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s. You were there. He witnessed weeks of celebrations in his honour, never once rebuking me for lauding him as a god. And since then? He has watched me crusade for him, never saying a word about what I've done. Only now, at Monarchia, did he bring down his wrath. When he decided my faith had to be broken, after more than a century.'
'Faith is an ugly word,' Magnus said, idly stroking the bound spine of the great book he always carried chained at his hip.
'Why were we born to be warriors?' Lorgar asked, apropos of nothing.
'Finally,' Magnus laughed, 'we reach the reason you summoned me to Colchis. Why are we warriors? A fine question, with a simple answer. We are warriors because that is what the Emperor, beloved by all, required in the galaxy's reclamation.'
'Of course. But this is the greatest age in mankind's history, and instead of philosophers and visionaries... it is led by warriors. There's something poisonous in that, Magnus. Something rotten. It is not right.'
Magnus shrugged, with a whisper of fine mail. 'Father is the visionary. He needed generals at his side.'
Lorgar clenched his teeth. 'By the Throne, I am sick to my core of hearing those words. I am not a soldier. I have no wish to be one. I am not a destroyer, Magnus. Not like the others. Why do you think I spend so long establishing compliance and creating perfect worlds? In creation, I am vindicated. In destruction, I am-'
'Not a soldier?'
'Not a soldier,' Lorgar nodded. He looked exhausted. 'There are greater things in life than excelling at shedding blood.'
'If you are not a soldier, then you have no right to lead a Legion,' said Magnus. 'The Astartes are weapons, brother. Not craftsmen or architects. They are the fires that raze cities, not the hands that raise them.'
'So we are speaking in hypocrisies today?' Lorgar managed a smile. 'Your Thousand Sons are responsible for much of Tizca's beauty, let alone Prospero's enlightenment.'
'True,' Magnus returned the smile, altogether more sincere, 'and they are also responsible for a great number of faultless compliances. The Word Bearers, by comparison, are not.'
Lorgar fell silent.
'Is this about Monarchia?' Magnus asked.
'Everything is about Monarchia,' Lorgar admitted. 'It all changed in that moment, brother. The way I see the worlds we conquer. My hopes for the future. Everything.'
'I can imagine.'
'Do not patronise me,' Lorgar snapped. 'With the greatest respect, Magnus, you cannot imagine this. Did the lord of all human life descended upon you, burn your greatest achievements to ash and dust, and then tell you that you - and you alone - were a failure? Did he throw your precious Thousand Sons to the ground and tell your entire Legion that every soul wearing their armour was a wasted life?'
'Lorgar-'
'What? What? I spent decades on Colchis dreaming of the day god himself would arrive and lead humanity to the empyrean. I raised a religion in his honour. For over a hundred years, I have spread that faith in his name, believing he matched every dream, every prophecy, every mythic poem about the ascension of the human race. Now I am told my life was a lie; that I have ruined countless civilisations with false faith; that every one of my brothers who laughed at me for seeking a greater purpose in life was right to laugh at our bloodline's only fool.'
'Brother, calm yourself-'
'No!' Lorgar instinctively reached for a crozius that wasn't there. His fingers curled in a rage that couldn't be released. 'No... Do not "brother" me with indulgence in your eyes. You are the wisest of us all and you see nothing of the truth in this.'
'Then explain it. And shackle your temper, I have no desire to be whined at. Or will you strike me, as you struck Guilliman?'
Lorgar hesitated. After a moment, he brushed a white petal from the railing with his golden palm. Anger quietened, without fully fading, as the petal flitted down through the air. He met Magnus's gaze.
'Forgive me. My choler is kindled, and my control lacking. You're right.'
'I always am,' Magnus smiled. 'It's a habit.'
Lorgar looked back out over the city. 'As for Guilliman... You have no idea how fine it felt to strike him down. His arrogance is unbelievable.'
'We are blessed with many brothers who would benefit from being humbled once in a while,' Magnus smiled, 'but that is for another time. Speak what must be spoken. You are afraid.'
'I am,' Lorgar confessed. 'I fear the Emperor will break the Word Bearers - and break me. We would be cast alongside the brothers we no longer speak of.'
The silence was hardly comforting. 'Well?' Lorgar asked.
'He might,' the one-eyed giant said. 'There was talk of it, before Monarchia.'
'Did he come to you to ask your thoughts?'
'He did,' Magnus admitted.
'And he went to our brothers?'
'I believe so. Don't ask what sides were taken by whom, for I do not know where most of them stood. Russ was with you, as was Horus. In fact, it was the first time the Wolf King and I have agreed on anything of import.'
'Leman Russ spoke in my favour?' Lorgar laughed. 'Truly, we live in an age of marvels.'
Magnus didn't share the amusement. His lone eye was a deep, arctic blue as it fixed upon Lorgar. 'He did. The Space Wolves are a spiritual Legion, in their own stunted and blind way. Fenris is an unmerciful cradle, and it breeds such things in them. Russ knows that, though he lacks the intelligence to give it voice. Instead, he swore that he'd already lost two brothers, and had no desire to lose a third.'
'Two already lost.' Lorgar looked back to the city. 'I still recall how they-'
'Enough,' warned Magnus. 'Honour the oath you took that day.'
'You all find it so easy to forget the past. None of you ever wish to speak of what was lost. But could you do it again?' Lorgar met his brother's eyes. 'Could you stand with Horus or Fulgrim, and never again speak my name purely because of a promise?'
Magnus wouldn't be drawn into this. 'The Word Bearers will not walk the same paths as the forgotten and the purged. I trust you, Lorgar. Already, there's talk that compliance was achieved on Forty-Seven Sixteen with laudable speed. Settler fleets are en route, are they not?'
Lorgar ignored the rhetorical question.
'I need your guidance, Magnus. I need to see the things you see.' The gold-skinned primarch watched the procession weaving through the streets, marching closer by the minute.
'You know of Colchisian mythology, and the Pilgrimage to where gods and mortals meet. You know how it matches the beliefs of so many other worlds. The empyrean. The Primordial Truth. Heaven. Ten thousand names in ten thousand cultures. It cannot be mere superstition, if shamans and sorcerers on so many words all share the same beliefs. Perhaps father is wrong. Perhaps the stars hide more secrets. Perhaps they truly do hide the gods themselves.'
'Lorgar...' Magnus warned again. He turned from the balcony, and moved back into the expansive chamber atop the Spire Temple. The domed ceiling was glass, offering a breathtaking view of the sky as night fell. The stars were beginning to make themselves known, pinpricks of light in the sapphire sky.
'Do not hunt for something to worship,' Magnus said, 'merely because your faith was proven false.'
Lorgar followed his brother, slender fingers toying with the hem of his grey robe's sleeve. The Word Bearers primarch spent much of his time on Colchis in this spire-top observatory, staring up at the stars. It was here that he'd watched and waited for the Emperor's arrival so many decades ago, mistaken in the belief that he would be a god worthy of worship.
'Is that how you see me?' he asked Magnus, his voice softer than before. Hurt shone in his eyes, flecked with buried anger. 'Is that how you judge my actions? That I cast about in ignorance, desperate for something, anything, to hear my prayers?'
Magnus watched the stars coming out for the night. He noted several constellations already - their shapes taken and bestowed on Chapters within the Word Bearers Legion. There, the faint image of a crozius crowned with a skull; there, the high seat, adopted as the symbol of the Osseous Throne; and there, the flared circle of the serrated sun.
'That is how history will judge you,' said Magnus, 'if you remain devoted to this path. No one will see your desire to elevate humanity or raise the species into some unknown enlightenment. They will see you humiliated and weak, desperate for something to believe in.'
'Humanity is nothing without faith,' Lorgar whispered.
'And yet we do not need religion to explain the universe. The Emperor's light illuminates all.'
'That is what you always fail to see,' Lorgar moved over to a table with several crystal wine glasses. 'You think faith is about fear. About needing things explained to ignorant minds. Faith is the greatest unifying element in mankind's history. Faith was all that kept the light of hope burning through the millennia on the thousands of worlds we now reclaim in this Crusade.'
'So you say, brother.' Magnus shrugged. 'You will not be judged kindly for that belief.'
Lorgar poured a glass of dark wine, its scent heightened by the powdered spices added during its fermentation. Lacking the climate for grape vineyards, Colchisian wine was almost always made from dates. The bitter drink reddened his lips as he sipped it.
'We are immortal,' Lorgar pointed out. 'Why would we worry for the future when we will still be around to shape it?'
Magnus ventured no answer.
'You've seen something,' Lorgar pressed. 'Something in the Great Ocean. Something in the warp you stare into so often. Some... some hint at what might be. A future yet to come?'
'It doesn't work that way, brother.'
'You're lying. You are lying to me.'
Magnus turned his gaze from the darkening sky. 'Sometimes you see and hear only what you wish. You're wrong, Lorgar. Father is not a god. There are no gods.'
At last, Lorgar smiled as if he'd waited hours for those words to be spok |
no answer.
'You've seen something,' Lorgar pressed. 'Something in the Great Ocean. Something in the warp you stare into so often. Some... some hint at what might be. A future yet to come?'
'It doesn't work that way, brother.'
'You're lying. You are lying to me.'
Magnus turned his gaze from the darkening sky. 'Sometimes you see and hear only what you wish. You're wrong, Lorgar. Father is not a god. There are no gods.'
At last, Lorgar smiled as if he'd waited hours for those words to be spoken.
'Is he a magical sky-spirit dwelling inside a mythical paradise? No. I am not a fool. He is not a god as primitive cultures once understood the concept. But the Emperor is a god in all but name, Magnus. He is psychic power incarnated within a physical shell. When he speaks, his lips never move and his throat makes no sound. His face is a thousand visages at once. The only aspect of humanity he possesses is the facade he wears to interact with mortals.'
'That's a very melodramatic perception.'
'And it is true. The only difference between you and I is that you call him father, and I call him a god.'
Magnus sighed, his breath rumbling as he suppressed a growl. 'I see where you are leading with this. Now I see why you summoned me. And Lorgar... I am leaving.'
Lorgar offered a golden hand, reaching out to his brother. 'Please, Magnus. If the Emperor is what he is, there might be other beings that wield the same power. How can so many legends of divinity, from so many disparate cultures, all agree on other powers that exist beyond the veil? There must be gods in the universe. Our species' most natural instincts cannot be wrong.'
'This reeks of desperation,' Magnus sighed. 'Have you considered that father warned you for a reason?'
'There is no shame in seeking the truth, Magnus. You of all souls should know that. Have you seen nothing of this in your travels through the Great Ocean? No beings that a human civilisation could perceive as a god or daemon?'
Magnus did not reply. His gaze burned into his brother.
'My mind is alive with questions,' the Word Bearer lord confessed. 'Where in the galaxy would gods and mortals meet?'
The giant's lip curled. 'The Great Ocean hides much beneath its tides, Lorgar. We have both walked worlds where the warp bleeds into our reality, only to be manipulated by heathen ritemasters and misinterpreted as "magic". Would you deceive yourself as they do?'
'Stay,' Lorgar implored. 'Help me.'
Magnus shook his head. 'Help you stare into the abyss? You want me to guide you along the paths walked by primitives and barbarians?'
Lorgar drew a shaky breath before replying.
'Help me seek the truth that lies behind the stars. What if we are waging a false crusade? This might be an unholy war... World after world is purged or brought to compliance... We might be strangling the truth - a truth believed in one form or another by countless cultures... We... We... I hear something call out to me, day and night. Something in the void. Is it fate? Is this how we perceive the future? By hearing destiny's voice whisper our names?'
Lorgar fell silent as Magnus came to him, the larger brother gripping the other's robed shoulders. The golden primarch's lips were trembling. His fingers twitched and shook.
'My brother, you are raving,' said Magnus. 'Look at me. Peace, Lorgar. Peace. Look at me.'
Lorgar did as he was asked. Magnus the Red, the Crimson King, fixed his brother's gaze with his own remaining eye.
'Your eye has changed colour,' Lorgar murmured. 'I hear them calling, Magnus. Fate. Destiny. I hear destiny's thousand voices...'
'Focus on me,' Magnus intoned, speaking slow and soft. 'Listen well to my words. You are speaking from fear. A fear of failing again. A fear of dooming another world to destruction. A fear that father will order a third Legion, and a third son, to be purged from history.'
'The fear has faded. I am no longer afraid. I am inspired.'
'You cannot hide it from me with mere words, brother. And you are right to fear what may come to pass. You stand on the precipice of destruction, and still contemplate a path that will send you falling over the edge. I understand your pain. Everything you achieved on Colchis was for a flawed faith. Every compliant world is one your Legion must revisit and reshape. But you cannot live in fear of making another mistake.'
Lorgar said nothing for several moments. At last, his shoulders slumped.
'You could have helped me, Magnus.' The Word Bearers' primarch lifted his brother's hands away, and walked back to the wine table. 'We could have taken the Pilgrimage together, and sought the place where the stars are stained by divine influence. You see into the Great Ocean better than anyone else. You could have been my navigator.'
Magnus narrowed his good eye. In sympathy, the puckered scar marking the absence of his other eye pulled tight.
'What do you intend to do, Lorgar? You have no idea of what you seek.'
'I will continue the Great Crusade,' Lorgar smiled, taking another swallow of the dark wine. 'I will cast my fleet across the galaxy, and bring every world we find into compliance. And as we sail the heavens, we will be as pilgrims seeking a holy land. If there is truth behind the legends so many cultures share, then I will find it. And with it, I will enlighten humanity.'
Magnus said nothing. Disbelief robbed him of speech.
Lorgar drained the wine. It stained his golden lips again. 'I will apply my Legion's full strength to the Great Crusade, and never raise another monument in the Emperor's image. I will do it all under the watchful eyes of his Custodes war dogs. Surely there is no harm in recording ancient tales of faiths from the cultures we encounter? You yourself assured me they were all false. Father said the same.'
'I am leaving,' Magnus said again, and moved to the centre of the room. Resting his gloved hand on the great leather-bound book chained to his belt, the primarch looked back at his brother. They would not meet again for almost forty years, and the galaxy would be a very different place by the time they did.
They both sensed this. It carried between them in that lingering stare: half-challenge, half-plea.
'What swims within the Great Ocean that you've always kept from us?' Lorgar demanded, teeth clenching. 'What secrets hide within the warp? Why do you spend your life staring into it, if there's nothing there? What if I asked our father about your secret travels into the aether?'
'Farewell, Lorgar.'
The Word Bearers lord pulled back his hood, his handsome features rendered into true gold by the candlelight.
'Is there a place where reality and unreality converge? An empyrean, a heaven that humanity has always misunderstood? A realm where gods and mortals meet? Answer me, Magnus.'
Magnus shook his head as motes of misty light began to form around him. A teleportation lock from his vessel in orbit. Wind, from nowhere, began to breathe.
'What are the voices?' Lorgar screamed over the rising winds. 'Who calls to me?'
'If you will not alter your path, then only one thing awaits you in the stars,' said Magnus.
Lorgar stared in rapt silence, hungering for the answer, but Magnus spoke only a single word before vanishing in a burst of bright light and white noise.
'Misery.'
ELEVEN
In a God's Service
Confession
The Pilgrimage
FOR SEVERAL KILOMETRES around the Spire Temple, revellers in the streets looked up in horror as the tower-top exploded in searing light. A dusty powder rained down from the observatory - its glass dome pulverised to the tiniest, twinkling shards.
The sonic boom of teleportation faded, as did the rush of displaced air.
In the wake of Magnus's thunderous departure, Lorgar stood unfazed. His robe fluttered in the evening wind, and he spared a moment's consideration for his scripture scrolls and parchment notes blowing out into the city. His crystal glasses were as annihilated as the reinforced glass dome, and his writing desk was stained by an expanding pool of bitter wine.
After an unknowable time of staring down at Vharadesh, he became aware of a pounding on the iron door set in the only remaining wall. Distracted, he paid the sound only a little heed.
'Enter,' he said.
ASCENDING THE SPIRE temple had been an exercise in frustration, with Covenant priests frantic about both the Blessed Lady's presence and the explosion almost ten minutes before, in the master's observatory. On several occasions, the Word Bearers had threatened panicking clergymen, forcing them aside to clear the way.
'He will not open the doors!' one wailed with a flagellant's desperation.
'We will speak with the primarch,' Xaphen assured the Covenant ministers. 'He sent for the Blessed Lady, and our lord will open the door for us.'
'What if he is wounded?' one of them whined, an obese creature with shaking jowls in the layered white and grey robes of a deacon. 'We must attend to the Urizen!'
'Control your emotions, and move aside,' Argel Tal growled, 'or I will kill you.'
'You cannot mean that, lord!'
Faster than human eyes could follow, the swords of red iron came free in hissing rasps. The tips of both blades rested against the fat priest's three chins before he'd even had time to blink. Apparently, the lord did mean it.
'Yes,' the deacon stammered. 'Yes, I...'
'Just move,' Argel Tal suggested. The priest took the suggestion, trying not to burst into tears. As he moved, an animal scent tainted the air; stronger than the fear-sweat and sour breath from the priests around them.
'Sir,' Torgal switched to vox, rather than speaking aloud. 'The priest pissed in his robes.'
Argel Tal grunted, and lifted Cyrene over the warm puddle on the wooden stairs.
With the last of the clergy sent scurrying, the warriors ascended the wide, spiralling stairway with their ward guarded between them.
'ENTER,' THE VOICE called.
Argel Tal hadn't sheathed his swords. He led the group into the primarch's observatory, which was now littl |
r-sweat and sour breath from the priests around them.
'Sir,' Torgal switched to vox, rather than speaking aloud. 'The priest pissed in his robes.'
Argel Tal grunted, and lifted Cyrene over the warm puddle on the wooden stairs.
With the last of the clergy sent scurrying, the warriors ascended the wide, spiralling stairway with their ward guarded between them.
'ENTER,' THE VOICE called.
Argel Tal hadn't sheathed his swords. He led the group into the primarch's observatory, which was now little more than a stone platform exposed to the night's breeze. Scrolls and books lay scattered across the floor, the former gently nudged by the wind, the latter having their pages turned by it.
The primarch stood by the platform's edge, staring down at the city below. His shaven, tattooed head was bare, seemingly unmarked by injury, and the grey-white robe of Covenant hierarchs was free of bloodstains.
'Sire?' said Argel Tal. 'What happened here?'
Lorgar turned slowly. Faint confusion marred his features, as if he'd expected someone else.
'Argel Tal,' he said, his voice rumbling. 'Captain of the Seventh Assault Company, Subcommander of the Chapter of the Serrated Sun.'
'Yes, lord. It is I.'
'Greetings, my son.'
The captain fought to keep the unease from his voice as he replied. 'Sire, the vox-network is aflame. May I inform the Legion that all is well?'
'Why would all not be well?' the primarch asked, his face still unresolved from distracted confusion.
'The explosion, sire,' said Argel Tal. 'Nine minutes ago.' He gestured around. 'The dome,' he added lamely.
'Ah,' Lorgar smiled. It was a magnanimous and entertained smile, crooked as if sharing a joke. 'I will have to discuss the matter of teleportation inside sensitive structures with my beloved brother in the future. Captain, do you intend to murder me?'
Argel Tal lowered his blades, only then realising he held them en garde.
'Forgive me, sire.'
Lorgar laughed, the feyness dissipating completely. 'Please inform the Legion I am well, and apologise for my lack of contact. I was quite lost in thought.'
On shrieking engines, two gunships drifted out of the night, hovering close to the tower-top. Their engine wash sent the remaining scrolls scattering off the edges, and spotlights stabbed down to illuminate the primarch with Argel Tal's coterie.
Argel Tal blinked at a flashing icon on his retinal display. 'This is the Seventh Captain. Stand down, stand down. False alarm.'
The tower-top fell dark as the stab-lights cut out.
'By your word,' one of the pilots said. 'Disengaging.'
Lorgar watched the gunships cruise away, back to their landing pads on the city's outskirts. All sky-freight - most notably the Legion's own military outposts - were situated in the desert outside the city walls. Vharadesh would not be defiled by warfare. Never again. Not after the civil war that crushed the Old Ways and brought the planet under Lorgar's rule so long ago.
'My lord,' Argel Tal ventured. 'You requested the presence of Cyrene, the Monarchian.'
Lorgar seemed to notice the others for the first time. A warm smile lit his features, and he stepped closer.
'I was just musing, captain, on whether I have thanked you yet.'
Argel Tal sheathed his blades and removed his helm. The warm air felt good on his face and sweating neck.
'Thanked me, lord?'
'Yes,' the primarch nodded. 'Were you and your Chaplain not the two who lifted me from the perfect city's dust, and set me on my feet once more?'
'Yes, lord. That was us. With respect, we didn't expect you to recall it.'
'Kor Phaeron professed not to remember your names. The old man has a black sense of humour. But I recall the moment all too well, and I thank you for it. I will arrange for my gratitude to be shown in a more significant way soon.'
'No, sire...' said Xaphen.
'That's not necessary, lord...' said Argel Tal.
Lorgar raised a hand to stall their protests. 'Ah, ah. Enough of that foolish modesty. Now, this must be the Blessed Lady. Come forward, child.'
Torgal and Malnor, who'd been kneeling in their lord's presence, rose to their feet and guided Cyrene closer.
In the presence of a primarch, most mortals were gripped by the immensity of just what they were seeing. Here, in physical form, stood majesty incarnate. The biological manipulation, flesh-smithing and genetic rewriting that goes into the construction of one of the Emperor's sons was a unique and unrepeatable practice, with its roots hidden beneath layers of ubelievable secrecy, for even if another sentient being could glimpse the Emperor's gestation laboratories, they would never understand what transpired within. Every mote of biological matter in their bodies was painstakingly shaped - forged on the quantum level to contribute to the whole. It was beyond science, beyond alchemy, beyond psychic sorcery, and yet drew from all of these and more.
Humans had suffered strokes and heart attacks in the presence of primarchs. Almost all, without exception, abased themselves upon first meeting one. Many wept without intention or reason.
Cyrene stood where she was led to stand, and she smiled at Lorgar. Directly at him - directly at his face.
'Hello, Blessed Lady,' the god's son chuckled. She was just tall enough to reach his waist.
'I... I can see you,' she almost laughed. 'I can see your smile.'
Lorgar saw his warriors begin to come closer, ready to examine her, to see if her sight was returning. He gestured them back with a hand, and shook his head.
Argel Tal The primarch's voice was sibilant in the captain's mind. Despite the gene-link between them, it was unpleasantly invasive - a spike of cold cutting right to the brain. The captain felt his muscles bunch, and both hearts beat faster.
The Word Bearer nodded, hoping his liege didn't detect his discomfort, but knowing he almost definitely did.
It is said she was abused on Khur came the primarch's voice.
The Word Bearer nodded again.
What a creature is Man, Lorgar's silent voice seemed to sigh. So much of life is wasted seeking dominance over all around us.
Emboldened by his father's familiarity tonight, Argel Tal tapped two fingertips beneath his eyes, one after the other.
No Lorgar's silent voice was weighted by emotion. She cannot see me. She senses me, my aura, and her mind misinterprets it as sight. But her eyes are still dead. They will always be. Guilliman's incendiary rage blinded her forever.
All of this transpired in three beats of Argel Tal's twinned hearts. Lorgar hadn't even glanced in his direction.
'Yes,' the primarch said to Cyrene, and lowered himself to one knee. It brought his face almost level with hers. Her sightless gaze followed his movements, and he smiled to see the effect he had on her. 'Yes,' he said again. 'You can see me.'
'As bright as the sun,' Cyrene whispered, crying now. 'I see gold, and gold, and gold.'
A hand the size of her head touched her with a ghost's softness, thick fingertips brushing her cheeks, drying her tears. She breathed out a sigh without meaning to, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
'Cyrene,' Lorgar's voice was resonant and low in her ears. 'I am told you are something of a talisman to my warriors. A lucky charm, if you will.'
'I couldn't say, my lord.'
'I am not your lord,' Lorgar gently stroked her features, fingertips smoothing along her nose, her cheekbones, her jawline. It was as if he were the blind one, needing to touch her to imagine her features. 'Your life is your own, not mine - not anyone's - to claim.'
She nodded, unable to speak through the mask of tears shining on her face.
'Do you know why I wished to see you, Cyrene?'
'No,' her voice was strengthless and breathless. She merely mouthed the word.
'To ask you for something. A gift only you can give.'
'Anything,' she mouthed. 'Anything.'
'Will you grant me forgiveness?' the primarch asked. He took her tiny hands in his own, the golden fingers enveloping hers completely. 'Will you forgive what I did to your world, to your perfect city, to your precious eyes?'
She managed a nod, looking away from the golden light she thought she could see.
Lorgar kissed her knuckles, the barest touch of his lips against her skin. 'Thank you, Blessed Lady. My soul is lighter in the wake of your words.'
He released her hands, and rose to his feet, moving away.
'Wait,' she called out. 'Let me serve you. Let me serve your Legion. Please.'
Argel Tal repressed a shiver. Cyrene's words were achingly similar to the vow he'd made himself upon first seeing the primarch. How curious it was, when the past reached through to the present with such clarity.
'Do you know,' Lorgar asked her, 'what a confessor is? Did they have such positions on Khur?'
'They did, master,' Cyrene said. She'd still not recovered her voice. 'They called themselves the Listeners. They would hear our sins, and forgive them.'
'Exactly,' Lorgar chuckled. 'Your life is your own, Cyrene Valantion of Monarchia. But if you wish to walk with my warriors and journey through the stars, then there is the perfect role for you to fill. You have heard my sins, and forgiven me. Would you do the same for my sons?'
Her answer was to kneel, abasing herself in thankful prayer. Instead of replying, her whispering voice spoke invocations of piety, straight from the scriptures she studied as a child.
The primarch cast a last affectionate look at Cyrene, before turning to Argel Tal. 'Captain,' he said.
'My lord.' Argel Tal saluted, fist over his chestplate.
'Erebus had much to say about you in the month I was secluded. When I recalled who pulled me up from my knees before my brother Guilliman, Erebus spoke of you.'
'I... am surprised to hear that, lord.'
Lorgar wasn't deaf to the hesitance in Argel Tal's tone. 'I had assumed your discomfort with Erebus had faded with time. Have I erred in that belief?'
Argel Tal shook his head. 'No, lord. Forgive me a moment's distraction. Our difficulties are in the past. The trials were long ago.'
'T |
tplate.
'Erebus had much to say about you in the month I was secluded. When I recalled who pulled me up from my knees before my brother Guilliman, Erebus spoke of you.'
'I... am surprised to hear that, lord.'
Lorgar wasn't deaf to the hesitance in Argel Tal's tone. 'I had assumed your discomfort with Erebus had faded with time. Have I erred in that belief?'
Argel Tal shook his head. 'No, lord. Forgive me a moment's distraction. Our difficulties are in the past. The trials were long ago.'
'That's good to hear,' Lorgar chuckled. 'To be trained by Erebus himself, and choose the blade above the crozius. You walking another path is a great blow to his pride, and a disappointment that cut him to his core. But he has forgiven you. I wondered - could the same be said for you? Have you forgiven him?'
Choosing another path. That, Argel Tal thought, was putting it very delicately.
'There was nothing to forgive,' he said. 'His anger at my decision was understandable.'
Lorgar watched him closely, the primarch's grey eyes forever judging, despite the affection that lay within them.
'Your compassion has always done you great justice, Argel Tal.'
'I am honoured you believe so, sire.'
'So now we come to the crux of why you were summoned.'
'I stand ready.'
'There will be some changes to the Serrated Sun when you return to the Great Crusade. I have chosen four Chapters to play host to our Custodes sentinels - each Chapter dealing with five of the twenty. It is with regret that I inform you the Serrated Sun is one of them. I understand you met Aquillon in the city of glass? I have granted his request that one of the Custodes groups travel with the Serrated Sun. I saw no harm in throwing the Emperor's watchdogs this one bone.'
'By your word,' said Argel Tal.
'There's more, I'm afraid.' Lorgar smiled again, every inch the charming, golden hierarch who led a revolution on this very world. 'I trust you above and beyond the call of duty. You lifted me from shame, dragging me from the dust, and I thank you for it. So I would ask, in all humility, if you would grant me a favour, Seventh Captain Argel Tal.'
The words, and the tone in which they were spoken, drove Argel Tal to his knee in supplication. What other primarch - what other godlike being - would be so humble as to ask one of his own sons for the gift of a favour? It humbled Argel Tal to be born into this being's bloodline.
Lorgar laughed, the sound melodious in the night's faint breeze. A dozen metres away, Cyrene heard the sound and felt the threat of tears again.
'Rise,' Lorgar said through the smile. 'Have you not knelt enough, Argel Tal?'
He rose, but kept his eyes at the primarch's feet. 'Ask anything of me, sire. Anything, and it will be done.'
'I have travelled with thousands upon thousands of my warriors, decade after decade, acting the general, playing the admiral. I grow weary of such games. While the Legion scatters across the stars, I have no wish to cross paths with my brothers now. Their righteous indignation will grate on my last nerves. You could say I wish to hide, but that would be a lie. I simply wish not to be found. There's a beautifully subtle difference between the two.'
'I understand, lord.'
'Tell me: your expeditionary fleet - which was it, again?'
'The 1,301st, sire. Commanded by Fleetmaster Baloc Torvus, currently engaged in the Atlas subsector.' And awaiting reinforcement, he didn't add out loud.
'Yes,' Lorgar nodded. 'The 1,301st. I have journeyed with eighteen of my Chapters since the dawn of the Great Crusade. This time, as we face our uncertain future, I would ask your permission to travel with the three hundred warriors of the Serrated Sun.'
Argel Tal looked over his shoulder at Cyrene, then Xaphen, before turning back to Lorgar. The Chaplain nodded once. The confessor had her hands over her mouth as tears streamed down her face.
'Pardon me, sire?' Argel Tal asked. 'I am not sure I heard you correctly.'
'I am asking this favour of you, my son. Kor Phaeron will lead the 47th Expedition in my absence. I may not be able to outrun the Occuli Imperator - he will follow me wherever I go - but I can seek the empyrean far from my brothers' eyes. And that is enough for now.'
'You will... travel with us?'
'I would be honoured to,' said the primarch. 'I could ask this of any of my fleets, I know. But you were the one to raise me back to my feet, when my ignorance had murdered a world. So I am asking you.'
'I... Sire... I...'
Lorgar laughed again, his golden hands reaching to prevent Argel Tal from kneeling a second time. 'Is that a yes?'
'By your word, Aurelian.'
'Thank you. It's a new age, Argel Tal. A new age of vision and discovery. Every Word Bearer fleet will be cast to the winds of fate, sailing where they will. We will reach farther from Terra than any other Legion, pushing the Imperium's boundaries with each world we take.'
Argel Tal knew where this was leading. It could only be going one way. He sensed Xaphen approaching from behind, though the Chaplain elected to say nothing.
'We are seekers,' Lorgar smiled, enjoying the word on his tongue. 'We seek the place where gods and mortals meet - seeking divinity in a galaxy my father believes is godless.'
Lorgar clasped his hands together, and lowered his head in readiness for prayer.
'The Legion will undertake the Pilgrimage.'
III
The Faceless Tarot
THE CARDS ARE faceless, devoid of illustration. This is intentional - it's what makes them so valuable, for they respond to the touch of an unseen sense, never relying on a lesser artist's imagery to limit the human consciousness.
The crystal wafers are cored by a psychoreactive liquid, the images taking shape in the celadon resin as the tarot reader holds each card in his hands.
He had hoped, in time, that every psychically gifted soul in his father's Imperium would come to learn this tarot. Instead, their creation had been scorned - even by Magnus (who had no need of such foci for his powers) and Leman Russ (who derided them even as he cast runestones and knucklebones in a bid to see the future).
It will soon be time to leave Colchis.
He turns the first card. In its milky surface, he sees a burning torch carried in a strong hand. Truth.
Something calls to me. That is a truth I am only now coming to accept. Something out there is calling to me.
I am not Magnus, to stare into space and easily hear the heartbeat of creation. My powers are not those of my dearest brother, nor my ascendant father. But something has always called to me. In my youth, it reached my mind as visions, nightmares, hallucinations. And now...
Erebus and Kor Phaeron - through their patience and guidance - aided me in growing attuned to the call.
My tutors in the Covenant, and my heart's family now. We meditated, pored over the Covenant's texts, and we decided the Legion's destiny.
Something calls me, faint but infinite, prickling my sixth sense like an echo in the stars.
HE TURNS THE second card, and sees himself - robed and cowled, turning away so as to avoid his own gaze. A common card, this one. Faith.
Humanity is nothing without faith.
Faith raises us above the soulless and the damned. It is the soul's fuel, and the driving force behind millennia of mankind's survival. We are hollow without it. Existence is cold and arbitrary in a godless galaxy - faith shapes us, raises us above all other life, defines us as perfect in our sentience.
In eras where faith was choked, weakness and decay infested the species, withering its innards. That is something the Emperor, beloved by all, has always known, but never admits.
Yet he knows, and he forges his empire accordingly. A god need not be named a god in order to stand in supremacy. Names are meaningless. Supremacy matters - and my father stands ascendant over all mortal life in the galaxy: a god in power, a god in wrath, a god in vision.
A god in all but name.
THE OLD FAITH of Colchis is one that shares roots in thousands of human cultures, across thousands of worlds. That alone is evidence that somewhere within its meandering parables, and the unsubtle blending of myth into history and history into myth, there exists a core of absolute truth.
The loveliest legend is that of the empyrean, the Primordial Truth.
It is known by countless names, of course. The empyrean is the name we spoke on Colchis. Others named it heaven - a means of existing into eternity, long after the death of the mortal form. A realm of infinite possibility: a paradise of potential where the souls of every mortal in history coil around one another.
Even I know such things are myths, stories spoken and passed down imperfectly through countless generations.
But... imagine it. Imagine the reality behind the myths. Imagine a place in the universe where gods and mortals meet. Imagine the miracles of power that could be performed.
Imagine a state of utter chaos, utter purity, where anything is possible. Life ends in death, but existence does not.
If there is truth to the Old Faith, I will find it.
HE TURNS THE third card. A haze of heat makes the sky shimmer above a skyline of towers and domes. Colchis. The City of Grey Flowers. Home.
The people of Colchis have always looked to the stars for answers. The Legion born on that world, the Bearers of the Word, is no exception. Many Chapters within the Legion are named for the constellations that brighten the night sky. Even the name they bestowed upon me, the name spoken by no one outside the Legion, has its foundations in antiquity. 'Aurelian', they call out as they wage war. 'The golden'.
Yet its linguistic roots go further back, to a truer meaning, created by those ancestors that forever stared skyward for inspiration.
Aurelian. The sun.
It is natural for us to seek answers in the stars. Life comes from them. The Emperor descended from them. The Legion rose into them.
Fate awaits us beyond them.
COLCHISIAN LEGENDS TELL tales of primitive space-faring vessels le |
ne outside the Legion, has its foundations in antiquity. 'Aurelian', they call out as they wage war. 'The golden'.
Yet its linguistic roots go further back, to a truer meaning, created by those ancestors that forever stared skyward for inspiration.
Aurelian. The sun.
It is natural for us to seek answers in the stars. Life comes from them. The Emperor descended from them. The Legion rose into them.
Fate awaits us beyond them.
COLCHISIAN LEGENDS TELL tales of primitive space-faring vessels leaving the world in search of the gods, much in the same way the Afrikaharan and Grecianic peoples of Ancient Earth once sought their deities. I have read the fragments that remain of their cultures, and I have walked the ways of the past with my brother Magnus. The travels of Osyrus and Odisseon in Terran myth are the travels of Khaane, Tezen, Slanat and Narag - prophets born of Colchis, great seekers now lost to time's embrace.
Their journey to seek the home of the gods is known to us as the Pilgrimage.
HE TURNS THE fourth card. The psychoreactive liquid forms architectural wonders in his fingertips: an arching bridge, a meandering path of stone through a great garden... A journey. A pilgrimage.
The Pilgrimage is the oldest legend in the Covenant of Colchis, and the one most often seen in human cultures scattered across the galaxy. Humanity has a fundamental need to believe in it. The Primordial Truth: heaven, paradise... It exists somewhere, in some form - home of the gods, underworld of the daemons. The layer behind natural reality. Anything is possible within its boundaries.
The Pilgrimage is nothing less than the journey to see it with one's own eyes. To confirm where mythology ends and faith begins.
Heaven. Hell. Gods. Daemons.
I will have the answers I seek.
HE TURNS THE fifth and final card. The Emperor, bedecked in finery, all details writ with punishing clarity except the one aspect that matters: his face. A golden lord.
I was weaned on the old scrolls - the very scrolls we cast aside in favour of worshipping the Emperor. Now, I cannot help but look back to the teachings of my youth, and think of those legends and their cores of truth.
In crude imagery, the old works showed a stain on the stars - a scar in reality, where the Primordial Truth reached out into the universe of flesh, bone, blood and breath. Each of them foretold of a golden lord, a being of godly power that would carry humanity to divine perfection. It had to be my father. It had to be the Emperor. And I believed it was, until the moment it was not.
He was not the golden lord. The Emperor will carry us to the stars, but never beyond them. My dreams will be lies, if a golden lord does not rise.
I look to the stars now, with the old scrolls burning runes across my memory. And I see my own hands as I write these words.
Erebus and Kor Phaeron speak the truth.
My hands.
They, too, are golden.
PART TWO
PILGRIMAGE
Three years after the Legion's departure from Colchis
IV
A Child's Dreams
I CAN ONLY imagine how the primarch's heart shattered when the Pilgrimage ended.
Three years of the Seventeenth Legion scattered across the stars. Three years of the Word Bearers sailing farther and faster than any of their brother warriors, reaching into the edges of space and pulling the boundaries of the Imperium with them.
So much of humanity's dominion over the stars is owed to the sons of Lorgar - a bitter reality after the years of ponderous, meticulous advancement, earning them nothing but scorn.
But I know the temperament of this Legion. For every peaceful compliance - for every culture brought into the Imperium and quietly encouraged to follow the new Word - there will have been a world that now spins in space as a dead husk, fallen victim to the Word Bearers venting their wrath.
The Pilgrimage revealed many truths: the flaws written into the Legion's precious gene-seed; the arcane gestation of Lorgar Aurelian himself; the existence of the neverborn - named as daemons, spirits and angels by a million ignorant generations of mankind. But the greatest truth revealed was also the hardest to accept, and it broke a primarch's heart.
And of course, it changed his sons. The Word Bearers could never go back to a time before the truth.
Argel Tal and Xaphen were my closest links to a world I could no longer see, and the Pilgrimage's destination changed them in ways far more profound than mere physical differences. The knowledge was a burden to them: that they and their brothers in the Word Bearers Legion must be the ones to return to the Imperium with this terrible truth.
I cannot conceive how they endured, being the heralds of such tidings. To be the ones chosen to enlighten an entire species that humanity would struggle from now until the day creation died. There would be no Golden Age, no era of peace and prosperity. In the darkness of the future, there would be only war.
Perhaps we are all playing the roles marked out by the gods. People who are destined for greatness will often dream great dreams as children. Fate shapes them for the years to come, offering their young minds a teasing glance at what will be.
Blessed Lorgar, Herald of the Primordial Truth, dreamed like this. His childhood was tormented by visions of his father's arrival - a god of gold, descending from above - as well as nightmares of someone unknown, something unseen, forever calling his name.
And that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Word Bearers Legion. Their father knew he would be one of those bringing enlightenment to humanity, but he could never foresee how it would come to pass.
The primarch has spoken of his brothers and how they dreamed similar dreams. Curze, born on a world of eternal night, dreamed of his own death. Magnus, Lorgar's closest kin, dreamed the answers to the universe's mysteries. One was cursed with foreknowledge; the other blessed by it. Both were destined to do great things as they reached maturity. Their actions have shaped the galaxy, just as Lorgar Aurelian's have.
As for myself, I only remember one nightmare from my youngest years.
In my dream, I sat in a blackened room, as blind in the darkness then as I am now. And in that darkness I sat in silence, listening to a monster breathe.
Where is the line between prescience and fantasy? Between prophecy and a child's imagination?
The answer is simple. Prophecy comes true.
We just have to wait.
- Excerpted from 'The Pilgrimage', by Cyrene Valantion
TWELVE
Death
Final Flight of Orfeo's Lament
Two Souls
XAPHEN LAY DEAD at the creature's feet.
His spine twisted, his armour broken, a death that showed no peace in rest. A metre from his outstretched fingers, his black steel crozius rested on the deck, silent in deactivation. The corpse was cauled by its helm, its final face hidden, but the Chaplain's scream still echoed across the vox-network.
The sound had been wet, strained - half-drowned by the blood filling Xaphen's ruptured lungs.
The creature turned its head with a predator's grace, stinking saliva trailing in gooey stalactites between too many teeth. No artificial light remained on the observation deck, but starlight, the winking of distant suns, bred silver glints in the creature's unmatching eyes. One was amber, swollen, lidless. The other black, an obsidian pebble sunken deep into its hollow.
Now you, it said, without moving its maw. Those jaws could never form human speech. You are next.
Argel Tal's first attempt to speak left his lips as a trickle of too-hot blood. It stung his chin as it ran down his face. The chemical-rich reek of the liquid, of Lorgar's gene-written blood running through the veins of each of his sons, was enough to overpower the stench rising from the creature's quivering, muscular grey flesh. For that one moment, he smelled his own death, rather than the creature's corruption.
It was a singular reprieve.
The captain raised his bolter in a grip that trembled, but not from fear. This defiance - this was the refusal he couldn't voice any other way.
Yes. The creature loomed closer. Its lower body was an abomination's splicing between serpent and worm, thick-veined and leaving a viscous, clear slug-trail that stank of unearthed graves. Yes.
'No,' Argel Tal finally forced the words through clenched teeth. 'Not like this.'
Like this. Like your brothers. This is how it must be.
The bolter barked with a throaty chatter, a stream of shells that hammered into the wall, impacting with concussive detonations that defiled the chamber's quiet. Each buck of the gun in his shaking hand sent the next shell wider from the mark.
Arm muscles burning, he let the weapon fall with a dull clang. The creature did not laugh, did not mock him for his failure. Instead, it reached for him with four arms, lifting him gently. Black talons scraped against the grey ceramite of his armour as it clutched him aloft.
Prepare yourself. This will not be painless.
Argel Tal hung limp in the creature's grip. For a brief second, he reached for the swords of red iron at his hips, forgetting that they were broken, the blades shattered, on the gantry decking below.
'I can hear,' his gritted teeth almost strangled the words, 'another voice.'
Yes. One of my kin. It comes for you.
'This... is not what... my primarch wanted...'
This? The creature dragged the helpless Astartes closer, and burst Argel Tal's secondary heart with a flex of thought. The captain went into violent convulsions, feeling the pulped mass behind his ribs, but the daemon cradled him with sickening gentleness.
This is exactly what Lorgar wanted. This is the truth.
Argel Tal strained for breath that wouldn't come, and forced dying muscles to reach for weapons that weren't there.
The last thing he felt before he died was something pouring into his thoughts, wet and cold, like oil spilling behind his eyes.
The last thing he heard was one of his dead brothers drawing a ragged breath over the vox-channel.
And t |
ling the pulped mass behind his ribs, but the daemon cradled him with sickening gentleness.
This is exactly what Lorgar wanted. This is the truth.
Argel Tal strained for breath that wouldn't come, and forced dying muscles to reach for weapons that weren't there.
The last thing he felt before he died was something pouring into his thoughts, wet and cold, like oil spilling behind his eyes.
The last thing he heard was one of his dead brothers drawing a ragged breath over the vox-channel.
And the last thing he saw was Xaphen twitching, rising from the deck on struggling limbs.
HE OPENED HIS eyes, and saw he was the last to awaken.
Xaphen stood stronger than the others, his crozius maul in his hands. Through the blur of Argel Tal's returning consciousness, he heard the Chaplain speaking orders, encouragement, demands that his brothers stand and pull themselves together.
Dagotal remained on his knees, vomiting through his helm's mouth grille. What he produced from his stomach was much too black. Malnor leaned against the wall, his forehead pressed to the cool metal. The others were in similar states of disarray, hauling themselves to their feet, purging their guts of stinking ichor, and whispering litanies from the Word.
Argel Tal couldn't see the daemon. He looked left and right, targeting reticule not locking on to anything.
'Where is Ingethel?' he tried to ask, but the only sound he made was a sick, thick drawl of wordless growling.
Xaphen came over to him and offered a hand to help him rise. The Chaplain had removed his helm, and in the chamber's gloom the warrior-priest's face was unnaturally pallid, but otherwise unchanged.
'Where is Ingethel?' Argel Tal repeated. This time, the words came forth. It was almost, but not quite, his voice.
'Gone,' Xaphen replied. 'The vox is back online, and power has been restored to the ship. Squads are checking in from all decks. But the daemon is gone.'
Daemon. Still so strange, to hear the word voiced out loud. A word from mythology, spoken as cold fact.
Argel Tal looked up at the glass dome ceiling, looking out into the void beyond. There was no space. Not true space, at least. The void was a swirling, psychotic mass of flensed energy and clashing tides. A thousand shades of violet, a thousand shades of red. Colours humanity had never catalogued, and no living beings had seen before. Stars, stained by the riot of crashing energies, winked through the storm like bloodshot eyes.
At last, in the window's reflection, he saw himself. Pearls of sweat rolled down his face. Even his sweat stank of the daemon: bestial, raw, ripe - the reek of organs, failing to cancer.
'We need to get out of here,' said Argel Tal. Something moved in his stomach, something cold uncoiling within him, and he swallowed acidic bile to keep from throwing up.
'How did this happen?' Malnor groaned. None present had ever heard the stoic warrior so unmanned.
Torgal staggered over to them, rubbing reddened eyes in sallow sockets. His chestplate was painted with a messy scorch-streak of burned ceramite - the black acid-burn of his vomit.
'We need to get back to the fleet,' he said. 'Back to the primarch.'
Argel Tal caught sight of his own broken blades, scattered in jagged pieces across the decking. Repressing the sting of loss, he reached for his discarded bolter. As soon as his gauntleted fingers touched the grip, an ammunition counter on his eye lenses flickered at zero.
'First, we need to get to the bridge.'
EVERY HUMAN ON board was dead.
This was something Argel Tal had first feared as he moved in a lurching stride from corridor to corridor. The fear became reality as more and more of Seventh Company's squads voxed to report the same thing.
They were alone here. Every servitor, every serf, every slave and preacher and artificer and servant was dead.
Deck by deck, chamber by chamber, the Word Bearers hunted for any sign of life beyond themselves.
Smaller than De Profundis, the destroyer Orfeo's Lament was an attack ship, a sleek and narrow hunter, not a line-breaking assault vessel like many Astartes cruisers. Its crew numbered just under a thousand humans and augmented servitors at full complement, in addition to the hundred Astartes - a full company's worth.
Ninety-seven Word Bearers remained alive. Of the humans, not one.
Three Astartes had simply not awoken as the others had. Argel Tal ordered their bodies burned, with the remains to be blasted out of an airlock as soon as the ship managed to get clear of the warp storm.
When, and if, that would ever be.
Evidence of the human crew's demise was everywhere to behold. Argel Tal, bred without the capacity to feel fear, was not immune to disgust nor shielded by his genes from feeling regret. Each corpse he passed watched him with a lifeless stare and open jaws. They screamed in silence. Shrunken, yellowed eyes accused him with every step he took.
'We should have defended them from this,' he murmured the words aloud without realising.
'No.' Xaphen's tone invited no argument. 'They were naught but resources for the Legion. We do the Legion's work, and they were the price we paid.'
Not the only price, Argel Tal thought.
'This decay,' he said. 'I don't understand.' The captain's pace was increasing with each step he took, and the closer he came to the bridge, the nearer he found himself to running. Strength flooded him, its presence a welcome contrast to the weakness only minutes before.
The hallway was a major thoroughfare running along the ship's ridged back like a spinal column. At all hours of day and night, it was busy with crew members going about their duties.
Except now. Now it was silent but for Argel Tal's footsteps, and his closest brothers with him. Rotting bodies lay gaunt and withered along the decking, husked by the dry, stale air put out by the ship's oxygen scrubbers.
'These bodies have been dead for weeks,' said Xaphen.
'That's not possible,' Malnor said. 'We were unconscious for no more than a handful of minutes.'
Xaphen looked up from where he knelt by the desiccated corpse of a servitor. Its bionics had shaken loose of the withering organic limbs, and lay pristine on the floor.
'Unconscious?' he shook his head. 'We were not unconscious. I felt my hearts burst in that beast's claws. I died, Malnor. We all died, just as the daemon said we would.'
'My hearts beat now,' the sergeant replied. 'As do yours.'
Argel Tal saw the same. Retinal displays didn't lie. 'Now,' he said, 'is not the time. We need to get to the bridge.'
The warriors moved again, stepping over the dried corpses that grew more frequent as they neared the command deck.
EIGHTY-ONE DEAD bodies waited for them on the bridge.
They lay sprawled or sat hunched, with several locked foetal on the floor, while others were cringing, curled, in their seats.
'They knew what was happening,' said Xaphen. 'This wasn't fast. They felt something as they died.'
Argel Tal hesitated by the twisted figure of Captain Janus Sylamor, curled in her throne as if she sought, in her last moments, to escape something that prowled nearby. Her sunken features, almost mummified, told him all he needed to know.
'Pain,' he said. 'What they felt was pain.'
Dagotal was already by one of the drive consoles, dragging an officer's body off the controls. The cadaver slumped to the decking, only to find its rest further disturbed by Xaphen, who set about examining it - carving into it - with his combat blade.
Dagotal swore in back-alley Colchisian. 'I drive a jetbike, sir. I can't fly an Imperial warship, even if we had the slaves necessary to feed the engine furnace.'
Argel Tal turned from the ship captain's husk. 'Just give me an overview.'
His voice still didn't sound, didn't feel, quite right. As if someone nearby was speaking the words in unison with him, in mocking chorus.
'We're dead in space,' Dagotal adjusted more controls to no effect. 'Power hasn't been restored to all systems. Not even close. The Geller Field is enabled, but we lack void shields, plasma propulsion, energy weapons, projectile weapons, and life support on half the decks.'
'Manoeuvring thrusters?'
'Sir,' Dagotal hesitated. 'We've drifted significantly in the storm's tides from where we came to all stop. Taking that into account, and lacking warp flight... On manoeuvring thrusters it will take us at least three months to break clear of the... nebula.'
'It's not a nebula,' Xaphen murmured. 'You've seen what's outside. It's not a nebula.'
'Whatever in the name of hell it is,' Dagotal snapped back.
'Hell is a good enough word for it,' Xaphen muttered, still distracted in his work.
Argel Tal lifted the body of Captain Sylamor from the oversized Astartes command throne, laying her to rest at the edge of the command deck. When he returned, he took her place, his armour clanking against the metal of her seat.
'Fire the thrusters,' he ordered. 'The sooner we begin, the sooner we'll be back with the fleet.'
'Bloodless,' Xaphen announced. He rose from his knees, blade in hand, the grisly dismemberment complete at his feet. Vox-officer Amal Vrey's autopsy would never enter any official record, but it was unarguably thorough.
'The bodies,' Xaphen said, 'they're bloodless. Something leeched the blood from their veins, killing them all.'
'Ingethel?'
'No, Ingethel was with us. Its kin did this.'
Its kin. The daemon's words resurfaced in Argel Tal's aching mind. 'Yes. One of my kin. It comes for you.'
He felt something slither within him. Something stirring, wrapping around the bones of his arms and legs, coiling in a tight spiral around his spine.
'Summon every warrior to the bridge,' he ordered, hearing his own voice echoing in his mind, a silent chorus twinned with his words.
'And Dagotal,' said Argel Tal, 'get us out of here.'
THE SHIP THAT limped its way from the warp storm was a far cry from the noble Imperial vessel that had cut its way in. It trailed psychic fog around its membrane-t |
felt something slither within him. Something stirring, wrapping around the bones of his arms and legs, coiling in a tight spiral around his spine.
'Summon every warrior to the bridge,' he ordered, hearing his own voice echoing in his mind, a silent chorus twinned with his words.
'And Dagotal,' said Argel Tal, 'get us out of here.'
THE SHIP THAT limped its way from the warp storm was a far cry from the noble Imperial vessel that had cut its way in. It trailed psychic fog around its membrane-thin Geller Field, turning in a slow roll that spoke of flawed guidance systems and damaged stabilisers.
Pulsing from its mangled communications towers was a repeated message, the Colchisian words rendered into fuzz by detuned vox.
'This is the Orfeo's Lament. Critical casualties sustained. Grievous damage. Requesting extraction. This is the Orfeo's Lament...'
'CONTACT RE-ESTABLISHED with Orfeo's Lament,' called out one of the bridge crew.
The command deck of De Profundis was alive with activity - a hive of officers, servitors, analysts and crew members of every stripe, all working around a central platform that rose above the consoles. On the platform, a golden giant in robes of grey silk watched the occulus screen. His face, so close to the face of his father, was softened in a way the Emperor's never was: Lorgar was both curious and concerned.
'Already?' he said, glancing to the officers at the vox-console.
'Sire,' the Master of Auspex called from his bank of flickering monitors, 'the ship is... horrifically damaged.'
The bustle of the bridge began to quieten, as more and more crew members watched the occulus, seeing the Orfeo's Lament in its powerless drift.
'How can this be?' Lorgar leaned on the handrail ringing the raised podium, his golden fingers gripping the steel. 'That's not possible.'
'Receiving a distress pulse,' said one of the vox-officers. 'Sire... My primarch... The Orfeo's Lament has suffered critical casualties. We're getting an automated message.'
Lorgar covered his parted lips with a hand, unable to conceal his unrest where another primarch might have stood stoic. Worry was etched onto his handsome features, replacing the confusion that had taken hold moments before.
'Play the message, please,' he asked in a soft voice.
It came through in a crackle of vox, grating across the bridge speakers.
'...the Orfeo's Lament. Critical casualties sustained. Grievous damage. Requesting extraction. This is the Orfeo's Lament...'
'How can this be?' he asked again. 'Master of Vox, get me a signal to that ship.'
'By your word, sire.'
'Argel Tal,' Lorgar breathed his son's name. 'I know his voice. That was Argel Tal.'
At his side, Fleetmaster Baloc Torvus nodded, his stern features emotionless where his primarch's were tormented. 'Aye, sire. It was.'
Contact took three and a half minutes to restore, during which the rest of the 1,301st Fleet had raised its shields and armed all weapons. Tug-ships sailed from the flagship's docking bays, ready to drag the limping Lament back to its sister vessels.
At last, a picture resolved on the occulus, showing the other vessel's bridge. Audio contact filtered back a few seconds afterwards, heralded by a burst of static.
'Blood of the Emperor,' Lorgar whispered as he watched.
Argel Tal wore no helm. His face was gaunt, a pathetic wraith of his former vitality, with his eyes ringed by the dark smears of countless restless nights. Speckles of old blood decorated the left side of his face, and his armour - what was left of it - was pitted and cracked, devoid of any holy parchment.
He rose from his command throne on unsteady legs and saluted. There was the softest bang as his fist hit his breastplate.
'You're... still here,' he rasped. All strength was gone from his voice.
Lorgar was the one to break the silence. 'My son. What has befallen you? What madness is this?'
Behind Argel Tal, other figures were moving into view. Word Bearers, all. They were just as weak, just as ruined, as their commander. One fell to his knees as Lorgar watched, praying in a senseless stream of conflicting words. It took several moments for the primarch to realise it was Xaphen, recognisable only because of the broken black armour.
Argel Tal closed his eyes, letting out a breath. 'Sire, we have returned, as ordered.'
Lorgar glanced at Torvus, before turning back to Argel Tal. 'Captain, you've been gone no more than sixty seconds. We just witnessed the Lament enter the edges of the storm. You return to us less than a minute after your departure.'
Argel Tal scratched his ravaged face, shaking his head. 'No. No, that cannot be.'
'It can be,' Lorgar stared hard at him, 'and it is. My son, what happened to you?'
'Seven months,' the captain sagged, leaning on the arm of his throne to keep standing. 'Seven. Months. There are barely forty of us left. No food. We ate the crew... hateful mouthfuls of leathery flesh and dry bones. There was no water. Water tanks ruptured in the storm damage. We drank promethium fuel... weapon oils... engine coolant... Sire, we've been killing each other. We have been drinking each other's blood to stay alive.'
Lorgar looked away only for long enough to address one of the vox-officers. 'Bring them in,' he said, pitching his voice low. 'Get my sons off that ship.'
'Sire? Sire?'
'I am here, Argel Tal.'
'The Lament has had its final flight. We are on guidance thrusters alone.'
'Thunderhawks are already launching,' the primarch assured him. 'We will return to safer space together.'
'Thank you, sire.'
'Argel Tal,' Lorgar hesitated. 'Did you slay the crew of Orfeo's Lament?'
'No. No, sire, never. We ate their carcasses. Carrion-feeders. Like the desert jackals of Colchis. Anything to survive. We had to bring you the answers you sought. Sire, please... There is something you have to know. We have the answers to all your questions, but one above all.'
'Tell me,' the golden giant whispered. He was unashamed at the tears in his eyes, to see his sons reduced to... to this. 'Tell me, Argel Tal.'
'This place. This realm. Future generations will name it the Great Eye, the Eye of Terror, the Occularis Terribus. In hushed voices, they will give a thousand foolish names to something they cannot understand. But you were right, my lord.
'Here,' Argel Tal gestured with a weak hand at the seething warp storm visible through the bridge windows, 'is where gods and mortals meet.'
SOON, HE WAS in isolation. Taken from his brothers.
This was not entirely unexpected, but they had also taken his weapons - 'for much-needed maintenance, brother' - and that, he'd not foreseen. They were cautious around him now. The escorts walking him to his meditation chamber had been tense, reluctant to speak, hesitant to answer even the simplest questions.
Never before had he felt this raw distrust between brothers. He knew what its genesis was, of course. The truth could never be hidden, and he had no desire to hide it. Yes, the survivors had eaten the human dead. Yes, they had butchered their own brothers. But not for sport. Not for glory. For survival.
To quench a lethal thirst, with the coppery wine that runs from cut veins.
What other choice was there? To die? To die away from the fleet, with the answers to every question the primarch had ever asked locked behind their dead lips?
But you did die. The traitorous thought rose behind his focus. You did die.
Yes. He did. He'd died before he chewed on the leathery skin of bloodless bodies. Before he'd used his dagger to slice open his brothers' throats and drink their life to sustain his own.
Some of them had died twice, then. A final death, to fuel the lives of those who would survive.
Thirty-eight Word Bearers had left the wreck of Orfeo's Lament. Thirty-eight, from one hundred. Far below half-strength. Seventh Company was devastated.
Argel Tal drew in a shivering breath. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the storm outside. In the warp's roiling tides, ten million faces silently screamed his name. He saw their lips moving, their teeth bared, their faces formed of clashing, psychic energy spilling across the ship's Geller Field barrier. The flesh and blood of unformed daemons. The raw matter of souls.
He exhaled, and opened his eyes.
The walls of his personal chamber, his haven aboard De Profundis for so many years of the Great Crusade, seemed alien now. Strange, how seven months could change a soul. Seven months, and a skull full of unbridled revelations.
The chronometer above the doorway mocked him with a date over half a year in the past. The primarch's words were an unwanted truth: seconds had passed at the edges of the warp anomaly. Months dragged by within.
Stripped of his armour, the captain examined his wasted body in the reflection of his dagger, the only weapon remaining to him. A revenant returned his gaze - a skeletal, hollow-eyed creature on the wrong side of the grave.
He lowered the blade, and awaited the chime he knew would come soon.
IN HIS HUMILITY, Lorgar had never looked grander.
He came to Argel Tal wearing the layered, glyph-embroidered robes of a Covenant priest, with the hood raised, darkening his features. In his hands he carried a small wooden chest; the box was open, revealing a selection of vulture-feather quills with an inkpot. Under one arm, the primarch bore a roll of papyrus parchments to record his son's words. As Lorgar entered, Argel Tal saw the hulking forms of two Word Bearers - brothers from the Serrated Sun, but not Seventh Company - standing outside his door.
Standing guard outside his door.
'Am I a prisoner, father?' he asked the primarch.
Lorgar drew back his hood, revealing his eternally youthful face and the uncertain smile upon it. His grey eyes were heavy with emotion, and little of it was pleasant. He grieved for his sons. He grieved for what he saw now.
'No, Argel Tal. Of course you are not a prisoner.' Their eyes met in that moment, and Lorgar's smile froze on his p |
m the Serrated Sun, but not Seventh Company - standing outside his door.
Standing guard outside his door.
'Am I a prisoner, father?' he asked the primarch.
Lorgar drew back his hood, revealing his eternally youthful face and the uncertain smile upon it. His grey eyes were heavy with emotion, and little of it was pleasant. He grieved for his sons. He grieved for what he saw now.
'No, Argel Tal. Of course you are not a prisoner.' Their eyes met in that moment, and Lorgar's smile froze on his perfect lips.
'The guards at my door would seem to suggest otherwise,' said Argel Tal.
Lorgar didn't answer. The beautifully carved wooden box crashed to the bare metal floor. The noise drew attention, and the bulkhead door slammed open. Two warriors from 37th Company came in, bolters aimed at Argel Tal's head.
'Sire?' they asked as one.
The primarch didn't answer them, either. He stood in rapt silence, reaching out, almost touching the captain's gaunt face. At the last moment, he drew his hand back before his fingers brushed Argel Tal's sunken flesh.
Their eyes were still locked: primarch and captain, father and son.
'You have two souls,' Lorgar whispered.
Argel Tal closed his eyes to break the stare. Something - a hundred somethings - slithered through his blood, worming within his veins, pushed on by his heartbeat.
He rose to his feet at last.
'I know, father.'
'Tell me everything,' said the primarch. 'Speak to me of the daemon, and the world of revelation. Tell me why my son stands before me with his soul cleaved in two.'
THIRTEEN
Incarnadine
Stormlost
Voices in the Void
'1301-12.' AS ARGEL Tal spoke the code, acidic saliva stung the underside of his tongue.
1301-12, the twelfth world to be brought to compliance by the 1301stExpeditionary Fleet. 'Of the seven worlds we conquered in three years,' he said, 'this was the most painful.'
Lorgar did not disagree.
'And yet,' the primarch said, 'it was also bloodless. Not a shot fired in anger, nor a blade drawn in rage. The pain was born of revelation.'
'Three years, sire,' said Argel Tal, looking away from his father's eyes. 'Three years, and seven worlds. History will point to those worlds, the husks we left, and describe how the XVII Legion vented its wrath in the wake of our failure. World after world burned, the populations butchered to slake our fury.'
Lorgar's smile was pyrite-false. 'Is that how you see our Pilgrimage?'
'No. Never. But seven worlds died in fire, and we were almost destroyed after leaving the eighth.'
Lorgar's grey gaze didn't waver for a moment. He was seeing with his sixth sense, looking into his son's heart, and sensing the second soul gestating there.
'Enough of this maudlin remembrance,' Lorgar's tone betrayed his impatience. 'Speak of the world we found.'
'Do you remember,' Argel Tal asked him, 'when we first reached orbit?'
THE FLOOR WAS trembling in a most specific way.
Xi-Nu 73 processed this. Beneath his metal feet, the rumble of the ship's deck had a very particular pulse - neither the arrhythmic flow of warp flight, nor the heartbeat tremor of sustained guidance thrust. Instead, murmurs coursed through his artificial bones, faint but blessedly metronomic.
Orbit.
Orbit, at last.
The last journey had been a long one. Xi-Nu 73 wasn't a being given to indulging in speculation beyond the present, but his calculated projections were grim. The warp storms battering the fleet would certainly have claimed more than the three ships they'd already taken, had the 1,301st pressed on even farther past this world.
Xi-Nu 73 had heard one of his menials tell another that 'the storm outside was hurling itself at the ship's shields', and he'd berated the worker for grafting human attributes onto an inappropriate subject. Such anthropomorphosis would harm the servant's chances for future elevation within the Mechanicum.
It was a violent storm, no doubt there. But there existed no passion, no anger, no intent in the warp's tides.
Elsewhere on De Profundis, the decks were alive with activity, as Astartes and human crew made ready for planetfall.
Xi-Nu 37 was largely immune to the brain chemistry necessary to feel excitement, having reengineered himself beyond such sensation. Instead, he focused entirely on his work, which stimulated the pleasure centres of his brain - a minute amount for each subroutine performed with absolute accuracy and ergonomic efficiency.
His fingers - fifteen of them spread across three mechanical hands - worked in the armoured bowl of Alizarin's skull. It was a process of restructuring globs of bio-plastic, each one dripping with nutrient-rich juices, within the robot's head. Each tract of spherical relay globes needed to be fixed and sealed into position, then connected to the slave systems they controlled, as well as the fail-safes they relied on in incidents of battle damage. Such were the workings of the robotic mind: an intelligence in mimicry of life, grown in a gene-lab to be used in a machine body.
The smell rising from this bowl of artificial cerebrospinal fluid was a revoltingly spicy reek reminiscent of rotting onions, but of course, Xi-Nu 73 had taken himself beyond the capacity to react to that as well. He only knew of the smell at all because his perceptive sensors streamed data onto his retinas, describing the stench in bland screeds of binary.
Despite the intricacies of his task, Xi-Nu 73 reserved a median five per cent of his focus to monitor his surroundings. Internal sensor arrays, perceiving the world through echolocation, first tracked the door to his workshop opening, then the movement of a figure traversing the chamber. The figure emitted an unmistakable power signature: armour, Mark III, Astartes.
Several other signals joined the first. Five Astartes in total.
These details flashed up as runic symbols on Xi-Nu 73's vision display. He paid them little heed, knuckle-deep as he was in organic slime, plugging tiny interface feeds into segmented spheres of bio-plastic. Each sphere was a part of the cortex program. Each fibre-optic link simulated synapses.
The Astartes had the good grace not to interrupt. They waited the three point three-two minutes until Xi-Nu 73 had finished the current phase of ministrations. A satisfaction pulse wormed through Xi-Nu's datacore. Dampened pleasure receptors fired. Work was complete.
At last, the Mechanicum adept turned from the workshop table. Ooze dripped from his fifteen metal fingers.
'Subcommander,' he said, neither acknowledging the senior sergeants at Argel Tal's side nor offering the kind of respectful bow usually given by mortal members of the crew. 'You are present to commence preparations on Incarnadine.'
Argel Tal was armoured for the coming planetfall, as were the officers with him. Xaphen, clad in black, Dagotal, Malnor and Torgal - all wearing the Legion's granite grey.
'It is time,' said Argel Tal.
Xi-Nu's three lens-eyes took a few seconds to refocus. 'This way,' the adept replied.
The warriors followed the machine-priest into the red-lit chamber beyond.
IT WASN'T THAT Xi-Nu 73 felt any shame in Incarnadine's induction into the Word Bearers Legion. Such an honour was tantamount to the highest accolades in the Legio Cybernetica, and evidence of the commanding adept's mastery - such a machine clearly had a spirit of fierce intensity, and was worthy of recognition.
It was just that since the induction into the Serrated Sun, since the Chapter's sigil had been etched onto the robot's forehead, the Conqueror Primus of 9th Maniple was a touch more... erratic. The machine's spirit had the error-laden propensity to act unpredictably, and that was unacceptable.
Even to a veteran adept like Xi-Nu 73, this made no sense outside of his deepest, darkest suspicions. He'd run several hundred diagnostics, as was his meticulous duty, but the discrepancies (the flaws? The aberrations?) in Incarnadine's cortex would resurface after each maintenance.
On one occasion, never to be repeated, Xi-Nu 73 had taken the greatest, gravest risk, purging Incarnadine's bioplastic brain. After flushing every trace of matter from the robot's skull bowl, he rebuilt the cortex over the space of four months, using spare parts, ritually cleansed after being taken from his supply caches.
The robot had a new brain, for Cog's sake. And still, still, it was...
Well. There was another problem. The Martian code-tongue lacked adequate description to summate the problem. Xi-Nu 73 had ventured the closest human term to describe the situation was that his Conqueror Primus was glitched. He considered this a symptom of his assignment, not just to the 1,301st Expeditionary Fleet, but to the Word Bearers Legion itself.
The war machines and expert technical crews of Carthage Cohort were spread across the many Word Bearers fleets, rather than housed on their own Mechanicum vessels the way the Titan Legions were. Lorgar's own insistence made it thus. Decades before, when the Legio Cybernetica had first approached the Word Bearer lord, Lorgar had generously offered to modify his vessels to accommodate the specialist needs of his new Mechanicum allies.
'We are all brothers under the same god's gaze,' he'd said to the Fabricator-General, during his first visit to the surface of Mars. Apparently, a concordance was reached soon after. The Carthage Cohort, one of Cybernetica's proudest armies, would march with the XVII Legion, and dwell in the bowels of their vessels.
Xi-Nu 73 had not been present at the time this ancient oath was sworn - had not even been flesh-born back then - and this contributed to his doubts about the tale's veracity. The reason it never cogitated as pure truth to Xi-Nu's perceptions was simple: despite how useful the Carthage Cohort was to the Word Bearers Legion, the Astartes simply did not like the Mechanicum element in their midst. Relations were closer to cold than cordial, even taking the Mechanicum's inhumanity into consideration.
It was said o |
t been present at the time this ancient oath was sworn - had not even been flesh-born back then - and this contributed to his doubts about the tale's veracity. The reason it never cogitated as pure truth to Xi-Nu's perceptions was simple: despite how useful the Carthage Cohort was to the Word Bearers Legion, the Astartes simply did not like the Mechanicum element in their midst. Relations were closer to cold than cordial, even taking the Mechanicum's inhumanity into consideration.
It was said other Legions worked more harmoniously with the Martian Cybernetica cult, especially the blessed Iron Hands and unbreakable Iron Warriors - both of whom enjoyed the Mechanicum's immense (and immensely valuable) respect from the first days their forces joined together in the Terran Emperor's crusade.
But over time, Xi-Nu 73 - who had most humbly risen to oversee a maniple of four robots - came to realise that the Word Bearers were not like their Astartes brothers. It was an opinion shared by others of his rank, on those increasingly rare occasions he established contact with them.
As the fleets moved farther and farther apart since the last grand gathering at Colchis three years before, so too did contact between the Carthage maniples wane. Vox-signals would never reach across such distances. Even astropathy was rumoured to be becoming unreliable - not that Xi-Nu 73 had access to such a talent.
Xi-Nu 73's principal problem where the Word Bearers were concerned was their fundamental organic nature. In short, they were too human. They valued the flawed aspects of faith, focusing on the flesh and the soul, rather than transcendence through oneness with the Machine-God. They were fuelled by emotion, rather than logic, which affected their tactical decisions and their very goals in the Great Crusade.
Most tellingly of all, many of the Serrated Sun's warriors seemed uncomfortable around the Mechanicum adepts themselves, as if forever on the edge of voicing some accusation, or framing a grievous complaint.
Too human. That was the problem. Too emotional, too driven by instinctive faith and eloquent diction. Too human, resulting in distance between the factions.
The exception to this distance was a source of disquiet for Xi-Nu 73, because the exception was his own Conqueror Primus.
Incarnadine, blessings upon its brave soul, was sincerely respected by the Word Bearers.
Indeed, they called it 'Brother'.
HE LED THE Astartes into the preparatory chamber, where his wards were undergoing the final rituals before reawakening. The three armoured machines stood in impassive silence, doted on by Mechanicum menials, all under Xi-Nu 73's command. Two of the robed attendants were lifting Vermillion's back-mounted lascannon, hefting it up along its greased runner track, testing the smoothness of motion as they brought it up to the firing position on the Cataphract's shoulder.
Sanguine, the gangly Crusader-class twin to Alizarin, was almost ready. The juddering clank of autoloaders filled the chamber as its shoulder cannon was fed fresh stores of ammunition. Servitors oiled its joints, only allowed near the war machine now that the vital work was complete.
Incarnadine was waiting for them.
That fact brought a stab of irritatingly human unease to Xi-Nu 73's thought processes. The robot's combat wetware was about to be installed, and then Incarnadine would be ready for deployment. But there it was: the anomalous reading in its brain patterns. An attention spike in the otherwise flat-lining rumble of its cognition. This flare of perception, along with the faintest adjustment of its visual receptors, only ever occurred in the presence of Word Bearers.
Like an animal instinctively recognising its kin, Incarnadine knew when warriors of the XVII Legion were near.
This was why Xi-Nu 73's pride was tainted. The robot's cortex shouldn't have allowed for this level of recognition without its combat wetware installed. It shouldn't be able to distinguish between targets and non-targets - seeing no difference between Astartes, human soldiers, aliens, or anything else.
In fact, it shouldn't be able to perceive anything at all beyond the presence of walls and floors, with the simple operational understanding not to crash into anything. And yet the robot had been waiting for this moment. Xi-Nu 73 tracked the glitch in Incarnadine's sensors as the Conqueror Primus recognised the Word Bearers before it.
'Incarnadine,' said Argel Tal, and the voice broke the adept's scrambled line of reasoning. The subcommander wore no helm, and Xi-Nu 73 saw the Astartes looking up at the towering machine. With no small reverence, the warrior unrolled a scroll of parchment, and began to read.
'As a warrior of the Seventeenth Legio Astartes, the Bearers of the Word, a brotherhood born of Colchis and born of Terra, do you swear to fight in the name of Lorgar - heart and soul, body and blood - until the world below, designated One-Three-Zero One-Nine, is brought to lawful compliance with the Imperium of Man?'
Incarnadine stood in silence. Argel Tal smiled, and didn't look away.
'Incarnadine,' said Xi-Nu 73 from his position to the side, 'swears the oath as it is written.'
The Astartes continued as if the adept wasn't even there. 'Incarnadine, your oath of moment is witnessed by your brothers...'
'Dagotal.'
'Torgal.'
'Malnor.'
'Xaphen.'
'...and affirmed by myself, Argel Tal, Subcommander of the Serrated Sun.' The captain affixed the scroll to Incarnadine's armour plating, mounting it on the hooks designed especially for this use. All five of the Astartes wore similar scrolls attached to their shoulder guards.
Xi-Nu 73's pride warred with his unfading irritation. Praise to the Omnissiah for the blessing of his own Conqueror Primus being accepted into an Astartes Legion's ranks, but curse the influence such a loyalty was having on its cortex.
The ritual completed, the Astartes saluted with their fists over their primary hearts, and made their way from the chamber. There'd been a time when the warriors would have made the sign of the aquila, but Xi-Nu 73 hadn't seen them perform the Imperial salute since the Legion's shaming three years before.
In the red-lit gloom of the chamber, the adept focused his tri-lens gaze on the hulking form of his favoured ward.
'Where do your loyalties lie, I wonder?'
Incarnadine didn't answer. It stood as it had for hours now: silently awaiting the next battle.
The ship shook again - even in orbit, the void around this new world was rich with warp energies, and occasional pulses of force brushed the ship's skin. Xi-Nu 73 had also stripped his brain function to deplete the fantastical outreaching of his human imagination, and yet the squealing of the storm against the hull sounded like... claws.
He filed the sound in his lobe archives, and went about his duties, only occasionally disturbed by the sound of nails clawing at the metal hull.
THE BLESSED LADY really needed to put some clothes on.
She reached blindly over the edge of her bed, her hand patting the floor, questing until she found her robe. Cyrene was slipping the garment over her head when she felt Arric's arms encircling her from behind.
'It's still early,' he said, breathing the words against her neck.
'Actually, I think you're already late. That wasn't the dawn chime, it was the signal for noon.'
'Don't joke,' he said, pulling her closer.
'I'm not joking.' Cyrene ran her fingers through her hair, ignoring his as they quested over her. 'Arric,' she said, 'I'm really not joking.'
He rolled out of bed with an 'Oh, shit...' before repeating the curse a number of times, in various languages.
Being in love with an officer could, at times, be an educational experience - especially ones that could swear in eighteen Gothic dialects.
'Shit,' he finished the tirade back where he started. 'I have to go. Where the hell is my sabre?'
She faced him without seeing him. 'I think it slid under the bed. I heard it scrape on the floor last night.'
'Where would I be without you?' Arric dragged the blade out from beneath the bed, and fastened the leather belt around his crumpled, unbuttoned uniform. 'I'll be back later,' he said.
'I know.'
'Planetfall today,' he said, as if it would somehow be news to her. The ship quivered around them, and she reached out to the wall, steadying herself.
'I know,' she said.
'Though with this storm...'
'I know,' she said again.
'How do I look?' he spoke the words with a grin, always enjoying this oldest of rituals between them. Usually she smiled back. Not this time.
'Like someone who is late for a meeting with fleet command. Now go.'
ARGEL TAL NODDED to Major Jesmetine as the human officer half-tumbled through the closing doors.
'I'm here,' he called out. 'I made it.'
His ochre uniform, marking him as a senior commander in the 54th Euchar Infantry, wouldn't pass muster on a parade ground without some serious tidying up first. His black hair was in a similar state, and he'd not shaved this morning, either.
He regarded the others gathered in the briefing room, where they all stood around an expansive central table. Forty men, women and Astartes (the latter, he smirkingly liked to call 'post-humans') turned to regard him in turn.
Above them, the chamber's illumination globes flickered as the ship shuddered again.
'Sorry,' said the major. 'I'm here now.'
Several heads shook, while irritated mutters broke out. The officer took one of the few places left at the table, next to a Word Bearer captain. The charged hum from the warrior's armour joints was ear-achingly loud up close. It made it a chore to hear the others' voices.
'Good of you to join us, Arric,' Fleet Commander Baloc Torvus said, scowling down the table at the breathless major. 'As I was saying-'
'My apologies,' the major interrupted again. 'The servitors on D deck are struggling with the... elevator... gyro-cogs. Something of a nightmare, really. Had to run the long way |
places left at the table, next to a Word Bearer captain. The charged hum from the warrior's armour joints was ear-achingly loud up close. It made it a chore to hear the others' voices.
'Good of you to join us, Arric,' Fleet Commander Baloc Torvus said, scowling down the table at the breathless major. 'As I was saying-'
'My apologies,' the major interrupted again. 'The servitors on D deck are struggling with the... elevator... gyro-cogs. Something of a nightmare, really. Had to run the long way.'
From across the chamber, the armoured figure of Chapter Master Deumos thudded a fist onto the table.
'Be quiet, you fool,' he grunted.
'Sorry, sir.' Arric saluted - the pre-Crusade fist over his chest, rather than the aquila.
Xi-Nu 73 turned his hooded head with a rattle of grinding gears. 'There is no component in the ship's construction matching the term "gyro-cog",' he noted.
Arric narrowed his eyes at the tech-adept. Thanks for that.
'I am aware,' the Word Bearer lord growled, 'that Major Jesmetine was lying through his teeth with very little skill. Torvus, get on with the details. We have a world to bring to compliance.'
Torvus began his summary, detailing land masses, population projections, and the disposition of forces. The people of 1301-12 were primitives, yet the entire Expeditionary Fleet was preparing for war: Army contingent, Astartes companies, Mechanicum forces - everything.
It all depended on first contact.
Arric listened to the things he'd already studied in the official reports. He caught the Word Bearer captain next to him glancing down.
'Did you comb your hair with your fingers?' Argel Tal asked.
The doors slid open before Arric could reply, but the retort would have been a rude one. Clad in ceremonial armour of chainmail and a breastplate of carved ivory, the primarch entered the war room.
'My friends, please accept the sincerest apologies for my untimely arrival.' Lorgar favoured them all with a beatific smile before taking his place at the head of the table. 'I trust all is in readiness for planetfall?'
The gathered commanders assured him that it was. Resplendent in the ceremonial armour of a Covenant warlord, Lorgar listened to their reports in turn.
'Sire,' one said, at the conclusion.
'Speak, Argel Tal.'
'One matter still troubles me. It has been three weeks now,' the captain said, ignoring the mutters that started up. 'Where is the Unending Reverence?'
Lorgar rested his golden hands on the central table, leaning forward. All present could see in his eyes how much the words cost him.
'It is stormlost. We will mourn the crew, and our brothers on board. But it is folly to hold out hope any longer.'
'Sire...' Argel Tal was far from placated. 'We will not even search for them? One vessel stormlost is a tragedy, but three... Aurelian, please, the Expedition is threatened. We must seek them.'
'How? In the warp?'
Another judder gripped the ship, this one lasting several moments. Lorgar smiled a downcast little smile, no doubt amused at the timing of the ship's renewed trembling. 'Even the aftershocks of this storm are savage. You wish to dive back into the warp to hunt three atoms in a whirlwind?'
'I call again for the astropaths to make the attempt,' said Argel Tal. 'If they can find their counterparts on the Reverence-'
'My son,' Lorgar shook his head. 'Your compassion does you great credit, but we cannot halt the Pilgrimage on account of one lost warship. The warp is a cruel mistress. How many vessels has the Imperium lost in its tides over the course of the Great Crusade? Hundreds? Perhaps even a thousand or more.'
Major Arric tapped a few buttons on his own data-slate. 'We're on the frontier, and we all know it. Reinforcements aren't coming our way, no matter how loud we shout for help. How regularly are we receiving word from other fleets now?'
'The time between contacts is rising exponentially,' said Phi-44. 'The last astropathic transmission from Lord Kor Phaeron's main fleet was four months ago.'
Xaphen spoke up now. 'The first captain's last message contained updated star charts showing the Legion's expansion to the Galactic Rim, and a list of compliances achieved. It also contained the sincerest gratitude for the eight thousand more words and three pict references to be added to their fleet's copies of the Book of Lorgar.'
The primarch chuckled, but said nothing.
Xaphen continued, 'The closest Imperial expedition to us is the 3,855th, almost a year's warp flight distant.'
'What Chapters lead the 3,855th?' asked Deumos.
'The Bloodied Visage,' Phi-44 confirmed, 'and the Crescent Moon. And Chaplain Xaphen is incorrect. The 3,855th Expeditionary Fleet is between thirteen and fifteen months distant, depending on the vagaries of the warp.'
Silence fell.
'A year,' said Lorgar. 'How far we have come, to serve as humanity's eyes in the dark. No other Imperials have spread themselves this far apart, nor travelled this far from Terra and its conquered territories.'
A year. Argel Tal was struck by the distance put into such terms. We are over a year's flight distant from our nearest brothers, and even farther from the Imperium's true edge.
'So we're well and truly alone,' Arric echoed the captain's thoughts, and the ship punctuated his words with another savage tremor.
'Sire,' Argel Tal began again.
'Peace, my son,' the primarch cut him off with a gentle lift of his hand. 'Master Delvir? Can you offer Captain Argel Tal the solace he seeks?'
The Master of Astropaths was a watery-eyed rake of a man, clad in a robe of colourless grey that hung off his shoulders in velvet waves. He regarded the room with a kicked dog's expression as he realised more and more faces were turning his way.
'Our auguries are... That is to say... Our senses are... I can hear the world we move towards. It's difficult to put into words.'
Lorgar cleared his throat to draw the man's attention. 'Master Delvir?'
'My lord?' the man asked in his whispery voice.
'You are among equals, here. Friends. We all sympathise with the pressures the storm has placed upon you. Do not be nervous or hesitant in explaining the details.'
Shosa Delvir, Master of Astropaths, bowed without much in the way of grace. But it was sincere. Lorgar returned the bow, not to same depth, but with a smile.
'Sometimes,' the astropath began slowly, 'mere chance is enough to bring an Imperial fleet to one of humanity's lost worlds. Blessed are those occasions. More often, we rely upon the few ancient star charts that endured the chaos of Long Night and the Unification Wars that ravaged Terra. But when you rely upon us - when you call upon the astropathic choir - I... I will explain it as best I can.'
'THAT,' ARGEL TAL watched his father writing the words down, 'was the first moment my blood ran cold. Anchored above the world, when the astropath told us how his kind saw through the storm.'
Lorgar nodded. 'It was the moment I first knew we were reaching the end of the Pilgrimage,' he said.
'There's truth in that,' the captain sighed.
No longer did their eyes meet as Argel Tal spoke. The delicate scratching of a feather quill on parchment provided the only accompaniment to Argel Tal's spoken words.
THE MASTER OF Astropaths only hesitated for a moment.
'We hear voices in the void,' he said. 'A world is a hive of sound, the buzzing of locusts or flies, but far, far in the distance. It is never easy to make out one world in the endless reaches of space. The Imperium is an ocean of silence, and only the most intense focus allows us to hear the hum of human sentience. Imagine yourselves beneath the water of a great sea. All sound is muted, while the silence is powerfully oppressive. Now try to listen for voices in the nothingness, when all you can hear is your own heartbeat.'
'Sire...' Deumos interrupted. 'Must we listen to this crude prose?'
Lorgar's answer was to press a golden finger to his smile. 'Let Master Delvir speak. I find his words enlightening.'
The astropath pressed on, avoiding any of their gazes. 'If you focus too hard on listening for voices, you will forget to swim. You'll drown. If you devote all your energy to swimming for the surface and breathing once more... you will hear none of the ocean's sounds.'
'You strive for balance,' said Argel Tal. 'That does not sound easy.'
'It is not, but no soul in this room can lay claim to an easy existence.' The astropath offered a respectful bow to the gathered warriors. Several acknowledged his respect with a salute. Argel Tal was one of them. He liked the scrawny little man.
'What has changed?' the captain asked. He felt the primarch's eyes upon him.
'This region of space is like no other we've seen in our travels. The warp is savage, and our ships are slaves to raging tides of aetheric energies.'
'We have all seen warp storms before,' said Lorgar. The glint in his grey eyes spoke volumes: he knew all of this, and was leading the astropath on, letting the psychic sensitive explain it to the fleet's commanders.
'This is different, sire. This storm has a voice. A million voices.'
It was safe to say he had the council's attention. Argel Tal tasted poison as he swallowed. On a whim, he keyed in an activation code onto the table's hololithic projector.
In flickering imagery, the region of space - zoomed out to display hundreds of suns and their systems - was beamed above the central table. It was impossible to miss what was wrong.
'This region here,' the astropath gestured. 'If the choir closes its eyes and reaches out with its secret senses... all we hear is screaming.'
The area was vast. Bigger than vast. It covered hundreds upon hundreds of solar systems, ugly even on the hololithic. The warp anomaly showed as a gaseous fog staining the stars, coiling down to a centre of roiling, boiling energy.
'When you all look at this,' said Arric Jesmetine, 'does anyone else see an eye? An eye in space?'
Many agreed. Lorgar did not.
'No,' the primarch said. 'I see |
ured. 'If the choir closes its eyes and reaches out with its secret senses... all we hear is screaming.'
The area was vast. Bigger than vast. It covered hundreds upon hundreds of solar systems, ugly even on the hololithic. The warp anomaly showed as a gaseous fog staining the stars, coiling down to a centre of roiling, boiling energy.
'When you all look at this,' said Arric Jesmetine, 'does anyone else see an eye? An eye in space?'
Many agreed. Lorgar did not.
'No,' the primarch said. 'I see a genesis. This is how galaxies appear when they are born. My brother Magnus showed me such things in the Hall of Leng, on fair Terra. The difference is that this... birth... is not physical. This is the ghost of a galaxy. You all see an eye, or a spiral. Both are right, both are wrong. This is the psychic imprint of some incredible stellar event. It was powerful enough to rip the void apart, letting warp space bleed into the corporeal galaxy.'
The astropath nodded, awed gratitude in his eyes as the primarch spoke the words he lacked himself.
'That is what we believe, sire. This is not merely a warp storm. This is the warp storm, and it has raged for so long that it now saturates physical reality. The entire region is both space and unspace. Warp and reality, all at once.'
'Something...' Lorgar stared at the bruised heavens, his gaze distant. 'This is an abortion. Something was almost born here.'
Argel Tal cleared his throat. 'Sire?'
'It's nothing, my son. Just a fleeting thought. Please continue, Master Delvir.'
The astropath had little more to say. 'The storms that have wracked our journeys these last weeks emanate from this region. Around 1301-12, space is relatively stable. But think of the storm we endured to reach this point of stability. That storm blankets thousands of star systems around us. If we break from this narrow corridor, the energies playing out would be...'
He trailed off. Lorgar looked at him sharply. 'Speak,' the primarch commanded.
'An old Terran term, sire. I would have said the storm is apocalyptic.'
'What does that mean?' asked Argel Tal.
It was Xaphen that answered. 'Damnation. The end of everything. A very, very old legend.' The thought seemed to amuse him.
'If the storm is nothing but screaming,' Argel Tal turned to Delvir, 'then how did we find this world? How could you hear the life upon it?'
The astropath took a trembling breath. 'Because something on the world below us screams even louder.'
'Something,' the captain said. 'You did not say "someone".'
The robed man nodded. 'Do not ask me to explain, for I cannot. It sounds human, but is not. The way you would hear another warrior's accent and know him to be from another part of your home world, the astropathic choir hears something inhuman screaming in human tongues.'
Lorgar cut off the discussion with a motion of his hand. 'This region is unmapped and unnamed. What vessels were lost in the journey through the storm?'
Phi-44 answered before the fleetmaster could. 'The Unending Reverence, the Gregorian and the Shield of Scarus.'
The Word Bearers present inclined their heads in respect. The Shield had been the strike cruiser of their own Captain Scarus and his 52nd Company. Their loss was a savage blow to the Serrated Sun, finding itself at two-thirds strength purely by the warp's fickle winds.
'Very well,' said Lorgar. 'Ensure all stellar cartography is updated, with records sent back to Terra. This region is hereafter known as Scarus Sector.'
'Will we make planetfall, sire?' This from Deumos.
With infinite care, the primarch took a rolled parchment from a wooden tube at his belt. He unrolled it with a precious lack of haste, and finally turned it to face them all. On the papyrus scroll, a spiralling stain was sketched in charcoal. Everyone recognised it immediately. It was already before them - the stain across the stars.
As the commanders watched, a vicious shiver ran through the ship. Emergency lighting stained all vision red for several seconds, and the hololithic winked out of existence. Argel Tal re-keyed the activation code as the lights returned.
The image flared back into jagged, unreliable life.
'Bitch of a storm,' Major Jesmetine muttered. A few quiet agreements were all the response he got.
'This is drawn from memory,' said Lorgar, meeting their eyes in turn. 'But my Word Bearers will recognise it.'
'The empyrean,' the Legion officers said at once.
'The Gate of Heaven,' Xaphen amended, 'from the old scrolls.'
'We were summoned here,' Lorgar said, his voice low and clear and unbroken by doubt's shadow. 'Something called out to our astropathic choir through the storm. Something wanted us here, and something awaits us on the planet below.'
The astropath broke decorum, possibly for the first time in his quiet and sheltered life. 'How... how can you know that?' he stammered the words through pale lips.
Lorgar let the scroll fall onto the table. Something like anger burned behind his eyes.
'Because I hear the screaming, too. And it is not wordless. Something on the world beneath us is crying out my name into the psychic storm.'
FOURTEEN
Violet Eyes
Two Voices
Answers
ARGEL TAL LOOKED at his reflection in the cup of water. Thin fingers touched the stark geography of his face. It was like stroking a skull.
Lorgar didn't look up from writing.
'Planetfall,' said the captain.
VIOLET EYES.
It was only apparent deviation from the purestrain human breed. With violet eyes, the people stared at the emissaries from the stars. Barbarians, dressed in rags and wielding spears tipped by flint blades, confronted Lorgar and his sons.
And yet, the primitives showed little fear. They approached the Word Bearers' landing site as a disjointed horde, divided by tribes, each host carrying flayed-skin banners and animal bone totems denoting their allegiance to the spirits and devils of their world's faith.
Lorgar had taken a small host to make first contact with the humans of 1301-12. The rest of the fleet remained ready in the heavens above, but Lorgar preferred to orchestrate first contact in more humble ways.
At his side stood Deumos, Master of the Serrated Sun, with the captains Argel Tal and Tsar Quorel of the Seventh and Thirty-Ninth Companies respectively. Both captains brought their Chaplains, who in turn stood with their crozius mauls drawn. Behind them, one figure stood skeletally slender, clad in a hooded robe. Three mechanical eyes peered out from the cowl as Xi-Nu 73 watched proceedings taking place. At his side, Incarnadine waited motionless, exuding threat without moving a gear.
Only one figure stood apart from the pack; clad in gold, bearing a spear of exquisite craftsmanship. Vendatha, the Custodian. Aquillon would not be dissuaded from one of his brothers joining them. The Occuli Imperator made it a point for at least one of his warriors to always accompany the primarch on incidents of first contact.
The Custodian's red helmet crest fluttered in the wind, as did the parchment scrolls bound to the Word Bearers' armour. He stood closest to Argel Tal. In all Vendatha's time with the fleet, no other Astartes present had showed him - or the other Custodes - the ghost of respect, let alone an offer of friendship.
At their backs, a Legion Thunderhawk sat at rest - traditional granite-grey, for Lorgar's golden Stormbird remained with the 47th Expedition. The primarch didn't miss it, even three years since last setting eyes upon it. The gunship's ostentation had always reeked more of gaudiness than grandeur. Let the preening Fulgrim adorn his war machines like works of art. Lorgar's tastes ran to less puerile pursuits.
'Their eyes,' said Xaphen. 'Every one of them has violet irises.'
'Look up,' the primarch spoke softly.
Xaphen obeyed. They all did. The warp storm wracking the region shrouded most of the night sky, a great spiral stain of reds and purples staring down like an unblinking eye.
