The Unburdened Page 3

  He did not succumb. The questions were too strong, and he was no coward. He had always fought for the truth, or at least what he had believed it to be. When at last it revealed itself to him, he would not turn from it. But for now, there were only the questions, and the incomprehension, and the horror, and the blood on his hands.

  So much blood. Even though the vitae had been burned away along with the layers of his armour, he thought he could still see it. Instead of grey, he was crimson. Word and act and blood and being were all one now.

  He exited the chapel. Toc Derenoth and Kaeloq walked with him down the steps to the dust-blown roads. Brothers from the Fifth waited outside the doors, lined the stairs, and gathered on the rockcrete. Four Thunderhawks rested on the roads. Tergothar had brought a large force in search of him. Kurtha Sedd wondered why. The captain could hardly have thought he had been captured. They were not at war, after all. The humiliation had been delivered, and the Ultramarines had departed. They were mere messengers, blindly following orders, and their work was done.

  Perhaps Tergothar had expected something extreme on Kurtha Sedd’s part. He had a reputation for recklessness on the battlefield. He took the mad risks, sustained by the confidence of his faith.

  And now? he thought. What have you done now?

  He had no answer. There were no words. There was no Word. It had been broken by the Emperor.

  There was a scratching at his ear. It cut through the limbo, irritating, drawing his attention. It was Tergothar’s voice on the vox. ‘Burn everything,’ Tergothar said. ‘Bring the chapel down. Leave no trace.’

  Toc Derenoth and Kaeloq guided Kurtha Sedd towards a Thunderhawk. He stopped short of the loading ramp. He turned to watch Tergothar’s orders carried out. Word Bearers entered the chapel. After a few moments, flames erupted from the doorways and broken windows. As the legionaries exited, the other three gunships took off. They flew in a circle formation over the chapel. Their cannons poured shells into the structure. The foundations erupted. The walls collapsed in on each other. Fragments of spire cartwheeled skywards, a last gesture of prayer, then fell down into the holocaust. Fire, smoke and dust rose higher and spread outwards. They consumed. They obscured.

  They erased.

  Kurtha Sedd saw all trace of his crime expunged. The cannon barrage continued, battering even the rocky elevation to powder. Soon there would be nothing but a crater. The knowledge of what had happened would be buried deep within the Legion.

  Kurtha Sedd had no doubt the massacre would be concealed. The knowledge filled him with wracking grief. The Emperor did not watch him. Lorgar had lied. The universe was empty of anything except betrayal. There was no room for faith.

  But guilt, the corpse of faith, would not lie still. It thrashed back and forth in his chest. Where is the judgement? it asked, over and over, obsessed, unable to accept nowhere as an answer.

  Where is the judgement? Where is the judgement?

  He had sinned. He must answer. He could not shed the burden of this truth.

  Where is the judgement?

  It will come.

  When?

  When?

  When?

  TWO

  Lanshear

  Static

  Shelter

  He never stopped expecting judgement. Even when fidelity turned into a greater hate. Even when he followed the new teachings of Lorgar and turned, at last, to the old gods of Colchis. He had found a new truth, and he had found divinities worthy of worship. But still, at the back of his mind, gnawing at his soul, as he waded through new oceans of innocent blood, the belief never left him. It weighed him down. Decades passed.

  Forty-four years after the Rebuke, an impossible flash made him think the judgement had come.

  The Fifth Assault Company was moving up to assist Hol Beloth’s force in Lanshear. Tergothar’s Word Bearers entered the city in the south. They came up the Nacona Axis, driving hard with Thunder­hawk and Rhino to bite into the flank of the Ultramarines reinforcements reported to have broken through from the east. Other arms of the XVII Legion were closing from other directions. Hol Beloth was closing a huge fist around the Ultramarines. Their breakthrough was a mere prolonging of their agony. They would hold their position at the guildhall a few minutes longer at the cost of even greater loss.

