by Warhammer
Too slowly. None of it would matter if she couldn’t escape. Trapped in the hive, hunted by enemies she didn’t know and couldn’t effectively counter… Fharkoum was right. She had no power. None that she could bring to bear.
The cage lurched as more holding bolts sprung from their fastenings.
‘It’s coming down…’ warned Drover, and betrayed the first real sign of concern at their likely fate.
The Broker retired to the storeroom at his quiet urging, the sommelier in tow. Kharata followed, summoned by his master’s scared bellowing.
Morgravia held onto his arm as he went to move past her. ‘Are you leaving the fight?’
Kharata tried to hide his fear behind a scornful mask. ‘There’ll be no fight,’ he said quietly and made to move on but she wouldn’t let him.
‘Then you won’t be needing two guns.’
He looked down at the shotgun, the barrel poking out of his side from where it hung over his shoulder. He yielded without much resistance.
‘Take it.’
She did, and then let him go. Kharata backed away, off to hide in the darkness with his master.
‘I feel safer already,’ said Drover, and Morgravia scowled.
Only the barkeep and the singer in black were left, as well as the two courtesans and Drover.
‘Can she be moved?’ Morgravia indicated the singer.
‘Jana, my wife…’ said the barkeep.
‘Can she be moved?’
He shook his head. ‘Her leg. She’s injured.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said one of the courtesans. Morgravia noticed the other one staring into the darkness, and recognised shock when she saw it.
‘Then stay down and hope they come to us.’
The cage buckled again. It shook, wrenched back and forth, twisting and creaking, the thin metal barrier between life and something worse than death.
‘I don’t know about you,’ she said to Drover, ‘but I’d rather die on my feet.’
‘I’d sooner not die at all,’ he replied, ‘but since that’s not on the table…’
The barkeep was up too. He’d found a heavy-looking mace from some concealed alcove or other. It looked regulation-issue.
‘Shock maul,’ said Morgravia as the three of them took position, almost shoulder to shoulder, on the lookout for where the cage would surrender first. ‘You were a lawman?’
‘Barak,’ said the barkeep, ‘I’m an ex-proctor.’ He nodded to the shotgun. ‘That’s from back in the day, too.’
Morgravia gave him a rueful smile. ‘All hail the Lex.’
Barak thumped his fist against his chest in an old salute. The flare of the shock maul cast a dull crackling glow as it activated.
Drover looked down at his punch dagger. ‘I won’t deny, I’m experiencing some serious notions of inadequacy at this moment.’
‘Have no fear…’ Morgravia replied, her eyes on the pallid, their hordes pushing and reaching, ‘the Emperor protects.’
Drover’s colourful expletive was drowned out by the sound of the cage bending and snapping as a welter of bodies tumbled in.
The shotgun boomed, loud as artillery fire. It bucked in Morgravia’s grip, kicking like a punch to the shoulder. Muzzle flame flared, magnesium bright. Faces and bodies disintegrated, reduced to mist and offal. Something burned, a pallid with its hair alight, cooking in its own wretched skin. The smell of ozone and heat arose as Barak lit up another. He had the maul on maximum discharge. It was practically a flaming brand.
In the snatches between the thunderous retorts of the shotgun, Morgravia saw Drover. He fought behind a rampart of bodies, killing with a pit fighter’s ferocity, his face a mask of blood.
