The Killing Ground

  He had never known such things, his every breath before now coated with toxic filth from the belching refineries that covered the desolate plains of the Iron Men's world.

  They had brought down another two of the beasts that lived in the pastures below a towering escarpment of rock and dragged them into the concealment of the forest. The carcasses lay torn apart and bleeding in a ring of the Unfleshed. The Lord of the Unfleshed tore meat from the bone with his teeth, the hind leg of one of the animals clutched in one meaty fist.

  The meat was like nothing he had tasted before, fresh, bloody and full of goodness. All he could remember eating was the spoiled meat of the dead or the chemically disfigured, the fatty bodies of the ones they had found in the flesh camps of the Iron Men.

  The thought that there could be another way to live had never entered the Lord of the Unfleshed's mind, for what other life was there? Fragmentary visions of his life before, like images on the shards of a broken mirror pricked his mind from time to time, but he had always turned from them.

  Sometimes, when the pain and exhaustion of his existence grew too great to bear, he would travel deep into the ashen mountains and bask in the smoggy peaks wreathed in caustic pollutants that would send him into the deepest slumbers, where he could cling to the last of his remembrances.

  There his body would rest, and he could reach the dreams of another life, another way of living.

  Were they memories? He didn't know, but he liked to think so.

  He would see a woman's face, kind and full of unconditional love. He hoped she was his mother, but had no memory of her beyond this sight. She would speak to him, but he never heard the words. All he saw was how beautiful she was and how much she cared for him.

  As the fumes carried him deeper into the tormented depths of his altered mind, he saw towering buildings of white stone, glorious windows of many colours and a host of statues depicting a golden warrior, his head haloed in stars and surrounded by angels of light.

  Of all the fevered visions the Lord of the Unfleshed saw, this one had the most power and, more than that, it had an identity.

  This was the Emperor and the Emperor loved him.

  This love would never last and these golden memories would shatter, replaced by loathsome visions of horror and blood so terrifying that he would crush rocks with his fists in his dreaming frenzy.

  He saw fire. He saw explosions and stuttering flickers of bullets.

  In the bursts of light, he saw warriors in iron-grey armour fringed with chevrons of yellow and black.

  Heavy, textured gauntlets reached for him, tearing him from the bloody corpse of the beautiful woman, his screams, falling on deaf ears as his world resolved into snapshots of horror: darkness and terror, the taste of blood never far from his mouth; slavering saw-carrying monsters and the giant, drooling faces of monstrous mothers.

  Then only pain and emptiness as he felt himself enfolded by moist folds of flesh and dragged down into darkness.

  Then, gloriously, light.

  But the light was a lie and served only to reveal his hideousness.

  A monster he was and a monster he became, flushed away with the rest of the rotten meat into the unforgiving wilderness beyond the Iron Men's citadel.

  His revulsion at his own horrible existence would always break the grip of the toxic fumes and he would rise from the mountainside to make his way back down to his wretched band, the unwanted, the rejected and the unloved.

  Many of the wailing masses of twisted meat and bone shat from above were howling things without form or mind.

  These the tribe would eat, but those with enough semblance of form and strength would become part of the Lord of the Unfleshed's growing tribe.

  This was the Lord of the Unfleshed's life and he had known of no other way to live, until the warrior had come.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed had watched the latest outpourings from the Iron Men's citadel fall into the pool, imagining the taste of their meat as they struggled to the edge of the black water. Anticipation turned to puzzlement, for they were none of them monsters. His only thought had been to feast on them, but he had smelled the mother meat on the warrior who led the new arrivals.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed had taken the new arrivals to the great cavern beneath the earth that was home and presented them to the mighty statue of the Emperor that they had built from the detritus flushed from above. The Emperor had judged the warrior, who called himself Uriel, worthy and so they had become part of the tribe and struck back at the Iron Men who lived in the fortress on top of the impossible mountain.

