Mortarion: The Pale King by David Annandale

Author:David Annandale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2022-07-13T10:25:43+00:00

NINE

The journey back from the generator hall was long. With the grav-lifts now inactive, the only way up for the company was on foot. On the north-east side of the hall, a shaft went straight up, metal stairs wrapping around its walls in an endless, dizzying spiral. Every fifteen metres or so, the stairs passed a ventilation shaft or a narrow maintenance access door.

Barrazin led the charge up the stairs. Calas Typhon followed close behind.

‘A long climb back to the war, First Captain,’ Typhon said.

‘I share your frustration, legionary. I have hopes it will meet us halfway.’

Barrazin moved faster, as if he sensed the proximity of the hypothetical encounter. Typhon matched his speed. He had faith in the captain. He had led the company well through the slaughterhouse of Protarkos, and he never held back. Typhon had not been certain that the Terran half of the Death Guard could be as ruthless as the situation, and Mortarion, demanded. He had understood that the greater experience of the Terrans meant none of the company captains were from Barbarus yet, but he had been wary, suspicious that they would prove soft. Barrazin had proven him wrong. The First Great Company fought as one, and it fought as the extension of the hand of Mortarion. His spirit infused the Legion.

We are all his sons.

The sound of an explosion came from farther up, muffled behind walls, but still too close to be caused by any of the other Death Guard forces fighting in the upper reaches of the hive. The shaft began to shake, the tremors growing more and more violent, and the air temperature spiked. Barrazin came to a halt. It was the first moment of uncertainty Typhon had seen in him.

‘What is it?’ Typhon asked.

‘I don’t know.’

The rumbling became deafening, and with it came the hiss of a maddened serpent.

Thirty metres up, a bright red glow lit the shaft.

‘Off the stairs!’ Barrazin ordered. ‘Take whatever exit point is nearest! They must have blown apart one of their refineries!’

A cataract of molten ore plunged down the shaft, a monster coming to devour the company.

The nearest maintenance door to Typhon was a few metres back. He sprinted down the stairs, leaping four steps at a time. Barrazin was right behind, shouting into the vox, urging the company to greater speed. The heat of the ore came down like a wall. Typhon was inside the throat of a volcano. His helm’s auto-senses screamed warnings. The howling, roaring, hissing ore was right behind him, and the door was too far away.

The walls of the shaft split. A fissure opened to Typhon’s right, and he threw himself at it. As he leapt, Barrazin’s shout of agony filled the vox, and then the molten orange flood was upon him. Typhon slammed against the sides of the fissure, blind with pain, and then lunged inside, into the breaking structure of the wall. A narrow stream of ore came with him. Typhon pushed through, metal snapped, and he fell into darkness, streamers of ore dropping with him.

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