Hammer and Bolter Issue Eighteen

by Christian Dunn

  Typhon gritted his teeth and shook his head to rid himself of the fugue that had descended on him following the Lion’s proclamation. He knew that there was something else at work here, not just the innate command of a primarch. Typhon opened up his mind to the warp, sensing the waves of energy that were part of, yet separated from, everything in the material universe. When he had been a member of the Librarius his powers had been considerable. Mortarion’s hatred of warpcraft had finished Typhon’s exploration of his other nature when the Dusk Raiders became Death Guard, and so he had committed himself to becoming First Captain. Now, with the encouragement of darker sponsors, Typhon had once again embraced the warp-born side of his powers, learning far more about the universe and its mysterious ways than he had ever thought possible.

  It was this that had first brought him in contact with the Father, and it was his warp-self that now detected the gentle interplay of energies being directed at the surface of Perditus Ultima. It seemed the Lion was no longer impressed by the Council of Nikaea’s decision either and had allowed his Librarians to reclaim their birthright.

  With this knowledge, Typhon was able to extend a little of his will, seeking a means to block the resolve-weakening presence of the Dark Angels Librarians. Despite his personal prowess, he was up against several trained minds, and so he turned to that shadowy force that had accompanied him these past years. He asked the Father for help, and help was granted.

  With a surge of psychic energy buzzing through him, its touch like the tread of a thousand tiny insects in his mind, Typhon cast a pall of shadow over his Grave Wardens, shielding them from the assault of the Dark Angels psykers. Almost immediately they ceased their withdrawal and turned to him, expecting orders.

  ‘Fools!’ he rasped, pointing his manreaper at the retreating Iron Hands. ‘Now is not the time to step back, now is the time to attack! Slay them all.’

  In a darkened chamber in the bowels of the Invincible Reason, the Lion stood between four of his Librarians, listening to their murmuring voices. All of the psykers had donned their old ceremonial robes of blue, their faces hidden by the shadows of the cowls pulled over their heads. It was better that this was kept from the sight of the ordinary battle-brethren. Confusion and hearsay could breed superstition faster than any explanation could thwart it.

  Corswain stood to one side, his agitation audible as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, his armour creaking with each movement. The Lion ignored his seneschal’s discomfort. This way was better, cleaner. If the Death Guard and Iron Hands could be forced to parley without fighting, it would be in the best interests of the Dark Angels.

  The Lion sensed Corswain straighten and he turned his gaze upon the seneschal.

  ‘It’s not working, my liege,’ said Corswain, sounding relieved by the fact. ‘Sensors show that the Iron Hands are retreating from a renewed Death Guard assault. They are being pushed back into the main facility.’

  ‘I warned them,’ snarled the Lion. ‘None will doubt my authority.’

  ‘Shall I signal Captain Stenius, my liege?’

  ‘Yes. If the Death Guard do not comply with my wishes, Magellix station will be obliterated. Tell Stenius to launch the torpedo.’

  GILEAD’S CURSE

  Chapter 5

  Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

  By all that’s good and holy, by Sigmar’s beard and Ulric’s teeth, and by blessed Aenarion, it pains me to repeat the events and traumas that Gilead suffered at any hand, but these cursed tales are the most hellish of all to tell. Were I not on my deathbed, facing the end of my time in these environs, I would not choose to recount such stories, but I am honour-bound by the tenets and laws of the bardic guilds to impart all that I have learned and all that has been entrusted to me by those that came before, however addled their minds in the telling and however young I might have been in the hearing.

  Listen if you dare, but be aware of what you will hear and how it will affect your lives. Pass this dread mantle I must, but with a weary heart made heavy by promises pledged too easily, many years ago.

  Gilead lay too long in that place. He was bound so tight that it was impossible for him to move. He was barely able to breathe, and if he had not had his wits about him, and inhaled deeply as soon as he was aware that the skaven hordes sought to bury him beneath their combined weight, he would surely have died of asphyxiation; either at the time of his capture or shortly after his bindings were secured. There was barely an eighth of an inch movement in the bindings of his chest, so his breaths must be shallow and controlled, and no unnecessary energy must be expended before he was able to escape his captivity.

  The first time he gained consciousness, Gilead kept his eyes closed while he carried out a detailed inventory of his ailments, wounds and vulnerabilities. They were many and took some time to innumerate and assess, but the worst of them was the tight, restricting bandage of greasy cloth, sodden rope, and leather straps and thongs that held him in the tightest of grips. He could neither straighten his knees nor flex his ankles. He could not rotate his wrists, tied tightly behind him, nor push his elbows away from where they were strapped to his sides. He could not turn his head nor flex it back or forth on his neck. He could not take a deep breath to settle his mind or relax his body. He could barely breathe deeply enough to lift smells out of the air around him. He could see, if he chose to open his eyes, but, most importantly of all, he could hear. He could hear, but he could not respond.

  ‘He has come, so he has. He has come. Now he has come, for come he has, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever,’ said the skaven Rat King.