'The storm?' Vendatha asked. 'Their eyes are violet because of the storm?'
Lorgar nodded. 'It has changed them.'
Xaphen rested his crozius on his shoulder as he still stared into the sky. 'I know the warp can infect psychics with the flesh-change, if their minds are not strong enough. But normal humans?'
'They are impure,' Vendatha interrupted. 'These barbarians are mutants...' he gestured with his spear at the approaching tribes, '...and they must be destroyed.'
Argel Tal glanced to his left, where the Custodian stood with his halberd lowered. 'Does this not fascinate you, Ven? We stand on a world at the edge of the greatest warp storm ever seen, and its population comes to us with eyes the same colour as the tortured void. How can you damn that before asking why it happens?'
'Impurity is its own answer,' said the golden warrior. He refused to be drawn into debate. 'Primarch Lorgar, we must cleanse this world.'
Lorgar didn't look at the Custodian. He merely sighed before speaking.
'I will meet these people, and I will judge their lives myself. Pure, impure, right and wrong. All I want is answers.'
'They are impure.'
'I am not slaughtering the population of an entire world because my father's war hound whined at the colour of their eyes.'
'The Occuli Imperator will hear of this,' Vendatha promised. 'As will the Emperor, beloved by all.'
The primarch took a last look at the blazing sky. 'Neither the Emperor, nor the Imperium, will ever forget what we learn here. You have my word on that, Custodian Vendatha.'
THE FIRST OF the barbarians approached.
Draped around her shoulders was a cloak of discoloured peach-brown, heavy like bad leather, bound by crude black stitching. Her eyes, that beautiful and disquieting violet, were ringed by white paint, daubed in tribal runes over her face. The symbols meant nothing to Vendatha.
But the cloak did.
'Degenerates...' the Custodian hissed over a closed vox-channel. 'That is human skin. Dried, cured, worn like a cloak of honour.'
'I know,' Argel Tal replied. 'Lo |
FIRST OF the barbarians approached.
Draped around her shoulders was a cloak of discoloured peach-brown, heavy like bad leather, bound by crude black stitching. Her eyes, that beautiful and disquieting violet, were ringed by white paint, daubed in tribal runes over her face. The symbols meant nothing to Vendatha.
But the cloak did.
'Degenerates...' the Custodian hissed over a closed vox-channel. 'That is human skin. Dried, cured, worn like a cloak of honour.'
'I know,' Argel Tal replied. 'Lower your weapon, Ven.'
'How can Lorgar deal with these creatures? Flayers. Primitives. Mutants. They coat their skin in meaningless hieroglyphs.'
'They're not meaningless,' said the captain.
'You can read those runes?'
'Of course,' Argel Tal sounded distracted. 'It's Colchisian.'
'What? What does it say?'
The Word Bearer didn't answer.
LORGAR INCLINED HIS head in respectful greeting.
The barbarian leader, at the head of over a hundred ragged people dressed in similar rags and armour of disquieting 'leather', showed no trepidation at all. More tribes were still converging from across the plainsland, but they held back, perhaps in deference to the young woman with the raven hair.
Skulls tied to her belt rattled as she moved. Despite reaching the primarch's waist, she seemed utterly at ease as she lifted her mutated eyes to meet the giant's own.
When she spoke, a heavy accent and clipped syllables couldn't disguise the language completely. It had come far from its proto-Gothic roots, but the Imperials recognised it, some with greater ease than others.
'Greetings,' the primitive said. 'We have been waiting for you, Lorgar Aurelian.'
The primarch let none of his surprise show. 'You know my name, and you speak Colchisian.'
The young woman nodded, seeming to muse on the primarch's deep intonation, rather than agreeing with Lorgar's words. 'We have waited many years. Now you walk upon our soil at last. This night was foretold. Look west and east and south and north. The tribes come. Our god-talkers demanded it, and the warchiefs obeyed. Warchiefs always heed the shaman-kind. Their voices are the voices of the gods.'
The primarch watched the crowd for signs of such respected tribal elders. 'How is it that you speak the tongue of my home world?' he asked their leader.
'I speak the tongue of my home world,' the woman replied. 'You speak it, also.'
Despite the burning skies and the surprises the girl brought, Lorgar smiled at the stalemate.
'I am Lorgar, as you foresaw, though only my sons call me Aurelian.'
'Lorgar. A blessed name. The favoured son of the True Pantheon.'
Through great effort, the primarch kept his voice light. No stray nuance could allow this first contact to go wrong. Control was everything, all that mattered.
'I do not have four fathers, my friend, and I am not of woman born. I am a son to the Emperor of Man, and no other.'
She laughed, the melody of the sound stolen by the blowing wind.
'Sons can be adopted, not merely born. Sons can be raised, not merely bred. You are the favoured son of the Four. Your first father scorned you, but your four fathers are proud. So very proud. The god-talkers tell us this, and they only speak truths.'
Lorgar's casual facade was close to cracking now. The Word Bearers sensed it, even if the humans did not.
'Who are you?' he asked.
'I am Ingethel the Chosen,' she smiled, all innocence and kindness. 'Soon, Ingethel the Ascended. I am your guide, anointed by the gods.' The barbarian woman gestured at the plain, as if it encapsulated the world itself. More tellingly, she gestured to the warp-wracked void above.
'And this world,' she spread her painted hands in benevolence, 'is Cadia.'
IT WAS SOMETHING of a unique first contact.
Never before had the Imperials been expected like this. Never before had they been greeted by a primitive culture that not only welcomed them, its people showed no fear at all in the face of giant armoured warriors striding through their midst. The Thunderhawk attracted some curiosity, though the primarch had warned Ingethel that the vehicle's weapons were active, manned by Legion servitors who would open fire if the Cadians drew too close.
Ingethel waved the curious men and women away from the Word Bearers gunship. The language she spoke was quick and flourishing, with a wealth of unnecessary words bolstering every sentence. Only when she addressed Lorgar and his retinue did she seem to strip the language down to its core, striving for brevity and clarity, evidently speaking Colchisian rather than Cadian.
LORGAR STOPPED HIS son's words with a concerned glance.
'You are snarling as you speak,' the primarch said.
'It is unintentional, sire.'
'I know. Your voice is as divided as your soul. I can see the latter with my psychic sense - two faces stare out at me, four eyes and two smiles. None would ever know of it, save perhaps my brother Magnus. But to know the truth, one has only to listen. Mortal ears will know of your affliction, Argel Tal. You must learn to hide it better.'
The captain hesitated. 'I was under the belief that I'd be destroyed after telling you all of this.'
'That is a possibility, my son. But I would take no pleasure in seeing you dead.'
'Will the Serrated Sun be purged from Legion records?'
Before speaking, Lorgar trickled fine, powdery sand onto the parchment, helping to dry the inked words he'd written thus far.
'Why would you ask that?'
'Because where once three hundred warriors once stood loyal, now barely a hundred remain alive. Of the three companies, one remains whole. Deumos is dead, slain upon Cadia. A hundred of our brothers were stormlost, taken by the warp on the Shield of Scarus. And now my company returns to you broken and... changed.'
'The Serrated Sun will always be a lesson for the Legion,' said Lorgar, 'no matter how the Pilgrimage ends. Some things must never be forgotten.'
Argel Tal took a breath. In the exhalation was a whispering sound. Something was laughing.
'I do not wish to speak of Cadia, sire. You already know everything I know that transpired on the surface. The nights of discussions with Ingethel and the tribal elders. The comparisons of our star charts with their crude maps of the heavens. Their pictographs of the Eye of Terror, and how the Cadians' images of the storm matched the empyrean from our scrolls of the Old Faith.' Argel Tal laughed, and the sound lacked any humour. 'As if we needed more evidence.'
Lorgar was watching him closely.
'What, sire?'
'The storm that blights this subsector. You called it the Eye of Terror.'
Argel Tal froze. 'That... Yes. That's what it will come to be called. When it opens wider across the void, when the trembling Imperium sees it as the galaxy's own hell. A void-sailors' dramatic name for the greatest mystery of the deep. It will be scrawled onto maps and digitally inscribed into stellar cartography databanks. Humanity will give it that name, as a child names its own simple fears.'
'Argel Tal.'
'Sire?'
'Who is speaking to me now? That is not your voice.'
The captain opened his eyes. He didn't recall closing them.
'It has no name.'
Lorgar didn't answer at once. 'I believe it does. It has identity, as strong as yours. But it slumbers. I sense its dissipation within you. You absorb it into the cells of your body like...' here, he paused again. Argel Tal had often wondered what it was like to see all life on every possible level, even the genetic one - the lives and deaths of billions of barely measurable cells. Could all primarchs perceive thus? Merely his own? He had no idea.
'Forgive me, sire,' he said to Lorgar. 'I will keep my eyes open.'
Lorgar's breathing quickened. No unaugmented man would be able to discern the difference in the primarch's heartbeat, but Argel Tal's senses were keener than a human's by many degrees. In truth, they were keener than Astartes perception now. He could hear the tiniest creak-stresses in the metal walls of his chamber. The guards' breathing outside the sealed bulkhead door. The skittering whisper of an insect's legs in the ventilation duct.
He'd felt this acuity before, back on Orfeo's Lament, during the seven months of drift-sailing in their bid to escape the Eye. The feeling had come many times, in truth, but none as strongly as when only a brother's blood quenched his thirst.
'I see two souls at war within you, and the violence behind your eyes. Yet I wonder,' the primarch confessed, 'if you are cursed or blessed.'
Argel Tal grinned, showing too many teeth. It wasn't his smile. 'The difference between gods and daemons depends largely upon where one stands at the time.'
Lorgar wrote the words down.
'Speak to me of the last night on Cadia,' he said. 'After the religious debates and the tribal gatherings. I have no interest in repeating weeks of research and rituals performed in our honour. The fleet's data-core is swollen with evidence that this world, like so many others, shares unity with the Old Faith.'
Argel Tal licked his teeth. It still wasn't his smile. 'None so close.'
'No. None as close as Cadia.'
'What do you wish to know, Lorgar?'
Here, the primarch paused, hearing his name leave his son's lips with such casual disregard. 'Who are you?' he asked, neither threatened nor fearful, but not quite at ease.
'We. I. We are Argel Tal. I. I am Argel Tal.'
'You speak in two voices.'
'I am Argel Tal,' the captain said through clenched teeth. 'Ask what you will, sire. I have nothing to hide.'
'The last night on Cadia,' said Lorgar. 'The night Ingethel was consecrated.'
'THIS IS HEATHEN sorcery,' said Vendatha.
'I don't believe in sorcery,' Argel Tal said back. 'And neither should you.'
Their voices echoed in the temple chamber, which was no more than a roughly-hewn room in the endless network of subterranean caverns. With no structures of human craft on the face of Cadia, the Temple of the Eye was far less grand than its name suggested. Beneath the northern plains where the |
ide.'
'The last night on Cadia,' said Lorgar. 'The night Ingethel was consecrated.'
'THIS IS HEATHEN sorcery,' said Vendatha.
'I don't believe in sorcery,' Argel Tal said back. 'And neither should you.'
Their voices echoed in the temple chamber, which was no more than a roughly-hewn room in the endless network of subterranean caverns. With no structures of human craft on the face of Cadia, the Temple of the Eye was far less grand than its name suggested. Beneath the northern plains where the Legion had made planetfall, the caverns and underground rivers formed a natural basilica.
'This world is a paradise,' Vendatha remarked. 'It beggars belief that so many tribes come to dwell here in these deadlands.'
Argel Tal had heard this complaint before. Vendatha, in his blunt and stoic wisdom, had seen the orbital picts as often as the Word Bearer captain had. Cadia was a planet of temperate forests, expansive meadows, healthy oceans and arable land. Yet here, in an uninspiring corner of the northern hemisphere, the vagabond population gathered en masse to eke out a living on the arid plains.
Xaphen walked with Argel Tal and the Custodian down the stone corridor. The temple's construction was as flimsy as could be expected from a culture of primitives - the sloping walls showed the stone-scars of miners' picks and other digging tools - but the chambers weren't entirely devoid of decoration. Pictographs and hieroglyphs covered every wall, replete with symbols, charcoal murals and etched sigils that made little sense to Vendatha.
In truth, it hurt his eyes to look at many of them. Uneven, jagged stars were scrawled everywhere, as well as long mantras in a meaningless tongue, their sentence structure clearly indicative of verse. Sketches of the Great Eye, as the Cadians named the storm above, were also commonplace.
Torches of bundled sticks burned in wall sconces at irregular intervals, making the stone hallways misty with smoke. All in all, Vendatha had been to many more pleasant places. A pox on Aquillon for volunteering him to descend to the surface.
'It is not difficult to comprehend why they come here, when you understand faith,' said the Chaplain.
'Faith is a fiction,' Vendatha snorted.
Argel Tal had never wagered in his life - to gamble was against the Legion's monastic code; it showed a reverence for worldly wealth which was meaningless to all pure-hearted warriors - but he would have been safe to gamble that the words Vendatha spoke most often were: 'Faith is a fiction'.
'Faith,' said Argel Tal, 'means different things to different beings.' It was a weak attempt to sunder the argument he could feel building between the other two, and it failed, just as he'd suspected it would.
'Faith is a fiction,' Vendatha repeated, but Xaphen went on, warming to his captive audience.
'Faith is why these people come here. It is why their temple stands at this spot. The stars are all in the right alignment at this place, and they believe it aids their rituals. The constellations mark the gods' homes in the sky.'
'Heathen magic,' Vendatha said again, getting annoyed now.
'Pre-Imperial Colchis was the same, you know.' Xaphen wouldn't let up. 'These rites are little different to the ones performed in the generations before Lorgar's arrival. Colchisians have always invested great significance in the stars.'
Vendatha shook his head. 'Do not add mindless superstition to the list of grievances I have against you, Chaplain.'
'Not now, Ven.' Argel Tal was in no mood for the two of them to go through yet another debate on the nature of the human psyche and the corruption of religion. 'Please, not now.'
While Argel Tal had slowly grown closer to the Custodes contingent in the past three years, often training his sword work with them in the practice cages, Xaphen seemed to take a kind of wicked delight in baiting them at every turn. Philosophical arguments almost always ended with Vendatha or Aquillon needing to leave the chamber before they struck the Chaplain. In turn, Xaphen counted these moments as great personal victories, and had an old man's cackle about the whole thing.
'If the stars are so precious to them,' Vendatha's voice was crackling through his helm's speakers, 'then why do they hide beneath the earth?'
'Why don't you ask them tonight?' Xaphen smiled.
The three of them walked on, and the silence lasted for several blessed moments.
'I hear chanting,' the Custodian sighed. 'By the Emperor, this is madness.'
Argel Tal heard it, too. The levels below them extended deep into the earth, but the thick stone carried sound with deceptive ease. To walk in the temple-caverns was to hear laughter, footsteps, prayers and weeping - at all times of day and night.
On one of those lower levels, the ritual was underway.
'I have watched you clutch at parchments and babble to the Cadians in their own tongue for weeks now.'
'It's Colchisian,' Argel Tal said, distracted, as he ran his gauntleted fingers along a charcoal depiction of what looked like the primarch. The image was crude, but showed a figure clad in a robe, next to another figure in mail armour, with one gaping eye. They stood atop a tower, in a field of shaded flowers.
This wasn't the first such image Argel Tal had seen, yet they never failed to capture his interest. Serfs from the fleet had landed in huge numbers, set with the tasks of exploring the Cadian caves and taking pict references of every marking they found.
'Is this is how your Legion repents for failing the Emperor?' Vendatha asked. 'After so many compliances, I'd dared to perceive you all in a new light. Monarchia was a past sin. Even Aquillon believed the same. And now we come here, and everything unravels as you stutter to these wretches in alien speech.'
'It's Colchisian,' Argel Tal said, refusing to be riled.
'I may not be fluent in your monotonous tongue,' said Vendatha, 'but I know enough. What leaves the Cadians' lips is not Colchisian. Nor are these writings. This resembles nothing else. Its roots aren't even in proto-Gothic.'
'It's Colchisian,' Argel Tal said again. 'It's archaic, but it is Colchisian.'
Vendatha let the old argument go. Aquillon had already been informed, and had travelled down to the surface to see everything for himself. The Custodes leader was fluent in Colchisian, yet struggled with the words just as Vendatha did. The cognitive servitors brought down from orbit met with the same difficulties - no linguistic decoders could make sense of the runic language.
'Perhaps,' ventured Xaphen, 'we are a chosen Legion. Only those of Lorgar Aurelian's blood may speak and read this holiest of tongues.'
'You would delight in that being the truth, wouldn't you?' Vendatha snorted.
Xaphen just smiled in reply.
The Custodian's mood was black in the wake of his most recent failures to decipher the scrawls on these cave walls.
'What does this say?' he indicated a random verse written upon the uneven rock wall.
Argel Tal glanced at the prose, seeing more of the poetry he'd come to expect here: simple, more like a form of clumsy lyric than reverent chanting. Knowing the Cadians' god-talkers, this was likely the work of a shaman, maddened with hallucinogenic narcotics, spilling his stream of consciousness onto the sacred walls.
'...we offer praise to those who do,
That they might turn their gaze our way,
And gift us with the boon of pain,
To turn the galaxy red with blood,
And feed the hunger of the gods.'
'IT'S JUST MORE bad poetry,' he said to Vendatha.
'I cannot read a single word.'
'It's very artless,' Xaphen smiled. 'You're not missing any insight into an advanced culture.'
'It doesn't concern you that I cannot read this?' the Custodian pressed.
'I have no answer for you,' snapped Argel Tal. 'It's the feverish etchings of a long-dead shaman. It ties in to the Cadian belief in other gods, but its meaning is as lost on me as it is on you. I know nothing more.'
'Were the weeks spent with the primitives in their tent-city somehow not enough, Argel Tal? Now you must attend the false worship of ignorant barbarians?'
'You are giving me a headache, Ven,' said Argel Tal, barely listening. His retinal display tracked a digital counter of the last time he'd slept. Over four days now. The conclaves with the Cadians ate up a great deal of time, as the Word Bearers pored over the humans' scriptures and discussed their faith's ties to the Old Ways of Colchis. Lorgar and the Chaplains were bearing the brunt of the ambassadorial and research efforts, but Argel Tal found his time occupied with plenty of tribal leaders pleading for his attention.
'I confess,' said Vendatha, 'that I'd hoped the Legion would avoid tonight's... foolishness.'
'The primarch ordered our presence,' Xaphen replied. 'So we will be present.' As the three warriors descended down more rough stone steps, the sound of distant drums grew more resonant.
'You have agreed to witness these degenerates perform a ritual without knowing what they intend.'
'I know what they intend,' Xaphen gestured at the walls. 'It is written everywhere, plain for all to see.' Before Vendatha could answer, the Chaplain added something that Argel Tal hadn't heard before. 'The Cadians have promised us an answer tonight.'
'To what?' both the Custodian and the captain asked as one.
'To what was screaming the primarch's name in the storm.'
ARGEL TAL CLENCHED his fist, but there was little anger in the gesture. He seemed content to watch the play of his muscles and the bones of his fingers working in natural, biological unity.
'Deumos,' he said. 'It was not easy to see him die.'
The primarch's quill stopped scratching at the parchment. 'Do you mourn him?'
'I did for a time, sire. But he has been dead over half a year to me. What I've seen since has made all previous revelations seem trivial.'
'You are snarling again.'
Argel Tal grunted acknowledgement, but had no desire to speak of it. 'The consecration,' he said instead.
THE |
play of his muscles and the bones of his fingers working in natural, biological unity.
'Deumos,' he said. 'It was not easy to see him die.'
The primarch's quill stopped scratching at the parchment. 'Do you mourn him?'
'I did for a time, sire. But he has been dead over half a year to me. What I've seen since has made all previous revelations seem trivial.'
'You are snarling again.'
Argel Tal grunted acknowledgement, but had no desire to speak of it. 'The consecration,' he said instead.
THE CAPTAIN WAS surprised when he first entered the main cavern, which wasn't quite the same as being impressed.
It was certainly of considerable size, and given that the Cadians' technology was somewhere in the region of Terra's long-forgotten Age of Stone, it had likely taken years to carve out the subterranean chamber and etch the murals, symbols and verses upon the walls and floors.
An underground river ran in a rushing torrent below dozens upon dozens of arched stone bridges. The curving walls were lit by more smoky torches, casting myriad silhouettes across the cavern that danced in frantic abandon to the sound of the drums.
A central island formed a hub for the bridges to meet in the middle. Here, naked in the firelight, her pale skin painted with twisted runes, was Ingethel. For the ghost of a moment, the symbols tattooed on her body drew Argel Tal's eyes. He recognised them all immediately, for each sigil was a stylised representation of a constellation drawn right from the night skies of Colchis. The Serrated Sun encircled the girl's navel in blue ink.
Drummers surrounded her in a ring, beating leathery skins with animal bones. Thirty in all - their harmonic pounding like the world's own beating heart. Hundreds and hundreds of Cadians lined the outer walls and walkways, all watching the performance as it was underway. Many chanted in praise of their heathen gods.
The alkaline smells of pure water, human sweat and ancient stone were almost overpowering, but Argel Tal still scented blood before he saw its source. Sensing his urgency, his visor tracked and zoomed across the scene. In the shadowed edge of the central ring, ten spears reached up from the ground.
The bases of nine of the wooden spears were streaked with blood and shit, forming sick pools on the stone. The spears themselves bore human fruit: each of the nine stakes played host to a tribesman - all impaled, all dead. The speartips thrust up through the dead men's open mouths.
'This cannot be allowed to continue,' said Vendatha. Disbelief softened his voice.
And this time, Argel Tal agreed with him.
Ingethel danced on, her lithe figure silhouetted into blackness by the bright fires behind her. At the heart of it all, not far from the maiden's undulating form, Lorgar towered above every other living being. He watched in silence with his arms crossed over his chest, his features masked by a raised hood.
Deumos stood by the robed primarch's side, sweating in full battle armour. Captain Tsar Quorel and his Chaplain, Rikus, stood way behind. Both wore their helms. Both were watching the impaling spears, rather than the dancing human girl.
'Brother,' Argel Tal voxed to his fellow captain, 'what blasphemy have we intruded upon?'
Tsar Quorel's tone betrayed his own unease. 'When we arrived, the woman was as you see her, and the primarch stood here watching. The atrocities on the spears were already committed. We saw as you see now.'
Argel Tal led Xaphen and Vendatha over a stone walkway, approaching the primarch. Cadians scattered like vermin before a pack of hunting dogs, bowing, scraping, reaching out with shaking fingers to touch the Colchisian runes engraved on their armour.
'Sire?' Argel Tal asked. 'What is all this?'
Lorgar didn't look away from Ingethel. Her dance seemed carnal to Argel Tal's inexpert eyes, as if the maiden was mating with some unseen creature as part of her performance.
'Sire?' Argel Tal repeated, and the primarch glanced his way at last. Ingethel's shadow danced across his eyes, reflected there by the firelight.
'The Cadians believe this ritual will allow their gods to manifest among us.' His voice was as low as the drums.
'You allowed them to do this?' He stepped closer, showing more disrespect to his gene-sire than he ever had in his life, for his hands fell to rest upon his sheathed swords. 'You watched them commit human sacrifice?'
The primarch took no offence at his son's boldness. In truth, he seemed not to notice it. 'The blood offerings were made before I was invited into the sacred chamber.'
'Yet you are still taking part. You tolerate this. Your silence endorses this barbarism.'
Lorgar turned back to watch the girl's dance, which grew ever more frantic. Perhaps an edge of doubt marred his flawless features. Perhaps it was simply the maiden's shadow flickering over the primarch's face.
'This is no different to the rituals practised on Colchis only decades before your birth, captain. This is the Old Faith in all its theatrical glory.'
'This is an abomination,' Argel Tal took another step closer.
'All I want,' Lorgar enunciated each word with patient care, 'is an answer.'
Before them, Ingethel slowed in her whirling dance. Her tattooed skin was a living, sweating devotion to the Word Bearers' Chapters and the Colchisian night skies from whence they drew their names.
'It is time,' she said to Lorgar in a hoarse, breathless voice. 'It is time for the tenth sacrifice.'
The primarch tilted his head down at the girl, not quite a concession. 'And what is the tenth sacrifice?'
'The tenth sacrifice must come from the seeker. He chooses the slain. It is the final consecration.'
Lorgar drew breath to answer, but was denied the chance to speak.
A sinister crackle came into waspish life - all recognised the snapping buzz of a power weapon going live. Vendatha lowered his guardian spear, aiming the blade and bolter at Lorgar's heart.
'In the Emperor's name,' said the Custodian, 'this ends now.'
FIFTEEN
Sacrifice
Baptism of Blood
Unworthy Truths
'BY THE AUTHORITY invested in me by the Emperor of Mankind, I do judge thee a traitor to the Imperium.'
Lorgar watched Vendatha, his benign expression unchanging all the while.
'Is that so?' asked the primarch.
'Don't do this,' said Argel Tal. 'Ven, please, do not do this.'
Vendatha didn't take his eyes from Lorgar. The golden spire-helm faced forward, red eye lenses catching the flames' reflection. Around them all, the drums were starting to slow and fall quiet.
'If any of you reach for a weapon, this becomes an execution, not an arrest.'
The Word Bearers remained frozen. Some risks weren't worth taking.
'Lorgar,' whispered Ingethel. 'The ritual must not be interrupted. The wrath of the gods will-'
'Be silent, witch,' Vendatha said. 'You have said enough already. Lorgar, Seventeenth Son of the Emperor, do you yield to righteous authority and give your oath to abandon this den of heathen belief? Do you vow to return at once to Terra and submit to the Emperor's judgement?'
'No,' the primarch spoke softly. 'I do not.'
'Then you leave me no choice.'
'There is always a choice,' said Argel Tal.
Vendatha ignored the captain's plea. He reached for the scrollwork etched into his ornate bracer, and pushed one of the mother-of-pearl buttons inlaid in the decoration.
Nothing happened.
He pressed the button again.
Nothing continued to happen.
The Custodian took a step backwards as the Word Bearers very, very slowly drew their weapons. The Chaplains unlimbered their crozius mauls. Tsar Quorel and Deumos raised their bolters, and Argel Tal unsheathed the swords of red iron.
'I think you will find,' the primarch smiled, 'that your teleport signal has been blocked since you entered this chamber. Just a precautionary measure we took, you understand? Aquillon and your brothers will not be appearing to aid you. They will never even know you needed them.'
'I confess I had not anticipated this,' Vendatha said. 'Well done, Lorgar.'
'It's not too late, Ven.' Argel Tal raised his swords en garde. 'Lower your weapon and we can end this without crossing the line.'
'Great One...' Ingethel whined. 'The ritual...'
'I said be silent, witch,' snapped Vendatha.
Lorgar sighed, as if a great disappointment settled upon his shoulders. 'Decide now, Custodian Vendatha, how best to serve my father's Imperium. Do you flee, escaping this chamber, and bring a truth you don't even understand to your brothers in orbit? Or do you shoot me now, and rid the galaxy of its only chance at enlightenment?'
'The choice you offer is no choice at all,' Vendatha said.
Argel Tal moved first, launching forward as the cavern echoed with bolter fire.
VENDATHA WAS NOT a fool. He knew the odds of surviving the next few moments were slim, and he knew a primarch's reflexes were the peak of biological possibility, faster than even his own, which bordered on the preternatural.
But Lorgar was at ease, his muscles loose. He actually expected his offer of truce to hold some weight, and that lapse in judgement was enough for Vendatha to take the chance. He pulled the haft-trigger, and his spear's underslung bolter cracked off a stream of rounds on full-auto.
Argel Tal saw it coming. The swords of red iron smashed the first three bolts aside, their power fields strong enough to detonate the shells as they streaked towards the primarch's heart. The explosions threw the captain to the ground, his grey armour scraping along the stone with the shriek of offended ceramite.
Vendatha was already in motion. The golden warrior leapt at the primarch, guardian spear spinning in his fists, an oath to the Emperor on his lips. Four Word Bearers blocked his path, and those four Word Bearers had to die.
Rikus was the first to fall. The Custodian's blade crunched into the soft, jointed armour at the Chaplain's throat, punching from the back of his neck. Tsar Quorel died next, decapitated with a buzzing sweep of the energise |
ng the stone with the shriek of offended ceramite.
Vendatha was already in motion. The golden warrior leapt at the primarch, guardian spear spinning in his fists, an oath to the Emperor on his lips. Four Word Bearers blocked his path, and those four Word Bearers had to die.
Rikus was the first to fall. The Custodian's blade crunched into the soft, jointed armour at the Chaplain's throat, punching from the back of his neck. Tsar Quorel died next, decapitated with a buzzing sweep of the energised blade, dead before he'd pulled his trigger.
Deumos managed to fire a stream of bolt shells, none of which connected. Vendatha weaved left, thudded the base of his spear into the Chapter Master's bolter, knocking it aside, and followed with a cutting swing that sheared both the Word Bearer's hands from his body, severing them at the forearms. Deumos had a scarce moment to draw in a stunned gasp before the spear sliced again, this time cleaving through his collarbone and spine, ripping his head free.
Vendatha span the blade in his hands, letting it come to rest with the tip and gun barrel aimed at Lorgar's heart again. Behind the Custodian, the bodies crashed to the ground in slow succession. Three seconds had passed.
Argel Tal was picking himself off the floor. Only Xaphen stood between the primarch and his attacker, but the Chaplain had used the scant, precious seconds to draw his bolter, which he aimed squarely at Vendatha's faceplate.
'Hold,' he warned.
'Lorgar, Seventeenth Son of the Emperor, surrender yourself into my custody at once.'
'You killed my sons,' Lorgar covered his mouth with a hand. 'They had never wronged you. Not once. Is this what my father's mandate allows you to do? To slaughter my sons if I do not dance to his ignorant tune?'
'Surrender yourself,' the Custodian repeated.
Vendatha had fought at the Emperor's side many times before. Always writ upon the Lord of Man's face was an unbreakable defiance, all emotion suppressed beneath the mask of stoic perfection.
Lorgar didn't share his father's capacity to conceal emotion. Hate bleached his features, and white teeth showed in a skull's grin.
'You dare threaten me? You murdered my sons, you soulless, worthless husk of genetic overspill.'
Vendatha squeezed the trigger again, but it was too late. Xaphen fired first.
Bolt rounds hammered into the Custodian's golden armour, beating the faceplate and chest out of shape, tearing chunks of plating away as they detonated. Each suit of battle armour was individually wrought for the Custodian granted the honour to wear it, and despite their finery, Custodes armour was a step beyond the mass-produced wargear used by the Astartes Legions.
Even so, the burst of bolter shells to the head and upper torso was almost enough to kill the warrior outright.
Vendatha staggered back, the guardian spear falling from slack fingers and crashing to the stone. Even with his face a burned and bleeding ruin, even with his helm wrecked and its twisted metal digging into his broken skull, he stared through the one eye that still worked.
Xaphen reloaded. The primarch did nothing. The naked maiden tugged at Lorgar's robe sleeve, imploring him to continue with the heathen rite, warning of the gods' anger if he didn't.
Vendatha reached for his fallen spear.
Wait. Where is Argel T-
The sword of red iron flew like a javelin, cracking Vendatha's remaining teeth into porcelain chips as it smashed into his closed mouth. Two metres of shimmering blade lanced from the back of the Custodian's head, while most of the warrior's ruined face was covered by the hilt and handle protruding from his open jaws.
As Rikus, Tsar Quorel and Deumos had done only moments before, Vendatha crashed to the ground, felled by an Imperial blade.
Xaphen released a breath. 'Nicely done, brother.'
The Chaplain had no warning, for Argel Tal struck without any. The captain's fist crashed into Xaphen's jaw, throwing him to the ground.
'Brother?' from his place on the stone floor, the Chaplain stared up at Argel Tal's fury.
'We have just killed one of the Emperor's own guardians, and your eulogy in this moment is "Nicely done, brother"? Are you insane? We stand upon the edge of heresy against the Imperium. Sire, we have to leave this place. We must speak with Aquillon, and-'
'Retrieve your blade,' ordered the primarch. Lorgar stared into the middle distance, paying little heed to what unfolded before his eyes. His voice barely lifted above a whisper.
Argel Tal approached with slow steps, taking his second sword back without gentleness, yanking it from the corpse's jaws. He froze as Vendatha's remaining eye followed him, and the body's fingers twitched.
'Blood of the... Sire, he's still alive,' Argel Tal called back.
'There is no virtue in cruelty,' murmured Lorgar. 'I wrote that once. In my book. I remember doing so. I remember the scratch of quill upon parchment, and the way the words looked on the page...'
'Sire?'
Lorgar stirred, focused. 'End his suffering, Argel Tal.'
All heads turned towards Ingethel as she cried out - wordless defiance, in a keening wail.
'This was ordained by the gods.' She gestured her tattooed hand to Vendatha's ravaged form. 'Lorgar is the seeker, the Favoured Son of the Great Powers, and he has provided the tenth sacrifice. Consecration may begin.'
A pack of Cadians came forward, their dirty hands pulling at Vendatha's golden armour, stripping it from his dying body. Argel Tal kicked one of the jackals off the fallen Custodian and levelled his blades at the rest. They scattered; carrion-feeders disturbed from a meal at the last moment.
'This was not a sacrifice for your blood magic,' the captain said. 'He aimed a weapon at the Emperor's son, and he will die for the sin. That is all.' Argel Tal looked over his shoulder. 'Sire, we have to leave. No answer is worth this.'
Lorgar lowered his hood, looking at neither Argel Tal nor Ingethel. His gaze rested on a far wall, and a faint scowl creased his lips.
'What's that sound?' the primarch asked.
'I hear nothing but the drums, sire. Please, we must leave at once.'
'You don't hear that?' Lorgar glanced at his two remaining sons. 'Neither of you?' Their silence answered for them, and Lorgar reached a hand to his forehead. 'Is that... laughter?'
Ingethel was on her knees now, dragging at his robes, weeping in her worship. 'The ritual... The gods come... It is not complete...'
Lorgar paid her heed at last, though the distant look never left his eyes. 'I hear them. I hear them all. Like the memory of laughter. The forgotten faces of distant kin when one struggles to recall them.'
Argel Tal clashed the swords of red iron together; the skish-skash of metal on metal loud enough to draw the primarch's attention.
'Sire,' he growled, 'we must leave.'
Lorgar shook his head, infinitely patient, infinitely calm. 'It is no longer our choice to make. Events are in motion. Stand away from the Custodian, my son.'
'But sire...'
'Ingethel speaks the truth. This was all ordained. The storm that stranded us. The screams that summoned us. The fear that led Vendatha to betray us. All part of a... a plan. It's so clear to me. The dreams. The whispers. Decade after decade after decade of...'
'Sire, please.'
Lorgar's statuesque features were warped by a sudden rush of fury. 'Stand away from that treacherous dog before you join him on an eleventh spear. Do you understand me? This moment is a crucible upon which all else spins. Obey me, or I will kill you where you stand.'
A shadow passed over Argel Tal's sight - something terrible in aspect, something winged and wrathful beyond mortal imagining.
The moment passed. The darkness receded. Argel Tal did as Lorgar commanded, stepping away from the body and sheathing the swords of red iron.
'No answers are worth this,' the captain said.
Neither Xaphen nor Lorgar met his glare. With keen eyes, both watched the ritual proceeding again.
HERE, LORGAR STOPPED writing. His smile was enriched by melancholy.
'Do you believe I sinned in that moment?'
Argel Tal laughed, the sound black and bitter. 'A sin is decided when mortal morality meets a code of ethics. Did you sin against a faith? No. Did you stain your soul? Perhaps.'
'But you hate me, my son. I hear it in your voice.'
'I think desperation blinded you, father. You may take no joy in sadism, but your need for the truth drove you to viciousness.'
'And for this, you hate me.' Lorgar was no longer smiling. His tone was low and barbed, while his eyes had all the warmth of a body on the battlefield.
'I hate what you've forced me to see. I hate the truth we must bring to the Imperium of Man. Above all, I hate what I've become in service to your vision.'
Argel Tal grinned the grin that wasn't his own. 'But we could never hate you, Lorgar.'
VENDATHA WAS STILL alive when they impaled him alongside the other nine sacrifices.
But, mercifully, not for long.
He never saw the consecration bought with his blood. He never saw what breached the barrier between the realm of spirit and the world of flesh.
INGETHEL'S WRITHING DANCE came to an end. The maiden was bathed in sweat, her hair in greasy ringlets and her body shining in the firelight as if beaded with pearls. In her hands, she still gripped her wooden staff, the head carved in a curving crescent moon.
A tattooed god-talker stood before each of the occupied spears, blood from the slaughtered victims gathered into crude clay bowls that were clutched in white-knuckled hands. As Ingethel approached each in turn, the shaman would mark her flesh with a spiralling symbol, tracing blood onto her body with a fingertip.
It was impossible to miss the significance. They were drawing the Eye on her.
'Incredible,' said Lorgar. He looked pained - the veins in his temples swollen and pulsing.
'I know this ritual,' Xaphen said. 'I know it from the old books.'
'Yes,' the primarch gave a strained smile. 'This is an echo of an ancient Colchisian cer |
ched in white-knuckled hands. As Ingethel approached each in turn, the shaman would mark her flesh with a spiralling symbol, tracing blood onto her body with a fingertip.
It was impossible to miss the significance. They were drawing the Eye on her.
'Incredible,' said Lorgar. He looked pained - the veins in his temples swollen and pulsing.
'I know this ritual,' Xaphen said. 'I know it from the old books.'
'Yes,' the primarch gave a strained smile. 'This is an echo of an ancient Colchisian ceremony. Kingpriests - the rulers of old - were appointed like this. The maiden's dance; the blood sacrifices; the constellations inked upon her flesh... All of it. Kor Phaeron would know it, as would Erebus. Both of them will have seen it before, with their own eyes, performed by the Covenant in the years before my arrival on Colchis.'
Argel Tal had considered their culture far beyond such decadence. Lorgar must have picked up on his disgusted thought, because the primarch turned to him with a sharp glance.
'I do not perceive this as beautiful, Argel Tal. Merely necessary. You believe we have progressed past such superstition? I remind you that not all change is for the better. Buildings erode. Flesh weakens. Memories fade. These are all part of time's progression, and all would be reversed, if a way could be found to do so.'
'We are here to seek evidence for the existence of gods, sire. No gods worthy of worship could demand this of their followers.'
Lorgar turned back to the ceremony, massaging his temples. 'Those, my son, are the wisest words anyone has spoken since we found this world. The answers I am finding have dismayed me. Torture? Human sacrifice?' The primarch's features drew into a slow wince. 'Forgive me, I ramble. My mind aches. I wish they would stop laughing.'
The cavern echoed with the thunder of drums, and the air trembled with monotone chanting from hundreds of human throats.
'No one is laughing, sire,' said Argel Tal.
Lorgar turned a pitying smile on his son. 'Yes, they are. You'll see. It will not be long now.'
Ingethel came to the last god-talker. The shaman anointed her with Vendatha's blood, outlining the Serrated Sun constellation on her bare stomach. With this last deed done, the maiden made her way back to the centre of the platform. There she stood, arms reaching out from her sides, head thrown back, crucified upon the very air.
The drumming intensified, a dragon's heartbeat thudding harder and faster as it slipped from its rhythm. The chanting became shouted laments, with hands and faces raised to the rock ceiling.
Ingethel's bare feet slowly left the ground. Blood was running down her legs in staining trails, dripping from her toes to the stone. The Cadians screamed. All of them, every single one, screamed. The captain's helm dimmed its audio receptors to compensate, but it made no difference.
Lorgar closed his eyes, fingertips still at his temples.
'Here it comes.'
ITS ARRIVAL WAS heralded first by the reek of blood. Unbelievably potent, as rich and sour as spoiled wine, it flooded Argel Tal's senses with enough violence to make him gag. Xaphen turned away and Lorgar's eyes remained closed - Argel Tal alone saw what happened next.
Ingethel, risen above the ground in weightless crucifixion, died a dozen deaths in mere moments. Invisible forces excoriated her, flaying her skin away in ragged strips, letting them fall with wet slaps onto the stone below. Blood flowed from her mouth, her eyes, her ears and nose; from every entrance and exit in her body. She endured this for a handful of seconds, until what remained of her simply ruptured. Her musculature burst, showering the primarch and his sons with human meat and lifeblood.
Her skeleton, still articulated, remained before them for a moment more - only to splinter and shatter with the sound of smashing pottery. Bone chips cracked off Argel Tal's armour, clacking like hailstones.
The maiden's staff clattered to the ground.
Lorgar, said the creature taking form amidst the dead girl's wreckage.
LORGAR PLACED THE quill on the parchment and closed his eyes - a reflection of that moment in the cavern: months ago to Argel Tal, only a handful of nights ago to the primarch himself.
'I curse the truth we have discovered,' he confessed. 'I curse the fact that we have reached the edge of reality, only for hatred and damnation to stare back at us from the abyss.'
'The truth is often ugly. It is why people believe lies. Deception offers them something beautiful.'
The creature that was and wasn't Argel Tal continued its recitation.
THE PRIMARCH OPENED his eyes and looked upon the face of the future.
It towered above them all, taller even than Lorgar, and regarded them with mismatched eyes above an open maw. The Cadian worshippers were so silent, so still, that the Word Bearers were no longer sure any other beings remained alive in the cavern.
Tactical data streamed across Argel Tal's eye lenses as his targeting sensors cycled in frantic inability to lock onto the creature. Each attempted lock drew an invalid response. Where his retinal view would always display analyses of an enemy's armour and anatomy, a Colchisian rune now blinked Unknown, Unknown, Unknown across his eyes.
Xaphen voiced the same problem. 'I can't lock onto it. It's... not there.'
Oh, I am here.
'Did you hear that?' the Chaplain asked. Argel Tal nodded, though his audio receptors had tracked no changes at all.
He disengaged the magnetic clamp sealing his bolter to his thigh, and aimed it the creature. He flinched when a golden hand rested on the weapon, lowering it to the floor.
'No,' Lorgar whispered. The primarch's eyes shined. With the threat of tears? Argel Tal wasn't sure.
Lorgar, the creature said again. The primarch met the thing's unbalanced stare.
Four arms curled from its slender torso, each ending in a clawed hand. Its lower body was the mating of serpent and worm, ripe with thick veins in the grey flesh. Its face was almost entirely given over to its open jaws, with selachimorphic teeth in disorderly rows.
A biological impossibility. An evolutionary lie.
It was never still, never motionless, even for a moment. Veins throbbed beneath its discoloured skin, betraying its pulse, and its talons were constantly opening and closing. Only one of its four hands remained closed: gripping Ingethel's ritual staff in a clawed fist.
One eye was sunken, dark and buried in a face of filthy fur. The other: swollen fit to burst, and the sickening orange of a dying sun.
Nothing remained of the maiden. What reared up before them on its coiled lower body was utterly beyond notions of gender.
I am Ingethel the Ascended, it said, and its silent voice was a hundred murmurs all at once. Argel Tal found his eyes drawn to the curved spines of blackened bone that arced out from the thing's shoulder blades.
Wings, he thought. Wings of black bone.
Yes. Wings. Humanity forever lies to itself about angels. The truth is ugly. Lies are beautiful. So mankind makes the gods' messengers beautiful. No fear, then. Lovely lies. White wings.
'You are not an angel,' Argel Tal spoke aloud.
And you are not the first Colchisians to reach this world. Khaane. Tezen. Slanat. Narag. All ventured here, millennia ago, guided by visions of angels.
'You are not an angel,' Argel Tal repeated, clenching his bolter tighter.
Angels do not exist. They have never existed. But I bring the word of the gods, as angels must do. Look for the core of truth at the heart of humanity's lies. You will see me. My kind. Angels. The creature blinked. Its swollen eye wouldn't allow it, but its black pebble of an orb vanished for a moment under wet, wrinkled flesh.
Angels. Daemons. Just words. Just words.
Lorgar stepped forward at last. To Argel Tal's eyes, he seemed naked without a crozius in his hands.
'How do you know me?'
You are the Chosen. You are the Favoured Son of the Powers.Your name has echoed across our realm since time immemorial, carried on the winds by the shrieks of the neverborn.
'I do not understand what you are saying.'
But you will. There are lessons to be taught. Things that must be shown. I will guide you. One lesson comes first.
The creature, Ingethel, gestured two of its claws - one at Xaphen, the other at Argel Tal.
Your sons, Lorgar. Give me their lives.
'You ask a great deal of me,' said Lorgar. 'You plead for my trust and for the souls of my sons, yet I owe you nothing. You are a spirit, a daemon; superstition born from nightmare and incarnated into flesh.'
All the while, Lorgar walked around the creature. He showed no fear, no trepidation. Argel Tal recognised the faint tension in the primarch's fingers. The Urizen ached to wield the crozius that, for now, was not at his side.
You know of the Primordial Truth. You know that a secret lies behind the stars. You know this is not a godless galaxy. The very gods you seek are the Powers that sent me to you.
Lorgar's angelic countenance twisted into a patient smile. 'Or I could speak a single word to my sons, and their weapons would end this conjuror's trick.'
Ingethel's jaw quivered, its fangs clicking together in a grotesque failure of symmetry. Argel Tal had seen the expression on its face before, written on the wide-eyed, shivering visages of trapped vermin.
Your blood-sons could not end me.
'They have ended everything else the galaxy has thrown at them.' The primarch made no pretence at hiding his pride. Argel Tal and Xaphen raised their bolters in perfect unison, both warriors sighting down the gun barrels at the creature's eyes.
I bring the answers you have sought all your life. If you wish to awaken humanity to enlightenment, if you wish to be the architect of the faith that will save mankind, I-
'Enough posturing. Tell me why you must take my sons from me.'
It moved in a blur, its serpentine tail leaving a smear of residue the thickness of treacle along the stone. One moment, the creature stood in the centre o |
aised their bolters in perfect unison, both warriors sighting down the gun barrels at the creature's eyes.
I bring the answers you have sought all your life. If you wish to awaken humanity to enlightenment, if you wish to be the architect of the faith that will save mankind, I-
'Enough posturing. Tell me why you must take my sons from me.'
It moved in a blur, its serpentine tail leaving a smear of residue the thickness of treacle along the stone. One moment, the creature stood in the centre of the platform, the next it slithered before Lorgar, staring down at the primarch.
Lorgar didn't recoil. He merely looked up at the creature.
The Great Eye. I will guide them into the storm, into the realm of the Powers. That is the first step, written in fate's own hand. They will return with answers. They will return as the weapons you require. Your time will come, Lorgar. But the Powers call for your sons, and I will guide them to where they must go.
'I would not sacrifice them for answers.'
Ingethel's jaw clicked as it trembled. Its laughter was little more than verminous chittering.
Do you believe that? Nothing matters more to you than the truth. The Powers know their son's heart. They know what you will do before it is done. If you desire enlightenment, you will take this first step.
'If I agree to this... will you harm them?'
Ingethel turned its bestial head to the side, watching the two warriors with its inhuman eyes.
Yes.
THE DECISION WAS not to be made lightly.
As he was wont to do, the primarch retreated into seclusion, away from the distractions of fleet management, away from the menial responsibilities that came with soldiering, and remained in the caverns beneath Cadia's surface.
Argel Tal and Xaphen returned to their Thunderhawk at the modest landing site, finding they had much to say to one another and little will to speak it. While the Chaplain voxed a scant, vague update to the ships in orbit, Argel Tal took the task of appraising Aquillon of the situation over a secure vox-channel.
Almost an hour later, the captain descended the gang ramp, standing once more on the desolate plains, watching the sky with its shroud of rippling violet.
Incarnadine, ever the silent watchman, stood as an imposing sentinel nearby. Argel Tal saluted, but the robot made no response. Next to the automaton, Xi-Nu 73 emitted a blurt of irritated machine-code. Something in his data readings apparently vexed him. At that point in time, the Word Bearer couldn't have cared less.
When Xaphen joined him at last, Argel Tal had a hard time meeting his brother's eyes. He placed his armoured boot on one of the swollen, twelve-legged beetles that scurried over the wastelands, killing it with a moist, crackling crunch.
'What lies did you weave for the Eyes of the Emperor?' asked the Chaplain.
'A long and detailed tale that tasted foul to even speak. A Cadian sect attacked us out of bitterness, and Ven was lost with Deumos, Tsar Quorel and Rikus.'
'Did they die like heroes?'
'Oh, undoubtedly. Songs will be sung and legends forever told of their most noble ends.' He spat acid onto the ground.
Xaphen gave a mirthless snort, and they fell silent.
The two Astartes watched the stained sky, neither wishing to be the first to broach the next subject. Ultimately, it was Argel Tal that ventured there first.
'We've split the Legion and sailed to the galaxy's edges, only to find... this. The Old Ways of Colchis were right. Daemons. Blood sacrifice. Spirits made flesh. All of it is real. Now Aurelian lingers in the darkness, sharing words with that creature, deciding whether to sell our souls for even uglier answers. If this is enlightenment, brother... perhaps ignorance is bliss.'
Xaphen turned from the burning sky. 'We have defied the Emperor to find these truths - defied the spirit of his decrees, even if we obeyed the letter of the law. Now a Custodian lies dead, and Imperial blades have shed Imperial blood. There can be no going back from this. You know what the primarch will decide.'
Argel Tal thought back to Vendatha's words: 'The choice you offer is no choice at all.'
'It will break his heart to do it,' the captain said, 'but he will send us into the Eye.'
SIXTEEN
Orfeo's Lament
The Storm Beyond the Glass
Chaos
THE VESSEL CHOSEN was Orfeo's Lament. A sleek, vicious light cruiser captained most ably by the famously tenacious Janus Sylamor. When the primarch's decree had reached the 1,301st, Sylamor had volunteered the Lament before Lorgar's vox-distorted voice had even finished the traditional blessings that ended his fleet-wide addresses.
Her first officer took a dimmer view of her eagerness, pointing out that this was the largest, most devastating warp storm ever recorded in the history of the species. Here was an anomaly with all the force of the legendary storms that severed humanity's worlds from one another in the centuries before the Great Crusade.
Sylamor had clicked her tongue - a habit of hers that always showed her impatience - and told him to shut up. The smile she gave him would only be considered sweet by people that didn't know her very well.
The departure window was set for sunrise over the wastelands, which left practically no time for preparation beyond the core necessities. Grey gunships graced the Lament's modest landing bay, delivering squad after squad of dark-armoured Astartes. Storage chambers were cleared to house the Word Bearers, their ammunition crates, their maintenance servitors, as well as the contingent from the Legio Cybernetica that accompanied Seventh Company, led by an irritable tech-adept calling himself Xi-Nu 73.
Introductions were brief. Five Astartes marched onto the bridge, and Sylamor rose from her throne to greet them. Each spoke their name and rank - one captain, one Chaplain, three sergeants - and each saluted her in turn. She responded accordingly, introducing her own command crew.
It was polite but cold, and over in a matter of minutes.
Only when the Astartes remained on the bridge did Sylamor sense a breach in decorum. Unperturbed, the captain continued her final checks, pointing her silver-topped cane to each console station in turn.
'Propulsion.'
'Engines,' replied the first officer, 'aye.'
'Auspex.'
'Aye, ma'am.'
'Void shields.'
'Shields ready.'
'Weapons.'
'Weapons, aye.'
'Geller field.'
'Geller field, aye.'
'Helm.'
'Helm standing ready, ma'am.'
'All stations report full readiness,' she said to the Word Bearers captain. This was something of a lie, and Sylamor hoped her tone didn't betray it. All stations had reported readiness, true, but the last hour had also seen reports of insurrection in the lower decks, put down by lethal force, and one suicide. The ship's astropath had requested to be assigned to another vessel ('Request denied', Sylamor had frowned. 'Who in the Emperor's name does he think he is to even ask such a thing?') and the Navigator was engaged in what he referred to as 'intensive mental barricading so as to preserve one's fundamental quintessence', which Sylamor was fairly sure she didn't even want to understand.
So instead of relaying all of this to the towering warlord standing next to her throne, she simply gave him a curt nod and said, 'all stations report readiness'.
The Astartes turned his helm's slanted blue eyes upon her, and nodded.
'There will be one last vessel docking soon. Ensure all of your crew are removed from the bay once it arrives.'
Her raised eyebrow conveyed just what she thought of this unorthodox demand. And in case it didn't, she added her own spice to it. 'Very well. Now tell me why.'
'No,' said one of the other Astartes. He'd named himself as Malnor, a sergeant. 'Just obey the order.'
The captain, Argel Tal, gestured for his brother to remain silent.
'The last gunship will be bringing a creature on board. The fewer of your crew that are exposed to it, the better it will be for all of us.'
The first officer pointedly cleared his throat. Crew members turned in their seats. Sylamor blinked twice. 'I will suffer no xenos presence on board the Lament,' she stated.
'I did not say it was an alien,' said Argel Tal. 'I said it was a creature. My warriors will escort it to the bridge. Do not look at it once we are underway. Focus on your duties, all of you. I have my men in the starboard docking bay, and will inform you when the gunship reaches us.'
'Incoming hail from De Profundis,' called an officer from the vox-console.
The Word Bearers went to their knees, heads lowered.
'Accept the hail,' Sylamor said. Without realising, she lifted a hand to check her hair was in neat order, and straightened her uniform. Around her, officers did the same, brushing epaulettes and standing straighter.
The occulus tuned into a view of De Profundis's command deck, where the primarch and Fleetmaster Torvus stood in pride of place.
'This is the flagship,' Torvus said, 'Good hunting, Lament.'
'Thank you, sir,' Sylamor replied.
An awkward silence reached between both bridge crews, broken by Argel Tal.
'Sire?'
'Yes, my son?' Lorgar's smile was sincere, though vox-crackle ruined his smooth voice.
'We will return with the answers the Legion needs. You have my word,' he gestured to the parchment bound to his shoulder guard, 'and my oath of moment'.
The smile remained upon the primarch's painted lips. 'I know, Argel Tal. Please, rise. I cannot abide you kneeling before me in this moment of moments.'
The Word Bearers rose as ordered, and Argel Tal nodded to Captain Sylamor.
'The last vessel has docked and my warriors are leading the creature to the bridge. Take us in, captain.'
The ship trembled as its engines came alive, and Orfeo's Lament speared away from the planet, cutting through the void towards the storm's distant edges.
'Three hours until we reach the storm's outermost border,' one of the helmsmen called.
Argel Tal held his bolter in his fists, waiting for the bridge doors to open once more.
'When the crea |
red, and Argel Tal nodded to Captain Sylamor.
'The last vessel has docked and my warriors are leading the creature to the bridge. Take us in, captain.'
The ship trembled as its engines came alive, and Orfeo's Lament speared away from the planet, cutting through the void towards the storm's distant edges.
'Three hours until we reach the storm's outermost border,' one of the helmsmen called.
Argel Tal held his bolter in his fists, waiting for the bridge doors to open once more.
'When the creature arrives, do not look at it.' He seemed to be addressing everyone, while looking at none of them. 'This is not a matter of decorum or politeness. Do not look at it. Do not meet its eyes. Try not to breathe too much of its scent.'
'Is this creature toxic?' asked Sylamor.
'It is dangerous,' the Word Bearer allowed. 'When I say these instructions are for your safety and sanity, I mean those exact words. Do not look at it. Do not even look at its reflection in any screen or monitor. If it speaks, focus on anything but its words. And if you feel nauseous or afflicted in its presence, leave your station at once.'
Sylamor's laugh was patently false. 'You are unnerving my crew, captain.'
'Just do as I ask, please.'
She bristled, not used to being given orders on her own deck. 'Of course, sir.'
'Don't act so offended, Janus.' The Word Bearer forced some warmth into his voice, which his helm's vox-speakers immediately stole and twisted. 'Just trust me.'
When the doors finally opened, the first thing to wash over the bridge was the smell, which caused several of the human crew to gag.
Commendably, only one turned around to see what entered, escorted as it was by a full squad of Word Bearers - and that one soul was Captain Janus Sylamor.
In accidental defiance of the promise she'd made only minutes before, she turned to the opening doors and saw the creature framed in the light of the illumination globes in the corridor behind. The first heave of bitter sick hit her teeth and lips so fast she didn't have time to open her mouth. The rest spread onto the floor as she went down on all fours, purging her stomach of the morning's caffeine and dry rations, and painting the decking with her bile.
'I warned you,' Argel Tal said to her, without taking his eyes from the creature.
Her answer was to heave some more, ending with a string of saliva hanging from her lips.
Ingethel wormed its way onto the bridge, leaving a discoloured smear in its wake. The tap, tap, tap of the staff's base on the metal floor acted as accompaniment to the sound of its slick flesh slithering across the deck.
Officers abandoned their posts by the captain's throne, stepping away with undisguised disgust and covering their mouths and noses. More than one vomited into their hands as Ingethel drew nearer, though for the creature's part, it seemed to notice none of this. Its malformed eyes stared dead ahead at the storm taking over the occulus.
Sylamor rose to her feet again, after taking Argel Tal's offered hand.
'What have you brought onto my bridge, captain?'
'It is a guide. Now with the greatest respect, Janus, wipe your mouth and do your duty. Next time, perhaps you will listen to me.'
She was familiar enough with Argel Tal from fleet command meetings to know that this curt treatment wasn't like him at all. Of all the Word Bearer commanders, he'd always been the most approachable, and the most inclined to hear the concerns of the human officers.
She said nothing. Instead, she nodded, breathing through her mouth to hinder some of the obscene reek that only fuelled her nausea. The foulness of the stench wasn't the worst part; it was the familiarity of it.
As a young girl on Colchis, she'd survived an outbreak of rotten lung in her village, and had been one of the few left to witness the arrival of a coven of mortuary priests from the City of Grey Flowers. Over the course of a single day, they'd erected a great pyre to cleanse the dead before scattering their ashes across the desert. The smell of that funeral pyre had never left her, and when it resurfaced now, it was all she could do not to choke at the creature's stench.
A curious drip, drip, drip ate at her attention, drawing her glance to the deck by the creature's sluggish body. A greasy, opaque plasm dripped from the muscled folds of its serpentine lower half, bleaching the steel decking where it fell.
'Full speed ahead,' said Sylamor, and swallowed before another purge took hold.
Orfeo's Lament trembled - ever the eager huntress, ever the keen explorer - and increased her pace. The storm swelled in the occulus before them as they cruised closer to its edge.
'Have the flagship's augurs managed to measure the afflicted area of space?' she asked.
Thousands upon thousands of solar systems lie within the Great Eye.
She froze, cheeks paling. 'I... I heard a voice.'
'Ignore it,' ordered Argel Tal.
You could sail your mortal craft for a hundred lifetimes within its depths, and see no more than a shadow of its full glory.
'I can still hear it...'
Argel Tal growled, deep and low, his head tilted towards the creature. 'Do not toy with their lives,' he said. 'You have been warned.'
None of them will survive this journey. You are a fool to believe they will.
'Did... did it just say...'
'It said nothing,' Argel Tal interrupted her stammer. 'Ignore the voice. Focus, Janus. Attend to your duties, and leave all else to us. I will not let the creature harm you, or anyone in the crew.'
She does not believe you.
'Be quiet, false angel.'
She knows you lie. You hear her heartbeat, as I do. She is terrified, and she knows you are lying to her.
Across the bridge, two menials vomited over their consoles. Another fainted at his station, with blood running from his ears in a slow trickle.
'Will this keep happening?' Sylamor asked Argel Tal, careful not to look at the creature over the warrior's shoulder, and hoping her voice wasn't shaking.
The Word Bearer didn't answer immediately. 'I believe so,' came the eventual response.
One of the helmsmen jerked in his seat, cracking his head against the back of the throne. Through clenched teeth, he managed a thin wail before falling into a seizure, kept in place only by his restraint harness.
'Medicae team to the helm,' ordered the captain.
Sylamor's patience was close to its end when one of her adjutant servitors unplugged itself from its post and began to painstakingly crawl across the floor. The servitor in question had no legs below the thighs, having had them surgically removed in order to better remain at its post at all times. When it detached itself from its bronze cradle and started clawing its way over the decking, Captain Sylamor watched this unprecedented behaviour for several stunned moments. The augmetic servant trailed wires and cables from its spine and severed legs, viscous oil leaking from its nose.
'Blood of the Emperor,' Sylamor cursed under her breath. 'Stand back, everyone. Stand back.'
She put the servitor down herself with a single pistol round to the back of the poor thing's head, and ordered two deckhands to remove it at once.
Vox-officer Arvas turned to his captain as she passed on the way back to her throne. 'Do you hear that?' he asked her.
'A contact? Another vessel?'
'No.' He held his earpiece, face darkened by concentration. 'I can hear him, captain.'
Mounting irritation overrode her unease. 'Hear who?'
Janus had known Arvas for over a decade, and on one night in particular four years ago, she'd known him - and four bottles of silver Yndonesic wine - regrettably well. Despite that lone indiscretion, he was one of her most adept and loyal crew members. 'Tell me who you hear, lieutenant.'
He tried to retune his console, twisting a row of dials. 'I can hear Vanic dying. He screams, but not for long. The rest is white noise. Listen,' he offered her his earpiece. 'You can hear Vanic dying. You hear him scream, but not for long.'
She hesitantly reached to take the earpiece. Standing next to Arvas, Vox-officer Vanic gave her an attempt at a smile. Discomfort was written across his fat features.
Arvas unholstered his sidearm and pumped four rounds into the other man's stomach. Blood, stinging and hot, flecked Sylamor's face as Vanic collapsed screaming to the deck.
'Now you hear it,' said Arvas.
The captain had no time to react - a blur of dark grey shoved her aside. Before she'd even blinked, Arvas was kicking and dangling above the ground, held aloft by Argel Tal's fist around his throat. The ship shivered around them as if it shared the crew's disquiet.
As he was strangled in the warrior's grip, Arvas's fingers scraped across Argel Tal's faceplate with all the ferocity of a cornered beast hoping to scratch out its killer's eyes. Sweat-smears painted across the eye lenses.
The medicae team reached Vanic's side in time for him to die at their feet. Arvas had been right - Vanic hadn't screamed for long.
The Word Bearer ignored the fingers scrabbling over the implacable ceramite, and turned to address his warriors. 'Dagotal, take this wretch to the containment cells.' He passed Arvas towards the other Word Bearers, sending him sprawling with a shove.
Another of the Astartes stepped forward, catching the struggling officer by the collar and lifting him from the ground. Arvas took over where Vanic's screams left off.
'And render him silent,' Argel Tal added.
'By your word, brother.' Dagotal gripped the officer's neck, squeezing his windpipe with gentle force. The human's voice faded to a gasping squeak as the Word Bearer hauled him from the bridge.
Captain Sylamor glared up at the towering figure of Argel Tal.
'That creature cannot remain on my bridge. It is... doing something to us, isn't it?'
'I do not know.'
'Then ask it.'
'We will take it to the observation deck, captain. Ensure your crew vacate the area, as well as the corridors between. Make full speed for the storm's edge. I will contact you with any |
ezing his windpipe with gentle force. The human's voice faded to a gasping squeak as the Word Bearer hauled him from the bridge.
Captain Sylamor glared up at the towering figure of Argel Tal.
'That creature cannot remain on my bridge. It is... doing something to us, isn't it?'
'I do not know.'
'Then ask it.'
'We will take it to the observation deck, captain. Ensure your crew vacate the area, as well as the corridors between. Make full speed for the storm's edge. I will contact you with any alterations to those orders if the need arises.'
'Thank you,' she said to him.
Argel Tal returned a curt nod, and moved back to his brethren.
'You should have killed the murderer,' Xaphen admonished.
'He will stand trial for his sin. It could be argued that his actions were not his own.' Argel Tal turned to watch Ingethel as the creature began its slithering withdrawal from the command deck. They followed, avoiding the slick trail it left in its wake.
'We are walking into the unknown, and there is nothing but darkness before my eyes,' Argel Tal said to his Chaplain.
'And that worries you.'
'Of course it worries me. If we are on the precipice of enlightenment, why have I never felt so blind?'
'Everything is darkest,' Xaphen mused, 'before the dawn.'
'That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realise it's a lie.'
THE OBSERVATION DECKS on most Imperial ships were places of great serenity. Although Orfeo's Lament was a modest vessel compared to De Profundis, let alone the grandeur of the Fidelitas Lex, Argel Tal still felt his breath catch as he entered.
Midway along the cruiser's battlemented spine rose an armoured dome, its clear surface offering an unparalleled view of the surrounding void. In normal space, the view of a billion stars in the infinite night never failed to capture his imagination - and, he'd admit in his prouder moments, his ambition as well. These were humanity's stars. No other species had the right to claim them, for their ages had come and gone. The future was one of purity, and it belonged to mankind.
Here, now, the stars were stained violet. Argel Tal watched distant suns drown in curling, thrashing mists of purple and red.
Do you see?
Ingethel had reared up to its full unnatural height, four stick-thin arms spread in benediction to the burning heavens. From jaws that couldn't close, it spat out a rattlesnake's hiss.
Do. You. See.
Argel Tal tore his gaze from the night sky. The observation deck was spacious, fitted with Spartan furniture that none of the Word Bearers were using. Each remained standing, bolters clutched in their hands.
'I see a storm,' said the captain. 'Nothing more.'
'You and I both, sir.' This, from Dagotal. The outrider sergeant had arrived several minutes after the rest of them, coming straight from the containment block where he'd left Lieutenant Arvas in the less than tender care of the brig officers. 'I feel something, though. The ship's shaking itself apart.'
'Always thought I'd die in battle,' grumbled Malnor.
Argel Tal shook his head. 'You dragged us into this nexus of energies, Ingethel. It is time to tell us why. What are we supposed to be seeing?'
The truth. The truth behind the stars. The hidden layer of the universe.
'I see a storm that threatens to kill us all, comprised of a thousand colours.'
No. You see target locks and biological data streams. You see the world before you through filtering lenses. You stand on the border of heaven, Word Bearer. Remove your helm. Look upon the home of the gods with your true eyes.
It took him a moment to comply, hesitating at the thought of the creature's smell assaulting his olfactory senses without first being purified by his helm's intake grille. He took a final breath of his armour's stale, recycled air, and disengaged the collar seals.
It was worse than he'd imagined, and the bridge crew were to be commended for the fact so few of them vomited. The chamber already reeked of a charnel house; that coppery spice of fouled blood, the stinging meat-stink of digestive organs bared to the air.
'I still see nothing,' Argel Tal grunted. 'I see the storm.'
You cannot lie to me as you lie to the humans. Stare into the clashing tides around us. Do you see what stares back?
The captain stepped closer to the dome's edge, peering out into the roiling void, where the playing energies mixed and swirled. The ship gave another tremor at the mercy of the forceful tides. There, just a for a moment, as the ship shook...
You saw. Your heart quickened. Your eyes dilated. You saw.
Argel Tal stroked his hand along the dense glass wall, staring into the tumult beyond. How could one draw meaning from this madness? The ship shuddered in the aetheric tides again, and once more the riotous energies coalesced for the briefest moment.
A human face, spoiled by frightened eyes and a screaming mouth, formed from the burning matter outside the glass. It burst against the dome, dissipating back into the raging tides from whence it came.
Do you know what this storm is?
Argel Tal wouldn't look away from the tides. 'It's warp energy. The aetheric current, reaching through into the material universe. Imperial records have chronicled the presence of alien creatures in the warp itself, but they are catalogued among the lesser xenos threats.'
Ingethel's hiss echoed in his mind. How verminous, the creature's laughter.
Do you know what those words mean? Or do you relate lore poured into your mind by the indoctrinations that shaped you? What do you see when you stare into this storm?
The Word Bearer turned to Ingethel. A face that would have been handsome - had it not suffered the trials of Astartes surgery - stared up at the creature. 'This is the galaxy's blood. Reality is bleeding.'
Close. The daemon-thing chittered with a rodent's delight. Humanity is precious in its ignorance, but that cannot be allowed to last if your species is to survive. The warp is more than a realm for mortal vessels to cut into with impunity, and use its tides to sail faster than light.
What you are seeing is creation's own shadow, where every mortal emotion and urge takes immortal form. You are sailing through seas made of psychic energy and liquefied sorrow. You are cast adrift in the heaven and hell of a million mythologies, Argel Tal.
This is where every moment of hatred, disgust, wrath, joy, grief, jealousy, indolence and decadence manifest as raw energy.
This is where the souls of the dead come to burn forever.
Orfeo's Lament gave a horrendous shudder, and the sound of wrenching metal ran through the deck beneath them. Torgal and Xaphen went to their knees - the former with a gutter curse, the latter with an indignant grunt.
In the storm beyond, more images took shape. Hands pressed against the glass, leaving discoloured smears. Faces, warped by screams, aching in their familiarity. The shadow of something, something vast and dark and cold behind it all, sweeping past the ship like a whale passing in the deepest ocean.
For a moment, Argel Tal's breath misted in the air. Frost beaded his skin. The shadow passed, and kept passing, disturbing the crashing energies with its immense, half-formed bulk.
A void leviathan. Fear would draw it closer, and this vessel would disintegrate in its jaws. But it passes, hunting other prey. In many of the futures I saw, it turned upon us, and your lives ended here. In three of those futures, Argel Tal, you were laughing as you died, dissolving in the energies outside the ship.
He was not laughing now.
'This is hell.' Argel Tal no longer struggled to see the faces shrieking in at him, nor the hands clawing at the glass. He could see nothing else. 'This is the underworld of human imagination.'
Do not be blinded by dogma. This is the Primordial Truth. Creation's shadow. The layer behind the stars.
The Word Bearer breathed a single word as he watched the sea of screaming souls beyond.
'Chaos.'
The daemon's maw twisted into a grin. Now you begin to understand.
ARGEL TAL SIPPED the water. It was brackish on his tongue, and distastefully warm. It was also the fifth such cup to sour in his hands like this, and he had the unsettling notion that it was his own body curdling the water.
'We soon reached the first world,' he said. 'Melisanth. The world had no human name, but in ancient days, the eldar-breed xenos... they named it Melisanth.'
Lorgar's flowing script recorded each word. 'The eldar? What is their role in all this?'
'Now? They have no role. They are the galaxy's memory, fading night by night. But once, this region of space was their most precious dominion - the heart of their empire. Their decadence brought us forth, from our realm into this one. We watched their worlds burning in spectral fire, and we tore their souls apart in claws of spirit and flesh.'
'Argel Tal.'
'Every sensation was new to us. We were newborns in the material realm. Blood fed us. Pain fuelled us. You cannot know what it is like to grow stronger when a creature suffers nearby. To swell with power when parents watch their children burn. To grow in size and intellect with each sin you inflict upon mortal flesh. To know more of the universe's secrets with each soul you swallow.'
'My son... Please.'
'But I was there, Lorgar. I saw these things. I did these things.'
'You are Argel Tal. You were born on Colchis, in the village of Singh-Rukh, to a carpenter and a seamstress. Your name means "the last angel" in the dialect of the southern steppes tribes. You are the youngest warrior in the Legion ever to inherit the mantle of company captain. You once bore swords of red iron - the blades of your predecessor - which you lost in service to your primarch. You are Argel Tal, a Bearer of the Word. You are my son.'
The Word Bearer looked down at his skeletal hands. 'Sire,' he said softly. 'Forgive me.' Argel Tal managed to meet his primarch's eyes, infinitely grateful that he saw no judgement in those grey dept |
dialect of the southern steppes tribes. You are the youngest warrior in the Legion ever to inherit the mantle of company captain. You once bore swords of red iron - the blades of your predecessor - which you lost in service to your primarch. You are Argel Tal, a Bearer of the Word. You are my son.'
The Word Bearer looked down at his skeletal hands. 'Sire,' he said softly. 'Forgive me.' Argel Tal managed to meet his primarch's eyes, infinitely grateful that he saw no judgement in those grey depths.
'There is nothing to forgive.'
'You knew more of my life than I realised.'
Lorgar smiled. 'All of my sons are precious to me.'
Argel Tal rubbed at his sore eyes. 'Ingethel told us that our changes would begin at the ordained time, when the galaxy burns. But I am losing myself now. Is this the ordained moment already? Is the galaxy aflame? None of my memories are my own, father. There's a copper taste on my tongue, like the echo of blood. Perhaps this is fear. Perhaps this taste is the fear so many poets and archivists have written about.' The captain laughed, the sound hollow and humourless. 'And now I speak my valediction.'
'It need not be a valediction, Argel Tal. That cannot be decided until the tale is told.'
SEVENTEEN
A Dead Empire
Revelations
Genesis
INGETHEL GESTURED AT the planet with a crooked claw.
They called it Melisanth. It was one of the last to feel the Eye's spreading influence.
'Auspex confirms no life readings, even down to the bacterial level,' Captain Sylamor's voice rasped over the vox.
'She really needed to scan to see that?' Torgal asked.
Below them was the ghost of a world - a globe of black oceans and grey landscapes, inexpertly guarded by thin cloud hazes. Even in orbit above Melisanth, the ship was buffeted by the warp-winds outside, while the observation dome endured the liquid, a tidal press of human faces and figures bursting against the reinforced glass. Each one splashed over the shielding with oil-on-water incandescence, flowing back into the maelstrom as soon as it destroyed itself.
After a while, Argel Tal started to see the same faces reappear. They seemed to be reforming out there in the winds and hurling themselves at the ship over and over again.
'Are they souls?' he asked aloud.
It is primordial matter. In the realm of flesh and blood, it manifests as psychic energy. Your thoughts give it shape. You see human souls, but it is so much more. Eldar souls. The flesh of the neverborn, that humanity once named daemonkind. Raw psychic currents. Possibility incarnate, when the mind shapes reality.
'I want to walk the surface of that world.'
You will die.
Argel Tal rounded on the creature, anger marring his unscarred features. 'Then why drag us here? What is the purpose of this journey if we cannot leave the ship? To stare at dead worlds from behind our Geller Field? To listen to the shrieking of lost souls?'
Ingethel slithered closer to the gathered Word Bearers. The black-wood staff, once carried by the maiden who sacrificed herself to bring the daemon into being, tapped on the decking like an old man's walking cane.
Such things I have to show you.
It gestured two gnarled claws at the world below. There is no lesson in Melisanth as it is. You must see Melisanth as it was.
Close your eyes. Hear the storm outside. Listen to the tide breaking against your vessel's skin.
Melisanth is but one world floating in the Sea of Souls. One amongst millions. Let me show it to you.
And then, no more than a heartbeat later - Open your eyes, Argel Tal.
HE'D ALWAYS TREASURED sunrise.
This one, an ocherous orb painting fierce light over a city of spires and minarets, was one to remember. Even with pain tolerance and resistance to light saturation written into his genetic code, the rising sun was bright enough to make his eyes ache. And that was beautiful too, for it had never happened before.
Ingethel was nowhere to be seen. They stood on a cliff's edge, above an alien city turned golden by the dawn. Argel Tal turned to see his brothers: Xaphen, watching the xenos colony; Malnor and Torgal with him; Dagotal, staring up into the blue sky.
This was Melisanth, came the creature's burbling voice in his mind. See the city made of bone and gemstones. See the spires too delicate for mortal physics to support them, standing only because of eldar witchcraft.
Now see the Fall.
In the sky above, the clouds raced in a cyclical dance - day and night flashing past in a blur of flickering grey. Tendrils of violet clawed across the heavens, thickening, linking, coiling, staining the air with red mist. Sweat broke out on Argel Tal's face and neck in the savage heat. It warmed even the aqueous moisture that lubricated his eyes.
As he watched, the city below began to tumble, its spires and walkways falling to shatter on the ground, crushing crowds of slender alien figures and demolishing lesser buildings beneath.
Their sorceries are fading. This is on the edge of the Great Eye. The destruction took days to unfold on these lesser colonies. At the core of their empire, all life was ended in mere moments.
Argel Tal could hear the city dying, the sounds of thunder, sorrow and lamentation carried up to him on the wind.
'Aliens,' Xaphen smiled at the toppling towers. 'May they all burn, soulless and forgotten.'
None of the others disagreed. 'Why did this happen?' asked Argel Tal.
The eldar were close to seeing the truth of the universe. Their civilisation spanned the galaxy, evolving for millennia under the guidance and worship of their gods. And then, at the last step... they faltered.
'How?'
Look to the sky.
The storm clouds gathered in a threatening spiral, darkening the land to every horizon. From the very first raindrops - hot on the skin and rich in their metallic reek - it was clear what was in store for the city below. With a single peal of thunder, loud enough to vibrate the air itself, the blackened clouds ground together and signalled the opening of the heavens.
Sheets of scarlet rained from the sky, showering the broken city in blood so thick it stained the bone structures that still remained standing. Xaphen closed his eyes, lifting his face to the downpour.
'This is not human blood. It's too sweet.'
Argel Tal wiped his face clear of the raining gore. In the city below, creatures were melting from the shadows of fallen monuments, rising from the lakes of blood that were forming in the streets. They staggered and sprinted, each one uneven and unnatural in its own half-formed way. Some crawled on a multitude of boneless limbs. Others wailed as they dashed on spindly legs, reaching out with curling claws.
My kin, taking physical form. They hunt souls, and flesh, and blood and bone.
'Why is this happening?'
The malformed beasts ran in packs, dragging down any of the slender, weeping survivors they found. The sight left him cold. Genocide should be a purification, and there was nothing of purity in this insane unleashing of unknowable powers.
'Answer me,' Argel Tal said softly. No answer came, beyond the blood running down his cheeks and over his lips. He could smell nothing else, taste nothing else, beyond the sanguine rain.
New towers rose from the tumbling city below - slender spires formed from pulsing walls of still-living flesh, decorated by voiceless faces and flayed arms stretching from the architecture. The rising towers reached for the panicking eldar in the streets, using their lives as raw material, their alien flesh as living mortar.
Watch them die. You would die the same way.
'I told you to answer me,' said the Word Bearer.
Watch and learn, Word Bearer.
'We have records of the eldar and their histories.' He spat the foul blood that kept running onto his tongue. 'They speak of the Fall, when decadence and sin bred corruption throughout their culture. A spiritual cataclysm annihilated them centuries ago. That devastation is this? This... divine wrath?'
This is their judgement. In their ignorance, they see only the death of an empire as countless worlds drown in blood and fire. In this moment of ascension, the eldar choose terror over power, and damn their kingdom to ashes because the Primordial Truth frightens them all.
They have given birth to a god. A god of pleasure and promise. Yet they feel no joy.
'Enough!' Argel Tal threw back his head and drew breath into his three lungs. The storm intensified, its tortured skies bleeding onto the world below.
'Answer me!' he screamed at the sky.
This is the Fall they speak of in whispered tones. The eldar were blind. They could have lived in harmonic union with the Powers, as humanity must soon learn themselves. Instead, they are dying. Unable to accept the Primordial Truth, they are being destroyed by it.
You ask why? Can you not see why? This is not how empires die, Word Bearer. This is how gods are born. The eldar faith has given the galaxy a new deity. She Who Thirsts. Slaa Neth. It has a thousand names.
These are its first moments of life, and it wakes to find its own worshippers are abandoning it, out of ignorance and fear.
This endless storm, this Eye of Terror, is the echo of its birth-cries.
'I have seen enough,' Argel Tal watched the city below, now silent, flooded, reaped clean of all life. 'Blood of the gods, I have seen enough.'
Then open your eyes.
INGETHEL WAS WATCHING them, its mismatched eyes unblinking as they reflected the sick light from beyond the dome. The stench of blood lingered in Argel Tal's nostrils, despite the warriors' pristine armour and clean skin.
'That was unpleasant,' said Torgal.
'Sir,' Dagotal reached for Argel Tal's shoulder guard. 'I think we should leave this place.'
It was Xaphen, not the daemon, that quelled such discussion. 'You overstep your authority, sergeant. We will not flee from the truths we've travelled so far to find.'
Argel Tal ignored their bickering. His vox-network was alive with squads checking in, retinal runes flickering as each sergeant l |
Tal's nostrils, despite the warriors' pristine armour and clean skin.
'That was unpleasant,' said Torgal.
'Sir,' Dagotal reached for Argel Tal's shoulder guard. 'I think we should leave this place.'
It was Xaphen, not the daemon, that quelled such discussion. 'You overstep your authority, sergeant. We will not flee from the truths we've travelled so far to find.'
Argel Tal ignored their bickering. His vox-network was alive with squads checking in, retinal runes flickering as each sergeant linked to him.
'Sir, we just saw...'
'Captain, there was a voice and... and a vision...'
'This is Vadox Squad, reporting...'
The Word Bearer turned to the daemon. 'Every one of my warriors on the ship saw what we saw.'
They hear my voice, the same as you. That is why they are here: to bear witness. To learn. The eldar failed, and the price paid for their sin was slow extinction. Humanity must not follow the same path. Mankind must accept the Primordial Truth.
'We cannot carry this message back to the Imperium,' said Argel Tal.
'Of course we can,' Xaphen narrowed his eyes. 'We can and we will, because we must. This is humanity's enlightenment.'
You came here seeking to learn if your home world's Old Ways were true. And now you know they were.
'This is a truth too ugly to be embraced by the Imperium.' The captain watched the dead world below. 'You, creature, know nothing of what you speak. But brother, do you expect us to sail into orbit around Terra and right into the Emperor's welcoming embrace? The answers we carry home will make a lie of the Imperial Truth. All human emotion takes form as psychic force? Not only is the Emperor's godless vision a lie, it must be crushed in favour of allying with daemons and spirits?' Argel Tal shook his head. 'It will be civil war, Xaphen. The Imperium will tear itself apart.'
The Chaplain gave a threatening growl. 'This is why we came. The truth is all that matters. You speak as though you expected the primarch to be proved wrong, and panic now he was shown to be right.'
'But the captain has a point,' said Dagotal. 'We will not be showered with medals for bringing home the truth that hell is a real place.'
They all turned as the daemon laughed in their minds.
You have seen nothing yet, but you already judge what is best for your species?
'What more is there to see?' asked Argel Tal.
Ingethel beckoned with its gnarled fingers. Close your eyes.
'No.' The captain took a calming breath. 'I am finished with blind indulgence. Tell me what you wish to show us.'
I will show you how your primarch was born. I will show you why the Cadians called him the Favoured Son of the Four. The Emperor is not his only father.
Argel Tal glanced at the others, seeing their eyes already closed, the mention of their father enough to tempt them into obedience. He spoke into the vox, alerting the other squads.
'Be ready, all of you, for what we see may be a deception.'
You have such little faith, Argel Tal.
The Word Bearer closed his eyes again.
THE AIR'S TOUCH was ice against his skin, and the first thing Argel Tal's returning vision offered was his own breath misting before him. The smell here was neither the sanguine richness of the alien world, nor the musky odour of oxygen filtered through a vessel's recycling scrubbers. A certain sharpness hung in the air: the chemical tang of volatile machinery and burning glass.
Argel Tal looked around the laboratory, surrounded on all sides by live generators, cluttered tables and humans at work in pressurised environment suits - some white, some bright yellow and marked by radiological sigils. Frost rimed their faceplates, scuffing away as powder when brushed off by gloved hands.
The Word Bearer had been in scarce few laboratories in the many decades of his existence, so his frame of reference was limited. Still, he could form a fair estimation that a facility this size would only be required for the most vital or visionary work. The walls were lost behind dense cabling and clanking generators; the technicians at work numbered in the hundreds, spread around tables, platforms and desks.
One passed Argel Tal, the figure's environmental hazard suit rustling as it brushed the Word Bearer's battle armour. The suit's faceguard stole any hope of seeing the wearer's face; either way, the technician ignored the Astartes completely.
Argel Tal reached for the figure.
Don't.
He hesitated, grey fingers curling back. The tiny servos in his armour's knuckles whirred as he pulled away from the technician's shoulder.
Be careful, Argel Tal. These souls remain blind to you as long as you do not interfere with their work.
'And if I did?' he asked quietly.
Then one of the most powerful psychic forces in the history of life would be alerted to you, and would kill you where you stand. You are within the Anathema's innermost sanctum. Here, it breeds its spawn.
'The Anathema,' Argel Tal repeated, looking around the colossal facility. The other Word Bearers walked to his side, none of them reaching for weapons just yet.
The Anathema. The creature you know as the God-Emperor.
Xaphen exhaled misty curls of vapour. 'This... This is Terra. The Emperor's gene-laboratories.'
Yes. Many years before the Anathema's crusade to reclaim the stars. Here, with the full clarity of its emotionless inhumanity, it has finished shaping its twenty children.
The Chaplain crossed to a table, where vials of blood span in a centrifuge, separating into layers within each glass vial. 'If this is a vision of the past, how could the Emperor destroy us here?'
You are protected for now, Xaphen. That is all that matters. This is what transpires on Terra, as the elder empire burns with soul-fire. The Anathema senses it will soon be time to begin his Great Crusade.
The Word Bearers moved along the rows of tables, their course taking them closer to the central platform standing above the laboratory. A column of black and silver machinery stood upon the decking there, ringed by a wide walkway. Argel Tal climbed the stairs first, his boots echoing on the metal, going unheard by the dozens of technicians nearby. Several passed him, paying no heed to anything beyond the digital streams on their frostbitten data-slates and the sine-wave readings on their handheld auspex readers.
Argel Tal walked across the platform, around the amniotic pods coupled to the main column - bound there by dense messes of wires, chains, cables and industrial clamps. The generators built into the column of metal made the same angry thrum as Astartes back-mounted power packs, and that little detail brought a smile to the captain's face.
The womb of the primarchs. Here, the Anathema's sons gestate in their cold cradles.
Argel Tal approached the closest pod. Its surface was unpainted grey iron, smooth in the few places where it wasn't scabbed by machinery sockets and connection ports. Etched clearly onto its front plating in silver lettering was the Gothic numeral XIII. Beneath the silver plate, an inscription was scratched into the metal in tiny, meticulous handwriting.
The exact meaning of the words escaped Argel Tal - it seemed a long and complicated prayer, beseeching outside forces for blessings and strength - but the fact he could read them was mystery enough.
'This is Colchisian,' he said aloud.
It is, and it is not.
'I can read it.'
The tongue you name Colchisian is a fragment of a primordial language. Colchisian... Cadian... these tongues were seeded onto your worlds in readiness for the coming age. The Emperor's golden pets could not read those inscriptions, for they do not carry Lorgar's blood in their veins. All of this was planned aeons ago.
'And the Cadians?'
Their world was touched, as Colchis was touched. Seeds planted in abundance, all to flower in this moment.
Argel Tal approached the pod marked XIII. A glass screen at eye level showed nothing but the milky fluid within.
And then, movement.
Go no closer.
The briefest shadow of something stirred inside the artificial womb.
Stay back. The daemon's voice was edged now - sharpened by concern.
Argel Tal stepped closer.
A child slumbered within the gestation pod, curled up in foetal helplessness, its eyes closed. It turned slowly in the amniotic milk, half-formed limbs moving in somnolent repose.
Stay back, Word Bearer. I sense your rising wrath. Do not assume I am the only one who is capable of feeling it. Strong emotion will also alert the Anathema.
Argel Tal leaned closer to the pod. His fingertips brushed frost from its surface.
'Guilliman,' he whispered.
The child slept on.
Xaphen moved away from the others, coming to the pod etched with XI. Rather than peer into its depths, he looked over his shoulder at Argel Tal.
'The eleventh primarch sleeps within this pod - still innocent, still pure. I ache to end this now,' he confessed.
Malnor chuckled from behind the Chaplain. 'It would save us all a lot of effort, wouldn't it?'
'And it would spare Aurelian from heartbreak.' Xaphen traced his fingertips over the designating numeral. 'I remember the devastation that wracked him after losing his second and eleventh brothers.'
Argel Tal still hadn't left Guilliman's pod. 'We do not know for certain if our actions here would change the future.'
'Are some chances not worth taking?' asked the Chaplain.
'Some are. This one is not.'
'But the Eleventh Legion-'
'Is expunged from Imperial record for good reason. As is the Second. I'm not saying I don't feel temptation creeping over me, brother. A single sword thrust piercing that pod, and we'd unwrite a shameful future.'
Dagotal cleared his throat. 'And deny the Ultramarines a significant boost in recruitment numbers.'
Xaphen regarded him with emotionless eyes, seeming to weigh the merit of such a thing.
'What?' Dagotal asked the others. 'You were thinking it, too. It's no secret.'
'Those are just rumours,' Torgal grunted. The assault sergeant didn't sound particularly certain.
'Perhaps, |
feel temptation creeping over me, brother. A single sword thrust piercing that pod, and we'd unwrite a shameful future.'
Dagotal cleared his throat. 'And deny the Ultramarines a significant boost in recruitment numbers.'
Xaphen regarded him with emotionless eyes, seeming to weigh the merit of such a thing.
'What?' Dagotal asked the others. 'You were thinking it, too. It's no secret.'
'Those are just rumours,' Torgal grunted. The assault sergeant didn't sound particularly certain.
'Perhaps, perhaps not. The Thirteenth definitely swelled to eclipse all the other Legions around the time the Second and Eleventh were "forgotten" by Imperial archives.'
Enough of this insipid conjecture, came the disembodied voice again.
Argel Tal looked below the platform, where the scientists laboured at their stations. Most were dealing with bloodwork, or working on biopsies of pale flesh. He recognised the extracted organs immediately.
'Why are these men and women experimenting on Astartes gene-seed?' he asked. The other Word Bearers followed his gaze.
They are not experimenting on it. They are inventing it.
Argel Tal watched them work, as Ingethel's voice hissed on. He saw several of the workers nearby slicing open the pale organs with silver scalpels. Each of them bore the numeral I on the back of their environment suits.
Your Emperor has conquered his own world with the proto-Astartes created in far inferior conditions. Now he breeds the primarchs, and in their shadow, he breeds the warriors he needs to lead the Great Crusade.
He watched them work, but the sight of his genetic genesis left his skin crawling.
These are the prototypical organs that will become the gene-seed for the first true Astartes. You know them as-
'The Dark Angels,' said Argel Tal. 'The First Legion.' Below him, the biotechnicians scalpelled through malformed organs, threaded veins, analysed with microscopes, and took tissue samples for further testing. The progenoid glands implanted in his own throat and chest throbbed with sympathetic ache. He lifted a hand to rub at the sore spot on the side of his neck, where the organ hidden beneath the skin did its silent work - storing his genetic coding until the moment of his death, whereupon it would be harvested and implanted within another child. The boy would, in turn, grow to become a Word Bearer. No longer human. No longer Homo Sapiens, but Homo Astartes.
It will be many Terran years before the organs below are ready for implantation in human youths. This is early in the process. Most of the flaws in gene-seed structure will be written out in the course of the coming decades.
The captain didn't like the creature's tone. 'Most?'
Most. Not all.
'The Thousand Sons,' said Xaphen. 'Their genetic code was misaligned. The Legion was afflicted by mutation and psychic instability.'
They are not alone in their flaws. The unwinding years will bring these biological errors to light. Gene-seed degeneration resulting in organ failure, stealing the ability to salivate venom; intolerance to certain radiation will alter a warrior's skin and bones.
'The Imperial Fists,' said Malnor. 'And the Salamanders.'
'But what of us?' Dagotal asked.
There was a pause as Ingethel whisper-laughed behind their eyes. What of you?
'Will we suffer from those... impurities?'
'Answer him,' said Argel Tal. 'He asks what we all wish to know.'
The code written into your bodies is purer than most. You will suffer no special degeneration, and endure no unique flaws.
'But there is something,' he said. 'I hear it in your voice.'
No Astartes is as loyal to their primarch as the XVII are to Lorgar. No Imperial warrior believes in their father's righteousness with as much faith and ardent devotion.
Argel Tal swallowed. It felt cold, and tasted sour. 'Our loyalty is bred into our blood?'
No. You are sentient creatures with free will. This is no more than a minor divergence in an otherwise flawless code. Your gene-seed enhances the chemicals in your brain tissue. It gives you focus. It grants you unbreakable loyalty to your cause, and to Lorgar Aurelian.
'I do not like the turn this revelation is taking,' the captain confessed.
'Nor I,' admitted Torgal.
The surprise you feel is false, Argel Tal. You have seen this before, reflected in the eyes of your brother Legions. Think of the compliance of Cassius, when the pale sons of Corax watched you with distaste, arguing against your savage purge of the heathen population. The Thousand Sons at Antiolochus... The Luna Wolves at Davin... The Ultramarines at Syon...
All of your brothers have watched you and hated you for your unquestioning, focused wrath.
He moved back to Guilliman's pod, examining it rather than paying attention to the technicians below. 'I will speak of this no further.'
It is not a flaw to believe, Word Bearer. There is nothing purer.
Argel Tal paid the daemon's words no mind. Something else had caught his attention and wouldn't let go.
'Blood of the... Look. Look at this.' The captain crouched by the lower half of Guilliman's coffin-womb. A bulky generator box was half-meshed with the main machinery behind the gestation pod. Coolant feeds quivered as they pumped fluid, and the details that could be made out through gaps in the armoured covering showed the generator's internal compartments were filled with bubbling red liquid.
Dagotal looked over Argel Tal's shoulder. 'Is that blood?'
The captain gave Dagotal a withering look.
'What?' the sergeant asked.
'It's haemolubricant, for a machine-spirit. These secondary generators are fastened behind each pod. And look, they run along the spinal columns of these structures, up the tower.'
Dagotal and the others looked around. 'So?'
'So where have you seen power generators of similar design before? What engine requires a machine-spirit of this complexity to function?'
'Oh,' the sergeant said. 'Oh.'
