Sabbat Worlds Anthology

REGICIDE (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

She spoke the words with a knife in her hand and a lie on her lips.

‘Tell me what happened, and I’ll let you live.’

Even if he had nothing else left, he still had his voice. She hadn’t taken his tongue.

‘You know what happened,’ he said.

In the knife’s reflection, he caught a glimpse of what was left of his face. The smile he couldn’t seem to shake was a mess of split lips and bloody gums.

Her face was covered by a carnival mask. Only her eyes showed through, and they didn’t look human.

She said, ‘Do not struggle,’ as if she expected him to actually obey.

Do not struggle. Now there was an amusing idea.

His shins and wrists were leashed together by pulley ropes. It looked like they came from an Imperial Guard tank. Probably his tank, he realised. Either way, there’d be no breaking free in a hurry. Even with her knife in his hands, it would take an age to saw through those ropes.

His head sagged back into the mud and the dust. While his eyes ached too much to see clearly, the sky met his sore gaze with bruises of its own. Choked and grey – heaven promised a storm – but the moon yet showed through cracks in the caul of clouds.

He lay in the rubble, knowing that before this place was a ruin, it was a battlefield, and before it was a battlefield, it was a public marketplace. Apparently something of a pilgrim trap, where relics and icons of dubious validity found their way from sweating hands into bandaged ones; a desperate industry based around hope, fuelled by deceit and copper coins.

He blinked sweat from his aching eyes and wondered where his weapons were.

‘Tell me,’ she came even closer, and the knife turned in the moonlight, ‘what happened on the eighteenth hour of the tenth day.’

Already the words felt like a legend. The eighteenth hour of the tenth day. She whispered it like some sacred date from antiquity, when it was only hours before.

‘You know what happened,’ he said again.

‘Tell me,’ she repeated, feverish in her curiosity, betraying her need.

His smile cracked into something more, promoting itself to a laugh – a laugh that felt good even though it hurt like hell. The sound was made by a punctured lung, flawed by cracked ribs, and left his body through bleeding lips. But it was still a laugh.

She used her knife as she’d been using it for over an hour now: to scrawl letters of pain across his bare chest. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered, ‘what happened.’

He could smell his own blood, rich over the scent of scorched stone. He could see it, trickling falls of red painting his torso below the jagged cuts.

‘You know what happened, witch. You lost the war.’

He was in a different place when he next opened his eyes.

His neck gave protesting twinges as he looked this way and that. The arched doorways, the broken gargoyles littering the floor, the stains of ash marking the pyre-sites of holy books...

This was the Templum Imperialis.

Well. One of them.

Muffled thunder betrayed the presence of distant artillery. Whoever this witch was, she’d barely moved him from the front lines.

He swallowed, but it was too thick and tasted of blood. Fists tightened as he tested the bonds that leashed his wrists to the chair. Nothing. No yield, no slack, and the chair itself was fastened to the floor. He was going nowhere.

‘Stop struggling,’ her voice came from behind. Footsteps echoed in the small chamber as she moved to stand before him. ‘There is no dignity in it.’ Her words were coloured by an ugly, halting accent. She wasn’t just from off-world – she’d barely spoken Gothic in her life.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, and punctuated the demand by spitting blood onto the tiled floor.

She stroked her fingertip along the hideous mask covering her face. ‘I am Blood Pact.’

The words meant nothing to him. Unfortunately, what she did next meant a great deal. With a chuckle from behind the mask, she reached for a weapon sheathed at her hip.

‘Your sword, yes?’

Instinct drove him to test his bonds again. He tried not to look at the blade in her hands – seeing her touch it with her seven-fingered hands made his heart beat faster. He’d preferred it when she’d been holding the knife.

‘That’s better,’ she smiled. ‘It is time to speak some truths.’

‘You’re not going to like anything I say.’ He forced the words through a wall of tight teeth. ‘Drop the sword.’

With her free hand, she stroked his jawline, the gesture gentle, grazing the unshaven skin without scratching it. Her fingernails had crescent-moon bloodstains beneath them, but they were old, from previous inflictions of pain.

‘You want this sword,’ she whispered, ‘and you want to see the colour of my blood as I lie dead upon this floor.’

He didn’t answer. With her free hand, she lowered the black mask that covered half of her face. It was a carnival mask, perversely featured and rendered in dull iron, with a witch’s hook nose and curving chin. The face it revealed was both lovelier and uglier, all at once.

His captor took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of recent battle and burned books.

‘You are one of the Argentum.’ She licked a slow circuit of her black lips, as if tasting the word. Even her smile was tainted. Her face was a canvas of meticulous scars, inflicted by a madman’s hand.

He laughed again, though thirst made the sound ragged and raw.

‘What is amusing?’ she asked, closer to sneering than speaking. ‘You think we cannot recognise the difference between Imperial regiments?’

‘What gave it away?’ He inclined his head to his silver shoulder guard, where the Warmaster’s laurel-wreathed skull was displayed in detailed engraving, and banged his silver vambraces against the back of the chair he was tied to. The same sigil was repeated on each of them, in echo of the Warmaster’s own armour.

Had he been able, he’d have shot her through the eye with his hellgun, which was – assuming it was still in one piece – embossed with silver aquilas on both sides of the stock.

‘Perhaps I dress like this because it’s cold outside,’ he said. ‘All the silver keeps me warm.’

She smiled, as if indulging a spoiled child.

‘You are one of the Argentum.’ He didn’t like how she mouthed the word, like she hungered for it. ‘The Silver Kindred.’ She swallowed, and something wet clicked in her throat. ‘The Warmaster’s Own. How proud you must be.’

He didn’t dignify that with a response.

‘You will tell me what I wish to know,’ she insisted with stately politeness.

‘Never in life.’

Fine words, but they came out badly, slowed by blood-thickened saliva. Throne, he wished she’d put the sword down. The hurt of seeing it in her hands went beyond a matter of personal pride – beyond even regimental honour.

‘We know the customs of the Silver Kindred,’ she said, and her voice was rendered gentler still by the whispering hiss of profane fingertips on sacred steel. ‘To lose your weapon is to betray the Warmaster, isn’t it? It carries the harshest penalty.’

She didn’t wait for an answer, instead drawing the blade from its scabbard. Steel sang in the air as the blade scraped free. He winced, and hated himself for it.

