Herzog, on his back, fired his boltgun, and blew out one of the crocodilian’s eyes. It thrashed in pain, slamming its vast body to and fro into the walls of the bridge and the corridor, shattering plaster and shaking the building. The mangled corpse of the operative tumbled out of its jaws and it snapped forwards, seizing Herzog by the leg. Mail rings cracked and pinged away as the gigantic teeth bit down.
Herzog roared.
Grammaticus had never heard an Astartes cry in pain before. He decided he never wanted to hear the sound again. He pushed Shere aside against the moving wall of lizards and adjusted his ring. It was an Old Kind digital weapon, a gift from Gahet.
He triggered it. An incandescent blue beam lanced out from it and exploded the crocodilian’s braincase in a wet blast of meat, bone and tissue.
‘Come on!’ Grammaticus yelled.
Herzog pulled his leg free of the ruptured jaws, and got to his feet. Limping, he led Grammaticus and Shere across the bridge. They had to clamber over the apparently endless bulk of the dead crocodilian. It was still twitching.
They reached the stairs of the neighbouring house and headed down. Herzog’s leg was badly lacerated from the bite, and he was faltering. Behind them, they could hear the advancing patter of the lizard tide. The first few green shapes were appearing above them, scurrying out across the ceiling, some falling like drops of water down the stairwell around them.
‘Where did you get that?’ Herzog yelled at Grammaticus. ‘What?’
‘That weapon!’
‘Does it matter?’
‘You could have used it on us earlier,’ Shere said, scrambling down the stairs beside Grammaticus.
‘The fact that I didn’t might persuade you that I’m serious,’ Grammaticus replied.
They snatched open the main street door of the house, and came out into bright sunlight, and into the middle of a gun battle. Two Astartes warriors in purple power armour – one of them, Grammaticus was certain, the giant who had questioned him earlier – were exchanging shots along the dusty, sunlit street with gangs of nurthadtre ground troops. Crowds of braying Nurthene civilians were urging the nurthadtre on, hurling cobbles and other missiles. Half a dozen mail-sleeved operatives, anonymous in their desert shawls, were supporting the outnumbered Astartes. Las-rounds and ballistic loads streaked up and down the narrow thoroughfare.
‘Pech?’ Herzog called out.
The armoured giant glanced around. So, not Alpharius then, Grammaticus thought, unless ‘Pech’ was some nickname or surname unknown to the Cabal.
‘Get out, Thias!’ the giant yelled. ‘We’ll hold them here and rendezvous as soon as we can!’
‘For the Emperor, Pech!’ Herzog shouted, pausing to add his bolter fire to the fight for a moment.
‘Let’s go!’ he declared, turning to face Shere and Grammaticus.
They began to run again, covering the sun-heated cobbles, the sounds of the firefight behind them echoing along the overhanging walls.
‘Where to?’ Grammaticus found the courage to ask.
‘To wherever is safe,’ Herzog replied. He was still limping badly.
‘I don’t think there’s anywhere safe for us in this town,’ Shere grunted.
‘No, neither do I,’ agreed Herzog, ‘thanks to him.’ He glared at Grammaticus.
‘This was not my doing,’ Grammaticus insisted as he ran. He checked his stride suddenly, flinching as he sensed the stomach-churning ripple of psyker activity again.
Shere had felt it too. ‘What—’ he began.
The street ahead of them split as if torn open by a fierce earthquake. The road surface burst upwards, and cobblestones flew like hail.
A vast monitor hauled itself up out of the ground in front of them, pulling its bulk free of the cloven street and the earth beneath. Cobblestones, hardcore and soil spilled out around it as it emerged. Its skull alone was the size of a lifepod. Its tongue, long, dry and forked, flickered in and out of its extravagantly massive maw. The tongue was as pink as Nurthene silk. The monitor was covered in cherry-red scales. They could smell the carrion stink of its jaws, feel the tremor of its advancing steps.
‘Here be dragons,’ Grammaticus whispered.
‘What?’ Shere yelled.
Here be dragons. It was no longer a quaintly phrased notation of warning, no longer the shorthand motto of man’s ignorance of the darker places of his universe. Dragons were real, not ambiguous scrawls on fading maps.
