The Oath in Darkness - David Annandale Read online

He entered the corridor, moving more and more cautiously. Something was wrong.

  The hall was a tube. Its sides were scored, creating a tight spiral that ran its entire length. The ridges looked both like grilles and tendons.

  Now it was Buria who tried to push past Grekh. He held out an arm to stop her. ‘Be wary,’ he said.

  ‘But we’re close,’ she breathed, eyes shining.

  ‘Then we should have more caution. Not less.’

  ‘Listen to him,’ Lorn pleaded. ‘We can’t be foolish, especially if we are so close to our goal.’

  Reluctantly, Buria took a step back.

  The tunnel curved around sharp bends. Branches opened up. Buria chose the left branch at the second intersection, and then ignored all the other tunnels that led off the new route.

  Grekh stopped. He gave his head a quick, hard shake. ‘We head back,’ he said. His instincts were screaming at him. Something was coming, something he could not protect his herd from.

  ‘No!’ said Buria. ‘We’re almost there. We go on.’

  ‘Back,’ Grekh insisted. ‘Off the fortress.’ Premonition hit him like a blow, his entire body reacting to the imminence of disaster. This was a new thing, new and terrible. He had never encountered its like on the Blackstone Fortress. He had no strategies for it. No one could. Whatever was coming was too big. He felt it building up like a wave a thousand feet high, and it was about to crash down and destroy them all.

  ‘Coward!’ Viktur snarled. He shoved past Grekh with his mother.

  Staggered by the sense of onrushing vastness, Grekh was too slow to respond. He reached for Viktur’s arm as if he were moving underwater. Then the bond of his oath snapped him back into action.

  ‘Come back!’ Dalkan shouted behind him as he started after the Navigators.

  Grekh did not know if the priest was calling him or Buria.

  It did not matter. The tunnel split in two. The decking on which Grekh stood heaved upwards. Dalkan, Lorn and Grekh fell as the floor shot upwards and its angle approached the vertical. They grabbed hold of the ridges and clung to a deck becoming a wall.

  The tunnel opened up like the pincers of a crab, and it became just a ridge in a gargantuan chamber. Dalkan was screaming, but Grekh could not hear him. The change had come. It was tectonic in scale, and had the violence of an eruption. The enormous machinery of the Blackstone Fortress’ being roared to life as it never had in all the time of Grekh’s exploration.

  For several long minutes, he could see nothing. He had only the impression of colossal movement, of mountains rising and falling, and of something gathering, a centre forming. This was willed. This was change with a purpose.

  Dalkan’s grip slipped. Grekh reached down and caught his wrist just as the priest began to fall. His rifle slung over his shoulder, his muscles straining, Grekh held himself and Dalkan in place with one hand. Lorn held fiercely to the wall beside them. She had lost her cane, her face was red with strain, and her fingers were white. If she fell, Grekh would have to drop the priest, who was not a Rekkendus.

  He did not want that to happen. He disliked thinning a herd in his care.

  Grekh stared into the violence of the change, and he saw the centre that was taking hold. He saw walls with a recognisable function. He saw jagged spires and turrets of blackstone. A twisted citadel within a fortress came into being before him. Warp-fire leapt from peak to peak, and auroras of madness billowed from its windows.

  At last, the transformation ended. Grekh crawled to the peak of the slope, dragging Dalkan with him, then went back down to help Lorn to safety. On the platform they reached, they looked out at the high, grim walls and glowering parapets of the citadel.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Dalkan whispered.

  Grekh knew Dalkan was not speaking to him. The priest was crying out to his god. Grekh answered all the same. ‘It is the work of an enemy. One we are not prepared to fight. The Rekkendus path ends here.’

  As towering as the citadel was, its vista swept off to both sides as far as Grekh could see. This was not an obstacle they could get around.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Lorn asked, voice shaking with pain and exhaustion.

