Make the word flesh. Conjure it with action.
Become murder.
Suddenly in possession of his true body again, the giant form of war. Moving again. Killing again. The thunder of his gun, the detonations of his wrath. Evangelism by shell.
The heavy beat, beat, beat of his tread, bones cracking beneath each step.
Fill the air with blood. Fill the void with blood.
Make the words with blood.
Then a voice speaking his name.
‘Sor Gharax.’
Snarling at the interruption, swinging his assault cannon forwards.
‘Judge of Hell, stop and listen.’
The shape before him: crimson, but not flesh. Bearing the words of truth in the jagged, writhing script of Colchis.
He stopped. Darkness in the air, darkness that was the source of the truth, curling around the armour of the speaker.
‘You know me, Annunake Sor Gharax.’
And through the pain, he shaped a name. ‘Chaplain Kurtha Sedd.’
The Dreadnought knew who he was. The Bull paused in his march. The assault gun lowered and did not fire.
‘Your lesson is wasted here,’ said Kurtha Sedd. He spoke with respect, but with command. Sor Gharax was on the edge of total, unthinking slaughter and he had to be held back. He could not be restrained physically. A squad’s strength of Word Bearers stood behind Kurtha Sedd, weapons ready. If Sor Gharax would not stop willingly, the only recourse would be destruction, and many legionaries would be lost in that catastrophe.
Kurtha Sedd did not believe that tragedy would occur. The Word Bearers had not transported Sor Gharax all this distance for nothing. The gods had spared the Bull, and given Fifth Company the chance to use his strength. And so they would. ‘We are in the underworld,’ the Chaplain said. ‘The enemy awaits your judgement.’
Sor Gharax made no answer. Though his body no longer drew oxygen as it had before his entombment, his low growls had the rhythm of pained breaths.
‘I do not ask for your patience,’ said Kurtha Sedd. ‘I ask you to wait. Prepare your wrath. You will have your foe. You will preach to the Ultramarines.’
‘When?’ The single word was a strangled rasp emerging from the Dreadnought’s vox-speakers.
The effort to achieve even that level of coherence must have been monstrous. Kurtha Sedd took it as a victory. He would be able to channel Sor Gharax’s wrath. ‘Very soon,’ he said. He realised now a turning point had been reached. The ritual he had just witnessed had done more than resurrect the Bull. The moment was a critical one. It remained to him to seize it.
Not all the cultists participating in the ceremony had been killed. Khrothis was among the survivors. She rose from where she had fallen, covered in the gore of her comrades. Her eyes shone with fervour. She ran forwards, heedless of the Dreadnought’s guns. She clasped her hands before Kurtha Sedd. ‘You saw, lord?’ she asked. ‘You saw the dark?’
‘I did.’ The tendrils of shadow had receded, but their meaning hovered in the air, and he could almost reach out and touch the possibility of their return.
‘Brother-Chaplain,’ said Kaeloq, his voice awed, ‘we all did.’
Kurtha Sedd risked taking his eyes from the Bull to look back at his brothers. Their weapons were still up, but their heads were all turned his way, and they were nodding. Gherak Haxx was among them, and he said, ‘You must minister to us.’ He sounded awed.
The moment became even more important. The fraying fabric of the company was healing itself. Kurtha Sedd could make it strong again. All he had to do was fulfil his allotted role.
He stood for a few moments in silence. He closed his eyes and let himself trace the threads and contours of possibilities before him. The need to descend was still strong. He had not reached his destination. It was closer than ever. It had chains around his soul. Its weight was so great, it should pull him down through the cavern floors. He had to go down.
But the descent would be difficult. The Word Bearers had already dropped below all but the deepest positions of the arcologies. They had penetrated a few caverns below the ones they currently held. Those caves appeared to have been unexplored by Calth’s inhabitants, and they were dead ends. There must be a way down. He would find it if he had to blast his way through rock, one metre at a time.
