Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  Once the Great Truth had been revealed, the Legion had thrown off the repressive, enslaving beliefs of the Imperium and dedicated themselves fully to their holy cause.

  The crozius arcanum had been sanctified to the true gods, and it was a potent symbol of the Dark Creed and faith. It had been purified in the blood of millions, and countless unbelievers had been smitten beneath it.

  Its haft was as black as ebony and studded with spikes. Marduk longingly traced the blood-red veins that ran up its length with a finger, marvelling at the workmanship. The hilt of the crozius was bound in the tanned skin of a cursed unbeliever, the Chaplain Atreus of the cursed Ultramarines Legion, who had been flayed alive on Calth by Lord Kor Phaeron. The head of the holy weapon was like a flanged mace or power maul, eight raised, spiked wedges forming its shape. When activated, the spiked head was wreathed in energy, and it would sunder the foes of Lorgar with the selfsame potency of a power talon.

  Marduk longed to lift the weapon up in both hands. Only two Dark Apostles had wielded this mighty weapon: the ancient Warmonger, long since interred in the sarcophagus of his mighty dreadnought, whose sanity was only barely kept in check; and Jarulek: Jarulek the Blessed, Jarulek the Glorified, beloved of the gods.

  Not anymore, thought Marduk with savage relish. This was his time. His star was in the ascendant, and once he had faced the Council of Sicarus, he would be allowed to wield this potent artefact himself. As it was, he had held it in his hands once, when he had rescued it from oblivion within the xenos pyramid, but even he was loathe to break the taboos and traditions of his order by bearing the holy weapon into battle before he had been fully embraced into the fold by the council.

  He felt the approach of his underlings behind him, and his eyes narrowed. Running his hands lingeringly over the crozius, he left them waiting for a moment, to reinforce their place, and his.

  At last, he turned towards them. They stood at the foot of the raised platform, and with a gesture, he beckoned them closer.

  They ascended the steps side-by-side, and though they both bore the hallmarks of Lord Lorgar’s gene-seed, they were as different in appearance as night and day.

  Kol Badar was ancient, having been a captain of one of the great battle companies of the XVII Legion long before the great Warmaster Horus had aligned himself with the true powers of the universe. His face was broad and bullish, though his flesh was wasted almost to the point of emaciation, and creases so deep they looked as if they had been carved with knives lined his face. His head was bald, and pipes and cables sank into his cranium, connecting him to his immense battle suit. He wore archaic, age-old Terminator armour and towered over Marduk by half a metre. He walked with heavy steps, his every movement filled with power and weight.

  Kol Badar was the Host’s Coryphaus: strategos, war leader, and the voice of the battle-brothers. It was his role to lead the chorus of hymnal responses in prayer, and to act as the link between the Host’s Dark Apostle and his warriors. At his side, dwarfed by his sheer bulk, swaggered the Host’s icon bearer, Burias.

  Where Kol Badar was all brute power and smouldering anger, Burias walked with a warrior’s subtle grace, his movements relaxed and fluid. He was wolf-lean and darkly handsome, his full head of pitch black, waist-length hair oiled and scented. His pale face encapsulated all the noble bearing of his heritage, and it was said that he resembled Lorgar, before he had ascended to daemonhood.

  Burias was the epitome of the warrior ideal: a consummate, balanced warrior. His body was as proud and strong as his faith, and though he was young in comparison to Kol Badar, he had been blooded in battle across a thousand worlds. He was quick to smile, though there was a lingering, dangerous intensity in his wide eyes, just a hint of the power lurking within, straining to be released. Burias was one of the possessed, and though he kept the daemon Drak’shal at bay with sheer force of will, he willingly gave way to the beast once the fires of battle were met, and the results were invariably bloody.

  Burias bowed low, dipping his tall, eight-pointed icon before him, and Marduk acknowledged him with an incline of his chin. Kol Badar bowed his head, carefully measuring the movement to be at once mildly insulting, yet not overtly disrespectful.

  ‘The Enslaved one is requesting that he be allowed to reconstruct his armature arrays, that he may continue his work upon the Nexus Arrangement, lord,’ said Burias, his voice neutral.

