Scourge The Heretic

by Sandy Mitchell

  ‘Inquisitor!’ Impelled by spiritual anguish, he was unable to keep the words to himself. ‘It’s unhallowed!’ He glanced back into the passenger compartment, but the inquisitor was unheeding, lost in a psychic trance as he gathered his power.

  Elyra glanced briefly in his direction, before returning her attention to their patron. ‘It’s all right,’ she said confidently. ‘He knows what to do.’

  Vex had no time to doubt or dispute her words. The wounded shuttle’s machine-spirit was nagging for his attention, and he soothed it as best he could, his eyes once again on the monstrous metal intruder looming ever larger in the viewport. Then, abruptly, it had gone, sheering off to starboard, flung aside by some preternaturally strong crosswind as casually as a twig.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ the gunner demanded, looking up from her console with venom in her eyes. ‘I had them cold!’

  The pilot didn’t answer for a moment, absorbed in the task of regaining control. The wind shear had come out of nowhere, impossibly fast, impossibly strong. Not that he’d give the frigid bitch behind him the satisfaction of admitting he’d lost control even for a moment. ‘I had to evade,’ he replied blandly. ‘They were trying to ram us.’

  ‘Sure they were.’

  Nettled by her obvious scepticism, he shrugged, determined not to show his irritation. ‘They’re going down, aren’t they?’ he pointed out. ‘What more do you want?’

  ‘I like to make sure,’ the gunner said, raising her voice over a soft beeping sound that had begun to resonate through the vox speaker.

  ‘You’ll just have to be sure enough,’ the pilot said, hiding his relief at the sudden interruption. ‘That’s the recall signal.’ Banking slowly to starboard, he began to descend towards the ruins of the fortress.

  Forest of Sorrows, Sepheris Secundus

  088.993.M41

  ‘Almost there,’ Kyrlock said reassuringly, risking a glance back to see if his friend was still in sight. To his vague surprise he was, floundering through the snow as if he was trying to wade in it instead of lifting his feet properly, the flapping outline of his cape blurring his silhouette into the surrounding maelstrom of flakes. Typical city boy. Game, though, Kyrlock had to give him that. Most tenderfeet he’d met would have collapsed by now, including the rest of their platoon. He pointed ahead, through the treeline, to the open space beyond. ‘Just the other side of the clearing.’

  ‘You’ve been saying “almost there” for the last five minutes,’ Drake grumbled, staggering closer. Kyrlock raised the amplivisor and swept the forest behind him, taking advantage of the brief pause to check for signs of pursuit, although every instinct he possessed was impelling him to keep going until they could reach the safety of the needlespine thicket; if he could find it at all in this freezing white-out, if it was even there to find. At least he could see no sign of movement behind Danuld other than the endlessly dancing snowflakes, so they still had a bit of time.

  Wait. Something flickered in the trees, an eerie, unnatural light, like the faint phosphorescence around a putrefying corpse. It was moving, growing brighter, and he turned to run again. Let Danuld keep up if he could. Friendship was one thing, but this was survival, pure and simple.

  Before he could take a step beyond the treeline, however, a new sound made him hesitate, a rising howl that tore through the bellowing wind like a knife through paper. Caught between two opposing fears, he vacillated, unable to decide where to run to, and Drake caught up with him a moment later, grabbing his arm.

  ‘Come on,’ he said urgently. ‘What are you waiting for? They’re right behind me!’

  ‘Listen!’ Kyrlock said, finally identifying the sound. Desperate panic rose within him, and he fought it down, trying to think of another plan in a hurry. The movement in the depths of the forest was more noticeable now, a few more unholy lights flickering in the darkness between the trunks, and, worse, solid blocks of shadow that moved with evident purpose. ‘They’re coming back!’ He glanced skywards, expecting to see the baleful silhouette of the alien drop-ship descending, cursing himself for a fool for leading them both into a trap.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Drake said, glancing up too. ‘The engine note’s different.’ He pointed suddenly. ‘Look!’

