FOREVER LOYAL
Mitchel Scanlon

IT WAS WITH good reason they called it Hell's Marsh. A lesson Arvus Drel, former notary minoris to the planetary archives of His Excellency Governor Arbenal of the Imperial backwater Bajoris IV, had learned to his displeasure in the course of three miserable days spent within its bounds. Three days spent wearily trudging from one dismal quagmire to the next, while all the time the mud underfoot pulled treacherously at boot and ankle. Three days enduring the bites of szetze flies the size of a man's thumb. Three days of cold, damp discomfort. Hell's Marsh, indeed. Drel had cursed the whole damned place to hell with many a ragged and unhappy breath. Cursed the marsh. Cursed his companions. And, above all else, cursed that circumstance ever forced him to so foul and loathsome a place.
The notary looked behind him at the landscape as it stretched away. They had lost sight of the shuttle days ago, and he cursed that they could not have landed closer to his conjectured co-ordinates. But the treacherous swamps were too soft for the lumbering craft to settle on, and they had been forced to abandon it on the only safe section of land they could find. From then on it had been a long toil on foot. His gaze wandered up into the sky. Through the misty swarms of mosquitoes he could see Bajoris IV itself, hanging in space like a livid, blue balloon. His head spun slightly at the thought that he was no longer standing on the ground of the planet where he had spent all his life. Hell's Marsh was Bajoris's moon. It was uninhabited, dangerous and completely without value. Or so everyone thought. Never did he imagine that he would ever have had to set foot on its stinking surface. Yet here he was...
Sergeant Jarl, leader of the platoon of PDF troopers assigned to escort Drel on his mission, glanced behind him and grinned.
'Ha. Now there's a face that could sour milk, my friends. From the looks of it, I'd say the notary was beginning to wish he'd never set foot on the marsh.'
A hulking brute of a man, Jarl seemed to find gruff and sly amusement in his charge's every discomfort. And, not for the first time, Drel found himself looking at the heavy fur of the cloak around Jarl's shoulders and wishing whatever unfortunate beast it once belonged to had put up more of a fight. Still, he was enough of a diplomat to keep the thought to himself. Instead, forcing a lacklustre smile, he tried a more civil reply.
'Not at all, sergeant. Though, granted, I had hoped we would be closer to our objective by now.'
'Teh. With country like this, it is always going to be slow progress, notary,' Jarl shrugged. 'If you know a shortcut to this lost city of yours, I'm sure we'd be glad to hear it.'
Biting his lip, Drel said nothing. The sergeant's mood seemed even enough, but three days in the marsh had already led to frayed tempers, and Drel knew better than to risk provoking Jarl and his men. They were Volgars, nomadic warrior tribesmen from the planet's polar wastes, probably conscripted into the Planetary Defence Force as punishment for non-payment of tithes. As far as Drel was concerned, they were little better than barbarians, with Jarl likely some minor clan chieftain awarded sergeant's rank as a mark of his status.
Far from the civilised lifestyle he was used to, Drel was keenly aware of his isolation. He was in the company of men to whom violence was second nature, men who would think no more of killing a man than Drel would of swatting one of these damned szetze flies. And, while the Volgars might be under orders to protect his life at all costs, he would not care to see their loyalty put too strongly to the test. Not with so many quagmires hereabouts where one might dispose of an inconvenient body. And especially not if they ever learned just how much they had been misled.
'The notary has gone quiet again, Jarl. Perhaps he don't know no shortcuts. Or else he's just enjoying his walk in the marsh so much, he doesn't want it to end.'
This from another of the Volgars, Trooper Skeg, a grizzled veteran whose elaborate facial tattoos failed to disguise the spectacular ugliness of the features beneath. All the Volgars wore similar designs, their ugly Northlander faces painted in swirling blue-black masks of whorls and arches, as though touched by the fingerprint of some savage god. But in his heart of hearts, Drel was forced to admit it was not just their stench he found intimidating. Never the largest nor most forceful of men himself, he felt dwarfed by his escorts' sheer physical presence. They were men built on a bigger scale, each one brawny, broad-shouldered and bear-like, standing half a head or more taller than him. And, while he suffered and stumbled through the marsh beside them, the Volgars seemed immune to every hardship.
It was then, as they made their way down yet another muddy and overgrown trail, that it happened. One of the Volgars had turned towards him with a sardonic smile, some fresh example of barbarian wit no doubt ready on his lips, when there came the sense of a distant discharge and a sudden stiffening of the air. Layer by layer, in the space of a single heartbeat, the trooper's face disappeared before Drel's horrified eyes, revealing first the wet red musculature beneath the skin, then the glistening white bone of the skull itself. For a moment the skull-face stared at him with empty sockets, an idiot smile seemingly still fixed upon its lipless mouth. The exposed spine rose from the undamaged flesh of the trooper's torso as though it were no more than some unwanted suit of clothing his skeleton was ready to discard. Then, abruptly, as though realising their mistake, flesh and bone alike collapsed in a steaming pile of offal. Though Drel might have screamed then, he found his horror at the gruesome spectacle outweighed by more pressing concerns. Spying movement in the long rushes on either side of the trail, he was forced to entertain the unwelcome notion that he himself might well be the next to die.
'Ambush!'
As Jarl's men shouted hoarse and desperate warnings, Drel saw half a dozen gaunt, machine-like figures emerge from among the rushes. Their bodies dripped with muck from the marsh, silent but for the eerie whisper of reed-stems whipping through the spaces of their ribs.
