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The Deeper Wounds – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Deeper Wounds

David Annandale

Lycotham Gamma, 782.M41
(the 27th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

Human skulls were a disappointment. They were too close to the surface.

Seddok Etogaur considered this as his Death Brigade moved through the disused mining tunnels. He felt an emotion like regret – regret woven in barbed wire – whenever his knife scraped bone. This wrathful frustration came whether he was carving an enemy’s flesh or his own. The blade could not sink as far as was right. There were limits to the profundity of the pain and the conjuring of blood. He marked his worship of the Blood God in the whorls of sliced muscle and flaps of cheek. But how could he give full expression to his faith and rage with such hard limits in the material?

There was very little more he could do with the canvas of his own flesh. The scars overlapped. They built on each other, layering the violence of meaning. His skull showed in patches on his crown. He had even worked on the bone itself, scraping runes with the point of the blade. The extent of his mutilation demanded the respect of his subordinates. The depth of commitment to the Blood Pact was measured by the acts of war against the enemy, and in the acts given physical memory on the warrior’s body. Seddok’s loyalty was visible in every contortion of the slices. He hadn’t even spared his tongue. He could still speak without difficulty, although he could taste nothing but thickened tissue and blood.

It wasn’t enough. The blade should go deeper. There should always be more pain, more blood, more flesh to tear away.

He was thinking about the limits to injury because the same ones applied to the present action. He and his troops were going to inflict pain. But not enough.

It would never be enough.

They reached a junction. Kstah took the left tunnel without hesitation. The mining operations had honeycombed this range of the Katchgar Mountains on Lycotham Gamma. The work went on, but many of the veins had been exhausted. By tasting the air and sensing vibrations beneath its clawed feet, the loxatl could gauge how close they were to any of the workers. The reptilian xenos had led the brigade through tunnels that hadn’t been used in years. As they neared their target, Seddok could hear, faintly, the sounds of labour and industry. There wouldn’t be any need for secrecy soon. A bit longer, and everything would be about injury and the teaching of a lesson. The lesson that would not be enough.

The Death Brigade had placed themselves on Lycotham Gamma four days earlier, landing in a desert, far from any population centre. Seddok and his warriors had made good time, and seen no one. They had not been detected by the Sons of Sek. The blow would come from the night. The message would be clear.

The quality of the air changed. It went from stale and close to choking, oily, gritty. Seddok felt a breeze. The tunnel came to an end at an opening about twenty metres up the cliff face. Seddok looked right, to the north, at the manufactorum. It squatted in a narrow valley, its walls abutting the mountainsides. It was a cathedral of black iron. Its clusters of chimneys were spires a hundred metres high, spewing clouds so thick they blocked all sight of the sky. Though it was midday, the valley was in deep twilight. A web of rails ran from tunnel entrances, feeding trainloads of ore to the receiving bays in the complex’s east and west flanks. The south face was dominated by massive gates. From there, a road led from the valley.

‘This won’t hurt as much as it should,’ said Mevvax Sirdar, echoing Seddok’s displeasure. She was looking at the transports hauling the manufactorum’s output through the gates. They were hull components for void ships. Taking out the manufactorum would be a blow to the Sons of Sek’s strength, but hardly a crippling one. They controlled Lycotham Gamma. This was not the only centre of production.

‘Agreed,’ Seddok said. ‘But what does?’

She shrugged.

‘We have orders,’ he reminded her. ‘And we obey.’

She nodded once, the gesture tense with anger at the prospect of unjustified effort.

‘We are delivering a message,’ he said, reminding himself as much as his subordinate. They were teaching, not decapitating. The Blood Pact was not at war with the Sons of Sek. But Anakwanar Sek did not recognise the authority of Urlock Gaur as he should. The magister needed to be reminded that the forces of the Blood God in this region of the galaxy spoke with one voice, and obeyed one master. The Sons of Sek believed themselves to be supreme on Lycotham Gamma. Perhaps they were. That did not mean they were untouchable.

Paraak laughed. The sound was liquid. The grotesque that masked his features had short spikes that pierced his cheeks. He was always swallowing his own blood. ‘It would do them good to bleed,’ he said.

Seddok grinned, feeling the ragged edges of his lips split as they rubbed against his own grotesque. His mask, unlike those of Paraak and the other lower orders, was not iron. It was gold. Even better for us to see them bleed, he thought. There was a second lesson they were about to teach. The braggart Sons of Sek needed to be taught humility. They vaunted their military prowess. The stories of their precision and discipline were spreading through the Sabbat Worlds systems. There was some basis for their pride, yes. They were doing well, yes. But Seddok had come to show them what a Death Brigade of the Blood Pact could do.

Before the manufactorum gates, on either side of the road from the valley, was an encampment. Large enough, Seddok estimated, for two hundred troops. He counted twenty sentries stationed around its perimeter and near the gates.

‘Look at them,’ said Eshk. ‘Proud of their finery.’

He meant their gear. Even from this distance, the quality of the Sons’ equipment was apparent. They weren’t wearing full-body carapace armour as the Death Brigade were, but the vests and helmets had a uniformity, and thus probably a reliability, beyond what many Blood Pact troopers had at their disposal.

‘It won’t do them any good,’ Seddok answered. He eyed possible approaches. The urge to launch into the humiliation of the Sons was strong. He wasn’t concerned by the eight-to-one odds. His brigade had annihilated larger Imperial Guard forces. But he had to be mindful of the goal. If the manufactorum was shuttered against him, its walls would be those of a fortress. He would be kept at bay until reinforcements arrived.

If he followed the dictates of cold anger instead of hot rage, the path was clear. Kstah had brought them to an entrance that gave onto one of the rails. From the state of its disrepair, it had fallen into disuse years ago, now too far from a viable source of ore, and was being allowed to decay. Its span was still intact. The receiving bay it led to was fed by two other lines. One of them came from an opening ten metres down and a hundred to the right of the brigade’s position. The other started from a tunnel whose mouth was almost forty metres straight up.

Seddok looked at the upper line. Kstah gave a peremptory hiss and pointed at the lower one instead. Seddok watched, trusting the loxatl’s vibratory perceptions. After a few minutes, an ore train rumbled down the track, its carts full. Its passage was loud, but added little to the metallic thunder echoing throughout the valley. Seddok raised his magnoculars and examined the sentries. They didn’t so much as glance at the train. Their attention remained on the road, the sole ground approach to the manufactorum.

It was almost too easy.

‘I think they want to be hurt,’ he said.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Sabbat Crusade in Great Britain in 2014.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland.

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