by S P Cawkwell
‘Yes,’ agreed Gileas with a thoughtful expression. ‘Perhaps it was, but it was a situation of your own making. Take your prizes, hunters, because that did not even remotely approach a challenge. That will come when we descend into the valleys.’ His eyes narrowed as he took in the darkening night sky and the endless white horizon. ‘That will come when we find whatever it was that drove these animals from their territory to seek refuge in higher hunting ground.’
Seven
The Lesser Evil
The valley was utterly soundless. The thick snow muffled everything, and sheltered from the driving wind the still, frozen air became oppressive. No cry of predators, no whisper of branches. Just a profound stillness that brought with it an eerie, sinister air all of its own.
Ancient trees, huge things that had endured the harshest of conditions, stooped beneath the crushing weight of the ice. They were bent double under the load of the snow that covered them, like a silent parade of hunched figures. In the fading light, they cast odd silhouettes in the new illumination brought by the Silver Skulls warriors trudging between the shadowy avenues they formed.
The pack ice was so old on Varsavia that there were few places one could sink into the snow-cover. Even the weight of an Adeptus Astartes was not enough to send them much further than shin-deep into the packed surface before their boots met the iron-hard ice beneath.
Their descent from the mountains had been spent in a strange kind of silence. Two of the three cats had been skinned, and the head of the pack leader severed from its body and placed into a sack that Nicodemus wore tied to his waist. Rich, red blood seeped from what was left of it, making a gory mess of the fabric. He did not care. It was his first true battle trophy and would stand testament to his skill for as long as he survived.
The two pelts were being worn across the shoulders of two of the other Scouts - the third cat had been too torn apart for the fur to be worth saving. They were huge when parted from the bodies of their former owners, but then so were the warriors who wore them.
Gileas’s ominous suggestion that something particularly dangerous must be at large in the valley had put them all on their guard. The sergeant had explained, during the descent, that the nivosus cats rarely moved up to the barren higher ground. The hunting was poor and the exposure to the elements brought a very grave risk with it. The caves they had briefly sheltered in had harboured a number of smaller, rodent-like animals who had hidden there, robbing the cats of their usual food source.
Gileas had primed every one of the neophytes to ensure their weapons were fully functional and had spent a little extra time ensuring that he had several of the grenades that he had brought with him.
Just to be sure.
The warriors moved through the forest in single file. Where they turned, the fading light traced across the deformed trees, casting long shadows across the ground. More than once, a Scout started in readiness, thinking that one of the moving shadows was something shifting in the trees.
They were fully alert for any kind of ambush that might be awaiting them, and the still air and stifling atmosphere necessitated a certain level of vox silence. Some idle banter was expected during long treks such as this, but the Scouts had all been quiet for upwards of thirty minutes now. Gileas watched their progress through the snow. Thus far, he had been reasonably satisfied with what he had seen. They had worked together and battled together long enough to be comfortable with one another. They had moved seamlessly and unconsciously into support and leadership roles and already they had ceased asking for orders. They were a good squad and Gileas was impressed with what Attellus was achieving.
Despite looking initially to their psyker for leadership, things had shifted subtly. Achak, the fair-skinned and fair-haired north-born, had assumed a natural leader’s role amongst the boys and they were eagerly listening to his suggestions. There was a calm assurance about his manner and he had an ability to bring out the best in the others. Even the arrogant Nicodemus had deferred decisions to him without question. Achak was the eldest of the Scouts by over a year and that one difference seemed enough to set him apart. He moved with surety and confidence but retained enough sense to know when to ask his superior questions.
Gaelyn and Motega, the two youngest who were so like one another in appearance that Gileas had mistaken them for blood brothers at the beginning of the hunt, were not in fact related except now through the gift of their ascension. But they had a synchronicity of thought and action that impressed the sergeant as he kept a careful eye on them. Like Achak, they both wore their hair cropped close to the scalp and like their accepted group leader they were both Varsavian-born, with the colouring that went with it. Both were gifted with an ability to think several steps ahead and discard unwelcome outcomes. Strategic minds were every bit as welcome in the Silver Skulls as strong sword arms.
Honon was a different matter. He had struggled to find a place within the squad. He was not confident enough to lead and yet there was a core of resentment rippling through him that meant he found it difficult to be deferential to what he saw as his peers and equals. When they stopped to review their plans and direction, Honon always remained slightly apart from the others. Gileas knew that attitude well; he had not been so very different when he’d been Honon’s age.
Honon was not a Varsavian. He had been drawn from the stock of one of the other recruiting planets, and his hair was red and his skin darker than the others’. There was a faint smattering of freckles across his face and he brought to memory Tikaye, of Gileas’s own squad and another native-born of Honon’s home world.
Nicodemus, for all his arrogance and nigh-on overbearing self-confidence, had noticed Honon’s self-imposed distance as well and without Gileas needing to intervene, had begun to draw his battle-brother into the group. The sergeant was pleased to note that and marked it down mentally as one of Nicodemus’s potentially redeeming qualities. Thus far, the list was not stacked heavily in that direction.
