Angron's Monolith - Steve Lyons Read online

  He backed up almost to the monolith itself, with Sergeant Divolio to his left and Veteran Brother Parvhel to his right. ‘Defend the Chief Librarian at all costs,’ Bardane bellowed, as the first feral orks poured into the clearing around them. How could so many of them have made it back here so quickly?

  The Chapter Master drew the Artekus Scourge. Tarryn had to settle for his regular chainsword and bolter, but he knew how to use them and the weapons had acquired a taste for greenskin blood. He shook his head to clear it as he activated his blade.

  With battle-brothers to either side of him and the monolith at his back, the feral orks could only get to him one or two at a time. That gave him the advantage over them, being stronger than any three of them.

  He favoured his melee weapon, as he was beginning to run low on ammunition. He used his boltgun only when he had to: when his chainsword choked on knotted muscle tissue and he needed a moment to restart it.

  He swung his blade, squeezed his trigger and weathered scores of axe and club blows in return. A lucky strike dented Tarryn’s helmet; another one, moments later, split one of his pauldrons. He soon lost count of the number of opponents he had slain. Their bodies were piling up at his feet, yet it seemed that the number of xenos still fighting was only increasing.

  The clearing was heaving with feral orks by now. They were snarling and howling and elbowing and trampling each other in their frenzy to reach their surrounded prey. Where are they all coming from? Tarryn wondered again. And where is the rest of our company? Bardane had summoned his scattered combat squads, but so far only one had made it here: they were firing into the greenskin pack from behind, but had had to fall back or risk being swarmed by them.

  Divolio lobbed a frag grenade into the feral orks’ ranks. As tightly packed as they were, the explosion wreaked carnage upon them. It also sent a heavy brute stumbling into Tarryn, almost knocking him off his feet. The vox-net was abuzz with confused reports from the combat squads. They had tried to follow the sounds of battle, rushing to their brothers’ aid as they had been instructed; instead, they found themselves inexplicably lost in the jungle.

  Halstron was still trying to haul Decario to his feet. He was urging him to reach for the obsidian shard again. At some point, he must have unleashed his bound daemonhost – their plight was certainly serious enough to warrant it – because the chained man had joined the melee, causing feral orks to combust with a flex of his fingers. Another link broken…

  The orks didn’t run from the chained man, this time. They were no longer afraid of him; either that or their fear was overridden by the scream of the monolith, the latter driving their hearts to beat harder, pumping white-hot fury through their arteries.

  Divolio was down.

  It had happened in the blink of an eye. Tarryn hadn’t even seen the blow that had felled him. He couldn’t tell if the sergeant was unconscious or comatose or dead. All he knew was that where a moment ago he had had a battle-brother protecting his flank, there were now two feral orks

  One hulking great beast, with a splinter of bone through its nose, pushed off from Divolio’s prone form and descended on Tarryn from above. It brought a massive axe down, two-handed, in a shattering blow to Tarryn’s wrist. He lost his grip on his chainsword, and his bolter chose that inopportune moment to run dry.

  He only needed a second to reload. He didn’t have it. The ork swung for his throat next; he barely managed to duck under its axe blade in time.

  He had a gladius sheathed at his hip, in reserve. His right wrist, however, was broken and his fingers were numb. He had to drop his bolter and draw the short sword left-handed. He plunged it into the feral ork’s stomach, up to the hilt, drenching his arm in its blood. The creature gave a step, with Tarryn’s blade buried in its guts, drawing him after it. He twisted the blade, eliciting a howl from his opponent; but then he stumbled over Divolio’s body, and the blood-slickened grip of the gladius slid out of his grasp too and he was unarmed.

  Another feral ork slammed into him and sent him sprawling.

  He could probably have caught himself had he not, at the crucial instant, felt a stab of anxiety about touching Angron’s Monolith. He imagined the Chaos power it contained coursing through him, shrivelling his soul.

  A club smashed into his side – the same spot at which he had been injured several days earlier, though the wound had healed by now – and suddenly, Tarryn was not just stumbling but falling. He glanced off the monolith on his way down, and it felt like stone, nothing more than normal stone.