  ‘Holy Throne!’ Kyrlock said. A blazing meteor was plummeting from the sky, battering through the blockading elements, a plume of smoke and flame trailing forlornly in its wake. He snapped the amplivisor to his eyes, resolving the image of a shuttle like some of the ones he’d seen landing and departing at the ravaged citadel somewhere beyond the treeline. ‘It’s one of ours.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ Drake said. ‘If the crash doesn’t get them, the witches probably will.’

  Reminded of the inexorably advancing threat behind them, Kyrlock nodded, and lowered the visor. ‘Let’s go, then. Maybe we can slip away in the confusion when it hits.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ Drake said, his battered military pride apparently picking one hell of a time to take one dent too many. ‘Whoever they are, they’re Imperial, maybe Guard. We can’t just run out on them without even trying to help.’

  ‘I didn’t see you getting all noble when Kreel and the boys were having their heads handed to them back there,’ Kyrlock riposted.

  Drake shrugged. ‘That wasn’t a fight, it was a massacre. No point us getting killed too, without even a chance to hit back. This time, maybe we can. This time we might make a difference.’

  ‘And maybe we won’t.’ Kyrlock hesitated, on the verge of making a run for it across the clearing, and took a final glance at the descending shuttle. It was too late anyway, he thought, with a sudden sense of fatalistic resignation. If he tried it now, he’d just get killed by the impact. He looked at Danuld again, the other Guardsman’s pox-pitted face angry and tense, and sighed. If he was going to die in the next few minutes, there was no point in throwing away their friendship first. Biting back the angry words that had almost fought their way past his tongue, he nodded instead. ‘But if we don’t try, we’ll never know.’ And at least, he thought, I won’t die alone.

  Drake nodded too, solemnly. ‘You’re a good man, Vos,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re a rutwitted warp magnet, but a good mate anyway,’ Kyrlock conceded, venting his feelings as best he could under the veneer of masculine banter. If Drake felt moved to respond in kind, he never heard it. The howling of the doomed shuttle drowned out everything, the orange glow of its blazing engines bringing a second, brighter sunrise to the clearing. Kyrlock flung himself to the ground, burrowing as deeply as he could into the snow, behind the cover of the largest tree he could see in their immediate vicinity. A second later, Drake followed suit.

  The shuttle hit the ground in a cloud of steam, the shriek of rending metal audible even over the screaming of its damaged engines and the relentless, battering wind. It bounced, and then hit again, gouging a long trench deep into the soil and loam, down into the permafrost beneath, throwing up a bow wave of frozen detritus, which descended on the two cowering Guardsmen like an avalanche, half burying them in the debris of its passing.

  Part of the tail sheared off with the second impact, pinwheeling away to smash a twenty metre tree to kindling and fill the air with wooden shrapnel, while a dozen hull and wing plates ripped free of their rivets and embedded themselves in ground and tree trunk alike. Maybe a few of the approaching heretics too, Kyrlock hoped, not daring to raise his head to look. Gouts of burning fuel erupted from ruptured piping, leaving pools of blazing incontinence behind as the wreck ricocheted across the violated glade, torching stands of scrub and woodland as it went.

  Fanned by the relentless wind, the fires grew quickly, and Kyrlock breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the Emperor that he hadn’t tried to make a run for it before the shuttle hit after all. Even if, by some miracle, he’d managed to make it across the clearing in time, he’d almost certainly have been immolated by the forest fire within moments. He’d seen such things before, and knew with a stone
cold certainty that he’d never have been able to outrun it.

  ‘Throne on Earth,’ Drake said, raising his head cautiously. ‘That’s something you don’t see every day.’

  ‘Everyone out! Now!’ Horst staggered to his feet, vaguely surprised to find that he still alive. Gripping his bolt pistol tightly in his right hand, he glanced around the shattered passenger compartment, and gestured towards the exit hatch with his left. They’d been lucky, there was no doubt about that. Most of the fuselage had remained in one piece, although snowflakes and smoke were drifting in through several ragged holes in the metal, and the crash webbing attached to their seats had taken the brunt of the impact, preserving everyone from serious injury. The floor was canted at an odd angle, though, and he found himself stumbling up a slope towards the door he’d indicated.

