Sons of Wrath - Andy Smillie Page 9

  Only in death does duty end.

  This is the favoured axiom of the rulers of man and the craven orators who speak on their behalf. For our sins, we too have passed on such falsehoods to our own, instilling in them the notion that death is the end of all things.

  We were wrong about the nature of our duty. We were wrong about death’s place in the order of things.

  It was only at the edge of madness, drenched in the blood of brother and foe, that we learnt the error of our thinking.

  For only in death does duty begin.

  It matters not in what colour we daub our armour or which symbol we carve on our pauldrons. Our purpose remains what it was always intended to be. We will kill the enemies of mankind, and with blade and fire protect the Emperor’s domain.

  We are harbingers of death, angels of vengeance, tearers of flesh.

  – Flesh Tearers Chapter Master Nassir Amit

  Three

  Assent

  Zurcon Primus looked as it had in Nuriel’s vision. The world was blackened, burned to cinders and ruined by the Victus’s onslaught. Deep craters marred the landscape, the smooth planes churned into a pockmarked wasteland of narrow ridges and fractured basins.

  Nuriel stepped from the Stormraven, his boots sinking into the ash of the earth, and took a long breath. There was death on

  the wind: the stench of seared flesh and scorched bones; the dense musk and acrid tang of magma detonations. Nuriel closed his eyes. Those tangible things were as subtle, background aromas compared to the potent reek of anguish. He could sense the souls drifting around him. Disembodied, they blazed in his mind’s eye, crying out against their fate. He could taste their fear, hear their screams as one by one they vanished, ripped from the mortal realm to be devoured by those that hungered in the warp.

  ‘Nuriel, maintain formation.’ Barakiel’s voice sounded over the comm.

  The inferno of souls faded and Nuriel’s focus snapped back to his shattered surroundings. He turned to look back over his shoulder, surprised to find the Stormraven twenty paces behind him. He had been unaware of taking even a single step in advance of the gunship’s shadow. Nuriel hid his surprise behind a scowl. ‘Despite what Amit believes, I do not need an escort.’

  ‘It is I, Librarian, who am thankful of your presence,’ said Barakiel, drawing level with Nuriel. ‘If any of the Zurconian psykers have survived, then I will be glad we have come armed with more than bolters. Your gifts will serve us well.’

  ‘Spare me the kindness of your lies,’ said Nuriel. ‘Amit trusts me no more than he does you, captain.’ Nuriel did not meet Barakiel’s gaze, his eyes fixed on the single structure that still stood amidst the destruction. A crumbling tower. A needle of shattered glass, glistening in spite of the darkness around it.

  ‘Agla, Sabrael, hold here and cover our advance,’ Barakiel said over the squad channel. ‘Tagas, Morael, sweep wide and secure the flanks.’ A series of acknowledgement runes flashed on Barakiel’s helm display as the four members of his squad moved to carry out their orders. ‘Let’s go,’ said Barakiel, gesturing to the tower.

  Nuriel grunted and advanced. The wind picked up around him as he closed on the structure. Wet ash blew against his face, staining his skin. ‘Blood,’ he cursed, screwing his eyes shut in pain.

  ‘Librarian?’ asked Barakiel.

  Nuriel waved away his concern. It was the souls. They were more numerous now, huddled around the tower like carrion circling a fresh corpse. Their screaming was deafening, the weight of their cries threatening to crush his skull. Blood dripped from his nose as he pushed them away, shoring up his mental barriers. The souls recoiled. A twisted smile creased Nuriel’s cheeks. They were afraid of him, of his power.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Barakiel.

  ‘You would not understand.’

  ‘Try me,’ Barakiel snarled.

  Nuriel ignored him. Where is he? Nuriel cast his mind through the press of souls in search of an answer. Where? The Librarian was like a hound, barking as it tore forwards, hunting the truth, demanding an answer. The souls stopped screaming and began to speak as one–

  ‘Nuriel.’ Barakiel grabbed the Librarian by his pauldron.

  Nuriel growled, his concentration broken. The soul-voices faded, dissolving back to an indiscernible wail. ‘I am not talking to you. You do not have the answer I seek.’

  ‘Answer to what?’

  Nuriel shook off Barakiel’s grip and retuned his attention to the souls. They coiled around him like a hurricane, their words rushing past his ears. They had much to tell him, but he had only one question. There was only one answer he sought among the throng of voices. Where? Where was the one who had called him here?