  He found himself on his back, in a heap at the monolith’s base, with a cluster of orks looming over him. They were jostling for the honour of delivering the coup de grâce, which was all that was keeping him alive. Tarryn’s closest brother, Parvhel, was battling his way towards him, but had no hope of making it in time.

  He needed a weapon.

  He fumbled for one with his left hand, his unbroken hand. His chainsword had to be lying close by, along with any number of clubs and axes in the rigid grips of the dead. His questing fingers found something like a blade, and closed eagerly around it. It might have been his own gladius, but as he hefted it, he knew it wasn’t. It was too short, for a start, and its balance was off.

  Whatever he was holding, though, it was solid and its twisted edges were sharp. It would do for Tarryn’s purposes – it was certainly better than nothing.

  A feral ork lunged at him, intending to tear out his throat with its tusks. Instead, it was impaled on his new weapon. It died on top of him, with an expression of injured surprise. Tarryn planted a foot in the creature’s stomach, and he thrust its corpse away from him into its thronged brethren.

  He braced his shoulders against the monolith and pushed himself up onto his elbows and feet. The feral orks seemed to be moving in slow motion; by the time they came at him again, to his own surprise, he was standing and ready for them.

  He swung his weapon twice before they could touch him. Its sharp edge opened the throat of his nearest attacker, spilled guts out of the next. A third feral ork aimed a clumsy axe blow at him, which Tarryn evaded with ease. Before the ork had even finished its swing, he had stabbed it through the heart.

  It was only then, as he wrenched his weapon out of the dying ork’s chest, that he saw what he was holding: an obsidian splinter, about a third of a metre long, scuffed and chipped and twisted. He was holding the shard from the monolith. The shard of Angron’s axe!

  Tarryn ought to have been horrified. Deep down, a small part of him was. A larger part, however, was grateful. He didn’t know where the shard had come from, how it had made it into his hand, but he would certainly have been dead without it.

  He wasn’t dead. Instead, he was slaughtering the enemies of the Emperor, the xenos scum that had dared infest this Imperial world. It must have been the Emperor Himself who had brought the shard to him so that Tarryn could do His holy work.

  Two feral orks rushed him at once, from either side. He handed off the one to his right, hardly noticing the bones grinding in his wrist and a lance of pain shooting up his right arm. The ork to his left howled and bled as the jagged point of Tarryn’s shard slashed it across the eyes.

  He remembered the Chief Librarian’s words last night: ‘When I picked up the Excoriator’s sword,’ he had mumbled reflectively, ‘for all that I was afraid of, even sickened by, the power it possessed – for all I denied it to myself, for days and even months afterwards – in the heat of that moment, there was no doubt. I simply knew. I saw the path that the Emperor had chosen for me.’

  Tarryn knew, now, exactly what Decario had meant.

  The monolith’s rage was pounding in his head and the world was turning red again. He was stronger and faster than before, he was unstoppable, and he was doing the Emperor’s will, so why question it? To question is to doubt, he thought, and doubt is the bane of faith. If he stopped to question what he was doing, he would die.

  So, Tarryn embraced the rage and the redness and the weapon, th
e shard, clutched tightly in his hand, and he whispered a prayer to the Emperor, which built into a scream as he threw himself headlong into the battle and lost himself in it.

  Fifteen

  Tarryn. Brother Tarryn. Listen to me. Can you hear my voice?

  Tarryn could hear it, but distantly, almost drowned out by the screaming in his head. The voice was urging him to do something, but he couldn’t understand it.

  There is only the Emperor. Say it with me.

  He wished the voice would go away, stop bothering him. It was dragging him back to a place he didn’t want to be. The voice spoke incessantly of faith and honour and duty, reminding him of a burden he thought he had finally lain down.

  It was saying a name, reminding him of a man he had once known: Tarryn. Nico Tarryn. Brother Tarryn.

  ‘There is only…’ another voice rasped. He felt the words burning in his throat and bleeding over his lips and he recognised that this voice was his. ‘There is only the Emperor, and He…’ He has chosen this path for me, the path I must tread, the path that leads towards the voice.