The skeletal figures advanced towards them, eyes burning with ancient malice; a malice which found able counterpoint in the sickly green death-glow emanating from the strange weapons each machine-warrior held in unfeeling hands. One of their weapons fired and a trooper died an ugly death, reduced to a flailing skeleton in the blink of an eye. Then, in a roar of obscene oaths and battle-cries, the Volgars charged forward to meet the advance with lasguns blazing.
Paralysed by indecision, Drel found himself briefly alone at the eye of the storm as, all around him, fragile flesh and unyielding metal met in uneven confrontation. He saw a machine-warrior cut down a screaming trooper right in front of him and for an instant the killer paused, death's head turning first one way, then the next as it cast about for a new victim. To Drel's horror, he saw the creature turn its smouldering and soulless eyes to gaze his way.
His panic-clumsy fingers scrabbled at the holster by his side as the creature advanced slowly towards him and Drel inadvertently took a step back. He abruptly realised his mistake as he felt his feet lose their purchase in the soft surface of the trail. He felt the ground slide away, the skeletal figure before him seeming to slip beneath his field of vision. It was replaced by a view of the dismal grey sky overhead as he landed on his back in the slurping mud of the marsh, the impact jarring the laspistol from his fear-slick fingers just as he finally managed to pull it free of its holster.
Caught helpless, Drel saw the machine-creature loom over him, arms raised as it lifted the axe-blade at the end of its weapon to deliver a killing blow. But the blow never came - the creature suddenly spat out a spray of broken metal as a fist-sized hole appeared in the front of its face. It stood frozen for a moment arms still raised, the symmetry of its death-mask features abruptly ruined, as eyes like burning coals became flickering embers. Then, strangely, the cadaverous outlines of its body seemed to almost soften and fade, before, in a sudden flaring flash of gangrenous light, the machine-warrior disappeared so swiftly it was as though it had never been there at all. Drel was left blinking in amazement, staring past where die metallic figure had been to see Sergeant Jarl standing a few paces behind, a thin line of smoke rising like a question mark from the barrel of the bolt pistol in his hand.
'Well, notary, they may look like death, but it seems if a man tries hard enough they can still be made to die.'

THE ENEMY HAD BEEN destroyed. But it soon became clear the men of Sergeant Jarl's platoon had paid a heavy price. Of the thirty men who had come down the trail only half still lived. Fifteen men were dead, their lives traded dearly for six of the enemy. Assuming the skull-faced figures that had ambushed them could ever be described as having lived at all.
Once a head count had been made and the wounds of the survivors dressed, Jarl and his men set about gathering the mostly skeletal remains of their dead before performing a brief approximation of the primitive funeral rites of their northern homelands. The body of each dead trooper was tied into a foetal position with twine, their lasguns similarly tied to dead hands so they would have a weapon with which to fight the daemons that would confront them at the gates of the afterlife. Then, after some words had been said and Jarl had cut a shallow but bloody notch into his forearm in memory of each departed comrade, their huddled bodies were thrown one by one into a deep watery pit in the marsh.
Drel noticed the Volgars were careful to strip the dead of any potentially useful equipment before consigning them to the waters - even removing the power packs from their lasguns. Whether this was a sign that they believed the dead had no need of such things in the Otherworld, or simply a matter of pragmatism outweighing superstition, he could not be sure. Not that he was overly concerned with the fate of the dead Volgars either way. When it came to the question of remains, he was more interested in those of the enemy.
Or rather, the lack thereof. For like the creature Jarl had slain, each of the machine-warriors had disappeared when they suffered fatal wounds, vanishing like nighttime terrors at the first touch of dawn. It was a mystery to which Drel could give no explanation. But whatever the cause, the enemy were gone, leaving the bodies of their victims and a few scraps of twisted metal as the only sign of their passing.
Holding one such fragment in his hands, Drel gazed at it with mingled horror and fascination. It was curved, marked with rectangular tooth-shaped protrusions at its base, its outer surface still stained with the patina of the marsh while the inner seemed impossibly smooth and ageless. It looked to have come from the upper jaw of the creature that had nearly killed him. Standing there with that fragment in his hands, Drel found himself wondering just how long the creature had been there, lying hidden in stagnant waters waiting to repel any intruder in the marsh. Centuries, perhaps? Even millennia? Were there others still out there, waiting patiently somewhere on the trail ahead to finish what their fellows had started?
'I'd say you owe us some answers, notary.'
It was Jarl, a dangerous edge to his voice as he spoke. He stood facing Drel, knife in one hand and blood trickling down his left arm from the fifteen fresh notches he had carved into his bicep. His men gathered behind him, glowering at Drel with faces set in hard and unforgiving lines. Looking at them, Drel realised the next few minutes might well dictate the future course of his life. Not least the immediate question of whether he would ever leave this trail alive.
'Answers, sergeant?' he replied, in what he sincerely hoped was a commanding and imperious tone. 'You have your orders. They should be enough.'
'I've lost fifteen good men, notary. All of them kinfolk, or else blood-sworn to me. Men who would've trusted me to lead them into hell. It looks like that's where I did lead them, blindly, and at your say-so. I want answers. I want to know why we came to this marsh. I want to know what those damned metal daemons were. Most of all, I want to know about this ruined city you told us you wanted to find, and what's there that could be worth my men's lives. I want to know all this now, notary. Or else I'm going to tell you where you can stick your orders. And then, I'm going to show you what you can put there with them.'
Jarl brandished his knife in front of Drel's face by way of emphasis. For his part, Drel did his best to reassure himself he could still turn this situation to his advantage. He must pick his words carefully, and, above all else, show no fear. If the Volgars smelt blood in the water, all was lost.