  ‘It is foolishness to allow it such privileges,’ said Kol Badar.

  ‘Walk with me,’ ordered Marduk, turning on his heel and striding away. He did not speak as they exited the cavaedium by a side portal within the sacristy, walking up corridors lined with skulls.

  One of the kathartes, skinless daemonic furies that inhabited the Infidus Diabolus, perched upon the shoulders of a winged angel of death statue above them, baring its teeth at their passing. Marduk flicked his gaze up towards the daemon, and it lowered its head, whimpering like a dog beneath the switch. Blood glistened across its exposed musculature, and it shimmered like a distorted pict image before disappearing once more into the sea of souls that was the warp. Immersed in the tides of the ether buffeting the Infidus Diabolus, the katharte would take on its truer form, that of an angelic maiden, as dangerous as it was alluring, propelling itself through the formless other world upon feathered wings, its siren call signalling the death of those of weak mind that heard it.

  They passed dozens of dark arches, each leading off into different areas of the labyrinthine ship. Warrior brothers stood aside, their heads lowered, as they passed. Black-cloaked slave-creatures scurried out of their path, while others prostrated themselves pathetically, faces pressed to the floor. Moans and tortured cries came from darkness beneath the walkways, and wasted, skeletal fingers extended through the metal grids in appeal. Thousands of wretched slaves were kept aboard the Infidus Diabolus, existing in the darkness and squalid conditions below deck in order to perform all the horrific and mundane jobs required to keep the ship running. They were condemned to a lifetime of servitude, and they cried out for death.

  ‘The priest-magos of the Machine-God is necessary,’ said Marduk finally, as the trio walked the musty halls of the strike cruiser. ‘The Nexus Arrangement will never be unlocked without him; he is the Key-master,’ he said, referring to a prophecy that told of one, the Enslaved, who would unlock the potent device that the Host had uncovered from a xenos pyramid upon the shattered Imperial world of Tanakreg. It would be a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the Word Bearers, and much favour would be granted to he who controlled it.

  ‘The Key-master?’ scoffed Kol Badar. ‘The wretch has proven useless in unlocking the device thus far. He cannot be trusted.’

  ‘The magos is mine,’ said Marduk. ‘He is my puppet, and will do exactly what I want.’

  Magos Darioq was changing. At first, the effects on his body had been subtle, barely noticeable, but, as the daemon took further control of his purged system, the change was coming on with alarming, exponential swiftness.

  Stripped of his robes and chained to the wall of his cell, he shuddered in torment as the carefully cultured daemon essence writhed within him. He opened his mouth soundlessly, exposing a secondary set of teeth, thick and sharp, pushing up through his bleeding gums behind his own.

  His flesh was wasted and pallid, though most of his body had long been replaced with mechanical augmentations. His entire lower body had been replaced with heavy-duty bionic replacements, immensely powerful leg-units with inbuilt gyro-stabilisers that enabled the magos to bear almost two metric tonnes of weight upon his frame. This was necessary, for with a fully activated servo-harness, the magos weighed as much as a small tank. Black tendrils crawled and pulsed beneath his skin, and his flesh rippled from within as the daemon made its claim on him.

  Augmetic telescopic braces were fused to his spine for stability and strength, but the distinction between mechanical augmentation and flesh was blurring. Blood dripped from rents in the metal.

  The heavy bulk o
f Darioq’s servo-harness was clamped between his hips and his shoulders, and again, the hybrid amalgamation of fusing metal and flesh could be seen. Fleshy muscles had grown over several of the pistons, enhancing their mechanical strength with that of the daemon and giving the corrupted magos an even more hunched appearance. The four servo-arms of his harness had been sheared away, along with half a dozen mechadendrites that plugged into the nerve endings of his spinal column, and they wept blood and ichor as their stubby remnants twitched and jerked spasmodically. Two of the severed mechadendrites had already re-sprouted, fleshy tentacles of glistening muscle growing from his spine. Plugs and sockets covered his wasted skin, and from some of these leaked a milky ichor that hissed as it hit the floor.