Grammaticus could see into it, past the giganticised body it wore, past the scale and flesh and muscle of the varanidae-genus form it had chosen, or been instructed, to take. He could see the absolute fury of its daemon heart.
Herzog began to fire, slamming bolt after bolt into the red monster’s head. Blood splattered from the snout, and two or three teeth were blown out of their sockets. The dragon lunged.
Shere screamed and lashed out with his pyrokinetic talent, and flames swirled along the reptile’s back and flanks in wild, flaring streams. The immense beast began to thrash as its scales scorched. Flames travelled down its length, engulfing it in a molten inferno too bright to look at. Its whipping, burning body and tail convulsed furiously and smashed into the surrounding buildings, bringing down their facades in thunderous torrents of brick and dry mortar.
Dust rose in solid, gagging walls. Grammaticus lost sight of Herzog and Shere. He began to run. Behind him, the death throes of the burning dragon sounded as though they were demolishing the entire city.
Grammaticus kept running. He didn’t look back.
FIVE
Mon Lo Harbour, three days later
‘WHY IS THE city screaming?’ asked Namatjira. No one had an answer for him, nor had they an answer to his next question, which was, ‘Why is this offensive turning into a total farce? Anybody? Anybody?’
They shifted uncomfortably, the high officers of the Imperial Army regiments at the Mon Lo front. Namatjira had summoned them to attend him in the largest meeting hall of the terracotta palace, and they were wary of his displeasure. Lord Commander Namatjira had a famously choleric temper.
He also had one of the finest martial records of any Army commander in the Great Crusade: one hundred and three successful campaigns of compliance, the last twenty-four of which had been achieved as commander of the 670th Expedition Fleet. Nurth was to have been the expedition’s twenty-fifth, making it officially Six-Seventy Twenty-Five, or the twenty-fifth world brought to terms by the 670th Fleet.
That achievement now looked to be in serious jeopardy.
Namatjira was a tall, dismayingly handsome man, with heroic features like the noblest classical statue, and skin so black it possessed a smoky sheen. He wore a frock coat of chrome plate armour over a deepwater blue uniform, and black riding boots with ornate chrome spurs. A floor-length cloak of painted silk hung off one of his shoulders, and a soldier standing to his left carried his fur shako with the reverence ordinarily accorded to a holy relic.
The soldier was a veteran of the feared Lucifer Blacks, so-called because of their coal-dust velvet coats and jet body plate. The Lucifers, an Ischian-raised elite brigade as old and celebrated as the Byzant Janizars or the Sidthu Barat, were all but extinct. Most of their strength had been depleted in the last years of the Unification Wars and, lacking the structural resilience of the Geno Chiliad, they had never rebuilt. During the Crusade, they had served a ceremonial role, providing companion retinues for distinguished commanders like Namatjira.
Five other Lucifers stood behind the Lord Commander, their hands on the pommels of their sabres. One carried a standard from which dangled the many laurels and sun disks, all stamped out of sheet gold, that enumerated Namatjira’s triumphs. Another held the golden lead of the Lord Commander’s pet thylacene, a regal, lithe beast with a dappled and striped mahogany pelt.
‘Anybody?’ Namatjira asked.
There were almost a hundred high officers and uxors in the chamber, the senior unit commanders of the serried forces deployed at Mon Lo, som
e three-quarters of a million men. The two dozen uxors represented the Geno Five-Two, and stood solemnly amongst various dress-uniformed officers of the Zanzibari Hort, the Crescent-Sind Sixth Torrent, the Regnault Thorns, the Outremars, and a clutch of support and auxiliary detachments. No one seemed especially willing to risk framing a response.
Towards the rear of the gathering, Honen Mu watched the Lord Commander carefully. She had only arrived in Mon Lo the day before, bringing with her the geno forces freed up by the conclusion of the Tel Utan offensive. She’d arrived in time to see the dispiriting disaster Mon Lo was turning into, and was therefore thankful that Namatjira could not direct his wrath at her. What was happening at Mon Lo had not occurred on her watch.
She pitied Nitin Dev. A major general in the Zanzibari Hort, and a damn fine warrior in Mu’s experience, Dev held overall field command of the Mon Lo theatre.
