"All the time the governor, Huac, kept up an endless, amiable chatter. We watched, dazzled and beguiled by his smooth voice and affable manner. As the long day wore on, we began to accept that there was no need to fight, that we should simply take the tribute and go home.
"Our minds were pleasantly befuddled, and we were prepared to agree to anything our gracious host suggested when the great cryogenic coffins were brought forth. Huac claimed they carried his greatest treasures. It is a measure of how under his sway we were that we almost took than. without thinking.
"It was Two Heads Talking who said no. He stood there, for a moment, like a man bemused, and then he began to chant. It was as if cobwebs had been lifted from our eyes and we saw the snare that had been so subtly set for us.
"The spell of the Magus, for such was Huac, was lifted, and we saw to our horror that we had almost taken two Genestealer coffins back to our fleet. All that afternoon, as our minds had been lulled by the long, slow march, Huac had been inserting subtle, mystical tendrils into our minds.
"Still, so near to being enthralled were we that we almost protested when Two Heads Talking riddled Huac and his two apprentices with bolter fire. Only the Living Dreadnought Hawk Talon joined in the firing. We reacted slowly when he warned us to defend ourselves. Huac"s guardsmen almost had us. "But we were Marines. No sooner had they opened up with their lasrifles than we returned fire with our bolters, cutting them down. Van Dam tried to contact the fleet but our comm-links were being jammed. and we could not teleport out.
There was nothing for it. We had to fight our way to the planet"s surface and hope that a dropship could reach us.
"It seemed as if the whole planet had turned against us, and that was more or less what had happened. Two hundred of us fought our way out of the audience room. We were met by armed men, unarmed children and their mothers. All threw themselves against us with insane ferocity. As we cut them down, they showed no fear - only a strange, unholy joy. The whole world had been infected.
"Our trip to the surface was a nightmare. We battled along dark corridors, crawled up access ladders and through narrow hatches never meant for Marines. I saw Steel Fist tumble back headless from one hatchway. Van Dam lobbed a handful of crack grenades through and we were spattered with the remains of a full-grown Stealer"
"My brother Red Sky was pulled down by a wave of feral children with explosives in their hands. They detonated them as they crawled over his body. He did not live.
"Twice in the endless corridors, we were almost overrun. It came to hand-to-hand combat with purestrain Stealers.
Twenty of our brothers were cut down before Two Heads Talking"s force axe and Cloud Runner"s power sword carried us clear.
"It was while guarding the final hatchway that I lost the use of my leg. A Stealer cut right through the floor and grabbed me, trying to pull me down. I blasted frantically at it. The last thing I remember was its horrid, leering face as it pulled me down toward it. Around it was a group of" Thranxians who stroked and pushed against it fondly.
"The others told me what had happened when I woke up in the medical bay of the ship with a new bionic leg. Two Heads Talking and Cloud Runner had pulled me clear and carried me to the roof of the world. where the dropship waited.
"There was only one thing to do: order the Exterminatus. The whole place was sterilised from orbit with virus bombs.
Later, inquisitorial investigators ascertained that the whole business had begun only sixty years before, when an unrecorded s.p.a.ce hulk had swung through the system.
"It had taken only three generations for the Stealers to infect a whole world. For that is how they reproduce - by turning people into hosts for their offspring. Their victims endure this willingly, due to the Stealers" hypnotic powers.
"Many nights I have lain awake wondering whether we could have saved the world if only we had arrived sooner.
Perhaps if we had been able to eliminate the Stealers before the cancer had spread, we would not have had to order the Exterminatus. Cloud Runner could see that the warriors had been swayed and angered by Lame Bear"s tale. He could tell that they were considering the a.s.similation of their People as breeding stock and the possibility that, by swift action, they might prevent it.
"Let us go." said Weasel-Fierce, leaping to his feet. "Let us enter the city and kill the Stealers" sp.a.w.n."
Several other warriors made to accompany him.
Wait," said b.l.o.o.d.y Moon. "The gathering is not over and I would speak..."
Anger and impatience drove Two Heads Talking toward the sound of pain. By the brink of the river, in the shadow of a monstrous factory, he saw that a group of bluecoats had pinned an old man against the wall and were slowly and surely beating him to death with their truncheons. One of their number held a lantern, occasionally giving a calm, precise order.
"Talk seditious nonsense, would you?" said one bravo. His stroke ended with the cracking of breaking ribs. The old man groaned and fell to his knees. The other bluecoats laughed.