  ‘To be found klik,’ said Grekh. He knew where Buria and Viktur had last been. He had to discern not their movements, but those of the fortress’ interior landscape. Where the section of floor he had been on had risen, the other had dropped. He had the scent of the two humans. He could track them through a maze.

  Grekh stood and moved to the other side of the platform. He eyed the downward slopes and curves of the reconfigured structure. He found the traces of motion in the new shapes. He saw where a tunnel had gone to become a wall, and how a wall had joined others to become a spire. He saw where a tower had grown, and how a parapet had come to be.

  He saw where Buria and Viktur had to be.

  ‘They are there,’ he said, pointing at the base of the citadel. Just above its roots was a small bulge in the outer wall of one of the towers. ‘Inside.’

  It was not far, in real distances. If the fortress remained still, that is – and Grekh felt it would; that in this region, at least, whatever forces had created this citadel would be satisfied for now.

  That was what concerned him. The enemy that had done this was formidable. More than the interior of the Blackstone Fortress had changed. Something fundamental had altered.

  There was no room to contemplate consequences now, but Grekh felt them looming as high as the citadel’s walls.

  ‘Follow close klik,’ he said. There was a ridge that sloped down from their position towards the base of the citadel. Taking it would expose them to what sentinels might be in those walls. It was also the only way forward.

  Grekh unshouldered his rifle and took the ridge, moving as quickly as he could without leaving Lorn and Dalkan behind. Lorn was unsteady without her cane, but she kept up with the priest, urgency granting her speed.

  They reached the bottom of the slope without being attacked, and crossed the wide stretch of deck to arrive at the tower. There was an open doorway in the curved outer wall, and inside the deck headed up again. Buria and Viktur’s scent was strong. The contract holder was not far.

  Grekh paused at the doorway. Foul ichor dripped from the walls and ran in channels down the deck, carrying the stench of nightmares and monstrous fates. There were other scents, too, enemy ones. They were pervasive. He couldn’t localise them. It was as if they were part of the very fabric of the citadel.

  Bad signs. No resistance was a bad sign too. And he had no choice.

  He climbed, the other half of his herd behind him. Dalkan was sticking close, his revulsion for the kroot overcome by his fear of his surroundings. Lorn was right behind, frantic to find her sister.

  The deck wound up inside the tower twice, and then the entrance to the bulge appeared, another angular doorway, savage in its shape, as if its edges were razors. Voices emerged, Buria and Viktur speaking with muted intensity.

  ‘I don’t understand!’ Viktur was saying. ‘Why won’t you tell me what is happening?’

  ‘Soon. All is well.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘All is well. We’ll wait a bit longer. We always knew there was a chance not all of us would survive. We are still enough. Lorn is not necessary.’

  Necessary? Grekh thought.

  He slowed down, and Dalkan did too. But at the sound of her sister, Lorn rushed forwards. She shoved past Grekh and into the chamber.

  Grekh was still a few feet from the entrance. He could see only part of the room beyond. Buria was on the left, facing Viktur, who was out of Grekh’s sight.

  ‘Buria!’ Lorn called, and then stopped in the middle of the room. She turned around slowly. Her eyes widened and she blanched at what she saw.

  ‘Threat!’ Grekh warned. He shoved Dalkan hard and the priest stumbled back down the
sloping deck and fell, rolling. Grekh brought his rifle up to fire.

  He wasn’t fast enough. He saved Dalkan, and he paused before pulling the trigger, because Lorn was in the direct line of fire, and that stole the fractions of a second he needed. Two massive forms stepped into the doorway, and they were already firing.

  Servants of the Abyss. Corrupted Space Marines, their armour black as the fortress, the eight-pointed star of Chaos a blaze of gold on their pauldrons. Their bolters roared in the narrow passageway, their fire an explosive hell.

  They were thunder. Grekh was lightning. He jumped back and down. A slug caught him on his shoulder plate and blew the armour away. Shells slammed into the walls. The rapid-fire hammer of explosions became a single blast, and then the walls were coming down on him, and with them darkness.

