Sepulturum - Nick Kyme by Warhammer

Sepulturum - Nick Kyme by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789993394
Published: 2019-12-02T10:18:32+00:00


Chapter XV

Ruination

The blade felt sharp against the skin, tucked just under the jugular. A quick slash and the carotid would open, spilling a river of red. This was the first thing Cristo thought of as he regained consciousness. The second was simply, I’m alive…

Relief quickly turned to fear, the revelation coming as he opened his eyes and saw men gathered around them.

A circle of masks, ragged strips of robes masking old military fatigues or factorum uniforms. One of those masks regarded him, the eyes that were visible through the slits bright and azure like chips of sapphire. It wore a simulacrum of a blank face, the strange figure, and his dirty red vestments smelled of cloying incense and blood, as if one had been deployed to obscure the other. Instead, both mingled into something noisome.

Cristo glanced about, only moving his eyes. He counted seven more figures, thuggish kinds, with masks of saints or laurel-crowned paragons. Two wore the faces of eagles. The aquila daubed their attire, roughly drawn, a dark stain that reminded Cristo of blood. Cudgels and rusty knives hung from studded leather belts. A few had a flagellant’s binding rope lashed around their ankles, the dried matter trailing from its inward-facing spikes like little tears of penance. Some carried trophies. Cristo saw bones, a rotting skull. They stank, despite the effort of cloves and garlic to suppress their foul odour.

The one with the knife – it was silver, double-edged and had the ornate look of an athame – leaned in to speak into Cristo’s ear. His breath reeked of soiled meat.

‘Weary traveller,’ his voice slid with the honey of a practised demagogue, ‘I am called Convocation, and these are my flock, the Divine.’

Zealots, Low Sink had them in abundance. Most deprived settlements did, their easy charms and false promises playing well with the disenfranchised and the desperate. Ordinarily, the proctors would suppress their bolder ambitions, but the Lex had departed Meagre altogether and left something primal in its place. Gang rule was now the only law, and the largest gang of all was that of the Imperial cult.

Power abhors a vacuum, or so Cristo had heard it said. An old phrase from old lips, but it held true. And in the absence of the proctors, a new law had arisen.

Belatedly, Cristo realised the skulls hanging off their belts were of the infected. Distended and emaciated, they could be no other. Then he saw Karina and Celestia, pushed to their knees, hands bound behind their heads, and Cristo tried to rise. The knife bit, deep enough to sting and draw a thick crimson rivulet that beaded down the blade.

‘No,’ the priest called Convocation said, ‘you stay.’

‘Don’t–’ Cristo snarled.

But Convocation smiled, certain of his absolute dominion.

‘Tell me, brother of man,’ he said, like a mendicant in search of alms, ‘do you believe in the Emperor’s light and righteous judgement?’

Two burly zealots hauled Cristo up, one wearing a hessian hood emblazoned with the eagle, the other an angelic mask. The latter’s



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