The Plagues of Orath Read online

  The targeting systems finally caught up and Isachaar released the safety on one of the stormstrike missiles slung beneath the Fury’s wings. It flew straight and true, and obliterated the corrupted vessel in a storm of fire. Isachaar allowed himself the organic indulgence of a smile.

  It would be the last time he would ever do so.

  Sentina stood in the middle of the passenger cabin, mag-locked to the floor, turning to observe each of the Centurions as they continued to track the foe. It made him proud to call them brothers. Though their effectiveness against the enemy would be slight, and the danger they faced by exposing themselves at the hatches was great, not one of them flinched. It was not quite true that Space Marines knew no fear. They knew it, but at their best they mastered it and used it to propel them forward. That was what Aeroth, Iova, Lentulus and Oenomaus did now. And through their efforts, one of their attackers was already destroyed.

  ‘By your efforts shall we defeat this foe,’ he intoned across the vox.

  The rest of what Chaplain Sentina had been going to say was lost when a third Chaos fighter, that had been hiding lower in the mist, emerged vertically and fired a slew of autocannon rounds straight through the Fury of Gallicus’s cockpit.

  A few seconds later, the Stormraven gunship exploded.

  ‘Incoming!’

  Alia’s voice rang through the central area of the small town, and the group of men and women clustered in small groups around the large, open area snapped to attention. She skidded to a halt and shouted again. ‘Dead incoming!’

  A figure pushed his way through the crowd that began to develop around her, a small man, portly, wearing ragged green robes, his ruddy face crowned by a greying tonsure of dark hair.

  ‘Are you all right, child?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘There are dead following, father. At least three, but maybe more. There were others, but we lost them.’ She was breathless, and babbling, she knew.

  ‘Rose, Bragg.’ The priest nodded to a pair of men who stood clutching makeshift spears, grim expressions on their faces. One was tall, his hair long and dirty blond, the other short, a ragged beard emphasising his balding crown. They shared a first name, and so were referred to by their surnames. ‘Did you hear young Alia?’ Father Andronicus continued.

  ‘Aye. We’ll set up a perimeter in the direction she came from, and keep an eye on the other exits to the square,’ said the shorter one.

  They nodded and set to it, looking faintly ridiculous next to one another as they started to organise a cordon.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me “young Alia”,’ she muttered as the priest returned his attention to her.

  ‘Ah, but you are, child,’ he said, pulling a battered canteen from within his robes and offering it to her.

  ‘I’m older than at least ten other people here,’ she protested, grabbing the canteen and unscrewing the top. She took a swig and nearly spat it back out. The liquor was strong, burning her throat. She coughed.

  ‘Oops.’ Andronicus smiled broadly. ‘Wrong drink.’ He rummaged in his robes again, and Alia shook her head.

  ‘No, that’ll do,’ she gasped. She heard a shout and turned her attention to the group of men Rose and Bragg were organising. They stood in a rough line, spears pointed at the group of three walking corpses Alia had exhorted to follow her. As she watched, the trio of creatures pounced, desperate to get between the wall of spears and tear into warm human flesh. All three were impaled, but seemed not to notice, continuing to pull themselves forward even as their innards unravelled, smearing the shafts of the weapons with blood and pus.

  The three men whose spears had caught the creatures – Rose and Bragg amongst them – shifted apart to allow another group through. These were armed with axes, and Alia looked away as they set to hacking the heads from the monsters. She didn’t want to watch. Monsters or no, they had been human once.

  ‘You said there were more?’

  ‘There are. Lots more.’ Keevan pushed his way through the group of blood-spattered men who were dragging the corpses of the undead away. ‘At least a hundred. And they’re acting as a pack. And coming this–’

  He was cut off by an immense explosion that echoed around the square and beyond. It seemed to come from all about Alia, and above. She looked up to see, in the distance, the aftermath of a great flash blazing fiercely through the greenish mist.

  ‘Ah…’ breathed the priest, his head also turned skyward. ‘At last.’ Then he turned and raised his voice. ‘Everyone, gather together and prepare to move on.’ He offered no further explanation.