Namatjira looked directly at Dev. ‘Major general?’ he asked. ‘Anything to say?’
There was a pause. Lord Commander Teng Namatjira seldom toured a fighting zone in person, except to join the victory celebrations at the end of a compliance war. He preferred to orchestrate his campaigns from orbit. For him to make the drop to the surface, to risk exposure by visiting the sharp end of things, was a very big, very telling detail.
‘No, my lord,’ said Dev. ‘I haven’t.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, my lord. I cannot add anything to what you already know.’
Honen Mu narrowed her eyes in admiration. The major general had balls of steel. Many times, she’d seen officers whine and dissemble and make excuses when brought to task by their superiors. Dev was making no attempt to wriggle out of this. He was taking it face on.
Namatjira gazed at the major general. Dev stood stiff and straight-backed, his eyes as glossy and black as the tight folds of the durband that secured his spiked helm to his head. Without expression, Dev half-drew his sabre with his right hand, his left hand clutching the top of the scabbard, and waited. Dev was showing he was prepared, at a simple nod from the Lord Commander, to snap his sword blade against the braced scabbard, to symbolise his disgrace and discharge, forfeiting forever his rank and rights. It was a brave offer.
‘Perhaps later, Major General Dev,’ Namatjira said, mildly. Dev resheathed his sword. The Lord Commander stepped forwards and the gathered officers parted to let him through. He strode down the chamber through the midst of them, heading towards the windows at the far end. His Lucifers followed him. The thylacene padded with them, lean as a coursing hound, its tongue lolling from its long, rapacious jaws.
‘Eight months,’ Namatjira said as he walked, ‘eight months we’ve had to slog at this world, and still the sorcerous bastards confound us. I thought we’d finally broken the deadlock when Tel Utan fell. I thought we were about to prise victory from their dead hands at last. But now this, this nonsense. It’s as if we’ve taken a backwards step. No, a dozen backwards steps. It feels like this bloody war is only just getting started and, Terra knows, it’s cost us enough already. It’s cost us blood, it’s cost us men, it’s cost us time. They’re barbarians! This should have been over and done inside two weeks!’
He stopped in his tracks halfway down the chamber. The Lucifers halted smartly and stood with him, eyes front. The thylacene pulled up sharp on the golden lead and sat. Namatjira turned slowly, running his gaze across the gathered commanders on either side of him.
‘It has been my recent privilege,’ he said solemnly, ‘to have shared communication with the First Primarch. Do any of you know where Lord Horus is, just now?’
No one answered.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Namatjira. ‘Great Lupercal is fighting on a rock called Ullanor. He stands at the Emperor’s side, at our most glorious Emperor’s side, and together, for the benefit of our future, they are making war upon the greenskins. The bestial monsters have gathered in unprecedented numbers, and the Emperor has met their attack head on. Can you imagine that? Ullanor may prove to be the single most important combat in the history of our new Imperium. We may, in time, regard Ullanor as the defining victory of the Crusade, the moment mankind confirmed his mastery of the void, the moment our xenos adversaries turned tail and fled forever.’
Namatjira hesitated before continuing. He was still turning slowly, watching them all, his eyes shining with passion. ‘And in the thick of it, the First Primarch finds enough time to contact the Crusade commanders, to check on their progress and encourage their efforts. What do I tell him? What? Do I tell him, Good luck with the greenskin horde, we’re having a terrible problem with a bunch of subhuman peasants?’
He let the words hang. He raised his hand and gestured towards the ceiling with outstretched fingers. ‘Out there, immortal combats are being waged in the name of humanity. The stars are quaking with the Emperor’s might. Yet this is the best we can do?’
He started walking again, and reached the window. The chamber was high up in the palace, and afforded a good view out towards the city of Mon Lo.
The officers and uxors gathered in behind him. There was no doubt, even from that distance, that the city was screaming.
ACCORDING TO HONEN Mu’s sources, the port city had started its eerie screaming during the early morning, three days previously. Within half an hour, the besieging forces had realised something momentous was afoot. Dark clouds, like the stain of vapour from a slumbering volcano, had spread above Mon Lo, and a wind had picked up. Oddly, despite the wind, the cloud cover in the broad sky above had slowed down, as if the planet had become retrograde on its spin. All of the astrotelepathic resources of the fleet had gone blind, or suffered sudden trauma shock. Word was, a powerful psychic force had been born in Mon Lo, the last bastion of the Nurthene.
