Blood Gorgons

Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou

IT IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon‐infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will.

Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio‐engineered super‐warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech‐priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever‐present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

TO BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re‐learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

CHAPTER ONE

COME DAWN, THE small craft settled on a disused runway sixteen kilometres east of the Belasian capital. The landing struts sought purchase on the broken rockcrete and Gammadin of the Blood Gorgons emerged purposefully. His men followed him, stepping down the landing ramp into the quiet morning. He led the way, parting the tall weeds that choked the landing strip as they threaded west towards the distant city lights.

The sun was rising, spilling a weak light over the disrepair of Belasia. Along the way, rockcrete blockhouses struggled out from the bushes. Their windows were broken, their roofs collapsed, and they had been abandoned long ago. The wind moved amongst the yellowing plant life, rustling the dead grass and shuddering the knotted, leafless brambles.

In the distance, the rusting frame of an air mill lay on its side, its skeleton scorched white by bomb blasts.

Gammadin and his Blood Gorgons scanned the broken panes of glass, their helmet arrays searching for thermal heat. There was none to be found except the tiny, skittering signatures of rodent life.

‘All clear,’ reported one of Gammadin’s companions.

‘Remain alert and adjust your auspexes,’ replied Gammadin. ‘They may mean to deceive us yet.’

Heeding his words, Gammadin’s men spaced themselves out into a wide echelon. They bent low, the butts of their guns locked tight against their shoulders. At the fore, Gammadin walked upright, almost nonchalantly, as he led them to the Belasian capital. He held out his palm, skimming the tall grass with one hand as he walked. In the other hand, held tight behind his back, he gripped the handle of a heavy tulwar blade.

They were large, these men, and some would say they were not men at all. They were post‐humans – living constructs that evolved the human form into a singular purpose of warfare. They were mortal things, but most whispered their names with a superstitious fear reserved for phantoms and daemons.

There were nine such warriors following Gammadin. Encased in plate and horn, they moved slowly and deliberately, as if they lived by their own rhythm and the world simply orbited their presence. Like their lord, each Traitor Marine wore power armour the colour of burnt umber. Barnacles and fossilised organisms spread across the sweeping surface of each plate. There was an organic element to their regalia, accentuated by the mutant growth of dorsal fins, quills and hard, segmented shells. Shambling ancients, slow and terrible, the eight Impassives appeared not to move at all as the landscape glided beneath their feet.

Behind them, almost as an afterthought, ghosted the witch, Anko Muhr, following behind in a tower of rigid armour with curtains of black silk trailing from his shoulders.

Unlike his brethren, Muhr was pensive, his fists clenching and unclenching. Unhelmed, his equine face was painted white but the war markings could not mask the agitation in his eyes. He watched the still grass and blinked against the rising sun. Nearby, leafhoppers chirped, promising a hot, quiet day. There was a still tension in the dawn, a fragile peace that could not last. Muhr could feel the taut energy on the wind.

2

Picking up speed, Gammadin and his warriors cut through the yellowing hills that bordered the capital. They stopped every now and again, trying to catch the scent of a human; a pack of blackened hunters, crashing through dry branches, lifting their heads to taste the air. Belasia lay ahead, a shoulder of rockcrete that surfaced above the flatlands and pastures. In the distance, yet clearly audible, the early morning was accompanied by the waking screams of thousands.

THE WEATHER WAS unusually fine in the Capital State of Belasia. The sun shone lime‐bright on the highways and gridded, austere buildings. Such temperate weather only contrasted with the depressive state of each precinct. The air was hazed with heat and summer dust. There was not a single window within the rectangular ministry blocks and tenements that remained intact. Life still dwelled there, but it was sporadic and rare. The long silence of the day was interrupted only by sudden and intense swells of gunfire.

