Flesh of Cretacia Read online

  Manakel growled as he dwelt on his brothers’ deaths. He could not allow his promises to be empty. Rising to his feet, he looked around the forest in search of something to rend. An army of sentinel-like trees sat still in the wind. They were the same as the hundreds of others he’d marched between in his journey through the forest, towering spears of nature whose needled branches obscured the sky. They stood at peace while the world raged around them. Manakel fixed the nearest of them with a murderous stare. ‘I will burn you to ash.’ The tree did not move, it did not quiver. Its smooth bark remained a passive canvas, mocking the Flesh Tearer.

  Manakel roared, flicking the activation stud on his chainsword and charging the tree. He swung out with a double-handed grip, burying the blade in the trunk. The weapon’s adamantium teeth snarled as they chewed through the wood, spitting splinters of bark over Manakel’s armour. Screaming in hate, he tore the blade free, chopping downwards with the reverse stroke. Again and again he repeated the action, carving deep scars into the tree. ‘Fall!’ Manakel growled through gritted teeth. Discarding his sword, he threw a barrage of punches, hammering his fists into the trunk. Each crashing blow left behind deep craters in the bark but brought the tree no closer to toppling. Still he kept punching, oblivious to the sound of his knuckles cracking. He hit the tree again, this time following up with a thunderous head-butt. The blow sent a crack arcing up the length of the trunk, and staggered Manakel, dropping him to his knees and bringing him to his senses. ‘Emperor grant me peace.’ Manakel mouthed the words between laboured breaths.

  But the Emperor was not listening.

  A wooden spear whistled past Manakel’s face, breaking his reverie and planting itself in the ground just beyond Lahhel’s remains.

  He growled, standing as he turned to face his aggressor. A single human stood twenty paces from him. Confusion strangled the worst of Manakel’s rage as he studied the man. He couldn’t have been more than thirty Terran years old, and was clothed in a green-brown tabard made from the rugous skin of some beast. Bird skulls and an assortment of small bones hung from the man’s neck on a band of woven vine. Slabs of dense muscle covered his frame, coloured by crude tattoos and markings. Though impressive, the warrior’s stature was not beyond the limits of a human’s normal physical tolerance; there was no evidence of gene-bulking or other enhancement. He would not have had the strength to tear apart Lahhel or the others.

  ‘Leave me, and you may live,’ Manakel barked, uninterested in wasting time.

  The warrior responded with anger, bellowing a challenge in a tongue Manakel had never heard before, and jutting his jaw forward like a primate, spitting on the ground to emphasise his point.

  ‘Do not pick a fight you cannot win, barbarian.’ Manakel felt his muscles bunch in anticipation.

  The warrior shouted again, and threw another spear.

  Manakel snarled as his eyes followed the weapon. The warrior did not mean to miss this time. Manakel let the weapon strike his vambrace. The spear clattered to the ground, its flint tip shattering against his armour. Manakel could feel his blood simmering beneath his skin like the magma of a volcano. He would rip the contemptible human limb from limb. He took a step forward and stopped, calming himself. The man was irrelevant. He needed to find the rest of the squad, to avenge his brothers. ‘Show me. Show me who is responsible for this and you may yet live.’ Manakel’s voice was like the crack of a furnace as he indicated Lahhel’s corpse.

  The warrior began to bray and howl, drawing a set of blades and charging.

  ‘Death, then.’ Manakel held his ground, unmoving for the three breaths it took the human to close within ten paces. Then in one fluid motion he drew his combat knife and threw it. The blade struck the man square in the chest, flipping him head over heels and tearing through his back. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Freshly spilled blood scented the air, greeting Manakel like the familiar smell of an old friend. He snorted and took a calming breath. He would not allow the man’s weakling cruor to stir his pulse. Manakel was about to turn back to Lahhel when a deafening cacophony of war cries resounded from all around him.

  A horde of barbarians, dressed in the same garb as the one he’d just slain, rushed Manakel from all sides. He counted almost a hundred as he brought up both arms to protect his face from the hail of spears flung towards him.

