hellish work. It took almost ten minutes for the framework of the scaffold to reposition itself, and it
was the only real break that the slaves got until the shift rotation. The Discord blared its hateful
sound.
“So what was it that you did before?” whispered Varnus. He knew his fellow slave’s name,
knew that he had lived his entire life in Shinar and that he had fathered no children. But he did not
know what the man had done before the occupation. It was almost as if the man had been avoiding
the subject, and Varnus had been waiting for this moment to ask him directly.
The blood-mortar smeared man looked away. “What did you do?” whispered Varnus again,
more forcefully. Betrayer, he thought he heard amidst me horrific sounds blaring from the speaker
of the Discord.
“I was a manservant and bodyguard.” Pierlo said, his eyes flicking left and right madly, and it
suddenly clicked where Varnus had seen him before.
“I have seen you before,” he said. Pierlo looked around sharply, his eyes blazing with unnatural
heat. He shook his head vigorously.
“No, I have,” said Varnus, “in the palace, right before the explosion.” Kill him. Betrayer.
Varnus shook his head and held his hands over his ears, moaning, trying to get the sound of the
voices out of his head. This place and that damned Discord were driving him insane. Pierlo was not
the only one losing his mind.
“You okay?” he heard Pierlo ask dimly, and he nodded his head.
“Someone will come.” Varnus said to himself. “Someone will come to liberate Tanakreg.”
Pierlo giggled hysterically, shaking his head. “No one will come. We will die here and our souls
will join with Chaos.”
Anger filled Varnus suddenly, hot and quick. “Don’t say such things! The Emperor’s light will
protect us in the darkness.”
“Chaos calls us, brother. Can’t you hear its voice?”
The Discord blared its monstrous sound.
Kill him.
Varnus closed his eyes tightly, and rocked back and forth slightly, trying to blot out the hideous
din.
44
“Someone will come,” he said to himself. He felt the hated symbol embedded in his forehead
writhe. He imagined that feelers from the vile thing were pushing through his skull, entering his
brain.
He prayed to the Emperor, his mouth moving silently, but the harsh, discordant babble of the
Discord seemed to get louder. The sound of the deep voices chanting within the noise pounded at his
eardrums.
Someone will come, he thought. They had to.
A hiss of pain emerged from Marduk’s pallid lips as the chirurgeons removed the vambraces of his
power armour from around his forearms with their spiderlike, long, metal fingers. Patches of skin
were ripped from his flesh as the curved armour plates were removed, and pinpricks of blood
covered the areas of the skin that remained. Tiny, barbed thorns lined the inside of the vambrace:
Marduk and his sacred armour were slowly becoming one. It was not uncommon amongst the
Legion.
The hunched chirurgeons scraped and bowed before him, and shuffled off to place the bloody
pieces of ceramite armour on a purple, velvet cloth alongside his gauntlet and under-glove. Marduk
clenched his fists before him, looking at the translucent, bloodied and pockmarked musculature of
his arms. They seemed almost unfamiliar to him.
Kol Badar led the morbid, monotonous chanting of the Host, and it carried across the open
ground, accompanied by the pounding cadence of giant, piston driven hammers striking great metal
drums. The roars and hellish screams of the heavily chained, restrained daemon engines mingled
into the din of worship. Throughout the city, the sound of the ritual would be blaring from the
daemon amps that accompanied the slave gangs.
Jarulek stood atop the altar, his blood-slick arms raised high as he rejoiced in the sound of
worship washing over him. Burning braziers lit the altar and thick clouds of incense rose from the
maws of bestial, brazen gargoyles. In the distance behind him was the Gehemehnet, the tower rising
at a rapid pace. A hundred slaves knelt along the front of the altar, adding their own music to the
cacophony of sound. They were restrained, their wrists bound to their ankles behind them, and they
stared out at the gathered congregation of Word Bearers, their faces twisted in terror, anguish and
despair.
Jarulek walked behind the line of kneeling slaves. He grasped the hair of one, pulled his head
back and slashed his throat with a long, ceremonial knife. Already, hundreds of throats had been cut
with that knife that day. The slave gasped, a wet, gurgling sound, and his lifeblood sprayed from the
wound. He was pushed off the front of the altar by a pair of Word Bearers honoured to have been
chosen for the duty, and the bound, dying man fell amongst the bloodless bodies piling within the
metal trough at its foot. Hunched overseers dragged another slave forward to take his place, and
Jarulek stepped to the next victim, swiftly cutting his throat, and he too was pushed from the altar.