  Then the sky erupted. Burning light too sudden and too intense, the shutters coming down over Kurtha Sedd’s lenses too late to save him from the glare-blindness. Pillars of fire struck Word Bearers positions with the perfect accuracy of divine verdicts. The vox-traffic became a storm of static and desperate, suddenly silenced shouts. The precision of the hits was sublime. They were the work of an omniscient intelligence that saw all and struck where it willed. A few seconds elapsed between the first hits, taking out the main concentration of Hol Beloth’s strength, and a meson beam blasting the Fifth’s position. Kurtha Sedd had time during those seconds to experience awe and numinous dread. A hand was reaching out across the decades to visit retribution on him.

  Then Tergothar was on the vox. ‘They’ve regained control of the defence grid! Pull–’

  The beam silenced him. Brilliant death took out the street. The gunships and tanks were leading the charge. They evaporated. Hundreds of legionaries perished in a second. The blast collapsed façades on either side of the boulevard. Tonnes of rockcrete and plex-glass fell into the crater and beyond, crushing still more of the advance.

  Tergothar had been riding in the front Land Raider. He was gone. His last words freed Kurtha Sedd from his delusion. He gave the first order in the wake of the beam. ‘Scatter!’ he yelled. He broke right and ran towards the nearest intact entrance. ‘Spread wide,’ he said. ‘No concentrations. Deprive the foe of a target.’

  He smashed through iron doors. He pounded down the marble hall of a luxury hab. Moments later, the meson beam hit again. He was a dozen metres in, moving at as close to a sprint as was possible in power armour. The walls of the building provided just enough shelter. They collapsed behind him. Wind and heat shoved him forwards. He almost fell. The fall of the building accelerated as floors pancaked. The hallway compressed. Powder filled the air. The rumble of falling marble and rockcrete and iron was a physical force, shaking the cracking floor beneath his feet. He stayed just ahead of the avalanche. The hab-block extended for half a kilo­metre. He reached the other end as the tower leaned towards its demolished face, parting from its foundations. It fell, and he was moving through a storm of thunder and dust.

  He angled across the street. It was narrower than the Nacona Axis, but wide enough. While he was in the open, the sky was a single enormous weapon. Judgement could pierce the clouds at any second. He dismissed the thought with a growl. There was no judgement here, only a military reversal, one the true gods would not let stand.

  One block to his right, on the other side of the road, was the large, arched entrance to a maglev station. A curved mosaic of stone depicted Guilliman – hand outstretched, pointing the way forward, inspiring transportation and industry. Kurtha Sedd chose the station over nearer shelter. Symbolism was important for brothers and for enemies. This location would serve.

  The vox-chatter was disordered with unanswered calls and reports of massive casualties. Most of the traffic was coming from other companies elsewhere in Lanshear, also caught by the celestial fire. As Kurtha Sedd reached the station, he heard Kaeloq’s voice.

  ‘Chaplain,’ he began, ‘what are–’

  ‘Maintain vox-silence,’ Kurtha Sedd ordered. ‘Find cover and remain there. We must deprive the enemy of a target. Let their attention move on. Let them believe their work is done.’

  It very nearly is, he thought. He doubted the Fifth had any vehicles left. He had no idea how many of his brothers had survived the bombardment.

  The concourse of the maglev station was shadowed and empty. The line, extending north towards the guildhall zone, had been
cut by the fighting. There were no civilian refugees in sight, which struck Kurtha Sedd. The station was silent. Its stillness was complete. There was no power to the lumen globes, no thrum of activity from lower levels. If the local population had fled to shelter, it had done so somewhere else. He filed the thought away for the moment. It had potential.

  He stood in the dark of the concourse, waiting. Clouds of dust billowed past the opening. Rain began to dampen them. The searing shriek of particle beams and lance strikes continued, but further away. There were no more impacts in the immediate vicinity. Kurtha Sedd waited a full minute, then called to Fifth Company. ‘To me, brothers,’ he said. ‘The Savo maglev station.’ He called up the tactical display of his auto-senses, pinpointing his precise location in Lanshear. He looked for opportunity, and for inspiration. He could make no decision yet, though. There were too many variables. He wanted to believe the situation was not as bad as he felt it might be. He had faith that it was worse.