  ‘There is a cost,’ the soul-voices said. ‘A price of knowing. The weak will be tested.’

  Nuriel nodded.

  ‘What is that noise?’ Barakiel stumbled to one knee, clutching his head. A moment later the voices of his squad crackled in his ears, their own cries of agony spilling over the comm. ‘Nuriel…’

  ‘It is truth,’ said Nuriel. ‘If you are strong enough to hear it, you will be saved. But…’ He turned to look down at Barakiel. ‘There is no salvation for the weak.’

  Barakiel found only madness in Nuriel’s eyes. He roared, straining against the oppressive psychic force assailing his mind as he tried to aim his boltgun.

  ‘Weak!’ Nuriel hammered his fist into Barakiel’s helm. The blow dented the brow and shattered the left optic. Barakiel dropped to the ground. ‘There can be no salvation for the weak.’ Nuriel bent down and lifted Barakiel into the air. ‘The weak have no place here,’ he said. Strengthening himself with his will, Nuriel hurled Barakiel away. The captain vanished amid the wind and the ash.

  Nuriel snarled as a stray bolt-round clipped his shoulder guard. He turned on Barakiel’s squad, throwing his arms out to cast them to the winds. Alone, Nuriel listened again for the soul-voices. This time, they let slip the truth. ‘A moment closer,’ they said.

  ‘Where?’ Nuriel asked aloud as he crossed over the tower’s threshold. He crouched low, scooping up a handful of glass. The fine grains had been blasted to crystalline sand by the heat of the Victus’s guns.

  ‘Here, now,’ the soul-voices said again.

  The familiar roar of a gunship drew his attention skywards. The bulky outline of a Thunderhawk descended towards him, its hull bearing the blue and white livery of the Eagle Warriors.

  Nuriel felt a surge of anger course through his veins. ‘Have you not taken enough, sons of Guilliman?’ he asked, crushing the glass in his gauntlet. Rising, he drew his sword and advanced on the craft as it touched down. The pilot kept its engines running, the low burn of its thrusters shimmering in the gloom. Five Eagle Warriors disembarked, their bolters held across their chests. Nuriel quickened his pace, rushing to meet them. ‘You will not deny me my answer,’ he roared over the wind. ‘You will–’

  Six. The number stung Nuriel to realisation. Of course. How could he have been so narrow-minded, so blind? His vision back on the Victus had been about more than the choir, more than this world. There had been much more to it. The feathered devils he’d battled had not been facsimiles of the Zurconian psykers but these Eagles Warriors. No, more than that. They had been the Emperor’s twisted angels. Legions of the misguided that would bring ruin and doom upon the galaxy.

  Nuriel bared his teeth in a vicious snarl and attacked, thrusting his palm out to send bolts of psychic lightning arcing into the nearest Eagle Warrior’s breastplate. The Space Marine convulsed and toppled, his torso shredded by the eldritch energy.

  The remaining Eagle Warriors cried out in hatred, issuing oaths of vengeance as their bolters chattered to life. Nuriel broke into a run, charging towards them, all thought of survival swallowed by his rage. He roared a curse as the lethal volley of explosive rounds shot towards him.

  No
ne found their mark.

  Nuriel faltered as the bolt-rounds detonated a blade’s width in front of him.

  ‘Do not stop, son of the Blood. I am with you.’

  Nuriel shot a glance to his right. A red-skinned warrior stood by his side, his blade outstretched before him. ‘You…’ Nuriel mouthed. ‘I have been searching for you.’ Armoured now, the Warrior was even more imposing. Bronzed plate guarded his torso. Rune-encrusted vambraces shielded his arms. A helm of brass and crimson hid his face, slick black horns protruding from his temples.

  The Warrior nodded and indicated the Eagle Warriors. ‘Blood.’ The single word was like a thunderclap. A summons to battle.

  A wolf-grin tore at Nuriel’s face. He attacked, landing among the Eagle Warriors in a single warp-charged bound. His landing scattered them, knocking them to the ground. He stood a moment, letting them regain their feet, letting them draw their knives. ‘With blade alone I shall kill you,’ he sneered, positioning himself in the middle of them. They were like children, scrabbling for hope. ‘I am better than you. Better than all of you.’ The Eagle Warriors attacked. The violence lasted only a heartbeat.

