A figure stepped through the slice. He was huge, and armoured in full plate. In his fist, glowing and dripping with immaterial aetherplasm, was the ritual athame.
A second figure stepped through after the first, sword raised. Like the first, he was clad in the dark red and ritually inscribed armour of the XVII Legion Word Bearers. Like the first, he wore no helm, for no helm could ever contain the twisted horns and scalp spikes that adorned their skulls. Their eyes were slits the colour of hot night.
They were once-proud warriors of the Legiones Astartes who had willingly allowed daemon-things to sp.a.w.n and grown inside them parasitically. They were Unburdened.
Their names had become Ulkas Tul and Barbos Kha, dull inhuman echoes of the names they had been baptised with. They were members of the Dark Apostle Erebus"s retinue, and had learned their evil craft directly from him.
They were vile things, their plate covered with sc.r.a.ps of parchment, all of which bore the insane scriptures of a now-mad creature who had once been the most insanely loyal of the Emperor"s sons: Lorgar.
A third figure stepped through behind them. He was a Word Bearer too, but he was helmed, and his armour was grey, sc.r.a.ped back to the metal, and bore no inscription other than the Legion"s crest. The warrior"s plate resembled the colour of the scheme worn before the war, before the Fall.
The third warrior lacked the Neverborn traits that invested his companions. A ma.s.sive Legion-issue sniper rifle was slung in a case over his back. He carried his bolt pistol, drawn and ready in his hand.
He was not ready, however. He shuddered as he stepped through the reality-slice, and then dropped to his knees with a crash, shaking the wooden floor of the scriptorium. Pages swirled around him, covered with words. Some had started to singe and burn.
With his free hand, Barthusa Narek tore off his helm. Beneath it, his eyes were masked by a tied blindfold. He had insisted on that. He had seen nothing of the crossing, but he had felt it well enough.
It was not a sensation that he ever wished to repeat. He had no idea how his brothers had ever embraced it, except for the fact that they were insane.
He began to pull off his blindfold, but the trauma he had experienced finally swept him away. He pitched forward onto his hands, and threw up. Stinking black bile squirted out of his mouth and plastered the floorboards between his hands. Burning scads of paper fell around him like snow as he heaved, prostrate and humiliated.
With a shudder, the slice in the world behind him sealed again, and the sickly light faded. The swirling, burning papers began to cease their turmoil and scatter back on the floor as the wind died.
*This is the place, Narek," said Barbos Kha, the Neverborn-blessed with the athame. Kha wiped the blade clean on his tongue, and kissed it. *As close as we can get."
*M-Macragge?" asked Narek, still on his hands and knees, spitting out toxic bile to clear his throat. He shuddered and gagged again. More bile jetted out of his anguished, gaping mouth.
*Macragge," agreed the horned thing with the knife. *Sanctuary City of our sworn foe. As the divinations said, this is the place."
*I th-thank you for your trouble, brothers," said Narek, trying to steady himself and rise. *I could not have reached this place otherwise."
*Then do what you must, Narek," hissed Ulkas Tul, the other horned thing. *Whatever your great mission is, whatever your hunt a it will be your last."
*I know," said Narek. Slowly, trembling, he got to his feet. His gut felt hollow. There was a disgusting taste on his palate. He held his bolt pistol in trembling hands that were splashed with flecks of tar-black vomit.
*You are pathetic," announced Barbos Kha, turning away. Kha"s bat-tongue flicked the air, tasting it, like an insect. There was a particularly unpleasant growth of hair and tumour on the back of his powerful, corded neck where it rose above the gorget seal of his armour.
*We could kill here," he purred to Ulkas Tul.
Ulkas Tul smiled back. It was not a smile anything human ever wanted to look at.
*No," Narek said, spitting to clean out his mouth. *No, you should go. You got me here, and I am thankful for it. But coming here is suicide. To enter the fortress city of our enemiesa"
*We are aware of the dangers," Barbos Kha said. He began to play with the athame.
*But we can cut our way out anytime we like, unlike you, Narek. Now we"re here, we can have sport."
