The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  The slope levelled off. The terrain was flat for several hundred metres, then began a descent as gradual as the ascent had been. They had been moving, Khi’dem realised, over a low plateau, its features rounded by erosion and accumulated vegetation. They had descended, he judged, about two-thirds of the way back towards the jungle floor when Atticus spoke on the open vox-channel. ‘Mistress Erephren says we are very close,’ he said.

  And Ptero paused, head cocked, and said, ‘We are being hunted.’

  Galba could see the sky again. He could also hear the pound of surf. They were less than a kilometre from the coast. The trees ahead were dead. Their branches tangled with each other, creating a web of talons. Light filtered down from above, broken into harsh fragments, like stained glass in a cathedral of predation. The trunks were more spread out here, and there was no underbrush. The ground was covered in desiccated vegetable matter, so brittle it turned to dust under the tread of the legionaries. But then, about fifty metres ahead, there was a cluster of trees that had grown together so closely, they formed a wall. They were dead, too. They were the skeletons of giants, pressing in against each other to hide the secret that had killed them.

  Erephren had been walking faster during the last few minutes. Her face was etched by canyons of exhaustion. Her skin, already a bleached, unhealthy pale, had turned the grey of crumbling bones. But she moved as if hauled forward by a terrible gravitational force. When Galba spoke to her, her answers were brief, distracted. It seemed to him that her consciousness had already reached their destination, and now her body was hurrying to catch up.

  There was a strip of open ground just before the tree cluster. Atticus ordered a stop at its border. Galba had to restrain Erephren from charging across.

  ‘It’s there,’ she gasped, pointing and reaching. The empty orbs of her eyes were fixed on the trees. ‘I have to be there.’

  ‘You will,’ said Atticus. ‘Once I know what those trees conceal.’ He turned to Camnus, the Techmarine. ‘Auspex?’

  ‘Nothing organic, brother-captain. Nothing sensible, either.’

  Then Galba was hearing from Ptero. ‘Sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘We have an attack approaching from the rear lines. Multiple large contacts, moving to surround.’

  ‘Confirmed!’ said Camnus. ‘Closing in from downslope as well.’

  Atticus cursed. ‘Darras, take those trees down. The rest of us, testudo formation.’ He pointed at Erephren. ‘You will be in the centre, and you will find the strength to resist the call, or you will be of no use to this Legion.’ He stood in front of her as he spoke, between her and her goal. Galba knew that Erephren could see neither Atticus nor the trees, but she reacted as if she could. Her near-madness diminished, the drive forwards breaking like surf against the immovable thing of war before her.

  ‘So ordered,’ she responded.

  Darras charged forwards with a demolitions team. While they set explosive charges, the other squads came together in a tight box. They were shoulder to shoulder, guns facing out on all sides. There was no space between them. They were a mass of ceramite, a moving fortress, every bolter a turret to cut down any foe that dared approach. There was a moment of tension, brief but real, over the role of the Salamanders. Khi’dem made no request of Atticus. Even so, with a curt nod, the captain of the Iron Hands indicated they should join the formation. The Raven Guard preferred speed and flexibility, and remained a group apart, moving in parallel with the main force.

  In the few seconds that had passed since the warning had been given, the approaching enemy had come close enough to be heard. Snarls echoed in the green darkness. Branches snapped before the passage of heavy bodies. The formation began its advance across the open area to the cluster.

  ‘Darras,’ Atticus said. ‘Status?’

  ‘At your command.’

  ‘Do it.’

  A series of explosions blew apart the bases of the trunks. The trees wavered, then, with deafening cracks, pulled away from each other’s embrace and fell. They came down like the hatches of an immense drop pod. From his position on the right flank, Galba watched their descent, not worried that they would fall on the formation. Darras was a master of the physics of demolition. The ground shuddered with the impact of the huge trunks on either side of the legionaries.

