Sepulturum - Nick Kyme Read online

  This is what she was, of course. A killer. A rough blade honed to a lethal edge by one of the Emperor’s death cults. The Sanguinous or some-such, Morgravia could not remember; but these days that was nothing new.

  ‘Just tell me you didn’t murder anyone,’ she said, tugging on knee-length boots that went over her breeches and then picking up a dark green flak-weave bodice. A bullet-stopper at anything but point-blank, pretty good against ranged weapons too. Fuck all use against a knife, though. ‘Here…’ she said, and gestured to her disturbing companion, ‘don’t just stand there looking grim and forbidding, make yourself useful.’ The bodice pushed in her ribs as Hel tied it off and affixed the mag-clasps around the back.

  ‘Throne,’ Morgravia gasped. ‘I do not enjoy wearing this thing.’ She gave Hel, who was bound in a black-red bodyglove, a side glance. A raft of exterior metal studs caught the light, and the rags of death oaths were tightly cinched around Hel’s arms and legs. A synthetic skull mask was near imprinted on her face. ‘How do you even stand wearing that all the time?’

  Hel canted her head, like a predator assessing a sudden peculi­arity in its prey.

  ‘Pain and forbearance brings us closer to His glory,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ Morgravia replied, strapping on her weapons belt before engaging the fingerprint access of a small lock-casket secreted in the inner pocket of her longcoat. The lid clicked loose with a hiss of depressurisation. ‘Did you see any sign of them?’ she asked.

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘But you found trouble?’

  ‘There is always trouble in Blackgheist.’

  Morgravia smirked and gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Too true, though we agreed you’d do it quietly.’

  ‘Confrontation was inevitable.’

  ‘So you did murder someone.’

  ‘Several someones.’

  Morgravia swore under her breath.

  ‘It was necessary to retrieve the information you desired.’

  Hope coloured Morgravia’s voice. ‘You found him?’

  Hel nodded, Morgravia reciprocating with a nod of her own.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘Hallow’s End.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it.’ She still held the lock-casket, not yet ready to lift the lid on what was inside. Morgravia let her eyes close for a few seconds. ‘Throne, this needs to be ended.’

  She eased open the lid, looked down.

  ‘Perhaps they have given up the hunt?’ suggested Hel after a few moments.

  ‘No, that’s not it. They’re waiting.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For me to remember,’ said Morgravia and took an item from the lock-casket. It was a sigil, an adamantium metal strip fashioned into the shape of a capital letter ‘I’ with three bars intersecting its horizontal axis. A synthetic wax seal in the shape of a jawless skull affixed to the midsection.

  Morgravia regarded the sigil in her hand.

  ‘We were here for a reason, Hel. I just wish I could remember what that reason was,’ she said, and put the Inquisitorial rosette away. Throwing on her longcoat, she made for the door. ‘Are you coming?’ she said, but Hel had already gone. ‘Quietly…’ she said reflectively. ‘Good girl.’

  The city stank of rot and venality. Tall gothic structures pressed in either side of a main street, leaning over the shuffling crowds like bent-backed old men. Huge statues sprouted liberally amongst the urban decay, pushing aside buildings and soaring so high into the false atmosphere their heads were wreathed in mist like the summits of mountains. Rivulets of moisture clung to their sculpted stone bodies, enhancing their godly aura, hands raised to the heavens as if holding up the very roof of the world. A thin river of effluence wended through the heart of it, peeling off into little tributaries, a manufactured delta of filth and industrial waste.

  Morgravia drank it all in as she moved through the habitation district of Low Sink. She stuck to the bigger crowds, hood up and head down, her gaze flicking up every now and then to the overhangs, the gantries and the walkways. Hel would be up there somewhere, staying out of sight, flitting from perch to perch with an acrobat’s easy grace.

  She trusted the death cultist, acknowledging she had little choice in the matter. Hel had dragged her from the sump outflow on the night Oshanti had died with his guts hanging out. She’d found the hab-unit, tended her wounds and wiped away every trace Morgravia had left behind. Without Hel, she would probably be dead. But Hel didn’t know anything, save she had a duty to the Inquisition and therefore Morgravia with it. She possessed no knowledge of the mission or what the threat might be. She was a weapon, nothing more, and a slightly broken one at that.