  Lahhel. They were after Lahhel. The idea sprang unbidden into Manakel’s mind, bypassing all conscious thought and strangling any semblance of restraint he had left. ‘You will not take him!’ Manakel snarled, advancing. He would have his vengeance. ‘I will kill you all. I will hunt down your mothers and slay your sons. I will end your heathen bloodline and drown your miserable world in blood.’

  Spitting litanies of hate, the Flesh Tearer broke into a sprint, charging towards the largest group of attackers. He barrelled into them, smashing apart their formation in a violent instant. He shouldered men aside, smashed others from their feet with powerful backhands and crushed the fallen beneath his boots. Each punishing blow cracked bone and ended a life. Manakel was oblivious to their screams, unable to hear anything but the roar of his heart. He snarled, relishing the taste of the barbarians’ blood as it splashed across his face and washed into his mouth.

  ‘To live is to kill. To live for the kill is to be of the Blood.’

  Until that moment Chaplain Zophal’s sermon had been lost on Manakel. He grinned in mad ecstasy, oblivious to the crude clubs that battered his warplate like hail and the slashing cuts that opened his cheeks and forehead. Manakel continued to kill. Splaying his fingers, he tore them through the barbarians’ bodies with the same savagery that a chainblade cut into flesh. With unrelenting vigour he eviscerated and smashed, killing and killing again. The dead piled up around him until he stood knee-deep in a mire of blood and dismemberment. Still he didn’t stop, didn’t slow. Picking up the bodies of the dead, he hurled them at those who tried to run. None escaped his wrath.

  Tamir watched in disbelief as the giant butchered its way through the war party. Never had he seen something so large move so swiftly. It was fluid, like running water, striking with enough force to shatter rock. Yet its hide was harder than any stone he had ever encountered. How could he kill something that no spear could pierce and no blade could cut?

  Tamir growled, angered by the weakness stirring in his gut. He had found the other crimson giants dead where they lay, mauled and shredded by the beasts he’d hunted since childhood. This giant would die too, even if he had to throttle it with his bare hands.

  Ra’d had been a fool to challenge the giant to single combat. The upstart warchief had wanted the glory of the kill for himself. His impetuous pride and infantile beliefs had cost the lives of every warrior under his totem. Tamir looked down at the blood-soaked grass, feeling it turn wet under his feet. Such things could not go unavenged.

  Drawing his blade across the muscle of his chest, Tamir prayed to the mountain for strength, and prepared to lead his own war party against the giant. He stepped forward, but felt a hand around his arm. He snarled, angered by the disrespect, and turned to find Abbas staring up at him. The elder’s eyes were moon-wide in a mixture of fear and admiration. Tamir pulled his arm free and glared at the old man, his ire fading as quickly as it had come. Had it been anyone else, he would have thought age had robbed them of courage, and struck them down as a coward. But Abbas had proved the strength of his heart on more occasions than any Tamir had fought beside. The elder’s courage was beyond question.

  The venerable war chief clasped the god-talisman around his neck and bid Tamir stay his wrath. ‘When the past takes leave of our memory and returns to greet us, we must still the present. We must allow the past to speak with our dreams, so that together they may form our future.’

  Tamir was only half listening, his attention fixed on the elder’s talisman. He turned his gaze to the giant, finding the same two-headed bird staring ba
ck at him from its chest.

  The orks outnumbered them four to one. But they were injured, disorganised. Cassiel could smell their foul blood as it seeped from fresh wounds. He listened as they argued in guttural bursts that sounded more like weapons fire than any language. Cassiel grinned darkly. He and his brothers would kill half of the orks before the greenskins even realised the battle had begun. The thought brought with it a warming rush of adrenaline. Cassiel relished the sensation, feeling his muscles twitch in anticipation, his mouth salivating at the thought of impending slaughter. He rolled his shoulders loose and redoubled his grip on his blade, savouring the metallic feel of the haft as he squeezed his fingers together, tightening each in turn. His heartbeat quickened as he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, his body urging him to go forward, to attack. His mouth twisted into a snarl of pleasure. This was what it was to be a child of the Blood. To feel truly alive only as you prepared to take the lives of others.

  ‘Stand ready.’

