Chapter 28: The Thirsty Land
Standard Terran Date: 681.M31
Tami secured the rope around her waist and scrambled down the crumbling wall of the well. Her feet hit the bottom, not with a splash, but with the dry crunch of sand. She drew her shovel and began to dig, the cramped space making the work exhausting.
After half an hour, she was covered in sweat, but the pit below her was still bone-dry. Defeated, she gave up and looked to the small circle of light far above. "There's nothing!"
Her companions hauled her up. The two hundred members of her tribe looked on, their faces gaunt with despair. Even their leader, the Prophet of the Feathered Serpent, looked shaken. The Prophet, whose arms and chest were now sprouting the iridescent feathers of his god's 'blessing,' gripped his staff.
"We must endure," he chanted, his voice hoarse. "We continue north. The new demons have cursed this land and held back the rains. But the Emissary of the Serpent awaits us in the heart of the continent. If we can reach him, the ritual can begin, and the Great Serpent will descend from the Empyrean to destroy the demons!"
Tami and her tribe could only nod and abandon the dead village.
She was losing hope. Their food and water were nearly gone. It had started over two and a half years ago. The rains simply... stopped. At first, they had survived on the rivers and by digging wells. They were used to a dry season; it had never lasted more than a couple of months.
But six months passed. Then a year. Not a single drop of rain. Even the clouds had vanished. The grasses and bushes shriveled and died. The rivers dried up, their beds cracking into dust. The animals, herbivores and carnivores alike, all died of thirst. Now, even their deepest wells were dry.
Their only hope was the Prophet's vision: a divine message that in the continent's center, the rains still fell.
So they walked north. The elders, too weak to make the journey, had chosen to stay behind. Tami knew this was a death sentence. Soon, the children began to falter. The smallest were carried, but the older ones just... slowed down, gradually falling behind, often with their mothers who refused to leave them. Tami's people were matrilineal; a child's father could be any man from a dozen tribes.
The Prophet said it was the sorcery of the demons. He promised that if they could only reach the Emissary, a great ritual would summon the Serpent God himself from the warp to cleanse the world.
The rain would return. Life would return. Tami clung to that sliver of hope, gripped her obsidian-tipped spear, and forced her legs to move.
Suddenly, a bestial howl split the air. A horde of figures, their faces painted with red crosses, burst from the rocks, waving crude weapons. They were howling, their weapons black with old blood.
"Fresh meat! FFFRRREESSHH MEAT! Kill them! For the Blood-Handed Slaughterer!"
The tribe's forward scout screamed a warning, "Servants of the Blood God!" before a thrown javelin took him through the throat. Over a hundred cultists of the 'Blood-Handed Slaughterer' charged.
Tami desperately tried to form a spear-wall, but she was weak from days without water. She knew she would be little help. But the Prophet stood at the front, and his presence gave her courage.
The Shaman raised his staff, chanted, and thrust his hand forward. A bolt of raw, blue-white lightning erupted from his fingers. The chain-lightning arced between the attackers, frying a dozen of the berserkers where they stood. The tribe's archers loosed a volley of poison-tipped arrows, felling more. They had the numbers, and they had their Prophet.
"In the Serpent's name!" the warriors screamed, their hope renewed. "Destroy the slaves of the Blood God!"
Finding her strength, Tami set her spear and drove it deep into the gut of a charging cultist.
The war for the thirsty land had begun.
Meanwhile, in the armory of the Fortress-Monastery, 34 neophytes were being armed.
"Operation Drought" was officially underway. The Warband and the Dark Mechanicum were launching a joint campaign to harvest servitor-stock and capture the wild psykers.
The neophytes had not yet completed their surgical transformations, but Lord Petros had ordered them into the field. His words had been: "A warrior is forged in battle, not in the training cage."
So, 34 aspirants gathered to receive their new wargear.
The equipment was basic: Scout-pattern Carapace Armor, forged from plasteel and lesser-grade ceramite. For melee, they were issued monomolecular combat knives and mono-edged long-blades; even many of the full Battle-Brothers still lacked chain or power weapons.
Their ranged options, however, were more varied: Bolt pistols, combat shotguns, long-las rifles, heavy stubbers (Ogryn-pattern), stub-cannons, grenade launchers, and net-launchers.
They were also issued flash-bangs, shock-grenades, and two special munitions provided by Daedalos: stumm-gas grenades and stumm-gas rounds for their launchers. The gas was too weak to affect even an Ogryn, let alone an Astartes, but it was perfect for primitives. The gas and the nets would be their primary tools.
Lykurgos hefted a heavy stub-cannon, slinging a massive, X-shaped ammo-feed over his shoulder.
Alexios, ever the traditionalist, took a bolt pistol and a long-blade.
Randolph, the massively-bearded neophyte, was inspecting his new chestplate. "I get it," he grumbled, "but why does this scout armor have sculpted abs?"
"It's a 'muscle cuirass,'" Alexios replied, his voice deadpan. "It's the Lacedaemonian style. Brother Phelon said the armor should have... local character."
Randolph grinned and pointed to the two raised, "heroic" nipples on the plastron. "You mean... these?"
"It is Lacedaemonian tradition," Alexios said, his face a mask of stone.
Gorgias ignored their bickering. In the five years since the Odyssey, the once-skinny fisherman had been forged into a 2-meter-tall, golden-haired hulk. The surgeries and gene-seed had worked their miracles.
He checked his armor seals, mag-locked his bolt pistol, and slung the net-launcher over his shoulder.
Today would be their first true battle.