'What do you know of the history of this world, sergeant?' he asked. Seeing Jarl's answering sneer, he quickly continued. 'Would it surprise you to learn that thousands of years ago, in the dark days before contact was re-established with the Imperium, people lived on Hell's Marsh in much the same way as your people do now in Volgar? That they were divided into dozens of squabbling nomadic tribes who lived - and I mean no offence when I say this, sergeant - in a state of barbarism, barely comprehending that a wider galaxy even existed?'
'I will take your word for it, notary,' Jarl said, the dangerous tone still present in his voice, although for the moment, at least, he had lowered his knife. 'But what does this have to do with our mission?'
'Everything, sergeant. You see, sometime in this moon's distant prehistory, one of those feuding tribes managed to raise themselves above their rivals. They called themselves the Neand, and somewhere in what are now these marshlands they built a city; a city from which they dominated this world for close to five hundred years, at the same time demonstrating a level of technological sophistication far in advance of anyone else.'
'Phh. If these Neand of yours were so special, notary, how is it I have never heard of them?'
'Few have, sergeant. You must understand that the entire span of the rise and fall of Neand civilisation took place in a time before histories were written. Even most scholars count them as little more than myth. It was only recently, through some of our earliest written records, that it was established where their city was located. There, you have your answers. It is time we were on our way once more.'
'Hold fast, notary,' Jarl said, his eyes hard and tight with anger. 'I don't remember saying we were going anywhere. To hell with your city and your answers. I've lost fifteen men. I don't intend to lose any more!'
'I mourn for your dead, truly I do. They were heroes, each and every one of them. But to turn back now would only dishonour them. Nor would that be the worst of it. You must understand, sergeant, there are facts about the nature of our mission that I am not at liberty to disclose. Facts which, were you to hear them, would convince you instantly of its importance. But for now, let me remind you I am here at the express order of Governor Arbenal. And let me tell you, if you fail in your duty, you and your men may be jeopardising the life of our entire planet.'
'Strong words,' Jarl growled. 'Takes more than strong words though, to make a thing true.' But despite the show of anger, Drel could see the big man was starting to waver. As a barbaric warrior, he was easy prey to words like ''heroism'' and ''honour'' and even as a conscript trooper, still fell prey to words like ''duty''.
'Be that as it may, search your heart for a moment and you will see the truth of what I tell you. Ask yourself: in all your years of service to the divine Emperor, have you ever fought anything like the creatures we fought here today? Ask yourself that, then tell me if you think I am lying when I tell you our world is doomed unless we complete our mission.'
Now it was Drel's turn to pause, letting the words hang in the air as the Volgars considered their weight. They were all wavering now. They looked, uncomfortable, unsettled, uncertain. It was time to press home his advantage.
'I am not unaware of the sacrifices you and your men have made. Nor will I try to tell you that there may not be yet more sacrifices to come. The governor has given me wide powers in this matter, and so I offer you just reward for your bravery. Continue with me to the city and I promise that once the mission is ended I will see to it every man here is given an honourable discharge and free passage back to Volgar. And with it, fifty kilos of gold per man. Think of it: you will return to your homeland as free men and heroes. Heroes, incidentally, who will be as rich as kings. Think on that, then tell me if you still say orders be damned.'
No one answered. But, from the thoughtful gleam in each man's eyes, no answer was needed. The tide had turned. He had them now. With reason, argument, and a touch of bribery, he had won the day.
It was almost a pity that so much of it was untrue.

NOT ALL OF IT, of course. The city itself was real enough, though it was all but forgotten, lost as surely in the mists of history as it was in the mists of the marsh. But as they made under way again, Drel reassured himself that even after thousands of years some part of the city and its treasures must still remain. And he would find them. He would not countenance any thought otherwise. -
Jarl and his men were quiet now; their earlier banter replaced by a sombre watchfulness as they continued down the trail. The ambush by the ''metal daemons'', as Jarl called them, had shaken the troopers badly, and Drel realised it was almost a miracle he had persuaded them to continue at all. A miracle of greed over superstition.
No, not just greed. It was his promise of free passage back to Volgar that had clinched it. One did not need to be a barbarian to see these men longed to return to their homes with every fibre of their being. And now he had seen that weakness in them he would remember it. Given the events of the expedition thus far, he had every reason to believe it was a lever he might have to use again.
They paused as the trooper on point raised his hand to beckon caution. With ears straining at every sound they stood motionless for a moment, barely daring even to breathe. But there was only the oppressive ever-present noise of the marsh: the cries of distant birds, the buzz and hum of insects, the sound of marsh waters lapping gently against the muddy bank of the trail. Then, seemingly satisfied, the trooper on point signalled the advance once more. Drel realised their progress would be slow now; for all their bullish bravado, Jarl and his men were spooked, jumping at shadows and pausing at the slightest uncertain sound. They must be close to the city by now, close enough that the Volgars' newfound caution could only add a day to their journey at most. And he could afford to wait a day longer. He had already waited his entire life.
Of course, it was only recently he had even realised he had been waiting at all. It was not so unusual for a man in his position to know discontentment. He had served the governors of Bajoris IV for nearly thirty years, a nameless bureaucratic cog in the service of a succession of distant uncaring masters. And what had been his reward for those years of dedication? At the age of forty-three he had risen as far as he was going to as notary minoris to the planetary archives - a glorified librarian - while all around him, men barely more literate than Jarl were raised above him by virtue of contacts and influence he did not have. Was it really so surprising he had grown unhappy with his lot? And when in the course of cataloguing some of the oldest records in the archives he had found the papyrus scroll, was it surprising his thoughts had turned immediately to how he could make this remarkable discovery work for him?
The scroll was over four thousand years old: so fragile he had needed to use forceps to handle it. Misfiled by one of Drel's predecessors, it had lain gathering dust for centuries, until, seeing it, Drel had recognised its importance at once. As he read the scroll, he realised his entire life up to that point had been spent marking time until he found it.