The Word Bearers looked up at the central column, juddering and humming with its machine-parts and multiple power supplies.
At last... Yes...
'This is more than an incubation tower,' said Xaphen.
You are so close now...
Argel Tal looked at the pods, each in turn, and the insanely complex array of machinery coupling them to the central column.
Yes... Yes... Witness the truth...
'This is a generator,' his voice softened in disbelief, 'for a Geller Field.'
XAPHEN CIRCLED THE walkway, his clanging boot steps unheard by the horde of technicians working away. Argel Tal watched his Chaplain moving around the pods, a slow suspicion creeping over the back of his neck. Both warriors were unhelmed, and thin sheens of icy sweat glistened on their faces.
'The most powerful Geller Field in existence,' Argel Tal gestured to the machinery. 'The generators on board our vessels, linked with the Navigators... they are a shadow of what we're seeing here.'
You do not truly comprehend the effect you name a Geller Field. It is more than a kinetic shield against warp energy. The warp itself is the Sea of Souls. Your fields repel raw psychic force. They are a bulwark against the claws of the neverborn.
'The question we must ask ourselves,' Xaphen spoke as he stroked the surface of the pod marked XVII, 'is why these incubators are shielded against...'
Say it.
Xaphen smiled. '...against daemons.'
Torgal joined the Chaplain before Lorgar's pod. He stared inside at the slumbering infant for some time.
'I believe I know. These children are almost grown to the point of birth. Daemon? Spirit?'
I am here.
Torgal looked acutely uncomfortable interacting with a disembodied voice. 'The Legions tell the tale of the Emperor's twenty sons being cast into the heavens by some great tragedy, some flaw in their creation process.'
You have been raised with tales of the primarchs that lead your Legions, but you have been fed centuries of lies. In a matter of moments, you will witness the truth. The Anathema dealt with the Powers of the warp long before he left Earth on the Great Crusade.
The Anathema desired mighty sons, and the gods granted him the lore to forge them with a union of divine genetics and psychic sorcery. He came to my masters, hungry for answers, beseeching the gods for power. With the lore they gave him, he shaped his twenty sons.
But treacheries have occurred. Oaths - sworn in blood and paid in soul - have been broken. The Anathema now refuses to show humanity the Primordial Truth, and the gods of the warp grow wrathful.
The Anathema is keeping its twenty primarch sons and paying no price to the Powers that gifted him with the knowledge to shape them.
Xaphen gripped the handrail to keep from going to his knees. 'Our father - all of our fathers - are the spawn of ancient blood rituals and forbidden science.'
Argel Tal couldn't keep from laughing. 'The Emperor that denies all forms of divinity shaped his own sons with the blessings of forgotten gods. Prayers and sorcery are written upon their gestation pods. This is the most glorious madness.'
Be ready. The reckoning comes. The Powers will reach into the material realm to reclaim the sons they helped breed.
Argel Tal looked at the pods through a smile that wouldn't fade. 'This Geller Field. It fails, doesn't it?'
It will fail in exactly thirty-seven beats of your heart, Argel Tal.
'And the primarchs are seized - taken by your masters in the warp. That's the accident that casts them across the galaxy.'
The warp gods are the primarchs' rightful fathers. This is not to spite your Emperor. It is nothing but divine justice. And as these perfect children travel through the stars, they will grow. This is the first step in the gods' plans to save mankind.
'And Aurelian...'
Is the most important one of all. Lorgar's incubation pod will be carried to Colchis, to walk the first steps to enlightening humanity of the Primordial Truth, and the gods behind the stars. Without the gods, humanity will die, piece by piece, under the predation of the aliens that still lay claim to muc |
Emperor. It is nothing but divine justice. And as these perfect children travel through the stars, they will grow. This is the first step in the gods' plans to save mankind.
'And Aurelian...'
Is the most important one of all. Lorgar's incubation pod will be carried to Colchis, to walk the first steps to enlightening humanity of the Primordial Truth, and the gods behind the stars. Without the gods, humanity will die, piece by piece, under the predation of the aliens that still lay claim to much of the galaxy. Those that remain will die as the eldar died: in agony, unable to see the Primordial Truth before their very eyes.
This is Fate. It is written in the stars. Lorgar knows that humanity needs divinity - it is what shaped his life and Legion. It is why he was chosen as the favoured son.
Xaphen closed his eyes, murmuring a litany from the Word. 'Faith raises us above the soulless and the damned. It is the soul's fuel, and the driving force behind millennia of mankind's survival. We are hollow without it.'
Argel Tal drew his weapons. The swords of red iron slid free from their scabbards with twin hisses.
Yes. Yes...
Both blades sparked into electrical life as the captain pulled the handle-triggers. Xaphen regarded him with hooded eyes.
'Do it,' the Chaplain said. 'Let it begin.'
Argel Tal whirled the blades in slow, arcing loops, their crackling power fields growing more intense, the blades emanating ozone mist as they burned and rasped through the frozen air.
'Aurelian,' whispered Malnor. 'For Lorgar.'
'For the truth,' Torgal said. 'Do it, and we will carry these answers back to the Imperium.'
Argel Tal looked at Dagotal; the youngest of his sergeants, only recently promoted before the Legion's humiliation. The outrider commander's eyes were distant.
'I am weary of being lied to by the Emperor, brother. I am so tired of being ashamed, when what we believe is the truth.' Dagotal nodded, meeting his captain's eyes at last. 'Do it.'
Three.
He stepped forward, staring at a cluster of vein-like cables twitching as they channelled artificial blood around the semi-organic tower machine.
Two.
Argel Tal span the swords, leaving blurred trails of lightning in their wake.
One.
The blades chopped down, crashing through steel, iron, rubber, copper, bronze and vat-grown blood.
Both swords exploded in his hands, their blades shattering like smashed glass and decorating his bare face with bloody cuts.
And then, for one horrific, familiar moment, Argel Tal saw nothing but burning, psychic gold.
EIGHTEEN
A Hundred Truths
Resurrection
Return
'I heard your brother,' Argel Tal confessed.
The primarch was no longer writing. For several minutes, Lorgar had done nothing but listen in mounting emotion as the captain relayed the events in Ingethel's vision. Now, at these words, he released a breath he'd been holding for some time.
'Magnus?'
Argel Tal had never heard his sire speak so softly. 'No. The Warmaster.'
The golden-skinned giant brushed his hands over his face, seemingly afflicted by a sudden weariness. 'I do not know that title,' he said. 'Warmaster. An ugly word.'
Argel Tal chuckled in two voices. 'Of course, forgive us, Lorgar. He will not be named that for some time. He is still merely Horus. When the vision ended in golden light, we could see nothing beyond the flare. But we heard your brother Horus. The machinery was breaking down, rattling and crashing. There was gunfire. The rush of the most powerful wind we've ever felt. And we heard Horus's voice - shouting, defiant, enraged. It was as if he were there with us, seeing what we saw.'
'Stop saying "we". You are Argel Tal.'
'We are Argel Tal, yes. In forty-three years, Horus will speak four words that will save humanity or lead to its extinction. We know what those words are, Lorgar. Do you?'
Lorgar cradled his head in his hands, fine fingers pressed to the elegant runes inked onto his skin.
'This is too much. Too much to bear. I... I need Erebus here. I need my fa- Kor Phaeron.'
'They are far from here. And we will tell you something more: neither Erebus nor Kor Phaeron would struggle to accept the truths that we speak. Kor Phaeron has always kept his belief in the Old Ways hidden behind lying smiles, and Erebus drools in the presence of power. Neither of those twisted warlocks would hold their heads in their hands and panic about how the Imperium will-'
Argel Tal's voices fell silent, quenched by the golden hand around his emaciated throat.
Lorgar rose to his feet in a smooth and effortless motion, dragging the Astartes up with him, the captain's feet lifting from the deck.
'You will watch your tongue when you speak the names of my mentors, and you will speak with respect when you address the lord of your own Legion. Is that understood, beast?'
Argel Tal didn't answer. His hands clawed at the primarch's forearm in desperate futility.
Lorgar hurled the skeletal figure against the wall. The captain crashed against the metal and tumbled to the floor.
'Wipe that filthy grin from your lips,' Lorgar demanded.
When the Astartes lifted his face to regard the primarch, it was Argel Tal who looked out through his own eyes once more.
'Control yourself, captain,' Lorgar warned. 'Now finish your tale.'
'I saw things.' Argel Tal tried to rise on trembling limbs. 'When the gold faded, there was more to see. Visions. I can't explain it any other way, sire.'
Sensing his son's return to the fore, Lorgar helped Argel Tal to a seating position.
'Speak,' he said.
ONE BY ONE, the pods came down.
Alone now, Argel Tal stood on the surface of each world and watched them strike home. Not all of them; and that itself was a source of mystery. Was there some significance in the planetfalls he was entitled to witness? Why these, and not others?
The first was a blazing meteorite, ploughing into the soft soil of a temperate world. The pod didn't punch deep; it carved a furrow in the ground and skidded to a halt in the midst of an evergreen forest so dense that the overhanging trees refused the moonlight above.
The child that emerged from the broken pod was pale of skin and fierce of eye. His hair was as black as the armour of the warriors he would grow to lead.
Twilight fell without warning-
-WITHERING THE TREES to dust, their ashes scattering in the sudden wind. In place of the lush forest was bleak tundra reaching from horizon to horizon, populated by black rock and stunted, colourless flora.
The pod rained down aflame from the grey sky, crashing against the jagged slopes of a cliff side and causing an avalanche of tumbling rocks in its wake. When the dust finally cleared, Argel Tal saw a slender child rise from the wreckage of metal and stone, brushing his dusty hands through hair the white of flawless marble.
The boy looked to his surroundings, while-
-ARGEL TAL WAS alone on a mountaintop, snow clinging to his armour as it fell. On a distant peak, a fortress stood silhouetted against a clean sky, its exquisite stone battlements and towers lit by the sun shining down through a break in the clouds.
The Word Bearer stared upward, feeling the light snowfall cool his fevered skin as he watched the pod fall from the heavens. When it struck the earth, it hit with enough force to drive itself into the side of the mountain, shaking the ground with the anger of an artillery barrage.
Argel Tal waited, watching the wound in the mountainside. At last, a child emerged, climbing over the rocks with ease, his skin bronze in the high sun. For a moment, it seemed the child saw him, but-
-NO WORLD SHOULD ever be this dark.
Argel Tal's eyes took a few seconds to pierce the deep night, and what met his gaze was no better than the preceding darkness. A lightless sky was dominated by an imposing moon that eclipsed the starlight rather than reflect the sun. A sprawling city on the horizon was barely lit, as though the eyes of its denizens would rebel against any true illumination.
Fire heralded the pod's arrival - brightening the air over the wasteland with blazing light as it tore groundward. The impact was a spear-thrust into the metallic-smelling soil, driving the incubator deep into the ground with enough force to split the land with tectonic cracks.
The Word Bearer maintained his balance, breathing in air that tasted of iron and waiting for signs of movement from the chasm freshly-carved into the infertile earth.
The boy that rose under the night sky was corpse-pale, and unique among the progenitors Argel Tal had seen so far, for he carried a shard of his gestation pod clutched tight in his fist - a knife, crude and instinctive, made from the twisted metal of his pod.
Thunder announced itself overhead. The boy raised his face to the sky, a sudden trident of lightning illuminating the child's gaunt, unhealthy features.
Argel Tal-
-STOOD ATOP ANOTHER cliff edge, this one overlooking a valley that split a brutal mountain range.
The pod hammered down - a blur of grey metal - smashing against the rock walls without piercing the stone. Argel Tal watched as the pod span end over end, wrecking itself in its devastating fall down the mountainside. Dark metal ripped from its armoured hull, shed like peeling scabs.
It came to rest upside-down at the bottom of the valley, and Argel Tal's visor zoomed in to compensate for the distance. He saw the pod shake once, twice, then roll aside, pushed away by the infant it had contained. Free of his burden, the boy touched trembling hands to a face awash with blood.
The scream of pain that rose from the valley had no place leaving the lips of a child so young.
When-
-EVERYTHING CHANGED AGAIN, Argel Tal watched the dusk through a haze of mist. The fog was thin, a sickly celadon jade that spoke of both chill air and toxicity. What little daylight pierced the mist was born of a pinprick sun, meagre in both size and generosity, setting below a flat horizon.
Plainsland stretched in every direction, as uninspiring and ba |
ling hands to a face awash with blood.
The scream of pain that rose from the valley had no place leaving the lips of a child so young.
When-
-EVERYTHING CHANGED AGAIN, Argel Tal watched the dusk through a haze of mist. The fog was thin, a sickly celadon jade that spoke of both chill air and toxicity. What little daylight pierced the mist was born of a pinprick sun, meagre in both size and generosity, setting below a flat horizon.
Plainsland stretched in every direction, as uninspiring and barren as any number of ignorable lifeless worlds Argel Tal had passed as part of the Great Crusade's expeditionary fleets.
The falling pod trailed smoke and flame, burning with green fire as it ignited the virulence in the mist. Its final descent brought it hammering against the rocky ground, cracking open as it skidded over the shale.
The Word Bearer moved closer to the downed capsule, seeing tendrils of fog creeping through the rent metal, misting up the interior behind the clear viewplate. Something pale moved within, but-
-HE WAS STANDING in the white stone and shining crystal heart of a city, surrounded by spires, pyramids, obelisks and towering statuary.
The pod fell from the summer sky at a meteor's angle, shearing through a slender tower with a crash of breaking glass that could be heard across the city. A moment later, the incubator cracked the mosaic ground, sliding and burning across the white stone until it ended its fiery journey against the base of a great pyramid.
Crowds of tanned, handsome figures gathered in the afternoon sunlight, watching as the metal coffin's rivets and bolts unscrewed and removed themselves, detached by unseen hands. Plate by plate, the pod's armour plating lifted away, floating in the air above the crash site. At last, the final structural pieces drifted apart, while at the heart of the hovering display was a red-haired child, his eyes closed, his skin a burnished coppery red.
The boy's feet didn't touch the ground. He floated a metre above the burned mosaics, and at last opened his eyes. Argel Tal-
-WALKED THE SURFACE of a wasted world. The air held the taint of exhaust fumes, and the lifeless landscape was a grey twin to Luna, Terra's only moon.
The pod fell from a night sky filled with stars - each of the constellations pregnant with the promise of deeper meaning. The ground rumbled in protest as the pod struck, and the Word Bearer climbed the small rise of a crater's lip to see the incubator gouging a furrow through the silvery soil.
The pod's door blasted open even as it was coming to rest, clanging loudly in the silent night. The boy that rose from the confines was inhumanly handsome, his fine features pale and contemplative, his grey eyes matching the earth of the world he'd landed upon.
There was no-
-CHANCE TO MOVE closer.
He was home. Not the sterile decks of the expeditionary fleet, nor even the Spartan sanctuary of his meditation chamber aboard De Profundis. No, he was home.
The sky was a cloudless expanse of blue above the dusty desert, while a city of grey flowers and fire-hardened red bricks sat by the side of a wide river. Argel Tal regarded the Holy City from his position downriver; such was his pleasure at this curious homecoming that he forgot to look up until the last moment.
The pod - his father's black iron womb - hit the rushing river with a great splash, throwing spray and a fine wet mist into the air. Argel Tal was already sprinting, his armour joints whirring as he ran over the arid soil. He didn't care if this was a vision or if he was really here; he had to reach his father's pod.
Astartes battle armour wasn't made for this. With its immense weight, his boots sank into the sticking river mud, generating grinding protests from the inbuilt mercury-threaded stabilisers in his shins and knee-joints.
The Word Bearer hauled himself through the waist-deep mud, clambering lower down the riverbank to reach the downed capsule. As he neared the incubator, one thing was obvious above all else: Lorgar's pod had suffered a great deal more damage than any other.
He reached out, the ceramite armouring his fingers just managing to scrape the pod's side, and an image flashed before his eyes, superimposing itself over reality.
The pod rattled, spinning through the void, tumbling alone through the warp's tides. Burn marks and cracks appeared as the lurching journey continued, while mist the colour of madness seeped in through the armour cracks. The child within slept on as pain marred its features, now restless in its repose.
See how the gods of this galaxy treasured your primarch above the others, keeping him in the Sea of Souls for decades, preparing him for the role he would play in the ascension of mankind to divinity.
Lorgar felt their blessed touch more than any of his brothers.
Argel Tal-
-STUMBLED, STAGGERING TO a halt.
The pod before him was a clone to his father's, but growing faint and indistinct before his eyes. The ground was dark, the night sky was starless, and for a moment Argel Tal wasn't sure whether he stood on the surface of a world or the deck of a powered-down ship.
As his senses faded, he caught a momentary glimpse through the viewplate on the pod's bulky front. Whatever moved within the incubator had too many limbs to be a lone human child.
Argel Tal stepped closer, only to have his attention stolen by a blur of scarlet in the glass reflection. It was his helm, his chestplate, but warped by ivory protrusions - a twisted, gothic bio-architecture formed from ceramite and bone. The face that looked back was a tusked rendition of his war helm, painted crimson and black but for the golden star around his right eye lens.
He-
-OPENED HIS EYES.
The observation deck, on board the Orfeo's Lament. The sky beyond the dome was full of thrashing chaos.
The daemon remained exactly where it had been, its muscled form never completely still, forever swaying side to side, its claws flicker-twitching in the air. Xaphen, Torgal, Malnor, Dagotal - all were exactly as they had been before.
The outrider sergeant checked his retinal chron. Three seconds had passed. Four. Five.
They'd been gone no time at all.
'Was any of that real?' he asked.
Ingethel the Ascended gestured with two of its spindly arms, the talons pointing to the ground behind the Word Bearers. There, on the decking, were the swords of red iron: broken beyond repair, the shards darkened by scorch markings from the detonation that ruined them.
'That looks real to me,' Xaphen chuckled.
You have seen much, and learned more. One matter remains. The daemon slithered around the Astartes, circling them with slow relish. Something akin to amusement glinted in its ugly eyes as it watched Argel Tal.
'What remains?'
A leap of faith.
Xaphen's eyes met Argel Tal's. 'We've come this far. We stand united.'
The captain nodded.
A choice must be made. You have witnessed the truth of the gods. You have seen the Emperor's own lies laid bare, and you know the slow extinction that awaits humanity if the species remains blind to the Primordial Truth.
So choose.
'Choose what?' Argel Tal narrowed his eyes. Unwilling to tolerate the creature's stench any longer, he put on his helm, breathing easier as the collar seals hissed and locked.
To lower this vessel's Geller Field. Ingethel stroked a claw down the dome's side. On the other side of the dense glass, screaming faces and frantic talons pressed against the daemon's hand. Lower the Geller Field. Become the architects of humanity's destiny, and the weapons Lorgar needs to wield against the Empire of Lies.
The Word Bearers didn't all react alike. Xaphen closed his eyes with a knowing smile, as if this confirmed something he'd been waiting to hear. Torgal rested his hands on his holstered pistol and sheathed blade, while Malnor placed his grey gauntlet on the stocks of the two bolt pistols mag-locked to his thighs. Dagotal stepped back from the group, his body language betraying his unease even though his eye lenses gave no emotion away.
Argel Tal didn't reach for a weapon. Instead, he laughed.
'You are insane, creature.'
This is the respect you show to a messenger of the gods?
'What did you expect? That the Word Bearers would kneel and accept everything you said as a divine mandate? We are done with kneeling, Ingethel.'
The daemon's maw quivered as it offered a rattish hiss. Lower the Geller Field and you will taste the last promise of proof.
'We must heed the messenger's words,' said the Chaplain.
'Enough, Xaphen.'
'Aurelian demanded this of us! We were ordered to follow the guide, no matter where he led us. How can you baulk at the final moment of truth?'
'Enough. We are not risking the ship in this storm. We already lost the Shield of Scarus. A hundred brothers lost in this sector of space, and you smile when it comes to losing a hundred more.'
They were not chosen, Argel Tal. You are. It was their time to meet destruction. They lacked the strength of will to endure what you are being offered.
The captain rounded on the daemon. 'What will happen if we lower the field? Will we be at the mercy of the storm? Pulled apart like every other Imperial vessel that lost Geller stability during warp flight?'
No. Lower the anathemic skin, and my kin will come to join us. To share the final revelation with the gods' chosen warriors.
'Daemons... on the ship.' Argel Tal watched the faces of screaming souls thrashing against the dome. 'This cannot be our choice. These cannot be the gods of the galaxy.'
Xaphen softened his voice. To Argel Tal's ears, he'd never sounded more like Erebus, his former mentor.
'Brother... We were never given a promise that the truth would be easy to bear. The way we were chosen - and our father favoured - by true divine power.'
Argel Tal turned to stare at Xaphen through a targeting reticule. 'You seem very certain about this course of action, brother.'
'Are you not honoured to be chosen like this? I wish to |
our choice. These cannot be the gods of the galaxy.'
Xaphen softened his voice. To Argel Tal's ears, he'd never sounded more like Erebus, his former mentor.
'Brother... We were never given a promise that the truth would be easy to bear. The way we were chosen - and our father favoured - by true divine power.'
Argel Tal turned to stare at Xaphen through a targeting reticule. 'You seem very certain about this course of action, brother.'
'Are you not honoured to be chosen like this? I wish to be one of the first to receive the blessing of the gods. It is a leap of faith, as Ingethel said.'
'Sylamor will not lower the Geller Field, even if we order it. It would be suicide.'
There will be no fruitless death. This is your moment of ascension, Word Bearers. Let fate take its course. Think of your primarch, kneeling in the dust before Guilliman and the God-Emperor.
This moment will be the beginning of his vindication. The Emperor's lies will damn your species. The Primordial Truth will set it free.
'We can carry this lore back to the Imperium, but humanity will never surrender itself to this... chaos.'
Humanity has no choice. It will die under the claws of aliens, and those few that survive will be swallowed by the spreading influence of the warp gods. They only grow stronger, Argel Tal. If one refuses to worship them, then that species has no place in this galaxy.
The Word Bearer didn't speak the words that lay on his tongue - nevertheless, the daemon sensed them.
What will you do, human? Fight us? Wage war against the gods themselves? How lovely, to imagine the little Empire of mortal man laying siege to heaven and hell.
Just like the eldar... You will see the Primordial Truth, or you will be destroyed by it.
'One last question,' he said.
Ask.
'You name the Emperor as the Anathema. Why?'
Because of the future. The Emperor will damn your species, denying humanity its birthright as the chosen children of the gods. He wages war against divinity, shrouding your species in ignorance. That will damn you all. The Emperor is not only loathed for his treacheries against the gods, he is anathemic to all human life.
Lorgar knows this. It is why he sent you into the Eye. Your enlightenment is the first step in the human race's ascendancy.
Argel Tal looked into the daemon's eyes for a long, long moment. In the mismatched depths, he once more saw Lorgar abase himself in the dust. He felt the deceitful Emperor's psychic gale throwing him from his feet, casting him to the dirt before the Ultramarines.
He felt the serenity of standing in the City of Grey Flowers, knowing beyond doubt that his cause was holy, that his crusade was just. How long had it been since he'd felt such purity of purpose?
'Qan Shiel Squad,' Argel Tal spoke into the vox. 'Make your way to Geller Generation on deck three. Squad Velash, move to support Qan Shiel.'
Affirmations crackled back. 'Orders, sir?' asked Sergeant Qan Shiel. 'I... we have all heard as you heard.'
The captain swallowed.
'Destroy the Geller Field generator. That's an order. All Word Bearers, stand ready.'
NINETY-ONE SECONDS later, the ship gave the slightest rumble beneath their feet.
Ninety-four seconds later, it pitched to starboard, wrenched from orbit by the storm's rage, drowning in the thrashing tides.
Ninety-seven seconds later, light died on every deck, bathing the crew and their Astartes protectors in the red gloom of emergency sirens.
Ninety-nine seconds later, every vox-channel erupted in screaming.
Ingethel uncoiled itself and launched forward, reaching for Malnor first.
XAPHEN LAY DEAD at the creature's feet.
His spine twisted, his armour broken, a death that showed no peace in rest. A metre from his outstretched fingers, his black steel crozius rested on the deck, silent in deactivation. The corpse was cauled by its helm, its final face hidden, but the Chaplain's scream still echoed across the vox-network.
The sound had been wet, strained - half-drowned by the blood filling Xaphen's ruptured lungs.
The creature turned its head with a predator's grace, stinking saliva trailing in gooey stalactites between too many teeth. No artificial light remained on the observation deck, but starlight, the winking of distant suns, bred silver glints in the creature's unmatching eyes. One was amber, swollen, lidless. The other black, an obsidian pebble sunken deep into its hollow.
Now you, it said, without moving its maw. Those jaws could never form human speech. You are next.
Argel Tal's first attempt to speak left his lips as a trickle of too-hot blood. It stung his chin as it ran down his face. The chemical-rich reek of the liquid, of Lorgar's gene-written blood running through the veins of each of his sons, was enough to overpower the stench rising from the creature's quivering, muscular grey flesh. For that one moment, he smelled his own death, rather than the creature's corruption.
It was a singular reprieve.
The captain raised his bolter in a grip that trembled, but not from fear. This defiance - this was the refusal he couldn't voice any other way.
Yes, the creature loomed closer. Its lower body was an abomination's splicing between serpent and worm, thick-veined and leaving a viscous, clear slug-trail that stank of unearthed graves. Yes.
'No,' Argel Tal finally forced the words through clenched teeth. 'Not like this.'
Like this. Like your brothers. This is how it must be.
The bolter barked with a throaty chatter, a stream of shells that hammered into the wall, impacting with concussive detonations that defiled the chamber's quiet. Each buck of the gun in his shaking hand sent the next shell wider from the mark.
Arm muscles burning, he let the weapon fall with a dull clang. The creature did not laugh, did not mock him for his failure. Instead, it reached for him with four arms, lifting him gently. Black talons scraped against the grey ceramite of his armour as it clutched him aloft.
Prepare yourself. This will not be painless.
Argel Tal hung limp in the creature's grip. For a brief second, he reached for the swords of red iron at his hips, forgetting that they were broken, the blades shattered, on the gantry decking below.
'I can hear,' his gritted teeth almost strangled the words, 'another voice.'
Yes. One of my kin. It comes for you.
'This... is not what... my primarch wanted...'
This? The creature dragged the helpless Astartes closer, and burst Argel Tal's secondary heart with a flex of thought. The captain went into violent convulsions, feeling the pulped mass behind his ribs like a bunch of crushed grapes, but the daemon cradled him with sickening gentleness.
This is exactly what Lorgar wanted. This is the truth.
Argel Tal strained for breath that wouldn't come, and forced dying muscles to reach for weapons that weren't there.
The last thing he felt before he died was something pouring into his thoughts, wet and cold, like oil spilling behind his eyes.
The last thing he heard was one of his dead brothers drawing a ragged breath over the vox-channel.
And the last thing he saw was Xaphen twitching, rising from the deck on struggling limbs.
LORGAR LOWERED THE quill once more. An unknowable emotion burned in his eyes - whatever it was, Argel Tal had never seen it before.
'And so we come full circle,' said the primarch. 'You died and resurrected. You found the crew slain. You sailed out from the Eye, taking seven months to do so.'
'You desired answers, sire. We brought them to you.'
'I could not be prouder of you, Argel Tal. You have saved humanity from ignorance and extinction. You have proved the Emperor wrong.'
The captain watched his father closely. 'How much of this did you already know, sire?'
'Why do you ask?'
'You lingered for three nights in the Cadian caves with Ingethel. How much of this tale had the creature already told you before you sent us in to the Eye?'
Lorgar released a breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. 'I did not know what would happen to you, my son. Please believe me.'
Argel Tal nodded. That was good enough.
He started to answer, but the affirmation caught in his throat. Was this the genetic loyalty all Astartes felt for their primarchs, only magnified in the XVII Legion? Would he ever be able to see deceit in his father's eyes, even if the Urizen lied right to his face?
Entire worlds had fallen to Lorgar's oratory without a single shot being fired in anger. In his son's eyes, he personified the persuasive, soulful charm so resplendent in the Emperor - always seeming above anything as base and crude as deception.
And yet, Ingethel's words cast the shadow of doubt.
'I believe you, father,' he said, hoping the words were true rather than knowing they were.
'We must cover our tracks.' Lorgar shook his head slowly. 'The Cadians' lives are evidence that the Emperor must never see. With his watchdogs among us, my father will know we witnessed the Cadian rituals, and that we ventured into the Eye. We must remain pure in the Emperor's eyes. The storm revealed nothing. The Cadians... well, they were destroyed for their deviance.'
Argel Tal swallowed acid. 'You will destroy the tribes?'
'We must cover our tracks,' Lorgar sighed. 'Genocide has never given me pleasure, my son. Tales of unrest will be spread among the fleet, and we will use tectonic weapons on the landing site to destroy the tribes that occupy the wastelands.'
Argel Tal said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
'You are reborn,' Lorgar pressed his palms together. 'The gods have reshaped you, granted you this great blessing.'
That's one way of seeing this, Argel Tal thought.
'I am possessed,' he replied. The words did no justice to the sense of violation, yet any other explanation would be too crude a fit. 'We were possessed, as evidence to you that Ingethel's words of the gods were truth.'
'I need no more convincing. Everything, at last, has fallen into place. I know my role in the galaxy, after two centuries of strugglin |
r pressed his palms together. 'The gods have reshaped you, granted you this great blessing.'
That's one way of seeing this, Argel Tal thought.
'I am possessed,' he replied. The words did no justice to the sense of violation, yet any other explanation would be too crude a fit. 'We were possessed, as evidence to you that Ingethel's words of the gods were truth.'
'I need no more convincing. Everything, at last, has fallen into place. I know my role in the galaxy, after two centuries of struggling to find the right path. And we will come to see your... union... as something avataric, something that exalts you in the eyes of the gods. Not a sacrifice. You were chosen, Argel Tal. Just as I was.' And yet, he did not sound as certain as his words insisted. Doubt shadowed his tone.
Argel Tal seemed lost in thought, watching the skeletal play of his opening and closing hand.
'Ingethel warned us all: this is merely the beginning. We will change as the possession takes hold, but not until the ordained time. These gods will cry out from their haven here in the storm, and when we hear them call to us, we will begin our... "evolution".'
'What form will these changes take?' Lorgar was writing once more, recording every word in his rapid, elegant script. He never went back to amend mistakes in his handwriting, for there were never any errors to amend.
'The daemon said nothing of that,' Argel Tal confessed. 'It said only that this age was coming to an end before another century has passed. When it does, the galaxy will burn and the gods will scream. Until then, we carry a second soul, letting it ripen inside us.'
Lorgar said nothing for some time. At last, he laid the quill aside and smiled at his son - a reassuring, welcoming smile.
'You must learn to hide this from the Custodes. You must hide this from everyone outside the Legion, until you hear the gods call.'
NINETEEN
Confession
Restoration
The Gal Vorbak
THE BLESSED LADY knew who it was even before the door opened.
She sat comfortably on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap, clad in her layered priestess's robe of cream and grey. Her sightless eyes turned to him as he entered, following the sounds of his bare feet. She heard the swish of robes rather than the thrum of active armour, and the novelty brought a smile to her lips.
'Hello, captain,' she said.
'Confessor,' he replied.
It took considerable poise to hide her shock. His voice had changed from the months of privation, sounding dryer as it left his throat. And there was something else... Something more: a new resonance despite the current weakness.
She'd heard the rumours, of course. If the talk was true, they'd resorted to killing one another and drinking their brothers' blood.
'I thought you'd have come to me before now.'
'Forgive the delay. I have been with the primarch since my return.'
'You sound tired.'
'The weakness will fade.' Argel Tal sat on the floor by her bed, taking his customary position. He'd last sat there only three nights before, though for the Word Bearer, almost a year had passed.
'I missed you,' he told her. 'But I am glad you were not with us.'
Cyrene wasn't sure how to begin. 'I heard... things,' she said.
Argel Tal smiled. 'They are likely all true.'
'The human crew?'
'Dead, to a man. That is why I am glad you were not on board with us.'
'And you suffered as the rumours say?'
The Word Bearer chuckled. 'That depends what the rumours say.'
His casual stoicism charmed her, as it always did. The hint of another smile tickled the corners of her lips.
'Come here. Kneel, and let me see you.'
He complied, bringing his face before her and holding her wrists in a gentle grip as he led her hands. She brushed her fingertips along his skin, tracing the contours of his diminished features.
'I have always wondered if you were handsome. It is so hard to tell with only touch to rely on.'
The thought hadn't really crossed his mind before. He was bred above such matters. He told her so now, with an amused addendum: 'Whether I was or not, I have looked better than I do now.'
Cyrene lowered her hands. 'You are very gaunt,' she noted. And your skin is too warm.
'Sustenance was in short supply. As I said, the rumours were true.'
When silence reached out between them, she found it awkward and unsettling. Never before had they struggled for words to share. Cyrene toyed with a lock of her hair, which her maid had painstakingly arranged only half an hour ago.
'I have come for confession,' he said, breaking the silence at last. Rather than soothe her, it sent her heart racing faster. She wasn't certain she wished to know what depredations had occurred on the Orfeo's Lament.
But Cyrene, above all else, was loyal to her Legion. Hers was a cherished role, and she was honoured to perform it.
'Speak, warrior.' A friendly formality came over her voice. 'Confess your sins.'
She expected him to relate how he'd butchered his brothers and supped their blood to survive. She expected tales of horror from the warp storm - a storm she'd never seen herself and had only the poorly-worded descriptions of other crew members to rely on.
The captain spoke slowly, clearly. 'I have spent decades of my life waging war in the name of a lie. I have rendered worlds compliant to a false society. I need forgiveness. My Legion needs forgiveness.'
'I don't understand.'
He began to describe the last year of his life for Cyrene, just as he had for his father. She interrupted a great deal less often, and once the retelling was complete, she focused not on the greater ramifications, but the moment that she'd heard Argel Tal's voice wavering more than any other.
'You killed Vendatha,' she said, keeping her voice soft to rob the accusation of its bite. 'You killed your friend.'
Argel Tal looked into her blind eyes. Since returning from the storm's depths, looking at living beings had a strangely pleasant edge. He'd always been able to hear the liquid rhythm of her heart, but now the sound was accompanied by the teasing sense of her blood running through her veins. All that warmth, all that taste, all that life: scarcely beneath her fragile skin. Looking at her, knowing how easy it would be to kill her, was a guilty pleasure he'd never felt before.
And it was so easy to imagine. Her heart would slow. Her eyes would glaze. Her breath would shiver as her lips trembled.
Then...
Then her soul would fall into the warp, screaming in that tumultuous abyss, to shriek into those thrashing tides until it was devoured by the neverborn.
Argel Tal looked away.
'Forgive me a moment's distraction, confessor. What did you just say?'
'I said, you killed your friend.' Cyrene touched a hand to her plain silver earring. A gift from her lover, Argel Tal suspected - Major Arric Jesmetine.
The Word Bearer didn't reply right away. 'I did not come to be forgiven for that.'
'I am not sure you can be.'
The captain rose to his feet once more. 'It was a mistake to come here so soon. I had feared this hesitance between us.'
'Feared?' Cyrene smiled up at him. 'I have never heard you use that word before, Argel Tal. I thought the Astartes knew no fear.'
'Very well. It is not fear.' Those words spoken by any other might sound petulant and defensive, but she heard no such emotion in Argel Tal's voice. 'I have seen more than most Imperial souls will ever see. Perhaps I possess a greater understanding of mortality - after all, I have seen where our souls go when we die.'
'Would you still give your life for the Imperium?'
This time, there was no hesitation in his answer. 'I would give my life for humanity. I would never offer my life to preserve the Imperium. Day by day, we have sailed farther from my grandfather's empire of lies. There will be a reckoning for the deceptions he has draped over the eyes of an entire species.'
'It's good to hear you speak this way,' she said.
'Why? You delight in hearing me speak blasphemy against the Emperor's dominion?'
'No. Far from it. But you sound so certain of everything once more. I am glad you made it back from that... place.'
Cyrene offered her hand, the way a Covenant priestess would offer her signet ring to be kissed. It was an old ritual between them; with no signet ring to kiss, Argel Tal's cracked, warm lips met the skin of her knuckles for the briefest moment.
'War will come from this,' she said. 'Won't it?'
'The primarch hopes it will not. Humanity has only one choice, and it must be made by those who have sought out the answers.'
'Such as yourself?'
He chuckled again. 'No. By my father, and the brothers he can trust. Some will be brought to his side by deception, if they are too dull-minded to come in perfect faith. But we are a populous Legion, and our conquests are many, with many more to come. Much of the Imperium's border worlds will answer to the warriors of Aurelian first, and the Emperor second.'
'You... you're planning this, already?'
'It may not come to war,' he said. 'The primarch is venturing into the Great Eye to witness his own revelations. Evidently, the lives of the Serrated Sun were spent and warped in what was merely truth's prelude.'
Cyrene could hear the discomfort in his voice. He was making no move to hide it.
'Do you believe the primarch sent you in first out of... fear?'
Argel Tal didn't answer that.
'Tell me one more thing before you leave, captain.'
'Ask.'
'Why did you believe all of this? Hell-worlds. Souls. Humanity's slow extinction, and these... monsters... that call themselves daemons. What convinced you that it was more than some alien trick?'
'Such creatures are no different from the gods of countless faiths that have risen and fallen over the millennia. Few gods were benevolent creators to any culture.'
'But what if we're being lied to?'
It would have been easy to say that the faith was its own sustenance and that humanity always reached for religion; that almost every rediscovered human culture clung to their own belief in |
e... monsters... that call themselves daemons. What convinced you that it was more than some alien trick?'
'Such creatures are no different from the gods of countless faiths that have risen and fallen over the millennia. Few gods were benevolent creators to any culture.'
'But what if we're being lied to?'
It would have been easy to say that the faith was its own sustenance and that humanity always reached for religion; that almost every rediscovered human culture clung to their own belief in the infinite and the divine; and that here was a realm of prophecy - where beings with the power of gods had proved beyond doubt that they'd summoned the Lord of the Seventeenth Legion, shaping fate to make these events unfold.
Whether they were benevolent creator gods from mythology or mere manifestations of mortal emotion was irrelevant. Here was the divine force in a galaxy of lost souls. On the edge of the physical universe, gods and mortals had finally met, and mankind would fall without their masters.
But Argel Tal said none of this. He was weary of such explanation.
'I remember your words after Monarchia died in the Emperor's fire. You told me it was the day you truly began to believe that gods were real, once you had seen such power unleashed. I felt the same when I saw the power at work in this storm. Can you understand that, Cyrene?'
'I understand.'
'I thought you would.'
And with those words spoken, he walked from her room.
AQUILLON FOUND HIM in the practice cages.
Both warriors were aware of each other long before either said a word. Aquillon watched in silence, respectfully waiting until Argel Tal finished his round of exercises, while the Word Bearer graced the Custodian with a perfunctory nod, saying nothing as he worked through his sword work routines. Finding balance in his weakened physique was a torturous affair. The deactivated sparring blades cut the air in dull sweeps - a poor shadow of the lost swords of red iron - and he was breathless with exertion as his hearts thudded to keep up with the demands he placed upon his emaciated physique.
At last, Argel Tal lowered the blades. His muscles ached from only two hours of training. Before his journey into the Eye, such a poor performance would see him doing penance for a ritual ninety-nine nights.
'Aquillon,' he greeted his friend.
'You look as though you died and forgot to lie down.'
The Word Bearer snorted. 'I feel like it.'
'A shame. You'd managed to last almost four minutes against me last time we stepped into these cages together.'
'I see you are not in a merciful mood.' In better times, this banter would have come easily to Argel Tal. 'Did you come to speak of Ven?'
Aquillon opened the force cage and took up a practice blade twin to the one Argel Tal still held. The sparring cage's hemispheres closed around them both. Both warriors wore robes: one, the white of Terra's palace servants, one, the grey of the XVII Legion.
'I wanted to hear it from you.' He raised the blade in a two-handed grip, mimicking his favoured weapon. His warriors carried the traditional glaives, but Aquillon's antique bidenhander broadsword was a blade apart. He carried this blade as he wielded his own sword: with a confident, effortless grip.
Argel Tal raised his own swords in a defensive cross, feeling the burn of lactic acid in his muscles. The two warriors tended to play to their strengths in the past: Aquillon was ferociously offensive in his blade work; Argel Tal remained consummately defensive.
'So will you tell me what happened?'
Aquillon was indeed not in a merciful mood. Before the Word Bearer could even answer, Argel Tal's blades were knocked from his hands and the captain found himself on the floor, breathing against the Custodian's sword point. It scratched the dirty skin of his throat, and Aquillon shook his head.
'Pathetic.' He offered his hand to help Argel Tal rise. 'Try again.'
The Word Bearer rose without the offered hand, retrieving his blades. 'I do not like the pity in your voice.'
'Then do something to get rid of it. But at least answer my question.'
The next clash lasted several seconds, but ended the same way. The Word Bearer backhanded Aquillon's sword away from his neck.
'Have you read the reports?' he asked the Custodian, again refusing his friend's offered hand and rising unaided.
'Yes. They are vague, and I am being generous when I say even that.'
Argel Tal had read them as well. The surface of Cadia... The journey into the Eye... The reports of each event were loose and evasive fictions that almost moved him to laughter. 'They are vague,' he conceded, raising his blades again. 'But they are accurate. I will enlighten you where I can.'
This time, Argel Tal attacked. Aquillon disarmed him in two swings of his blade, and a boot to the solar plexus sent the Word Bearer back down to the floor.
'Begin with Vendatha. He told me that Lorgar was attending a heathen ritual and several of the officers would be with him.'
'That's true enough.'
'You are still blocking the feinted thrust, by the way.'
'I know.'
'Good. Now speak.'
Something burned in his blood. Something reactive, unwilling to be dominated. Argel Tal bit back a sudden need to curse at the Custodian in a language that was and was not Colchisian.
'It... was not a ritual in the sense that we feared it would be.' He rose to his feet as he continued. 'A tedious recital of ancient texts. Prayers to spirits of ancestors. Dances, drums and herbal narcotics.'
Blades in hands, Argel Tal attacked again. Another clash, clash, clash, and he was dumped back onto the floor - the back of his head perilously close to the buzzing bars of the force cage.
'Lorgar sent you into the storm based on this? A... theatrical performance of old lies?' This time, Aquillon didn't offer to help Argel Tal stand. A doubting scowl passed over his features.
'Don't be foolish.' The Word Bearer rolled his shoulders, wincing at the crackle of abused muscle and vertebrae. 'He never sent us into the storm. I volunteered. We lacked standard Mechanicum explorator vessels, so we used the smallest warship in the fleet.'
The two warriors circled one another, blades half a metre apart. 'You volunteered?'
'It was a last attempt to salvage some worth from the journey. One last venture beyond Imperial borders, before we turn around and make for new space. Aquillon... there is nothing out here. Do you think we wish to heap further shame upon ourselves by admitting that? Plenty of expeditionary fleets take months, even years, to find a world worthy of conquest - but this is our primarch's fleet, even if only temporarily. Desperation drove us to try one last time. Don't hate us for doing our sworn duty.'
The Custodian attacked, his blade lashing one of Argel Tal's blades out of the captain's grip, while a kick smashed the other aside.
The Word Bearer smiled through a face streaked with sweat, and went to recover his blades yet again.
'And Vendatha?' Aquillon asked.
Argel Tal's smile faded, wiped from his face. 'Ven died with my brothers. Deumos fell first, then Rikus and Tsar Quorel. Ven was last.' The Word Bearer met the Custodian's eyes, letting his sincerity show. 'He was my friend, Aquillon. I mourn him as you do.'
'And this... riot... on the planet that killed three Astartes and a Custodes?'
'When the primarch renounced the barbarians and refused to draw them into the Imperium, they rose up in anger. What could we do? Their rituals are too far from the Imperial Truth. Never will they accept the Emperor's rule.'
'Invasion?'
'The planet is sparsely populated, and much of it is a paradise despite its proximity to the hellish storm. Cyclonic torpedoes will annihilate the tribes, and leave the planet free for future colonisation - if the Emperor wills it.'
Aquillon released a pent-up breath. There was something unarguably youthful about the warrior, despite his ageless, regenerative immortality. 'I commend Lorgar's actions in rejecting the primitives on the world below. I have seen compliance after compliance executed to perfection for three years, and I do not judge his actions as flawed now. It's difficult to believe Ven is dead, that's all. He'd earned twenty-seven names in the Emperor's service over a century of immaculate duty. The same mentor taught us both to wield a blade. Amon will grieve to learn of his fate.'
'He died in the Emperor's service, defending a primarch from the rebellion of heathen culture. You may not respect my sire, but he is still a son of the Emperor. If I could choose my hour of death, it would be in battle at Lorgar's side.'
Aquillon raised his sword en garde, speaking with a curious formality. 'Thank you for your candour, Argel Tal. Our presence is loathed by your Legion, but the Custodes have always appreciated your friendship.'
The Word Bearer didn't answer. His next attack was deflected and beaten back within a matter of moments.
Aquillon offered a hand again, and this time, Argel Tal took it as he rose.
'What now for the Serrated Sun?' asked the Custodian.
'There's nothing left for us out here. Once Cadia is purged, we press on as part of the 1,301st, returning to more promising territory. I believe the primarch will rejoin the main crusade fleet, with Erebus and Kor Phaeron. He will be done with these provincial conquests. I suspect he also wishes to speak with several of his brothers.'
Aquillon nodded, and returned his practice sword to the weapon rack. His white robe was unmarked, while Argel Tal's was bathed in sweat stains down the spine and around the collar.
The Custodian saluted, making the sign of the aquila over his chest. Argel Tal returned it, as he always did in his friend's presence.
'One last thing,' the Custodian remarked.
The Word Bearer raised an eyebrow. 'Speak.'
'Congratulations, Chapter Master.'
Argel Tal couldn't resist a smile. 'I wasn't aware it was public knowledge. Will you be at the ceremony?'
'Without a doubt.' In a moment |
robe was unmarked, while Argel Tal's was bathed in sweat stains down the spine and around the collar.
The Custodian saluted, making the sign of the aquila over his chest. Argel Tal returned it, as he always did in his friend's presence.
'One last thing,' the Custodian remarked.
The Word Bearer raised an eyebrow. 'Speak.'
'Congratulations, Chapter Master.'
Argel Tal couldn't resist a smile. 'I wasn't aware it was public knowledge. Will you be at the ceremony?'
'Without a doubt.' In a moment of rare fellowship, Aquillon rested his hand on Argel Tal's shoulder. 'I wish you well on your return to health. I am glad that, at the end, Vendatha stood with a friend.'
An image of Ven's last moments flashed through Argel Tal's mind: the naked Custodian twitching, gagging, being dragged down and impaled upon the wooden spear.
Unable to speak another lie, the Word Bearer merely nodded.
THE CEREMONY WAS attended by every officer of significant rank, as well as the remaining Word Bearers of the Serrated Sun, including the robed ranks of their Acolyte Auxiliary - many of whom would be elevated into the three shattered companies with the Legion's losses in recent months.
Such a gathering required use of De Profundis's primary hangar deck, which in turn offered a stunning, disquieting backdrop through the open bay doors' shimmering force field. Through the haze of thin energies, the storm beyond was a swirling mess of psychic vitriol. The ship creaked and whined around them as they stood in orderly rows, facing Lorgar.
At the primarch's side, the Blessed Lady carried a rolled scroll on a plain, white cushion. She stared blindly over the ranks of Word Bearers, occasionally glancing to the towering primarch as if she could somehow see him. On Lorgar's left, Fleetmaster Baloc Torvus stood tall and proud in his ceremonial grey and white uniform, a fur cloak - once the skin of some immense arctic beast that the officer had never even seen, let alone killed himself - draped over one side of his body. None present could actually recall the last time Torvus had set foot on a planet; the man clearly treasured his place among the stars.
Fully a third of the Legion warriors were wasted husks in their half-repaired armour. These were the survivors of the Eye, standing in rows ahead of their hundred remaining brethren.
The Mechanicum contingent had manifested in full strength as well, though only one of their robotic charges was present. To no one's surprise, Incarnadine was among the Word Bearers ranks, the scarlet war machine bedecked in honour scrolls and towering above its living kinsmen. Despite bearing the scarlet armour of Carthage, it was a welcome presence among the Legion's grey.
Standing aside from all the others, four golden figures watched from a gantry above. Aquillon and his Custodians were resplendent in their armoured finery - the gold surfaces playing host to flickering reflections from the storm outside.
The primarch, clad in a shirt of fine silver mail, raised his hands for silence. All whispers died down immediately.
'I have brought this expeditionary fleet far from the heart of my father's kingdom. Every fleet with a Word Bearer presence has done the same, sailing far from beloved Terra, into the cold, away from the cradle of our species. We are far from our brothers and will hear tell of their travels and conquests in time, but I say this with confidence: none of my Legion has endured what you have. None have stared into the madness at the edge of the universe, as you have done. And you survived. You returned.'
Lorgar inclined his head at his warriors before continuing. 'This Legion, more than any other, has suffered through change and evolution since its inception. But each phase exalts us, improves us and brings us closer to fulfilling our potential. The Emperor bred this Legion from his biological barracks on distant Terra, and for many years only Terrans filled its ranks. A more innocent age, an age when the Legion bore a different name, and today we begin to leave the last vestiges of those days behind. The Imperial Heralds became the Word Bearers, and the Word Bearers were shown the error of their ways in worshipping the Emperor. Change upon change, all leading towards this moment.'
The primarch gestured a gloved hand to a bulkhead in the closest wall, and spoke a single word. 'Enter.'
The bulkhead opened to reveal two figures - both armoured in crimson ceramite - walking towards the primarch. The first bore a black helm with eye lenses of crystal blue. One eye was ringed by the golden Serrated Sun, and his power armour was edged in polished silver. The second carried a familiar crozius of black iron, with its armour trimmings formed of bronze and bone. Thick, ornamental chains rattled around their waists and wrists as both warriors moved. Prayer scrolls were bound to shin-guards and pauldrons, the parchment showing the primarch's own flowing script.
'Warriors of the Serrated Sun,' Lorgar smiled. 'Kneel before your new commanders.'
Every Word Bearer went to their knees. Incarnadine took several seconds longer to complete its obeisance, lowering itself on grinding hydraulics.
The first crimson warrior removed his helm. Argel Tal looked upon the gathered Legion, and called out across the deck.
'Survivors of the Orfeo's Lament, rise and step forward.'
They did as they were ordered. Behind Argel Tal, Xaphen removed his own skulled helm, remaining by the primarch's side.
The new Chapter Master was still gaunt, as were the warriors he surveyed with a calm gaze. 'Our sire has ordered we rebuild the Serrated Sun far beyond its former strength. We obey his word, as we have always obeyed. But he has offered more. You, the survivors of the Orfeo's Lament, are to be honoured for your sacrifices.'
Argel Tal nodded to Xaphen, who took the scroll from Cyrene's cushion and brought it to the Chapter Master.
'This scroll is bare, but for two names. My own, and Chaplain Xaphen's. If you accept the honour of joining us as the primarch's chosen elite, then you will kneel before the Blessed Lady in this very hangar, and you will speak your name to her. It will be written upon this parchment, and stored in the vaults aboard De Profundis.'
Argel Tal looked each of the survivors in the eyes, one after the other. 'We will be the Gal Vorbak, armoured in black and crimson, the elite of the Serrated Sun and the chosen of Lorgar Aurelian.'
Lorgar chuckled, light and pleasant, as he stepped forward to rest a hand on Argel Tal's shoulder-guard.
ON THE GANTRY above, Kalhin let his glance flicker to Aquillon. His voice was low, despite the fact he wore his helm and none would overhear them speaking over the inter-squad vox.
'Gal Vorbak. I did not study their culture as you did. Is that Colchisian?'
Aquillon nodded. 'It means "Blessed Sons".'
'I am pleased for Argel Tal. He is healing well, and it will be good to turn back into fairer territory after this failed madness. Deumos was always cancerous, so I will shed no tears at his tenure coming to an end.'
That statement met with grunts of agreement from the others.
'When Lorgar returns to the 47th Expedition, should we accompany him?'
Aquillon had been dwelling on that very thought. 'Our mandate is to stand vigil over the Legion itself. Four Custodian teams, bound to four fleets. Iacus already claims the 47th, and I trust him as I trust any one of you. Let him play watchdog over this weakling primarch for a while. Our duties will keep us with the 1,301st, and the compliances to come.'
Kalhin released a slow breath. 'I would pay dearly to set eyes on Terra's skylines once more.'
'You will,' said Aquillon.
'In forty-seven years,' the other Custodian scoffed. 'Remember the terms of our oath. Five decades among the stars. Fifty long, tedious years away from Terra.'
'It beats the endless blood games,' Nirallus shrugged.
'You only say that,' Kalhin pointed out, 'because you are so awful at them.'
Aquillon heard the tension in his brothers' voices. 'The Word Bearers will not languish under suspicion forever. In three years, have you seen evidence that they still worship the Emperor? And look at them now: already their rites are growing closer to the traditions of the other Legions. This is almost like Sigismund knighting one of his templars at a gathering of the Imperial Fists.'
Kalhin shrugged. 'Perhaps they have come a long way from the fanatics we joined, but the stink of desperation yet clings to their breath when they shout their battle cries. I still do not trust them.'
The Occuli Imperator didn't take his eyes from the red-clad figure speaking with his new warriors as they knelt before the blind girl from the dead world.
'No,' he said. 'Neither do I.'
'Not even Argel Tal?'
'One warrior in an entire Legion.' Aquillon left the railing, turning back to his Custodians. 'He is the only one I trust. That's the problem.'
V
Smoke and Mirrors
It was a lie, of course.
Blessed Lorgar didn't return to Imperial space right away. One of the fleet's scout vessels was chosen to carry the primarch back to his main crusade fleet, and a grand event was held on every deck of De Profundis to honour the Urizen before he left.
And that was the lie.
I was there when the primarch bade farewell to his sons Xaphen and Argel Tal, and I travelled back to safer space with the new lords of the Gal Vorbak.
Lorgar, meanwhile, travelled the same path that the daemon Ingethel had chosen for his children.
With the Custodians blinded to his true destination, Lorgar went into the Eye.
His last words to Argel Tal will never leave me - not only for the events they set in motion, but for what they did to my friend, and how they changed him.
'Take the truth to Erebus and Kor Phaeron. While I am gone, they will be the Legion's lords, and they will orchestrate the spread of true faith in the shadows of my father's empire. I shall return to them soon.'
Xaphen swore an oath never to |
for his children.
With the Custodians blinded to his true destination, Lorgar went into the Eye.
His last words to Argel Tal will never leave me - not only for the events they set in motion, but for what they did to my friend, and how they changed him.
'Take the truth to Erebus and Kor Phaeron. While I am gone, they will be the Legion's lords, and they will orchestrate the spread of true faith in the shadows of my father's empire. I shall return to them soon.'
Xaphen swore an oath never to fail his primarch.
Argel Tal did not. He spoke in a voice soft enough to break hearts, 'We are heretics, father.'
Lorgar laughed his melodic laugh. 'No, we are saviours. Is all in readiness?'
'It is.'
'Sail far and wide without me, but keep the Custodians away from Imperial listeners. Once you return to stable space, they will resume their astropathic contact with Terra. My father will suspect the truth if he knows we came this close to the galaxy's edge, and suspicion alone will be enough to damn us. I cannot remain here to block their pet astropath's reaching voice. Find a solution. Xaphen, look to the texts retrieved from Cadia. The rituals within them will provide the answer.'
'By your word, sire.'
'Keep his watchdogs alive, Argel Tal. There may yet be a means to win this war without bloodshed. But keep them silent.'
With his last words ordering the first of a thousand treacheries, the primarch boarded his vessel and left us.
What he saw within the Eye is the source of near-infinite speculation. Many of the Word Bearers came to me for weeks afterwards, wracked by dreams that barely faded when their sufferers awoke. The blood connection between Aurelian and his sons was a powerful one indeed, for what Lorgar saw with his own eyes, his sons witnessed in horrifying echoes.
It was Xaphen who spoke most of his dreams, while Argel Tal remained next to silent. The Chaplain would speak with a fevered cast in his voice, as if harsh whispers could pierce the walls of my humble chamber and reach the primarch halfway across the galaxy.
He spoke of Lorgar walking the surface of worlds where the oceans were formed from boiling blood, and the skies stood dark under heavenly cities of clanking black steel. He told me of an entire Legion in the crimson of the Gal Vorbak, waging war before the gates of a golden palace.
Most tellingly of all, he described world after world dying under the tainted touch of alien claws. He swore that this was the Imperium's demise - a godless empire reaved clean by inhuman tides. Only faith would save mankind from fate's promises. Only worship of the Great Powers nestling within the warp.
Perhaps these were the lessons Lorgar was seeing for himself, while his sons returned to spread the word among the other fleets.
Cadia burned, just as we'd all known it would. The tribes were destroyed by Argel Tal's own command, and the world left in silence, ready to be seeded with colonists in the future. He never once asked me to forgive him for it, just as he never asked me to console him over the murder of Vendatha.
I love him above all others, not only for saving my life, but for the fact he stains his soul with such blackness, yet masks his guilt and shame so completely. He has never broken, despite carrying the secrets and sins that will damn or save our entire species.
I believe the only mistake he ever made was in allowing himself to grow closer to the Custodes leader, Aquillon.
But then, it was just like Argel Tal to endure such penance. He became a brother to the one man he knew he must eventually betray.
-Excerpted from 'The Pilgrimage', by Cyrene Valantion
PART THREE
CRIMSON
Forty years later
TWENTY
Three Talents
A New Crusade
The Crimson Lord
ISHAQ KADEEN WAS immensely proud of himself, for he did three things in life with a skill few others could match. These three talents had earned him enough coins to rub together, no doubt there, but they'd also elevated him from the depths of poverty that had swallowed his parents - and getting out of those slums was something far out of reach for most of the beggars and street-folk in his home city.
Three talents. That's all it took.
And they weren't even that hard. If he'd needed to practise them, then it might have been a different story. Ishaq Kadeen was one of those naturally lucky souls that live their lives in the moment. He never spared a thought for getting old, never saved money with any great care, and never worried overmuch what the enforcer patrol around the next street corner might have to say about his activities.
Three talents got him through life, pitching him in and out of trouble.
The first was to run, which was a skill he'd honed by putting it to good use in the criminal-infested lower sprawls of Sudasia's primary hive city.
The second was to smile with a vicious blending of charm, smarm and intimacy, which had variously gotten him into several lines of employment, out of an entirely legal execution that he'd absolutely deserved, and even once into the fine, black lace underwear of a countess's younger cousin - the night of the gala held to celebrate her coming of age.
The third talent, which was what had gotten him posted to his current situation in the first place, was the fact he could take a wicked pict when he wanted to.
Not a day passed that Ishaq didn't think back to the conversation that damned him out here onto the fringes of space. He'd been sitting in an austere office, absently picking dirt from beneath his nails while a robed hierarch in the Remembrancer Order droned on and on about 'noble goals' and the 'very real need' to record the present for future generations to study in excruciating detail.
'It is the greatest honour,' the stern gentleman insisted.
'Oh, I know.' Ishaq started to bite his nails now they were clean. 'The greatest.'
The older man seemed dubious. Ishaq thought he looked like a vulture disapproving of a potential meal, largely because it was still alive.
'Thousands of archivists, sculptors, painters, pictographers, poets, playwrights have been sent. Tens of thousands have been rejected for lacking the thoroughness and flair that the Great Crusade deserves in its remembrancers.'
Ishaq made a noncommittal noise to encourage the hierarch to continue, while secretly musing over the number of artistic professions beginning with the letter "P". Painters, pictographers, poets, playwrights...
'So you see, to be chosen like this... You have to understand how fortunate you are.'
'What about puppeteers?' Ishaq asked.
'I... what?'
'Nothing. Never mind.'
'Yes, well. I'm sure you can appreciate the gravity of the situation.' The hierarch did his vulture-sneer again. Ishaq smiled back - his eyes brightened; a faint movement of his eyebrows suggested something delightfully wry; and a calculatedly cocksure amount of teeth were on display for a predatory moment - but the hierarch was neither female nor attracted to males, and that disinterest rather disarmed Ishaq's best weapon.
'Mr. Kadeen?' the man said. 'Are you taking this seriously? Do you wish to be shipped to Mars to end your years as a servitor?'
He really didn't. If it came to a choice between paying for his crimes in the traditional manner or catching a transport ship halfway across the galaxy to serve as a remembrancer... Well, it wasn't much of a choice at all. He wasn't going to spend his life lobotomised into penal service.
So he assured the remembrancer hierarch that he was taking it very seriously indeed. Over the following two hours, he weaved a compelling fiction of interstellar ambition and an exploratory spirit that had suffered in the strangling confines of his birth-slums. Now, at last, he would be free to walk the stars, to gaze upon new suns, to chronicle the advance of mankind, to...
To lie through his teeth.
Ishaq, at thirty-five, was not an educated man, and he was fairly certain at several points he invented new words or mispronounced ones he'd only read before, but it did the trick. Three days later, his intermittent work as an imagist for almost-wealthy hive families and crime scene pictography was behind him - as was Terra itself and the shit-heap hive in which he'd been born.
Was it an honour, really? That all depended upon just where you were sent.
In the briefings, Ishaq had been hoping against hope for a posting that would actually mean something. While the major expeditionary fleets were already swollen with remembrancer hangers-on, there were still plenty of possible placements in the smaller fleets.
He might never get to lay eyes upon the Warmaster, or see his images depict the glory of a primarch like Fulgrim, but he'd not lost hold of the desperate, panicked hope that he'd be assigned to one of the Emperor's so-called 'glory Legions'. The Ultramarines, founders of the perfect empire... The Dark Angels, commanded by the consummate general... The Word Bearers, renowned for bringing the Emperor's own wrath against enemy worlds...
At last, he'd been assigned. A full sprint through the order's barracks had ensued, with remembrancers shoving past one another to reach the posted listings in the lobby. All dignity was cast aside in the rush - artists, poets, playwrights rioting against each other to see where in the galaxy they were being sent. Someone had even been stabbed during the crush of bodies - perhaps out of jealousy, since that imagist in particular had been assigned to a fleet commanded by the Emperor's Children, and such a posting even among a modest fleet was worth its weight in gold.
There it was:
KADEEN, ISHAQ - IMAGIST
1,301st EXPEDITIONARY FLEET
WHAT DID THAT even mean? Were there even Legion forces with that fleet? He'd shouldered a young woman aside to use one of the barracks' information terminals, and hammered in his keycode with trembling fingers.
Yes. Yes. Each line sent his heart beating faster.
1,301st Expeditionary Fleet.
Commanded by Fleetmaster Baloc Torvus.
3 Com |
ror's Children, and such a posting even among a modest fleet was worth its weight in gold.
There it was:
KADEEN, ISHAQ - IMAGIST
1,301st EXPEDITIONARY FLEET
WHAT DID THAT even mean? Were there even Legion forces with that fleet? He'd shouldered a young woman aside to use one of the barracks' information terminals, and hammered in his keycode with trembling fingers.
Yes. Yes. Each line sent his heart beating faster.
1,301st Expeditionary Fleet.
Commanded by Fleetmaster Baloc Torvus.
3 Companies of XVII Legiones Astartes: Word Bearers.
Commanded by the Crimson Lord, Master of the Gal Vorbak.
Noted Citations: Honoured by the presence of the Emperor's Custodian Guards, led by Aquillon Althas Nero Khai Marithamus... the name went on and on and on, but it didn't matter.
He'd been posted to one of the most aggressive, renowned, largest Legions, responsible for more compliances in the last half a century than any other - and a fleet, minor or not, that was honoured to contain some of the Emperor's own golden Custodes warriors. The images that could come from this... The fame... The attention...
Yes. Yes. YES.
'Who were you posted to?' he asked the girl next to him.
'The 277th.'
'Blood Angels?'
'Raven Guard.'
He gave her a pitying smile and headed back to his room, making sure to tell everyone on the way back where he'd been assigned. This only backfired once, when a pretentious arse of a sculptor had sneeringly replied: 'The Word Bearers? Yes, well, they've conquered much in recent years to make amends for their former flaws... but they're not exactly the Sons of Horus, are they?'
The flight to join the 1,301st Expeditionary Fleet had lasted nineteen long, long months, during which Ishaq had slept with twenty-eight separate members of the transport ship's crew, been slapped by three of them, taken almost 11,000 picts of tedious goings-on aboard the vessel, and passed out from ship-made alcohol more times than he could reliably remember.
He'd also lost a tooth in a fistfight with an angry husband, though he still claimed the moral victory in that one. Given all of this and the lifestyle that preceded it, it would be fair - but not entirely accurate - to assume that Ishaq Kadeen cared nothing for his work.
He didn't consider himself lazy. It was just difficult to find things that inspired him, that was all.
The first pict he'd truly cared about had since done the rounds of the entire 1,301st fleet, and it was, in his own inestimable opinion, an absolute beauty. Already, it was being hailed as a masterpiece in the fleet's archives, and he'd received a courier-brought note from the Crimson Lord himself, thanking him for the image.
When they'd arrived, dropping from a year and a half in the swirling tedium of the warp to approach the battlefleet, Ishaq had been unable to resist getting caught up in the moment.
With his picter rod in hand, about the size and heft of a cudgel, he'd aimed the eye lens at the view from the porthole, watching and recording the great warships drifting by.
And then, there it was. The grey-hulled fortress-flagship of Lord Argel Tal, silent and serene despite its world-breaking weapons array.
De Profundis. Ishaq's new home.
Awe left his mouth slack as he clicked pict after pict. One of them - one of the very first he took - showed the warship abeam, slaved to a sharp perspective: a stone and steel bastion of Imperial might. Starlight cast raw glares across its dense armour plating, while a statue of the primarch jutted from the vessel's spine - Lorgar, arms raised to the void, haloed by the system's distant sun.
Click, went the picter, and Ishaq Kadeen fell in love with his work.
That had been three weeks ago. Three weeks spent waiting for inspiration to strike again. Three weeks spent waiting for today.
The starboard hangar deck was a messy maze of landed gunships, load-bearing vehicles and cargo containers, populated by an army of servitors, tech-adepts and human crew going about their business. Thunderhawks were being loaded, their swooping wings weighted down by racks of missiles, while boxes of bolter shell belt-feeds were installed by the defensive turrets. All around was the rattle, the clang, the clank of heavy machinery, which was doing nothing positive for Ishaq's hangover.
At the heart of the organised chaos was the eye of the storm, where space had been cleared for the scheduled arrival. Ishaq stood at the edge of the cleared zone - just one of many witnesses to the morning's events. A glance to the left revealed a flock of other remembrancers: there was Marsin, a painter, scribbling in his sketchpad. Lueianna, a skinny and pale little thing who composed entire concerts around various flute arrangements. Hellic, who almost definitely owed Ishaq some money from the last time they played cards.
What did Hellic do? Was he a composer, as well? Ishaq wasn't sure. Whatever his fellow remembrancer did to express himself, he was a piss-poor gambler.
The Blessed Lady was here, of course - standing out from her maids and companions in a gown of arterial red that looked more suited to a Terran ballroom than the greasy, oil-blackened deck of a warship. She looked no older than her late-twenties, though given how long she'd been with the fleet, rejuvenation surgery must have featured heavily in her recent past.
Ishaq lost a fair few minutes just watching her. She was dusky-skinned, not as dark as Ishaq himself, but clearly from a desert people, and it was easy to see why she was considered blessed. He'd never seen anyone move with the same slow, effortless grace, or smile with such subtle brilliance. Every time she shared a word with one of her entourage, she seemed to be smiling with endearing shyness at some secret joke between them.
Ishaq decided, then and there, that he wanted her.
For a moment, he was certain she turned to regard him. Wasn't she said to be blind? Was that a facade? A rumour to enhance her mystique?
An honour guard from the Imperial Army had deigned to show its face, too. White-clad officers of the Euchar 54th stood in neat ranks, their formalwear impressive in its ornate finery. Each of the officers rested a gloved hand on a sabre sheathed at their sides, while their free hands remained nestled in the small of their backs as they stood at attention. In the middle of the front row, Ishaq made out the grizzled, half-bionic figure of General Arric Jesmetine.
The general had a fearsome reputation on the ship: all the talk passed around the remembrancers had Old Arric pinned as a tyrant and a taskmaster. They'd only crossed paths once before, in an upper deck corridor while the new remembrancer was scouting around for something to inspire him.
Jesmetine had been with the fleet for sixty years, and every month of it showed. He walked with a silver cane, and most of the right side of his body hummed and whirred with the bionics beneath the old man's uniform. His beard was kept trimmed close to his haggard face, a fine pelt of white around a scowl like a slit in old leather.
'You there,' the general had said. 'Are you lost?'
Well, no, he wasn't lost. But nor was he supposed to be up here on the operations decks.
'Yes. Yes, I am.'
'You're a bad liar, son.'
This offended Ishaq a great deal, but he didn't let it show. 'Apparently so.'
'You grin too much. If I had daughters, I'd kill you for ever going near them.'
'With respect, sir, I'm not in the mood for a character assassination. And I am at least a little lost.'
'See? Grinning again, you won't charm me with that. Who are you?'
'Ishaq Kadeen, official remembrancer.' He liked the way that felt on the tongue, so he said it as often he could.
'Oh.' The old man cleared his throat with a sound like gargling gravel. 'You're not a poet by any chance, are you?'
'No, sir. I'm an imagist.'
'That's a shame. The Blessed Lady has an ear for poetry. Though, hmm, it's for the best if you never darken her door, I'm sure.'
This was before he knew who the Blessed Lady was, but that grumble alone was enough to make him vow to darken her door as soon as possible, whoever she might be.
'So you're hunting for picts to take?'
'Guilty,' Ishaq halted the grin before it reached his lips, 'as charged.'
The old man scratched at his neat beard, fingers making scritch, scritch, scritch sounds against what was barely more than stubble. 'This is a warship, you know. You can get in a lot of trouble wandering around like this. Go back to the lower decks, and wait for the Chaplain's arrival like everyone else. You'll get all your picts then.'
Ishaq considered that a fair deal, but as he turned to leave, he decided to push his luck a little more.
'Sir?'
'What?' The old man was already walking away, cane tapping on the decking.
'You don't seem the merciless terror that the remembrancers have been told to fear.'
General Arric smiled, which made the slit in his face even less appealing. 'That's only because you're not one of my men, Remembrancer Kadeen. Now get off the operations decks and back to the jury-rigged bar I know you little vermin are already setting up in the shadows of this blessed ship.'
'It's called the Cellar.'
'How very apt,' the old man huffed as he walked away.
So he'd waited eleven days, and true to both form and the general's appraisal, he'd spent those eleven days in the bar.
Now he was here, after hauling his hungover carcass across to the main starboard hangar, waiting with the dregs and top brass alike for the Chaplain to arrive.
'I thought the Crimson Lord was supposed to be here,' he whispered to Marsin. The other remembrancer just shrugged, still taking notes and sketching vague figures.
The Astartes were here at least, though Ishaq took much less pleasure in their presence than he'd expected. Twenty of them in all: grey statues in two ranks of ten, not a ghost of movement between any of them. Immense bolt pistols were clutched to the Word Bearers' chests, while unpowered chainswor |
alike for the Chaplain to arrive.
'I thought the Crimson Lord was supposed to be here,' he whispered to Marsin. The other remembrancer just shrugged, still taking notes and sketching vague figures.
The Astartes were here at least, though Ishaq took much less pleasure in their presence than he'd expected. Twenty of them in all: grey statues in two ranks of ten, not a ghost of movement between any of them. Immense bolt pistols were clutched to the Word Bearers' chests, while unpowered chainswords were kept at their sides. Scrolls and iconography marked them as warriors from the 37th Assault Company.
Ishaq kept abreast of deployment chatter: most of 37th Company were engaged on the world below, waging a compliance war alongside General Arric's Euchar regiments.
He snapped several images of the towering, silent Astartes, but his angle was far from perfect, and the edge of frame was ruined by servitors stumbling around in the background. He supposed there should be something glorious and inspiring about the warriors, but he found it hard to swallow if he looked too long in their direction. They weren't inspiring at all. Just... imposing. Distant. Cold.
'Attention!' the general barked.
Ishaq conceded to this by standing slightly straighter. The Euchar officers went ramrod-straight. The Astartes still didn't move.
The gunship came into the hangar on a sedate drift, guidance thrusters gushing pressurised air as it hovered down. Crimson armour plating coated the Thunderhawk in dry scales, while heavy bolter turrets panned left and right - the servitors slaved to the guns' systems ever-alert to threats.
Landing claws kissed the decking. At last, the boarding ramp lowered on squealing hydraulics. Ishaq clicked a pict of the gunship's yawning maw.
From the hangar's edge, more Astartes entered - five warriors clad in armour of a newer, more streamlined design than their grey brethren, painted in scarlet and silver, with black helms staring ahead. The remembrancers turned as one, whispering and muttering, variously taking picts, making notes and sketching what they saw.
Gal Vorbak, came the whisper from many mouths.
Leading them was a warrior with a black cloak draped over his shoulders, and his Legion symbol hidden beneath yellowed parchment scrolls depicting his deeds. He stalked past the gathered remembrancers, the joints of his Mark IV battle armour humming a smooth hymn. Skulls of slain alien warlords rattled against his dark ceramite as they dangled from iron chains.
There he is, the whispers started up again. The Crimson Lord.
The warrior moved to the Blessed Lady's side, whereupon he offered her a slight inclination of his head, and spoke the name 'Cyrene' with a growl of acknowledgement.
'Hello, Argel Tal,' she smiled without looking up at him. Her entourage of maids and advisors scattered back with dignified slowness as the Gal Vorbak took their places around their master.
Ishaq took another pict: the huge warrior in his snarling black helm, and the petite figure at his side, both surrounded by red-clad Astartes.
The figure that descended from the Thunderhawk onto the hangar deck wore armour to match his brothers in the Gal Vorbak, though his trimmings were reinforced bone and bronze, and his helm bore Colchisian runes painted in gold leaf.
Chaplain Xaphen walked down the gang ramp, briefly embracing Argel Tal at the bottom.
'Cyrene,' the Chaplain said afterwards.
'Hello, Xaphen.'
'You look younger.'
She blushed, and said nothing.
Argel Tal gestured to the Thunderhawk. 'How were our brothers in the IV Legion?'
Xaphen's rumbling voice was as vox-ruined as Argel Tal's. 'The Iron Warriors are well, but it is good to be back.'
'I assume there's much to discuss.'
'Of course,' the Chaplain replied.
'Come, then. We'll talk while the preparations are made for planetfall.'
The warriors walked past, and the orderly gathering began to dissolve into groups heading back to their duties. Just like that, it was over.
'You coming?' Marsin asked Ishaq.
Ishaq was looking down at his picter, intensifying the image on the small viewscreen. It showed the two commanders of the Gal Vorbak side by side, with the Blessed Lady nearby, her head tilted as she regarded them both with unseeing eyes - a look of adoring beneficence writ upon her lovely features. One of the Astartes carried his black crozius maul: the ornate weapon slung over his shoulder. The other, the cloaked Crimson Lord, sported deactivated claws of red iron, each oversized power fist ending in four talons the length of scythe blades.
Both suits of armour glinted with shards of yellow jade as they reflected the orange overhead lighting. Both helms had slanted, sapphire eye lenses that seemed to stare right into Ishaq's viewfinder.
This, he thought to himself, might be another classic.
'Are you coming?' Marsin repeated.
'What? Oh. Yes, sure.'
TWENTY-ONE
Machinations
A Curious Deception
Indulgence
'THESE REMEMBRANCERS,' XAPHEN said with an air of displeasure, 'are everywhere.'
'Ours arrived this month. It was not possible to deny them access to the fleet any longer.'
'Horus's flagship has had the little rats crawling over its decks for two years. Can you believe that?'
Argel Tal shrugged his shoulders, uncaring either way. 'Three of the poets read to the Blessed Lady, for which Cyrene is monumentally grateful. And I have a beautiful pict of De Profundis that one of them took on his first day. It almost stopped my heart to see the ship looking so grand.'
Xaphen chuckled. 'You are growing soft, brother.'
The two warriors had retired to Xaphen's prayer room, which was a rather immodest chamber by Argel Tal's standards. The Chapter Master preferred Spartan furnishings and a minimum of distraction, but Xaphen's personal reflection room was decorated in a plethora of banners and old prayer scrolls cast across the table and floor. Many of the banners were from victories fought with other Legions - as they talked, the Chaplain added another to the hallowed ranks. This one sported the metallic skull of the Iron Warriors, emblazoned with runes around the central symbol.
Several of them resembled Colchisian constellations. Argel Tal examined them each in turn. 'What are these?'
'Symbols of the Iron Warrior circles. They do not name them "lodges", as the Sons of Horus do.'
Argel Tal removed his helm with a click-hiss of air pressure. As always, the Chaplain's festooned chamber had the lingering twin-scent of dried spices and old incense.
'You were gone much longer than expected,' he said. 'Problems?'
'Nothing worth doing is ever easy.'
Argel Tal flexed his hands, closing and opening them from fists. They ached. They'd ached for days now.
'That doesn't answer my question.'
'There were no problems,' said Xaphen. 'I stayed longer because it seemed prudent. Their circles are large, taking up the overwhelming majority of the Legion, but it was a critical phase. I was not the only Chaplain there.'
Argel Tal raised an eyebrow, not realising he was mimicking Cyrene's bemused smirk out of habit. 'Oh?'
'Maloq Kartho was there to deal with another of the warrior circles, and I was treated to several of his sermons. The air fairly reeked of brimstone when he spoke. Var Valas was there, as well. Both were with the Iron Warriors after long tenures with the World Eaters.' Xaphen sighed - a satisfied sound to match the brightness in his eyes. 'The web is wide, brother. Lorgar's conspiracy spans the stars themselves. At last count, there are over two hundred of our Chaplains seconded to other fleets. Erebus now stands at the Warmaster's side. Can you give that countenance? Horus himself, heeding Erebus's words.'
Xaphen laughed as he trailed off. 'It begins, brother.'
Argel Tal didn't share his brother's relish. A scowl darkened features that had grown continually more scarred over the last half a century.
'I do not like that word,' he said, low and slow.
'What word?'
'The word you used. Conspiracy. It demeans the primarch's vision. It demeans us all.'
Xaphen smoothed the black war banner against the wall before stepping back to admire it. 'You are oversensitive,' he muttered.
'No, I am not. It is the wrong word, implying plotted schemes and ignoble secrecy.'
'Dress it however you wish,' the Chaplain said. 'We are the architects of humanity's ascension, and the web of necessary deceit is wide.'
'I choose to see it in nobler terms. Now finish what you have to say. I am releasing the Gal Vorbak, and have final preparations to make.'
The Chaplain sensed Argel Tal's recalcitrance. It was hard not to. 'You are angry with me.'
'Of course I am angry with you. I have five hundred warriors that haven't seen a Chaplain from their own Legion in almost a year. You were many months overdue, fighting with the Iron Warriors. Oros, Damane and Malaki are also still with Perturabo's lesser fleets, furthering the conspiracy.' He sneered through the word.
'What of Sar Fareth?'
'Dead.'
'What?'
'Killed ten months ago, shortly after you left. Slain by a human, of all things. An unlucky thrust with a wooden spear.' Argel Tal tapped two fingertips against his neck. 'Tore out most of his throat, laid it bare to the bone. I've never seen anything like it. Blood of the gods, I'd have laughed if it hadn't been so pathetically tragic. He bled out before the Apothecaries could reach him, still trying to shout the whole time.'
'What happened to his killer?'
Argel Tal had seen it himself. Sar Fareth had gripped the human's shoulder and leg, and pulled. The result came away in three bloody pieces before the Chaplain died.
'Justice happened.'
Xaphen released a breath that wasn't quite a sigh. Sar Fareth had been one of his own: trained by his hand to wield a crozius in Lorgar's name.
Argel Tal crossed his arms over his armoured chest. 'Will the Iron Warriors join us?'
The Chaplain's smile returned. 'Will they? Perturabo's Legion has already abandoned the Great Crusa |
it himself. Sar Fareth had gripped the human's shoulder and leg, and pulled. The result came away in three bloody pieces before the Chaplain died.
'Justice happened.'
Xaphen released a breath that wasn't quite a sigh. Sar Fareth had been one of his own: trained by his hand to wield a crozius in Lorgar's name.
Argel Tal crossed his arms over his armoured chest. 'Will the Iron Warriors join us?'
The Chaplain's smile returned. 'Will they? Perturabo's Legion has already abandoned the Great Crusade. I was with them on Olympia.'
That couldn't be. 'Olympia?' Argel Tal managed to speak. 'So soon?'
'All of the primarch's plans are coming to fruition. That, in truth, is why I returned. Olympia was in open rebellion against the Imperium, and the Iron Warriors declared war against their own people in desperation to pacify their home world. Brother, you cannot imagine the sight. The skies were black with Perturabo's gunships and landers, while the ground shook from dawn to dusk under the wrath of half a million war machines.'
Argel Tal took a slow breath, forcing an unwilling imagination to picture Xaphen's words. 'A primarch has lost control of his own home world.'
'You speak as if you never believed this day would come.'
Argel Tal said nothing, motioning for the Chaplain to continue.
'All of it was orchestrated to the very finest degree. The Iron Warriors' wrath was a sight to behold. They have instigated genocide against their own people. What choice do they have now? The call will come soon: Horus is already gathering his forces, cleansing them of unworthy elements. The Emperor's Children, the Death Guard and the World Eaters are with him. The bulk of each Legion gathers in the Isstvan system, while Perturabo has betrayed the Imperium in his need for vengeance. He will stand with us when Lorgar throws off the False Emperor's shackles.'
The fervency in his voice wasn't new to Argel Tal, but without the presence of a Chaplain for almost a year, Xaphen's eager passion had faded from his memory. He found his brother's enthusiasm more unnerving than anything else.
'When do we travel to the primarch?'
'Soon.' The Chaplain met his brother's eyes. 'I told you, I returned because the time has come. Soon, the call will come from Terra.'
Xaphen activated the wall-screen, cycling through visuals of stellar cartography. He added layer upon layer of superimposed fleet markers. Argel Tal watched the display taking shape, so beautifully complex in its completion.
'Tell me what you see,' Xaphen said with a smile.
Argel Tal glanced at him. 'I see the death of my patience. I see my anger rising at how you hold all these answers purely by virtue of your position in the Chaplain brotherhood. I see me walking from this room without a straight answer given immediately.'
'Such vim,' the Chaplain chuckled. 'Very well. Here is the Isstvan system. Here, far across the western spiral arm, is Terra. Take note of the compliances being carried out in the subsectors closest to Isstvan. Now, humour me. What do you see?'
Argel Tal recognised symbolising runes from four Legions - and no others. It formed a curious pattern, notable for the lack of Imperial Army or Mechanicum battlefleets, as well as the total absence of many notable Legions.
'I see the hand of the Warmaster at work,' said Argel Tal. 'He has positioned certain fleets closest to him at Isstvan. These fleets could reach the system within a matter of days. Those on the outer arc will take longer, but... This is an immense gathering of force.' Argel Tal looked at Xaphen, reluctantly drawing his eyes from the twinkling stellar ballet. 'Now tell me why.'
'Forgive me, brother. Little did I realise the frustration of isolation you've suffered in a fleet burdened by Custodes presence. Your duty was to maintain the lie, and you've done so to perfection. But you are owed enlightenment.'
Xaphen cancelled the cartographic imagery and continued. 'Horus and Lorgar are already moving against the Emperor. The Warmaster has sworn devotion to the Hidden Gods, and now walks in their light. For now, the warp is pregnant with unrest, leaving much of the Imperium blind. Many of the established warp-paths are severed from each other by aetheric storms. The tumult will only grow worse, giving us enough time to enact the primarch's will without fear of Imperial retribution. Such is the influence of the true gods. The warp itself is their canvas, and they paint to please us.'
The Master of the Serrated Sun let his scowl speak for him. He took offence to the way Xaphen insinuated they were no longer Imperial, purely for contemplating regicide. We are overthrowing a stagnant and ignorant ruling order. We are bringing enlightenment to our people, not ending the empire.
'Go on,' he said.
'A call will reach us soon - a panicked plea that every astropath in the fleet will hear at once. A call from Terra. The Emperor will soon learn of Horus's rebellion, and what choice does he have? He must order the closest Legions to destroy the Warmaster's traitorous forces.'
Argel Tal pictured the Legion signifiers flashing closest to the sun named Isstvan.
'Horus will be destroyed.'
The Chaplain laughed, relishing the moment. 'He will be entrenched on an impregnable world, commanding four Legions. What could destroy him?'
'The seven Legions tasked with doing so. Even with the Iron Warriors at our side, the other five Legions remain under the Emperor's aegis. Six against five. Our losses will be catastrophic. How can we illuminate Terra when the Legions sworn to Lorgar and Horus are bloodied and broken?'
Xaphen didn't answer immediately. His brother recognised something in his face - some creeping disquiet, close to the bladed edge of mistrust.
'Do you have such little trust in your own Legion's Chaplains, that our work has failed to turn the Night Lords, or the Alpha Legion? Lorgar has worked for half a century to spread the truth to those ears worthy of hearing it. Every Legion we need will be at our side. The loyalists will find nothing but extinction waiting for them on the surface of Isstvan V. They will never leave their dropsites alive, Argel Tal. I promise you that.'
'This conspiracy,' said Argel Tal, 'disgusts me.'
'It is the primarch's plan, brought into being by Horus himself.'
Argel Tal shook his head. 'No. This is not Aurelian's work. This is Erebus and Kor Phaeron's doing. Their treacherous stink comes off this vision in waves. Lorgar is a golden soul, a being of light. This shadowplay comes from the dreams of much smaller, darker men. The primarch, blessings upon him, loves that foul wretch. He embraces a viper to his breast and names it father.'
'You should not speak this way of the Master of the Faith.'
'Master of the...' Argel Tal laughed. 'Kor Phaeron? "Master of the Faith"? He coats himself in titles the way a killer's knife is laced with poison. Truly, I have been isolated from the Legion too long, if Kor Phaeron is now beloved of the masses. You of all people, Xaphen - you loathed him. An impure soul. A false Astartes. Your own words, brother.'
Xaphen looked away at last, unwilling or unable to hold the gaze any longer. Nothing broke eye contact like shame. 'Times change,' the Chaplain said.
'So it seems.' Argel Tal closed his hands into fists to ease the pain in his bones. It didn't work. His knuckles went on throbbing. 'Just get on with it. I have a world to bring to compliance.'
'If you please, I have questions of my own.'
'Ask,' said Argel Tal, 'and I will answer.'
'Cyrene,' Xaphen began. 'She has undergone more rejuvenation treatment.'
'Do not look at me, nor should you accuse her of vanity. An astropathic order came from the primarch himself some time ago. He still holds her in high regard, and expressed his desire that she go through another cycle of treatments.'
Xaphen nodded. 'And Aquillon?'
Argel Tal's expression was unreadable. 'As before. He knows nothing, and suspects even less. His messages to the Emperor never leave the fleet.'
'My failsafe?'
'Is still in effect.'
'Have you checked yourself?' The Chaplain knew his brother found certain methods distasteful. 'It is integral you check yourself.'
'I have,' said Argel Tal. 'Nothing has changed, put it from your mind.'
'Then I am sanguine. Nevertheless, I will renew the wards tonight.' He moved over to his writing desk, and unclasped a great book from where it was chained to his waist. Slowly, reverently, he leafed through the pages of the great, leather-bound tome - through pages and pages of elegant scripture, mathematical designs, astrological diagrams, chanted invocations and ritual formulae.
Argel Tal ached to step closer and read the secrets spilled from the primarch's mind. Truly, Lorgar was sharing a great deal with the Legion's Chaplain brotherhood.
'You have added much to the book,' he noted.
'I have. Each month, we receive new chapters and verses for the holy work. The primarch's mind is aflame with ideas and ideals, and we are honoured to hear them first. Thousand of epistles now grace these pages.'
The 1301st's databanks would never be allowed to archive digital copies of the primarch's scriptures, for such information could be accessed by the wrong souls. Instead, the Serrated Sun's Chaplains each carried their own copies chained to their armour - forever adding to them as the Word grew and spread - using them to preach at secret sermons. Argel Tal had taken Sar Fareth's Book of Lorgar from the Chaplain's corpse, incinerating it on the battlefield; committing necessary blasphemy to prevent the tome ever falling into unintended hands.
The Chaplain took a slow breath. 'I have been gone too long, Argel Tal. You're right. I was lost in manipulating the dull-witted labourers of the IV Legion, when in truth I desired nothing more than to be here with my brothers, preaching the evolving Word of Lorgar.'
'Apology accepted,' said the Crimson Lord. 'And you have thirty-eight minutes before plane |
aplain's corpse, incinerating it on the battlefield; committing necessary blasphemy to prevent the tome ever falling into unintended hands.
The Chaplain took a slow breath. 'I have been gone too long, Argel Tal. You're right. I was lost in manipulating the dull-witted labourers of the IV Legion, when in truth I desired nothing more than to be here with my brothers, preaching the evolving Word of Lorgar.'
'Apology accepted,' said the Crimson Lord. 'And you have thirty-eight minutes before planetfall. I will see you on the deck before the Rising Sun.'
Xaphen was reading the data screeds scrolling over his eye lenses. 'There's an order for the coming engagement, sanctioning the presence of remembrancers during combat operations. That cannot be correct, for I know you would never acquiesce to such a thing.'
Argel Tal grunted something that wasn't quite an answer, and made his way to the door.
'Wait.'
Argel Tal froze, already at the chamber door. 'Yes?'
'Think of all that has come to pass, brother. Focus upon how events are flowing faster towards the inevitable insurrection. Are you feeling anything within you? Any... changes?'
The Chapter Master's hands ached with sudden ferocity. It was if his knuckles and wrists were hinged by broken glass.
Without knowing why he did it, Argel Tal lied.
'No, brother. Nothing. Are you?'
Xaphen smiled.
MAKING WAR UPON another human culture was always a distinct kind of poison, and Argel Tal loathed every time it became necessary.
These were unclean wars, and fought with bitterness bred into every soul doomed to take up arms against the Imperium. It wasn't that the enemy dared resist that discomfited the Crimson Lord, nor was it the expenditure of munitions or the fact each of these worlds was peopled by defenders he came to admire for their tenacity. Those aspects grieved him, but the waste of life and potential from their defiance - that was what left scars.
He'd tried to raise the point with Xaphen in the past. With characteristic bluntness, the Chaplain had lectured him on the rightness of their cause and the tragic need to crush these cultures. Such discussion told Argel Tal nothing he didn't already know. Similar talks with Dagotal and Malnor had progressed the same way, as had one with Torgal. The Gal Vorbak dispensed with all ranks outside of Argel Tal's own, rendering all its warriors equal under the Chapter Master, and the former assault sergeant had struggled hardest to understand what Argel Tal was trying to explain.
'But they are wrong,' Torgal said.
'I know they are wrong. That's the tragedy. We bring enlightenment through unification with mankind's ancestral home world. We bring hope, progress, strength and peace through unmatched might. Yet they resist. It grieves me that extinction is so often the answer. I pity them for their ignorance, but admire them for the fact they will die for their way of life.'
'That is not admirable. That's moronic. They would rather die being wrong than learn to embrace change.'
'I never said it was intelligent. I said it grieved me to reave a world clean of life because of ignorance.'
Torgal mused on this, but not for very long. 'But they're wrong,' he said.
'We were wrong once, too.' The Chapter Master held up a gauntleted fist to make the point: it was crimson, where it would once have been grey. 'We were wrong when we worshipped the Emperor.'
Torgal had shaken his head. 'We were wrong, and we adapted rather than be annihilated. I do not see the source of your grievance, brother.'
'What if we could convince them? What if the flaw is with us, that we merely lack the words to win them to our side? We are butchering our own species.'
'We are culling the herd.'
'Forget I mentioned it,' the Chapter Master conceded. 'You are right, of course.'
Torgal would not be moved. 'Do not mourn idiocy, brother. They are offered the truth and they have refused. If we had resisted the truth unto destruction, then we would have deserved our fate, just as these fools deserve theirs.'
Argel Tal hadn't tried again. A treacherous and unworthy thought plagued him in those grimmest moments - how much of his brothers' unquestioning belief was born of their own hearts, and how much was bred into them by their gene-seed? How many souls had he consigned to destruction himself, silently urged into bloodshed by sorcerous genetics?
Some questions had no answers.
Reluctant to burden Cyrene with his own troubles when she already served as confessor for hundreds of Astartes and Euchar soldiers, the only other time he'd spoken of his unease was with the one soul he knew he needed to guard against.
Aquillon understood.
He understood because he felt the same, sharing Argel Tal's subtle lament at the need to destroy entire empires simply because their leaders were blind to the realities of the galaxy.
The latest world to earn destruction was called Calis by its inhabitants, and 1301-20 by the 1301st Expeditionary Fleet. A planetwide invasion was in the making even as Calis's primitive orbital defences fell, burning, back into the atmosphere.
The population was sentenced to destruction on account of their dealing with xenos breeds. The purestrain human biological code of Calis's citizens had been unalterably corrupted by the introduction of alien genetics. The people of the world below would not surrender the exact details to the Imperium, but it was clear from blood samples that the Calisians had cultured alien deoxyribonucleic acid into their own cells at some point in time.
