by Henry Zou
On the horizon, Angkhora appeared to levitate above the earth on a shimmering mirage of heat, although that was an illusion. Its profile was dominated by a quincunx of sandstone towers, ogival in shape like tightly furled buds of flowers. Stairs were a dominant feature; the city had no walls, only ziggurat steps that tiered the outer cruciform terraces. The design gave Angkhora a harmonious symmetry that seemed strangely inhuman in the precision of its arrangement.
Roth’s insertion point was exactly eight kilometres out from Angkhora, the minimum distance in the event of signature detection. They made landfall on an apron of reef mangrove that sprawled out before Angkhora’s monument gates. The region was a glistening plain of muddy water and bulbous, shallow-rooted hydrophytes.
Slogging under the weight of thirty kilograms of surveillance, survival and military equipment each, the trio waded through the shin-deep mangrove. Their weapons were cautiously shouldered as they advanced, scanning the surroundings for signs of enemy or natural predation. Madeline had warned them the primordial creatures that inhabited the low lands were small but they could be quick, darting out of mud burrows with snapping, lashing jaws.
Moving at a stealthy, wary creep, the task group reached the three-hundred-metre tall gates of Angkhora in just under four hours. They halted several times during the advance, allowing Pradal to make intermittent signal burps on his vox, broadcasting to low-frequency Imperial channels across the southern belt. There was a chance the frequencies had already been compromised, but it was a gambit Roth was willing to make. Yet they received no answer by the time they reached the monument gates.
Up close, Roth could see the narrative scenes etched into the stonework. Each dancing character – animal, flower or astronomical body – was no bigger than Roth’s thumb, yet the cavorting figures were carved across the entire surface of the gate pylons.
‘These gates here, they depict the interment of the dead in their final resting place – the garden in the sky. Angkhora was never a place of domestic living, it was an extensive tomb-city,’ Madeline said, reaching out to touch the stone with her gloved fingertips for protection. It was a Medinian superstition she had acquired in her studies.
‘They built this place for the dead? All of it?’ Roth asked.
‘Yes they did, but that was a long time ago. For the past several centuries, the climate has become more habitable, temperatures here have lowered and a substantial part of this city had been converted to urban hab, mostly for the destitute, the poor, the ones less missed, so they lived here amongst the dead. The population for this city should be at least eight thousand,’ she said but then checked herself. ‘Should be… eight thousand.’
‘That’s a bad omen,’ Captain Pradal said, making the sign of the aquila before thrice tapping the stone with his knuckles. Cradling the lasrifle slung across his chest for comfort, his other hand resting on the bolt pistol at his thigh, he crossed the threshold into the dead city.
Within, the streets were a rambling maze. The flagstones were worn smooth by flood and silt deposits, and then baked into a cracked finish by the searing heat. Black run-off like dried tears ran down every surface of stone, what Roth could only imagine as being the evaporated essence of time itself. From what Roth had seen, ancient structures were often blackened through sheer dint of age.
Of the population of eight thousand, there was no sign.
‘No life signs at all,’ said Pradal, reading an auspex that was attached by a wire cord to his hip webbing. ‘Not in proximity at least.’
‘Signal-burp again,’ Roth bade him.
‘Sir, I’ve been transmitting on sustained long-range frequency for the better part of four hours, emitting contact to listening stations across the entire southern belt. If anything, we’ll bring every Archenemy within the southern savannah on our tracks.’
‘I know, captain, but we need this,’ Roth said.
They went down into cover, moving towards a line of stone apartments. Whatever purpose the terraces served in the city of the dead, it had been converted to a tenement block. They entered one of the small habs, noting that all the apartments were missing their doors.
Inside, they could see signs of recent habitation. A stone pallet bed was unceremoniously upended, its thin mattress half-thrown across the apartment. Tables and lockers of a cheap mass-produced alloy were dented and ransacked, the meagre possessions strewn across the floor. If Roth’s forensic reasoning was anything to go by, it seemed that the occupant had been dragged out of bed as they had slept.
‘Sustained signal-burps, captain, keep them brief and clear,’ Roth ordered.