The scroll contained a treatise by the sage Terodotus, outlining a brief history of the Neand. Written centuries after their downfall, it told of how, with the aid of their technology, the Neand had drained part of the marsh and built their city to be the hub of a burgeoning moon-wide empire. At the same time, Terodotus wrote that the Neand were also a deeply religious people, whose lives were structured around regular rituals of praise and thanksgiving dedicated to their unnamed god - a god whose benevolence they held responsible for all their triumphs. In the name of their god, the Neand dominated Hell's Marsh (although it wasn't called that then) for centuries. But, for all their achievements, even they could not endure forever. Under weight of war with jealous tribal rivals, the boundaries of the Neand Empire were slowly pushed back until only the city in the marsh remained. Then, the waters of the marsh rose once more and the Neand found even their last stronghold threatened, though, finally, it was neither war nor waters, but religion that sealed their fate. In the wake of some form of religious schism, the guardians of the Neand's faith turned on their fellow city-dwellers, slaughtering every man, woman and child in a single terrifying night of bloodshed. Their city was slowly forgotten as it was gradually swallowed by the rising marsh. Sic transit gloria mundi, as Terodotus put it in the Old High Gothic dialect of his time.
So pass away the glories of this world.
But whatever wider parable the ancient sage had hoped to teach with his history of the Neand was lost on Arvus Drel. Instead, the tale of their city and its marvels awakened a desire he thought he had made peace with years ago. A desire for wealth, power and all the finer things. A desire for everything in his life that he had so far gone without. A desire awakened by a single, simple word.
Archeotech.
Before he had even finished reading the scroll, Arvus Drel found himself considering the resources at his disposal. With information as to the possible location of a vast treasure trove of archeotech at his fingertips, it was not a question of whether he would go after it.
It was only a question of how.

'YOU REALISE, THIS is highly irregular,' Captain Vlix had said, glancing up from the sheaf of papers on his desk to look sourly at Arvus Drel. 'First you come here demanding I give you a platoon of men and a shuttle. Now you say I can't even vox my superiors for approval?'
'As I said before, captain,' Drel replied, doing his best to imitate the smooth arrogance of an envoy on an important mission, 'this is a matter requiring more than the usual discretion. You will see it is all laid out plainly in the orders I have given you.'
'The orders. Yes...' Vlix's voice trailed off as his gaze returned to the papers on his desk. For long minutes he studied them, but Drel felt no great fear at the scrutiny. The signatures, Governor Arbenal's seal, even the papers embossed watermark, were all quite genuine. As notary minoris to the planetary archives, he had access to countless such official documents. It had only been a matter of finding a suitable template and, making use of a previously unknown talent for forgery, creating some small alterations. Then, armed with his fraudulent papers, he had sought passage to an isolated PDF outpost to acquire the troops he needed to put his plans into motion.
'Corporal Drinn, bring me the duty roster.'
At last, despairing of finding any fault in them, the captain abandoned his inspection of the papers to press a stud on the vox-corn at his desk. Then, as a corporal hurried from a nearby anteroom with a heavy logbook in his hands, Vlix took it from him and began leafing through the pages with a pained expression.
'You must understand,' he said, 'at an outpost like this, manpower is limited.'
'All the same, captain, I feel confident you will put every resource at my disposal,' Drel replied, the smugly condescending tone in his voice letting the captain know he expected nothing less.
'As you wish,' Vlix said, eyes returning to the pages of the roster before rising again with a subtle gleam. 'Now, as to those men you wanted, I do believe I may have found some suitable candidates.'
Abruptly, Captain Vlix stood up, absent-mindedly buttoning his uniform jacket as he strode from the office with Drel trailing behind him. There was a definite spring in the captain's step now, almost as though something he had seen in the roster had given him a new lease of life, a change that Drel could not help but view with a certain foreboding.
Following Vlix through the cramped corridors of the command post, Drel began to hear the voices of dozens of shouting, cheering men. As they stepped into the parade ground outside, he saw the source of the noise: a crowd of at least fifty troopers gathered in the centre of the parade ground, standing in a ring around some unseen spectacle. Seeing his commanding officer's approach, a harried lieutenant gave up his attempts to restore order to turn and smartly salute the captain.
'It's Sergeant Jarl, sir,' the lieutenant said, his voice helpless. 'He is demonstrating unarmed combat techniques to some of the men.'
Following in the captain's wake as he pushed his way through the cheering throng, Drel saw that at least half the men in the crowd were Volgar Irregulars. He saw money changing hands as odds were adjusted, other men squabbling, even coming to blows. Then, Vlix reached the inner circle of the crowd, and Drel saw what had caused all the excitement.
In the open space at the centre of the crowd, two men were fighting. One was quite possibly the biggest man Drel had ever seen: a tattoo-faced, top-knotted Volgar primitive wearing a heavy fur cloak with sergeant's stripes branded on his shoulder. He was unarmed. Although the other man - a uniformed local PDF trooper of less extraordinary build - was armed with a bayonet on the end of his lasgun, there was no question the Volgar had the advantage. Jabbing desperately with his weapon, it was all the trooper could do to keep the big man away. Suddenly, the trooper thrust too far and the Volgar caught hold of the lasgun barrel with one meaty hand. For a moment the two men struggled for possession of the weapon, though in truth the trooper was the only one struggling. At last, growing bored with the game, the giant used his grip on the lasgun to pull the trooper towards him, simultaneously raising his knee to make crushing contact with his opponent's groin. With a high-pitched scream the trooper bent double, his face striking one of the Volgar's raised elbows before collapsing to the ground as all around the other Volgars whooped in triumph.