  ‘Who died and left you in charge?’ Keira asked, leaping over the intervening seats in one lithe and sinuous motion. Horst glanced at the inquisitor, worried that he might have overstepped his authority. He’d become so used to functioning as the group’s leader in the months they’d been operating independently that he’d assumed the role instinctively, finding the habit of command hard to shake now that their patron was among them once again. The inquisitor, however, was looking at him with evident approval, leaning on Elyra for support as he moved out into the narrow aisle between the seats. The effort of unleashing the psychokinetic bolt, which had deflected the attacking drop-ship, had evidently been greatly debilitating, but he straightened almost at once, to the woman’s ill-concealed disappointment.

  ‘A wise suggestion,’ he said mildly.

  Keira tugged at the emergency release handle, and the hatch blew out, disappearing in a flurry of orange tinted snow that looked like floating embers. Her synsuit did its best to mimic the dancing flames outside, turning her into the image of a vengeful phoenix. ‘No visible hostiles,’ she called, sounding almost disappointed at the fact, before somersaulting through the gap and disappearing.

  ‘After you, boss,’ Horst said, standing aside to let the pair of psykers disembark. Neither bothered to draw their sidearms, no doubt preferring to rely on their innate abilities if the young assassin turned out to be wrong.

  ‘But I can’t just leave it,’ a voice protested behind him, and Horst turned, to find Vex manhandling the pilot bodily from the cockpit. ‘I’m responsible for this vessel, and–’

  ‘You’ll be responsible for a very large hole in the ground when the fire reaches the fuel tanks,’ Vex told him briskly. ‘Out while you can.’

  ‘Damn right,’ Horst said, making for the hatch. ‘If anyone gives you grief for it later, tell them you were following a direct order from the Inquisition.’ His sense of social order assuaged at last, the pilot scrambled out with almost indecent haste, slipping on the thin film of slush already accumulating around the rim. Horst followed, slithering to the ground down the canted stump of a wing, and glanced around, orientating himself as quickly as he could.

  The shuttle would never fly again, that much was obvious, the tangled wreckage of its battered hull strewn across a wide swathe of the forest. They’d impacted in the middle of a wide clearing, and Horst suddenly found a renewed appreciation of the skill of their pilot, who was staring at the shattered corpse of his beloved machine with an expression of stunned disbelief. ‘Good landing,’ he said, clapping the man on the back, suddenly aware that he had no idea of his name.

  The pilot turned, searching his face for any sign of sarcasm, and finding only genuine relief at their survival. His name was stencilled on the breast pocket of his flight suit, which cleared up that little mystery at any rate: Barda. He shrugged, his voice flat with delayed shock. ‘I did my best, sire. Whether the guild believes that–’

  ‘Incoming,’ Keira called, from her perch on a high piece of wreckage. Horst turned, narrowing his eyes against the barrage of sleet, and tried to see movement beyond the flickering shadows cast by the spreading inferno behind them. He couldn’t make out a thing, but he trusted the girl anyway, and flicked the safety of the bolt pistol off.

  What can you see? the inquisitor sent to all of them, relaying the girl’s reply directly into the minds of the rest of his team. Barda looked at Horst curiously as his expression changed, but there was no time to explain what was happening to him. Horst felt the words in his head echoing with the timbre of Keira’s voice, blocking out almost everything else.

  Two men. An image appeared in his mind’s eye, vertiginously confusing for a moment, until he reconciled the spatial difference between where he was standing and the view from Keira’s position. Coming this way. The girl’s desire for bloodshed was a tangible thread in her relayed thoughts, a coppery taste in his mouth, and he felt a flicker of revulsion rising within him. I can take them easily.

  That won’t be necessary, the inquisitor admonished, to Horst’s quiet relief, and broke the link.

  ‘I should think not,’ Vex said, appearing through the exit hatch at last. ‘Their attire and equipment is Imperial Guard issue.’ He looked at Horst with mild curiosity. ‘Still here? I wasn’t joking about the size of the explosion you know.’

  ‘So what kept you?’ Horst snapped, nudging Barda into motion, and following the tech-priest’s rapidly retreating back. The heat of the forest fire was intense, the snow across half the glade melting into puddles and slush, beneath which his boots were beginning to churn up thick, sticky mud.

