‘They do.’ Zamikov hiked a thumb over his shoulder, at the corpses arrayed in various pieces around the furniture barricade. ‘That’ll come afterwards. First they kill, then they purify.’
‘They come back to burn the dead after a battle? They actually do it themselves?’
Zamikov nodded, no longer looking over at the imagist. Ishaq noticed the shift in the soldier’s stride – as soon as they’d heard the gunshots, each of the Euchars moved lower, faster, their lasrifles clutched tighter. It was like watching hive-street cats on the hunt for rats.
‘They do it themselves. No funerary serfs or corpse-servitors for the Word Bearers. They’re a thorough lot, you’ll see.’
‘I can already see.’
‘That a fact?’ Zamikov spared him a quick glance. ‘What do you see here?’
‘Bodies.’ Ishaq raised an eyebrow. What kind of question was that?
‘It’s more than that.’ The soldier looked ahead again. ‘This entire wing of the palace is cleaned out, but we’ve doubled back on ourselves more than once following the trail of dead. The Word Bearers aren’t racing to the throne room. That’s not how they do things. They’re killing everyone in the palace first, room by room, chamber by chamber. That’s punishment. That’s being thorough. You understand now?’
Ishaq nodded, not sure what else to say.
The sound of gunfire was joined by the guttural whine of motorised blades. He felt his heart quicken. This was it: battle, seeing the Astartes fight. And hopefully, not getting shot at himself.
‘Look alive,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘Rifles up.’
Ishaq didn’t have a rifle, but with his face set just as stern as Zamikov’s, he raised his picter.
When they caught up to the Word Bearers, the scene was nothing like he’d expected. Firstly, it wasn’t a squad of Word Bearers, it was just one. And secondly, he wasn’t alone.
The picter clicked and clicked and clicked.
They were twins in movement, a single weapon with a single intent. Neither led the other, neither moved any more or less than his twin. It was not competition. It was the perfection of unity.
They stopped as one, ending their advance to take stock of their surroundings. The city was in the throes of evacuation, for whatever good it would do the populace, and the air was a wailing morass of conflicting sirens audible even here within the palace. Platoons of defenders stood at every corridor corner and junction, armed with solid shot rifles that cracked and pinged harmlessly off Astartes armour.
The vox-network was calm. No cries for reinforcement. No demands for orders. The monotonous chanting so typical of Word Bearer squads was absent from the Gal Vorbak. Forty warriors, drop-podded into four sections of the royal castle, immediately splitting up to slaughter with muted grunts and growls.
Another barricade stood before the two advancing warriors, manned by dozens of the rifle-armed defenders in their ostentatious white and gold garb. Puffs of smoke preceded the click-clack-click of their bullets sparking harmlessly aside.
Both warriors broke into a run, boots crunching into the stone floor. Both vaulted the barricade of smashed furniture in the same moment, both grunting in effort as they leapt. Both landed at the same time, and both let loose with abandon, their weapons lashing out to shed blood. The defenders fell in pieces around them, chopped and carved faster than the eye could follow.
Ruthless familiarity with each other was all that made this possible. When one would weave low to thrust, the other would aim high to slice. Their movements were a blurring dance around each other’s forms, forever watching and anticipating the other’s movements even as they focused on slaying their enemies.
Around the two warriors, nineteen defenders were twitching human wreckage. The last to die had been disembowelled and decapitated by both warriors in the same heartbeat.
Now blood ran from the sword’s blade, just as it ran from the eight talons. Back to back, the warriors glanced at the ruination around them, took half a second’s note of the Euchar escorting the remembrancers down the hallway, and moved on in the same second.
Aquillon ran.
Argel Tal staggered.
Surprise froze the Custodian’s movements dead. As he turned, he saw the Word Bearer take another flawed step and crash to his knees among the corpses they’d created.
Aquillon span his blade – a deflective propeller to ward off any assassin’s shot. He wasn’t connected to the Legion’s networked data-stream, and couldn’t read Argel Tal’s life signs on a convenient retinal display. But there was no blood. No sign of injury, beyond the collapse and spasm.
‘Are you hit?’
Argel Tal answered with wordless rasps. Something wet and black dripped from his helm’s mouth grille, thinner than oil, thicker than blood, hissing like acid as it fell to the stone.
Aquillon stood above the prone Word Bearer, sword spinning in his gold hands. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t gain a target lock. There was no assassin – at least none that he could see. He risked another glance down.
‘Brother? Brother, what ails you?’
Argel Tal used his claws to rise, digging them into the wall and dragging himself to his feet. Black bubbles, silvered by saliva, swelled and popped at his mouth grille.
‘Rakarssshhhk,’ he said, in a greasy blurt of vox. The twitching was subsiding, but the Word Bearer seemed in no hurry to move.
‘What struck you down?’
‘Hnh. Nothing. Nothing.’ Argel Tal’s voice was a breathy wheeze. ‘I... Tell me you hear that.’
‘Hear what?’
Argel Tal gave no answer. The scream in his mind went on and on, a sound of sorrow and anger somehow ripened by amusement – a meaningless melange of incompatible emotion, curdled into a single scream. Each second it lasted, his blood boiled hotter.
‘Let’s move on,’ he growled at Aquillon through chattering teeth.
‘Brother?’
‘Move on.’
Torgal screamed in unison with the distant cry, sending human defenders panicking before him. The Gal Vorbak warriors by his side dropped their weapons, hands clutching at helms, wordless shouts of anguish vox-roaring throughout the throne chamber.
Psychopomp Shal Vess Nalia IX watched this sudden madness through tears in her eyes. The ruler of the planet Calis had, before this moment, been curled in her oversized throne – a mess of rich robes containing rolls of fat – weeping and wailing for all to hear. The last survivors of her royal guard, those who’d not fled to leave her to die at the hands of the invaders, were similarly taken aback now as the red-armoured slaughterers howled and ceased their butchery.
The guards’ ceremonial blades were worthless against Astartes armour, as were their solid-shot rifles. Instead of pressing the attack, they used the momentary respite to fall back to the psychopomp’s throne.
‘Highness, it’s time to leave,’ a house-captain told her. This was a refrain he’d been trying for days, but if it wouldn’t work now, at least he’d never need to try again.
She blubbed in response. Her chins jiggled.
‘Forget her,’ one of the others said. All of their faces were taut under the pressure of the invaders screaming so loud. ‘This is our chance, Revus.’
‘Defend me!’ the matriarch wailed. ‘Do your duty! Kill them all!’
Revus was fifty-two years old, and had served most loyally as house-captain to the current psychopomp’s father, who’d been a charismatic and effective ruler beloved by his people – everything his fat bitch of a daughter was not.
But he couldn’t leave. Or rather, he wouldn’t.
Revus turned to the prone invaders, watching them kneel and cry out in the sea of carved corpses around them, and made the last decision he would ever make. He would not run. It was not in him to do so. Instead, he would defend his sire’s indolent daughter with his life, breaking his blade upon the armour of his enemies, making sure his final words would be to spit defiance in their faces.