Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  The Space Marine spoke, and Baranov reeled in horror, doubling over in pain. It felt like things were clawing inside him, and an intrusive stabbing pain gripped his guts. He vomited, emptying his stomach as the utter wrongness of the voice clawed at his sanity, and tears ran down his face as he spat yellow bile onto the floor.

  Baranov sank to the floor, oblivious to the vomit and drool on his chin and down the front of his chest, his limbs shaking. The Space Marine spoke with the voice of a daemon, a voice of madness. Its words were alien and horrific to Baranov, like a deafening cacophony of screams and guttural snarls.

  A sudden compulsion made him crawl forwards on his hands and knees to peer around the corner of the circular doorway, and though he fought the urge, his soul screaming, he could no more stop his movements than he could stop his heart from beating. With tears running down his face, and shaking his head in denial, Baranov looked around the corner.

  The Space Marine was standing with his arms spread wide, his head thrown back, and pink mist was seeping from within him, billowing from the cuts upon his body and spilling from his eyes, nostrils and mouth. The mist rolled out across the floor before him, and the black-armoured xenos warriors continued to blaze away at the daemonic figure as they backed away from its touch, though their weapons did nothing.

  Baranov thought he saw shapes within the mist, sensuous bodies wrapped around each other in ecstasy, but he blinked his eyes and they were gone, nothing but contorting shapes formed by the roiling, pink smoke.

  The mist coiled around Baranov’s legs, and he felt hands caressing his skin, which was at once arousing and repulsive. The musk entered his lungs and he felt instantly light-headed, as if his mind was addled with opiates, and his flesh tingled with sensation.

  He saw that his first impression had been correct. There were figures in the mist, and they were rising like serpents, their bodies unfurling as they stood, their every movement fluid and supple beyond human capacity.

  There were dozens of them: tall, slender figures not unlike the eldar in proportion, though the similarities ended there. They were neither male nor female, or rather, they were both simultaneously, and they moved with inhuman grace and suppleness, their bodies twisting and writhing. Baranov found that his breath was coming in husky gasps as he looked upon their unnatural forms.

  The figures solidified, and Baranov was paralysed in horrified rapture. His soul screamed within him of the utter wrongness of what he was seeing, yet his body was responding to the hellish allure of the figures. He saw their faces, and they were angels, beings of incomparable beauty. Their hair writhed like nests of vipers, and their eyes gleamed with the promise of pleasure… and pain.

  The daemon’s faces changed suddenly, the facade of beauty sloughing off as they opened luscious mouths, exposing needle-like teeth. Their eyes were as black as night and too large for their hellish faces, and Baranov realised that the daemon’s slender arms ended not in hands, but in elongated, serrated claws.

  Then the killing began.

  The daemonettes moved with impossible grace, matching and surpassing that of the eldar. Every sharp movement of the daemons ended in a spurt of blood, a killing thrust, a severed limb. Bladed arms slashed across jugulars, and slender claws snapped bones. Elongated, tri-forked tongues lapped lasciviously at spilled blood, and the daemonettes spun and pirouetted through the carnage, killing with every graceful, savage movement.

  Baranov breathed deeply of the intoxicating musk as he began to hyperventilate, and his irises swelled into wide, staring discs.

  A daemonette appeared out of the mist alongside him, running a slender claw along the inside of his thigh, drawing blood. A stinging tongue caressed his neck, and Baranov moaned.

  Marduk laughed aloud, hacking left and right with his blade, severing limbs from bodies and relishing the unabashed terror of the eldar.

  The daemonettes were tearing through the eldar, carving a bloody swathe through their panicked ranks. Dozens of the daemons were snuffed out of existence as their physical bodies were torn apart by the frantically fired weapons of the eldar, but more of them continued to appear from the heady musk, taking shape even as their sisters were cut down.

  Marduk fought his way towards the eldar lord, who was backing away frantically, his guards closing around him in a tight-knit circle. The heavily armoured warriors slashed around them with curved-bladed glaives, scything through daemonettes screeching like banshees, their voices raised in piercing cries that were at once hauntingly beautiful and horrific.