  Cassiel subvocalised an affirmative to Asmodel. He was unable to speak, his teeth locked tight against one another, his mouth awash with saliva. The moment of bloodshed was so close he could almost taste the orks’ vitae.

  ‘Kill them.’

  Snarling like a beast, Cassiel was moving before Asmodel finished the sentence. He lunged from behind a tree to drive his knife through the neck of the nearest greenskin. The ork spasmed through its death throes. Blood gushed from the wound, soaking Cassiel’s arm in warm, arterial fluid. ‘Filth,’ he cursed. The other orks reacted quicker than he expected, opening fire, spitting shells from their crude cannons in a wild hail. Cassiel pulled the dying ork to him, using it as a meat shield. The ork’s body shuddered under numerous impacts as the ork weapons carved away chunks of muscle and bone. Cassiel pressed his bolt pistol to the ork’s spine and blasted a hole in its torso. Forcing the nose of his pistol through the exposed innards, he returned fire. His first shot clipped the closest of the orks in the midriff, cleaving a chunk of meat from its side. Grunting in frustration, Cassiel adjusted his aim, shooting the ork in the head and blowing its brains over the face of the one beside it. Distracted, the other greenskins’ shots flew wide, churning up the undergrowth to Cassiel’s left. The Scout didn’t waste the opportunity, using the brief respite to release the ork’s corpse and throw himself behind a fallen tree trunk.

  ‘Melechk!’ Cassiel had to shout to be heard over the bark of weapons fire. Wood splinters and shell fragments showered him as the orks resumed firing, blazing away at his cover with reckless eagerness. ‘I’m pinned.’

  ‘Keep your head down.’ Melechk dropped his weight through his knees, bracing himself as his heavy bolter roared into life.

  Cassiel felt his pulse quicken as the weapon belched rounds, each thundering shot as silence compared to the beating of his heart.

  ‘Move, now!’

  On Melechk’s word, Cassiel sprang up and over the tree trunk. The orks who’d fired on him were gone, reduced to a pinkish mist by the heavy bolter. To his right, Asmodel finished dispatching two more of the greenskins. The sergeant snarled and stamped his boot down onto a wounded ork’s head as it tried to rise, crushing its skull into the ground. The other died to a burst from his bolt pistol, its torso coming apart even as it swung a rusted cleaver towards Asmodel’s neck.

  Nearby, Hamied was straddling the chest of the largest ork. The hulking greenskin’s right arm was pinned, the Scout’s blade buried up to the hilt. Its left arm finished above the elbow, the bicep reduced to a ragged mess of fused flesh by a point-blank bolt round. Hamied bellowed an incoherent stream of curses as he hammered his fists into the ork’s skull. Blood and clumps of brain matter spattered Hamied’s face and chestplate as he beat the greenskin to death.

  ‘Hamied!’

  Hamied ignored Cassiel. His blood was up, making him oblivious to the pair of armoured orks closing in on him, and to the energy round that tore through his shoulder and burned away the flesh of his cheek.

  ‘Hamied! Cassiel opened up on full auto, emptying an entire clip at the orks. The explosive rounds sparked as they collided with the plates of metal the greenskins had hammered into their flesh. ‘Emperor damn you, Hamied. Move!’ Cassiel tried a final time to reach the other Scout, and threw a grenade at the approaching orks.

  Hamied turned his head, foam riming his mouth. He growled, enraged to be denied his slaughter. His pupils were nuggets of coal, lost in a crimson furnace as they tracked the grenade. He moved at the last moment, rolling off the ork and dragging its bulk over him as the explosive detonated. Flame washed over him, the stench of cooked flesh choking the air as the ork’s skin bubbled away.

  The armoured orks were blasted from their feet, landing in bloodied heaps of flesh and gristle. Lethal clusters of steel pellets and shrapnel ripped through their armour and bodies, shredding their internal organs. One of the orks refused to die. It grunted with pained effort as it tried to rise.

  Cassiel stared coldly at the greenskin. Blood seeped from innumerable wounds and its left leg had been reduced to a stump.