  He was right. Three minutes after the orbital strikes, the city’s sirens wailed. The voice of Remus Ventanus resounded from vox-speakers on rooftops and walls. The Ultramarines captain was speaking to the planetary population. ‘The surface of Calth is no longer a safe environment,’ he warned. ‘The local star is suffering a flare trauma, and will shortly irradiate Calth to human-lethal levels.’ Run for the arcologies, he urged the citizens. ‘In the name of the Imperium, make haste.’

  Our great work is coming to kill us, Kurtha Sedd thought.

  Less than half the company made it to his rallying point. And by then, rumour was infecting his brothers. He had heard the messages bouncing through the fragments of vox-traffic from the other smashed regiments in Lanshear. There had been no communication established with the fleet in orbit. Therefore, the Infidus Imperator had fled the system. Or the battle-barge was destroyed. Or the entire fleet had burned.

  His brothers surrounded him, waiting for his orders. With the captain dead, the command was his. The spiritual and the tactical had been one in this campaign. With Kor Phaeron and Erebus setting the example, Kurtha Sedd had had almost as much control over the Fifth’s direction in the war as Tergothar. Now he was the only leader.

  ‘What has happened to the fleet, Chaplain?’ Toc Derenoth asked.

  ‘It has fallen silent,’ said Kurtha Sedd. ‘And I will not speculate on strategy.’ But he did speculate. He distrusted the silence. But then, he trusted nothing.

  He looked at the grey daylight outside the station entrance. It was benign, mundane. There was no hint of what was coming. ‘What is true, though,’ he continued, ‘is that we must assume there will be no evacuation for the time being.’

  The company stirred. Every battle-brother present knew what that meant.

  ‘And Veridia…’ Toc Derenoth began, giving voice to the question they all had.

  ‘The Ultramarines’ warning is correct. The work has been completed. The storm approaches.’

  ‘We are abandoned?’

  Abandoned was not the word that Kurtha Sedd had been working to keep from his consciousness. That word was betrayed. ‘No,’ he said, to himself and to Toc Derenoth. ‘We fight alone for now. That is all. The advantage the Ultramarines have regained will be taken from them in minutes. Our brothers will return for us.’

  ‘And where do we fight?’ Kaeloq asked.

  ‘Below. In the arcologies. We will find shelter from the solar storm and an enemy to humble. In the depths there is darkness, and in the darkness there is truth. We fight with the strength of the Word, brothers. We will not fall.’

  ‘Where is the nearest entrance?’ Sergeant Vor Raennag asked. He had turned his head towards the daylight too, as if expecting to see the fire arrive.

  Kurtha Sedd checked the tactical display again, weighing possibilities. Then the emptiness of the station hit home, and gave him his inspiration. The closest was to the north, closer to the heart of the now-ended battle. It would also be a strongpoint. If the Ultramarines were not already there, they would be soon. The Word Bearers would have to fight their way in. Kurtha Sedd entertained a vision of a pyrrhic destruction of the shelter, then dismissed it. His war was far from over. Forty-four years ago, he had lost his purpose. Since then, he had come to a new faith. But he was still searching for his role, for his reason to exist. Since landfall on Calth, he had felt a pull at the edge of his soul. There was something on this planet, something important to him. He did not know what he was looking for. The instinct was too vague. But it was also real, and insistent. It had not grown any stronger during the day of the campaign, but now the thought of descending below the surface of the planet filled him with eagerness.

  There was another entrance to the west. A bit further. With the flare on its way, the company only had minutes to reach it. It would be close. The Word Bearers would have a slightly wider margin if they headed for the northern access point, and maybe they would have the force necessary to overwhelm the defenders.

  But the alternative position had other enticements.

  ‘This is our best option,’ he said, blinking at the western arcology entrance on his display and relaying it to the rest of the company. He had not answered Vor Raennag’s question directly, and the choice he was making was putting many of his brothers at risk. No matter. He had more important concerns, and he would be at the head of the charge. He would reach the entrance. He would make the descent.