  Tarryn was on his knees – When did I fall? – in the jungle, with ugly black flowers sprouting up to his chest. His right wrist was throbbing and the scream in his head had suddenly ceased, silence rushing in to fill the void it had left. A fuzzy, pale shape hovered in front of him.

  He blinked and recognised the grey face of Chief Librarian Decario. He was kneeling before Tarryn, hands outstretched towards him, an urgent plea in his eyes. ‘You must let go of the artefact, Brother Tarryn,’ he said quietly.

  Tarryn gaped at him, blankly. He was sweating profusely in his armour.

  The Librarian glanced down at Tarryn’s hands, which were resting in his lap. His fingers were fastened around something sharp and black. It had cut through the ceramite of his gauntlets and into his palms, deep enough to draw blood. He was plastered in blood, he suddenly realised, only some of it his own.

  ‘What happened?’ he whispered, hoarsely.

  ‘You heard the Chief Librarian, Tarryn,’ barked a familiar voice behind him. ‘Hand the artefact over to him. Now.’

  Tarryn stiffened. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and he tried to lift his arms but his muscles ignored his commands. His stomach tightened. His Chapter Master had given him an order, but he hadn’t… he couldn’t…

  Strength of will, courage of will, he told himself fiercely.

  He closed his eyes and recited the words in his mind, tried to fill his head with them until there was nothing but the words. He felt Decario’s hands around his. They took hold of the shard. Somehow, though he couldn’t bring himself to hand it over, Tarryn managed to relax his fingers and let the shard be eased away from him.

  A tidal wave of nausea broke over him, and he had to straighten his arms to catch himself as he pitched forwards. Runes flashed inside his helmet and his auto-injectors pumped a dizzying cocktail of stimulants into his bloodstream.

  He was trembling; he couldn’t help himself.

  He forced himself to raise his head, to look up, to find Bardane looming over him. The Chapter Master told him to remove his helmet, which he did. He glared into Tarryn’s eyes, his frown lines deepening. Then he nodded to Decario, approvingly, and turned away.

  It was only as Bardane took his hand away from his belt that Tarryn realised it had been resting there.

  Decario had wrapped the shard in a black cloth and lowered it into a small wooden chest, which he bound with iron chains. He bent forwards and placed a pair of steadying hands on Tarryn’s shoulders. ‘What do you remember?’

  He remembered rage and hatred and blood and orks fleeing from his terrible wrath. He remembered the screaming in his head and his temples pounding fit to burst. He remembered his fingers gouging flesh from his enemies’ hides, and he remembered carving them up with his misshapen obsidian blade.

  He didn’t remember leaving the clearing in which Angron’s Monolith stood, and yet somehow he was elsewhere in the jungle. Other members of the captain’s command squad stood around him, although Maegar himself wasn’t present.

  Most of Bardane’s honour guard, including his standard-bearer, were here too. They were tending to fresh wounds. The bodies of several feral orks – and one battle-brother – lay half buried in the undergrowth.

  ‘It was a long and hard-fought battle,’ said Decario, ‘and you fought longer and harder than any of us. You ploughed into the feral orks like a whirlwind. They couldn’t seem to lay a hand on you. You kept them in disarray, long enough for more combat squads to find us. You certainly shifted the odds in our favour.’

  ‘We beat them?’ asked Tarryn. ‘We won?’

  ‘They finally broke and tried to flee. You went against Captain Maegar’s orders and pursued them.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t have,’ he protested. He remembered, though, chasing the Emperor’s enemies through the jungle. He remembered how determined he had been to punish them for their sins, to see them dead. He didn’t remember being ordered to desist. He didn’t remember his captain being present at all, nor any of his battle-brothers.

  ‘I mustn’t have heard him,’ he ventured, ‘with the screaming in my ears.’

  …but that can’t be right, because I would never have abandoned them, even if I were faster than the rest of them were, faster than the feral orks…

  The Chief Librarian shook his head. ‘The monolith had fallen silent, by then. Had it not, I doubt the orks would have been able to run at all.’