  ‘Again?’ groaned a voice from somewhere in the crowd of bodies. Alia recognised it as belonging to Pieta, a lad from a village they had passed through the month before. They had found him hiding in the basement of his family home. Of his parents and brothers, there was no sign. He was eight years old, and had lived in relative luxury, the son of a scholam instructor and a nurse at the local medicae. He hadn’t adjusted to life on the run yet, and every time they found a new settlement, he was the first to voice the hope that this might be a clear town, that they might be able to settle here.

  It was a fool’s hope, Alia knew. She had dared to express it herself in the early days, but cynicism had soon set in. Part of her hoped it would do so in Pieta as well. His constant hope annoyed her. But then she saw him, so like little Felip, and she hoped that his dreams stayed alive. Maybe they would even come true, if the priest was right and they found help at the distant edifice of Fort Garm.

  ‘Again, Pieta,’ boomed the priest. ‘I know, I had hoped for longer here as well, but we must accept that the God-Emperor is pushing us onwards to Fort Garm, where salvation awaits.’

  A general grumbling met the priest’s words. No one really believed that there would be anything at the ancient fortress other than more death. Andronicus was an outsider. He didn’t know the stories of Fort Garm, and its counterpart on the northern continent, Fort Kerberos.

  ‘Come on now!’ bellowed Keevan. ‘Gather everything together. Are we missing anyone?’

  People started moving with purpose, Keevan amongst them. Alia caught his arm.

  ‘Did you find a gun?’ she asked.

  Keevan grimaced. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Empty. Looks like he used his final round on himself.’ He pulled away and delved into the crowd, shouting orders. Crestfallen, Alia clutched the leather pouch around her neck, squeezing it and feeling the solid shape within. Her fingers brushed the crude wooden eagle as well. She looked into the crowd and caught a glimpse of Pieta. For a moment, he looked just like Felip. Just like her brother.

  Thirteen thousand years ago

  The tide of monsters stretched to the horizon, and beyond. From his vantage point atop the Hill of Beginnings, Kharanath could see little but a roiling mass of ever-changing flesh, the raw stuff of the otherrealm become real. Everywhere he looked, it formed bodies that looked wrong, with too many joints, impossibly rippling muscles and bone-like blades that jutted directly from skin. When they were struck by one of the eldar in the small – and shrinking – knots of defenders, the flesh split, deformed, then reknitted, sometimes the same, sometimes in a completely different configuration. The things couldn’t die. The warriors of Meldaen had held out against them for weeks now, awaiting reinforcements in vain. Now only one hope remained.

  ‘The mon-keigh have a word for them,’ whispered a voice in his mind. ‘A name from their most ancient myths. Daemon.’

  Kharanath snorted in amusement. ‘We have words for them as well, Elthaenneath. Neverborn, soul thieves, darktide, bloodwights. A million names, for the million or more forms they take.’

  He had to admit that the word did fit though. ‘Daemon,’ he repeated softly. It was a surprisingly simple word to encompass such complex creatures with their seemingly infinite variety, but it had a good weight to it.

  ‘They believed that creatures such as these were the servants of evil gods, that they existed to steal souls and put them to eterna
l torture.’

  The psychic conversation with his brother helped to keep Kharanath focused. His arms ached, his body protesting after days of near-constant battle. His spear was harnessed on his back now, his pistol long since discarded for want of ammunition. Further down the slope, his Seventeen Swords – or ‘Nine Knives’ as Kotris, the eternal joker, had dubbed them, with regard to their remaining number – fought against the front-line troops of the foe, tall and rangy beasts with crested and horned heads, and backwards-jointed legs. They gripped great brass blades in their claws, and their lean bodies seemed soaked in gore. The smell of them infused the battlefield.

  ‘Battlefield,’ he said ruefully. ‘All of Meldaen is a battlefield now.’

