The First Heretic

‘I wasn’t wondering that,’ Ishaq lied.

‘No shame in honest horror,’ Zamikov shrugged. ‘I’ve been with the Serrated Sun twelve years now, and I puked my way through the first two. The Crimson Lord’s lot do messy work.’

They took a left, stepping through another broken barricade that had failed to do its job. Gunfire in the distance hastened their strides.

‘I’d heard the Word Bearers always incinerated their enemies.’

‘They do.’ Zamikov hiked a thumb over his shoulder, at the corpses arrayed in various pieces around the furniture barricade. ‘That’ll come afterwards. First they kill, then they purify.’

‘They come back to burn the dead after a battle? They actually do it themselves?’

Zamikov nodded, no longer looking over at the imagist. Ishaq noticed the shift in the soldier’s stride – as soon as they’d heard the gunshots, each of the Euchars moved lower, faster, their lasrifles clutched tighter. It was like watching hive-street cats on the hunt for rats.

‘They do it themselves. No funerary serfs or corpse-servitors for the Word Bearers. They’re a thorough lot, you’ll see.’

‘I can already see.’

‘That a fact?’ Zamikov spared him a quick glance. ‘What do you see here?’

‘Bodies.’ Ishaq raised an eyebrow. What kind of question was that?

‘It’s more than that.’ The soldier looked ahead again. ‘This entire wing of the palace is cleaned out, but we’ve doubled back on ourselves more than once following the trail of dead. The Word Bearers aren’t racing to the throne room. That’s not how they do things. They’re killing everyone in the palace first, room by room, chamber by chamber. That’s punishment. That’s being thorough. You understand now?’

Ishaq nodded, not sure what else to say.

The sound of gunfire was joined by the guttural whine of motorised blades. He felt his heart quicken. This was it: battle, seeing the Astartes fight. And hopefully, not getting shot at himself.

‘Look alive,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘Rifles up.’

Ishaq didn’t have a rifle, but with his face set just as stern as Zamikov’s, he raised his picter.

When they caught up to the Word Bearers, the scene was nothing like he’d expected. Firstly, it wasn’t a squad of Word Bearers, it was just one. And secondly, he wasn’t alone.

The picter clicked and clicked and clicked.

They were twins in movement, a single weapon with a single intent. Neither led the other, neither moved any more or less than his twin. It was not competition. It was the perfection of unity.

They stopped as one, ending their advance to take stock of their surroundings. The city was in the throes of evacuation, for whatever good it would do the populace, and the air was a wailing morass of conflicting sirens audible even here within the palace. Platoons of defenders stood at every corridor corner and junction, armed with solid shot rifles that cracked and pinged harmlessly off Astartes armour.

The vox-network was calm. No cries for reinforcement. No demands for orders. The monotonous chanting so typical of Word Bearer squads was absent from the Gal Vorbak. Forty warriors, drop-podded into four sections of the royal castle, immediately splitting up to slaughter with muted grunts and growls.

Another barricade stood before the two advancing warriors, manned by dozens of the rifle-armed defenders in their ostentatious white and gold garb. Puffs of smoke preceded the click-clack-click of their bullets sparking harmlessly aside.

Both warriors broke into a run, boots crunching into the stone floor. Both vaulted the barricade of smashed furniture in the same moment, both grunting in effort as they leapt. Both landed at the same time, and both let loose with abandon, their weapons lashing out to shed blood. The defenders fell in pieces around them, chopped and carved faster than the eye could follow.

Ruthless familiarity with each other was all that made this possible. When one would weave low to thrust, the other would aim high to slice. Their movements were a blurring dance around each other’s forms, forever watching and anticipating the other’s movements even as they focused on slaying their enemies.

Around the two warriors, nineteen defenders were twitching human wreckage. The last to die had been disembowelled and decapitated by both warriors in the same heartbeat.

Now blood ran from the sword’s blade, just as it ran from the eight talons. Back to back, the warriors glanced at the ruination around them, took half a second’s note of the Euchar escorting the remembrancers down the hallway, and moved on in the same second.

Aquillon ran.

Argel Tal staggered.

Surprise froze the Custodian’s movements dead. As he turned, he saw the Word Bearer take another flawed step and crash to his knees among the corpses they’d created.

Aquillon span his blade – a deflective propeller to ward off any assassin’s shot. He wasn’t connected to the Legion’s networked data-stream, and couldn’t read Argel Tal’s life signs on a convenient retinal display. But there was no blood. No sign of injury, beyond the collapse and spasm.

‘Are you hit?’

Argel Tal answered with wordless rasps. Something wet and black dripped from his helm’s mouth grille, thinner than oil, thicker than blood, hissing like acid as it fell to the stone.

Aquillon stood above the prone Word Bearer, sword spinning in his gold hands. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t gain a target lock. There was no assassin – at least none that he could see. He risked another glance down.