The inquisitor moved to one of the low square windows cut into the thick sandstone. He surveyed the city quietly as the captain went about his work. The tightly coiled streets were empty and heavily shadowed by the ogival towers at their cardinal points above.
‘So this is where the Old Kings sleep,’ Roth whispered under his breath.
A giant, lurking within the deep folds of stone that formed the architecture of Angkhora, watched the three little humans.
It watched them with the same malevolent interest that a predator would regard its frail, cumbersome prey.
As the giant moved, the shadow of late afternoon rippled across its glossy hide. Where the sun shone, its hide was a hard black enamel, so glossy it was slick with a film of red. Like blood on the surface of black oil.
And how it moved! As overwhelming as the tide, it surged on plated limbs through the crumbling masonry. The brutal speed and controlled power with which it cut across the rooftops and streets was terrifying.
It could, if it chose to, warn the others of its kind. But the giant chose not to disturb them. It lived by the rhythm of killing and eating and it would be better not to share its prey.
Leaping from roof to roof with a simian lope, the giant paralleled the movements of its prey, constantly keeping them under its watchful eye.
According to the complex geometry of the equator lines and if their mathematics were anything to go by, the Old Kings of Medina would be buried in the central tomb complex, deep within the womb of Angkhora’s central ziggurat.
‘At least another twelve kilometres to our north-east unless we can find some way to circumvent these dead-end avenues and maze stair-wells,’ Pradal said as he checked his auspex.
Referring to his map-sleeve, Roth traced the route with his finger. It was an imperfect map, an old piece they had acquired from Madeline’s own scholarly collection. In the time since its making, the galleries and step-mazes of Angkhora had been subject to collapse. Even conservative estimates put them half a day’s trek from the site.
Roth shrugged off his canvas bergen and rolled his neck, easing out the acidic knots along the muscles of his shoulders. ‘Drink some water and grab some food while you can, we’ve got a long way to go yet.’
With a sigh of relief, Captain Pradal sunk down under the shade of a mausoleum and unlocked the strap of his webbing and equipment, keeping them within easy reach. He stretched out his leg and began to unwrap a block of compressed grain ration.
‘We’re being followed,’ Madeline said, moving to join the others under the alcove of balustrades. She turned and played her carbine across the garlands of stone flowers that uniformly edged the pediment rooftops.
Roth looked up from his map and swore quietly under his breath. ‘I thought so. I’ve known for some time but I didn’t want to cause distress until someone else concurred.’
Roth looked across the silhouette of Angkhora. The city of the dead stared back at home, utterly quiet, refusing to give up its secrets. For the first time, Roth noticed that not even the leather-winged lizards roosted here, nor flocked to the skies.
‘What do we do?’ Madeline groaned, suddenly despairing.
‘We wait,’ Captain Pradal said confidently. ‘Let’s find a defensible position and bait him out.’
‘This will do,’ Roth said.
The chosen site of their ambush was not ideal but it would suffice. It was a stair pillar, or rather that was what Roth called it; Madeline assured him they were called gopurams in the ancient Terran lanuage of Anglo. Its foundations were a rectangular slab of sandstone, likely more than some fifty tonnes. The structure tapered up, each stepped tier diminishing in size as they swept upwards, in acquiescence to the heavens. The song birds, chariots and horned animals that dancing along the bas-reliefs of each tier represented the sky gardens of the dead, a reminder that Angkhora was a cemetery for the past. Song birds and horned animals had not danced on Aridun for thousands of years.
‘Whatever it is, it’s coming closer,’ Madeline whispered without turning to look.
Roth nodded softly. He too had seen a ghost of movement in his periphery, just a vast and very sudden shadow that was no longer there when he turned. Their hunter was getting careless – either that, or it was getting bolder.
‘I’ve seen the hostile too, several times now,’ Pradal said. He stopped plodding up the ziggurat and checked on the course of the suns. It would be dusk soon, one sun was already dipping along the horizon as an amber rind, another sun making a heliodonic arc over the first, turning the deepwater sky from blue to black. In Pradal’s military training, dusk was the most opportune time to attack, when the mind was hard-wired to rest at the break of light.
