Season of Shadows - Guy Haley Read online

  He thought he caught a voice and spun round.

  ‘Brussssscccc,’ he heard. He could swear he heard it, barely louder than the engine and the whine of his armour. ‘Brussssccccc.’

  ‘Anything wrong, brother?’ asked Sunno.

  Brusc’s targeting reticle danced over an ash fall sheeting down, seeking a threat and finding none. His finger relaxed on the trigger of his boltgun.

  ‘No, nothing. The wind. Come on.’

  ‘You are getting nervous, brother,’ said Sunno.

  ‘Vigilant,’ corrected Brusc. ‘Let’s pick up our pace. There’s nothing here.’

  The Sword Brother jogged on. Cataphraxes’s engines growled louder as Sunno re-engaged the tracks.

  After another hundred metres, the canyon ended.

  Brusc took in the wide space before him. Visibility had improved again, the clogged air forming a diffuse ceiling over his head. He could see all the way to the other side of the pit, a disused open-cast mine or quarry. The canyon gave every impression of being naturally formed, but the topography here was anything but. They emerged into a perfect square, the half-kilometre-long edges sharp as if cut out with a knife. On the far side were the dilapidated remains of a facility of some kind. Held off the floor on thick metal pillars, it climbed to the top of the pit wall opposite to a steep roadway that went from floor to edge via several switchbacks. The facility was made of local iron and had reddened in what little moisture there was in the air. He took in the corrosion from both ambient moisture and acid rain squalls and calculated that it had been unused for at least fifty years. More than that, Brusc could tell little about the place. His reticle flicked from point to point, unable to give him any more information than how far away it was, and what windshear would effect his bolts if he were to open fire.

  ‘The mine,’ said Sunno.

  ‘Any indication what they were doing here?’ asked Brusc. His voice sounded too loud in his helmet.

  ‘It doesn’t say,’ said Sunno. ‘Minimal information. Does it matter, brother?’

  ‘No,’ said Brusc. He walked forward until he was standing at the edge of a roadway similar to the one opposite. Evidently, the canyon had been co-opted into being a secondary entrace. The floor of the pit was not uniform. Cuboid sections had been lifted from it. the road headed immediately right from the canyon mouth, a generous arc provided for the turn at the top, three switchbacks taking it to the pit floor. He judged that the trucks would be able to go down, if they were careful. The road continued onwards, skirting the diggings, to the facility. ‘I am coming aboard, brother,’ said Brusc. ‘We will be stopping here tonight.’

  Night fell quickly, hurried in by the ash’s gloom. The sky remained thick with ash and glowed strangely with the refracted lights of distant cities, but the pit itself remained clear. Were it not for rare gusts of wind, the mine would have felt like a cave. A stuffy stillness filled the place, the dying gasp of the Season of Fire.

  Brusc walked around the camp set up beneath the broken facility. Chutes opened above truck bays ranged against the raw stone of the pit wall. The convoy did not occupy these, but had drawn up in a defensive horseshoe, ends anchored against the pit side. Within this corral there was little activity. Few without orders felt like daring the night; everyone was tired.

  Loose sheets of metal banged when the wind gusted. When it did not, the facility groaned as the temperature changed. Bickering voices announced the approach of a Jopali patrol. When they saw Brusc they fell silent. Their sergeant acknowledged him with a nod. Once they thought he was out of earshot they resumed their arguments, their sergeant’s threats having little effect.

  Brusc watched them go. It was dark under the facility, but his suit picked out their shapes clearly. They reached the inner edge of the camp, and tramped up a set of rickety stairs into the building. Another group was patrolling the road leading out of the pit. He could not see them from his position but they too were arguing and he heard them.

  ‘Keep your men quiet, sergeants,’ he growled. ‘Unless you want every ork within twenty kilometres to know we’re here.’

  The Black Templar passed the stairs and headed past the lone sentry guarding the gap between trucks. The man stared at him, afraid of Brusc and the night in equal measure.

  He walked along the edge of the trucks, passing more men keeping watch over the pit floor and the road they had entered by. Brusc had the same impression of nervous energy from them all. He walked on until he was clear of the camp and the facility. It towered over him. He should have felt safe beneath it, but somehow he did not.