  Much blood had been shed, many Iron Men killed and their fortress brought crashing down. Many of the Unfleshed had died also, but it was a good memory, one the Lord of the Unfleshed held fast to as they escaped the world of their monstrous birth in the bowels of the iron daemon's machine.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed did not like to think of the time spent within the daemonic machine's reeking, blood-soaked depths, for it had taken all his power and strength to prevent the tribe from turning on one another in a frenzy of gnashing jaws and taloned fists.

  The journey had ended though and they had set foot on this world. The air was clean and the ground soft, but there was something wrong with it. He did not know what it was or how to articulate that wrongness, but a presence of great anger saturated the air of this place.

  He could feel it as surely as he felt the blood running down his fleshless face.

  The meat from the carcasses was almost gone. One of the tribe, a creature with glistening organs oozing at the edges of its bones and a hideously elongated mouth filled with serrated fangs, snapped bones and sucked the marrow from them. Another scraped the inside of the gutted beast's stomach for the last morsels.

  'No,' growled the Lord of the Unfleshed, 'we not need to live like this.'

  The tribe looked up at him, confusion twisting their mangled features.

  'This a better world for us,' he said. 'Uriel promise us this. We not be feared and Emperor loves us.'

  He could see the hope in their eyes, the first rays of sunshine diffusing through the treetops with a soft golden glow. The Lord of the Unfleshed felt it on his skin as a pleasant tingle and looked down as the warmth spread across the raw redness of his arm.

  He rose to his feet and made his way from the shadows of the forest, ducking under branches as the sun rose higher over the mountains and spilled its golden light over the landscape. The tribe followed him, captivated by the glow building in the sky.

  Walking like recently awakened sleepwalkers, the Unfleshed made their way from beneath the trees to stand in the open. Their faces were alive with wonderment, the sight of this bright orb in the sky incredible and new, yet strangely familiar.

  Memories of happier times fought to reach the surface of the Lord of the Unfleshed's mind and he felt the beginnings of hope stir in his breast. Perhaps this could be a better place, a new beginning on a world where they were not hated and hunted.

  The sensation of the sunlight on his body grew stronger, the tingling turning to something else, something painful. The tribe began to moan, rubbing their arms and bodies as though scratching at a persistent itch.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed felt the musculature of his body begin to burn, the sensation like the angry heat that covered his body whenever he had ventured into the filthy waters of the Iron Men's world.

  He growled as the burning sensation grew stronger, the meat of his body unused to the strange sun's rays. Black patches began to form on his skin, spreading like droplets of oil on water. Pain grew as the black, blistering marks grew and the Lord of the Unfleshed roared as he scratched one and a viscous pus oozed from the wound.

  On the Iron Men's world, the sun radiated despair and hopelessness, but this one... this one radiated pain.

  The Unfleshed began to howl, clawing at the meat of their limbs and bodies as they struggled to understand what was happening to them. Their cries were piteous as the sunlight burned their
bodies and the Lord of the Unfleshed roared in anger and hurt betrayal.

  This world was no good. He had known it, but had allowed himself to forget that everything hated them.

  Even the sun wanted to destroy them.

  'Tribe!' he roared. 'Back! Back into shadow!'

  He turned from the burning sun and ran back to the shelter of the trees, but even there the sunlight found them, slicing through the trees in deadly beams that seared the unprotected flesh of their bodies. The Unfleshed looked to him for guidance, but he had none to give.

  There was no better life, not for the likes of them.

  The Unfleshed bellowed and beat their chests in agony and the Lord of the Unfleshed cried his frustration to the heavens. Through the foliage he saw the rocky escarpment rearing above them, a vertical slab of glistening black rock with numerous waterfalls cascading from high above.

  Against the blackness of the rock, the Lord of the Unfleshed saw a patch of deeper darkness, a cleft in the sheer surface: a cave.

  'Tribe must run!' he cried. 'Find shelter in rocks! Follow!'

  Without looking to see if any came with him, the Lord of the Unfleshed broke from the scant cover of the forest and ran uphill towards the cliffs. His powerful muscles easily carried him across the landscape, leaping over huge boulders and shutting out the burning pain that threatened to overwhelm him.