Belasia had once been a stable world of the Imperium. High density city blocks dotted efficient highways that traversed the wide plains of chemically wilted flora. It was neither a metropolis nor a thriving port of trade, but its governance had been effective. A modest export of coal and non‐ferrous metals to the domestic subsector maintained a reasonable standard of living for its large labouring populace. Like their plain proto‐Imperial architecture, Belasians were an uninspired group. Austerity, order and economic prudence were the prevailing ideology, alongside honest work for the Emperor’s glory.

But this stability had been undone by the discovery of rich mineral seams along the Belasian Shelf and the civil war that followed. As with all civil wars, it became a battle of interests. The wealthy collared the poor and the poor fought amongst themselves.

The military chieftains of the Belasian PDF were quick to declare their interests in the mineral wealth, mobilising Belasia’s ‘Red Collar’ regiments to forcefully secure mining sites.

In reaction, the Imperial administration levied a conscript force and transformed their modest primary production sectors into industries of war. The ensuing conflict wiped out thirty per cent of adult males in Belasia within a decade. When the number of able‐bodied young men dwindled, both factions turned to recruiting boy soldiers to continue their campaigns.

Rebels, looters and activists added to the degeneration of society. The entire infrastructure of Belasia deteriorated as her people descended into violent madness. It was not long before boy soldiers roamed the streets, proclaiming themselves rulers, brandishing lasguns. With the sudden proliferation of arms, no one argued with them.

By virtue of their obscurity within the star system, the Belasians fought a vicious war amongst themselves for seventeen years. Neither PDF militants nor the local government requested aid from Holy Terra, for neither wanted to share the spoils of victory. By 855.M41, entire cities were held by local warlords and their gangs. The Red Collar regiments became mere mobs of heavily armed children fighting for food and ammunition.

That was when the dark eldar chose to strike.

Not much can be remembered of the invasion, for nothing was recorded. Although the xenos were small in number, the population of Belasia possessed no means to repel them.

The Red Collars and child rebels, soft from plundering unarmed civilians, fled at the advance of the dark eldar. In the days following the xenos landings, the remaining military vox‐channels spread tales of alien raiders and mass murders. People hid in their public shelters or fled from the cities.

3

In the years that followed, the dark eldar cultivated Belasia as a farmer tends an orchard. They harvested slaves from the pockets of life, never taking more than the population could replenish. They indulged in orgies of bloodletting to keep the humans fragmented and fearful, but never pushed a region into extinction. These slaves were sold on to other dark eldar kabals, to Chaos cults in neighbouring subsectors and even to Chaos Space Marine warbands such as the Blood Gorgons.

IT WAS THE first meal Jonah had eaten in three days. That in itself was not uncommon on Belasia. Not many dared to forage wild cabbage in the city outskirts when pressured constantly by the fear of being hunted.

But finally Jonah had succumbed to hunger, and under the cover of darkness he left the shelter of his basement. From the local chemical mills, he would gather fungi that spored in the rubble and rust of demolition. Over where the highways led out to the district outskirts, he knew of a spot where string vines grew in patches, between the cracked pavement slits.

They were palatable enough if boiled with salt.

Travelling light, Jonah tucked the scavenged vegetables into a plastek bag and stole his way through the darkest lanes and drainage pipes. At all times, he watched his back carefully, looking for a glimpse of the stick‐men. Jonah remembered a time when it had only been a brisk stroll from his hab to the outer townships. Now the creeping, hiding and constant panic took him hours.

Back home in his basement, his family waited for him – his daughter, Meisha, and his wife in the corner, looking mousy and long suffering.

They ate in silence, concentrating on the task of spooning, chewing and savouring. It made the food last longer that way. Quietly they ate, hidden from the outside world.

It was not until they finished that Jonah heard a cracking on the floorboards above. A low groaning of the wood, soft at first but growing persistent as it crept close. It sounded, quite dreadfully, as if someone was treading across the abandoned rail station above them.

Had he been followed? He had never been careless when foraging for food or water in the city.

They held their breaths. A shadow glided across the boarded up windows, rippling through the tiny slits between the planks.

The fear in him was so great. Jonah knew very well what those stick‐men did to people.

