Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  Burias ascended towards the shining eye, his talons easily finding handholds between the massive carved feathers. He ascended the sheer exterior of the immense statue, swiftly, barely pausing as he climbed, like a dark stain upon the noble eagle’s body. The wind howled around him, buffeting him and threatening to rip him loose, and ice and snow drove into him at gale force.

  Climbing swiftly and surely, he scurried up the curving neck like a spider until he was directly below the head. With a snarl he sprang out, twisting in mid-air, and one hand locked around a feathered grip three metres higher. Without pause, he continued up beneath the immense head, crawling upside down along the underside of the monolith. He paused as he reached the beak, for the stone was as smooth as glass and there were no handholds. He changed the angle of his climb, and scrambled up the vertical eagle head, being careful to stay out of sight of the shining eye, and pulled himself atop the massive structure.

  Oblivious to the danger the winds presented as they assailed him, Burias threw his head back and roared into the gale.

  Dropping to a crouch, Burias made his way on all fours towards the eagle’s shining eye. Cautiously, he peered inside.

  He saw a man sitting at a desk, an almost completely empty decanter of dark liquid in front of him. By his manner of dress, he was clearly a high-ranking official, and another man, young and awkward, stood at his side. The two appeared to be engrossed in conversation, and they did not notice the daemonic vision of the possessed warrior glaring in at them. There were two exits from the room: an elevator lift that would descend into the body of the aquila, and a heavy blast door.

  Climbing backwards, Burias-Drak’shal reached the top once more, looking down. On the back of the eagle head, fifteen metres lower, was a protected platform where a small shuttle was docked, and where the blast door led.

  Burias-Drak’shal perched some ten metres above the blast door, and settled down to wait. If any eye had been able to pierce the darkness and the howling gale he would have looked like a malicious gargoyle, crouching motionless as he awaited his prey.

  ‘In position,’ he growled, his fang-filled mouth forming the words awkwardly.

  ‘Received, Burias-Drak’shal,’ replied Marduk. The snow settled over him, so that only his baleful skull-faced visage peered from beneath the white blanket, his black eyes staring hatefully at the enemy structure.

  ‘217th Havoc coterie, split,’ Kol Badar ordered. ‘Heavy weapons, hold position. Namar-sin, move the rest of your squad forward to support the First Acolyte, and ready melta-bombs. Move on the First Acolyte’s word.’

  ‘Forwards on me,’ motioned Marduk as Namar-sin and three of his coterie emerged from the blanketing gale behind him, crawling stealthily forwards, their horned helmets covered in a thick layer of snow.

  Marduk resumed his advance, inching his way forwards. Imperial sweeps arced across the ice three times, and the Word Bearers froze each time, instantly cutting relay feeds and vox-transmissions to make themselves all but invisible.

  The distance to the closest turret was no more than twenty metres, and the bastion gate was less than forty. Metre by metre, Marduk and his chosen brethren crept forwards. The wind suddenly dropped, and warning sensors flashed in Marduk’s helmet. Without the interference of the billowing ice-crystals in the air, the turrets swung towards the Word Bearers and opened fire.

  A fraction of a second before the autocannons unleashed their fury, Marduk rolled to the side and high-calibre rounds ripped up the ground where he had lain. One of the Havoc Space Marines was hit by the opening salvo, his helmet smashing apart beneath the heavy weapons fire, staining the snow with his blood.

  ‘Now,’ barked Marduk into his vox-relay, and a beam of light stabbed out of the storm as one of the heavy weapon-armed Havocs of the 217th coterie fired his lascannon, and one of the turrets fell silent. A stream of white-hot plasma engulfed another turret, and plasteel and rockcrete ran like liquid as it was destroyed.

  Marduk was up and running, roaring a catechism of devotion as he unslung his chainsword. Autocannon rounds screamed past him, and one of them clipped his shoulder, jerking him to the side, but not halting his progress. Another lascannon beam stabbed from the gale, and a third turret was destroyed, detonating from within as its ammunition cache was hit. The resulting explosion threw chunks of rock in all directions. Marduk swayed his head to the side as a piece of red-hot rockcrete the size of a man hurtled past him.