'Most likely to cure hereditary or degenerative disease,' Torvus suggested. But the reason was meaningless. Such deviation could not be tolerated.
General Jesmetine's Euchar regiments were tasked with taking hold of twelve major cities across Calis's scarce landmasses, each with support from several Astartes squads.
The capital city - a sprawl of industrial decay by the name of Crachia - was also the seat of the planetary ruler, who claimed the evidently hereditary title of 'psychopomp'.
It was this woman, Psychopomp Shal Vess Nalia IX, that had rebuffed the Word Bearers' emissaries. And it was this woman, swollen with corpulence, who had signed her culture's death warrant.
'Leave the capital untouched,' Argel Tal had informed Baloc Torvus at the preceding war council. 'I will release the Gal Vorbak upon Crachia and take their queen's head myself.'
The fleetmaster had nodded. 'And what of the remembrancers? They've barely been with us a fortnight, yet already I'm suffering hourly beseeching from their representatives, begging that they be allowed to witness an assault.'
The Crimson Lord shook his head. 'Ignore them. We are conquering a world, Baloc, not nursemaiding tourists.'
Baloc Torvus had grown deeply patient in his advancing age, which was one of the fleetmaster's many virtues that his men admired and his fellow commanders relied upon. Argel Tal saw the beginnings of cracks in that ironclad facade now, showing in the lines around the ageing man's eyes, and the way he adjusted his white cloak to calm himself before replying.
'With respect, lord-'
Argel Tal raised a hand in warning. 'Don't fall into formalities just because you disagree with me.'
'With respect, Argel Tal, I have been ignoring them on your behalf since their arrival, and for over a year before that. I have mouthed platitudes and composed missives refusing them access to the fleet, citing a hundred and more reasons that it would be inappropriate, impossible, or impractical to deal with them. Now they are here, and they come equipped with Imperial seals from the Sigillite himself, demanding that they be allowed to record the Great Crusade. Short of shooting them - and don't think I can't see that smile - how am I to continue delaying them?'
Argel Tal chuckled, the first break in his foul mood the fleetmaster had seen today. Whatever news the returning Chaplain had brought, it was not sitting well with the Chapter Master. 'I see your point. How many have joined the fleet?'
Torvus consulted a data-slate. 'One hundred and twelve.'
'Very well. Make them choose ten. We'll take them down with us in the first wave, and give them a minimal Army escort from the Euchars. The rest can follow once the landing zones are secure.'
'What if they encounter significant opposition?'
'Then they die.' The Crimson Lord made to leave the room. 'I do not care, either way.'
Torvus took several seconds to make sure Argel Tal wasn't joking.
'By your word.'
TWENTY-TWO
An Idea
Brothers
The Ordained Hour
ISHAQ WAS FAINTLY concerned that he was going to die down here, but that wouldn't stop him enjoying it while it lasted.
The other remembrancers whined on and on, badgering their Echuar aides about where would be best to observe the battle without actually getting anywhere near it. Apparently they'd forgotten the honour of getting sent down here shortly after first setting foot on solid ground. Most of them seemed dedicated to completely missing the whole point of making planetfall in the first place, but that was fine by Ishaq. He wasn't here to babysit their careers.
The ride down to the surface had been an uneventful drift through the afternoon sky - anticlimactic after all the tension of being selected, and boring enough for Ishaq to start wondering if there was really a war going on at all. The limited view from the dirty window had revealed a distant city of obviously human construction below.
Strange, to consider waging war against such a familiar scene.
Their lander was an Army troop transport, a shaking, rattling example of the ancient Greywing-class shuttles that he'd assumed were out of service these days, replaced by the smaller, sleeker Valkyries. Ishaq had looked at the boxy underslung compartment where the thirty passengers were evidently supposed to travel. He'd looked at the sloping wings, ran a gloved hand over the armour plating, pockmarked from battle and painted with faded lightning bo |
der waging war against such a familiar scene.
Their lander was an Army troop transport, a shaking, rattling example of the ancient Greywing-class shuttles that he'd assumed were out of service these days, replaced by the smaller, sleeker Valkyries. Ishaq had looked at the boxy underslung compartment where the thirty passengers were evidently supposed to travel. He'd looked at the sloping wings, ran a gloved hand over the armour plating, pockmarked from battle and painted with faded lightning bolts from the Emperor's Unification Wars on Terra two centuries before.
And he'd fallen in love.
He snapped several picts of the venerable old girl, pleased with each and every one of them.
'What's her name?' he asked the pilot, who was standing around with the two dozen Army soldiers on the hangar deck and looking just as annoyed.
'They didn't name them back when she was made. Too many, produced too fast, by too few facilities.'
'I see. So what do you call her?' He pointed at the faint, stencilled print along the hull: E1L-IXII-8E22.
The man thawed a touch at Kadeen's interest. 'Elizabeth. We call her Elizabeth.'
'Sir,' Ishaq grinned. 'Permission to come aboard your fine lady.'
So it'd started well. Once they were down, things took a turn for the worse. The officer in nominal command of their expedition wasn't an officer at all - he was a Euchar sergeant who'd drawn the short straw and had to babysit the gaggle of pretension and nervousness that made up ten highly-strung artists in a warzone.
Ishaq half-listened to the sergeant arguing with a handful of the other remembrancers about just where would be acceptable for them to enter the city. He was already bored, standing on the edge of a rise about three kilometres from the city limits. The place itself looked no different from any industrialised sprawl on Terra, and there weren't even any obvious signs of battle.
The nature of Astartes assault presented a problem for the people attempting to chronicle the event. A direct drop-pod attack against the palace meant the remembrancers had to cross an entire hostile city alone, or would remain outside the city limits and ultimately witness nothing at all. The former was never going to happen. The latter almost definitely was.
Ishaq Kadeen was a naturally suspicious soul, and he felt a bleak sense of humour behind all this. Someone, perhaps even the Crimson Lord himself, was making fun of them all. Inviting them down here, but keeping them tediously safe and out of the way.
He trudged over to his minders: two men in the neat ochre uniforms of the Euchar 81st. Each of the remembrancers was similarly guarded. Ishaq's own sentinels looked both bored and annoyed all at once, which was quite a feat for human facial expressions.
'What if we just flew over to the palace?' he suggested.
'And get shot down?' The Euchar was practically spitting. 'That piece of shit would catch fire and fall out of the sky as soon as it came into range of the anti-air guns.'
With effort, Ishaq kept his smile cordial. 'Then fly really, really high, and come down sharp on top of the palace. Then find somewhere to land.' He demonstrated this feat of aeronautics with his hands. They didn't seem convinced.
'Not happening,' one of them said.
Ishaq turned without another word, heading back into the dark confines of the Greywing's passenger pod. When he emerged again, he had a plastek personal grav-chute pack tucked under one arm, clearly taken from the overhead storage lockers.
'Then how about this? We fly really damn high, and anyone who actually wants to do their job can jump out and do it.'
The two soldiers shared a glance, and called their sergeant over.
'What is it?' the sergeant asked. His face painted enough of a picture: he needed another whining artist like he needed a hole in his head.
'This one,' the soldier pointed at Ishaq. 'He's had an idea.'
It took twenty minutes for the idea to become reality, and Ishaq regretted it right about the same time he jumped out of the gunship and started falling.
Below him sprawled the white-stone palace, like something from Ancient Hellas in Terra's decadent past. It was coming up to meet him with surprising speed, while the wind was doing its best to beat him unconscious.
This, he thought, may have been a mistake.
He tapped the switches on his chest buckle that would engage the grav-chute. First one, then the other. First one, then the other.
'Wait twenty seconds before you switch it on,' the sergeant had said to the few of them that were making the drop. 'Twenty seconds. Understood?'
Wait twenty seconds.
The wind roared against him, and the ground swelled below. Was he going to be sick? He hoped not. The queasiness in his stomach flipped and bubbled. Ugh.
Wait twenty seconds.
No sign of anti-air fire, at least. He could make out a spot among one of the inner courtyards - a blackened stain where a red drop-pod had beached itself. That was a good place to start.
Wait twenty seconds.
How... How long had he been falling?
Oh, shit.
Ishaq looked up, through bleary goggles he could see his two minders above. Both were far, far higher than him, shrinking all the while. Even smaller, above them both, were the others who'd caught onto his plan and given it enough credence to come with him.
He flicked the switches, first the blue, then the red. For several moments, absolutely nothing happened. Ishaq continued his plummeting death-dive, too surprised to even swear. He started flicking the switches in random panic, little realising that by doing so he wasn't giving it time to warm up and engage.
The grav-chute finally kicked in hard enough to wrench the muscles in his neck, its gravity suspensors humming as they came alive. The late activation saved Ishaq from becoming a red smear along the wall of a palace tower, but he paid the price for distraction. Laughing with terror, he careened off the stone parapet, bouncing, giggling and trying not to soil himself as he tumbled through the air.
Forty-eight seconds later, the first of his minders touched down in the courtyard. He found Ishaq Kadeen a bloody mess, cradling his picter in bruised hands as he sat on the grass, rocking back and forth.
'Did you see that?' he grinned at the soldier.
THREE REMEMBRANCERS, SIX Euchar soldiers - a strike force of nine souls, moving through the corridors of the palace. It was a scantly-decorated affair with little in the way of art or ornamentation. The architecture was all pillars and arched roofs, while uncarpeted stone floors led them deeper into the structure, which had all the charm and warmth of a mountaintop monastery.
When they'd first entered the palace, leaving the fire-blackened Astartes drop-pod behind, Ishaq had wondered how they'd know which way to go. It turned out to be a needless worry. They just followed the bodies.
Evidence of the Astartes' passing was everywhere. This wing of the palace was swept clean of life, with ruptured corpses left in place of traditional decoration. One of the other remembrancers, a whippet-lean imagist by the name of Kaliha, would pause every few minutes and compose a pict around the dead bodies. It was clear from the angle of her picter that she sought to avoid any real focus on the slain, perhaps leaving them as blurred images in the foreground.
Ishaq had no interest in chronicling this butchery - artfully, tastefully or otherwise. The ambitious, mercenary part of his brain knew there'd be no point: such work would never enter the most treasured archives. Truly morbid pieces rarely did. People on Terra wanted to see what was humanity was capable of creating, not the aftermath of what it destroyed. They wanted to witness their champions in moments of glory or struggling in righteous strife, not slaughtering helpless humans that resembled Terrans far more than the Astartes themselves did.
It was all about presentation, about presenting what people wanted to see, whether they knew it or not. So he left the bodies unrecorded.
He tried not to look at the corpses they passed. Their ruination was so brutally complete it was difficult to imagine that these gobbets of meat had ever been people. They hadn't just been killed, they'd been destroyed.
One of the soldiers, Zamikov, caught Ishaq's eye. 'Chainblades,' he said.
'What?'
'The look on your face. You're wondering what does this to a body. Well, it's chainswords.'
'I wasn't wondering that,' Ishaq lied.
'No shame in honest horror,' Zamikov shrugged. 'I've been with the Serrated Sun twelve years now, and I puked my way through the first two. The Crimson Lord's lot do messy work.'
They took a left, stepping through another broken barricade that had failed to do its job. Gunfire in the distance hastened their strides.
'I'd heard the Word Bearers always incinerated their enemies.'
'They do.' Zamikov hiked a thumb over his shoulder, at the corpses arrayed in various pieces around the furniture barricade. 'That'll come afterwards. First they kill, then they purify.'
'They come back to burn the dead after a battle? They actually do it themselves?'
Zamikov nodded, no longer looking over at the imagist. Ishaq noticed the shift in the soldier's stride - as soon as they'd heard the gunshots, each of the Euchars moved lower, faster, their lasrifles clutched tighter. It was like watching hive-street cats on the hunt for rats.
'They do it themselves. No funerary serfs or corpse-servitors for the Word Bearers. They're a thorough lot, you'll see.'
'I can already see.'
'That a fact?' Zamikov spared him a quick glance. 'What do you see here?'
'Bodies.' Ishaq raised an eyebrow. What kind of question was that?
'It's more than that.' The soldier looked ahead again. 'This entire wing of the palace is cleaned out, but we've doubled back on ourselves more than once following the trail of dead. The Word Bearers aren't racing to the throne room. That's not how they do things. They're killing everyone in the palace first, ro |
gh lot, you'll see.'
'I can already see.'
'That a fact?' Zamikov spared him a quick glance. 'What do you see here?'
'Bodies.' Ishaq raised an eyebrow. What kind of question was that?
'It's more than that.' The soldier looked ahead again. 'This entire wing of the palace is cleaned out, but we've doubled back on ourselves more than once following the trail of dead. The Word Bearers aren't racing to the throne room. That's not how they do things. They're killing everyone in the palace first, room by room, chamber by chamber. That's punishment. That's being thorough. You understand now?'
Ishaq nodded, not sure what else to say.
The sound of gunfire was joined by the guttural whine of motorised blades. He felt his heart quicken. This was it: battle, seeing the Astartes fight. And hopefully, not getting shot at himself.
'Look alive,' the sergeant grunted. 'Rifles up.'
Ishaq didn't have a rifle, but with his face set just as stern as Zamikov's, he raised his picter.
When they caught up to the Word Bearers, the scene was nothing like he'd expected. Firstly, it wasn't a squad of Word Bearers, it was just one. And secondly, he wasn't alone.
The picter clicked and clicked and clicked.
THEY WERE TWINS in movement, a single weapon with a single intent. Neither led the other, neither moved any more or less than his twin. It was not competition. It was the perfection of unity.
They stopped as one, ending their advance to take stock of their surroundings. The city was in the throes of evacuation, for whatever good it would do the populace, and the air was a wailing morass of conflicting sirens audible even here within the palace. Platoons of defenders stood at every corridor corner and junction, armed with solid shot rifles that cracked and pinged harmlessly off Astartes armour.
The vox-network was calm. No cries for reinforcement. No demands for orders. The monotonous chanting so typical of Word Bearer squads was absent from the Gal Vorbak. Forty warriors, drop-podded into four sections of the royal castle, immediately splitting up to slaughter with muted grunts and growls.
Another barricade stood before the two advancing warriors, manned by dozens of the rifle-armed defenders in their ostentatious white and gold garb. Puffs of smoke preceded the click-clack-click of their bullets sparking harmlessly aside.
Both warriors broke into a run, boots crunching into the stone floor. Both vaulted the barricade of smashed furniture in the same moment, both grunting in effort as they leapt. Both landed at the same time, and both let loose with abandon, their weapons lashing out to shed blood. The defenders fell in pieces around them, chopped and carved faster than the eye could follow.
Ruthless familiarity with each other was all that made this possible. When one would weave low to thrust, the other would aim high to slice. Their movements were a blurring dance around each other's forms, forever watching and anticipating the other's movements even as they focused on slaying their enemies.
Around the two warriors, nineteen defenders were twitching human wreckage. The last to die had been disembowelled and decapitated by both warriors in the same heartbeat.
Now blood ran from the sword's blade, just as it ran from the eight talons. Back to back, the warriors glanced at the ruination around them, took half a second's note of the Euchar escorting the remembrancers down the hallway, and moved on in the same second.
Aquillon ran.
Argel Tal staggered.
Surprise froze the Custodian's movements dead. As he turned, he saw the Word Bearer take another flawed step and crash to his knees among the corpses they'd created.
Aquillon span his blade - a deflective propeller to ward off any assassin's shot. He wasn't connected to the Legion's networked data-stream, and couldn't read Argel Tal's life signs on a convenient retinal display. But there was no blood. No sign of injury, beyond the collapse and spasm.
'Are you hit?'
Argel Tal answered with wordless rasps. Something wet and black dripped from his helm's mouth grille, thinner than oil, thicker than blood, hissing like acid as it fell to the stone.
Aquillon stood above the prone Word Bearer, sword spinning in his gold hands. No matter where he looked, he couldn't gain a target lock. There was no assassin - at least none that he could see. He risked another glance down.
'Brother? Brother, what ails you?'
Argel Tal used his claws to rise, digging them into the wall and dragging himself to his feet. Black bubbles, silvered by saliva, swelled and popped at his mouth grille.
'Rakarssshhhk,' he said, in a greasy blurt of vox. The twitching was subsiding, but the Word Bearer seemed in no hurry to move.
'What struck you down?'
'Hnh. Nothing. Nothing.' Argel Tal's voice was a breathy wheeze. 'I... Tell me you hear that.'
'Hear what?'
Argel Tal gave no answer. The scream in his mind went on and on, a sound of sorrow and anger somehow ripened by amusement - a meaningless melange of incompatible emotion, curdled into a single scream. Each second it lasted, his blood boiled hotter.
'Let's move on,' he growled at Aquillon through chattering teeth.
'Brother?'
'Move on.'
TORGAL SCREAMED IN unison with the distant cry, sending human defenders panicking before him. The Gal Vorbak warriors by his side dropped their weapons, hands clutching at helms, wordless shouts of anguish vox-roaring throughout the throne chamber.
Psychopomp Shal Vess Nalia IX watched this sudden madness through tears in her eyes. The ruler of the planet Calis had, before this moment, been curled in her oversized throne - a mess of rich robes containing rolls of fat - weeping and wailing for all to hear. The last survivors of her royal guard, those who'd not fled to leave her to die at the hands of the invaders, were similarly taken aback now as the red-armoured slaughterers howled and ceased their butchery.
The guards' ceremonial blades were worthless against Astartes armour, as were their solid-shot rifles. Instead of pressing the attack, they used the momentary respite to fall back to the psychopomp's throne.
'Highness, it's time to leave,' a house-captain told her. This was a refrain he'd been trying for days, but if it wouldn't work now, at least he'd never need to try again.
She blubbed in response. Her chins jiggled.
'Forget her,' one of the others said. All of their faces were taut under the pressure of the invaders screaming so loud. 'This is our chance, Revus.'
'Defend me!' the matriarch wailed. 'Do your duty! Kill them all!'
Revus was fifty-two years old, and had served most loyally as house-captain to the current psychopomp's father, who'd been a charismatic and effective ruler beloved by his people - everything his fat bitch of a daughter was not.
But he couldn't leave. Or rather, he wouldn't.
Revus turned to the prone invaders, watching them kneel and cry out in the sea of carved corpses around them, and made the last decision he would ever make. He would not run. It was not in him to do so. Instead, he would defend his sire's indolent daughter with his life, breaking his blade upon the armour of his enemies, making sure his final words would be to spit defiance in their faces.
'Turn and run, dogs,' he snarled at his own men. 'I will die doing my duty.'
Half of them seemed to take that as an order, for they fled immediately. Revus watched their dark-armoured forms slipping into servants' passages, and despite himself, couldn't wish harm upon them for their cowardice.
The house-captain remained in the screaming maelstrom with eight men: all too proud or too dutiful to run, and all on the veteran side of forty.
'We're with you,' one of them said, his voice raised to make it above the shouts.
'Defend me!' the hideous girl wailed again. 'You have to protect me.'
Revus spoke a small prayer of reverence, wishing the shade of her father well, and promising to see him soon in the afterlife.
The invaders rose again. The screams faded to moans and grunts. They reached for weapons that had fallen into the gore.
Revus yelled 'Charge!' and did exactly that.
He cared nothing for slaying one of the invaders, for he knew he couldn't. All he wished to do was break his blade upon their red armour - to land a single blow, when so many of the royal guard had died without even striking once.
One moment he ran and roared, the next, he was crashing to the floor. There wasn't even any pain as his legs went out from under him, just a moment of dizziness, before looking up to see the crimson warrior towering above. His blade remained unbroken. His last wish, denied.
The invader stepped on the dying man's chest, crushing every bone in his torso and pulping the organs. House-Captain Revus died without even knowing his legs and waist were three metres away, severed from his body by the red warrior's first blow.
Torgal dispatched the last of the ardent defenders, reaching the throne before the other Gal Vorbak. Acidic bile still stung his throat, but control and strength alike had returned to his limbs. The vox was a frenetic exchange of squads all reporting the same crippling pain and the sound of laughter.
'Leave my world!' the psychopomp squealed from her chair.
Torgal plucked her up by her fat neck. The weight was considerable, even for Astartes battle armour. He felt gyros in his shoulder and elbow joints lock to deal with the strain.
Next to him, Seltharis was replacing his helm after spitting black bile at one of the dead bodies. 'Just kill the piggish creature. We need to return to orbit. Something is wrong.'
Torgal shook his head. 'Nothing is wrong.' He did his best to ignore the girl's weeping protests. 'But we must commune with the Chaplain at once. If this is the ordained hour, we must-'
'What?' Seltharis was almost laughing. 'What must we do? I am hearing a spirit laughing inside my skull, while my blood boils hot enough to burn my bones. We have no plan for this. None of us truly believ |
t one of the dead bodies. 'Just kill the piggish creature. We need to return to orbit. Something is wrong.'
Torgal shook his head. 'Nothing is wrong.' He did his best to ignore the girl's weeping protests. 'But we must commune with the Chaplain at once. If this is the ordained hour, we must-'
'What?' Seltharis was almost laughing. 'What must we do? I am hearing a spirit laughing inside my skull, while my blood boils hot enough to burn my bones. We have no plan for this. None of us truly believed it would ever come.'
'Leave my world!' the matriarch insisted. 'Leave us in peace!'
Torgal sneered at her behind his faceplate, loathing her down to the wretched, alien fish-stink of her sweating skin. What abominable event in this world's past had led to such deviancy? What could make such desecration - the corruption of the human genome with alien genetics - a necessary reality? These people seemed no stronger, no more enlightened, no more industrious than any other human culture. In truth, they were less advanced than most.
'Why did you do this to yourselves?' the Astartes asked.
'Leave my world! Leave!'
He threw her aside. The fleshy pile crashed to the ground, her dynasty ended by a broken neck.
'Burn everything,' ordered Torgal. 'Burn it all, and summon a Thunderhawk. We stand at the ordained hour. I will report to the Crimson Lord.'
THE CRIMSON LORD surveyed the courtyard. Empty, but for the grounded gunship.
He lowered his claws.
Torgal reported the monarch's downfall almost an hour before, but Argel Tal's fervour had faded even before the announcement. With the echo of that silent scream still drifting through his skull, he stood in the shadows of his Thunderhawk, Rising Sun, abstaining from the final slaughter within the palace. With flamers and incendiary grenades, the Gal Vorbak were erasing all evidence of royal life, gutting the pillared palace from within.
Most were voxing questions to one another, coating the communication network in a buzz of aggressive, amused voices. The words Ordained Time surfaced with sickening frequency. Their blood was up, for it seemed the gods had called.
Aquillon had followed him, which was the first thing he expected, and the very last thing he needed. The four Custodes were scattered among the Word Bearers assaulting the palace. They had surely seen everything, and that was going to become a problem sooner rather than later.
Argel Tal watched the man he would soon be ordered to kill, and wondered if he were capable of the act, both physically and morally.
'I have no answer for you,' Argel Tal told him. 'I do not know what happened. A momentary weakness played over me. I forced it back. That is all I can tell you.'
The Custodes sighed through his helm speaker. 'And you are well now?'
'Yes. My strength returned quickly. There has been no moment of similar weakness.'
'My men report similar incidents,' the Custodian said. 'Many of the Gal Vorbak fell as if struck by unseen hands, at the same moment you lapsed yourself.' Aquillon removed his helm in a gesture of familiarity. It was a gesture that went unreturned. 'We have detected no enemy weaponry capable of creating such an effect.'
He could only meet Aquillon's gaze with his own eyes guarded by the lenses of his helm.
'If I knew what had afflicted me,' Argel Tal said, 'I would tell you, brother.'
'We have to consider that this is some previously unknown flaw in your Legion's gene-seed.'
Argel Tal grunted a vague noise that may or may not have been affirmation.
'You understand,' the Custodian continued, 'I must report this to the Emperor, beloved by all, at once.'
Behind his faceplate, Argel Tal was drooling blood again.
'Yes,' he said, licking his lips clean. 'Of course you must.'
AT FIRST, HE believed the scream was returning. Only after listening to its ululating wail for several moments did he turn back towards the palace walls.
'Do you hear that?' he asked.
This time, Aquillon nodded. 'Yes. I do.'
WHEN THE SIREN started, almost all of the Word Bearers requested confirmation of its origins. The Colchisian rune flickering across hundreds of retinal displays told a blunt, stark tale, but it was a story that made no sense.
Even among the Gal Vorbak, the red-clad warriors hesitated in their fire-bearing purges, voxing to the orbiting fleet for immediate confirmation and explanation.
IN THE COURTYARD, Argel Tal and Aquillon boarded the Rising Sun, ordering their warriors to return to their dropships without hesitation. The psychopomp's palace no longer mattered. This entire compliance was now meaningless.
'All Word Bearers, all Custodes, all Imperial Army forces of the 1,301st Expeditionary Fleet - hear these words. This is Argel Tal, Master of the Serrated Sun. Word has reached De Profundis from Terra itself, bearing the seal of the Emperor. The Isstvan System is in open rebellion, led by four of our own Legions. Rumours are rife, and facts are few. It is said the Warmaster has renounced his blood-oaths to the Throneworld. True or false, we will not go to war blinded by ignorance. But we will answer the primarch's call, for Lorgar himself demands we respond.
'Disengage from the surface attack, and regroup at your transports. Return to orbit at once. We are ordered to Isstvan, and we will obey as we were born to obey. The Word Bearers will cut to the heart of this betrayal, tearing the truth out from within. Officers, to your stations. Warriors, to your duties. That is all, for now.'
Aquillon stood with the Crimson Lord in the gunship's crew bay. 'I cannot give this even a moment's belief. Horus? A traitor?' The Custodian ran his fingertips over the flat of his sword's blade. 'This cannot be true.'
'You heard the message, just as I.' Argel Tal blink-clicked a runic marker on his visor display, opening a vox-channel to the Gal Vorbak.
'Confirm network security.'
Another rune twinned with the first, blinking in reassurance.
'This is Argel Tal,' he spoke only to his closest brothers now. 'Aurelian calls us.'
A voice answered without the aid of vox, drifting through his senses with maddening familiarity.
They already know. They sense it.
I know this voice, he thought.
Of course we know it. It is our own voice. We are Argel Tal.
TWENTY-THREE
Traitors
Possession
The Choice
THE ASTROPATH NODDED.
Aquillon was too stunned to even feel rage. 'Treason,' he said. 'How can this be?'
The astropath's name was Cartik, and at his full height he cut an unimpressively short figure, only made worse by both advancing age and a tendency to hunch his shoulders like an animal about to be attacked. The psyker was pushing seventy years of age with a face cracked by time's lines, and he'd hardly been spry even in youth. He was old now. It showed in everything he did, and how slowly he did it.
Surprisingly lovely eyes flickered about as they watched from beneath half-hooded lids, sunk into the sallow sockets of an ugly face formed by cruel genes and chubby cheeks. Upon seeing him once, a remembrancer had remarked that Cartik's mother or father - perhaps even both - were almost definitely rodents.
He'd never been skilled at cutting comebacks. His talents simply didn't lie in witticism. That was the last time he attempted to make friends among the newly-arrived civilians. He knew loneliness would drive him to try again, but was content to let it wait a while.
His position as personal astropath to the Occuli Imperator had brought his family on Terra a modest measure of wealth, though it had brought nothing but a lonely and boring indentured exile for himself. Such were the sacrifices made in this day and age. He was content enough to do the Emperor's duty, safe in the knowledge that his family were well provided for.
Once or twice, remembrancers had come to him, seeking to use his position for their own ends, in their quest for stories to record and tales to tell. Cartik read the naked ambition in their eyes, as well as their utter disinterest in him, and made himself unavailable to such visitors. In truth, he'd grown used to the loneliness. He had no desire to be used just to escape it.
'I confirm it,' Cartik said. His speech, like his eyes, was deceptively pleasant. Not that anyone would ever know it beyond Cartik himself, but he had a wonderful singing voice, too. 'Exalted sire, the aether has cleared a great deal in recent days, and the message from Terra was clear. It has come to treason.'
Aquillon looked at the others gathered in Cartik's isolated chamber. Kalhin, the youngest, with barely nine names in the Emperor's service. Nirallus, with his breastplate bearing twenty name-etchings, and the best of them all with a guardian spear. Sythran, still keeping his vow of silence sworn atop one of the few remaining mountains of Himalaya, looking up at the walls of the Imperial Palace. He viewed their assignment as penance, and would never speak a word until they returned to Terra in seven more years, at the completion of their five-decade service.
'Four Legions,' said Kalhin. 'Four entire Legions have betrayed the Emperor.'
'Led by the Warmaster,' Cartik added to their discussion with awkward softness. 'The Emperor's most beloved son.'
Nirallus breathed out something between a snort and a laugh. 'We are the Emperor's most beloved sons, little warp-speaker.'
Aquillon ignored the old argument. 'Argel Tal informs me we will reach Isstvan in thirty-nine days. Upon arrival, the Serrated Sun will rejoin the Legion and deploy alongside the other Word Bearers. No Army, Mechanicum or external forces are to join the assault, including us. This is an Astartes concern, apparently. They wish us to take command of four smaller vessels, to aid in repelling boarders. I have acquiesced to this.'
The others turned to him. Most nodded in acceptance at the honour offered to them, though they were still troubled.
'Thirty-nine days?' asked Nirallus.
'Yes.'
'That is incredulously quick,' Kalhin said. 'We've spent year |
and deploy alongside the other Word Bearers. No Army, Mechanicum or external forces are to join the assault, including us. This is an Astartes concern, apparently. They wish us to take command of four smaller vessels, to aid in repelling boarders. I have acquiesced to this.'
The others turned to him. Most nodded in acceptance at the honour offered to them, though they were still troubled.
'Thirty-nine days?' asked Nirallus.
'Yes.'
'That is incredulously quick,' Kalhin said. 'We've spent years pushing through turgid tides and bringing backwater worlds to compliance, and suddenly the Navigators are reporting clean warp-lanes all the way to where we need to be? A quarter of the way across the galaxy? That journey should take a decade.'
'The warp has cleared,' reiterated Cartik.
'In good tides, it is still a journey of many months. Even years.'
Aquillon looked down at Cartik. One by one, so did the others.
'Yes, Occuli Imperator?' the man said.
'Inform the Sigillite that we await his orders. The Astartes are resistant to exterior forces taking part in the coming battle, but we will be spread across the Word Bearers' fleet, commanding four of their vessels.'
'By your word,' Cartik said reflexively. It would be a long night of pulsing so urgent a message all the way to Terra, and maintaining a link with an astropath on the distant home world long enough to carry a reply. 'It will be as you wish.'
The Custodians left the room without saying another word.
ARGEL TAL SHIVERED in his armour, cold despite the heat, icy sweat drenching his skin before it was absorbed into the layers of his armour and recycled back into his body.
The scraping of heavy ceramite on steel decking was a rhythmic rasp, screeching each time his body gave another shudder in time to his heartbeat. He'd tried to stand countless times. Each attempt met with failure, crashing back down to the floor of his meditation chamber, denting the deck and chipping paint from his armour.
An open vox-channel to the other Gal Vorbak brought him their curses and murmured prayers, but he could neither recall opening the link, nor remember exactly how to close it. They suffered as he suffered. Most didn't sound capable of speech, either - their voices lost in feral, ragged snarls.
The door signal chimed once.
Argel Tal released a low growl, needing several moments to form a single word.
'Who?'
The wall-speaker hissed. 'It is Aquillon.'
The Word Bearer turned watering eyes to his retinal chron, seeing the digital runes counting up. He had forgotten something. Some... event. He couldn't think clearly. Saliva stringed between his aching teeth.
'Yes?'
'You were not present at our sparring.'
Yes, that was it. Their daily spar.
'Apologies. Meditating.'
'Argel Tal?'
'Meditating.'
There was a pause. 'Very well. I shall return later.'
Argel Tal lay on the decking, shivering and whispering mantras in the language at Colchisian's core, freed of its Terran and Gothic roots.
At one point, lost in a haze of pain, he'd drawn his combat blade. In a trembling grip, he used the sword to slice the palm of his gauntlet, seeking to release the burning from his blood. What dripped from the wound was like boiling oil, bubbling and popping, and it ate into the deck floor in hissing rivulets.
The slice closed the way a smile slowly fades. Even the cut in his armour resealed with disgustingly organic scarring.
He managed to haul himself to his feet after another hour had passed, composing himself enough to stand without trembling. Over the vox, his warriors were laughing, weeping, betraying emotion after emotion rarely heard from the throats of Astartes.
'Xaphen.'
The Chaplain evidently needed several long seconds to reply. 'Brother.'
'We must... hide this from the Custodes. Spread the word. The Gal Vorbak are to be sequestered in meditation. Penance. Contemplation as we travel to Isstvan.'
'We can just kill them.' Xaphen barked the words over the vox-network. 'Kill them now. The time has come.'
'They die,' Argel Tal swallowed a gobbet of acid, 'when the primarch says they die. Spread the word across the ship. The Gal Vorbak is suffering penance, and refuses all outside contact.'
'By your word.'
In the background, his brothers were screaming and howling. The sound of fists and foreheads crashing against walls transmitted over the vox in dull clangs. He couldn't breathe. He had to get his stifling helmet off; even the ship's warm, recycled air was better than choking in this ashes-and-ember reek.
Fingers clasped at his collar seals, but each tug jerked his whole head. The helm wouldn't come free. Cold sweat, somehow, had cemented it to his face.
Argel Tal moved to the doorway, pressing the activation plate. Once the door was open, the Crimson Lord broke into a staggering, lurching run, moving down the corridors, seeking the one place of refuge his disoriented mind could focus upon.
'ENTER,' SHE CALLED.
The first thing she heard was the servo-snarl of armour joints with the booted thunder of Astartes tread. She opened her mouth to speak, but the smell silenced her. Aggressively strong, the potent chemical iron-reek of melting metal, with the ashen scent of burning coal.
The footsteps were uneven, leading into her chamber, and ended with a crash of ceramite on metal that shook her bed. In the wake of the crash, the door sealed again. She sat on the edge of her sleeping mattress, staring blindly where she'd heard the Astartes fall.
'Cyrene,' the warrior spoke. She knew him instantly, despite the strain in his voice.
Without a word, she slipped from the bed, feeling for where he'd fallen. Her hands brushed the smooth armour of his shin guard, and the tattered oath paper that hung there. With that as her frame of reference, she moved up, until she sat by the warrior's shoulders, cradling his heavy helm in her lap.
'Your helmet will not come off,' she said.
This was his face now: this image of slanted eyes and snarling ceramite. He didn't answer.
'I... I will summon an Apothecary.'
'Need to hide. Lock the door.'
She did so with a spoken command.
'What is wrong?' There was no concealing her concern, or her rising panic. 'Is this what Xaphen spoke of? The... the ordained change?'
So the Chaplain had already told her everything. He knew he was foolish to be surprised by that fact - Xaphen had always shared all with the Blessed Lady, using her as yet another instrument in his spread of the new faith among the Legion and the serfs alike. Argel Tal blinked sweat from stinging eyes before he replied. A targeting lock outlined Cyrene's face above him, and he voided it with gritted teeth.
'Yes. The change. The ordained hour.'
'What will happen?' The unease in her voice was an aural nectar. Through a perception he didn't quite understand, Argel Tal felt stronger when he heard the break in her breathing... the way her heart beat faster... the warmth of fear in her voice. Tears fell onto his faceplate, and even this made his muscles bunch with fresh strength.
We feed on her sorrow, the thought rose unbidden.
'Are you dying?' she asked through her tears.
'Yes.' His own answer shocked him, because he'd not expected it, and yet knew it was true the moment he spoke it. 'I think I am.'
'What should I do? Please, tell me.' He could feel her fingertips stroking along the faceplate of his helm, cool to the touch, soothing some of the pain. It was as if her cold fingers rested directly against his feverish skin.
'Cyrene,' he growled, his voice barely his own. 'This is the primarch's plan.'
'I know. You won't die. Lorgar wouldn't allow it.'
'Lorgar. Does whatever. Must be done.'
He felt his voice growing fainter as he fell, drifting and slipping back from awareness as if into a sleep forced by narcotics. With ringing echoes, his thoughts split into an uncontrollable duality.
He could see her, her closed eyes that still trailed tears, her tumbling locks of chestnut hair curtaining down around her face. But he could see more: the pulse at her temple, where the vein quivered beneath her thin, too-human skin; The wet, crumpling boom of her heartbeat, pumping liquid life through her fragile body. The scent of her soul, escaping moment by moment throughout her entire life, breathed from her body until her body would breathe no more. She smelled alive, and she smelled vulnerable.
Somehow, that fired his hunger, like battle-lust, like starvation, but more potent than both - fierce enough to pain him. Her blood would tingle on his tongue, and sing through his digestive tract. Her eyes would be sweet balls of chewy, mouth-watering paste. He would break her teeth and swirl the shards around his mouth, before pulling her tongue from her bleeding lips and swallowing the severed length of flesh whole. Then she would scream, gurgling and tongueless, until she bled to death before him.
She was prey. Human. Mortal. Dying, minute by minute, and her spirit was destined to swim in the Sea of Souls until devoured by one of the Neverborn.
She was also Cyrene. The Blessed Lady. The one soul he'd come to at the nadir of his life, as his body broke and his faith broke alongside it.
She would be a joy to destroy. Her sorrow would sustain him, even enrichen him.
But he would not harm her. He could, but he would not. The wrath, born from nowhere, faded in the face of this realisation. He was not enslaved to his feral needs, despite their urgent strength.
He would never abandon his brothers, or shirk from Lorgar's vision. Everything was a choice, and he would choose to suffer through this as the primarch had intended for him, carrying the changes so that others would never have to. Humanity would live on through the strength of the chosen few.
'Argel Tal?' she spoke his name as she always spoke it, with a curious gentleness.
'Yes. We are Argel Tal.'
'What's happening?'
He managed a reassuring smile. It split the ceramite of his helm, and the faceplate smiled with him. She could |
or shirk from Lorgar's vision. Everything was a choice, and he would choose to suffer through this as the primarch had intended for him, carrying the changes so that others would never have to. Humanity would live on through the strength of the chosen few.
'Argel Tal?' she spoke his name as she always spoke it, with a curious gentleness.
'Yes. We are Argel Tal.'
'What's happening?'
He managed a reassuring smile. It split the ceramite of his helm, and the faceplate smiled with him. She couldn't see the daemonic visage leering up at her.
'Nothing. Only the change. Watch over me, Cyrene. Hide me from Aquillon. I can control this. I will not harm you.'
He raised a hand, watching through swimming vision as the edges of everything grew blurry and indistinct. A bladed claw met his stare, a human hand coated in cracked crimson ceramite, the black talons stroking her hair with inhuman care. For a time, he simply watched his new claws catch what little light existed in the room's ever-present darkness - the metal of his armour now an epidermis of ceramite, and the claws of his gauntlets now the talons of his own hand.
'Your voice is different,' she said.
His vision focused, the blurs fading, gelling into acuity. The claw was no more than his own gauntleted hand, as human as it had always been.
'Do not worry,' Argel Tal told her. 'One way or another, it will be over soon.'
THE GAL VORBAK did not remain in seclusion for long. Most emerged from their sealed chambers within a handful of nights. Xaphen was the first, leaving his chamber seemingly unchanged, though he was never without his helm as he travelled the ship's decks. A brazier burned at all times from its cage mounting on his power pack, trailing the scent of ashes and coals wherever he went. He spent his time visiting the other Gal Vorbak in their meditation chambers, allowing no other visitors.
Argel Tal left Cyrene's chamber after three nights. Aquillon was in the sparring halls, just as the Word Bearer had expected.
'I had a feeling you'd be here,' he said.
The Custodes stepped back from one another: Aquillon had been duelling with Sythran, both of them wielding live weapons and wearing full armour, including their crested helms.
Sythran deactivated his guardian spear, the spear blade turning off with a snap of discharged energy. Aquillon lowered his blade, but left it active.
'A long meditation,' he said, watching through ruby eye lenses.
'Is that suspicion in your voice, brother?' Argel Tal grinned behind his faceplate. 'I had a great deal to dwell upon. Sythran, may I borrow your spear? I wish to duel.'
Sythran turned his head to Aquillon, saying nothing. The Occuli Imperator spoke for him. 'Our weapons are keyed to our genetic spoor. They would not activate in your hands. As an addendum, it is considered the height of insult for one of us to let another touch the blades issued into our care by the Emperor himself.'
'Very well. I meant no offence.' Argel Tal moved to the weapon rack, donning a battered, ancient pair of power claws over his gauntlets. 'Shall we?'
Aquillon's golden helm tilted slightly. 'Live weapons?'
'Duellem Extremis,' Argel Tal confirmed, tensing his fists to activate the electrical power fields around the long claws.
Sythran left the practice cage, sealing his commander and the Crimson Lord within. He'd seen Argel Tal and Aquillon cross blades on hundreds of occasions, and an educated, experienced estimate would see the Word Bearer defeated within sixty to eighty seconds.
The commencement chime sounded. Eleven clashes and five seconds later, the bout was over.
'Again?' enquired the Astartes. He heard Sythran's quiet exhalation in place of speech. Aquillon said nothing, either.
'Is something amiss?' Argel Tal asked. With the claws on his gauntlets, he couldn't offer a hand to help Aquillon rise.
'No. Nothing is amiss. I had not expected you to attack, that is all.'
The Custodian regained his feet, his own armour joints humming as false muscles of machine-nerve and cable-sinew flexed and tensed.
'Again?'
Aquillon hefted his long blade. 'Again.'
The two warriors flew at one another, each strike flashing aside with bursts from their opposing power fields. Every second saw three strikes made, and each strike snapped back with the weapons' electrical fields repelling one another after the metal kissed for the briefest moment. The air was rich with the ozone scent of abused power fields in only a matter of heartbeats.
This time, the two warriors were more evenly matched. Argel Tal's strength lay in his awareness, not only of his own blade work but his enemy's potential, betrayed by their own movements. It had always allowed him to stand his ground against superior weapon-masters, such as Aquillon, for a respectable amount of time before being unable to deflect the winning blow. Now he coupled that perceptive gift with speed to match the Custodian's, and Aquillon was forced to bring desperate defensive strokes to bear for the first time in any of his duels with Argel Tal.
He gleaned the flaw in the Word Bearer's sudden thrusts - that edge of indelicacy, the suggestion of imperfect balance - and struck out when the next opportunity presented itself. The flat of his blade crashed against Argel Tal's breastplate, sending the Astartes stumbling back. Aquillon's lips were already creasing into a smile as the crimson-clad warrior thudded to the deck.
'There. The balance is restored. You are back where you belong: on the floor.'
Argel Tal's voice told of the grin behind his faceplate. 'I almost had you.'
'Not a chance,' the Custodian replied, wondering why it was suddenly true. 'But you are different, brother. Energised. Vital.'
'I feel different. Forgive me for now - I have duties to attend to.'
'By your word,' said the Custodian.
Both Aquillon and Sythran watched the Astartes leave. In the silence afterward, Aquillon said 'Something has changed.'
Sythran, true to his vow of silence, merely nodded.
TWENTY-FOUR
Isstvan V
Traitors
In Midnight Clad
ISSTVAN - AN UNREMARKABLE sun, far from Terra, precious Throneworld of the Imperium.
The system's third world, comfortably close enough to the sun to support human life, was a virus-soaked mass grave marking the anger of Horus Lupercal. The world's population was nothing more than contaminated ash scattered over lifeless continents, while the bones of their cities remained as blackened smears of burnt stone - a civilisation reduced to memory in a single day. The orbital bombardment from the Warmaster's fleet, payloads of incendiary shells and virus-laden biological warfare pods, had seemingly spared nothing and no one anywhere in the world.
Isstvan III lingered now in silent orbit around its sun, almost grand in the extent of its absolute devastation, serving as the scarred tombstone for the death of an empire.
The system's fifth planet was a colder globe, able to support only the most resistant and genetically valiant life. Its skies were thick with storms, its skin was scabbed by tundra, and nothing on the face of the world promised an easy life for any that would settle upon it.
Ringing Isstvan V was one of the largest fleets ever gathered in the history of the human species. Without a doubt, it was the most impressive coalition of Astartes vessels, with the scouts, cruisers, destroyers and command ships of seven entire Legions. The matt-black hulls of the Raven Guard's vessels blended into the void around their flagship, the sleek, vast and vicious Shadow of the Emperor. In a tighter formation, the green armour-plated warships of the Salamanders clustered in orbit around their primarch's vessel, the immense Flamewrought, its edges and battlements bedecked in leering, draconic gargoyles of burnished bronze.
A much smaller fleet hovered in the high atmosphere, comprised almost entirely of smaller escorts around the hulking capital ship Ferrum, marked the presence of the Iron Hands. The vessels were denser, their armour thicker, and their black hulls were trimmed with gunmetal grey and polished silver. The Iron Hands had sent their elite companies, while the bulk of the Legion's fleet remained en route.
Of the enemy fleet, there was no sign at all. The vessels of the Death Guard, the Emperor's Children, the World Eaters and the arch traitorous Sons of Horus were gone - hidden from Imperial eyes and the Emperor's vengeance.
In preternatural concordance, hundreds of vessels drifted closer to the world from the system's farthest reaches. Clad in armour of midnight-blue, the warships at the vanguard bore the skullish insignia and bronze statuary of the Night Lords Legion. The Iron Warriors drifted alongside their brothers, bastion-ships of composite metals and dull iron ceramite barely reflecting the stars. The vessels of the Alpha Legion formed the peripheries of the massed fleet, their sea-coloured hulls painted with stylised scales in honour of the reptilian beast they'd taken as their symbol. Embossed hydras snarled into space from their places along the ships' hulls.
At the core of the approaching armada, with more warships than any of their brother Legions, came the stone-grey battlefleet of the Word Bearers. The XVII Legion flagship, Fidelitas Lex, carved its way closer to the world ahead, massive engines vibrating with the gentle power of an approach vector's thrust.
So many vessels breaking from the warp at once should have been a maelstrom of colliding hulls and spinning junk, yet the armada coasted closer to Isstvan V with maddening calm, safe distances maintained between every craft, and the void shields of each ship never once coming into crackling contact.
With a precision that required mass calculation, the fleets of seven Astartes Legions hung in the skies above Isstvan V. Shuttles and gunships ferried between the heaviest cruisers, while the decks of every warship made ready to deploy their warriors in an unprecedented, unified planetfall.
Ho |
d spinning junk, yet the armada coasted closer to Isstvan V with maddening calm, safe distances maintained between every craft, and the void shields of each ship never once coming into crackling contact.
With a precision that required mass calculation, the fleets of seven Astartes Legions hung in the skies above Isstvan V. Shuttles and gunships ferried between the heaviest cruisers, while the decks of every warship made ready to deploy their warriors in an unprecedented, unified planetfall.
Horus, traitorous son of the Emperor, was making his stand on the surface. The Imperium of Man had sent seven Legions to kill its wayward scion, little knowing four of them had already spat on their oaths of allegiance to the Throneworld.
THE CELLAR WAS crowded with the remembrancers and off-duty Army grunts barred from the operations decks. Ishaq shouldered his way through to the bar, earning a score of annoyed grunts and tutted threats that he knew wouldn't ever go anywhere near an actual confrontation.
He ordered a plastic beaker (no expenses spared here in the Cellar) of whatever engine grease had been recently brewed without being immediately fatal. In payment, he scattered a few coppers on the bar's stained wooden surface. In their absence, his pockets were distinctly empty.
Around him, the conversations were all keyed to the same subject. The planetfall. The betrayal. Horus, Horus, Horus. What he found most interesting was the tone such discussion was taking. 'The Emperor abandoned the Great Crusade.' 'Horus was betrayed by his father.' 'The rebellion is justified.' It went on and on, just as it had been doing for over a month now, during the entire time the fleet had been in the warp.
Ishaq tapped one of the nearest drinkers on the shoulder. The man turned, showing a face with an interesting geography of scars. He wore Euchar fatigues, and a holstered sidearm.
'Yes?'
'So tell me why you think this is all justified,' Ishaq said. 'Because it just sounds like treason to me.'
The Euchar trooper sneered and turned back to his friends. Ishaq tapped him on the shoulder again.
'No, really, I'm interested in your perspective.'
'Piss off, boy.'
'Just answer the question,' Ishaq smiled.
The Euchar gave a grin that would have been more threatening if he didn't have flakes of his last meal caught between his teeth. 'The Warmaster conquered half the galaxy, didn't he? The Emperor's been hiding back on Terra for half a century.'
Typical soldier logic, Ishaq thought. While one man dealt with the incomparable scale of managing an entire interstellar empire, he was infinitely less respected than the man who waged war in the most simple, aggressive terms, and always from positions of tactical, numerical and materiel supremacy.
'Let me get this straight,' Ishaq feigned a thoughtful expression. 'You admire the man who has armies large enough never to lose a single war, but loathe the man responsible for the vision and effort of actually maintaining the Imperium?'
The Euchar scoffed at Ishaq's description, and turned his back on the remembrancer. For just a moment, the imagist wondered if he was missing some key point in all this. The Word Bearers were here under Imperial orders, summoned to help put down Horus's rebellion. Yet here, the human staff and crews of the expeditionary fleet were practically united in favour of Horus's actions.
He sipped the drink and immediately regretted it.
'Delicious,' he said to the girl behind the bar.
The talk rattled on around him. Ishaq let it filter in, as he did most nights, listening without speaking, eavesdropping without being brazen about it. He was a passive seeker of public opinion. Easier to avoid fights that way - the Cellar had become a little more 'fisticuffy' since the soldiers had started drinking here too.
'The Word Bearers won't attack Horus,' one voice said with solemn surety.
'It's not a war. They're here to negotiate.'
'It'll be a war if the negotiations fail.'
'The Emperor is a relic of the Unification Wars. The Imperium needs more from its leaders now.'
'Horus hasn't even committed any crime. The Emperor is overreacting out of fear.'
'It won't come to battle. Lorgar will see to that.'
'The Emperor won't even leave Terra to deal with this?'
'Does he even care about the Imperium?'
'I heard Horus will lead the other primarchs to Terra.'
Ishaq left his drink unfinished as he headed back to his personal chamber on the communal civilian deck. He wanted to believe he had only so much stomach for bad beverages and seditionist ideology, but the truth was far more prosaic. He didn't have much money left.
Halfway to his room, he decided to change his course. Sitting bored in his chamber yet again wouldn't achieve anything, and even without the coin to get pleasantly drunk, he could do what he'd done back in those first nights after joining the Legion's fleet. It was a duty that had, for better or worse, lapsed in recent weeks. His endless attempts to arrange a meeting with one of the Gal Vorbak were rebuffed each and every time. The crimson warriors' seclusion was ironclad, and it was rumoured even the Custodes were barred from accessing their meditation chambers. The continuous refusals and lack of battle had dulled the remembrancer's ambitious interest somewhat, but with nothing else to do, it was time to get back in the game.
Ishaq checked his picter's battery cell, and went off in search of something that would make him famous.
THE PRIMARCH WAS waiting for them.
As they disembarked from the Rising Sun and onto the main hangar platform of Fidelitas Lex, Lorgar stood in full warplate, the massive crozius maul Illuminarum in his grey fists. At his side, Erebus and Kor Phaeron wore their own granite-dark armour, the surfaces of each armour plate etched with invocations from the Word. Behind them, the entire First Company formed an imposing welcome in their overbearing suits of Terminator wargear, bearing double-barrelled bolters and long blades in brutish fists.
Lorgar's benevolent countenance broke into a warm smile as the thirty-seven crimson warriors walked onto the hangar deck. As one, they went to their knees before their liege lord.
Lorgar gestured for them to rise. 'Are your memories so short? My Gal Vorbak need never kneel before me.'
Argel Tal was the first back to his feet, noting the distaste upon Kor Phaeron's aged features. He growled, baring his teeth at the first captain as his gauntlet claws extended.
Lorgar chuckled at the display. 'My prayers are answered,' the primarch continued, 'for you have arrived.'
'As ordered,' said Argel Tal and Xaphen in the same moment.
The Gal Vorbak had little cohesion in their ranks. There was no pretence of standing at attention or gathering in orderly rows. They stood together but alone, each one remaining among their brothers yet guarding their personal space with narrowed eyes behind crystal blue helm lenses.
'We make planetfall within the hour,' Lorgar said. 'Argel Tal, Xaphen, for now, I would have you come with us. You will rejoin your brothers before we commence the assault.'
'Very well,' said Argel Tal.
'The Custodes?' Lorgar asked. 'Tell me they still live.'
'They still live. We have them scattered on four separate vessels, assigned with "overseeing the defence" if the vessels are boarded in the coming battle.'
'They know there will be a battle?' Lorgar rounded on Argel Tal.
'They are not fools, nor are they inured to news as it spreads from ship to ship. They are placed on four vessels that are... delayed... in the warp. Their Navigators and captains have been appraised of the situation's delicacy, sire. The Custodes will not arrive until the Battle of Isstvan is won.'
Xaphen broke in. 'They were spared, as you ordered.' He ignored Argel Tal's glare, feeling it despite the fact his brother still wore his helm.
'It was not my order - at least not in recent years.' The primarch gestured to Erebus, who inclined his head in turn. 'The First Chaplain has demanded they remain alive all this time. He weaves the plans that require them alive.'
Argel Tal said nothing, though he openly radiated annoyance. Xaphen was less restrained. 'Erebus?' he asked, smiling behind his faceplate. 'I have paid heed to every addendum and subscript in the Book of Lorgar, brother. I've used many of your new rituals myself. I would be keen to learn more of this one.'
'In time, perhaps.'
Xaphen thanked the other Chaplain as the group moved on. Erebus remained closest to the primarch as they walked away - his stoic, tattooed features as stern and dignified as ever. Kor Phaeron stalked in their wake, the heavy gear-joints of his Terminator armour grinding with each step. Xaphen kept his actions the very mirror of Erebus's, but Argel Tal glanced at the First Captain with a smile.
'What amuses you, brother?' the ageing half-Astartes asked.
'You do, old one. You reek of fear. I pity you, that they never bred the human terror out of your bones.'
'You think I feel fear?' The scarred face twisted into something even sourer. 'I have seen more than you know, Argel Tal. We have not been idle in the true Legion, while you danced at the galaxy's edge, playing nursemaid to the Custodes.'
Argel Tal merely chuckled, the laugh leaving his helm in a low growl of crackling vox.
THE FIDELITAS LEX played host to a gathering of rare significance.
Upon entering the war room, Argel Tal couldn't hold back an exhalation of awe. He'd been expecting a gathering of Word Bearer captains, Chaplains and Chapter Masters. He'd not anticipated the presence of commanders from the Night Lords, Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors, let alone the three figures that stood around the central hololithic table.
The crowds parted, allowing Lorgar to proceed to the centre, where he stood alongside his brothers. None of the three welcomed him, just as none of them seemed overly respectful to each other, either.
Argel Tal grunted acknowledgement of the two c |
ting a gathering of Word Bearer captains, Chaplains and Chapter Masters. He'd not anticipated the presence of commanders from the Night Lords, Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors, let alone the three figures that stood around the central hololithic table.
The crowds parted, allowing Lorgar to proceed to the centre, where he stood alongside his brothers. None of the three welcomed him, just as none of them seemed overly respectful to each other, either.
Argel Tal grunted acknowledgement of the two captains closest to him as he took his place at the front of the gathered Astartes. Their heraldry offered their identities in flowing Nostraman script: the first - a tall, austere warrior with bronze-plated skulls hanging from his pauldrons on iron chains, bore the numerals of 10th Company, and the name-etching Malcharion.
The second needed no declarations of identity, for everyone knew him as soon as their eyes rested upon him. His armour was wreathed in stretched, leathery patches of flayed flesh, and his helm's faceplate was a skullish glare of bleached bone. His was a name spread across the Imperium, almost as notable as that of Abaddon of the Sons of Horus, Eidolon of the Emperor's Children, Raldoron of the Blood Angels... or even the primarchs themselves. Argel Tal inclined his head in respect to Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords Legion. The warrior nodded in return.
'You are late,' his voice issued forth as a grinding snarl.
Argel Tal didn't rise to the Night Lord's bait. 'How perceptive of you,' he replied. 'You can read a chronometer.'
A guttural grunt of amusement issued from Sevatar's skull-painted helm.
In the centre of the gathered leaders and lords, Lorgar raised his hands for silence. The baiting, grumbling and occasional laughter between the Astartes died down.
'Time is short,' said the golden primarch, 'and events are already in motion. Those of us in this room are under no illusions as to what we face. Eight Legions, of which we are four, and countless worlds are rising in rebellion against the Imperium. If we are to march on Terra and take the throne, we must annihilate those Legions remaining loyal to the Emperor. And we must do so alone. No matter how loyal our Army regiments are, they will be devastated if they are committed to the surface of Isstvan. So we wage war without them: Astartes against Astartes, brother against brother. There is a poetry to that I am sure you will all appreciate.'
No one said a word. Lorgar continued.
'You have all walked different paths, but together, we come to the same destination. The Emperor has failed us. The Imperium has failed us all.'
Here, Lorgar nodded to the largest gathering of Night Lords in their lightning-streaked warplate. 'It has failed us by the laxity of its laws, the decadence of its culture, and in the injustices heaped upon those of us who served most loyally.'
He gestured to the bare metal ceramite of the Iron Warrior captains. 'It has failed us by never recognising our virtues, never rewarding us for the blood we have shed in bringing about its ascendancy, and never providing unity when we needed it most.'
The Alpha Legion stood impassive and silent in their scaled armour. 'It has failed us,' Lorgar inclined his head to them, 'by being flawed to its core, imperfect in its pursuit of a perfect culture, and in its weakness against the encroachment of xenos breeds that seek to twist humanity to alien ends.'
Finally, the primarch turned to his own captains, their grey armour decorated with prayer scrolls. 'And it has failed us, most of all, by being founded upon lies. The Imperium is forged by a dangerous deceit, and erodes us all by demanding we sacrifice truth on the altar of necessity. This is an empire, propagated by sin, that deserves to die. And here, on Isstvan V, we begin the purge. From these ashes shall rise the new kingdom of mankind: an Imperium of justice, faith and enlightenment. An Imperium heralded, commanded and protected by the avatars of the gods themselves. An empire strong enough to stand through a future of blood and fire.'
The change in the room was subtle, but impossible for Astartes senses to miss. Every warrior stood taller, straighter, their hands resting upon the hilts and handles of sheathed weapons.
'The Emperor believes us loyal. Our four Legions were ordered here on that misguided conviction alone. But our coalition here and now is the fruit of decades' worth of planning. It was ordained, and brought about according to ancient prophecy. No more hiding in the shadows. No more manipulating fleet movements and falsifying expeditionary data. From this day forward, the Alpha Legion, the Word Bearers, the Iron Warriors and the Night Lords stand together - bloodied but unbowed beneath the flag of Warmaster Horus, the second Emperor. The true Emperor.'
The Astartes stared, none of them moving a muscle. The primarch could have been addressing an army of statues.
'I see your eyes,' Lorgar's smile took in the room, 'even behind your helms. I see the hesitation, the unease, the mistrust of the very brothers by your side. We are not friends, are we? We have never been allies. Our Legions are kin by bloodline, yet not brought together in proven, chosen brotherhood. But remember this, as you look upon the shades of armour so different to your own. You are united by righteousness. You are unified in revenge. Every weapon in this room is wielded for the same cause. And that, my sons, brothers and cousins... That is all the strength we need. After today, we will be brothers. The forge of war will see to that.'
Silence reigned in the wake of Lorgar's words. The primarch turned back to the hololithic table, already entering the codes necessary to activate the image generator, when several muted clanks sounded behind him.
Lorgar looked over his shoulder, seeking the sounds' sources. Several Word Bearer captains were shaking hands with their counterparts in the other Legions, with more joining in every moment. They gripped wrist-to-wrist, a traditional warrior gesture to seal a pact.
Argel Tal offered his hand to Sevatar. The Night Lord gripped the Word Bearer's wrist as their emotionless faceplates met each other's eyes.
'Death to the False Emperor,' said Sevatar, becoming the first living soul to utter the words that would echo through the millennia.
The curse was taken up by other voices, and soon it was being cried in full-throated roars.
Death to the False Emperor. Death to the False Emperor. Death. Death. Death.
At the heart of the cheering, the four primarchs smiled. Each curl to their lips was variously cold, ugly, mocking or indulgent, but it was as close as they'd come to showing any emotion so far.
Lorgar keyed in the last command code. The hololithic table rumbled into life, its internal generators cycling up to project a flickering image of the surface tundra. A grainy view, flawed by patches of static distortion, hovered in the air above the table. Helms of dark iron, midnight, sea-green, crimson and grey lifted to regard the holo image. It showed a ravine, gouged with tectonic ambivalence, running for several kilometres through the landscape.
'The Urgall Depression,' said one of Lorgar's brothers in a rumbling baritone. 'Our hunting ground.'
Konrad Curze had once, perhaps, been a majestic creature. Everything in his bearing spoke of a regal nature now shattered, all grace and grandeur cast aside to leave a warrior-prince skinned down to a core of lethal, cadaverous nobility. In black armour edged by unpolished bronze, the primarch of the Night Lords gestured to the ravine with a power claw of four curving blades. 'Enhance the image.'
Unseen servitors did exactly that. The three-dimensional hololith blurred momentarily, before refocusing on a more detailed landscape. At one end of the ravine was a fortress of plasteel, ceramite and rockcrete, rendered indistinct by the haze of void shields protecting it from orbital bombardment. A massive panorama of bulwarks, barricades, trenches and earthworks stood implacable guard around it. Every warrior present could see it for what it was: a defensive masterpiece, constructed to repel tens of thousands of enemy troops.
At the other end of the canyon, a literal fleet of gunships and drop-pods lay in wait, but it was what turned the canyon's centre dark that drew all eyes in the chamber.
Two armies were locked in pitched conflict, two greyish masses of grinding battle lines, reduced to an amalgamated horde.
'Enhance central sector,' ordered Primarch Curze.
The image blurred and refocused again, showing a flawed image, disturbed by interference, of...
'Civil war,' Konrad Curze smiled, all teeth and bright eyes. 'The two sides are matched, with our brothers in the Death Guard, World Eaters, Sons of Horus and Emperor's Children holding superior ground, and the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard maintaining numerical superiority.'
Argel Tal growled as he breathed, feeling his lips moistened by bile. Nearby heads turned to him, but he ignored their watchful eyes.
'Brother?' Erebus voxed from his place at the primarch's side.
'I thirst,' Argel Tal smiled as he spoke into the private channel.
'You... thirst?'
'I have tasted Astartes blood, Erebus. It is rich enough to never fade from memory, and its genetic holiness stings the tongue. I will taste it again, on Isstvan V.'
The Chaplain didn't reply, but Argel Tal saw Erebus turn to Kor Phaeron, and knew all too well that they were conversing over a secure channel. The thought made him smirk. Silly little creatures. So precious in their meagre ambitions. So feverishly hungry for temporal power. He felt a moment's pity for the primarch, to have spent the last four decades guided by their insipid scheming.
That thought cooled his condescending wrath, though. What had they done in all this time? Kor Phaeron's remark about Argel Tal nursemaiding the Custodes away from the 'true Legion' had bitten de |
ll too well that they were conversing over a secure channel. The thought made him smirk. Silly little creatures. So precious in their meagre ambitions. So feverishly hungry for temporal power. He felt a moment's pity for the primarch, to have spent the last four decades guided by their insipid scheming.
That thought cooled his condescending wrath, though. What had they done in all this time? Kor Phaeron's remark about Argel Tal nursemaiding the Custodes away from the 'true Legion' had bitten deeper than he wished to confess.
The growl grew faint in his throat, taking on a bestial whine.
'Be silent,' grunted Sevatar.
Argel Tal tensed, holding his breath, suppressing the rush of anger he felt at being spoken to in such a way. Whatever was bonded to him truly loathed being pushed into situations of submission.
Raum.
What?
I am Raum.
Argel Tal felt his heart beat in time to the whispered syllables. The bile at his lips bubbled as it boiled, and his hands ached to the bone with merciless ferocity.
You are the second soul my father saw so long ago.
Yes.
You twist my thoughts. I am forever on the edge of rage, or speaking bladed words to my brothers.
I bring out only what is already present within you.
I will not let you claim me.
I will not try. We are one. I have slept long enough to drip into every cell within your body. It is your flesh, and it is my flesh. It will change soon. We are Argel Tal, and we are Raum.
Your voice is the same as mine.
It is how my soul speaks to yours, and how our shared flesh translates it into mortal meaning. I have no voice, except for the roars we will shout when we shed blood.
Argel Tal felt burning wetness around his gauntleted fingers. I am in pain. I cannot move my hands.
Symbiosis. Union. Balance. There will be times when you rise to the fore. There will be times when I am in ascendance.
Then what is this pain?
It is all a prelude for the changes to come.
The gods have already sent their call. The ordained time has come... I am faster, stronger, more vital than before. And I cannot remove my armour, nor take off my helm.
Yes. This is our new skin.
What more changes can there be?
Raum laughed, whisper-faint and teasingly distant. You will hear the gods many times in your life. The ordained time has not truly come. You heard the call to begin the Long War, but the gods have not screamed yet. This is the prelude.
But I heard them. We heard them.
You will know the scream when you truly hear it. This, I promise.
'...the Gal Vorbak will stand with the Iron Warriors, forming the anvil,' concluded Lorgar.
Argel Tal refocused on his surroundings. The pain in his hands faded once more. Not knowing what he should say, he nodded his head in the primarch's direction, agreeing with Lorgar's words without knowing what they were. The primarch offered a kindly smile, seeming to sense his son's distraction.
Lord Curze turned his sleepless eyes upon his own Astartes. 'Then we stand ready. My First Company will also join the Iron Warriors for the initial strike.'
'Dath sethicara tash dasovallian,' the Nostraman language hissed off his tongue. 'Solruthis veh za jass.'
The Night Lord captains banged dark gauntlets against their chestplates. 'In midnight clad,' they chorused.
'Iron within,' Perturabo spoke gruffly, and hefted his massive warhammer over his shoulder. 'Iron without.' In response, his men thudded the hafts of their axes and hammers on the decking.
The warriors of the Alpha Legion, and their primarch himself, remained silent.
It fell to Lorgar, as Argel Tal had known it would, to finish the gathering.
'The forces on the surface have been embattled for almost three hours with no clear victor emerging. Even now, the loyalists wait for us to make planetfall, believing we will reinforce their final advance. We all know our parts to play in this performance. We are all aware of the blood we must shed to spare our species from destruction, and install Horus as the Master of Mankind.
'Brothers,' the primarch bowed his head in reverence. 'Today we take the first step towards forging a greater kingdom. May the gods go with you.'
As Argel Tal made to move from the chamber, he saw his former mentor beckon him closer. Erebus was handsome only in the way a weapon could be called such: a cold blade, dangerous no matter who holds it, reflecting the light while producing none of its own. The Gal Vorbak leader stalked closer, ululating a quiet growl in his throat, nursing it there and enjoying the feel of his rage.
Erebus wished to speak with him, and Kor Phaeron would almost certainly remain. That in itself was cause for disquiet. What ambitions had they fed to the primarch in four long decades? What had they seen, and what had they learned?
His growl grew louder.
Hate him, but do not strike him. He is chosen. Just like you.
Will I always hear your voice?
No. Our end is fated. We will be destroyed in the shadow of great wings. Then you will hear my voice no more.
Argel Tal felt his blood run cold, and knew that this feeling, at least, was not part of the promised changes to his body.
'Erebus,' he greeted the First Chaplain. 'I am in no mind to argue.'
'Nor I,' the older warrior said. 'Much has happened since we last spoke. We have both seen many things, and made difficult choices to bring us to this moment in time.' Erebus met Argel Tal's eye lenses with his own stony, solemn gaze. It was hard not to admire the Chaplain's composure at all times, and his great patience.
It was also hard to forget his great disappointment, once it was earned.
'I have heard of all you witnessed, and went through,' Erebus continued. 'Xaphen has kept me appraised.'
'Do you have a point?' Argel Tal murmured, and even to his own ears his words sounded puerile.
'I am proud of you.' Erebus briefly rested his hand on Argel Tal's shoulder. 'I simply wished to say that.'
Without another word, Erebus moved away, following the primarch. Kor Phaeron gave a wet, burbling chuckle, and stalked off in slower pursuit, Terminator joints grinding.
TWENTY-FIVE
Second Wave
Changes
Betrayal
IT WAS THE battle to begin the war.
The Urgall Depression was churned to ruination beneath the boots and tank treads of countless thousands of Astartes warriors and their Legion's armour divisions. The loyal primarchs could be found where the fighting was thickest: Corax of the Raven Guard, borne aloft on black wings bound to a fire-breathing flight pack; Lord Ferrus of the Iron Hands at the heart of the battlefield, his silver hands crushing any traitors that came within reach, while he pursued and dragged back those who sought to withdraw; and lastly, Vulkan of the Salamanders, armoured in overlapping artificer plating, thunder clapping from his warhammer as it pounded into yielding armour, shattering it like porcelain.
The traitorous primarchs slew in mirror image to their brothers: Angron of the World Eaters hewing with wild abandon as he raked his chainblades left and right, barely cognizant of who fell before him; Fulgrim of the lamentably-named Emperor's Children, laughing as he deflected the clumsy sweeps of Iron Hands warriors, never stopping in his graceful movements for even a moment; Mortarion of the Death Guard, in disgusting echo of ancient Terran myth, harvesting life with each reaving sweep of his scythe.
And Horus, Warmaster of the Imperium, the brightest star and greatest of the Emperor's sons. He stood watching the destruction while his Legions took to the field, their liege lord content in his fortress rising from the far edge of the ravine. Shielded and unseen by his brothers still waging war in the Emperor's name, Horus's lips were never still - he spoke continuous orders to his aides, who transmitted them across to the embattled warriors. His eyes remained narrowed as he watched the carnage playing out on the stage below, orchestrated and guided by his own will.
At last, above this maelstrom of grinding ceramite, booming tank cannons and chattering bolters - the gunships, drop-pods and assault landers of the second wave burned through the atmosphere on screaming thrusters. The sky fell dark with the weak sun eclipsed by ten thousand avian shadows, and the cheering roar sent up by the loyalists was loud enough to shake the air itself.
The traitors, the bloodied and battered Legions loyal to Horus, fell into a fighting withdrawal without hesitation.
ARGEL TAL WATCHED all of this from the cockpit of Rising Sun as the Thunderhawk swooped low, engines howling as they carried it over the warring armies. A host of Word Bearer's landing craft, the colour of their hulls matching the bleak weather of this cold world, headed for the ravine's edges.
'This is far enough. Set down,' he ordered Malnor, who was piloting.
'By your word.'
The two crimson gunships among the leaders of the grey pack began their downward drift. The Word Bearers chosen landing site was close to the spread of terrain used by the Raven Guard in the initial assault, and the flock of regal, granite-grey aircraft touched down alongside their charcoal-black twins.
Affirmation pulses chimed across the beleaguered vox-network as the four Legions' landers hit their marks. The tide was turned at the eleventh hour. Horus and his rebels broke into full retreat, fleeing back to their fortress.
Argel Tal walked down the gang ramp and into his first filtered breath of Isstvan V's air. It was cold, cold and coppery, with the rich, earthy smell of churned mud and the ever-present smog of thruster exhaust. A quick scan through his eye lenses showed the panoramic view of the unfolding battle, where the Night Lords corvidish gunships were coming down on one flank, and the Alpha Legion's war machines on the other. The main Word Bearer force bolstered both of their brother Legions on the Depression's sides, and for a brief, uplifting moment, Argel Tal saw the flash of grey, ivory and gold that marked out Lorgar among the exalted F |
thy smell of churned mud and the ever-present smog of thruster exhaust. A quick scan through his eye lenses showed the panoramic view of the unfolding battle, where the Night Lords corvidish gunships were coming down on one flank, and the Alpha Legion's war machines on the other. The main Word Bearer force bolstered both of their brother Legions on the Depression's sides, and for a brief, uplifting moment, Argel Tal saw the flash of grey, ivory and gold that marked out Lorgar among the exalted First Company.
Then the primarch was gone, stolen by distance, smoke and the press of too many gunships between here and there.
The Iron Warriors had claimed the highest ground, taking the loyalist landing site with all the appearance of reinforcing it through the erection of prefabricated plasteel bunkers. Bulk landers dropped the battlefield architecture: dense metal frames fell from the cargo claws of carrier ships at low altitude, and as the platforms crashed and embedded themselves in the ground, the craftsmen-warriors of the IV Legion worked, affixed, bolted and constructed them into hastily-rising firebases. Turrets rose from their protective housing in the hundreds, while hordes of lobotomised servitors trundled from the holds of Iron Warriors troopships, single-minded in their intent to link with the weapons systems' interfaces.
All the while, Perturabo, Primarch of the IV Legion, watched with passionless pride. He wore layered ceramite that would have looked at home as a tank's armour plating, and clicking, crunching servos in his joints announced even the smallest shift in his stature.
Occasionally, he would spare a moment's glance for the representatives from the other Legions among his number: nodding acknowledgement to the Word Bearers and Night Lords captains sharing his defensive bastions. The nod spoke volumes when coupled with the primarch's bitter eyes: without even the pretence of respect, he acknowledged their presence and warned them to be about their business. Let them remain here as their primarchs had ordered, so long as they did not interfere. The Iron Warriors did not need them getting in the way. All the while, the sounds of warfare's industry rattled and ground on, and the firebase structures lifted higher, their battlements forming and defensive cannons whirring as they took aim down at the central plain.
Argel Tal and Xaphen led the Gal Vorbak away from their Thunderhawks, through the statuary of landed gunships, and through to the barricades being raised by the metallic forms of the Iron Warriors. The ground trembled gently with the tread of Astartes boots as the Word Bearers seconded to Argel Tal's command closed ranks and followed. Thousands of warriors awaited his signal, their companies and Chapters marked by banners raised high.
Down the line, past the mounting masses of Iron Warriors battle tanks and assembling Astartes, Argel Tal could make out the cloaked form of First Captain Sevatar and his First Company elite, the Atramentar. Bronze chains wrapped their armour, leashing weapons to fists, as the Night Lords made ready for the coming signal.
'We are to be the anvil,' Xaphen voxed to the gathered Word Bearers as they waited by the barricades. 'We are the anvil, while our brothers form the hammer yet to fall. The enemy will stagger back to us, exhausted, clutching empty bolters and broken blades, believing our presence to be a reprieve. The Iron Hands have damned themselves by remaining in the field, but you see the survivors of two Legions coming to us even now. The Salamanders. The Raven Guard. We must hold them long enough for our brothers to annihilate them from the flanks and the rear.'
Argel Tal had tuned out already. He watched the battle breaking apart, seeing the defiant Iron Hands contingent ringing their primarch at the heart of the battlefield. The righteous indignation that kept them there would see them slain before any others.
The forest-green of Salamander ceramite formed a withdrawing mass scrambling its way back uphill to the Iron Warrior barricades over to the east, while the battered black armour of the Raven Guard warriors came towards the unified Night Lords and Word Bearers force. The loyalists' shattered unit cohesion was already beginning to reform, reshaping around bannered sergeants as they marched up the incline.
Argel Tal swallowed a mouthful of something that tasted like poisoned blood. He couldn't keep himself from salivating.
Raum, he said silently, but there was no answer. In a bizarre moment of clarity, he realised he could feel the wind against his skin. Not the focused feeling of pressure from a puncture in his warplate, but all over - a faint breath of wind against his flesh, as if his wargear had grown dull nerves capable of recognising external sensation. His hands began to ache again, and this time the pain brought something new: the sense of swelling, stretching, the torture of his own body-meat rendered as malleable as clay, with the brittle creaking of bone still inside.
Targeting circles that he hadn't activated started to spin before his eyes, flickering across the blue lenses in search of prey.
Beneath them the Raven Guard in their thousands marched up the rise of land. Not a single one had escaped with his armour unscarred from the battle below. Despite their distance, Argel Tal's vision was keen enough to make out how individual warriors marched with their bolters slung, out of ammunition, and oaths of moment reduced to burned, flapping parchment rags in the wind.
'Sixty seconds,' he growled into the vox.
'By your word,' chorused three thousand warriors in the ranks alongside him.
DAGOTAL SAT IN his saddle, looking over the barricades. The repulsor drive built into his jetbike's chassis hummed in sympathy with his movements, whining louder as the rider leaned forward to watch the withdrawing Raven Guard draw nearer.
His task was to skirt the battle's edges, cutting down any stragglers that sought to escape from the main melee. Although only five of his outriders had survived the transition into the Gal Vorbak so many years before, they sat at his side now, gunning their engines in readiness for what they were committed to do.
He blinked burning sweat from his eyes, breathing in laboured rasps, trying to ignore the voice howling in his mind. The pain in his throat had been building in intensity for hours to the point where swallowing caused excruciating pain. Now, even breathing was a trial. Venom dripped down his chin, bubbling hot, from his overworking saliva glands. The acidic poison dripped over his lower teeth every few seconds, and he could no longer bear to swallow and neutralise it.
'Thirty seconds,' came Argel Tal's order.
Dagotal murmured meaningless syllables with a wet voice, as acid hissed from his helm's mouth grille.
TORGAL THUMBED A gear-rune on his chainaxe's control, shifting settings from soft tissue to armour plating. A thicker second layer of jagged teeth slid forward alongside the first. In truth, a chainbladed weapon would always struggle to do more than strip the paint from layered ceramite, but it would chew through fibre-bundle armour joints or exposed power cables with ease.
He had been weeping blood, without feeling sorrow or any emotion at all, for an hour. Had he been able to remove his helm, Torgal was certain the scarlet tracks would be stained across his cheeks by now, darkening the skin with a tattoo's permanence. Each time he blinked, his tear ducts flushed more of the watery blood-fluid down his face. When his tongue moved in his mouth, it slid along a maw of jagged teeth that cut his tongue open, and he tasted coppery pain for the few seconds it took the little slice wounds to seal.
Blood, thick and dark, was leaking from the knuckle-joints of his gauntlets, cementing his fingers to the haft of his axe. He couldn't open his hand. He couldn't release the weapon, no matter how he tried.
'Twenty seconds,' said Argel Tal.
Torgal closed his eyes to blink them clear, but they wouldn't open again.
MALNOR'S BREATH SAWED in an out of his vocaliser grille. A chorus of voices assailed him, and for the briefest moment, he believed he was listening to the sounds of everyone he had ever met in his life. There was a tremor in his bones that he couldn't suppress.
'Ten seconds,' came Argel Tal's voice. 'Stand ready.'
Malnor's twitched head turned to the advancing ranks of the Raven Guard. Distance markers flashed across his retinal display, flickering as it recognised individual squad sigils on their shoulder guards.
Malnor grinned, and clutched his bolter tighter.
'BROTHERS,' THE VOICE crackled. 'This is Captain Torisian, 29th Company, Raven Guard.'
At the vanguard of the marching Astartes, a cloaked captain raised his hand in greeting. A spent bolter was mag-locked to his thigh, and a gladius glinted in his left hand. The captain's cloak, once a regal blue, was a ragged ruin. Argel Tal raised his own hand in response, and replied over the vox.
'This is Argel Tal, Lord of the Gal Vorbak, Word Bearers Legion. How goes the battle, brother?'
The Raven Guard leader laughed as he came closer. 'The traitorous dogs already flee the field, but they fight like bastards, each and every one. In Terra's name, it is a blessing to see you. Our primarch has ordered us back for resupply - but Lord Corax is an unselfish man. He would not wish us to steal all the glory on this day of days.'
Argel Tal could hear the smile in the other warrior's voice as he continued. 'Good hunting down there, all of you. Glory to the Word Bearers. Glory to the Emperor!'
The commander of the Gal Vorbak didn't reply. The advancing Raven Guard were almost at the barricades. He felt his muscles bunching and twitching with sick need.
'Brother?' asked Torisian. The captain's armour was an older Mark III Iron-class suit, blocky and heavy, almost primitive compared to the Maximus-class armour worn by the XVII Legion. 'What |
ar the smile in the other warrior's voice as he continued. 'Good hunting down there, all of you. Glory to the Word Bearers. Glory to the Emperor!'
The commander of the Gal Vorbak didn't reply. The advancing Raven Guard were almost at the barricades. He felt his muscles bunching and twitching with sick need.
'Brother?' asked Torisian. The captain's armour was an older Mark III Iron-class suit, blocky and heavy, almost primitive compared to the Maximus-class armour worn by the XVII Legion. 'What are your plans for assault?'
Argel Tal took a breath, and prepared to speak damnation.
Without knowing why, he couldn't keep from thinking of Lorgar's words to him, spoken so long ago. 'You are Argel Tal. You were born on Colchis, in the village of Singh-Rukh, to a carpenter and a seamstress. Your name means 'the last angel' in the dialect of the southern steppes tribes.'
He thought, briefly, of his parents - two hundred years dead now. He had never visited their graves. He wasn't even sure where they might be.
His father had been a quiet man with kind eyes, who had round shoulders from a lifetime of devotion to his craft. His mother was a mouse of a woman, with dark eyes and black hair in the ringlets preferred by the southern tribes. She had smiled a great deal. It was his abiding memory of her.
How far he'd come, in distance and time, from their riverside hut of packed mud and straw. He could almost feel the river water on his hands now, cooling to the touch even as it sparkled in the oppressive Colchisian sun.
He had four older sisters, each as distant and dead as his parents. They had wept when the Legion came for him, though at the time he couldn't understand why. All he could see was the adventure, the joy, in being chosen by the holy warriors. The youngest - Lakisha, only a year older than he was - had given him a necklace of desert-dog teeth that she'd made herself. He felt it now, tied around his wrist, bound there each dawn upon rising and completing his meditations. The original string had long since rotted away, but he threaded the jackal teeth onto a new cord with the passing of every few years.
His oldest sister, Dumara, had spent every day telling him that he was good for nothing but getting underfoot. But she had no unkind words that day, and instead brought him a blanket of goat's wool to take with him.
'He will not require that,' the massive grey warrior had declared in a machine-voice.
Dumara flinched back, clutching the blanket to her chest. Instead of offering it to the boy, she kissed his cheek instead. She was crying, too. He remembered how her tears made his face wet, and he hoped the warrior didn't think it was he who'd been crying. He had to look brave, else the warrior might not choose him after all.
'What is the boy's name?' the warrior demanded.
His mother had surprised him with a question of her own. 'What is your name, warrior?'
'Erebus. My name is Erebus.'
'Thank you, Lord Erebus, this is my son, Argel Tal.'
Argel Tal. The Last Angel. He'd been born as a sickly little thing, during a year of blight and drought, and was given a name to mark him as the last child his mother would ever bring into their dry, thirsty world.
'Forgive me,' he whispered now. He hadn't meant to speak the words aloud, but didn't regret doing so.
'Brother?' Torisian's voice crackled. 'Repeat, please.'
Argel Tal's grey eyes hardened to flint. 'All Word Bearers,' he said. 'Open fire.'
TWENTY-SIX
Dropsite Massacre
Hull Breach
In the Shadow of Great Wings
TORISIAN SHOVED THE body of his sergeant aside and scrambled forward. His ammunition counter flashed up the moment he touched a hand to his bolter, and it told a stark tale indeed. Among the clattering, crashing carnage, he drew his combat blade and charged.
'Victory or death!' he cried the call of his Legion. 'We are betrayed! Attack!'
Bolt shells hammered into his chest and pauldrons as he ran, throwing him off-balance and breaking his armour apart. He sustained damage faster than his retinal display could track it. Torisian staggered, feeling fluid in his throat. A dense wetness was drowning him behind his ribcage.
The flash of blue hit him from nowhere, brighter than staring into the sun, tipping him back down to the ground. There he died alongside so many of his brothers, bisected by lascannon fire and dead from his wounds before he could drown in the blood filling his lungs.
The Raven Guard front ranks went down as if scythed, harvested in a spilling line of detonating bolter shells, shattered armour and puffs of bloody mist.
Black-armoured Astartes tumbled to their hands and knees, only to be cut down by the sustained volley, finishing those who fell beneath the initial storm of head- and chest-shots. Seconds after the first chatter of bolters, beams of achingly bright laser slashed from behind the Word Bearers as the cannon mounts of Land Raiders, Predators and defensive bastion turrets gouged through the Raven Guard and the ground they stood upon.
Argel Tal saw precious little of the bigger picture. Beams of ice-blue, as thick as his arm, slashed and burst overhead as they carved furrows in the soil and sliced cleanly through bodies. At his side, the Gal Vorbak stood in silence, clutching their axes and blades. The Iron Warriors and Word Bearers around them were variously reloading, opening fire again, hurling grenades, and preparing to fall back.
In the eye of this storm, Argel Tal looked on with hooded eyes. The vox-link to Torisian remained open long enough for him to hear the warrior die, wordless gurgles transmitting over the channel as the captain crashed to the ground.
KOR PHAERON LICKED his yellow teeth.
The wind howled around them, funnelled through the Urgall Depression in a noisy roar that challenged the battlefield's thunder for supremacy. It was an unclean wind, carrying the bowel-smoke of tank engines in its breeze.
'I cannot see,' he confessed. 'It is too far.'
The Word Bearers Legion had taken up landing positions on the west of the field, ready to sweep down and engage the Raven Guard from the flank. Three figures stood atop the roof of an ornate command tank, the Land Raider's bronze and grey armour decked out with flapping banners and etched with fingernail-fine scripture over every visible surface.
Kor Phaeron, Master of the Faith, watched the distant dropsite through a desperate squint. He was unhelmed, and his massive Terminator warplate gave him the appearance of a hunched, armour-plated giant.
Erebus stood at his side, watching without effort, his Astartes vision keen enough to offer clarity.
'We are winning,' he said. 'Nothing else matters.' Only a flicker of emotion in his eyes betrayed his humour. Erebus was a dry soul, right to his core. 'But already, the Raven Guard attacks the barricades. Far to the other side, the Salamanders fall to the guns of the other Legions. In the centre of it all, the few remaining Iron Hands encircle their doomed lord.'
Lorgar towered above both of them, but had no attention to spare for the treacherous opening salvoes against the warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders Legions. He stared into the battlefield's heart, his eyes wide even in the wind, his lips gently parted as he watched his brothers killing each other.
Fulgrim and Ferrus, the fading sunlight flaring from the edges of their swinging weapons. The wind stole the clash and clang of their parries, but even in silence the duel was beyond captivating. No senses but a primarch's could have followed such instant, liquid movements. The perfection of it all almost brought a smile to Lorgar's lips.
Lorgar knew them both, though never as well as he'd wanted to. His approaches to Fulgrim had always been rebuffed with diplomatic grace, but his brother's ire was clear: Lorgar, among all of the Emperor's sons, was the failure that just wouldn't remain silent. Even in the fifty years since his humiliation in Monarchia, as the Word Bearers had conquered more than any other Legion, desperate to match the tallies of the Sons of Horus and the Ultramarines. Fulgrim still wished nothing to do with him. The Lord of the Emperor's Children - and oh, how proud he was that his sons alone among the Astartes could wear the Emperor's aquila on their armour - had never voiced his distaste in express terms, but Fulgrim's feelings were transparent enough. He was a being that valued nothing but perfection, and Lorgar was irrevocably stained by his flaws.
Ferrus, Lord of the Iron Hands, was an open book where Fulgrim was a closed one. Lorgar's passion was ever on the surface, as was the passion of his Legion on the battlefield. Ferrus contained his wrath beneath a dignified facade but never buried it, and asked the same of his warriors. While Ferrus treasured those times on Terra he had spent working at the forge, shaping metal into weapons worthy of gifting to his demigod brothers, Lorgar had sequestered himself in the palace itself, debating philosophy, ancient history and human nature with Magnus and the Emperor's more cerebral courtiers, advisers and viziers.
The closest they'd come to an accord was still a memory barely worthy of any family. Lorgar had come to find Ferrus in his forge, working at the construction of something molten, dangerous and undoubtedly destined to be a weapon of war. It seemed all the Iron Hands primarch was capable of.
Knowing the spiteful thought was petty, Lorgar had sought to temper it. 'One wonders if you are capable of making anything that creates, rather than destroys.' He tried to smile, hoping it would rob the accusation of any venom as he stood uncomfortably in the heat blaring from the open furnace.
Ferrus had cast a glance over his dark-skinned shoulder and watched his fey brother for a moment, not returning the smile. 'One wonders if you are capable of creating anything worthwhile at all.'
Lorgar's golden features had tightened, the smile now etched on rather than worn with any since |
ou are capable of making anything that creates, rather than destroys.' He tried to smile, hoping it would rob the accusation of any venom as he stood uncomfortably in the heat blaring from the open furnace.
Ferrus had cast a glance over his dark-skinned shoulder and watched his fey brother for a moment, not returning the smile. 'One wonders if you are capable of creating anything worthwhile at all.'
Lorgar's golden features had tightened, the smile now etched on rather than worn with any sincerity. 'You summoned me?'
'That I did.' Ferrus stepped away from the anvil. His bare chest was flecked with miniscule marks of burn tissue, hundreds of them pockmarking his dark skin from stray sparks and spatters of molten metal. A lifetime of forge-work, worn like a coat of medals that scarred the flesh. 'I made something for you,' he said, his voice as low and rumbling as ever.
'What? Why?'
'I won't call it a rescue,' said Ferrus, 'for my warriors wouldn't stand for that. But I owe you thanks for the "reinforcement" at Galadon Secondus.'
'You owe me nothing, brother. I live to serve.'
Ferrus grunted, as if doubting even that. 'Be that as it may, here is a token of my appreciation.'
Ferrus's Legion was named for the primarch himself. His arms were metallic, but not robotic, as if formed from some alien compound of organic silver. Lorgar had never asked about his brother's unique biology, knowing that Ferrus would never explain it to him.
As he reached a nearby table, he lifted a long weapon with a sure grip. Without a word, he tossed it to Lorgar. The Word Bearer caught it neatly with one hand, though it was heavier than he'd expected and he winced under its sudden weight.
'It's called Illuminarum,' Ferrus was already working back at his anvil. 'Try not to break it.'
'I... I do not know what to say.'
'Say nothing.' Already, the falling ring of hammer-hand upon yielding steel.Clang, clang, clang. 'Say nothing, and leave me be. That will spare us any halting attempts at conversation when we agree on nothing, and have nothing but awkwardness to share.'
'As you wish.' Lorgar had forced a smile to his brother's back, and left in silence. Such was the extent of his closeness to Fulgrim and Ferrus.
LORGAR STARED AT the two of them now, awe paling his features as their weapons cracked off each other, shedding sprays of power-field lightning.
'What have we done?' he whispered. 'These are my brothers.'
Kor Phaeron grunted in wordless disapproval. 'Boy, order the attack. We must support Argel Tal and the Iron Warriors.'
'But what are we doing? Why have we done it this way?'
Erebus didn't scowl, he was far too composed for that, but Kor Phaeron wore his human emotion with greater ease. He fairly snarled the words, leeching them of kindness.
'We are bringing enlightenment to the galaxy, Lorgar. This is what you were born for.'
Erebus turned to regard his primarch. 'Is it not a grand sensation, sire? To be the architect of all this? To see your designs reach fruition?'
Lorgar would not, could not, look away from his duelling kin. 'This was not my design, and you know it as well as I. Let us not pretend I have any skill at orchestrating bloodshed and betrayal on this scale.'
Kor Phaeron's lips twisted as close as they ever came to a smile. 'You give me far too much credit.'
'It is well-earned.' The primarch's gauntleted fist was tight around Illuminarum's haft, and minute tremors narrowed his eyes with each blow that rained upon Ferrus's black armour. 'Ferrus is tiring. Fulgrim is going kill him.'
With a grinding purr of servos, Kor Phaeron came forward to rest a clawed hand on his foster son's arm. 'Do not let it grieve you. What must be, must be.'
Lorgar didn't shake the hand off, which both Erebus and Kor Phaeron counted as enough of a triumph. Lorgar's feyness had worn on them both, and it took great patience and subtlety to incite him to violence. This battle had been years in the planning, and they would not allow him to foul it now with misplaced compassion. Emboldened, Kor Phaeron continued. 'The truth is ugly, boy, but it is all we have.'
'Boy.' Mirth had no place in Lorgar's smile. 'I am over two centuries old, and I am dragging my father's empire to its knees. Yet you still call me boy. Sometimes I find that a comfort. Other times, a weight around my shoulders.'
'You are my son, Lorgar. Not the Emperor's. And you are bringing hope to mankind.'
'Enough,' said the primarch, and now he did shake his foster father's hand loose. 'Come. Let us get this day done with.' Lorgar raised his crozius maul to the sky.
It was all the signal they needed. Thousands of Word Bearers roared their approval behind him, as their liege lord led them to war.
THE WAR ON the surface was of no concern to him anymore.
Staying alive was, but then, that was always a concern. He was forever aware of that fact, which was why he was so good at it. Still, he had to admit it had become a more pressing matter, and a more difficult aim to reach.
Ishaq had never been in a void battle before, and it wasn't something he hoped to get into again. The ship shook as if in a storm's grip, shuddering with a belligerent aggression that defied all expectation. Every two dozen steps he took found him thrown to the floor with knee-aching violence, and resulted in hisses of pain along with the creation of new swear words - the latter usually by melding three existing curses together in a stream of invective. When Ishaq Kadeen swore, he swore with feeling, even if not with sense.