Pushing the sinking fear from his mind, Jonah closed his eyes and began to count. Slowly, with his breath still and taut in his chest.

The footsteps faded.

Meisha hissed a low wheezing breath. It was too soon.

Suddenly and without reason, the lone candle flickered out.

The door buckled with a sudden crack. Jonah screamed in shock without meaning to.

The door warped under the pressure before popping uselessly off its hinges. Meisha began screaming because he was screaming. Soon his wife followed suit and they were all shrieking in terror as the stick‐men skittered into their shelter.

Their limbs shot through the door first, long and fluted like finely carved lengths of ebony. This was followed by the uncurling spindle of their torsos as they swooped beneath the door frame. They moved so fast that they seemed to flicker.

Jonah fumbled for the shotgun beneath the blanket trunk. He had once been an enforcement officer, when Imperial law had still been relevant on Belasia, and that weapon 4

was the last remaining vestige of his pride. It had pained him when his wife had insisted he keep it locked away from the children. Now it was too late. Jonah never got to the shotgun.

They came to him with such speed, kicking him in the jaw with a finely pointed boot and sprawling him onto the floor. In a daze, Jonah could not see how many there were, he only saw the whirl of tall thin bodies. In the dark, their armour matched the hue of a midnight sky and their faces were enclosed in tusk‐shaped helmets.

‘Pa!’ shrieked Meisha. ‘The ghosts are here! The ghosts are here!’

A stick‐man aimed his rifle at her, the razorblades that edged the weapon flashing with his movement. It was said by some that their guns spat poison. Jonah leapt to his feet, his fear suddenly forgotten, and lunged for his daughter. But the stick‐men were too quick. An armoured fist punched him on the chin and blackened his vision entirely. The last thing he remembered was the shrieking.

JONAH AWAKENED SLOWLY to pounding pain in the back of his head. He was groggy and it took him a moment to realise he was not in his own home any more. He panicked with a start and began to fight against the paralysis of sleep. With a thrust of conscious effort he forced his eyes to open.

He lay in an old armoury of some kind, likely the PDF staging station in St Orlus Precinct. The tin shed was unlit except for the bay of small windows that let in hazy shafts of sunlight. A thick patina of blackened soot covered the inside of the corrugated tin shed while old tools still hung from the roof racks in cocoons of dust and spider webs.

The place had been stripped of its equipment during the civil war, likely many years before the coming of the stick‐men. Civilian vehicles, uparmoured and customised, replaced the old tanks and carriers of the Red Collar regiments. Jonah could make out a road hauler with a heavy bolter mounted on its bonnet and a Chimera, its hull sprayed with skull motifs in the manner of the child soldiers.

As his vision began to focus, Jonah realised there were others with him. There were bodies shifting under the scant light, packed into the armoury. Jonah recoiled in fright, but hands pushed back at him, intruding on his space. In such tight confines, he smelt sweat and the oiliness of human hair.

There was a man of middle years next to him, his shoulders pressed together. Squinting, Jonah saw the silhouette of a beard and matted hair. The man said nothing, but Jonah could feel his shoulders tremble softly as he cried. Jonah looked away, suddenly ashamed. There were many others around, moaning and babbling.

The noise rose as more captives regained consciousness. The nonsense sounds of human misery grew louder until suddenly Jonah heard a stinging crack. The moans turned into howls.

Something was amongst the writhing captives. A tall figure, standing above them, lashing a whip into the mound of bodies. Following each snap of the whip came a protest of humiliated pain. Jonah tried to move away as the stick‐man picked his way through the captives, thrashing his whip. There was a final, sinking pain in Jonah’s chest as his fears became real. He had been captured by the stick‐men; there was no denying that reality any more.

The stick‐man’s face had the pallor of the dead and his eyes were large and almost entirely black, their pupils seeming to swallow up the whites. Narrow and vulpine, his features had a wicked upward slant that were locked in a darkly comedic grin.

