The Lords of Silence Page 23

  He hangs there for a moment, over the water, staring. If he still had a heart, it would be hammering. His fists clench, dragging through the bloody gravel. He wants to scream, but he has already done so much of that.

  This is how I look to them.

  And he finds then that he cannot even remember what he looked like before.

  He gets up. He is panting, but not from exertion. He is still cold, but there is something else inside him now. He is confused. He might be… angry.

  He swings round, back towards the barricades. From behind him, he can hear others sliding and stumbling down the long slope. His people. His people.

  He opens fire. The lasgun whines, sending the first shot into the night. Then he fires again and starts to walk. Soon he is joined by the others, and they advance in something like formation. The fires roar overhead. Smoke tumbles across the cityscape, and it coils around his boots.

  He will be at the barricade soon. He will be unstoppable when he gets there. He feels a spark of pleasure in that. He guesses he ought not to but can no longer remember why.

  He fires, and fires again.

  Dantine has fought on many worlds before, but not like this. It is better this way, though, he thinks. It is something he could learn to like.

  The charges blow, demolishing the entire tunnel wall ahead of them. Garstag is running before the last of them ignites, his huge body hurtling into the flying debris.

  For the most part, Garstag moves slowly, but when he has to, when the old rages are stoked again, he can still generate frightening momentum. His chainsword swings, batting aside falling rock, and he barges through the rest of it, shouldering aside tottering pillars and wheeling around to find a target.

  The rest of the Kardainn come behind him, cutting and blasting. Slert’s Unbroken are still working the turbo-hammers, enlarging the breach and securing its edges against collapse. It already stinks in here, the spoor they brought with them caking the fire-heated stonework, the foetid air spilling up into sterile chambers.

  Garstag powers upwards, smashing aside the damaged remains of a doorway and crashing into a vaulted hall beyond.

  They are waiting. Alarms sound, tinny and shrill, and whirling warning lumens make everything bloody. The las-fire is not as it was on Najan – it is precise, directed, massed on single points. Garstag runs right into it, his body taking the hits. His battle-brothers are close on his heels, and they wade into the fight, building up the swing of their scythes.

  Garstag says nothing. He pants, he grunts, he works the gunning blades, but no words pass his lips. He can hear the enemy shouting to one another – orders, warnings, even that stale old injunction ‘For the Emperor!’ It seems to help them. Garstag has never uttered a war cry, not even when he fought in the Barbaran Legion and these divisions had not yet emerged. Like all his Legion, he enters combat in silence, letting his work speak for him. To invoke another, even the primarch, would be to admit weakness, a lack of self-sufficiency, to open the suspicion that there is luck or favour involved in these things.

  He shrugs off more hits and lumbers towards the first barricade. They have barred the width of this chamber halfway along its length – dozens of them, all armoured, holding their ground and keeping discipline. He finds himself admiring that even as he crunches through the first barrier and starts his chainblade whirling again.

  Behind him, he can hear more invaders pouring up through the breach, their armour steaming from the last dregs of Slert’s broth. Bolt-shells crack out, spinning into battleplate and exploding, throwing bodies aside. The first tang of blood enters the melange of aromas, and it spikes Garstag’s battle-mood further.

  It takes him a moment to realise that not all the bolt-shells are coming from the Unbroken. The chamber is dark, already filling with smoke, and he almost misses the faint flash of white-and-blue power armour.

  They are high up, the Corpse-spawn, in a gallery level that runs around the rim of this chamber, and they are breaking out of cover now, hemming them in and pinning them down. Garstag sees Artarion take a flurry of hits, stumbling over them, his breastplate cracking. By the god, that might even end him.

  Garstag presses on, taking a detonation on his right pauldron. He slaughters freely, working his way down the barricade. Once at the far side, back under some cover, he can turn his attention to the Space Marines.

  ‘Putrifier,’ he barks over the comm. ‘Slert, where are you?’

  His visual field is already cluttered, spiralling with locator runes. More of the enemy are racing into the chamber’s far end, trying to staunch this wound, and the volume of las-fire rakes upward. More of this, and even he will take too much damage.