  The trees had concealed a column of black stone. The colour was deep as obsidian, but there was no sheen, no reflection. It seemed to absorb light, spreading a halo of shadows. It was twisted, curving away from the vertical as it reared up like a striking serpent. Its peak was split into three hook shapes, like an open talon. Its surface was cracked and lined, and it seemed to Galba that there was a pattern there to see. But his gaze kept slipping away. He could not focus on a single spot on the column. At first glance, he had assumed the structure was artificial, but there was also a suggestion of flow to the rock, as if it had erupted molten from the earth and cooled into this shape. His gut told him that somehow both possibilities were wrong and correct.

  The Iron Hands were only a few metres from the column when the hunters arrived. They emerged from the jungle on all sides. They hesitated for a moment, sniffing the air and staring at their prey, choosing the angle of their attack.

  ‘Brother Ptero,’ Galba voxed, ‘I hope you don’t object to the biology of these beasts.’

  ‘No,’ Ptero replied. ‘Those are flesh-eaters. Without a doubt.’

  The Iron Hands battle the monsters of Pythos

  They were bipedal saurians, perhaps eight metres tall. For creatures that size, their build was surprisingly lithe. Their forearms were long, and ended in five-fingered hands whose thumbs were blade-shaped claws the size of chainswords. Their necks were long and sinuous, accounting for almost a third of their height. Their jaws, filled with gladius-sized teeth, hung open as they panted. They looked like they were smiling.

  Galba counted twenty that were visible. He could hear more in the jungle behind the front lines. The individual merged into a single collective growl that resonated in Galba’s chest. It was a carnivorous song, a choir of animal hate and eagerness. The saurians began to advance.

  ‘Fire,’ Atticus said. His rasp over the vox was just as predatory.

  For the first few seconds, the transhuman hunters controlled the field. Their weapons tore the leading saurians apart, blasting heads, severing limbs and necks, shooting torsos to pieces. Then, with lethal agility, the reptiles retaliated. They could leap. The second line exploded from the tree cover, vaulting over the twitching carcasses of their fallen. Galba’s shots were suddenly too low as a creature soared two metres above the ground, coming straight for him. It landed just in front of him, smashing into the ground with such force that the tremor almost knocked him from his feet.

  The beast slashed at him with thumb-blades. He parried with his bolter. The saurian arched its neck over his defences and clamped its jaws over his head. He heard teeth shatter against ceramite, but he also felt others dig into his gorget, stabbing for his throat. He fired blind. The impact from the shells tore the monster away, knocking it back a step. Roaring pain and rage, its ribs visible through the holes in its torso, it lunged at him straight on. He crouched, firing up through the saurian’s jaws, and blew out the top of its skull.

  As he straightened, a glancing blow to his left made him stumble. Another reptile had landed full on the brother at his side. The beast was crushing the legionary, tonnes of bone and flesh smashing his armour open like an eggshell. Galba stitched fire up the beast’s flank and through its neck. Its frenzy refused to let it die. Before it fell, it raked its claws through the body of its victim, ripping him open.

  Other Iron Hands were slaughtered by the saurians, and the formation contracted, an ever-tighter fist. The warriors adjusted their fire. No longer taken by surprise by the agile leaping of the monsters, they killed more of them at a distance. Yet the saurians kept coming. The blood in the air was calling the
hunting packs, and the numbers were growing.

  The formation reached the column. ‘Mistress Erephren,’ Atticus said. ‘Do what you must. Brothers, conserve your ammunition. Our journey is only half done.’

  Galba switched to his chainsword. The battle turned into a melee. The saurians crowded in, fighting and clawing at each other for a chance at the prey. The Iron Hands were surrounded by a wall of hide and fangs and claws. Galba’s chainsword whined, the blade biting through muscle and bone with every swing. It was impossible to miss, but the attacks were almost as hard to avoid. The blows rained down with massive animal fury.

  The column was at his back now. He was no psyker, but he felt something emanating from the stone and seeping into his consciousness. It was vibration, it was heat, it was insinuation. For a moment, he thought he heard laughter, but then a drooling maw was filling his sight, and there was only roaring in his ears, and he answered with his own roars of war and of blade.