  Behind him, he heard howls of pain, but also the sounds of the tribe following him, wet, meaty footfalls and the crack of malformed bones grinding together.

  The black lesions spread across his body as he ran, but the Lord of the Unfleshed shut out the pain, his entire being focused on reaching the cooling darkness of the cave. He vaulted a fallen slab of rock and slowed his pace as he slid into the shadow. The immediate burning sensation subsided, but the crawling pain in his limbs and body remained.

  He turned as the faster members of the tribe completed their mad dash to the cave, howling and gnashing their teeth against the pain. The Lord of the Unfleshed turned to see others making their painful way over the open ground, the golden light searing and blackening the meat on their bones with every passing second.

  One of the Unfleshed, a creature with stunted legs and an oversized upper body tripped on a loose boulder. It fell to the ground with a shriek of pain, viscous ooze seeping from burns that tore open as it landed. Its glistening, red body split apart where it was burned and it fought to right itself. Its body was out of balance and it could not get up. Powerful arms sought to haul it to its feet, but the pain and horror of what was happening to it were too much.

  The creature collapsed with one final howl, and the Lord of the Unfleshed watched the blackness creeping across its body as the unforgiving sun burned away the last of its life.

  'Dead now,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed and the others shuffled over to look at the blackening corpse. They could smell the meat on it and he could sense their confusion and hunger, but none dared venture out into the light.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed turned away from the light of the cave mouth. Black, water-streaked, walls stretched off into the distance and the darkness was comforting after the pain of the light. The Lord of the Unfleshed lurched deeper into the cliff, his thoughts in turmoil at this new pain.

  Once more they were monsters, lurking in the darkness of the cave, where all monsters should be.

  Anger swelled within the Lord of the Unfleshed.

  THE TROOP COMPARTMENT of a Chimera armoured fighting vehicle claimed to be able to convey twelve soldiers and their kit into battle. As was typical for spaces designed by the military, it assumed that the soldiers would not need to move so much as a muscle once they were packed in. With two Space Marines inside, that space became seriously confined and five soldiers had been displaced and forced to ride back on the roof of the vehicle.

  'And I thought Rhinos were cramped,' said Pasanius. 'Remind me never to complain to Harkus again.'

  Uriel did not reply, keeping his eyes fixed on the landscape coming into view through the scuffed vision blocks that punctuated the sides of the vehicle and allowed a little natural light to enter the compartment. Recessed glow strips ran the length of the roof, but their light was a sickly red.

  Four soldiers of the Achaman Falcatas sat with them in the back of the Chimera, three helmeted warriors with their lasguns held across their laps and the sergeant who had removed Pasanius's weapon. He alone had removed his helmet and Uriel saw that the ocular implants were integral to it and not part of him.

  The sergeant was middle-aged, but had a weathered, deeply lined face topped by a shock of sandy hair. The man's eyes were hard, but not unkind, and he looked at Uriel and Pasanius with an expression that was part awe and part nervous excitement.

  'So you're Ultramarines?' he said.

  'We are,' nodded Uriel.

  'I'm Sergeant Jonah Tremain,' said the man, extending his hand to Uriel. The hand beneath the gauntlet felt hard and inflexible to Uriel and he suspected that the sergeant's hand was augmetic.

  His suspicions were confirmed when Tremain held up his hand and said, 'Lost it in a skirmish against eldar pirates. Caught a ricochet and a splinter of something got under the skin. Got infected and the medics had to take it right there and then.'

  'I have fought the eldar before,' said Uriel. 'They are swift and deadly killers.'

  'That they are,' agreed Tremain. 'That they are. But then the colonel was no slouch either. Outmanoeuvred them and none of their fancy tricks could save them when his Screaming Eagles had them locked in place.'

  'His? I don't understand.'

  'Ah, of course. Colonel Kain's only been in charge of what's left of the regiment since Restoration Day,' explained Tremain. 'Before that, Colonel Barbaden led the Falcatas.'

