The first transgression is one of bodily weakness: I cannot sleep. I writhe in my bunk, feeling the sheets twist around me like fetters. It is too hot. The air is too still, too moist.
I open my eyes and push myself up. My vest is damp and clammy. In the darkness of my cell I see visions of another world. I see the vistas described to me by Morbach. I see a horizon of boiling blood, and brass-coloured plates of stone coating a core of angry magma. I see the sky screaming and men dying, hundreds at a time.
‘Lumen,’ I say, and the narrow chamber flickers into light.
I swing down from my bunk. I stumble to the wall-mounted ewer and splash water on my face. I dress, donning jodhpurs, a stiff tunic, boots and my cloak. I take my pistol. I do not take my armour – that would take an age to assemble, and I already feel time is pressing down on me.
I glance at the chrono above my bunk. It tells me that in four hours Morbach will be dead. As I watch the runes count down, I make the decision to disobey Coteaz for the second time.
The corridors outside are deserted and echoing. It is the deep of night, and the fortress interior is like a city of stacked tombs. I hurry along, feeling furtive and hunted. I have no need to feel this: I am an inquisitor with full licence to roam where I will.
But I cannot fool myself. I am doing this because a compulsion has been awakened in me. I am indulging that most base and trivial of sins: curiosity.
I reach Cell 7897. Morbach is lying where I left him, tangled and supine on the floor. I close the door behind me and crouch over him. His smell assails me again; it has got worse with time and confinement.
I withdraw a vial of combination adrenaline and locquazine from the casket array at my belt and load it into a syringe. I push the needle into Morbach’s withered arm, depress the plunger and wait for the results.
He awakens moments later, disorientated and shivering. I stay close, looming over him. I want him to be as scared of me as he is of his dreams.
‘Finish what you were saying,’ I order.
I see the confusion in his addled face, but he will not resist for long. The chem-mix already fizzing in his bloodstream will bring him to lucidity quickly. If he talked before, he will do so again.
‘Quickly,’ I say, feeding the word with a resonant threat-harmonic. ‘Speak quickly.’
He stares at me. He cannot tell where he is. Only when he starts speaking do I see that he is back on Voidsoul again. I doubt that he will ever truly leave.
‘Up on the ridge,’ he rasps. ‘They were coming up after us.’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Keep talking.’
And the words spill out.
‘Dying, all of us dying. Fired my lasgun, aiming at something in the sea of teeth and horns. Don’t think I hit anything. Could we even hurt them? Don’t know. Didn’t see one fall. It had all been a mistake, a hellish mistake.’
His eyes swivel, as if scanning for targets. I watch him carefully. If he attacks me again, I will be prepared.
‘Saw one come for me. It bounded up the slope, bodies still in its claws. It saw me. It pounced. I could do nothing. Transfixed. It moved like men do in dreams – flickering, shifting, jerking. That was it. I was dead.’
Despite myself, I smile.
‘You were not dead,’ I say. ‘What happened?’
‘Don’t know,’ he says.
Then he smiles too. This time it is not wry; it is wistful. His face is transformed by it. He might almost pass for human again.
‘Don’t know what they were,’ he says. ‘One got me, grabbing my shoulder. Pain was terrible. Hurled away, right through the air as if I weighed nothing. Landed hard, nearly blacking out. Remember blood down the inside of my helm visor. Armour torn open.’
His smile lingers.
‘It had thrown me clear,’ he says.
‘What had?’
Morbach looks at me, his eyes drawing into focus.
‘One of the beasts,’ he says.
‘Beasts?’
‘In the armour of men. Massive, grey, howling. They were unstoppable. Brutal as the creatures that swarmed around us. They charged through the blood and smoke as if born to it. The monsters screamed back at them, but the beasts did not hesitate. The beasts could hurt them. They did hurt them. They made them yowl.’
He chuckles at the memory.
‘What were they?’ I ask again, pressing him. I remember the talon. I remember old myths, rumours, legends. I begin to wonder.
For a moment Morbach does not answer. He is lost in some reverie, a rare recollection of defiance amid a bloodsoaked swathe of shudder-cold memories.
‘Saw one of them clearly,’ he says, musingly. ‘The one who threw me? Maybe. Stood straighter than the others, like a man, but far greater. He carried an axe that glowed with blue fire. His beard was as grey as ash, long hair matted. He looked at me, just for a second. Eyes were mournful. Never seen a face so grim. So noble.’
Morbach’s smile fades.