5

Jonah started to yell. He did not mean to, but he became caught up in the panic around him. It was the deep, bawling cry of a terrified human adult, equal parts a sound of distress and the loud roar of an animal trying to frighten away its tormentors.

The armoury erupted with shrill, maddening laughter. Jonah realised there were more stick‐men watching him than he had realised. The laughter came from behind him, and even seemed to drift down from the darkened rafters and furthest corners. Bladder muscles loosening, Jonah sank back into the floor as the whip crashed against his back.

THE WATER WAS an unctuous yellow. It was so heavy with pollutant that the liquid sat with an unmoving viscosity. Stringy, grassy vegetation scummed its surface, collecting in progressively larger bales towards the centre of the lake, gathering into a morass of dark, hairy fibres.

Standing on the banks, Lord Gammadin watched as Captain Hammurabi descended shin‐deep into the water. The still surface rippled awkwardly, bubbling and frothing in fits.

With one mighty stroke of his broadsword, Hammurabi collapsed an entire copse of small bushes.

Gammadin had a great admiration for the captain of his personal guard, the eight Impassives. Hammurabi had a good sword arm, and was loyal as far as a worshipper of Chaos could be termed so. He followed his duties as Gammadin’s first blade strictly. He executed those duties well now as he sloshed deeper into the water, parting reeds with heavy blows of his sword.

Gammadin waded into the water. The disturbance rocked the water grasses and they rustled a collective sigh, swaying gently back and forth. The sun caught the water and flickered. For a moment, Gammadin thought he saw a face, but then it was gone.

Blinking his hooded eyelids, Gammadin studied the grasses but found nothing. His hand slithered over the hilt of his tulwar and there it stayed. The air was hot and still, the sun steaming off the lake’s surface. The water seemed to murmur, furtive with secrets.

Suddenly, Gammadin sensed a presence. He felt a chill in the base of his neck.

He advanced waist‐deep into the water, the ancient servos of his power armour whirring as they churned his legs through the muddy bottom. Yet still that feeling would not leave him.

‘My Khorsaad,’ Hammurabi said, gesturing respectfully for Gammadin to follow. The captain had already advanced several dozen paces ahead, cutting a swathe through the bog.

Gammadin raised his ceramite palm. ‘Wait.’

Despite the stillness, there was a restless quality to the atmosphere, beneath the surface. Long ago, the gods had gifted Gammadin with enlightenment, and his psychic abilities had matured into a fearsome prospect ever since. Gammadin could see the arcs and mathematic patterns in the air that modelled the space and materium of this world. He could channel his will into displays of physical force. But above all, he could sense the consciousness of the world around him – the rocks, the soil, the trees. He sensed, now, there was a hidden danger. The lake seemed to tremble with anticipation and the air was coarse with a lively, barely contained static. Hidden energy surrounded him everywhere.

The water stirred behind Gammadin. The lord turned slowly to see Anko Muhr enter the lake with Gammadin’s retinue, an elite core of venerated seniors bonded in the ritual way of the Blood Gorgons. There were four pairs in all, each pair having shared organs and tissue to produce a symbiosis of shared battlefield experience.

6

What manner of beast or man could ever overwhelm the eight Impassives?

Gammadin quelled the troubling instinct and began to walk across the lake. Together they fanned out into a staggered formation, waist‐deep. The lake was wide, but drought had evaporated its depth. Heavy minerals crunched underfoot, feeding the floating water grasses that obscured the distant shoreline from view. They did not travel far before Gammadin felt it again. Stronger this time, a palpable warning that drummed with percussive urgency in his temple.

‘Halt!’ Gammadin called. He spied movement in the water to his immediate left. The grass parted softly, tentacle roots bobbing listlessly away in the water. Their steps had disturbed the soil. Something dark and round bubbled to the surface.

Gammadin gnashed the spined pincer of his right arm with a loud click. The Impassives dropped low, their bolter barrels chasing the grass for a target. Sliding his tulwar from his waist, Gammadin slapped the flat of its blade against the mottled shell of his right arm.

