by Henry Zou
Opposite him, Muhr also stepped onto the dais. The witch’s armour was polished clean. New iron studs had been riveted over the polyps that clustered on the shoulders and chest plate. A black cloak poured from his shoulders and a sword that Sabtah had never seen before sat at his hip.
Both were ready for judgement.
Sabtah knelt down, murmured his devotion to the gods and threw fistfuls of rock salt over his shoulders. The coarse grains cascaded down his back as he prayed.
‘We invoke you for judgement,’ intoned one of the coven. The air continued to distort, warping itself to bursting point. Patterns solidified in the air as overlapping dimensions within the warp became lucid to the human mind. The air became so cold, it carried particles of frost.
Muhr looked at Sabtah, curiously confident despite his impending judgement.
Inside the sacrifice bowl, Muhr’s crystal shard rocked gently as the warp energy was invoked. The creature within became animated, thrashing its microscopic arms and dancing with an eerie vigour. As it cavorted, minute cracks appeared across the tiny shard. The crystal cracked and began to weep a black fluid. Oozing like treacle, it was pushed outwards from the crystal shard, discolouring and mingling with the blood. Bubbling and frothing, it released an absurd amount of liquid that the tiny crystal could not possibly contain. It filled the bowl until the black fluid gathered along the edges and poured down in a solid curtain. With one final shudder, the bowl rocked and tipped over, spilling a low tide across the marble.
The Blood Gorgons gathered at the edge of the pit touched their boltguns in trepidation. The invocation was a common ritual but they had never seen this before.
Sabtah looked up. Across from him, Muhr had crouched with one knee on the ground. The witch’s head was bowed. His hands were nonchalantly pressed against the marble. His fingers, subtle and almost unseen, were scraping away at the painted wards.
Sabtah rose urgently. He opened his mouth to shout a warning. Muhr looked up and smiled at him.
Something was wrong, but it was too late.
Reality began to buckle. The walls of the temple appeared to liquefy, the particles of its structure becoming loose. The floor and ceiling tilted at an angle that was nauseous to the human mind. The three dimensions of the material plane and the numerical perfection of existence was disintegrating as the warp hole began to expand.
And then the world went black.
Yetsugei was awakened. His playthings were pleading for his presence again. The warp was shifting. Beyond any concept of distance or time, a rift was opening. He could sense his invocation. But there was something else there too – a baleful malevolence, strong and reeking. Yetsugei knew better. He curled himself away, folding himself up and squirming into the darkest regions. The presence was too much, even for him. He ignored their call and tried to flee.
There was an atom-splitting howl. They all heard it.
It was followed by a sudden and ominous blackout. Every single sconce torch fluttered out.
As a matter of automatic reaction, the Blood Gorgons switched to thermal vision. Nothing. Night reflection. Nothing. Multi-light overlay. Nothing. It was an unnatural darkness flooding in from the warp.
Then the screaming began.
It killed quickly. Brother Talus was disembowelled. Brother-Sergeant Arkum fell in sections, blood drizzling like fine rain. Muzzles flashed.
Inexplicably, the torches fluttered back. A daemon was amongst them. The containment wards had failed. They were scorched into the marble itself, burning like a racing promethium flame.
It towered above them all, thirteen metres tall. Its body was flaccid, covered with sparse, wiry hair. Its eight-dozen arms whipped sickles like a threshing mill. Its maw was ringed by blunt, chiselled teeth.
‘Daemon of Nurgle!’ shouted one of the coven.
‘Basho Eeluk has come for Sabtah,’ gurgled the daemon.
Before the coven could banish it, Basho Eeluk shouted a single word, a syllable of power. The warp gate expanded rapidly until it encompassed the entire dais before collapsing with a surge of static. There was a rolling boom like thunder, as air rushed in to fill the vacuum.
The marble dais was gone. The sacrificial bowl lay upturned. Sabtah was gone. Muhr was gone.
Sabtah did not know where he was. His surroundings were dark and insubstantial. The marble dais seemed to be suspended in mid air. He saw only the daemon and moved to flank it. The daemon sensed his intent and swung to meet him. It crashed down onto the dais, splitting the marble, as it bellowed.