  The Word Bearers left the station and headed west. The route took them back through the devastation wrought by the meson beams. They charged through craters, battering their way through incinerated stone. They moved through a landscape dead as a meteor-blasted planetoid. Rain fell, and on all sides buildings still stood tall. The skyline of Lanshear was defiant, as if the city had been cauterised of its foes, and had a future ahead of it. Take full advantage of your future, Kurtha Sedd thought. It is measured in minutes.

  They were two-thirds of the way to the destination. The day still gave no sign of the coming wrath. Without knowing exactly when Veridia had reached the critical stage, there was no way to tell how much time he had. Kurtha Sedd chose to believe he had enough. There was a path he must follow, and he would find it.

  At the edge of the path of destruction carved by the defence grid beams, a spur of rubble reached outwards. Walls had been blasted by shells. It looked like a skirmish had been fought, but there had been no Ultramarines in this area. Beyond a final heap, Kurtha Sedd saw what had caused the damage. Sor Gharax had fallen there. The Dreadnought must have been clipped by the blast and had managed to stagger this far. He was roaring with the anger of a hundred wounded predators. His howls were shaped into syllables, but they were not words. He was consumed by insane, incoherent rage. There was limited movement in his upper limbs. His legs were motionless. The war-priest of old had fallen to this state: a helpless, mad machine.

  Kurtha Sedd stopped running. He stared at Sor Gharax for a precious second. Then another. In the third second, he recalled the Bull’s wrath on Monarchia, and the words that had seemed blasphemous, but now were revealed as prophetic.

  The Bull was important.

  ‘Bring him,’ Kurtha Sedd ordered.

  His brothers obeyed. A squad’s worth of legionaries moved to either side of the Dreadnought and began to drag him forwards. Sor Gharax snarled at them. His right arm fired at the sky, but he could no longer swivel the gun. His brothers were able to stay out of the path of his shells. After a few metres, he stopped shooting. His inarticulate curses continued, but the electronic grind of his voice was weaker. There was little more than a spark of life still left in his scorched shell.

  Kurtha Sedd led the way once more, back on a street now, the Gades Boulevard. Half a minute later, the goal came into view on the south side: the huge repository of the Gades Archives. This was the bureaucratic memory of Lanshear and the surrounding regions of Calth more than it was a cultural one. It was a monumental structure,
squat in appearance even though it was a hundred metres high, sitting in the centre of its own square. Its marble walls, smooth, their surface uninterrupted by windows, were so polished they gleamed even in the grey light of the city’s last day. Four columns the size of Titan legs flanked twin entrances in the north face. Both portals were open. Enormous blast doors were raised above each.

  The Word Bearers had not come across any civilians until now – those unfortunate enough to have still been near their initial advance had been eradicated by the beams. Now Kurtha Sedd beheld many, streaming in from the east down the Gades Boulevard. Thousands of them, heeding the words of Ventanus and the whoop and wail of the tocsins. Fleeing their own sun. They were crowding into the left-hand doorway. The right, which opened onto a staircase leading upwards, was ignored.

  There were some Imperial troops with the refugees. Kurtha Sedd spotted a single squad of Ultramarines, one that had perhaps been split off from the main force during the fighting. The enemy presence he saw was insignificant, and the civilian numbers were what he had hoped to find.

  ‘Bearers of the Word,’ he called, pulling out his plasma pistol and raising his crozius high, ‘bless these vermin with the truth.’

  The Imperials spotted Fifth Company at the same moment, and opened fire. They were hampered by the number of refugees. Whether they tried to avoid killing their own people or not, the civilians were in the way. They absorbed some of the rounds meant for the Word Bearers.

  Even at half strength, Kurtha Sedd’s assault company was overwhelmingly stronger than what the Imperials could muster. Its barrage of bolter shells and plasma scythed through civilians and defenders. The Word Bearers pounded the handful of Ultramarines. Their skill and their armour counted for little. The sheer physics of being hit by hundreds of mass-reactive shells defeated them. Even so, they tried to vanquish the impossible. They dropped three Word Bearers before the charge reached them. Kurtha Sedd rammed through civilians, shattering their bodies with momentum and mass, and closed with the Ultramarines sergeant.