  Gilead did not need to open his eyes to know who was speaking. The rat’s voice had become impossibly high-pitched with excitement, and the words kept tripping out of his mouth, over and over, the speaker apparently caught in some spell that made him repeat the little speech, ad infinitum, as if it were some kind of unholy mantra.

  Gilead did not open his eyes. He did not respond. He continued to take shallow breaths. His mouth was dry and somewhat tacky from the noxious smells that he had inhaled underground and could not rid himself of, but he did not swallow, nor did he lick his parched lips. His mouth remained firmly, but casually closed, as if he continued in his unconscious state in some still and dreamless existence. The skaven had not killed him. Their King had been stronger and more powerful than Gilead could ever have expected; more in control of his horde than any Rat King had a right to be, and far more cunning than the average enemy creature, and yet the elf had not died at their hands. Since he was not dead yet, the skaven clearly had other plans for the elf. He knew not what they were, but he did know that there was time enough to find out, and, in the meantime, his best course of action was to rest as much as he could, regain some strength, and formulate a plan of escape.

  Gilead rolled his closed eyes back into his head, and adjusted a twinge or two with some small exertions and a little fine muscle control. The Rat King could, no doubt, detect his movements, but dormant creatures stirred too, and the skaven would surely think nothing of the elf moving a little in his sleep.

  The elf fell, voluntarily, into a restful and invigorating sleep-state, one from which he could wake at will, should the need present itself.

  Gilead woke again when the chanting stopped. He lay still for an hour or two, listening, and opened his eyes only when he knew that he was likely to remain alone for some time to come.

  Aware that the skaven could detect the smallest of movements through the vibrations carried by earth, brick and rock in their underground fastnesses, Gilead made no attempts to free himself from the confines of the ties that bound him. He did not thrash or squirm. He lay as still as he could and felt the earth floor beneath his body. He had to concentrate long and hard to feel any vibrations at all, and when he did feel something, he was able to deduce that the crowds in the great hall had dispersed and there were few or no skaven close by.

  Gilead ha
d been lying on his side, curled slightly, as his bindings pulled his knees towards his chest. He opened his eyes into the faint green light that hung in the air of the antechamber. He could see very little apart from the legs of an oddly formed piece of furniture close to his face. The Rat King had clearly taken pleasure in looking down on the elf’s face, for Gilead cast his eyes upwards to see that the tangle of wood and blades and handles, and parts of tools and weapons strapped together, formed an impressively grotesque throne, of sorts.

  The faint smell that drifted around Gilead as he flexed the muscles down the left side of his body in an attempt to roll onto his back, told him that the Rat King had left the room four or five hours previously and had not returned. There was only one scent signature in the room, so the King was clearly a lone creature, keen to maintain a private space. There could be only one reason for that.

  Gilead flexed again, breathing out as hard as his bounds would allow, and slowly rolled off his side and onto his back, trapping his hands beneath him. His feet were raised slightly off the ground and his knees tucked up. It was not the most elegant of postures, but it was a possible position of strength against the bindings when the time came.

  For the moment, Gilead allowed the back of his head to rest on the cold dank earth and began to cast his eyes around the room, since there was very little movement in his head and neck.

  The room was spartan. It had only one door to serve as both entrance and exit, so must be an antechamber to a larger space, possibly the great hall, since the few sounds that came to Gilead appeared to do so from an echoing distance.

  The room held only the chair for furniture, but was too small to be used as a throne room for the skaven to kneel and bow before their leader, besides, Gilead had already determined that the room had only one inhabitant. As his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light in the room, Gilead began to cast his gaze into the deeper recesses. He could not see into the corners beyond his head, at floor level, but he could look up into the low ceiling of dark, crusting earth above him. He followed the line of the ceiling until he was able to peer into the corners, albeit there were only three of them and they curved away rather than met the walls at regular angles. Then a dark spot caught his eye, just below the rim where the ceiling met the curving, irregular wall to his left. He cast his eye further along the wall and spotted another dark spot, and then a lighter one. He counted six anomalies along the top of the wall.

  Concentrating first on the lightest of the patches high on the wall, Gilead quickly realised that he was looking at an opening or a niche from which a small amount of light was emanating. He took two or three shallow breaths and blinked twice, taking his time to examine the area of the wall, thoroughly.

  He saw a faint spark, and thought he heard a low hum. He stopped breathing and closed his eyes for a moment so that he could concentrate on fully hearing the sound. It was a click, so slow and pitched so low as to be almost inaudible and easily mistaken for a low buzz or hum. Gilead took a breath, drawing in as much of the stale air around him as he could, and listened again while he exhaled impossibly slowly.

  There was a pattern to the clicks, a rhythm, a pace, not like a heartbeat, but more like music, like a skilled percussionist picking out a complex tune with intricate phrasing. It was beautiful, and Gilead found his mind following the pattern, trying to decipher its meaning. It must mean something.

  His eyes firmly closed, his breathing abated and only his hearing informing his consciousness, Gilead was mesmerised by the sound until he stopped counting the clicks, stopped trying to work out the pattern, and simply became absorbed by it. It filled his mind’s eye with a swarming carpet of gleaming, glossy carapaces, an oil-slick of rainbow colours refracting impossibly from the backs and wing-cases of a tidal wave of chittering insects. Suddenly, the low click separated into thousands, millions of squeaks and squeals as armoured limbs rubbed against one another and proboscises and antennae twitched and flexed.