'Sergeant Jarl!' Vlix yelled.
As the Volgars fell into sullen silence, Drel despaired inwardly as he understood the reason for the spring he had seen in the captain's step earlier. Evidently it was in Vlix's mind to kill two snakes with one stone. He was going to give Drel the one group of men in his command he would be glad to see the back of - the Volgars. As he saw Jarl turn to grudgingly salute his commander before walking towards them, Drel realised the captain's cunning might still work to his advantage. He noticed Jarl could not resist giving one last kick to the head of his fallen opponent before walking away.
Yes, thought Drel. On reflection, this is exactly the quality of man I need.

'AND I TELL you it is suicide!' Crouching beside him within the cover of a tall stand of reeds, Jarl's voice was an urgent whisper. And, as much as it would have suited his purpose to argue otherwise, privately Drel was forced to admit the sergeant might well be right.
Six days had passed since their meeting on the parade ground. And now, the day after the ambush on the trail, they had finally reached the ruins of the city in the marsh. Little of its former glories remained. From the occasional weathered outcrop of rock bearing the faint outlines of what once must have been exquisite carvings, Drel could see the majority of its buildings were submerged in the mud of the marsh beneath their feet. All that was left above the waterline were the monumental ruins before them - ruins of the great temple that had once dominated the city from a low hill at its centre. But even that had not escaped unscathed. Time and the elements had done their worst, leaving the temple and its surrounding walls in an alarming state of disrepair. Everywhere, eroded stonework seemed ready to collapse under the weight of time; to enter the temple at all was to risk being buried under a landslide of rubble. But it was not the perilous state of the place's masonry that had raised Jarl's ire. For all the carelessness of its ruin, the temple compound had not been left unguarded. At regular intervals, along every section of its crumbling outer gates and walls, stood more of the sinister machine-creatures that had ambushed them earlier.
'I count a dozen at least,' Jarl whispered. 'That's twice as many as before, and they killed half my men. So I say to hell with your gold and promises. The only thing attacking that damned place would get us is dead!'
For perhaps the first time in years, Drel found himself without a ready answer. Jarl was right: whatever small numerical advantage the troopers possessed was easily outweighed by the sheer fearsomeness of the guardians which, even now, patrolled the wall ramparts or else stood motionless, with unblinking eyes trained on the landscape about them. Any hopes he had harboured that the creatures who had ambushed them on the trail might be the last of their kind were cruelly dashed. As matters stood, an assault on the temple could have only one outcome.
Watching them as they went about their duties, Drel pondered the nature of his enemy. They certainly seemed like machines: he found it impossible to believe they were essentially alive, as he was. But if they were machines, who had made them? Had the Neand created them to guard their city, leaving the sentries to stand unceasing at their posts long after their masters were as dust? There was no clear answer, but as an educated man Drel refused to be defeated. All things could be laid bare by reason, he told himself. And, if he had never seen the like of these machines before, then perhaps it was a question of considering when he had seen or heard of anything similar.
His first thoughts were of things he had heard of but never seen: the God-Machines of the Adeptus Titanicus, and the servitor creations of the Adeptus Mechanicus. But he quickly abandoned them; the Titans were giants, while the servitors of the tech-priests were said to be a fusion of machine and once-living flesh - neither remotely like the skeletal figures guarding the city. But the machine-creatures' eerily precise and methodical movements put him in mind of something else. Years ago, a merchant eager to win favour had purchased a set of life-sized clockwork automata shaped to look like marching guardsmen, and had gifted them to Governor Arbenal. They had been remarkably ingenious, attached to runners set in a circular grooved track. Once activated, the guardsmen would march round and round until the reserves of energy stored in their springs were exhausted. At first delighted, the governor had put them on display in his palace foyer, where Drel had seen them during his infrequent visits to the palace.
Drel had always found something hideous in the mechanical figures' blank imitation of life, and he'd been pleased when, finally growing tired of his gift, the governor had ordered the automata put into storage. But now, watching the temple walls, Drel saw something that made him think perhaps the machine-creatures and those automata were not so unalike.
From his vantage among the reeds, Drel saw a small piece of ageing wall rampart crumble beneath the feet of the metal warrior above it. Caught off-balance, the creature stood awkwardly on one leg for a moment, only to be doomed by its slowness of wit as, suddenly, the whole section of wall on which it stood collapsed, throwing the metal biped violently to the ground in a shower of toppling masonry. Crushed among fallen debris at the foot of the wall, it tried to free itself, impotently writhing its limbs, reminiscent of the struggles of an insect caught in molasses. Then, abruptly, its strength failing at last, the creature disappeared in a flash of ghastly green light. But what seemed extraordinary to Drel was the fact the other machine-creatures did not at any point go to help their fallen brother, or even turn their eyes to glance its way. And it occurred to him: what if the machine-creatures were just automata? More complex and sophisticated than the marching guardsmen perhaps, but still machines, with all a machine's limitations. What if they were only acting according to pre-defined instructions and incapable of responding to any situation unforeseen by their makers? If that were the case, it might be just the edge he needed. His mind made up, Drel turned to Jarl beside him, to give the crouched and glowering Volgar a confident smile.
'Suicide, sergeant? Not at all. I assure you, not only will we breach those temple gates, but we will live to tell the tale of it to our grandchildren afterwards.'

THERE WERE FURTHER arguments, of course. But eventually even the most unimaginative of the Volgars were forced to admit his plan had merit. Then, after several hours scouring the marsh for suitable materials and applying the native skills that had probably stood them in good stead in their primitive homelands, the Volgars came to him with an acceptable facsimile of the device he had asked them to build.