‘This pains you,’ she told him, not quite asking because the answer was so clear. ‘It hurts you to see your blade in enemy hands, doesn’t it?’

Once more, his words were thickened by exhaustion and a bleeding mouth. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

As he spoke, she turned the sword over in her hands, seeking something. There, etched onto the grip: an Imperial eagle of white gold. She smiled at her captive, and spat on the God-Emperor’s sacred symbol. Her saliva hung down in a string, dripping from the sword onto the filthy floor.

His eyes closed, and he imagined his hands slipping through her dark hair, fingers curling to cradle her skull while his thumbs plunged into her slitted eyes. Her screams would be music.

‘Look at me,’ she commanded. ‘There. That’s better.’

She stepped closer. He had one shot at this. One shot.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he promised through the threat of tears. ‘In my Warmaster’s name, I am going to kill you, witch.’

‘Your Warmaster.’ She cast the sword aside without a care. It tumbled across the floor with a clash of abused metal. ‘Your Warmaster is nothing more than crow shit by now. He is as dead as your Emperor, a feast for the carrion-eaters. Now tell me what happened.’

This again.

‘You know what happened,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows.’

‘Tell me what you saw.’ She stepped even closer, the knife in her hand again. He hadn’t seen her draw it. ‘You are one of the Argentum. You were there, so tell me what you saw.’

One shot. Just one. She was close enough now.

The knife’s tip kissed his jawline, stroking along, scratching patterns too soft to break the mud-marked skin. As the blade caressed his lips, she smiled again.

‘Tell me what happened, or you die a piece at a time.’

‘You don’t want to know what happened. You just want to know how he died.’

She trembled. There was no disguising it. The knife pricked his cheek at her lapse of control, and tears drip-dropped – one from the left, one from the right – almost in unison from her fluttering eyelashes. She had to moisten her lips to speak, which she did with a black tongue.

‘How did he die?’

In a traitorous moment, he realised that she was beautiful. Pale, poisonous and corrupt. But beautiful. The corpse of a goddess.

His breath misted on the polished knife blade. ‘He died first. And we killed everyone who came for his body.’ No need to lie when the truth was enough to hurt her. ‘I saw your king die, and we shot every weeping bastard that came to claim his body.’

‘He was not my king. My lord is Gaur, for I am Blood Pact. But Nadzybar was the best of us, nevertheless.’

‘Now,’ the captured Imperial grinned, ‘he’s crow shit.’

The knife lowered in a slackened grip. She didn’t try to hide the spilling tears. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said again. ‘Tell me how the Archon died.’

Their eyes met. His were human, with irises of rich hazel. Hers hadn’t been human in years: mutated, slitted the same way a snake’s eyes are split by black pupil slices – just as disgusting, and just as captivating.

Just one shot at this. One chance.

With his shins leashed together, there was a chance he could hammer a two-booted kick up into her throat, crushing her trachea and damaging her larynx. At the very least, she’d be stunned and muted, preventing an immediate call for aid. At best, she’d die from the trauma of impact, asphyxiating soon after.

One shot. One chance.

He could see it, hear it, feel it. Perhaps he’d miss. Perhaps his boots would smack into her chin, meeting her jawbone with a sick, sharp crack. Her lovely face would snap back on a bent neck, and instead of rising to flee, she’d fall like a puppet with cut strings.

One chance.

Her guard was down, but... not enough. It wasn’t worth the risk.

Not yet.

Bide your time.

His rank was senior sergeant. His regiment was the Argentum: also known as the Silver Kindred, the Warmaster’s Own, and – on the Munitorum rosters – the Khulan 2nd Huscarls, assigned as bodyguards to Slaydo himself.

He wore the same silver shoulder guards and ornate vambraces that the Warmaster wore, for his uniform was a lesser reflection of Slaydo’s own finery. Carried in a scroll case strapped to his thigh was a parchment copy of the 755 Crusade Charter, issued by the High Lords of Terra, granting permission for Imperial forces to declare a crusade into retaking the Sabbat Worlds.

In his webbing, he carried a printed, leather-bound copy of A Treatise on the Nature of Warfare – required reading for command candidates, and the seminal work from the pen of Lord Militant Slaydo, written in the decades before his ascension to Warmaster.

Slaydo knew his first name, and addressed him by it. Familiarity had long begun to erode the boundary between the officer and the soldiers that served him.

‘Commodus,’ the Warmaster would always say in his gruff tones. ‘Still dogging my footsteps, boy? Still keeping up with this old war hound?’

Commodus Ryland, senior sergeant, was not with the Warmaster now, but he was still breathing. He intended to keep it that way.

Bide your time, he thought.

So he said: ‘I’ll tell you.’

And did just that.

‘I have dreamed of this many times, but in my worst nightmares, I did not witness this.’

– Slaydo, Warmaster of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade

History would say all of Balhaut burned that month. For once, these words could be spoken without a poetic simile or a mind to dramatise an event into the pages of Imperial archives.

Day and night, earth and sky, Balhaut burned.

Bal Prime and Boruna Hive, Zaebes City and the Western Plains, the Tark Islands and Ascension Valley. Every critical site on Balhaut endured punishing orbital bombardment, the skies above them alight with the Warmaster’s anger.

Balopolis, the capital city, died in the heart of those flames.

Through sulphur skies, great whale ships breached the ashen cloud cover, gliding groundwards. Each one was fat with armour plating and swollen with legions of troops – Guard carriers, each eager to be the first on the surface and disgorge its soldiers into the Last Battle.

In the years to come, when Balopolis was a shrine-city – a monument to the trillions slain over the Crusade’s course – the memorials for this invasion would paint a glorious picture. Ten days of victory after victory; ten days of unstoppable Imperial advance into Archenemy territory. Wreckage from the Archon’s annihilated fleet rained onto the world below, each hunk of ship’s hull raising cheers in the Imperials that beheld it.

With no capacity to flee the planet’s surface, the enemy leaders barricaded themselves inside their strongholds, legions of loyal followers between them and Slaydo’s landing forces.

By nightfall on the ninth day, Slaydo had driven his bleeding forces into the heart of Balopolis with a crusader’s zeal. His army besieged the High Palace itself, regiment after regiment marching into the wasteland that Balopolis had become. Every record of the Great Victory would describe this in excruciating – and verbose – detail, for Slaydo’s death was only hours away.

