On Wings of Blood Read online

  Easy,+ Aegir soothed. +We will find them soon enough.+

  Roga watched as seven figures in tattered robes knelt in a circle. Each chanted words long forgotten to the tongues of humans, and long forbidden in the halls of the eldar. For seven days, they had neither eaten nor rested, instead dedicating themselves to the completion of the summoning. Weeping sores covered their skin in triads – the sacred mark of the Grandfather, the blessing of the Great Master of rebirth, the bringer of despair. Words tumbled from bleeding gums that bared teeth the colour of tallow.

  As the ritual finally came to its close, a wind rose in the cavern. Dust from the floor drifted, coalescing into clumps in the middle of the circle. The gusts grew stronger and the matter was drawn into a tight spiral, spinning ever faster with the hastening currents. A vortex formed, its column reaching high to the ceiling. The gale whipped at the figures’ robes, flapping them like battle standards.

  The sorcerers’ voices swelled until they were screaming their incantations over the sounds of the vortex: a discordant howl, a mix of hatred and joy, a baleful melody to those who listened too closely.

  Together, they threw back their heads. Sickly green light poured from their eyes and mouths, only to be pulled into the cyclone. Lightning crackled in the dust. Only now, it wasn’t dust. It was a swarm of fat-bellied flies. The sorcerers spasmed, their bodies jerking and twisting as if they were electrified. The tempest dropped, but the buzzing of a billion bloated, swirling insects remained.

  An immense fork of lightning struck in the centre of the column of flies. The maelstrom of insects ceased its spinning. The carrion feeders scattered, landing on the spent sorcerers and consuming their rotten flesh, before disappearing into the porous rocks.

  The herald emerged. It was as large as a Space Marine but had the body of a grotesque slug, glistening with moisture and maggots that rippled like a river of undulating flesh. Its head was the only part of its anatomy that was covered. A single horn protruded from beneath the cowl, and an ancient mechanical arm, ending in a simple grab-claw, had been grafted to its shoulder. Blood and pus oozed from the graft site. Skittering beetles played in its skin’s folds, while larvae emerged from the numerous triad pores.

  Roga inclined his head towards the figure, his decaying armour protesting at such a movement. Flakes of white lacquer shed from the corroding ceramite. The ache in his temple magnified, though it had improved since he removed the helm. A trio of sores at the corner of his mouth constantly wept. He licked at them, drawing the corruption into his mouth, and delighting in the taste of so many virulent diseases percolating in his body.

  ‘Captain Roga?’ The herald’s voice was like a breeze through a valley of dead trees. ‘First Captain of the Lords of Decay, and honoured sire of the Great Plaguebearer?’

  ‘Yes, herald.’

  ‘His most Imperious Majesty, and chosen of the Grandfather, Anahk’hir.’ The herald swept his mechanical arm wide and shuffled to one side.

  Captain Roga’s eyes widened. Despite his corroded armour, he dropped to one knee. The Space Marines and thralls behind him did the same.

  ‘My lord,’ he said. ‘My followers are yours to command.’

  Anahk’hir bid the captain to stand. The daemon prince grinned, revealing yellowed teeth, a swollen tongue and a mouth full of larvae.

  ‘Then we should begin.’

  Two things happened within a heartbeat: Grand Master Vardan Kai’s presence returned to the egregore, and the stench of death sprang forth in Aegir’s senses, then vanished just as fast.

  Brothers,+ Captain Pelenas interrupted, summoning those of Aegir’s level and above. +Tactical communion.+

  Aegir closed off the part of his psyche open to the squad. In his imagination, the tactical communion took place around a large, circular wooden table aboard the Castigator – though no such table existed in reality. His mind’s eye painted the picture into which he projected his consciousness. As the others appeared in the shared psychic space, they took their seats at the table, devoid of armour and rank.

  Brother-Captain Pelenas joined them, his presence larger than the others, manifesting as a broadening of the shoulders, and standing taller than the rest. Outside of the communion, Aegir had never seen the brother-captain without his armour, so could not gauge the projection’s accuracy. Grand Master Kai then entered, standing a clear head taller than even Pelenas, radiating with a faint golden light.

