Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley Read online

  They didn’t smash nearly enough.

  Two Chimeras ran into a stream of dead who threw themselves under the armoured carrier’s treads. The corpses piled higher, more and more sucked in beneath the vehicles, blood and bone-shrapnel spraying. Within seconds, the Chimeras had sunk into a quagmire of gore metres deep. Their crews piled out and were dragged down into the muck.

  The casualties mounted. The dead pressed harder. The streets narrowed and the buildings crowded in. Mortisians transformed into howling creatures and clawed at their neighbours, spreading the contagion. But the civilians didn’t turn. The dead simply ripped them to pieces. This wasn’t battle, Toharan thought as he tore the head off a man whose idiot face was covered in the foam of his rage. This wasn’t even a retreat. This was a race against Chaos itself. There was honour in the effort, but his mind was troubled by the hard, insistent possibility of failure and futility.

  Snarling, a man threw himself out of the third floor window just ahead and on Toharan’s left. The creature’s hands were hooked into talons of hate and hunger, his eyes locked on a sobbing Bethshea. Toharan snapped out a ceramite-clad fist and smashed the corpse aside, caving in the head. Another one down. Another drop in a limitless ocean. But a glance at Bethshea renewed the calm of perfect duty. Since Toharan had shown her that he was a giant, not a monster, she had cleaved close to his legs. She had to run to keep pace with his every stride, but she managed, a tiny remora to his black, remorseless shark. Toharan roared his encouragement to his brothers and the Guard.

  They passed a side street. It was empty when Toharan looked down it. But as the rear elements of the caravan went by, they were hit by a sudden, shrieking, frenzied mob of the dead. A torpedo of damnation, uncountable thousands strong, shattered the lines. Toharan looked back to see Brother Xorion caught. The dead ploughed into and onto him in an unending tide. Only Brother Guerign was close enough to help. He waded in and, standing back to back, the two Black Dragons felled hundreds. Toharan and the rest of the squad supported them with a stream of bolter fire, but no amount of firepower was enough against the rushing, frothing wave of corpses. Xorion and Guerign died. Even ceramite could be crushed by the sheer weight of dead flesh.

  As Toharan watched, helpless, his soul sickening, what made the scene even more horrific was the single-minded focus of the dead. Even now, the Space Marines weren’t actual targets. The dead hadn’t attacked Xorion and Guerign – they had run them down. The corpse faces, mindless slackness mixed with idiot hunger, all faced in a single direction. Their blank yet raging eyes were fixed on the herded survivors. They didn’t care about the Dragons. Toharan’s brothers had simply been in the way.

  Had the enemy been sentient, there could have been no greater insult.

  Toharan turned from the disaster. A quarter of the civilians gone. The Mortisians weakened by at least that much. An awful reality, but it changed nothing. The orders still stood. The mission was not done until there was victory. ‘Forward!’ he cried. To the refugees who stood still, mesmerised by unholy loss, he said, ‘Honour your dead and honour your planet. Survive and reclaim! Go!’ They did, one foot in front of the other, and, to their very great credit, without panicking.

  They honoured their protector, too.

  Harried and crushed, diminished and scarred, the caravan emerged from the hab zones and gradually left the city behind. The apartment warrens, now hives of the dead, gave way first to the manufactoria, and then to still-unspoiled forest. The survivors and their guardians picked up speed, and for a little while put some distance between themselves and the greater part of the city’s undead millions.

  Ahead, the landscape rose in gentle foothills until it reached the jarring interruption of the Temple Mountains. The chain thrust from the earth like sudden, granite judgement, its faces vertical, towering, defiant. From there, the sanctuary of Lexica Keep was less than a day’s forced march away. The keep would be blessedly inaccessible to the dead horde on its cliff side, and the route to it wound through a long, narrow pass several kilometres long. If they could reach the pass, Toharan was confident he could see his charges to safety. The mountain walls of the defile were so close together that the dead would be streamed into a line that could be held off by even a modest contingent of Guard. Arrival at the pass would be a guarantee of victory.

  Or of what little victory that could be claimed. By now, half the civilians were dead. The Mortisians had been decimated, reduced to barely a third of their original strength.

