He forced himself to return his gaze to the horrific gutting. 'You said that the ones who survive have the skin bound to their flesh. What happens to the ones who don't survive?'
Sabatier rasped in laughter, fixing its attention squarely on Vaanes. 'Newborns too badly deformed or mutated are flushed away with rest of filth of Khalan-Ghol into mountains. Your bones and torn skin will join them soon.'
'The Unfleshed…' said Vaanes, recognising the terrible, red monsters that roamed the mountains from Sabatier's brief description. 'They are the failed births…'
'Yes,' hissed Sabatier. 'Most die in minutes, but some survive.'
'You will pay for this,' promised Vaanes, seeing Pasanius finally slide his arm from the restraint as the Savage Morticians continued their noisy work on the hanging carcass.
Uriel tried to scream, but stinging birth fluids filled his mouth and his body spasmed as his weakened respiratory system fought to sift as much oxygen as it could from the liquid that filled his lung. He floated in the loathsome amniotic jelly of the daemonculaba's womb, his skin burning from leaking gastric fluids and the virulence of the flesh magicks used to warp and mutate the woman's body.
He struggled against the sutures that held him fast, feeling his strength grow with each one he felt rip from the blubbery flesh. His determination to free himself burned with a white heat in his breast and he thrashed like a mindless beast, tearing his bindings loose and leaving him floating and unbound in the womb.
Uriel clawed and bit at rippling folds of flesh, tasting blood and fatty tissue in his mouth as he tore his way upward, each breath a spike of fire in his lung. His vision was greying and his heartbeats sounded like thunder in his ears, thudding booms that echoed strangely, as though it was more than just his own heart he was hearing within this prison of flesh.
He twisted and kicked, always pushing up and stabbing forward with his hands.
Suddenly, his right hand burst into dryness, tearing through the drum-taut skin of the daemonculaba's belly. Galvanised by the prospect of near freedom, Uriel doubled his efforts, pressing his other hand into the tear and pulling it wider. The skin tore along the line of the stitches and frothing fluids drained from the beast's belly as it poured out onto the grilled walkway. Uriel pushed his head clear of the daemonculaba, vomiting up the foul birth juices and gasping in a great lungful of air. Stagnant and blood-soaked though the atmosphere in the chamber was, it still felt like the clearest mountain air of Macragge compared to the inside of the womb.
Twisting and turning, Uriel extricated his wide shoulders, using the additional leverage that granted to pull his bruised torso from the daemonculaba. And in a stinking wash of birth fluids, blood and viscera, Uriel fell from the creature's belly to the iron floor.
He lay coughing and gasping for breath, hearing cries of alarm nearby and looked up to see a pair of the hunched mutants in black rubber bodysuits racing towards him. They carried long halberds with curved blades and Uriel's fury surged around his body at the sight of them.
He pushed himself wearily to his feet as they came at him, stabbing their weapons towards his belly. Uriel dodged the first blade, swaying aside as the second jabbed for his groin.
Uriel gripped the haft of the first mutant's halberd, slamming his fist into its glass faceplate and pulverising its skull. He quickly reversed the weapon, easily blocking a clumsy swipe at his head, and stabbed his own blade through the second mutant's midriff, driving the haft clean through its body. The mutant shrieked in agony and Uriel kicked it from the weapon without pity.
He dropped to his knees beside the mutants, weeping and howling in blind rage, curling into a ball as anger and horror threatened to overwhelm him. He spat a mouthful of greasy fluid from his mouth, hearing a cursing, shouting voice.
Uriel forced himself to take a tight hold on the emotions surging within him as he recognised the voice as belonging to Ardaric Vaanes. He couldn't make out the renegade's words, but he could easily read the bitterness and fury in his tone.
His heart hardened with righteous anger, Uriel pulled himself unsteadily to his feet with the aid of the long halberd and set off in the direction of the shouting.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
'Emperor damn you all to the depths of hell!' shouted Vaanes as Seraphys's dismembered corpse was taken down from the hooks on the block and tackle. Those hunks of meat not harvested for consumption were disposed of in the same barrels that overflowed with blood, and the clattering assembly was moved around the circumference of the theatre to the next Space Marine.
The Savage Morticians ignored his ravings and Sabatier just laughed, but their attention was fixed either on him or their next victim. And that was all that mattered.
He risked a glance towards Pasanius, and fought to keep a vengeful smile from his face as he watched the sergeant lean across the mortuary table. Using the ragged stump, he pushed the bolt from the restraint holding his other arm and the clanking of chains, Vaanes's shouting and the great booming of the Heart of Blood easily swallowed the squeal of rusty metal as the bolt slid through the clamp.
With his good arm free, he easily loosed the bolts holding his midsection and legs.
Vaanes shouted, 'Sabatier! The Unfleshed, what becomes of them?'
Sabatier looked up from dragging away the remains of Seraphys, his drooling features twisted in irritation. 'You ask too many questions! Cut out your tongue first!'
Vaanes saw Pasanius climb to his feet on the mortuary table and he shouted, 'Come here and do it then, Chaos filth!' as he saw the disgusting mutant corpse finally realise that Pasanius was free. It screeched a warning to the Savage Morticians, who spun to face him, surprisingly agile for such ungainly looking creatures. They shrieked in apoplectic fury, sounding more outraged than anything else.
Sabatier cowered behind the barrel of blood, but the Savage Morticians sped across the arena, bladed arms and pistoning legs carrying them with fearsome speed.
'Pasanius, watch out!' shouted Vaanes, but the sergeant had no intention of avoiding the incoming monsters. Instead, he leapt, feet first towards the nearest, and Vaanes heard metal and bone snap beneath his boot heels. It flailed for Pasanius, whirring drills and slashing blades cutting its own dead flesh as it struck at him.
Vaanes struggled uselessly once more as he watched the unequal battle, Pasanius gripping the black robes of the Savage Mortician with one hand as it tried to prise him from its body. The sergeant transferred his grip to the mesh scaffolding that supported its skull and slammed his forehead into its face. Even over the screaming Morticians, Vaanes heard the crunch of bone.
The Savage Mortician collapsed, its spider-like legs folding under it as it reeled from the impact. As it dropped, Pasanius released his grip on its body and dropped lightly to his feet beside it. The second creature tried to snap at him, but Pasanius kept the stunned creature between him and its slashing blades.
It backed away, unfolding longer, more deadly blades from the sheaths of its arms and Pasanius took the opportunity to step in and deliver a thunderous punch to the creature before him as it struggled to push itself to its feet. It howled in pain and Pasanius took hold of its quivering, beweaponed armature, alive with shrieking cutting implements, and rammed it into the monster's face.