He saw a slight smile in the eyes of the commissar as he played along.
'Motivation is vitally important,' the commissar had said earlier, 'whether it comes from the threat of a bullet, the impassioned speech of an officer, or propaganda from the mouth of a commissar, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that your soldiers fight and that they have fire in the bellies. For some that comes from faith, for others it is from outrage. It doesn't matter. But you must never miss an opportunity to inspire your men. It's not much, but a word here and there goes a long way with the common soldiers.'
These conversations with the commissar had been playing on his mind and he had begun to wonder if that was another reason why Havorn had attached the commissar to his staff, to teach him the power of motivation in all its forms.
'By the Emperor's name, they will pay,' said Laron once more.
The view on the grainy, black and white pict screen had been astonishing as Marduk's Thunderhawk made its approach into Shinar. It was almost unrecognisable from the original Imperial city. From this high in the air, nothing of it could at first be seen, but the immense Gehemehnet tower that rose into the atmosphere. It was as if some astral deity had hurled a mighty spear into the planet, skewering it. It could be seen for thousands of kilometres all around when the air was clear.
Beneath the tower, lower in the atmosphere and hanging directly over Shinar, was a thick, oily, black smog. It was roiling and contorting as if alive and it was swirling around the tower that rose in its midst. The tower was the very centre of the gaseous maelstrom and the fumes were thickest there, the winds strongest.
Nothing could penetrate the thick, noxious smog cloud, not even the Thunderhawk's sensitive, daemon infused sensor arrays. Marduk knew that the Gehemehnet was creating a wide cone of warp interference that spewed out through the atmosphere and beyond. This interference would effectively make the entire side of the planet all but invisible to the enemy. Just as he thought of this, the Thunderhawk's pict-screen flickered and degenerated to static. The power of the Gehemehnet was indiscriminate in whose equipment it affected. The gunship was still around two hundred kilometres from Shinar, but had clearly entered the wide cone of disruption. The Thunderhawk had no need for concern - it did not rely upon technical arrays and its witch sight saw all the more clearly within the warp field.
Marduk felt the field close over him and his twin hearts palpitated erratically for a moment, his breath catching in his chest. It was joyous to feel the power of the Immaterium wash over him. He heard the whispers of daemons in the air. He felt his sacred bond to the warp strengthen and his power with it. The Dark Apostle was wielding some powerful faith to have created a warp field of such potency.
Movement flickered at the corner of his eyes and he felt presences brush past him. The barriers between the realms of Chaos and the material plane were thin. He could almost make out the daemonic entities straining from beyond to cross the thin walls and enter the physical world. Soon, he whispered to them. Soon the barriers would be stripped away like flesh from bone and then they would be able to take corporeal form and bring hell to this world.
He felt a certain amount of apprehension as he approached Shinar and the Dark Apostle. To wield such power! Never had he been witness to such a feat of strength from the holy leader as this. He had not imagined that Jarulek would have been able to create such a powerful Gehemehnet. He had believed that the Dark Apostle had long reached the apex of his rise and that his own rise would eclipse Jarulek's power over the next millennia. Could he have underestimated him?
An uncomfortable and uncharacteristic flicker of doubt squirmed within him. Could he wield such power? He knew that he could not, not yet, but he was certain that his powers would treble once he passed the full indoctrinations required to become a true Dark Apostle. He would take up that mantle and soon, no matter what the cost or sacrifice required. Long had he waited for his moment to arise and he would be damned before he saw his opportunity splutter and die out like a blood-wick before it had even begun to blaze.
He was rocked as strong winds buffeted the Thunderhawk. The engines screamed as they fought against being sucked into the swirling morass rotating around the Gehemehnet. The speed of the wind whipping around the tower must have been immense. Pushing these thoughts from his mind, he closed his eyes and let his spirit break free of his earthly body.
Invisible and formless, he soared from the Thunderhawk, passing through its thick, armoured hull and out into the atmosphere beyond. The powerful winds touched him not at all, and with a thought he hurtled across the sky towards the rising Gehemehnet, faster than any crude mechanical aircraft ever could. This was the way of the spirit and with his insubstantial warp-touched eyes he saw the world in a different light.
The material world around him was shadowy and dim, a pale and dull land. With his sight he saw not the light of the sun, nor the colours of the mundane world, all was but shades of grey, lifeless and monotone. There was movement all around, the movement of daemons separated from the mundane world by only a micro-thin layer of reality. He flew somewhere in between the two worlds, neither truly in the real nor the Ether, but he could perceive both.
He heard nothing but the scraping, garbled cacophony of noise that was the sound of Chaos. A million scrambled, screaming voices mixed with the roars and whispers of daemons. It was to Marduk a comforting, neutral sound in the back of his mind. It was too easy for the unwary or uninitiated to be forever lost in the sound. If you listened too closely, it would draw you into it and never let you have peace.
Marduk willed himself on, drawn towards the massive Gehemehnet tower that rose in both the material world and the warp. It existed in both planes and it was not a monotone shadow like the rest of the world he passed over. Far from it, for the Gehemehnet tower was ablaze with light and colour. Deep red and purple shades blurred across its surface amid flashes of metallic sheen, like those created by oil on water.
Tiny pinpricks of light, countless thousands of them, marked the soul fires of the mortal worker slaves who toiled over the physical construct of the Gehemehnet. They were like tiny burning suns. Some burnt bright and fierce, their spirits strong, while others grew pale and faltering. Carrion daemons of the warp clustered around each burning soul fire, along with an endless myriad of daemons of other bizarre and horrific forms. They clumped around the souls of the living like cold children around a campfire in winter, straggling against each other to be the closest to the blaze. The mortals were completely unaware of the attention that they received, save perhaps for an occasional feeling of coldness, or a flicker of movement in the corner of the eye.
The kathartes were there, clustered around the bright soul lights, and they raised their beautiful, pristine and predatory feminine faces at his approach. They kicked away from their vigils and soared towards him upon glowing feathered wings. In the Ether they were angelic and alluring - it was only when they breached the material plane that they became twisted hag furies.
As he drew nearer the pulsating Gehemehnet, he saw the soul fire of one of the slaves flicker and dim as the man gave up his hold on his mortal body. Instantly, the pale light of the spirit was set upon by the daemons huddled around it and its light was hidden amongst the dense ball of daemons that were wild in their ravenous feeding frenzy as they consumed the unfortunate soul.
The soul fire of one slave drew his attention, for it was different from the others. It was bright and fierce, with a grand cluster of over a thousand ethereal denizens of the warp around it, and Marduk could feel their expectation. This one was favoured indeed, he thought.
A sudden tug upon his spirit pulled at Marduk and he allowed himself to be drawn towards the calling. In an instant he had passed through the walls of the shattered palace of Shinar and hovered before the Dark Apostle. He was infused with light, a strong presence in the warp as in reality. He turned his earthly eyes to look at Marduk and smiled.
'Welcome, my First Acolyte. I thought I felt your questing spirit lurking nearby.'
'Of course. Its power waxes strong.'
'It is close, but I need your strength, First Acolyte, to complete the rituals of binding. This is why I recalled you from battle.'
'I would sacrifice the entire Host in order to fulfill the will of the Dark Council, if such was needed.'