  With his hood and robes stripped away, Darioq’s head was laid bare. Only a fraction of his original face remained, the rest encased in mechanics. A grilled voice box was implanted in his throat, and his left eye was an impressive display of sensors and optical arrays.

  The distinction between the mechanical and the human was blurring all over the corrupted magos’s body. Even as the trio of Word Bearers watched, the metal cranium of the magos swelled and rippled like water, and a curving horn pushed up from the righthand side of Darioq’s skull. Its tip was hard and bony, but clearly organic.

  His right eye, which had been milky and blind when the Word Bearers had first captured him, was now solid black. His brain units, held in protective bell-jar casings that protruded from behind his hunched shoulders, were filled with dark, writhing clots, and black, oily tentacles burrowed through them, like a mess of bloodworms.

  ‘Magos Darioq is no more. This,’ said Marduk with a wave of his arm, ‘is Darioq-Grendh’al.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Guildmaster Pollo scanned the latest despatches, blinking his augmented silver eyes intermittently to record their contents. After several minutes of reading and recording, he dropped them onto his desk and leant forward to pour himself another drink from the half empty crystal decanter in front of him.

  He raised his glass up to his eyes, gazing at the play of light upon the ruby liquid as he sloshed it around the ice. Then he knocked the drink back, savouring its bite. He placed the glass down on its coaster, and rubbed at his temples with both hands, his eyes closed.

  ‘Bad news, guildmaster?’ ventured a voice.

  Pollo turned to face his young adjutant, Leto. He was little more than a boy, barely having the need to shave yet, and his eyes flicked around nervously as he waited for his answer. He was young, but he was a good officer and had a mind like a sponge. He knew that in time he would have made a suitable guildmaster, but such a thing was not to be.

  ‘You should have gone with the others, Leto,’ he said, his voice tired.

  ‘I will leave when you leave,’ replied his adjutant.

  When the first astrotelepathic despatches had come, warning of the xenos hive fleet’s approach, Pollo’s distaff had been aghast. That had quickly descended into panic when the extreme dictate to combat this threat had been transmitted, and that panic had not been aided by the sudden departure of the Administratum’s advocate of Perdus Skylla.

  ‘This world has been condemned to death,’ the administrator had whined as he frantically gathered up his possessions. ‘You are a fool to stay behind,’

  ‘I will not leave until the guilds are fully evacuated,’ Pollo had replied, his voice unwavering. ‘I will not abandon my post and leave those who depend upon me to their fate.’

  ‘Do not judge me, guildmaster,’ the administrator had snapped. ‘I am a servant of the Administratum, and with the mining facilities abandoned I see no purpose in my remaining here. If you have any sense at all, you will leave Perdus Skylla immediately. Coordinate the evacuation from space if your conscience demands such a thing.’

  Guildmaster Pollo had wanted to strike the man, but he had held his anger in check. He had turned his back on the administrator, and had watched as his shuttle left the moon for the safety of the Imperial blockade. He had ordered his distaff to vacate Perdus Skylla, and he had seen the relief in their faces at his order. He did not think badly of them as they saluted him and boarded the first chartered evacuation ships.

  ‘Why will you not go?’ Leto had asked him.

  ‘I swore an oath of service to the guilds of Perdus Skylla. My leadership will be needed in the evacuation effort. It sends a message to the guilds, and the populace, if I remain.’

  ‘Then I shall remain with you, sir,’ said the boy.

  Pollo had promoted him to be his adjutant, and had been pleasantly surprised to find that the young man adapted to his role admirably.

  Pollo sighed, picked up the reports and flicked them to Leto. The young man caught them awkwardly, and scanned their contents. The guildmaster poured himself another drink as his adjutant looked at the first of the reports. Leto looked up in shock, his face pale.

  ‘Keep reading,’ said Guildmaster Pollo.

  The reports contained disturbing information: evidence of slaughter in three of the main mid-ice access highways that linked the Phorcys starport to the guilds. The attacks had occurred just hours earlier, and there had been no survivors nor any eyewitnesses. It was impossible to gauge the number of casualties, but there was something in the realm of twelve thousand citizens reported missing. Thousands more had been killed in the stampede to get out of the tunnels, and the Skyllan Interdiction Forces had shut the access tunnels down, pending an armoured investigation.