  The battle was over before Dalkan had finished falling down the ramp. A portion of the inner tower wall fell on Grekh, and there were a few moments of silence. Smoke filled the twisting corridor, and Dalkan lay still. He waited for death, and prayed to the Emperor that he would meet it with more dignity than he had the horrors he had witnessed so far in this corrupt nightmare of a place.

  He heard voices. Lorn’s first, shouting in incomprehension.

  Then Buria spoke, sounding horribly calm. ‘We don’t need him any longer. Let’s go.’

  ‘What are you saying? By the Throne, what are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t question me. Viktur, are you ready?’

  ‘What? No, mother. This is wrong.’

  Dalkan had never heard Viktur stand on principle before. He had never heard him sound so frightened either.

  ‘Take them,’ said Buria.

  There were sounds of scuffling, and then the heavy tread of ceramite boots, heading higher up the tower.

  ‘Is it far?’ Buria asked.

  ‘Close enough,’ said a voice, deep and harsh through a helmet’s vox-speaker.

  The footsteps receded. Dalkan got to his feet and staggered back up until he was level with the rubble. The collapsed wall covered most of the corridor, but there was still room to clamber over it and follow.

  To what end? What can I do?

  Nothing. You useless, useless fool.

  He was going to die here, and die for nothing. He had believed in a traitor.

  The rubble stirred slightly. Dalkan heard a grunt of effort.

  By the grace of the Emperor, the xenos monster was still alive. The kroot was an offence merely to gaze upon, and he was also Dalkan’s only source of hope. There was only one living being who could be the hand of the Emperor here and now.

  A gigantic theological problem unveiled itself before Dalkan. He prayed that he would live to contemplate it.

  He pulled at the wreckage, shoving off the fragments small enough for him to shift. ‘I am here,’ he whispered fiercely, as if he were the one giving comfort. ‘I am here.’

  ‘Quiet and dig,’ the inhuman voice snapped.

  Dalkan worked at the rubble. It sliced his hands. It felt like it was biting him. It was something that looked like stone, but only, he thought, because it chose to do so. In another few seconds, it might flow into another change, crushing Grekh out of existence.

  The top of the rubble loosened. Dalkan heaved a slab off. The kroot found leverage, and fought his way out, bleeding and furious. He paused to check his rifle, then opened a small canister in the pouch of his belt. From it he extracted a thick, bloody paste that he smeared on the bleeding, burned flesh of his shoulder. He snapped his beak with a sharp, satisfied click.

  ‘What must we do?’ Dalkan asked. He heard the deference in his voice. Only a tiny, irrelevant part of his consciousness thought it was strange.

  ‘Buria Rekkendus has broken the contract. Our oath does not bind us to her any longer.’

  ‘Lorn did not betray you. Nor did Viktur.’

  ‘No. The oath holds for them. Also for you.’

  ‘Save us.’

  ‘I will.’

  If he had been tracking the Servants of the Abyss, Grekh would have found the hunt challenging. Theirs was the scent that filled the citadel. This was their doing, somehow. They had grown in strength. They had become terrible in their threat, and he was in their stronghold.

  The Rekkendus scent, though, was easy to follow. Buria and the Servants of the Abyss had taken the others higher in the tower, and then down a long, narrow passage. It was barely large enough for a Space Marine to pass through, and its nature gradually changed as Grekh and Dalkan made their way down its length. The matter of the Blackstone Fortress mixed with metal alloys of human construction. The tunnel was a ship’s conduit that had been fused with the fortress.

  Grekh took the last few yards of the tunnel slowly, dropping down to a crawl and signalling to Dalkan to stay back. The conduit was dark, giving him the cover of shadows as he looked into the circular chamber beyond.

  This too was part of a ship, or had been. It was an ancient bridge, and had long ago become one with the Blackstone Fortress. Buria had been telling the truth about the existence of the vessel. She had either been lying or was deceived about the possibility of extracting it from the fortress.