‘Then he was gone, stalking off, his old cloak rippling in the wind.’ He looks down at his hands. They are still trembling. ‘Those of us still alive, a pitiful tally, we boarded the few landers that still remained. Remember clambering into the crew bay. My shoulder was agonising and inflamed, but I didn’t care. We got out. Limped back home. The rest you know.’
I am fascinated. Coteaz was wrong: this is something new. None of the others have given coherent accounts of what happened on Voidsoul. I see the conviction of truth in Morbach’s eyes, and wonder what else we can learn from him.
I struggle to contain my excitement. We have so few weapons against the daemonic. Since the ravaging of the Gate we are hard pressed. If allies exist, capable of cutting down the neverborn on their own cursed worlds, then we must learn more of them.
I get up.
‘Try to remember everything,’ I say. ‘Every detail: any symbols on their armour, any words they spoke. This is important. Your soul may yet be saved. I will return soon. While I am gone, try to remember.’
He looks at me strangely, confidently.
‘Do not fear for my soul,’ he says.
I slip out of the cell, taking care to lock the door as I leave. The space outside is empty and hung with shadows. I hasten down the corridor towards the stairway. I reach the spiral shaft and pick up the pace, taking the steps two at a time. I ascend one level, then another. As I climb, I activate the comms-stud at my collar.
‘A message for the Lord Inquisitor,’ I say, hurrying.
A servitor replies.
‘State nature of message.’
I curse. Coteaz is always busy, but time is short and I know he will be difficult to persuade.
‘Priority summons from Inquisitor Damietta. This will not–’
The lights blow.
Everything plummets into darkness. For a moment I am lost in shock. Then I regret the fact I do not have my armour-helm. I have no dark-vision and little protection. I draw my pistol and crouch low, listening.
I try to re-establish a comm-link, and get nothing but static. From far below I hear muffled bangs, like krak grenades going off.
My heart starts to race. I click the safety off and begin to move, creeping back down the stairs. I listen carefully, trying to make sense of what is happening. I hear movements from the levels below – doors slamming, more distant crashes, the echo of bootfalls. I try to gauge numbers, positions.
Then alert klaxons begin to sound. Emergency lighting flickers on, limning the corridors in blood-red. I spit another curse – my concentration broken – and start to move again.
I reach the corridor just above the level containing Morbach’s cell. It extends away from me, occluded despite the floor-level glow. Rows of locked doors line each side, intact and monolithic. The stairwell down is at the far end, a hundred metres distant. I barely make out its open aperture;
just a black void amid the shadows.
I pad down the corridor. No noise emerges from any of the cells as I pass by; their inmates have barely enough life left in them to breathe, and if they have heard the disturbances then they will do nothing more than huddle against the far walls, eyes open and breath shallow.
I hear more noises from below – something like coarse snuffling, or maybe growling, breathy and hot. The hairs on the back of my arms rise. I smell cordite. I smell… other things; musty, bestial things.
I reach the spiral stairwell and edge downwards, keeping my pistol pointing ahead of me two-handed, going silently. My heart is thumping.
I reach the base. I am in a circular antechamber at the head of the cell corridor, less than ten metres in diameter. It is darker here, almost pitch black – something has happened to the emergency lumens. I can just make out the outline of the blast doors I need to pass through. They have been broken open and hang at angles from the frame. They are thick, those doors. Their edges are jagged, as if something has bitten into them.
I hesitate. For some reason, my nerves betray me. This shames me – I have seen combat on a dozen worlds against many foul creatures – but still I feel the cold touch of fear snaking down my spine.
It is then that I realise that I am not alone.
I turn, slowly, and see two points of light in the dark. They stare back at me, liquid and luminous. A vice of horror seizes my stomach.
I fire once, twice. My aim is not good – I am panicked. Two shells explode out and detonate in flashes of white against the far side of the chamber. In those two freeze-frames, stark and jagged with jolting movement, I glimpse fragmentary aspects of what lurks there.
I see something huge, far bigger than me. I see armour pieces glinting, curved and lined with brass. I see a shaggy jowl, dripping with loops of saliva. I see yellow teeth pared back in a snarl, and ragged flails of pelts and leather. I see golden eyes, rimmed black and sunk into a bestial, hirsute face. I feel the rush of air as it leaps across me, veering effortlessly through my shots and bounding clear. Its stink overwhelms me, pungent and musky, before it is gone.
I shrink back, my arms shaking. It broke through the blast doors, shouldering the remains aside and crashing free.
Swallowing my fear down, I go after it. I clamber through the door-wreckage and out into the corridor beyond.