Comparatively few records would recall the Warmaster’s face on the morning he met his fate.

‘You look tired, sir.’

In the wake of this observation, the old man scratched at his beard with soot-blackened fingers. His fingernails were darkened by dirt crescents beneath them, and his beard – once a feral red – was now stone grey, dashed with flecks of colour like fading fire.

The old man forced his scarred lips into what passed for a smile. It looked like a gash of mirth slitting his beard.

‘I am tired, boy. It’s what happens when you get old.’ He returned his gaze to the burning skyline, at the ruined cityscape of once-grand Balopolis. Through the devastation rolled a horde of iron beetles – Leman Russ tanks and Basilisk gun platforms of every class. The walls of the High Palace stood cracked and crumbling under the onslaught of entire siege tank companies. Even the air tasted of ash and engine fumes.

‘Not long now,’ he said, and closed his eyes, unsure if he was hearing his heartbeat or the pounding of distant guns.

‘You should rest while you can, Warmaster.’

Slaydo snorted. ‘I’m not ready to call off the hunt yet. What about you, Commodus? Still keeping up with this old war hound?’

The sergeant answered with a grin.

When the palace walls came down, Imperial cheering shook the city.

From his vantage point at the western edge, the Warmaster exhaled a shivering breath. Around him, the Argentum stood proud, hellguns primed and officers exchanging last words with the men.

‘Do you see that?’ the old man asked. The question was to none of them and all of them, and it made the old man smile to say it. ‘Watch how the verminous tide claws its way through the breakages.’

Commodus looked on, squinting through his visor. Battered armoured personnel carriers, scorched tanks, broken squads of men in mismatching armour... all fled through the rents that Imperial guns had hammered through the palace walls. Those Archenemy troopers still outside were falling back for the last time, to stand and fight with their Archon.

‘I’ve heard that rats always flee a sinking ship.’ The old man’s smile was like a bad scar. ‘But these vermin flee into one.’

His hand rested on the pommel of his sheathed sword as he watched the cracked, burning palace ahead – its battlements of white stone tumbling, falling, breathing out clouds of dust as they died.

Around those immense walls, the dead slept in their thousands, a carpet of split flesh and stinking blood punctuated by the graveyards of slain tanks. Slaydo turned away at last, blinking eyes that suddenly stung.

‘What is it, sir?’ asked one of his men.

‘Such bravery,’ the old man almost laughed. ‘Such sacrifice. Hear me well and mark my words. No accounting, no retelling, will ever do these days justice. Balhaut will become a memorial after the victory we’ve bled for here.’ Slaydo brought his gaze back to the razed city streets, and the bodies that blanketed them. There was nowhere else to look. The skies burned. The city was rubble. The dead were everywhere.

‘And what else could it become? We‘ve made a tomb of this world.’ Every one of the Argentum that heard those words also heard the crack in their master’s voice, audible despite the mumble of distant artillery, and the rumbling of engines as the regiment’s silver-painted troop transports idled nearby.

Carron, the squad’s vox-officer, approached with the receiver in hand. The bulky vox-caster backpack strapped over his shoulders hummed in the light rain.

‘Warmaster,’ Carron offered the receiver to the old man. ‘It’s Colonel Helmud of the Pragar.’

Slaydo took the speech-horn. The men smiled at his terrible habit: he cleared his throat loudly while his mouth was next to the vox-mic.

‘Slaydo,’ he said, once he’d spat sooty phlegm onto the ground.

‘It’s Helmud.’ The voice was rasped by bad frequencies. ‘The walls are going down like pieces on a regicide board. We’re ready, Warmaster. This is it. We win Balhaut this day.’

Slaydo didn’t answer. His callused fingers stroked the grip of the blade still sheathed at his hip, and he stared at the urban ruin acting as a mass grave for the loyal dead.

‘Warmaster?’

‘I’m here, colonel.’

‘The Palace will be ours, sir, but for a few thousand lives.’

Slaydo drew his sword for the first time in four hours. Gold flashed as it caught what little light broke through the smoke-choked sky.

‘Start with mine,’ the Warmaster said, and hung up the receiver without waiting for a reply.

His blade fell in a chop, the order to advance. After a brief respite, the Argentum went back to war.

Commodus wasn’t a bad driver, but nor was he a particularly good one.

Vellici, the squad’s previous driver, had got it in the neck the day before – a sniper with a truly evil aim had tagged him through the Chimera’s front vision slit. Commodus and three of the others had buried the body, while the rest of the squad did what they could to clean up the tank’s interior. Vellici seemed to have a lot of blood, not uncommon in a man as big as he was. Sadly, at the end, it had all been on the wrong side of his skin.

Behind the driver’s seat, a ladder let up to the gun turret. The old man stood up there, peering from the open hatch with tired eyes. The men had commented on this many times before, citing that he was making himself an easy target.

The old man always replied the same way. This tank is festooned with flags, beribboned with honour markings, and as silver as Luna’s smiling face. If the enemy want me dead, they already know where to shoot.

Hard to argue with that.

Commodus drove the Chimera up an incline of rubble. Something – metal on metal – passed under the tank’s hull with a sickening grind.

‘Don’t ask,’ Commodus called back to the others, ‘because I don’t know.’

The old man leaned back down into the dim, sweat-smelling interior. ‘It was wreckage,’ he said. ‘Leman Russ. One of theirs.’

Commodus trundled on through the palace grounds, tank treads crunching over rubble. What was once an immense botanical garden stretched out in all directions, blackened and starved. The palace’s cracked battlements rose ahead, while around them was nothing but a sea of advancing Imperial troop carriers.

A shot clanked against the hull, making every man tense.

‘We’re in range,’ said Yael, in the back.

‘Thanks, genius,’ said one of the others.

The shot was the first of many. Hailstone-loud, the others started arriving moments later.

The turret hatch slammed closed, and the old man descended the ladder with a cackle.

‘First in, my boys,’ he grinned as he primed his laspistol. ‘And last out. Let’s win this war.’

Commodus laughed, even under fire. ‘Good to see you back, sir.’

The old man’s eyes gleamed. ‘He’s close now, my boy. I can smell him.’