  A light rain pattered on Morgravia’s longcoat, drizzling through the mouths of gargoyles crouched on the edges of slab-stoned tenements and spired factorum-cathedra. Daisy-chains of sodium lamps hung along the main civilian route, flickering and spluttering, casting long, knife-sharp shadows. Morgravia shuddered as the memory of the tunnel intruded on the present. She increased her pace, bulling her way past grimy dockhands, factorum serfs and grey-faced servitor units. Several streets converged into a public concourse where a preacher babbled from a makeshift pulpit, spitting zeal and fury as he brandished a tatty book in the direction of his onlookers. He’d attracted a decent crowd, though the roads out of Low Sink were so rammed he could hardly have not. Even the proctors, shock mauls swinging lazily from their belts, clad in black carapace and glaring through rain-spattered helmet visors, struggled to make way. One bellowed through a loudhailer, reminding every citizen of their Throne-expected duty to report any mutant, heretic or witch to the Imperial authorities. Vigilance, he said, protects.

  Morgravia sincerely doubted that, and besides, she would have to flout that directive if she had any aspirations of convincing the Broker. And she needed to convince the Broker.

  Pushing through the throng, edging around a burly ogryn hauling a stack of crates wrapped in a tarpaulin on its back, Morgravia made for a side street. She had taken a few steps beyond the alley threshold when the pain hit like a mag-trans locomotive, poleaxing her to the ground…

  flesh stretched taut tearing ripping every seam pulled apart to reveal red hot and red hearts beating organs steaming blades pushing through skin twisting bones splintering skull cracking spine bent double and bleeding red red red pain and pain and agony a cut a slash peeling back every layer no crevice left untouched bruised and battered knives two red suns looming shearing pinned back and exposed a crimson flower in bloom its petals spread to every cardinal destination flensing grinding excise and exsanguinate until only red remains and red is all there is

  She came to, a cry half-stifled in her throat, hot tears stinging her cheeks, to see a shadow looming over her. For a second, Morgravia panicked, taken back to a past trauma she couldn’t remember, a memory of knives and blood. Then she realised where she was. His hands were inside her longcoat, rummaging. Morgravia jabbed the stub pistol into the thief’s side, snarled.

  ‘I squeeze and the bullet perforates your liver. It will hurt. You will bleed to death in this alleyway and no one will mourn you.’

  The thief backed away empty-handed, mumbling fearfully. Little older than a boy, he had a faint wash of downy stubble and bright, scared eyes. Dressed in rough clothes, he looked like a dock runner, and capered off as soon as he hit the crowds, leaving the whiff of ammonia in his wake.

  Morgravia got up and dusted herself off. Someone had shoved a burning poker in her skull. That’s how it felt, how it always felt. The red dream. She vomited in her mouth, tasting the acerbity of stomach acid as it seared her throat. She spat it up, wishing she had something to drink. She could imbibe later when she reached Hallow’s End.

  Sweeping her gaze across the ledges and gantries above, she scowled.

  ‘I see you pick and choose when you watch my damn back.�
��

  Hel, if she was watching, didn’t make her presence known.

  Morgravia was about to walk on when she heard a commotion from the street outside the alley. She heard shouting. Some of the proctors were bellowing orders for people to stand aside. Someone screamed. Even the preacher’s sermon had been interrupted. Wanting no part of it, Morgravia headed for Hallow’s End, where the Broker would be waiting.

  The juve fell like a sack of dead meat.

  The gangers had enough sense to post lookouts at the perim­eter of their territory but Cristo moved swiftly for a big man and had a keen eye for trouble. He was also supremely motivated. He didn’t kill them. He loathed killing and felt the weight of those who had died at his hands like an ever-thickening noose around his neck. He hurt them though. Broke bones. Rendered them unconscious. Male, female, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the chain-wielding banshee in the fighting pit.