Sabtah held his trident in a loose hammer grip, winding his arm back like a javelin thrower. He cast it with all his superhuman strength, pivoting on his toes to wring out every shred of momentum. The weapon punched deep into the daemon’s paunch and quivered there like an arrow. Recoiling from the wound, Basho Eeluk began to pull at the protruding weapon shaft even as a conical swarm of bone hornets belched from the daemon’s mouth.
Like sharp-edged darts, the swarm richocheted against Sabtah’s plate. They slashed his face open, drawing hundreds of tiny, piercing cuts through skin, fat and flesh. Garbling a howl of elation, Basho barged forwards, driving off its powerful legs. Standing his ground, Sabtah sprayed his bolter on automatic. Yet the daemon’s multiple hands moved so quickly it seemed as if it fanned out hundreds upon hundreds of arms, catching the bolt-rounds and exploding them in mid-air. His bullets foiled by dark magic, Sabtah pivoted to the side as the daemon pounced. Rolling off his shoulder, Sabtah came up in a crouch, his bolter already tracking.
‘Is this what you wanted, Sabtah?’ asked a voice from behind his neck.
Spinning quickly, Sabtah saw Muhr. The sorcerer stood at the edge of the marble disc, aiming a bolt pistol. He fired from almost point-blank range.
Sabtah had no choice. He slapped the round away. His left hand exploded in a concentric swirl of blood and armour fragments. Circling away, Sabtah returned with a triple burst of his boltgun. The shots sent Muhr ducking for cover.
And then the daemon was all over him.
Teeth. Fangs. Glistening skin. Sabtah was mauled from all directions at once. He let his boltgun fall on its sling. Basho Eeluk used its bulk, pushing the old warrior to the edge of the marble disc. Solid, black nothingness plummeted away beneath him. Hands slapped at him. Tremendously powerful palm slaps that jostled Sabtah’s heavy bones against their ligaments.
Sabtah barely reached the daemon’s thigh height, but he clinched up with it. Power armour servos whirring, Sabtah locked up Basho Eeluk’s thighs with his arms and began to drive forwards. Blood draining from his severed wrist, Sabtah relied on his arms alone, sucking the daemon’s knees towards his chest by tucking his elbows in. Pushing forwards, Sabtah began to lurch the daemon over its centre of gravity, worrying it like a game hound. Basho Eeluk toppled, stretching out a choir of arms to break its fall.
Sabtah muscled the daemon onto the ground and began to climb up its supine form. Basho Eeluk shook its monstrous body, trying to dislodge the old warrior from its torso.
Finally, Sabtah found purchase on the daemon’s enormous throat. He wrapped his steel-shod legs around the daemon’s neck and constricted his thighs like a lariat. Rearing its greenish bulk, it jerked, suddenly rising. Sabtah dangled off the neck upside down, like an oversized necklace.
With a creak of scraping metal, Basho Eeluk clawed at Sabtah with a forest of hands. Another two-dozen hammered his armoured shell, wrenching him like a struggling crustacean. Sabtah locked his legs tighter and curled his abdomen, pulling himself upright despite the suffocating wave of attacks. He found himself staring directly into the daemon’s face. The head was almost as large as Sabtah’s torso. Disc-like fish eyes returned his stare with a dull, silver gaze.
A sickle chopped into his side. One of the daemon’s many weapons had found a gap in his torso plate. The razor cut deep into his liver, exploding toxins i
nto his bloodstream. Another finally punched through his battered thigh plate.
Gritting his teeth against the accumulating wounds, Sabtah unsheathed the knife. Basho Eeluk rolled, wrenching its body like a surfacing whale. Sabtah swung on the daemon’s neck, but his legs only hugged tighter. Reaching up, Sabtah rammed the knife into Basho Eeluk’s eye. It scored open like firm fruit.
Basho Eeluk spasmed. It gripped Sabtah with all of its hands, hundreds of clawed fingers grasping and worming away him. Prying and pulling, Basho Eeluk tried to drag Sabtah off its neck like a stubborn leech. Sabtah slashed the knife again, paring away a long strip of daemon flesh. Where the ensorcelled blade made contact, Basho Eeluk corroded, bubbling like acid on metal.
Yet Eeluk refused to die. It reared up and dived back down, head first. There was a sharp, jarring impact. Sabtah’s back slammed back into the marble dais. He felt his spine shatter, vertebrae twisting. His legs loosened, flopping aside as his nervous system seized.