It was so hard to remember how it felt, he realised as he let his eyes search with practised ease around the snowy forest. How it had felt to step out of the apothecarion more than a foot taller and with radically altered physiology. He had become so accustomed to his implants that he had simply remembered the change as being instant. Now he realised it was not.
The silence here was eerie. There were no evident animal tracks in the crust of snow, but after they had walked some way into the forest, Achak pulled up short.
‘Sergeant,’ he said with a certain level of surprise in his voice. ‘Looks like we are not the only hunters out this night.’
Approaching the Scout’s position, Gileas saw the unmistakable flicker of a fire some way ahead of them and much deeper into the trees. He frowned and called up the mental map of the area in his mind. The Thunderhawk had dropped them just to the south of the landlocked sea. From his own long-distant experiences and from records kept meticulously by the Chapter, no tribes had moved their hunting grounds to this region of southern Varsavia.
The temperature around them notwithstanding, something chill gripped at Gileas’s soul. He turned to Gaelyn and Motega and automatically assumed the tone of a commanding sergeant. The difference in his voice, where before he had been decidedly affable and easy-going, caused all five of the Scouts to stand to attention.
‘Go ahead,’ he ordered. ‘The two of you get as close as you can to the camp and assess the situation. Do not engage unless it is absolutely necessary. It may simply be a wandering family who have taken shelter in the forest for the night, or it might be a whole tribe. Neither would give us any great problem, but you know how the Prognosticatum stands on interaction with the tribes who are not directly tithed.’
‘They are hunters,’ offered Nicodemus. Gileas glanced over at him.
‘What makes you so certain?’
‘There.’ The group followed Nicodemus’s finger to the broken spear that was hal
f buried just below the snow. Gileas’s lip twitched.
‘Good eyes,’ he said, approvingly. ‘The orders remain unchanged. Go. We will hold here and observe the perimeter. Keep vox contact to a minimum and ensure you are out of earshot before you report back.’
With nods of affirmation, Gaelyn and Motega vanished out of sight between the trees.
The sergeant stooped to pick up the spear and considered it carefully. It was a hunter’s instrument, sure enough. Plain, without any embellishment or etched design, it was an object that had been fashioned with the sole purpose of bringing down prey. He let his hand run across the roughly carved haft to the sharpened spear tip.
It was not a beautiful weapon. Its balance was poor and the metal point was not even particularly sharp. But there was something there… in the iron. He brought it closer to examine it carefully. The ice in his heart spread further through his body. He beckoned the remaining Scouts over to him.
‘Opinions?’
Motega and Gaelyn were discovering that swift scouting was less easy than it had been before they had been gifted with their implants. Their increased height and bulk made a cautious approach challenging. They may not have been stealthy, but they were learning to adapt as best they could to their given terrain. Trees provided cover and whilst the snow laid their prints bare for any to follow, the deadening white also muted their approach.
The flickering fire that had caught Achak’s attention was some way through the woods; a dancing wall of orange and yellow flames that contrasted brightly with the near-black velvet darkness. Using the comparative cover of the trees, the two Scouts approached with as much stealth as they could muster.
A break in the treeline afforded them an excellent glimpse of the encampment that they had been sent to assess and it took less than a minute to gauge what they saw there. Indicating to pull back, Motega picked up the pace noticeably.
‘Did you see…?’ Gaelyn’s hushed question was answered before the words had even left his mouth.
‘Aye, brother, I did.’
They both lapsed back into silence and continued to draw away from the encampment of approximately twenty-five warriors, each of whom had been very clearly marked with the tribal sign of the Xiz.
It began as a gentle tremor underfoot, so innocuous that it was hardly even worthy of notice. There were three active volcanoes across the planet’s surface and seismic activity was not uncommon. So when the ground shook slightly beneath their feet, Gileas saw no immediate cause for concern. A proper earthquake brought acceptable risk: landslides, avalanches and all the other difficulties that nature liked to frequently deposit on the citizens of Varsavia. So the slight twitching beneath the sergeant’s boots barely even registered on his scale of interest.
Nicodemus, however, sensed something was wrong immediately. He whipped his head around in the direction they had walked, his eyes narrowing and the sparks on his psychic hood glinting in the darkness. Gileas looked up at him immediately.
‘Something is out there,’ muttered the psyker and he exchanged a glance with Gileas. He did not have to wait for the sergeant’s words and simply elaborated. ‘There is a mind out there that I do not recognise. Animalistic.’ He concentrated, but there was no more. Nicodemus berated himself for even trying. His powers were good, his skill exceptional, but there were so many things he did not know how to do. Had he been truly exceptional, he could have been more specific. As it was, he drew a blank. ‘I don’t believe it’s human,’ he tried. Gileas quirked an eyebrow.
‘Nothing more?’
‘No, brother-sergeant. Hunger, perhaps? There is a drive and determination there.’
‘A hunter. Definitely not human. Not the tribesmen, then.’ Gileas rubbed at his jaw.
‘Brother-sergeant?’ Motega’s voice crackled through the vox-bead in his ear. ‘Twenty-five tribesmen camped out here. All Xiz, sir.’
