‘I don’t know,’ admitted Uriel. There is nothing to choose between them.’
‘Then we’ve nothing to lose, whichever one we take,’ pointed out Vaanes, heading towards the middle archway.
‘I suppose,’ said Uriel, though a gut feeling told him that there was something different about this archway. He could not put his finger on what, but since he had no better idea of which one to take, he set off after Vaanes. The Space Marines followed him, bolters levelled in cautious apprehension.
Vaanes waited for him at the entrance to the archway, and as Uriel passed beneath its Stygian immensity, he sketched the sign of the aquila across his chest, hearing a distant pounding, like the slow heartbeat of a sleeping monster.
‘We are in the belly of the beast once more, Uriel,’ said Pasanius, the guttering blue tip of his flamer throwing their faces into stark relief and causing the carvings on the inner faces of the archway to leer and dance across the walls.
‘I know,’ nodded Uriel, praying that the white cloak he had put over his soul would protect it from the vile things they were sure to see in the heart of the Enemy’s lair.
ONYX GHOSTED OVER the lip of the ruined bastion, his bronze claws sliding slowly from his flesh. His silver eyes scanned the battlements for any sign of the renegades, but they were nowhere to be seen. Moving like a shadow, Onyx tasted the air, the crawling silver veins beneath his skin burning brighter as he channelled the daemonic energy within him into tracking the intruders.
His vision shifted into realms of sight beyond the ken of mortal men, where that which had already come to pass could be seen by listening to the echoes in the air. He watched as shadowy forms climbed over the ramparts, in much the same way as he had just done: many warriors, led by one whose soul burned brightly with purpose and another whose soul was withered and dead.
As though formed from swirling particles of smoke, their forms were ethereal and insubstantial, but Onyx could see them as clearly as though he had been here to watch them arrive. They had passed this way but minutes ago, their phantasmal echoes walking from the battlements and heading in the direction of the monstrous archways carved into the mountainside.
Onyx watched as the ghostly figures were swallowed up by the whispering darkness of the archways and sheathed his claws. He would need to take another route into the fortress to hunt the intruders, for if Khalan-Ghol had lured them into the bedlam portals, there was a good chance they were already dead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE JOURNEY THROUGH the darkened archway was one that Uriel knew he would never forget. The sensation of being spied upon by every square centimetre of wall was intolerable and he was sure he could hear a susurration of whispered voices, just on the threshold of hearing. Their words, if such they were, were unintelligible, but on some primal level, Uriel knew that they whispered of vile, terrible things.
.. .dishonour, disgrace and failure…
This at least he felt he could bear, having already seen the most terrible things imaginable in the presence of the Nightbringer, but still…
The twilit darkness seemed to go on forever and Uriel soon lost track of how long they had been travelling along the damnable tunnel.
…it doesn’t ever stop, it goes on and on…
‘Imperator! Does this ever end?’ growled Vaanes as they delved further and further into the never-ending darkness.
‘I know,’ said Uriel. ‘I get the feeling that we do not travel normal paths here. We can trust nothing, not even the evidence of our own senses.’
‘Then how will we find what we’re looking for?’
…you won’t…
‘We will have to trust that the Emperor will show us the way,’ said Uriel, irritated by Vaanes’s constant questions.
Vaanes shook his head in exasperation. ‘I knew I should have never come on this mission. It was doomed from the start.’
…yes, doomed, only death awaits…
‘Then why did you come?’ snapped Uriel, rounding on the former Raven Guard, his temper fraying.
…he hates you and will betray you…
‘Damned if I can remember,’ snarled Vaanes, his face centimetres from Uriel’s. ‘Perhaps I thought you had more of an idea about how you planned to get in here and find what we came for!’
…he doesn’t, he will see you dead soon…
‘Damn you, Vaanes. Why must you always undermine me?’ said Uriel, hearing soft, malicious laughter and the whispers of the walls growing louder in his ears. ‘Every step of this journey you have done nothing but tell us that we are on a fool’s errand. That may be so, but we are Space Marines trapped on a daemon world and it is our sacred task to fight the enemies of mankind wherever they may be.’