The city had begun to emit a howling scream, a scream audible to both the regular soldiery camped outside, and the minds of the fleet’s wounded sensitives. The screaming, both acoustic and psychic, sounded like the anguish of the damned.
The uxors and their aides had suffered particular discomfort, but everyone had been affected. Vox links had been impaired, and many Army units had been rendered nervous and undisciplined. Assuming that some calamity had stricken the city, Major General Dev had ordered an immediate attack to take advantage of the situation. The attack had stalled when significant portions of the besieging force had simply refused to advance.
Other stories had surfaced: plagues of lizards and frogs had been seen around the city’s sewer outfalls, and petals of sloughed snakeskin had blown into the Imperial lines on the wind. Forward observers claimed to have seen giant things, great saurian shapes, moving around in the dust storms that had whipped up outside the city walls. Orbital scans revealed that the basin of Mon Lo harbour had turned pink overnight, perhaps due to algae infection, and that the pink stain was spreading out of the harbour area into the open sea.
Still, through it all, the plangent screaming had continued.
QUITTING THE MAIN chamber, Namatjira retired to his private quarters. He left one of his Lucifer Blacks to announce a list of the persons he wished to meet with personally.
‘Attend! Major General Nitin Dev,’ the Lucifer called out in his thick, Ischian accent, ‘Colonel Sinhal Manesh, Colonel Iday Pria, Princeps Amon Jeveth, Uxor Rukhsana Saiid, Uxor Honen Mu.’
Honen Mu froze. What?
‘DO YOU KNOW what this is about?’ Honen Mu asked Rukhsana as they walked briskly along the hall to the Lord Commander’s quarters. They didn’t know one another especially well, having served in different theatres during their careers. Honen was much younger and much shorter than the long-limbed Rukhsana. She was also much stronger, perceptively, and rather despised Rukhsana, though she didn’t mean to. The older uxor was in the last days of her command, and her ’cept powers were eroded. To Honen Mu, Rukhsana embodied the inevitable frailty that awaited all uxors.
‘I have no idea, Mu,’ Rukhsana replied.
‘This is a mess, though, isn’t it?’ Honen Mu replied, s
campering her little feet to keep pace with Rukhsana.
‘Oh, quite a mess indeed. I understand you had some success, though. Tel Utan?’
Honen Mu shrugged. ‘I was lucky.’
‘Define luck, sister.’
Honen Mu glanced up at Rukhsana. Rukhsana’s strong features were almost entirely veiled by her long, blonde hair.
‘That is, I’m afraid, confidential,’ Honen replied.
They had left their respective bands of aides waiting in distant anterooms. At the end of the corridor, a stern Lucifer opened a door and let them into the Lord General’s suite. Namatjira sat on a low couch, with data-slates and furls of reports scattered around him. The thylacene lay at his feet, and he scrunched at its scalp and neck with his fingers, making it tilt its head back and purr. Major General Dev lurked in the background like a reprimanded schoolboy. Lucifer Blacks flanked the room.
Princeps Amon Jeveth was leaving as the uxors arrived, heading back to his Titan legio with a fierce scowl on his face. Colonels Manesh and Pria were standing to attention as they weathered Namatjira’s abuse.
‘Not good enough,’ Namatjira was saying. ‘Not good enough, sirs. Your forces baulked and refused to obey a direct order. I want to see some damn discipline!’
‘Yes, sir,’ they mumbled.
‘Proper damn discipline! You hear me? You hear me? I aim to bring this compliance to a swift and brutal end, and when that end comes, I want your men in at the kill, no questions. I tell you to advance, you advance! Do not fail me the way you did Dev.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Get out of my sight.’
The officers hurried away. The thylacene opened its huge jaws and yawned languidly. Namatjira studied a data-slate one of the Lucifers handed to him, and then looked up.
‘Uxors,’ he smiled. ‘Come close.’
They came forwards, side by side. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I want to build the full picture here. Rukhsana, I’m told you were responsible for reconnaissance and scouting at Mon Lo?’