*May Lorgar watch over you," Ulkas Tul told Narek. *Barbos Kha is right. There is sport to be had here. We are in the belly of the beast. Kha and I will do as we please. We will take many lives before we leave. Maybe Guilliman"s."
*My brothers," Narek said, *if you go on a spree, you will ruin my mission. I need to disappear. I need to work and hunt. You will spoil this for me if you go killing."
Barbos Kha kept toying with the athame that had cut open the warp for them.
*Look at you, Narek," he said, *so impoverished. Our transit alone left you gasping and sick."
*You have mocked us, burdened one," Ulkas Tul said. *You have scorned our conjunction with the warp, refusing to take it into yourself. Yet you were quite happy to make use of our magic to get you here."
*You are right, brother," said Narek nodding. *I have dishonoured you and the glory you serve. Forgive me."
*Not good enough," said Kha. There was something horribly insectile about the way his mouthparts moved independently. *You used us to get here. You used my knife."
*You used my divination to find your target," Ulkas added.
*We only brought you because of where you wanted to go," Kha gurgled, saliva welling out of his maw and dripping onto the floor. *Magna Macragge Civitas, home of our enemies. We will kill now, and then depart. That is the price we claim for your transfer."
*Yes, I dishonoured you," Narek said. *I am not worthy of the magic you wield. But you must go now. Now."
*Is he threatening us?" Ulkas asked Kha.
*No, no, not at all!" Narek told the daemonic twins. The smell of them was quite awful. Flies were humming around them, flies born out of nothing.
Narek turned his head aside, spat out another fat gob of black phlegm, and looked back at his travelling companions. He tried to smile a rea.s.suring smile at what remained of two men who had once been his sworn comrades. It had taken every ounce of his guile to persuade the pair to a.s.sist him at Traoris starport, and every sc.r.a.p of his stamina to tolerate their presence ever since. His weakness was not false, for the warp-transit had harrowed him, but he was overplaying it to keep them pliant.
*Then you presume to give us orders?" asked Ulkas.
*I presume only the Word," said Narek.
He paused and wiped his mouth with the palm of his left hand.
*I believe in the Word of our primarch," Narek continued simply, *and I believe that Word makes us loyal to the Emperor. We are of the Word, and thus we are of the Emperor. It was ever thus. I despise the steps my Legion-kin have taken to embrace the Outer Dark. Too many steps, too far. You, Kha, and you, Ulkas. You have polluted yourselves and our Legion. Yet I thank you. I thank you for bringing me here. You have done a great service to the loyal Seventeenth."
They both glared at him, confused.
*What are you saying, Narek?" Kha asked.
*I"m saying receive my thanks," Narek replied, and put four bolts from his pistol through Barbos Kha"s skull.
Fragments of horn, b.l.o.o.d.y meat and brain tissue spattered out in an explosive burst that was driven from within by an eerie flicker of fracturing warp-light.
Barbos Kha toppled backwards. Narek was fast, but not as fast as he had been in his glory days, thanks to the augmenting bionics that had repaired his leg.
Ulkas Tul came at him howling, swinging his blade. The light of dead stars blazed in his lidless eyes, and his lips had peeled back to reveal a screaming maw filled with serrated, blackened tusks.
Narek tried to shoot, but the blade ripped the pistol out of his hand. Too slow. The cross-strike came back and the sword scratched a deep gouge in his ceramite chestplate, almost splitting him entirely, as surely as Kha"s athame had split time and s.p.a.ce.
Narek smashed the blade aside with his forearm, and backed away. Ulkas would not be denied. The Unburdened swung again, another potential kill-strike. Narek threw himself backwards, ducked further slashing cuts that would have severed his armoured torso cleanly, and then bypa.s.sed Ulkas"s guard and landed a ferocious punch in the beast"s snout.
Teeth broke. Bits of them went flying. The Unburdened monster lurched backwards, crashing into two script lecterns and shattering them. Still toppling, he caught himself against a heavy shelf to stop his fall, but Narek was not going to let up. Ulkas"s guard was down, his sword flailing. Narek came in and delivered two more punches into the side of Ulkas"s skull with his gauntleted fist, crushing his ear, cracking his brain pan.