  Marduk was five metres from the last remaining turret, and he threw himself forwards into a roll as its barrels swung towards him, spitting a torrent of high-velocity rounds. He came up to his feet beneath it, and grabbed one of the barrels. Servo-muscles straining, he pushed upwards with all his might, overextending the automated turret housing, exposing cabling and ammo feeds. Sparks spattered off Marduk’s skull-faced helmet, and he slashed his chainsword across the turret’s internals. The whirring chain links tore through the cables, and oil gushed like blood. Releasing his grip on the barrel of the weapon, the turret flopped lifelessly to the side.

  More turrets, higher up on the bastion’s face, were opening fire, raining down a hail of gunfire, which was answered by the heavy weapons fire of those warrior brothers further back. One of Namar-sin’s coterie was caught in a fusillade from two directions, and fell to one knee as his body was pierced a dozen times. Still, he refused to fall, and pushing himself back to his feet, he ran on towards the bastion gates.

  Bullets glanced off Marduk’s shoulder plates, and a round caught him in the chest, knocking him back a step, though it did not penetrate his thick ceramite armour. With a hiss of anger, he lurched forwards, running down the incline towards the bastion gates. Beneath the overhanging lip, he was protected from the worst of the fire, and Marduk pulled a melta-bomb loose from a chain around his waist. He whispered a prayer to the Great Changer as he primed the potent grenade and slammed it onto the thick door, placing it over one of the locking mechanisms. Electromagnets held it firmly in place, and a red light on the melta-bomb began to flash.

  ‘On approach,’ said Kol Badar, his voice overlaid with static and interference.

  As another melta-bomb was slammed into place by a warrior of the 217th coterie, the champion Namar-sin staggered into the protection beneath the gateway, smoking bullet craters across his armour. His left arm was gone, blown clear by autocannon fire, and his armour was awash with blood.

  ‘You took your time,’ growled Marduk.

  ‘I apologise, my lord,’ he said. The powerful anti-coagulants in the warrior’s blood had already stemmed the flow, and formed a thick crust around the shocking wound.

  ‘I can still do my job,’ said Namar-sin defensively, feeling Marduk’s gaze on his injuries. Gritting his teeth, the champion primed his melta-bomb somewhat awkwardly with one hand, before slamming the bulky grenade into position.

  More lascannon beams stabbed from the ice storm towards the bastion’s defences as the Land Raiders approached. In response, the first of the battle cannons spoke, firing blindly into the gale, the ensuing reverberations shaking the ground.

  The melta-bombs detonated, and the metre-thick gates buckled inwards. The force of the super-heated explosions was directed inwards, searing through the reinforced metal barrier. It was not fully breached, but as he lowered the arm that shielded his face, Marduk recognised instantly that its integrity was compromised.

  ‘Twenty seconds,’ said Kol Badar’s voice in Marduk’s helmet.

  Lascannons fired from the blinding gale, and then the dark shadow of the first Land Raider could be seen, driving at speed for the gatehouse. An explosion slammed into the ice beside the behemoth, knocking it to the side, and for a second its left-hand tracks lifted, spinning wildly before it slammed back on the ground and corrected its angle of approach.

  Marduk moved to the side, his back to a rockcrete support buttress, as the immense Land Raider gunned its engines. Its ancient hide was inscribed with passages from the books of Chaos, and symbols of d
evotion and allegiance marred its clotted-blood coloured armour plates. Autocannon rounds ricocheted off the Land Raider, unable to penetrate, and heavy bolter rounds were deflected off its angled plates. Its side sponsons lit up the darkness as they stabbed into the gates, further weakening them, and Marduk pressed himself backwards so as not to be struck by the monstrous battle tank as it dropped down the incline towards the entrance to the bastion.

  It slammed into the weakened gates with the force of a battering ram, and they collapsed inwards. Another Land Raider bedecked with chains from which severed heads and limbs hung followed the first, its daemon-headed exhausts spewing black smoke as it roared down the incline and into the belly of the bastion, followed by the third. The last of the Land Raiders would hold position, scanning for any sign of the enemy out on the plain. With the enemy bastion breached, the heavy weapons toting Havocs of the 217th coterie pulled back towards the Land Raider, as per Kol Badar’s orders, though their champion Namar-sin was to enter the bastion alongside the First Acolyte.