The object burped to the surface with one final pop of oily water. A black hat. It sat still on the surface. A black felt hat with a round crown and wide brim.

Hammurabi slid through the water and flipped it over. It turned, floating like a high-sided boat, revealing blood and hair on the underside. The blood was still fresh and soaked into the felt like an ink stain.

‘How curious,’ Muhr observed. He seemed to drift. His dark brown cloak, sagging with charms and fetishes, clung to his power armour wetly as he waded closer.

Gammadin eyed the witch warily. He did not trust Muhr. Not only because he was a sorcerer, but also because Gammadin could sense a jealous ambition in Muhr’s black heart.

Muhr was the Chapter’s senior Chirurgeon and high priest of the witch coven, and Gammadin was aware of his power lust.

‘Leave that,’ Gammadin commanded.

‘’Tis truly a gods‐damned omen,’ Muhr said theatrically, rubbing the wreaths of knuckle bone necklaces that coiled down his breast. ‘A dead man’s hat, drifting in the current.’

The troubling fear still weighed heavily on Gammadin’s brow. He was not one to listen to the witch’s superstitious meanderings, but there was something in the air.

‘Let us beseech the protection of the gods,’ Muhr said. ‘Only they can convert ill‐luck to fortune.’

Gammadin scanned the lake, motionless now. He agreed reluctantly and signalled for the witch to go ahead.

As the chanting began, Muhr’s black craft unsettled even the eight Impassives. He swayed, rocking gently at the waist. A monotonous prayer rasped from his vox‐grille. It had a steady, hypnotic cadence. With the raising of his voice, a light wind picked up which brought grit and dry leaves on its draught.

The Impassives grew ever more restless. They breathed heavily. The Blood Gorgons were renegades but they had not been lured into depths of arcane lore like the warbands of their more superstitious brethren. They considered themselves a warrior band first and foremost. Despite their worship of the Sects Undivided, sorcery was a fickle and dangerous thing to be feared and respected from a distance.

Muhr finished his chant and began to splash oil from a ceramic gourd. He splashed some against Gammadin. The droplets felt like intrusive hammer blows, and Gammadin immediately felt drowsy, as if his eyes were blinking through the haze of half‐sleep.

7

‘What have you done, witch?’ Gammadin asked brusquely. He felt his muscles unknot involuntarily as the ominous urgings dissipated. Yet it did not quell his instincts. He simply felt blinded now. The trouble did not seem to go away, it felt to Gammadin that he simply could not feel it any more. As if it were hidden from him now, just out of reach, as if someone had hooded his psychic abilities.

‘The gods, they have dampened our souls against the daemons that watch us.’

‘I feel–’ Gammadin took a deep, clattering breath. ‘I feel like a dull razor.’

‘A mere blessing of the gods’ gaze. They watch over you now, so you do not need to watch for yourself,’ Muhr replied.

‘Khorsaad¸ there is movement,’ Blood‐Sergeant Makai announced, pointing his boltgun warily.

As Makai spoke, the reeds to their immediate left parted and a man hurtled through the water. He was dazed and bleeding, running wild. He did not even seem to register the presence of the Traitor Marines. He simply tried to churn his legs wildly through the sluggish water.

Makai cut down the man with a burst of his bolter.

‘No!’ Gammadin said, his voice rising slightly in anger. The man was already dead, bobbing softly over a dark patch of aquatic weed. It was not like Makai to be spooked so easily. Something was irritating all of them.

‘I acted hastily, Khorsaad,’ Makai replied.

Hammurabi interjected, shaking his head as if to clear it. ‘Be still, Makai. We came here to test this world for genestock. This is not a kill‐raid.’ As Hammurabi spoke, he flipped the dead man onto his back.

For a brief moment, Gammadin’s flesh tensed. He thought he saw fear in the man’s rigid features. The man had been running and frightened before he had even seen them. As Gammadin studied the corpse, he began to wonder if the Impassives stood on the same soil as something even more terrifying to these humans than an Astartes. Perhaps there was more on Belasia than the topographic scans had revealed. From orbit, the planet had appeared to be a prime slave colony, but now they were on‐world, he was not so sure.