Sabtah had one last window of opportunity and he took it. As Eeluk pulled its head free, Sabtah’s knife hand followed it.
Basho Eeluk was still bellowing victory as Sabtah blinded its other eye. The daemon reeled. Completely sightless it lurched, limbs awkwardly flailing. Its cry became one of despair. It dragged itself over the edge of the marble dais and slithered over the edge, banishing itself back into the rolling clouds of the warp-sea. It roared one final time, fading cries marking the depth of its descent.
‘Muhr,’ Sabtah said. He tried to rise, but he no longer had control of his lower body. Given proper clinical treatment and augmentation, the spinal severance would only be a minor injury.
Muhr drifted into view. He stood over Sabtah’s splayed body.
‘Sabtah. How sad it has come to this,’ Muhr said.
‘Betrayer,’ Sabtah accused hoarsely.
‘Not so,’ Muhr replied. ‘I only have the glory of our warband in mind. I can make the Blood Gorgons a proper Chapter again. Not renegades, but an army.’
‘We’ve always been who we are, Muhr.’
‘Vagabonds,’ Muhr finished testily.
‘We have a name. The Imperium does not wish to fight the Blood Gorgons. We have a history.’
‘Under Opsarus and the Legions of Nurgle we will achieve more than we ever could alone. We will raise empires. Empires, Sabtah. Hauts Bassiq is a small price to pay in return for Opsarus’s patronage.’
‘But we won’t be Blood Gorgons any more,’ Sabtah concluded bluntly. He was beginning to feel drowsy. His body was fighting the massive trauma he had sustained: a severed hand, a ruptured liver, serious cuts, a broken back. Endorphins flooded his brain as the Larraman cells in his bloodstream coagulated the wounds. His sus-an membrane began to slow the beating of his hearts. His breathing became shallow.
‘Nothing you have to worry about, Sabtah.’ Muhr cocked his bolt pistol. ‘I never wanted to do this. You are a good warrior and a sound tactician. But our ideologies are irreconcilable.’
Sabtah shook his head as blood bubbled into his beard. A dowry. That was what they used to call it.
In order to cement the Blood Gorgons’ alliance to greater powers, there needed to be a gift, a token. That was Hauts Bassiq. Mineral-rich, resource-rich, a staging post of conquest that would become the jewel of Opsarus’s dominion. In ancient days, humans exchanged livestock, beads, even precious stones. Hauts Bassiq was no different. It was a valuable gem for those who could exploit it.
Meek. That was the accusation Sabtah wanted to use. Muhr was meek. He was selling Sabtah’s bond-brothers to the Cult of Rot and Decay merely for the promise of power. Amongst soldiers such as themselves, the word meek was the gravest insult.
But the witch had sold the warband like a bride. There was no allegiance here. Muhr was trying to buy his way into power by offering Nurgle both a Chapter and a world. For a moment, Sabtah was overwhelmed by the hot rush of anger and the contrasting cold of his wounds.
‘You are a bondless witch,’ Sabtah murmured. He invoked the last of his bleeding strength. ‘Muhr the Meek. That is how history will know you.’
Muhr flinched at the accusation. ‘I may not have the blood bond but I have devoted myself to this Chapter all the same. You just can’t accept it.’
Muhr pressed the pistol against Sabtah’s head.
The marble dais reappeared in the Temple Heart with a clap of expanding gas. The fifty-tonne disc slammed back onto the decking with a force that caused earthquake tremors across a third of the space hulk.
As the dust cloud parted, Muhr was the only one remaining on the dais. Blood and fragments splashed across the white marble. The assembled squads had formed a ring around the dais, weapons primed and aimed. Muhr waved them back.
‘The waves and tides of the immaterial realm have cast me in the role of guardian,’ he declared.
Some of the Blood Gorgons reacted more slowly than Muhr would have liked, giving him a hesitant salute. There were those among the assembly who did not react at all. Beneath the screaming face-plates of their helmets, there would be surprise and perhaps some measure of fear. Muhr made sure to remember those dissidents who now disrespected his rank; they would need to be quelled soon.