  One of the incubi was dragged down, bladed arms stabbing into its stomach and head simultaneously, and a pair of daemonettes danced towards the dark eldar lord, claws slashing towards him.

  The dark eldar lord moved with blinding speed, catching the blows on his bladed forearms, turning them aside and snapping one of the claws clean off with a deft twist. The daemonette hissed as milky ichor dripped from the wound, and the eldar lord stepped in close, slashing the blades across its face, tearing its unholy flesh from ear to ear.

  The eldar lord swayed back from a sweeping blow from the other daemonette, before leaping into air, spinning, and slamming first one foot and then the other into the daemonette’s face. Blades in his boots sliced through infernal skin, spilling more steaming ichor, and the lord stepped back as his incubi bodyguards finished the injured creatures, ripping them in two with powerful blows of their punisher glaives.

  ‘I come for you!’ roared Marduk, his voice still that of the daemon, as he slashed a path towards the dark eldar lord.

  ‘It’s moving a little fast for a freighter, don’t you think?’ commented Burias, looking with narrowed eyes at the flickering vid-screens on which the positions of the fleets blinked.

  The Imperial vessel that Marduk was located aboard had moved swiftly as the Infidus Diabolus had swung towards it, altering its trajectory with a speed and manoeuvrability that seemed far beyond that of a simple freighter; indeed it came about to a new heading with a swiftness that was far beyond any Imperial ship. Despite its surprising swiftness, the sudden movement of the Infidus Diabolus would surely allow at least one barrage upon it before it slipped out of range.

  ‘Targeting matrices locked on,’ croaked seven daemon-servitor symbiotes in unison.

  ‘Fire,’ barked Kol Badar.

  A moment later, Burias felt the reverberations through the Infidus Diabolus as a full broadside salvo was launched upon the curious Imperial freighter.

  The eldar vessel veered to starboard as hundreds of cannon batteries unleashed their devastating fusillade, displaying a speed of manoeuvrability that a strike craft a tenth of its size would have envied. That brutal salvo would have torn through the void shields of any Imperial ship in seconds, and smashed apart its hull armour within moments, but the bulk of the shots went screaming past the shadowy outline of the dark eldar ship. Its mimic engines projected an outline that was vastly different to its actual proportions, fooling the targeting arrays of the Infidus Diabolus, and hundreds of tonnes of heavy duty ordnance roared past the ship, screaming wide of the mark.

  Even with the naked eye, its exact position was impossible to discern thanks to it shadow fields, all light refracting and curving around its hull so that it seemed barely there at all.

  Still, the weight of cannon fire was heavy and indiscriminate, and it tore through the bladed membranes of the back-swept vanes that rose like a ridge across the back of the dark eldar ship. Several barrages also slammed into its hull proper, wreaking terrible damage.

  Even as the ship dived away from the Infidus Diabolus, slicing through the void like a knife, it returned fire, and stabbing lances of dark matter slammed into the Word Bearers’ strike cruiser.

  A dozen broadside cannon batteries were destroyed instantly, and tens of hundreds of indentured slaves, chained together in long worker gangs, whose sole existence was to load and prepare the mighty weapons for firing, were dragged into the emptiness of space, where their organs imploded. Fire b
lossomed across the strike cruiser as its hull was compromised in a handful of places, though the flames almost instantly died as bulkheads isolated the crippled areas and the air within was sucked into space.

  The Astartes cruiser fired again, correcting its aim now that the mimic engines of the dark eldar vessel had been nullified.

  ‘Admiral!’ shouted the flag-captain of the Hammer of Righteousness.

  ‘What?’ snapped Admiral Rutger Augustine. His knuckles were white as he clenched the railing before his view screen on the bridge of his flag-ship.

  ‘That rogue freighter…’ began his second in command, Gideon Cortez.

  ‘What about it, Gideon? We are fighting a damn engagement here.’

  ‘It’s… it’s not an Imperial vessel, lord.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The scans, they’ve been wrong. It’s a xenos vessel, sir. Eldar. They must have been transmitting a false signal that’s been fooling our sensors.’

  Augustine swore. He had his hands full already with more than half his fleet engaged with the tyranids. The last thing he needed was for an eldar fleet to turn up. One never knew what their intentions were. Were they here to fight the tyranids for their own benefit? Or would they attack the Imperial fleet while it was engaged with the xenos foe?