The blood of the sacrifices ran down the inside of the trough and drained into a catchment where
it pooled before being pumped through a twisted pipe that extended out to a large basin positioned
before Marduk. It bubbled as it was filled with the warm lifeblood, and he dipped his bare arms into
it.
Kol Badar was the first to step forward, still chanting, and Marduk reached up to the warlord’s
forehead with a bloody hand. He drew the four intersecting lines that formed the Chaos star in its
most basic form across the Coryphaus’s brow with his thumb. The huge warrior then closed his
yellow, hate-filled eyes, and Marduk placed a bloody thumb mark on each eyelid.
“The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother.” Marduk intoned, and Kol Badar wheeled
away. The next in line was Burias, the warrior’s vicious, handsome face framed by his slick, black
hair. He dropped to his knees before Marduk, an aspect of the ceremony that Kol Badar had been
unable or unwilling to perform in his bulky Terminator armour. Marduk drew the star of Chaos
upon his forehead and placed his thumbs to his eyelids.
45
“The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,” Marduk intoned, and Burias filed away.
The entire Host was to be marked, blessed by the gods before they entered sacred battle once more.
He felt the daemon stir within the chainsword at his side as blood dripped from his gore-slick
forearms onto the hilt. Marduk smiled as he applied the blood to the face of a towering Anointed
warrior. Soon, dear Borhg’ash, he thought.
Over the course of the next hour, Jarulek slashed the throats of hundreds of slaves, their sacrifice
offered up to the glory of the gods of Chaos, and the stench of blood and death was strong. The
droning chants of the Host continued unabated, and the last warrior-brother was blooded.
Jarulek descended imperiously from the altar, drenched in blood, and stepped lightly down the
stairs, his long, ceremonial skin cloak flowing behind him. The entire Host dropped to one knee as
the Dark Apostle reached the ground, and even the raging daemonic engines were cowed by the
powerful figure. He walked towards Marduk, and the Dark Apostle raised the First Acolyte’s head
with gentle pressure under his chin. Jarulek drew the lines of the Chaos star upon Marduk’s
forehead and placed his bloody thumbprints against the skin of his eyelids.
His skin burned where the blood was smeared, pulsing with energy and potency. Opening his
eyes, he saw that colours appeared more vivid than before, and he could clearly see a shimmering
aura, the power of Chaos, surrounding the Dark Apostle like a ghostly, gossamer shroud. That
power could always be felt when in Jarulek’s presence, but it was rarely seen.
“The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,” intoned Jarulek, his voice silken. Marduk
rose to his feet and followed Jarulek as he strode back in front of his gathered warriors towards the
altar steps. Kol Badar fell into step alongside Marduk, and without missing a word, Burias took over
leading the ponderous chant of the Host.
Solemn and in silence, the Coryphaus and the First Acolyte followed the Dark Apostle back up
the altar stairs. The Dark Apostle turned to face the gathered Host, and the pair stood a respectful
distance back from him.
A chirurgeon shuffled forwards, accompanied by hunched, robed figures dragging a stepped
platform behind them. The platform was placed before the Dark Apostle, and the chirurgeon
climbed awkwardly atop it. Hissing steam, the platform rose until the robed figure stood at chest
height to the Dark Apostle.
The chirurgeon then set to work, the blades and needles of its fingers piercing the flesh of
Jarulek’s face. Biting claws gripped the skin, holding it taught as the black robed figure sliced
through Jarulek’s pale flesh, cutting a neat strip from first one cheek, then the other. Blood ran
freely from the wounds, before its flow was staunched by the tainted cells within its make up. The
chirurgeon bowed and handed the two strips of flesh to the Dark Apostle.
Jarulek stood, holding the two rectangular, bloody ribbons high in the air for all to see. The
pounding of mechanical drums ceased and Burias led the chanting of the warriors to a close.
“I honour these two warriors with passages from the Book of Lorgar, carved from my own
flesh.” Jarulek said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the gathered mass. Already the red-raw
rectangles on his cheeks were healing. Within a day the skin would be smooth and unmarked: two
small patches of pale skin amidst a sea of scripture.