  Nuriel cut the head from the shoulders of the first as he lunged, turning low to take the legs from the second. Rising, he bisected the third from groin to neck and cut down the fourth, before pivoting to thrust his blade through the primary heart of the last.

  ‘It is done.’ Nuriel flicked their blood from his blade and turned to the Warrior, eager for his praise.

  ‘No. The killing is not over,’ said the Warrior.

  Nuriel followed the Warrior’s gaze to the Thunderhawk. The gunship’s engines roared as its pilot fed them power. ‘Cowards!’ Nuriel threw his will behind the word. The psychic shockwave rolled over the Thunderhawk, cracking its armourglass and stripping its ceramite to a lifeless grey. Nuriel advanced on it, focusing on the Eagle Warriors pilot, surveyor and gunner crewing the cockpit. Grinding his teeth in hatred, Nuriel willed them to die.

  Wracked by spasms, the Eagle Warriors toppled to the deck in agony. Blood spewed from their orifices as one by one their organs failed. Nuriel tasted their pain, heard their souls cry out against the inevitability of their fate. He grinned in dark satisfaction and ended their torment, pulping each of their twin hearts with a thought.

  With no one at the helm, the Thunderhawk yawed, pitching over to crash into the lip of a crater and explode in a ball of fire.

  Nuriel turned from the destruction to face the Warrior. ‘Why? Why do you come to me?’

  ‘Our father in Blood sent me to follow you.’ The Warrior stepped close. ‘You alone have the strength to do what must be done. The will to see the Blood honoured. Where you lead, I follow. My strength is yours to wield. You need but take it.’ The Warrior offered Nuriel his blade, and took a knee. ‘Take it.’ The command rolled through Nuriel’s mind as a sea of fire, cleansing the last of his doubt. ‘Remove my head. Claim my skull.’

  Nuriel took the blade.

  Amit had not been merciful.

  He snarled and threw one final punch, further cracking the flagstones. Rock dust and wet brain matter dripped from his gauntlet. The face of the man pinned beneath him was gone, reduced to a fleshy smear on the grey rockcrete.

  Rising, Amit turned his gaze back towards the heart of the city. Fire touched everything. Black smoke drifted up in plumes like overpopulated hab-towers, obscuring the sky. Even at the fringe of the city, standing on the ruins of the wall that had protected the Zurconian palace, he could feel the heat of the flames. He cast his eyes over the wide concourse they’d slaughtered their way up. The remains of Zurconian vehicles littered it like rubble. Green-armoured corpses, the elite of the Zurconian army, their golden helms tarnished and broken, lay stacked upon one another like crumpled leaves. Amidst the detritus, he watched a mewling female as she attempted to drag away one of the corpses. Perhaps it was her husband, her son. Amit grunted, it didn’t matter. He raised his bolt pistol and shot her. He would spare no one.

  Kill them all. It had been his only order as the Flesh Tearers roared from their drop pods to crash against the Zurconian army. His warriors had set about their task with unrelenting vigour, eradicating the Zurconians wherever they found them. The Zurconian army had been vast. Legions of men and tanks had met the Flesh Tearers in open combat. Legions. Amit’s mouth curled in disgust at the undeserved epithet. For too long the Zurconians had relied on their psykers for sanctuary. They had grown weak, complacent. His Flesh Tearers had cut them down like stalks of wheat.

  It would have been quicker, more efficient, to destroy the capital from orbit. If Zophal had asked him, he would have told him that heresy on such a scale demanded nothing be left to chance. Amit smiled. And like all the other lies, he told himself, Zophal would have seen through it. The Flesh Tearers had not taken to battle in such strength since their formation. They needed this release. Every Zurconian killed was as a soothing raindrop, a momentary salve for the painful inferno that blazed in their blood. Amit’s face twisted into a snarl. It would take an ocean to drown their anguish, but he would start with this.

  ‘The charges are set,’ Druel called from up ahead.

  Amit moved to join his honour guard – Druel, Tilonas, Nudriel and Sigron. Clad in hulking Terminator armour, the four veterans stood head and shoulders over their Chapter Master.

  ‘According to Ronja’s scans, the Zurconian council are in there.’ Tilonas indicated the sealed blast doors barring their way inside the palace.

