Cult of the Warmason Read online

  Trishala could see the hybrid plunging down across the tombs, unfazed by Reshma’s attacks. The genestealers glanced backwards, glaring up towards the two Sisters. A few of them started to turn back, but a gesture from the robed cultist brought them short. Recalled by the hybrid, they followed him downwards.

  ‘The range is too great for a boltgun,’ Reshma apologised.

  ‘We’ll have to get closer,’ Trishala decided. ‘Make sure of our target. The xenos won’t escape.’ She roused Reshma to a renewed effort, leading her in the hazardous climb from their perch to the ring of tombs just beneath them.

  As the two Battle Sisters started their descent, a lull in the artillery barrage enabled them to hear the snarl of gunfire from above. Trishala lifted her gaze, hoping to see Sister Nikhila bringing reinforcements to join the pursuit. Instead she saw why the genestealers had been called back. Their leader had other agents to guard his back. Emerging from the doorways of a dozen tombs were cultist fighters.

  Trishala voxed an alert to the Sisters within the cathedral, telling them of the situation outside. The burst of fire the cultists sent down at Trishala’s group was imprecise, but concentrated. Slug-throwers, lasguns, even a few bolters began smashing away at the exterior tomb where the Sisters were poised.

  On her command the Battle Sisters sent a storm of bolter-fire up at the cultists. The explosive shells raked the hybrids and the tombs that sheltered them. The fury of the response caught them by surprise. A group of the cultists went hurtling earthwards as the tomb they were standing on disintegrated beneath the barrage. Another band was shredded under the righteous indignation of the Sisters.

  The Sisters were to pay dearly for that brief moment of supremacy. The fire the cultists were directing down at them stopped abruptly. It took but a moment for the cause to manifest itself. Leaping up the tombs, using the fire from the cultists to cover its advance, one of the genestealers charged the Sisters. Alien claws sheared through ceramite and snapped bone in a frenzy of violence. One after another, the black-armoured Sisters fell, tumbling down the side of the cathedral or else sprawling amid the bones of the crypt. Soon Trishala and Reshma were the last ones standing.

  Reshma’s shots ripped at the xenos, crunching through its chitinous hide and exploding inside its flesh. She cried out as the genestealer sprang at her, its jaws snapping tight around her neck, its claws stabbing through her chestplate. Blood streaming from her wounds, she managed to raise her bolter and explode the head of the monster that dealt death to her.

  Trishala started towards the stricken Reshma, but as she did a blur of motion caught her eye. A second genestealer came rushing into the tomb, crashing down through the roof rather than coming up from below. The xenos landed in a crouch, its eyes narrowing as it fixed its attention on Trishala. With a hiss, the alien rushed at her.

  Bolter shells smashed into the genestealer as Trishala blazed away at the xenos. Despite the havoc her shots wrought on the creature’s body, she couldn’t blunt the impetus of its charge. The clawed alien slammed into her, propelling both itself and the armoured warrior through the rockcrete wall of the tomb.

  Locked in the grip of a mangled genestealer, Trishala went hurtling down the side of the cathedral.

  The death-shriek of an Inheritor rang through Bakasur’s soul. The magus bit down on the anger and guilt that pounded in his heart. Emotion wouldn’t serve any purpose. It wouldn’t bring them any closer to the ascension or the design that the Great Father had planned.

  Bakasur clung to the Warmason’s Casket, keeping it safe as he descended the layers of exterior tombs and hastened through to the catacombs beneath the mountain. Only a few genestealers remained with Bakasur once they’d completed their descent. The others had been dispatched to aid the cult’s forces already inside the cathedral. With the relic secured and some measure of victory guaranteed, it was time to focus on the greater objective. He wasn’t certain where the Space Marines were, but if the Iron Warriors hindered the conquest of the cathedral, only the pure-strains had a chance to overcome them.

  The remaining Inheritors clustered around the magus, hurrying him through the catacombs and into the tunnels below them. The Cult of the Cataclysm had been very careful about those tunnels; only Bakasur himself and the Inheritors were permitted to use them lest the humans suspect their existence. Now, however, the time for caution was past.

  The hour of the Great Father would soon be at hand.