  ‘Is its disposition hostile?’ he asked.

  ‘Negative, sir, it is moving away from the fleet.’

  ‘Well that is something at least. Ignore it. I have no wish to incur the wrath of the eldar. Not here.’

  ‘There is something else, Rutger,’ said Gideon, and Augustine could hear the reticence in his friend’s voice. It must be bad, he thought with a sigh.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said wearily.

  ‘The Adeptus Astartes cruiser has been identified. Its signature has been pulled from the archive banks of command central. It is the Infidus Diabolus, lord. Word Bearers Legion.’

  ‘Traitors,’ said Augustine. He cast his gaze heavenwards, and barked a humourless laugh. ‘Tyranids, eldar, and now traitor Space Marines. Perfect.’

  ‘There is some good news, sir,’ said Gideon.

  ‘Oh?’ replied Augustine.

  ‘It would appear that the eldar and Chaos ships are engaging each other.’

  Augustine shook his head.

  ‘The Emperor works in mysterious ways,’ he said.

  Eldar were one thing, as often friends as foes, but a cruiser of traitor Space Marines? They were the enemy, and must be eliminated.

  ‘Order the Implacable to move up in support of the eldar vessel,’ order Augustine. ‘Order them to engage and destroy the Infidus Diabolus.’

  Marduk stumbled as the entire xenos ship was rocked by a second series of impacts, and he cursed. He had to get off the ship.

  He saw the female, flame-haired wych that had captured him cartwheel through the melee, her whip crackling through the air behind her, and three of the daemonettes screamed in fury as their earthly bodies were slain, disappearing into mist.

  Another daemonette reared up behind her and rammed its claws through her slender, tattooed body. Marduk plunged his blade into the wych’s face, spitting her head on its length. Face to face with the daemonette, Marduk grinned. The daemon licked its teeth at him in response, and ripping its claws from the wych’s body, it spun lightly on its heel, claws singing through the air to decapitate another eldar, sending its head flying.

  Marduk whipped the blade free, spraying blood in a wide arc and spun to his right, slashing it across the helmet of another warrior, the slender xenos limb slicing through the armour with consummate ease.

  Another barrage struck the eldar ship and Marduk stumbled again, cursing.

  Darts spat into Marduk’s chest, and he hissed as debilitating pain wracked his body for a moment, before the power of the warp within him surged, and he felt the pain recede. One of the dark lord’s guardians stood before him, and more darts were fired from the tip of its backwards-curving helmet, which resembled a scorpion’s tail.

  Marduk lifted a hand, the movement guided by the power of Slaanesh surging within him, and the darts were halted in mid-air. With a quick motion, Marduk sent them slicing off to the side, where they took an eldar in the face.

  The bodyguard darted towards Marduk, swinging its glaive with surprising swiftness, forcing him to leap backwards to avoid being cut in two. There was no time to launch a riposte, for the eldar danced after him, its return blow striking towards his neck.

  Marduk met the blow with one of his own, but the glaive sheared through his blade as if it were not there, and though Marduk swayed to the side at the last moment to avoid the killing blow, the blade smashed into his shoulder, sinking deep into his flesh.

  Grabbing the blade with one hand, keeping the eldar from pulling it clear, the First Acolyte and the eldar were momentarily locked together. Marduk stood half a head taller than the slender warrior, and over twice his weight, but the eldar was swift, despite its heavy armour.

  The eldar’s foot snapped out, hitting Marduk squarely in the throat. Again, the eldar snapped a kick to his neck, but this time the Word Bearer met its force with his arm, clubbing down hard on the leg as it rose towards him.

  The eldar gave a reptilian hiss of pain as its leg was broken, its armour crushed beneath the blow. Instantly, Marduk ripped the glaive from his shoulder and whirled it through the air. He hit the eldar in the back as it fell away from him, severing its spinal column.

  The weapon was phenomenally light in his hands, and he slashed it to the right, cleaving the arm from another of the eldar lord’s bodyguard as it despatched another daemonette.

