blurring its image slightly and hurting the eye.
An extra, backwards bending joint had formed in the lower leg of the daemon creature, in the manner of a bird, and long talons emerged from its toes. With a sickening, wet cracking sound, a pair of long, skeletal wings unfolded from the monster’s back, sheets of bloody skin hanging limply between the bloody bones.
Opening its sharp-toothed, lipless maw wide, the daemon creature hissed hollowly at Marduk, like some newly hatched chick crying to its mother for food. He smiled broadly, the flickering candlelight glinting in his eyes.
‘Karalos is no more,’ spoke Marduk. ‘He gave up his mortal vessel selflessly that this katharte might come into existence.’
The gathered men stared at the daemon with wide eyes. The air tasted electric; like the taste of Chaos.
‘Now, all of you will selflessly give yourselves up to Chaos as good Karalos did,’ said Marduk, ‘for that is what I wish, and through my words you hear the desire of the gods themselves.’
The gathered men glanced warily at each other
‘Well,’ said Marduk to the daemon clawing at the floor in front of him, licking itself with a long, barbed tongue, ‘call the flock.’
The men in the room fell to the ground as one, blood running from their eyes and ears, and they began to convulse.
‘It’s not right,’ said Sergeant Elias of the 72nd Elysian storm troopers, hotly. ‘We are the damned elite. We are not meant to be the grunts of the Imperium, plodding through the mud and crap getting gunned down in droves. We ain’t that kind of regiment. We are…’
‘The glory boys?’ suggested Captain Laron wryly. The captain was a big, blond haired soldier, born of pure Elysian stock. Brash, strong and proud, he was the perfect captain for the brash, strong and proud storm troopers of the 72nd. If any other soldier or officer had spoken to him in such a way he would have had the man disciplined, but Elias had been his comrade for decades. He had fought alongside the man long before he had been captain, or even sergeant.
‘Damn right we are!’ said Elias with considerable passion. ‘It’s the job of the other regiments to grind mindlessly up the centre. We are the elite, fast in and fast out.’
‘I’m sure the camp women appreciate that, sergeant.’
Elias laughed at that. ‘But you know what I mean, sir. We don’t have the sheer number of men or tanks to fight a conventional frontal assault, not against this enemy.’
‘Who said we would be fighting a conventional frontal assault? The brigadier-general is not a damn fool.’
‘I know that he is not, sir, but… I still don’t know why we didn’t just drop on Shinar and have this whole thing over with as soon as possible.’
‘We do that and the entire damn regiment would be slaughtered. The air defences of Shinar are strong. Don’t be thickheaded, Elias. Use your brains for a change and stop thinking with your damn balls!’
Elias grinned suddenly. ‘I do have a big old pair of balls though, captain.’
‘The sentinels on recon reported yet?’
‘Another hour before the next report, sir.’
‘Well, keep Colonel Boerl informed. If they see any enemy movement, report in immediately. We must secure those highlands. The brigadier-general says the enemy may be up there already. If that’s the case, then without artillery support to make the bastards keep their heads down, we will be weathering the storm trying to land. If they are up there, it is not going to be easy to take it off them.’
‘If anyone can take it off them, it’ll be the 72nd,’ said Elias, turning towards his superior. The captain was looking out across the plains to where the Adeptus Mechanicus battle force was making ready to move out.
‘What do you make of them, sir?’ asked Elias, indicating the massing Adeptus Mechanicus tech-guard with an incline of his head. Ever more of the disturbing warriors and war machines of Mars were disembarking from the wide-bodied Mechanicus loaders.
Captain Laron curled his lip in d
istaste. ‘Never seen a concentration of them like this.’
The earth boomed as another of the massive cargo-transports of the Mechanicus landed, throwing up a cloud of salt grit. Hulking, slow moving, tracked crawler vehicles emerged from transports that had already landed, each led by a procession of censor waving, red-robed adepts of the Machine-God. From others came more of the pale fleshed tech-guard soldiers, marching in perfect, rectangular phalanx blocks, ten deep and a hundred wide.
Those phalanxes that had already disembarked were arrayed in their rigid formations, standing stone still on the salt plains, awaiting further instruction. Laron was certain that if no instruction came, they would stand unmoving, arrayed as they were until the cursed salt winds buried them. Even then, he supposed that the mindless things would be still, awaiting instruction.
From a distance, they might have been mistaken for regular Imperial Guard infantry platoons, though an observant onlooker would see that they were far too still to be completely human. They stood in serried ranks with lasguns held motionless over their chests, and many of their faces were all but obscured by deep visored helmets.
On closer inspection, many of the tech-guard soldiers looked less like Imperial Guardsmen and more like semi-mechanical servitors.
Servitors existed in every facet of Imperial life, fulfilling all manner of menial, dangerous tasks, but to see so many of them gathered together in one place for the sole purpose of war was highly disturbing to the Elysians. Servitors were neither truly alive nor truly dead. They had been human once, but all vestiges of that humanity had been long lost. Their frontal lobes had been surgically removed and their weak flesh improved upon with the addition of mechanics. These varied depending on the task that they were required to perform. They might have had their arms removed and replaced with power lifters or diamond-tipped drills the size of a man’s leg to work in one of the millions of manufactorums across the Imperium, or be hard-wired into the logic engines of battle cruisers to maintain the ships’ support functions.
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