  A dull red light greeted Trishala when she at last opened her eyes. Confusion roiled through her mind as she tried to unravel the sensations that racked her brain. There was that gruesome light, an emanation that seemed to pulsate from the very walls. The atmosphere was at once both hot and hideously moist, the air fairly dripping into her lungs when she drew a breath. There was a musty morbid smell, the odour of old bones and even older metal. For an instant she thought she must have crashed through the roof of one of the crypts clinging to the walls of the cathedral, but the sense of pressure against her ears made her reconsider. She was underground, and at some depth. Certainly further than she could have fallen and survived.

  When she started to move, Trishala felt something damp and sticky dragging at her. Lowering her gaze she saw the pulped remains of a genestealer squashed beneath her. She was in no doubt that it was the same creature that had sent her hurtling down from the tomb. In their fall, the alien had been caught under her, its body dulling the impact enough to preserve Trishala’s life. Lifting her gaze, she could see a jagged gash above her, a crater gouged into the ceiling by one of the artillery shells that had savaged the summit of Mount Rama.

  The instant Trishala tried to rise she felt a weight pressing down against her chest. Twisting her head, she was treated to a grisly sight. Looming over her, one boot planted against her chest, was a huge, grotesquely disfigured hybrid. The cultist’s head bore the worst aspects of both human and xenos, and from its shoulders sprouted four gangly arms with hands tipped by knife-like claws.

  The hybrid hissed, glaring at her with hate and outrage. Opening its mouth, displaying its rows of needle-like fangs, the cultist leaned over Trishala. Looking like a scarlet worm, a tendril-like organ licked out from behind the teeth.

  Horror filled Trishala, but decades of Adepta Sororitas training took that horror and turned it into violence. She wasn’t the weak child of Primorus now, she was a Battle Sister. Boldly she kicked out with her legs, smashing the hybrid’s pelvis with her armoured boots. The servo-enhanced might of her blow cracked the bone, viscous ichor splashing down on her as the surprised cultist recoiled in pain.

  Trishala lunged at the enemy. She’d lost her bolt pistol in the fall, but she still had her power sword. Whether through ignorance or arrogance the cultist had neglected to take the weapon from her. She activated the sword and sent a destructive field of energy rippling across the blade.

  Thrusting the sword upwards, Trishala felt a brief instant of resistance as it crunched through the hybrid’s flesh and bone. A hot stream of ichor sizzled against the blade’s power field as she drove the thrust home.

  Trishala twisted the blade around in the wound, wrenching it across the hybrid in a vicious assault. All the fear, all the terrors that had lurked in her mind since her obliterated childhood were exorcised as she brought death to the monster. She saw again the xenos horde as they ran amok across Primorus, as their contagion consumed her parents and neighbours. This time, however, she wasn’t helpless. This time she could fight back.

  A look of almost human shock gleamed in the eyes of the hybrid as its corpse struck the ground. Muscular spasms rippled through its mangled body, causing its hands to claw at the floor, its talons to scratch at the wall.

  The Sister Superior kicked the dead cultist away and rose to her feet. Certain that it would move no more, she looked away from the hybrid and at her surroundings. From the bones embedded in the walls she knew she was somewhere in the maze of
catacombs that wound their way through the guts of Mount Rama.

  How could she find the thieves who’d taken the Warmason’s Casket? The recovery of the relic seemed impossible now. She voxed Sister Archana to report her condition and the situation. It was Sister Nikhila that responded.

  ‘The cathedral is beset by enemies,’ Nikhila voxed, the chatter of gunfire and the screams of the dying echoing behind her words. ‘Cultists and genestealers, swarming in from above and below. Their efforts to take the Great Gate were only a feint, something to draw us away from the real attack.’

  ‘What of the relics? Can you hold the Celestial Chapel?’ Trishala asked.

  ‘Chaos Space Marines,’ Nikhila replied. ‘They forced their way up to the sanctuary while we were fighting the cultists. Sister Archana is dead.’

  The news made Trishala’s blood go cold. It was enough to try to hold off the genestealers, but against the Chaos Space Marines as well she knew they would have no chance. ‘Where are the Traitor Space Marines?’