Not enough, thought Morgravia as the pallid kept coming, their numbers endless. Not enough, as the shotgun fed its last round into the breech. Hand to hand, they would quickly be overrun. Her senses slowed, the last seconds stretching like time smeared across the pane of her existence. Sound distorted, robbed of its clarity. She tasted blood, and smelled the actinic bite of another place. The red dream came again, uncaring of its inconvenience, and as she fell and the pain needles took their due, Morgravia looked up into the rafters at an arachnoid shape descending, silver fangs glinting, poised for the kill–
Then the dream took her.
hot blades severing paring dissecting organs heaped upon a slab clicking whirring the tools descending bone yielding cracking snapping the stink of burning fusion melding made and unmade metal and rods and sinew and muscle skin burning cold dark warm bright the throb of the machine droning chirping a long chime stretching on into forever dying dying endlessly dying the loop unbroken as two red suns loom over red red red
A flash of captured silver brought her back. The bar had partly collapsed as the mesh had been wrenched away and she stared through a canyon of splintered wood at the darkness. It was a sword she had seen. Held by a shadow, dark against light. A second joined the first. Two long, arching blades, snapping with serpentine quickness, wielded in tandem, scything and reaping. They severed hands and scalps, and legs and torsos. They impaled and cleaved and sheared.
Hel had arrived for the pallid in more ways than one, and it wore the face of death.
She sprang like a clockwork thing but with a dancer’s grace, fluid and syncopated at the same time. A heel turn, a pirouette. No pallid could touch her, but she went through their foetid ranks like a threshing machine, night black and deadly. She moved across the floor, the walls, the ceiling, as if the laws of physics and gravity did not apply to her, slashing and weaving, her swords like silver lightning.
Morgravia groaned, ‘Late as usual,’ and felt a soft hand stroke her calloused grip. She turned to see one of the courtesans, her face pale white but with a reddish rose colour around the eyes. Morgravia released her, tried to stand, stumbled, snarled a refusal of help and then stood upright on the second attempt.
The cage had come down, torn right off its hinges, and hung slack like a broken jaw. Bodies were trapped beneath it, within it, snagged where they’d tried to reach through the mesh. All were unmoving, dismembered or beheaded.
Barak sagged against the bar, exhausted.
Drover was wiping his punch dagger on a grimy trouser leg. He had a wild, faraway look in his eyes and didn’t meet Morgravia’s gaze at first. When he did, he just stared, the blood spattering his face like warpaint.
The others lived, the singer in black and the other courtesan, though she remained hunched up below the bar and had not broken eye contact with the shadows there. Morgravia wondered if there was much of her left beyond the shell she still possessed.
Every pallid was slain. Disassembled. An abattoir stench pervaded, the charnel devastation all too apparent. In the midst of it stood a slight figure: a girl, really, though she had ceased to be that for some time, if she ever really was one.
Morgravia felt a pang of something lost as she regarded her, this leather-clad assassin, as bloody as any corpse, staring from behind the hollows of a grinning skull.
Hel slid her blades back into their scabbards.
‘Hello, Mother,’ she uttered pleasantly, ‘did you miss me?’
Chapter X
Relentless
Wearily, they trudged through Meagre. At first, Cristo had insisted they keep to the side alleys and narrower streets, the ones less travelled. He need not have concerned himself. The town was deserted, its districts ominously silent, its commercia and habitats empty as if they had all been abandoned at the same time. It was as if some unknown signal had gone out and now everyone was simply gone.
Scraps of parchment, fluttering strips of torn fabric and propaganda leaflets scampered across the main street, pushed and pulled by the breeze. Somewhere a recyc-fan turned, its lazy revolutions an eerie drone that put Cristo on edge. He glanced at Celestia. She clung to the sword, gazing up at the hig
h buildings, at the squalor and the dilapidation. She hadn’t spoken since they had fled the agri-fields. Nor had he, the memory of the machine ever at the edge of his mind.
He had seen servitors before, the cyborganic creatures that fulfilled the labours at the bullet farm that no mortal could endure. But that stalk-legged thing, the red eyes strafing… It had been made to hunt and would have killed them both had it not been called away.
‘It is a grimy place,’ Celestia observed, pulling him from his thoughts.
‘Can’t argue there,’ Cristo replied, glad of the distraction. ‘It’s not usually this quiet. You’ve never seen Meagre before?’
She shook her head. ‘I have never left the priory.’
‘Ever? How did you come to serve the Church?’