The Chimeras skidded to halts, churning the garden’s soil beneath their tracks.

Ramps crashed down. Men ran from the scorched and battered hulls of their transports, seeking cover in the statuary and rockeries of the botanical garden. Getting through the outer walls had been simple enough. Now came the true test: fighting chamber to chamber, hallway to hallway, into the palace’s heart.

Time to abandon the tanks, then.

Commodus hunched into cover behind the statue of an angel with its face shot off. Thirty metres away, his Chimera leapt into the air, performing a tortured half-spin, before its left track exploded along with half the hull. Steel rained down around him, clanging off already-broken angels and breaking several more.

More rockets streaked down from balconies and windows above, inflicting similar punishment on the Imperial Guard tanks clustered in the garden. One of the Warmaster’s flags, emblazoned with the laurel-wreathed skull he wore as a personal emblem, fluttered down to drape itself over the head of a nearby angel, hiding its face like a funeral shroud.

Commodus didn’t exactly find the comparison touching.

Next to him, breathing in something between a laugh and a wheeze, Yael clutched his hellgun tight to his chest.

‘I’ll miss our tank,’ he said.

Commodus ignored the weak attempt at humour. ‘I counted seven emplacements on balconies. The Emperor only knows how many of the bastards are squatted at windows up there. I got to twenty before it was too dangerous to keep looking.’

‘Should’ve counted faster, sarge.’

‘Funny.’ Commodus tightened his vambrace. ‘Voxing for Vulture support is going to be like pissing into the wind, isn’t it?’

‘Into a storm, more like.’ Yael raised his head, and his rifle, between the angel’s stone wings. ‘No saviours from the sky are coming to blast us out of this one for a while yet.’

Commodus hunched lower as a solid shot cracked off the angel’s shoulder. He blinked stone dust from his eyes. This was going nowhere.

‘Where’s Carron?’ he asked.

Yael snapped off a shot. His hellgun whined for the half-second it took to power up, and spat a spear of hissing energy skywards. Both men heard the scream as one of the red-clad enemy soldiers toppled from the window above. The panicked shout ended with a wet smack. Something that had once been human was smeared across the stone tiles.

Yael sniggered. ‘He won’t be going home to his mother’s farm.’

Commodus was still scanning the view from ground-level. ‘I said where’s Carron?’

‘Not a clue, sarge. No, wait – there he is. Pinned down behind the primarch.’

‘The primarch’ was a statue of a robed figure, towering above all others around it, depicting one of the Emperor’s blessed sons. In better days, it had doubtless been a beautiful piece. The weeks it had suffered under the tender mercies of the Archenemy invaders had not been kind. It now stood deprived of one arm, its face annihilated by hammers, and fresh bullet-scars appearing on its stone flesh with each moment.

With several of the Argentum using it as cover, it was drawing a withering hail of fire from above.

Carron crouched beneath the statue’s plinth, firing up at the walls with his pistol.

‘I see him,’ said Commodus. ‘Not a good place to hide.’

‘Not at all,’ Yael agreed.

Carron rose up to take another shot. He was immediately lanced by three separate snipers. The first shot was enough to kill him outright, blowing mess from the back of his head before it even snapped his neck back. Carron collapsed in a heap that didn’t even twitch.

‘Dead at Rogal Dorn’s feet,’ Yael remarked. ‘Now there’s an honour not many can claim.’

Commodus added his fire to Yael’s, shooting up at the windows. ‘That’s Guilliman,’ he said. Another body turned end-over-end as it fell from above.

‘How do you know it’s Guilliman?’

Apparently, their return fire was drawing notice. A spray of solid slugs cracked around them, defacing their angelic protector all the more. Both Yael and Commodus ducked, using the respite to recharge their weapons.

‘Are you blind? It’s holding a book in its hand.’

Yael recharged first. He cracked off a shot in the direction their most recent attackers were firing from. ‘So? I’m sure Rogal Dorn could read, sarge.’

‘It’s the Adeptus Astartes holy book.’ Throne, what an idiot. ‘The one with all their laws.’

‘If you say so.’ Yael didn’t stop firing. ‘Always hated mythology classes.’

Another of their squad hunkered down into hiding with them, breathless from the sprint into cover.

‘Grunner,’ both of them greeted him. He looked as tired as Commodus felt, all sickly and hollow-eyed. When he reloaded, it was with clumsy hands.

‘Shit, why are you two so happy?’

‘Born this way,’ Yael replied, still shooting up at the balconies.

Commodus answered with a question of his own. ‘You tired, Grunner?’

‘Been a long week, sarge.’ Grunner forced a smile onto a face lined by middle-age, too many close calls, and one hell of a sleep debt. ‘All over soon, though. Even the old man says so.’

Commodus nodded. The old man knew best.

Vulture air support arrived almost two hours later, and annihilated the western face of the Golcir Battlement with strafing runs and rocket barrages. The Argentum had been pinned the entire time, taking casualties from the Archenemy’s last-ditch efforts – with no way to advance, and suicide to retreat. Such was the price paid by the Slaydo’s Own for ‘first in, last out’.

Each man and woman in the uniform was a veteran storm-trooper, hand-chosen by the Warmaster himself. With grenade and hellgun, every soldier accounted for themselves, raking the windows and walls with unrelenting firepower. Bodies tumbled and toppled from their gun-nests, though more of the ragged enemy took the places of the fallen. Resistance was forever fed from the garrison within.

On beast-loud engines with turbines sucking in air, the Vulture gunships banked over the battlements to unleash their payloads. The horrendous fire being spat down at the Argentum ceased, hurling itself into the skies to repel this newest threat. Seven gunships died, hulls burning and spinning, only to hammer into the same walls and rooftops they were already attacking. Even in death, they still served.

When the wall came down in an avalanche of dead soldiers, gunship wreckage and powdered rubble, Yael was one of the first to make a break for the opening.

Commodus remained where he was for long enough to close Grunner’s lifeless eyes. Only then did he scramble up from cover, picking his way through the ravaged botanical garden, stepping over the bodies of his brothers and sisters – and the twisted remains of those they’d killed.

One of the dust-covered Argentum corpses grasped at his boot with a bleeding hand.

Commodus went to his knees, rolling the body over. Not only was it not dead, it also wasn’t one of the Argentum.