  ‘Gone, praise the God-Emperor,’ Nikhila said. ‘They fought their way up to the Celestial Chapel from the crypts, and then forced their way back down again. They must be insane.’

  Trishala didn’t think their actions could be explained so easily. Something had happened to divert the Chaos Space Marines. Their entering the cathedral from below lent a sinister significance to the inability to raise Kashibai or Palatine Yadav on the vox. The Traitor Space Marines could be responsible. If they were, then they could have discovered the entrance Yadav was trying to reach.

  Why then had the Chaos Space Marines withdrawn? There was only one explanation that suggested itself. They’d come for the Warmason’s Casket and, finding it stolen, they had no reason to stay.

  ‘Nikhila, I am going to try to reach the Mourning Door,’ Trishala said. She saw no way to pick up the trail of the missing relic, but if she could reach the cathedral, at least she could help her Sisters defend it.

  Consulting her auspex, Trishala moved through the bleak catacombs, heading for the underground door. As she drew closer to her objective, she began to wonder how long ago the Chaos Space Marines had withdrawn from the cathedral and where they might be now.

  As if in response to her unspoken questions, Trishala heard the tramp of armoured boots close by. When she neared the junction of two tunnels, she drew closer to the wall, holding her breath as she watched gigantic shapes stalking through the gloom.

  She’d found the Iron Warriors. This close the Chaos Space Marines were even more monstrous, their armour adorned with grisly trophies and profane sigils. They exuded an aura of murder and massacre, the ignominy of treacheries ancient and obscene.

  Trishala watched them pass, seven giants arrayed in ancient power armour. She heard the deep snarl of their horned leader as he gave the others their orders. Hearing his words brought clarity to the lurking Battle Sister.

  From his words, Trishala knew the leader of the Iron Warriors was looking for the Warmason’s Casket. They were on the track of the xenos thieves, intending to seize the relic from them.

  A new intention filled Trishala’s heart with grim determination. If she was careful she might follow the Iron Warriors, let them lead her to the stolen relic. When they confronted the xenos, when traitor and alien fought, she might find opportunity in the confusion of battle. She might steal back the Warmason’s Casket or at the very least destroy it so that no enemy could defile its purity more than they already had.

  Steeling herself for the ordeal ahead, Trishala stalked down the passageway, following the armoured step of the Iron Warriors as they marched deeper into the catacombs.

  Rhodaan kept close to Cornak as the sorcerer guided the Iron Warriors ever deeper into the catacombs. If the hexmaster faltered in his purpose now, Rhodaan would emphasize the cost of failure. Seizing the Warmason’s Casket would render a great honour to Perturabo. This close to achieving that ambition, Rhodaan wasn’t about to be thwarted. Not if all the xenos witches on Lubentina were howling for Cornak’s blood.

  ‘We’re getting close,’ Cornak advised, strain in his tone.

  Almost the moment the sorcerer spoke, the catacombs erupted with gunfire. Hybrid cultists came charging out from side passages, blasting away with shotguns and lasrifles, bolters and stubbers. The whirring snarl of Gaos’ autocannon reduced one pack to a tangle of gore, but other cultists came surging through the carnage. Las-bolts and shotgun pellets glanced off their power armour as the Iron Warriors met the rebel charge.

  A snarl from Periphetes’ bolter brought a pair of cowled hybrids plunging to the floor, their bodies quivering in a final paroxysm. Captain Uzraal’s meltagun evaporated a burly hybrid lugging a heavy bolter. Turu and Mahar were beset by a pack of zealots swinging energised picks and hammers, and fended off the mob with bone-breaking swings of their fists and mangling swipes with the stocks of their bolters.

  A snarling monstrosity with three arms hurled itself at Rhodaan. The hybrid’s claw slashed at the warsmith’s face, but the intervening parry of his chainsword blocked the strike. The blade’s whirring teeth dug into the chitinous limb, partly severing it and leaving it dangling from the cultist’s shoulder. While the hybrid sent shots from its laspistol glancing off Rhodaan’s armour, the Space Marine’s bolt pistol punched holes through its body.

