Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds Page 16

  ‘Such subterfuge is not our way,’ Anvindr had said, trying not to let defiance slip into his voice. He kept his head low, avoiding Haakan’s gaze.

  The jarl had let out a low growl, a threat that kept Anvindr’s head down.

  ‘Our ways are our ways,’ spat Haakan. ‘We have our own honour and our own code, and we pity and hate those mortals and others who live by lesser creeds. But the Inquisition is an instrument of the Emperor, also. They have their own codes that are not ours, but to live with honour we follow their orders nonetheless. Go, take your doubt and crush it as you would any enemy.’

  ‘I recognise my failing,’ Anvindr had said as he crossed to leave. ‘And will be sure to correct it.’

  ‘You do that, Anvindr Godrichsson,’ Haakan had said. ‘And remember that, should we be led astray by another’s foolish whims… Well, the Emperor’s will has a way of correcting that, too.’

  Those had been dangerous words for even a jarl to utter, and they were the one part of the conversation Anvindr had not repeated to his pack. Sitting staring into the fire, those words calmed Anvindr’s silent rage a little, the slim promise that Pranix might face a reckoning still.

  Following the sacking of Rubicon, the temple to the Emperor had been desecrated in the vilest ways, its statues and shrines smashed and befouled, blood and other fluids smeared across every surface, dried to a crust over the weeks since then.

  Anto had made it his home on Laghast. The inversion of the sacred space’s purpose, smashing its symbols and reconsecrating it to his own gods, pleased the sorcerer. This blasphemy against the Corpse-Emperor, the false god who Anto had long rejected even before Huron’s conversion, made the temple a perfect ritual place.

  Fresh blood had been spilt, straight from the veins of many members of the Ecclesiarchy captured for just this purpose, flowing through grooves Anto had personally, painstakingly chiselled into the stone floor. Incense burned in the Cup of Blessings.

  Anto sat in the centre of the blood-symbol, the cup before him, its smoke rising to his nostrils. Huron knew his purpose, and would not disturb him in his meditations. No one else would dare try while he was on the Tyrant’s business.

  He breathed deeply, loosening his mind’s connection with physical bonds, not to drift but to move with purpose, his consciousness reaching out, pushing through the Archway and the Archways beyond, reaching out across worlds, trying to make contact.

  Kretschman watched as the system governor showed Pranix and the Space Wolves the pride of his war room, the great maps of the Hollow Worlds of Lastrati, placed across seven tables, the latest reported forces represented by models scattered across each map. Red Corsairs units had spread out from Laghast, through the Archway to Kerresh. From there they had advanced on Kerresh’s Archway to Hacasta.

  ‘The Archenemy have spread far,’ said the leader of the Space Wolves, looming over the maps. Pranix had introduced him as Wolf Lord Haakan of the Skull Wolves, and his voice was a deep bass rumble, weary with years. His beard was whiter than those of the other Space Wolves, his lower face extended into something closer to a muzzle, and heavy fangs filled his mouth.

  ‘It is worse than I expected,’ said Pranix. ‘Did the Cadians close the Archway between Laghast and Kerresh?’

  He looked directly at Kretschman as he asked the question, but it was Cheng who answered.

  ‘They did, my lord, but the traitors reopened the Archway within weeks,’ said the system governor. ‘Our forces had prepared a pre-emptive strike to retake the Archway when it opened, but it was crushed.’

  Lord Haakan growled contemptuously. ‘And now they run amok across the system,’ the Wolf Lord spat.

  ‘The Cadian Three Hundred and First have made sporadic guerrilla attacks to slow the enemy’s advance, my lord,’ said Cheng, with the tone of a man feeling the rope tighten around his neck.

  ‘Fascinating, such fine detail,’ said Pranix, picking up a model of a Red Corsair representing a sighting of a Red Corsairs unit, examining it closely then putting it down exactly where he found it on the map of Kerresh. Then he turned to the two lords, the system governor and the Wolf Lord. ‘Let us not dwell on existing defeats, but on how to reverse them.’

