by Henry Zou
‘Brother, what are you doing?’ Barsabbas asked as he drew close.
Sargaul looked at him but did not seem to recognise his battle-brother. He started vacantly at Barsabbas before turning his attention back to the wreckage, muttering ceaselessly.
Barsabbas knew his brother was lost. Sargaul was tapping away at a crumpled panel of plating with a tiny work hammer, utterly focused on the task.
‘Brother, where are you going?’
At this Sargaul drowsily raised his hand and pointed to the north without even looking at him. Far away, hazed by the glare of background suns, Ur shone on the horizon.
For a while, Barsabbas attempted to speak to Sargaul, but his bond did not acknowledge him. It was almost as if he did not exist. Only when that seed of doubt was nurtured in Barsabbas’s mind, did he think it a dream.
He awoke then.
The final sunset was two hours away when Gumede began the final preparations for departure. The arrival of a Godspawn had been an unexpected delay and the temperamental gas engines of the road train had to be refired. Despite this, he believed the Godspawn was a good portent. As the last of the kinship tied their possessions to the roof and side racks of the convoy, Gumede needed only one more thing before he was ready.
He took from his carriage rack a lasrifle. It was an heirloom, handed down between the elders of the kinship. The gun had always belonged to the family and none knew its precise origins. Some cousins claimed it had been simply traded for two dozen caprid from the city of Ur by a long-lost uncle. But Gumede had also been told by an aunt that it had been given to them by missionaries of the eagle-headed faith. Those missionaries did not come to their land any more, but the cells that powered the weapon continued to be recharged by the solar heat of their many suns, even after so many centuries. The use of the lasrifle was a rare skill and something that Gumede had learned from an early age.
He wiped the rifle’s metal exterior with a cloth and slotted a rectangular cell into its housing. He chanted a mantra and dialled up the weapon’s charge. It hummed softly. He thumbed the well-worn slide down to idle.
‘I am ready,’ he said to himself. Climbing atop his bird with slow deliberation, he made one last survey of his convoy and began to ride.
Chapter Eleven
It was just a rumour, but Sufjan had learned to take rumours very seriously.
Sufjan Carbo had earned his black turban by keeping a clear head and open ears. Being a slave to the Traitor Marines was usually a short and very brutal existence, but there were those such as he who had learned to thrive in such volatile environments. Men like him had learned to listen and glean every scrap of information to survive. Everything on the Cauldron Born happened for a reason, and everything that happened had consequences, even for the lowliest slave.
Things had not always been this way. Sufjan Carbo had been a janitorial factotum for a district scholam. His life had involved distilling the right combination of bleach and water for the cork floors and tightening the scholam’s faulty plumbing. Such things were a fading memory. He had come to accept life as a volatile thing, from the moment they took him away from his world, to the dangers of life as an expendable servant of the Chaos powers.
And things, he had learned, had become very volatile lately.
There were rumours amongst galley slaves and the warp engine crews that rival factions were on the verge of intra-Chapter war. The slaves were scared, even more so than usual. They walked timidly, keeping their eyes down, hoping to avoid the attention of their Blood Gorgon masters. Some saw the strife as a good thing, as an opportunity, perhaps, for liberation. But Sufjan knew that nothing good would arise out of it. If the Chapter were to go to war with itself, the slaves would be the first to suffer.
Sufjan did not intend to suffer. He had earned a trusted position standing sentry outside a little-used staircase from strata 23/c that led to the upper spines of the ship. His familiar staircase 23/c, with its rusty spiral stairwell and the globe-lamp larvae that hung in small, grape-like clusters. Compared to other slaves, his job was simple: to keep order amongst the menials and lower caste servants. In doing so, he earned a double ration of protein strands and a billet in the guard barracks. It was not something he intended to relinquish easily.
The vacuum hiss of blast shutters opening woke Sufjan from his fretting.
Suddenly he felt nervous, as he fussed over his orange silks and began to buff the brass etchings on his breastplate. Although the Blood Gorgons were piratical by nature, they enforced uniform infractions amongst the black turbans with a heavy hand.
Thudding footfalls echoed down the corridor. Sufjan bladed his shoulders and stood to attention. His horse-headed halberd was angled in salute, planted forty-five degrees out from his upcurled boot toes.
