False Gods

war.

Loken returned his attention to the battle and, with Luc Sedirae and Nero Vipus in the fight, he was able to gain some space and time to reorganise.

'Thanks, Luc, Nero. I owe you,' he said in a lull in the fighting. The Sons of Horus reloaded bolters and cleaned chunks of dead flesh from their swords. Spo­radic bursts of gunfire still sounded from the swamp and strobing flashes lit the fog with firefly bursts. Off to their left Loken saw a burning pyre where the skiff had come

down, its flames acting as a beacon in the midst of the obscuring fog.

'No problem, Garvi,' said Sedirae, and Loken knew that he was grinning beneath his helmet. 'You'll do the same for me before we're out of this shit-storm, I'll wager.'

'You're probably right, but let's hope not.'

'What's the plan, Garvi?' asked Vipus.

Loken held up his hand for silence as he attempted to make contact with his Mournival brothers and the War-master once more. Static and desperate cries filled the vox, terrified voices of army soldiers and the damned, gurgling voices that kept saying, 'Blessed be Nurgh-leth…' over and over.

Then a voice cut across every channel and Loken almost cried aloud in relief to hear it.

'All Sons of Horus, this is the Warmaster. Converge on this signal. Head for the flames!'

At the sound of the Warmaster's voice, fresh energy filled the tired limbs and hearts of the Astartes, and they moved off in good order towards the burning pillar of fire coming from the wrecked skiff they had seen earlier. Loken killed with a methodical precision, each shot felling an opponent. He began to feel that they finally had the measure of this grotesque enemy.

Whatever fell energy bestowed animation upon these diseased nightmares was clearly incapable of giving them much more than basic motor functions and an unremit­ting hostility.

Loken's armour was covered in deep gouges and he wished he knew how many men he had lost to the loath­some hunger of the dead things.

He vowed that this Nurgh-leth would pay dearly for each of their deaths.

She could barely breathe, her chest hiking as she drew in convulsive gulps of air from the respirator Maggard

was pushing against her face. Petronella's eyes stung, tears of pain coursing down her cheeks as she tried to push herself into a sitting position.

All she remembered was a fury of noise and light, a metallic shriek and a bone jarring impart as the skiff crashed and broke into pieces. Blood filled her senses and she felt excruciating pain all down her left side. Flames leapt around her, and her vision blurred with the sting of the atmosphere and smoke.

What happened?' she managed, her voice muffled through the respirator's mouthpiece.

Maggard didn't answer, but then she remembered that he couldn't and twisted her head around to gain a better appreciation of their current situation. Torn up bodies clothed in her livery littered the ground – the pilots and flight crew of her skiff– and there was a lot of blood cov­ering the wreckage. Even through the respirator, she could smell the gore.

Cloying banks of leprous fog surrounded them, though the heat of the flames appeared to be clearing it in their immediate vicinity. Shambling shapes sur­rounded them and relief flooded her as she realised that they would soon be rescued.

Maggard spun, drawing his sword and pistol, and Petronella tried to shout at him that he must stand down, that these were their rescuers.

Then the first shape emerged from the smoke and she screamed as she saw its diseased flesh and the rotted innards hanging from its opened belly. Nor was it the worst of the approaching things. A cavalcade of cadavers with bloated, ruptured flesh and putrid, diseased bodies sloshed through the mud and wreckage towards them, clawed hands outstretched.

The green fire in their eyes spoke of monstrous appetites and Petronella felt a gut-wrenching terror greater than anything she had ever known.

Only Maggard stood between her and the walking, diseased corpses, and he was but one man. She had watched him train in the gymnasia of Kairos many times, but she had never seen him draw his weapons in anger.

Maggard's pistol barked and each shot blasted one of the shambling horrors from its feet, neat holes drilled in its forehead. He fired and fired until his pistol was empty, and then holstered it and drew a long, triangular bladed dagger.

As the horde approached, her bodyguard attacked.

He leapt, feet first, at the nearest corpse and a neck snapped beneath his boot heel. Maggard spun as he landed, his sword decapitating a pair of the monsters, and his dagger ripping the throat from another. His Kir-lian rapier darted like a silver snake, its glowing edge stabbing and cutting with incredible speed. Whatever it touched dropped instantly to the muddy ground like a servitor with its dotrina wafer pulled.

His body was always in motion, leaping, twisting and dodging away from the clutching hands of his diseased attackers. There was no pattern to their assault, simply a mindless host of dead things seeking to envelop them. Maggard fought like nothing she had ever seen, his aug-metic muscles bulging and flexing as he cut down his foes with quick, lethal strokes.

No matter how many he killed, there were always more pressing in and they steadily forced him back a step at a time. The horde of creatures began to surround them, and Petronella saw that Maggard couldn't possi­bly hold them all back. He staggered towards her, bleeding from a score of minor wounds. His flesh was blistered and weeping around the cuts and there was an unhealthy pallor to his skin, despite his respirator gear.

She wept bitter tears of horror as the monsters closed in, jaws opening wide to devour her flesh, and grasping

hands ready to tear her perfect skin and feast on her innards. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. The Great Crusade wasn't supposed to end in failure and death!

A corpse with mouldering, sagging skin lurched past Maggard, his blade lodged in the belly of a giant, necrotic thing with green flesh that was thick with flies.

She screamed as it reached for her.

Deafening bangs thundered behind her and the crea­ture disintegrated in an explosion of wet meat and bone. Petronella covered her ears as the thunderous roar of gunfire came again and her attackers were torn apart in a series of rancid explosions, falling back into the fires of the skiff and burning with stinking green flames.

She rolled onto her side, crying in pain and fear as the terrifyingly close volleys continued, clearing a path for the massive, armoured warriors of the Sons of Horus.

A giant towered above her, reaching for her with his armoured gauntlet.

He wore no helmet and was silhouetted by a terrible red glow, his awesome bulk haloed by blazing plumes of fire and pillars of black smoke. Even through her tears, the Warmaster's beauty and physical perfection rendered her speechless. Though blood and dark slime covered his armour and his cloak was torn and tattered, Horus towered like a war god unleashed, his face a mask of ter­rifying power.

He lifted her to her feet as easily as one might lift a babe in arms, while his warriors continued the slaughter of the monstrous dead things. More and more Sons of Horus were converging on the crash site, guns firing to drive the enemy back and forming a protective cordon around the Warmaster.

'Miss Vivar,’ demanded Horus. 'What in the name of Terra are you doing here? I ordered you to stay aboard the Vengeful Spirit!

She straggled for words, still in awe of his magnifi­cent presence. He had saved her. The Warmaster had personally saved her and she wept to know his touch.