  ‘The Jopali are staying in their trucks. They don’t much like this place.’

  ‘Brother Sunno,’ said Brusc as Sunno joined him.

  ‘I have been walking the pit floor.’

  ‘There’s nothing down there,’ said Brusc.

  ‘It does not hurt to be diligent.’

  ‘You are uneasy?’

  Sunno did not reply immediately. ‘I’d be a liar if I said I was not.’

  Brusc was silent a space. Both of them spoke quietly, but even in the privacy of their helmets their voices felt like an intrusion into the quiet of the pit, as if the animus of the place were offended.

  ‘I have had to break up two fights. It is affecting them. I admit something about it sets my teeth on edge too,’ said Brusc.

  Sunno looked about himself, his lenses glowing in the flat face of his crusader helm. ‘I feel it, I feel it brother. A… A rage.’

  ‘A geologic oddity,’ said Brusc. ‘Tectonic infrasound, localised magnetic field…’

  ‘Does your armour’s spirit detect any of those things? Because mine does not,’ interrupted Sunno. ‘Perhaps we should not have come here.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ said Brusc. ‘Your diligence is correct. Stay so. The storm appears spent. We shall move out at first light.’ He looked around. ‘You are right, I do not like this place.’

  ‘Yes, Sword Brother,’ said Sunno.

  Brusc resumed his circuit, skirting around outside the line of giant metal columns supporting the facility. The effect of the sky pressing down was claustrophobic. He experienced a sudden desire to remove his helmet and, seeing no reason not to, he did.

  The neck seal hissed as it came undone. The air hit his face like a blast from an oven. Nevertheless, he breathed deeply of it, glad to be able to smell something other than himself and his suit’s coolant system. His mutilated face itched terribly, and he rubbed at the patchwork of scars and plasti-skin with armour-clad fingers. Without the red staining of his helm, the mine should have looked less sinister, but his sense of wrongness only grew.

  For a moment he closed his eyes. It was so quiet there the silence became almost audible, washing out the distant voices of the Jopali sentries with its roaring hush.

  ‘Brussssccccc.’

  Brusc had his bolter in his hands before his helmet hit the floor.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he shouted. The voice had been louder this time, his name clear. ‘Who’s there?’

  He hunted through the murk. His eyes were keen, but he regretted removing his helmet for he saw nothing. A new set of sounds reached his ears: footsteps scrabbling on loose ash, the thump and jangle of kit bumping on running bodies and the click of respirators.

  ‘My lord, we heard you shouting. Is there something amiss?’

  Brusc cursed the men for their clumsiness, no matter how well intentioned. ‘Something is out there.’ He did not tell them it had spoken his name. ‘Gone now.’ His delivery made sure they were left in no doubt it had gone because of their racket.

  ‘My lord, I…’

  A scream rent the air, confined, bouncing from metal walls.

  ‘The facility,’ said Brusc.

  The Jopali had no time to respond before Brusc was away running from them. He easily outpaced them, reaching the bottom of the stairs within the camp in seconds. They shook dangerously as he pounded up them, the camp behind him going into a commotion in his wake.


  His entrance into the bottom floor of the facility burst the door from its hinges. He squinted into the gloom. The room had been stripped of useful materials, flimsies and yellowed sheets of paper were scattered everywhere, square pale islands on the dark floor. Insubstantial partitions had once divided the place up into administrator’s cells. Most were gone, only jagged edges remained where they had been ripped away. A long row of broken windows looked out over the pit. Many had their shutters down. All of these showed signs of storm damage, and several shutters were missing altogether.

  The far wall backed onto the rock, the panels that covered it fallen away in places. Only the chutes seemed permanent, giant square pipes pitted by corrosion yet still whole. Everything else was in decay. Acid rain had rotted through large patches of the floor. Through them, past the lumpen silhouettes of broken processing machinery, Brusc saw clear to the roof, an expanse of blackness punctured by holes that, together with the windows, let in the muted glow of the sky. For a moment, he saw the holes as a leering face. Only for a moment. Up there, near the edge of the pit, it was windier. He heard ventilation cowls rotating to face the wind, fans spinning, directing air into spaces that had long since opened themselves to the elements.