…not any more. Give in, you are worthless…
‘Don’t you understand? We are not Space Marines,’ shouted Vaanes, the reflected blue light of the tunnel glittering in his eyes. ‘Not any more. We are all outcasts, shunned and banished from our Chapters. We owe neither them nor the Emperor anything any more. And I, for one, am getting sick of hearing your sanctimonious voice telling me what I ought to be doing.’
…yes, kill him, what is he to you anyway…?
Uriel shook his head as Vaanes slapped a gauntleted hand on his shoulder guards and said, ‘Where is your Chapter badge, Ventris? I don’t see it, does anyone else?’
‘What happened to you, Vaanes?’ asked Uriel, angrily shrugging off the hands on his shoulders and gripping the hilt of his sword. ‘How did you become so damaged?’
…because he has no honour, he deserves to die…!
‘Because I let myself get put in situations like this once too often,’ hissed Vaanes. ‘And I swore I would not blindly follow another to my death. Damn me, but I let myself get fooled again.’
Uriel drew his sword, his anger boiling over when he heard the soft susurration of the whispering walls once more and the words and feelings behind them wormed their way into his brain.
.. .more, say more, give vent to all your secret doubts and fears and frustrations…
The voices insinuated themselves within his head and lodged upon his tongue, just aching to be said for the sake of malice and spite. Uriel clamped his hands to his ears as a measure of understanding forced its way past the fog of bitterness that filled his mind.
The voices clouded his head, louder now that their subterfuge was unmasked. Uriel stumbled and reached out to steady himself, his hand brushing against the wall, its undulating substance wet and fluid. He dropped to his knees and shouted, ‘Get out of my head!’
…no, worthless you, meaningless you, insignificant you, unremembered you…
‘Uriel? Are you all right? What’s going on?’ shouted Pasanius, running over to where his captain knelt. Vaanes backed away from Uriel, shaking his head and clutching his temples in pain.
What the hell is going on?’ he yelled as the roar of voices, thousands of them, swelled in volume and filled the tunnel.
.. .kill, it’s such a friendly word… it’s the only way…
‘Don’t listen to them!’ shouted Uriel. ‘Shut them out!’
The other Space Marines now felt the full power of the lunatic voices, dropping their weapons as the urge to turn them upon themselves grew unbearable. A shot rang out and one of their warrior band, a Doom Eagle, toppled forwards, his skull little more than a charred blood basin, spilling brain and skull fragments as he fell.
Uriel threw away his gun as he felt the muscles of his arm twitch in response to the voices, fighting their urgings
…it is hopeless, no point in fighting, nothing can stand against the majesty of Chaos…
He squeezed his eyes shut, repeating the Litanies of Hate as preached by Chaplain Clausel from his umber-sap pulpit: catechisms of loathing and the Rites of Detestation he had been taught when in the service of the Ordo Xenos.
…it is pointless to resist the inevitable. Join us! Give in and kill yourself…
Uriel fought the urge to curl up
and give in, remembering past glories where victory had meant something concrete, where the defeat of terrible foes had achieved something meaningful. He pictured the great victory on Tarsis Ultra, the defeat of Kasimir de Valtos and the capture of the alpha psyker on Epsilon Regalis. With each victory remembered, the power of the voices diminished, the despair they fostered kept at bay by his powerful sense of worth and purpose.
He staggered to his feet, seeing Pasanius disengage the promethium unit from his flamer and flip a fragmentation grenade from his dispenser into his hand.
‘No!’ shouted Uriel and kicked the grenade from his sergeant’s hand.
Pasanius rose up to his full height, his face twisted in a snarl of anger and tears coursing down his face.
‘Why?’ he yelled. ‘Why won’t you let me die? I deserve to die.’
…he does! Let him die, you hate him anyway…!
‘No!’ gasped Uriel, fighting the deadly power of the voices. ‘You have to fight it!’
‘I can’t!’ wailed Pasanius, holding his silver arm up before him. ‘Don’t you see? I have to die.’
Uriel gripped his friend’s shoulders as another shot echoed in the tunnel and another warrior succumbed to the suicidal lure of the voices.