  Brothers,+ the Grand Master began, his voice reverberating around the communion chamber like thunder through Titan’s great valleys. +Sturmhex is dying. With that death comes a weakening in the barrier between reality and the warp. This is just the opportunity the Despoiler needed to launch a crusade against the Imperium. The Prognosticars have foreseen a great awakening that bathes this system in corruption.+

  Aegir could feel the lodestone pulling at the edge of his consciousness. Something was there that he couldn’t quite identify.

  The Lords of Decay, brothers, occupy Sturmhex Prime. Where the renegades amass in number, surely the daemon is to follow.+

  Aegir looked around the circle. It did not take a latent psychic talent to see the word ‘renegade’ ignite anger in a Grey Knight. He felt his own hands ball into fists and his jaw tighten.

  The Holy Inquisition has tasked us with destroying our enemy, and whatever Neverborn abominations they have allied themselves with. Agreed?+

  Agreed,+ the communion chimed as one.

  Land the brotherhood. Annihilate the enemy. Extract to the Castigator. You have your orders. Brother-Captain Pelenas, they are yours.+

  Thank you, Grand Master.+

  Pelenas was the first to disappear from the circle, followed by the Justicars. Aegir was about to leave when he thought he saw a ripple of anger cross the Grand Master’s face. There was a slight pull at the edge of the image, a slight elongation of the table. Grand Master Kai disappeared, leaving Aegir alone. The mental turbulence of the last few moments left him with a slight sick feeling in his stomach, and a throbbing pain behind his left eye. He dismissed the communion, opening up his psyche to relay the intelligence to his squadron.

  Is everything in order?+ Metis asked, careful to shroud his words from the others. +I can feel something is unsettled.+

  It is nothing, Metis,+ Aegir replied, cursing himself for not closing off that part of his mind to the clairvoyant. +A slight headache that manifested when we translated in system.+ The throb remained, and the sound of buzzing crept in at the edge of his hearing.

  Dying stars will do that to some,+ came the reply.

  Aegir angled Kodachi through increasingly tight turns. The tunnel opened out into an enormous domed cavern, the size of Deimos, with a thin, noxious haze hanging in the air. The rest of the squadron emerged from similar tunnels that perforated the cavern walls. Land Raider-sized flesh sacs the colour of flensed bone lay strewn across the ground. Tactical data scrawled across the weapon’s augur. It identified thousands of targets – Traitor Space Marines, thralls, acolytes and edifices in numbers to rival most fortress-monasteries of the Adeptus Astartes.

  By the Emperor,+ Aegir pulsed. +This is not just a simple warband. This is almost two Chapters’ worth of souls! Regroup. Now.+

  The wing emerged from the tunnels into the hollow cavern of the planet’s core, and opened fire.

  Roga turned his gaze from the approaching fleet to Anahk’hir. The bloated daemon’s skin was stretched thin – thin enough to see the myriad of tiny beasts that fed on his insides. Buboes wept viscous yellow fluids on which maggots and flies gorged. He was the epitome of the Grandfather’s blessing.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘You heard me, captain.’ The tone in his voice was dangerous. ‘Engage the Sigillite’s puppets. Bring them in close. We shall draw him out and devour him. We will make his body a new garden for my children to play in.’

  ‘But what of the Black
Lord’s orders? What of his campaign? Without this foothold, his crusade will falter before it begins.’

  ‘You swore your lives to me. Each one of you. They are mine to command, and mine to take away. You will commit your force as ordered. If we are driven back, the Despoiler’s plan is worth nothing.’ Anahk’hir chuckled. ‘I promised the Lord of the Black Legion this system, and he shall have it. I never said I wouldn’t use this day to pursue my own ends.’

  Aegir banked hard left. The inbound missile strafed under the starboard wing, and exploded against the cavern wall. Aegir returned fire, stitching a line of bolt shells across the cavern. The havoc squad ducked, going to ground against the retribution.

  Thebe! Iocaste! Disembark your payloads.+

  Kalyke unleashed his hurricane bolters, killing an advancing line of cultists, and halting their charge. Metis swept in low to Kalyke’s port, covering the western approach. He fired his weapons and drove the enemy to ground. Aegir circled overhead, keeping watch as Thebe and Iocaste landed. Two full squads of Terminator brethren emerged from the Storm­ravens’ holds.