Right now, though, this moment, so critical, so rich in potential, pointed elsewhere. The Bull’s rage would serve no purpose in a search through empty tunnels. It had to be directed back upwards. Sor Gharax needed Ultramarines to kill.
And the dark. The dark called him down, but it had also risen. It had answered the call of simple mortals, cultists who had no concrete experience of eternity and the sublime. He could feel the dark waiting for him. Waiting for his command.
But he was not Erebus. He did not have the First Chaplain’s power or training. The doubts, banished at the peak of the ritual, returned. If he reached out to the darkness, he would prove himself worthy, and he would lose the bonds of uncertainty.
The physical descent was stymied for now. But the spiritual one knew no such limits.
Kurtha Sedd looked into the blood-drenched chamber. ‘We will need more offerings,’ he said.
‘Our lives are yours to command, lord Chaplain,’ said Khrothis.
That would be a start. But much more would be needed. Kurtha Sedd spoke to Sor Gharax. ‘I see the path to your vengeance, Annunake.’
In order to descend, they must go up.
Kurtha Sedd sent scouting parties ahead. They branched out in groups of five legionaries, seeking hunting grounds for the company and for the Bull. Kurtha Sedd loosed Sor Gharax. The Dreadnought thundered up the widest, most direct passages. He might well draw the enemy to him. If he found targets on his own, well and good. If he did not, one of the reconnaissance missions would, and give him the guidance.
Toc Derenoth led a full squad in the footsteps of Sor Gharax. His mission was more than one of reinforcement. It was a journey of redemption.
Kurtha Sedd remained behind, but only as a start. Word would come of a fertile terrain, and he would rush to that location. He would begin his important work in the tainted storage cavern. The space was thick with recent death. It thrummed with hunger.
And so he fed it.
He led twenty legionaries in worship. Twenty-four cultists stepped forwards to feed the dark. The eight-pointed star had been defaced by the heavy steps of the Bull and the generalised spilling of blood. The cultists recreated it, larger than before, the lines reaching almost to the walls of the chamber. They drew it with the ash of bone. Then they took up their positions: one human at each point, one where each line crossed the two concentric circles of the design.
Kurtha Sedd began the prayers. The words were Colchisian. Their guttural contours forced his tongue and throat into the contortions of ceremony. He uttered the lines of worship and madness, and his brothers joined him. Their amplified voices clawed at the stone of the walls. The cultists joined in the praise, and they knelt. They raised the blades they carried. They began to cut. They started with their arms, drawing slashes from shoulder to palm. They anointed their corners of the star.
The words of the prayers began to transmute into something more and less than language. They lost any meaning of human speech. They became acts. They became the opening of ways.
Driven by the prayers, the cultists found the will and strength to perfect their sacrifice. The knives sought the deeper flesh. They cut tendons and released viscera. They cut for prolongation of pain and the inevitability of death. The air became moist. The chamber filled with agonised worship. The human shape mutilated itself. Praise and prey were one.
Kurtha Sedd’s hymn took possession of his body. He could not have ceased chanting if he had wanted to. And now his mind rode the contorting waves of the prayer. He reached the limits of the materium with effortless de
sire. The veil between the real and the darkness was close, and it was weak. Out beyond the Veridia System, the Ruinstorm was rending the galaxy. For the first time, Kurtha Sedd felt the distant touch of an event too vast for comprehension. We have done this, he thought. Violent pride swelled.
In the recesses of his soul, he still dreaded the light of judgement scouring Calth. It was looking for him. He would be held to account. Here, though, here in the depths, the dark was more fearsome than the light, and it welcomed him. It did not absolve his crimes. It exalted them. It pulsed and snarled on the other side of the veil, and Kurtha Sedd answered its desire with his own.
He parted the veil. He called the dark.
It answered, and it slavered. It rose again. It rose from the lower depths of Calth, and it rose from the wounds in the real. The lines of the star, ash sticky with blood, turned black. They undulated. They thickened, spread and joined. They covered the bodies of the sacrifices. They became a single mass of darkness. It was a tide, rising, whispering, a hungry thing with concealed teeth. It filled the chamber. It rolled over the Word Bearers, gathering its flock. As it submerged him, Kurtha Sedd was exhilarated.