Raging, Ulkas smashed back at Narek, catching him a glancing blow that removed the two smallest fingers of Narek"s left hand with the edge of his sword. Narek rolled away from the pain and the jetting blood, and delivered a huge, angry, power-amplified punch with his right fist, which sent Ulkas flying the length of the scriptorium chamber.
He hit the far wall, demolishing shelves, crushing books. Another blizzard of pages filled the air.
Ulkas fell on his hands and knees, found his blood-stained sword, and got up again. He saw Narek across the chamber and came at him, charging, his sword drawn back for a two-handed strike.
Narek had already dropped the case from his rifle and pulled it to his cheek, aiming. He felt the kill-notches against his skin.
He had time for one shot. He had pre-loaded a specialist bolt-round for penetration and range, a custom-built core and propellant sh.e.l.l manufactured by his company armourer. Overkill, at this distance.
Narek didn"t care. He enjoyed the explosive red murk Ulkas"s head produced as it burst off his neck.
Ulkas kept coming.
Narek remained calm. Time had almost frozen for him. A sniper"s greatest strength was steadiness and patience, even when the world around him was moving at high velocity.
The sniper rifles of the Legions were all ma.s.sive weapons, and Narek"s gun, the infamous Brontos-pattern, was a particularly huge and unwieldy brute. It was long and heavy and c.u.mbersome, and gauged for bolt-rounds, an almost impossible trade-off between muzzle velocity and round impact. The bolt sh.e.l.ls had to be tailor-made to compensate for range with an added propellant stage.
The Brontos had an automatic bolt return, a fixed sequenced powered cycle that chambered each round from the short-packed magazine.
It also had a manual racking handle for faster returns.
Narek calmly racked the bolt handle and fired again as the headless thing bore down on him. The first shot had been overkill, but the second...
Ulkas"s torso disintegrated in a crimson blitz of meat, sheared electro-fibre bundles and armour shards. His ruined body collapsed at Narek"s feet.
Narek rose out of his firing crouch and lowered the smoking bolt rifle from his shoulder. His transhuman biology had already stopped the blood flow leaking from the stumps of his missing fingers.
Something twitched nearby. Kha"s corpse was still quivering. Narek slotted back the bolt of his rifle and put a final shot through Kha"s chest into the floor. Kha"s corpse jolted like someone slammed by cardiac paddles as the round went clean through him.
Silence.
Paper crackled as it burned and settled.
The chamber reeked of toxic blood.
Narek shook himself. *Wake up," he muttered. *This is done but there is so much still to do."
The enemy would be closing in, without a doubt. He had to move, and lose himself. The Ultramarines wouldn"t take him. He wouldn"t allow it, not this early. Not like this.
He had work to do, the holiest work that any legionary had ever undertaken.
He had to deliver his Legion from evil.
Narek bagged his rifle and exited the scriptorium. Outside, in a dank insulae, he cowered, hearing landspeeders approaching and gun-teams deploying.
He took out the piece of parchment that Ulkas had given him before their departure, and looked at the words written upon it.
Grammaticus: the divined location of Grammaticus.
Narek closed his eyes and let his mind dwell on his target.
John Grammaticus, human, Perpetual, and p.a.w.n of the xenos-breeds. He and John had played regicide against one another on Traoris.
This new playing board, this Magna Macragge Civitas, would see the endgame.
Narek of the Word fled into the darkening streets.
12.
Brothers
*The Salamander is a sufficiently convincing example that
everything which burns is not consumed,
as the souls in h.e.l.l are not."
a *Saint" Augustine Tetrarch Dolor came to attention as Guilliman strode into the Residency"s medicae hall. The primarch was still wearing his ceremonial war-plate, and seemed too big and regal for the sub-level confines.
*My lord," said Dolor. *Your brother has arrived, I gather?"
*He awaits upstairs," Guilliman replied. *There is conversation to be had."
*How does he seem?"