Half of the problem was that he was lost, and the other half of the problem was that he was lost on what was jokingly-referred to as the monastic deck, where the Word Bearers and their Legion serfs went about the business of being heroes (and the slaves of heroes). Sneaking onto the deck had seemed a good idea at the time; he'd hoped for some panoramic views of Astartes training chambers, or discarded suits of armour awaiting repair, or immense weapon racks to show the scale of war waged by the Emperor's Legions. All of these would have made for fine, private and personal images very rarely seen from the Great Crusade, and would have bolstered his portfolio immeasurably. Stealing the grey, hooded Legion robe had been no trouble at all. Even slaves with vows of silence had to do their laundry.
It had started well. Then the battle had started, and he'd got lost.
Luckily, no Word Bearers were on board, all of them committed to the world below. The Legion serfs he did see were hurrying along about their business, but even they were hardly a sizable population. Evidently they had other duties to perform when their masters went to war. What they might be, Ishaq had no idea.
'Shields down,' shouted a voice over the shipwide vox, accompanied by some truly horrendous shaking. 'Shields down, shields down.'
Well, that wasn't good.
He stumbled around a corner as the lights flickered above. Another long corridor awaited him, with various junctions leading off deeper into this never-ending maze. At the far end, he could see another bulkhead of dense, multi-layered metal. He'd come across several of these so far, and was almost certain that they led to the most interesting parts of the deck. Ishaq wasn't about to attempt to gain entrance though - a single failed retinal scan would mark his location to the Army units on board, and he could look forward to a quick execution. Oh, yes. He remembered the penalties for coming here all too well.
The Euchar were proving to be a problem too. Squads of them patrolled the halls with their lasguns held diligently to their chests, and though he was immune to their gaze with his robe's hood covering most of his face, they made it difficult to take any picts, even if he had actually come across anything worthwhile.
Ishaq was finally considering a tactical retreat when the ship shook with enough violence to send him sprawling off-balance, head banging off the steel wall. It hurt enough to stun him, and it stunned him enough that he didn't even think of swearing.
That lapse was rectified several seconds later, when an automated voice declared a list of breached decks over the vox. The list came to a climax with the words: 'Deck Sixteen, void breach. Bulkheads sealing. Deck Sixteen, void breach. Bulkheads sealing.'
In a moment of almost poetic disgust, Ishaq looked up to see the great, red 'XVI' emblazoned on the wall where he'd hit his head. It was even decorated with spots of his blood.
'You're kidding me,' he said out loud.
'Deck Sixteen, void breach,' the crackling voice monotoned again. 'Bulkheads sealing.'
'I heard you the first time.'
The ship rattled again, with the definite booming of explosions only a few corners away. Smoke billowed from the far end of the corridor.
Ishaq's world dimmed into the deep, unwanted red spectrum of emergency lighting. At best, it would ruin any picts he took. At worst, and much more likely, he was about to die.
ARGEL TAL DREW back his claws. The blood lining them sank into the curling metal, drank as thirstily as desert soil drinks rainwater. He released a great howl to the sky as he waded forward, kicking aside wounded Astartes and carving out at the massed Raven Guard in range. Their blades broke against his armour, each strike hitting with a curiously muted sensation - he could feel the slices as if they were chopping into the skin of his armour, but they never bled, never caused any pain. blade left danger kill
The warnings manifested with tickling pressure behind his forehead, somewhere between a voice, a premonition, and a tide of instinct. He wasn't sure if Raum was warning him, or he was warning Raum - both voices were the same, and his movements were only half his own. He would swipe with a claw, but the blow would accelerate and hit harder than he could ever manage himself. He would block a sword blow, but would find his talons around the enemy's throat before he had time to think.
He |
ger kill
The warnings manifested with tickling pressure behind his forehead, somewhere between a voice, a premonition, and a tide of instinct. He wasn't sure if Raum was warning him, or he was warning Raum - both voices were the same, and his movements were only half his own. He would swipe with a claw, but the blow would accelerate and hit harder than he could ever manage himself. He would block a sword blow, but would find his talons around the enemy's throat before he had time to think.
He wrenched his head to the left - he smelled the metal tang of the descending blade, he caught the flash of sunlight along its edge without even looking - and Argel Tal span to kill its wielder. The Word Bearer's claws raked across the warrior's torso and the Raven Guard dropped instantly, his armour savaged and pulled from his body. Argel Tal's fingers burned as they absorbed his brother's blood. Under his helm, his grinning mouth was stained red by a bleeding tongue.
In every battle of his life, he'd felt a desperation beneath the ferocity of the moment. A feverish awareness of how to survive always nestled beneath his righteous anger, even in those moments of near-suicidal attack when he'd led dozens of his brothers against hundreds of the enemy. As his claws ravaged the armour and exposed faces of the Raven Guard around him, he cast that awareness aside.
'Traitor!' one of the Raven Guard cried at him. Argel Tal roared in reply, the ceramite of his helm cracking open to reveal a jagged maw, and leapt at the warrior. The Astartes died on the blood-mulched ground, pulled and torn to pieces by Argel Tal's jointed claws.
He was dimly aware of snarling laughter coming over the vox. At one point, in the senseless, timeless melee, Xaphen had shouted to them all.
'The Gal Vorbak are released at last!'
'No,' Argel Tal replied with growling certainty, without knowing how he knew. 'Not yet.'
He tore the helm from a Raven Guard's head and leered into the struggling warrior's face.
'Beast...' the Astartes choked. 'Corruption...'
Argel Tal caught his reflection in the warrior's eyes. His black helm roared back at him, the left eye still ringed by a golden sun, the mouth grille split to reveal monstrous jaws of ceramite and bone, the crystal blue eye lenses leaking trails of blood down his painted faceplate.
Argel Tal sank his claws into the warrior's body, feeling the tingle of leeching blood as his talons scratched at the man's organs and bones. 'I am the truth.'
He pulled, and the Raven Guard came apart in his hands, rendered into bloody chunks.
'No peace among the stars,' he said, unsure if both of his voices were speaking or if he merely imagined one of them.
'Only the laughter of thirsting gods.'
The Gal Vorbak howled as one as they cast around for more prey, chasing down the Raven Guard that sought to regroup and oppose the unbelievable treachery facing them. Argel Tal howled loudest of all, but the sound soon died in his throat.
A shadow, the shadow of great wings, eclipsed the sun.
THE GROUND MURMURED with his landing. Claws slashed from their power-fist housings with silver flashes, and shimmering wings of dark metal reached up from his shoulders into the air above. Slowly, so painfully slowly, he raised his head to the traitors. Black eyes stared from a face whiter than Imperial marble, and written across the pale features was the most consummate, complete anger Argel Tal had ever seen. It was an emotion truer and deeper even than the rage that ruined the faces of the daemons within the warp.
And Argel Tal realised it was not anger, nor rage. It went beyond both. This was wrath, in physical form.
The primarch of the Raven Guard turned with an inhuman cry, letting the thrumming wing-blades affixed to his smoking jetpack slice out with their killing edges. Word Bearers tumbled away in droves, shredded into lumps of armoured flesh. The claws followed, rending through any of the grey warriors unlucky enough to be within range of the warlord's landing.
Once he was in motion, Corax never slowed. He was a blur of charcoal armour and black blades, carving, chopping, dismembering without effort, mutilating with the barest movement, butchering with an ease that belied his ferocity.
Lascannon fire rained towards the primarch as the Iron Warriors turned their turrets on the gravest threat in range. The Word Bearers caught in the net of streaming fire were sliced apart as surely as the ones killed by Corax's claws, but the beams themselves flashed aside from the primarch's armour, never striking it straight-on, leaving savage burn scars without once penetrating.
The voices of dying Word Bearers became a conflicting chorus over the vox.
'Help us!' one of the captains screamed to Argel Tal.
The Crimson Lord cast aside the last Raven Guard he'd killed - the warrior's neck had crackled most satisfyingly as he was strangled - and ordered the Gal Vorbak to charge. It left his helm as a split-jawed roar, for even his face was no longer his own.
Even with the cry reduced to wordless malice, the Gal Vorbak understood and obeyed. The first to reach Corax was Ajanis, and the Raven Guard lord butchered the warrior without even turning to face him. A burst of flame from the flight pack seared Ajanis's armour, slowing him long enough for the swinging wings to shear through his torso as Corax turned to face other enemies. The crimson Word Bearers leapt and struck at the primarch, but their assault did little more than their grey brothers' had done.
We die in the shadow of great wings, came the voice from within.
I know.
Argel Tal leapt forward to meet his end at the hands of a demigod.
LORGAR HESITATED, AND in that moment his crozius maul lowered. Blood marred its ornate head - the blood of the Raven Guard: the same blood that ran in his brother's veins ran through his genetic progeny.
Bolter shells cracked against Lorgar's armour, their heat and explosive debris going utterly ignored. Just as the Word Bearers struggled to stand before Corax, so too did the Raven Guard fall back and die in droves to Lorgar's dispassionate, surgical destruction through their ranks.
Lorgar's head snapped back as a bolter shell thudded into his helm, disrupting the retinal electronics and warping the ceramite. He wrenched the mangled metal from his face and killed his attacker with a single swipe of Illuminarum. The blow sent the Raven Guard tumbling away over the heads of his retreating brothers, crashing down among them.
'What is it?' Kor Phaeron stalked to Lorgar's side, his claws as wet as the primarch's crozius. 'Push on! They are breaking before us!'
Lorgar aimed his maul across the battlefield. Corax was wading through the Gal Vorbak, ripping the crimson warriors apart.
'Who cares about the albino's cowardice?' Kor Phaeron was frothing, spit spraying from his lips as he cursed. 'Focus on the fight that matters.'
Lorgar ignored the bile in his father's words, as well as the infrequent shells crashing against his armour. Given a blessed respite from the primarch's murderous advance, the Raven Guard were falling back from him in a black tide. They left their dead in a carpet at the primarch's feet.
'You do not understand,' Lorgar shouted over the din. 'My brother is not fleeing. He has flown to where the fighting is thickest. He is cleaving a path to his gunships, drawing the worst of our firepower, so his sons might escape.'
Erebus was a grey blur of lethal motion, hammering an unhelmed Raven Guard sergeant to the ground and killing him with a return swing that caved in the warrior's skull.
'Sire...' The First Chaplain's armour was blackened from flamer wash, the joints still smoking. 'Please focus.'
Lorgar clutched his sundered helm in one hand. The vox-link was still open. He could hear the tinny screams of the dying. 'He is killing so many of us.'
The helm fell, gripped no more. He held his bloodied maul in ironclad fists, and clenched his teeth just as tightly. 'No,' the word was breathed with absolute conviction.
Kor Phaeron's face was a mess of wounds, and even with his augmentations, he was breathing in a hoarse rasp. The battle was costing him dearly. He met Erebus's eyes for a moment - and something akin to disgust passed between them.
'Your deeds are ordained on these killing fields,' Erebus spoke almost as if delivering a sermon. 'You must not face your brothers yet. It is fate. We play our destined parts, as the pantheon wills it.'
'Kill. The. Raven. Guard.' Kor Phaeron growled through bleeding lips. 'That is what you are here to do, boy.'
Lorgar stepped forward and cast a sneer that settled over both his mentor and ancient foster father. 'No.'
Kor Phaeron screamed in frustrated anger. Erebus remained composed. 'You have laboured for decades to raise an army of the faithful, sire: a Legion that would die for your cause. Do not deviate from the path now you at last possess what you have dreamed of.' Lorgar turned from them both, first watching the retreating Raven Guard, then seeing Corax slaughtering his way through Word Bearers - some armoured in grey, some in crimson.
'We have found gods to worship,' he said, staring without blinking. 'But we are not enslaved to them. My life is my own.'
'He'll kill you!' Kor Phaeron's sluggish Terminator warplate wouldn't let him run, but there was real fear, real sorrow, beneath the anger and panic. 'Lorgar! Lorgar! No!'
Lorgar broke into a sprint, boots pounding over the churned earth and dead bodies of his brother's Legion, and for the first time in his life, he went to engage in a battle he had no hope of winning.
'My death is my own, as well,' he breathed the words as he ran.
He saw his brother - a man he'd barely spoken to in two centuries of life, a man he barely knew - butchering his sons in a vicious rage. There was no thought of conversion. No hope of bringing Corax into the fold, or enlightening him enough to cease this murderous rampage. Lorgar's own anger |
earth and dead bodies of his brother's Legion, and for the first time in his life, he went to engage in a battle he had no hope of winning.
'My death is my own, as well,' he breathed the words as he ran.
He saw his brother - a man he'd barely spoken to in two centuries of life, a man he barely knew - butchering his sons in a vicious rage. There was no thought of conversion. No hope of bringing Corax into the fold, or enlightening him enough to cease this murderous rampage. Lorgar's own anger rose to the fore, burning away the passionless killing of only moments ago. As the Word Bearers primarch hammered his way through the Raven Guard to reach his brother, he felt power seethe within him, aching to rise out.
Always, he'd bitten back his psychic potential, hiding it and hating it in equal measure. It was unreliable, erratic, unstable and painful. It was never the gift it seemed to be for Magnus, and thus, he had swallowed it back, walling it up behind unyielding resolve.
No more. A scream of release tore itself free, not from his mouth, but his mind. It echoed across the battlefield. It echoed into the void. Energy sparked from his armour, and a sixth sense unrestrained at last, with its purity perhaps coloured by Chaos, exhaled from his core. A sound like the crashing of tides in the Sea of Souls swept through the ravine, and Lorgar felt the heat of his own fury made manifest. He felt his unchained power reaching out, not only to enhance his physical form, but reaching to his sons across the battlefield.
And there he stood at the heart of the killing fields, winged and haloed by amorphous contrails of psychic fire, shouting his brother's name into the storm.
Corax answered with a shriek of his own - the call of the betrayer, the cry of the betrayed - and the raven met the heretic in a clash of crozius and claw.
THIS, CAME THE voice, is the cry of the gods we have both been waiting for.
Argel Tal had no hope of replying. The pain knifing through every cell in his body was enough that he sought to slay himself, clawing at his helm and throat, feeling his fingers burning with his own blood as he ripped hunks armour from his flesh, and fistfuls of flesh from his bones.
Do not fight the communion.
Again, he ignored the voice. He wasn't dying, no matter how he tried. A hooked claw tore the skin from his throat, and with it, half of his collarbone. He inflicted similar injuries upon himself with each second, but he wasn't dying. He scrabbled at the armour and bone shielding his two hearts, feverish in his need to wrench both of them from his chest.
Communion... Ascension...
The winged shadow vanished from Argel Tal's vision, and above him the sky was brightened by the last rays of the setting sun.
I am alive, he thought, even as he tore himself apart, even as he ripped a handful of steaming organ meat from his shattered ribcage and burst his first heart in his hand. I did not die beneath the shadow, and I cannot destroy myself now.
This pain will bleed you of sanity. Let me ascend!
Despite agony no living being had ever survived, there was still a moment of fierce resistance in the war behind Argel Tal's eyes. He wanted to die, to taste nothingness, not to endure further corruption. The sentience that was Raum found itself shackled deeper within by a soul ruthlessly unwilling to surrender.
I will save us, not harm us. RELEASE ME.
The Word Bearer's concentration went slack, not because he believed the daemon's words, but from reaching the absolute end of his strength.
Argel Tal closed his eyes.
Raum opened them.
A CLOVEN HOOF of bleached bone, wreathed in ceramite that seemed moulded to fit, crushed a gasping Raven Guard warrior into the mud. Great claws with too many joints, resembling the lashing branches of winter trees, closed and opened, closed and opened, while each of its long fingers ended in black talons. Most of the crimson armour was bulked up and layered by dense bone ridges and knuckly spines. It stood taller than even an Astartes - though not equal to the primarchs battling a short distance away.
Its helm was crowned in pagan majesty with great horns of ivory, and silhouetted against the bright cannon fire it seemed to resemble the Taur of Minos from pre-Imperial Terran mythology. Its legs were jointed backwards and brutally muscled beneath the armour, with powerful black hooves leaving burning imprints in the soil. Its Astartes helm was split along the cheeks and mouth grille to reveal a shark's maw with rows of bladed teeth, glinting with clear acidic saliva.
The daemon drew in a great breath and roared it back out into the retreating ranks of the Raven Guard. That terrible wall of sound hit the Astartes as if an earthquake was laughing at them. Dozens fell to their hands and knees.
Around the warped helm's left eye lens, the golden sun was all that marked the creature as the man it had been.
TWENTY-SEVEN
An Image to Make his Name
Sacrifice
The Burden of Truth
ISHAQ MADE A jump for it, and rolled under the bulkhead before it slammed down. It was less daring than it sounded as the security doors were taking their sweet time to close, but with the sirens wailing and the emergency lighting darkening everything to deep red, he was hardly thinking clearly. He didn't want to get sucked out of a void breach, but nor did he want to be caught up here when the battle was over. He needed to go, go, go.
Checking his picter was still in one piece, he broke into another sprint, desperate to get the hell off this deck. The labyrinthine corridors defied this, hindering him further by the fact most of the wall markings were in Colchisian rather than Imperial Gothic.
Have I been here before? One corridor was much the same as another. In the distance, he could hear bulkheads sealing shut and corridors collapsing as the ship sustained more damage. He'd already made it through several thoroughfares where the walls were reduced to wreckage scattered all over the floor in a twisted mess of grey steel and black iron.
He started running again. Four dead men waited around the next corner - four Euchar soldiers, half-crushed by an exploded, fallen wall.
No. Three dead. 'Help me,' said the fourth.
Ishaq froze while the ship shook around him. If this soldier survived and identified him later, he was a dead man for being on the monastic deck.
'Please,' the trembling man begged.
Ishaq knelt by the soldier and heaved some of the wreckage off his legs. The Euchar screamed, and the imagist squinted through the emergency darkness to see why. Some of the detritus had pierced the soldier's legs and belly, pinning him to the floor. There'd be no helping him, after all. Pulling this out was the work of a skilled surgeon, and even then, it likely wouldn't be enough to save the poor wretch.
'I can't. I'm sorry. I can't.' He rose to his feet. 'I can't do anything.'
'Shoot me, you stupid bast-'
'I don't have a-' He saw the soldier's rifle half-buried in the junk, and hauled it free. As he tried to take aim, the shuddering ship almost sent him sprawling.
Click, went the trigger. Click, click, click.
'Safety,' the soldier groaned. Blood was pooling beneath him. 'The... switch.'
Ishaq flicked the switch along the gun's side, and pulled the trigger. He'd never fired a lasweapon before. The crack-flash left dancing lights before his eyes, and he struggled at first to see the soldier. The man was dead now, his head emptied against the wall behind him. The corridor itself was blocked by debris, and Ishaq dropped the rifle with a clatter, turning to head back the way he'd come.
The bulkhead at the end of the concourse thunked shut with a finality Ishaq almost swore was smug, trapping him in a corridor with four dead bodies and a lot of wreckage. One door led out of here, marked by what looked like Colchisian verse on the damaged walls either side.
He pounded his fists against it, getting no answer. The door was warm, charged somehow, as if the room on the other side were a living thing. Ishaq hammered meaningless numbers into the keypad, receiving the same amount of success.
At last, he took up the lasrifle again, closed his eyes, and shot the security panel. The keypad shorted out, flickering with small flames, and the door at the heart of the monastic deck opened with a sweltering whisper of released air. The sigh of pressure was obscene in its biological origins, stinking of unwashed flesh and the faecal reek of prolonged deprivation. Voices drifted out from the room as if carried on the air. They mumbled and muttered, and made no sense.
Ishaq stood, staring inside, unable to form words at what he was seeing.
His picter flashed. This, at last, was the image to make his name.
HIS BROTHER WAS a warrior, a warlord, and from the very first moment their weapons met, Corax was fighting to kill, while Lorgar fought to stay alive. The battle moved too fast for mortal eyes to perceive, with both primarchs pushing themselves beyond anything else they'd endured.
Corax evaded the crozius without even once parrying. He weaved aside, threw himself out of reach, or fired his flight pack with enough force to boost him up and over Lorgar's heavy swings. By contrast, sweat stung Lorgar's eyes as he desperately blocked each of his brother's attacks. Illuminarum's great hammerhead rang like a church bell as it battered aside the Raven Lord's claws.
'What are you doing?' Corax cried into his brother's face as their weapons locked. 'What madness has taken you all?'
Lorgar disengaged, hurling Corax backward with enough strength to leave his brother unbalanced. The Raven Lord compensated instantly, his flight pack breathing fire and propelling him back at his brother. Bladed wings flashed out to the side, but Lorgar was ready for them. He ignored their scraping, cutting wounds as they knifed through his armour, and focused on hammering Corax's claws aside. In the seconds' safety he bought for himself, Lorgar at last lande |
. 'What madness has taken you all?'
Lorgar disengaged, hurling Corax backward with enough strength to leave his brother unbalanced. The Raven Lord compensated instantly, his flight pack breathing fire and propelling him back at his brother. Bladed wings flashed out to the side, but Lorgar was ready for them. He ignored their scraping, cutting wounds as they knifed through his armour, and focused on hammering Corax's claws aside. In the seconds' safety he bought for himself, Lorgar at last landed a true blow. Corax was sent sprawling again as the crozius pounded into his breastplate. The power field around the maul's head struck with enough force to send a shockwave blasting out from the warring brothers, throwing all nearby Astartes to the ground.
In less time than it took to breathe in, Corax was back on his feet, thrusters firing, spearing at Lorgar once more.
'Answer me, traitor,' the Raven Lord grunted. His dark eyes were narrowed at the sickening light that haloed Lorgar. 'You... are a poor reflection of our father... with that psychic gold.'
Lorgar felt himself slipping back in the mud, his boots grinding across the earth as his brother's strength leaned heavier against him. He couldn't break the weapon lock this time. Both Corax's claws clutched at Illuminarum's haft, burning the handle and the Word Bearer's hands.
'I am bringing the truth to humanity,' Lorgar breathed.
'You are destroying the Imperium! You are betraying your own blood!' The wildness in the Raven Lord's black eyes was something Lorgar had never even imagined before. Corax had always seemed so taciturn, so devoid of passion. That this warrior lay beneath the albino facade was a horrendous revelation.
The claw tips, spitting with crackling power fields, were a finger's length from Lorgar's face now. 'I will kill you, Lorgar.'
'I know.' He spoke through gritted teeth, feeling strength bleed from his bones. 'But I have seen what will be. Our father, a bloodless corpse enthroned upon gold, and screaming into the void forever.'
'Lies.' The black eyes narrowed, and the Raven Lord's pale muscles bunched, locking harder. 'You are reducing a kingdom to chaos. Overthrowing the perfect order.'
Lorgar's grey eyes danced with light despite the strain on his body. 'The opposite of chaos is not order, brother. It is stasis. Lifeless, unchanging... stasis.'
With a last grunt, Lorgar's strength gave. Quivering hands could no longer keep his brother's weapons back.
'Here it is,' Corax promised in a hiss, his saliva flecking Lorgar's eyes and cheeks. 'Here is the death you so richly deserve.'
The claws reached his brother's face. Slowly, the metal burning-hot, they sliced over Lorgar's golden skin. Inch by inch, blackening the golden flesh, cutting into the meat of his cheeks. Even should he escape, he would bear these scars until the day he died. He knew this, and did not care.
The psychic fire wreathing them both flared in response to Lorgar's pain. Corax closed his eyes to spare his sight, and instinct cost him his quick victory. Lorgar threw the Raven Lord back again. Illuminarum rose, ready to strike, before a burst of smoky fire launched the Raven Lord up from the soil to come down on Lorgar from above. The Word Bearer smashed the first claw aside, striking the fist with enough force to shatter the gauntlet completely, but even as scythe-long claw blades span off into the surrounding melee, the second claw struck home.
Metre-long talons sank through Lorgar's stomach, the tips glinting to the side of his spine as they thrust from his back. Such a blow meant little to a primarch - only when Corax heaved upwards did Lorgar stagger. The claws bit and cut, sawing through the Word Bearer's body.
Illuminarum slipped from the impaled primarch's fists. Those same hands wrapped around Corax's throat even as the Raven Lord was carving his brother in half.
'For the Emperor,' Corax breathed, untroubled by his weaker brother's grip. Lorgar crashed his forehead against Corax's face, shattering his brother's nose, but still he couldn't free himself. The Raven Lord gave no ground, even as a second, third and fourth head butt decimated his delicate features.
'But he lied to us,' Lorgar spoke through lips that produced more blood than language. 'Father lied.'
The claws jerked, snagged against Lorgar's enhanced bones. Corax tore them free, inflicting more damage than the first impaling had done. Blood hissed and popped as it evaporated on the force-fielded blades.
'Father lied,' Lorgar said again. He was on his knees, hands clutched over the ruination of his stomach.
Corax's black eyes gave nothing away. He stepped closer, his one functioning claw raised to execute his brother.
'Do it,' Lorgar snarled. The psychic wind, the misty fire - all were gone now. He was as he'd always been: Lorgar, the Seventeenth Son, the image of his father, the one soul in twenty who'd never wished to be a soldier. And here he would die, at the heart of a battlefield.
The foul irony of the moment settled on his shoulders, feeling grotesquely apt. He couldn't move his legs. His body was a temple to nothing but pain. He could barely even see his executioner, for his psychic efforts had left him quivering with both weakness and a vision-blurring ache in his mind. A faint outline met his gaze, the blurred image of scythe-blades raised high.
'Do it!' Lorgar screamed at his brother.
The claw fell, and struck opposing metal.
CORAX LOOKED TO meet eyes as black as his, in a face as pale as his own. His claw strained against a mirroring weapon, both sets of blades scraping as they ground against each other. One claw seeking to fall and kill, the other unyielding in its rising defence.
Where the Raven Guard primarch's features were fierce with effort, the other face wore a grin. It was a smile both taut and mirthless - a dead man's smile, once his lips surrendered to rigor mortis.
'Corax,' said the other primarch.
'Curze,' Corax said the name as the curse it was.
'Look into my eyes,' said the progenitor of the Night Lords Legion, 'and see your death.'
Corax sought to wrench his claw free, but Curze's second gauntlet closed on his brother's wrist. 'No,' Curze's laughter as was joyless as his smile. 'Do not fly away, little raven. Stay. We are not finished, you and I.'
'Konrad,' Corax tried. 'Why have you done this?'
Curze ignored the plea. He turned his void-like eyes on the prone Lorgar, with disgust written plain across his carcass face. 'Rise from your knees, you accursed coward.'
Lorgar sought to do just that, using his brother's midnight-blue armour as a crutch to haul himself to his feet. Curze bared his sharpened teeth. 'You are the foulest weakling I have ever seen, Lorgar.'
Corax was not idle as this exchange took place. He fired his flight pack, burning his fuel reserves to escape Curze's grip. The Raven Lord's claw ripped free, and Corax soared skyward, carried on jet thrust away from Curze's rising laughter.
On the ground, Curze shook himself free of Lorgar. 'Sevatar,' he spoke into the vox. 'The Raven comes to you, to free his men.'
Battle sounds. Bolter fire. The roar of tank engines. 'We will deal with him, lord.'
'See that you do.' Curze shoved Lorgar back towards his Word Bearers. Around them both, the grey Legion warred with the warriors in black. 'I am done with you, golden one. Go back to killing Astartes with your pretty hammer.'
Lorgar's preternatural biology was regenerating his damaged tissue with alacrity, but the primarch was shivery and weak as he reached for the fallen crozius.
'Thank you, Konrad.'
Curze spat at Lorgar's feet. 'I will let you die next time. And if you...'
The Night Lord trailed off, his black eyes narrowing as he watched the figures appearing at Lorgar's side. Their armour was crimson ceramite and ridged bone. Great claws, both metallic weapons and fleshy, jointed talons, extended from bestial arms. Every helm was horned. Every faceplate was split by a daemon's skullish leer.
'You are so much more than merely foul,' Curze turned his back. 'You are rancid in your corruption.'
Lorgar watched his brother stalking back through the ranks of Night Lords and Word Bearers, wading through them to reach the Raven Guard once more. Soon enough, the silver claws began to rise and fall as they always had, shearing through the armoured bodies of Curze's enemies.
Lorgar turned to the Gal Vorbak. 'Argel Tal,' he smiled at one of them, knowing him instantly.
The creature grunted, twitchy with the need to shed blood. 'It is I, sire.'
'The warriors I would need,' Lorgar murmured the old words with awe tainting his breath. 'Truly, you are blessed by the gods. Go. Hunt. Kill.'
The Gal Vorbak withdrew from their lord, launching themselves back into the battle with leaps and snarls. Argel Tal lingered. A claw of ceramite and bone closed on Lorgar's arm.
'Father. I could not reach you in time.'
'It does not matter. I live still. Hunt well, my son.'
The daemon nodded and obeyed.
THUNDERHAWK GUNSHIPS IN the colours of the Raven Guard and the Salamanders exploded at the launch site as the Iron Warriors turned their weapons from the slaughter and targeted the loyalists' only avenues of escape.
Despite the grind of battle, dozens of the landing craft managed to make it back into the air. Most of these were soon sent spiralling back down to earth, streaming black smoke from lascannon wounds in propulsion systems. The Iron Warriors fired with impunity, caring nothing that many of the downed gunships fell groundward into the battle still being waged. The burning hulls of destroyed Astartes craft rained onto the killing fields, pulverising Word Bearers and Night Lords more often than they crashed into the few remaining pockets of Raven Guard and Salamanders survivors.
When contacted by Legion commanders protesting the careless destruction, the Iron Warriors captains replied with laughter that bordered on betrayal.
'We are all bleeding to |
nity, caring nothing that many of the downed gunships fell groundward into the battle still being waged. The burning hulls of destroyed Astartes craft rained onto the killing fields, pulverising Word Bearers and Night Lords more often than they crashed into the few remaining pockets of Raven Guard and Salamanders survivors.
When contacted by Legion commanders protesting the careless destruction, the Iron Warriors captains replied with laughter that bordered on betrayal.
'We are all bleeding today,' an Iron Warriors captain voxed back to Kor Phaeron. 'Have faith, Word Bearer.' The link went dead to the sound of chuckling.
Time ceased to have any meaning for Argel Tal. When he was not killing, he was moving, hunting, seeking something else to kill. His claws savaged any Raven Guard warrior that came within his grip. Corax had thinned the ranks of the Gal Vorbak before Lorgar's intercession, but enough of the chosen sons remained to form a feral pack that led their Legion, cutting into the diminishing foe.
In battle, he changed. His was not the ascendant consciousness. He ceded a measure of control to Raum, the surrender coming as naturally as breathing: it seemed simply a function of his new form. The daemon in possession added strength to even his lighter blows, and tore chunks from his enemies even as Argel Tal sought only to clutch onto them. His every motion was made feverish, hungrier somehow, drenched in blood and inhuman needs. As he wrapped his claws around a Raven Guard's throat with the intent to strangle, his talons sank into the warrior's neck and hooked around his spine. Every motion was instinctively more violent, breeding more pain in those foolish enough to stand before him.
Many of the Raven Guard sought to run. Argel Tal let these live, knowing his grey-armoured kin would cut these down with their bolters. It was a chore to resist the animalistic need to chase down prey - just seeing them flee from him was enough to tense his muscles into the desire for pursuit - but he knew his role in this war. He was a warrior, not a hunter.
A connection he'd not known existed went hollow and cold, and he felt, rather than saw, Dagotal die.
You are all bound. Blessed and bound.
A second of pain, like the memory of an old wound, and a curious loss stole over him. It was a lessening, as if the warmth of the sun had fallen behind a greying sky. The momentary chill passed, but the knowledge of his brother's demise was etched into him, as cold as a stone in his skull.
He died in fire. Raum's voice was as ecstatic as it was breathless. A cascade of chopping images flickered in Argel Tal's mind, showing Dagotal engulfed in flame, surrounded by Raven Guard bearing flamer units. They bathed him in the corrosive fire, layering chemical propellant over his mutated armour, stoic against the unbelievable stench their murder was making.
The images flashed away, and Argel Tal dropped the corpse he'd strangled. Immediately, the need took him again. Like a hunger, a need for satiation, he physically ached unless he was moving toward prey. And he knew this ferocious need was the only emotion the neverborn could ever feel. This was how their minds worked - in stunted, brutal instinct.
The daemon moved to sate his new hunger.
THE TREMORS EASED, but didn't cease. Still, Ishaq was thankful for small mercies. Nonessential bulkheads were grinding open now. The red light staining everything flickered back to standard illumination. He assumed De Profundis was pulling free of the main battle for... some reason. To rearm? To regroup? Whatever, he didn't know and it didn't matter. He was bolting through the corridors the moment he heard the first bulkhead unsealing.
Many were still shut tight, blocking off voided sections of the deck. This, too, didn't matter. He didn't want to explore any more, he just wanted to get out of here alive.
It was strangely worse to slow down and walk solemnly past Euchar infantry patrols than it was to pick and weave between the dead bodies that adorned some of the more damaged corridors. The Euchar squads were here to clean up, and he didn't envy them that job. On several occasions, he moved past them in a dignified walk, seeing them gathering the fallen and bagging them up. He made sure his face was covered by the serf hood, and did his best to seem as if he paid little heed.
Once he was free of the monastic deck, he made his way to the Cellar, shaking loose the Legion robe on his way. His picter scanner was kept in a white-knuckled grip that would've broken a cheaper, less sturdy model.
The doors opened before him, revealing the Cellar in all its bustling slum hole glory. Even in the midst of the battle, the remembrancers and civilian crew had gathered here, gambling and drinking and doing their damndest to ignore the war raging outside. In truth, he didn't blame them. He'd done it himself in smaller battles before.
His hands were shaking when he reached an empty table. A passing girl brought him something he didn't order, and wouldn't like even if he was in the mood to drink it. He scattered the few coins he had left, not caring that he overpaid. He just needed to be around people. Normal people.
'Ishaq Kadeen. The imagist. I have your pict of De Profundis. A masterpiece, young sir.'
Ishaq looked up to meet the speaker's dark-ringed eyes. He recognised the old man immediately.
'You're the astropath. The astropath for the Occuli Imperator.'
'Guilty,' the old man performed a strangely courtly bow, 'as charged.' He gestured to the chair. 'Absolom Cartik at your service. May I sit?'
Ishaq's grunt passed as a yes. The elder seemed nervous in the Cellar, just as he had last time Ishaq saw him in here. 'I've not seen you in a couple of weeks. There was talk you'd be forsaking this place for good.'
'I do not fit in well, but at times, the quiet gets to me. I feel the need to be around other people.' Cartik gestured to the walls. 'The battle,' he swallowed. 'They always get to me.'
'I know that feeling. Sorry, but I'm not exactly wonderful company right now,' Ishaq said.
The astropath was watching him with unwavering focus. 'Your thoughts are very loud.'
All the blood drained from Kadeen's face. 'You're reading my mind?' He stood up fast enough to make himself dizzy. 'Is that legal?'
The astropath waved his concerns aside. 'I could never read a mind as you would understand it. Suffice to say, you are broadcasting your emotion with great intensity. Just as someone might see you laugh or cry, knowing your thoughts from your face, I can see the distress in your mind. No details, but it is very... loud,' he finished lamely.
'I don't need this right now. I really don't.'
'I meant no offence.'
Ishaq took his seat again. The ship shook under enemy fire - enough to spill people's drinks. Most pretended to ignore it. A few faked laughter, as if it were all part of the adventure.
'Might I ask if you have any more masterpieces in the making?' the old man asked. Ishaq glanced at his picter rod.
'I'm not sure. Maybe. Look, I have to go.' He squeezed his eyes shut, but everything looked the same when he opened them again. 'I don't want to be around anyone after all. And I'm not going to drink this, so consider it a gift.'
He slid the glass across the table. As Cartik took it, the astropath's finger brushed the imagist's knuckles. The elder jumped if kicked, staring with wide eyes. He looked as suddenly unwell as Ishaq felt.
'By the Throneworld...' he stammered. 'Wh-what have you seen?'
'Nothing. Nothing at all. Goodbye.'
Absolom Cartik's elderly claw gripped onto the younger man's wrist with all the tenacity of a raptor talon. 'Where. Was. This.'
'I didn't see anything, you crazy old bastard.'
Their eyes met. 'You wish to answer the question,' Cartik said softly.
'I saw it on board the ship.'
'Where?'
'The monastic deck.'
'And you made recorded images? Evidence of what you saw?'
'Yes.'
Cartik released the man's wrist. 'Come with me, please.'
'What? No chance.'
'Come with me. What you have seen must be shown to the Occuli Imperator. If you refuse, I can guarantee you only one thing: Custodian Aquillon will kill you for attempting to keep this a secret. He will kill everyone who has kept this a secret.'
The emergency lighting dimmed back into life. Complaints rang out across the Cellar, and the vessel around them shivered as its engines flared open again. They were returning to the battle.
'I'll... come with you.'
Absolom Cartik smiled. He was an ugly man - and age hadn't helped change that fact - but he wore the kind of paternal, assured smile that stayed in a family's memory for many years.
'Yes,' the old man said. 'I thought you might.'
TWENTY-EIGHT
Aftermath
Blood is Life
An Unusual Welcome
HE FOUND DAGOTAL after the battle.
First, he came across his brother's jetbike, powerless and half-buried in the Urgall dirt. Not crashed. Abandoned. Abandoned when the change took place, abandoned in favour of running and killing with one's own claws.
He moved on, stepping over the bodies of slain Raven Guard, their white Legion symbol tarnished by mud or split by savage weapons. A warrior nearby still lived, his breath straining from a broken mouth grille. With a reaching claw, Argel Tal enclosed the Raven Guard's neck, squeezing the soft armour there and ending the warrior's life with the popping crackle of destroyed vertebrae.
There was no flood of endorphins from a hunger momentarily sated. With each minute that passed, Raum's consciousness ebbed from Argel Tal's mind with the helpless loss of sand slipping through his fingers. With the daemon's recession, Argel Tal's own instincts and emotions rebuilt themselves in his mind. In place of bloodlust and unnatural appetites, he felt hollow, and used, and so very, very tired.
His shadow stretched before him, made uneven by the dead bodies it fell across. Great horns curled from his helm. His body was a nightmare of protruding b |
sated. With each minute that passed, Raum's consciousness ebbed from Argel Tal's mind with the helpless loss of sand slipping through his fingers. With the daemon's recession, Argel Tal's own instincts and emotions rebuilt themselves in his mind. In place of bloodlust and unnatural appetites, he felt hollow, and used, and so very, very tired.
His shadow stretched before him, made uneven by the dead bodies it fell across. Great horns curled from his helm. His body was a nightmare of protruding bone ridges and crimson ceramite. His legs were... He didn't even have the words. They were jointed like a beast's hind legs - a lion or a wolf - and ended in huge hooves of black bone. His warplate still covered them, leaving his silhouette like the shade of a creature from unholy myth.
Argel Tal turned from his shadow. A wet, burbling growl rumbled in his throat. That scent. He snuffed the air twice. Familiar. Yes.
He stalked away, letting his shadow fall across other bodies. There. Dagotal. A blackened thing, ripe with the scent of baked blood and life reduced to ash. Grey and red armour was strewn all about him, making his husk the cremated statue at the heart of a fallen Word Bearers pack. In the deepest distance, bolters still chattered. Why? The battle was over. Prisoner execution, perhaps. It did not matter.
Still infused with the aftermath of Raum's inhuman perception, he sensed the others approaching. All of them resembled Argel Tal to some degree. Malnor was a twitching, brutish thing, his bunched musculature claimed by frequent spasms. Torgal hunched as he moved, his faceplate moulded into a snarling face entirely lacking eyes. Argel Tal knew without asking that Torgal was blind. Perhaps he was aided by scent and sound, but he hunted by the daemonic awareness of mortality nearby. Instead of the claws most of the Gal Vorbak now sported, Torgal's arms ended in lengthy bone blades, hooked like primitive scimitars. Jagged, knuckly teeth roughened the surface of them, showing where they'd once been his chainblades.
Eleven of the Gal Vorbak remained alive. Corax had slain over two dozen - their dismembered parts now scattered over the nearby area - red amidst the grey. In the heat of the battle, it had been an easy matter to ride Raum's perceptions, discarding the fragmentary pulsing pain of his brothers' lives ending. But now, in the bitter dusk, their absence was harder to ignore. Their loss left him cold.
With the passing minutes, Argel Tal could feel the daemon's quiet, small presence wrapped in a crippling exhaustion. Raum was not gone, nor truly distant. The daemon slumbered, its cold weight seeking to warm itself within the Word Bearer's mind.
The horrendous changes inflicted upon his body and armour began to undo themselves at last. Ceramite cracked and resealed. Bony protrusions sank back beneath his skin, dragged back into the bones from whence they came. As Ingethel had promised so long ago, it was not a painless process, but by now the Gal Vorbak had passed through the fire of that particular torment. Pain was just pain, and they'd endured so much worse. A few grunted as the changes unwrought and their Astartes physiques reformed, but none voiced a lament as bones creaked and muscles condensed.
Still, they'd been seen. Warriors from the other Legions had seen them during and after the battle, and made their distasteful fascination shown in varying measures. The Night Lords seemed particularly unwilling to approach the Gal Vorbak. When Argel Tal had neared Sevatar, the captain had removed his helm to spit acid on the ground by the Word Bearer's feet. The Sons of Horus - the Warmaster's own - were more willing to approach and speak of the change. Argel Tal was unwilling to indulge them, but Xaphen, the slowest by far in resuming his Astartes form, seemed all too keen to enlighten the Sons of what the future held for the gods' chosen warriors.
Argel Tal waited an hour for his bones to cease their creak-aching, but the sense of relief was nothing short of divine when he disengaged his collar seals and pulled his helm free.
The battlefield stank of engine breath and chemical-rich blood, but he had no sense to spare for anything beyond the feel of the wind rushing over his face for the first time in so many weeks.
Boot steps, heavy and assured, came from behind. He knew who it would be without needing to turn.
'How does it feel?' came the expected voice.
'Strong. Pure. Righteous. But then cold, and hollow. Violated.' Argel Tal turned to meet the other's eyes. 'I feel the daemon within me now, weakened and slumbering. Even after knowing the change would grip and fade in tides like this, it was like nothing I can describe. I am uneasy in the knowledge it will happen again, but I also feel anticipation for it. I... I lack the words to do it justice.'
'We saw you fight,' said the other. 'The "blessed sons" indeed.'
Argel Tal sighed, still enjoying the world's air instead of the filtered oxygen of his warplate. 'I was spiteful to you before the battle, master. I ask forgiveness.'
Erebus's smile didn't reach his lips, but the momentary warmth of sincerity showed in his gaze. 'Master no more.'
Argel Tal broke the look to stare out over the battlefield. Thousands and thousands of armoured bodies. Hundreds of wrecked tanks. Gunship hulls, still burning in their craters. Roaring cheers from the ranks of the World Eaters as they gathered skulls. The buzzing grind of chainblades as the warriors of seven Traitor Legions looted the dead for trophies and relics.
'I do not regret taking the sword instead of the crozius all those years ago. As I've proven so many times since, I lack the words to be a preacher.'
Erebus came alongside his former pupil, looking out over the desolation. His armour showed clear signs of the battle, cracked and scorched all over. Erebus was never one to send his warriors into battle without leading them in himself. The bas-relief etchings of his deeds in neat Colchisian were discoloured by burn markings and stripped paint showing flashes of metallic ceramite beneath.
'I believe that night may have been the very first incident of an Astartes seeking to kill another Astartes.'
Argel Tal remembered it well. 'The primarch told me, long ago when I last stood in the City of Grey Flowers, that you had forgiven me for that night.'
'The primarch was right.'
Argel Tal narrowed his eyes. 'I never asked for your forgiveness. Not for that.'
'It is yours, nevertheless. You still believe I went too far in my methods. I do not. We will never agree upon it. Do you believe you were right in your reaction? To draw a weapon against a brother? To seek to slay a Chaplain of your own Legion?'
'Yes.' Argel Tal's gaze was unwavering. 'I still believe that. I would have killed you, had I the chance.'
Erebus remained impassive. 'Beside that first and last betrayal, you were a better student than you give yourself credit for. Loyal, intelligent, and strong of both heart and will.'
Loyal.
Raum's thought was somnolent, barely formed in a veil of fogged weariness. It brought Argel Tal on guard, as he expected the daemon's intent had been.
'Sometimes I wonder,' he said, 'just how much of our loyalty is written into our blood.'
Erebus wasn't blind to the inference. 'The gene-seed changes every Legion, but the Word Bearers would not follow Aurelian into damnation and triumph with equal passion. We follow him because he is right, not because we must.'
Argel Tal nodded, neither agreeing nor arguing.
'I need answers,' the Gal Vorbak commander said. His tone was cold and clear, and Erebus turned upon hearing it.
'Is this really the time?' he asked.
Argel Tal fixed his former mentor with a cynical scowl. 'We stand in the midst of two Legions brought to extinction by traitorous hands, and walk the first battlefield of an Imperial civil war. There will never be a better time to talk of betrayal, Erebus.'
The slightest edge of a smile coloured the Chaplain's lips. 'Ask.'
'You already know what I would ask, so spare me speaking the question.'
'The primarch.' Erebus was utterly neutral once more, ever the statesman. 'You would have me relay what we have done in the main Legion fleet for forty years? There is no time for such discussion. Much of what we learned is contained within the Book of Lorgar.'
A curl to his lips showed how little Argel Tal liked that answer. 'Which, it seems, you have written half of,' the Gal Vorbak lord said.
Erebus acquiesced to this with a shallow nod. 'I have added to the rituals and prayers within, yes. As has Kor Phaeron. We have learned much, and have guided the primarch as often as he has guided us.'
Argel Tal growled his displeasure. 'Be clearer.'
'As you wish. A moment, please.' Erebus knelt to slide his gladius into the throat of a twitching Raven Guard warrior. As they walked on, he wiped blood from the blade with an oiled cloth from his belt pouch.
'You do not know what it was like, Argel Tal. After venturing into the Great Eye, Lorgar was... distraught. His faith in the Emperor was already destroyed, and the truth he found at the galaxy's edge tormented him as much as it inspired him. Indecision gripped him for months. Kor Phaeron took command of the fleet for a second time, and we did little but vent our wrath across the worlds we came across. Despite Lorgar's return, the Legion felt no joy from the primarch's presence. In truth, Aurelian wasn't certain humanity was ready to learn of such... horror.'
Argel Tal's skin crawled. 'Horror?'
'The primarch's own word, not mine.' Erebus nudged another body with his boot. When a rasping breath wheezed from its mouth grille, the Chaplain repeated his execution, cleaning the blade again afterwards. 'The Legion never struggled to adopt the new faith. We are philosophers as much as warriors, and take pride in such. All could see how the gods had seeded their worship into our culture from generations in the past. The const |
y to learn of such... horror.'
Argel Tal's skin crawled. 'Horror?'
'The primarch's own word, not mine.' Erebus nudged another body with his boot. When a rasping breath wheezed from its mouth grille, the Chaplain repeated his execution, cleaning the blade again afterwards. 'The Legion never struggled to adopt the new faith. We are philosophers as much as warriors, and take pride in such. All could see how the gods had seeded their worship into our culture from generations in the past. The constellations. The cults that always looked skyward for answers. The Old Ways themselves. Few Word Bearers resisted the truth, for most had always felt it on some level.'
'Few resisted...' An uncomfortable thought climbed Argel Tal's spine with prickling fingers. 'Was there a purge? A purge of our own ranks?'
Erebus weighed his answer before giving it voice. 'Not all wished to turn on the Imperium. They believed that stagnancy was strength, that stasis was preservation. No such reluctance remains in the Legion now.'
So Word Bearer had slain Word Bearer, unseen by the eyes of other Legions. Argel Tal breathed slowly, not wishing to ask yet unable to resist. 'How many died?'
'Enough.' Erebus took no joy in confessing it. 'Not many - nothing like the numbers of those who were culled from the faithless Legions - but enough.'
They moved around the charred hull of a Sons of Horus Rhino. The armoured personnel carrier's tracks were shattered and scattered like teeth punched from a jaw, while the sloped green hull was pockmarked with bolter fire. Erebus glanced inside. The driver was dead, slain by the shell that destroyed the tank's front plating, his sea-green ceramite ruptured with shrapnel as he lay slack in his seat.
'Why do I sense that was not your only question,' he muttered.
Argel Tal scratched his cheek, and the motion turned into a subtle check, feeling his face for any further changes. He was himself again, at least for now. The mutations were locked inside his genetic code as the daemon slumbered. He knew they'd return soon enough. Just dwelling on the thought was enough to set Raum stirring, the daemon slowly writhing in its repose, like a creature shifting in its sleep.
'The Custodes,' he said. 'We have suffered a long exile to keep them alive. Xaphen's ritual kept them silenced. Tell me why, Erebus. We have ached to be by the primarch's side.'
'So has every Word Bearer in every one of the Legion's fleets.'
'We are the Gal Vorbak.' Argel Tal crashed a fist into the Rhino's flank, denting the armour plating.
'Temper, Argel Tal.'
'We,' the commander repeated, 'are the Gal Vorbak. We brought the truth to the primarch at the cost of our own souls. I am not demanding glorification. I am asking for a reason why we were kept in exile.'
Erebus walked on, leaving the tank, and the two Salamanders warriors it had crushed, behind. 'You came to reflect a side of the primarch's doubts, until Kor Phaeron and I were able to reignite his conviction. We travelled to those first worlds we conquered - the ones that we'd allowed the Old Ways to in secret remain out of respect. On those worlds, Lorgar's passion to enlighten the Imperium was reforged anew.'
'So why were we not recalled? Xaphen's ritual to silence the Custodes-'
'I know the ritual,' Erebus snapped. 'I wrote the ritual myself, after weeks of communion. Only then did I provide it to Xaphen, and it has been refined each time the invocation was cast.'
The invocation. A spell. Sorcery. Argel Tal shuddered. The word alone was enough to make his skin crawl. On the hillside, the first construction work was beginning on a towering funeral pyre, and a platform for the Sons of Horus to aggrandise themselves above the 'lesser' Legions. Argel Tal and Erebus paid the work little heed.
'I can read the reluctance in your voice, Argel Tal. You do not burn with fervour to kill them, and I will see through any lies you tell me otherwise.'
'I have no desire to slay them. We have grown closer over time, bonding through battle. But I must know why they were ordered to be spared.'
'I need them alive,' the Chaplain admitted at last.
'Obviously,' Argel Tal snorted. 'But why?'
'Because of what they are. Imagine a life form that cannot reproduce. Imagine it self-replicates instead, but the process is not perfect. It only achieves immortality for its species by creating weaker versions of itself down the generations. We are an example of this. From the Emperor came the primarchs, from the primarchs came the true Astartes. We are a species that names the Emperor not only as our inceptor, but our grandfather.'
Argel Tal nodded, waiting for Erebus to continue. He felt the threat of a smile as he recalled their lessons just like this, back in the days of tutor and student, master and acolyte.
'We are the third generation of this genetic line. But what if our fleshworkers, our Apothecaries, and our psychically-gifted warriors could use our link to the Emperor as a weapon against him? Should we not capitalise on that possibility?'
Argel Tal shrugged a shoulder. 'I do not see how we could.'
Erebus chuckled. 'Think back to the Old Ways, and the lore you know of that faith from archives. Think back to the superstition and dogma that the Emperor has sought to banish from the sphere of human knowledge in his precious "Great Crusade". How much of humanity's clearest, core beliefs centred around sacrifice and spells fuelled by blood? Blood is life. Blood is the focus of a million magics, linking invoker and victim, or serving as an offering to reach the higher powers within the warp. If you have a being's blood, you can tailor a poison to slay them and no other - a venom bred to end a single life, but to spare all others.'
'And our blood is the blood of the Emperor,' Argel Tal finished for him.
'Yes. But it is thinned and filtered by mass production, with too many artificial chemical components, making it too weak to use in either alchemy or sorcery. The link to our grandsire is far too tenuous.'
Alchemy. Sorcery. Argel Tal found it starkly ironic that even with a daemon in his heart, he hated to hear of these words spoken so lightly. Truly, the winds of change had blown hard in the four decades of his unofficial exile.
Erebus looked across the battlefield, where the Iron Warriors were gathering bodies with the blunt efficiency so typical of the Legion's attitude to warfare. Tanks fitted with great plough blades heaved through piles of the slain, sending the bodies tumbling along towards the funeral pyre.
'Do you understand?' he asked, without taking his eyes from the funerary work.
'You believe the Custodes offer a closer link to the Emperor.'
'I do. They are born from the same genetic code, though ours was filtered for mass production. They are purer for their rarity, if not their quality.'
It was an old assumption, and one with no proof, to claim that the Emperor was a primarch to the Custodian Guard. Argel Tal shook his head.
'You need living Custodes for their blood,' he said, 'in the hopes of chasing what may well be a myth.'
'All weapons must be considered.' Erebus was composed. 'No one but the Emperor has ever had the chance to study the Custodes, and knowledge is power. It must be guarded well. We have tried rituals with the blood of eleven Legions now, and all results met with disaster. What if we master the secrets of the Custodian genus? We could harness that lore to strengthen ourselves, not simply harm our foes. The Custodians in the main fleet, led by Iacus, were killed in battle long ago. Aquillon and his minions present one of the few remaining opportunities. Their blood must be borne from a beating heart for the rituals to have any hope of success.'
Another thought occurred, and Argel Tal spoke before considering it. 'Are not the primarchs closest to the Emperor? You could use their blood for these... rituals.'
Erebus laughed. For the first time in Argel Tal's life, he heard the First Chaplain really, honestly laughing. 'Truth,' Erebus smiled, 'from the mouths of babes. Do you see any willing primarchs? We failed to capture any of the Emperor's sons here, and you will not find Horus or even Aurelian eager to let their blood be manipulated in such a way.'
Argel Tal hesitated. In his hand, his helm emitted a vox-crackle.
'My lord?' came the voice of Fleetmaster Torvus. The Word Bearer replaced his helm with a deep sigh of reluctance. His clear vision was immediately stained dark and flickered with targeting markers.
'This is Argel Tal.'
'Sir, our final four ships have broken from the warp. The Occuli Imperator is demanding to board De Profundis immediately.'
'Allow it. It no longer matters. They will have their suspicions, but only evidence would rouse them to fury. We are returning to orbit within the hour, and will deal with them then. Has the ship sustained damage?'
'A great deal, but we've held it together through spit, grit and prayer. The only damage you will consider vital was taken on the Legion's sanctum deck. Several breaches, but all hull wounds are isolated and secured.'
Argel Tal swallowed. 'The Blessed Lady?'
'Secure and well. A Euchar force investigated not thirty minutes ago. The enemy fleet is dust and wreckage in orbit. How fares the surface battle?'
Argel Tal scanned the devastation for several moments before answering. 'We won, Baloc. That's enough for now.'
AQUILLON WALKED FROM the eagle-winged shuttle and onto the empty hangar deck. He'd never seen it so quiet: a hollow space of silent, waiting cranes and idle servitors standing by their wall-stations. The Legion was deployed, and everything the Word Bearers commanded had been committed to the world below.
At the base of the ramp, several figures were waiting for him. Sythran inclined his head in silence. Kalhin and Nirallus likewise didn't salute - it wasn't their custom to show obeisance to anyone but the Emperor, beloved by all. The three warriors held their guardian spears |
never seen it so quiet: a hollow space of silent, waiting cranes and idle servitors standing by their wall-stations. The Legion was deployed, and everything the Word Bearers commanded had been committed to the world below.
At the base of the ramp, several figures were waiting for him. Sythran inclined his head in silence. Kalhin and Nirallus likewise didn't salute - it wasn't their custom to show obeisance to anyone but the Emperor, beloved by all. The three warriors held their guardian spears in loose grips, but their body language and postures suggested restraint, rather than simply remaining casual. He could read the telltale tension in their muscles, even beneath their golden armour.
The other two figures drew Aquillon's attention. The first was Cartik, who offered a deep bow. The old man was sweating in the cold hangar, and his ageing heart beat in an accelerated, irregular rhythm. The second was unknown to him. Dusky-skinned and keen of eye, daunted by nothing he bore witness to. A brave soul, this one. Or reckless.
'A curious welcome,' the Occuli Imperator said softly. He was not angry - not yet, at least - but his patience had bled dry many hours before. The loss of contact with the Word Bearers fleet left him rattled, and this was indeed an unusual welcome. He knew something was wrong the moment he saw his brothers waiting for him below.
'Your ships were "delayed" as well,' Aquillon surmised. 'You were prevented from reaching the battle at all.' All three warriors nodded.
'I was first to arrive,' Nirallus said. 'Less than ten minutes ago. The approach to the fleet was a nightmare, and the auspex chimed out with hundreds of dead ships in the upper atmosphere. It will rain steel on Isstvan V for decades to come.'
'I saw the same,' admitted Aquillon. 'No sign of any vessels bearing the traitors' colours, but the loyal Legions have suffered horrendous losses themselves. And the wreckage patterns did not suggest accurate numbers. It seems two Legions have been annihilated. Others who were supposed to be present were simply never here.'
'I have not been able to reach Argel Tal,' said Kalhin. 'Or anyone else on the surface.'
Aquillon looked down at the two humans. 'Explain their presence.'
Sythran stepped forward, and offered Aquillon a bulky plastek picter rod. The imagifier was of expensive make, that much was clear. Aquillon took it, but didn't look at the viewscreen.
'You are an imagist?' he asked the human.
'Ishaq Kadeen,' the man replied. 'Yes, I'm an imagist. You activate the-'
'I know how it works, Ishaq Kadeen.' Aquillon thumbed the activation setting along the haft, and the small screen blinked into life.
Aquillon processed what he was seeing. His education and training at the Emperor's side allowed him a broad view of human capability, and the possibilities of technology in union with living beings. He had never seen anything quite like this before, but he knew immediately what it had to be.
The Occuli Imperator handed the picter to Ishaq, who took with a mutter of gratitude. 'You found this on the sanctum deck, I assume?' Aquillon enquired.
'The monastic deck? Yes.'
'Of course.' And then, with infinite dignity, Aquillon reached to unsheathe his blade. 'My brothers,' he said. 'We are betrayed.'
'I do not much like our chances against an entire vessel's crew, even with the Legion off-ship. What do you suggest?' asked Kalhin.
'First, we find the depths of this betrayal. I must see this madness for myself, and tear the truth from the lips of those that keep it. Before we can even consider cutting out the cancer at this rebellion's heart, we must secure passage to Terra and relay every detail to the Emperor.'
'Beloved by all,' said Kalhin and Nirallus at once. Sythran tapped his knuckles to his chestplate, over his heart. Ishaq's own 'beloved by all' came a couple of awkward seconds later, though none of the others were paying him any attention anymore.
'This will be a great deal of work,' Kalhin grunted.
'Who do we interrogate?' asked Nirallus. There was no doubt in his voice - he didn't ask because he had no idea of an answer, he asked because there were too many possible names and the decision ultimately rested with Aquillon. 'The fleetmaster? The general?'
'There's one soul on this ship that has listened to the Word Bearers whisper their secrets for half a century. We will find this precious soul not far from where you found the evidence of their treachery. Come with me.'
'H-how will you get onto the monastic deck?' Cartik was already falling behind, practically ignored by the Custodes.
'We will kill everyone that stands in our way,' Nirallus replied as if the answer were obvious. 'Return to your room, old one. It will not be safe at our side.'
The Custodes moved forward, blades drawn. Aquillon let emotion curl his lip into an ugly snarl. 'Cyrene,' he hissed. 'Their "Blessed lady".'
TWENTY-NINE
Cyrene
Never Human
A Completed Vow
SHE LIFTED HER head at the sound of blades against her door, though of course, she saw nothing. Heat came at her in a breathy wave, emanating in her direction from the thudding steel portal. Power weapons, then. They were cutting through with power weapons.
Cyrene typed as fast as she could, her fingertips dancing over the familiar keypad, but her efforts ended mid-sentence. The door slammed to the floor, and the thrum of live power armour filled the room. Joints whirred. False fibre-bundle muscles purred.
'Aquillon. I knew you would c-'
'Be silent, traitorous whore. The Word Bearers are gone, and you will answer to the authority of the Emperor. Order your maids to flee, or they will suffer alongside you.'
Cyrene inclined her head in a slight nod. The two older women fled the room barely short of a run.
'Brother...' began Kalhin, turning to the secondary chamber and the open door leading into it. Another figure had appeared there, doubtless hiding in wait.
'The Word Bearers,' it said, 'are not all gone.'
'You have no place here, tech-adept,' Aquillon gestured with the point of his sword.
'Correct.' Xi-Nu 73 applied an exact amount of pressure on the trigger of the signum control in his left hand, and a massive figure made of gears and armour plating moved into view behind him. It took up the entire door arch as it gave a mechanical growl of warning. Xi-Nu 73 steeled himself to finish speaking. 'I have no place here. But he does.'
The robot's arms, both mounted with heavy bolter cannons, were preloaded and cycled live - they'd been powered up for hours, ready for this worst of possible moments. Cyrene hurled herself off the bed, seeking all the distance she could put between herself and Aquillon.
'For the Legion.' The voice was like steel bars tumbling over rock.
The Custodes were already moving, their halberds spinning, when Incarnadine opened up at them with a horrendous storm of fire.
ARGEL TAL SPRINTED up the gunship's ramp, his boots clanging all the way into the troop bay. He was the last aboard. The vox was a hive of conflicting voices as the Gal Vorbak snapped at him to hurry. Other Thunderhawks, proud in the Legion's grey, were already lifting off.
'Take off,' he ordered the pilot over the vox, unashamed by the threat of panic in his voice. 'Get us back to the ship.'
Rising Sun shivered as its claws left the parched soil.
Argel Tal switched vox-channels. 'Jesmetine. General, are you there?'
Distortion.
'Answer me, Arric.'
'Lord.' The general was breathless. 'Lord, they are loose.'
'We just received the warning. Tell me exactly what has happened.'
'They landed. The Custodes landed. They stormed the monastic deck soon after. Something has enraged them. They must have discovered the truth, though I've no idea how. All Euchar forces there are out of contact or already confirmed dead. One of them, one of them, is holding the corridor leading to Cyrene's chamber. Blood of the gods, Argel Tal... he has a barricade made from the bodies of my men. Every charge sees more cut down. We cannot overwhelm one of them, let alone four.'
The Word Bearer felt the gunship lurch beneath his feet. 'We have started primus burn, and are en route. What of Xi-Nu 73?' Across the vox, he could hear the snap-crack of lasguns barking their payloads. More Euchar engaging in futility.
'No word,' the elder general replied. 'Not a damn word. Where the hell are you?'
'We are on our way.' Raum? he quested.
Weak. The link was sluggish and feeble. Slumber.
The gunship climbed, its engines exhaling smoke and flame as it left the killing fields far below.
SYTHRAN FOUGHT AS he always fought: in the perfection of silence and solitude. Everything was in motion to an exacting standard - each twist of the spear haft brought the blade up to block las-fire or down to cut flesh, while each weave and duck was performed with the necessary vigour to keep him unwounded, but never left him overbalanced or needing to reposition himself. His footwork was stoic and rigid only long enough to kill the nearest soldier, before blending back into the dance of movement.
They fell back again. No, they fled.
Behind his faceplate, Sythran smiled. The bolter on his spear juddered with its release, punching explosive shells into the spines of all who were cowardly enough to turn their backs on him. The rhythmic pound of detonation after detonation made an abattoir of the hallway. Sythran went prone behind a mound of the dead, spinning his spear to hold the blade end. A clunk, a click, and the weapon was reloaded. Sythran rose again, already cutting the air with grand sweeps, batting aside the streaking laser fire.
'Syth,' crackled Aquillon's voice. 'We move.'
Sythran returned an acknowledgement blip by blinking at the affirmation rune on his retinal display. More Euchar, so very proud in their dull orange fatigues, came charging down the corridor. Sythran leapt his cadaver barricade and met them head on. They fell in pieces, and beyond a las-burn along his shoulder guard |
k, and the weapon was reloaded. Sythran rose again, already cutting the air with grand sweeps, batting aside the streaking laser fire.
'Syth,' crackled Aquillon's voice. 'We move.'
Sythran returned an acknowledgement blip by blinking at the affirmation rune on his retinal display. More Euchar, so very proud in their dull orange fatigues, came charging down the corridor. Sythran leapt his cadaver barricade and met them head on. They fell in pieces, and beyond a las-burn along his shoulder guard, the blood on his blade was the only evidence he'd even been fighting. The corridor was clear for now, populated by dead fools who'd believed they could bayonet him where their fellows had failed. Sythran looked over his shoulder in time to see his brothers emerge from the witch's cell. But only two. Nirallus and Aquillon, their armour pitted and cracked by incendiary fire.
Perhaps they detected his questioning glance without seeing his face, for Aquillon said 'Kalhin is dead. We must hurry.'
Well did he mark the blood shining on Aquillon's sword point.
XI-NU 73 SIGHED. It vocalised from his rebreather mask as an insect's buzzing. The sensory inhibitors lining his nerves like insulating cable around wire were doing all they could, but they failed to entirely mute the pain of shutting down. Shutting down? Dying. In his final mortal moments, he couldn't resist the biological descriptor. Such resonance. Dying... Death... So dramatic.
He laughed, and made more static-laden buzzing. It became a cough that tasted of spoiled oil.
With his one remaining hand, the adept started the laborious task of dragging himself across the floor. A potential subroutine to this task presented itself as he moved. Could he not stop halfway and examine the corpse of the human female?
A cost/benefit analysis flickered in his thought-core. Yes. He could. But he would not. The subroutine was discarded. His hand clawed at the smooth deck, and he dragged himself another half-metre with the squeal of his metal body along the floor. All the while, functionality statistics formed charts behind his eyes. He realised there was a chance, though small, that he would terminate before he reached his objective. It spurred him on, while the bionic nodules attached to his few remaining mortal organs stimulated the fading flesh with jolts of electrical energy and injections of emergency chemicals.
The tech-adept was blind by the time he reached his destination. His visual receptors had failed, as blank as a monitor with no power. He felt his hand clank against his intended target, and used the motionless bulk to pull himself closer. The fallen robot was a toppled statue, a fallen avatar of the Machine-God, and Xi-Nu 73 embraced it as one would a beloved son.
'There,' he murmured, barely hearing his voice as his aural receptors failed next. 'Duty done. Honoured. Name inscribed. In. Archive of. Visionary. Merit.' His throat vocaliser failed at the last word, leaving him mute for the remainder of his existence.
Xi-Nu 73 expired twenty-three seconds later as his augmetic organs powered down without hope of restarting. He would have taken no pleasure at all in the irony that his withered organs of meat strove on for half a minute more, still trying to feed life through a body that couldn't process it.
THE CHAMBER REMAINED still and quiet for only a short while. Booted footfalls soon drummed down the hallway, heralding the arrival of more inhumans.
The figure in crimson armour stood in the doorway, framed against the bloodstained wall behind. He waited there without moving, unable to accept what lay before his eyes.
'Let me through,' said Xaphen.
Argel Tal stopped him with a glare, and went inside himself.
Xi-Nu 73 lay in embryonic repose, curled foetally beside Incarnadine's cracked and broken shell. The robot was in complete ruin, its armour riven into a hundred chopped canyons inflicted by hacking blades. The war machine's banner-cloak and oath scrolls were likewise ravaged, reduced to shredded rags. The walls and floor had fared no better. Holes showed through the sides of the armoured chamber into adjacent rooms, and where the walls still stood whole, they were cratered by punishing bolter fire.
Argel Tal noted all of these details in the time it took to blink, and paid no heed thereafter. He knelt by Cyrene's slack form. Blood deepened the red of her gown - the same crimson as his own armour - and painted the floor beneath her. Liquid red flecked her neck and hair. The wound was a blatant one: a great split in her chest where the sword-tip had rammed into her. One blow, a heart strike, had been enough to pierce her precious mortality.
Blood. The presence was still thick and slow, but Argel Tal's despondent anger was rousing the daemon to wakefulness. Blood soon. Hunt.
The change was taking hold again. The daemon sensed battle, and the flesh they shared began to warp in reaction. Argel Tal breathed a bestial rumble, but the sound died in his throat when Cyrene shuddered.
She lived. How had he not seen? The faintest, barest rise of her chest betrayed the life that still beat beneath.
'Cyrene,' he growled, as much Raum now as Argel Tal.
'This...' Her voice was a child's whisper, so breathless that it barely made a sound. 'This was my nightmare.' Blind eyes found his with unwavering ease. 'To be in the dark. To hear a monster breathe.'
Claws closed around her frail form with possessive, protective strength, but the damage had long since been done. Her blood stung his fingers where it dripped onto them.
'What have they done to you?' Cyrene asked with a smile.
She died in his arms before he could answer.
HE HEARD THE voices, but had no reason to pay heed to them. The Other, yes, he heeded such chattering. The bleating of humanity: fleshy tongues flopping in moist mouths, and the gusting of lung-breath over meat to make a sound in the throat. Yes, the Other listened to the voices and replied in kind.
Raum did not. He barked a word of hate, drawn from the Old Tongue, hoping it would silence their nasal noises. It did not. Hngh. Ignore them. Yes.
He had sensed the need for the blood-hunt, and risen to the fore in a rush of release. The Other's body - no, the body they shared - assumed the hunting skin with ease now.
He ran, aching with need, pained by the pursuit of prey without catching it. Humans in his way were dashed aside. Raum did not look back. He smelled them die, scenting their lifeblood and brainmeat spilling out onto walls and floors.
Frail things.
You are killing the crew.
The Other was returning? This was good. They were stronger together. The Other's silence had been a cause for fear. As he returned, Raum felt his instincts shifting, adapting, made sharper by reason and the concept of past and future. Intellect, not mere cunning. Sentience. Better. He charged down the corridor, roaring at the humans to frighten them aside. As he passed, he did not slay them.
They are allies.
They slowed the hunt. He felt an itching reluctance to confess to his weakness of reason and forethought. We will kill no more. We are whole.
I... I am back.
Argel Tal drew in a breath, tasting the ship's recycled air with its stale-skin tang. Like a thread to be pulled loose, he scented something snagging at the edge of his perception. His friend. Aquillon. That ozone smell of charged weapons. The oils used to maintain the golden armour.
He ran on through the hallways, moving past more corpses, ended by blades rather than claws. De Profundis was packed with the dead, with slain Euchar lining the corridors.
You were gone too long. The humans bleat and snort at us.
The vox. Argel Tal blinked at the flashing runes. 'I am here.'
'Where?' Xaphen sounded as furious as Argel Tal felt. 'The Emperor's bastard sons have decimated half the Euchar on board. Where are you?'
'I... I lost control. I have Aquillon's scent now. I... Thirteenth concourse, at the port hangar deck.' Argel Tal stormed through the great doors onto the gunship bay.
The Rising Sun's aft thrusters flared before him, as it roared its way out through the containment field and into the void beyond.
Argel Tal's scream echoed around the hangar.
'Brother?' Xaphen was shouting. 'Brother?'
They run to hide. The prey goes to ground.
'They flee us,' Argel Tal raved across the general channel. 'They're running to the planet. Baloc! Track the Rising Sun. All batteries, track that ship and fire at will.'
'No!' Xaphen called. 'Erebus wants them alive!'
'I do not care what Erebus wants. Send them to the ground in flames.'
DE PROFUNDIS CAME about in a ponderous arc. Along with most of the Astartes Legion fleet, it had suffered hard in the void battle, and was loath to respond to orders now. Signals and firing solutions flew between all nearby Word Bearers vessels, and seven ships let loose with their broadsides, spilling their immensely destructive firepower into space in the hopes of hitting the tiny gunship.
Less than a minute after it had blasted its way from De Profundis's hangar bay, the Rising Sun cut through the atmosphere of Isstvan V, its hull aflame and its heat shields glowing molten orange with the stress of a spiralling, rudderless atmospheric re-entry.
The capital ship Dirge Eterna claimed the kill shot.
Argel Tal listened to the scramble of conflicting voices over the vox, and the fleetmaster's description of the Thunderhawk falling in an uncontrolled descent, but not destroyed outright. There would come a time to dispute the Dirge Eterna's attempt for glory, but that time was not now.
'Gal Vorbak to the assault deck,' he ordered. 'Ready a drop-pod.'
THE GUNSHIP LAY on its side, the very picture of twisted, miserable metal.
Red shards of hull were scattered across the surrounding terrain, while one engine still valiantly coughed, wheezing smoke too oily and black to be healthy thruster emission. For almost a hundred metres behind, a furrow was carved into the soil where the |
There would come a time to dispute the Dirge Eterna's attempt for glory, but that time was not now.
'Gal Vorbak to the assault deck,' he ordered. 'Ready a drop-pod.'
THE GUNSHIP LAY on its side, the very picture of twisted, miserable metal.
Red shards of hull were scattered across the surrounding terrain, while one engine still valiantly coughed, wheezing smoke too oily and black to be healthy thruster emission. For almost a hundred metres behind, a furrow was carved into the soil where the Thunderhawk had come down and slid, shuddering, along the ground before ploughing headfirst into the ruins of a city wall. This eroded stone stood as warden around a long-forgotten city, home of a long-dead culture. Chunks of masonry broke off as the gunship smashed to a halt, and old stone rained onto the mangled hull plating, punctuating the abuse with a final insult.
The sky lightened over the wreckage as sunrise came to Isstvan V. An unremarkable star winked over the horizon, more white than yellow, too distant to offer much warmth. On the other side of the continent, a great funeral pyre still burned.
HE BREATHED THE cold dawn air through open jaws, tasting burning oil on the wind. His brothers, his crimson kin, hunted around and through the gunship's wreckage, seeking any spoor. Behind them, their drop-pod still hissed and creaked as the metal strained in the aftermath of plummeting through the atmosphere.
'They have not been down long enough to hide.' Xaphen spoke the words as an assured threat. At his side, Malnor was a twitching, ragged creature that drooled venom. Torgal climbed the gunship like something grotesquely simian, leaping and hooking into the hull with his bone-scythes to haul himself upward. His blinded face jerked to the side as he gave canine snuffs. Argel Tal stalked around the gunship's base, his claws folding closed into knuckly fists, then opening again into raptor talons. Like a desert jackal pack, the eleven remaining Gal Vorbak swarmed the downed Thunderhawk, sniffing out their prey. They did not need to hunt for long.
'So, at last, comes the Crimson Lord.' Aquillon's voice was biting in its insincerity. 'Revealing his true self to those he has betrayed.'
The Custodes walked from the shadow of a broken wing, their weapons held in loose hands. Each of them exuded rigid confidence. Their gait was assured, their shoulders back, their armour damaged and dented, but ostensibly whole.
The Gal Vorbak closed in. At the centre of the crimson circle, the three golden warriors went back to back. They offered the Word Bearers nothing but breastplates emblazoned with the Imperial eagle, and blades that would only ever rise in the Emperor's service. Of the Astartes Legions, only one had ever been honoured enough to engrave the aquila upon their armour - the once-noble Emperor's Children, now a core part of the Warmaster's rebellion. But these were Imperial Custodians, the praetorians of the Master of Mankind, and kept their mandate far above such concerns. The Custodes wore the aquila more often than the primarchs themselves. Each eagle symbol shone on their chests in solid silver, clutching lightning bolts in their claws. Nowhere else in the Imperium were the two symbols of the Emperor's ascension twinned like this: forged into the armour of his chosen guardians.
The hunters drew even closer. At their vanguard, Argel Tal spared a brief moment's concern for the fact the Custodes had not fired upon them. Perhaps they lacked ammunition after the battle aboard the ship. Perhaps they wished to end this cleanly, with blades rather than bolters.
'You killed Cyrene,' he said, the words thickened by spite and the acidic bile stringing between his jaws.
'I executed a traitor who had borne witness to a Legion's sins.' Aquillon aimed at his sword at Argel Tal's warped visage. 'In the name of the Emperor, what are you? You seem more nightmare than man.'
'We are the truth,' Xaphen barked at the trapped Custodes. 'We are the Gal Vorbak, the chosen of the gods.' All the while, the Word Bearers stalked closer. A noose was closing around the Custodians.
'Look upon yourselves,' Aquillon said in disbelief. 'You have cast aside the Emperor's vision of perfection. You have abandoned everything it meant to be human.'
'We were never human!' Hissing spit sprayed from Argel Tal's jaws as he roared the words. 'We. Were. Never. Human. We were taken from our families to fight the Forever War in the name of a thousand lies. Do you believe this truth is easy to bear? Look at us. Look at us! Humanity will embrace the gods, or humanity will embrace oblivion. We have seen the Imperium burn. We have seen the species brought to extinction. We have seen it happen, as it happened before. The cycle of life in a galaxy owned by laughing, thirsting gods.'
Aquillon's voice held nothing but kindness, and that made it all the crueller. 'My friend, my brother, you have been deceived. The Emperor-'
'The Emperor knows far more than he has ever revealed to you,' Xaphen cut in. 'The Emperor knows the Primordial Truth. He has challenged the gods and damned humanity with his hubris. Only through allegiance...'
'...through worship...' said Malnor.
'...through faith...' said Torgal.
'...will mankind endure the endless wars against the tides of blood that will drown our galaxy.'
Aquillon turned to each of the Word Bearers as they spoke their piece of the sermon. He looked back to Argel Tal at its conclusion.
'Brother,' he said again. 'You have been most blackly deceived.'
'You. Killed. Cyrene.'
'And you count this as some unfathomable betrayal?' Aquillon's laughter was rich and ripe, and to hear it made Argel Tal's teeth grind. 'You, who stand out of the Emperor's light, malformed into a monster. You, who binds tortured souls into the walls of your ship with forbidden lore, letting them suck in all psychic sound for forty years? You, accuse me of betrayal?'
Even through the daemon's rage fogging his thoughts, even through his grief-born anger at Cyrene's murder, his brother's words struck with enough force to wound. Argel Tal had walked through that chamber himself many times, and no matter how ardently he hated the necessity of it, he had still allowed its existence.
Images assailed him with guilty stabs, each memory knifing into him before he could cast it aside. Xaphen, chanting from the Book of Lorgar, as an astropath shrieked before him. She was being disembowelled, and not quickly, her pain serving as a focus while she was chained to the chamber walls. Colchisian symbols that had been tattooed onto her flesh an hour before still bled freely. The vitae engines, maintained by an Apothecary of the Legion, would keep her alive for many months to come. The daemon Xaphen summoned within her would enslave her mind to that most simple of tasks: to draw in and digest any psychic communication from nearby minds.
No word would ever reach Terra, but for the falsified reports the Word Bearers made themselves. Compliances achieved. The perfect Legion. Lorgar, the Seventeenth Son, as loyal as any father could hope.
'I accuse you,' Xaphen laughed himself, 'of being a fool. Your precious astropath has been wailing your suspicions right into the mouths of listening daemons for four decades. Every time you huddled around him and heard the Emperor's words, you were hearing nothing more than the lies I whispered into a daemon's ears.'
Argel Tal did not add to Xaphen's relish. The chamber was no source of sinister pride for him. He had condemned not one woman to die in agony there, but sixty-one souls in all. The strain of possession wore the astropaths down with disgusting rapidity. Their degradation was quick, but never merciful. Stinking black cancers ate through their bodies after only a few months. Most faded fast, their minds eroded by the warp's winds like a cliff suffering in an endless storm. Few ever lasted a year - soon enough, it was always time to bind another helpless, screaming astropath into the life support engines, and inflict horrors upon their flesh with ritual blades and burning brands.
He considered it part of his penance to watch each binding. Each time, he would wait for the moment when the captive's eyes would glaze, not in death, but in surrender. Each time he would watch for that precious second when the daemon's consciousness devoured its way to the fore of the victim's mind. The screaming would cease. Silence would resume, blessed in the wake of such sounds.
Nineteen had volunteered. Nineteen members of the fleet's astropathic choir, nourished by years of Xaphen's sermons, had volunteered for the honour of keeping the Legion's greatest secrets. Curiously, these burned out the fastest, succumbing to biological erosion before those who were unwillingly bound. It seemed suffering was a source of strength in the ritual - Xaphen had noted it, and informed Erebus. He received thanks in return, and the rite was amended in the Book of Lorgar. Xaphen had blazed with pride for weeks afterward.
The Custodes had found the chamber at the heart of the monastic deck, but someone, somewhere, somehow, had found it first. Aquillon had been led there. Of that, Argel Tal was certain. He vowed in silence then. Whoever that treasonous soul might be, he would pull it apart and feast upon its flesh.
'We were never human.' He said the words quietly, not even realising he spoke them aloud. Raum seized hold in the moment of melancholic anger, and the body they shared broke forward into a run.
'For the Emperor!' Aquillon cried.
The Gal Vorbak answered with the laughter of daemons.
IN THE YEARS to come, Argel Tal recalled precious little of the battle. Sometimes he attributed this to Raum's presence in ascendancy, sometimes he attributed it to his own guilt seeking to purge the night from his mind. Whatever the truth, any reminiscence left him hollow and worn, at the mercy of fragmented images and half-remembered sounds.
It was like thi |
he body they shared broke forward into a run.
'For the Emperor!' Aquillon cried.
The Gal Vorbak answered with the laughter of daemons.
IN THE YEARS to come, Argel Tal recalled precious little of the battle. Sometimes he attributed this to Raum's presence in ascendancy, sometimes he attributed it to his own guilt seeking to purge the night from his mind. Whatever the truth, any reminiscence left him hollow and worn, at the mercy of fragmented images and half-remembered sounds.
It was like thinking back to the moments of earliest childhood, before genetics had shaped his mind with an eidetic memory, when it was a struggle to fill a forgotten time with all five senses and make them feel real.
We were never human. He never forgot those words, nor how they were both true and false, all at once.
Malnor.
Malnor sometimes rose from the churning mess and resolved with clarity. When had Malnor died? How long had they been fighting? He wasn't sure. Nirallus's blade had hewn the Gal Vorbak's head clean from his shoulders, but Malnor did not fall. A wraithly image of his helm remained, snarling and shouting in silence. Nirallus, a blade master beyond anything Argel Tal had ever seen, had been forced to carve Malnor to pieces to put the warrior down for good.
The fight was too frantic and frenetic for sanity to have any place in its motions. Thought and formality vanished, replaced by training and instinct. A blur of blades and claws. The crack of ceramite. The grunts of pain. The smells of spit, of acid, of sweat, of parchment, of bone, of panic, of confidence, of smoky bolter muzzles, of charged blades, of tear-salt, of breath, of blood, and blood, and blood.
And then, the first kill.
Nirallus. The blade master. He killed Malnor, and that left him vulnerable. Torgal and Sicar had leapt onto the Custodian's back. Chop, chop, chop went the hacking blades, biting into armour joints at the back of the neck and the base of the spine. A life for a life.
Nirallus fell. Torgal leaped away, to safety. Sicar stayed to feed, and earned death himself. Aquillon. The Occuli Imperator. He avenged his brother's slaughter by ending Sicar a heartbeat later with clean, bright sweeps of his sword.
Argel Tal was on him in that moment. He remembered the leap, and the soreness in his throat as he roared once more. He remembered the juicy, meaty crunch as the Custodian's head ripped free of its neck. Like a flopping serpent, Aquillon's spine hung down from the dripping helm. A dizzying stench of blood; a maddened laugh that may or may not have been Argel Tal at all. He never knew for certain.
Six of the Gal Vorbak still drew breath. Six possessed warriors gave their desert dog cackles and ran for the last Custodes with daemonic vigour burning in their limbs.
And this was the last moment Argel Tal could ever recall, until the air was cold again and it was all over. Sythran pulled his helm free, and faced them bareheaded. Instead of waiting with his halberd in hand, he hurled it as a spear.
The Gal Vorbak scattered, but it still struck home. One of them took the blade in the chest with a crack like a falling tree. The spear pounded through ceramite, bone and meat with enough force to burst from the Word Bearer's back. The Astartes flipped over with the impact, his chest cavity stripped hollow, his lungs and two hearts blasted out of him, reduced to pulped meat on the ground.
Sythran had smiled as the other five descended upon him. He considered his vow of silence complete given the circumstances, and he laughed at the warrior he'd killed.
'I always hated you, Xaphen.'
VI
Valediction
It is so very like you, to think of one soul's safety while an entire world burns beneath your feet. I reassured you that you were wrong to worry; that all would be well, as it always is.
Now the sirens wail and the corridors echo with gunshots. The precaution you ordered as a comfort is now a last hope of defence, and I am not a fool - I know they will not be able to protect me against what is coming.
I write these words as quickly as I can, hearing the crashing of blades getting closer with each moment. I could try to hide, but I won't. The answer is obvious: they will find me no matter where I am, and I cannot outrun such enemies. They will find me if I cower in the cargo holds, or sit comfortably in my own chamber. The secrets I hold mean they have no choice but to come for me, and though you have left these breathless guardians, I am under no illusions. They will come and they will find me. When I die, I will die without betraying my Legion. I promise you that.
My life has been long, and I have no regrets. Few can say such a thing, and even fewer can do so with sincerity. Even you cannot make that claim, Argel Tal.
When you read these words, please know I wish you all the fortune in the world. I have heard the way you speak of Calth and the wars to come, and I trust in your vision and passion for the righteous crusade our Legion will lead. You will bring enlightenment to the galaxy. I have faith in that, never doubting it for a single moment.
Stand with Xaphen, as he stands by you. You are the sons of a demigod, and the chosen avatars of the true deities. No one can take that from you.
I hear blades against my door please remember th
EPILOGUE
The Crimson Lord
CALTH.
A bountiful, beautiful world, a world under the aegis of the XIII Legion, as Khur had once been claimed by the XVII.
Calth. A name on the lips of every Word Bearer. Calth, where Guilliman's Legion gathered for war.
Lorgar's Legion sailed almost in its entirety. Enough warships to blockade the beloved kingdom of Ultramar, and burn the face of every world black. Enough warriors to drive the Ultramarines to their knees. Isstvan had been forced into history at the point of a traitor's sword. Soon there would come another massacre to fit into Imperial archives alongside it.
Calth.
Argel Tal remained alone for now. He had no patience for the cries of praise his brethren kept offering in his presence. He had no desire for their regard or worship.
Instead, he sealed himself away from his own Legion, kept company only by the regrets he'd accrued over half a century of treachery.
Across his lap lay a golden blade of exquisite manufacture, etched and engraved for the hand of a master swordsman, gene-coded to activate only for the man it was made for. It was the weapon of one he had called brother, taken from Aquillon's body in the light of an unforgettable sunrise.
In his hands was a digital data-slate, sized for human fingers. A cursor blinked halfway down the screen, waiting for words that would never be entered. An unfinished sentence ended the text. Argel Tal had read it more times than he cared to recall, each time hoping that he'd see the intent, the meaning, that never made it onto the page.
The ship shivered as it sailed through the underworld of human myth. They would reach Calth soon.
Aquillon. Xaphen. His brothers were gone.
Argel Tal put the sword aside, and left the data-slate on the modest table by his pallet. He rose to his feet, knowing it would soon be time to end this isolation. The Legion called. The Legion needed him. The primarch himself had asked if he would to stand with Kor Phaeron, leading the assault on Calth.
He would obey, even if he stood alone.
My brothers are dead.
No, the voice rose from within. I am your brother.
PART ONE
THE UPPLANDER
'If I am guilty of anything, it is the simple pursuit of knowledge.'
- The Primarch Magnus, at Nikaea
'Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark! what discord follows; each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should become the lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather right and wrong
(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing, includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite.
And appetite, a universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce a universal prey, and last eat up himself.'
- attributed to the dramaturge Shakespire (fl. M2), cited in the Prophecy of Amon of the Thousand Sons (chp III verse 230)
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
- unattributable (circa M2)
ONE
At the Turning of Spring
DEATH HAD THEM surrounded.
It had come to cut threads, and today it wore four faces.
A burning death for those too hurt or too afraid to flee the settlement as the firestorm swept through it. A freezing death for those who ran away up the scarp to escape the murder-make. Even in spring, the wind came in off the ice flats with a death-edge that sucked an exposed man's life-heat out through his lungs, and rotted his hands and feet into black twigs, and left him as a stiff, stone-hard bundle covered in rime.
For others, a drowning death, if they attempted to flee across the blue-ice around the spit. Spring's touch was already working the sea ice loose against the shore, like a tooth in a gum. The ice would no longer take a man's weight, not reliably. If the ice broke under you, down you went: fast and straight if you plunged through, slow and screaming if an ice plate tipped and slid you in. Either way, the water was oil black, and so cold it would freeze the thoughts in your brain before your lungs were even empty.
For the rest, for those who had remained to fight, a bloody death, the death of the murder-make. This was the death that knocked you down hard onto the ice with an axe or a maul, so you felt nothing except the cold burn of the ice, and the hot burn of your own blood, and the pain-scream of your crippling wound. This was the death that stood over you and knocked you again, and again, and as many times as necessary until you would not rise again, or until you were so |
your lungs were even empty.
For the rest, for those who had remained to fight, a bloody death, the death of the murder-make. This was the death that knocked you down hard onto the ice with an axe or a maul, so you felt nothing except the cold burn of the ice, and the hot burn of your own blood, and the pain-scream of your crippling wound. This was the death that stood over you and knocked you again, and again, and as many times as necessary until you would not rise again, or until you were so disfigured that death could no longer bear to look at you, and moved off in disgust to find another soul to knock.
Any of those four faces would cut your thread as soon as look at you. And those were the faces the Balt were wearing.
The Balt. The Balt had brought the murder-make down on the Ascommani aett. Twenty boat. It was early in the season for a raid. A man had to be desperate to go out making red snow when he could wait for the first grasses and milder weather.
Twenty boat, and all of them still rigged for ice-running under their sea-sails.
If there had been time, the Ascomani might have wondered why their doom had come so early. Ironland, where the Balt had settled, had persisted twenty great years, but many now said its roots were soft. Many now said it would only be one more summer, two at the most, before the ocean sucked it down again into the world-forge.
Ascomani land ran from the spithead to the ice shelf, and was poor for farming and lacked natural defences, but it was yet just one great year old, and the dowsers had proclaimed it strong land, with many years left in it.
So land-thirst. Perhaps it was that.
Fith knew better. Nothing got the murder-urge pumping like fear, and nothing stoked up fear like a bad omen. A broom star. A day star. Colour in the ice. Bloom in the sea. Smoke out on the ice shelf where no settlement was. Some dead thing washed up that should not be. Something born to livestock or to a woman that should not be. Something with birth defects.
Sometimes a bad dream would be enough to do it, a bad dream that told you the tribe down the coast or around the headland was maleficarum. You let land-thirst be your excuse as you reached for your shirt and your blade, but you made sure the gothi marked your face in soot-glue with good cast-out marks like the sun-disk and the warding eye before you opened out your sails.
And there had been a bad omen, all right. Fith had seen it.
Fith had seen the make coming too. He'd seen the sails approaching along the in-shore early enough to blow the scream-horn, but too late for it to do any good. He had merely enabled his kinfolk to die awake.
The Balt main force had come up around the spit in their wyrmboats in the sightless pre-dawn grey, sailing black sails straight out of the water and onto the shore-ice on their rigs, translating from water-craft to ice-craft with barely a jolt. Their skirmishers had put ashore on the far side of the headland, and come romping in over the high back of the snow dunes to fall on the Ascommani settlement from the hind side.
After that, it had been fire and knocking. The Balt were mongrel-big, men with long faces and beards waxed into sun rays under their spectacle-face helms. They were horribly able with axe and maul, and the occasional high-status sword that some carried.
But they brought with them none of the screaming vigour of a normal Balt raid or murder-make. They were silent, terrified of what they had come to kill, terrified of its sky magic. They were silent and grim, and set to murder everything to wipe the magic away. Men, women, the young, livestock, nothing was spared a knock. There was not a shred of mercy. There was not a moment's thought to claim prisoners or take slaves. Ascommani girls were famously fine-looking, and there were plenty of healthy girl-children too, who would make valuable breeding slaves in time, but the Balt had put away all appetites except for a fierce desire to be cleansed of fear.
The sound of an axe knocking-in is a wet smack of slicing meat and shattering bone, like sap-wood being cut. A maul makes a fat, bruising sound like a mattock driving pegs into marsh loam or wet ice. Worse than both are the after-sounds. The screaming of the agonised, the ruined and the dying. The begging shrieks of the hurt and maimed. The hacking impacts of death knocking until the fallen stop being alive, or stop trying to rise, or stop screaming, or stop being in once piece.
Fith had just enough time to get his shirt on and loft his axe. Several other hersirs fell to arms with him, and they met the first skirmishers coming in through the walls and window-slits of the settlement head on. The panic was up already. It was blind blundering in the dark, a reek of urine, the first noseful of smoke.
Fith's axe was balanced for a single hand. It was a piece of proper craft, with a high-carbon head that weighed as much as a decent newborn boy. From the toe of the blade to the heel of the beard, it had a smile on it wider than a man's hand-span, and it had kissed a whetstone just the night before.
The axe is a simple machine, a lever that multiplies the force from your arm into the force delivered by the blade. The rudiments apply whether you're splitting wood or men.
Fith's axe was a bone-cutter, a shield-breaker, a helm-cleaver, a death-edge, a cutter of threads. He was a hersir of the Ascommani aett, and he knew how to stand his ground.
It was a throttle-fight in the settlement itself. Fith knocked two Balts back out of the tent wall, but the tight confines were choking his swing. He knew he needed to get out. He yelled to the hersirs with him and they pulled back.
They got out of the tents into the settlement yard, wrapped in swirling black smoke, and went eye to eye with the Balts in their spectacle-helms. It was mayhem. A free-for-all. Blades swung like windmills in a storm.