  The cordon of flickering drum fires drew closer with every step. As Cristo moved deeper into the gully he realised he knew this place, more by reputation than familiarity. It was Red Hand territory, at the least the very edge of it. The juves he had put down wore patches depicting a crowned skull. Mark of the Death Kings. Such ridiculous names they gave themselves, but the Death Kings were a rival faction to the Red Hand, which only meant more trouble and the possibility of a ticking chrono. Cristo upped the pace to the rattling tune of a chain raking at a drum shield as the fight in the pit intensified. The mob bayed with every lash, urging violence, thirsty for more. Then a horn sounded like a distant war cry, discordant, blaring. Cristo turned, they all did, towards a ridge of refuse and debris that rose up like a grubby cliff. Lights flared, eye-achingly bright spots of magnesium white, and the rumble of engines suddenly eclipsed the catcalls like thunder rolling across a dirt sea.

  ‘Shit…’

  The ticking chrono was ringing.

  The interlopers had bloody handprints daubed on their faces and rode down the ridge on grit-bikes, jinking left and right, kicking up dirt, dust pluming from their tyres. Blades and axes whirled menacingly as they arrowed in on the other gang. An ash-runner, a much larger bike, grunted behind them. Petrochem spewed from its twin chrome exhausts. The rider was leant back in the saddle. His plate armour and the chainblade strapped to the bike’s hefty frame marked him out as the gang leader.

  Gun shots rang out. The riders had sidearms as well as blades. The Death Kings gathered around the fighting pit scattered. A few pistols barked back. Someone in the crowd got hit and went down. The girl in the pit with the improvised shield took her chance, and Cristo cried out despite himself when she smashed her chain-wielding opponent in the neck. Heads turned, shocked at the burly bullet-maker in their midst, but they were too busy with the riders to really worry about him.

  Cristo barrelled on, hoisting a ganger that got in his way up and over his shoulder. He barged another from his path, swatting the ganger aside, not missing a step as he rushed into the fighting pit to the side of the fallen.

  ‘Karina…’

  She lay curled in foetal agony, choking for breath and clutching at her throat.

  A rider sped past a few feet away, whooping and crowing. He hit something, a hatchet blade slapping into skin. Blood arced. It spattered Cristo’s cheek, hot and sudden, and he looked up to see one of the Death Kings juves fall with her head caved in.

  The girl on the ground next to him could barely breathe. Her eyes rolled as a bruise blossomed menacingly across her larynx. She’d taken some licks in the pit too, deep cuts that bled beneath a leather jerkin. Cristo’s palms came away wet and red and he stared at them, horrified, for just a second. Then he swept his massive arms under and around the girl, scooping her up.

  She gripped his arm, pinching the skin with what little strength she had, her eyes bright with fury.

  ‘You can shout at me later,’ he said, and that was that. They were moving, Cristo ploughing back up the ridge towards the overhang while Karina clutched his bullet-maker’s garb. She need not have worried about him dropping her. Cristo kept a tight grip and nothing but death itself would see him relinquish it.

  He only slowed down when a rider came circling around, whooping and hollering, his grit-bike carving an arc in the dirt. A long spiked chain shrieked around his head, the brutal torturer with his lash. It whipped out towards Cristo, who ducked its bite and kept moving. Swiftly losing interest, the rider peeled off and went in search of better prey in the gully.

  Skirmishes had broken out across the entire expanse below the overhang, as fighters poured in from either faction. Cristo had to run through them, though chose to largely skirt their ranks. In the snatched glances he got, he reckoned the Red Hands had the better of it. Their riders cut back and forth, scything through the Death Kings like horse-mounted savages, but reinforcements for the beleaguered gangers were still coming. Crackling gunfire rippled across the gully in staccato starbursts of muzzle flare as gangers ran between snatches of cover, or else fell clutching wounds or simply fell and did not rise again.

  Cristo felt a sharp pain in his arm and looked down. Karina had dug in her nails, drawing blood.

  ‘Down…’ she rasped.

  ‘We need to keep moving.’