"Preach heresy against the Imperial cult and the warriors from the sky, eh? What makes you old fools do it? By the Emperor. I thought we had got the last of you."
Their victim looked up at them. "You are deluded. The Warriors from the Sky would not have built this place and herded us here the way elks are herded to the slaughter. Nor would they have broken the burial mounds of our people.
Your masters are evil spirits summoned by the Hill Clans, not true Sky Warriors. Deathwing will return and rend them asunder."
"Silence, blaspheming no-name." said the leader of the bluecoats.
"You wish to prove your courage, do you? Perhaps we should return to the old ways, drunkard, and practise the Weasel Claw ritual on you."
The old man coughed blood. "Do what you will, I am Morning Star of the line of Running Deer and Silver Elk. I have the Witching Sight. I tell you that the spirits walk. Ancient powers stalk the land. The red star burns bright in the sky.
A time of trouble is coming."
"Is that why you chose to start ranting this night? I had thought the only spirits that talked to you came from a bottle," said another bluecoat, kicking Morning Star in the ribs. The old man groaned. Two Heads Talking made his way forward through the mist, till he emerged into the lantern light.
"The bluecoat leader spoke to him. "Go away, buck. This is Warrior Lodge business. If you don"t want to join this drunkard in the river, you"ll leave now."
"You dishonour the idea of the Warrior Lodge," said Two Heads Talking quietly. "Depart now, and I will spare you.
Remain a heartbeat longer, and I will surely grant you death."
The old man looked up at him. awe-struck. Two Heads Talking could see the winged skull tattoo of a Shaman on his forehead. A few bravos laughed. Some, the wiser ones, heard the soft menace in the Marine"s voice and backed away.
The leader gestured for the bluecoats to attack. "Take him!"
Two Heads Talking parried the swipe of a truncheon with his forearm. There was a metallic ring as the bludgeon snapped. He broke the bravo"s nose against the b.u.t.t of his force axe then lashed out with his foot, driving it into another bluecoat"s stomach with inhuman force. As the man bent double the Librarian chopped down on his neck.
breaking it.
The bluecoats swarmed over him now. Their truncheons were as ineffective as twigs against a bear. A few tried to grab his arms and immobilise him. He shrugged them off easily, swinging killing blows with weapon and elbow. Where he struck, men died.
As the battle l.u.s.t swept over him, he felt the bound spirits slip away. He knew that he stood revealed in his true form.
The last of the bluecoats turned to ran. Two Heads Talking hooked an arm around his neck and twisted. There was acrunch of shattering vertebrae.
The old man gazed on him with religious intensity. "The spirits spoke truthfully," he said, as if he did not quite believe it. He reached out and touched him. making sure he was real.
"You have come at last to free the People from their bondage to the false Emperor and lead them back to the plains.
What is your name, Sky Warrior?"
"In my youth, it was Two Heads Talking, apprentice to Spirit Hawk. When I entered the service of the true Emperor, I took the name Lucian." He could see tears running down the old man"s scarred cheeks.
"Tell me, old man, what has happened to our folk? How did they come to fall so low?"
"It began when I was a buck." said Morning Star, wiping his face. "One summer night, the sky burned, and there was a great roaring. A trail of fire raced across the sky, and there was an explosion. Where we are now was a vast crater, and in the centre, where the Temple of the Four-armed Emperor stands, was a great, red-hot pile of metal.
"Some people thought the Sky Warriors had returned, that the roaring was the voice of their thunderbird. The Shamans knew that this could not be so, for Deathwing returns only once every hundred years, in autumn, and it had been only fifty years since the red star was last visible."
"We were pleased because we thought that we might ride Deathwing. Most of us had reckoned on being old men when the Sky Warriors came again.
"Those who met our chiefs were not the armoured warriors of legend. They were feeble, pale-skinned men who claimed that they had come from the Emperor to show us the way to build an earthly paradise. They preached the virtues of tolerance and brotherly love and an end to warfare. The chiefs sent them packing, which was a mistake, for when honeyed words did not succeed, they tried force of arms. They allied with the Hill Clans and gave them metal blades which our weapons could not withstand.
"Eventually, clans were forced to trade for the new weapons in order to withstand their enemies. Tales were told of how witching spirits with four arms and terrible claws destroyed our warriors. Soon, the pretenders ruled the Plains, taking slaves and destroying utterly those who opposed them.
"Then came the building of this great city, using slave labour and paying the freemen in trade tokens."