  ‘Just do what you’re doing, Kardainn-master,’ Slert’s voice comes back, sounding like it’s a long way off. ‘I have my own errands to run.’

  Garstag finally pulls up the Putrifier’s locator amid all the junk and sees that Slert is nowhere near. He’s heading deeper, into places where no true defenders will be, only huddled, terrified fodder fit for nothing but the sustenance vats.

  ‘Slert!’ he roars. ‘This is no time to–’

  But he never finishes. Three Tactical Marines of a White Consuls squad have vaulted down from the gallery, and already they are mobbing Brannad. A heavy weapons team drags something multi-barrelled in through the far chamber doorway. They are fighting furiously, these defenders, and the attack on the barricades falters. Even the carapace-armoured defenders are rallying, making up in numbers and coordination for what they lack in individual power.

  Garstag snarls and guns his chainsword up a notch. Slert can do what he wants.

  ‘The rot stops here,’ he voxes to his counterparts, irritated, striding with greater purpose now. ‘Tear them apart.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Finally. Finally, there is fighting again, true fighting. Fighting that hurts, fighting that is a test.

  Dragan feels his muscles burning. His killing hand is dripping with blood and power armour coolant. His bolt pistol is almost out of ammunition, his armour dented and charred.

  A White Consul comes for him, sprinting down the long gallery. They are all within the citadel now, just part of the contagion that spreads through it. Word Bearers run rampant, carried by their momentum of terror and atrocity. Tanks rolls down the narrow streets and up steep ramps, bolstered by whole squads of Unbroken. Flames have broken out all over, fast-kindled slicks of oil, and the smoke gets everywhere, making the atmosphere bitter and choking.

  Dragan sees one of the Unbroken blasted apart, riddled with hits from at least two bolters. He sees a gang of Sabatine Praetorians slaughtered by a single Word Bearer carrying a bronze axe. The slaughter is free-flowing now – they are in among the enemy, in their halls and their corridors, their dungeons and their command towers.

  The White Consul crashes into contact, and the two of them trade crushing blows. Dragan has to work hard to move his claw to block a swipe from a power sword, to push back, to go for the jugular.

  These adversaries are fast, precise, working in interlocking squads that back one another up and press forward in tandem. Already Dragan can see more locator signals approaching, racing into battle.

  He cries out as he punches back with the claw, hurling the White Consul into an already-teetering column. He swivels, trying to draw a bead with the pistol, but his adversary is not yet done – he lunges back into contact, thrusting his power sword two-handed.

  Dragan feels the blade bite, carving down under the layers and layers of filth and sediment and rotting ceramite. He pulls away, swinging forcefully and nearly yanking the sword out with him. His claw whistles hard and fast, punching into the White Consul’s midriff and driving through the cabling. Impaled, the Space Marine still fights, scrabbling for a bolt pistol to fire at point-black range.

  He nearly makes it. Dragan jerks his killing talons suddenly upward, li
fting his adversary from his feet and crushing his lungs. Then he fires his own pistol straight into the Space Marine’s gorget, blowing his throat out with a single shot.

  After that he’s moving again, shaking the corpse loose and running, making use of the power and speed that he still possesses, even as his battle-brothers sway and stride behind him.

  The gallery has its roof blown off at the far end, collapsed after being hit by a Thunderhawk’s battle-cannon, and smog is piling in from the maelstrom outside. Dragan can just make out the burning profile of towers beyond, still with the flickering trails of void shields but now swarmed by gunships. The invaders are getting close to the citadel’s inner layers now, fighting steadily up every artery and causeway. The going is stone-hard, the defence ferocious and committed. How could it not be? There is nowhere for these people to go.

  Another Space Marine races to engage him, haloed in a wave of solid-round fire from dug-in Praetorians. Dragan fires the last of his bolt-shells, missing narrowly. He can admire the commitment here, even the skill, but in truth these enemies are just symbols for him – obstacles to be overcome, like whetstones to sharpen his own capability.