  The tyranny of numbers caught up to them as they reached the foot of the mountains. The city had emptied, and when its masses arrived, the open spaces no longer worked in the caravan’s favour. The dead formed a single, coherent mass millions strong. A tsunami of rage slammed into the Imperial forces and pushed them up against the unforgiving granite of the Temples. The caravan couldn’t advance. The dead were a sea of bone and muscle, the blasted twelve million of Lecorb constricting the little flame of life until they could smother it.

  On the line fighting to hold back the tide, a conscript flipped backwards and hit the ground hard and dead. His forehead was a scorched crater. He’d been hit with a las-round.

  ‘Brother-sergeant, did you see that?’ Melus asked over the vox-link.

  Toharan had. He thought he’d seen the same thing happen a few times in Lecorb, but he couldn’t be sure in the confusion of confined spaces and the rainfall of dead. But now there was no doubt. The Guardsman hadn’t been killed by friendly fire. The shot had come from one of the dead, who shouldn’t even know what a rifle was, much less how to operate one.

  Anger. Speed. And now weapons fire. All of it wrong, and Toharan seethed with frustration at the stalled advance. The entrance to the pass was barely a kilometre to the north. He could see it, a jagged shadow in the mountain wall, its contours outlined in the red glow of the setting sun. Squad Pythios could punch through the corpse legions easily on its own. The problem was doing so with even a handful of survivors. And the problem was looking increasingly academic as the siege wore on.

  The Guardsmen were collapsing. Their lines were thinning, pulling back, and then disintegrating. Squad Pythios did what it could to shore them up. Toharan and his brothers ran the interior perimeter once more, dividing the circle into eight between themselves. They were not a patrol: they were a revolving scythe, a perpetual charge, blasting clusters of dead with bolter fire, pushing into the thick of the attackers with chainsword and fist, leaving barriers of inert flesh in their wake. They were relentless. They slowed the hordes down.

  They couldn’t stop them.

  They might have, if the Mortisians were able to hold position with just a bit more characteristic resolve. These men were veterans, blooded and war-tempered by a hundred battles, but they were going down like the rawest trainees. Toharan was baffled yet again by what he was seeing. How could the infection spread so quickly? The change from loyal Guardsman to savage corpse took seconds. There was barely time for a man to die before he turned on his comrades. The virulence of the contagion was beyond unholy. And still, not one of the civilians had succumbed. They were shredded into strips of meat when they were caught, but they never changed.

  The refugees howled their terror and despair. For a moment, Toharan’s frustration veered into contempt. The terrible losses of this pointless mission had been for the sake of these bleating sheep? Where was the sense in that? Then his eyes landed on Bethshea, always running to be near him, looking up at him now not as a monster, not as a giant, but as a god come to keep her safe, and there was his answer. There was the sense of the mission.

  His vox-link came to life. ‘Pythios, this is Ormarr.’

  ‘Volos,’ Toharan said. Even through the distorting static of the transmission, the rumbling rasp of Squad Ormarr’s sergeant was unmistakable. ‘Tell me you have good news, brother-sergeant.’

  ‘Would our imminent arrival qualify?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘A
way through to the pass so we can move the civilians.’

  ‘You’ll have it,’ Volos promised. ‘Fire and bone.’

  ‘Fire and bone,’ Toharan responded, returning the Dragons battle-cry, and swallowing, as he always did, the twinge of regret that the words would never hold the full meaning for him that they did for Volos. He mag-locked his bolter to his thigh, conserving rounds, and tore into grasping, surging dead with renewed purpose. The warp take the Mortisians if they weren’t up to the task. The Dragons would complete the mission themselves. His sword lopped off limbs and heads. The ground beneath his boots had become a mire of blood, and some of the defending Guardsmen were losing their footing in the slickness, but he didn’t lose a beat. He was an engine of precise destruction, and mowed the dead down, slicing and trampling them to their second, final end.

  But still they didn’t attack him. Still, with hands and teeth, they lunged only for the unaugmented humans. And as the Guard succumbed, there were more and more corpses with weapons. Many simply used the rifles as clubs. But even though there was only a tiny percentage that actually fired the guns, and there was no accuracy worthy of the name, the numbers were enough, and they were growing. The air was filling with the lethal web of hostile las-fire.