  Aegir’s hearts swelled with pride as he watched his brothers advance, their silver armour shining, and their weapons crackling with nascent psychic energy. All across the cavern, the action was being mirrored by the other gunships, each disgorging the First Brotherhood with a roar of storm bolters.

  The taste of cold iron. The scent of burning flesh. Then they were gone. Two fragments lasting no more than half a heartbeat each. Aegir was shaken by the two great intrusions behind the wards in his mind. He was used to the gentle brushstrokes of his squad, and the heavier probing of the brother-captain. These were like hard punches, one after the other. He felt a bead of sweat drip down his face inside the armour.

  Aegir–+

  Not now, Iocaste,+ he clipped. +Switch with Kalyke.+

  Captain Roga had joined his elite troops on the front lines. They fought on the eastern slopes as the Grey Knights advanced, bolters stuttering. Anahk’hir sat in a shallow cut into the cavern floor formed by his summoning. He surveyed the battle of his prized possessions, drinking in the death songs that filled the domed space. The daemon prince watched as the silver craft of the First Brotherhood tore through armoured Raptors and blight drones. As each fell, Anahk’hir gifted them with life anew, imbuing the hollow armour and machinery with daemonic children.

  ‘He is near, herald. I can feel him,’ Anahk’hir said, larvae spilling from his mouth. ‘I will take from his flesh the millennia I spent banished in his prison, unable to tend my gardens, unable to cultivate my children.’

  Anahk’hir stretched his arms wide, his low voice chanting an ancient language. Bruise-coloured clouds formed in the upper reaches of the planet’s hollow core, and unnatural lights began to flicker behind his eyes. Anahk’hir smiled as the first of his beings materialised from nothingness.

  ‘Yes,’ the daemon prince said. ‘I shall lure him here, and then breed corruption in his body until the end of time.’

  Aegir often marvelled at the manoeuvrability of the Stormraven. It did not look the most graceful of creations, but could be called upon to produce some sublime aerobatics with a talented pilot at the helm. Pulsing an order to his gunnery servitor, Aegir launched a Stormstrike missile. He watched the vapour trail until it penetrated the hull of the lead Rhino. The vehicle exploded from within, killing the occupants and leaving a smoking ruin in its stead. The second transport ploughed into the wreckage of the first, buckling its front blade, and bringing it to a complete halt. Its doors struggled to open, the squad inside trapped by the corrupted machine-spirit’s frustration, and the carcass of its brother. A squad of Grey Knights closed in with speed that belied their bulk. Heaving the doors open, they thrust their weapons into the troop hold and fired.

  A third Rhino swerved into Kalyke’s firing arc.

  Now, Kalyke!+ Aegir pulsed.

  The Grey Knight relayed the fire order, and unleashed the multi-melta. Intense microwave energy bubbled the ceramite shell of the Rhino, turning it to liquid in seconds. Kalyke pulled the craft to port, yanking the multi-melta blast across the flank, to aim at the engine block. The Rhino buckled, detonating in a plume of shrapnel and viscera.

  As the Stormravens covered them, the Grey Knights on the ground charged. Storm bolters spat shells into the advancing line of the Lords of Decay. Their grey-and-white armour was coated in patinas of green mould and corrosion. Aquilae had been carved from the armour by knife or axe, leaving the ceramite wounds exposed. Some bore the triad mark of the Master of Decay, others bore a single horn, or a single eye. A number went without helm, their skin covered in boils and sores, with hair falling out from some virulent disease.

  They moved like a disorganised rabble. But nothing could be further from the truth of it. Each warrior had a role. Where a gap opened up in the line, there was another waiting for an opponent to over-extend and step through it. Where lines weakened and crumbled, it was to pull in an impatient foe and crush him completely.

  The sons of Titan were no fools. They struck hard and fast, countering each charge with a flurry of bolt shells, and spinning blades of psychic energy fuelled by hatred. They were as lethal as the diseases the Lords of Decay carried, and no less cunning than their foe’s master.

  A corrupted Razorback, its pale green hull covered in rusted chains and gangrenous heads, advanced on the left flank, sweeping its lascannon turret along the lines. Aegir saw it approach, and communed with the battle-brothers on the ground to warn them. Metis swooped in low, his assault cannon chewing through the debased armour. The Razorback’s turret turned on the Stormraven, and fired.