  The two of them slam together, blade against claw, and their limbs blur. He absorbs another stab and staggers back. His enemy goes after him, feinting before thrusting, but Dragan is bigger and stronger, his body flooded with the Gifts of the god. He slices in turn, a vicious transverse whip that scores across his enemy’s breastplate and carves up the armour. Phages catch where his poisoned talons dig deep, and the blood is thicker than it should be, but still the Space Marine fights on, driving his blade into Dragan’s stomach, once, twice, severing muscles wetly.

  Dragan cries out, furious now. He headbutts the Space Marine and their helms crack together. He butts again then swings a leaden punch, catching him full on his cracked faceplate. A lens is shattered – more blood sprays. For a moment he thinks he’s done enough, but the Space Marine stabs with the sword-tip again, going for his throat. Dragan yanks away from danger, and the killing edge shoots a finger’s width past his chin.

  He punches a final time, putting all his weight and fury behind it, a piledriver of a strike that caves in the ceramite and digs down into flesh beyond. He feels the skull crumple, the burst of hot fluid, and knows this is – at last – enough. As he rises, searching for another kill, he is panting, covered in sweat, his twin hearts booming.

  The wall ahead of him collapses, blown apart by the impact of something enormous. He hears the drum and boom of engines and a vox-distorted roar, then the Dreadnought emerges from the dust and flying debris, striding out in an aegis of battle cries. Dragan can just make out shouts of ‘Jerimias!’ before an assault cannon opens up.

  He flings himself to the floor as the world dissolves into a thunder of destruction. Locator runes blink out across his swaying visual feed, and he knows that his brothers are dying.

  ‘Shit,’ he curses, crawling over the corpse of the Space Marine he has just killed, reaching out for his bolter.

  The Dreadnought sways closer, treading heavily through a crumpled landscape of tangled steel and rockcrete. White Consuls are advancing behind it, using it for cover, and Dragan sees two Word Bearers caught up in the barrage and shredded.

  He runs a quick mental tally – the surviving Unbroken in the gallery versus the enemy – and realises they cannot win this.

  ‘Shit,’ he says again, grabbing the bolter and preparing to leap to his feet.

  He never makes it. From behind him, from the stairwell that they have just gained with their own tally of bloodshed, something even bigger emerges.

  Freed from his prison on Solace, Naum seems ludicrously big, as if he has uncurled and stretched out and relaxed held-in lungs and stomachs. He staggers into the ruined gallery, his huge shoulders ploughing through the vaulted roof and showering his path with clumps of plaster. Just like the rest of the Unbroken, he is hardly raging – his mouth gapes, and his tiny eyes amid all that plate and flesh and dust are merely blinking, as if startled by the light. He is covered in blood, his claws dripping with it, and a battered White Consul is still clutched in one fist, dragged like a child drags a half-forgotten doll.

  The Dreadnought lets loose on him, booming battle cries and sending streams of shells smacking into the leviathan’s leathery hide. The Space Marines follow up, generating their own chorus of bolter-fire.

  Naum never even cries out. The projectiles thud into him, stripping and tearing, rocking the Helbrute back on his immense, squat legs. He just keeps on going, lowering his shoulders against the withering barrage, throwing the bedraggled corpse aside and reaching out for the origin of this fresh pain. Dragan watches his tiny grey face crumple into a kind of confused agony before he strides past, closing on the Dreadnought. Other survivors, both Unbroken and Word Bearer, scramble up from their prone positions and join the assault. This engagement is accelerating fast – the terrain around them is taking a hammering from the flying shells, and another column blows apart in a hail of stone-flecks.

  Dragan gets to his feet, taking aim, ignoring the blood running down his chest. Just as he does, he gets a priority comm-burst from Philemon.

  ‘Gallowsman, withdraw to my position.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Dragan growls, opening fire. He keeps low, trying to draw a bead on that accursed Dreadnought before Naum obscures his line of sight entirely. ‘We’re closing on the heart of it.’

  ‘That is the issue. Look around you. How many Word Bearers in your attack?’

