to understand amidst the garbled, daemonic sounds, bellows and sibilant whispers that blasted from the infernal thing.
Varnus and Pierlo finished smearing the blood-mortar across the top of the stone slab just as another sharp note rang out, and they hurriedly stepped back onto the scaffold. Shrieks of agony rang out from those slaves that had been deemed too slow as they were disciplined by the overseers.
The slaves held onto the metal spars of the scaffold as it shook. The outside wall of the tower was not perfectly smooth, but rather was slightly stepped, each block overlapping the one below by half a hand-span. After every twenty layers of stones were laid, the mechanical scaffold would climb those narrow steps, pistons steaming as the spiderlike legs of the framework pulled it further up the growing structure. It was an ingenious creation, Varnus had been forced to admit, though he hated it to the core of his being.
Varnus squatted atop the shuddering structure, holding on tight. Pierlo grinned at him, his eyes lit up feverishly. He guessed the man was losing his mind, for he almost seemed to be enjoying the hellish work. It took almost ten minutes for the framework of the scaffold to reposition itself, and it was the only real break that the slaves got until the shift rotation. The Discord blared its hateful sound.
'So what was it that you did before?' whispered Varnus. He knew his fellow slave's name, knew that he had lived his entire life in Shinar and that he had fathered no children. But he did not know what the man had done before the occupation. It was almost as if the man had been avoiding the subject, and Varnus had been waiting for this moment to ask him directly.
The blood-mortar smeared man looked away. 'What did you do?' whispered Varnus again, more forcefully.
'I was a manservant and bodyguard.' Pierlo said, his eyes flicking left and right madly, and it suddenly clicked where Varnus had seen him before.
'I have seen you before,' he said. Pierlo looked around sharply, his eyes blazing with unnatural heat. He shook his head vigorously.
'No, I have,' said Varnus, 'in the palace, right before the explosion.'
Varnus shook his head and held his hands over his ears, moaning, trying to get the sound of the voices out of his head. This place and that damned Discord were driving him insane. Pierlo was not the only one losing his mind.
'You okay?' he heard Pierlo ask dimly, and he nodded his head.
'Someone will come.' Varnus said to himself. 'Someone will come to liberate Tanakreg.'
Pierlo giggled hysterically, shaking his head. 'No one will come. We will die here and our souls will join with Chaos.'
Anger filled Varnus suddenly, hot and quick. 'Don't say such things! The Emperor's light will protect us in the darkness.'
'Chaos calls us, brother. Can't you hear its voice?'
The Discord blared its monstrous sound.
Varnus closed his eyes tightly, and rocked back and forth slightly, trying to blot out the hideous din.
'Someone will come,' he said to himself. He felt the hated symbol embedded in his forehead writhe. He imagined that feelers from the vile thing were pushing through his skull, entering his brain.
He prayed to the Emperor, his mouth moving silently, but the harsh, discordant babble of the Discord seemed to get louder. The sound of the deep voices chanting within the noise pounded at his eardrums.
Someone will come, he thought. They had to.
A hiss of pain emerged from Marduk's pallid lips as the chirurgeons removed the vambraces of his power armour from around his forearms with their spiderlike, long, metal fingers. Patches of skin were ripped from his flesh as the curved armour plates were removed, and pinpricks of blood covered the areas of the skin that remained. Tiny, barbed thorns lined the inside of the vambrace: Marduk and his sacred armour were slowly becoming one. It was not uncommon amongst the Legion.
The hunched chirurgeons scraped and bowed before him, and shuffled off to place the bloody pieces of ceramite armour on a purple, velvet cloth alongside his gauntlet and under-glove. Marduk clenched his fists before him, looking at the translucent, bloodied and pockmarked musculature of his arms. They seemed almost unfamiliar to him.
Kol Badar led the morbid, monotonous chanting of the Host, and it carried across the open ground, accompanied by the pounding cadence of giant, piston driven hammers striking great metal drums. The roars and hellish screams of the heavily chained, restrained daemon engines mingled into the din of worship. Throughout the city, the sound of the ritual would be blaring from the daemon amps that accompanied the slave gangs.
Jarulek stood atop the altar, his blood-slick arms raised high as he rejoiced in the sound of worship washing over him. Burning braziers lit the altar and thick clouds of incense rose from the maws of bestial, brazen gargoyles. In the distance behind him was the Gehemehnet, the tower rising at a rapid pace. A hundred slaves knelt along the front of the altar, adding their own music to the cacophony of sound. They were restrained, their wrists bound to their ankles behind them, and they stared out at the gathered congregation of Word Bearers, their faces twisted in terror, anguish and despair.
Jarulek walked behind the line of kneeling slaves. He grasped the hair of one, pulled his head back and slashed his throat with a long, ceremonial knife. Already, hundreds of throats had been cut with that knife that day. The slave gasped, a wet, gurgling sound, and his lifeblood sprayed from the wound. He was pushed off the front of the altar by a pair of Word Bearers honoured to have been chosen for the duty, and the bound, dying man fell amongst the bloodless bodies piling within the metal trough at its foot. Hunched overseers dragged another slave forward to take his place, and Jarulek stepped to the next victim, swiftly cutting his throat, and he too was pushed from the altar.
The blood of the sacrifices ran down the inside of the trough and drained into a catchment where it pooled before being pumped through a twisted pipe that extended out to a large basin positioned before Marduk. It bubbled as it was filled with the warm lifeblood, and he dipped his bare arms into it.
Kol Badar was the first to step forward, still chanting, and Marduk reached up to the warlord's forehead with a bloody hand. He drew the four intersecting lines that formed the Chaos star in its most basic form across the Coryphaus's brow with his thumb. The huge warrior then closed his yellow, hate-filled eyes, and Marduk placed a bloody thumb mark on each eyelid.
'The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother.' Marduk intoned, and Kol Badar wheeled away. The next in line was Burias, the warrior's vicious, handsome face framed by his slick, black hair. He dropped to his knees before Marduk, an aspect of the ceremony that Kol Badar had been unable or unwilling to perform in his bulky Terminator armour. Marduk drew the star of Chaos upon his forehead and placed his thumbs to his eyelids.
'The great gods of Chaos guide you, warrior-brother,' Marduk intoned, and Burias filed away. The entire Host was to be marked, blessed by the gods before they entered sacred battle once more.
He felt the daemon stir within the chainsword at his side as blood dripped from his gore-slick forearms onto the hilt. Marduk smiled as he applied the blood to the face of a towering Anointed warrior. Soon, dear Borhg'ash, he thought.
Over the course of the next hour, Jarulek slashed the throats of hundreds of slaves, their sacrifice offered up to the glory of the gods of Chaos, and the stench of blood and death was strong. The droning chants of the Host continued unabated, and the last warrior-brother was blooded.
Jarulek descended imperiously from the altar, drenched in blood, and stepped lightly down the stairs, his long, ceremonial skin cloak flowing behind him. The entire Host dropped to one knee as the Dark Apostle reached the ground, and even the raging daemonic engines were cowed by the powerful figure. He walked towards Marduk, and the Dark Apostle raised the First Acolyte's head with gentle pressure under his chin. Jarulek drew the lines of the