‘My Sisters…’ she faltered, biting her lip to contain her grief. ‘They took me in as a baby. And raised me in their ways and beliefs. My aptitudes lay in healing, and so they tutored me also.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I have no regrets. I yearned for nothing more than the opportunity to serve Him. And to heal others.’
‘No,’ said Cristo, realising she had misunderstood. ‘I meant, I’m sorry you lost them. Your Sisters.’
Celestia’s face darkened and she replied in a small voice. ‘As am I.’ She looked up at him, tears brimming in her eyes but her emotions held in check. ‘Thank you. For saying that. You are a good man.’
Cristo gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I have sin enough for two lifetimes. If you knew what I had done, you would not think of me so favourably.’ He paused, considering the right words. ‘I want to atone. I want to be better.’
Celestia gestured to Karina. ‘For your daughter.’
Cristo nodded, and cast a fearful glance in her direction. ‘She’s all that matters now.’
Celestia smiled and for a moment she seemed older than her years, the teachings of her order ageing her artificially. ‘I do not know what you’ve done, Cristo, these sins you speak of. I only see what is before me, and that is not an impious man.’
Cristo bowed his head, feeling unworthy of her absolution.
He belonged here, amongst the filth and the rot. He knew that. Though the people had disappeared, the stench would always remain, the eye-watering reek of effluence that stuck to clothes and refused to depart. Blood scent coloured the air now too, so thickly that a great quantity of it had to have been spilled, but Cristo saw no bodies. He saw a few weapons here and there, a discarded riot shield. No one alive though. No one dead either.
He was wondering why that was when he felt a sort of low throb that hurt his ears. Then came a stirring of the air, a faint susurration of a distant disturbance. Celestia heard it too and turned to him, her eyes wide as silver coins.
Grasping her wrist, he pulled her into a parchment maker’s, the wares scattered around a dingy chamber and trailing unkemptly out of the open door. Bloody footprints marked a few of the pages, mixing with the smeared ink and dirt, and he wondered where the person who they belonged to had gone.
They crouched down, Cristo still holding onto Karina and listening, trying to discern where the sound was coming from.
‘What is it?’ hissed the Sister-novice before Cristo pressed a finger to his lips indicating that they should stay quiet.
He remembered those killing edges again and that cold regard. If the machine they had met earlier stalked the town… Cristo suddenly wished he’d stopped to pick up one of the weapons he’d seen lying around. Then he quickly dismissed the idea. There would be no fighting something like that. The only chance they had would be to stay hidden.
But it wasn’t the machine. It was something else. Maybe something worse. He knew it with all the gut-wrenching certainty of a man who can’t escape his fate, who is destined to face the penance he is due. He almost sank then, down to his knees, ready to accept, to relent at last.
Then he closed his eyes, clenching them tight and thought of Karina in those days gone, of the daughter he still owed and the girl crouched nearby he had sworn to himself to protect.
I want to atone. His own words returned to judge him.
They would not stop coming. They had no pity. No remorse. Cristo opened his eyes, ready to bear his burdens again.
Find the strength. Be like them. Never yield, not until she’s safe. Until they’re both safe. Then you can stop. Then you’ll be done.
He met Celestia’s scared gaze and reached out to grip her small hand in his.
‘We have to run.’
The dead had returned.
And they were coming.
Chapter XI
Plague
Barak disliked most people. He found them shallow and likely to disappoint, but he would miss Veran. He had been an ostentatious character in life, fond of jewelled rings and fine attire. At least as fine as he could afford, and the jewels were really just cut glass. Fake emeralds had been his favourite. Still, it gave him an air. Barak smiled sadly at the memory his thoughts provoked.
‘Damn theremin,’ he murmured, surprised at the thickness of his voice.