  Hardly any. The brunt of this is being borne by the Unbroken, and they are paying a heavy price. Even as he watches, another Plague Marine is smashed to the ground, his armour torn open by the blistering onslaught of the assault cannon. Naum swaggers into close range, swinging his enormous fists and finally croaking out something like anger.

  ‘Vorx has let this slip,’ Philemon goes on. ‘You know it, brother. We’re being used. He won’t move against them until it’s too late.’

  Dragan hesitates, crouching down again. The crescendo of bolter shells is driving all other sounds out, and another wall is teetering on the edge of destruction. He sees a White Consul go down under heavy fire and another Unbroken blasted into lumps of gristle. The two giants are close to wrestling range now, and they are tearing the masonry up around them.

  ‘They’re crawling through the tunnels, rounding up the mortals. You understand what they intend. They’ll let us take this place for them, but it’s just an altar. He doesn’t see it. Gallowsman – pull back here. Someone needs to act.’

  Dragan curses. His internal battle maps are jumpy and out of kilter, but he does see some patterns there – Word Bearer units ignoring the main clusters of defence, heading into the hab-zones.

  Damn him. Vorx was always a credulous fool. This was on the cards from the start.

  ‘Where are you?’ Dragan voxes, pulling back, firing all the while. Naum is hammering at the Dreadnought now – huge, two-fisted blows.

  ‘Three levels down. Bring what you can. The zealots are the enemy.’

  Dragan looks up a final time. The fight between the two leviathans is already apocalyptic, and Naum has taken some heavy damage. He would like to watch this, but does not fool himself that there is anything he can do to alter the outcome.

  A sick feeling washes over him. He has been too keen to get to the action, to exercise that prowess so long kept under wraps. They have all been too keen.

  ‘Understood,’ he voxes, and begins to move.

  He can summon many more. He can pull them out and muster at Philemon’s position.

  This is working against Vorx. This is seizing the chance. Despite everything – his long resentment, the knowledge of his destiny, his overbearing confidence – there is still a step to be taken. Perhaps this is the last vestige of his old self – that iron discipline – struggling to shuffle out of contention.

/>   When the moment comes, you have to take it.

  He looks over at Naum, who is lost in his combat now. The blows being exchanged by those two are immortal. Almost regretfully, he opens the comm to the Unbroken under his direct command.

  ‘Pull back,’ he voxes. He withdraws to the stairwell, firing all the time. ‘Regroup at coordinates to follow. We have new targets. Repeat, we have new targets.’

  Slert likes being underground. Being blind in these places is no handicap at all, and the sensation of cold, old walls pressing in tight is one he is used to.

  He detects bodies, thousands of them, most very close. They have packed them in, the Imperials, hoarding them like gold in the dungeons of this ancient place. Perhaps they thought they would be safe in here. He has some sympathy for that. A Chapter fortress-monastery would, in ordinary times, be among the very safest places in the galaxy.

  But, as Vorx has reminded them on many occasions, these are hardly ordinary times. The White Consuls have been unlucky. They were cut off, left high and dry, their strength bled from them in a war on the edge of realspace. They have done, in this situation, what nine thousand years of constant doctrine has told them to do – get behind the walls and gather what strength remains – but these things no longer hold true when a daemon can spew forth from the air at the click of fingers. The masters of this world, so close to the epicentre of Abaddon’s Rift, were already partly overrun before Solace got here, and this is just the final act. For all the talk of tests and danger, Vorx must have known there was little risk here.

  The true danger comes from elsewhere. That is the great lesson of history, something the Death Guard have always appreciated – the real enemy is seldom the one you can see, in front of you with sword in hand, but the one you can’t, in the shadows, or in the past, or within yourself, coiled ready for the moment of ripening when all plans are suddenly undone.

  Slert is not alone. He makes his pilgrimage down the tunnels with his guards, the Unbroken of his cadre, limping through the dark in their phosphor-pale battleplate. He has his servitors and his slaves, hauling the contraptions he has brought down so reverently from Solace. They are huge, those machines, marked with the sign of the god and dragged on corroding segmented tracks. They hiss and they gout, powered by that familiar fusion of the mechanical and the divine, studded with grapple-mounted vials that swill dark fluids.