‘Does not the God-Emperor fight on our side?’ Kersh asked. Melmoch’s brow furrowed, surprised at such a reference from the corpus-captain.
‘He does,’ the Epistolary replied suspiciously.
‘Then I suppose you had better take it up with him.’
PART THREE
For whom the bell tolls…
Chapter Thirteen
Heavenfall
Brother Omar stumbled through the mist. It was as though the clouds were too tired to take their own weight and had settled like ephemeral behemoths on the necroscape. Thick and noxious, the miasma stank of evil, threaded through as it was with a dull spectrum of unnatural colour, like oil spreading through water. Above the Excoriators Scout, the overcast sky – all but indistinguishable from the burial ground-hugging mist – glowed with atmospheric agitation. It was as though the heavens were alight. It was a bad sign. Certus-Minor was passing through the tail of the comet, Omar presumed.
The neophyte was a mess. His carapace was but a feral worlder’s loincloth, shredded and hanging in tatters about his waist. His muscular torso glistened with his own blood, decorated all over as it was with nicks, bites and slices. A ragged strip from his long-abandoned cloak served as a bandana to keep the gore from his eyes, and his recovered combat blade dangled loosely from his exhausted grip like a machete. With only a primordial will to live sustaining the Excoriator, Omar had crawled up through the bodies, breaking bones and crushing skulls with his bare hands. With the roaring masses swarming about him, the Scout’s combat blade had been knocked free. Too much of a temptation to the bloodthirsty wretches, the razor-sharp weapon had been picked up and used on the Scout, slashing him feebly across the shoulder. Back in the Excoriator’s possession the weapon did its worst, however. Recalling training exercises on Cretacia, the Scout cut through bodies like death world jungle. For hours Omar had hacked back and forth, putting one foot in front of the other, leaving a trail of slaughter through the howling crowds. This, in turn, fuelled the frenzy further as maniacs descended upon the twitching corpses of the decapitated and limbless, finishing them off with god-pleasing ferocity.
Eventually, Omar reached the periphery of the horde. Continuing to cut a path to freedom, he staggered into the fog and left the screams of fury and death behind him. Mind-numb and blood-drenched, the Scout tried to orientate himself, settling on a seemingly arterial lychway in the assumed direction of Obsequa City. The neophyte was fairly sure that it was the same road upon which he had ridden out; but in the swirling fogbank, and surrounded by grave markers, statues and mausolea that all looked the same, he could have been walking in entirely the wrong direction.
A rumble and a quake beneath his feet brought the Excoriator back to his weary senses. Lifting his head and squinting, Omar could make out little. Through the murk of the mist he saw momentary streaks of fire giving the impression of something falling from the heavens. This was soon lost in the obscurity, until the Scout felt the further tremor of impacts through the soles of his gore-splattered boots.
Lifting the combat blade with one muscle-torn arm, and his knees in an attempt to galvanise his sluggish legs into a run, Omar advanced in the direction of the sound and sensation. Through the fog Omar began to make out a glow, then the flicker of small fires. Before long he found himself at the edge of a small crater, the impact zone a site of incandescent earth and destruction. Gravestones and the coffins that had been buried beneath them had been churned up and lay smashed amongst the debris of shattered bone and masonry. Moving on, the Scout encountered several more glowing craters, the undoubted sites of meteoric impact, rock, ice and ancient metals falling away from the comet and raining to the Certusian surface from its streaming tail.
Something did not seem quite right to the Excoriators Scout. Each of the impact craters was strewn with remains and coffin fragments. At the centre of each lay a single casket. They were untouched by the crash and steaming quietly in the night. Some were all but buried, while others lay across the bottoms of the craters. Climbing down into a hot trench, Omar inspected the fourth such object he had encountered. Unlike the flimsy stasis caskets used in the Certusian burial services, it was tall, broad and baroque. It stuck upright out of the ground at the bottom of the crater and was crafted from some dark, adamantine alloy. It was decorated with fretwork and ornamental art; Omar could make out some kind of bird, embroiled in flame.
Working his way around the object – which despite being surrounded by glowing, razed earth, was strangely cool to the touch – the Scout discovered Chapter designations and battle honours. Damage to the metal sarcophagus had obscured the name of the Chapter but did reveal its Founding as the unfortunate Twenty-First. Its honour roll was one a First Founding Legion would be proud of, including the Apostatic Wars, the Great Malagantine Purge, the Golgotha Castigations, the Battle of Lycanthos Drift, the Second Scouring of the Black Myriad and the Badabian Tyranicide.
Nestling the tip of his combat blade between lid and sarcophagus, Brother Omar twisted the weapon and broke the pressure seal. The object gave a loud moan of relief and the Scout proceeded to prise open the top half of the lid. Swinging open, the lid bounced on its chunky hinge, presenting a dark interior. An empty interior. Looking deep inside, Omar found nothing. No remains of the Adeptus Astartes battle-brother he expected to find within. On the inside of the lid the Scout discovered a simple plaque identifying a gene-code in symbol and number, a name, rank and company dictum. Brother-Sergeant Attica Centurius, Honoured First Company: In dedicato imperatum ultra articulo mortis. ‘For the Emperor beyond the point of death.’
Something screamed overhead. Closing the lid and crouching, Omar looked up at the hazy sky. There were more streaks blazing across the firmament. Many more. It was as if the filthy heavens had opened and fire was falling to the cemetery world surface. The Scout felt the first impact through the floor and the cool alloy of the sarcophagus. Then a second and a third. They were close and getting closer. Soon they were almost continuous, with objects rocketing down from the sky and thunderbolting into the burial grounds. At first Omar had thought it a meteor storm, the full wrath of the comet brought to bear on the planet surface. He had even considered the barrage a further heavenfall of the mysterious sarcophagi. The Scout didn’t relish being beneath either as they rained from the sky at searing speed.
Then he heard it. Something indescribably horrible announcing its arrival through the fog. Not a meteorite or an empty sarcophagus. The Excoriator climbed out of the crater and began a low walk to the lychway. There were other sounds now. An ungainly flapping overhead. The gargle-hiss of something hatching to the neophyte’s right. The tremble of footfalls, colossal and closing from behind. A screech close by that went straight through the Scout and caused his eyes to bleed. Omar’s stealthy advance turned into a march, and the march into a run. He no longer felt the agony in his arms and the weight in his legs. Horrors were raining about him, things infernal and impossible. Brother Omar ran into the darkness, crunching along the gravel track that he hoped to the Emperor would lead him to Obsequa City, his battle-brothers and a loaded boltgun.
The Scourge stood atop the masonry scarp. Techmarine Dancred admitted to having little trouble demolishing the exterior walls, chapels and habitations – ancient and already crumbling as they were. Now these buildings were a perimeter of steep stone wreckage, providing Obsequa City’s defenders with protection, elevated fire arcs and a workable, if ramshackle, battlement upon which to station heavy weapon emplacements and themselves. Conversely, it presented an assaulting enemy with a tiring and time-consuming climb, hopefully giving the Charnel Guard and their recent recruits opportunity to riddle their attackers with las-bolts.