‘Remember how you got that arm?’ shouted Uriel. ‘You helped save the world of Pavonis. You stood before a star god and defied it. You are a hero, Pasanius! All of you, you are heroes! You are the greatest warriors this galaxy has ever seen! You are stronger, more courageous and more resourceful than any mortal man!’
…no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…
Uriel released Pasanius and moved from warrior to warrior, shouting at them as he went, his voice growing louder as he warmed to his theme.
‘Do not forget who you are!’ he yelled over the furious whispers. ‘You are Space Marines. Warriors of the Emperor of Mankind and you fight the Dark Powers wherever you find them. You are strong, proud and you are warriors. You have fought for centuries and your honour is your life, let none dispute it!’
He drew his sword and activated the blade, which rippled with fiery energies, and raised it high.
‘Every foe we slay means something!’ shouted Uriel, slashing at the walls of the tunnel with every word. ‘Every battle we win means something. We mean something! Remember every battle you have fought, every foe vanquished, every honour won. They stand for everything we were created to serve. Remember them all and the voices will have no power over you!’
The slithering carvings within the walls screeched in frustration, retreating into the depths of the rock before Uriel’s bright blade as his words undid their masquerades. A new sound arose to banish the hateful whispers: the sound of voices being raised in honour of great victories of the Imperium.
The Storming of Corinth, the Iron Cage, Phoenix Island, the Liberation of Vogen, Armageddon, the Fall of Sharendus, the Eleggan Salient, the Battle of Macragge… and a hundred others rang out against the foul temptations of the voices, the walls becoming dark and solid as the volume of the warrior band’s shouts grew.
Uriel almost wept in triumph as the darkness of the walls retreated and the illusory nature of the tunnel fell away to reveal the softly glowing exit before them. The soulless light of Medrengard filled the tunnel and though it promised nothing but death and emptiness, Uriel rejoiced to see it.
‘This way!’ shouted Uriel, scooping up his bolter before staggering exhaustedly towards the tunnel’s exit.
The warrior band gathered their weapons and followed him from the hellish mouth of madness.
ONCE CLEAR OF the tunnels of despair, Uriel saw that they had barely penetrated the walls of the fortress at all. The Iron Warrior with the coruscating energy whip had called this place Khalan-Ghol, and as Uriel cast a wary glance towards the hungry maw of the tunnel they had just left, he wondered if it was a name given to the fortress or one it had taken for itself. A potent malice saturated the air, a sense of ancient sentience lurking in the very rocks and mortar of this place.
The Space Marines, Colonel Leonid and Sergeant Ellard collapsed as they fled the dark of the mountain, shaking their heads clear of the last vestiges of the tunnel’s evil. It had led them out onto a high ledge at the head of a long, winding set of carven black stairs overlooking the madness of the interior of Honsou’s fastness.
Sprawling towers, manufactories and darkly arched cloisters jostled for space amid tall statues and spike-fringed redoubts. Dark-tiled roofs and insane structures of non-Euclidian geometries that hurt the eyes and violated the senses were crammed within the jagged, hostile architecture of the fortress, twisting, and gibbet-hung boulevards winding between them in impossible ways. A wan emerald light held court over it all, pierced with streamers of sickly orange fires burning from forges and melancholy temples. Streams of liquid metal ran in basalt troughs through the fortress, the reflected heat bathing everything in droplets of glistening, metallic condensation.
Copper, verdigris-stained gargoyles vented clouds of steam and tall, crooked towers of black brick spewed choking clouds of pollutants into the atmosphere from great, piston-heaving power plants. Grey figures shuffled through the city and dark, slithering things slipped like shadows through the nightmare streets of the fortress towards the heart of the mountain, where a single, rearing tower of iron stood, its dimensions immense and impossible.
It speared the clouds above, a swirling mass of bruised vaporous energies circling its tallest peak. Thousands of arched firing slits pierced the tower, its base out of sight behind the belching forges clustered before it. Uriel knew that the master of this horrible place must dwell within that awful tower and understood with utter certainty that this was their ultimate destination.