  This seemed to cast the Wolf Lord into deep thought, his grey eyes distant as he stroked his beard with one gauntleted hand, surveying the maps.

  ‘This world, Hacasta, is gateway to the others,’ Haakan said. ‘Once taken, they will have access to your throne world, and the whole system. How close are they?’

  ‘We believe the traitors have taken the Hacastan Archway and made advances into Hacasta, my lord,’ said Cheng. ‘But only in the last two days–’

  The Wolf Lord silenced him with a glance from his golden eyes.

  ‘Inquisitor, your ordo has studied the traitor Huron Blackheart,’ said Haakan, his words sounding more like an accusation than a simple statement. ‘Where will he strike?’

  If Pranix was troubled by Haakan’s tone, he concealed it well.

  ‘Blackheart seeks power and conquest,’ he said. ‘He will wish to capture Ressial, the throne world. These Traitor Marines may seem like mindless monsters, but they are heretics and their twisted faith is soaked in signs and symbols. Even if there is no urgent strategic need, Huron Blackheart will wish to seize the seat of government within the Hollow Worlds as a symbolic taking of power. If we can deny him that, his occupation of other worlds will be less secure, both to his forces and the inhabitants of the occupied world.’

  The Wolf Lord gave a grunt of assent.

  ‘The throne world will be defended,’ said Haakan, then belatedly, ‘as the inquisitor wishes it.’

  His eyes moved across the map.

  ‘What is this island?’ he said, a finger coming down on the map of Karstveil, between models representing forces deployed. ‘“Ironshore.” It is as well defended as your palace. Why?’

  Cheng seemed hesitant, then began to speak, only for Haakan to snarl.

  ‘I can smell the lie on you before it is uttered,’ spat the Wolf Lord. ‘I have not lived so long without learning the scent of mortal deceit.’

  Kretschman found he had unconsciously taken a step backwards, recoiling from Haakan’s restrained fury.

  ‘Wolf Lord Haakan is one of the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes, while I am of the Holy Inquisition,’ said Pranix. ‘There is no secret so sacred we are not entitled to know the truth of it.’

  ‘The Orrery is a device capable of altering the alignment of the Archways, to alter the connections between the Hollow Worlds,’ said Lord Cheng. His voice had taken a hushed, almost resentful tone, as if he hated to speak out loud the secrets of his office, even to superior authority and with dire necessity. ‘It hasn’t been used for millennia, since the calamity which ended with Threshold being lost to the other Hollow Worlds. Accounts of that distant time, confused as they are, tell of great catastrophes from attempting to realign the worlds, of tides that drowned cities and suns that darkened for centuries.’

  ‘If this Orrery is so dangerous, why not destroy it?’ growled Haakan. ‘To leave such an advantage open to the enemy is foolishness.’

  ‘It has been tried,’ said Cheng. ‘But the Orrery is invulnerable, self-repairing any damage caused to it. We have done all that we can, building the Ironshore around it and creating a complex entry system.’

  ‘Does anyone else know of this access system?’ asked Pranix.

  ‘Well, yes, but only the elites of each wor–’ started Cheng, but Pranix cut him off.

  ‘We can presume then that your security arrangements will already have been compromised,’ said Pranix. ‘Also that the Orrery will be Blackheart’s secondary target, if not his primary one. Great catastrophes, you say? That will be the kind of leverage Huron Blackheart likes.’

  ‘Then our strategy is clear,’ said Wolf Lord Haakan. ‘We send our fastest forces to strike
hard on Hacasta, to intercept the traitors before they can reach Karstveil. Crush their advance then press on, driving them back.’

  He brought down his fist on the map where the assault would take place, shaking the table.

  ‘Let the hammer of Fenris fall,’ snarled the Wolf Lord.

  Fourteen

  That night, Kretschman woke covered in cold sweat. The room was dark but his eyes saw perfectly – he was in a draughty servant’s room in the governor’s palace on Trincul. They were due to move out in the morning, abandoning Cheng’s ridge runner in favour of Pranix’s forces and Cheng’s moving together to the Ressial Gate.