‘None may pass…’ Sufjan began to say.
The Blood Gorgon’s shadow fell across him. It was Sabtah the Older. The slaves knew him as the old brown wolf. Sabtah was followed by a squad of Blood Gorgons that Sufjan did not recognise. They were heavily armed, unusually so. Perhaps the rumours were true.
‘Step aside,’ Sabtah said in a weary, almost languid tone.
Fighting against his sense of self preservation, Sufjan remained at attention in front of staircase 23/c. ‘My apologies, master… but Master Muhr has ordered me to refuse entry at this time.’
‘I am countermanding those orders. Step aside.’
Sufjan felt the prick of sweat on his scalp. Master Muhr had been very specific in his instructions that no black turbans were permitted to allow access for anyone to his spire chambers. It had seemed straightforward at the time, but Sufjan had not expected this.
‘Master Muhr was very specific,’ Sufjan said timidly.
‘Why are you even looking at me?’ Sabtah asked, his voice remaining even.
Sufjan dropped his gaze to the floor. He realised he was trembling. In his mind, he tried to weigh up the danger of disobeying Master Muhr with the danger of antagonising Master Sabtah, but he could not think properly. All he could think about was the calibre of a boltgun. Zero point seven five. It filled his mind like a void.
‘Master Muhr does not wish to be disturbed,’ Sufjan murmured into his chest.
‘I will kill you, then,’ Sabtah said, his hand shooting out to clamp Sufjan’s throat. ‘Hold still, you won’t feel it.’
‘No, master, please!’
The bolt pistol swung down to his forehead like an executioner’s axe. Cold steel pressed against his skin. He heard the round being chambered. It vibrated through his skull with finality.
‘I know things! I’ve heard things!’ Sufjan screamed, his words overlapping each other.
The gun wavered.
‘What do you know, slave?’
Sufjan felt weak. He leaned against his halberd for support, his rigid salute collapsing as fear shook his body. ‘Muhr, he talks. Other slaves can hear it in the air vents from corridor 25/Upperlevel-32 and in the lavatories of the guard barracks if the warp echo is strong.’
Sabtah seemed interested. He smiled, a flash of curved fangs parting his beard. ‘More.’
‘Muhr talks constantly with someone he calls Overlord. He wishes to merge the Blood Gorgons with his new master. That’s all we know!’
Sabtah seemed to ponder that. His eyes took on a glazed, distant look. But his grip on Sufjan’s throat did not loosen and the boltpistol did not waver.
‘Slaves heard this?’ he said finally.
‘I am sure,’ Sufjan croaked. ‘They listen. Not me personally. But others do.’
Sabtah unlatched his grip from Sufjan’s throat. He smoothed the slave’s collar with a delicate finger. ‘That may be so. But we can’t have eavesdropping slaves. You understand?’
The boltpistol clinked. It was the firing pin. Sufjan had never fired a gun before, but somehow he knew it was the firing pin.
<
br /> The blast shutters that sealed off Muhr’s sanctuary were barred from the inside. Behind Sabtah, the six Blood Gorgons of Squad Pharol wedged their wide shoulders into the cold, wet corridor.
‘Sergeant Orchus,’ Sabtah said, turning to the squad. ‘Breach this door.’
Orchus lumbered his way to the front. ‘Milord,’ he said, patting his power maul against his palm. The weapon’s energy field activated with a crackle of compressed oxygen. The corridor’s stale air was cut with the smell of ozone.
Hauling back for a wide backhand, Orchus collided his power maul into the blast shutter. The boarding weapon sank through with a liquid pop. Bubbles of molten metal boiled to the surface as the power maul was torn from the shutter. It peeled away a long strip of armoured door, leaving it to slough off like a wilting petal. Orchus struck again, throwing his hips and torso into the swing. Again and again. Droplets of liquefied steel flew.
‘That’s enough, sergeant,’ Sabtah said as the solid steel became doughy, melting in puddles across the decking.