Suddenly, the old man"s eyes went wide with horror. He was looking past Two Heads Talking and into the night. The Librarian turned, and from the mist, shapes emerged.
One was the fat man who earlier had been riding in the palanquin. Flanking him were two huge four-armed figures.
Their carapaces glistened like oil. They raised large claws which glittered in the moonlight.
"We would have told you all this if only you had asked." said the fat man, gazing at Two Heads Talking with his dark, magnetic eyes.
The Librarian flexed his fingers, and his force axe hummed a song of death in his hand.
"It was in the time of Commander Aradiel, a hundred summers gone," said b.l.o.o.d.y Moon. "We were aboard the battlebarge Angelus Morte on sector edge patrol when the alarms went off. Sensor probes indicated that a s.p.a.ce hulk had dropped from warp s.p.a.ce near us. Deep scanning revealed nothing. We were ordered to investigate.
"We crouched within the boarding torpedoes and were fired at the hulk. It was unpowered and dark when we disembarked, so helmet lights on, we moved to secure the perimeter. We met no resistance, but as per standard operational procedures, we proceeded with extreme caution.
"We identified the hulk as Prison of Lost Souls, an appropriate name as it turned out. We moved nervously through the shadowy corridors, for the taint of the warp still hung about the craft. It made us uneasy."
"At first, there was no sign of danger. Then we came across the bodies of some s.p.a.ce Wolves. They had been riddled with bolter fire. We could not guess how long they had lain there - perhaps since the hulk had last entered normal s.p.a.ce. It might have been ten years or ten thousand - we did not know. The tides of warp s.p.a.ce are unpredictable, and time flows strangely there. "Brother Sergeant Conrad ordered us to be wary. Then a terrible thing occurred. A s.p.a.ce Wolf"s corpse sat upright. its eyes glowing crimson. "You are doomed." it told us. "Every one of you will die as I have." We riddled it with fire from our weapons, but still its horrible whispers echoed in our minds.
"We began to fall back. All around us, Blips suddenly appeared on our sensors. They were running parallel to us, trying to cut us off from the boarding torpedo.
"At corridor intersections, we caught sight of armoured figures. We exchanged a few shots with them. I hit one and heard its scream over the comm-link. They were using the same frequencies as we were. When we realised that, our blood ran cold. We asked ourselves: could these be Marines?
"We did not have long to wait for an answer. They swarmed down the corridor toward us in a vast wave. They were garbed in the armour of Marines, but they were horribly mutated. Some clutched rusty bolters in tentacles instead of hands. Some had faces that were moist and green and slimy like toads. Some had claws and extra limbs. Some dragged themselves along, leaving a trail of mucus behind them.
"The mark of Chaos was upon them. They called on Horus and those powers that are better not named. And we knew then - they were renegades, survivors from the Age of Heresy who had pacted with Chaos in exchange for eternal life.
The fighting became close and heavy. They had the weight of numbers, but we had our Terminator armour and the strength of righteousness.
"For a moment, it looked as though they might overwhelm us, but then our thunder hammers and lightning claws came into play, and we cut through them inexorably. They fought like daemons, and they had the strength of the d.a.m.ned, but eventually we won.
"I stood looking down at the body of my last foe, and a thought occurred to me: this man had once been a Marine like myself. He had undergone the same training and indoctrination as I had. He had sworn to serve the Emperor. And yet he had betrayed humanity. How could this be?
"How could a true Marine become forsworn? It seemed unlikely that he would suddenly turn his back on the pattern of a lifetime and pact with the Darkness. What had Chaos to offer him?
"Wealth? We have no use for the baubles that other men covet; we already have the finest of everything that a man could wish for. Sensual gratification? We are taught its transitory nature. Power? We know true power, which is the will of the Emperor. Who among us could equal his sacrifice?" "No - as I stood over his body I came to understand. He had deviated not in one leap but in small steps, by increments.
"First he had come to place trust in the Warmaster. An easy step, for was not Horus the chief champion of the Emperor?
"Then he had come to follow the Warmaster. Who would not? A soldier follows his commander.
"Then he had come to believe Horus divine. An easy mistake. Was not the great Heretic one of the Primarchs of the First Founding, gifted with G.o.d-like powers second only to the Emperor himself.
"Thus did he sway from the path of truth, till eventually he lost both his life and soul. It is a way that is open to anyone, one small mistake leading to another until at last the Great Error is reached. This I came to realise as I studied the body of the renegade on the Prison of Lost Souls. I resolved then and there to submit myself to the Emperor"s will.