  ‘Xenos filth doesn’t know when to die.’ Cassiel pressed his boot on the ork’s back, pushing it into the dirt. ‘Sanguinius savage your wretched soul,’ he spat, firing a single round through the ork’s skull. Warm blood splashed over him as the greenskin’s head exploded. He looked for a fresh target but his attention became fixed on the thick blood as it dripped from his boot to mix with the wet earth underfoot. His eyes followed a narrowing line of the ork’s arterial fluid, until it vanished, no longer distinguishable from the mud. Cassiel crouched down, his fingers straying to where the blood had been. He opened a comm-channel to Hamied. ‘Do you ever wonder, brother, how much blood a world can drink before its seas run red and its continents become little more than scabs baked beneath the sun?’

  A raucous squawk drowned out Hamied’s reply. Cassiel rose, weapon raised, searching for the source of the noise. It came again, a shrill call that sent the birds flitting from the trees and the remaining three orks bolting from cover.

  ‘An angel’s wrath cannot be outrun.’ Hamied was moving, pacing after the greenskins and pumping a stream of rounds into their backs as they fled. The Scout appeared to have regained his composure, but a thin line of saliva still trickled from his mouth.

  The bark of Hamied’s bolt pistol gave way to a thunderous pounding, the quickening step of something far larger than the Scouts. Cassiel kept panning, shifting his gaze from tree to brush, east to west as he sought a target.

  ‘Perhaps the greenskins had the right idea,’ Melechk joked, clearing a measure of phlegm from his mouth as the ground began to tremble.

  The rhythmic pounding grew louder as the unseen threat grew nearer. Whatever was coming for them, it was crashing though the forest with enough force to tear the towering trees from their roots, snapping their trunks like kindling.

  ‘East! It comes from the east,’ cried Hamied.

  ‘Form up, assault line.’ Asmodel had to shout to be heard.

  The four Scouts deployed in a staggered line with just enough space between them to prevent a well-placed grenade from killing them all at once. Cassiel ejected the clip from his bolt pistol and slammed in a fresh one. Hamied fixed his knife to his gun and drew another blade from a scabbard on his back. Melechk tightened his grip on his heavy bolter and braced himself as best he could in the slick earth. Asmodel tested the weight of a cleaver he had liberated from an ork corpse.

  ‘Hold!’ The sergeant bellowed the order as the forest was rent apart in a hail of splinters and displaced earth.

  Cassiel shielded his eyes as fragments of tree split his skin and ruined his carapace. When the timber-fog cleared, he found himself staring at the brown hide of a gargantuan beast. It was impossibly large, bigger even than the Thunderhawk that had delivered them from orbit. Its chest and underbelly were armoured with slabs of bone. It had no forelimbs,
but its feet ended in barbed talons and a muscled tail extended out of sight behind it.

  The beast paused, huffing breaths through the lines of conical nostrils studding its long, reptilian snout. It snorted, opening its mouth to display a row of barbed incisors.

  ‘What in the name of Baal is that?’ Cassiel asked.

  The beast snarled, emitting another torturous roar before loping towards the Scouts.

  ‘Worry about that later. Just kill it!’ Asmodel growled, unleashing a hail of rounds.

  Cassiel squeezed his bolt pistol’s trigger with enough force to crack a man’s neck, as though the pressure applied determined the weapon’s potency. To his right, Melechk and Hamied opened fire, the bark of the former’s heavy bolter competing with the pounding footsteps of the beast as it bore down on them. The mass-reactive shells did little more than mottle the beast’s hide, impotent against the dense layer of natural armour.

  ‘Its hide’s too tough.’

  ‘Aim for its eyes.’

  Melechk adjusted his aim, sending a burst of rounds into the beast’s face.

  This second burst met with more success, stitching across the beast’s snout to tear through its left eye. The beast reeled, crying out.

  ‘My fury shall be unceasing!’ Melechk growled, advancing on the beast as it tried to shield its face.

  ‘Melechk! Hold the line,’ Asmodel shouted over the din of the heavy bolter, but the other Scout wasn’t listening. Melechk’s blood was up, his mouth twisted into a sneer.

  Melechk kept firing, advancing, driving the beast back. Then, with a resounding clack, his weapon racked empty.