  I am hit!+ Metis relayed. Aegir reached out with his mind, seeing the smoking hole left by the lascannon strike that had punctured the wing and tail section of his Stormraven. The pilot was doing his utmost to bring it in softly, struggling against aerodynamics and gravity. Metis continued firing, cutting through the Razorback’s armour until it exploded in a surge of flames. The Stormraven dipped, flying through the fireball.

  Emperor be with you, brother,+ Aegir said.

  And also with you,+ came the reply as the Stormraven ditched.

  The Grey Knights were outnumbered, but that didn’t matter. Their martial skill and superior armament meant they rarely faced an enemy they could not defeat. The Lords of Decay had been caught unawares by the Stormravens’ approach, and the onslaught of the First Brotherhood drove them backwards towards their redoubts and fortifications. Although a few of their number had fallen, the warriors of the Six Hundred and Sixty-Sixth Chapter were undaunted.

  The haze that pervaded the cavern was dispersed by hexagrammic wards inscribed inside each suit of armour, pushed away like dust in the wind. The Terminators spread as they advanced, forming a thin silver line – a delineation between Imperial space and the realm of the traitors.

  Something is amiss,+ Pelenas communed, detecting a flicker across his psyche.

  At that moment, the traitor’s line fell back at the double, fading from combat. The Terminators seized on the opportunity, advancing unopposed further into the ­enemy’s territory.

  Hold!+ Pelenas bade.

  In the clear zone between the two battle lines, corrupted lightning began to gather.

  Hold!+ Pelenas ordered again.

  Seventy-seven individual coruscating spheres of energy appeared. They grew smaller and smaller until a concussive boom rang out from each. Dust whipped at the Grey Knights, battering their armour, making it rattle and ping. Seventy-seven lesser daemons – plaguebearers – now stood against the Grey Knights, each brandishing a rusty knife as long as its arm, and bearing all manner of skin sores and distended intestines.

  Charge!+ Brother-Captain Pelenas bellowed at last. The Grey Knights obeyed. Behind those daemons just summoned came scores more and scores more again; a stinking, rotting flesh tide to stand against the might of the Imperium�
��s finest warriors.

  Force staves and halberds spun in expert hands, dancing beams of psychic energy, ice-blue against the necrotic skin of the plaguebearers. Blades bit deep into flesh, severing limb and neck, pulping rotten muscle and exposing internal organs. Pelenas chanted the words of the First Canticle of Banishment.

  Nurglings, irritating creatures slightly larger than a human skull, swarmed the battlefield. Great slug-bodied beasts eagerly barged their way through the lines to investigate the warriors.

  The daemons of Nurgle slowed the brotherhood’s charge. They stymied the Grey Knights, forcing them into an attritional campaign, making them fight for each step and each solitary inch they gained. But still they gained. One by one, each of the brotherhood took up the canticle, raising it as a battle cry through the vox-arrays in their helmets.

  Overhead, the Stormravens battered the hunkered-down defences of the Lords of Decay. Havocs were driven behind casements and hastily constructed earthworks, then pummelled by bolter and cannon. Rhino transports were destroyed before they were given a chance to mount a counter-attack. Bikers revved angry engines, jinking and scything around incoming ordnance, only to be unseated by another of the attack wing closing from the opposite flank.

  Raptor packs hunted the Stormravens, leaping from promontories and galleries to hound them. A number of the flyers bore crazed canopies, testament to the fervour with which the Raptors attempted entry to the cockpit, intent on murdering the pilots within. None had fallen.

  The Grey Knights’ superiority over the forces of the Archenemy was absolute.

  This number of lesser specimens would be impossible for a traitor to summon without support.+ Pelenas’ voice was strained. +There must be a greater aberration out there somewhere. Find it!+

  Aegir banked left to cover Iocaste’s strafing run across the renegades’ withdrawal when the brother-captain’s order was broadcast. Kodachi and Longsword were approaching from the opposite vector. Together, Thebe and Kalyke decimated the throng of summoned plaguebearers with concentrated fire. But where they fell, more were summoned.