Hark Rodney stood vigil a short distance behind the priest. It was the honour granted to him as one of the priest’s trusted retainers.
As the most devoted follower of the god of courage and glory, his valiant slaughter after receiving the god’s blessing had won the cult priest’s recognition. Only then had he been permitted to become a trusted guard for the god’s earthly emissary.
In return, the priest had promised him that, once this blood sacrifice was complete, he would receive supreme power. Everything he had once wished to do but never dared attempt would become possible.
The priest’s hoarse chant drifted through the night wind, and with every syllable, the stink of blood in the air grew thicker.
Hark gripped his crude autogun tightly, his knuckles whitening from the force of it.
He closed his eyes. His sister’s pale face rose in his mind, along with the blood his parents had coughed up after working themselves beyond exhaustion.
He could still hear the village headman cracking a whip across his father’s back while clutching the tithe ledger, and his mother begging the man to grant them a little more time.
The nobles in the city, clad in clean garments, had looked upon them as though they were insects crawling through the fields.
Why? They had planted every grain one by one. They had shed every drop of sweat. Why did those people get to stand so high above them?
Why, merely because sickness had prevented them from paying enough of their grain tithe, had they been punished with the lash? Why?!
And those priests of the God-Emperor—aside from spewing their worthless blessings, they had nothing to offer!
Kill. That damned village headman had to die! Those highborn nobles had to die! The priests of the false god had to die! And all those ignorant fools too frightened to resist, too frightened to join them—they all had to die! Kill! Kill! Kill!!!
Once the thought took root, it spread wildly like weeds.
Blood slowly flooded Hark’s eyes. Beside him, the priest’s invocation was nearing its end, and a faint crimson mist began to gather in the air.
He felt his blood boiling. Soon. Soon. Once the ritual was complete, the god would bestow His blessing upon them. Then the angels of the divine realm would descend, and every injustice would be crushed beneath their feet...
Screee—
The shriek of a lasbolt tearing through the air cut through the chanting.
Hark’s eyes snapped open. The priest’s head vanished in a cloud of blood before him. The man’s formerly emaciated body swayed once, then toppled backwards like a broken stalk of grain.
Silence descended upon the threshing ground. Nothing stirred save the wind moaning through a shattered window nearby.
Then the cultists across the threshing ground erupted into chaotic cries.
Before Hark could even raise his weapon, more las-fire erupted from the shadows of the fields beyond the village.
Red beams carved lethal paths through the night. Each flash was accompanied by the dull impact of flesh being punched through and a scream of agony.
"For the Emperor!"
A thunderous roar rolled in from the farmland outside the village.
Amid the chaos, Hark saw a figure sprinting for the field ridges. It was one of his own—Longlegs Hark. He truly was fast, fast enough to evade several lasbolts.
But fortune had apparently deserted him. Hark saw a man in a grey military greatcoat burst from the shadows, the teeth of the chainsword in his hand spinning into a frenzied, deafening snarl. Then the blade sawed Longlegs Hark’s legs off.
Oh, gods! Why was there another huge man charging out from the other side of the village, his face so thick with hair that he looked like some monstrous beast... Fuck! He had torn Shorty Brook’s head off with his bare hands!
"Enemy attack! Engage them!" a cult leader howled.
But it was already too late. Las-fire crossed in from two directions, weaving a lethal net of fire. Hark crouched behind a heap of corpses and wildly pulled the trigger in the direction of the fields.
The recoil of the crude automatic weapon numbed his arms. Most of his bullets disappeared into the crops without even grazing the enemy’s shadows.
Their fire, by contrast, was terrifyingly accurate. Hark saw the comrade beside him poke his head up, only for a charred hole to appear in his skull. Another tried to rush for cover at the edge of the village. He had taken only three steps before three lasbolts struck his chest simultaneously, blasting open a spray of blood.
The god’s blessing had made them fearless, but it had not made them invulnerable to blade and shot. Fanaticism meant nothing before an absolute advantage in firepower.
Hark lay prone, listening as the screams around him gradually became fewer.
Fifteen minutes—perhaps less—and the sounds of large-scale fighting ceased. Only scattered gunfire and the groans of the dying remained. Holding his breath, he peered out from behind the mound of corpses.
The grey-clad soldiers were emerging from the fields in pairs, beginning to search the village houses one by one.
They moved with practised precision, covering one another. Whenever they found a cultist still struggling, they finished him with a bayonet thrust. Their efficiency was despairing to behold.
Only after the search party entered the buildings on the other side did Hark quietly rise and creep along the wall towards the edge of the village. He remembered a shed there where odds and ends were stored. Beneath it lay a hidden cellar entrance...
But it seemed his luck had finally run out. At the corner, he encountered the man who had sawn off Longlegs Hark’s legs. The man said nothing. The roaring chainsword ended Hark’s life.