  'The same Barbaden who is now governor?'

  'The very same,' agreed Tremain. 'We won this world fair and square. Did our ten years of service, and after we'd fought through the hell of Losgat and Steinhold we were given the right to settle here once we'd won it back for the Emperor.'

  Uriel glanced over at the silent soldiers who sat by the heavy iron assault door at the rear of the vehicle. They were hard, tough men and the notion that the sergeant would be so garrulous seemed out of character.

  'So how did you pair come to be all the way out here?' asked Tremain.

  'In that city or on this world?'

  'Both,' said Tremain, smiling, but Uriel could see that the expression was forced. 'I'm sure it's an exciting story. We don't get many visitors here, let alone Space Marines. So come on, tell me how you came to be out here.'

  Uriel could sense Pasanius's unspoken warning of saying too much and wondered if Colonel Kain was listening in. Had she placed Tremain in here to get them to talk unguardedly in front of a friendly sergeant?

  'That is a long and... involved tale, Sergeant Tremain,' said Uriel.

  'You must have a ship. I mean, how else would you have got to the surface?'

  'No, we don't have a ship,' said Uriel.

  'So did you just teleport down?' pressed Tremain. 'From a vessel in orbit? Or maybe a drop-pod? You Space Marines use drop-pods, don't you?'

  'We do,' agreed Uriel, 'but we did not arrive in one.'

  'Then how did you get here?'

  'As I said, that's a long story, and one I think I'd prefer to tell Governor Barbaden. I will tell you this, though, we are loyal servants of the Emperor, just as you are. We have been on a mission for our Chapter and all we want is to go home to rejoin our battle brothers.'

  'It's just that of all the places you had to turn up, it was there,' said Tremain.

  'In Khaturian? That's what that place was called wasn't it?'

  'Yes, that's what it was called,' said Tremain, and Uriel sensed the man's reticence to talk further of the dead city.

  'What happened to it?' asked Uriel. 'Why does it carry a death penalty to go there?'

  'It just does,' snapped Tremain. 'Now we'll have no more talk about the Killing Ground.'
r />   'The Killing Ground?'

  'I said we'd have no more talk about it,' warned Tremain, clearly not intimidated by the fact that he sat opposite a warrior who could kill him in the time it took to think it. Whatever the truth of Khaturian, or the Killing Ground as Tremain had called it, it was not a subject he was comfortable talking about.

  Seeing he was going to get nothing useful from Uriel, Tremain's volubility evaporated and the next few hours of the journey were undertaken in silence, the sergeant offering no more insights to the world of Salinas or its inhabitants. Uriel made no attempt to engage him in conversation, and, instead, turned his attention to the slivers of landscape that he could see through the vision blocks fitted above the vehicle's integral lasguns.

  What little he could see suggested a lush landscape of tall mountains, wide forests and clear skies. To see such things after the nightmarish landscapes of a daemon world in the Eye of Terror was a very real pleasure and Uriel looked forward to seeing more of this world before departing for Macragge.

  The thought of seeing the home of his Chapter once more was like a balm on his soul and he could already feel the shadow that had fallen over his normal demeanour lifting.

  They had completed their Death Oath and had returned to a world of the Imperium. True, they were little better than willing captives, but that would not be the case for long and Uriel was willing to suffer a little indignity before reaching home. He could not fault the Falcatas for their suspicions, for had they not appeared unannounced and unexpectedly in the middle of nowhere? Had someone done the same on Macragge, they would have been hurled into the deepest dungeons of the Fortress of Hera before being mercilessly interrogated.

  Ah... the Fortress of Hera: the great libraries of knowledge, the Temple of Correction where the body of Roboute Guilliman lay in stasis, the Hall of Heroes, the Valley of Laponis... So many wondrous places.

  If given the chance upon their return to Macragge, Uriel decided he would visit them all.

  A crackling voice from a battered loudspeaker cut through his reverie.