expendable if Barsabbas could find Sargaul. He would need them to take him into the deep north. Alone he might fail, but with a mighty war host as a diversion…
THAT NIGHT, BARSABBAS dreamed of Sargaul. A Chaos Space Marine did not often dream.
Rather, their catalepsean nodes placed them in a state whereby the resting portions of their brain relived memories throughout the day. Memories of drill, memories of field tactics, memories of war. Decades or centuries of memory that would otherwise be forgotten in the sieve of a human mind.
But that night, Barsabbas dreamed. He dreamed that he visited Sargaul. His blood bond was tinkering with the wreckage of a Rhino armoured carrier. The desert plains stretched out on every side and the tank was beached in the centre, its paint scorched to cracking by the sun.
Sargaul was muttering softly to himself as he worked on the broken tank. But as Barsabbas approached he saw that there was nothing to fix. The tank was an empty, burnt out shell.
‘Brother, what are you doing?’ Barsabbas asked as he drew close.
Sargaul looked at him but did not seem to recognise his battle‐brother. He started vacantly at Barsabbas before turning his attention back to the wreckage, muttering ceaselessly.
Barsabbas knew his brother was lost. Sargaul was tapping away at a crumpled panel of plating with a tiny work hammer, utterly focussed on the task.
‘Brother, where are you going?’
At this Sargaul drowsily raised his hand and pointed to the north without even looking at him. Far away, hazed by the glare of background suns, Ur shone on the horizon.
For a while, Barsabbas attempted to speak to Sargaul, but his bond did not acknowledge him. It was almost as if he did not exist. Only when that seed of doubt was nurtured in Barsabbas’s mind, did he think it a dream.
He awoke then.
THE FINAL SUNSET was two hours away when Gumede began the final preparations for departure. The arrival of a Godspawn had been an unexpected delay and the temperamental gas engines of the road train had to be refired. Despite this, he believed the Godspawn was a good portent. As the last of the kinship tied their possessions to the roof and side racks of the convoy, Gumede needed only one more thing before he was ready.
He took from his carriage rack a lasrifle. It was an heirloom, handed down between the elders of the kinship. The gun had always belonged to the family and none knew its precise origins. Some cousins claimed it had been simply traded for two dozen caprid from the city of Ur by a long‐lost uncle. But Gumede had also been told by an aunt that it had been given to them by missionaries of the eagle‐headed faith. Those missionaries did not come to their land any more, but the cells that powered the weapon continued to be recharged by the solar heat of their many suns, even after so many centuries. The use of the lasrifle was a rare skill and something that Gumede had learned from an early age.
He wiped the rifle’s metal exterior with a cloth and slotted a rectangular cell into its housing. He chanted a mantra and dialled up the weapon’s charge. It hummed softly. He thumbed the well‐worn slide down to idle.
87
‘I am ready,’ he said to himself. Climbing atop his bird with slow deliberation, he made one last survey of his convoy and began to ride.
88
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS JUST a rumour, but Sufjan had learned to take rumours very seriously.
Sufjan Carbo had earned his black turban by keeping a clear head and open ears. Being a slave to the Traitor Marines was usually a short and very brutal existence, but there were those such as he who had learned to thrive in such volatile environments. Men like him had learned to listen and glean every scrap of information to survive. Everything on the Cauldron Born happened for a reason, and everything that happened had consequences, even for the lowliest slave.
Things had not always been this way. Sufjan Carbo had been a janitorial factotum for a district scholam. His life had involved distilling the right combination of bleach and water for the cork floors and tightening the scholam’s faulty plumbing. Such things were a fading memory. He had come to accept life as a volatile thing, from the moment they took him away from his world, to the dangers of life as an expendable servant of the Chaos powers.