  Objects rose from the deck that had the shape of control surfaces, but had become tumour-like extrusions of the fortress’ matter. A fissure midway up the walls ran the entire circumference of the bridge. It opened and closed, a lipless maw revealing rows of fangs. In the centre of the deck sat what was still recognisable as a command throne, though its shape had a fluidity no human, kroot or t’au construct had ever had. It was linked by writhing, viscous mechadendrites to two other thrones. They were half-sunken in the floor, or perhaps they had half-emerged. The changes to the ship were so profound that there was no distinguishing between the features that were echoes of what it had once been, and those that were the marks of what it had become.

  Buria stood beside the central throne. Lorn and Viktur were in the other two, and the seats had partly closed over them like cocoons. A squad of Traitor Space Marines surrounded the thrones, watching.

  ‘Mother!’ Viktur shouted. There was no bravado in him now. Only fear. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Ascending,’ said Buria. ‘You have always been a disappointment to me, Viktur, but at least you will be useful. Your ability and Lorn’s will be slaved to mine, and I will pilot the greatest weapon the galaxy has ever seen.’

  ‘Then do it,’ said the commander of the Traitor Space Marines. ‘You can gloat later.’

  ‘We will fight you,’ Lorn vowed.

  ‘You can’t,’ Buria said with a smile. She gave the Servant of the Abyss a regal nod, and climbed into the throne.

  Grekh looked over the sights of his rifle. He might be able to down one of the Space Marines. He had a clear shot into the warrior’s helm lenses.

  Not good enough.

  He would kill one enemy, and then die, having saved no one, and broken his oath.

  Mechadendrites slithered around Buria’s arms and chest. Her smile faltered. ‘What…’ she began. She started to twitch.

  ‘You will pilot nothing,’ the commander snarled at her. ‘The three of you will be a single force at the command of Obsidius Mallex. Through you, he will wake the fortress. He will guide its path of destruction.’

  All three Navigators screamed. Their third eyes opened. A psychic wave rippled through the chamber as minds began to fuse and identities began to melt. The thrones glowed, and a hemisphere of roiling warp light slowly expanded from their centre.

  Grekh felt something very deep, and very great, stir in the heart of the Blackstone Fortress, and now he saw how he could fulfil his oath. He could still save his herd.

  He fired three times, placing every shot in the warp eye of one of the Navigators.

  As she died, Grekh thought he saw a look of gratitude on Lorn’s face.

  The Spa
ce Marines turned in his direction, bolters rising.

  The psychic build-up imploded. The bodies of the Navigators collapsed on themselves, and the thrones followed. An instant later, the warp energy erupted again, lashing out uncontrollably, devouring the chamber and the Servants of the Abyss.

  Grekh spun and ran. The pain of his injuries tried to slow him, but his will and his oath were stronger than agony. Grabbing Dalkan, he sprinted back down the conduit, and then towards the base of the tower. The eruption grew in power. The walls and deck shuddered, and a sound that was both thunder and shriek rocked the tower.

  Dalkan ran fast, doing well for the weak thing he was, and when they reached the base of the tower and fled the citadel, Grekh knew he would save this one also. The destruction he had caused would buy them time. He would carry the priest if he had to, but he would see this one alive back to Precipice.

  They had to reach Precipice, because he would have to make a new oath. His old reasons for coming to the Blackstone Fortress had died with the birth of the citadel. So had those of every living being on the station.

  Whether they knew it or not, they were now at war.

  About the Author

  David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain and the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy range includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood and Neferata: The Dominion of Bones. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

  An extract from Blackstone Fortress.

  How they would have wept to hear him. All those years of brutal tutelage, so many prayers meted out with an unsparing stick, and not one of their aphorisms had stayed with him – all that cant wiped away by the savagery of the war. Only one simple phrase, whispered to the rhythm of his breath, had kept him alive. Through the needle’s eye. He could see it in his mind – a sliver of sanity, surrounded by a galaxy of madness. I live or die.