He had done this thing.
He was worthy.
But there is more. He was unsure if he had thought the words or if the darkness had spoken. No matter. This was just a beginning. There was much more power within and beyond the dark. He could not unleash that potential yet. He did not have the strength. Perhaps he would find it down below, where his journey must still take him.
And will you dare? This time, the thought was his. He pushed it away, along with the need to answer. It was enough for now to give himself over to the wonder of the spreading darkness.
It enveloped him, and all light died, yet his sight was untroubled. He could see the chamber, the runes, the cultists and his brothers as easily as if a dozen lumen globes illuminated the scene. He saw everything and he saw the dark. There was no contradiction between blindness and perfect clarity. He saw with the illumination of faith.
So did his brothers and the cultists. Khrothis and the others present at the ritual but not sacrificed to it had turned to him in wonder. They appeared before him as beings painted in crystalline black and grey. Their eyes shone like obsidian. The Word Bearers were not in grey. That colour had been rejected long ago, and the shadows magnified the crimson of their armour. The blood on the floor, still pouring from the martyrs, was red too. Kurtha Sedd was in a world of visible darkness splashed and honoured with red.
It was magnificent.
He turned towards the exit. The darkness flowed before him, filling the corridors. As he walked, he was embraced by shadows, and he was their conjurer. They were not his to control, but he had opened the path. He no more governed them than he could a flood. Yet the action was his.
He was pulling the entire arcology network down into the dark ocean.
The hunt began. Until now, the war had been a series of chance encounters and evasions. The descent had, at times, felt like flight. Now, for the moment, the direction reversed. The Word Bearers headed back uphill, moving through the spreading dark.
The hungry dark.
It needed to be fed.
It was Kurtha Sedd’s squad, trailed by the cultists, which found the first source of food. The civilian enclave was reached by a tributary tunnel, running for some distance off a major artery. Instinct made Kurtha Sedd choose this turn. He sensed eagerness in the flow of the dark. He followed the course. A blast door sealed the end of the corridor. It was not in the same league as the barriers that protected the underworld of Calth from the death searing the surface. Two melta bombs were enough to breach it. Beyond was a small, self-contained worker colony. A large central cavern served as gathering place, mess hall and dormitorium. The high walls were pockmarked with alcoves holding cots. The civilians were here, and they were armed, warned by the sound of the bombs, terrified by the dimming of their lumen globes and the arrival of darkness that knew no barriers.
There was no Ultramarines presence. They were spread thin. Millions of inhabitants of Calth had flooded the arcologies. No small number had been present before the war had begun. The XIII Legion could not be everywhere. It could not protect everyone.
Kurtha Sedd was disappointed not to find the enemy here. He was gratified by the size of the population. There were thousands of souls to feed to the dark.
‘Disarm them,’ he ordered. ‘But minimise the combat.’
The fight was brief. The civilians’ lasrifles did nothing against the legionaries. The Word Bearers walked into the hall, ignoring the opposing fire. They barely used their bolters, taking a few shots only to take down gunmen who had climbed to the higher alcoves. Gherak Haxx guarded the entrance. He was enough to stop any mortal from escaping. The rest of the Word Bearers moved through the room, grabbing weapons and breaking arms. The skirmish was over in minutes.
After the first few seconds, most of the mortals ceased trying to fight and sought escape. The dark trapped them. They couldn’t see what they were shooting at, and they couldn’t see where to run. Kurtha Sedd watched panic, true blind panic, spread through the assembly. A froth of vermin shrieked and clawed at each other. The darkness fed on the fear. It grew stronger even without a ritual.