  Three guilds, two of them major houses, had no direct access to the evacuation freighters. That translated as almost four million people, trapped on Perdus Skylla until the tunnels were opened, for it would be almost impossible for them to make the journey on foot.

  Three days had been the estimate before the xenos fleet made planet-fall. It had been a logistical impossibility to evacuate all of Perdus Skylla in that time, but now with access tunnels locked down?

  Guildmaster Pollo was a realist. He did not delude himself into thinking that he ever had even half a chance of getting more than perhaps twenty per cent of the population of Perdus Skylla off-world; there were just not enough ships to facilitate the evacuation. He cursed the bureaucracy of the Administratum that had given his world such callously short notice of its doom.

  He had finished his glass of amasec by the time his adjutant had read through all the despatches.

  ‘What does it mean, master?’ asked Leto, his face pale.

  ‘It means,’ said Pollo, cradling his empty glass, ‘that there are enemy forces already on Perdus Skylla.’

  ‘The… the tyranids?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no,’ said Leto. ‘Something entirely else.’

  With a sound akin to the birth-scream of a fledgling god, the Infidus Diabolus ripped through the skin of the warp and entered real-space. Flickering arcs of energy danced across its hull, coalescing over the towering spires and cathedrals devoted to the dark gods of the ether. The full awesome majesty of the strike cruiser slipped from the protective womb of the immaterium, and the rift was sealed behind it.

  Within the bridge of the colossal vessel, Marduk and Kol Badar leaned over the flickering data-screens before them, studying the stream of information being relayed. They saw an image of the sub-system, spinning slowly, and flashes of light began to appear, marking the positions of planets, ships and radiation fields.

  Remnants of the warp remained within the ship, and scenes of depravity and bloodshed flashed up over the screens, momentarily disrupting the feed of information. For a fraction of a second, the screens showed a skinless face, its eyes on fire and its cheeks pierced by blades, before they returned to normal. A moment later, the screens flashed again, and an image of a writhing, blood-soaked figure appeared on the pict screens for less than a tenth of a second, accompanied by the blare of static, overlaid with unholy roars and screams.

  The pair of Word Bearers ignored the distractions, peering through the ghost-images of daemons ripping apart flesh a
nd bubbling blood that appeared on the screens, focusing on the wealth of sub-system information being picked up by the daemonic sensor-arrays protruding from the prow of the Infidus Diabolus. They saw the conglomeration of Imperial vessels forming an unbroken line across the system and the flickering waves of warp-energy that marked jump-points, and located the position of the target: the moon the Imperials called Perdus Skylla.

  The sounds of Chaos croaked from grilled vox-speakers and discords throughout the ship, a blaring cacophony of madness and rage. Bellows and screams were overlaid with inhuman screeches and hateful whispers, and the painful squeal of scraping metal blurred with the relentless pounding of hammers and gears, the sound of flesh being rent by steel, the roar of the fires of hell and the plaintive weeping of children. It was a beautiful din, one that calmed Marduk’s mind, though to listen too deeply was to give yourself over to insanity.

  A face appeared on the central pict screen, its eyes black as pitch and its cheeks carved with bloody sigils, and it opened its mouth wide, exposing a mass of writhing serpents, spiders and worms.

  ‘Enough,’ barked Marduk, banishing the daemon with a wave of his hand. Instantly, the snarling image disappeared.

  More flashing lights and runic symbols appeared on the representation of the surrounding galactic plane, and both Marduk and Kol Badar leant forward to peer upon them. Kol Badar snorted and leant back. A bitter laugh burst from Marduk’s lips, the sound making the image on the pict viewers shimmer with static.

  ‘It would seem, Coryphaus, that the Imperium is engaged in a war in this little solar system,’ said Marduk, ‘and they are losing.’

  ‘Admiral,’ someone shouted.

  Rutger Augustine pulled his gaze away from the scale model representations of the fleet and turned to see one of his petty officers moving towards him.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  The petty officer was flushed and he carried a transmission card, its waxy surface punched with a series of holes. He thrust it towards the admiral.