Fenk went down as a Balt axe split his left calf lengthwise. He bawled in rage as his leg gave out, useless. Seconds later, a maul knocked his head sidelong, snapping his neck and his thread. He flopped down on the earth, his shattered skull-bag leaking blood.
Fith drove off a Balt with a mattock, scared him back with the whistling circles of his swinging axe.
Ghejj tried to cover Fith's flank, using the basics of shield-wall tactics. But Ghejj had not had time to collect a decent shield from the stack, just a tattered practice square from the training field. A Balt spear punctured him right through, and tore him open so thoroughly, his guts spilled out onto the snow like ropes of sausage. Ghejj tried to catch them, as though he could gather them up and put them back inside himself and everything would be all right again. They steamed in the spring air. He squealed in dismayed pain. He couldn't help himself. He knew he was ruined unto death.
He looked at Fith as he squealed again. It wasn't the pain. He was so angry that he was irreparably dead.
Fith put mercy into his stroke.
FITH TURNED AWAY from his last picture of Ghejj and saw that there were fingers scattered on the snow, on the snow that had been churned up by scrambling and sliding feet, along with blood by the bowl-full. They were the fingers of women and children, from hands held up to protect themselves. Defensive wounds.
There on the snow, a complete hand, the tiny hand of a child, perfect and whole. Fith recognised the mark on the ring. He knew the child the hand had once belonged to. He knew the father the child had once belonged to.
Fith felt the red smoke blow up in his head.
A Balt came at him, silent and intent. Fith flexed the lever of his axe, hooked it in, and made a ravine of the Balt's face.
Four hersirs left. Fith, Guthox, Lern and Brom. No sign of the aett-chief. The chief was probably dead and face down in the red snow with his huscarls.
Fith could smell blood. It was overpoweringly strong, a hot copper reek spicing the freezing dawn air. He could smell Ghejj's insides too. He could smell the inner parts of him, the ruptured stomach, the yellow fat of his belly meat, the heat of his life.
Fith knew it was time to go.
The Upplander was in the furthest shelter. Even the Ascommani knew to keep him away from people.
The Upplander was propped up against cushions.
'Listen to me,' Fith hissed. 'Do you understand me?'
'I understand you. My translator is working,' the Upplander replied, looking pale.
'The Balt are here. Twenty boat. They will knock you dead. Tell me, do you want the mercy of my axe now?'
'No, I want to live.'
'Then can you walk?'
'Perhaps,' the Upplander replied. 'Just don't leave me here. I am afraid of wolves.'
THERE ARE NO wolves on Fenris.
When the Upplander had been told this, years before, he'd laughed.
He had heard it from a venerated scholar and conservator, later celebrated iterator, called Kyril Sindermann. The Upplander, not long graduated with distinction from the Universitariate of Sardis, had won a coveted place on an eight-month field mission to audit and preserve some of the arcane datacores of NeoAleksandrya, before sandstorms and scorching radiation squalls erased the precious ruins into the melancholy emptiness of the Nordafrik zone forever. This was many decades before the Upplander decided to go to Fenris, or call himself Ahmad Ibn Rustah. Back then he was twenty-five years old, and known to his friends as Kasper.
Sindermann learned his name early on. Sindermann wasn't the project head. He had been sent in for a three-week consult, but he was not afraid to get his hands dirty or to mix with the junior team members. He had an easy way with people. Names were important.
One evening, the team had fallen, according to their habit, into discussion over supper in the project's base, a modular station overlooking the library ruins.
They were all exhausted. Everyone had been working inadvisably long shifts to get the mission accomplished. No one wanted to see the precious digital memories tha |
en sent in for a three-week consult, but he was not afraid to get his hands dirty or to mix with the junior team members. He had an easy way with people. Names were important.
One evening, the team had fallen, according to their habit, into discussion over supper in the project's base, a modular station overlooking the library ruins.
They were all exhausted. Everyone had been working inadvisably long shifts to get the mission accomplished. No one wanted to see the precious digital memories that lingered in the ruins lost for all time.
So, everybody was sand-burned, and everybody was sleep deprived, and everybody had lost significant body mass to water debt. The nights should have been time for restorative rest, but they had found their dreams populated by the data-ghosts of NeoAleksandrya, talkative phantoms that would not let the living slumber undisturbed. So they stayed up to keep the phantoms out, and the nights became time for tired companionship and reflection as the ablative winds howled in over the radgrave of NeoAleksandrya and assaulted the station's bolted storm shutters.
They talked about everything, just to stay awake. Sindermann, perhaps the greatest polymath the Upplander would ever have the honour of knowing in his long life, had a tireless tongue.
The older team members talked about the various places they had visited in the courses of their careers, and the younger members talked of places they still wanted or hoped to visit. This led, inevitably, to the concoction of an ultimate wish list, a dream itinerary of the places in creation that any scholar, historian or remembrancer would give great wealth or a body part just to glimpse. It was a list of the universe's secret places, its remote wonders, its enigmatic corners, its rumoured sites and mythical locales. Fenris was one such. Ironically, given what the Upplander would witness towards the end of one of his lives, Tizca was another.
Sindermann, though even then a man of great age and experience, had not been to Fenris himself. The number of outsiders who had ever gone to Fenris was alarmingly small. But then, as Sindermann put it, Fenris did not welcome visitors, nor was it a gracious host. Thanks to its extreme conditions, even a well prepared man might be lucky to survive a few hours on its open surface.
'Still,' he had said to them, 'think of all that ice.'
It had sometimes reached forty degrees in the station at night, at least that when the climate control centre packed up. They had all groaned at Sindermann's tormenting words.
Then, apropos of nothing in particular, Sindermann made the remark about the wolves, a remark that had been passed to him down such a long relay of other travellers and historians, its provenance was obscure.
'There are no wolves on Fenris,' he had said.
The Upplander had smiled, expecting some droll witticism to follow. His smile had covered the shiver he had felt.
'Except, of course... for the wolves, ser?' he had replied.
'Exactly, Kasper,' the old man said.
Shortly afterwards, the subject had changed, and the remark had been forgotten.
FITH DIDN'T MUCH want to touch the Upplander, but he wasn't going to walk far without an arm around his ribs. He hoisted the man up, and the Upplander groaned at the jolt.
'What are you doing?' Brom yelled. 'Leave him!'
Fith scowled. Brom knew better than that. It wasn't that Fith wanted to drag the Upplander around, but that was the thing with omens. You didn't invite them into your aett, but once they were in, you couldn't ignore them.
Fith could no more leave the Upplander lying there than the Balt could have refused to set out on the murder-make that midnight.
Lern stepped up and helped Fith handle the injured man. The shelters of the aett were ablaze, and choking the pale dawn sky with fat rivers of black smoke. The Balt hadn't finished cutting threads. Sharp screams of anguish and pain split the air like arrows.
They ran along the edge of the scarp, stumbling with the burden of the injured man. Guthox and Brom followed them, snow-running with wide, splayed steps. Brom had got a spear from somewhere. A gang of Balt took off after them, chasing like hunting dogs across the snow, hunched and loping.
Guthox and Brom turned to meet them. Guthox's axe knocked the first one onto his back, and a jet of blood squirted out in a five-metre arc across the snow. Brom's spear-tip found the cheek of another Balt, and tore it like cloth, digging out teeth that popped free like kernels of corn. Brom clubbed his victim dead with the butt of his spear-shaft as the man fell down holding his face.
The Balt circled and danced away from Brom's jabbing spear. Fith left Lern with the Upplander's weight and turned back. He came past Brom in a screaming charge, and lopped off the top of a Balt's skull with his circling axe. That shook things up. Spear or no spear, the Balt went for them. They tried to use their shields to get the spear out of their faces. One of them immediately took the spear in the breastbone. It made a dry-branch crack as the iron head went in, and the man puked blood. But the spear was wedged, and the Balt's dead weight wrenched it out of Brom's hands. He scrambled back with nothing but a long knife to guard himself.
Guthox used his axe to break a shield, and the arm holding it, then felled the Balt with a neck wound. He turned to fend off a bearded Balt axe with the cheek of his own, but the Balt was big and strong, and drove Guthox onto his heels with a series of relentless knocks.
Fith still had momentum. His charge ran down two more Balt, one of which he left bleeding to death, the other dazed, and he turned in time to rescue Guthox by burying the toe-point of his axe through the spine of the big Balt hacking at him.
Fith jerked the axe out with a snarl, and the Balt collapsed on his face. Brom was finishing another with angry, repeated stabs. The Balt had wounded Brom on his first pass, but had then made the mistake of getting too close to the hersir's long knife.
They ran back to where Lern was toiling with the Upplander. Brom had recovered his spear, but he was leaving red snow behind him.
The Upplander was panting with effort. Heat was steaming out of his loose, gasping mouth. Under his storm cloak, the Upplander wore garments made from fabrics unfamiliar to Fith or his kinsmen. The sky-fall had hurt the Upplander, broken some bones was Fith's guess, though Fith had never seen an Upplander opened up to know if they worked the same way inside as Ascommani, or Balt, or any other aettkind.
Fith had never seen an Upplander before. He'd never been tied up in an omen this bad. He wondered what had become of the aett's gothi. The gothi was supposed to be wise, and he was supposed to use that wisdom to steer and safeguard the wyrd of the aett.
Fine job he'd done. The gothi had not known what to make of the Upplander when the hersirs had first brought him in from the crash site, and he hadn't known what to do after that, except shake his bone jangles and his rattle full of fish teeth, and beseech the spirits with the same old tired chants, pleading with them to come down from Uppland and take back their lost kinsman.
Fith believed in the spirits. He firmly believed. He believed in Uppland above where the spirits lived, and the Underverse below, where the wights went. They were the only thing a man had to cling to in the changing landscape of the mortal world. But he was also a pragmatist. He knew there were times, especially when a man's thread was pulled so thin it might snap, that you had to make your own wyrd.
Three bow shots away from the aett, the Ascommani kept a basin for their boats. It was a little ice crater open to the sea on the north head, and they had better than ten boat in it. Most were up on blocks, hoisted from the ice, so the men could labour in daylight hours to remove the rigs ready for the spring waters. But one was the aett-chief's boat, ready to run at a moment's nod. It was called 'keeping it nocked'. You nocked the cleft of an arrow against a bowstring ready for tension, ready to fly. The chief's wyrmboat stood on its runners on the hard ice, its sails ready to drop and fill, checked only by the anchor lines.
'Into the boat!' Fith ordered as they scrambled down the slope to the basin edge.
'Which boat?' asked Lern.
'The chief's boat!' Fith snapped.
'But it's the chief's boat...' Guthox said, wary.
'He's not going to be needing it,' said Fith. 'Not as much as we do, anyway.'
Guthox looked at him blankly.
'The chief's sleeping on the red snow, you arsehole,' said Fith. 'Now get in the boat.'
They got into the boat, and laid the Upplander down in the bow. The Balt began to appear at the crest of the slope. The hersirs heard the air-buzz of the first arrows.
Fith dropped the sea sails, and they filled in an instant. The canvas cracked like thunder as it took the world's breath. There was a hard snow-wind that morning, and he'd barely noticed it. The anchor lines creaked and strained as the wyrmboat mithered on the ice, impatient to slip.
'Cut the lines!' Fith yelled out.
Guthox looked at him from the stern, where the wind-pull was chaffing the taut lines against the rail.
'He's really not coming?' he asked.
'Who?'
'The chief. You saw his thread cut?'
'He'd be here if he was coming,' said Fith.
They heard cracking sounds like green wood spitting in a fire. The iron heads of arrows were smacking into the ice around them, drilling up puffs of ice dust or cracking punctures into the blue-black glass of the crust. Two arrows hit the boat. One went into the main mast as deep as the length of a man's forearm.
'Cut the lines!' Fith yelled.
Guthox and Lern cut the lines with their axes. The wyrmboat took off like an escaping animal, its sails bellied out full and as rigid as iron. The lurch shook them on their feet. The bladed runners of the ice rig shrieked as they scratched across the marble ice of the basin.
Le |
, drilling up puffs of ice dust or cracking punctures into the blue-black glass of the crust. Two arrows hit the boat. One went into the main mast as deep as the length of a man's forearm.
'Cut the lines!' Fith yelled.
Guthox and Lern cut the lines with their axes. The wyrmboat took off like an escaping animal, its sails bellied out full and as rigid as iron. The lurch shook them on their feet. The bladed runners of the ice rig shrieked as they scratched across the marble ice of the basin.
Lern took the helm. He was the best steersman of them. He draped his armpit over the tiller, loading it with his weight to drive the blade of the sternpost rudder into the ice, and balanced the tension of the ropes coming from the quarter rudders, one in each fist. Steering a rigger was a battle of muscle and wit. One bad judgement, one over-light feathering of the quarters, one heavy-handed dig of the main blade, and the combination of polished ice and raw wind shear could tumble even the biggest wyrmboat, and knock it into kindling.
They left the basin. They went through the sea-cut in the granite lip that let out onto the open water. But it wasn't water. It was long past the great year's glacial maximum, and time was turning, but this stretch of sea along the shadowed inlet remained the sky's looking glass. In some places it was grey-green like an old mirror, in others blue like uncut sapphire, in others bright and clear like fine crystal, but everywhere it was thick to a depth two or three times the height of a man.
As soon as they were clear of the basin, and the boat's runners were shrieking across the surface of the mirror sea like the baleful voices of the wights of the Underverse, the cold hit them. It was the open cold, the cold of the dull, iron-hard end of winter, the blunt cold of the open ice range. All of them gasped at the shock of it, and immediately laced up their collars or wrapped up scarf bindings to protect their mouths and noses.
Fith looked at the Upplander sprawled in the bow. He was panting from a combination of pain and exertion, and the breath heat was steaming out of him in great spectral clouds that the wind was stripping away.
Fith moved down the vibrating wyrmboat towards him, walking with the practised, rolling gait of an experienced ice-mariner.
'Cover up your mouth!' he shouted.
The Upplander looked up at him blankly.
'Cover up your mouth! Breathe through your nose!'
'What?'
Fith knelt down beside him.
'The heat'll bleed right out of you, with your mouth open like that. Breathe through your nose. Conserve it.'
He opened one of the woven-grass coffers tucked in under the boat's rail, and pulled out a blanket and some furs. They were all stiff with cold, but he shook them out and swaddled the Upplander in them.
'Through your nose,' he reminded. 'Don't you know that? Don't you know the cold?'
'No.'
'Then why the hell would you come to this land, if you didn't know all the ways it would try to kill you?'
THE UPPLANDER HAD no answer. He couldn't summon the effort. Renewed pain was gripping him, and it was extraordinarily comprehensive. It pinned his thoughts, and refused to allow him even a small reserve of mental power to use for other things. He'd never known pain like it, except perhaps once.
He could hear a clavier playing. The keys were ringing out a cheerful music hall melody that he could just pick out above the screaming of the runners and the roaring of the brutish crew.
He could hear a clavier playing, and he knew he ought to know why.
THE BALT CAME after them. Lern shouted out as soon as he spotted them, and pointed astern. Wyrmboats were skating out from around the spithead. They were black-sail boats, rigged for a murder-make by night. The Balt were resolved to see the make through to its bloody end. Fith had hoped the Balt might give up once the main raid on the aett was over.
But no. The Balt had to be terrified to keep up the pursuit. They weren't going to rest until everyone was dead.
What had their gothi told them, Fith wondered? What interpretation had he spouted that night when the broom star had sliced the sky, a ribbon of light that had left an accusatory glowing scar directly over Ascommani territory. How had he explained the land fall, the noise-shock of the star hitting ice?
What had he told his wide-eyed hersirs, his chief, the Balt womenfolk, the children woken up and crying because of the noise?
Fith had seen the Balt gothi once, three great years back, at a time when the Balt and the Ascommani had been on trading terms, when they could visit aett to aett for a barter-make with cargoes of pelts and grass-weave and smoked meat, and exchange them for preserved herbs, lamp-oil, whale-fat candles and ingots of pig iron.
There had been a formal meeting of the chiefs, with an exchange of gifts, a lot of bowing, a lot of long-winded rehearsal of lineage and bloodline from the skjalds, and a lot of blowing of the Balt's bronze horns, which made a sound half like a sea-cave echo and half like a muffled fart.
The Balt gothi had been skinny, 'taller than a warbow and twice as thin' as the saying went, with a heavy jaw like that of a mule-horse or a simpleton. There were so many metal piercings in his lips and nose and ears, he looked as if he had been plagued with boils and cold sores.
He had a wand made of a bear's arm blade, and a silver torc. Someone had braided seabird feathers into his long, lank hair, so that they made a white mantle around his bony shoulders. His voice was thin and reedy.
His name was Hunur.
He spoke sense, though. During the barter-make, Fith had come to the gothi's shelter, joined the listeners sharing the fire, and listened to him talk. The Balt gothi knew how the world worked. He talked plainly about the Verse and the Underverse, as if he had been told their secrets by the wights themselves.
The Ascommani gothi was a crazy brute. He had fits, and he smelled like a sea-cow, both of which factors had probably led to his election as gothi. He was good with stars, Fith had to give him that. It was as if he could hear the noise their rigs made as they skated around the glass of the sky. But the rest of the time he was foul-tempered and raving.
His name was Iolo.
At the barter-make, Iolo and Hunur had squared up to one another, sniffed and growled like rutting bull seals, and then spent the whole time trying to steal one another's secrets.
But it had also been as if they were afraid of one another. It was as if, in trying to steal one another's secrets, they were afraid that they were risking infection.
That was how it went with magic. Magic had an underside. Magic could transform a man's life, but it could corrupt it too, especially if you weren't careful, if you didn't watch it and soothe it and keep it sweet. Magic had a nasty undercurrent that could infect a man if he wasn't paying attention.
Magic could turn nasty. Magic could turn on you, even if you were the most exact and painstaking practitioner or gothi.
The worst magic of all, that was sky magic, and it was sky magic that was riding in the bow of their wyrmboat.
Fith wondered what the Balt gothi had said to his people to get them so fired up.
LERN SWUNG THEM west, down the mirror-throat of the inlet, under the shadows of the spithead cliffs and out onto the ice field, the apron of the great glacier.
Ice was better than water; the same area of sail could invest you with ten times the speed. But the effort was mighty. Fith knew they'd have to change steersman in another hour, or stop to let Lern rest, because the concentration was so intense. Already, Lern's eyes looked drawn, what Fith could see of them over the lip of his collar.
They cut up across a long strayke of ice field the colour of grey fish-scales, and passed through the collar ridges where glacial moraines of broken rock pushed up through the ice of the glass like extrusions of deformed bone.
The Balt boats were steadily falling behind. A good Balt boat was one thing, axe-carved from ocean-wood and whale bones, but a good Ascommani boat was quite another, especially a fine rig built for an aett's chief.
They might live yet.
It was a fragile thought, and Fith hated himself for even thinking it and thus jinxing it. But it was real. They might yet outrun the Balts' murder-make and find sanctuary.
The Hradcana, they were the best hope. The Hradcana were a major power in the west, with several aetts along the jagged backbone of the ice field, less than a day away. More important, a peace-make understanding had endured between the Hradcana and the Ascommani for the lifetimes of the last six chiefs. Most important of all, the Hradcana and the Balt had quarrelled and made red snow on and off for ten generations.
When Guthox saw the first Hradcana sails ahead, Fith's spirit lifted. Some beacon look-out had seen them raking in across the ice field and sent a horn-blast down the chain, and the Hradcana chief had ordered out his wyrmboats to greet and assist the Ascommani visitor.
Then he realised, with a sinking feeling, that the explanation didn't fit the facts.
'We're too far out,' he murmured.
'What?' Brom asked. He was trying to sew his cut up with fishing wire and a bone needle. The work was too fussy for gloves, but the windchill was too severe for bare hands to function with any finesse. He was making a mess of himself.
'We're too far out for any Hradcana lookout to have spotted us yet,' Fith said. 'They're coming out because they knew we were coming.'
'Crap!' Brom snorted.
Fith looked at the sails of the Hradcana boats. Sails were the most distance-visible aspect of a boat, so they were often used to declare intention. A straw-yellow sail invited trade and barter. A purple sail indicated aett-mourning, the cut thread of a chief or a queen. A white sail, like the one dragging Fith's wyrmboat, proclaimed open approach and embassy. A black sail, like the ones the Balt had come in under, was |
They're coming out because they knew we were coming.'
'Crap!' Brom snorted.
Fith looked at the sails of the Hradcana boats. Sails were the most distance-visible aspect of a boat, so they were often used to declare intention. A straw-yellow sail invited trade and barter. A purple sail indicated aett-mourning, the cut thread of a chief or a queen. A white sail, like the one dragging Fith's wyrmboat, proclaimed open approach and embassy. A black sail, like the ones the Balt had come in under, was a treacherous sail, because it hid its declaration in the night, and thus defied the convention.
A red sail was an open announcement of the intention to murder.
The Hradcana sails were red.
FITH SETTLED DOWN in the rattling bow of the wyrmboat beside the Upplander.
'What are you?' he asked.
'What?'
'What have you done? Why have you brought this on us?'
'I did nothing.'
Fith shook his head. 'Red sails. Red sails. Gothi has spoken to gothi through the Underverse. The Balt came at us, now the Hradcana come at us too. Who else? Have you turned the whole Verse against us, or just against you?'
'I don't know what you mean,' the Upplander said.
'Did you make it your destiny to die here?' asked Fith.
'No!'
'Well,' the hersir replied, 'you certainly seem to have put some effort into making it happen.'
IT WAS AN exalted place.
Even on that pestilential day, with the tail-end of the six-week campaign to take the Boeotian citadel chattering and booming in the distance, there was an odd stillness in the shrine.
Kasper Hawser had felt it before, in other places where mankind had focussed its worship for unnumbered generations. A cathedral in Silesia, just the shell of it, brittle as paper, rising above the fuming, white rubble and slag of the atomic dustbowl. The deep, painted caves in Baluchistan where a closed priesthood had concealed precious cellulose scrolls inscribed with their sacred mysteries, and thus preserved the essence of their faith through the Age of Strife. The high, monastic refuges in the Caucasus where scholars and savants fleeing Narthan Dume's pogroms had hidden in exile, forlorn, ascetic outposts perched at such an altitude, you could see the expanding hive zones of the Caspian Bloc to the east and the nano-toxic waters of the Pontus Euxinus to the west, and the voice of some forgotten god lingered in the wind and the thin air and the bright sky.
The scholars had come out of Dume's Panpacific realm with a priceless cargo of data that they had painstakingly liberated from the Tyrant's library prior to one of his data purges. Some of that material, rumour suggested, dated from before the Golden Age of Technology.
When Hawser and his fellow conservators finally located the refuges, they found them long-since extinct. The cargo of data, the books and digital records, had degraded to powder.
The more man masters, the more man finds there is to be mastered; the more man learns, the more he remembers he has forgotten.
Navid Murza had said that. Hawser had never seen eye to eye with Navid Murza, and the various associations they'd been forced to make during their careers had fostered a sour and immotile disdain between them.
But there was no faulting Murza's passionate intent. The strength of his calling matched Hawser's.
'We have lost more than we know,' he said, 'and we are losing more all the time. How can we take any pride in our development as a species when we excel at annihilation and fail to maintain even the most rudimentary continuity of knowledge with our ancestors?'
Murza had been with him that day, in Boeotia. Both of them had been awarded places on the conservator team by the Unification Council. Neither of them had yet seen their thirtieth birthday. They were both still young and idealistic in the most vacuous and misguided ways. It rankled with both of them that they had tied in the appointment rather than one winning and one losing.
Nevertheless, they were professionals.
The vast refinery eight kilometres away had been mined by the retreating Yeselti forces, and the resulting fires had blanketed that corner of Terra in lethal black smoke, a roiling, carcinogenic soup of soot-black petrocarbon filth as thick as oceanic fog and as noxious as a plague pit. The conservators wore sealed bodygloves and masks to go in, shambling through the murk with their heavy, wheezing aug-lung packs in their hands, like suitcases. The packs were linked to the snouts of their masks by wrinkled, pachydermic tubes.
The grave gods loomed to meet them through the smoke. The gods wore masks too.
They stood for a while, looking up at the grave gods, as immobile as the ancient statues. Divine masks of jade and gold, and staring moonstone eyes looked down on haz-guard masks of plastek and ceramite, and lidless photo-mech goggles.
Murza said something, just a wet sputter behind his visor.
Hawser had never seen anything like the gods in the Boeotian shrine. None of them had. He could hear the visor displays of several team members clicking and humming as they accessed the memories of their data-packs for comparative images.
You won't find anything, Hawser thought. He could barely breathe, and it wasn't the tightness of the mask or the spit-stale taste of the aug-lung's air flow. He'd scanned the grapheme inscriptions on the shrine wall, and even that quick glance had told him there was nothing there that they'd expected to find. No Altaic root form, no Turcic or Tungusic or Mongolic.
The picters they carried were beginning to gum up in the sooty air, and battery packs were failing left and right. Hawser told two of the juniors to take rubbings of the inscriptions instead. They turned their goggles towards him, blank. He had to show them. He cut sheets of wrapping plastek into small squares and used the side of the wax marker-brick to scrub over the faint relief of the mural marks.
'Like at school,' one of the juniors said.
'Get on with it,' Hawser snapped.
He began an examination of his own, adjusting the macular intensity of his goggles. Without laboratory testing, it was impossible to know how long the shrine had stood there. A thousand years? Ten thousand? Exposed to the air, it was degrading fast, and the pervasive petrochemical smog was destroying surface detail before his very eyes.
He had a desire to be alone for a minute.
He went outside, back up the throat of the entranceway. The Boeotian Conflict had uncovered this treasure. The site had been exposed by a parcel of wayward submunitions rather than the diligent hand of an archaeologist. But for the war, this treasure would never have been found, and because of the war, it was perishing.
Hawser stood at the entrance and put his aug-lung on the ground beside him. He took a sip of nutrient drink from his mask feeder, and cleaned his fogging goggles with hand spray.
To the north of his position, the conflict in the Boeotian citadel underlit the horrendous black roof of the sky, a bonfire shaped like a city. The blackness of the vast smoke canopy was all around, as dense as Old Night itself. Gusting pillars of bright flame came and went in the distance as the smoke shifted.
This, he remarked to himself with leaden irony, was what the great era of Unification looked like.
According to history tracts that were already published and in circulation, that were already being taught in scholams, for goodness sake, the glorious Unification Wars had brought the Age of Strife to an end over a century and a half earlier. Since then, there had been more than one hundred and fifty years of peace and renewal as the Emperor led the Great Crusade outwards from Terra, and courageously reconnected the lost and scattered diaspora of mankind.
That's what the history tracts said. Reality was far less tidy. History only recorded broad strokes and general phases of development, and assigned almost arbitrary dates to human accomplishments that had been made in far less definitive instalments. The aftershocks of the Unification War still rolled across the face of the planet. Unification had been triumphantly declared at a point when no power or potentate could hope to vanquish the awesome Imperial machine, but that hadn't prevented various feudal states, religious adherents, remote nations or stubborn autocrats from holding out and trying to ring-fence and preserve their own little pockets of independence. Many, like the Boeotian Yeselti family, had held out for decades, negotiating and conniving their way around treaties and rapprochements and every other diplomatic effort designed to bring them under Imperial sway.
Their story demonstrated that the Emperor, or his advisors at least, possessed extraordinary patience. In the wake of the Unification War, there had been a strenuous and high-profile effort to resolve conflicts through non-violent means, and the Yeselti were not tyrants or despots. They were simply an ancient royal house eager to maintain their autonomous existence. The Emperor allowed them a twilight grace of a century and a half to come to terms, longer than the lifespan of many Terran empires.
The story also demonstrated that the Emperor's patience was finite, and that when it was exhausted, so was his mercy and restraint.
The Imperial Army had advanced into Boeotia to arrest the Yeselti and annex the territory. Hawser's accredited conservator team was one of hundreds assigned to follow the army in, along with flocks of medicae, aid workers, renovators, engineers and iterators.
To pick up the pieces.
Hawser's mask-mic clicked.
'Yes?'
It was one of the juniors. 'Come inside, Hawser. Murza's got a theory.'
In the shrine, Murza was shining his lamp pack up angled stone flues cut in the walls. Motes of soot tumbled in the beam, revealing, by their motion, a flow of circulation.
'Airways. This is in use,' he said.
'What?'
'This isn't a relic. It's old, yes, but it's been in use until very recently.'
Hawser watched Murza as he prowled around |
engineers and iterators.
To pick up the pieces.
Hawser's mask-mic clicked.
'Yes?'
It was one of the juniors. 'Come inside, Hawser. Murza's got a theory.'
In the shrine, Murza was shining his lamp pack up angled stone flues cut in the walls. Motes of soot tumbled in the beam, revealing, by their motion, a flow of circulation.
'Airways. This is in use,' he said.
'What?'
'This isn't a relic. It's old, yes, but it's been in use until very recently.'
Hawser watched Murza as he prowled around the shrine. 'Evidence?'
Murza gestured to the faience bowls of various sizes dotted along the lip of the altar step.
'There are offerings of fish and grain here, also copal resins, myrrh I believe. Scanners show carbon counts that indicate they're no more than a week old.'
'Any carbon count is compromised in this atmosphere,' Hawser replied. 'The machine's wrong. Besides, look at the state of them. Calcified.'
'The samples have degraded because of the atmosphere,' Murza insisted.
'Oh, have it both ways, why not?' said Hawser.
'Just look at this place!' Murza shot back, gesturing with his gloved hands in exasperation.
'Exactly what are you proposing, then?' asked Hawser. 'An occulted religious observance conducted outside the fringe of Boeotian society, or a private order of tradition sanctioned by the Yeselti?'
'I don't know,' Murza replied, 'but this whole site is guarding something, isn't it? We need to get an excavator in here. We need to get into the recess behind the statues.'
'We need to examine, record and remove the statues methodically,' Hawser said. 'It will take weeks just to begin the preservation treatments before we can lift them, piece by-'
'I can't wait that long.'
'Well, sorry, Navid, but that's the way it is,' said Hawser. 'The statues are priceless. They're our first concern for conservation.'
'Yes, they are priceless,' Murza said. He stepped towards the solemn, silent grave gods. The juniors were watching him. A few took sharp breaths as he actually stepped up onto the base of the altar, gingerly placing his foot so as not to dislodge any of the offertory bowls.
'Get down, Murza,' said one of the seniors.
Murza edged up onto the second step, so he was almost at eye level with some of the gazing gods.
'They are priceless,' he repeated. He raised his right hand and gently indicated the blazing moonstone eyes of the nearest effigy. 'Look at the eyes. The eyes are so important, don't you think? So telling?'
He glanced over his shoulder at his anxious audience. Hawser could tell Murza was smiling, despite the haz-mask.
'Get down, Navid,' he said.
'Look at the eyes,' Murza said, ignoring the instruction. 'Down through time, they've always meant the same thing to us, haven't they? Come on, it's basic! Someone!'
'Protection,' mumbled one of the juniors awkwardly.
'I can't hear you, Jena. Speak up!'
'The eye is the oldest and most culturally diverse apotropaic symbol,' said Hawser, hoping to cut to the chase and end Murza's showboating.
'Yes, it is,' said Murza. 'Kas knows. Thank you, Kas. The eye guards things. You put it up for protection. You put it up to ward off evil and harm, and to keep safe the things you hold most precious.' His fingertip traced the outline of the unblinking eye again. 'We've seen this so many times, just variations of the same design. Look at the proportional values! The eye shape, the brow line, this could have been stylised from a nazar boncugu or a wedjat, and it's not a million kilometres away from the Eye of Providence that is so proudly displayed in such places as the Great Seal of the Unification Council. These are gods of aversion, there's no doubt about it.'
He jumped down from the steps. Some of the party gasped in alarm, but Murza did not disturb or break any of the precariously placed bowls.
'Gods of aversion,' he said. 'Keep out. Stay away.'
'Have you finished?' Hawser asked.
'The pupils are pieces of obsidian, Kas,' Murza said eagerly as he came towards Hawser. 'You get as close as I did, get your photo-mech to decent resolution, you can see that they're carved. A circle around the edge, a dot in the middle. And you know what that is.'
'The circumpunct,' Hawser replied quietly.
'Which represents?' Murza pressed.
'Just about anything you want it to,' said Hawser. 'The solar disc. Gold. Circumference. Monad. A diacritical mark. The hydrogen atom.'
'Oh, help him out, Jena, please,' Murza cried. 'He's just being awkward!'
'The eye of god,' said the female junior nervously. 'The all-seeing singularity.'
'Thank you,' Murza said. He looked directly at Hawser. His eyes, behind the tinted lenses of the goggles, were fierce. 'It says keep out. Stay away. I can see you. I can see right into your soul. I can reflect your harm back at you, and I can know what you know. I can read your heart. I can keep you at bay, because I am power and I am knowledge, and I am protection. The statues are priceless, Hawser, but they are gods of aversion. They're guarding something. How valuable is something, do you suppose, that someone would protect with priceless statues?'
There was silence for a moment. Most of the team shifted uncomfortably.
'They're a family group,' said Hawser quietly. 'They are a representation of a dynastic line. A portrait in statue form. You can see the gender dimorphism, the height differentials, and the placements, thus determining familial relationships, hierarchies and obligations. The tallest figures on the highest step, a man and a woman, lofty and most exalted. Below them, children, perhaps two generations, with their own extended families and retainers. The first son and first daughter have prominence. It's a record of lineage and descent. They're a family group.'
'But the eyes, Kas! So help me!'
'They are apotropaic, I agree,' said Hawser. 'What could they be guarding? What could be more priceless than a gold and jade effigy of a god-king, and his queen, and his divine sons and daughters?'
Hawser stepped past Murza and faced the altar.
'I'll tell you. The physical remains of a god-king, and his queen, and his divine sons and daughters. It's a tomb. That's what's in the recess. A tomb.'
Murza sighed, as if deflated.
'Oh, Kas,' he said. 'You think so small.'
Hawser sighed, knowing they were about to go around again, but they turned as they heard noises from the entrance.
Five soldiers clattered into the shrine, spearing the gloom with the lamps strapped to their weapons. They were Imperial Army, hussars from the Tupelov Lancers, one of the very oldest regiments. They had left their cybernetic steeds outside the shrine and dismounted to enter.
'Clear this site,' one of them said. They were in full war-armour, combat visors down, frosty green photo-mech cursors bouncing to and fro along their optical slits.
'We've got permission to be here,' said one of the seniors.
'Like crap you have,' said the hussar. 'Gather your stuff and get out.'
'Who the hell do you think you're talking to?' Murza exclaimed, pushing forwards. 'Who's your commander?'
'The Emperor of Mankind,' replied the hussar. 'Who's yours, arsewipe?'
'There's been a mistake,' said Hawser. He reached for his belt pack. Five saddle carbines slapped up to target him. Five lamp beams pinned him like a specimen.
'Whoa! Whoa!' Hawser cried. 'I'm just reaching for my accreditation!'
He took out the pass-pad and flicked it on. The holographic credentials issued by the Unification Council Office of Conservation billowed up into the smoky air, slightly blurred and malformed by the edges of the smoke. Hawser couldn't help but notice the Eye of Providence on the Council seal that flashed up before the data unfurled.
'That's all very well,' said one of the hussars.
'This is all current. It's valid,' said Hawser.
'Things change,' said the hussar.
'This was personally ratified by Commander Selud,' said one of the seniors. 'He is primary commander and-'
'At oh-six thirty-five today, Commander Selud was relieved of command by Imperial decree. All permits and authorities are therefore rescinded. Get your stuff, get moving, and live with your disappointment.'
'Why was Selud removed?' asked Murza.
'Are you High Command? Do you need to know?' sneered one of the hussars.
'Just unofficially?' Murza pleaded.
'Unofficially, Selud's made a total clusterfug of the whole show,' said the hussar. 'Six weeks, and he still manages to let the refinery fields catch fire? The Emperor's sent someone in to tidy the whole mess up and draw a line under it.'
'Who?' asked Hawser.
'Why are these civilians still here?' a voice asked. It was deep and penetrating, and it had the hard edges of vox amplification. A figure had entered the chamber behind the Tupelov Lancers. Hawser wasn't sure how it could have possibly walked in without anyone noticing.
It was an Astartes warrior.
By the pillars of Earth, an Astartes! The Emperor has sent the Astartes to finish this!
Hawser felt his chest tighten and his pulse sprint. He had never seen an Astartes in the flesh before. He hadn't realised they were so big. The curvature of the armour plating was immense, oversized like the grave god statues behind him. The combination of the gloom and his goggles made it hard to resolve colour properly. The armour looked red: a bright, almost pale red, the colour of watered wine or oxygenated blood. A cloak of fine metal mesh shrouded the warrior's left shoulder and torso. The helmet had a snout like a raven's beak.
Hawser wondered what Legion the warrior belonged to. He couldn't see any insignia properly. What was it that people were calling them these days, now that the bulk of all Astartes forces had deployed off Terra to spearhead the Great Crusade?
Space Marines. That was it. Space Marines. Like the square-jawed heroes of ha'penny picture books.
This was no square-jawed hero. This wasn't even human. It was just an implacable thing, a giant twice the size of anybody else in the chamber. Hawser felt he |
Hawser wondered what Legion the warrior belonged to. He couldn't see any insignia properly. What was it that people were calling them these days, now that the bulk of all Astartes forces had deployed off Terra to spearhead the Great Crusade?
Space Marines. That was it. Space Marines. Like the square-jawed heroes of ha'penny picture books.
This was no square-jawed hero. This wasn't even human. It was just an implacable thing, a giant twice the size of anybody else in the chamber. Hawser felt he ought to have been able to smell it: the soot on its plating, the machine oil in its complex joints, the perspiration trickling between its skin and its suit-liner.
But there was nothing. No trace, not even a hint of body heat. It was like the cold but immense blank of the void.
Hawser could not imagine anything that could stop it, let alone kill it.
'I asked a question,' the Astartes said.
'We're clearing them now, ser,' stammered one of the Lancers.
'Hurry,' the Astartes replied.
The hussars started to herd the team towards the entrance. There were a few mumbles of protest, but nothing defiant. Everyone was too cowed by the appearance of the Astartes. The aug-lungs were wheezing and pumping more rapidly than before.
'Please,' said Hawser. He took a step towards the Astartes and held out the pass-pad. 'Please, we're licensed conservators. See?'
The hologram re-lit. The Astartes didn't move.
'Ser, this is a profound discovery. It is beyond value. It should be preserved for the benefit of future generations. My team has the expertise. The right equipment too. Please, ser.'
'This area is not safe,' said the Astartes. 'You will remove yourselves.'
'But ser-'
'I have given you an order, civilian.'
'Ser, which Legion do I have the honour of being protected by?'
'The Fifteenth.'
The Fifteenth. So, the Thousand Sons.
'What is your name?'
Hawser turned. The Tupelov Lancers had led most of the team out of the shrine, leaving only him behind. Two more Astartes, each as immense as the first, had manifested behind him. How could something that big move so stealthily?
'What is your name?' the new arrival repeated.
'Hawser, ser. Kasper Hawser, conservator, assigned to-'
'Is that a joke?'
'What?' asked Hawser. The other Astartes had spoken.
'Is that supposed to be a joke?'
'I don't understand, ser.'
'You told us your name. Was it supposed to be a joke? Is it some nickname?'
'I don't understand. That's my name. Why would you think it's a joke?'
'Kasper Hawser? You don't understand the reference?'
Hawser shook his head. 'No one's ever...'
The Astartes turned his beaked visor and glanced at his companions. Then he looked back down at Hawser.
'Clear the area.'
Hawser nodded.
'Once the security of this area can be guaranteed,' said the Astartes, 'your team may be permitted to resume its duties. You will evacuate to the safe zone and await notification.'
NO NOTIFICATION EVER came. Boeotia fell, and the Yeselti line came to an end. Sixteen months later, by then working on another project in Transcyberia, Hawser heard that conservator teams had finally been let into the Boeotian Lowlands.
There was no trace that any shrine had ever existed.
FITH WONDERED WHAT kind of wight he would come back as. The kind that flashed and flickered under the pack ice? The kind you could sometimes see from a boat's rail, running along in the shadow of the hull? The kind that mumbled and jittered outside an aett's walls at night, lonely and friendless in the dark? The kind that sang a wailing windsong between the high ice peaks of a scarp on a late winter day?
Fith hoped it would be the darkest kind. The kind with the oil-black eyes and the slack-hanging mouth, the kind with rust and mould clogging the links of its shirt. The kind that clawed its way up from the Underverse using its fleshless hands as shovels, gnawed its way through the rock waste and permafrost, and then went walking at night.
Yes.
Walking until it reached Ironland and the hearth-aetts of the shit-breath Balt. Walking with a special axe in its hand, an axe forged in the Underverse from the bitter wrath of the restless and murdered, hammered out on god's own anvil, and quenched in the bile and blood of the wronged and the unavenged. It would have a smile on it, a smile sparked on wyrd's grindstone to a death-edge so keen it would slice a man's soul from his flesh.
Then threads would be cut. Balt threads.
Fith hoped that would be the way. He wouldn't mind leaving the Verse so much if there was an expectation of returning. He hoped the wights would let him do that. They could carry him away to the Underverse for all he cared, knocked down by a Balt maul or a Balt arrow, his own cut thread flapping after him in the gales of Hel, just so long as they let him return. Once he reached that unfamiliar shore, they had to remake him, build him back up out of his own raw pain, until he looked like a man, but was nothing more than an instrument, like an axe or a good blade, forged for one pure, singular purpose.
It wouldn't be long before he found out.
Guthox had taken the tiller so that Lern could bind his rope-sawn fingers. The red sails were gaining on them, faster than the black sails of the Balt.
They had one chance left, in Fith's opinion. A half-chance. One last arrow in wyrd's quiver. If they cut north slightly, and ran through the top of Hradcana territory, they might make it to the ice desert beyond. The desert, well, that was death too, because it was a fatal place that no man or beast could live in, but that was a worry for later. They would make their own wyrd.
If they went to the desert, neither the Hradcana nor the Balt would follow. If they could get through a cut in the rock rampart the Hradcana called The Devil's Tail, they'd be free and clear, free to die on their own terms, not hounded and knocked to Hel by a pack of soul-cursed murder-makers.
But it was a long run to The Devil's Tail. Brom was too messed up to take a turn at the tiller, and even in rotation, the rest of them would be hard pressed to keep going. It was a run you'd break into four or five shorter runs, maybe sleeping out on the ice and cooking some food to rebuild your strength. To make it non-stop, that would be a feat of endurance, a labour so mighty the skjalds should sing about it.
If there were any Ascommani skjalds left alive.
Braced against the rail, Fith talked it over with Lern and Brom. All three of them were hoarse from the fight, from yelling hate back into the Balts' faces.
Brom was in poor shape. There was no blood in his face, and his eyes had gone dim like dirty ice, as if his thread was fraying.
'Do it,' he said. 'The Devil's Tail. Do it. Let's not give these bastards the satisfaction.'
Fith made his way to the bow, and knelt down beside the swaddled Upplander.
The Upplander was speaking.
'What?' asked Fith, leaning close. 'What are you saying?'
'Then he said,' the Upplander hissed, 'then he said I can see you. I can see right into your soul. That's what he said. I can reflect your harm back at you and I can know what you know. Oh god, he was so arrogant. Typical Murza. Typical. The statues are priceless, Hawser, he said, but how valuable is something, do you suppose, that someone would protect with priceless statues?'
'I don't know what you're telling me,' said Fith. 'Is it a story? Is it something that happened in the past?'
Fith was afraid. He was afraid he was hearing sky magic, and he didn't want any part of it.
The Upplander suddenly started and opened his eyes. He stared up at Fith in sheer terror for a second.
'I was dreaming!' he cried. 'I was dreaming, and they were standing looking down at me.'
He blinked, and the reality of his situation flooded back and washed the nonsense of his fever dream away, and he sank and groaned.
'It was so real,' he whispered, mainly to himself. 'Fifty fugging years ago if it was a day, and it felt like I was right back there. Do you ever have dreams like that? Dreams that unwrap fresh memories of things you'd forgotten you'd ever done? I was really there.'
Fith grunted.
'And not here,' the Upplander added dismally.
'I've come to ask you, one last time, do you want the mercy of my axe?' asked Fith.
'What? No! I don't want to die.'
'Well, first thing, we all die. Second thing, you're not going to get much say in the matter.'
'Help me up,' said the Upplander. Fith got him to his feet and propped him against the bow rail. The first pricking gobs of sleet were hitting their faces. Up ahead, the sky had risen up in a great, dark summit of cloud, a bruised stain like the colour of a throttled man's face, and it was rolling in on the ice field.
It was a storm, coming in hard, flinging ice around the sky. Late in the winter for a storm that dark. Bad news, whichever way you looked at it. The rate it was coming, they weren't going to get anywhere much before it blew in across them.
'Where are we?' the Upplander asked, squinting into the dazzle of the ice field rushing by.
'We're somewhere near the middle of shit-goes-our-luck,' said Fith.
The Upplander clung onto the rail as the wyrmboat quaked across a rough strayke.
'What's that?' he asked, pointing.
They were coming up fast on one of the Hradcana's remote northern aetts. It was just an outpost, a few shelters built on some crags that rose above the ice plain. The Hradcana used it to resupply and safe-harbour their fisher boats when the sea thawed out. It was uninhabited for months at a time.
A row of spears had been set tip-down in the sheet ice in front of the aett. They stood like a row of fence posts, six or seven of them. On the raised end of each spear-haft, a human head had been impaled.
The heads were turned to look out onto the ice field at them. Their eyes had been pinned open.
They were most likely the heads of criminals, or enemy captives, ritually decapitated for the purpose, but it was possible they were Hradcana, sacrificed in despera |
inhabited for months at a time.
A row of spears had been set tip-down in the sheet ice in front of the aett. They stood like a row of fence posts, six or seven of them. On the raised end of each spear-haft, a human head had been impaled.
The heads were turned to look out onto the ice field at them. Their eyes had been pinned open.
They were most likely the heads of criminals, or enemy captives, ritually decapitated for the purpose, but it was possible they were Hradcana, sacrificed in desperation because of the extremity of the maleficarum. Their eyes were open so they could see the evil coming and ward it off.
Fith spat and cursed. He dearly wished Iolo had been able to badge their faces with cast-out marks, to bounce the warding magic back. The wyrmboat had eyes on its prow, of course: the all-seeing sun-disc eyes of the sky god, painted bold and bright, and decorated with precious stones. All wyrmboats had them, so they could find their way, see off danger, and reflect an enemy's magic.
Fith hoped it would be enough. The boat was a strong boat, an aett-chief's boat, but it had run hard and it was tired, and Fith was worried that its eyes might not be powerful enough to turn the magic back anymore.
'Gods of Aversion,' the Upplander murmured, gazing at the staked heads. 'Keep out. Stay away. I can see you.'
Fith wasn't listening to him. He yelled back down the long, narrow deck at Guthox, signalling him to turn wide. The aett was inhabited. A second later, the spiked heads flashed by, and they were skating the inshore ice under the shadow of the crag.
Guthox cried out. They were still two or three decent bow shots from the islet, but someone was either gifted or favoured by the Underverse. An arrow had gone into him.
Now more struck, thakking into the hull or falling short and skipping across the ice. Fith could see archers on the rim of the islet crag, and others on the beach.
He raced back down the boat to Guthox. Lern and Brom were moving too.
It was a monstrously lucky shot, except for Guthox. The arrow had gone through the tight-ringed sleeve of his shirt, the meat of his left tricep, shaving the bone, and then through the sleeve again, and then the shirt proper, before punching into the hersir's side between his ribs, effectively pinning his arm against his body. Guthox had immediately lost control of one of the quarter rudder ropes. The pain was immense. He had bitten through his tongue in an effort not to scream.
Two arrows were embedded in the deck boards beside them. Fith saw they had fish-scale tips: each head shaped and finished from a single, iron-hard scale from a deep water monster. They were barbed, like a backwards-slanted comb.
That was what had gone into Guthox. It would never come out.
Guthox spat blood and tried to turn the tiller. Brom and Lern were shouting at him, trying to take over, trying to snap the arrow shaft so they could free Guthox's arm. Guthox was slipping away.
Another wave of arrows hit. One, perhaps, came straight from the same gifted or favoured archer. It hit Guthox in the side of the head, and ended his pain by cutting his thread.
Blood droplets and sleet stung their faces. Guthox fell away from the tiller and, though Brom and Lern sprang in, the wind became their steersman for a split-second.
That was all the time the wind needed, and it had no interest in sparing their lives.
TWO
Dis-aster
THE WIND FLUNG them into the rocks abutting the beach, and the wyrmboat shattered like a crockery jar. The impact was sustained, like a relentless series of hammer blows. The world vibrated and up-ended, and the shivering air filled with rock-grit and out-flung stones, along with sleet, with slivers of ice, and with raked splinters of deck-wood as sharp as darning needles. The maniacal wind tore the sails away, like a vicious child plucking the wings off a long-legged fly. The sail-cloth, so full of hard air that it was splitting, cracked as it flew free, and the halyards screamed as they fled through the blocks and sawed into the pins. There was a brief, sharp reek of smoke from unwetted wood as the rigging lines friction-burned their way through and away. Under tension, the escaping lines whirred and buzzed like bees.
Fith smelled the wood-burn in the last instant of the wyrmboat's life. The deck broke under him, and flipped him into the sleeting sky. Then he hit the ice with his face.
The wyrmboat had gone right over, and folded up into the rocks where the wind had driven it. Thrown clear, Fith slid face-down across the glazed sea, his throat full of ice and blood. He rotated, head and toe, as he slowly came to rest.
He raised his head. The ice beneath him was as dull and cold as the flat of a sword. His chest and face were one big aching bruise, and it felt like he had taken the smile of an axe in his breastbone, and another in his cheek.
He tried to get up. He felt as if he was too cracked to even breathe. Sucking air into his chest was like swallowing broken glass. Part of the wyrmboat's mainsail, full of wind and trailing its lines, danced away along the shore of the islet like a gleeful phantom, like a capering wight with its arms out-flung.
Fith began to limp towards the ruin of the boat. A few arrows hissed overhead. Hradcana bowmen were scrambling down the rocks to reach the wreck. Hradcana red sails were closing in across the ice. Fith could hear the shriek of their bladed runners.
The ice in his path was scattered with debris. Here was a piece of mast, sheared off. There was part of the starboard rigger, torn off, its iron-shod skate stuck in the crazed ice like a giant's arrow. Here was a section of spar. Fith picked it up, and hefted it as a weapon.
There was Guthox's body. The wyrmboat had spilled it as it tumbled, and one of the riggers had sliced right over it, mashing it flat at the waist.
A Hradcana arrow whipped past Fith's face. He didn't flinch. He saw his axe lying near Guthox, and discarded the spar.
He picked up his axe.
Close beside the mangled ruin of the wyrmboat, Lern was dragging the Upplander's corpse onto the shoreline rocks. Blood was streaming down one half of Lern's face and soaking his whiskers. Fith began to limp faster to reach them.
When he left the ice and set foot on the ice-fused shingle, the Hradcana had come close enough for him to see their wild eyes and the white ash-glue coating their faces. They were so close that he could smell the stink of their ritual ointments. These were foul-smelling pastes their gothi had made, aversion remedies to keep the maleficarum at bay. The warriors had put aside their bows and taken up their axes and their swords. A bad omen had to be more than just killed. It had to be cut apart, hacked apart, dismembered and un-remembered. That was how you got magic to leave you alone.
Brom had got up to face them with his axe. Fith wondered how he was even standing any more. He limped to stand at Brom's side.
One of the Hradcana was shouting out at them. It wasn't a challenge or a threat, it was a ritual thing, a statement of intent, a declaration of what they were doing and why they were doing it. Fith knew that from the sing-song cadence of the words, rather than the words themselves. The warrior was using the Hradcana's private tribal tongue, their wyrd-cant, which Fith did not speak.
'This is onto you and onto your heads, in the day and the night, in the time of the moving sea and in the time of the still sea,' the Upplander suddenly said out loud as Fith stepped past him. He wasn't dead after all, though both of his legs had undoubtedly been broken in the crash. Lern, blood still pouring from his scalp, was trying to make him secure, but the Upplander was pushing away and trying to pull himself up onto a rock.
'This is the wyrd that you have written for yourself by taking the disaster into your aett and deciding to protect it,' the Upplander continued. He looked at Fith. 'That's what they're saying. My translator is reading it. Do you understand them?'
Fith shook his head.
'Why do they call me a disaster? What did I ever do?'
Fith shrugged.
A look of realisation suddenly crossed the Upplander's drawn face. 'Oh, it's just the translator! It's literal, just literal... "dis-aster"... bad star. They're calling me Bad Star.'
Fith stood beside Brom and faced the Hradcana. The Hradcana warrior was finishing his declaration. Behind him, Fith could hear the Upplander translating the last of it.
The Hradcana rushed them.
Without shields, the two Ascommani took the charge. They put over-swings into the first row of faces, and under-swings into the second. Like the surge of the sea when the sea was wet, the Hradcana slipped back and came in again across the shingle. Brom split a man's shoulder. Fith smashed a man's jaw into mammocks and managed to wrest the man's shield away from him. He punched the iron boss of it into the face of the next Hradcana who came looking for an opening, and broke the man's nose-bone up into his skull. A big axe, a two-hander, swept at Brom, but Fith knocked it away with his captured shield, and Brom tore out the owner's belly while his arms were still pushed up.
The next wave came, breaking on their shield. They had to take a few steps back each time. Red-sailed wyrmboats were grounding on the beach, and men were disembarking.
'Do you think they've brought enough bodies?' Brom asked. He was panting hard, and his face was bloodless with pain and effort, but there was still a laugh in his voice.
'Nothing like enough,' said Fith. 'And nothing like enough threads, either.'
LERN LEFT THE Upplander in the rocks and came to stand beside them. He took a sword out of a dead man's hand, thanked him for it, and hunched his back to face the surge.
The storm was behind them. It was shrieking in across the ice field, across the stilled sea, wailing like an Underverse chorus. Everything in the world that was loose was beginning to shake. The three Ascommani felt |
re was still a laugh in his voice.
'Nothing like enough,' said Fith. 'And nothing like enough threads, either.'
LERN LEFT THE Upplander in the rocks and came to stand beside them. He took a sword out of a dead man's hand, thanked him for it, and hunched his back to face the surge.
The storm was behind them. It was shrieking in across the ice field, across the stilled sea, wailing like an Underverse chorus. Everything in the world that was loose was beginning to shake. The three Ascommani felt the grit of sleet hitting their necks and the backs of their heads. They heard the prickle of it pelting off their mail shirts.
The storm of men was in front of them. They were Hradcana, most of them, three or four score painted for murder, but there were Balt too, just arriving in their slower boats, slithering up the ice-cake beach in their eagerness.
It was a strange eagerness. It was born of desperation, the frantic wish to be free of a burden or a curse, to discharge an onerous duty and be done with it. There was no yelling, no war-shouts, no rousing bellow of comradeship and common purpose. They had no taste for it, or else fear had soured the words in their mouths.
They were chanting instead, steady and slow. They were reciting the rhymes of banishment and aversion they had learned around the aett hearth as children, the sharpened words, the strong words, the power words, the words with enough of a death-edge on them to keep bad stars at bay.
But the bad star was keeping them at bay too.
They were a great gang of men: hersirs, mostly, veterans, riggers, strong men with arms made thick from axe-work and backs made broad from the long oar. They crowded the beach: an army, bigger than any decent raiding party, as many faces as Fith had ever seen in one place. With a host like that, you could take a kingdom. You could conquer a chief's whole territory.
All they had to do, these men, was kill three hersirs and a cripple. Three hersirs and a cripple with but one shield between them, stuck on a shingle spit in the cold empty, with nowhere left to run and nothing at their backs except the approaching enmity of the winter's last, psychopathic storm.
Yet they were faltering. They were wary. There was no conviction in their surges. When they rushed in, they rushed in with fear in their eyes and hesitation in their blades. Each surge drove the Ascommani back closer to the ice, where standing steady and meeting a push would be impossible. But after half a dozen surges, Fith, Brom and Lern had knocked ten men down with red snow under them.
Then Fith saw the Balt gothi, Hunur. A wyrmboat had just brought him in, and hersirs were carrying him to the beach. He stood up tall on their cupped palms, such a tall skinny bastard, waving his bear's arm blade at Uppland above. The storm light, yellow and frosty as the sky closed down, glinted off the gothi's piercings and silver torc. His mantle of seabird feathers streamed out in the air behind him, white like early snow.
He was screaming. He was howling toxic curses into the thundering wind, calling on the spirits of the air and the wights of the Underverse and all the daemons of Hel to come forth and extinguish the bad star. Fith felt a prickle on his skin that was more than the battering sleet.
The sight of the gothi spurred the Hradcana on, that and the sound of his screams. They surged again, and Fith knew this would be the worst rush yet. The shock of impact drove the three Ascommani back a step. Two axes hooked into Fith's shield and dragged it down. A third broke its rim. Fith hacked his own axe into a Hradcana skull, then levered it out of the collapsing dead weight and swung it again. The poll of it broke a helmet's cheek guard and cracked the rim of an eye socket. Fith could no longer cover Brom's flank.
Brom was mindless with fatigue and pain. He was jeering and lunging with his axe, but there was no strength or skill left in his arm.
Fith heard Lern shouting at Brom to keep his eyes up. Lern was laying in with his wight-loaned sword. He knew to use the tip and not the edge in a crush-fight, jabbing it in at belt height, skinning ribs and gouging hips and rupturing bellies. The blade was good, with a keen point that pinged through the rings of a man's shirt and speared the meat beneath.
Then one of the Hradcana got a shield in the way, and Lern's sword punched clean through it, almost to the length of a man's forearm. It punched clean through and the blade stuck fast in the tight-grained wood. Lern tried to pull it out, but the shield man pulled back and dragged Lern out of line. The Hradcana took him and cut his thread: four or five enemy swords stabbing into him repeatedly, rehearsing the lesson in sword-work that Lern had delivered.
He disappeared under their feet, and the surge rolled over him. Brom was on his knees. He wasn't really aware of where he was any more. Fith had both hands clamped around the throat of his axe, and both sets of knuckles were dripping red.
The surge rolled back and parted, and the Balt gothi approached. Balt hersirs were still carrying him in a cradle of hands. He aimed the bear blade-bone at Fith and for a moment it felt like the two of them were alone on the sleet-battered beach.
The gothi started speaking. He started speaking magic words to forge a spell that would blast Fith off the beach. The men around him, Hradcana and Balt alike, covered their eyes or ears. The hersirs holding Hunur up began to weep, because their hands were busy and they could not block his words out.
Fith didn't know the meaning of the words, and didn't want to. He tightened his grip around the throat of his axe. He wondered if he could reach the gothi and bury the smile of it in his pierced face before the Hradcana and the Balt cut him down, or the gothi's magic turned his bones to melt-water.
'Enough.'
Fith glanced over his shoulder. The Upplander, crumpled in the lee of a wet-black boulder, his mangled legs twisted under him, had spoken. He was looking up at Fith.
Fith could see he was trembling. His heat was pouring out of his mouth in steaming clouds. Sleet pelted them both, and settled in small white clumps in the Upplander's matted hair.
'What?' Fith asked.
'I've heard enough,' the Upplander said.
Fith sighed. 'Have you? Have you, indeed? So now you want the mercy of my axe, now we've come to this? You couldn't have asked the favour earlier, before-'
'No, no!' the Upplander snapped. Every word was an effort, and he was clearly frustrated to have to say anything more than was absolutely necessary.
'I said,' he replied, 'I've heard enough. I've heard enough of that shaman's ravings. My translator's sampled enough, and it's built a workable grammatical base.'
Fith shook his head, not understanding.
'Help me up,' the Upplander ordered.
Fith hoisted the Upplander a little more upright. The barest movement caused the Upplander to grimace in pain. The pulverised bones in his legs ground together. Tears welled in his eyes and froze on his lower lashes.
'All right, all right,' he said. He adjusted the little translator device woven into his quilted collar.
He began to speak. A huge voice, tinny and harsh, boomed out of the device in his collar. Fith recoiled at the sound of it. The voice boomed out words just like the words the gothi was yelling at them.
The gothi scrambled down out of his hersirs' hands and stopped shouting. He stared at Fith and the Upplander. There was terror on his twitching face. The Hradcana and the Balt edged backwards, uneasy and unsettled.
'What did you say?' Fith asked in the silence as the sleet billowed around them.
'I used his words back at him,' said the Upplander. 'I told him I'd bring a daemon out of the storm if they didn't back off. If they're afraid of me because they think I'm a bad star, I might as well act like one.'
The gothi was gabbling at his warriors, trying to spur them in again to finish the matter, but they were really reluctant to move. The gothi was losing his temper. He kept staring at Fith and the Upplander with the same, terrified look as before. So were a lot of the men.
Then Fith realised that none of them were looking at him or the Upplander after all.
They were looking past him. They were looking out at the ice field, out at the still sea, out at the Hel-storm that was screaming in and staining the sky black. Fith turned, the wind in his hair and the sleet in his face, to see the storm approaching. It was a low, racing blackness, like blood swirling through water. The snow and sleet that formed its bow-wave hazed the air like dust. Ice splintered up from the surface of the frozen sea, whirling away like petals in its vortex. Bars of lightning stabbed from the skirts and the belly of the storm like jagged, blinding lances, and smote the sea crust.
There was something in the storm. There was something just ahead of it, staying ahead of it, pounding out of the sleet-blur towards them.
It was a man. It was a huge man, a shadow on the ice, running towards them, running across the sea, out-running the storm.
The Upplander's bad star magic had brought a daemon down to punish them all.
HUNUR SCREAMED. HIS hersirs had been bewildered for a moment, but they snapped to attention at the squeal of his voice, and loaded their bows. Fith threw himself flat as the first salvo of arrows loosed at the approaching daemon. The men were firing at will, spitting iron-head darts into the air as though they hoped to pin the storm to the sky.
The daemon struck. He came in off the sea at the tip of the storm in great bounding strides. Fith could hear the ice crunch under each pounding step. Furs and a ragged robe fluttered out behind him. He leapt up into the beach rocks, turned the bound into a sure-footed hop that propelled him off one of the largest boulders and up into the air, arms outstretched. This soaring leap took him clean over Fith and the Upplander. Fith ducked again. He saw the great a |
hoped to pin the storm to the sky.
The daemon struck. He came in off the sea at the tip of the storm in great bounding strides. Fith could hear the ice crunch under each pounding step. Furs and a ragged robe fluttered out behind him. He leapt up into the beach rocks, turned the bound into a sure-footed hop that propelled him off one of the largest boulders and up into the air, arms outstretched. This soaring leap took him clean over Fith and the Upplander. Fith ducked again. He saw the great axe uplifted in the daemon's right hand. The air was thatched with black arrows.
The daemon hung for a second in the mayhem of sleet, arms wide against the black sky like wings, robes trailing like torn sails. The host of Balt and Hradcana below him tilted back from him in fear, like corn stalks sloped by the wind.
Then he smashed down into them. The impact threw men into the air on either side. Shields, raised in haste at the last moment, fractured and splintered. Blades shattered. Bows broke. Arms snapped.
The daemon howled. He had landed in a crouch, at least two men crushed beneath his feet. He rose, hunched over in a fighter's stance. He swung his broad upper body, and put the full force of his vast shoulders behind his axe. Its death-edge went through three men. Arterial blood, black in the foul light, jetted into the air, and drops of it rained down in the sleet. Men were screaming. Hradcana voices, Balt voices, all screaming.
The daemon drove into the enemy mass, breaking wood and bone. He seemed blade-proof, as if he was made of iron. The tongues of swords cracked as they rebounded off him, the handles of axes snapped. There were two or three black-fletched arrows buried in the daemon's bulk, but he didn't appear to even feel them, let alone be slowed down by them.
The daemon let out another roar. It was an animal sound, the deep, reverberative throat-roar of a leopard. The sound penetrated. It cut through the booming swirl of the storm, and through the frenetic din of steel and sleet and voices. It cut like the keenest death-edge. Fith felt it in his gut. He felt it shiver his heart, colder than ice, worse than fear.
He watched the slaughter unfolding in front of him.
The hulking daemon drove into the great gang of killers. He pushed them against the wind and down the beach. They mobbed around him and onto him, like dogs on a bear, trying to out-man him, trying to smother his blows and choke his swing, trying to ring him and pull him down. They were terrified of him, but they were even more terrified of letting him live.
Their efforts were nothing. It was as if the Hradcana and the Balt were made of straw, cloth dummies stuffed with dry grass, like they were empty vessels with no weight. The daemon broke them and knocked them down. He swung and sent them flying. Men took off from each ploughing impact. They left the ground, flung into the sleet, limbs pinwheeling, a boot flying off, a shield in tatters. They flew out sideways, tumbling over the ice-caked shingle and ending up in still death-heaps. They lofted up from an axe-whack, split asunder, squirting blood from their cleaved bodies, raining broken rings from their shredded shirts, chainmail rings that pinged like handfuls of coins as they scattered across the beach. They cartwheeled over his shoulders, pitched like forked bales.
They littered the shingle. Most times, they were no longer in one piece once he'd done with them. Some lay as if they were sleeping. Others were crumpled in limp, slack poses that the living could not mimic. Some were split and steaming in the sleet. Some were just portions and pieces scattered by the relentless axe. Blood ran between the ice-black beach stones, coiling, trickling, deep and glossy, thick red, meat red, or cooling into slicks of rusty brown and faded purple.
The daemon's axe was a massive thing, a two-hander with a long, balanced handle. Both grip and blade were engraved with complex, weaving patterns and etched chequers. It sang to itself. Fith could hear it. The axe hummed and purred, as though the death-edge was privately chortling with delight at the rising tally of threads. A drizzle of blood droplets was flying off it, as if the blade was licking its lips clean.
Nothing stopped it. It was unimaginably sharp, and it was either as light as a gull's bone, or the daemon was as strong as a storm giant. It carved through everything it encountered. It went through shields, whether they were cured leather or hardwood or beaten copper. It went through armour, through padded plates, through iron scales, through chain. It went through the hafts of spears, through the handles of good axes, through the blades of swords that had been passed down for generations. It went through meat and muscle and bone.
It went through men effortlessly. Fith saw several men remain on their feet after the axe had sheared off their heads, or half of their heads, or their bodies from the shoulders. They stayed standing, their truncated figures swaying slightly with the pulse of the blood spurting from the stump or cross-sectioned portion. Only then would they collapse, soft and boneless, like falling cloaks.
The murder-makers were close to breaking. The daemon had cut so many of their threads, and left so many of them scattered on the blood-drenched beach, their resolve had thawed like ice in springtime. The storm was right above the islet now, enfolding the beach and the crag in its sharp, screaming embrace. The wind had been put to a whetstone. The air was shot through with bullets of hail. Where the demented sleet hit the hard stones of the beach, it scoured the blood away, and turned the dead into puffy, bleached, white things that looked like they had been waterlogged for a month.
A fire was driving the gothi Hunur. A fire had been lit in his blood. He had seen the evil of the bad star hanging in the future, and he had raised the murder-make to exterminate it. Now the evil was manifesting, driven into the open, he was all the more determined to end it.
He scrambled back to some higher rocks above the beach, and yelled down at the last of the Balt wyrmboats, where men had yet to disembark. They got out their bows, and Fith saw a glimpse of tallow flame in the stormy gloom.
The bowmen started to loose pitch-arrows.
The arrows were longer than regular man-stoppers, with simple iron spike tips and knobs of pitch-soaked rag knotted around the shafts behind the head. The rags caught as soon as flame was applied. Burning arrows ripped into the lightning-split sky.
Other men were spinning bottles on leather cords, letting them fly under their own weight. The bottles were filled with liquid pitch and other volatiles. Their contents sprayed out as they struck the beach and shattered. The burning arrows quickly ignited the spreading slicks.
Bright flames leapt up with a plosive woof like the sound of wind biting sailcloth. A great thicket of fire spread along the beach, fed by the blazing arrows. The flames were painfully bright, almost greenish and incandescent. The daemon, and the press of murder-makers around him, were swept up in the flames within seconds.
A burning man's screams are unlike the screams of a cut or knocked man. They are shrill and frantic. Engulfed, wrapped up in flames they could not shrug off or outrun, men stumbled out of the fight, mouths stretched wide, breathing fire. In the driving wind, the flames and the rank, black fat-smoke poured off them, like the burning tails of falling stars.
Their flaming arms milled in the air. Their hair and beards burned. Their undershirts ignited and cooked the rings of their shirts into their flesh. They ran into the sea, but the sea was just hard ice and couldn't quench their agonies, so they fell down onto it instead, and burned to death with the ice crust sizzling under them. They were gaunt black shapes in clothes of fire, like the effigies that burned at Helwinter. They were human tinder, crackling and sparking and fizzling in the sleet, hearth-brush kindling blown on by the storm until it flared white-hot.
The daemon came through the flames. He was singed black, like a coal carving. His furs and ragged robe were alive with little blue flames. His eyes were like polished moonstones in his soot-black face. He roared again, the throat-thunder of a hunting cat. It wasn't just his eyes that lit a wild white against his blackened flesh. His teeth glinted too: white bone, long canines no human mouth should possess.
The daemon buried the smile of his axe in the beach ice, and left it sticking fast with its handle pointing at the sky. Two more flaming arrows hit him. He tore one out of his cloak, flames licking around his fingers.
He brought something up from his side, something metal and heavy that had been strapped there. It was a box with a handle. Fith didn't know what it was for. All he knew was it was some daemonic device. The daemon pointed it at the Balt wyrmboats.
The box made a noise like a hundred thunderbolts overlapping. The sound was so loud, so sudden, so alien, it made Fith jerk in surprise. Gouting flashes of fire bearded the front of the daemon's curious box, blinking and flickering as fast as the rattling thunder-roar.
The nearest Balt wyrmboat shivered, and then disintegrated. Its hull shredded and flew apart, reduced to wood chips and pulp and spinning nails. The mast and the quarter rigs exploded. The figurehead splintered. The men on board atomised in puffs of red drizzle.
The wyrmboat behind it began to shred too, and then the boat beyond that. The daemon kept his roaring lightning-box aimed at the boats, and invisible hands of annihilation demolished the craft drawn up along the ice-line. A thick brume of wood-fibre and blood-mist boiled off the destruction into the wind. Then the pitch bottles that had yet to be thrown exploded.
The inferno was intense. Despite the storm, Fith could feel the heat of it on his face. The line of boats lit off |
fs of red drizzle.
The wyrmboat behind it began to shred too, and then the boat beyond that. The daemon kept his roaring lightning-box aimed at the boats, and invisible hands of annihilation demolished the craft drawn up along the ice-line. A thick brume of wood-fibre and blood-mist boiled off the destruction into the wind. Then the pitch bottles that had yet to be thrown exploded.
The inferno was intense. Despite the storm, Fith could feel the heat of it on his face. The line of boats lit off, like the fire graves of great heroes at a boat burial. Ash and sparks zoomed crazily like fireflies. The wind took hold of the thick black smoke coming off the burning, and carried it out across the sea almost horizontally like a bar of rolling fog.
The daemon's lightning-box stopped roaring. He lowered it and looked up the beach at the gothi. Hunur was a shrunken, defeated figure, his shoulders slack, his arms down. A few Hradcana and Balt were fleeing past him up the rock slope, seeking the far side of the islet.
The daemon raised his lightning-box and pointed it at the gothi. He made it flash and bark just once, and the gothi's head and shoulders vanished in an abrupt pink cloud. What remained of Hunur snapped back off the rock, as if snatched from behind.
The daemon walked down to the ice-line. The intense heat of the burning boats had liquefied the sea ice along the shore, creating a molten pool of viscous water that was greedily swallowing the boat wrecks down into the darkness in a veil of angry steam. The iron-edged smell of the ocean was released to the air for the first time that year.
The daemon knelt down, scooped water up in the cup of his massive right hand, and splashed it over his face. The soot streaked on his cheeks and brow. He rose again, and began to walk back up the beach towards Fith.
The hrosshvalur rose without much warning: just a blow of sour bubbles in the turbulent melt-pool and a sudden froth of red algae. Like all of the great sea things, its diet had been constrained by the ice all winter long, and it was rapaciously hungry. The burning boats had opened the sea to the air, and their cloudy ruins had brought down quantities of meat and blood to flavour the frigid water with an intoxicating allure. The hrosshvalur may have been leagues away when it got the taste; one particle of human blood in a trillion cubic litres of salt water. Its massive tail flukes had closed the distance in a few beats.
The daemon heard the liquid rush of its emergence, and turned to look. The melt-pool was barely big enough to fit the sea thing. Its scaled flanks and claw-toed flippers broke the ice wider, and it bellied up onto the beach, jaws wide and eager at the scent of blood. The flesh inside its mouth was gleaming white, like mother of pearl, and there was a painful stink of ammonia. Its teeth were like spears of ragged yellow coral. It brought its shuddering, snorting bulk up onto the shingle, and boomed out its brash, bass cry, the sound you sometimes heard at night, on the open water, through the planks of the hull. Smaller mushveli, yapping and writhing like worms, followed it up out of the melt-hole, equally agitated by the promise of meat. The hrosshvalur drove them aside, snapping the neck of one that got too close, and then wolfing it down whole in two or three jerking gulps. It levered its body across the shingle on its massive, wrinkled flippers.
The daemon crossed in front of the giant killer. He knew that its appetite was as bottomless as the North Ocean, especially since the turning of spring. It would not stop until it had picked the aett islet clean of anything remotely edible.
The daemon plucked his axe out of the ice-cake shingle. He pulled it up with his hand clasped high under the shoulder, and then he let the handle slip down through his loose grip, pulled by the head weight, until he had it by the optimum lever point between belly and throat. He ran at the ocean monster.
It blew its jaws out at him in a blast of rancid ammonia. The jaws hinged out so wide they formed a tooth-fringed opening like a chapel cave. The maw was so big that a full crew of men could have carried a wyrmboat into it on their shoulders. Then its secondary jaws extended too, driven by the undulating elastic of the throat muscles, bristling with spine teeth made of translucent cartilage. The spine teeth, some longer than a grown man's leg, flipped up out of the gum recesses like the blades of a folding knife, each one as transparent as glacial ice and dewed with drops of mucus. The hrosshvalur lunged at the charging daemon, the vast tonnage of its bulk grinding and scraping off the beach stones.
The daemon brought his axe down and cut through the lower, primary jaw between the biter-teeth at the front, splitting the jaw like a hull split along its keel. Noxious white froth boiled out of the wound, as if the hrosshvalur had steam for blood. Whooping, it tried to turn its injured head away. The daemon knocked his axe into the side of its skull, so that the blade went through the thick scale plate to its entire depth. Then he put it in again, directly below one of the glassy, staring eyes that were the size of a chieftain's shield.
The ocean monster boomed, and spewed out a great torrent of rank effluvium. The daemon kept hacking until there was a bubbling pink slit where the hrosshvalur's head met its neck. The beach underneath them was awash with stinking milky fluid. The slit puckered and dribbled as air gusted out of it. The beast wasn't dead, but it was mortally stricken. The yapping mushveli began to eat it alive. The daemon left it to die, and walked towards Fith.
The Upplander had been awake to see most of the spectacle. He watched the daemon's approach. Close to, they could see the plated form of the daemon's decorated grey armour under his scorched robes and furs. They could see the corded brown lines tattooed into his face, down the line of his nose, across the planes of the cheek and around the eyes. They could smell him, a scent like an animal, but clean, the heady pheromone musk of an alpha dog.
They could see his fangs.
'You are Ahmad Ibn Rustah?' the daemon said.
The Upplander paused while his translator dealt with the words.
'Yes,' the Upplander replied. He shuddered with cold and pain. It was a miracle he was still conscious.
'And you are?' he asked.
The daemon said his name. The translator worked quickly.
'Bear?' asked the Upplander. 'You're called Bear?'
The daemon shrugged.
'Why are you here?' asked the Upplander.
'There was an error,' said the daemon. The purring growl was never far from the edges of his voice. 'An oversight. I made the error, so now I make amends. I will take you out of this place.'
'These men too,' said the Upplander.
The daemon looked at Fith and Brom. Brom was unconscious against a rock, dusted with pellets of hail. The blood seeping from his wounds had frozen. Fith was just staring at the daemon. There was still blood on the handle of his axe.
'Is he dead?' the daemon asked Fith, nodding at Brom.
'We're both dead,' Fith replied. That was all that was left for him now; the voyage to the Underverse to be remade.
'I haven't got time,' the daemon said to the Upplander. 'Just you.'
'You'll take them. After what they gave today, keeping me alive, you'll take them.'
The daemon let out a soft, throbbing growl. He stepped back and took some sort of tool or wand from his belt. When he adjusted it, it made small, musical noises.
The daemon looked out to sea, out into the storm in the direction he had come from. Fith followed his gaze. Driving sleet flecked his face and made him blink and wince. He could hear a noise like a storm inside the storm.
The daemon's boat appeared. Fith had never seen its like before, but he recognised the smooth boat-lines of the hull, and fins like rudders. It was not an ice rig or a water boat: it was an air boat, a boat for riding the wind and the storm. It came slowly towards them across the ice, hanging in the sky at mast-top height. Screaming air blasted down from it, keeping it up. The air flung ice chips up off the sea. Small green candles lit on and off at the corners of its wind rigs.
It came closer, until Fith had to shield his face from the blitzing air and the ice chips. Then it settled down on the sea crust with a crunch and opened a set of jaws as large as the hrosshvalur's.
The daemon scooped up the Upplander in his arms. The Upplander shrieked as his broken leg bones ground and rubbed. The daemon didn't seem particularly bothered. He looked at Fith.
'Bring him,' he said, nodding at Brom again. 'Follow. Don't touch anything.'
HAWSER HAD BEEN working in the upper strata of Karelia Hive for over eight months when someone from the Council legation finally agreed to see him.
'You work in the library, don't you?' the man asked. His name was Bakunin, and he was an understaffer for Emantine, whose adjunct had repeatedly refused Hawser's written approaches for an interview or assessment. Indirectly, this meant that Bakunin reported to the municipal and clerical authorities, and was therefore part of the greater administrative mechanism that eventually came to the attention of Jaffed Kelpanton in the Ministry of the Sigillite.
'Yes, the Library of the Universitariate. But I'm not attached to the Universitariate. It's a temporary position.'
'Oh,' said Bakunin, as if Hawser had said something interesting. The man had one eye on his appointment slate and could not disguise his eagerness to be elsewhere.
They'd met in the culinahalle on Aleksanterinkatu 66106. It was a high-spar place, with a good reputation and great views down over the summitstratum commercias. Acrobats and wire artists were performing over the drop in the late afternoon sun that flooded through the solar frames.
'So, your position?' Bakunin inquired. Elegant transhuman waiters with elective augmetic modifications had brought them a kettle of whur |
on his appointment slate and could not disguise his eagerness to be elsewhere.
They'd met in the culinahalle on Aleksanterinkatu 66106. It was a high-spar place, with a good reputation and great views down over the summitstratum commercias. Acrobats and wire artists were performing over the drop in the late afternoon sun that flooded through the solar frames.
'So, your position?' Bakunin inquired. Elegant transhuman waiters with elective augmetic modifications had brought them a kettle of whurpu leaf and a silver tray of snow pastries.
'I'm contracted to supervise the renovation. I'm a data archaeologist.'
'Ah yes. I remember. The library was bombed, wasn't it?'
'Pro-Panpacifists detonated two wipe devices during the insurrection.'
Bakunin nodded. 'There can be nothing whatsoever to recover.'
'The Hive Council certainly didn't believe so. They passed the area for demolition.'
'But you disagreed?'
Hawser smiled. 'I persuaded the Universitariate Board to hire me on a trial basis. So far, I've recovered seven thousand texts from an archive that had been deemed worthless.'
'Good for you,' said Bakunin. 'Good for you.'
'Good for all of us,' said Hawser. 'Which brings me to the purpose of this meeting. Have you had a chance to read my petition?'
Bakunin smiled thinly. 'I confess, no. Not cover to cover. Things are very busy at the moment. I have reviewed it quickly, however. As far as the general thrust of your position goes, I am with you all the way. All the way. But I can't see how it isn't already covered under the terms of the Enactment of Remembrance and-'
Hawser raised his hand gently. 'Please, don't point me to the Offices of the Remembrancers. My requests keep getting channelled in that direction.'
'But surely you're talking about commemoration, about the systematic accumulation of data to document the liberation and unification of human civilisation. We are blessed to be living through the greatest moment in the history of our species, and it is only right that we memorialise it. The Sigillite himself supports and promotes the notion. You know he was a direct signatory of the Enactment?'
'I know. I am aware of his support. I celebrate it. So often, at the great moments in history, the historian is forgotten.'
'From my review of your statements and personal history,' said Bakunin, 'I am in no doubt that I can secure you a high-profile position in the Remembrance order. I can recommend you, and I'm confident I can do the same for several other names on the list you submitted.'
'I'm grateful,' said Hawser, 'truly, I am. But that's not why I requested this meeting. The remembrancers perform a vital function. Of course we must record, in great detail, the events that are surrounding us. Of course we must, for the public good, for the greater glory, for posterity, but I am proposing a rather more subtle endeavour, one that I fear is being overlooked. I'm not talking about writing down what we're doing. I'm talking about writing down what we know. I'm talking about preserving human knowledge, systemising it, working out what we know and what we've forgotten.'
The understaffer blinked, and his smile became rather vacuous. 'That's surely... pardon me, ser... but that's surely an organic process of the Imperium. We do that as we go along, don't we? I mean, we must. We accumulate knowledge.'
'Yes, but not rigorously, not methodically. And when a resource is lost, like the library here in Karelia, we shrug and say oh dear. But that data wasn't lost, not all of it. I ask the question - did we even know what we had lost when the wipe devices detonated? Did we have any idea of the holes it was eating in the collective knowledge of our species?'
Bakunin looked uncomfortable.
'I need someone to champion this, ser,' Hawser said. He knew he was getting bright-eyed and eager, and he knew that people often found that enthusiasm off-putting. Bakunin looked uneasy but Hawser couldn't help himself. 'We... and by we I mean all the academics who have put their names to my petition... we need someone to take this up the line in the Administratum. To get it noticed. To get it to the attention of somebody who has the position and influence to action it.'
'With respect-'
'With respect, ser, I do not want to spend the remainder of my career following the various Crusade forces around like a loyal dog, dutifully recording every last detail of their meritorious actions. I want to see a greater process at work, an audit of human knowledge. We must find out the limits of what we know. We must identify the blanks, and then strive to fill those blanks or renovate missing data.'
Bakunin let out a nervous little laugh.
'It's no secret that we used to know how to do things that we can't do anymore,' said Hawser, 'great feats of technology, and constructions, miracles of physics. We've forgotten how to do things that our ancestors five thousand years ago considered rudimentary. Five thousand years is nothing. It was a golden age, and look at us now, picking through the ashes to put it back together. Everyone knows that the Age of Strife was a dark age during which mankind lost countless treasures. But really, ser, do you know what we lost exactly?'
'No,' replied Bakunin.
'Neither do I,' Hawser replied. 'I cannot even tell you something as basic as what we lost. I wouldn't know where to start.'
'Please,' said Bakunin. He shivered as though he was sitting in a draught. 'Caches of data are being recovered all the time. Why, just the other day, I heard that we now had complete texts for all three of Shakespire's plays!'
Hawser looked the understaffer in the eye.
'Answer me this,' he said. 'Does anyone even know why the Age of Strife happened? How did we end up in the great darkness of Old Night to begin with?'
HAWSER WOKE UP. He could still smell the whurpu leaf and hear the background chatter of the culinahalle.
Except he couldn't.
Those things were years ago and far away. He'd blacked out and been dreaming for a second. He could smell blood and lubrication oil. He could smell body odours, scents of dirt and pain.
The pain of his own injuries was incandescent. He wondered if the Astartes - Bear - would give him a shot of something. It didn't seem likely. Bear's attitude towards suffering appeared to be fixed to a different scale. It was more probable that the Upplander's mind would, at some point, cease registering the extremes of pain in a desperate effort to protect itself.
The cabin space was dark around the metal stretcher he had been laid out on. His limbs had been strapped down. They were in the air still. Everything was vibrating. There was a constant howl from the drop-ship's engines. Every so often, turbulence jolted them.
Bear appeared. He loomed up over the stretcher, looking down. He'd sheared off the burnt ends of his mane of hair, and tied the rest back with a loop of leather. His face was long and noble, with high cheek ridges, a long nose and a prominent mouth, like a snout almost. No, not a snout, a muzzle. The intricate lines of the brown tattoos followed the geometry of Bear's face, and accented the planes of the cheek and nose, and the angles of the cheeks and brows. His skin was wind-burned and tanned. It looked as if his face had been carved out of hardwood, like the figure post of a wyrmboat.
He stared down at the Upplander. The Upplander realised the Astartes was scanning him with a handheld device.
He clicked it off and put it away.
'We're coming in now,' he said. The Upplander's translator raced to keep up. 'There'll be a surgeon waiting to tend you, but this is a special place. You know that. So let's start as we mean to go on.'
He reached down, and with the fingers of his left hand, he gouged out the Upplander's right eye.
THREE
Aett
IF THE DAEMON, Bear, represented salvation, then he also represented a final submission. The Upplander no longer needed to fight the cold to stay awake, or the pain to stay alive. He let go, and sank like a rock into the glassy silence of a freezing sea. Pain devoured him. It beset him like a blizzard, so violent and furious that he could see it, even with his blinded eye.
The blizzard continued long after the pain blew out.
THEY WERE APPROACHING the special place that Bear had promised to take him to. They were arriving in a snow storm. It was a terrible snow storm.
Or was it white noise? Flecks of static instead of particles of snow? A faulty pict-feed? The signal trash of a damaged augmetic optic? Just fuzz, just buzzing white speckles against-
Against blackness. The blackness, now that had to be real. It was so solid. Solid blackness.
Unless it was blindness. His eye hurt. The absence of it hurt. The socket where his eye had been hurt.
Snow and static, blackness and blindness; the values interchanged. He couldn't tell them apart. His core temperature was plummeting. Pain was being diluted with numbness. The Upplander knew he had long since ceased to be a reliable witness of events. Consciousness refused to reignite in any stable fashion. He was caught in an ugly cleft of half-awareness, a pitiful fox-hole in the lee-side of a snow-bank of insensibility. It was unbearably hard to distinguish between memories and pain-dreams. Was he seeing white noise on a blacked-out display screen, or blizzarding snow against solid black rock? It was impossible to tell.
He fancied the blackness was a mountain beyond the snow, a mountain that was too big to be a mountain, a black tooth of rock that loomed out of the blizzard, broader and taller than could be taken in at a single glance. It was so big that it had already filled his field of vision, up and down and side to side, before he even realised it was there. At first, he thought it was the blackness of the polar sky, but no, it was a solid wall of rock, rushing towards him.
He sighed, reassured, able at last to comfort himself by definitively separating one memory-fact from dream-fiction. The mounta |
ntain, a black tooth of rock that loomed out of the blizzard, broader and taller than could be taken in at a single glance. It was so big that it had already filled his field of vision, up and down and side to side, before he even realised it was there. At first, he thought it was the blackness of the polar sky, but no, it was a solid wall of rock, rushing towards him.
He sighed, reassured, able at last to comfort himself by definitively separating one memory-fact from dream-fiction. The mountain, that was definitely a dream.
No mountain could be that big.
HE WAS CARRIED in out of the storm, down into the warm and muffled blackness of a deep cave. He lay there and dreamed some more.
The Upplander dreamed for a long time.
The dreams started out as pain-dreams, sharpened by the pangs of his injuries, distorted by opiates flooding into his bloodstream. They were fragments, sharp and imperfect, like segments of a puzzle, or pieces of a broken mirror, interspersed with deadened periods of unconsciousness. They reminded him of the moves of a regicide game, a match between two experienced players. Slow, considered moves, strategically deep, separated by long stretches of contemplative inaction. The regicide board was old and inlaid with ivory. He could smell the lint that had collected in the corners of the board's case. Nearby, there was a small toy horse, made of wood. He was drinking radapple juice. Someone was playing the clavier.
The sharp edges of his mental fragments dulled, and the dreams became longer and more complex. He began to dream his way through epic cycles of dreams. They lasted years, they enumerated generations, they saw the ice encroach and thaw away again, the ocean harden and return to motion, the sun rush across the cloud-barred sky like a disc of beaten copper, winking, glittering, growing bright like a nova and then dull like a dead stellar ember. Day, night, day, night...
Inside the dreams, men came to him and sat by him in the secret gloom of the cave. They talked. A fire was burning. He could smell the copal resin smoking into the air. He could not see the men, but he could see their shadows, cast up the cave wall by the spitting fire. They were not human. The shadow shapes had animal heads, or antlers, or horns sometimes. Man-shapes sat and panted through dog-snouts. Spiked branches of horn-crest nodded as others spoke. Some were hunched with the weighty shoulder hump of winter-fat cattle. After a while, he became uncertain if he was seeing shadows on the cave wall, or ancient parietal art, smudged lines of ochre and charcoal, that had been lent the illusion of movement by the inconstant flames.
He tried to listen to what was being said by the men during the long, mumbling conversations, but he couldn't concentrate. He thought that if he was able to focus, he would hear all the secrets of the world come tumbling out in a murmured river, and learn every story from the very first to the very last.
Sometimes the Upplander's dreams picked him up and carried him outside the cave. They took him up to some high vantage where there were only stars overhead, in a roof of velvet blue, and sunlit lands below, a tapestry of worlds, all sewn together, all the worlds in creation, like the inlaid board of a great game. And on that board, epic histories played out for him. Nations and empires, creeds and races, rising and falling, bonding and fighting, forming alliances, making war. He witnessed unifications, annihilations, reformations, annexations, invasions, expansions, enlightenments. He saw it all from his lofty vantage, a seat so high and precarious that sometimes he had to cling on to the throne's golden arms for fear of falling.
Sometimes his dreams swept him back inside himself, into his own flesh, into his own blood, and there, at a microscopic level, he observed the universe of his own body as it disassembled atom from atom, his essence sampled down to the smallest genetic packet, like light sifted and split into its component colours by a subtle lens. He felt he was being dismantled, working part from working part, like an old timepiece, and every last piece of the damaskeened movement laid out for repair. He felt like a biological sample: a laboratory animal, belly slit and pegged open, its organs removed one by one like the gears of a pocket watch; like an insect, pinned and minutely sectioned for a glass slide to learn what made it tick.
When his dreams took him back to the cave, where the therianthrope shadows sat muttering in the fire-light, he often felt as if he had been put back together in an altogether different order. If he was an old timepiece, then his dismantled movement had been rearranged, and some parts cleaned or modified, or replaced, and then his mainspring and his escapement, his going train and his balance wheel, and all his tiny levers and pins had been put back together in some inventive new sequence, and his cover screwed shut so that no one could see how he had been re-engineered.
And when he was back in the cave, he thought about the cave itself. Warm, secure, deep in the black rock, out of the storm. But had he been taken back there for his own protection? Or had he been taken back there for safekeeping until the man-shapes around the fire got hungry?
THE STRANGEST AND most infrequent dreams of all were of the coldest, deepest part of the cave, where a voice spoke to him.
In this place, there was only blackness cut by a cold, blue glow. The air smelled sterile, like rock in a dry polar highland that lacked any water to form ice. It was far away from the soft warmth and the firelight of the cave, far away from the fraternity of murmuring voices and the smell of smouldering resin. The Upplander's limbs felt leaden there, as though he had swallowed ice, as though cold liquid metal ran in his veins and weighed him down. Even his thoughts were slow and viscous.
He fought against the arctic slowness, afraid to let it pull him down into dreamless sleep and death. The best he could muster felt like a feeble twitch of his heavy limbs.
'Be still!'
That was the first thing the voice said to him. It was so sudden and unexpected, he froze.
'Be still!' the voice repeated. It was a deep, hollow voice, a whisper that carried the force of thunder. It wasn't particularly human. It sounded as if it had been fashioned out of the bleating, droning notes of an old signal horn. Each syllable and vowel sound was simply the same low, reverberative noise sampled and tonally adjusted.
'Be still. Stop your twitching and your wriggling.'
'Where am I?' the Upplander asked.
'In the dark,' the voice replied. It sounded further away, a ram's horn braying on a lonely cliff.
'I don't understand,' he said.
There was a silence. Then the voice came again, directly behind the Upplander's right ear, as if the speaker had circled him.
'You don't have to understand the dark. That's the thing about the dark, it doesn't need to be understood. It's just the dark. It is what it is.'
'But what am I doing here?' he asked.
When the voice answered, it had receded. It came as a rumble from somewhere ahead of him, like the sound of a wind moaning through empty caves. It said, 'You're here to be. You're here to dream the dreams, that's all. So just dream the dreams. They'll help pass the time. Dream the dreams. Stop your twitching and your wriggling. It's disturbing me.'
The Upplander hesitated. He didn't like the threat of anger in the voice.
'I don't like it here,' he ventured at length.
'None of us like it here!' the voice boomed, right in the Upplander's left ear. He let out an involuntary squeak of terror. Not only was the voice loud and close and angry, but there was a wet leopard-growl in its thunder.