  ‘Not for too much longer, my brother,’ came Elthaenneath’s voice, whispering through his senses. ‘The ritual nears completion. The seals take shape.’

  Elthaenneath stood far beneath Kharanath’s feet, deep in the tunnels beneath Meldaen. He was no warrior, his brother. While Kharanath had studied the arts of battle, the way of the blade, his twin had toiled to become an artisan, learning how to sing wraithbone into shape.

  That was what he was doing in that chamber far below, crafting a wraithbone capstone with which to seal the rift in the otherrealm that had opened in the heart of their world. Another bonesinger was doing the same on the other side of Meldaen. When their work was complete, the horde of monsters – daemons – that surged across the world would be banished. Or so they hoped.

  Of course, that assumed that the eldar lasted long enough to complete the seals and end the incursion. The death toll had been horrendous, the damage to the population of the previously idyllic world incalculable.

  ‘I wonder if the doomsayers in the coreworlds have a point, my brother,’ he said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You have heard the tales of the excesses in the heart of the empire, the orgies of bloodletting, the festivals of indulgence. What if they are disturbing the fabric of the otherrealm? What if those who claim farsight are right, and a blade is coming through the darkness for us? What if this is its leading edge?’

  Elthaenneath had no response.

  Kharanath returned his attention to the battle below. The knots of eldar warriors – brave men and women who had taken up blade and rifle to save their world, though they had lived long lives of peace and luxury – were getting smaller, and the enemy host was undiminished. He sighed, and began the climb down the steep hill, picking his way sure-footedly through clusters of loose stones and skipping across the eldar dead from the last time the daemons had broken through the lines of the Seventeen Swords and made it partway up the hill.

  ‘We can’t even bury our dead,’ he muttered bitterly. The creatures were relentless, their assaults ferocious, and each time they pushed forward, they came closer to overwhelming the exhausted eldar entirely.

  ‘And the living cannot hold out much longer,’ said a voice from behind him, soft and feminine.

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Kharanath agreed, not turning. Althyra was his shadow, his protector, the only one of his Seventeen Swords not guarding the slopes below. She was sworn to keep any threats from reaching Kharanath. Ultimately, he knew, she would fail, unless Elthaenneath and his fellow bonesinger completed their work. ‘But if we fall, we fall as heroes, Althyra. It is time for our last stand.’

  Drawing his tall spear from its harness on his back, Kharanath stepped forward and thrust the weapon into the air. It sang as it sliced, a long, low keening that would have pierced the souls of his foes, had they souls to affect.

  ‘Seventeen Swords! To me!’ he bellowed, his voice carrying across the clash of blades and bestial sounds of the unnatural monsters below. He broke into a run, feeling Althyra following, and leapt into the fray. Allowing his training and deadly instinct to take over, Kharanath started to kill.

  As his blade cleaved through infernal unflesh, spilling corrosive black blood that stained the soil, he cast his mind back to his brother.

  ‘Elthaenneath, how goes the ritual?’

  He was vaguely aware of his remaining guards gathering around him, each performing mighty deeds that would be commemorated in song and story, should any who saw them survive long enough to record them.

  Here, Alandris the Deathshaper leaped high into the air, carving his way through the pilot of a flying chariot that burned with blue flames, before skipping his way across a flight of manta-like beasts that followed in the chariot’s wake, stabbing each with one of his paired mirrorblades as he bounded from their predatory forms.

  There, Althyra slipped from shadow to shadow, her skills defying mortal comprehension, bringing herself closer to a towering, disease-ridden warrior who directed the march of a host of smaller creatures ten thousand strong, each clutching a misshapen sword dripping with virulent fluid and oozing blood and pus from a dozen wounds across their bodies. The creature didn’t see Althyra coming. She appeared behind it, coming from the shadow cast by a great flapping banner marked with sigils that made Kharanath’s soul itch. With a single line of monofilament wire, Althyra took the enemy leader’s head from its shoulders. It was to little avail – there were a dozen more to take its place, and the march of the plagueridden soldiers continued unabated.