‘Commodus...’ the old man said, ‘don’t leave me here.’

A voice that had bellowed orders on hundreds of battlefields now left Slaydo’s cracked lips as a strained whisper.

With the walls down, it was difficult to see through the dust. Commodus cleaned the Warmaster’s face with trickles of lukewarm water from his canteen. Little blood showed through the filth on his uniform, but the whistling rasp in Slaydo’s breathing told enough of a tale.

The sergeant lifted Slaydo’s silver breastplate, and there it was. A knife-sliver of sharp rock, stabbed into the old man’s stomach. A chance thing; no doubt ricocheted from the ground as the walls tumbled down.

Commodus was already drawing breath to shout for a medic when a fierce claw latched onto his wrist with a talon’s grip.

‘Don’t you dare,’ hissed the old man. ’Think of morale, you fool. We’re inside now. It’s almost over. Now shut your mouth and bind that wound, or... or I’ll find a new senior sergeant.’

Commodus spoke as he obeyed. As soon as the rock shard came free, blood followed in an eager flow. ‘This is straining your heart,’ the sergeant said. ‘The trauma first, and the blood loss will–’

Warmaster Slaydo spat dust onto the grass, his lined face the very picture of impatience. ‘I like you, my boy, but you’ve always talked too much. Now tighten it up, and get me to my feet.’

‘Sir, you need to–’

Defiance gave the blow strength, and the sergeant flinched back as Slaydo’s backhand crashed against the side of his helmet.

‘I need to finish the hunt, Commodus. And so do you. Now get me to my feet.’

The Warmaster’s weary stagger soon became a lurching walk, then a subtle limp, and then nothing more than clenched teeth and a shine in his eyes. Spite and defiance drove him on where the pain should have driven him to his knees. Better than any of the memorials to come when this day was done, these hours exemplified Slaydo’s life in the eyes of the men and women serving him.

In his hand was Liberatus, the silver-wrought sabre granted to him by the High Lords of Terra at the Crusade’s commencement. With it, he carved down the enemy when he could reach them, and pointed the blade to aim the Argentum’s weapons when he couldn’t.

The palace’s corridors, once the halls of the reverent and decadent alike, had fallen into disgusting disrepair during the Archon’s occupation. The Imperials battled through ruined halls that reeked of piss, great corridors once home to works of religious art, used as latrines by the Archenemy’s forces and populated by wreckage where statues once stood.

Slaydo’s voice grew stronger with every step he took. Blood ran from the curved blade at his side and his eyes glittered, as though he stared at sights unseen by any of his men.

‘Clear,’ Commodus called to the seven Argentum troopers with him. At the other end of the corridor, which had once housed masterpiece landscape paintings from twelve other worlds, the last enemy soldier fell dead.

‘Good shot, sarge,’ said Yael. Commodus had nailed the bastard in the throat from at least seventy metres away. ‘If you’d been doing that the whole time, we’d be done by now.’

The sergeant just nodded, his usual banter nowhere in evidence.

‘The stairs ahead lead up to the Western Palisade battlements,’ Commodus said to the Warmaster. ‘Or we can move around to the Central Cloister, cutting left through the servants’ passages.’

‘The Palisade,’ Slaydo ordered. ‘He will be seeking us, just as we seek him. No retreat now. No flight off-world. He knows this is the end.’

‘Are you s–’

‘The Palisade.’ The Warmaster raised his sabre high, as if declaring a cavalry charge from antiquity. ‘It happens under the open sky. She told me herself. It’s time to end this.’

The eighteenth hour of the tenth day, and the Western Palisade reached out for a kilometre – a wide rampart of gun emplacements, dead bodies and annihilated walkways along the palace walls. The bombing had taken its toll here, as had long-range shelling from Imperial artillery.

Rain slashed down in a torrent, the kind of cold downpour that so easily penetrated clothing to leave skin feeling greasy. Slaydo advanced along the stone battlements, Liberatus in an ungloved hand, the elegant gold etching along the silver blade turned to flickering amber as it reflected the burning city below. The coiled engravings shimmered in the caught firelight, weaving like serpents along the steel.

‘I was so certain,’ the old man whispered. ‘So very sure.’

The Argentum storm troopers fanned out around him, powered backpacks buzzing in the rainfall, hellguns thrumming in ready hands. Several squads had linked together in the last advance. Commodus stayed at the Warmaster’s side.

‘They’re all dead up here, sir.’ He kept his voice neutral, masking both disappointment and concern.

‘I was so very certain,’ the old man repeated. Slaydo looked out over the razed city, then down the long rampart with its population of broken weapons batteries and slaughtered enemy soldiers. ‘She told me it would end like this, you know. In the rain.’

Commodus cast a worried glance at the others. The Warmaster leaned against an unbroken section of wall and took a shuddering breath. ‘I’m tired now,’ he said. ‘And I ache like you wouldn’t believe.’

The sergeant had seen the wound now eating at the old man’s life, so he could indeed believe it. Gut wounds killed slowly, but they killed with a vengeance. The Warmaster would never leave Balhaut unless he fell back to proper medicae facilities soon.

‘What are your orders, my Warmaster?’ asked Trejus, a sergeant from another Argentum squad. Commodus waved him away.

Slaydo wasn’t listening, anyway. The fight had bled from him. In a palsied hand, he clutched a small bronze relic formed into the shape of a young woman. The figurine was no larger than a finger, and the old man’s knuckles whitened around it in his fervency.

‘Not like this.’ He hissed the words as he stared at Balopolis in flames. The fires raged through the parts of the city still standing, savage enough to resist the rainfall.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rain. Liberatus steamed as water hissed against the live blade.

‘Gunfire,’ said Commodus behind him.

‘Contact, contact,’ Argentum troopers were calling to each other. ‘There, contact, dead ahead.’

Slaydo turned in time to see his most loyal bodyguards raise their weapons and stream beams of energy down the ramparts. A raw, roughshod pack of robed figures was emerging from an arched tower doorway, moving onto the battlements, returning the welcome with lasguns and solid-slug rifles of their own.

Three of the Argentum were punched from their feet by the first barrage, where they died with faces upturned to the oily rain. The others scrambled for cover, laying down a curtain of fire that ripped through the mob’s ranks.