  As the third Land Raider roared past, Marduk broke into a run behind it, using it as moving cover. He drew his chainsword as he ran, and felt the impatience of the daemon Borhg’ash within the daemon weapon.

  Already he could hear the sounds of gunfire, the hiss of lasguns and the whine as they re-powered, and the deep percussive boom of heavy bolter fire.

  The ramp descended into the interior of the bastion, which had been carved into the solid rock. The interior was not unlike the hangar deck of the Infidus Diabolus, with high ceilings and various levels and gantries running around its walls. Around thirty APCs, light scout vehicles and a couple of heavier tanks, all armoured in the same uniform white plates, were lined up in serried ranks, and white-armoured soldiers were running forwards. Officers were shouting, and men were running in from portals in the north and south. Others were taking up positions upon the gantries lining the walls, firing down at the Word Bearers.

  The two Land Raiders had ground to a halt, heavybolters built into their hulls pumping explosive rounds into the enemy, ripping men apart in bloody detonations. The frontal assault ramps slammed down onto the rockcrete floor, and the bulky forms of the warriors of the Host appeared from the red-lit interiors, smoke billowing around them.

  Kol Badar strode from the lead Land Raider, his face hidden beneath his quad-tusked helmet and fire spitting from the barrels of his archaic combi-bolter. The Coryphaus roared, the daemonic sound resounding from vox-grills as he cut a white-armoured man in half with bolter fire. Behind him, the four warriors of the Anointed, the warrior elite of the Host, stalked forwards heavily. The servos of their ancient Terminator armour hissed and vented steam as the Anointed advanced from the interior of the battle tank, their weapons roaring.

  Sabtec and Khalaxis emerged from the other Land Raiders, leading their respective coteries. The 13th instantly took cover, bolters spitting death as they coolly split into two teams and manoeuvred into good firing positions. As Sabtec’s warriors laid down their hail of suppressing fire, Khalaxis and his 17th coterie disdained any attempt to seek cover, and raced headlong towards the enemy, revving the motors of their chainblades and snapping off shots with their pistols.

  A portal lifted beside Marduk, and he swung his bolt pistol around and fired. A troop of white-armoured soldiers ran at him, and his first rounds took one of them in the chest. He fell with a strangled cry as his ribcage was shattered. A second enemy dropped as his head exploded, and Marduk pumped another pair of shots into the body of a third warrior.

  The soldiers halted, those in front dropping to one knee as they raised their lasguns. Others sought cover against the pipes protruding into the corridor, and they fired as their sergeant shouted an order.

  Las-rounds impacted with Marduk’s chest and shoulder pads, knocking him back half a step. They left blackened scorch marks on his armoured plates, and Marduk snarled in fury as he leapt forwards, his chainsword roaring.

  More las-rounds pinged off his armour as he closed the distance, and he began to recite the Litanies of Hate and Vengeance, barking the words like a mantra. Several of the enemy soldiers baulked and stumbled back from his charge as his vox-enhanced voice made their eardrums bleed. Marduk blew the arm off one of them with his bolt pistol fired at close range, and then he was amongst them.

  His chainsword hacked into the neck of the first, teeth biting through armour, flesh and bone, and hot blood splashed across Marduk’s tabard. Blood ran down the feeder grooves carved into the sides of the chainsword and was sucked into the internals of the weapon, and Marduk felt fresh power and strength flow through him as the daemon Borhg’ash fed. Veins pulsed along the length of the ancient weapon, and the daemon urged Marduk on to feed it further.

  He dropped to one knee, and a las-bolt seared above him where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier. He hacked out again, cutting through another soldier’s leg, the bone ripped apart by Borhg’ash’s eager teeth. He fired his bolt pistol, and another enemy was slammed backwards into its comrades as the back of its head exploded outwards.

  Brother Namar-sin was at Marduk’s side, and he buried his axe in the chest of another of the soldiers, the pain of his severed arm lending him additional strength and fervour. He planted his boot on the chest of the man and ripped his axe free, kicking the soldier to the ground. He hacked his axe into another man, severing his arm and cutting half way through his torso.