  There was a small sink in the corner of the room, and Kretschman walked over and turned the cold tap on. After some creaks and groans, cleanish-looking water trickled out, and he put his mouth under the tap to drink some.

  Afterwards, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stared at himself in the dirty mirror on the wall. There had been a dream that disturbed him, but he could barely remember the details.

  He had been back in the system governor’s war room, but there was only him and Kulbard, discussing the conflict and moving the tokens representing the forces around the maps with long sticks.

  Kretschman couldn’t remember the exact words from the dream, but he did recall debating the merits of the inquisitor’s plans, and also that the tokens, instead of being one small representative model for each force, had been hundreds of tiny, living Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines, protesting as they were swept around the map.

  As was often the case with dreams, the logic and sense of place had been fluid, and sometimes Kretschman and Kulbard were looking down at places on a map, and at other times they were in the places themselves, back on the battlements of a ruined Rubicon, or out on the plains of Hacasta where battle would be joined.

  Kretschman wasn’t sure whether he was anxious about the battle, or just the fact that when it began he would be on Ressial instead. Was it the prospect of facing the traitors again that disturbed his sleep, or the prospect of not being allowed to?

  He shook his head. He wished he were back with his regiment where he belonged, with the simple certainties of a Guardsman’s life. In the meantime, he still needed to sleep, so he returned to the reassuring discomfort of a servant’s cold bed.

  His long meditation over, Anto was allowing his slaves to secure him back into his armour and robes when Huron entered the desecrated temple, Terminator guards close behind.

  ‘Valthex’s monitoring suggests the inquisitor has returned,’ said Huron Blackheart, terrified slaves scattering ahead of him. ‘There has been great activity around the other gate – a number of ships have docked.’

  Anto secured his helmet, and a slave passed him his staff. He dismissed his servants with a wave of one gauntleted hand.

  ‘I know, my lord,’ he said to the Tyrant. ‘He brings with him Space Wolves, and intends to disrupt your invasion.’

  ‘Dogs of the Emperor,’ snarled Huron. ‘Ferocious, they do not break easily, but they are crude and direct. Across so many worlds, they will be spread too thin, unfocused.’

  ‘The inquisitor provides them with direction,’ said Anto. ‘He wields them as a blunt weapon against us, aimed with his precision.’

  ‘Then remove that intelligence,’ said Huron. ‘Do what you should have done before he fled these worlds. Kill that inquisitor for me, and these Space Wolves will be little more than rabid animals to hunt down at our leisure.’

  Days passed, and corvids flew between worlds.

  At the foot of the Archway between Trincul and Ressial, Lord Inquisitor Pranix set up his maps beneath water-resistant canopies, the rain hammering on the taut material.

  He studied reports; he moved pieces on the map.

  Lines drew closer together. Armies were on the march.

  On Laghast, only a thin army of occupation remained in the ruins of Rubicon, mostly mortals and mutants with a handful of Red Corsairs left to provide leadership. Enough to secure a route of retreat from the front lines of the Corsairs’ incursion to the Hellward Gate, should such a route be needed.

  Garreon had departed to lead the strike on the Archway between Kerresh and Hacasta many weeks ago, while most of the rest had moved out with Huron’s galleons in the last few days, their bloodied banners unfurled.

  Anto was one of the most senior Corsairs left on an occupied world, and even he had orders to catch up with Huron’s army at the first opportunity. But he had work to complete first, work that required a familiar environment adjusted to his ritual specifications.

  In the centre of his desecrated temple, Anto cut his hand and let his own blood run onto the floor, mixing with the blood of sacrifices killed by a ring of mortal followers, whose feverish chanting underscored the incantations of the sorcerer who towered over them.

  As his followers let the blood drip from the necks of the innocents they had just killed, Anto allowed himself to savour the irony. While the blood of innocents was vital to the ritual that broke the veil between this reality and the immaterium, the shedding of blood was not the only role each of these subservient mortals had to play.