  ‘Iron within! Iron without!’ the warriors of the Third Grand Company bellowed as they butchered their way through the cultists. Even Rhodaan lost count of how many fell before their assault as the Iron Warriors smashed their way through the rebels. Ahead he could see that the tunnel branched off. To the right there was a continuation of the morbid, bone-encrusted passages of the catacombs. To the left, angling downwards, the path took on a raw, rugged appearance, walls of compressed spoil fused and hardened by the pressure of millennia.

  ‘This is what the cultists tried to keep us from finding,’ Uzraal observed as he aimed his weapon at the mouth of the sunken tunnel.

  ‘They failed,’ Rhodaan said. He turned towards Cornak, pointing to the tunnel. ‘They must have taken the relic this way.’

  Cornak nodded his head. ‘The magus is near,’ he declared. ‘He thinks to block our advance with his powers.’ He reversed his staff, bringing it slamming down against the floor. Immediately a blast of force swept forwards, roaring down into the tunnel. Rhodaan could almost see the moment when the sorcerer’s magic slammed into an opposing force. There was a flash of energy, a tremble that rolled through the earth. Dirt and bones clattered from the ceiling.

  ‘Keep the xenos witch’s magic in check a little longer, hexmaster,’ Rhodaan ordered Cornak. He hefted his chainsword. ‘His spells will end when his head leaves his shoulders.’ The warsmith led the way as the Iron Warriors descended into the lower tunnels.

  Chapter XIII

  Bakasur clutched at his head as the psychic vibrations issuing from his brain met the arcane surge expelled by Cornak’s magic. He could feel the black tendrils of sorcery seeping through the power he’d evoked, splitting and fracturing it, partitioning its strength until there were only feeble motes of energy left. The mental blast that would have brought the roof of the tunnel crashing down instead only provoked the slightest shifting of the ancient spoil heap. Instead of tonnes of earth crashing down there were only a few streams of dirt and dust.

  The magus opened his mind, reaching into the consciousness of the cultists around him. A dozen hybrids staggered against the earthen walls of the cavern as Bakasur drew from their brains the energy he needed. He focused the siphoned power into his effort to collapse the tunnel, but even this wasn’t enough to overwhelm Cornak’s sorcery. The Space Marine was on his guard now, wary of allowing Bakasur to draw him into the magus’ mental defences. Cornak concentrated only on combating the manifestation of his power, not on the alien mind that produced it. The sorcerer wouldn’t let himself be exposed to the consciousness of the cult, to have his ment
ality dispersed among thousands of minds. He was content to keep the tunnel open.

  It was no stretch of imagination for Bakasur to understand why. The sorcerer was counting on the other Iron Warriors to deal with the magus.

  Dread of such an encounter briefly made Bakasur consider drawing upon the minds of the Inheritors with him to add to his power as he’d done with the hybrids. The thought of defiling the essence of a pure-strain with such a trespass made him repent the very thought. There was a better way. A way that would draw the Space Marines into a trap of their own making.

  Still keeping a part of his mind fixated on bringing down the tunnel so as to distract the sorcerer and keep Cornak occupied, Bakasur gave speedy commands to the hybrids and genestealers with him. The half-human cultists spread out across the cavern, taking up positions from which they’d be able to ambush the Iron Warriors. The Inheritors scurried away down the side passages, ranging through the burrows they’d excavated long ago. The genestealers would be ready when Bakasur needed them.

  Rhodaan’s chainsword came snarling down into the neck of the cultist sprawled at his feet. The hybrid screamed, struggled to bring his alien claws slashing into the Space Marine’s power armour. By that time the teeth of Rhodaan’s blade had already ripped through the chitinous hide and were shredding the fibrous tendons within. The cultist’s head sagged obscenely against his shoulder, dangling by a clutch of unsevered muscles and veins. The warsmith kicked the twitching carcass aside and waved his followers forwards.

  The narrow tunnel opened into a large cavern lit by a hellish luminance pulsating from the walls. The crimson glow sent weird shadows playing across the rough columns of rockcrete that supported the ceiling overhead. Pockets of darkness stretched away on all sides, shadowing niches and cavities, obscuring passageways and tunnels. About the cavern was strewn a jumble of cannibalised machinery, the detritus of scores of mining implements stolen and scavenged by the cult.