I knew that all our regulations and our codes have a purpose, and it is not for us to question them, for they keep us from the path of the deviant.
Around the fire, there was silence. Cloud Runner could tell that b.l.o.o.d.y Moon"s words had touched a chord within the Marines. He found himself examining his own conscience for signs of heresy. The implication of b.l.o.o.d.y Moon"s tale was quite clear: if they lapsed from the service of the Emperor, they were taking the first step down the road to d.a.m.nation. He had also reminded them that they were Marines, the chosen of the Emperor. If they did not keep the faith, who would?
For a long time, all was quiet. Then Weasel-Fierce indicated his wish to talk. "I will speak of death," he said. "the death of men and worlds...."
Two Heads Talking felt the impact of the fat Magus" will like a physical blow. The great, dark eyes seemed to swell, to become bottomless pits into which the Librarian fell. At his feet, Morning Star whimpered.
With a wrench, the Marine broke the psychic contact, thankful that his Librarian"s armour was equipped with a psychic hood. The Magus was strong, and Two Heads Talking was already tired.
The Stealers raced toward him. The Librarian raised his storm bolter and sent a hail of sh.e.l.ls blazing out. Tracer fire ripped the night apart. The leading Genestealer was shredded by the heavy bullets. The other dodged with inhuman speed.
Morning Star leap between the Librarian and his a.s.sailant. A claw flickered, and the old man"s body was tom in half.
Two Heads Talking lashed out with his axe, willing it to strike hard, and its blade burned coldly as it pa.s.sed through the Stealer"s neck. He leapt back to avoid its reflexive death-strike.
The Magus laughed. "You cannot escape. Why struggle?"
The fat man concentrated, and a halo of power played around his head. The Librarian hosed him down with fire, but some force intercepted the sh.e.l.ls, causing them to explode harmlessly a few feet from their target.Two Heads Talking strode forward, swinging the axe. He felt his own power build within him as the blade arced toward his target. Something stopped it a foot away from the Magus"s head. Great muscles bulged under his armour as he forced it forward. Servo-motors whined as they added their strength to his.
Slowly, inexorably, the Marine forced the blade toward his enemy. Sweat ran down the fat man"s brow as he concentrated. A look of fear pa.s.sed across his face. He could not save himself. and he knew it.
He gave a single shriek as his concentration lapsed. The force axe sheared through him from head to groin. Two Heads Talking felt the Magus" psychic death scream echo through the night. He sensed hundreds of minds answer it in the distance, through the deadening curtain of mist, he heard the sound of scuttling, coming ever closer.
Knowing his only chance of survival lay in swift flight, Two Heads Talking turned and ran.Chapter IV "Our world is dead," said Weasel-Fierce. Some Marines muttered about the fact that he was addressing than directly, rather than keeping to the ritual. He silenced them with a short, chopping gesture of his right hand. When he spoke again, his tone was scathing and savage.
"This ritual is a sham. It comes from a time that is ended. Why pretend otherwise? You may wish to delude yourselves by keeping with the old ways, but I do not.
"You can speak in parables about our oaths to the Emperor, the horror of the Stealers or the nature of d.a.m.nation. I choose to speak the truth.
"Our people are dead or enslaved, and we sit here like old women, asking ourselves what to do. Have we been put under a spell? When were we ever so indecisive? A true warrior has no choice in this matter. We must avenge our people. Our weapons must taste enemy blood. It would be the coward"s way not to face them."
"But if we fail . . ." began b.l.o.o.d.y Moon.
"If we fail. so be it. What have we to live for? How many summers have we left before we die of old age or are encased in the cold, metal body of a Living Dreadnought?"
He fell silent and glared around the fire. To Cloud Runner"s surprise, he looked down, and the fury seeped out of him.
"I am old," he said softly. "Old and tired. I have seen more than two hundred summers. In a few more, I will be dead anyway. I had hoped to gaze again on my kin before then, but it is not to be. This is my only regret."
Cloud Runner could see the weariness in him, felt its echo in his own mind. Every man about the fire had served the Emperor for centuries, their lifespans increased by the process that turned them into Marines.
"If I had remained among the people," Weasel-Fierce said. "I would be dead by now. I chose another path and I have lived long longer perhaps than any mortal should.
"It is time for an ending. Where better than here, on our homeworld, among the bones of our kin? The day of the Plains People is done. We can avenge them, and we can join them. If we fall in combat, we shall have had warriors" deaths. I wish to die as I have lived: weapons in hand, foes before me.