The group entered Muhr’s sanctuary proper. They pushed on in a tight formation into Muhr’s laboratories. There, the walls were peeling, the cracked paint revealing cryptic designs underneath. Slab-like operating tables lined the wide hall. When Sabtah looked closely, he could see the tables were scarred with irregular human tooth marks. The witch conducted many of his live experiments here, and the pain of his victims had driven them mad.
Four black turbans, unaware of the squad’s identity, charged out from behind amniotic tanks and curing shelves with their halberds raised. They realised their mistake too late. Sabtah and his retinue shot them down before they could protest.
Others appeared on the mezzanine steps. Sabtah could not tell whether they were menial servants or armed guards. It did not matter. They shot them all down, chopping down the silhouettes until none appeared above the banisters. The squad stormed up into the unlit upper levels, moving by the muted shades of night vision.
They found Muhr in the upper tip of his tower, a conical chamber with a thin, fluted ceiling. He was stooped over his mirror, his hair matting his face and trailing to the ground like a torn shawl. He stood up quickly, forcefully.
‘What is this?’ he shrieked.
His outburst stopped even Sabtah in mid-sprint. Muhr had changed. He was unarmoured, but somehow he looked larger. Muhr had always been pallid and thin compared to the others, but now he looked distended, as if his bones, like his nails, had been painfully lengthened.
‘Muhr. We have come to detain you,’ Sabtah announced from behind the barrel of his bolt pistol.
Muhr laughed aloud. ‘On what grounds?’
Sabtah’s tone was expressionless. ‘You are a traitor, Muhr. Hauts Bassiq, Gammadin’s death, it was all your doing, witch. You sold us to Nurgle.’
‘I accuse you of the same!’ Muhr retorted, his voice rising. ‘As do my brothers in arms.’
Above them, high amongst the viewing balconies, warriors of Squad Agamon and two Chirurgeons of Fourth and Ninth Company emerged. They were resting with their boltguns against the balustrade. Sabtah found himself staring into the barrel of Squad Agamon’s autocannon from a second-storey knuckle balcony.
‘Brother-Sergeant Phistos. Lower your weapons. I am your superior,’ Sabtah commanded. His voice was calm, but inside he seethed. Sabtah knew Phistos as a promising young prospect, a ruthless raider with many years of service to the Chapter. But now he had been led astray by Muhr’s promises of change and power, as Sabtah had always feared. The Blood Gorgons were already straining under the first cracks of intra-Chapter war.
Phistos of Agamon hesitated at Sabtah’s command. His barrel dipped.
‘Weapons trained!’ Muhr shouted. ‘He is the traitor! Detain him.’
Sabtah knew it was an empty charge, a counter-accusation simply to buy Muhr time.
Muhr knew he had been caught and he was desperate, cornered and crazed. Behind Sabtah, Squad Pharol’s guns did not stray from Muhr. Optic scopes chimed and auspexes pinged with feedback as they refused to lock on. To prevent friendly fire in the tight confines of a boarding action, their bolters’ machine spirits had been forged to seize up when targeting Blood Gorgon power armour.
There was a brief moment of stillness. The squads were locked, both unable to act, their weapons trained on one another.
Sabtah thought about finishing it. He could kill him now, execute him and be done with it. But such an act would open the floodgates of utter chaos. Muhr’s factional supporters would grow uneasy – there would be repercussions. Those rogues who harboured their own ambitions would fear for their own safety. Above all, Sabtah would be viewed as an indiscriminate tyrant. They would never accept him as a rightful Champion. The fabric of Blood Gorgon unity would erode through mistrust and paranoia. Brother would turn against brother, blood bond against blood bond. It would force history to repeat, and that was what Sabtah feared the most.
‘All squads, lower your weapons,’ Sabtah said quietly. Both squads continued to threaten each other with their guns. ‘Now!’ Sabtah warned, spiking his vox with amplitude. Once the squads cowled their weapons, he approached Muhr with open palms.
‘This can only be resolved by invocation.’
Muhr bared his teeth. ‘You dare rouse Yetsugei for this?’
‘Why, are you frightened of judgement? The Prince sees all,’ Sabtah snorted.
Muhr licked his lips with a serpentine tongue. ‘Then we will summon him. The one who survives judgment will stand as ward of this Chapter.’
‘You should be dead, Muhr,’ Sabtah spat. ‘By all rights you should be dead. I should kill you. Now the Prince will have that honour.’