Marduk stepped forwards in front of Kol Badar, smirking at the flash of anger in the
Coryphaus’s eyes, and the skin of his left cheek was cut away by the chirurgeon. Speaking a
blessing, Jarulek placed the scripture carved from his own skin upon the wound. There was a
tingling, painful sensation as the flesh of the Dark Apostle knitted to his own. Bowing his head, he
stepped aside.
“Go forth, my warrior-brothers,” said Jarulek once the second scripture had been fused to Kol
Badar’s cheek. “Go forth, and kill in the name of blessed Lorgar, and know that the gods of Chaos
smile upon you!”
46
CHAPTER EIGHT
Icy winds whipped at Marduk as he stood silhouetted atop the mountain ridge watching the
approach of the Imperial scout vehicles below. The two-legged walkers, each manned by a single
crewman, were climbing along a rocky ravine, making far faster progress than could be achieved by
a man on foot. Clearing over three metres with each step, the walkers were making good progress,
stepping easily over cracks in the rocky ground that fell away beneath them for hundreds of metres.
He had no concern about being spotted. A mere human eye would be unable to pick him out at
such a distance, and the rocky terrain and gale force winds would make the crude sensors of the
sentinels almost completely ineffective.
“Shall we gun the fools down?” asked Burias. “The havocs of the VI Coterie have lascannons
trained on them.”
“No, let the dogs down there take them,” said Marduk, indicating with a nod towards the figures
waiting in ambush.
The three sentinels continued along the ravine, completely unaware of the cultists waiting in the
rocks. A screaming rocket streamed through the air, slamming into the exposed cabin of the
rearmost walker, which was annihilated in the billowing explosion.
The cult warriors wore pale cloaks as camouflage against the densely packed rock salt that was
as hard as any stone, and they billowed out behind the men as they peppered the sentinels with lasfire.
The Imperial walkers began to edge backwards and returned fire, strafing the rocks with
autocannons. Several of the cultists fell back as bullets ripped through their cloaks, but they had
chosen a good place from which to launch their ambush and the rocks took the brunt of the fire.
One cloaked figure sprinted across the lip of the ravine, bullets spraying at his heels, and threw
himself from the high rocks. He landed sprawled atop the roof panel of a sentinel and rose to one
knee, a long blade appearing in his hand.
The sentinel crewman leant from the cabin, an autopistol raised, and fired off a quick burst
across the rooftop of his cabin. The cultist grabbed the man’s arm, pulling him further out of the
cabin, and plunged his knife down into the man’s neck.
The autocannon on the last sentinel went quiet as a lucky shot slammed into its pilot’s head.
“Not bad,” grunted Marduk, as he began the descent towards the victorious cultists.
Karalos looked up sharply as he heard the shout. Brushing his long, unkempt hair back behind his
ears with his blood-splattered hand, he sheathed his knife and stood atop the motionless Imperial
sentinel. The mutilated, bloody corpse of the Imperial soldier was forgotten as he shielded his eyes
to see what the commotion was.
His jaw dropped as he saw the two colossal, red-armoured warriors walking through the ravine
towards his band of the faithful.
“Get everyone together,” he ordered. “The Angels of the Word have come, as the Speaker
foretold.”
47
The cultists’ base of operations was high in the mountains, hidden from view from the sky by pale
tarpaulins that draped over the low structures. Every member of the cult within Shinar had spent
some time at the Camp of the Word, the old Speaker had told Marduk.
The Speaker was a withered man, the flesh all but wasted from his almost skeletal frame. He
was blind, his vision long lost to the biting salt of Tanakreg. To Marduk he had looked pathetic.
“Bring me a hundred of your strongest warriors,” he had ordered the old man, “and send the rest
of your cultists out into the passes. The enemy will be soon be upon us.”
He had grown bored as the old man had babbled on, and had eventually put a bullet through his
head. The one hundred men on their knees before him had not made a move as the shot had rung
out, and Marduk had seen that Karalos had smiled as the old man was slain. Marduk liked the man:
he had the soul of a true warrior of Chaos, even if he was just a wretched mortal.
“You men are blessed indeed.” Marduk said, “for you have been chosen to receive a great gift, a
boon of the great majesty of the warp. It is the Calling, and you are to be the hosts.”
Marduk began to chant, his voice effortlessly mouthing the difficult, unearthly language of the