‘Don’t look down, but I think it’s slinking at the base of the ziggurat,’ Madeline said, hurrying up the last few steps to the shrine at the top of the gopuram.
If what Madeline said was correct, it meant that the hostile was no longer tracking them; it was simply stalking them in the open. It meant the hostile had no need for stealth, perhaps even deliberately induced the fear of attack by flitting in and out of view. Roth gritted his teeth, resisted the temptation to look down the steps and followed Madeline.
‘Pradal, cover the north, Madeline, cover the south, I’ll take the east. The suns are coming down west so keep your backs to them,’ Roth commanded.
The top of the gopuram was a flat square about twenty metres wide along each side. The three of them crouched down, back to back, their weapons pointed directly ahead. Their position afforded them a magnificent view of Angkhora; as the suns set, they chased the yawning shadows. The sunlight gleam of sunstone fading to a dim purple.
The hostile did not need to wait for dusk.
Roth heard steps, dulled and quietly menacing. The sound of grit and loose earth crunched underfoot.
‘Here it comes, up the north face,’ Pradal said, thumbing his lasrifle to its highest setting.
Roth spun on his coiled crouch to face the approach. He felt the familiar surge of adrenaline, building like a spring coil in his bladder.
The slow, deliberate steps sounded like war drums. The Tong cannibals of the Punic subcontinents used war drums to psychologically assault the enemy, Roth remembered. A deep, almost ritualistic rhythm that put the ‘fears in the bellies of their foe’. Roth imagined it would be quite similar – he certainly felt the fears.
‘Throne, I hate this, I hate this,’ Madeline hissed under her breath.
The steps stopped.
Pradal slid a frag grenade from his belt loop, tensing to hook the pin with his thumb and throw one-handed.
Vandus Barq surfaced over the edge of the ziggurat. He looked a mess. His armoured rig was blackened with ash and his face was marred with speckled bruising. In his steel-gloved hands, he clutched a vox-signaller, the tracking array guiding him up.
‘Roth! You bastard! When I snagged those vox transmissions I knew it was you.’ The inquisitor was trembling, quaking.
Roth rose to his feet and placed a hand on one of Barq’s heavy shoulder guards. ‘Look at you, Vandus. Calm down, you look a mess.’
Barq shrugged off Roth’s hand, his shaking head. ‘Not now, not now. You’re being hunted.’
‘Hunted? By whom?’ Captain Pradal said, still aiming his rifle along the northern edge.
‘I said not now!’ Inquisitor Barq snapped, almost irritably.
Barq’s breathing was irregular and laboured; a nervous tic was seizing the entire left side of his face. Roth recognised the latent stage of shock when he saw it. Something was terrifying an Imperial inquisitor, terrifying him enough to send an inquisitor’s formidable mental faculties into neural overload. The fear in his belly, as the Tong cannibals would have said.
‘Barq, you have to explain what is happening. Intelligence before action, the first principle of the Inquisition. Come on now, old friend, breathe, breathe,’ Roth said.
‘Roth. I’m coherent,’ Barq jagged through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve got a vehicle waiting in the causeway. We have to get out of this region, you don’t understand. We have to go – if the vehicle is still there.’
Roth was reluctant. Travelling at night in the dead city did not appeal to his sensibilities. He looked at the horizon; the suns were sinking into hazy crescents and tinting the city a murky purple.
But then he saw it again. The silhouette of a giant, rising across the rooftops. It was backlit by the twilight, like a shadow puppet. It was there and then it wasn’t.
This time they all saw it. Madeline exhaled sharply.
Roth made up his mind. ‘Okay, Vandus, show us to your vehicle.’
Quickly, before night falls, Roth thought to himself silently.
Barq’s vehicle, thankfully, remained where he left it, underneath the lengthening shadows of a lotus shrine.
It was a V-8 Centaur, a small military tractor. Its square-framed, boxy hull was painted in the russet-brown of the Cantican Colonials. The rearing horse, sabre and cog crest of the CantiCol Sixth Logistics and Supply dominated the welded frontal plates.