  Then, at the apex of the crescendo, a thousand million wing-cases unfolded, releasing gossamer wings in thousands of shades of blue, yellow and green. The sound changed again as millions of pairs of wings extended into the air, moving and shifting great swathes of it and causing a deafening susurrus as if an exodus were under way.

  Gilead wondered in the moment, afraid of nothing, steeped in the pleasure of so magical an event.

  Eventually, the elf had to breathe again, and his mind returned to him, only the low hum and the greenish light, a reminder of what he had witnessed. He blinked and an image flashed against his retina. He could not see it, not from this angle low to the floor, and yet he knew that the niche from which the faint greenish light emanated held a bell jar in which was imprisoned a single, mature, winged beetle of a type that he had never seen before, and which he believed he would never see again. It was magical, talismanic and beautiful, and it was as far from home as he was, and almost as ancient.

  Gilead cast his eyes along the wall to the left of the lit niche, and concentrated hard on the first of the dark patches; if the lit patch was a niche and in that niche was the captive insect, what else might the Rat King have collected? What else could Gilead learn about his captor?

  Gilead concentrated for what, to skaven scum would have seemed like a very long time, but Gilead was a mature example of one of the longest living of species, and minutes, hours, days, even, were as nothing to him. Time was always on his side. He dilated his pupils as far as he could, until his vision became slightly blurry at the very edges, casting an aura around the niche he was focusing on, making it appear even more magical, more dreamlike. His flexed pupils grabbed all the light that they could out of the air, deep in the shadows of the niche in the wall, and he began to discern a shape there. He saw a ‘V’ of some lightweight chain or other, from which hung something so fragile it seemed to shift in some invisible, imperceptible breeze in the room, although it was only the smallest movement in the air caused by Gilead’s measured, shallow breathing. It looked like a feather... No, a lock of hair. It was a lock of the finest, brightest, lightest of hair, like the down that grew on the most precious of elf-infants’ heads.

  Gilead’s blink captured everything the elf could wish to know about the pale lock of hair, the single sweeping curl that hung by the side of a glorious face... glorious even for a human, for the curl did not belong to an infant elf, but to a beautiful human girl. An abundance of soft curls crowned a delicate, porcelain-perfect head. Suddenly, the face broke into a stunning smile of perfect pink lips and tiny teeth, plumping and rouging apple-cheeks and reaching into the palest of pale blue eyes, with devastating effect. The girl tossed her head, and the cascading curls bounced around her face. Gilead noticed a discreet circlet of fine gold wirework with pink sweet-water pearls and an abundance of pave-set diamonds. The hair did not belong to any beautiful girl, it belonged to a special girl, a girl of fine breeding and finer habits, a girl of great expectations and exemplary deportment; it belonged to a singular girl, a girl who could change the Empire forever.

  Gilead’s eyes opened at the end of the blink, and he sighed slightly. The girl, so clear in his mind, so complete, so real, was gone, and he was back in the dark, underground bolthole of the skaven scum.

  Gilead wondered whether he wanted to look into any of the other niches in the wall. He had seen such wonders in the first two, and did not want to break the spell, and yet, he needed to know, felt compelled to scrutinise the niches, not only for the sake of the Rat King, not only because he thought he’d gain a greater insight into the machinations of the creature, but for the sake of the objects themselves, so that he might experience their wonders.

  An hour passed in the moments that Gilead took to prepare himself for another bout of concentration, and for the possibility of losing himself in his mind once more.

  As Gilead looked up at the third niche, a warm, orange-red glow began to emanate from it. The glow trickled and then poured out of the wall. It appeared to turn into a stream of clear
orange liquid, and then began to steam and coalesce, and before he knew what was happening, Gilead was being drowned in a confetti of cascading leaves. They were red and yellow and a bright, sappy green. The light seemed to come from within them, flickering brightly, making the leaves seem transparent, showing the skeletons of their perfectly symmetrical veins. The leaves continued to fall, pouring from the niche as if blown through it in great gusts.

  Gilead was soon covered in the leaves, too light for him to feel them falling, but warming him in a blanket of feathery silk. When they fell close to his eyes, Gilead barely needed to breathe out to shift the trajectory of the leaves, keeping his face clear of them, although a little part of him longed to be buried forever in the subtle, comforting embrace of whatever natural force had created such a wonder.

  He continued to watch, unblinking, as more leaves were ejected from the niche, but, as they met the foetid air of the antechamber, they began to spark and dance. One by one, the leaves began to ignite in bright, smokeless flames. They changed colour to subtle ashy greys and blues, and then floated up into the curved ceiling before their lights were extinguished and they vanished into the air, leaving behind only the faintest whiff of warm clouds and clean ozone.

  As the air cleared, more and more of the leaves began to ignite. They jumped and skittered over Gilead’s form like benign fleas before combusting and floating away in brilliant, waving, dancing patterns before his eyes.