'None of us like it here,' the voice repeated, calmer now, circling him in the darkness. 'None of us chose to be here. We miss the firelight. We miss the sunlight. We've dreamed all the dreams they give us a hundred times over, a thousand times. We know them off by heart. We don't choose the dark.'
There was a long pause.
'The dark chooses us.'
'Who are you?' the Upplander asked.
'I was called Cormek,' the voice said. 'Cormek Dod.'
'How long have you been here, Cormek Dod?'
Pause, then a rumble. 'I forget.'
'How long have I been here?'
'I don't even know who you are,' the voice replied. 'Just be still, and shut up your racket, and stop disturbing me.'
THEN THE UPPLANDER woke up, and he was still on the metal stretcher Bear had strapped him to.
The stretcher was swaying slightly, suspended. The Upplander's vision swam into focus and he looked up, up at the chains rising from the four corners of the stretcher. They all met at a central ring, and became a single, thicker length of chain. The main chain, dark and oiled, extended up and away, into the oppressive twilight of the vast roof space above him. It felt like a cave, an enormous cave, but it wasn't the dream-cave where the animal-men had murmured by the firelight, and it wasn't the deep, cold cave with the blue glow either.
Everything was in shadow, in a twilight of a greenish cast. From what he could make out in the half-light, the cave was a vast space, like the nave of a cathedral, or the belly-hold of a voidship. And it wasn't actually a cave, because the structural angles and edges were too straight and regular.
The Upplander couldn't turn his head or move his limbs, but he was relieved to find that he was no longer in pain. There was not even a vestigial nag of discomfort from his torso or his shattered legs.
His relief was rather eclipsed by the anxiety he felt at his new situation: trapped and pinned, strapped down, unable to twist his head to see anything but the black roof space above. A dull, drowsy weight on his heart made him feel sluggish and leaden, as if he'd taken a tranquiliser or a sleeping draught. He blinked, wishing he could rub the grit out of his eyes, wishing the stretcher would stop swinging |
n. There was not even a vestigial nag of discomfort from his torso or his shattered legs.
His relief was rather eclipsed by the anxiety he felt at his new situation: trapped and pinned, strapped down, unable to twist his head to see anything but the black roof space above. A dull, drowsy weight on his heart made him feel sluggish and leaden, as if he'd taken a tranquiliser or a sleeping draught. He blinked, wishing he could rub the grit out of his eyes, wishing the stretcher would stop swinging.
A swaying length of thick chain ran back down out of the darkness at an oblique angle to the central chain supporting him, and from its rhythmic jolts, it seemed clear that he was being hoisted up into the vaulted roof of the cathedral. The links clattered through an invisible block high above him.
He stopped ascending. The stretcher wobbled for a moment, and then swung hard to his left, out across the room, drawn with such force it started to rotate. Then the chain began to rattle back up in fits and starts, and the stretcher began to descend. The taut chains securing the four corners of the stretcher shuddered with every downward jerk.
He began to panic. He strained at the buckled canvas restraints. They wouldn't give, and he didn't want to tear or strain any of his wounds.
He came down lower, in a series of jolting drops, onto some sort of deck area or platform. Men moved in quickly from either side to take hold of the stretcher and steady it.
The Upplander looked up at their faces, and his anxiety transmuted into fear.
The men wore robes of simple, poor-quality cloth over tight body-suits of intricately fashioned brown leather. Each leather suit was constructed in artful panels, some shaped, some decorated with piercing or knotwork or furrowed lines, so that the whole resembled an anatomist's diagram of human musculature: the wall of muscle around the ribs, the tendons of the arms, the sinews of the throat.
Their faces were animal skulls, masks fashioned from bone. Stub horns curled from discoloured skull brows. Branching antler tines rose from unicorn centre-burrs.
The eyes staring out of the mask slits at the Upplander were inhuman. They were the black-pinned yellow eyes of wolves. They shone with their own light.
Get off me! he shouted, but his voice was dust-dry in his throat, as though he hadn't spoken for centuries. He coughed, panic rising in his chest. The bone faces crowded in around him, puzzled at his antics. All of them smiled the simpleton smile of skulls, the idiot grin of death's face, but the eyes in the sockets and slits put the lie to that glee. The fire in the yellow eyes was predatory, a fierce intellect, an intent to do harm.
'Get away from me!' he cried, finding his voice at last, dragging it out, old and rusty, from the parched creek bed of his throat. 'Get back!'
The skulls did nothing of the kind. They came closer. Hands sheathed in intricate brown leather gauntlets reached towards his face to clamp his mouth. Some of them had only two or three fingers. Some had dewclaws.
The Upplander began to thrash in his restraints, pulling and twisting in a frenzied effort born of panic. He no longer cared if he tore sutures, or reopened a healing gash, or jarred a mending bone fracture.
Something broke. He felt it snap, thought it was a rib or a hamstring, braced himself for the searing pain.
It was the canvas cuff on his right arm. He'd torn it clean off the metal boss that anchored it to the stretcher's frame.
He lashed out with his freed arm and felt his knuckles connect with the hard ridges of a skull mask. Something let out a guttural bark of distress. The Upplander punched again, yelling, then he scrabbled at the buckles girthed around his throat, and undid the neck straps. With his throat free, he could lift his shoulders off the hard bed of the stretcher, and raise his head clear of the leather brace that was preventing all lateral movement. He bent up, leaning over to unfasten the canvas cuff holding his left wrist. The right-hand strap was still buckled around his right forearm with a frayed tuft sprouting from its underside where he'd torn it off the steel boss.
The skulls came at him, grabbing him and trying to press him back down. Unbraced, the stretcher swung wildly. The Upplander fought them off. His legs were still strapped in. He punched and twisted, and cursed at them in Low Gothic, Turcic, Croat and Syblemic. They gibbered at him, in commotion, trying to pin him and restrain him.
The Upplander's right leg came free. He bent it, and then lashed out a kick with as much force as he could muster. He caught one of the skulls full in the chest, and rejoiced to see the figure recoil with enough violence to tumble at least another two of its robed companions backwards.
Then his left leg tore free too. As his weight shifted suddenly, the stretcher tipped and he spilled off, falling into half a dozen of the skulls trying to keep him in place. His fists were flying. The Upplander had never been taught to fight, and he'd never had to, but terror and a frantic survival instinct impelled him, and there didn't appear to be any huge mystery to it. You swung your fists. If your fists connected with things, you hurt them. The things jerked backwards. They uttered growls of pain or barks of breath. If you were lucky, they fell down. The Upplander milled his arms like a madman. He kicked out. He drove them back. He kicked one of them so hard that it sprawled and broke its skull mask against the smooth granite of the platform.
The Upplander found his feet. The skulls were circling him, but they had become wary. Some of them had been bruised by his slugging fists. He snarled at them, stamping his feet and gesticulating wildly with his fists, as though he was trying to scare off a flock of birds. The skulls drew back a little.
The Upplander took a second to get his bearings.
He was standing on a platform of dark granite, a shelf that had been cut, sharp and square-edged, from the rock around it. Behind him, the stretcher was swinging on its chains. To his left, a row of oblong granite blocks lined one side of the platform, permanent catafalques onto which stretchers like his own could be lowered and rested. Above him dangled four or five more chain pulleys of various gauges and sizes.
To his right, the platform overhung a gulf. It went straight down into darkness, and smelled of wet minerals and the centre of the world. The gulf was a shaft, rectangular in cross-section, and the sides of the shaft had been cut, like the platform, out of the living rock. The shaft dropped into the darkness below him in square-cut, oblong bites, like the layers of a cake, or the cubic levels of a monolithic quarry. They looked like they had been cut with sideways slices of a giant chisel.
All around him, the chamber rose in majesty, its cyclopean walls rock-hewn like the shaft, too regular and rectilinear to be a natural cave, too make-shift and imperfect to have been planned in one piece. Monumental stonemasons and mining engineers had opened this cavity over a period of decades or centuries, excising one or two levels of oblong blocks at a time, increasing the space in rectilinear levels, quarrying each layer of stone away and leaving artificial lines of division and stratification in the gigantic walls. Each phase must have been a monstrous effort, from the sheer tonnage of rock alone. The square-cut bites showed how huge and unwieldy each removed block of stone must have been. The cubic mass of a mountain had been hollowed out of the heart of a bigger mountain.
The platform and the shaft top were lit by the frosty green twilight. Watermarks streaked the horizontally scored, stratified walls, leaving downstrokes of emerald minerals and algae stain. The Upplander could not see how far up the ceiling was, because it was lost in the cavity's darkness.
He edged backwards, the skulls around him. He became conscious of the way that every sound they made became a deep bell-echo in the vast chamber. He tried to move to keep the catafalques between him and the skulls. They circled in between the biers, trying to outflank him. He noticed that, although they looked solid-hewn, the catafalques had metal plates set in their sides. The plates incorporated vent caps, indicator lights and recognisably Terran control pads. Stout, reinforced metal ducting sprouted like drainpipes from the plates and disappeared flush into the platform. There was tech in this primordially quarried chamber, a lot of tech, and it was largely concealed.
The skulls attempted to rush him. The Upplander darted backwards and reached the pendulating stretcher. He grabbed its metal frame and steered it at the skulls, ramming it at them. They jumped back out of its way, and he rammed it again to keep them at bay. He saw the buckled canvas cuffs anchored to the stretcher's bed. He had assumed he'd simply pulled them all off their pins, like the right-hand cuff that was still fastened around his forearm. But both leg straps and the left-hand cuff had been ripped. The waxed canvas and leather trusses had torn open along their stitching. He'd as good as wrenched himself free of his bonds.
The thought disturbed him. He was sick and injured, surely? He didn't feel sick and injured. The Upplander looked down at himself. He was whole. His feet were bare. They were pink and clean. The still-buckled canvas cuff hung around his right wrist. His body was cased in a dark grey bodyglove with reinforced panels at the major joints like the undersuit of some void-armour. It was tight and form-fitting. It revealed a figure that looked remarkably lean and strong, with surprising muscle definition. It did not look like the well-worn, over-taxed eighty-three year-old body he had last looked down at. No thickness at the hips, no incipient paunch from too many amasecs over too many years.
No augmetic implant from that day in Ossetia.
'What the hell...?' the |
d in a dark grey bodyglove with reinforced panels at the major joints like the undersuit of some void-armour. It was tight and form-fitting. It revealed a figure that looked remarkably lean and strong, with surprising muscle definition. It did not look like the well-worn, over-taxed eighty-three year-old body he had last looked down at. No thickness at the hips, no incipient paunch from too many amasecs over too many years.
No augmetic implant from that day in Ossetia.
'What the hell...?' the Upplander breathed.
Sensing his sudden disconcertion, the skulls came at him.
HE SWUNG THE stretcher into them with all the force he could muster. Its metal nose caught one in the breastbone, and almost flipped it onto its back. He glimpsed a cracked dog-skull mask, strap broken, sliding away across the platform. Another skull grabbed the opposite end of the stretcher and tried to wrench it out of his hands. The Upplander uttered a despairing, denying cry that echoed around the vast chamber, and hauled the stretcher out of the skull's grip. The skull's feet left the ground for a moment as it tried to cling on.
The Upplander pulled the stretcher right back and let it fly. It swung like a wrecking ball. It struck one skull down and slammed into a second, knocking it off the edge of the platform into the gulf.
The skull managed to catch the lip of the platform as it went over. Its hands clawed frantically at the granite surfaces. The weight of its legs and body slid it backwards. The other skulls rushed forwards and grabbed it by the hands and sleeves.
While they were occupied pulling their kin to safety, the Upplander ran.
He left the chamber, his bare feet slapping against the cool stone floor. He passed under a broad lintel, and down the throat of an entrance hall big enough to fly a cargo spinner through. The permeating green dusk cast a confused light. His shadow ran away from him in different directions.
The grand entrance hall, and the rock-cut tunnel that lay beyond it, were more finished than the vast chamber behind him. The rock walls had been planed or polished to a dull shine, like dark water ice in the middle of a hard winter. The floor was stone. The ceiling, and the edges of the floor where it met the wall, along with the interspersed archways, ribs and regular wall panels, were dressed in beams and fittings of gleaming off-white, like varnished blond wood. Most of the white wood finishings were massive, as thick as tree boles, and hard-edged, although some were expertly curved to form arches, or chamfered to make wall ribs.
The gloomy place made memories fire in his head, sudden and sharp. The halls reminded him of ikon caskets he had once recovered from atomic bunkers under the nanotic ground zero outside Zincirli, in Federated Islahiye. They reminded him of Gaduarene reliquaries with their engravings of lightning stones, and the case of Rector Uwe's treasured old regicide set. They reminded him of the elegant, silk-lined boxes of the Daumarl Medal. They reminded him of Ossetian prayer boxes, the ones made of grey slate set into frames of expertly worked ivory. Yes, that was it. Gold sheets, hammered around carcasses of wood and pin-screwed bone, so old, so precious. The white posts and pillars finishing his surroundings looked like they were made of bone. They had an unmistakable, slightly golden, cast, a warmth. He felt as if he were inside a box of Ossetian slate lined with ivory, as if he were the ancient treasure, the rusted nail, the lock of saintly hair, the flaking parchment, the keepsake.
He kept running, straining to hear whether he was being followed. The only sounds were the slaps of his soles and the faraway sigh of wind gusting along empty hallways. The draught made it feel as though he were in some high castle, where a casement shutter had been left open somewhere, allowing air to stir through unpopulated chambers.
He stopped for a moment. Turning to his left, he could feel the breath of the wind against his face, a faint positive pressure from one direction.
Then he heard something else, a ticking sound. A clicking. He couldn't tell where it was coming from. It was ticking like a clock, but faster, like an urgent heartbeat.
He slowly made sense of what he was hearing.
Something was padding along the stone floor of the tunnel, somewhere close by, a quadruped, soft-footed, moving with purpose, but not running. It had claws, not the retractable claws of a feline, but the claws of a dog, prominent and unconcealed, the wear-blunted tips tap-tap-tapping on the stone floor with every step.
He was being stalked. He was being hunted.
He started to run again. The tunnel broadened out, under a fine, spandrelled arch of blond wood, and revealed a great flight of stairs up ahead. The steps were cut from the native rock, square and plain. They became winders after the first ten steps where the flight turned away. The depth of the tread and the height of the risers were two or three times the normal dimensions. It was a giant's staircase.
He heard the claw-clicks closing in behind him, and began to bound up the steps. The lustrous green twilight threw strange shadows. His own shadow loomed alarmingly at his side, staining the wall like the therianthropic shapes in his dream-cave. His shadow-head looked more like an animal's on the curving wall, so much so that he had to stop for a moment and feel at his face to check that he had not woken in possession of a snout or muzzle.
His fingers found the lean flesh of his face, human and familiar, with a trace of moustache and a patch of beard on the chin.
Then he realised he could only see out of one eye.
The last breathing memory he had was of Bear taking his right eye out with his fingers. The pain had been dull, but enough to shock him into unconsciousness.
Yet it was his right eye he could see out of. It was his right eye that was showing him the frosty green twilight around him. His left eye registered only blackness.
The claw-taps approached behind him, louder, nearly at the bullnose step at the foot of the flight. He resumed his escape. Looking down, he watched the shadows on the winding steps move and alter behind him. The edge-step shadows fanned out into a radiating geometric diagram, like the delicate compartments of a giant spiral seashell, or the partitioned divisions of some intricate brass astrolabe or timepiece.
Tick, tick, tick - each second, each step, each stair, each turn, each division.
A new shadow loomed below him. It spread up across the outside wall of the giant staircase, cast by something on the stairs but out of sight around the turn.
It was canine. Its head was down, and its ears were forward and alert. Its back, thickly furred, was arched and tensed. Its forepaws rose and took each step with mesmeric precision and grace. The ticking had slowed down.
'I'm not afraid of you!' he cried. 'There are no wolves on Fenris!'
He was answered by a wet throat-growl that touched some infrasonic pitch of terror. He turned and ran, but his foot caught a step wrong, and he tripped and fell hard. Something seized him from behind, something powerful. He cried out, imagining jaws closing on his back.
A tight grip rolled him onto his back on the steps. There was a giant standing over him, but it was a man, not a wolf.
The face was all he saw. It was sheathed in a tight mask of lacquered brown leather, part man, part daemon-wolf, as intricately made as the body-suits of the skulls. Knotted and straked, the leather pieces circled the eye sockets and made heavy lids. They barred the cheek like exposed sinew, and buffered the chin. They wrapped the throat, and were shaped to mimic a long moustache and a bound-up tusk of chin-beard. The eyes revealed through the mask slits were the colour of spun gold with black pinprick pupils.
The mouth held bright fangs.
'What are you doing here?' the giant rumbled. It bent down and sniffed at him. 'You're not meant to be here. Why are you here?'
'I don't understand!' the Upplander quailed.
'What are you called?' the giant asked.
Some shred of wit remained in the Upplander's head.
'Ahmad Ibn Rustah,' he replied.
THE GIANT GRASPED him by the upper arm and dragged him the rest of the way up the stairs. The Upplander scrambled to keep up, his feet slipping and milling, like a child pulled along by an adult. The giant had a lush black pelt around one shoulder and his immense, corded physique was packed into a leatherwork bodyglove. The build, the scope of the giant's physicality, was unmistakable.
'You're Astartes...' the Upplander ventured, half-running, half-slithering in response to the dragging grip.
'What?'
'Astartes. I said, you're-'
'Of course I'm Astartes!' the giant rumbled.
'Do you have a name?'
'Of course I have a name!'
'W-what is it?'
'It's shut up or I'll slit your bloody throat! That's what it is! All right?'
They had reached a landing, and then the doorway of a massive but low-ceilinged chamber. The Upplander felt heat, the warmth of flame. Vision was suddenly, curiously, returning to his dead left eye. He could see a dull, fiery glow ahead. It was enough to catch the shape of things in the dark, the shape of things his right eye saw in hard, cold, green relief.
The giant dragged him in through the stone archway.
The chamber was circular, at least thirty metres across. The floor was a great disk of polished bone or pale wood, laid in almost seamless sections. There were three plinths in the room, each one a broad, circular platform of grey stone about five metres in diameter rising about a metre off the bone floor. Each plinth was simply cut and worked smooth. In the centre of each was a firepit, crackling with well-fed flames, oozing a blush of heat into the air. Conical iron hoods hung down over each fire from the low, domed ceiling to vent the smoke.
Through his right eye, the chamber was a bright place of spectral green light. The licking flames were blooming |
ee plinths in the room, each one a broad, circular platform of grey stone about five metres in diameter rising about a metre off the bone floor. Each plinth was simply cut and worked smooth. In the centre of each was a firepit, crackling with well-fed flames, oozing a blush of heat into the air. Conical iron hoods hung down over each fire from the low, domed ceiling to vent the smoke.
Through his right eye, the chamber was a bright place of spectral green light. The licking flames were blooming white in their brightness. To his left, it was a dark, ruddy cave suffused by an uneven golden glow from the fires. The expanse of bone floor and brushed pale stone reflected the firelight's radiance. Opposite the chamber door, where the low wall met the down-curved edge of the domed roof, there were shallow, horizontal window slits, like the ports of a gun emplacement. The depth of the angled recesses around the slits spoke of the extraordinary thickness of the walls.
Four men occupied the room, all seated on the flat top of the furthest plinth. All of them were giants in furs and leather like the one who clasped his arm.
They were relaxed, sipping from silver drinking bowls, playing games with bone counters on wooden boards laid out on the plinth between them. It looked like one of the men, cross-legged and nearest the firepit, was playing all of the other three, simultaneously running three boards.
They looked from their games, four more daemon faces cased in tight leather masks, four more sets of yellow eyes, catching the lamplight like mirrors. The flash was brightest in the green-cast view of the Upplander's right eye.
'What have you found now, Trunc?' asked one.
'I've found Ahmad Ibn Rustah on the Chapter stairs is what I've found,' replied the giant holding him.
Two of the men by the fire snorted, and one tapped a finger to his crown to imply a touch of simple-headedness.
'And what's an Ahmad Ibn Rustah, then?' asked the first one again. The pelt he was wearing was red-brown, and his hair, long and braided stiff with wax or lacquer, projected out of the back of his full-head mask in an S-curve like a striking serpent.
'Don't you remember?' the giant replied. 'Don't you remember, Var?' The giant let go of the Upplander's arm and shoved him down onto the bone floor until he was kneeling. The floor was warm to the touch, like fine ivory.
'I remember you talking shit yesterday, Trunc,' returned Var of the serpent-crest. 'And the day before that, and the day before that. It all blurs into one to me.'
'Yes? Bite my hairy arse.'
The men lounging on the plinth burst out laughing, all except the one sitting cross-legged.
'I remember,' he said. His voice was like good steel drawing across an oiled whetstone. The others fell silent.
'You do?' asked Trunc.
The one sitting cross-legged nodded. His mask was the most intricate of all. The cheeks and brow were seething with interlocking figures and spiralling ribbon-shapes. His wide shoulders were draped with two pelts, one coal-black, the other white.
'Yes. And you'd remember him too, Varangr, if you only thought about it for a bloody minute.'
'I would?' asked Var of the serpent-crest uncertainly.
'Yes, you would. It was Gedrath. It was the old Jarl of Tra. Remember now?'
Var nodded. The crest of bound hair went up and down like the arm of a hand pump. 'Oh, yes, Skarsi, I do. I do!'
'Good,' said the man in the black and white pelts, and casually fetched Var an open-handed clip around the side of the head that seemed to deliver the same playful force of a mallet seating a fence-post.
'I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it,' Var mumbled.
The man in the black and white pelts uncrossed his legs, slipped to the edge of the plinth, and stood up.
'What do we do with him, Skarsi?' Trunc asked.
'Well,' the man said, 'I suppose we could eat him.'
He stared down at the kneeling Upplander.
'That was a joke,' he said.
'I don't think he's laughing, Skarsi,' said one of the others.
The man in the black and white pelts aimed an index finger at Trunc.
'You go down and find out why he's awake.'
'Yes, Skarsi,' Trunc nodded.
Skarsi turned the finger towards Varangr.
'Var? You go and find the gothi. Bring him here. He'll know what's to be done.'
Var nodded his serpent-crest again.
Skarsi pointed at the other two men. 'You two, go and... just go. We'll finish the game-circle later.'
The two men got off the plinth and followed Var and Trunc towards the chamber door. 'Just because you were losing, Skarsi,' laughed one of them as he went by.
'You'll look pretty funny with a hneftafl board jammed up your arse,' Skarsi replied. The men laughed again.
When the four of them had passed through the arched doorway and out of sight, Skarsi turned back to the Upplander and hunkered down to face him with his hands clasped and his elbows resting on his knees. He cocked his huge, masked head on one side, studying the man kneeling on the floor in front of him.
'So, you're Ibn Rustah, then?'
The Upplander didn't reply at first.
'You got a voice in you?' Skarsi asked, 'or is it just the words I'm using?' He tapped the lips of his tight leather mask. 'Words? Yes? You need a translator? A translator?'
The Upplander put his hand to his chest, and then remembered that his environment suit was long gone.
'I've lost my translator unit,' he replied. 'I don't know where it went. But I understand you. I'm not sure how. What are you speaking?'
Skarsi shrugged. 'Words?'
'What language?'
'Uh, Juvjk, we call it. Hearth-cant. If I speak Low Gothic like this, is it any better?'
'Did you switch just then?' asked the Upplander.
'Between Juvjk and Low? Yes.'
The Upplander shook his head, slightly mystified.
'I heard a sort of accent shift,' he replied, 'but the words stayed the same. It was all just the same.'
'You know you're speaking Juvjk back to me, don't you?' Skarsi said.
The Upplander hesitated. He swallowed.
'I couldn't speak Juvjk yesterday,' he confessed.
'That's what a good night's sleep'll do for you,' said Skarsi. He rose. 'Get up and come sit over here,' he said, pointing at the plinth where the four Astartes had been gaming. The Upplander got up and followed him.
'You're Space Wolves, aren't you?'
Skarsi found that amusing. 'Oh, now those words aren't Juvjk. Space Wolves? Ha ha. We don't use that term.'
'What do you use, then?'
'The Vlka Fenryka, if we're being formal. Just the Rout, otherwise.'
He beckoned the Upplander to sit on the broad stone plinth, sliding one of the wooden game-boards out of his way. In the firepit, kindling spat and cracked, and the Upplander could feel the fierce press of heat against his left side.
'You're Skarsi?' he asked. 'Your name?'
Skarsi nodded, taking a sip of dark liquid from a silver bowl.
'That's so. Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson, Jarl of Fyf.'
'You're some kind of lord?'
'Yes. Some kind.' Skarsi appeared to smile behind his mask.
'What does Jarl of Fyf mean, then? What language is that?'
Skarsi picked up one of the bone-disc counters from the game boards and started to play with it absent-mindedly.
'It's Wurgen.'
'Wurgen?'
'You ask a lot of questions.'
'I do,' said the Upplander. 'It's what I do. It's why I came here.'
Skarsi nodded. He flipped the counter back onto the board. 'It's why you came here, eh? To ask questions? I can think of plenty of better reasons for going to a place.' He looked at the Upplander. 'And where is here, Ahmad Ibn Rustah?'
'Fenris. The fortress of the Sixth Legion Astartes, called - forgive me - the Space Wolves. The fortress is known as the Fang. Am I right?'
'Yes. Except only an idiot calls it the Fang.'
'What does a man call it if he isn't an idiot?' the Upplander asked.
'The Aett,' said Skarsi.
'The Aett? Just the Aett?'
'Yes.'
'Literally clan-home, or fireplace? Or... den?'
'Yes, yes, yes.'
'Am I annoying you with my questions, Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson?'
Skarsi grunted. 'You are.'
The Upplander nodded. 'Useful to know.'
'Why?' asked Skarsi.
'Because if I'm going to be here, and I'm going to ask my questions, I'd best be aware of how many I can get away with at a time. I wouldn't want to piss the Vlka Fenryka off so much they decide to eat me.'
Skarsi shrugged and crossed his legs.
'No one's going to eat you for that,' he said.
'I know. I was joking,' said the Upplander.
'I wasn't,' replied Skarsi. 'You're under Ogvai's protection, so only he can decide who gets to eat you.'
The Upplander paused. The heat of the firepit against the side of his face and neck suddenly felt unpleasantly intense. He swallowed.
'The Vlka Fenryka... they're capable of cannibalism then, are they?'
'We're capable of anything,' replied Skarsi. 'That's the whole point of us.'
The Upplander slid off the plinth and stood up. He wasn't sure if he was moving away from the Astartes lord or the disagreeable heat. He just wanted to move away, to walk around.
'So who... so who's this Ogvai who has power over my life?'
Skarsi took another sip from his bowl.
'Ogvai Ogvai Helmschrot, Jarl of Tra.'
'Earlier, I heard you say someone called Gedrath was Jarl of Tra.'
'He was,' said Skarsi. 'Gedrath's sleeping on the red snow now, so Og's jarl. But Og has to honour any of Gedrath's decisions. Like bringing you here under protection.'
The Upplander moved around the room, his arms folded against his chest.
'So jarl. That's lord, we've established. And tra and fyf? They're numbers?'
'Uh huh,' nodded Skarsi. 'Three and five. Onn, twa, tra, for, fyf, sesc, sepp, for-twa, tra-tra, dekk.'
'So you're lord of five, and this Ogvai is lord of three? Fifth and third... what? Warbands? Divisions? Regiments?'
'Companies. We call them companies.'
'And that's in... Wurgen?'
'Yes, Wurgen. Juvjk is hearth-cant, Wurgen is war-cant.'
'A specialised combat language? A battle tongue?'
Skarsi waved his hand in a distracted manner. 'Whatever you want to call it.'
'You have a language for f |
h huh,' nodded Skarsi. 'Three and five. Onn, twa, tra, for, fyf, sesc, sepp, for-twa, tra-tra, dekk.'
'So you're lord of five, and this Ogvai is lord of three? Fifth and third... what? Warbands? Divisions? Regiments?'
'Companies. We call them companies.'
'And that's in... Wurgen?'
'Yes, Wurgen. Juvjk is hearth-cant, Wurgen is war-cant.'
'A specialised combat language? A battle tongue?'
Skarsi waved his hand in a distracted manner. 'Whatever you want to call it.'
'You have a language for fighting and a language for when you're not fighting?'
'Fenrys hjolda! The questions never end!'
'There's always something else to know,' said the Upplander. 'There's always more to know.'
'Not true. There's such a thing as too much.'
This last comment had been made by a new voice. Another Astartes had entered the chamber behind the Upplander, silent as the first snow. Varangr lurked at his heels in the doorway.
The newcomer had the stature of all of his breed, and was dressed in a knotwork leather suit like the others the Upplander had encountered. But he was not masked.
His head was shaved, apart from a stiffly waxed and braided beard that curled like a horn from his chin. There was a cap of soft leather on his scalp, and a faded tracery of tattooed lines and dots on the weather-beaten flesh of his face. In common with all of the Vlka Fenryka the Upplander had seen, the newcomer's eyes were black-centred gold, and his lean, craggy face was noticeably elongated around the nose and mouth, as if he had the hint of a snout. When he opened his mouth to speak, the Upplander saw what the extended jaw was made to conceal. The newcomer's dentition resembled that of a mature forest wolf. The canines in particular were the longest the Upplander had seen.
'There's such a thing as too much,' the newcomer repeated.
'Exactly!' Skarsi exclaimed, getting up. 'Too much! That's exactly what I was saying! You explain it to him, gothi! Better still, you try answering his endless questions!'
'If I can,' said the newcomer. He gazed at the Upplander. 'What is the next question?'
The Upplander tried to return the stare without flinching.
'What did that remark mean? Too much?' he asked.
'Even knowledge has its limits. There is a place where it becomes unsafe.'
'You can know too much?' asked the Upplander.
'That's what I said.'
'I disagree.'
The newcomer smiled slightly. 'Of course you do. I am not at all surprised.'
'Do you have a name?' the Upplander asked him.
'We all have names. Some of us have more than one. Mine is Ohthere Wyrdmake. I am rune priest to Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson. What is your next question?'
'What is a rune priest?'
'What do you suppose it is?'
'A shaman. A practitioner of ritual.'
'A rattler of bones. A pagan wizard. You can barely disguise the superior tone in your voice.'
'No, I meant no affront,' the Upplander said quickly. The priest's lips had curled into an unpleasant snarl.
'What is your next question?'
The Upplander hesitated again.
'How did Gedrath, Jarl of Tra, die?'
'He died the way we all die,' said Skarsi, 'with red snow under him.'
'It must have been sudden. In the last few days.'
Skarsi looked at the rune priest.
'It was a time ago,' the priest told the Upplander.
'But Gedrath gave me his protection, and that has passed to Ogvai. Ogvai must have replaced him in the last week. What? Why are you looking at me like that?'
'You are basing your assumptions on a false premise,' said Ohthere Wyrdmake.
'Really?' asked the Upplander.
'Yes,' said the priest. 'You've been here for nineteen years.'
FOUR
Skjald
THEY GAVE HAWSER the Prix Daumarl. When he was told of the decision, he felt flattered and nonplussed. 'I've done nothing,' he said to his colleagues.
There had been a shortlist of notable candidates, but in the end it had come down to Hawser, and a neuroplasticist who had eradicated the three strands of nanomnemonic plague devastating Iberolatinate Sud Merica. 'He's done something, a considerable something, and I've done nothing,' Hawser complained when he found out.
'Don't you want the prize?' Vasiliy asked. 'I hear the medal is very pretty.'
It was very pretty. It was gold, about the size of a pocket watch, and it came mounted in a Vitrian frame in an elegant casket lined with shot purple silk. The citation bore the hololithic crests of the Atlantic legislature and the Hegemon, and carried the gene-seals of three members of the Unification Council. It began, 'Kasper Ansbach Hawser, for steadfast contributions towards the definition and accomplishment of Terran Unification...'
Soon after the presentation, Hawser learned that the whole thing was politicking, which he generally detested, though he did not speak up as the politicking in this instance served the cause of the Conservatory.
The award was presented at a dinner held in Karcom on the Atlantic platforms, just after the midsummer of Hawser's seventy-fifth year. The dinner was arranged to coincide with the Midlantik Conclave, and thus served as an opportunity to celebrate the Conservatory's thirtieth anniversary.
Hawser found it all rather dreadful. He spent the evening with the elegant little purple box clutched to his chest and a sick smile on his face waiting for the interminable speeches to conclude. Of the many dignitaries and men of influence attending the dinner that midsummer night, no one was paid more deference than Giro Emantine. By then, Emantine was prefect-secretary to one of the Unification Council's most senior members, and the common understanding was that Emantine would be given the next seat that came vacant. He was an old man, rumoured to be on his third juvenat. He was accompanied by a remarkably young, remarkably beautiful and remarkably silent woman. Hawser couldn't decide if she was Emantine's daughter, a vulgar trophy wife, or a nurse.
Emantine's status placed him directly at the right hand of the Atlantic Chancellor (though nominally the guest of honour, Hawser was three seats down to the left, between an industrial cyberneticist and the chairman of one of the orbital banking houses). When it was Emantine's turn to speak, he appeared to have great difficulty in remembering who Hawser was, because he spoke fondly of their 'long friendship' and 'close working association' down the 'many years since Kas first spoke to me about the notion of founding the Conservatory.'
'I've met him three times in thirty years,' Hawser whispered to Vasiliy.
'Shut up and keep smiling,' Vasiliy hissed back.
'None of this actually occurred.'
'Shut up.'
'Do you suppose he's on some kind of strong medication?'
'Oh, Kas! Shut up!' Vasiliy bent close to Hawser's ear. 'This is just the way things are done. Besides, it makes the Conservatory look good. Oh, and his adjunct has informed me that he'll want to see you afterwards.'
After the dinner, Vasiliy escorted Hawser up to the Chancellor's Residence on Marianas Derrick.
'It's a beautiful city,' Hawser remarked as they walked up the terrace. He had drunk a couple of amasecs at the end of the meal to settle himself for the acceptance speech, and then there had been the toasting, so he was in a wistful mood.
Vasiliy waited patiently for a moment as Hawser stopped to admire the view. From the terrace they could see out across the plated scape of Karcom and beyond. It glittered in the late sun, the surface of a metropolitan skin nine kilometres thick that capped and encased the ancient dead ocean like an ice-pack. Shoals of aircraft, silver in the sunlight like reef-fish, flitted and drifted over the scape.
'Amazing enough that man could build this,' said Hawser, 'let alone build it three times.'
'Man probably shouldn't have kept nuking it, then, should he?' said Vasiliy.
Hawser looked at his mediary. Vasiliy was terribly young, little more than twenty-five. 'Isak Vasiliy, you have no soul,' he pronounced.
'Ah, but that's why you hired me,' Vasiliy replied. 'I don't let sentiment get in the way of efficiency.'
'There is that.'
'Besides, to me the very fact that the Atlantic platforms have been obliterated and re-built twice is symbolic of the Conservatory's work. Nothing is so great that it cannot be recovered and restored. Nothing is impossible.'
They went into the Residence. Ridiculously ornate robotic servitors imported from Mars were attending the select group of guests. The Chancellor had commissioned the machines directly from the Mondus Gamma Forge of Lukas Chrom, an ostentatious show of status.
The windows of the Residence had been dimmed against the glare of the setting sun. A pair of servitors in the shape of humming birds brought Hawser a glass of amasec.
'Drink it slowly,' Vasiliy advised discreetly. 'When you speak to Emantine, you need to be coherent.'
'I doubt I'll drink it at all,' Hawser said. He'd taken a sip. The amasec served by the Atlantic Chancellor was of such a fine and extravagantly expensive vintage, it didn't really taste like amasec anymore.
Emantine approached after a few minutes, his silent female companion in tow. He shed his previous conversational partners behind him like a snake sloughing skin; they knew when their brief allotted audiences with the prefect-secretary were done.
'Kasper,' Emanatine said.
'Ser.'
'Congratulations on the prize. A worthy award.'
'Thank you. I... Thank you, ser. This is my mediary, Isak Vasiliy.'
Emantine did not register anyone as lowly as Vasiliy. Hawser felt the prefect-secretary was only registering him because he had to. Emantine drew Hawser away towards the windows.
'Thirty years,' Emantine said. 'Can it really be thirty years since all this began?'
Hawser assumed the prefect-secretary meant the Conservatory. 'Nearly fifty, actually.'
'Really?'
'We measure the life of the Conservatory from its first charter at the Conclave of Lutetia, which was thirty years ago this summer, but it took nearly twenty years to get the movement to that place. It must be fifty years ago I fir |
registering him because he had to. Emantine drew Hawser away towards the windows.
'Thirty years,' Emantine said. 'Can it really be thirty years since all this began?'
Hawser assumed the prefect-secretary meant the Conservatory. 'Nearly fifty, actually.'
'Really?'
'We measure the life of the Conservatory from its first charter at the Conclave of Lutetia, which was thirty years ago this summer, but it took nearly twenty years to get the movement to that place. It must be fifty years ago I first contacted your office to discuss the very basic first steps. That would have been in Karelia. Karelia Hive. You were with the legation back then, and I dealt, for a long time, with several of your understaffers. I had a dialogue with them for a number of years, actually, before I met you for the first time and-'
'Fifty years, eh? My my. Karelia, you say? Another life.'
'Yes, it feels like that, doesn't it? So, yes, I worked with a number of adjuncts to get some awareness. Made a bit of a nuisance of myself, I'm sure. Doling was one. Barantz, I remember. Bakunin.'
'I don't remember them,' the prefect-secretary said. His smile had become rather fixed. Hawser took a sip of his amasec. He felt slightly invigorated, slightly warm. He had become fixated upon Emantine's hand, which was holding a crystal thimble of some green digestif. The hand was perfect. It was clean and manicured, scented, graceful. The skin was white and unblemished and uncreased, and the flesh plump and supple. There were no signs at all of the consequences of age, no wrinkles, no liver spots, no discolourations. The nails were clean. It wasn't the gnarled, sunken, prominently-veined claw of a hundred and ninety year-old man, and prefect-secretary Giro Emantine was at least that. It was the hand of a young man. Hawser wondered if the young man was missing it. The thought made him snigger.
Of course, the prefect-secretary had access to the best juvenat refinements Terran science could afford. The treatments were so good, they didn't even look like juvenat treatments, not like the work Hawser had had done at sixty, plumping his flesh with collagenics, and filling his creases and wrinkles with dermics, and perma-staining his skin a 'healthy' tanned colour with nanotic pigments, and cleaning his eyes and his organs, and resculpting his chin, and pinching his cheeks until he looked like a re-touched hololith portrait of himself. Emantine probably had gene therapies and skeleto-muscular grafts, implants, underweaves, transfixes, stem-splices...
Maybe it was a young man's hand. Maybe the skinweaves were why the prefect-secretary's smile looked so fixed.
'You don't remember Doling or Bakunin?' Hawser asked.
'They were understaffers, you say? It was a long time ago,' Emantine replied. 'They've all climbed the ladders of advancement, been posted and promoted and transferred. One doesn't keep track. One can't, not when one runs a staff of eighty thousand. I have no doubt they're all governing their own ecumenopolises by now.'
There was a slightly awkward pause.
'Anyway,' said Hawser, 'I should like to thank you for getting behind the idea of the Conservatory all those years ago, be it thirty or fifty.'
'Ha ha,' said Emantine.
'I appreciate it. We all do.'
'I can't take the credit,' said Emantine.
Of course you damn well can't, Hawser thought.
'But the idea always had merit,' Emantine went on, as if he was content to take the credit anyway. 'I always said it had merit. Too easily overlooked in the headlong rush to build a better world. Not a priority, some said. The needs - and they're budgetary often - of Unification and consolidation far exceed conservation. But, we stuck to it. What is it now, thirty thousand officers worldwide?'
'That's just direct. It's closer to a quarter of a million counting freelance associates and archaeologists, and the off-world numbers.'
'Superb,' said Emantine. Hawser continued to stare at his hand. 'Then of course, there's the renewal of the charter, which is never opposed. Everyone now understands the importance of the Conservatory.'
'Not quite everyone,' said Hawser.
'Everyone who matters, Kasper. You know the Sigillite himself is keenly interested in the Conservatory's work?'
'I had heard that,' Hawser replied.
'Keenly interested,' Emantine repeated. 'Every time I meet with him, he asks for the latest transcripts and reports. Do you know him at all?'
'The Sigillite? No, I've never met him.'
'Extraordinary man,' said Emantine. 'I've heard he even discusses the Conservatory's work with the Emperor on occasion.'
'Really?' said Hawser. 'Do you know him?'
'The Emperor?'
'Yes.'
A slightly glassy expression flickered across the prefect-secretary's face, as if he wasn't sure if he was being mocked.
'No, I... I've never met him.'
'Ah.'
Emantine nodded at the purple box still clamped under Hawser's arm. 'You deserve that, Kasper. And so does the Conservatory. It's part of the recognition we were talking about. It's high-profile, and it'll bring around those few closed minds.'
'Bring them around to what?' asked Hawser.
'Well, support. Support is vital, particularly in the current climate.'
'What current climate?'
'You should cherish that award, Kaspar. To me, it says that the Conservatory has matured into a global force for Unification...'
And it doesn't hurt at all that your name is forever attached to it by the simple accident that you were at the top of the bureaucratic chain I first approached, Hawser thought. This has done your career no harm, Giro Emantine. To recognise the importance of the Conservatory project, to give it your support and backing when others scorned it. Why, what a wise, humanitarian and selfless man you must be! Not like all those other politicians.
The prefect-secretary was still speaking. 'So we need to be ready for changes in the next decade,' he was saying.
'Uhm, changes?'
'The Conservatory has become a victim of its own success!' Emantine laughed.
'It has?'
'Whether we like it or not, it's time to consider legitimacy. I can't nursemaid the Conservatory forever. My future is beckoning in different ways. A seneschalship to Luna or Mars, maybe.'
'A seat on the Council, I was told.'
Emantine pulled a modest face. 'Oh, I don't know.'
'It's what I heard.'
'The point is, I can't protect you forever,' said Emantine.
'I wasn't aware the Conservatory was being protected at all.'
'Its resource and personnel budget has become quite considerable.'
'And is scrupulously policed.'
'Of course. But it's the mandate that bothers some. It's having what is essentially a vital organ of government, a key and growing human resource, functioning separately from the Hegemonic Administration.'
'That's just the way it is,' replied Hawser. 'That's just the way it's evolved. We're transparent and open to all. We're a public office.'
'It might be time to consider bringing the Conservatory in under the umbrella of the Administration,' said Emantine. 'It might be better that way. Centralised, which would help with the bureaucratic management, and with archiving and access, not to mention funding.'
'We'd become part of the Administratum?'
'Really just for book-keeping purposes,' replied the prefect-secretary.
'I... well, I think I'd be a little hesitant. Resistant, in fact. I think we all would.'
The prefect-secretary put his digestif down and reached out his hand to clasp it around Hawser's. His young man's fingers enclosed Hawser's grandfather hand.
'We must all move with a fluid, common purpose towards Unification, that's what the Sigillite says,' said Emantine.
'The Unification of Terra and the Imperium,' replied Hawser. 'Not the literal union of the intellectual branches of mankind that-'
'Doctor Hawser, they may refuse to renew the charter if you resist. You've spent thirty years showing them that the systematic conservation of knowledge is important. Now the feeling is - and it's shared by many on the Council - conservation of knowledge is so important, it's time it was conducted by the Administration of the Hegemony. It needs to be official and sanctioned and central.'
'I see.'
'Over the next few months, I'm going to be handing off a lot of responsibilities to my undersecretary, Henrik Slussen. Did you meet him earlier?'
'No.'
'I'll see to it you meet him tomorrow at the manufactory visit. Get to know him. He's extremely able, and he'll steward this situation in directions that will reassure you.'
'I see.'
'Good. And once again, congratulations. A deserving winner. Fifty years, eh? My my.'
Hawser realised his audience had concluded. His glass was empty too.
'HOW CAN IT be so long?' he asked, as the Astartes took him from the firepit chamber and out along the dark, breathing halls of the Aett. The wind gusted around them. Away from the firelight, his left eye lost its sight again.
'You've been asleep,' the rune priest replied.
'You say nineteen years, but you mean Fenrisian years, don't you? You mean great years?'
'Yes.'
'That's three, four, times as long in Terran years!'
'You've been asleep,' the rune priest said.
The Upplander felt light-headed. The sense of personal dislocation was intense and nauseating. He was afraid he might be sick, or pass out, and he was afraid of doing anything so frail in front of the Astartes. He was afraid of the Astartes. The fear added to his sense of personal dislocation, and made him feel sicker.
There were three of them with him, walking behind him: the rune priest, Varangr, and another whose name the Upplander did not know. Skarsi had shown no particular interest in coming with them. He had turned back to his playing boards, as though the Upplander was a mild diversion that was now finished with, and more important things, like bone counter discs on an inlaid board, had become more significant.
As they walked, the Astartes directed him with the occasional tap on the shoulder to turn him left and right. They walked him through gr |
hind him: the rune priest, Varangr, and another whose name the Upplander did not know. Skarsi had shown no particular interest in coming with them. He had turned back to his playing boards, as though the Upplander was a mild diversion that was now finished with, and more important things, like bone counter discs on an inlaid board, had become more significant.
As they walked, the Astartes directed him with the occasional tap on the shoulder to turn him left and right. They walked him through great rock crypts and chambers of basalt, sulking voids of granite, and mournful hollowed halls panelled in bone. He saw all of these places through the green glare of his right eye, with only impenetrable darkness in his left. All of them were empty, except for the plaintive lament of the respiring wind. They were like tombs, tombs waiting to be filled, great sepulchres carved out in the expectation of an immense death toll, in anticipation of the corpses of a million warriors, carried in on their shields and laid to rest. A million. A million million. Legions of the fallen.
The wind was just rehearsing for its role as chief mourner.
'Where are we going?' the Upplander asked.
'To see the priests,' said Varangr.
'But you're a priest,' the Upplander said to Ohthere, half-turning. Varangr gave him a little push to encourage him forwards.
'Different priests,' said Varangr. 'The other kind.'
'What other kind?'
'You know, the other kind,' said the nameless Astartes.
'I don't know. I don't understand,' said the Upplander. 'I don't understand and I'm cold.'
'Cold?' echoed Varangr. 'He shouldn't feel the cold, not where he's been.'
'It's a good sign,' said the other.
'Give him a pelt,' said the rune priest.
'Do what?' retorted Varangr.
'Give him a pelt,' the rune priest repeated.
'Give him my pelt?' Varangr asked, looking down at the red-brown skin around his shoulders. The S-curve of his lacquered hair rose like a spear-casting arm as his chin dipped. 'But it's my pelt.'
The other Astartes snorted and pulled off his own fur, a grey wolfskin. He held it out to the Upplander.
'Here,' he said. 'Take it. A gift from Bitur Bercaw to Ahmad Ibn Rustah.'
'Is this some kind of compact?' the Upplander asked warily. He didn't want to accidentally become beholden to a wolf Astartes on top of everything else.
Bercaw shook his head. 'No, not anything with blood mixed in it. Maybe when you tell my account, you'll remember this kindness, and make it part of the story.'
'When I tell your account?'
Bercaw nodded. 'Yes, because you will. When you tell it, you make me look good, sharing the pelt with you. And you make Var look like a selfish hog.'
The Upplander looked at Varangr. His eyes shone like lamps in the frosty dark. He looked as if he was going to strike Bercaw. Then he saw the rune priest watching him. He sagged a little.
'I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it,' he mumbled.
The Upplander pulled Bercaw's gift around his shoulders. He looked up at Ohthere Wyrdmake.
'I still don't understand.'
'I know,' said the priest.
'No, no,' the Upplander replied in frustration. 'This is where you reassure me. This is where you tell me that everything will be explained.'
'But I can't,' replied the priest, 'because it won't. Some things will be explained. Enough things, probably. But not everything, because explaining everything is never a good idea.'
They arrived at the drop.
The long, draughty hall came to an end and they were standing on the lip of a great cliff. A chasm plunged away beneath them, dropping sheer into total blackness. On the far side of the great drop, the Upplander could see the ghost-green ragged wall of the shaft. The sepulchral hall had brought them to an enormous flue, rising vertically through the rock in the heart of the mountain. The shaft vanished into darkness high above them. The winter gale gusted up from far below.
'Which way now?' asked the Upplander.
Varangr gripped him firmly by the upper arm.
'Down,' he said, and he stepped off the cliff and took the Upplander with him.
HE WAS TOO shocked to scream out the terror that exploded his chest and burst his brain. They fell. They fell. They fell.
But not hard, and not to their deaths. They fell softly, like flecks of down from a torn sleeping roll, caught by the breeze, like papery flecks of ash, like a pair of humming bird servitors defying gravity with wings so fast they seemed still.
The wind of Fenris was everywhere inside the Aett, gusting in halls, breathing through crypts and vaults and chambers, but in the great vertical flue it blew with enough upward force to catch falling objects and cushion their descent. The rising gale lowered them slowly, dragging against their flapping pelts, and flapping the beads and straps of the Astartes.
Varangr stuck out an arm, the one that wasn't gripping the Upplander's limp frame. He stuck it out like an eagle's wing into the updraught, and steered them. He turned them slowly, at an angle in the fierce blast. The Upplander's tear-shot eyes, blinking furiously in the wind and out of gutting fear, saw another cliff-lip below, another shelf opening into the flue. They came into it at a perfect angle. Varangr landed on his feet, and turned the landing into a couple of quick steps that bled off his speed. The Upplander's feet scrambled and kicked, and he fell on his face. The pelt flopped forwards over his head like a hood.
'You'll learn the knack,' said Varangr.
'How?' asked the Upplander.
'By doing it more,' replied the Astartes.
On his hands and knees, the Upplander convulsed violently and retched. Nothing but spittle and mucus came up out of a gut that had been empty for nineteen years, but his body wrenched and wrung itself in a brutal effort to find something.
Bercaw and the rune priest landed on the lip behind them.
'Pick him up,' said the priest.
They carried him forwards, away from the cliff edge. His head lolled, but his left eye woke up. He saw a chamber up ahead, well lit with biolumin lamps and electric filaments in glass tubes. The sudden illumination was painful. He had a hot, orange version of the scene in his left eye, full of fire shadows and the warm yellow glow of tube lights and ivory flooring. In the other eye, the scene was an incandescent green, violently bright. The lamps and other light sources were so intense to his right eye, they had almost scorched out of vision entirely and become white-hot spots and after-image blooms. There were very few shadows in his right eye, and the focus was shot.
The Astartes put him down.
The Upplander could smell blood, salt water and the bleachy reek of counterseptic. The chamber was either a medical facility or an abattoir. Or perhaps it was both, or had been one and was now the other. There was also a hint of laboratory, and a smack of kitchen. There were metal benches and adjustable cots. There were clusters of overhead focus lights, and branches of automated servitor arms and manipulators sprouting from the ceiling like willow trees. There were stone slabs, like butcher blocks or altars. Hidden machinery hummed and whirred, and electronic notes sounded a constant background chorus like a digital rainforest. Archways led through to other kitchen-morgues. The complex was vast. He glimpsed the frosty doors of cryogenic units and the glass-lidded tanks of organic repair vats. Library shelves stretched off into the distance, lined with heavy glass bottles and canisters, like giant jars of pickled and preserved fruit in a winter root cellar. But the flasks did not contain vegetables or radapples in their dark, syrupy suspensions, and they were slotted into the shelves to connect with the facility's vital support system.
Horned skulls appeared, robed men with animal skull heads like the ones who had surrounded him when he first woke up. The rune priest sensed his alarm.
'They are just thralls. Servants and grooms. They will not hurt you.'
Other figures appeared from invisible corners of the rambling laboratory. These were Astartes, from the build of them. Horned skulls of significantly greater scale and threat than the ones worn by the thralls covered their faces. Their robes were floor length and had a quilted look, stitched together from sections of soft, napped leather. When they reached out their hands to greet or grasp the Upplander, he saw that their hands were covered in gloves patched together from the same material, and that the gloves were sewn into the enveloping cloaks, as if they were inside patchwork bags of skin with integral glove extensions that allowed them to work. The stitching on the patchwork seams, though expertly neat, reminded the Upplander far too much of surgical sutures.
They were sinister figures, and their presence was not helped by the fact that even Ohthere Wyrdmake showed deference to them.
'Who are you?' the Upplander asked.
'They are the wolf priests,' said Ohthere softly at his shoulder, 'the geneweavers, the fleshmakers. They will examine you.'
'Why?'
'To make sure you're healthy. To check their workmanship.'
The Upplander shot a quick glance at the rune priest.
'Their what?'
'You came to the Aett broken and old, Ahmad Ibn Rustah,' said one of the wolf priests in a voice that creaked like floe-ice, 'too broken to live, and too old to heal. The only way to save you was to remake you.'
One of the horned giants took his right hand, another his left. He let them lead him into the slaughterhouse chapel like parents leading a child. He took off the pelt and settled on the black glass bed of a body scanner. There were a lot of wolf priests around him now, shamanic shadows with feral horns and guttural voices. Some were intent on adjusting the backlit wall plates of the control panels. Others were occupied with the elaborate tapping and shaking of rattlebags and bone wands. Both tasks seemed to carry equal significance.
The scanner bed elevated him and tilted him backwards. Manipu |
erhouse chapel like parents leading a child. He took off the pelt and settled on the black glass bed of a body scanner. There were a lot of wolf priests around him now, shamanic shadows with feral horns and guttural voices. Some were intent on adjusting the backlit wall plates of the control panels. Others were occupied with the elaborate tapping and shaking of rattlebags and bone wands. Both tasks seemed to carry equal significance.
The scanner bed elevated him and tilted him backwards. Manipulator arms, some of them fitted with sensors, others with the finest micrometre tool-heads, clicked down around him in a cage, like a crouching spider. They started working, twitching and brushing and scurrying. He felt the tickle of scan-beams, the nip of pinpricks, the sting of diagnostic light beams penetrating his held-open eyes.
He looked up, past the surgical lights, and saw himself, full length, reflected in the tinted canopy of the body scanner.
He had the fit, athletic body of a thirty year-old. Fitter and more athletic, in fact, than the thirty year-old body he had once possessed. The muscle definition was impressive. There was not an ounce of fat on him. Nor was there any sign of the old augmetic. He had the makings of a moustache and beard, a fuzz of growth a few weeks thick. His hair was shorter than he chose to wear it, as if it was growing back in after being shaved. It was darker than it had been since his fiftieth birthday.
Behind the beard growth, his face was still his own: younger, but still his own. This fact filled him with greater relief and confidence than anything else that had happened since he had woken.
It was the face of Kasper Ansbach Hawser, twenty-five years old, back when he was headstrong and arrogant and knew nothing about anything. This latter detail seemed more than a little appropriate.
In the reflection, dozens of hands in gloves of patchwork skin worked on him.
'You refashioned me,' he said.
'There was significant damage to your limbs and to your internal organs,' said the ice-creak voice. 'You would not have survived. Over a period of nine months, we used mineral bonding and bone grafts to reconstitute your skeletal mass, and then resleeved it in musculature gene-copied from your own coding, though reinforced with plastek weaves and polymers. Your organs are primarily gene-copied transplants. Your skin is your own.'
'My own?'
'Removed, replenished, rejuvenated, retailored.'
'You skinned me.'
They did not reply.
'You worked on my mind too,' he said. 'I know things. I know a language I didn't know before.'
'We did not teach you anything. We did not touch your mind.'
'And yet here we are conversing, without a translator.'
Again, they did not reply.
'What about the eye? Why did you take my eye? Why do I keep going blind in my left eye?'
'You do not keep going blind in your left eye. The sight in your left eye is human-normal. It is your eye.'
'Why did the warrior take my right eye?'
'You know why. It was an implant. It was not your eye. It was an optical recording device. It was not permitted. Therefore, it was detected and removed.'
'But I can see,' the Upplander said.
'We would not blind you and leave you blind,' said the ice-creak voice.
He looked up at his reflection. His left eye was the eye that he remembered.
His right eye, gold and black-pinned, was the eye of an adult wolf.
RECTOR UWE CALLED them in, just as the moon rose. All the children had spent the day outside, because the weather was clement and the grids had forecast no rad clouds or pollution fogs on the desert highland.
The children had worked outdoors, especially the older ones. That, the rector taught, was the purpose of community. The parents, all the adults, they were raising the city, the great city of Ur. They were gone for months at a time, away in the sprawling work camps that surrounded the vast street plan that the Architect had marked out on the chosen earth. Rector Uwe showed the children scenes from Faeronik Aegypt in old picture books. Gangs of industrious labourers with uniform asymmetric haircuts pulled ropes to raise the travertine blocks that made the monuments of Aegypt. This, he explained, was very much the way their parents were working, pulling together with a single purpose to build a city. The difference, he added, was that in old Aegypt, the builders were slaves, and in Ur, the workers were freemen, come willingly to the task, and all according to Catheric teachings.
Though they could not work on the city itself, the children still worked. They harvested fruit and vegetables from the tented fields, and washed them and packed them to be shipped to the work camps. They patched and mended worn clothes sent back from the labour site in yellow sacks, and wrote messages of encouragement and salvation on slips of paper that they tucked into pockets to be discovered at random.
In the afternoons, the rector gave the children instruction. He taught lessons in language, history and Catheric lore in the long room of the commune, or out under the trees of the tent fields, or even out in the actual open, in fair weather. The children learned their letters and their numbers, and the basic elements of salvation. They learned about the world as well: the name of the desert highlands, and the long valley, and the site chosen for Ur. They learned the names of all the other communes, just like their own, where other rectors looked after other student bodies, all part of the greater community. Rector Uwe had no staff, except for Niina the nurse-cook, so as the older children learned, they took charge of the younger ones' instruction. The rector let the brightest of all use the half-dozen teaching desks in the annex beside the commune's library.
Kas was only a little boy, four or five, but he was already one of the brightest. Like a lot of the children in the rector's care, Kas was an orphan as far as the rector could determine. One of the Architect's surveyor troops had found him in the cot-box of an overturned trackwagon out on the radland flats, a year back. The wagon had tipped on a salt depression, with no hope of righting. Its cells were flat dead, and there was no sign of any adults, except for a few bones and hanks of clothing about a kilometre further on.
'Figure predators got them,' said the surveyor troop leader when he brought Kas in. 'The ride went over, so they walked to find water and help, and preds found them first. The boy's lucky.'
Rector Uwe nodded, and touched the little gold crux around his neck. It was an odd definition of the word.
'Lucky we found him,' the leader clarified. 'Lucky the predators didn't.'
'You see any preds?' the rector asked.
'The usual meat birds,' the leader replied. 'Plus dog tracks. A lot of dog tracks. Big, maybe even wolves. They're getting bolder. Coming closer, every year.'
'They know we're here,' replied the rector, meaning mankind, back to his old tricks, with all the bonus scraps and left-overs that entails.
There were a lot of orphans in the commune, because building a city was hard, but most came with names. The boy didn't have one, so Rector Uwe chose one for him. A suitable name. The troops had found a little toy horse made of wood, like the Horse of Ilios, in the trackwagon with the child, so that made the choice easier.
He called them in at moonrise. After work and lessons, they had run out into the open woods and the meadow beyond the stream that moved their wheel. The meadow grass was the last, long straw from summer, bleached by sun and rads. The sky was wort-blue. Stars prickled the early evening. The children chased along the avenues of trees, under the tunnels of their rad-blacked leaves. They swung and played shouting games. Thunder warriors was popular with the boys. They made guns from fingers and death noises with their mouths, and came back in for supper with skinned knees.
There were always stragglers at supper call. Niina used the threat of wolves to bring the laggards in.
'The wolves are out there! The wolves will get you, now the moon's up!' she'd call from the back door of the kitchen.
When he came in that night, red-faced and out of breath, Kas looked at Rector Uwe.
'Are the wolves here?' he asked.
The boy was flushed and sweating. He'd probably been playing thunder warriors with the older boys, running to keep up and shout as loud. But he also appeared scared.
'Wolves? No, that's just what Niina says,' Rector Uwe replied. 'There are preds, so we must be careful. Dogs, most likely. A lot of wild dogs, living in packs. They're scavengers. Sometimes they come down off the high desert and raid our midden. But only if they're bold, only if the winter's been bleak. They're more scared of us than we are of them.'
'Dogs?' Kas asked.
'Just dogs. Dogs used to live with men, as their companions. Some communes still keep them as guards and to mind livestock.'
'I don't like dogs,' the boy replied, 'and I am afraid of wolves.'
He ran off to join the end of the noisy game. He ran with a little boy's acceleration, from nothing to maximum speed in a blink. Rector Uwe smiled, but his heart was heavy. He wondered what it had been like in the cabin of that overturned trackwagon. He wondered how much a three year-old could remember. He wondered how close the preds had got, how close they had got to breaking into the wagon body, how terrifying they would have been.
The clement weather stayed with them for several weeks. Autumn was late. In the evenings, the light spun out, long and golden, and stretched the shadows of the raddled trees. The sky was like the glass of a blue bottle. Occasional little clouds dotted the horizon, cotton-white, like smoke signals lost for words. The children played out late. It was good to get open air into them, not recyc.
After supper, most nights, Rector Uwe liked to take out his regicide set and play a game or three with the smartest kids. He liked to teach them (he even had a few |
tumn was late. In the evenings, the light spun out, long and golden, and stretched the shadows of the raddled trees. The sky was like the glass of a blue bottle. Occasional little clouds dotted the horizon, cotton-white, like smoke signals lost for words. The children played out late. It was good to get open air into them, not recyc.
After supper, most nights, Rector Uwe liked to take out his regicide set and play a game or three with the smartest kids. He liked to teach them (he even had a few old books of instruction that he was prepared to lend) but he also enjoyed the challenge of a live player, however unschooled they might be, because it was an improvement over the programmed opposition provided by the teaching desks.
The rector's regicide set was very old and very worn. The case was something he called shagreen, framed with discoloured ivory and lined with blue velvet. The board, unfolded, was made of inlaid walnut (it was slightly warped), and the pieces were made of bone and stained hoganny.
Kas was a quick learner, quicker even than some of the older clever boys. He had the wit for it. Uwe taught him what he could, knowing it would take a long time to season him and show him a decent range of opening schemes and ending-outs.
As they played that night, a game that Rector Uwe easily won, Kas mentioned the name of one of the other boys, and said that the boy had heard dogs barking earlier that day.
'Dogs? Where?'
'Up on the western slopes,' Kas replied, considering his next move with his chin on his fist, the way he had seen the rector do it.
'Probably crows cawing,' said the rector.
'No, it was dogs. Did you know that all dogs, everywhere in our world, all of them descended from a pack of wolves tamed on the shores of the Youngsea River?'
'I did not know that.'
'It was fifty-five thousand years ago.'
'Where did you learn this?'
'I asked the teaching desks about dogs and wolves.'
'You are properly afraid of them, aren't you?'
Kas nodded. 'It is sensible. They are predators and they devour.'
'Are you afraid of meat-birds?'
Kas shook his head. 'Not really, though they are ugly and they can hurt you.'
'What about eater-pigs and wild swine?'
'They are dangerous,' the boy nodded.
'But you're not afraid of them?'
'I would be careful if I saw one.'
'Are you afraid of snakes?'
'No.'
'Of bears?'
'What is a bear?'
Rector Uwe smiled. 'Make your move.'
'They are all animals besides,' the boy said, moving his piece.
'What are?'
'The things you're asking me about, the snakes and the pigs. Are bears animals? I think they are all animals, and some of them are dangerous. I don't like spiders. Or scorpions. Or big scorpions, the red ones, but I am not afraid of them.'
'No?'
'Yaena has a red scorpion in a jar in his foot locker, and when he shows it to us, I am not afraid of it.'
'I will be talking to Yaena about that.'
'I am not afraid of it, though. Not like Simial and the others. But I am afraid of wolves, because they are not animals.'
'Oh? What are they then?'
The boy scrunched up his face, as if determining the best way of explaining it.
'They are... well, they are like ghosts. They are devils, like scripture tells us about.'
'They are supernatural, you mean?'
'Yes. They come to destroy and devour, because that is their nature, their only nature. And they can be wolves, that is dog-shape, or they can walk about in the shape of men.'
'How do you know this, Kasper?'
'Everyone knows it. It is common knowledge.'
'It may not be correct. Wolves are just dogs. They are canine animals.'
The boy shook his head fiercely. He leaned forwards and dropped his voice very low.
'I have seen them,' he whispered. 'I have seen them walk about on two feet.'
HE WAS GIVEN some food, a basic nutrient broth and some dry biscuits, and then he was left on his own in a draughty room near the kitchen-morgue. The room was panelled in white bone, and it had a small firepit and a bench cot. It also had a lamp, a small metal-bodied biolumin unit of the type stamped out in their millions for the Imperial Army. Light from the lamp let him see the room around him with both eyes. He was getting used to the discrepancy between vision types.
The food had come on a brushed metal tray. It made a poor hand mirror, but a mirror nonetheless. He looked at his new eye in its rubbed surface.
His new eye had extraordinary night and low-light response. He had spent a great deal of his time, since waking, moving around in pitch darkness without even realising it. That was why his real eye had seemed blind. It was also why the world looked spectral green, and why actual light sources flared to white blooms of painful radiance. The Wolves of Fenris lived in darkness most of the time. They hadn't much need for artificial light.
His new eye lacked good, defined distance vision. Everything became slightly unfocussed at distances of more than thirty metres, like looking through an extremely wide-angle optical lens, the sort he had often used on good quality picter units for architectural recording. But the peripheral vision and the sensitivity to movement were astonishing.
Exactly what you'd expect from a predator's eye.
He held the tray up in front of his face, and closed one eye, then the other, back and forth. When he switched back to his wolf eye for the fifth time, he noticed, in the battered reflection, the half-shadow in the doorway behind him.
'You'd better come in,' he said, without looking around.
The Astartes came into the room.
The Upplander put the tray down, and turned to look at him. The Astartes was as big as all his kind, wrapped in a slate-grey pelt. His fur and his armour looked wet, as if he had been outside. He had removed his leather mask, to show his face, weathered and tattooed. The Upplander knew the face.
'Bear,' he said.
The Astartes grunted.
'You're Bear,' the Upplander said.
'No.'
'Yes. I don't know many Astartes, I don't know many Space Wolves-'
He saw the Astartes's lip curl at the use of the term.
'But I know your face. I remember your face. You're Bear.'
'No,' the warrior said. 'But you might remember my face. I'm known as Godsmote now, of Tra. But nineteen winters ago I was called Fith.'
The Upplander blinked.
'Fith? You're Fith? The Ascommani?'
The Astartes nodded. 'Yes.'
'Your name was Fith?'
'My name's still Fith. They call me Godsmote or Godsmack in the Rout, because I've got a good swing on me, a swing like an angry god, and I once buried the smile of a blade in the forehead of a warboss...'
His voice trailed off.
'That's another story. Why are you looking at me like that?'
'They... they made you into a Wolf,' said the Upplander.
'I wanted it. I wanted them to take me. My aett was gone, and my folk. I barely had my thread left. I wanted them to take me.'
'I told them. I told Bear to take you. You and the other one.'
'Brom.'
'Brom, yes. I told Bear to take the both of you. I told him to make bloody sure he took the both of you, after all you did for me.'
Fith nodded. 'They changed you too. They changed us both. Made us both sons of Fenris. It's what Fenris always does. Changes things.'
The Upplander shook his head in slow disbelief. 'I can't believe it's you. I'm glad it is. I'm happy to see you alive. But I can't believe... look at you!'
He glanced down at the brushed steel tray.
'Come to that, look at me. I can't believe this is me either.'
He stood up and held out his hand to the Astartes.
'I want to thank you,' he said.
Fith Godsmote shook his head. 'No need to thank me.'
'Yes, there is. You saved my life, and it cost you everything.'
'I don't see it like that.'
The Upplander shrugged, and lowered his hand.
'And you don't look too happy I saved your life,' the Astartes added.
'I was then,' the Upplander replied. 'Nineteen winters ago. Now, well, everything's a little strange to me. I'm adjusting.'
'We all adjust,' said Fith. 'It's part of changing.'
'Bear, he's still alive, is he?' the Upplander asked.
'Yes. Bear's running a thread still.'
'Good. He didn't think to come and see me now I'm awake?'
'I don't see he's got much reason to,' replied the Astartes. 'I mean, his debt to you is long since done. He made an error, and he atoned for it.'
'Yes, about that,' the Upplander said, sitting down again and leaning back. 'What was his error? His oversight, that he had to make amends for?'
'It was his fault you were out there. It was his fault you fell as a bad star.'
'Was it?'
Fith nodded.
'Was it really?'
Fith nodded again. 'You'll see Bear, I should think, when Ogvai calls you to Tra. You'll probably see him then.'
'So why's Ogvai going to call me to Tra?'
'He'll decide what we should do with you.'
'Ah,' said the Upplander.
Fith reached under his pelt and produced a limp plastek sack, tied shut. It was a miserable bundle, and the skin of the bag was wet with droplets of ice mush and meltwater.
'When I heard you had come back awake, I fetched this. It's the bits you were carrying with you when you came to Fenris. All that I could find, anyway. I thought you might want them.'
The Upplander took the cold, wet sack and began to unpick the knot.
'So where is Brom?' he asked.
'Brom never made it,' Fith replied.
The Upplander stopped picking at the knot and looked at the Astartes.
'Oh. I'm sorry.'
'No need to be. There is a place for all things, and Brom is in Uppland now.'
'That word,' the Upplander said, 'I remember that word. When I got here, when the Ascommani pulled me from the crash site, that's what you called me. An Upplander.'
'Yes.'
'It meant heaven, didn't it? It meant the places up there, above the world?' The Upplander pointed at the chamber's ceiling. 'Upplander is someone who comes down to the land, to the mortal Verse. The stars, other planets, heaven, they're all the same thing, aren't they? You thought I was some sort of god, fallen out of heaven.'
'Or a daemon,' Fith suggested.
'I suppose. Anyway, my point is... |
when the Ascommani pulled me from the crash site, that's what you called me. An Upplander.'
'Yes.'
'It meant heaven, didn't it? It meant the places up there, above the world?' The Upplander pointed at the chamber's ceiling. 'Upplander is someone who comes down to the land, to the mortal Verse. The stars, other planets, heaven, they're all the same thing, aren't they? You thought I was some sort of god, fallen out of heaven.'
'Or a daemon,' Fith suggested.
'I suppose. Anyway, my point is... you know about space and the stars now. You know about other planets. You must have been to some. Now you've become an Astartes, you've learned about the universe and your place in it.'
'Yes.'
'But you still use a word like Uppland. You said Brom is in Uppland. Heaven and hell are primitive concepts, aren't they? Is it just the reassurance of old names?'
Fith didn't reply for a moment. Then he said, 'There's still an Uppland, as far as I'm concerned. Just like there's a Verse and an Underverse. And as for Hel, I know there's a Hel. I've seen it several times.'
WHEN THEY CAME to take him to see the Jarl of Tra, he was in fear for his life. This was an unnecessary fear, he reasoned, because the Wolves had put significant effort into preserving and maintaining his existence. It seemed unlikely that they would expend that effort only to dispose of him.
But the fear clawed him and would not go away. It hung around him like a pelt. Whatever they were, the Wolves showed absolutely not a scrap of sentiment. They arbitrated decisions, right or wrong, on what seemed like whims, though were probably the blink-fast instincts of accelerated warriors. He was, to them, a curiosity at best. The work they had put into saving his life must have been a considerable effort. To them, with their halfway-immortal lives, it might just have been a way of fending off boredom through a long winter.
Fith Godsmote came to fetch him, along with others from Tra whose names the Upplander would only learn later. Fith was junior to them all, and from a different company. They were hulking, longtooth monsters with shadowed eyes. The Upplander realised that Fith's inclusion in the honour guard was a mark of respect shown to a novitiate by his elders. Fith had saved the Upplander and brought him to the Aett, so it was only right that he should be part of an escort, even if the escort duty would normally fall to the company veterans.
That made logical sense. It made logical sense when they first came to his white bone room and summoned him with a gesture. By the time they had ascended to the Hall of Tra, a climb that had taken an hour, and had woven up deep staircases and rock chutes and one, stomach-wrenching ascent on the wind itself, fear had mutated the logic, and the only sense the Upplander could see was that Fith Godsmote had to be present at his death as some form of punishment duty.
The Hall of Tra was cold and lightless. His wolf-eye caught the ghost radiation of barely smouldering firepits. In terms of heat and light, the Wolves were making no allowances for human tolerances of comfort. They had given him a pelt and an eye to see through the dark with. What more could he want?
He realised he wasn't alone. The company was all around him. Their body heat was barely detectable, dimmer than the dull firepits. The Hall was a massive natural cavern, ragged and irregular, and the Astartes were ranged around it, huddled and coiled in their furs, as immobile as a sibling pack of predators, gone to ground overnight, dormant and pressed close for warmth. Faces cowled by animal skin hoods were watching his approach. There were occasional grumbles and murmurs, like animals growling in their sleep or tussling over bones. As his eye resolved the scene better, the Upplander saw some evidence of movement. He saw hands casually raise silver bowls and dishes so that men could sip black liquid from them. He saw hunched shapes engaged in the counter game, hneftafl, that the Upplander had seen Skarsi playing.
Little heed was paid to him. Tra Company was resting. They had not assembled to give him audience. He was just something being brought through their hall so that business could be settled. He was a minor distraction.
At the back of the hall, at the highest point of the cavern, was Ogvai Ogvai Helmschrot. High Wolf. Pack master. Jarl of Tra. Just from his bearing, his authority was beyond question. He was big, long-boned, a runner who would make pursuit relentlessly across waste and tundra with immeasurable stamina. His hair was long and straight, centre-parted, black, and his head was tilted back to invest his black-circled eyes and clean-shaven jaw with a commanding arrogance. The centre of his lower lip was tagged with a fat steel piercing that gave him a petulance that seemed childish and dangerous.
He slid forwards off a mound of battered old skins to get a look at the Upplander.
'So this is what a bad omen looks like when it stands up in your face?' he asked no one. The Upplander's breath was steaming the frigid air, but barely a curl escaped Ogvai's mouth alongside his words. Astartes biology was marvellously adapted for heat retention.
The jarl was wearing a laced leather jacket with no sleeves. His arms were long and his skin was sun-starved white. There were dark tattoos on the albino flesh there. He stretched one arm out and took up a silver bowl. It was full of a liquid so dark it looked like ink. The jarl's fingers, curled around the lip of the silver lanx, were armoured with dirty rings. The Upplander imagined the jarl wore them less for decoration and more for the damage they would do to the things that he hit.
Ogvai took a sip, and then offered the lanx to the Upplander. He held it out.
'He can't drink that,' said one of the escort. 'Mjod will go though his innards like acid.'
Ogvai sniffed.
'Sorry,' he said to the Upplander. 'Wouldn't want to kill you with a toast to your health.'
The Upplander could smell the petroleum reek of the drink. There was blood in it too, he guessed. Liquid food, fermented, chemically distilled, extremely high calorific content... more akin to aviation fuel than a beverage.
'It keeps the cold out,' Ogvai remarked as he set the bowl down. He looked at the Upplander.
'Tell me why you're here.'
'I'm here at the continuing discretion of the Rout,' the Upplander replied in Juvjk.
Ogvai curled his lip.
'No, that's why you're still breathing,' he said. 'I asked why you're here.'
'I was invited.'
'Tell me about this invitation.'
'I sent a number of messages to the Fenris beacon, requesting permission to enter Fenrisian world-space. I wished to meet with and study the Fenrisian Astartes.'
One of the escort standing behind the Upplander snorted.
'That doesn't sound like a request that we would say yes to,' said Ogvai. 'Were you persistent?'
'I think I sent the request, with various elaborations, about a thousand times.'
'You think?'
'I can't be sure. I had a log of the precise number, with transmission dates. My effects were returned to me, but all my data-slates and notebooks were missing.'
'Written words,' said Ogvai. 'Written words and word storage devices. We don't permit them here.'
'At all?'
'No.'
'So all my notes and drafts, all my work, you destroyed it?'
'I would think so. If that's what you were idiot enough to bring with you. Don't you have back-up off-world?'
'Nineteen great years ago, I did. How do you record information here on Fenris?'
'That's what memories are for,' said Ogvai. 'So you sent this message a lot. Then what?'
'I got permission. Permission to set down. Coordinates were given. The permit was verified as Astartes. But during planetfall, my lander suffered a serious malfunction and crashed.'
'It didn't crash,' said Ogvai. He took another sip of his ink-black drink. 'It was shot out of the sky. Wasn't it, Bear?'
Nearby, at the foot of the jarl's seating mound, one of the dark masses of huddled furs stirred.
'You shot him down, didn't you, Bear?'
There was a grumble of reply.
Ogvai grinned. 'That was why he had to come out and rescue you. Because he shot you down. It was a mistake, wasn't it, Bear?'
'I recognised my failing, jarl, and I was sure to correct it,' Bear replied.
'If you knew all this, why did you ask me?' asked the Upplander.
'Just wanted to see if you remembered the story as well as I did.' Ogvai frowned. 'Your telling's not up to much, though. I'll put that down to the fact that you've been in the icebox a long time and your brain's probably still frosty. But as a skjald, you're not really what I expected.'
'As a skjald?'
Ogvai leaned forwards and rested the elbows of his long, white arms on his knees. His pale skin glowed in the gloom, like glacier ice.
'Yes, as a skjald. I'll tell it now, then. I'll tell the account. Gedrath, who came before me, he warmed to your messages. He talked to us in Tra, and to me, who was his right hand, and to the other jarls, and to the Wolf King too. A skjald, he said. That would be amusing. Diverting. A skjald could bring new accounts from Upp and out, and he could learn ours too. Learn them, and tell them back to us.'
'This is what you thought I'd be?' asked the Upplander.
'Is it what you thought you'd be?' asked the jarl. 'You wanted to learn about us, didn't you? Well, we don't give our stories cheaply. We don't give them to just anybody. You sounded promising, and eager.'
'Then there was the name,' said one of the escort behind the Upplander. Ogvai nodded, and the Tra veteran stepped forwards. He was lanky and grey-haired, with blue tattooing writhing up and out from the edges of his leather face mask and across his deep brow. Plaited grey beard tails sprouted from the mask's lower rim.
'What's that, Aeska?' asked Ogvai.
'The name he gave us,' said Aeska. 'Ahmad Ibn Rustah.'
'Oh yes,' said Ogvai.
'Jarl Gedrath, rest his thread, had a romantic soul,' said the warrior.
Ogvai grinned. 'Yes. It appeale |
e escort behind the Upplander. Ogvai nodded, and the Tra veteran stepped forwards. He was lanky and grey-haired, with blue tattooing writhing up and out from the edges of his leather face mask and across his deep brow. Plaited grey beard tails sprouted from the mask's lower rim.
'What's that, Aeska?' asked Ogvai.
'The name he gave us,' said Aeska. 'Ahmad Ibn Rustah.'
'Oh yes,' said Ogvai.
'Jarl Gedrath, rest his thread, had a romantic soul,' said the warrior.
Ogvai grinned. 'Yes. It appealed to him. To me too. I was his right hand, and he looked to me. He didn't want to appear whimsical or weak, but a man's heart can be touched by an old memory or the smell of history. That's what you intended, wasn't it?'
He was looking directly at the Upplander.
'Yes,' said the Upplander. 'To be honest, after a thousand or so messages, I was willing to try anything. I didn't know if you'd know the significance.'
'Because we're stupid barbarians?' asked Ogvai, still smiling.
The Upplander wanted to say yes. Instead, he said, 'Because it's old and obscure data by any standard, and that was before I knew you kept no written or stored records. Long ago, before Old Night, before even the rise of man from Terra, and the Outward Urge, and the Golden Era of Technology, there was a man called Ahmad Ibn Rustah, or ebn Roste Esfahani. He was a learned man, a conservator who went out into the world to discover and preserve knowledge, learning it first-hand so he knew it to be accurate, to be the truth. He went from Isfahan in what we know as the Persian region, and travelled as far as Novgorod, where he encountered the Rus. These were the peoples of the Kievan Rus Khaganate, part of the vast and mobile genetic group that encompassed the Slav, the Svedd, the Norsca and the Varangaria. He was the first outsider to integrate with them, to appreciate their culture and to report them to be far more than the stupid barbarians they were thought to be.'
'You see a parallel here?' asked Ogvai.
'Don't you?'
Ogvai sniffed and rubbed the end of his nose with the pad of his thumb. His finger nails were thick and black, like chips of ebony. They each had deep and complex patterns embossed or drilled into them. 'Gedrath did. You used the name as a shibboleth.'
'That's right.'
There was silence.
'I understand I've been brought here so you can decide what to do with me,' said the Upplander.
'Yes, that's about it. It falls to me to decide, now I'm jarl and Gedrath is gone.'
'Not to... your primarch?' asked the Upplander.
'The Wolf King? That's not the kind of decision he bothers himself with,' replied Ogvai. 'Tra had seneschalship of the Aett the season you came along, so Gedrath was the lord in charge. This is down to his whimsy. Now I find out if Tra comes to regret it. Do you really want to learn about us?'
'Yes.'
'That means learning about survival. About killing.'
'You mean war? I have lived most of my life on Terra, a world that is still riven by conflict as it restores itself. I've seen my fair share of war.'
'I don't mean war so much,' said Ogvai doubtfully. 'War's just an elaboration and codification of a much purer activity, which is being alive. Sometimes, at the most basic level, to be alive you must stop other people being alive. This is what we do. We are extremely good at it.'
'I have no doubt of that, ser,' the Upplander replied.
Ogvai picked up his lanx and held it pensively in front of his mouth in both hands, ready to sip.
'Life and death,' he said softly. 'That's what we're about, Upplander.' He said the name scornfully, as if mocking. 'Life and death, and the place where they meet up. That place, that's where we do business. That's the space we inhabit. That's the place where wyrd gets decided. You want to come with us, you'll have to learn about both of them. You'll have to get close to both. Tell me, you ever been close to either? You ever been to the place where they meet?'
HE COULD HEAR music. Someone was playing the clavier.
'Why can I hear music?' he asked.
'I don't know,' Murza replied. He clearly didn't care either. A fat pile of manuscripts and maps was spread out over the battered desktop, and he was picking over them.
'It's a clavier,' said Hawser, cocking his head.
The day was fine, sunny. The white dust kicking up from the Army shelling seemed to have dried out the previous day's rain and left the sky a deep, dark blue, like the lid of a box lined with velvet. Sunlight sloped in off the street through the blown-out window and doorway, and brought the distant music with it.
The building had once been a clerical office, perhaps for patents or legal work, and a penetrator shell had gone through its upper storeys like a round through a brainpan. The floor of the front office they were standing in was stained navy blue from the hundreds of bottles of ink that had been blown off the shelves and shattered. The ink had soaked in and dried months before. The blue floor matched the sky outside. Hawser stood in the patch of sunlight and listened to the music. He hadn't heard a clavier playing in years.
'Look at this, will you?' Murza said. He passed a hand-held picter unit to Hawser. Hawser looked at the image displayed on the back-plate screen.
'This has just come through from our contact,' he said. 'Do you think it's a match?'
'The image quality is poor-' Hawser began.
'But your mind isn't,' snapped Murza.
Hawser smiled. 'Navid, that's probably the nicest thing you've ever said to me.'
'Get over it, Kas. Look at the pict. Is it the box?'
Hawser studied the image again, and compared it to the various antique archive picts and reference drawings that Murza had arranged in a line across the desk.
'It looks genuine,' he said.
'It looks beautiful is what it looks,' smiled Murza. 'But I do not want to get bitten like we did at Langdok. We have to be sure this is genuine. The bribes we've paid, the finder's fees. There'll be more, you can count on it. The local priesthood will have to be financially persuaded to look the other way.'
'Really? You'd think they'd be grateful. We're attempting to salvage their heritage before this war obliterates it. They must realise we're attempting to save something they can't?'
'You know that this is much more complicated than that,' replied Murza. 'It's a matter of faith. That much should be obvious to a good Catheric boy like you.'
Hawser didn't rise to the bait. He'd never made an attempt to hide the tradition of belief he'd been raised to. All teaching at the commune that had been his first home had been Catheric, as had all the communes and camps serving the Ur project. A city built by and for the faithful. It was an appealing idea, one of an infinite number that had tried and failed to make sense of mankind's lot after Old Night. Hawser had never been much of a believer himself, but he'd had great patience and respect for the ideas of men like Rector Uwe. In turn, Uwe had never presumed to impose his beliefs on Hawser. He'd supported Hawser's ambition to attend a universitariate. Almost accidentally, in conversation with a faculty senior many years later, Hawser had discovered that he had been awarded his scholarship to Sardis principally on the basis of the letter Uwe had sent to the master of admissions.
Without Rector Uwe, Hawser would never have left the commune and Ur, and entered academia. But for his place at Sardis, Hawser would still have been at the commune when the predators, the human predators, had stolen in off the western slope radlands and put an end to the dream of Ur.
It was a salvation he still found uncomfortable, two decades later.
Hawser was interested in the tradition and histories of faith and religion, but it was hard in the modern age to believe in any god who had never bothered to prove his existence, when there was one who most profoundly had. It was said that the Emperor denied all efforts to label Him a god, or entitle Him with divinity, but there was no getting around the fact that, as He had risen to prominence on Terra, all the extant creeds and religions of the world had correspondingly dried up like parched watercourses in summer.
Murza now, he hid his beliefs. Hawser knew for a fact that Murza had also been raised Catheric. They'd discussed it sometimes. Catheric had a strand of Millenarianism in it. The proto-creeds that had given rise to it had believed in an end time, an apocalypse, during which a saviour would come to escort the righteous to safety. An apocalypse had come all right. It had been called Strife and Old Night. There had been no saviour. Some philosophers reasoned that mankind's crimes and sins had been so great, redemption had been withheld. Salvation had been postponed indefinitely until mankind had atoned sufficiently, and only once that had happened would the prophecy be revisited.
That didn't satisfy Hawser especially. No one knew, or could remember, what the human race might have done to displease god so spectacularly. It was, Hawser reasoned, hard to atone if you didn't know what you were atoning for.
The other thing that made him uneasy was that the rise of the Emperor was seen by an increasing number of people as evidence that the postponement was over.
'I'm sorry. It's easy to mock religion,' Murza said.
'It is,' Hawser agreed.
'It's easy to scorn it for being old-fashioned and inadequate. A heap of superstitious rubbish. We have science.'
'We do.'
'Science, and technology. We are so advanced, we have no need of spiritual faith.'
'Are you going somewhere with this?' Hawser asked.
'We forget what religion offered us.'
'Which is?'
'Mystery.'
That was his argument. Mystery. All religions required a believer to have faith in something inexpressible. You had to be prepared to accept that there were things you could never know or understand, things you had to take on trust. The mystery at the heart of religion was not a mystery to be understood, it was a mystery to be cherished, beca |
, we have no need of spiritual faith.'
'Are you going somewhere with this?' Hawser asked.
'We forget what religion offered us.'
'Which is?'
'Mystery.'
That was his argument. Mystery. All religions required a believer to have faith in something inexpressible. You had to be prepared to accept that there were things you could never know or understand, things you had to take on trust. The mystery at the heart of religion was not a mystery to be understood, it was a mystery to be cherished, because it was there to remind you of your scale in the cosmos. Science deplored such a view, because everything should be explicable, and that which was not was simply beneath contempt.
'It's no coincidence that so many old religions contained myths of forbidden truth, of dangerous knowledge. Things that man was not meant to know.'
Murza had a way of putting things. Hawser believed that Murza was considerably more scornful of the faith that had raised him than Hawser was, even though Murza believed and Hawser didn't. At least Hawser had respect for Catherisism's morality. Murza made a great show of treating anyone who professed a faith as an irredeemable idiot.
But he cared. Hawser knew that. Murza believed. The little sign of the crux he wore under his shirt, the genuflection he sometimes made when he thought no one was looking. There was an inkling of the spiritual about the sardonic Navid Murza, and he kept it alive to preserve his sense of mystery.
It was mystery that propelled Murza and Hawser on their expeditions to recover priceless relics of data from the world's shattered corners. Rescued data unlocked the mysteries that Old Night had burned into the tissue of mankind's collective knowledge like lesions.
Sometimes it was mystery that sent them after spiritual relics too. Prayer boxes in Ossetia, for example. Neither of them believed in the faith that had constructed the boxes, or the sacred virtue of the things they were supposed to contain. But they both believed in the importance of the mystery the items had represented to past generations, and thus their value to human culture.
The prayer boxes had kept faith alive in this cindered part of Terra through the Age of Strife. There was very little chance they contained any data of actual, practical value. But a study of their nature and the way they had been crafted and preserved could reveal a great deal about human thought, and human codes, and the way man thought about his place in a cosmos where science was increasingly proving to be inimical.
There was a noise outside in the street, and Vasiliy stepped in out of the sunlight.
'Ah, captain,' said Murza. 'We were about to send for you.'
'Ready to advance?' Vasiliy asked.
'Yes, up through Old Town to a rendezvous point,' said Hawser.
'Our contact has come up with the goods,' Murza added.
The captain looked reluctant. 'I'm concerned about your welfare. In the last hour, this whole region has become very active. I'm getting reports of actions with N Brigade forces all down the valley as far as Hive-Roznyka. Moving through Old Town will make you very exposed.'
'My dear Captain Vasiliy, Kas and I have absolute faith in you and your troops.'
Vasiliy grinned and shrugged. She was a good looking woman in her mid-thirties, and the plating and ballistic padding of the Lombardi Hort battlegear did not entirely disguise the more feminine highlights of her form. Her right elbow was leaning on the chrome 'chetter strap hung from her shoulder. Sunlight glinted off the armoured links of the ammo feed that ran between weapon and backpack. A giant slide-visor of tinted yellow plastek came down over her eyes like an aviator's headcan. Hawser knew its inner surface was flickering with eyeline displays and target graphics. He knew it because he'd asked her to let him try it on once. She'd grinned, and buckled the strap tight under his chin, and explained what all the cursors and tags meant. In truth, he'd only done it so he could see her whole face. She had great eyes.
In the street, the Hort forces were moving up. Vox officers scurried like beetles with their heavy carapace sets and long, swaying antennae. Troopers prepped 'chetters and melters, and set off in fire-teams. The sunlight winked off their yellow slide-visors.
A modest sub-hive dominated the hill's summit, punctured and dilapidated by fighting. In its foothills, the outskirts known as Old Town, much more ancient street patterns and urban growths fanned out like root mass from a tree trunk. Hawser could hear shelling away to the south, and rockets occasionally whooped and squealed as they spat off overhead.
Hawser and Murza had spent three months in the region, tracking down the prayer boxes through a long and complex series of contacts and intermediaries. The boxes were said to contain the relics of venerated individuals from the Pre-Strife Era, part of a local tradition of Proto-Cruxic worship. Some contained old packets of scripture on paper or old-format disk too. Murza was especially excited about the translation possibilities.
So far, they'd recovered two boxes. Today, they hoped, they'd get the third and best example before the brutal inter-hive warfare finally forced them to quit the region. The item was owned and guarded by a small, underground coven of believers, who had kept it safe for six centuries, but picture records made by an antiquarian ninety years earlier attested to its outstanding significance. The antiquarian's records also spoke of considerable scriptural material.
'You do as I say,' Vasiliy told them, as she did every morning when she led them out into the open.
They moved through the town under escort.
'Can you hear music?' Hawser asked.
'No, but I do hear it's your birthday,' said Vasiliy, by way of reply.
Hawser blushed. 'I don't have a birthday. I mean, I only have a rough idea what day I was born on.'
'It says it's your birthday on your bio-file.'
'You looked me up,' said Hawser.
She feigned disinterest. 'I'm in charge. I need to know these things.'
'Well, captain, the date on my bio-file is the birthday I was given by the man who raised me. I was a foundling. It's as good a birthday as any.'
'Uh huh.'
'So why do you need to know?' he asked.
'It just occurred to me that tonight, when this business is done, we could raise a glass to celebrate.'
'What a fine idea,' said Hawser.
'I thought so,' she agreed. 'Forty, huh?'
'Happy birthday me.'
'You don't look a day over thirty-nine.'
Hawser laughed.
'When you two have stopped flirting,' said Murza. His link had just received a pict-message from their contact. It was another image of the prayer box, its lid open. The image was of better quality than the previous one.
'It's as though he's teasing us, tempting us,' said Hawser.
'He says the box is safe in the basement of a public hall about half a kilometre from here. It's waiting for us. He's agreed terms and a fee with the cult elders. They're just glad the box can be removed to safety before war tears the city down.'
'But they still want a fee,' said Vasiliy.
'That's really for the contact, not the elders,' said Hawser. 'One hand washes the other.'
'Can we move ahead?' asked Murza sharply. 'If we're not outside in twenty minutes, they're going to call the whole thing off.'
Vasiliy signalled the troop forwards again.
'He's impatient, isn't he?' she said to Hawser quietly, nodding at Murza up ahead.
'He can be. He worries about missed opportunities.'
'You don't?'
'That's the difference between us,' said Hawser. 'I want to preserve knowledge - any knowledge - because any knowledge is better than none. Navid, well I think he's hungry to find the knowledge that matters. The knowledge that will change the world.'
'Change the world? How?'
'I don't know... by revealing some scientific truth we'd forgotten. By showing us some technological art we'd lost. By telling us the name of god.'