  There was no order to the battle. The eldar were completely overrun by the daemons of Slaanesh. The musk had a powerful, intoxicating effect, and everything was brighter, more alive, and more intense than in any battle Marduk had experienced before. He heard every groan, scream and gasp, and every splatter of blood as it struck the flooring. The blood being spilled was the most entrancing, vivid colour imaginable, and he felt a savage joy at the play of light across the armour of the eldar warriors, the alluring smell of death, and the feel of the xenos weapon beneath his hands.

  He saw the guards of the eldar lord fall one by one, dragged down into the mist, until the black-armoured figure stood alone, defiant and savage, yet hopelessly overwhelmed. This one moved well, and Marduk longed to test his strength against him, but it was not to be.

  The daemonettes circled in around the eldar lord, snarling and hissing, closing off any chance of escape, and Marduk had no wish to come between the daemons and their prey.

  Another series of detonations rocked the eldar ship, and Marduk swung away from the doomed eldar lord, leaving him to his fate.

  ‘That one is mine,’ said a voice, and Baranov looked up to see the Space Marine that had released him from his imprisonment striding towards him through the pink mist, eyes blazing with dominating power as he glared at the daemonette that held Baranov in its thrall.

  The daemonette hissed in anger, but obediently spun away from Baranov, who cried out in desire and pain as it relinquished its hold on him. Bloody, stinging welts covered Baranov’s body, and his eyes lingered on the fey creature as it spun away on one clawed foot and slashed its arm across the neck of a slave, who was standing nearby, mouth agape. Blood fountained from the mortal wound, yet the man moaned in pleasure, and the daemonette bore it to the ground in its embrace, the pair disappearing into the knee-high mist.

  Baranov was insensible, shaking and gibbering from the horrors he had witnessed as the Space Marine hauled him brutally to his feet.

  ‘Take me to your ship,’ growled the immense figure, eyes blazing with fury and power.

  ‘My ship,’ muttered Baranov, his sanity in tatters, but he was brought back into reality as the Space Marine slapped him across the side of the head. His brain was rattled inside his skull by the force of the blow. The immense figure grabbed Baranov by the front of his shirt and pulled him towards his sna
rling, bloody face.

  ‘Take me to you ship, or I’ll gut you here,’ he growled.

  Dracon Alith Drazjaer turned on the spot, his eyes darting between the encircling daemonettes. All his long centuries of decadent life, avoiding the claim that She Who Thirsts had over his soul, and it had come to this. Anger, bitterness, desperation and fathomless terror flowed through him in equal measure, but his body had been well trained in the death-cult temples of Commoragh, and he reacted instinctively as the daemonettes closed in on him.

  He spun towards one of them, catching the daemonette’s blow in one hand and slashing his bladed forearm across its neck with his other arm. He spun the daemonette into the path of one of its companions, and ducked beneath the slashing claws of the third daemonette, coming up inside its guard and ripping its abhorrent body apart with twin swipes of his arms.

  Turning swiftly, he swayed beneath a swinging claw that would have ripped his head from his shoulders, and slammed a kick into the daemonette’s perverted, backwards jointed knee, shattering it. As it fell, he rammed his elbow into its face, spitting it on the blade that jutted from his armoured plates.

  He caught a blade on one forearm, and then another on his other arm, and snapped a kick into the daemonette’s leering face. Blades snapped forwards from his knuckles and he stepped in close and punched the bitch daemon in the throat twice, hissing fluid spraying from the wound even as the infernal lesser daemon returned to smoke.

  Drazjaer felt the presence of the mandrake, Ja’harael, materialise at his side.

  ‘Save me, half-breed, and all that is mine will be yours,’ Drazjaer hissed in desperation.

  The mandrake stepped in close behind him and rammed blades into the dracon’s unprotected back.

  ‘You have failed Lord Vect, dracon,’ hissed the mandrake in his ear. ‘Your path is your own.’

  The daemonettes closed in once more, licking their lips seductively.

  ‘Goodbye, lord dracon,’ said Ja’harael, and his form turned to shadow, even as the graceful claws of a daemonette slashed towards him. The daemonic blade-limbs sliced harmlessly through his insubstantial body, and he disappeared, retreating into the refuge of the webway.