There was just something in the air…

‘This is a lawless world and this human’s suffering is no uncommon thing,’ Muhr said, pointing at the dead man. ‘We should make haste and think nothing of it.’

Gammadin slapped his thigh decisively. ‘Come then. We go,’ he said, resuming his steady wade.

STANDING AMONGST THE chemical‐churned mud and dead reeds of the shoal, Jonah was stripped of his clothing. There was no dignity, no modesty. The captives stood close together, each trying to hide behind the person in front. A cold draught blew across the lake’s surface, drawing goose bumps across Jonah’s forearms.

The stick‐men surrounded them. Perhaps two hundred slaves, shepherded by tall, thin shapes. Jonah dared not look at them directly but he felt them in the corners of his vision.

Stick‐men enslavers hauled against the straining leashes of their hounds. Further behind them, Jonah could hear the high‐pitched machine hum of their war engines. A fleet of four or five craft hovered metres above the ground, their long ship‐like chassis sharp and narrow. Poised for speed, they rocked gently under the gravitational pull as the stick‐men clung to the running boards, shouting and keening in anticipation.

8

When it finally happened, the stick‐men gave them no instructions. They simply pointed across the lake with long, clawed fingers. The meaning was clear enough. Slaves were to run, make a break for freedom across the lake.

And then the stick‐men unleashed their animals.

Jonah could not avert his gaze any more. He looked up and saw a hound pounce on a man at the edge of the mob. They were not like any canines that Jonah had handled in his enforcement days. These were hairless things, all naked flesh and gristle. Teeth with jagged regularity snapped closed as the creature began to savage the man into the mud, grinding the man down with its weight and mauling him.

Jonah ran. They all ran, a stampede that crashed into the water and moved as one.

Blinding fear forced them to stay together.

Flanking them, running parallel, the warp hounds chased the slaves, forcing them to run in the same direction. The animals did not bark, but they laughed with a shrill yapping as the pack communicated to each other, herding the running humans along the lake bank.

A slave went over, tackled from behind by a hound and nailed into the mud face first. On impact, the hound flipped over its victim, hurtling through the air with its legs upturned and twisting. Before the captive could rise, the other hounds were snapping all over him.

GAMMADIN STOPPED MID‐STRIDE, his boot sinking into a mud crater. He raised his hand.

The shore grass swayed beneath a sudden bar of wind. He could smell the scent of humans on the gust, but there was something else too. More than the gamey, mammalian oil of human skin, there was something organic that stung Gammadin’s olfactory glands.

He realised that they were not here simply hunting for slave samples any more. Without a doubt, there was something purposeful manifesting itself. Something knew of the Blood Gorgon presence and was prepared for it, this Gammadin could feel. He knew.

Gammadin’s helmet optics were already scanning the surrounding area for danger. The banks of the lake were wide and flat, covered in clumps of dry grass and semi‐aquatic rushes. There could be danger there. A fluid stream of information was filtered from his helmet’s sensors into his neural relays – wind current, visibility and metallic resonance.

Hammurabi sank into a squat beside Gammadin, leaning on his sword. ‘I feel it too, Khorsaad. There is a background roar in my ears.’

Probing psychically, Gammadin attempted to expand his consciousness into the surrounding environs, but he found himself mentally disorientated. The air and slight buzzing of insects made him listless, almost distracted. He had felt the same way ever since Muhr had invoked his black arts.

Muhr. Gammadin growled deep within his blackened hearts. What did he know of the events here?

‘Khorsaad!’ Hammurabi began, rising suddenly.

They came over the crest, hugging the line where the water met the earth. Slashing, frothing and flailing as they went, a stampede of people.

It was unclear who fired the first shot. A bolt‐round exploded in the midst of the rapidly advancing human tide, but they ran undeterred. Closer now, Gammadin could see their faces, contorted in fright and utterly unaware of the Blood Gorgons in their path of flight.