  Another warrior of Namar-sin’s 217th fired his bolter at point blank range, blasting the soldiers back, chunks of flesh and blood spraying in all directions. One man, his lifeblood running from his wounds, was on his knees before the warrior brother, and his skull was pulverised by the butt of a bolter.

  Marduk continued reciting from the Litanies of Hate and Vengeance and rammed his chainsword into the gut of another enemy. The whirring, barbed links of the weapon ripped the soldier in two, cutting off his pitiful cries of agony.

  Borhg’ash was gorged with blood, and it leaked from the internals of the chainsword like a syrup, but the daemon still hungered for more. Marduk felt the sentience within the chainsword urging him to kill again, and he gladly indulged its will.

  Having emptied his bolt pistol clip, he holstered the weapon as he hacked a lasgun being levelled at him in two with a backhand sweep of his chainsword. The sparking halves of the lasgun were ripped from the terrified soldier’s hands, and as he staggered backwards in shock, Marduk cleaved him from shoulder to hip with a powerful two-handed blow with his chainsword.

  There were no more living threats, and Borhg’ash revved its engine, expressing its desire for more blood. Seeing one soldier on the ground still living, though he was dying fast as his blood pumped from his severed leg, Marduk reversed his grip on his chainsword and drove it downwards into the man. The soldier shuddered as the sharp teeth of the weapon ripped apart his flesh, and Borhg’ash greedily sucked up the gore.

  Marduk loaded a fresh sickle-clip into his bolt pistol as he marched back out onto the main concourse. A frantic gun battle was still underway, with enemy soldiers high up on gantries sniping down at the Word Bearers below. Scores of white-armoured men were lying dead or dying throughout the area, some crawling vainly for the futile safety of cover.

  Sabtec’s 13th coterie was taking cover behind the bulk of the Land Raiders, positioned at corners and snapping off beams at the enemy soldiers. Lasgun shots impacted uselessly against the armoured hulls of the massive vehicles, and those few Word Bearers that were struck shrugged off the las-fire as if they were irritating mosquito bites.

  One of the 13th dropped to one knee, aiming his stubby, daemon-headed missile launcher up high, and smoke billowed out the back of the missile tube as he fired. The missile screamed upwards and struck the underside of one of the gantries where a cluster of snipers was positioned, exploding in a billowing cloud of flame. The flesh of the soldiers was sliced apart as super-heated fragments of metal lacerated them, and the metal grid gave way. Those not killed by
the explosion dropped ten metres to the next level of gantries, and were crushed as metal bracings were wrenched out of shape and pulled down in their wake.

  Khalaxis and his warriors stormed across the gantries, unstoppable juggernauts of muscle and power armour that smashed through the enemy, throwing them over railings to fall fifteen metres to the ground, hacking limbs from bodies with sweeps of chainswords and killing everything in their path.

  Three of the light armoured vehicles of the enemy were thrown upwards as a lascannon ignited fuel cells, and a mushroom of fierce orange flame billowed upwards, black, oily smoke licking at its edges. One of the vehicles spun end over end and slammed into a wall, while the other two came crushing down onto other unmanned vehicles behind which more enemy soldiers were hunkered down. They staggered back away from the inferno, and were dutifully gunned down by concentrated bolter fire.

  Kol Badar strode through the firefight snapping off shots with his combi-bolter, his entourage of Anointed warriors walking steadily alongside him. They eschewed any attempt to take cover, the ancient, ceramite and adamantium plates of their Terminator armour offering them more protection than rockcrete or steel.

  One of the Anointed swung the heavy twin barrels of his reaper autocannon before him like a scythe, laying down a withering hail of high-calibre fire that ripped everything apart indiscriminately: armour, men, vehicles and rockcrete.

  A body landed in front of Marduk, having been hurled from a gantry above. The soldier’s helmet was smashed, and his eyes stared blankly up at the First Acolyte. Marduk kicked the man in the head, splashing blood and brain matter across the floor.

  More enemy soldiers were appearing, assailing the Word Bearers from all directions. They were caught in the middle of a crossfire, but were cutting the enemy down ruthlessly. Marduk saw that two Word Bearers had fallen, though their injuries were not mortal and they continued to fight on. At least fifty enemy soldiers had been slain, and the casualties were mounting.