  The music of the war was an atonal cacophony of howling corpse, shrieking survivor, and crying wounded, the high timbre modulated only by the chud-chud-chud of bolter fire, growl of chainsword and punctuating crack of bone. The steady, rotating, murderous sweep of Squad Pythios carried what rhythm there was. But now came the glorious bass: the huge, deep-throated, vengeful roar of the Thunderhawk gunship Battle Pyre . Flying low, it emerged from the pass, a stub-winged fist of black armour that reflected crimson sunset as the ship turned and began its strafing run. Hellstrike missiles flashed from their pods. They slammed into the undead army with a blast of purifying fire. Tiny suns rose between Toharan and the pass, and the sky rained fragmented body parts. The sponson cannons opened fire, and the ground erupted with geysers of dirt and corpses. For a moment, the pressure from the north ebbed. The Guard pushed hard, and there was movement. The refugees, their cries turning to whimpers of hope, inched towards the north.

  Figures in jump packs detached themselves from the Battle Pyre.

  Bethshea pointed up. ‘Look!’ she squealed. ‘More giants!’

  ‘Yes,’ Toharan said. But as he watched the Dragon Claws arrive, what he thought, despite himself, and to his burning shame, was, No, not giants. The monsters have come.

  CHAPTER 2

  FIRE AND BONE

  From above, the dead were an undulating carpet covering the landscape. Volos saw eddies and currents in their movement, the formal thrust of the attack giving way in isolated pockets to the purely random. But there was no lack of focus in the forces surrounding Squad Pythios and the tattered remains of the Mortisian Guard. During the seconds of his flight, Volos eyed the distance between the caravan and the pass, saw what was needed if the refugees were going to have even a fighting chance of surviving the next hour. Brother Keryon had given the Claws a good start, ploughing a purging furrow of fire with the Thunderhawk, but the dead were flowing back quickly. Time to teach them that even a corpse could know fear.

  The Dragon Claws slammed into the ground, punching craters in the enemy army. They came in at staggered distances, with Volos closest to the caravan. The goal: blast away the dead and form a chain along which the caravan could move once more. A jump pack assault normally called for close combat weaponry, but for this deployment, Volos had ordered a maximum ammo load and flamers for all. He straightened from his landing, unshouldered the flamer and let spray in a single movement. His back to the mountainside, he played the fire out over 180 degrees, incinerating the dead and pushing their masses back.

  The leading Hellhound started up. Its cannon was silent, the promethium tank long since depleted. Volos stepped forward, the flamer on full, and the dead retreated still further. The Hellhound drew level with him. Volos glanced up, saw Colonel Kervold salute his thanks. Volos gave a slight nod and returned his attention to the enemy. The Hellhound passed at his back, between Volos and the cliff wall. Toharan’s voice crackled over the vox-link. ‘We’re advancing. Fine work.’

  ‘So is yours.’ He tried to picture the journey his fellow sergeant had made. It was song-worthy.

  The Hellhound stopped. Its engine stalled out. Not letting up with the flamer, Volos turned his head. Kervold was looking down inside the vehicle, his expression a jagged mix of fury and puzzlement. He opened his mouth.

  The order never came. His eyes widened. Volos saw something new wash over the colonel’s face, emotions that should have been foreign to that scarred stone. The first was fear. The second was doubt, and somehow, this seemed more intense and terrible than the fear. Kervold convulsed with spine-snapping force, his body shaken by the fist that was seizing his soul. His eyes glazed as his face twisted into the shape of blank fury. He thrashed himself free of the hatch and turned with a snarl towards the refugees who were just now passing the Hellhound.

  His right hand holding down the flamer’s trigger, Volos pulled out his bolter with his left and shot Kervold, turning his skull into mist. As he acted, he processed what he had seen. The contagion had struck from the inside of the Hellhound, where no injury had been sustained. The implications staggered him, but they would receive his attention later. The consequences demanded a response now.