  That was six floors up. Down at the bottom was only stillness. The room stretched on into an infinity of silences.

  A pale figure moved in the gloom.

  ‘Who goes there?’ Brusc shouted. The figure stood still for a moment, then walked away out of Brusc’s sight, right into the rear wall.

  Brusc swore, held his bolter at chest height and advanced.

  Army boots clattered on the stairs behind him. The soldiers, seeing Brusc’s watchful stance, fanned out with their weapons at the ready. Feeble munitorum torches poked yellow beams of light into the dark.

  ‘Anything to report my lord?’ asked Ghaskar.

  ‘Only laxity! I thought you said your men had checked this place?’

  ‘Suflimar!’ Ghaskar shouted out of the door. A few seconds later one of his men came up from outside. Ghaskar had a furious exchange with him. Their dialect was so thick that Brusc caught one word in every four.

  ‘He says he did check it, my lord.’

  ‘There’s somebody up here. I saw him. About halfway down the hall.’

  ‘Maybe it was Bapoli, or Srinergee. That’s who Suflimar left up here, my lord.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  Suflimar called the men’s names out, his voice wavering. There was no reply. Vox clicks and mutters asking the sentries to check in produced static hiss.

  ‘Is there another way out of here?’ asked Brusc.

  ‘The stairs, down the far end.’ Torches converged to pick out a door ajar many metres distant, and broke apart again.

  ‘No. He went out there.’ Brusc pointed his gun. ‘Halfway down.’

  ‘There is no way out there, my lord,’ said Ghaskar.

  ‘The chutes, is there a way into the chutes?’ demanded Brusc. ‘Or behind the panelling, between the room and the rock?’

  ‘Nay, lord,’ Suflimar answered for himself. ‘Tere is notting, notting like tat.’

  Brusc had thought the lieutenant’s faith in his men admirable. Now he saw it as weakness, putting trust in such as these.

  ‘There’s one there. You must have missed it,’ Brusc snarled. He went forward. The Jopali, unasked, covered him. His armoured feet crunched on broken glass and drifts of ash. The floor was unsteady, and he took care to stick to the joins in the panelling where structural beams ran.

  ‘Brother!’ shouted Sunno from outside.

  ‘Enter!’ said Brusc over his shoulder.

  Sunno jogged up to join his brother. When he reached Brusc he handed him his helmet.

  ‘You dropped this.’

  ‘My thanks, Brother Sunno.’

  Sunno’s bolter clicked as he brought it up. Brusc maglocked his bolter to his chest while he replaced his helm. Its features revealed to him more clearly by his sensorium, the room looked no less empty. ‘Where are the neophytes?’

  ‘Watching over the camp, and keeping Sister Rosa in her trailer. She wanted to come up here.’

  ‘We will not allow it. Something is gravely amiss here. I saw someone. Ghaskar’s men are missing.’

  ‘Understood, brother.’

  The pair of them spread out, then took oblique lines across the floor toward where Brusc had seen the pale man. In the dark, Sunno’s white shoulder pads were a muddy grey, the black templar cross stark upon them. Brusc’s own red Sword Brother’s cross was invisible on black. He was a shadow giant, armour whining eerily along with the wind above. The weakened floor shifted alarmingly under their great weight, but they did not take their eyes or their guns from their target.

  ‘Brother,’ said Sunno. He held his bolter up one handed, pointing with the other. Behind a pile of debris was a body. Brusc’s auto-senses showed him what it was before he’d registered it. Data flicked before his eyes. A threat indicator unfolded in the lower left of his vision, and ticked steadily upwards.

  ‘Dead,’ said Sunno.

  Brusc crunched over to it as stealthily as he could. Close inspection revealed a catalogue of horrors.

  ‘Not just dead. Mutilated.’

  The man’s jaw had been pulled off, his tongue nearly cut around so that it remained rooted in his head and poked into the air. His eyelids were gone, giving him a crazed stare, as were the tips of his fingers. His stomach had been neatly excised, the guts and the tissue that covered them were neatly piled next to him.

