Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,72
muscular wheels. The rail frame itself formed an integrated roll cage with an exposed gas engine. Barsabbas did not know its age, but he guessed it was pre‐colonial, a relic from the planet’s prospecting era. Despite the plainsmen’s efforts to preserve its condition, the centuries had taken their toll. Much of the roll cage was corroded to a mottled orange, and the exposed engine block was fused together by rust in some parts. Somehow the shamans, with their rote knowledge of machinery and rudimentary repair skills, had managed to keep the engine alive. Rope actually held parts of the vehicle together.
When Barsabbas eased his weight onto the cracked leather seat, the quad groaned under his weight, yet the engine purred responsively to the ignition. Given the situation, Barsabbas considered the quad quite a fortunate find. Nestled within the motored cage, Barsabbas left the camp, a single file of outriders following his dusty plume.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE BADLANDS OF the north appeared as a monotonous, featureless land to Barsabbas, an uninspired painting rendered in a repetitive sequence. But to the plainsmen braves, the terrain was an open book, every tree or stone a page mark for another narrative.
They rode for six kilometres with desperate haste, until they reached the stump of a brittle acacia. The tree looked no different to the sparse, withered things that he had seen standing like lonely fence posts on the horizon. Yet the tree was of some significance to the plainsmen. Barsabbas listened patiently, logging pieces of intelligence into his helmet’s data feed.
The tree, he was told, marked a well‐known walking path – a line in the sand that was barely visible until they pointed it out to him. Apparently satisfied that neither the walking dead nor the Septic had used the track for some time, they continued on.
As they scouted, the braves, some as young as ten, began to point out the prints of various animals: the splayed bird feet of talon squalls, the crescent prints of the caprid, curving belly marks of a brown‐backed serpent. Simply from the depth and size of the tracks, they deduced the animals’ gender and age. From this tiny fragment of information, they could tell whether the animals’ natural habitat had been disturbed and, if so, in what way.
Two hours into their patrol of their surroundings, Gumede indicated a series of splayed prints in the sand, sprinting in the opposite direction. Judging by the spacing of their strides, Gumede knew many of them were injured by the way some of them left unevenly distributed prints, or dragged the knuckles of their feet.
‘Injuries,’ Gumede said, running a finger through the prints. ‘Many injuries.’
‘Tell me what that means,’ said Barsabbas, deferring to the plainsman’s experience.
Barsabbas was an expert tracker. Memo‐therapy had imparted into his hippocampus knowledge of wilderness survival across seventy‐eight different forms of terrain. This, however, was beyond even his considerable skill.
‘Birds are predators. They are rarely injured, and if so, never so many. They were attacked,’ said Gumede. ‘See here? Running tracks. The birds are running away from something to the north. There are fewer males running with the flock too, far too many chicks and females. It tells me that many of the males were killed protecting the flock.’
‘These tracks are fresh?’
‘No more than one day old. I would guess whatever attacked the birds is roughly two days’ travel from here. Maybe less.’
Barsabbas understood. Out in the badlands, nothing would attack a flock of apex predators, except for something far more dangerous. It was likely something had fired upon the flock, or engaged them in a brief skirmish. The predators, defeated, had fled southwards, away from their attackers.
‘Then we do not have much time. The enemy are close,’ Barsabbas said.
‘We should warn the camp.’
Barsabbas smiled and hefted his boltgun. ‘We will return to the muster.’
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THE PLAINSMEN WERE ready when they came. Through the low, bulbous fields of cacti the enemy approached. Four thousand Septic infantry, accompanied by light, sand‐trawling gun platforms. The keening squeal of hydraulics and the clatter of engines echoed across the badlands. Behind them, with almost no urgency, marched a company of Plague Marines.
Twenty‐eight warriors in all, a procession that followed the heavy banner of Nurgle.
Barsabbas had brought the road trains into a crescent‐shaped wall, a silver ridge of carriages almost one kilometre in length, girded by mountains on either flank and fields of cacti to the fore. Behind them the sprawling tents and lean‐tos of the kinships took shelter.
Barsabbas did not expect the line to hold.