Slaydo saw none of this. He saw only that the mob of enemy warriors – clad as priests and worshippers rather than soldiers – were led by a creature that may once, perhaps, have been human.

A toothless, howling maw opened far too wide in a face flayed down to bare muscle and bone. It saw the old man and screamed, birthing a hundred voices from its rippling throat.

How it saw him, he didn’t know. The creature had no eyes in its empty sockets – no eyes in any of its three faces, all of them howling, bellowing wordless bile through their cavernous jaws. Fingers with too many joints grasped at the air in twitching need, and the thing broke into a disgusting run on legs that seemed too scarecrow-frail to support it.

All three faces kept shrieking as it sprinted through the rain.

Slaydo surprised his men by bursting out into raucous, genuine laughter. He shouted an oath to the Emperor and His beloved Saint Sabbat, and ran towards the daemon that seemed to breathe by howling.

‘Sir!’ Commodus cried out. ‘Sir!’ The old man didn’t even look back.

After a decade of crusading across conquered worlds and billions of lost lives, the Warmaster and the Archon met at last on Balhaut, in the eighteenth hour of the tenth day.

Everyone held their fire.

The old man and the robed creature met between the warring sides, their blades clashing and sparking as they cut against each other. There was no hesitation, no careful assessment of the opponent’s fighting style; the human and the once-man hurled themselves at one another with no thought beyond seeing a nemesis finally dead.

Several Argentum soldiers, Commodus among them, tracked the battle through their gunsights. Each one ached for the chance to take one clear shot, while the mob of enemy soldiers bayed and whined like frightened dogs – some chanting, some weeping, some merely panicking. None raised their weapons, as if even risking to aim in their master’s direction was some great sin.

‘I can hit the son of a bitch,’ Yael murmured, staring through his targeter. ‘I swear I can.’

Commodus was certain he could, too. But he still ordered ‘Don’t,’ in a quiet voice. ‘Don’t risk it.’

‘Is that him?’ one of the others asked. ‘That thing is the Archon?’

The Imperials watched the skinless creature lashing at the old man with a sword that moved too fast to betray any detail. Its robes were a beggar’s rags, streaming from its skeletal body in the wind and rain. Exposed veins formed webways of tension along its flayed limbs and three skinned faces. Worst of all was the way it moved – with something insectile in its jerking grace, limbs with too many joints lashing out like a praying mantis.

The old man had never looked more alive. Age forced him to block blows rather than duck them or weave aside, and sweat beaded his flushed face, while mist left his panting mouth. And yet, he exuded vitality in a way none of them had seen since before Balhaut began. Throne, he was even laughing.

The creature that called itself Nadzybar snapped its seven-fingered hand at Slaydo’s throat, gripping for long enough to hurl the old man off-balance. Its serrated blade sliced out below Liberatus, tearing across Slaydo’s thigh and ripping silvered armour plating clear, scattering it over the stones.

The old man sagged and struck back, favouring his injured leg. As he doubled his efforts, his blood wasted no time, escaping from his body in a flooding stain down his thigh. ‘Femoral artery,’ said Yael softly. ‘Shit, this’ll be over fast.’

‘Stand your ground!’ Slaydo called back to them. He couldn’t spare them a moment’s glance, such was the Archon’s ferocity. ‘I am the Emperor’s will! I am the sword of His Blessed Saint!’

Sparks lit up their faces as both man and monster duelled in the midst of their men. Both blades glowed a dull orange as they heated up, their crackling power fields abused almost to breaking point.

‘Fix bayonets,’ Commodus ordered. ‘To hell with this, I’m not going to stand here and watch him die.’

Before the Argentum could even draw close, Nadzybar let fall the blow that would end the Warmaster’s life.

With a three-mouthed howl, the creature hacked its serrated sword into Slaydo’s side. The old man breathed blood through his slack lips, almost vomiting redness onto his uniform.

‘Kill it!’ Commodus screamed, and broke into a run, his hellgun lowered like a lance, tipped by his silver bayonet. Nadzybar was stroking Slaydo’s features with its long fingers, nail-less fingertips running over the old man’s lips and unshaven jawline. As it stroked the dying man, a breathless, wheezing purr rumbled from its open maws.

It turned to regard the Argentum as they charged, staring sightlessly with its three faces. It still didn’t release the old man from its possessive, gentle grip.

Worshippers streamed past the Archon, flooding either side of the creature, screaming and stabbing with spears made from furniture, shooting at close range with stolen rifles. The Archenemy’s forces were down to the very dregs.

Yael swore as a spear-tip gashed open his cheek and ripped his helmet free. He killed his attacker with a hell-round to the face, and followed up by ramming his bayonet into the next cultist’s throat. Commodus, similarly engaged, spat blood and lost a tooth, hewing left and right with his rifle, clubbing the scum from their feet and letting his squadmates stab them as they lay prone.

He managed a single glance through the melee, seeking out the Warmaster.

The momentary glance tore laughter from his lips, and he screamed something that was almost a cheer.

Slaydo ended the embrace when he pulled his sword from the monster’s stomach. The creature’s fingers left his rain-wet face, twitching in the air before Slaydo’s eyes.

Organs, blackened by cancer, slipped through the tear in Nadzybar’s belly, flopping to the stone floor in puddles of bloody juice. Ropes of intestinal tract looped out in sloppy pursuit.

Nadzybar licked at its lipless maws, trembling, sinking to its knees.

The old man’s blood-scented breath washed over the Archon’s faces as Slaydo rested Liberatus on the creature’s skinny neck. Consecrated steel kissed pale, quivering flesh.

It was a trial just to speak, but the old man managed three words.

‘For.

The.

Emperor.’

The holy blade chopped once. Flesh parted with vicious ease, releasing a torrent of stinking black blood.

Nadzybar, the great Archon – fell to the ground. Its head rolled the other way, tumbling under the boots of its worshippers.

Before the body was even still, the old man let his sword fall from strengthless fingers, and roared up at the raining sky.

His triumphant cry was answered, but not by his men.

The Archon fell, and the ragged worshippers lost their minds.