Flocks of the delirium spectres wheeled above the dread tower, their raucous cries echoing weirdly from its tall spires and nameless garrets. Tall peaks of the black mountains swooped high above them, and though it had seemed they walked for many kilometres through the rock of the mountain, the noise of the battle was close, as though they had travelled only a little way.
‘How can that be?’ said Vaanes, guessing Uriel’s thoughts.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Uriel. ‘We cannot trust that our senses are not deceived at every turn in this dark place.’
‘Uriel, listen, about that tunnel and the things that were said…’
‘It doesn’t matter. It was the voices, they got inside us and made us say these things.’
Vaanes shook his head. ‘What were they? Daemons? Ghosts?’
‘I do not know, but we defeated them, Vaanes.’
‘You defeated them. You saw through what they were trying to do to us. I almost gave in… I wanted to.’
‘But you had the strength to defeat them,’ said Uriel. ‘That came from inside you, I just reminded you of it.’
‘Maybe,’ said Vaanes, in a rare moment of confession. ‘But I am weak, Ventris. I have not been a Space Marine of the Emperor for many decades now and I do not think I have the strength to be one again.’
‘I believe you are wrong,’ said Uriel, placing his hand in the centre of Vaanes’s breastplate. ‘You have heart, and I see courage and honour within you, Vaanes. You have just forgotten who you really are.’
Vaanes nodded curtly, pulling away from his touch without replying, and Uriel just hoped he had been able to convince the former Raven Guard of his own worth. This hellish place would test them all to the very limits of their courage and would seek out any chink in their armour and destroy them if they let it.
He caught Pasanius’s eye, but his friend broke the contact just as quickly, turning his back upon Uriel.
‘Pasanius,’ said Uriel. ‘Are you ready to move on?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Aye, there’s no telling what might follow us through those tunnels. The sooner we’re gone the better.’
Uriel reached up to stop Pasanius as he moved off. ‘Are you all right, my friend?’
‘O
f course,’ snapped Pasanius, pushing past Uriel and marching to the top of the winding, uneven stairs. Smooth, black and glassy, they would require careful negotiation if they were to avoid slipping and breaking their necks.
Pasanius led the way down, the Space Marines and the two Guardsmen following gingerly in single file. The clanking workshops of the fortress spat flames and smoke: the pounding of hammers the size of tanks echoing from the blackened walls of the windowless buildings. But over everything hung the leaden weight of the spirit of the iron tower, its dead-windowed stare crushing the soul by its very existence.
As they descended into the fortress, Uriel saw strange creatures of light moving between the vast structures, tall, elegant beings walking on golden stilts that trailed streamers of lambent amber fire. Bizarre carriages were suspended between them, filled with glowing ripples of light and a swirling latticework of cogs and pistons. A procession of these creatures passed through the fortress, but they were soon lost to sight in the illogical maze of the streets.
Huge bulldozers, similar to the bulk-hauler they had commandeered, rumbled through the wider thoroughfares, red and hateful, with tall banner poles hung with eight-pointed stars and iron tenders hitched behind them. Blood sloshed from the tenders, leaving a filthy stream of red in their wake as they made their way from the fighting on the walls to the tower at the centre of the fortress. Twisted limbs jutted from the blood-filled tenders, the corpses in each one jostling against one another as the bulldozers ploughed onwards. As the bodies moved, it was clear from their size and muscle mass, that they were those of Iron Warriors.
‘Where are they taking them?’ said Leonid.
‘For burial perhaps,’ suggested Uriel.
‘I didn’t think the Iron Warriors cared too much about honouring the dead.’
‘Nor did I, but why else bring the fallen back inside the walls?’
‘Who knows, but I have a feeling we’ll be finding out soon,’ said Vaanes, gloomily.
‘If it is connected to our mission, then yes, you’re right,’ said Uriel continuing down the stairs to the interior of the fortress. The stone steps reflected the light from the purple clouds above the iron tower and Uriel wondered what dark practices and plans had been hatched within its cold depths. The stairs curled down the cliffside of the mountain, widening until they formed a long processional that opened into a bone-flagged esplanade with iron execution poles spaced at regular intervals.