  Over the vox came Erephren’s gasp. Both hands on his chainsword, reptilian blood cascading over him, Galba kept his gaze forward, surviving second by second. But he knew that the astropath had touched the column. He felt her shock as a jagged cut in the uncanny presence of the stone. He heard grunts of surprise over the vox, and knew that the moment had resonated over the entire formation.

  ‘Mistress Erephren?’ Atticus said, the strain of combat coming through even his mechanical tones.

  ‘Yes, captain.’ Erephren’s strain was different in kind and degree. Galba was astonished that she could speak at all. Her voice was brittle as ancient paper, faint as the shadow of hope, its mere existence an act of extraordinary will. ‘We can go,’ she croaked. ‘We must go.’

  ‘Bolters,’ Atticus ordered. ‘Fire at will.’

  Galba brought the chainsword down in a lethal arc, gutting the saurian before him. He mag-locked the chainsword to his side and pulled up his bolter in a single fluid motion. He pulled the trigger at the same moment as his battle-brothers. The blast of point-blank mass-reactive shells hit the saurians like an artillery barrage. The animals screamed, the sound high and gurgling, and cut short. Carcasses blown wide open, they were propelled backwards into their oncoming kin.

  ‘Punch through,’ said Atticus.

  The formation turned into a wedge. With the captain at the front, the Iron Hands and Salamanders broke the line of predators, a blunt arrowhead tearing through the barrier of raging flesh. The Raven Guard had been harrying the rear of the saurian packs, undermining their siege of the larger formation. Now they concentrated their attacks on the reptiles attacking from upslope. The saurians were caught between the two groups of legionaries, and the attack faltered. The wedge picked up speed. The weapons fire was continuous, and at last the numbers of saurians began to drop. No more packs were joining the hunt, and the survivors began to hang back.

  By the time the legionaries reached the top of the plateau, the reptiles had given up the pursuit. They contented themselves with the corpses that surrounded the column. Galba could hear them snarl and squabble over the spoils. He knew there were many of their own kind for the reptiles to feast upon. He tried not to think about the other bodies left behind. But then he heard Vektus’s low, steady cursing. The Apothecary was two men up from Galba’s position.

  ‘Not a one,’ Vektus was saying. ‘Not a solitary one recovered.’ He was furious.

  Galba winced. More losses the Iron Hands could not afford. More gene-seed gone forever, and so the future of the Legion impoverished by just that much. More brothers denied the most basic dignity in death.

  And now he could not stop thinking about what was being devoured in the shadow of the column.

  Four

  Foothold

  Nothing to fear

  Synaesthesia

  The base was established at the landing site. It could only be approached by land from the east, but Atticus still ordered walls constructed along the entire perimeter of the promontory’s level peak. Modular fortifications and housing were brought down by lighter from the Veritas Ferrum, along with the construction teams of Legion serfs. Reinforcements came too. By nightfall, a fortress had risen on Pythos. It was an iron riposte to the planet’s savagery. If the jungle had tried to scour the Iron Hands from Pythos’s surface, it had failed. They would be here for as long as they chose to be.

  Erephren was aware of the stronghold coming into being around her. Though she could not see it, she felt its weight. She was responsible for the coming of the walls, the command post, the dormitorium, the supply depot and more. The base was, in no small measure, her creation. It was her quest that had driven the legionaries through the jungle, and that had exacted a heavy toll. It was her decision to have the base constructed here, rather than at the site of the column, and she was grateful to have been able to make that choice.

  ‘Are you certain?’ Atticus had asked her when they had returned to the landing site. ‘We will take the land around the column, if you need that level of proximity.’

  ‘Captain,’ she had replied, ‘that terrain is indefensible.’ She was still horrified by the thought of the lives necessary to seize and hold that low-lying section of the jungle. She was terrified by the prospect of remaining that close to the column.

  ‘There is no terrain that cannot be taken,’ Atticus had said. ‘If that is what is required, that is what we shall do.’