Clambering into the Centaur’s open-topped cab, the Task Group nested amongst the neatly stacked rows of ammunition and the disassembled parts of a 75mm mortar.
Barq snuggled down into the operator’s seat, hunching his shoulders so he could lean forwards and peer through the narrow, visored vision slit.
‘Are you fit to drive?’ Roth asked.
‘Oh please…’
Barq fumbled at the ignition. Finally, with a guttering metallic chain rip, the Centaur coughed into shuddering wakefulness. The Centaur rolled forwards, picking up speed, little by little.
It wasn’t fast enough.
The stalker exploded from the shadows. He was enormous. From the plated pillars of his legs to the towering turret of his torso, he throbbed with primal power. His armour was of the deepest red, so red it was almost black. In metal-shod hands he swung a double-handed chainsword, the venting pipes at the hilt grumbling with exhaust.
Captain Pradal screamed. It was the first time Roth had heard a trained soldier scream with such fervent, almost plaintive panic. It was a horrifying sound and Roth did not ever wish to experience the organic fear again. He looked to see what Pradal saw and froze.
It was an Astartes of the Chaos Legions.
‘Blood Gorgon!’ Barq roared, without turning to look. He gunned the Centaur, taking its engine to protesting limits.
Roth was the first to react. He leaned over the edge of the vehicle and let loose a plasma shot. The Traitor Marine took the hit on the tower of his shoulder plate, before accelerating fast towards them. It was so explosive, like the gliding footwork of a champion fist-fencer, utterly in control of his body, thought Roth. Except this monster weighed half a tonne.
‘Throne’s sake, come to your senses!’ Roth bellowed at Madeline and Pradal. His shouts seemed to rouse them from their paralysis of shock. Captain Pradal, still screaming in wide-eyed panic, began to hose his weapon in a rea
rward direction on full auto. Madeline fired her carbine double-handed; the first torrent of shrapnel went wide as their vehicle thumped over a loose flagstone. The second expanding coil of splintered metal hit the Blood Gorgon across the thick slab of his chest. It barely arrested his sprint.
The Blood Gorgon closed the distance. How fast were they going? Perhaps forty kilometres an hour? And still the Traitor Marine was gaining on them, pumping his armoured legs with seismic force, blading his arms as he closed in. Like the pirahnagator, he was utterly explosive in a single direction.
‘Turn! Keep jinking!’ Roth called to Barq.
The Centaur peeled off from the causeway down a walled viaduct. The evasive manoeuvre left the Blood Gorgon careening away, albeit briefly, at a perpendicular direction.
A plasma shot ate a broken, calcified puncture in the Blood Gorgon’s upper thigh sheathing. Las-rounds bubbled the waxy enamel of his ceramite. Flechette shells puffed like smoke against his hide. The Blood Gorgon pounded down on them, undaunted.
Barq turned them down a broad boulevard, ornate headstones flanking the avenue like cathedral pews. It was difficult to navigate in the dark, the headlamps bobbing and shaking, revealing only a blurred path of illuminated ground that streaked by beneath them. Roth didn’t know if Barq knew where they were going.
The Blood Gorgon was close enough that one of his enormous, armour-clad gauntlets could almost graze the tow bar of their Centaur. Close enough that Roth could see the Traitor Marine’s face plate, snouted and equine with flared nostrils and a shrieking mouth grille.
In his desperation, Roth seized one of the mortar rounds from the stack. He banged the percussion cap against the plating of the Centaur and lobbed it overhand from the back of the vehicle. The round clattered, bounced and skipped against the cloven boots of the Traitor Marine and exploded.
The Blood Gorgon actually staggered, briefly. He growled through the bassinet grille of his helmet. The sound amplified through his chest speakers, wet and tremulous.
‘Mortars, use the mortars!’ Roth yelled to his team. They didn’t need his coercion. Both of them were hurling mortar rounds at the Blood Gorgon with a reckless desperation. A chain of explosions crackled in the wake of the Centaur, blowing fragments of stone from the road. They aimed the mortars low, banging them against the vehicle plating and skipping them at the Blood Gorgon’s legs.