  But that isn’t possible, Tarryn wanted to argue, because the scream only ended a moment ago. He had still been able to hear it, he was sure, when he had caught up to his prey and sent the first of them crashing into the next, from behind. Right here, he thought. That must have been right here, though it felt like it had happened worlds away and days ago.

  There had been someone… Another memory, an urgent memory, was surfacing through the fog that enshrouded the past hour of his life. He remembered a figure standing obdurately in front of him, attempting to bar his path. He had taken off his helmet and was yelling in Tarryn’s face, but Tarryn couldn’t make out what he was saying. ‘Brother Baeloch,’ he whispered.

  He followed the telltale flicker of Decario’s eyes, to the armoured body in the undergrowth. His sickness had been subsiding, but now a fresh wave of it rolled over him. He tried to scramble towards the body, but he wasn’t yet strong enough and Decario had to steady him again.

  ‘Brother Baeloch is dead,’ said the Chief Librarian, not unkindly.

  Tarryn felt numb. ‘I remember… He tried to stop me.’ He was standing between me and my righteous vengeance, and I remember how angry that made me, so angry that I had to… I… I had the shard in my hand and I…

  ‘He tried to make you drop the shard. I advised him that you, only you, could shake its influence over you. I told Baeloch to stand aside, but he was too stubborn to listen to me. He believed he was saving your soul.’

  ‘I killed him, didn’t I?’ said Tarryn. ‘I killed my brother.’

  ‘You saved my life, Brother Tarryn. Hold on to that. When I was at my weakest, it was you who kept the feral orks away from me. It was you who turned the power of the monolith against them, and fought them until no more remained to fight.’

  I didn’t want to hurt him, thought Tarryn, but he wouldn’t get out of my way. Why wouldn’t he get out of my way?

  ‘Do you have the strength to stand?’ Decario asked him.

  He wasn’t sure if he did, but he tried and with a little help, he succeeded. ‘The remainder of your company has returned to your base camp,’ said Decario. ‘Now that we have you, and the shard, we should hasten to join them. The Chapter Master has ordered that we leave Armageddon as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Leave?’ echoed Tarryn. ‘But the war–’

  ‘With the Emperor’s will, Warlord Ghazghkull will indeed be defeated. But our Chapter will play no further part in that victory. We have fulfilled our purpose on this world and have other wars to fig
ht. He has chosen a different path for us.’

  Two Relictors hoisted Baeloch’s body between them, and Tarryn felt a painful stab of guilt as they passed him. ‘I don’t even… I don’t know how the shard got into my hand. It was stuck in the side of the monolith.’

  ‘Perhaps my efforts loosened it, after all. Perhaps the violence of the battle vibrated it free. Perhaps it landed, unnoticed, among our brothers and was kicked along the base of the monolith to you. Perhaps that is how it happened.’

  He was yelling in my face, the scream was pounding in my head and I just wanted him out of my way and the shard went straight through his breastplate and…

  ‘He was right,’ said Tarryn. ‘Baeloch was right. I couldn’t control it.’

  ‘I’d say you controlled it well enough,’ Decario assured him. ‘You saved your company today, and, in acquiring the shard where I failed, perhaps our entire Chapter.’

  …and if Baeloch had lived, he would have gone to the Inquisition with what he knew and that would have been the end of the Relictors, so perhaps…

  …perhaps, his death…

  Bardane gave the order to move out, and Decario walked with Tarryn, ready to support him should he need it. They were joined by Inquisitor Halstron. His bound daemonhost followed him, but his presence didn’t bother Tarryn as it had. He was glad to see that the pale man was still a prisoner, that at least some links of his chains remained intact. The inquisitor regarded Tarryn for a moment, coolly. Then, much to his surprise, he favoured him with a small, approving nod.

  The Emperor has chosen this path for me, he told himself, but whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the face of Baeloch, his brother, and heard his accusing voice: You are toying with forces you don’t understand… Your mind has touched the warp and there is always a price for that… What if you have already succumbed?

  ‘God-Emperor, forgive me,’ Tarryn prayed.

  Chief Librarian Decario looked at him in surprise, and then his lips twitched as if he were remembering some private joke and trying not to smile at it.