  Each had been drawn from the many treacherous mortals who, seeking favour with their new masters, prostrated themselves before Anto in the streets of Rubicon each day, pleading to be allowed to serve. He had selected each for their profound ignorance, and their ambition. These were men and women with no faith in the Chaos gods, just a desire to obtain some small scrap of great power to advance their own petty ambitions.

  They had learned their part in the ritual well, eager to please their master, but none had any idea of the import of what they were saying, and the results of the requests and pleading they were muttering in lost languages they could never understand.

  And, as the mortals sacrificed their souls, Anto, their master, stood between them, fluently incanting the punishment to be meted out for their sins.

  A sphere of screams began to form in the centre of the room, ice frosting around it and then turning to steam, a great ball of dark energies in which tormented souls could be seen twisted in agony.

  Then those energies were released, hitting each of the mortals in turn, causing them to drop the corpses of Lastrati stupid enough to maintain faith in the Emperor while living under Chaos’ rule.

  Anto’s followers, those who had taken knives to their own kind to please their new masters, suffered an even worse fate – their skins began to boil and distort, stretching and darkening. Bones cracked and reformed. Recognisable human screams turned into something else: unrecognisable animalistic howls.

  Anto performed a brief rite of annulment, sealing the small rift to the warp he had opened. The damage had been done, the process begun. Now he just had to watch the consequences.

  The sacks of flesh that had been his mortal acolytes twisted, bat-like wings sprouting from backs, arms and legs extending into clawed limbs with razor-sharp talons. One of these creatures even tried to get to its feet, slashing at Anto.

  The sorcerer batted it away with a gesture, laughing at the impudence but admiring the once-human creature’s spirit.

  Their forms were settling now, with hideous heads showing heavy brows and wide, fanged mouths. Wings began to flap, and the creatures began to lift off the floor, desperate to brutalise mortal flesh.

  Anto slammed his staff against the floor and unleashed a punishing blast of psychic energy, bringing the newborn creatures crashing down to the floor.

  ‘Not yet, my furies,’ said Anto. ‘Reborn you may be, but you are still bound to my will, and I have a very important task for you to perform…’

  Days passed, one after another.

  On the throne world of Ressial, a great barge crossed the murky seas between the Archway and the forested continent that was home to the great institutions of the Hollow Worlds. Aboard the barge were most o
f Inquisitor Pranix’s strike force – Space Wolves, Tallarns and Cadians – as well as Lord Cheng’s retinue.

  Kretschman was unsure as to which group he belonged. He was unsure of much, these days. His sleep was further disrupted with dreams and nightmares. He felt he saw Kulbard out of the corner of his eye, soaked in blood.

  Anxiety was not a Cadian quality, but the further Kretschman stayed within the safety of Pranix and Cheng’s world, far away from the front lines, the more disturbed he felt. He felt guilty for not being where he could best do his duty when whole worlds were at war.

  Perhaps that was where these melodramatic visions of Kulbard came from. The scout was almost certainly dead – there had been no news of him since limited communications were restored with Laghast, not that there was likely to be in the terse reports from the few pockets of rebellion left there. Pranix received reports from the corvids of the Ecclesiarchy, some of which captured picts with the implants in their heads, but most of these were from Hacasta and Kerresh.

  Kretschman was aware of the guilt some survivors felt, but had no idea why it might affect him now, and in relation to a scout he barely knew. When had he even met Kulbard in the first place? He could hardly recall now.

  From the deck of the barge, Kretschman could see the spires on the shoreline ahead, and knew that in the dark woods beyond lay the Gatehouse. He couldn’t see the Gatehouse itself, but he could see some of the higher towers of the Onyx Palace that dwarfed it, stark against the more muted hues of the mountain range beyond.

  Nearby, Pranix was poring over his charts. He had abandoned all the other Hollow Worlds, and now simply consulted maps of Kerresh and Hacasta. Many of the model units had not moved in days, not because their real equivalents were static, but because the information supply was beginning to dry up and Pranix didn’t know where they were.