The concern that had slowly been crystallising since the discovery of the spear finally found its name. He shook his head to clear it of old prejudices that suddenly rose unbidden and instead focused on Nicodemus. Maybe the animal mind that the psyker was feeling was one that belonged to the tribesmen, in that case. Gileas felt a faint disappointment that the psyker’s abilities were still so immature. If Nicodemus was less arrogant and more focused… the revenge that could be wrought…
Revenge.
Gileas allowed his breathing to slow again and controlled his thoughts. Revenge indeed. It was a thought unworthy of a battle-brother of the Silver Skulls and he knew it. But old memories, however deeply suppressed beneath the careful layers of mental conditioning and endless indoctrination, would not be denied. Particularly when they were the kind of memories that had been instrumental in the earliest days of forging the weapon that he had become.
The ground lurched beneath their feet again and this time Gileas noticed it. This was not what he had expected to find when he had set out to track down the predator that had displaced the nivosus cats from their regular territory. In the beat of a heart, the Silver Skulls had gone from being the hunters to potentially becoming the hunted.
The phenomenal encyclopaedic knowledge that was stored inside his mind had already worked out what it was that stalked them. Native Varsavian creatures such as the nivosus cats were reasonably prolific in the south but there were some things that were so rare that sighting them was considered at one and the same time a good omen and a dread curse. In this instance, Gileas’s opinion was weighted very heavily in favour of the latter.
The quake was growing more intense now, cascading thick drifts of snow from the aged trees. The sergeant knew that he was going to have to act fast for all their sakes. He cast his gaze around the forest, his mind working furiously through a number of possible options. Activating his own vox, he assumed command of the squad. The moment he did so, the Scouts realised the seriousness of their situation. Until now, he had merely acted as a voice of experience. But this was the side to him that they were conditioned to respond to with instant obedience.
They slotted perfectly into the ordered machine of the Chapter. For all they had seemed a little unsure of themselves, the three young warriors still with Gileas had immediately and without question taken the roles they had been born to play.
‘Motega, Gaelyn, fall back to this position immediately. If we do not regroup now, I cannot guarantee how easily we will get back to…’
He never finished the sentence. The persistent tremor underfoot became a rolling surge in the ice, which rippled beneath them like a wave that caused all of the Space Marines to stagger on the now uneven surface. Nicodemus stumbled sideways and Gileas reached out automatically to stop him falling. The ground bucked and heaved like a thing possessed and without any further warning, there was an ear-splitting crack as the deep ice beneath them suddenly ruptured.
From somewhere further in the forest they could hear the guttural sounds of human voices. Their Xiz hunter counterparts were evidently on the move as well, disturbed by the sudden activity.
‘Motega! Gaelyn! Regroup. Now!’
‘The Xiz are breaking camp, sergeant. The earthquake has disturbed them.’
‘This is not an earthquake.’
And it was not. The ice creaked again and a great fissure split the surface, swallowing tons of snow and ancient trees into the lightless chasm. Great slabs sheared from the widening maw in the earth and tumbled away with a deafening crash.
With a sound like shattering bone, dozens of the snow-laden trees heaved into the air and burst apart as their frigid cores buckled under the strain, rising upwards in a spray of bark and pulped wood. Gileas’s hand closed around his weapon, for all the good the chainsword was likely to do him. He cursed inwardly for the ambition that had driven him to seek the predator that had driven off the cats. That predator had now found them.
The earth seemed to inhale, a great bowl-shaped hollow sudden
ly falling away before being ejected into the air in a dirty shower of pulverised ice and fragmented vegetation. Rising from the pit came a monster that eclipsed the starlight and shook the heavens with the thunder of its voice. It towered two hundred metres into the night air and much of its bulk still lay concealed beneath the permafrost.
The broad, tubular body that drew to a taper at the top end was instantly identifiable. Thick, greyish fur covered its lumpy hide, punctuated by stubby and muscular claws that it employed to propel itself at startling velocity through the frozen earth. No eyes were visible, for there were none to see. The creature was completely blind.
‘Solifugus worm,’ breathed Nicodemus, who was caught between awe at the incredible beast that emerged before him and the need to ensure the continued survival of them all. The solifugus worm was a peculiar evolution of a species that had been indigenous to the planet long before the Silver Skulls had even come into being. Researchers and members of the Adeptus Biologicus had theorised that they might even have been the original dominant species on the world.
‘The size of it,’ muttered Achak. Gileas gave a humourless smile.
‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘See the greyish tint to its skin? That marks it as a juvenile.’ Those words caused a ripple of disbelief that somewhere there was something bigger than this leviathan. The young warriors steeled themselves.
A cavernous mouth peeled back on its bullet-shaped head, revealing numerous rows of grinding teeth. These creatures were carnivorous and with its appearance it became instantly obvious what had caused the other predators to evacuate. The only mercy that Gileas could find in the situation was that the worms were solitary by nature and their territories were vast. There would be no more than one to deal with.
Should be. Luck had not favoured them so far.