Many collapsed where they were, weeping and screaming, tearing at their hair and beating at their scabrous flesh. These were easy prey for Argentum guns, and they died on their knees, joining their master in whatever hell was reserved for the blackest of heresies. Others abandoned their melee with the Imperials, shrieking in secret languages as they ran for the staggering figure of the Warmaster. With knives and fists they fell upon him, dragging him down, and their bloodied daggers rose and fell for those precious, fevered moments before the Argentum could butcher every living being not wearing their colours.

Commodus was the one to drag the last cultist clear. He kicked her against the battlement wall, broke her jaw with the butt of his rifle, and ploughed three shots into her head.

Nothing remained above her shoulders. Lacking a face to spit into, he spat onto the medallion she wore: an emblem of the Archon’s three faces in crude brass.

‘Clear,’ he shouted.

Commodus turned as the Warmaster called his name.

Slaydo lay where he’d fallen, his uniform dyed with blood, most of which was his own.

‘It’s done,’ he said. The smile curving his lips was sincere, and his voice remained strong.

‘It’s done, my Warmaster,’ said Commodus. He could still hear gunfire across the palace, some of it drawing closer, and he looked away long enough to wipe his eyes. ‘We have to get you out of here.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he huffed. ‘Come on, then. Stop standing there crying like schoolchildren, and help an old man to his feet.’

‘Make a stretcher,’ the sergeant ordered Yael. ‘Out of whatever you can.’

‘Don’t you dare obey that order, Yael.’ The Warmaster rose on shaking legs, aided by those nearest to him. ‘I may be dying, but I’m not lazy. I’ll march out of here on two feet, like the Saint herself intended for me.’

Yael and Tiri supported the old man, keeping him between them as they walked. True enough, he walked with them, rather than letting them carry him.

‘Carry my sword, Commodus. There’s a useful fellow.’

‘Yes, my Warmaster.’

The building trembled in sympathy with the distant artillery.

The masked woman was unashamed of her tears – or at least felt no shame in silently crying before one such as him. She remained before him for the entire retelling, never interrupting; not to offer him water when his voiced cracked, nor to ask for any clarification. She stood above him the whole time with the knife in her hand.

‘That’s what happened,’ said Commodus. ‘That’s how your king died.’

The hook-nosed carnival mask leered in exaggerated mirth. ‘He was not my king. I am Blood Pact. I serve Gaur. But Nadzybar was the finest of us all, and I will mourn him for the rest of my nights.’

‘He looked far from fine when I saw him last.’

She didn’t seem insulted. ‘It grieves me that anyone witnessed him at his panicked, hopeless end. But the Powers willed it, else it would never have come to pass.’

Commodus swallowed, trying to moisten his sore throat. ‘You know the rest. The battles in the palace. The Argentum rearguard. The Warmaster escaping.’

‘Yes.’ She came lower now, back to the half-crouching position when, last time, she’d cut into him with the dagger. ‘I expect you believed yourself valiant, didn’t you? To delay us, so a decrepit and dying man could escape with your brothers and sisters.’

Commodus was not a vain man, but if that wasn’t something he could be proud of, he didn’t know what else could be.

‘I have one question,’ she asked, and he knew she was smiling behind the mask. ‘What happened to your friend? Yael?’

‘He was in the rearguard, next to me. I know he was hit, but I don’t know how badly. All I know is that he killed four of you.’

She leaned closer, pressing the knife blade to his throat. Here it is, he thought. Here we go.

But she didn’t kill him. She blinked, her eyes flicking to the dagger in her own hand. ‘Wait,’ the masked woman whispered. ‘You carried the Warmaster’s sword. You mean... your sword...’

Commodus grinned into her face. ‘Throne, you are one slow bitch.’

She turned to glance at the ornate sword she’d cast aside before. The sword she’d believed was his.

It was all the distraction he needed.

His boots thudded up between her legs, striking with the strength he’d been saving for half an hour, then powered into her lower stomach, sending her sprawling backwards into the table. He rose to his feet, still tied to the wooden chair, and launched after her in the most frantic hop – surely ludicrous to see, if anyone had been looking.

He drop-kicked her as she was picking herself up, both boots smacking into her face, breaking her cheek, her nose, and her freak-show witch-face mask. The chair crumbled beneath him as he crashed down, various jagged wooden limbs wrenching into his spine and shoulders. His wrists were still leashed behind his back, but that didn’t matter. He was free enough now.

Commodus was on her as she moaned on the floor, his knee slamming down into her throat, crushing any hope of breath. The woman’s slitted eyes were wide in her purpling face as she clawed at his thighs and chest, raking at the exposed wounds. Commodus breathed in agonised hisses, not letting up the pressure for a moment.

‘Should’ve called for help when you had the chance,’ he said.

She kicked ineffectually at his back, and hammered increasingly weak punches at his front. Her face was blue now. Commodus grunted and pushed harder. Vertebrae in her neck gave muted, snapping clicks as the pressure increased.

At last, she fell limp.

The sergeant stayed where he was for another thirty heartbeats, making certain she was never getting up again.

Several minutes later, after an ungainly performance of freeing himself from the tank cable bindings, Commodus picked up Liberatus from the floor and pulled the exquisite sabre from its plain leather sheath.

Lightning ran the length of the curved blade as he thumbed the activation rune.

‘Pleasure talking to you,’ he said to the woman’s corpse, and took one look at the chamber’s only door, before promptly leaving through the broken window.

As escapes went, it was hardly graceful. She’d cut him up good, and his injuries put paid to any attempt to bolt with decent speed.

Commodus leaned into a staggering run, spit running from his clenched teeth, swallowing the pain with each breath. Below the chest, his uniform was dyed red in the places it wasn’t completely shredded. Dozens of cuts ran down his legs. The insides of his boots were hot and squelching, and it wasn’t with sweat.

Blood loss would take him down soon; so the witch would kill him with her knife, after all.

More than once, Commodus went down on all fours, scrambling over rubble in a bid to keep moving no matter how often he lost his balance. The city around him was in absolute ruin – a levelled wreckage of shattered buildings and broken roadways. The palace, ostensibly retaken by the Imperials hours before, loomed to the south. Half of it still burned behind fallen walls. The witch and her friends really hadn’t dragged him far.

He’d made it almost five minutes away before las-rounds started dogging at his heels and slashing past his shoulders.

The sergeant hurled himself behind the closest rise of rubble, the Warmaster’s sword gripped in the hand without half its fingers broken, and stole a look to see who his pursuers were.