  ‘No, the initial contact was enough, captain. This degree of proximity will suffice. I can do what must be done from here.’

  Inside the command block, there was a small, windowless room, barely large enough for her astropath’s throne. Here she sat, and as the construction carried on outside, she opened her mind’s eye to the column, a few thousand metres in the distance.

  She had not told Atticus what she had experienced when she touched the column. In that instant, the warp had unfolded before her like a sudden blossom. Revelation upon revelation had poured into her consciousness, vistas of madness and immensities of the impossible cascading over each other. Just before she had pulled away, she had caught a glimpse of things just over the horizon of her knowledge. A palace, a fortress, a maze and a garden. The impressions were ludicrous, she knew. They were merely her interpretation of formlessness, her mind’s need for patterns imposing them where none existed, like seeing shapes in the clouds. That was all they were. They could be nothing else. Yet her terror at the prospect of their unveiling had jolted her hand away from the column.

  She did not like to think about what she had witnessed, but she had no choice. It was the singularity nestled at the centre of her mind, and all her thoughts now circled it. She could not escape its pull, but she feared the annihilation of her self if she gave in to its spiralling fascination. That fear, she hoped, along with the physical distance, would give her the strength she needed to read the unfolding of the warp without disappearing into it. And read it she must, because she had caught a glimpse of something else in those moments of contact.

  She had seen a fleet.

  Night fell on Pythos, and was its own sort of predator. The cloud cover was thick, not to be pierced by star or moon, and so the darkness was complete. It was a smothering obscurity. Jerune Kanshell found it hard to breathe. The too-rich scents of the jungle, carried on a humidity he could almost touch, wrapped themselves around his head and squeezed. It took a real effort not to gasp. If he began that futile struggle for cleaner air, he would not be able to stop. He had already seen several of the other serfs who had come down with him succumbing to hitching, desperate gulps. They found no relief, and he could see panic growing in their eyes. So he kept his breathing steady.

  The dark had other weapons, too. The sounds of the jungle seemed to grow louder. Kanshell had not been able to see more than a few metres into the trees when he had arrived in the daylight hours. The walls had been completed before twilight. His duties did not take him to the ramparts, so he no longer saw anythi
ng of the jungle, and had not for several hours. But when the last of the light in the sky had faded, the calls and cries of the land had grown in intensity and frequency. He was sure of it. He listened with dread as the overlapping snarls of perpetual war had taken on an awful kinship to a choir. Pythos was singing, and its song was murder.

  The serf dormitorium was a large, rectangular structure near the northern wall. His construction shift done, he walked across the compound, his shadow a jagged, angular thing in the harsh arc lighting. He slowed as he approached the doorway. Agnes Tanaura was sitting on the ground beside it. She was staring up into the void of the sky. There was nothing beatific in her face tonight. She seemed worried.

  She looked down and saw him. She must have noticed his reluctant pace, because she said, ‘I’m not going to preach to you tonight, Jerune. Not here.’

  ‘Worried you’ll be caught?’ He was not in a teasing mood. But the weight of the night was oppressive, the cries of the jungle a snapping of jaws against his psyche. Taunting Tanaura was nothing more than bravado.

  ‘No,’ she answered, not rising to his bait. Either she saw through it, or she did not care. ‘I need all my faith for myself tonight,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She was genuinely ashamed.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said, feeling the flush of his own shame. ‘Be strong,’ he said, not sure why he did so, but answering a need for solidarity. Confused, nervous, he avoided looking at her as he entered the barracks. The interior was a single open space filled with rows of bunks stacked five high. Kanshell made his way between them, following the dim lumen-strips on the floor to his billet towards the rear. Most of the others were occupied. The dormitorium was quiet, and the silence made his skin crawl. There was no snoring. Every serf he passed was lying still, fully awake. The breathing he heard was shallow, hesitant. He was surrounded by people who were watchful, waiting, straining to hear. The effort was contagious. When he climbed a ladder to his top bunk and lay down, he too began to listen.