It was a handcart of sorts, mounted on rough-carved wooden wheels and designed to be pushed towards its destination. Held together with reed-stem ropes and wooden dowels, with hand-rails set wide enough apart for three men to push it at once and a makeshift wooden hoarding to shield them, it looked every bit the flimsy scratch-built device it was. All the same, Drel was sure it would serve his purpose well enough.
'Now!' yelled Jarl.
From their hiding places among the reeds, the troopers opened up with their lasguns, concentrating their fire on the machine-creatures standing on the ramparts above the temple's dilapidated gates. The Volgars' marksmanship was poor, but still the machine-warriors seemed taken aback by the sudden withering fusillade of fire. Then, before the enemy could regain the initiative, a trio of Volgars emerged from the reeds to push the lumbering handcart towards the temple gates.
Watching them straining every sinew to move their recalcitrant burden through the mud, Drel began to believe his plan might work. As he had predicted, only the four guards nearest the gates had responded to the attack, the others standing motionless at their posts as though nothing was amiss. But then, he saw one of the gate-guards fire its weapon, a crackling beam of energy reducing the hoarding on top of the handcart to ash. Another of the creatures fired twice more, the first beam passing harmlessly over the heads of the handcart's crew. But with the second beam the creature found its range, flaying the flesh from a screaming crewman in an instant. Seeing it, Drel felt icy doubts clutch at his heart: if the machines thought to fire at the cart itself, the assault would be over. But the enemy seemed to lack the wit to shoot at anything other than the crew, while the remaining crewmen were careful to keep their heads down as the air above them boiled with virid fire. Then at last Drel saw the handcart finally reach the gates.
'Now, Jarl! Now!' he yelled as, seeing four machine-creatures sally forth to defend the gates, the handcart crew abandoned their burden and turned to run.
'Not until my men are clear,' Jarl rumbled back. He gripped a small black cylinder that was dwarfed in one giant fist. For a moment Drel feared loyalty might ruin everything. The machine-creatures at the gate decided the issue for them as they cut down the fleeing troopers in mid-stride. Then, eyes dark with hatred, Jarl pressed the stud of the remote detonator in his hand and the handcart exploded.
It had taken every grenade and scrap of explosive the Volgars had, but Drel could not help but feel satisfied as the handcart's cargo detonated, enveloping the machine-creatures and the gate in a blinding flash of fire. He found himself even more satisfied when the smoke cleared to reveal splintered gates yawning open on broken hinges and no sign of any surviving guards.
'For Volgar!' Jarl screamed, as he rose from among the reeds and started for the shattered gates. 'And for the honour of our dead!'
Taking up their sergeant's cry, the remaining Volgars charged forward with him. Racing to keep up, Drel marvelled at the success of his plan. Even with the gates ruptured and their comrades destroyed, the remaining machine-warriors on other parts of the wall showed no sign of taking action. It was as he thought - each machine-warrior was detailed to guard its own section of wall and no other. With the sentries guarding the gates gone, and judging by the reaction of the others, he and the screaming horde of Volgars might as well have been ghosts.
After reaching the sheltering arc of the all but nonexistent gates, the Volgars paused long enough for Drel to catch up.
'Where to now, notary?' Jarl asked.
'The grey pyramid-shaped structure just ahead of us,' Drel panted, still out of breath. 'The main building of the temple. That is where the ancients would have kept most of their archeo... ah, the materials which are the object of our mission.'
If Jarl noticed the slip of the tongue, he gave no sign of it. Instead, turning to face his men, he said: 'You heard him. We go in two files and we go slow. Keep your wits sharp and your lasguns ready.'
Slowly then, eyes nervously scanning the ruined buildings either side for tell-tale movement, they advanced into the temple courtyard. Their objective, a squat and ugly pyramid with great stone steps running up its face, stood perhaps three hundred paces away at the centre of the temple complex. But with the sepulchral silence of that place restored, to Drel they seemed the longest steps he had ever taken. This was a place of the dead, where every shadow seemed to harbour hidden danger and the air hung heavy with menace. But he had come too far to turn back. Even with every nerve in his body urging him to run and never look back, he refused to be dissuaded.
He was so close now. He need only walk between the double row of crown-sized silver domes marking out the pathway to the temple, and everything he had ever dreamed of would be in his hands. Power, riches, respect; he need only keep walking and it all would be his. As they made their way down the pathway, Drel saw one of the silver domes start to rise from the mud. It was then that he realised the magnitude of his error.
With nightmare slowness, two dozen machine-warriors rose from the ground on either side of them. A trooper screamed in pain, the sound dying abruptly as the fleshy apparatus birthing it was scourged from vacant bones. Another man died, lasgun falling unfired from skeletal hands as a bile-green light stripped them of their flesh. Then another, and another, and yet another. But, already running, Arvus Drel was not there to see it.
He ran for his life. He bounded up the steps of the pyramid in a dozen fear-crazed steps, his boots slipping and sliding under him. On reaching the doorway just below its apex, Drel felt his heart skip a beat as the door held fast. Jarl suddenly appeared beside him, putting a shoulder against it to force the screeching portal open. Darting inside, Drel dimly realised the surviving Volgars were right behind him. But he was past caring. He was running for his life, and, if Jarl had not grabbed him then and slammed him hard against the wall, he might never have stopped.
'You brought us here, Emperor damn you! Now tell us how to escape!' Jarl screamed. Behind, his men did their best to barricade the door by piling ancient funeral urns and reliquaries against it like so many sandbags. Jarl slapped him, hard enough to rattle his teeth. For a moment, Drel just stared dumbly back. Then, in a sudden burst of fevered insight, he saw the answer.