But for now, Muhr had other things to attend to. The air of the warp clung to him and he would need to exorcise his body. Perhaps he would even allow himself some rest. He could afford the time, now he was Chapter Master.
Barsabbas had not commanded humans in combat before but if their travel discipline was a measure of their soldiering, then it did not augur well for the campaign. Slow, disorganised and soon needing rest, the humans were incapable of travelling at a competent pace.
The muster travelled for four days and five nights before reaching the baked clay flats of the north. Accompanied by the rumble of motors, a line of dust almost two kilometres in length meandered across the terrain. Road trains forged the way, escorted by talon outriders. Herds of caprid straggled behind, trailing like a spillage of shaggy brown coats in their wake. The convoy was a mess. It was a wonder that the enemy did not attack.
Barsabbas rode at the front. His frame was too big to fit comfortably in the engine cab, so he sat on the tin roof, surveying the lands with an old retractable telescope.
Hauts Bassiq had once been an industrial world. He saw, interspersed between mountains, the artificial outlines of human structures, half buried by sand and rust. The infrastructure, old as it was, still remained. There were foundries, gas refineries, open cut mines and millions of kilometres of pipeline that had been laid down. They remained like buried mausoleums, preserved by the ferric sands.
They encountered the walking dead too, but only in small, wandering packs. The outriders lured them away from the main advance and dispatched them from the saddle with well-placed bowshots.
At one point, during their third day of travel, mounted scouts returned in a panic. They had spotted a patrol of large men in hoods, shod in bulky grey: a twenty-man platoon of Septic infantry. It was a convenient opportunity for Barsabbas to show the natives what he was capable of. He halted the convoy and asked the scouts to lead him to where the enemy were camped. There, from a distance of five hundred metres, Barsabbas gunned down the entire platoon of enemy auxiliary as they slept. He slew six before they even realised they were being fired upon. He downed another four more as they struggled to locate his muzzle flashes. By the time the Septic returned feeble, hesitant counter-fire, Barsabbas had put down the rest with precise, clean shots to the chest. The entire engagement took less than a minute and Barsabbas did not even change his thirty-round magazine.
By the time he returned to the convoy, word had already spread about his exploits. Outriders brandished the enemy guns as trophies, even though most did not know how to use them. The plainsmen seemed unduly occupied with deifying him. They truly believed Barsabbas would lead them to victory.
They
made camp in the badlands, surrounded by fields of dry organ pipe cactus. Two hundred thousand people spreading out to prepare for the coming war.
While the kinships rested and watered, Barsabbas did not. He debated plans of attack with the chieftains long into the night.
According to the tact-maps and scout reports, they were in the heart of enemy territory. With such a large force, it would only be a matter of time before the enemy responded to their presence.
Barsabbas knew they could do nothing but prepare their defences. He knew they would be overrun, but at least they would cause significant damage to the enemy plans on Hauts Bassiq.
The suns were at their highest ascension. The Celsius gauges peaked at the high fifties. Bare skin seemed to strip and crack upon exposure to the glare.
The camp was alive with the sounds of urgent activity. The cactus fields formed natural fortifications for the camp and the plainsmen went about their daily business of cleaning, washing and cooking. Several of the chieftains attempted to send their closest family members to feed and bathe Barsabbas, perhaps in the hopes of receiving good fortune.
Barsabbas dismissed them all. He gathered Gumede and two-score mounted braves. He ordered them to pack a day’s worth of supplies and to travel light. While the camp braced itself for the inevitable assault, Barsabbas intended to ride forth and survey the region.
He also requested a vehicle, something fast that was capable of carrying his significant weight. The braves scattered, eager to be the one to fulfil the Red God’s wishes.
Upon their return, a vehicle waited for him, draped under heavy woollen blankets. Underneath was an open frame chassis mounted on four muscular wheels. The rail frame itself formed an integrated roll cage with an exposed gas engine. Barsabbas did not know its age, but he guessed it was pre-colonial, a relic from the planet’s prospecting era. Despite the plainsmen’s efforts to preserve its condition, the centuries had taken their toll. Much of the roll cage was corroded to a mottled orange, and the exposed engine block was fused together by rust in some parts. Somehow the shamans, with their rote knowledge of machinery and rudimentary repair skills, had managed to keep the engine alive. Rope actually held parts of the vehicle together.