The space is silent. The aroma remains, cloying and potent, but I see no sign of its owner.
I edge forwards, sweeping the pistol muzzle gingerly. My heartbeat thuds heavily in my ears.
I reach Cell 7897. I already know what I will find. The doors are broken. The interior is deserted. No blood, no sign of struggle. Morbach is gone.
I look at the shattered doorway. It has been built to withstand immense impacts, but it has been ripped apart. I can see gouge marks on the steel, deep like stonemason’s grooves. I run my finger lightly along those marks. They come in fours, running parallel.
I remember Morbach’s last strange, confident look.
Do not fear for my soul.
I lower my weapon.
From deep down, buried in the heart of the fortress’s dungeons, I hear more noises – echoing, damp growls, hammer-blows, sporadic gunfire.
I make no move. I would not be fast enough. They have got what they came for. They are leaving now.
When Coteaz arrives I am still standing there, staring at the floor of Morbach’s cell. He is in full armour, as imposing as ever. The electric nimbus of his thunder hammer lights up the dark places, glossing them with a blush of gold.
He is furious. His face is tight with it. This is his place, ringed by hexagrammatic wards and layer upon layer of sentry walls. He had thought it inviolate. Even now, even after all that has taken place on Cadia, he still trusted in stone and metal to keep the bad dreams out.
‘What did you see?’ he demands.
I feel no fear of him this time. I am still unsettled by what I witnessed; beside that, Coteaz’s fury feels little more than mortal petulance.
‘I do not know,’ I say, truthfully.
He clenches a fist in frustration.
‘How can this be?’ he hisses, pacing around the cell.
He is as impatient as he is angry. He has nothing to fight. He has been humiliated, but he has no target to take his choler out on.
He turns to me again. He looks suspicious. I return his gaze equably.
‘All of those retrieved from Voidsoul,’ he says. ‘All of them. Gone. Their cells empty, no trace remaining. None of the others touched. How did they do it? Our grid has not been compromised.’
I have no answers. All I can see is the animal face in the dark – something like human, but so changed. I shudder to recall it.
As I think of something to say, we both freeze. A new noise has broken out, far away, beyond the perimeter of the fortress walls, audible even over the drone of the klaxons.
I listen, and it makes my blood run colder. Even Coteaz is stilled. I see his gauntlets grip the hammer-shaft more tightly.
They are howling out there. Out on the dark surface of the fortress-moon, under the hard, unmediated light of the stars, they are howling.
Coteaz scowls to hear it. The sound smacks of deviancy. If he could destroy those beasts, he would. I am sure he has already dispatched kill-teams to hunt them down, each one moving fast and armed to the teeth with forbidden weapons. I am equally sure that none of them will find anything but echoes.
I release the capsule at my belt and the talon falls into my palm. I look at it again, dull in the light of Coteaz’s metallic nimbus.
It is long, gnarled, old-looking. An animal’s, perhaps. Or maybe a man’s, his body changed by ancient arts of gene-sorcery, then tempered in the fires of daemon worlds. That is possible too.
I remember what Morbach said.
Stood straighter than the others, like a man, but far greater. He carried an axe that glowed with blue fire. His beard was as grey as ash, long hair matted. He looked at me, just for a second. Eyes were mournful. Never seen a face so grim. So noble.
‘So what were they?’ demands Coteaz.
I shake my head.
‘I do not think we will ever know,’ I say.
That is almost certainly not true. Archives will be scoured, leads hunted down. Coteaz is thorough. In time, he will at least have a name to pin on the creatures that broke into his interrogation chambers and took his subjects from him.
But I care little for that. As I listen to the last of the howls dying out and fading into silence, a new thought occurs to me.
They came for the ones who had witnessed them. They came for those who knew of their existence and had evidence that such half-breed things walked among men. No citadel of the Inquisition could keep them out.
I clutch the talon in my palm. I feel it dig into my softer flesh.
I have been told too much. I know too much. The after-echoes of the howls still linger, eerie and ephemeral.
Do not fear for my soul.
I let my curiosity get the better of me. I followed leads I should not have followed. I thought I was doing the hunting; perhaps that was a mistake.
They were unstoppable.
They came for him. They came for all of them.
And so I wonder then, remembering Morbach’s unexpected confidence, surrounded by claw-marks and emptiness, when they will come for me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Wraight is the author of the Space Wolves novels Battle of the Fang and Blood of Asaheim. He has also written the Space Marine Battles novel Wrath of Iron, along with Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor and Luthor Huss in the Warhammer universe. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
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Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland
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