'The holy-of-holies!' he said, speaking quickly for fear Jarl might hit him again. 'Don't you see? For the machine-creatures to be guarding this temple it must be important to them in some way. There must be something here that is valuable. Something left by the Neand. Something they would not want to see damaged. And where better to keep something of value than in the most sacred place in the temple - the holy-of-holies? That is where we should make our stand!'
Jarl stood brooding on his words for a moment. Then, abruptly, the decision was made for him, as the temple door disintegrated and the machine-creatures outside began to pick their way through a sea of upturned urns and reliquaries towards them.
'We go then,' Jarl said, pushing Drel before him. 'But you had better find this place quick, notary, or I'll kill you myself.'
Drel needed no prompting. With Jarl and the Volgars following he ran down the corridor, the clanging echoes of metal feet behind them telling him the machine-warriors had not given up the pursuit. Now and then, Drel heard a Volgar scream. But he did not look back. He just kept on running, hopelessly lost, through a labyrinth of ancient marbled halls that led him deeper and deeper within the earth. He ran past rooms full of all manner of extraordinary things: hieroglyphic obelisks, strange machines, the mummified remains of creatures seemingly saurian in origin, artefacts which would once have excited in him great awe and interest, but now could only ignore. He had run past such treasures. Run past glory. Run past riches. Run past ambition. With sudden desperate despair, Drel turned a corner to see the massive bulk of a stone door before him and realised he could run no farther.
'You try the door, I'll hold them back!'
It was Jarl, now his only living companion, a glimpse of white bone peering out through the ruptured flesh of his forearm where the beam of one of the machine-creatures' weapons had caught him. The other troopers were dead, fleshless skeletons lying haphazardly along the path they had taken like a thread, leading back to the beginning of the labyrinth. But Jarl refused to go so easy into the night. Turning towards the relentless phalanx of approaching metal-warriors, he fired his laspistol with a scream of defiance. The las-bolts found their mark: two machine-creatures fell, then abruptly vanished. But there were so many now, marching remorselessly towards them with steps as sure and certain and inevitable as death.
Facing the door, Drel saw nine indecipherable sigils embossed at its centre, arranged like a code-pad in three rows of three. Lacking any better option he pressed them at random, hoping by desperate chance to stumble on the correct combination. A hopeless task. But suprisingly, with an awful grinding of stone against stone, the door suddenly slid open. Amazed, Drel immediately stepped into the room beyond as the door began to close behind him. He heard Jarl's voice and, turning, saw the sergeant throw his now-empty pistol at the enemy and start to run towards him. But it was too late, the door was all but shut between them. His last sight of Jarl through the diminishing gap of the doorway was the sergeant's imploring face as the metal hands of the machine-creatures reached out for him.
'The door, notary!' Jarl screamed. 'Stop it! Sweet Emperor, don't let it close!'
But Drel did nothing.

JUDGING BY THE DURATION of the screams, it took Jarl a long time to die. Long before they stopped, however, Drel had abandoned whatever polite interest in the sergeant's fate he might once have maintained. Calm now that the impassable bulwark of the stone door stood between him and Jarl's killers, he had already turned to inspect his newfound refuge.
He found himself in a vaulted room, fifteen paces wide and twice as many long. Facing him, the smoothly lustrous black stone of the far wall was blank, while the long granite walls on either side were covered in the same hieroglyphs he had seen elsewhere in the temple. On a small dais at the centre of the room there stood a lectern. Its flat, obsidian top was etched with the imprint of a three-fingered claw. Otherwise, the room was empty; though he quickly found his eyes drawn to an artful mosaic set into the middle of one of the hieroglyphic walls.
It depicted a smiling, golden figure, standing with hands held open in a welcoming gesture. Although human in proportions, the figure was obviously not human, possessing an elongated head and heavy downward-arching horns, with an elliptical groove set into the long expanse of its forehead. It could only be the Neand's god. But while clearly intended as an object of veneration, Drel could not help but see something malevolent in the knowing curve of the figure's smile. Perhaps it was the cunning artistry of the mosaic, but wherever he walked in the room the eyes of the smiling god seemed to follow. The gaze was unsettling; almost as though the Neand's god had looked deep into his soul and saw something there to amuse it.
He noticed a more familiar script hidden among the hieroglyphs and realised some of the words on the wall were written in an archaic form of Old High Gothic dialect. Words which, slowly, haltingly, he began to translate. Standing in that ancient chamber, he saw the secret history of the Neand and their city unfold before him.
The Neand had not built this city; that was the first revelation. Millennia ago the Neand's nomadic ancestors had come and found a ruined city buried in the mud. The city was full to the brim with all manner of wondrous alien technologies, and littered with the mummified remains of an unknown race of sentient saurians, apparently native to the moon. Deciphering the hieroglyphs, the Neand had learned the saurians had founded the city aeons earlier, at the instruction of a benevolent god who had come to them from the stars. This star-god had given the saurians all their technology, asking in return only that they prove themselves worthy of his gifts. He told them he was a god who expected strength in all things. If his people were worthy, they would prosper in his absence. Then, promising to return sometime in the future to judge their labours, the star-god left them.
That the extinct saurians had not prospered was readily apparent. But refusing to read any omen in the failures of others, the Neand had settled in the city, mastering the technologies they found there to rebuild the city to its former glories. In the centuries that followed, they worshipped the saurians' god as their own, confident that when he returned he would be pleased to see how well the newcomers had used his gifts. Nor did their worship end there. The Neand also gave praise to the slumbering machine-servants the star-god had left behind; machines called necrons, said to rest in a black stone monolith deep beneath the temple...