  And all the while, Kharanath slew, his spear driving through enemy chests, bursting from their backs in showers of corrupt blood and slicing limbs from bodies. And all the while, he waited for a response from Elthaenneath. But there came none.

  ‘Elthaenneath?’ he sent again, allowing concern and a touch of panic to colour the message. Still nothing. He spoke aloud. ‘Althyra, I have lost contact with my brother. We must get below. If he is lost, we all are.’

  She was suddenly at his side, clenching and unclenching the fist that controlled her monofilament wire spinner. ‘Then we go, my lord. The other Swords?’

  Kharanath hesitated. If the daemons had overwhelmed Elthaenneath’s guard, the Seventeen Swords would be of immeasurable use. Yet they were direly needed up here. He shook his head. ‘They stay.’

  Althyra nodded. ‘Then let us go.’ She bounded away towards the hidden entrance to the caverns, some kilometres distant, away from the bulk of the fighting. Kharanath followed. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

  Three

  The wind rushed around Sentina, deafening and dizzying. There was no up or down as he fell, no sense of location, time or distance. He remembered – barely – an almighty explosion, immense heat and deafening noise, and the Stormraven losing control. He remembered dropping, and being grabbed by a great fist. Oenomaus. The young battle-brother had pulled him onto his huge shoulder guard. And now they were falling, the wind buffeting them as they tumbled through the mist. The Chaplain heard – barely – a bleat over his vox-link and blink-clicked the volume to maximum.

  ‘…ryone… ke it… plan…’

  It was Aeroth’s voice, and the Chaplain struggled to hear what the sergeant was saying. ‘Repeat, sergeant!’ he shouted, his voice booming but still almost lost to his ears as the wind rushed and whipped against his helm.

  ‘…aid…ve a plan…’

  Sentina growled. Aeroth had a plan. How very reassuring. He focused all his efforts on locating the other Centurions. His helm display blinked with their transponder icons, though it was clearly struggling to keep up with the pace of their descent, altitude markers flicking digits quicker than even his enhanced eyes could follow.

  He struggled to make sense of where they were in relation to him. Three-dimensional navigation was, he believed, something better left to pilots. As best he could tell, they were all within twenty metres of one another horizontally, but at differing altitudes. He shouted into the vox again.

  ‘Your plan had better be good, sergeant, or this is going to be a short and painful mission.’

  Aeroth couldn’t make out exactly what the Chaplain had shouted over the vox, but he caught the general idea. He muttered a quiet response, knowing it would never be heard.
/>   ‘I hope it works as well, Manet…’

  The plan was simple, but not exactly one that was Codex-approved. For some reason, the wisdom held within that mighty tome didn’t include what to do to survive a fall of several kilometres without jump packs, so some degree of improvisation was required. If the worthies of the Chapter objected, Aeroth would simply be glad to be alive to hear it. Assuming the plan worked and whatever waited for them on the surface of Orath didn’t kill them.

  With a thought, Aeroth brought the controls for his grav-amp up on his helm display. The arcane piece of technology that was built into his left arm had no function on its own; its purpose was to enhance and regulate the gravitational effects of the cannon slung under his right limb.

  Grav-weapons fired a focused graviton beam that created a temporary increase in the Newtonian force around a target, crumpling armour and mangling organic tissue. The grav-amp allowed the user to increase or decrease the power of the created anomaly.

  Or reverse it.

  Aeroth manipulated the controls with a series of gestures and blinks. What he was doing wasn’t quite what the weapon was designed for, but it would work. It would have to.

  As he completed the adjustments, warning lights blinked red on his display. He was sure alarms were sounding as well, and he silently thanked the Emperor that he couldn’t hear them. He dismissed the warnings and, with a grunt of effort, forced his right arm to move against the onrushing wind, pointing directly down. He did some calculations, aiming at a point past Brother Iova, who would be the first to know – in spectacular and messy fashion – if the plan failed.

  He closed his eyes and fired, holding down the trigger and sending a steady stream of gravitic particles towards the rapidly approaching ground.