Dark Imperium (Dark Imperium: Warhammer 40,000 Book 1) by Guy Haley

Author:Guy Haley [Haley, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2021-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PLAGUEBRINGER

Varens was sleeping, and his dreams were stranger than ever before.

He watched himself from outside, as is sometimes the way in dreams, as if he were two separate people – the actor and the observer. The observer saw himself hiding by the hospital entrance, spying on the sentries, their conversation puffed out into the cold night air like smoke signals. The active Varens watched one of the sentries leave his post and go inside to warm his hands. As the soldier passed him, Varens clubbed him down with a stone urn. Then this Varens stalked the gravelled forecourt of the hospital, a stolen lasgun in his hands.

The second Varens watched.

The first Varens raised his lasgun. The remaining sentry’s eyes became shocked round zeroes in the shadow of his helmet. ‘Don’t shoot!’ he said.

Varens squeezed the trigger and blasted a neat hole in the sentry’s chest that steamed as he stepped over the corpse. He dropped the gun.

This act of violence half woke him.

He should have been warm, but his feet were freezing and felt wet. A chill wind made him colder still. He tried to go back to sleep. There was a sharp pain in his wound.

How could this be? he thought in his dream. I am ready to go back to the war. I am fit enough to die.

Another stab of pain made him gasp and wake slightly. He tried to go back to sleep, but there was an irritating rattling noise all around him. It sounded like reeds, reeds in the wind.

Varens’ eyes snapped open.

He was totally disoriented. Pale strands waved at the height of his nose, filling the world as far as he could see, dividing it into hissing paleness below and darkness above. It took him a moment to see that the strands were reeds, and the darkness was the sky where clouds sped over stars under the urging of the wind.

He was in the marsh.

It took him a moment to get his bearings and locate the hospital. It looked small, the marble a blur in the dark. He had come a long way, well past the edges of the meadows into shallow water.

His dream came back to him. The dead soldiers. Or was this the dream, and what he remembered in the dream the true memory? It couldn’t be possible.

He felt dizzy. He reached his hand to his forehead. There was something slimy on his hand, and he wiped it on his gown. His forehead was hot. He had a fever. He should get back; there was something very wrong with him.

He turned to face the hospital. His limbs were shivering, and his muscles ached. His feet were going numb. His skin bumped under his hospital gown. He would die out here if he did not get back.

Definitely a fever.

‘I’ve caught my damned death out here,’ he muttered. He sloshed through the mud, heading for the firmer ground of the meadows. He had nearly made it when a familiar voice called out in the marsh.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.