A black stone monolith.
With a start, Drel paused in his reading to look with fearful eyes at the black stone wall at the far end of the room. Could it be the outer wall of the monolith written of in the Neand accounts? Gazing at it he felt a shiver of apprehension, afraid at any moment a hidden panel might open and machine-creatures emerge to kill him. But the stone of the wall was still and silent.
No, he told himself. If that was the monolith they would have come for me already. It is just a wall like any other, carved of a curiously lustrous stone perhaps, but no more sinister than the granite walls either side. But for all his own reassurances he could not escape a feeling of foreboding. Then, as much to distract his thoughts as anything else, he began to read what was written on the walls once more.
But the greatest gift the smiling god had left his people had not been the city, its technologies, or even the sleeping necrons. Even though the star-god had told the saurians he expected them to show strength at all times, still he understood that inevitably they would face moments of weakness. And so he left a summoning device behind, in the shape of an obsidian-topped lectern - the same lectern in the room where Drel now stood. He promised that, come their darkest hour, one of them need only place a hand upon the device and the servants of their god would awaken to answer the call. Come their darkest hour.
From what was written on the walls, it was clear the Neand took this promise as the final proof of their newfound god's benevolence. To them it was a covenant, a sacred contact upon which their entire civilisation was founded. And so, when after centuries of dominance they found themselves hemmed in by enemies and fighting a losing battle with the marsh, a momentous decision was reached. A delegation of priests was sent into the summoning chamber to put a hand upon the lectern and call their god's servants to them. And there, the records of the Neand abruptly ended.
Their darkest hour.
To Drel there seemed more questions here than answers. If the Neand summoned their god's servants, how was it their entire civilisation came to be destroyed? And if these servants - these necrons - allowed the Neand's ancestors easy access to the marsh millennia ago, why today had they treated Drel and the Volgars as invaders? And then there was the matter of the saurians. Surely they would have seen the coming of whatever disaster engulfed them and turned to their god's servants for aid? It made no sense, until he remembered the scroll he had seen in the planetary archives, and how the ancient sage Terodotus had written the Neand were slaughtered by ''the guardians of their faith''. There was a similar Old High Gothic phrase written on these walls, but inadvertently Drel had given it a different translation. The same words which meant ''the guardians of their faith'' could have another meaning.
The servants of their god!
With sudden insight he finally understood. The Neand had summoned their god's servants, just as the saurians must have aeons earlier. Only for both races to learn that when the necrons were awakened they did not bring aid. They brought judgment. For, having summoned the necrons, the peoples of the city had demonstrated weakness. And by showing weakness they had failed the star-god who, from the first, had told them just what manner of deity he was.
A god who expected strength in all things.
Staring at the smiling face of the figure on the mosaic before him, Drel could not help but shudder at the thought of a god who would leave such a bitter ''gift'' for his people, knowing that one day, no matter how hard they struggled, they would succumb to the temptation to use the summoning device and then be destroyed. It was almost as though all of it - the rise and fall of the Neand civilisation and that of the saurians before them - had all been some dark and sinister game for their god's amusement Gazing at the god in the mosaic, Drel found himself hating the haughty curve of those sickle-bladed lips. It was as though the figure was laughing at him. Then, a revelation hit him that pushed all thoughts of the Neand, the saurians, and their laughing god aside. Glancing at the solid seamless walls of the wider room around him, Arvus Drel came to a sudden and frantic realisation.
He was trapped.

TIME PASSED. IT passed at first with pleading, then screaming, then at the last with long ragged breaths. Then, when the dead eyes of Arvus Drel could no longer see it, a doorway opened.
For an instant, the black stone of the wall at the end of the summoning chamber seemed to shift almost imperceptibly, before a whole section of it rose to reveal something like a vertically hanging pool of bile-green waters. Ripples spread and played across its surface, the green taint growing ever more vivid. Then, the waters of the pool seemed to coalesce as dark shadows appeared within them. Finally, a skeletal metal form broke the surface as, one by one, the guardians stepped from the monolith into the chamber.
They stood there for long moments, death-skull faces turning slowly, deliberately, to scan the room's interior with burning eyes. There, they saw a body lying beside the door at the other side of the room, fingers reduced to blood-encrusted stumps as their owner had desperately tried to claw his way through solid granite. Sure now that any danger of damage being inflicted on the delicate mechanisms of the summoning chamber had passed, the guardians collected the body and dragged it from the temple. This body once had a name. Once it was Arvus Drel, former notary minoris to the planetary archives of His Excellency Governor Arbenal. But the guardians did not care. To them it was simply the body of an intruder from one of the races who had already failed the test of the city. An intruder, killed by a need for food and water which they no longer shared. A body to be dragged outside and discarded to the muddy embrace of the marsh with its fellow invaders, like all the thousands of others who had come to the city before them. Then, with their duties for the moment done, the guardians returned to the monolith to sleep once more.
To sleep and to wait.
Perhaps, in time, more intruders would come from the failed races and the guardians would be awakened to drive them from the marsh once more. Perhaps, in time, a new race would evolve here and come to the marsh to see the city and the gifts their god had left for them. Their civilisation might even flourish for a time. Until, inevitably, one day they would come to the summoning chamber to put a hand upon the lectern and their god's servants would awaken to destroy them. Perhaps one day, even their god himself might return. But his servants, the necrons, did not care. Regardless of whether he returned or not, they would continue to serve him. However much time passed, they would continue to wait. Whatever might come, they would never falter. While other races rose and fell, planets died, stars were extinguished, they would endure. It was the one sure and certain thing among the restless maelstrom of Eternity. Eternally steadfast. Unendingly patient. Faithful beyond death.