  The plague spread through what remained of the Mortisians with the speed of a shock wave. The last of the Imperial forces succumbed in seconds. The disease leaped from man to man without needing injury or even contact. It was as if the fall of the colonel signalled the death of the companies’ collective spirit. Commissar and trooper alike frothed and lunged for the civilians.

  Volos’s flamer ran dry. The enemy surged with renewed strength and reinforcements. Clawing for their prey, the dead slammed in a wave against Volos, knocking the bolter from his grasp, lifting him off the ground and throwing his weight against the Hellhound. Volos slid off the vehicle’s hull. The flood tried to crush him. ‘Toharan!’ he voxed. ‘The Guard is lost! Grab anyone and go !’ Buffeted by the infinite enemy, he vowed to the Emperor that he would give his life in the service of any victory that might yet be claimed from this day. Then he crossed his arms against his chest and flexed his wrists, fists down.

  There was a familiar moment of agony so pure it bordered on ecstasy, and his bone-blades shot out from his wrists, passing over his knuckles. They were a metre long and sheathed in adamantium. He swung his arms down and out. Limbs and heads went flying. Arterial fountains burst around him, drenching his armour, covering his visor. He ducked his head and lunged forward, a maddened bull. His helmet had a large slit near the top, and from it protruded his forehead’s bony growth. He had sanded it into the shape of a crescent horn, the tips and edge as lethal as the blades that grew from his arms, and here too he had added the extra kill strength of adamantium. The dead fell before his charge. His vision narrowed as the euphoria of war descended on him. He saw nothing that wasn’t the next thing he was about to butcher. His fangs extended, hungry for the mangled flesh and blood whose sight and smell had become the sum total of his world. He was the destroyer, and however numerous his foes, they were pitiable in their fragility.

  A moment came when he had nothing to kill, and his mind cleared with a neuronal snap. His system quivered with the residual ecstasy, but he was already thinking tactically again. Corpses in the dozens surrounded him. The army in his vicinity had staggered, and would need a few seconds before the torrent could flow again. Volos retracted his blades, recovered his bolter and vaulted to the top of the Hellhound.

  The Mortisians were all part of the dead army now. There was still occasional weapons fire, but it was all sloppy, and all aimed at the refugees. There were precious few of them left. The brothers of Squad Pythios carried a civilian on each shoulder and were moving at a good pace towards the pass. They had just reached the next of
the Dragon Claws. Brother Nithigg’s clearing was about to collapse as the onslaught closed in, but the dead were still seconds behind, and the Space Marines were gaining momentum. Handfuls of civilians ran in howling clusters, desperation giving their sprints a speed that was almost that of the Black Dragons jog.

  Moment by moment, their numbers dwindled.

  Volos joined the race. He came up behind a pair of scrambling humans, a man and a woman. They had been high administrators, to judge by their shredded finery. They held hands as they ran, as if that fragment of comfort was worth what they lost in speed. The gesture was so futile in the face of inevitable massacre, and so touchingly human. It was, Volos thought, the epitome of what he had been created to protect. A group of frenzied dead closed in on the couple. Volos swatted the enemy away, pulping the bodies. He scooped up the two humans. They screamed when they first felt his grasp. They seemed hardly more reassured when they realised what was happening. They stared at him with eyes that were near mindless with fear. But they didn’t struggle.

  Volos ran faster, barrelling through the dead, exploding bodies with his juggernaut run. He reached Nithigg, who grabbed two civilians and joined the race. Behind, more clusters of humans fell off the pace and were swallowed by the horde.

  By the time Squads Pythios and Ormarr reached the pass, the only refugees left were the ones they carried. They held two each, except for Toharan, who had three: there was a small child perched on his head. Thirty-seven survivors. A poor showing.

  The Black Dragons pounded along the broken, twisting path of the defile. Behind them, the dead raged and followed, but lost ground. The walls of the pass closed in, barely a few metres apart at moments. They leaned in from the vertical, black stone slicked with moisture. Misting waterfalls thickened the air. The Temple chain was taking the intruders into its hard embrace, hugging them tighter and closer. Even with his enhanced vision, Volos found it difficult to see more than a few dozen metres ahead. But that was enough.