  ‘Temperature reading suggests death occurred recently. Who is this?’ Brusc asked. The Guardsmen approached fearfully. One of them clawed off his respirator to be noisily sick.

  ‘Tat Bapoli, lord,’ said Suflimar. ‘Ork do it?’

  ‘One of their torturers maybe. One of their infiltrators, but I see no trace of their presence. Even the most cunning ork gives himself away.’ He searched for dung or disturbances in the rubbish strewing the place, and found none.

  ‘That’s not the work of an ork, brother,’ said Sunno privately.

  ‘No,’ replied Brusc. ‘It is not. Speak carefully.’

  ‘Yes, brother.’

  ‘Emperor preserve us,’ said Ghaskar.

  ‘We shall all pray that he does,’ said Brusc publically. ‘Be on your guard! The Emperor will not help those who do not help themselves.’

  Sunno advanced further. ‘Here’s our door.’

  With the barrel of his bolter he pointed to a rectangle of blackness in the stone so deep their armour senses could not penetrate it. Suflimar babbled a long stream of his nonsense Low Gothic at the sight of it. The other Jopali became agitated, jabbering back.

  ‘He says that this door was not here three hours ago when he checked, my lord, nor when the last patrol came by,’ said Ghaskar.

  ‘And now there is a door, and it is open,’ said Sunno. Unlike every other edge in the pit, square cut by mining machinery, this had a rough look, as if hewn by primitive tools. ‘It looks like it has been here for a thousand years, brother.’

  A whisper came out of the darkness. ‘Brussssscccc.’

  Brusc’s bolter clicked against his armour as he pulled it in tightly to himself to steady his aim.

  ‘What?’ asked Sunno.

  ‘You didn’t hear that?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘A whisper,’ said Brusc. Realising that their conversation was spooking the men, he switched to vox.

  ‘I heard nothing,’ said Sunno.

  A scream sounded from the door. Up and up it rose, reaching a crescendo of terror, then collapsed into despairing laughter.

  ‘Now that I heard,’ said Sunno. He shifted, seeking a target in the dark.

  ‘Something fell is at work here,’ said Brusc. He switched back to helmet speaker. His words were harsh, the voice of the Emperor’s deadly angels, and it reassured the men. ‘Remain here with my brother. I will enter the dark and see if I can find your comrade. If I d
o not return within an hour, break camp and depart immediately. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Ghaskar. The men quietened, grateful to have orders.

  ‘Do not waste yourself for one man, brother,’ said Sunno.

  ‘There is more at stake than a life,’ said Brusc.

  ‘Then let me come with you, brother. Let me help you,’ said Sunno.

  Brusc was already walking towards the door. Whispering came at him, seemingly from within his helmet.

  ‘If I am right about what I think might be down there, brother,’ said Brusc. ‘Then only the Emperor can help me.’

  He stepped into the door with a prayer on his lips, disappearing from view instantly, his black armour swallowed by the dark.

  ‘What did you hear?’ voxed Sunno. ‘What did you hear, brother?’

  Only static answered.

  The darkness was fleeting. Firelight took its place. Brusc walked down stairs unsuited to human feet. Torches flickered in sconces, too few for the illumination provided. The stairs wound in a spiral, down and down.

  ‘The lord Emperor is my protector. He is the shield of humanity,’ said Brusc. ‘I am His sword.’

  Brusc was old, very old. Six hundred years he had fought for the Imperium, his blooding taking place in the Kalidar Crusade, yet another war against the orks. The following years saw the Black Templars criss-crossing space bled dry to supply Lord Solar Macharius’s glorious adventure, and he had fought all manner of foes before he was made an initiate.

  But not daemons. He encountered them much later. The Adeptus Astartes were better informed about the nature of the warp, but even amongst them few knew the whole truth. As a Sword Brother of Dorn’s black knights, Brusc was one who did.

  He had fought daemons. He had killed them. He had seen them suck his brothers’ souls from their bodies. He had seen the horror the daemons brought, how they twisted reality about them.