  They were out of the worst of the fighting now, just a few fleeing juves flanking them at a distance, but they wouldn’t be safe until they reached the overhang so Cristo ignored the pain and carried on.

  She stabbed harder and he had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out.

  ‘Down…’

  He put Karina down.

  She immediately snatched a knife dropped by a dead juve, whose eyes were fixed upwards to a sky he would never see, a bullet hole gaping in his forehead. Karina barely noticed him. She immediately headed eastward across the gully, cutting back in a diagonal line from the fighting, but Cristo put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She whirled on him, her expression furious.

  More gunfire snapped from below, pushing them into the shelter of a broken piece of the old bridge. Shots pranged off the granite chunks before being directed elsewhere.

  Cristo shook his head. ‘Not that way.’

  ‘East is Death Kings territory. Red Hand won’t risk approaching the border.’

  ‘Like you didn’t with their territory.’

  She frowned at that. ‘Where then?’

  Cristo pointed to the arc of the sundered bridge and the shadows beneath it. ‘The overhang.’

  ‘And then what? Back to Meagre? I don’t think so.’ Karina continued in her original direction but Cristo stopped her again. She snarled, lashing out with the knife, but Cristo caught her wrist.

  ‘I can make you, Karina,’ he said, his voice harder than he meant it to be before it softened again, ‘but I don’t want to.’

  He saw in her eyes that she knew he could do it.

  ‘You won’t take me back,’ she swore. ‘I belong here.’

  She looked to her gang, but the fierceness in her expression slowly turned to despair as she saw the Red Hands literally taking the Death Kings apart.

  ‘Here is about to become nowhere,’ said Cristo.

  She turned on him, savage and snarling. ‘Then I’ll be nowhere.’

  Cristo held her gaze, knowing she had to climb down from her anger on her own, and anything he said now would inevitably be taken in exactly the opposite way it was intended.

  Seething, still fighting for breaths, Karina relented. ‘I was winning,’ she said, stifling a sob.

  ‘You were fearsome,’ said Cristo, and meant it, though it went against every instinct to say so.

  There was a short moment of silence between them, filled by the sounds of gangers fighting and dying, before Karina relented and they made for the overhang.

  ‘Why did you come for me?’ she said after a few paces.

  ‘I don’t know how you can ask that.’r />
  Cristo risked a look back, making sure they weren’t being followed. He had been about to elaborate further when he thought he saw something in the skirmish below that made him slow down. And then stop.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind,’ said Karina, stopping too. She was a little way ahead – even injured she was faster on her feet than him – and looked back down the ridge.

  Cristo didn’t answer. The overhang was close, but he was drawn to the battle as if his mind couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing and therefore refused to let him look away.

  ‘Something happening…’ he began, but couldn’t finish.

  Karina snapped irritatedly. ‘What is it?’

  The skirmishes had coalesced, devolving into a massive brawl. Either the gangers had run out of ammunition or they simply wanted to hack at each other hand-to-hand. But this wasn’t just bloodlust or territorial anger. Several gangers, badly wounded by the look of them, were fighting frenziedly. They had abandoned their knives, cudgels and other weapons, and went at their foes with bare hands, nails… and… teeth?

  There was screaming. Not the kind of screaming to fire up the blood, or even the mortal scream of death or severe pain. It was terror, pure and abject.

  Some of the gangers were trying to break loose but got snarled up. Cristo couldn’t quite make out why. He did see the leader of the Red Hand. His ash-runner had got snagged too. Something had tangled around the wheels. They looked like… limbs. Stood up in the saddle, he hacked around himself with the chainblade. Gore and matter flew wildly. Then he was dragged down by dozens of grasping hands, and his last stand ended.

  Cristo’s eyes narrowed. ‘Bloody Throne…’

  He quickly turned, suddenly aware of Karina behind him. He didn’t want her to see this.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Damn it, Father,’ she shouted.

  Cristo got in her way, making sure she wouldn’t see. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said again. ‘Please…’ he added, and in the use of this simple plea he saw understanding, if not full comprehension in her eyes.