‘Formation!’ Gammadin shouted at his Impassives.

The Impassives tightened into a defensive shell around Gammadin. In a circle, they fired into the oncoming avalanche of thrashing limbs, flashing bursts of ammunition into the 9

mob. The horde rushed into and directly over the Blood Gorgons. Naked bodies collided against the anchored warriors, bouncing off their solid weight and swarming around them like an estuary.

‘We are being fired upon,’ voxed Bond‐Brother Carcosa as he placed a hand to his suddenly bleeding neck.

‘We are receiving fire,’ Khadath affirmed as panicked bodies drummed and bumped against him.

From the distant slopes, a high‐pitched whistling could be heard as high‐velocity missiles whipped through the grass. They came from every direction at once, slicing into the enamel of his armour. It was an indiscriminate volley, slicing down the fleeing humans as it ricocheted against their plate.

Gammadin magnified his vision threefold towards the slopes. He saw thin humanoids in dark blue carapace standing up from the grass, darting from position to position. They raised long rifles and moved with the fluid coordination of trained marksmen. Gammadin recognised their attackers as dark eldar and knew there was treachery on this world.

He threw the tulwar blade in his palm underhand; the heavy dagger shot out in a wide arc before meeting a dark eldar almost forty metres away, sending it sprawling into the grass. Before his blade had found its target, Gammadin had already picked out several shots with his combi‐bolter. The mag scope of his vision lens spun and whirled as it tracked multiple targets before seeking a new one as Gammadin put them down. His rage was building. A xenos round, a crystallised shard of poison, sliced through the back of his knee joint. The toxin tingled in the wound, potent enough to have immediately paralysed any normal human being. The wound only enraged Gammadin further, his killing becoming methodical as he picked target after target.

The eight Impassives fanned out to lay down a curtain of fire. Like Gammadin, they were not pressured to shoot wild. Even as a constant shred of dark eldar weaponry hummed through the air, they picked their shots. The Blood Gorgons refused to give ground, despite the fleeing humans who were adding to the confusion. Growing bold, the dark eldar emerged from the grass to charge down the sandy gradient in a ragged line. A grenade went off at close range, shaking the world and jetting up sheets of mud.

Gammadin’s withdrawal was being cut off. The dark eldar hooked around their flanks as the stampede of captives blocked and hemmed in the Impassives. Gammadin nearly lost his footing in the treacherous mud as the storm of xenos weaponry thickened considerably.

Splinter rifles rippled shots across the mud flat, steaming up a fog of dirt particles. The airborne mud hung in swirls and lazy drifts, choking the Blood Gorgons’ targeting systems.

‘We must withdraw,’ Gammadin voxed over the squad link.

As they fell back, the dark eldar pressured them, staying in their pocket and exchanging a blizzard of shots. Blood‐Sergeant Abasilis and his bond, Bond‐Brother Gharne, moved to intercept the dark eldar flanking pincer on their left, banging off crisp, precise shots.

Gharne had been blinded in the firefight, his helmet discarded and his eyes shorn by shrapnel. Abasilis called out coordinates to the sightless Gharne, directing his bolter wherever the enemy gathered to return fire.

Movement was the only thing that prevented the Blood Gorgons from being pinned in the open. Gammadin, still facing the enemy, moved backwards into the lake. His combi-bolter was spent of bolt shells. The dark eldar chased him, daring to rush so close that Gammadin could see into the vision slits of their helmets. Easily excited, the dark eldar 10

were growing careless in their pursuit. Gammadin raised his right arm, the monstrous chitin of his pincer, and caught them as they lunged in. With his left he expelled the last of his flamer.

The dark eldar caught in the high pressure stream shrieked and died loudly, their inferior carapaces charring under the chemical flame. Capable of stripping paint off a tank-hide in its raw form, when ignited the palmitic acid burned to a glowing white two thousand degrees. Within seconds the dark eldar were melted into stumps of fused plating and flesh. Corrosive fumes billowed out in a thick, cloying raft, driving back those dark eldar who were hounding Gammadin too closely.