Hark collapsed onto the ground, his body twitching uncontrollably. So cold. His vision gradually blurred. He had not yet avenged his sister and parents... What a bitter injustice... Why...
Duvall flicked the clotted blood from his chainsword. The blade gradually spun down, while two lines of text surfaced in the upper-right corner of his vision.
[You have completed a perfect ambush. Experience gained by the Legion under your command: +10%. Morale and Loyalty moderately increased. Emperor’s Wrath +100.]
[The Emperor approves of you.]
Damn it. Was that yellow-furred bastard watching him the entire time? Duvall muttered to himself as he checked the company’s status. Overall morale had risen to 75%, Loyalty stood stable at 80%, and supplies had fallen to 48%.
He still had four altars to destroy. He could only hope their supplies would hold out.
Second Lieutenant Anderson reported from behind him. He was covered in blood, though fortunately it all belonged to the enemy. After all, Duvall had personally watched him tear a cultist’s head from his shoulders.
Looking at the officer’s heavily muscled frame, Duvall found himself wondering why no elite-unit designation had appeared above Anderson’s head.
From the report, Duvall learned that only four soldiers had been grazed by stray rounds in the recent chaos. The medic had given them rudimentary treatment, and their injuries would not impede movement.
"Stroud, take men and sweep the perimeter again. Confirm that no stragglers remain," Duvall ordered. "Anderson, take two squads and search the eastern houses. The rest, with me."
The soldiers carried out their orders in silence. Through their successive battles, this battered remnant of a company had forged a certain unspoken understanding.
Duvall led ten soldiers into the western side of the village. Most of the houses stood empty. Only a few cultist corpses lay scattered in corners. The air reeked of blood and scorched flesh, mingled with the sour stench of fermenting grain. It was enough to turn the stomach.
While searching the third shed, Duvall noticed something unusual about the ground. A heap of battered farm tools and burlap sacks had been carelessly piled in one corner, but the soil beneath bore obvious signs of being trampled. He signalled for the soldiers to move the clutter aside.
Sure enough, a rough wooden plank was revealed. Duvall tapped it with his chainsword. A hollow echo answered from below.
"Cellar," he said quietly. He motioned for two soldiers to keep their weapons trained on the opening, then crouched and used the tip of his chainsword to pry up the plank.
A damp, mouldy smell rushed up at him. A ladder descended into darkness. Duvall took a glow-rod from his belt, snapped it alight, and tossed it down. Its dim yellow light illuminated a cramped space, roughly three metres square, with several mouldering sacks piled within.
He descended the ladder first. When he landed, his boot came down on something hard. Looking down, he found half a blackened loaf of bread.
"Is anyone there?" he called. His voice echoed through the enclosed space.
There was no answer.
Duvall raised his chainsword and advanced slowly. The cellar ran deeper than it had first appeared, with a small partitioned room at the rear. The instant he approached its entrance—
Whoosh!
A black shadow lunged at him from the side.
Duvall instinctively twisted aside and threw a left hook. His fist slammed squarely into the shadow’s abdomen. The figure let out a muffled groan and staggered backwards.
Duvall immediately triggered the chainsword’s engine. Beneath its immense roar and the glow-rod’s halo of light, he saw a youth who could not have been more than a dozen or so, curled on the ground with both hands clutched over his stomach, his face twisted in pain.
Behind sandbags in the corner was an even smaller girl. She hugged her knees tightly and buried her face in the crook of her arms, her slight shoulders trembling without cease.
Both wore ragged homespun clothes, their faces smeared with mud. There were no marks of Chaos, no frenzied eyes—only pure terror.
Duvall slowly lowered his sword. The soldiers behind him climbed down the ladder, and the torchlight made the cellar brighter.
The boy looked up. Tears welled in his eyes, but he clenched his lips tight and stubbornly refused to cry. The girl curled up even tighter, like a frightened animal.
"Civilian survivors," Duvall said softly, as though confirming it to himself.
"Take them up," he told the soldiers behind him. "Careful. Don’t frighten them."
The soldiers stepped forward in response, moving as gently as they could. The boy struggled once, but the pain in his abdomen left him too weak to resist. The girl had gone completely rigid, allowing a soldier to lift her into his arms.
Duvall gave the cellar one final look, then turned away and climbed the ladder.
Moonlight fell across his face again. The night wind carried a biting chill. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but the wind seemed to be growing stronger, while dense clouds drifted towards them in the distance.
Stroud was approaching from afar, several captured crude firearms hanging from one hand.
"Chief, the sweep is complete. We killed seven who were hiding. No other survivors." The bald man reported, then noticed the two children being brought out and raised an eyebrow. "Well, look at that. Little rats."
"Assign two men to look after them," Duvall ordered. "We rest here for fifteen minutes, then move on."
"Understood."
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register