The instrument had emerged unscathed and intact, which was more than could be said for poor Veran himself. During the initial surge he had saved Jana, and Barak would be ever grateful for that sacrifice. He had wanted to bury him, but not enough remained to give to the earth, and as he hunted around the shed attached to his bar he realised he didn’t own a shovel anyway. The blanket he had wrapped Veran in would have to suffice instead, as it had for the others. Until they were all burned.
‘Is it still here?’ asked a quiet, hardened voice.
He nodded, not needing to turn around to identify the speaker. He’d known she’d want to see the Mule as soon as he’d mentioned he still had it. Barak worried she might sanction him, but he suspected they were beyond all of that.
‘Are you really one of them?’ he asked.
‘A woman?’
Barak chuckled, appreciating the effort at levity. ‘Well that answers one question,’ he said, his old hands finding the edge of a dusty tarp. It felt coarse against his fingers. ‘They don’t bleed you of humour at least.’
‘Oh no, they let us keep that. It helps when faced with the abyss.’
‘I should think it does,’ said Barak, hauling on the tarp, pulling it back and away. A small dust cloud kicked up and he coughed, waving his arm back and forth to help clear it. ‘Been a long while since I took her out.’
‘We’ll need it. No way we’ll get out of here on foot.’
The chains and clamps were still in place. Barak needed keys and they were back in the bar. He didn’t relish the thought of returning there. It was why he left in the first place when everyone else was still afraid to. Apart from her, of course. And the other one. He tried not to think about the one in black, grinning like death.
‘Will it run?’ asked Morgravia.
He faced the inquisitor. He caught an inkling they weren’t alone and found he had a sudden desire to leave.
‘She’ll have to.’
Barak departed, leaving Morgravia alone to her thoughts. At least for a short while.
‘I can feel you watching me, you know,’ she said, and stepped away from the shed.
Hel emerged from the shadows, poised like a dancer. Her head canted one way then the other, jerky and avian.
‘Are you angry with me, Mother?’
‘I asked you not to call me that,’ said Morgravia sternly. ‘And no, I’m not angry. You saved my life. You saved several lives.’
If that registered on any sort of emotional level, Hel didn’t show it. She had been well indoctrinated, a blunt blade honed into a killing weapon by the Sanguinous. Morgravia wondered if she’d had a part in that, handing a child into the hands of a death cult to be hollowed out and shaped into something lethal. She supposed she must have.
‘Is this a part of it, the reason why we are here?’ asked Hel.
Morgravia thought on that a moment, and decided that it probably was. ‘What did you find?’
‘It is bad, Moth– my lord. The plague has taken the town. Many are infected.’
‘Infected how?’
‘Unknown. The contagion affected masses at once. Entire districts.’
‘Spores? A chemical attack?’ Morgravia considered. ‘No… it can’t be the air. We would have felt its effects, and been turned ourselves. Blood or saliva? A biological toxin? That wouldn’t explain the mass infections.’
She ran through the probabilities aloud, collating what she could remember. The Ordo Sepulturum had a particular interest and efficacy in dealing with what had been termed ‘plagues of unbelief’, the miraculous and horrific rising of the dead. Chaos taint, the belief in old infernal gods and the rejection of the Imperial creed, was a supposed catalyst. A corruption of the faith as well as the body. In this case, the symptoms did not match the disease. The pallid were alive. At least at first. This was different. Without the expertise of a magos biologis or even a sanctioned chirurgeon, she could only postulate.
‘And the other matter?’ she asked. ‘Have you found any sign?’
‘They remain clandestine.’
‘It must be connected.’
‘I agree.’
A mild spike of pain had Morgravia pinching the bridge of her nose and shutting her eyes to ward it off.
‘The malady?’ asked Hel.
Morgravia nodded. ‘Still here. Ignore it. This is nothing.’
‘Has it worsened?’
Morgravia paused but saw no need to dissemble. ‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps it is connected too.’
‘Thought had crossed my mind.’ The pain ebbed and Morgravia opened her eyes again. She regarded Hel. ‘Why did you return?’