  ‘The shuttle’s machine-spirit was gravely wounded,’ Vex said, ‘and would be extinguished entirely by an explosion among the wreckage. I felt it only proper to administer the last rites before it merged with the Omnissiah.’

  ‘Very commendable,’ Horst said, managing to convey entirely the opposite meaning by his tone.

  As they approached the inquisitor, Vex permitted himself to look smug. ‘Time well spent,’ he said, ‘and not just in the spiritual sense.’ He held up the old and battered data-slate that accompanied him everywhere, then tucked it away in some recess of his robes. ‘In the process of shriving the datacore, I took copies of the sensor logs, which include some remarkably clear picts of the obscenity that attacked us.’

  ‘Something which will no doubt aid in their identification,’ the inquisitor said, nodding in approval. He directed a smile towards Barda. ‘My compliments on your exceptional skills, young man. I will commend them to your masters on our return.’

  ‘If we return,’ Elyra said, with a gesture towards the running Guardsmen in the distance. ‘There’s something after them. I can feel it.’

  ‘As can I,’ the inquisitor agreed levelly.

  ‘Well at least it’s warmer,’ Drake said, the heat of the fires striking him like a physical blow as they approached the scattered wreckage. He flinched back from it, feeling his frozen face tingling with renewed circulation.

  The blizzard scoured clearing he remembered had altered beyond all recognition, transformed into a lurid, orange tinted hell, lit by the flickering flames beyond it. The snow underfoot had become watery slush as they drew closer to the inferno, and then cloying mud, the frozen water metamorphosed by the alchemy of heat into tendrils of mist, which the fierce wind whipped away like smoke. The persistent barrage of snowflakes had changed as well, firstly into warm, driving rain, which evaporated at once from the surface of his skin, before disappearing altogether as the rising heat from the spreading forest fire sublimed them into vapour before they reached the ground.

  ‘You were right,’ Kyrlock admitted grudgingly, pointing to a group of figures trotting towards them, backlit by the flames. They were a motley collection, civilians by the look of them, and Drake began to wonder if he’d made a mistake after all. He’d been expecting soldiers, reinforcements for the one-sided battle behind them, allies against the swarm of renegade psykers hard on their heels, and the disappointment was almost physically painful.

  ‘Drop the guns, soldier boys,’ a mellifluous feminine voice urged, and the two men turned to face it.

  Drake blinked i
n surprise. A girl stood behind them, although how she’d got there the Emperor alone knew. Not a bad looker, either, if you liked skinny with all the right curves, which Drake did, and the bodyglove thing she was wearing left no doubt that she possessed them. Her hair was purple, tied back with a red bandana, which made him hesitate. That alone marked her out as an off-worlder, and he wondered for a moment if she was somehow connected to the red uniformed soldiers he’d seen guarding the citadel.

  It was the eyes in her narrow, vulpine face that really gave him pause, though. They were green, like those of a predatory animal, and held about as much compassion as one. Her posture, too, marked her out as dangerous. She stood, completely relaxed, her hands not even resting on her weapons, but poised and ready to react to anything. It wasn’t just that she clearly didn’t consider the two Guardsmen a threat; she obviously thought they couldn’t possibly be, under any circumstances.

  Slowly, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck, Drake moved to comply.

  Kyrlock laughed loudly. ‘Suppose we don’t. You think you can take them off us, girlie?’

  ‘If I take them, it’ll be off your corpses,’ the girl said, her hand dropping casually to the hilt of the sword scabbarded at her waist. An almost feral eagerness entered her expression, and Drake felt a jolt of pure terror, even stronger, if that were possible, than he’d felt when they’d confronted the mutant witch. Then he’d known he might have a chance of survival if he reacted quickly enough, but if this one decided to kill him, his life would be over, simple as that.

  ‘Big words,’ Kyrlock said, still not getting it, and Drake held his breath.

  ‘Keira.’ The grey-haired man leading the group of survivors spoke quietly, but his voice carried easily across the intervening distance. ‘You might save us all a great deal of trouble simply by showing these gentlemen your rosette.’