Two of them, running over the wasteland, firing from the hip. They wore the same grotesques as the witch had worn – those hook-nosed carnival face masks leered in metallic delight – and came clad in the same scarlet uniforms.

Blood Pact.

He hoped there weren’t many more of these malicious bastards out there. Were they some newly founded cult? An enemy regiment they’d not crossed paths with before?

Whatever they were, he certainly couldn’t survive another one of their knifey-knifey interrogation sessions.

Commodus sank down into the dusty rocks and started crawling. If he couldn’t run, it was time to hide.

The first red-clad soldier passed through the ruins of what had been a museum only three days before. He entered with his rifle up to his cheek, aiming into corners and at chunks of rubble each time he heard a noise. Perfect movement, keen senses. Head high, ready to fire.

And completely missing the faint trail of blood on the floor.

When he passed another slab of fallen masonry, a sabre lashed out from beneath and cleaved through both his shins. He went down firing, hitting nothing, and died a moment later when the sword of Warmaster Slaydo chopped through his neck in one clean blow.

Blood sizzled and turned crispy black as it burned on the energised blade.

One down. One to go.

Commodus pulled himself clear, cursing at the cramp taking over his left leg. It made a bad limp even worse, and even availing himself of the dead Blood Pact’s lasgun didn’t bring a smile to his face.

In a game of cat and mouse, when one side was reduced to dragging himself through the dust, the evidence started to rack up for just who would be playing the rodent. Commodus hauled himself over to a pillar, leaning his back against what was left of it. His assets were a stolen lasrifle – half-empty – that smelled a little like an open coffin, and one of the finest, most potent power weapons in the Imperium of Man.

Working against him was the fact that the other Blood Pact soldier almost definitely knew where he was – even if his slain fellow hadn’t had the chance to scream, he’d still fired a fair few shots as he went down – and the equally troubling fact that Commodus was slowly but surely bleeding to death.

Good odds, Yael would’ve joked. But Yael was probably dead, too.

The sergeant blinked to clear his blurring vision. It worked on the third try.

Stand up, he thought. Just stand up first.

Commodus buckled the old man’s weapon belt around his waist, used the pillar for support to lift himself to his feet, and gripped his new rifle.

Now get the hell out of here.

He made it another two minutes before his pursuer tracked him down.

By this point, Commodus could barely breathe with his mouth and throat so dry, and blinking did nothing to stop his vision from swimming.

Something clattered to the ground. He could still feel the lasgun’s weight in his sore arms, so it must’ve been the sword. Or a piece of his armour, perhaps. It didn’t really matter.

‘Eshek gai tragir,’ barked the Blood Pact, from behind him. ‘Eshek gai tragir kal-kasakh!’

Commodus turned, seeing a red smear against a grey haze background.

‘I don’t speak...’

Wait, what language is that?

‘Eshek gai tragir!’ the Blood Pact yelled again.

‘I don’t speak... Evil,’ Commodus said, and started laughing.

He raised his weapon, but his hands moved like he was underwater. He heard the Blood Pact’s rifle crack once, and the red smear moved in a blur.

He felt himself falling a moment later. There was no change in the pain, no amplifying of the agony he already felt. They’d carved him to pieces already. Shooting him wouldn’t change a damn thing.

More gunfire rang out. More voices bleated. Commodus wiped his eyes, but couldn’t see a thing through them. Not that there was much to see, anyway. They’d levelled this beautiful city. Life at the Warmaster’s side, that was. Life in the Guard. Kill a whole world to break one viper’s back.

By the Saint’s sacred arse, he was tired. Dimly, he wondered where he’d been shot. Everywhere hurt as much as everywhere else.

This is what dying feels like. This is what the old man had fought through, right to the end.

Tough old bastard.

He was on all fours when the Blood Pact descended upon him. Their hands grabbed at his ripped clothes, taking his weight, lifting him to his feet, asking if he could hold on a little longer, and saying his name.

‘I don’t speak Evil,’ he murmured again, and collapsed into Yael’s arms.

‘Senior Sergeant Commodus Ryland,’ called the voice.

‘You can go in,’ said the immaculately clad bodyguard. Commodus did just that, though his limp made it slow going.

When he’d first woken up that morning, the sawbones had threatened to have away with his leg.

‘Take the leg,’ Commodus had said, still flying high and grinning hard from the pain-inhibitors, ‘and I’ll shoot your balls off.’

He limped through the open doorway now, hoping his leg really would start to bend again soon.

Inside the Warmaster’s tent, twenty officers in a variety of uniforms stood around a central table that seemed to be drowning in print-papers. Commodus made no eye contact with any of the brass, and stole a glance at one of the paper scrolls that’d fallen onto the floor.

A casualty list, from the Hyrkan 8th.

He glanced at the table again. Throne, these were the casualties of the last two weeks. A forest must’ve been slain to make that much paper.

‘Commodus Ryland?’ asked the same nasal voice that had called him in. ‘I believe you have something to present to me.’

‘Yes, my Warmaster.’

In a smooth motion, he offered the beautiful, fresh-cleaned sword out, hilt-first. Even leaning forwards like this made the healing muscles in his back catch fire. He trembled as he offered the blade, feeling his leg begin to go.

A hand gloved in white lifted Slaydo’s sword from his grip. It was all he could do not to reach for it and steal it back.

‘Yes, yes,’ the sword’s new owner trilled. ‘Lovely weapon. Served the old man well. My thanks, sergeant. You did gloriously.’

Commodus stood straight and saluted. He still avoided the Warmaster’s eyes, instead fixing his gaze on the man’s silver-white breastplate that encased a physique edging into portly.

‘Thank you, my Warmaster.’

‘I may have something for you in the future, to recognise your valour in the field. You’re dismissed for now, sergeant.’

He saluted again, and turned to limp out.

‘Ryland?’ The Warmaster seemed to voice his name through a nasal sneer. ‘I’ve not seen your report yet. Those traitors in the ruins, sergeant – what did they call themselves?’

‘Blood Pact, my Warmaster.’

‘Ah, yes, that’s it. Thank you.’ Macaroth, heir to Slaydo, Warmaster of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, turned back to his command staff.

‘Blood Pact,’ he said to them. ‘I do not like the sound of that at all.’