Their isolationism was evident amongst their fading finery; the textiles once rich and well made were now thinning into 148
thread. The men preferred tabards and cloaks of coarse hessian for their resilience, while the women wore shawls of blues, greys and blacks for their ease of dyeing. It seemed the barony held monopoly of the planet’s resources but had nothing to spend it on.
The isolation had eroded their health too. Even a visitor such as Barsabbas could plainly see the effects of inbreeding and an indigenous immune system which hadn’t been in contact with the pathogens of an outside world. There were not many children, and many people balanced upon crooked limbs and crutches. Rarer still were those of an older age, for it seemed the elderly did not live long in Ur. Barsabbas imagined that the arrival of Nurgle would have devastated their sheltered existence through mere contact with bacteria alone.
They stood with the inattentive wistfulness of forlorn prisoners. The fusion reactors had been made to leak on purpose, allowing Ur to irradiate its surrounding land and slowly kill its inhabitants. The Plague Marines with their supernatural constitution and power-armoured containment were immune, but these people were not.
Nurgle was poisoning them slowly, yet still they jeered Barsabbas as his open‐topped carriage trundled past. They shouted and hurled pebbles although their taunts lacked conviction. Barsabbas had the sense that these people performed their hate simply to curry the favour of Nurgle. Many simply watched him with sullen looks, empathising with his state of captivity.
IN TRUTH, THE decay of Ur had begun long before the coming of Nurgle. It could be said that by some strange, or perhaps divine, consequence, Nurgle had chosen to conquer them and accelerate their process of decline.
Once, the citizens of Ur had been men of a mono‐segregationist Imperial cult. They had believed Bassiq was a trial for the colonists and the God‐Emperor had wanted them to remain pure, to shore up their city‐state as an island of salvation amongst a sea of godless sin. They believed, in short, that Bassiq with its fire and heat were the canonical hells of the warp.
But they had devolved over the centuries. Sealed away in their city, the people had atrophied, withering like an unused muscle. The Barons of Ur, once Imperial cultists, had quickly relinquished rule to Nurgle.
Now the Barons of Ur attended their sumptuous courts, in a dining gallery in the highest tiers of their clay palace. The woven rugs that adorned the walls were threadbare with silverfish. Men roosted on ceremonial tables whose gilt was flaking to show the worn, chipped wood beneath.
High Baron Matheus Toth sat in his fading chiffon. His ring‐clustered fingers darted as he pantomimed the act of eating. The table was bare but he supped on a spoon delicately and drew deep breaths from a hollow goblet.
The full court had been summoned by their Plague Marine overseers. Some guests were living, while others, quite dead, were dragged unceremoniously from their coffins. The unliving sat in their high‐backed chairs, their hands curled into stiff fists and their faces unmoving. Some were bloated with corpse gas and slumped awkwardly in their seats. The aggressive ones had to be tied down by rope, their dignity long faded as they shouted garbled words from black lips.
149
A full court of dying nobles, eating dust and attended by the dead. The richly dark humour of Papa Nurgle was evident in the actions of his followers. A royal guard blew on a horn with flaking lips and the celebrations began.
SINDUL SCRATCHED HIS cheek, fidgeting incessantly at the mark. If he probed with his fingertips, he fancied he could detect the hard lump buried in his flesh. He was insufferably bored.
The human architecture did not at all interest him. The walls were too neat, too vertical and bared brick. Ugly, wrought‐iron torch brackets were fixed to the walls, but their flames had been replaced with phosphor lighting. Sindul supposed the sconce fixtures were meant to complement the dining hall but they didn’t. The placement of the long trestle tables was not quite symmetrical and everything about the chamber was linear and claustrophobic.
Sindul had not wanted to accept the barony’s invitation to be the guest of honour at their banquet. He felt like a vulture dining alongside rodents.
For a moment, it seemed as if the barons were watching him. Playing the part of a willing guest, Sindul’s hand drifted back to the table and he picked up a fork. But then he