  Druel laughed, motioning to the city burning behind them. ‘There’s little place else for them to be hiding.’

  ‘Then let us end this,’ said Amit.

  Druel nodded and activated the charge. ‘Three seconds.’

  Nudriel and Sigron flexed their arms, readied their storm shields and stepped to within a hand span of the doorway. They would be first into the breach.

  The charge detonated, blasting the doors inwards in a pall of fire and broken adamantium. Nudriel and Sigron were over the threshold an instant later, striding through the flame in search of targets.

  Tilonas and Druel followed them in, their assault cannons whining at firing speed. Amit came last, holding his eviscerator low so that it tore a furrow in the rockcrete behind him. Breaching the smoke-choked darkness thrown up by the explosion, the Flesh Tearers emerged into a wide, oval chamber. Around its circumference, thick marble pillars, the same green as the Zurconians’ armour, supported an overhanging balcony. Of the Zurconians themselves, there was no sign.

  ‘That was anticlimactic,’ Druel voxed over the squad channel, as he panned around, searching for targets.

  Amit paced to the raised dais set at the chamber’s centre. He turned on the spot to throw his gaze across the rows of empty seating lining the balcony. ‘Know this, filth,’ he snarled, his voice wet with spittle. ‘Whatever horror awaits you after this life, we are worse.’

  A cacophony of screeches sounded in answer to Amit’s challenge. A dozen things leapt from concealment on the balcony to engage him. Druel and Tilonas opened fire without pause, shredding the bulk of them before they could land. Only two reached striking distance of Amit. The first he eviscerated, bringing his blade up to tear through its torso. The other lashed out at him, talons raking his pauldron. Amit headbutted it, snapping off its beaked nose, before clamping a hand around its neck. The thing thrashed in his grasp, screeching. Amit grunted, killing it with a twist of his wrist.

  ‘Defilers. Blasphemers.’ A lumbering brute emerged from behind one of the pillars, its voice the shrill chirp of an avian. Whatever it was, it had once been human, though its limbs had been stretched and distended. Pale skin struggled to contain a misshapen musculature that pulsed with sickening rhythm. Its eyes were pinpricks of malice, darting over the Flesh Tearers with hungry enthusiasm. Eight more of the creatures followed the first into view, stepping from behind the other pillars to
surround the Flesh Tearers. Some wielded two-handed blades that curved like crescent moons. Others gripped heavy, tri-barrelled laser cannons. ‘Defilers. Blasphemers,’ they said, echoing the words of the first as they advanced.

  ‘Will this do?’ Tilonas shot a glance in Druel’s direction as laser blasts scored his armour. He opened fire, pumping a stream of rounds into the nearest brute. The creature exploded in a storm of flesh and dark ichor.

  ‘It’s a start.’ Druel paced forwards, thrusting the barrel of his weapon into a creature’s chest and gunning the trigger. The thing came apart, its back blown out by the burst of shells, innards churned to mulch by the assault cannon’s spinning barrels.

  Nudriel and Sigron bellowed war cries and engaged a foe each, bracing themselves as heavy blades cleaved into their storm shields. Nudriel swung out with his thunder hammer, smashing a brute’s knee. The creature dropped low, roaring in anguish before Nudriel’s reverse stroke caved in its skull. Sigron drove his opponent back against the wall, delivering a series of relentless hammer blows that stripped chunks from its flesh until there was little left to hit.

  Amit made straight for the first and largest of the creatures. His hearts hammered, blood and anger coursing through his veins. His mouth widened in a savage grin. There was something else surging through him. Righteousness. He felt righteous. For the first time since entering Zurconian space, he faced a real foe, a thing worthy of his wrath. The brute was the physical manifestation of the insidious sickness infecting the system. It was no inhuman or vat-grown defect. It was a heretic, a traitor. It had allowed its flesh to be violated by the Dark Gods. Cleaving its head from its shoulders was all that mattered.

  Amit roared, powering forwards to meet the brute head-on. It sliced its blade down towards his neck. He slipped the blow, raising his shoulder as he drew his eviscerator up into its abdomen. Its blade bit deep into his pauldron. His eviscerator rent its flesh, cutting until its teeth dug into bone. Chained by blade and flesh, they stood a moment, each frozen by hatred for the other.