Behind Gammadin, Blood‐Sergeant Khadath, Carcosa and Blood‐Captain Hammurabi escorted Muhr, who was extracting Nagael’s gene‐seed with his scissor hands. The trio surrounded the witch‐chirurgeon, firing outwards as they fought their way towards Gammadin. A dark eldar raider, too confident in his abilities, darted low at Hammurabi, twin blades trailing. The ancient captain dismissed him with a back‐handed slap, breaking the dark eldar’s neck while he continued to cycle through his bolter. Khadath suddenly fell, his neck ruptured. Carcosa caught him by his bolter sling and dragged him backwards.

Gammadin milked the last of his flame chambers as he watched the dark eldar close in.

How many of them were there? Hundreds?Certainly, judging by the bodies that were beached on the shores.

The remaining Impassives, their bolters now slung, slaughtered their way deep into the lake with mace, axe and hammer. They drove a path through the dark eldar who tried to engage them hand to hand. For all the speed and deft blade‐skill of the xenos raiders, the Impassives crushed them with brute strength. Bond‐Brother Gemistos led the way, sprinting at full speed, all three hundred kilos of him. An ironclad juggernaut crashed through the dark eldar, swinging his antlered helmet from side to side.

Together the Impassives clustered around Gammadin like a shield wall. They became a solid phalanx of ceramite. The dark eldar could not manoeuvre close enough to surround them. Bolt shells whistled and spat through the water grass.

And that was when Muhr revealed his hand.

Trailing behind, the witch moved away from his lord. The dark eldar around him did not strike nor fire upon him, even as he raised his arms to summon his powers. A sudden wind gusted across the river, flattening the grass on the banks as it reached a high‐pitched crescendo.

‘Witch!’ shouted Gammadin. ‘What manner of–’

Gammadin was cut short as Muhr clapped his hands. The air pressure dropped as if in a vacuum. Shadows began to rise out of the boiling current, humanoid in shape, with multiple reaching hands.

The water frothed violently around the Impassives. Shadowy apparitions bubbled forth from the river and began to swarm over them. The mud beneath the Chaos Space Marines’

feet gurgled wetly, slipping and sliding as if falling away.

‘Muhr. You are not worthy of the Blood Gorgon title,’ Gammadin whispered on the squad link.

The lake bottom suddenly imploded with a thunderous gurgle. It yawned like a sinkhole, thirstily draining water into its aqueous abyss. Four Impassives were carried down by the crashing flood of water. Gammadin sank down on one knee, fighting for purchase in the mud. Warning lights flashed across his vision as the spirit of his armour 11

began to babble nonsense in his ears. The ground beneath him continued to give way.

Sensing his weakness, warp hounds began to paddle across the lake towards him.

‘I have plenty left for you!’ he roared, drawing a scimitar from his back scabbard. The pitted blade was almost two metres in length, scarred and nicked from centuries of service.

It resembled a tool rather than a blade, a piece of metal stripped of any elegance in favour of the utility of killing. Dragging it to his left he met the charging hounds with three horizontal strikes, rushing past them as they leapt into the air and leaving severed corpses in his wake.

He turned to meet Muhr the betrayer. The sorcerer was wise to keep his distance, stepping away even as his hands throbbed with black, sorcerous fire.

‘Witch. What have you done here?’ Gammadin demanded.

‘You’re a tiresome one,’ Muhr replied. ‘The Blood Gorgons need leadership. I tire of roving like vagabonds, adrift in space with no purpose.’

‘We are raiders, Muhr. That’s our way of doing things,’ growled Gammadin. He tried to rise to his feet, but the lake bottom sucked and slurped. The waterline lowered visibly as the Champion Ascendant planted his foot into solid mud, but it yielded completely. The gushing water pushed against him and suddenly Gammadin was going over.

‘You’re going to die now,’ Muhr said.

It was the last thing Lord Gammadin heard as the lake opened up to swallow him whole.

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