With the ritual, however…
The Word Bearers moved to each exit. They and the cultists herded the civilians to the centre of the hall. The killings began in earnest. They were unhurried acts of cruelty committed solely with blade and hand. They were creative. Bodies were joined together with chains of muscle while still alive. Kurtha Sedd led the chants, and he directed the painting of the words. Blood beyond measure spilled, and the Word Bearers marked the walls and the floor with truth. They carved flesh into gospel. The words of the gods took shape, and they shouted the joy of the dark. The blackness boiled out of the air. Kurtha Sedd felt it surge outwards and upwards. The flood had come, and the entire underworld felt the touch of the ceremony in this hall.
Bearing his wrath through the tunnels. He had come down these paths as a helpless thing, a motionless mass barely able to whisper his curses. But now, oh now, now returning with thunder, now filling these caverns with his power, sending the boom of his great voice ahead.
Let the enemies of the truth hear. Let them take warning. Let them flee. He would catch them. He would kill them all.
The darkness everywhere, racing ahead and carrying him forwards. A wind of black, the extinction of hope made manifest. Voices in the black, whispers and shouts that he heard even over his own snarls. Voices of the Word.
His march unstoppable, his rage uncontainable, unleashed at long last. Hungry for the crack of bone, the hissing spray of blood, the gurgle of death.
A marching wall of war. Howling juggernaut.
And then, at last, the first of the prey. A squad of little soldiers in blue armour. The believers in the lie. The puppets of the liar.
Uncertainty in their movements. The dark blinding them. Their fire at the sound of his approach. Bolter shells striking him. Little flames, little bursts, little meaning.
Give them illumination. His assault cannon blazing with killing light. Massive impacts smashing the small shapes to the ground. His fury in their midst, roaring, bringing his hell to the universe of lies. Reaching out with his power fist. Grasping the nearest creature in blue. Squeeze it. Crush it. Feel the contraction. The body giving way beneath the compacting ceramite. Bones to powder. Organs to liquid.
And there, the shout of agony. The shout of truth.
Blood running down his fist in tribute.
Do they see the truth? Do they yet?
No. Even if they think they do.
The Bull charged onwards.
The rage of the darkness came for the Ultramarines.
EIGHT
Voices through the dark
Between the lines
&n
bsp; Let the Bull lead
The vox was useless over any distance. They worked by relay, one group of Word Bearers communicating with the nearest, which linked to another, and so on until news reached Kurtha Sedd. The system was imperfect and ungainly. He heard reports after frustrating delays. The jumble of redundant, conflicting and fragmented transmissions made effective coordination almost impossible.
At least the Ultramarines would be facing the same limitations beyond the reach of the command nexus. And they were blind. Word of encounters with the enemy arrived. Kurtha Sedd heard tales of vengeance. He was glad. At the news of each successful attack, he asked the same question.
‘Was Aethon among them?’
No. He was not. The dictates of fate would not be thwarted. Even so, Kurtha Sedd hoped.
He travelled upwards through the layers of tunnels and caverns. The direction of his journey was maddening, as it dragged him further and further away from his true goal. He accepted its necessity. He rose with the tide of darkness. And he circled closer and closer to the battle he would have given much to avoid.
His route was circuitous. The hungry dark kept leading him to more pockets of civilians. He obeyed the shadows and fed them. He fed them with slaughter and the inspiration of atrocity. His brothers climbed the heights of cruelty.
They found another large refuge. It was a medicae centre. Its patients had been injured by the collapses more than by the war itself. There was a single Ultramarines legionary here. He was wounded. Kurtha Sedd guessed he had not been posted here, but had stumbled upon the centre by chance too. He was blind. He raged and fired as Kurtha Sedd came for him, but he responded to more than the sounds of the Chaplain’s boots on stone. The whispers assailed him. Kurtha Sedd heard them too, but they were his allies. They were the disembodied jaws of truth, though the Ultramarine would have called them lies. Voices cried out to the legionary, and they taunted him. At Kurtha Sedd’s shoulders, they snickered.
A gibbering choir laughed as he sank his crozius into the wounded Ultramarine’s thigh. The armour was already broken there, and Kurtha Sedd shattered the leg in two. He brought the crozius down again, in a succession of blows, this time on the enemy’s arms. The Ultramarine cursed him.
The Unburdened Page 9