‘We shall see, Sabtah. We shall see.’
The warp. The warp was no place to walk barefoot.
There, the sky was constantly expanding, allowing him to glimpse overlapping time loops of the universe’s ending. The land curved away from him, never-ending. Crushed stone bit his soles. He could see a citadel. Its towers and parapets sat atop the shell of a turtle like a hive stack. The turtle was ponderous, marching tirelessly across the horizon. How large was it? A thousand kilometres long? Perhaps a million? With each lethargic step, it levelled mountains and bevelled cliffs into biting, crushed stone shards. The scale was hypnotic.
Muhr knew he was dreaming. He was dressed in a cloak of black velvet, but nothing else. At his hip was a sword he did not remember owning.
Sabtah’s threats still rang in his ears. Muhr had been thinking about them before he drifted into his psy-trance. Now, even as his spirit waded through the warp, the troubles of the physical world followed him.
He knelt down to pick up a flint. It crumbled at his touch, exploding into powder as if age had stolen its integrity. Muhr stood up quickly, his black cloak snapping. The simple movement caused a rippling wind that puffed a stand of dry, leafless trees into ash. Everything in this world was dead, preserved only by tranquillity.
‘Welcome to my home,’ said a hollow voice. ‘It is as much yours as it is mine.’
‘Opsarus! My Overlord!’ Muhr gasped. He fell to his knees, pressing his forehead to the powdered stone.
Opsarus appeared to him as old as the world itself. His power armour had a petrified, granular texture, as if a mantle of minerals had risen from the ground to streak it with opaline, jade and sickly lime and white. Its surface was studded with bolts, weeping with rust. Looming over Muhr, Opsarus was a rising ocean wreckage, dragged from the bottom of a powerful sea.
‘Get up, Muhr. Act like my lieutenant for once.’ The turbines of Opsarus’s power pack whirred with a rhythmic hum, constant and powerful. His face was a deathmask of sculpted turquoise, its moulded features noble, almost angelic in bearing and set in the middle of his hulking shoulders. When he spoke, the voice that issued through the metal lips was garbled and distorted.
Muhr got up quickly. ‘Why do you bring me here, Overlord?’ he asked.
‘Be quiet, sorcerer. Listen first, then ask questions,’ Opsarus snapped impatiently. ‘Too much talking, that’s your failing, sorcerer.’
Muhr lowered his head.
‘Sabtah seeks to invoke Yetsugei to reveal your true ambitions?’ Opsarus chuckled.
Muhr nodded.
Opsarus chuckled again. ‘And you are frightened? Yes?’
‘Of course, lord. Yetsugei sees all, and the Chapter will listen to the daemon’s words. They will discover the truth. It will lay bare our plans.’
‘Yetsugei is a jester. A king among men, but a fool among daemonkind.’
‘Yet the Chapter heed his words. They will know.’
‘Another failing of your Chapter and your gene-seed, sorcerer.’
The words stung, but Muhr knew it was the truth. The Blood Gorgons lacked the favour of the gods. While Opsarus could invoke the power of the Great Unclean One, the Blood Gorgons were left to grovel to some petty daemon prince. It reminded him of their inferiority.
‘What can we do, Overlord?’
‘All part of the plan,’ Opsarus said, laying a hand on Muhr’s head. ‘I have known this for some time.’
‘I’m sure, Overlord. Your wisdom has never led me astray.’
‘Take this.’
Opsarus pressed a small, hard object into Muhr’s palm. It was a crystal. Unremarkable and entirely mundane. Yet when Muhr peered closer, he saw a scintilla of movement within. When he squinted, Muhr could see a peculiar little thing – a tiny figure was trapped in the fragment. Sure enough, the creature moved again, dancing and prancing inside the crystal. Although Muhr could not see the microscopic expression of the creature inside, there was a malevolence that exuded from it. Muhr was sure the thing was sneering at him.
‘Thank you, Overlord. What do you–’
Opsarus cut him off. ‘Listen first, Muhr, then questions. Use this shard to disrupt the summoning. Cast it into the wards as you invoke. It will release the daemon within. Yetsugei will not heed the call.’
