It stomped and splashed through the pool towards him and pushed the creature with Uriel's sword still lodged in its belly aside. It crouched in the water, its head still metres above Uriel and hauled him to his feet, dragging him close to its horrific features.
Uriel struggled against it, but its strength was beyond even that of a dreadnought and he was held firm. He was lifted from the water and held close to the Lord of the Unfleshed's face, the ragged flaps of skin around its nasal cavity fluttering as it smelled him.
A thick tongue slid from its mouth and Uriel gagged at the monster's corpse-breath as the leathery appendage licked the skin of his face. Before he could do more than retch, the Lord of the Unfleshed dropped him back into the water, and he grunted in pain as the splintered ends of his collarbone ground together.
The massive creature turned to the Unfleshed around the pool.
'Not meat yet! Maybe they Unwanted like us. Smell and taste flesh mother meat on him,' it said, its words twisted and guttural.
The Unfleshed threw back their heads and gave voice to a plaintive howling that echoed from the high peaks of the mountains, and Uriel could not decide whether the ululating cry was a gesture of welcome or a desperate cry of pity.
The Halls of the Savage Morticians still echoed to the pounding beat of the Heart of Blood, the air still stank of desperation and the psychic deadness still draped the soul. But for all that it remained the same, there was a subtle shift in the dynamic of the chamber. Honsou had not noticed it at first, but as he followed the bronze-legged Savage Mortician through the paths of the dying, he noticed it in the downcast skull-faces of each of the black-robed monsters…
'Have you noticed…' whispered Obax Zakayo, reading his master's features.
'Aye,' replied Honsou. 'They are afraid, and that doesn't happen often.'
They had good reason to be afraid, though, thought Honsou. Prisoners entrusted to their destruction by the master of Khalan-Ghol had killed two of their number and escaped. Obviously dark memories of the fortress's last master still burned in the minds of the Savage Morticians and Honsou found himself relishing their apprehension as he reached the mortuary circle where the Space Marines who followed Ventris had been shackled.
In the centre of the circle were the mangled, dismembered remains of two Morticians: their flesh hacked to carven, grey chunks. Honsou knelt beside the nearest, pulling the dead arm bearing a vicious drill from the ruin of its head.
'I fear I may have underestimated this Ventris and his band,' he said.
'You think he might be more than one of Toramino's mercenaries?'
Honsou nodded. 'I'm beginning to think that he might not have anything to do with Toramino at all, that he might be here for reasons of his own.'
'What reasons?'
Honsou did not answer at first, but snapped his fingers and indicated that one of the hissing, dark surgeons approach. A tall beast with wide, bladed legs and clicking hydraulic claws for arms stooped to face him, its gleaming jaws centimetres from Honsou.
'You put Ventris in the daemonculaba?' he asked.
'Yes. Stitched him in. Into the womb with the others. He should not be alive.'
'No,' agreed Honsou. 'He very definitely should not. Show me.'
'Show master of Khalan-Ghol what?' hissed the Savage Mortician.
'Show me where you implanted him,' ordered Honsou. 'Now.'
The creature nodded and reared up to its full height, stalking off between the barrels of viscera and blood towards the nearest ramp that led to the gantries of the daemonculaba. Honsou and Obax Zakayo followed, noting with interest some of the more cruel and unusual experiments in pain that were being carried out in the quest for deathly knowledge.
'With all due respect, my lord,' began Obax Zakayo. 'Is it wise to concern yourself with a fate of a few renegades? The armies of Lord Berossus are at the gates of Khalan-Ghol.'
'And?'
'And they are within days at most of breaching the walls…'
'Berossus will not get in, I have plans for him.'
'Any you want to share?'
'Not with you, no,' said Honsou as they reached the top of the ramp. 'Understand this, Obax Zakayo, you are my servant, a mere functionary, and nothing more. You served a master who had forgotten why we fight the Long War, a master who had allowed the bitter fires of the False Emperor's treachery to smoulder instead of burning brightly in his breast. Have you forgotten how our Legion was almost destroyed piece by piece by his uncaring, unthinking betrayals? Have you forgotten how he allowed us to stagnate and become little more than gaolers? The False Emperor drove us to this fate, condemning us to suffer an eternity of torment in the Eye, and while Forrix forgot that, I did not.'
'I only meant—' began Obax Zakayo.
'I know what you meant,' snapped Honsou, making his way along the gantry past the heaving masses of flesh that rippled in agony with new life. 'You think I don't know of your entreaties to Toramino and Berossus? You have betrayed me, Obax Zakayo. I know everything.'
Obax Zakayo opened his mouth to protest, but Honsou turned and shook his head. 'You can say nothing. I don't blame you. You saw an opportunity and you took it. But to think that someone like you could outwit me… please!'
The servo claws hunched at Obax Zakayo's shoulders reared up, snapping like the jaws of evil, mechanical snakes, and the giant Iron Warrior gripped his toothed axe tightly.
Honsou smiled and again shook his head as a pair of Savage Morticians loomed behind Obax Zakayo. The axe was snatched from his hands and broken like a twig as bronze claws snapped shut on his limbs and crackling, piston driven pincers cut the mechanised arms from his back.
'No!' shouted Obax Zakayo as he was lifted from his feet. 'I know things you need to know!'
'I don't think so,' said Honsou. 'Toramino is not so stupid as to trust you with anything of importance.'
Honsou nodded to the Savage Mortician and said, 'Do with him as you will.'
He turned away as Obax Zakayo screamed curses upon his name and was carried away by the Savage Morticians to his no doubt bloody fate. Honsou had not been surprised by Obax Zakayo's treachery: indeed it had proven to be extremely useful. Soon Berossus and Toramino would learn the price for trusting such a poor traitor.
Putting Obax Zakayo from his mind he walked along the grilled gantry to where a wheezing mass of blubbery, torn flesh was being prodded and cut further by the creature that had led him here. The pain-filled features of the daemonculaba stared at him in mute horror, its glassy eyes rolling in unspeakable pain. Honsou ignored its suffering and leant down to examine its torn belly, where recently sutured flesh had been rudely torn open.
'From the inside…' noted Honsou. 'He climbed out himself.'
The Savage Mortician bobbed its head, though Honsou could clearly see its confusion at such a thing.
'How could Ventris have done this?' asked Honsou.
'Not knowing. Daemonculaba tasted him, fed him soporifics. Should not have happened,' rasped the Mortician.
'And yet it did,' mused Honsou, pulling back the greasy folds of flesh from the daemonculaba's ruptured belly. The slippery innards of the great beast heaved and shuddered at his touch and Honsou drew back as the creature went into a violent seizure, its entire frame shuddering. Though it had no voice to call its own, a high, keening wail ripped from its ruined throat and a flood of gore gushed from the open wound.
'What's happening to it?' demanded Honsou.
'Womb ready to expel its issue,' explained the moribund surgeon.