'I'll tell you how you change the world,' she said. She fetched a creased pict-print out of her thigh pouch. A sunny day, a grinning teenager.
'That's my sister's boy. Isak. Every male in my family gets the name Isak. It's a tradition. She got to marry, and raise the kids. I got to have a career. Apart from living expenses, every penny I earn goes back to her, to the family. To Isak.'
Hawser looked at the picture and then handed it back to her.
'Yes,' he said. 'I like your way more.'
They came around a street corner and saw the clavier.
It was sitting in the middle of the street, an upright model, missing its side panel. Someone had wheeled it out of one of the bombed-out buildings for no readily apparent reason other than that it had survived. An old man was standing at its keyboard, playing it. He had to hunch slightly to accommodate the length of his limbs and the lack of a stool. He'd been good once. His fingers were still nimble. Hawser tried to recognise the tune.
'I told you I could hear music,' he said.
'Clear the street,' Vasiliy voxed to her men.
'Is that necessary?' asked Hawser. 'He's not doing any harm.'
'N Brigade members strap toxin bombs to children,' she snapped back. 'I am not going to take chances with an old man and a wooden box large enough to take a mini-nuke.'
'Fair enough.'
The old man looked up and smiled as the troops approached him. He called out a greeting, and changed what he was playing mid-bar. The tune became, unmistakably, the March of Unity.
'Cheeky old bastard,' muttered Murza. Vasiliy's men surrounded the old man and began to gently persuade him away from his music-making. The march missed a few notes, added a few dud ones. The old man was laughing. The March of Unity became a jaunty music hall melody
'So, your birthday,' said Murza, turning to Hawser.
'You've never remembered before.'
'You've never been forty before,' said Murza. He reached into his coat. 'I got you this. It's just a trinket.'
The music stopped. The Hort troopers had finally got the old man to step away fro |
en surrounded the old man and began to gently persuade him away from his music-making. The march missed a few notes, added a few dud ones. The old man was laughing. The March of Unity became a jaunty music hall melody
'So, your birthday,' said Murza, turning to Hawser.
'You've never remembered before.'
'You've never been forty before,' said Murza. He reached into his coat. 'I got you this. It's just a trinket.'
The music stopped. The Hort troopers had finally got the old man to step away from the clavier. His foot came off the forte pedal. There was a metallic whir, like the counterweight wind of a clock movement, as the firing plate of the nano-mine inside the clavier engaged.
In less time than it takes a man's heart to beat its final beat, the clavier vanished, and the old man disappeared, and the troopers surrounding him puffed into vapour like cotton seed heads, and the surface of the street peeled away in a blizzard of cobblestones, and the buildings on either side of the road shredded, and Murza left the ground in the arms of the shockwave, and his blood got in Hawser's eyes, and Hawser started to fly too, and all the secrets of the cosmos were illuminated for one brief moment as life and death converged.
OGVAI SENT THE Upplander away while he thought about his decision. Eventually, after what the Upplander calculated to be about forty or fifty hours, during which time he saw no one except the thrall who brought him a bowl of food, the warrior called Aeska appeared in his doorway, sent by the jarl.
'Og says you can stay,' he remarked, casually.
'Will I... I mean, how does this work? Are there formalities? Are their patterns or style conventions for the stories I record?'
Aeska shrugged. 'You've got eyes, haven't you? Eyes, and a voice, and a memory? Then you've got everything you need.'
PART TWO
WOLF TALES
FIVE
At the Gates of the Olamic Quietude
HE ASKED THEM if, under the circumstances, he ought to be armed. The thralls and grooms who were preparing and anointing the company for drop cackled behind their skull masks and animal faces.
Bear said it wouldn't be necessary.
THE QUIETUDE HAD placed a division of their robusts on the principal levels of the graving dock. The dock was an immense spherical structure comparable to a small lunar mass. It consisted of a void-armoured shell encasing a massive honeycomb of alloy girderwork in which the almost completed Instrument sat, embedded at the core, like a stone in a soft fruit.
Deep range scanning had revealed very little about the Instrument, except that it was a toroid two kilometres in diameter. There were no significant cavity echoes, so it was not designed to be crewed. An unmanned vehicle could only be a kill vehicle in the opinion of the commander of the 40th Imperial Expedition Fleet, and Ogvai Ogvai Helmschrot tended to agree.
Tra made entry via the polar cap of the graving dock megastructure. The company then moved down into the dock interior, descending via the colossal lattice of girderwork that cradled the Instrument. The Wolves came down, hand over hand, swinging from fingertips and toe holds, gripping struts with their knees, sliding, dropping, leaping from one support to another beneath. Hawser imagined that this process would look crude and ape-like; that the Astartes, bulked out even more than usual in their wargear, would appear clumsy and primitive, like primates swinging down through the canopy of a metal forest.
They did not. There was nothing remotely simian about their motion or their advance. They poured down through the interlocking ribs and spans like a fluid, something dark and glossy, like mjod, or blood. Something that ran and dripped, swelled and flowed again, a dark something that found in every angle, strut and spar the quickest unbroken route by which to follow gravity's bidding.
LATER, THIS OBSERVATION was the first to earn Hawser any compliments as a skjald.
THE WOLVES DESCENDED and they did so silently. Not a grunt of effort, not a gasp of labour, not a click or crackle from a vox device, not a clink or chime from an uncased weapon or an unlagged armour piece. Hair was tied back and lacquered or braided. Gloves and boot-treads were dusted with ground hrosshvalur scales for grip. The hard edges of armour sections were blunted with pelts and fur wrappings. Behind tight leather masks, mouths were shut.
The Quietude's robusts matched the Astartes in bulk and strength. They had been engineered that way. Each one was hardwired with remarkable sensitivity to motion, to light, to heat and to pheromonal scent. Somehow, they still didn't see the Wolves coming.
Why don't the men of Tra draw their weapons, Hawser wondered? His panic began to escalate. Great Terra above, they've all forgotten to draw their weapons! The words almost flew out of him as the Wolves began to drop out of the girderwork and onto the heads of the robusts patrolling below them.
Most went for the neck. A robust was big, but the weight of a fully armoured Astartes dropping on it from above was enough to bring it down onto the deck, hard. With open hands, unencumbered by weapons, the Astartes gripped their targets' heads, and twisted them against the direction of fall, snapping the cervical process.
It was an economical and ruthless execution. The Wolves were using their own bodies as counterweights to clean-break steelweave spinal columns. The first audible traces of the fight were the rapid-fire cracks of fifty or more necks breaking. The sounds overlapped, almost simultaneous, like firecrackers kicking off across the vast, polished deckspace. Like knuckles cracking.
Distress and medical attention signals began to bleat and shrill. Few of the robusts who had been brought down were actually dead, as they did not enjoy life in the same way that conventional humans did. The robusts were simply disabled, helpless, the command transmissions between their brains and their combat-wired bodies broken. An odd chorus of information alerts began to sound throughout the dock's megastructure. Layer added upon layer incrementally, as different bands of the Quietude's social networks became aware of what was happening.
Stealth ceased to be a commodity of any value.
Having made their first kills, the Wolves rose to their feet. They were all, very suddenly, aiming guns. The fastest way to arm themselves had been to appropriate the weapons that were ready-drawn and clutched in the paralysed hands of their robust victims. The Wolves came up raising streamlined chrome heat-beamers and gravity rifles. It was really not Hawser's place, then or later, to remark how sleek and unlikely these weapons looked in the hands of Rout members. It was like seeing pieces of glass sculpture or stainless surgical tools gripped in the mouths of wild dogs.
Instead, Hawser's account reflected the following point. It is, the Wolf King teaches, good practice to use an enemy's weapon against him. An enemy may fabricate wonderful armour, but the Wolves of Fenris have learned through experience that the effectiveness of an enemy's protection is proportionate to the efficacy of his weapons. This may be a deliberate design philosophy, but it is more usually a simple, instinctive consequence. An enemy may think 'I know it is possible for armour to be strong to X degree, because I am able to forge armour that strong; therefore I need to develop a weapon that can split armour of X degree, in case I ever encounter an opponent as well-armoured as I know I can be.'
The heat-beamers emitted thin streaks of sizzling white light that hurt the eyes. They made no dramatic noises except for the sharp explosions that occurred when the beams struck a target.
The gravity rifles launched pellets of ultra-dense metal that laced the dock's warm air with quick smudges like greasy finger marks on glass. These weapons were louder. They made noises like whips cracking, underscored by oddly modulated burps of power. Unlike the heat beams, which split robust armour open in messy eruptions of cooking innards and superhot plate fragments, the gravity rifle pellets were penetrators that made tiny, pin-prick entry marks and extravagantly gigantic exit wounds. Stricken robusts faltered as their chests caved in under scorching heat-beam assault, or lurched as their backs blew out in sprays of spalling, shattered plastics, liquidised internals and bone shards.
It was almost pathetic. The Quietude had a martial reputation that was measured in centuries and light years, and the robusts were their battlefield elite. Here, they were falling down like clumsy idiots on an icy day, like clowns in a pantomime, a dozen of them, two dozen, three, smack on their faces or slam on their backs, legs out from under them, not a single one of them even managing to return fire, not a single one.
When the robusts finally began to rally, the Wolves played the next card in their hand. They tossed away the captured guns and switched to their own weapons, principally their bolters. The Quietude's social networks had frantically analysed the nature of the threat, and processed an immediate response. This took the networks less than eight seconds. The robusts were armoured with interlocking, overlapping skins of woven steel as their principal layer of protection, but each one also possessed a variable force field as an outer defensive sheath. After only eight seconds of shooting, the social networks of the Olamic Quietude successfully and precisely identified the nature of the weapons being used against its robusts. They instantly adjusted the composition of the individual force fields to compensate.
As a result, the robusts were effectively proofed against heat-beams and gravitic pellets at exactly the same moment as they started to take Imperial bolter fire.
Further humiliation was heaped upon the Quietude's reputation. The men of Tra spread out, firing from the chest, mowing down the robusts as they attempted to compose the |
precisely identified the nature of the weapons being used against its robusts. They instantly adjusted the composition of the individual force fields to compensate.
As a result, the robusts were effectively proofed against heat-beams and gravitic pellets at exactly the same moment as they started to take Imperial bolter fire.
Further humiliation was heaped upon the Quietude's reputation. The men of Tra spread out, firing from the chest, mowing down the robusts as they attempted to compose themselves.
For this, thought Hawser, for this work, for these deeds: this is why the companies of Wolves are kept.
He had never seen a boltgun live-fired before. All his eight-and-the-rest decades of experience, all the conflict he'd witnessed, and he'd never seen a boltgun shot. Boltguns were the symbol of Imperial superiority and Terran unification, emphatically potent and reductively simple. They were Astartes weapons, not exclusively, but as a hallmark thing. Few men had the build to heft one. They were the crude, mechanical arms of a previous age, durable and reliable, with few sophisticated parts that could malfunction or jam. They were brute technology that, instead of being superseded and replaced by complex modern weapon systems, had simply been perfected and scaled up. An Astartes with a boltgun was a man with a carbine, nightmarishly exaggerated.
The sight of it reminded Hawser of how un-human the Wolves were. He had been amongst them for long enough to have become used to the look of them and the way they towered over him.
Still, they were positively reassuring compared to the forces of the Quietude.
Skull measurements and other biological data taken from captured Quietude specimens had confirmed their Terran ancestry. At some point long before the fall of Old Night, a branch of Terran expansion had brought the Quietude's gene pool into this out-flung, unremembered corner of the galaxy. The commander of the 40th Imperial Expedition Fleet, along with his technical advisors and savants, believed that this exodus had taken place during the First Great Age of Technology, perhaps as long as fifteen thousand years earlier. The Quietude possessed a level of technological aptitude that was extremely sophisticated, and so divergent from Terran or even Martian standards as to suggest a long incubation and, possibly, the influence of a xenobiological culture.
At some early stage in their post-Terran life, the humans of the Quietude had given up their humanity. They operated in social networks, cohered by communications webs neurally spliced into them at birth. They sacrificed most of their flesh anatomy to ritualised surgical procedures during childhood that prepared them to inhabit artificial bodies. Pretty much all that remained of a Quietude adult, organically speaking, were the brain, skull and spinal cord. These rested in the neck socket of an elegantly engineered humanoid chassis, which contained the machine-analogue organs that fed the brain and kept it alive.
That explained why the shot-up robusts were pooling almost purple fluids around their carcasses instead of blood.
The citizens of the Quietude wore hoods of silver circuitry over their skulls, and hologram masks instead of faces. As the boltguns killed them, the masks flickered out and failed, and revealed the self-inflicted inhumanity beneath.
Aeska had carried Hawser down with Tra, instructing Hawser to hold onto his neck. He'd clung on like a pelt, and Aeska had carried him as if his weight had no significance to the Astartes, and even when they'd been going hand-over-hand down through the dock's girder lattice, even when the only thing preventing Hawser from plunging to his death was the grip of his fingers around Aeska's neck, he'd kept his eyes open. He had not done this because he'd jumped down enough flues in the Aett to develop a head for heights. He'd done it because he'd known he had to. It was expected of him.
On the principal deck level, as the assault began, Aeska had set Hawser on the ground behind him and told him to walk in his shadow. The vast, polished deck yawned away on either side of them, curved like the surface of a world seen from orbit, and the lattice above was like the branches of a dense thorn thicket. The air was laced with bolter fire.
Hawser needed very little encouragement.
Five minutes into the fight, the Quietude finally began to claw back. The first Rout blood they spilled was from a warrior called Galeg, who was hit by a gravity pellet. The shot turned his left arm, from the elbow down, into a bloody twig, rattling with bracelets of shattered armour. Galeg shut the pain down and advanced on his attacker, swinging out a chain axe. Steam and blood-smoke sizzled from his injured limb.
The shot had not come from one of the robust warrior units. Three graciles, the lighter weight technical versions, had retrieved the weapon of a fallen robust and set it up on a lattice walkway. Galeg bounded up onto the walkway as they missed him with two more desperate shots, and dismembered them with his wailing axe. He did this with relish, and let out wet growls as their fracturing chassis shattered under his axe-blows and emitted strangulated electronic shrieks.
When Galeg had finished his kill, he signalled his ability to continue with a casual air-punch of his bloody, ruined fist, a gesture that Hawser found chilling.
Several robusts had defended the entrance to a major engineering underspace with what looked like a heavier, perhaps crew-served, version of the gravity rifle. The colossal bursts of fire, ripping up the underspace approach from an unseen source, vaporised Hjad, the first Wolf to come into view. Bear wheeled the rest of his pack aside. There was no point in providing further targets. Hawser saw Bear take out a small hand axe, a one-piece steel cast, and mark the bulkhead beside the underspace slope. He did it quickly and deftly. It was evidently a mark he'd made many times: four hard cuts to form a crude diamond shape, then a fifth notch bisecting the diamond. Hawser considered the mark gouged into the bulkhead metal, and realised what it was.
It was an incredibly simplified symbol for an eye. It was a mark of aversion.
THE OLAMIC QUIETUDE had been hostile from the very point of contact. Suspicious and unwilling to formalise any kind of convergence, they had engaged the 40th Fleet in two separate ship actions in an attempt to drive the expedition out of Quietude space. During the second of these skirmishes, the Quietude managed to capture the crew of an Imperial warship.
The commander of the 40th Imperial Expedition Fleet sent a warning to the Quietude, explaining that peaceful contact and exchange was the primary goal of the Imperium of Terra, and the Quietude's aggressive stance would not be tolerated. The warship and its crew would be returned. Negotiations would begin. Dialogue with Imperial iterators would begin and understanding reached. The Quietude made its first direct response. It explained, as if to a child, or perhaps to a pet dog or bird that it was trying to train, that it was the true and sole heir of the Terran legacy. As its name suggested, it was resting in an everlasting state of readiness to resume contact with its birthworld. It had waited patiently through the apocalyptic ages of storm and tempest.
The Imperials who now approached its borders were pretenders. They were not what they claimed to be. Any fool could see that they were the crude artifice of some alien race trying to mock-up what it thought would pass for human.
The Quietude supported this verdict with copious annotated evidence from its interrogation of the Imperial prisoners. Each prisoner, the Quietude stated, displayed over fifteen thousand points of differential that revealed them to be non-human impostors, as the vivisections clearly demonstrated.
The commander of the 40th Expedition Fleet sent for the nearest Astartes.
THE LONGER HAWSER lived amongst the Rout, the more the Astartes had to do with him. Warriors he did not know, from companies he had not encountered, would come and seek him out, and regard him suspiciously with their abhuman gold eyes.
They hadn't learned to trust him. It wasn't trust. It was as though they had got used to his alien scent being in the Aett.
Either that, or someone, someone or something with the authority to call off a pack of the wildest killers on Fenris, had ordered them to accept him.
It seemed, as it had with Bitur Bercaw, that the telling of stories mattered to them.
'Why do the stories matter?' Hawser asked one night when he was permitted to eat with Skarssen and his game-circle. Board games like hneftafl were for sharpening strategy.
Skarssen shrugged. He was too busy scooping meat into his mouth in a manner that wasn't a human gesture. It wasn't even the gesture of a ravenous human being. It was the action of an animal fuelling itself, not knowing when it would feed again.
Hawser sat with a meagre bowl of fish broth and some dried fruit. The Astartes of Fyf had mjod, and haunches of raw meat so red and gamey it stank of cold copper and carbolic.
'Is it because you don't write things down?' Hawser pressed.
Lord Skarssen wiped blood from his lips.
'Remembering is all that counts. If you remember something, you can do it again. Or not do it again.'
'You learn?'
'It's learning,' Skarssen nodded. 'If you can tell something as an account, you know it.'
'And accounts are how we don't forget the dead,' put in Varangr.
'That too,' said Skarssen.
'The dead?' asked Hawser.
'They get lonely if we forget them. No man should be lonely and forgotten by his comrades, even if he's a wight and gone away to the dark and the Underverse.'
Hawser watched Varangr's face in the lamplight. There was no way to read it except as the dull-eyed mask of an apex predator.
'When I was sleeping,' Hawser said. It was the start of a sentence, but he hadn't thought it through to the end, an |
e don't forget the dead,' put in Varangr.
'That too,' said Skarssen.
'The dead?' asked Hawser.
'They get lonely if we forget them. No man should be lonely and forgotten by his comrades, even if he's a wight and gone away to the dark and the Underverse.'
Hawser watched Varangr's face in the lamplight. There was no way to read it except as the dull-eyed mask of an apex predator.
'When I was sleeping,' Hawser said. It was the start of a sentence, but he hadn't thought it through to the end, and nothing else came out.
'What?' asked Skarssen, annoyed.
Hawser shook himself, coming out of a brief trance. 'When I was sleeping. In cold sleep, where you kept me. I heard a voice then. It said it didn't like it in the darkness. It missed the firelight and the sunlight. It said it had dreamed all of its dreams a hundred times over, a thousand times. It said it hadn't chosen the dark.'
He looked up and realised that Skarssen, Varangr and the other members of Fyf around him had stopped eating and were staring at him, listening intently. A couple had blood on their chins that they hadn't wiped away.
'It told me that the dark chooses us,' Hawser said. The Wolves murmured assent, though their throats made the murmur into a leopard-growl.
Hawser stared at them. The twitching firelight caught golden eyes and gleaming teeth in shadow shapes.
'Was it a wight?' he asked. 'Was I hearing a voice from the Underverse?'
'Did it have a name?' asked Varangr.
'Cormek Dod,' said Hawser.
'Not a wight, then,' said Skarssen. He sagged, as if disappointed. 'Almost but not.'
'Worse, probably,' grumbled Trunc.
'Don't say that!' Skarssen snapped.
Trunc bowed his head. 'I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it,' he said.
Hawser asked what they meant, but they wouldn't be drawn. His story had briefly piqued their interest, but now they were deflated. The jarl turned back to the subject of death.
'We burn our dead,' said Skarssen. 'It's our practice. There's no soil on Fenris for burial. No ground that isn't iron hard in the long winter, and no ground with any permanence in summer. We don't leave markers or tombs, no graves for the worm-wed like other men. Why would a dead man want that? Why would he want his wight weighed down and anchored to one place? His thread's cut and he can finally roam as he pleases. Doesn't want a stone pinning him down.'
'A story is better than a stone,' said Varangr. 'Better for remembering the dead. Do you know how to remember the dead, skjald?'
THE MEDICAE WHO tended him in the field station at Ost-Roznyka spent some time explaining that they'd nearly been able to save his leg.
'The shrapnel damage would have been repairable,' he said, as if discussing the re-liming of a wall. 'What cost you was the crush damage. The blast carried you into a building, and brought a lintel down on you.'
Hawser felt nothing. His senses had been entirely fogged by opiates, he presumed. The Lombardi Hort field station was grubby and painfully under-provided, and the medicae's scrub-smock, mask and cap were soiled so deeply it was clear he didn't change them between patients, but there were several freshly used opiate injectors in a chrome instrument tray by his cot. They'd used precious pharm supplies on him. He warranted special attention. He was high status, a visiting specialist.
It was likely several regular soldiers would die or at least suffer terrible and avoidable pain because of him.
He felt nothing.
'I think an augmetic will be viable,' the medicae said, encouragingly. He looked tired. His eyes looked tired. All Hawser could see of the medicae above his soiled mask were his tired eyes.
'I can't do a proper assessment here,' the medicae said. 'I really don't have the resources.'
Eyes, without a nose or mouth. Hawser felt nothing, but a current stirred deep down in his drugged torpor. Eyes without a nose or mouth, eyes above a soiled mask. That was wrong. He was used to seeing it the other way around. A mouth and no eyes. A mouth, smiling, and eyes hidden.
Really great eyes, hidden behind a tinted yellow slide-visor.
'Vasiliy,' Hawser said.
'Hmh?' replied the medicae. Someone was shouting outside. Cybernetica portage units were arriving with fresh casualties loaded onto their stretcher racks.
'Vasiliy. Captain Vasiliy.'
'Ahhh,' said the medicae. 'She didn't make it. We worked on her, but there was too much organ damage.'
Hawser felt nothing. It was a state of mind that was not destined to last.
'Murza,' he said. His lips felt like dough. His voice flowed like glue.
'Who?'
'The other inspector. The other specialist.'
'I'm sorry,' said the medicae. 'The blast killed him outright. There were barely any remains to recover.'
HAWSER REMEMBERED THE names of the dead whose threads were cut taking the Quietude's graving dock. Five Astartes, five of Tra: Hjad, Adthung Greychin, Stormeye, Tjurl-On-The-Ice and Fultag Redknife.
He witnessed two of the deaths personally, and learned particulars of the others afterwards, so that he had at least one specific detail for each one, a piece that would make a proper end for each account.
For example, just before the robusts' crew-served weapon had turned him into bloodsmoke and a rattling drizzle of armour fragments, Hjad had carried over two of the Quietude's big fighting units by rushing them bodily. One had been too crippled to pick itself up again. The other had attempted to claw at Hjad, its face hologram blinking as it tried to reload into something more threatening. Hjad had punched his right fist through its torso and pulled out its spine. That was Hjad, the men of Tra agreed. Unflagging, unsentimental. A good account.
Hawser felt confident he had an idea of the desired form.
Adthung Greychin had cleared an entire deck level of the graving dock structure with his chainsword after a lucky shot damaged his bolter. He went through robusts and graciles alike, making them scatter. No one actually saw him take the two gravity penetrators that killed him, but Thel saw his body on the ground just after it dropped, and told Hawser that Adthung's famous grey beard had been dyed almost indigo by the spatter of the enemy's pseudo-blood. He had died well. He had left a litter of dead and a field of cut threads behind him. Hawser added a quip about sleeping on purple snow to the finish of Adthung's tale, and that earned appreciative rumbles from Tra.
Stormeye went to the Underverse destroyed by beam weapons. Blinded, his face all but scorched off by damage, his mouth fused shut, he had still managed to split a robust from the shoulder to the waist with his axe before falling. Hawser had seen this feat for himself. A dead man pulling another down in death with him. This account's ending was greeted by a grim but admiring silence.
Erthung Redhand told Hawser about Tjurl. Tjurl was known as Tjurl-On-The-Ice because he liked to hunt, even in the alabaster silence of Helwinter on Fenris. He would leave the mountain with his spear or his axe, and go out into the high wastes of Asaheim. His blood never froze, that's what they said about him. Because of all that mjod he had drunk, Erthung liked to add.
Tjurl went hunting that day in the graving dock. He took many trophies. That was how Hawser told it. Not once did Tjurl's fury grow cold. Not once did he freeze.
Last to fall was Fultag Redknife. Last story to learn and last to tell before the account of the taking of the graving dock could be finished. Fultag led the assault that took the dock control centre and slashed the throat of the Quietude's social network system so that all the data drained out as useless noise.
The assault was not the act of vandalism that Hawser had expected. Fultag's team did not smash the systems indiscriminately with a heathen lust to defile the artefacts of a more sophisticated culture. They disabled specific parts of the control centre using magnetic mines, gunfire and blunt force, but spared enough of the primary network architecture for the Mechanicum to later examine and, if necessary, operate.
The higher beings of the Quietude were clearly concerned about accidental weapons discharge in the control centre. None of the robusts there were armed. Instead, the area - a geodesic dome structure in the central dock space directly beneath the caged Instrument - was defended by squads of super-robusts. These were titans, reinforced heavyweights armed with concussion maces and accelerator hammers. Some of them had double sets of upper limbs, like the blue-skinned gods of the ancient Induz. Some even sported two heads, twin side-by-side mountings for vestigial organic components, each with its own silver-circuit hood and holomask.
Fultag's team gave them a lesson in axe work. Ullste, moving in to support, witnessed the fight. Each blow shook the deck, such was the strength in those limbs, he said. Super-robusts and Wolves alike were knocked down by bone-crushing blows. It was a clubbing, battering fight that churned through the split levels of the centre, smashing the gleaming window ports, fracturing console desks as bodies reeled into them. The matt fabric of the floor was quickly covered with chips of glass and fragments of plastic and spots of purple pseudo-blood.
Fultag knocked down his first super-robust on the centre's entry ramp. He ducked the mace it swung at his head. If it had connected, the blow would have pulverised even Fenrisian anatomy. The thwarted weapon made a woof through the air instead, a woof like a winded fjorulalli, the great seal-mother.
Fultag was wrong-footed by having to duck, and there was no time to plant his feet better to swing the smile of his axe in before the mace came back at him. He managed a half-swing instead, and connected with the poll of the axe-head. The blunt back of the head fractured the super-robust's shoulder armour and impaired its limb function on one side. It compensated.
Fultag had already rotated his axe, reset his stance, an |
h the air instead, a woof like a winded fjorulalli, the great seal-mother.
Fultag was wrong-footed by having to duck, and there was no time to plant his feet better to swing the smile of his axe in before the mace came back at him. He managed a half-swing instead, and connected with the poll of the axe-head. The blunt back of the head fractured the super-robust's shoulder armour and impaired its limb function on one side. It compensated.
Fultag had already rotated his axe, reset his stance, and brought the axe through in a downsweep that severed one of the super-robust's arms at the elbow and the other at the wrist. The detached pieces, still gripping the energy-sheathed mace, thumped onto the deck. Purple pseudo-blood jetted from the ruptured hydraulic tubes in the limb stumps.
The super-robust seemed to hesitate, as if it wasn't sure how it should proceed.
'Oh, fall down!' Fultag growled, and kicked it over the way he'd kick a door in.
Several members of his team were by then engaging enemy units in the mouth of the hatchway at the top of the ramp. The hatch was effectively blocked by the savage melee. Fultag vaulted the ramp's guardrail and edged along a parapet that ran around the dome's outer surface. When he got to the first window, he stove it in with his axe and jumped inside.
The graciles manning the consoles had begun to disconnect and flee the moment the window exploded in at them and showered the control area with glass shards. Fultag managed to kick one over and chop it in half. A super-robust came at him, and he used his axe-haft to deflect its hammer. Like a staff fighter, he brought the knob of the axe-haft up across his body, two-handed, and smacked the Quietude warrior in the sternum. Then the smile of his axe went into the super-robust's right shoulder.
It stuck fast, wedged. The thing wasn't dead. It lashed at him. Fultag pulled out his long knife, the knife he had cut so many threads with, the knife that had earned him his name, and propelled himself forwards into it. He crashed it backwards against a console. The combined weight of them partially dislodged the console from its floor socket and snapped underfloor cables. The super-robust got its hand to his throat, but Fultag stabbed his knife into the middle of its face.
It died under him and went limp, arms, head and legs slack over the console like a sacrificial victim on an altar slab.
Before he could slide back off his kill and regain his feet, Fultag was hit across the back by another super-robust. The blow was delivered with an accelerator hammer. It cracked Fultag's armour and broke his left hip.
He uttered a growl as he came around at his tormentor, his black-pinned golden eyes wide with rage. His transhuman Astartes biology had already shut the pain off, diverted ruptured blood vessels, and shunted adrenaline to keep Fultag moving on a half-shattered pelvis.
The super-robust was one of the quad-armed, two-headed monsters. Its upper torso and shoulder mount were wider than the driving cage of a Typhoon-pattern land speeder. It carried the concussion hammer with its upper limbs like a ceremonial sceptre-bearer. Fultag managed to evade its next blow, which folded and crushed the damaged console and the dead super-robust draped over it. The follow-up caught him across the right shoulder guard and hurled him sideways into another bank of consoles. Fultag growled, his teeth bared, and droplets of blood spraying from his lips, a wounded wolf now, hurt and deadly.
He went in at the super-robust and grappled to clamp its upper limbs and stop the hammer blows. The Quietude warrior actually found itself pushed back a few steps. It couldn't wrench its arms free. It dug in with its secondary upper limbs, ripping low at Fultag to break his grip. It clenched hard on the broken armour and mashed hip, and managed to get a yowl of pain out of him. He butted its left side head, making its holomask short out. The real face behind was a flayed human skull wired into a plastic cup of circuits. The lidless eyeballs stared back. The impact of the headbutt had caused one to fill almost instantly with pseudo-blood.
Fultag guttered out an ultrasonic purr and butted again. As the super-robust recoiled, he yanked the hammer from its upper set of limbs, but its haft was slick with purple sap and it flew out of his hands.
He tore the super-robust's left head implant out instead. He ripped it clean out of its shoulder socket - skull, neck mount and spinal cord. It came out in a spray like afterbirth. Fultag spat. He gripped the wrenched-out piece of anatomy in his right fist by the base of the spine and began to spin it like a slingshot. Then he swung it repeatedly at the super-robust in the manner of a ball and chain, and didn't stop until its other head was caved in.
The men of Tra approved of this.
More of the enemy came at Fultag after that, and the only weapon in reach was the accelerator hammer. This was his downfall. Stung by the use of its own weapons against it, the Quietude had adjusted its operational settings. When Fultag attempted to defend himself with the hammer, it fired a massive charge of power through the grip that cooked and killed him where he stood.
Around the circle, men nodded gravely. A trick, a trap, an enemy deception, these were all the hazards of war. They would all have made the same choice as Fultag. He'd gone with honour, and he'd held the super-robusts long enough for Tra to take the centre.
The wolf priests attended the dead. Hawser saw some of the dark figures he'd glimpsed in the kitchen-come-hospital-come-morgue on the day he woke up. The priest who served Tra was called Najot Threader.
The death of Fultag troubled Tra most of all. His organics had broiled and burned. There was, Hawser learned, nothing for Najot Threader to recover.
Hawser didn't know what that meant.
A WARSHIP CLOSED in as soon as Tra signalled that the graving dock was taken. They felt the megastructure shudder as it took disabling hits from the warship's massive batteries. The shots were annihilating secondary docks and support vessels, and crippling the graving dock's principal launch faculty.
The deck vibrated. There was a dull, dead sound like a giant gong striking arrhythmically in a distant palace of echoing marble. The air began to smell quite different: drier, as if there was ash or soot flowing into its intermix. Hawser felt afraid, more afraid than when he'd been in the thick of the close fighting with Tra. In his imagination, the warship's complement of monastically-hooded calculus bombardi, ranked in steeply-tiered golden stalls around the warship's gunnery station, were intoning their vast and complex targeting algorithms into the hard-wired sentiences of the gun batteries too rapidly. Mistakes were being made, or just one tiny mistake perhaps, a digit out of place, enough to place the delivery of a mega-watt laser or an accelerator beam a metre or two to the left or right over a range of sixty thousand kilometres. The graving dock would rupture and burst like a paper lantern lit and swollen from within by combusting gas.
Hawser realised it was because he trusted the men of Tra to keep him safe, safe from even the deadliest super-robust. He was only afraid of the things they couldn't control.
The next phase of the war unfolded. Word came that the Expedition Fleet's principal assaults on the Quietude's home world had begun. The men of Tra took themselves to the graving dock's polar bays to observe.
The polar bays had been opened to allow access for the shoals of Mechanicum and Army vessels ferrying personnel onto the dock structure. Hawser joined the Wolves looking down through networks of docking gibbets and anchored voidboats. Below, vast cantilevered hatches and payload doors were spread open like the wings of mythical rocs.
Beneath that, the planet filled the view like a giant orange. The sharp airless clarity of the view made the reflected sunlight almost neon in intensity.
The men of Tra took themselves out along the latticework of girders and struts to get the best view of the operations far below. They were oblivious to the precipitous drop. Hawser tried to seem as matter of fact, but he fought the urge to hold on to any and every guardrail or handgrip.
He edged onto a docking girder after Aeska Brokenlip, Godsmote and Oje. Other Wolves crowded onto the gantries around them.
A formation of bulk capacity deployment vessels was moving into line of sight about three kilometres below them, and the men were keen to watch. Some pointed, indicating certain technical aspects. What struck Hawser most was the way the three men of Tra with him comported themselves. They dropped down onto the gantry like eager animals watching prey from a clifftop, Oje crouching and the other two sprawled. Like dogs in the sun, Hawser thought, panting after exertion, alert, ready to bound up again at a moment's notice. The vast armour that cased them didn't appear to offer the slightest encumbrance.
A flurry of small but searing flashes across the neon-orange view below announced the start of the surface bombardment. Dark patterns immediately began to disfigure the atmosphere of the Quietude's world, as vast quantities of smoke and particulate product began to spill into it. The skin of the orange bruised. The slow-moving deployment vessels began to sow their drop vehicles: clouds of seed cases or chaff tumbling out behind the monolithic carriers.
The Wolves made remarks. Oje dripped a little scorn on the commander of the 40th Expedition Fleet and his council of tacticians for not synchronising the surface assault with the advancing nightside terminator, as he would have done, and thus maximise the psychological and tactical advantages of nightfall. Aeska agreed, but added he'd have run the whole attack on the nightside, except that the Army didn't like to fight at night.
'Poor eyes,' he said, as though talking of invalids or unrema |
rs.
The Wolves made remarks. Oje dripped a little scorn on the commander of the 40th Expedition Fleet and his council of tacticians for not synchronising the surface assault with the advancing nightside terminator, as he would have done, and thus maximise the psychological and tactical advantages of nightfall. Aeska agreed, but added he'd have run the whole attack on the nightside, except that the Army didn't like to fight at night.
'Poor eyes,' he said, as though talking of invalids or unremarkable animals. 'Sorry,' he added. He cast the last comment over his shoulder to Hawser, who was perched behind them, holding on to a spar with white knuckles.
'For what?' asked Hawser.
'He's apologising to your human eye,' said Godsmote.
'Maybe someone should do you a favour and poke that out too,' said Oje.
The three Wolves laughed. Hawser laughed to show he understood it was meant to be a joke.
The Wolves turned their attention back to the invasion below.
'Of course, if I'd been in charge,' said Aeska, 'I'd have just dropped Ogvai into their main habitation, and then come back a week later to collect him and hose him down.'
The three Wolves laughed again, teeth bared. They laughed so hard the gantry vibrated slightly under Hawser.
A cry went up. They all turned to investigate.
Bear, and another of Tra named Orcir, had finally dislodged the crew of robusts who had earlier vaporised Hjad on the underspace slope. They dragged them out into the open, where a gang of Tra members gathered and slaughtered them in a manner that seemed both ritualistic and unnecessarily gruesome. Despite the inhumanity of the Quietude creatures, Hawser found himself glancing away uncomfortably, unwilling to let his eyes record the scene. The two warriors saved the worst of their ministrations for the gracile commander of the weapon crew. The men of Tra watching yelled out encouragement. There was glee in the dismemberment.
'They are chasing out the maleficarum,' said Ogvai. Hawser looked up. He had not heard the massive, battle-black jarl come up to him.
'What?'
'They are casting it out,' said Ogvai. 'They are hurting it so badly it will know not to come back. They are punishing it, and explaining pain to it, so it will not be eager to return and bother us.'
'I see,' said Hawser.
'Make sure you do,' said Ogvai.
The gracile was dead. The Wolves left all the bodies where they had fallen.
Bear walked across to the top of the underspace slope and, as Hawser watched, used his axe to excise the mark of aversion he had made earlier.
SIX
Scintilla City
'I'VE SEEN SEVENTY-FIVE years come and go,' said Kasper Hawser, 'and I've worked fifty years on this project-'
'And the Prix Daumarl attests to the sterling-'
'Could I finish? Could I?'
Henrik Slussen nodded, and made a conciliatory gesture with his gloved hand.
Hawser swallowed. His mouth was dry.
'I have worked for fifty years,' he resumed, 'shepherding the concept of the Conservatory from nothing into this, this form. I was raised by a man who understood the value of information, of the preservation of learning.'
'That's something we all believe in, Doctor Hawser,' said one of the thirty-six rubricators sitting in a semi-circle in the writing desks behind Slussen. Hawser had asked Vasiliy to arrange the meeting in the college's Innominandum Theatre, the lecture theatre panelled in brown wood, rather than the provost's office as Slussen had requested. A psychological ploy; he could get Slussen and his entourage to take the fold-down seats built for students, and diminish them in contrast to his authority.
'I believe the doctor was still a little way from finishing,' Vasiliy told the rubricator. His tone was smooth, but there was unmistakable chastisement in his voice. Vasiliy was standing at Hawser's left shoulder. Hawser could tell that his mediary had one hand inside his coat pocket, secretly holding on to the small vial of medication in case the tension of the situation became too much for Hawser.
The man worried too much. It was charming.
'The work the Conservatory has done,' said Hawser, 'the work I have done... It has all been about expanding mankind's understanding of the cosmos. It has not been about salvaging data and placing it in an inaccessible archive.'
'Explain to me how you think that is happening, doctor?' asked Slussen.
'Explain to me the process by which any average citizen can access information from the Administratum datastacks, undersecretary?' Hawser replied.
'There is a protocol. A request is made-'
'It requires approvals. Authorities. A positive request may take years to fill. A refusal may not be explained or appealed. Information assets, precious information assets, are being placed into the same vast pot as general global administrative data. Vasiliy?'
'Current assessments made by the Office of Efficiency predict that the centralised data-wealth of the Imperium is doubling every eight months. Simply navigating a catalogue of that data-wealth will soon be arduous. In a year or two...'
Slussen did not look at Hawser's mediary.
'So it's a problem of access, and of the architecture of our archives. These are issues that I am happy to explore-'
'I don't believe they are issues, undersecretary,' said Hawser. 'I believe they are symptoms and excuses. They are soft ways of censoring and forbidding. They are subtle ways of controlling data and deciding who gets to know what.'
'That's quite a claim,' said Slussen, entirely without tone.
'It's not the worst thing I'm going to claim today by any means, undersecretary,' said Hawser, 'so hold on tight. High level control of global information, that's bad enough. A conspiracy, if you will, that restricts and seeks to govern the free sharing of composited knowledge throughout mankind, that's bad enough. But what's worse is the implication of ignorance.'
'What?' asked Slussen.
Hawser looked up at the ceiling of the lecture hall, where egg tempera angels flew and cavorted through gesso clouds. He was feeling a little light-headed, truth be told.
'Ignorance,' he repeated. 'The Imperium is so anxious to retain proprietorial control of all data, it is simply stockpiling everything without evaluation or examination. We are owning data without learning it. We don't know what we know.'
'There are issues of security,' said one of the rubricators.
'I understand that!' Hawser snapped. 'I'm simply asking for some transparency. Perhaps an analytical forum to review data as it comes in. To assess it. It's six months since Emantine put you in charge, undersecretary. Six months since you began to steer the Conservatory into the dense fog of the Administratum. We are losing our rigour. We are no longer processing or questioning.'
'I think you're exaggerating,' said Slussen.
'Just this week alone,' said Hawser, taking the data-slate Vasiliy held out to him, 'one hundred and eighty-nine major archaeological or ethnological survey reports were filed directly to the Administratum through your office without going through the Conservatory. Ninety-six of those had been directly funded by us.'
Slussen said nothing.
'Many years ago,' said Hawser, 'so many years ago it alarms me to count them, I asked someone a question. In many respects, it was the question that led us to this place, the question that drives the whole ethos of the Conservatory. It comes in two parts, and I'd be very interested to know if you can answer either.'
'Go on,' said Slussen.
Hawser fixed him with an intent stare.
'Does anyone even know why the Age of Strife happened? How did we end up in the great darkness of Old Night to begin with?'
'WHAT ARE YOU going to do?' asked Vasiliy.
'Finish packing,' Hawser replied. 'Perhaps you'd like to help?'
'You can't leave.'
'I can.'
'You can't resign.'
'I did. You were there. I expressed a desire to Undersecretary Slussen to withdraw from the project for the time being. A sabbatical, I think it's called.'
'Where are you going to go?'
'Caliban, perhaps. An investigative mission has been sent to audit the Great and Fearsome Bestiaries in the bastion libraries. The idea appeals. Or Mars. I have a standing invitation to study at the Symposia Adeptus. Somewhere challenging, somewhere interesting.'
'This is just an overreaction,' said Vasiliy. The afternoon sunlight was piercing the mesh shutters of the high-hive dwelling, an academic's quarters, fully furnished, generous. The items in the room that were actually Hawser's belongings were few, and he was hurling them into his modular luggage. He packed some clothes, some favourite data-slates and paper books, his regicide board.
'The undersecretary's answer was just flippant,' said Vasiliy. 'Trite. He didn't mean anything by it. It was a politician's nonsense, and I'm sure he'll take it back on reflection.'
'He said it didn't matter,' said Hawser. He stopped what he was doing and looked at his mediary for a moment. He was holding a small toy horse made of wood, deciding whether to pack it or not. He'd owned it for a long time.
'He said it didn't matter, Vasiliy. The causes of the Age of Strife were of no consequence to this new golden age. I have never heard such folly!'
'It was certainly hubristic,' said Vasiliy.
Hawser let a thin smile cross his lips. His leg ached, as it always did in times of stress. He put the wooden horse back on a side shelf. He didn't need it.
'I'm going,' he said. 'It's been too long since I did any field work, far too long. I'm sick to the eye teeth of this bean-counting and political fancywork. I'm not made for it. There is no part of me that ever wanted to be a bureaucrat - you understand that, Vasiliy? No part. It disagrees with me. I need to work in a marked trench, or a library, with a trowel or a notebook or a picter. I'll only be gone a short while. A few years at most. Enough time to clear my head and refresh my perspective.'
Vasiliy shook his head.
'I know I'm not going to talk you out of this,' he said. 'I k |
ick to the eye teeth of this bean-counting and political fancywork. I'm not made for it. There is no part of me that ever wanted to be a bureaucrat - you understand that, Vasiliy? No part. It disagrees with me. I need to work in a marked trench, or a library, with a trowel or a notebook or a picter. I'll only be gone a short while. A few years at most. Enough time to clear my head and refresh my perspective.'
Vasiliy shook his head.
'I know I'm not going to talk you out of this,' he said. 'I know that look, the one you've got in your eye. It says stay away from the crazy man.'
Hawser smiled.
'There, you see? You know the omens to look for. You've been warned.'
THE QUIETUDE'S HOME world, that neon orange ball, was actually skinned with ice in the parts that mattered. The Quietude, it appeared, had artificially extended its ice caps like an armoured sheath.
A message was sent to Ogvai asking for further expertise.
'We're going to the surface,' Fith Godsmote said to Hawser. 'You'll come. Make an account.'
It almost sounded like a question, but it was really a statement of the imminent.
Stormbirds had been brought into the graving dock's extravagant facilities. As the men of Tra readied their weapons and kit, and lined up to board, Hawser saw that some of them were engaged in half-joking arguments.
'What's going on?' he asked Godsmote.
'They are debating which bird you should ride on,' said Godsmote. 'When you came to Fenris, you were a bad star and you fell out of the sky. No one wants to ride down the sky with a bad star.'
'I can imagine,' said Hawser.
He looked at the Astartes, and called out, 'Which craft is Bear travelling on?'
Some of the men pointed.
'That one, then,' said Hawser, walking towards the vehicle. 'Bear won't let me fall out of the sky twice.'
The men of Tra laughed, all except Bear. The laughter was edged with wet leopard-growls.
HAWSER HAD TO wear a plastek rebreather over his nose and mouth, because there was something in the atmosphere that didn't agree with standard human biology. The Astartes had no need of support. Many went bare-headed.
The view was extraordinary. The sky, only faintly bruised by vapour, was an oceanic amber canopy that had such bright clarity it looked like blown glass. Everything had a slightly yellow cast to it, an orange tinge. It reminded Hawser of something, and it took him a little while to pull up the memory.
When he finally did, it was surprisingly sharp. Ossetia, a few days before his fortieth birthday; Captain Vasiliy sniggering as she allowed him to try on her heavyweight headgear, him blinking as he peered out through the giant slide-visor at a world tinted orange.
Then he heard, in his head, the March of Unity being played on an old clavier, and tried to think about something else.
They had set down on a great ice field. Under the orange sky, the landscape was flat but dimpled, like a textured flooring fabricated and rolled out from a machine. It was ice, though. The dimples were where small liquid ripples had flash-frozen, and punch samples had been taken by the engineer corps of the advancing Imperial Army brigades. The chemical composition matched those derived from orbital scanning. Stupendous towers the size of hive city spire caps, but of a design ethic that matched the graving dock far above, protruded from the ice field at regular intervals of approximately six hundred and seventy kilometres like cloves studding a pomander.
Almost the first thing the Wolf beside Hawser said was, 'There's no hunting here.'
He meant the ice was sterile. Hawser could sense it too. This was not the absolute white wilderness of Asaheim. This was an engineered landscape. The towers were generators, in his estimation. In the face of a massive extraplanetary invasion, the Olamic Quietude had used its appreciable technology to extend its natural ice caps to form shields. The thickness and composition were such that great parts of the orbital bombardment had been reflected or resisted.
There were cities under the ice where the Quietude was preparing its counter-attack.
THE IMPERIAL ARMY had targeted some of the towers, and were attacking them in vast numbers. Hawser saw tides of men and armoured fighting machines washing in across the ice towards one, pouring in across pylon bridges and support struts. Mass gunfire had stippled the ice field, and the crust around the tower's structure was beginning to melt, suggesting that damage had been done to parts of its mechanism.
There were fires burning everywhere. Thousands of threads of dirty smoke rose into the ochre sky across the giant vista, each one spewing from a destroyed machine, just dots on the ice in the general mass of attackers. It was a scale that he could not really comprehend, like the scenic backdrop of some painting of a general or warmaster with a raised sword and his boot on a fallen helm. Hawser had always presumed the apocalyptic battle scenes rendered behind them were somewhat over-enthusiastic and largely intended to fluff the sitter's importance.
But this was bigger than anything he had ever seen: a battlefield the size of a continent, an armed host that numbered millions, and that host only one of hundreds of thousands that the Imperium had birthed upon the awakening cosmos. In one repellant moment, he saw the contradictory scales of mankind: the giant stature that allowed the species pre-eminence in the galaxy, and the individual stature of a great-coated trooper, one of scores, falling and lost under the charging boots of his comrades as they stormed the alien gates.
Quietude defences lashed the advancing lines with withering disdain. Along the leading edge of the attack, the air seemed to distort as the Quietude's weapon effects impacted and mangled armour, ice and human bodies. High on the ominous tower, massive lamp-like turrets rotated slowly and projected down beams of annihilating energy, washing them slowly as they turned like the beacons of fatal lighthouses. The beams left black, steaming, sticky scars gouged through the densely packed hosts of advancing Imperials.
Super-heavy tanks in deep formation braced for ice-firing and began to devastate the lower flanks of the tower. Parts of it blew out, ejecting huge sprays of debris. The explosions looked small from a distance, and the clouds of debris little more than exhalations of dust, but Hawser knew it was simply scale at work again. The tower was immense. The cloudbursts of debris were akin to those that might rain down after the destruction of a city block.
As he watched, a whole bridge section collapsed, spilling Imperial soldiers into the gulf between the tower and the ice shelf it was plugging. Hundreds of soldiers fell, tumbling, tiny, the sunlight catching braid and armour. Several armoured vehicles plunged with them, sliding off the bridge section as it caved, tracks snapping and lashing. They had been assaulting one of the main exterior gates, which had remained shut and unyielding throughout. Another bridge section collapsed about five minutes later when one of the tower's subturrets succumbed to bombardment from the superheavy tanks and slumped like a landslip, its form unforming, its structure blurring, its weight ripping down off the face of the main tower and exploding the massive bridge into the gulf.
How many thousand Imperial lives went in that second, Hawser wondered? In that flash? In that senseless roar?
What am I doing here?
'Come on. You, skjald, come on.'
He turned from his ringside view of armageddon and saw the flame-lit face of Bear. There was no smile or expression of regard to be found there. Hawser had learned this to be a character mark of the sullen Wolf. He presumed that Bear was particularly sullen with him because he, a human, had caused Bear, an Astartes, embarrassing problems in the eyes of his company, and the Vlka Fenryka as a whole.
'Where?' Hawser asked.
Bear bristled slightly.
'Where I tell you,' he said. He turned, and tilted his head to indicate that Hawser should follow.
They left the powdery, yellow lip of an ice ridge where most of Tra had settled to observe the assault. Behind them, an expanding column of thick cream dust was slowly filling the amber sky. It was emerging from the tumult surrounding the tower assault, climbing into the sky like a stained glacier, ponderous and threatening. The upper parts, where it broadened, were already seventy kilometres across, and the formations of Army gunships and ground-attack craft lining up on the tower were having to fly instruments-only as they penetrated the sulphurous pall.
Hawser followed Bear up the slope. The fine yellow powder-ice was adhering to the Wolf's dark, almost matt-grey armour. Sometimes Hawser stumbled or slipped a little as the soft slope trickled or subsided under him, but every single step Bear took was sure: deep strides, planting his massive, armour-shod feet, not once having to steady himself with a hand. He began to leave Hawser behind.
Hawser fixated on the black leather braids and runic totems tied to the Wolf's belt and carapace, imagined himself grabbing hold of them and clinging on, and tried to catch up.
They wound up the cliff slope, through groups of lounging Wolves, past the brooding Terminator monsters, their gross armour burnished and glinting in the sun, past teams of thralls making adjustments and spot repairs to seams and joints as their masters waited impatiently to go back and view the battle. The Terminators were as immobile and sinister as cast bronze sculptures, all arranged to face the nearby conflagration.
Away from the unmarked but defined perimeter of Tra's vantage point, the rear echelon and supply encampments of the Imperial Army group were spread out like a souk. There was a dead space, a fringe of about two kilometres, between Tra's position and the closest Army post, indicating the intense reluctance of any soldier, officer or even mediary of the Imperial Army to |
battle. The Terminators were as immobile and sinister as cast bronze sculptures, all arranged to face the nearby conflagration.
Away from the unmarked but defined perimeter of Tra's vantage point, the rear echelon and supply encampments of the Imperial Army group were spread out like a souk. There was a dead space, a fringe of about two kilometres, between Tra's position and the closest Army post, indicating the intense reluctance of any soldier, officer or even mediary of the Imperial Army to come within sight of a Fenrisian Wolf.
If only they knew, Hawser thought. There are no wolves on Fenris.
'Keep up!' Bear said, turning to glance back. Now at last there was an expression on his face. It was annoyance. His black hair made a ragged curtain that threw his eyes into shadow and made them shine with nocturnal malevolence.
Hawser was dripping with sweat under his body-suit and the pelt draped over his shoulders. He was out of breath, and the sun was burning his neck.
'I'm coming,' he said. He wiped perspiration off his face, and took a long suck from the water-straw that fed into his rebreather mask. He stopped deliberately to catch his breath. He was interested to see how far he could push Bear. He was interested to see what Bear would do.
He hoped it wouldn't be hit him.
Bear watched. He'd braided his jet-black hair around his brow and temples before the attack on the graving dock to afford and cushion the fit of his Mark-IV helm. One of the braids had worked loose, and was causing the curtain across his eyes. Bear began to plait it back into place, waiting for Hawser.
Hawser took another deep breath, flexed his neck in the prickling heat, and caught up.
They entered the Army encampment. It had only been there a few hours, but it was already the size of a large colony town. Arvus- and Aves-pattern transatmospheric lifters were still coming in and out to make drops in a haze of ice vapour on the far edge. The vapour was catching the sun and creating partial rainbows. The encampment, a patchwork of prefab tents and enviro-modules mixed with pods, containers, payload crates and vehicles: some beige, some gold, some khaki, some russet, some grey, looked to Hawser like a patch of mould or lichen, spreading out across the clean surface of the ice field. When he mentioned it later, this description also won him some approval from the Wolves.
No one challenged their entry into the encampment. Around the edges of the mobile base were pickets of Savarene Harriers with their shakos and gold-topped staves, and G9K Division Kill eliters wearing long dusters over semi-powered combat suits. Not a single gun twitched in their direction. As the Wolf approached with the human bumbling along behind him, the soldiers found other, far more important things to look at. In the 'streets' of the tent town, the bustling military personnel gave them a wide berth.
It was like a souk, a busy market, except all the traders were provisioners of military service and all the produce was munitions and materiel.
'Where are we going?' Hawser asked.
Bear didn't reply. He just kept striding on through the camp.
'Hey!' Hawser shouted, and ran to catch up. He reached out, and pulled at the thick, blunt edge of Bear's left armour cuff. The ceramite was numbingly cold.
Bear stopped, and very slowly turned. He looked at Hawser. Then he looked down at the vulnerable human hand touching his arm.
'That was a bad idea, wasn't it?' said Hawser, removing his hand warily.
'Why don't you like me?' he asked.
Bear turned away and started walking again.
'I have no opinion either way,' said Bear. 'But I do not think you should be here.'
'Here?'
'With the Rout.'
Bear stopped again and looked back at him.
'Why did you come to Fenris?' he asked.
'That's a good question,' said Hawser.
'What's the answer?'
Hawser shrugged.
Bear turned and started walking again.
'The jarl wants you to see something,' he said.
Close to the centre of the vast encampment, which was feeling more and more like a carnival ground to Hawser, a large command shelter had been erected. There were tented shades overhead to screen off the harshest of the ice desert's hard sunlight, and walls of reinforced shockboarding to baffle any stray or lucky munition strike. Nearby, a crew of polished silver servitors laboured to install and activate a portable void shield generator that would, by nightfall, be protecting the high-value section of the encampment under a fizzling blue parasol. The tent shades and shockboarding distorted the travelling roar of the conflict on the other side of the ridge, and somehow made it louder and more intrusive than it had been on the slope where the Wolves had gathered.
A crowd of perhaps two hundred had gathered under the central awning. They were surrounding a mobile strategium desk, the top of which was alight with active and moving hololithic displays.
The crowd, all Imperial Army officers, parted to let Hawser and his towering Astartes escort through. As he stepped up on to the self-levelling interlock staging, Hawser felt a pop in his ears and a chill on his face that announced he had just entered an artificial environment bubble. He unclasped his rebreather, and let the mask dangle around his neck. He smelled clean air, and the body sweat of hot, agitated, tired men.
Ogvai was at the centre of the crowd beside the strategium desk. He was not escorted by any of Tra, and he had removed his helm and some of the significant parts of his arm, shoulder and torso plating. Hugely armoured from the gut down, he stood with his long, white arms emerging from the rubberised black of his sleeveless underlayer with its feeder pipes and heat soaks like necrotised capillaries, and his long, black centre-parted hair, resembling a wager-bout pit fighter ringed by an audience at a country fair.
As a child at the commune, Hawser had seen men of that kind many times. Rector Uwe had sometimes taken the children to the festivals at the work camps of Ur where, in sight of the slowly forming, monolithic plan of the city-dream, the labour force would halt to celebrate the periodic feasts of Cathermas, Radmastide and the Divine Architect, as well as the observances of the builder-lodges. These holidays were basically excuses for spirited fairs and jubilees. Some of the larger labourers would strip to the waist and invite all-comers to bouts of sparring for beer, coins and the crowd's entertainment. They would tower head and shoulders above the onlookers too.
Except here, the onlookers were Army service personnel, many of them large and imposing men. Ogvai was a raw-boned monster in their midst. With his skin so white, he looked like he was carved out of ice and immune to the merciless heat, where they were all ruddy and sweating. The fat silver piercing in his lower lip made him look like he was taunting them all.
Why has he stripped back his armour, Hawser wondered? He looks... informal. Why does he want me here?
Bear stopped at the edge of the ring of onlookers with Hawser beside him. Ogvai saw them. He was in discussion with three senior Army officers around the desk. He leaned forwards, resting his palms on the edge of the desk and his weight straight-armed on his hands. It was casual and rather scornful. The officers looked uncomfortable. One was a field marshal of the Outremars, obediently holding up the holographic visage of his telepresent khedive master like a waiter holding a grox's head on a platter. Beside him was a thick-set, choleric G9K Division Kill combat master in a flak coat and a quilted tank driver's cap. The third was a freckled, pale-blond man in the austere uniform of the Jaggedpanzor Regiments. It was curious to hear Ogvai speaking in Low Gothic: curious to know that he could, curious to hear his jaw and dentition manage the brittle human noises.
'We are wasting time,' he was saying. 'This assault is not punching hard enough.'
The hololithic image of the Outremar khedive squealed in outrage, a sound distorted by the digital relay.
'That is a frank and open insult to the architects of this planetary attack,' the image declared. 'You exceed yourself, jarl.'
'I do not,' Ogvai corrected pleasantly.
'Your comment was certainly critical of the competency of this assault,' said the Jaggedpanzor officer, in a tone rather more conciliatory than the one the khedive had adopted, probably because he was actually standing in Ogvai's presence.
'It was,' Ogvai agreed.
'This is not "punching hard" enough for you?' asked the G9K commander, making a general gesture at the display in front of them.
'No,' said Ogvai. 'It's all very well as mass surface drops go. I guess one of you planned it?'
'I had the honour of rationalising the invasion scheme on behalf of the Expedition Commander,' said the khedive.
Ogvai nodded. He looked at the Jaggedpanzor officer.
'Can you kill a man with a rifle?' he asked.
'Of course,' said the man.
'Can you kill a man with a spade?' Ogvai asked.
The man frowned.
'Yes,' he replied.
Ogvai looked at the G9K man.
'You. Can you dig a hole with a spade?'
'Of course!' the man answered.
'Can you dig a hole with a rifle?'
The man didn't reply.
'You've got to use the right tool for the right job,' said Ogvai. 'You've got a big, well-supported army, and a world to take. It doesn't automatically follow that throwing the former at the latter will get you what you want.'
Ogvai looked over at Bear.
'Like you wouldn't try to hunt an urdarkottur with an axe, eh, Bear?'
Bear laughed a wet leopard-growl.
'Hjolda, no! You'd need a long-tooth spear to get through the fur.'
Ogvai looked at the Army commanders.
'The right tool for the job, see?'
'And are you the right tool?' the khedive asked.
Hawser heard the Jaggedpanzor officer gasp and recoil slightly.
'Don't push it,' Ogvai said to the hologram. 'I'm trying to help you save a little face here. It's you the fleet commander is going to drag over the coals if th |
o hunt an urdarkottur with an axe, eh, Bear?'
Bear laughed a wet leopard-growl.
'Hjolda, no! You'd need a long-tooth spear to get through the fur.'
Ogvai looked at the Army commanders.
'The right tool for the job, see?'
'And are you the right tool?' the khedive asked.
Hawser heard the Jaggedpanzor officer gasp and recoil slightly.
'Don't push it,' Ogvai said to the hologram. 'I'm trying to help you save a little face here. It's you the fleet commander is going to drag over the coals if this situation doesn't start to improve.'
'We are very grateful for any advice the Astartes can offer,' the field marshal carrying the hololithic plate suddenly said, holding the platter to one side in case his distant, holoform-represented master said anything else provocative.
'That's why we sent the request to you,' said the G9K man.
Ogvai nodded.
'Well, we all serve the great Emperor of Terra, don't we?' he said, flashing a smile that showed teeth. 'We all fight on the same side for the same goals. He made the Wolves of Fenris to break the foes that couldn't otherwise be broken, so you don't have to ask twice, or even that politely.'
Ogvai looked at the projected, slightly shimmering face of the khedive.
'Though a little basic respect is always good,' he said. 'I want to be clear, mind. If you want us to do this, don't get in the way. Go back to your superiors and make sure they send official communiques to the Commander of the Expedition Fleet that my Astartes have been given theatre control to end this war. I'm not moving until I get that confirmed.'
Why did he want me to see that, Hawser wondered? Does he want me to be impressed? Is that it? He wants me to see him intimidate and bully senior and serious Crusade commanders. And he wants them to see he can do it stripped to the waist like he's relaxing.
The meeting began to disperse. Ogvai wandered towards Bear and Hawser.
'You see?' he asked, in Juvjk.
'See what?' Hawser replied.
'What I brought you here to see,' snapped Bear.
'That everyone fears you?' asked Hawser.
Ogvai grinned.
'That, yes. But also that I abide by the codes of war. We abide by the codes of war. The Vlka Fenryka abide by the codes of rule.'
'Why is it important to you that I understand that?'
'The Sixth Legion Astartes has a reputation,' said Bear.
'All the Legions Astartes have reputations,' replied Hawser.
'Not like ours,' said Ogvai. 'We are known for our ferocity. We are thought to be feral and undisciplined. Even brother Legions consider us to be wild and bestial.'
'And you're not?' asked Hawser.
'If we need to be,' said Ogvai. 'But if that was our natural state, we'd all be dead by now.'
He leaned down towards Hawser like a parent addressing a child.
'It takes a vast amount of self control to be this dangerous,' he said.
HAWSER REQUESTED PERMISSION to stay in the Army encampment for an hour or two more, until it was time to depart. Ogvai had already wandered off. Bear gave Hawser a small homer wand and told him to return to the dropsite the moment it chimed.
It had been a long time since Hawser had been around regular humans, a lifetime in which he had been reborn as something that was not entirely human any more. After waking, he'd lived in the fastness of the Fang with the Rout for the best part of a great year, acclimatising, learning their customs, learning their stories, learning his way around the gloomy vaults of the Aett.
In all that time, three things had been kept from him. The first was the person of the Wolf King. Hawser didn't even know if the Sixth Primarch was actually on Fenris during that period. He doubted it. The Wolf King was more likely upp, leading companies in the service of the Emperor. Hawser reconciled himself to the fact that Skarssen and Ogvai would be the most senior Wolves he would have access to.
The second thing was a secret, something about Hawser himself. It was hard to say how Hawser knew this, but he did. It was a gut response, an instinct. Wolves often described to him particular moments in combat in such terms: visceral stimuli felt in their living bowels that made the split-second difference between living and dying. They always sounded proud of being sensitive to them. Hawser flattered himself that his immersion in their society was teaching him to recognise the same trick.
If it was, then it was telling him something. The Astartes and their thralls were withholding some details from him, one thing in particular. It was an intensely subtle thing. There were no crass signs like conversations abruptly halting when he entered rooms, or sentences suddenly trailing off when the speaker thought better of them.
The third thing was Imperial human company.
Towards the end of his first great year, Dekk Company returned to the Aett from a long tour of service in the Second Kobolt War, and Tra found itself rotated into the line, with instructions to shadow and support the 40th Expedition Fleet in the Gogmagog Cluster.
There never seemed any question that Hawser, as skjald, would go with them. He was part of their portage, part of company support, along with the thralls, the armourers, the pilots, the servitors, the musicians, the victuallers and the butchers.
They embarked onto Nidhoggur, one of the grim, comfortless warships that served the Sixth Legion, and made the translation to the immaterium with a flotilla of service tenders in support. Nine weeks later, at a mandeville point shy of Gogmagog Beta, they retranslated and made contact with the 40th Expedition Fleet, which was, by then, pressing fruitlessly into Olamic Quietude territory.
'What sort of thing are you?'
Hawser looked up from the strategium desk and found he was being addressed by the G9K Division Kill combat master who had been in conference with Ogvai.
'Do you have clearance to be here?' the man asked, clearly emboldened now that the brute Astartes had gone.
'You know I do,' Hawser replied with a confidence that surprised even him. The man was prepared to argue the toss, so Hawser brushed back his hair, which had grown long during the great year spent at the Aett, and properly revealed his gold and black-pinned eye.
'I am a watcher, chosen by the favour of the Sixth Legion Astartes,' said Hawser.
The combat master's expression registered distaste.
'But you're human?'
'Generally speaking.'
'How can you live with those beasts?'
'Well, I watch my tongue, for a start. What's your name?'
'Pawel Korine, combat master first class.'
'I get the distinct impression that no one here is comfortable having the Wolves as allies.'
Korine studied Hawser uncertainly.
'I'll watch my tongue, I think,' he said. 'I don't want them looking at me through your eyes and deciding I need to be taught a lesson in obedience.'
'It doesn't work like that,' Hawser smiled. 'I can be discreet and selective. I'd like to know what you think.'
'So you're some kind of... what? Chronicler? Remembrancer?'
'Something like that,' said Hawser. 'I make accounts.'
Korine sighed. He was a heavy-set man with Prussian ethnic traits, and he carried himself with the manner of a career soldier. G9K had a considerable reputation as a front-line force. It famously maintained an archaic performance-based pay and advancement model that was said to have its origins in the prediluvian traditions of mercantile-sponsored mercenaries. For Korine to have achieved the post of combat master first class, he had certainly seen some considerable active service.
'Tell me what you meant,' said Hawser.
Korine shrugged.
'I've witnessed plenty,' he said. 'I know, I know, that old soldier routine. But trust me. Thirty-seven years non-adjusted, that's what I've spent in this Crusade. Thirty-seven years, eight campaigns. I know what ugly looks like. I've seen Astartes fight four times. Every time, it's scared me.'
'They're designed to be scary. They wouldn't be effective if they weren't.'
Korine didn't look especially convinced.
'Well, that's a whole different issue,' he replied. 'I say if man's going to take back this great Imperium, he ought to do it by the sweat of his brow and the strength of his arm, and not build damned supermen to do the work for him.'
'I've heard that line of argument before. It has some merit. But we couldn't even unify Terra without the Astartes to-'
'Yes, yes. And what will we do when the work is done?' Korine asked. 'When the Crusade is over, what will we do with the almighty Space Marines? What do you do with something that can only ever be a weapon when the war is over?'
'Maybe there will always be war,' said Hawser.
Korine crinkled his thin lips distastefully.
'Then we really are all wasting our lives,' he replied.
His wrist-mounted communicator, thickly cushioned in black rubber, beeped, and he checked the display.
'Six hour evacuation has just been posted,' said Korine. 'I have to see what's going on. You can walk with me if you wish.'
They went out, back into the open and the roasting sunlight. Hawser felt the artificial atmosphere sleeve pop around him and replaced his rebreather. Activity levels in the camp had risen. Out in the rainbowed band of vapour beyond the camp edge, lifter craft were queuing out across the ice desert in a wavering, hovering line as they waited their turn to swing in and load up. The distant ones crinkled in an eerie heat-haze.
'You don't approve of Astartes then, combat master?' Hawser asked as they strode through the camp.
'Not at all. Extraordinary things. Like I said, I've seen them fight four times.'
They entered the combat master's command post, a large enviro-tent where dozens of G9K officers and technicians were already dismantling the site for withdrawal. Korine went to a small desk and began to sort through his personal equipment.
'The Death Guard, once,' he said, holding up a finger to begin a tally. 'Murderous efficiency with such small numbers. Blood Angels.' Another raised finger. 'A firefight gone bad in a casein works on on |
things. Like I said, I've seen them fight four times.'
They entered the combat master's command post, a large enviro-tent where dozens of G9K officers and technicians were already dismantling the site for withdrawal. Korine went to a small desk and began to sort through his personal equipment.
'The Death Guard, once,' he said, holding up a finger to begin a tally. 'Murderous efficiency with such small numbers. Blood Angels.' Another raised finger. 'A firefight gone bad in a casein works on one of the Fraemium moons. They arrived like... like angels. I don't mean to be glib. They saved us. It was like they were coming to save our souls.'
Korine looked at Hawser. He raised a third finger.
'White Scars, side by side, for six months on the plains of X173 Plural, hosing xeno-forms. Total focus and dedication, merciless. I cannot, hand on my heart, fault their duty, devotion to the Crusade cause, or their supreme effort as warriors.'
'You said four times,' Hawser pressed.
'I did,' said Korine. He raised a fourth finger in a gesture that reminded Hawser of surrender.
'The Space Wolves, two years ago non-adjusted. Dekk Company, they called themselves. They came in to support our actions during the Kobolt scrap. I'd heard stories. We'd all heard stories.'
'What kind of stories?'
'That there are Space Marines and there are Space Marines. That there are supermen and there are monsters. That in order to breed the Astartes perfection, the Emperor Who Guides Us All has gone too far once or twice, and made things he should not have made. Things that should have been stillborn or drowned in a sack.'
'Feral things?' asked Hawser.
'The worst of them all are the Space Wolves,' replied Korine. 'They were animals, Great Terra, they were animals those things that fought with us. When you have sympathy with the enemy, you know you have the wrong kind of allies. They killed everything, and destroyed everything and, worst of all, they took great relish in the apocalypse they had brought down upon their foe. There was nothing admirable about them, nothing rousing. They just left a sick taste in the mouth as if, by calling on their help, we had somehow demeaned ourselves in an effort to win.'
Korine paused and turned to hand out instructions to some of his men. They were obedient, well-drilled, attentive. Hawser could see that Korine was a soldier who expected an army to be supremely disciplined in order to function. One of his men, a burly second-classer with a chinstrap beard, brought a data-slate over for Korine's review. He glared belligerently at Hawser.
Korine handed the data-slate back to his officer.
'Full withdrawal from the surface,' he said. He sounded broken. 'All forces. We're to stand down and get clear so the Wolves can take it on alone. Shit. This assault has cost us thousands of men, and we're just scrapping it.'
'Better that than thousands more.'
Korine sat down, opened a haversack, and pulled out a slightly battered metal flask. He poured a generous measure into the cap and passed it to Hawser, and then took a swig from the flask.
'When the 40th discovered that the Wolves were the only Astartes in range who could help us tackle the Quietude, we almost cancelled the request. I heard that as a fact from one of the senior men close to the fleet commander. It was a genuine consideration that we didn't want to involve ourselves with the Wolves again.'
'You'd rather face defeat?'
'It's about ends, and the means that get you there,' Korine replied. 'It's about contemplating the question, what are the Wolves for? Why did the Emperor make them like that? What purpose could he possibly have for something so inhuman?'
'Do you have answers to any of those questions, Combat Master Korine?' asked Hawser.
'Either the Emperor is not as perfect an architect of this new age as we like to suppose, and he is capable of manufacturing nightmares, or he has anticipated threats we can't possibly imagine.'
'Which would you prefer?'
'Neither notion fills me with great confidence about the future,' replied Korine. 'Do you have an answer, as you keep their company?'
'I don't,' said Hawser. He'd finished his drink, and Korine refilled the cap. It was a strong spirit, an amasec or a schnapps, and there was a flush on Korine's cheeks, but Hawser felt nothing except the slightest burn in his throat. Life on Fenris had evidently bred a stronger constitution into him.
'The things we fought in Kobolt space,' said Korine quietly, 'they were lethal and proud. They had no interest in human ways or human business, and they were quite capable of fighting us to a standstill. They had mighty vessels, like cities. I saw one of them. I was part of an assault against it. Someone called it Scintilla City because it sparkled like it was all made of glass. We later found out it was called Thuyelsa in their language, and it was a structure they called a craftworld. Anyway, we never worked out why they were fighting us or what they were trying to defend, except perhaps that they were trying to keep us at bay, or keep for themselves whatever it was they had, but you knew, you just knew inside yourself they had something worth defending. A legacy, a history, a culture. And it was all lost.'
Korine looked down into his flask, as if some truth might lurk inside in the dark. Hawser suspected he might have been looking in that very same place for an answer for quite some time.
'At the end,' Korine said, 'they began to plead. The Wolves were upon them, and the city-vessel was shattering around them, and they realised that they were going to lose everything. They began to plead for terms, as if anything was better than losing everything. We never really understood what they were trying to tell us, or what kind of surrender they were trying to make. I personally believe that they would have given all of their lives if Scintilla City had been allowed to survive. But it was too late. The Wolves couldn't be called off. They sacked it. The Wolves destroyed it all. There wasn't even anything left for us to salvage, no treasure for us to plunder, nothing of value to claim as a prize. The Wolves destroyed it all.'
Korine fell silent.
The homer wand Bear had given to Hawser gave out a little beep.
Hawser set the cap down and nodded to the combat master.
'Thank you for the drink and the conversation.'
Korine shrugged.
'I think perhaps you malign the Wolves a little,' Hawser added. 'It may be that they are misunderstood.'
Korine made a sound, possibly a laugh.
'Isn't that what all monsters say?' he asked.
HAWSER LEFT THE G9K enviro-tent. All around him, personnel were busy dismantling the encampment for surface departure.
He stood for a moment, consulting the homer's direction indicator. Behind his back, someone cursed him.
He swung around.
Korine's second-classer, the man with the chinstrap, and several other G9Kers were loading impact-resistant crates onto a flatbed truck.
'Did you speak to me?' Hawser asked.
Chinstrap's glare was toxic. He set down the crate-end he had been lifting, and walked towards Hawser. His men looked on.
'Sack of shit animal,' Chinstrap hissed.
'What?'
'Go back to the filth you run with. You should be ashamed. They're not human. They're animals!'
Hawser turned aside. The man was big and aggressive, and he was evidently upset. It was the sort of confrontation Hawser had sought to avoid for most of his life.
Chinstrap grabbed Hawser's right arm. The grip was painful.
'You tell them that,' he said. 'Seventeen hundred men Division Kill's lost in one day of surface assault, and now those stupid animals tell us to piss off? Seventeen hundred lives wasted?'
'You're clearly upset,' said Hawser. 'This has been a costly engagement, and I am sympathetic to-'
'Screw you.'
The other men, the members of Chinstrap's loading team, had closed in.
'Let go of my arm,' said Hawser.
'Or what?' Chinstrap asked.
'RUN!' MURZA TOLD him.
Murza was usually right about these things. It wasn't that Murza was a coward, Hawser supposed, it was simply because he was far more the rationalist. After all, neither of them were fighters. They were academics, field archaeologists, average men with above average minds. Neither of them had any military schooling and neither had been on any kind of self-defence training programme. They were armed only with their wits and their accreditation papers, which stated their names, the fact that they had both recently celebrated their thirtieth birthdays, and their status as conservators working in Lutetia for the Unification Council.
None of which was going to do them very much good.
'They can't be allowed to get away with this-' Hawser began.
'Oh, just run you idiot!' Murza shouted back.
The other members of the placement team were already running, no further encouragement needed. Their boots were clattering down the cobbled back alley as they scattered into the warren of unmapped streets criss-crossing the slum quarters of Lutetia around the dead cathedral.
The cathedral was just a giant corpse-building. It had died as a place of worship during the Nineteenth War of Uropan Succession three thousand years earlier, and since then its structure had been put to other uses: a parliament hall for three centuries, a mausoleum, an iceworks, an almshouse, and, latterly, a market when the last of the roof fell in. For the last eight hundred or so years, it had been an empty husk, a physicalised memory, lifting its rusting iron ribs at the overcast sky.
The rumours of its past had persisted as long as those ribs, if not longer. Murza had not been able to keep the excitement out of his voice when he'd briefed the team two days before. The site had been a place of worship for as long as records existed, and the cathedral stood upon the plot of previous structures called cathedrals, and was indeed only called a cathedral because of that masonic legacy.
There were cellars down there, deep under the foundati |
rusting iron ribs at the overcast sky.
The rumours of its past had persisted as long as those ribs, if not longer. Murza had not been able to keep the excitement out of his voice when he'd briefed the team two days before. The site had been a place of worship for as long as records existed, and the cathedral stood upon the plot of previous structures called cathedrals, and was indeed only called a cathedral because of that masonic legacy.
There were cellars down there, deep under the foundations, the basements of previous incarnations, cisterns buried under the sub-fabric of later builds. Some said if you could trace your way down through the dark, you'd reach the centre of the Earth, and the catacombs of old Franc.
One of Murza's contacts (and he, as usual, had a network of well paid informers watching the traffic of artefacts and relics throughout the entire Lutetian city-node area) had reported that a gang of labourers had excavated the entrance to a drainage sump while reclaiming old stone. Some silver amulets and a ring scooped from the sump had been enough to convince the contact that the area was worth a look, and worth the fee that the conservators would have to pay the gang to reveal the precise location.
Hawser had been mistrustful from the start. The labourers, all local, were big men caked in black mud from street work. All of them showed signs of atomic mutation, a trait common in the slum. Hawser immediately felt threatened by them, physically intimidated, the way he had been by the bigger, older boys back at Rector Uwe's commune. He was no fighter. Confrontation, especially physical confrontation, made him lock up and freeze.
The slum district was a maze. Nothing identifiable remained of the planned city that had once occupied the area. The streets had corroded into sub-streets and under-runs, alleys and cul-de-sacs, all of them dark and thick with filth, none of them charted or named. Children played in the piles of trash, and the sounds of wailing babies and arguing adults echoed down from the tenement levels rising above them. Washing lines were strung from building to building, like the canopy of a dingy, man-made jungle. It was shadowy and airless.
The labourers led them into the alley maze. It seemed an unnecessarily circuitous route to Hawser, and he said so to Murza, who told him to hush. After walking for about twenty minutes, the labourers turned and told Murza it was time to pay them the agreed fee.
The leader of the gang happened to add that what he meant by the agreed fee was significantly higher than anything Murza had discussed with the team.
Hawser realised they were in trouble. He realised it was all simply a trap designed to extort, and that its most likely consequences would be a beating or a kidnapping. It was going to cost the Conservatory programme: it was going to cost them in medical fees, or ransom or simply excess pay-offs. It might even cost them lives. He felt outrage. He felt stupid that he'd allowed Murza to walk them into another less than brilliant situation.
'This is no time to feel choleric!' Murza shouted. The gang was closing in on them, surly, barking threats. Some had shovels or picks.
'Run!' Murza yelled.
Hawser recognised that running was the only sensible course of action, but the physical threat had finally eclipsed his outrage, and intimidation had glued him to the spot. One of the labourers stepped towards him, spitting curses through buckled brown teeth, shaking a fist with kielbasa knuckles. Hawser tried to force his feet to work.
Murza grabbed his arm so hard it hurt and yanked him backwards.
'Come on! Come on, Kas!'
Hawser started to stumble, his legs beginning to move. The labourer was reaching for them. Hawser realised the labourer had drawn a gun, some kind of pistol.
Dragging Hawser after him, Murza looked over his shoulder and yelled something at the labourer, a single word or sound. There was an odd pulse, a pop like the equalisation of air at the skin of an environment bubble. The labourer yelled and fell backwards, writhing.
They ran, side by side, Murza still gripping his arm.
'What did you do?' Hawser yelled. 'What did you do? What did you say to him?'
Murza couldn't answer. There was blood drooling from his mouth.
CHINSTRAP'S FINGERS DUG into his arm like hooks. Scared, Hawser shoved. He just shoved to lurch the man away, so he could walk on, get past them, leave them behind.
Chinstrap hit the side of the pile of rubber-sleeved crates on the back of the track. He was airborne and travelling backwards. His spine and shoulders took the first impact, and his skull cracked back across the top of the uppermost crate. Then he plunged forwards and hit the ground flat on his face, loose as a sack of stones. His face just slapped into the gritty ice, shattering his plastek rebreather.
While Chinstrap was still in the air, one of his men swung a punch at the back of Hawser's head. The punch seemed to Hawser to be ridiculously telegraphed, as if the man was trying to be sporting and give him a chance. He put his hand up to stop the fist from hitting his face and caught it in his palm. There was a little shock. He felt finger bones break and knuckles detonate, and none of them were his.
The third man decided to kill Hawser, and made an effort to insert a heavy, cast iron crate spanner into Hawser's skull. Once again, however, he appeared to be doing this in a delicate fashion, like an over-emphatic stage punch that goes wide of the mark but looks good from the audience. Hawser didn't want the spanner to come anywhere near him. He swung out his left hand in an impulsive, flinching gesture to brush the man's arm away.
The man screamed. He appeared to have developed a second elbow halfway down his forearm. The skin of his arm folded there like an empty sock. He fell over, the spanner bouncing solidly off the ice.
The other men fled.
BEAR WAS WAITING for him at the foot of a Stormbird ramp.
'You're late,' he said.
Hawser handed the homer back to him.
'I'm here now.'
'We would have left without you if you'd been much longer.'
'I'm sure you would.'
'You smell of blood,' said Bear.
'Yes, I do,' said Hawser. He looked at Bear.
'Why didn't you tell me how thoroughly you'd rebuilt me?' he asked.
SEVEN
Longfang
JARL OGVAI'S SOLUTION to the Quietude's resistance was as direct as it was effective. Having been granted an unequivocal mandate for theatre control by the commander of the Expedition Fleet, he gathered his iron priests, gave them instruction, and set them to work.
It took them about two days to complete the calculations and the preparation work. By then, the fleet's massive drop forces had been extracted from the planet's surface.
At a moment on the third day considered propitious by the jarl's closest advisors, the iron priests unleashed their handiwork.
A series of colossal controlled explosions tore the graving dock out of its stable orbit. Plumes of shredded, metallic debris streamed out behind it, glittering in the hard sunlight. The dock arced across the vast orange surface of the world, a tiny twin conjoined to it by the ligaments of gravity. They danced together, two encircling objects, like a child's brightly coloured spinning toy.
It took eighteen full rotations for the murdered orbit to decay to the inevitable, the terminal. The debris plumes had formed fine brown threads around the world by then, like the most delicate of rings around a gas giant. Friction and atmospheric retardation were beginning to burn the graving dock, to ablate its superstructure. It began to glow as it fell, like a metal ingot in a smithy, first dull red, then pink, then white with heat. Its curving descent, the steady unwinding of orbital passage, was tantalisingly slow.
It fell as all bad stars fall. Hawser knew about that. As bad stars went, it was the worst.
It struck the ice field between two of the stupendous towers, the towers that rose at intervals of approximately six hundred and seventy kilometres, and probably had been there for thousands of years. There was, at first, a wink of light, then a rapidly expanding brilliance like a sunburst squirting up through the ice. The brilliance became a dome of blinding radiance that travelled outwards in all directions, vaporising the ice crust and annihilating the towers like trees in a hurricane.
The impact event created a lethal pulse of infrared radiation. Ejecta clogged the air and scarred the atmosphere with a vast darkness of dust and aerosolised sulphuric acid. Incendiary fragments vomited up by the bolide-type impact pelted back down, adding to the firestorm outwash.
Tra had gathered on the embarkation deck of the ship to watch the mortal blow being delivered via pict-feed to several huge repeater screens designed for assault briefings. Thralls and deck crew gathered too. Some still had tools or polishing rags in their hands, or even weapons that they were in the process of repairing or cleaning.
There was general silence as they watched the languid descent, a little muttering, a few murmurs of impatience. When the impact came at last, the Wolves exploded into life. They stamped their armour-shod feet and smashed the hafts of their axes and hammers on the deck; they beat their storm shields with their swords; they threw their heads back and howled.
The noise was numbing. It sent a shockwave through Hawser. All around him, the armoured giants bayed. Exposed throats swelled, mouths opened to what seemed like impossible widths, and spittle flew out between exposed canines and carnassials. The pronounced, 'snouted' shape of the Fenrisian physiognomy had never been more obvious to Hawser.
He only truly recognised that later. In the heat of the moment, there on the embarkation deck, all that he was able to register was the shock of the bestial noise. The savagery of the Wolves' delight assaulted him like a physical trauma. It reached into his chest and squeezed with f |
mouths opened to what seemed like impossible widths, and spittle flew out between exposed canines and carnassials. The pronounced, 'snouted' shape of the Fenrisian physiognomy had never been more obvious to Hawser.
He only truly recognised that later. In the heat of the moment, there on the embarkation deck, all that he was able to register was the shock of the bestial noise. The savagery of the Wolves' delight assaulted him like a physical trauma. It reached into his chest and squeezed with fingers that were prodigiously clawed. The hooded Fenrisian thralls, and even some of the deck crew, had begun to howl and shout too, shaking their fists. The roaring was tribal and primal.
Just as he began to believe he couldn't tolerate it for a second more, Hawser tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and began to howl with them.
In the aftermath, a deluge of acid rain began to fall, and the stratosphere began to collapse. Tra's Stormbirds led the way down into the toxin dust, into the discoloured smoke banks seething with crown-of-thorns lightning.
The dark ships, wings broad, looked to Hawser like their namesakes, circling ravens as black as thunderstorm clouds, as they descended into the broken and exposed heart of the ancient Quietude cities.
He said this to the Wolves, and they asked him what 'ravens' were.
THE PACIFICATION TOOK three weeks, ship time. Time to learn things, Hawser decided. Some of the things would be about himself.
Accounts were already accumulating. Some were brought back from the sub-surface fighting by packs returning for replevin, others relayed by the members of packs waiting in reserve, stories that had filtered up from the planet through the links.
Some were worthy accounts of actions. Others seemed to Hawser to display, already, the hallmarks of the embroidered, the enhanced. Mjod stories, Aeska Brokenlip had called these, accounts exaggerated by the strength of the Fenrisians' lethal fuel.
Yet it didn't seem likely they were mjod stories, because Aeska had also made it clear that no self-respecting member of the Rout, and certainly no man of Tra, would ever be boastful. The braggart was one of the lowest forms of life, according to the traditions of the Vlka Fenryka. A warrior's stories were the measure of him, and the truth of them was the measure of his standing. A battlefield quickly exposed the braggart's lies: it tested his strength, his courage, his technical prowess.
And, Aeska had added, that was another reason why skjalds existed. They were brokers of truth, neutral mediators who would not let any fluctuations like pride or bias or mjod affect the agreed value of truth.
'So skjalds tell accounts to keep you entertained, to keep you honest, and to keep the history?' Hawser asked.
Aeska grinned.
'Yes, but mostly to keep us entertained.'
'What entertains the Wolves of Fenris?' Hawser pressed. 'What entertains them most?'
Aeska thought about it.
'We like stories about things that scare us,' he replied.
APART FROM THE stories that appeared to be exaggerations, there were others that puzzled Hawser.
According to the general picture, the battle far below was apocalyptic. With the ice-shield gone, the core cities of the Quietude were exposed, like the setts of some animal dug up by trappers. Conditions were hellish. There was acid rain and a pestilential sub-climate that included noxious gas clouds and hail. The irradiated cliffs of the impact crater were continuing to collapse into the continent-sized hole. The cities were mangled, pinned and crushed like passengers in a wrecked vehicle, leaking life and heat, bleeding power.
The forces of the Quietude had nowhere left to run, so they were fighting to the last.
Tra formed the strategic spearhead of the Imperial assault. Imperial Army hosts, now equipped for chemical war and hazard environs, followed their lead.
The accounts that puzzled Hawser were strange fragments reporting almost pernicious brutality. The Wolves seemed eager to record moments that did not portray them as heroic or daring or even lucky; they seemed almost gleeful about scraps that illuminated nothing but atrocity.
They were non-stories, with no point, no beginning, middle and end. They were not cause and effect. They were simply descriptions of murder and dismemberment committed on Quietude combatants.
Hawser wondered if he was supposed to weave some kind of narrative thread around these anecdotes, to sew them into a context that might make them more heroic and dramatic. He wondered if he had misunderstood something, something cultural that even the processes nanotically wired into his brain had not been able to translate.
Then he recalled the assault on the graving dock, and the episode when Bear and Orcir had finally dislodged the crew of robusts who had earlier vaporised Hjad on the underspace slope. He recalled the grisly ritual slaughter that had followed.
They are chasing out the maleficarum, Ogvai had said. They are casting it out. They are hurting it so badly it will know not to come back. They are punishing it, and explaining pain to it, so it will not be eager to return and bother us.
These accounts, Hawser decided, were the same thing, marks of aversion in word form. They were designed to scare the maleficarum.
So what scares the Wolves, he wondered?
'YOU LOOK DISCOMFORTED,' remarked Ulvurul Heoroth. Heoroth, called Longfang, was Tra's rune priest, a man far older than Ohthere Wyrdmake. Like Ogvai and many of Tra, he had a skin like ice, but it did not glow with inner light like a glacier, the way that Ogvai's flesh did. It was glassy and dark, like the half-translucent plate of ice on a midwinter lake.
His skin was not the only evidence that he was old. He was lean and bony, and his long hair was thin and white. He appeared hunched and sclerotic in his runic armour. Age had not afflicted him the way it had altered other senior Wolves. It had bleached him and wizened him, and grown out his canines into the teeth that had given him his war-name. Some said there would be other longfangs one day, if any of the Rout lived long enough. Wyrd alone had kept Heoroth Longfang's thread uncut. He was as old as it was possible for a Wolf to be, the oldest of the last few Sixth Legion Astartes who had been created on Terra and shipped to Fenris as the foundation of the Wolf King's retinue.
The warship's massive embarkation deck, a long gallery with Stormbirds racked laterally from overhead rails ready for launch, was quieter than it had been at the moment of impact. The priest was kneeling, like a crusader knight of Old Terra at a Cruxian shrine, looking up at the repeater screens. The two packs he was about to lead surfacewards in support of Ogvai were preparing nearby. Hawser could hear the shrill buzz of fitter drills screwing armour into place. He could hear the hiss of hydraulics and the whirr of lifter gear. Fifty metres away from him, along the main plain of the deck, a circle of Wolves gathered to kneel around their squad leader and take their pledge, the signifier known to other Legions Astartes as the oath of moment.
'What are you doing?' Hawser asked the rune priest. It was a blunt question, but he asked it anyway. Though he had spent more time with Tra than with any other portion of the Sixth Legion Astartes, he had exchanged almost nothing with the saturnine priest. Longfang had never given him a story to keep safe, nor offered comment on any account Hawser had delivered in his capacity as skjald. Longfang was also far less approachable than Wyrdmake, though even Wyrdmake was a chilling prospect.
Seeing Longfang alone for a moment, Hawser had taken his chance. Longfang had not needed to look around to know Hawser was behind him or, it seemed, what expression was on Hawser's face.
The repeater screen showed the Quietude home world from high above: the hard clarity of space, the brilliance of direct sunlight. The world looked like an orange that had had a red-hot poker rammed into its upper hemisphere.
No, it looked like a radapple, one of the late crop, fat and russet pink, but marred with a huge, rusty blemish of rot.
Longfang continued to stare at the screen.
'I'm listening,' he said.
'To?'
'The snapping of threads. The shaping of wyrd.'
'You're not watching, then?'
'Only the reflection of your face in the screen,' said Longfang.
Hawser snorted a small laugh at his own foolishness. The Wolves liked to wrap themselves in a cloak of mystery and solemn, supernatural power, but such nonsense was the superstitious talk of barbarians, inherited from the Fenrisians they drew their strength from. The truly abnormal thing about the Wolves was the sharpness of their perception. They had taught themselves to notice everything about their surroundings, and to use every scrap of information at their disposal. Their reputation helped. No one expected brutes who looked like ritual-obsessed, bestial clansmen to be underpinned by peerless combat intelligence.
It was what made them such efficient weapons.
'So why is there unhappiness in your visage?' Longfang asked.
'I am still uncertain of my place among you. Of my purpose.'
Longfang tutted.
'First, it is every man's lot to wonder at his own nature. That is life. To wonder at your own wyrd, that is the eternal state of contemplation for most men. You're not alone.'
'And second?' asked Hawser.
'It puzzles me, Kasper-Ansbach-Hawser-who-is-Ahmad-Ibn-Rustah-who-is-skjald-of-Tra, that you do not know yourself when, quite plainly, there are so many of you to know. It puzzles me that you chose to come to the Allwinter World, yet cannot account for that choice. Why did you come to Fenris?'
'I'd spent my whole life learning,' said Hawser. 'Gathering data, collecting it, preserving it. Always my motive had been the betterment of mankind. I reached a place where I felt that my life of effort was being... squandered. Passed over as insignificant.'
'Your pride was wounded?'
'No! No, |
do not know yourself when, quite plainly, there are so many of you to know. It puzzles me that you chose to come to the Allwinter World, yet cannot account for that choice. Why did you come to Fenris?'
'I'd spent my whole life learning,' said Hawser. 'Gathering data, collecting it, preserving it. Always my motive had been the betterment of mankind. I reached a place where I felt that my life of effort was being... squandered. Passed over as insignificant.'
'Your pride was wounded?'
'No! No, nothing like that. It wasn't personal. The things I had cared enough about to conserve were just being forgotten. They weren't being put to use.'
Heoroth Longfang made a small movement deep inside his etched, bead-draped carapace that may or may not have been a shrug.
'Whatever the truth of that, it still does not explain Fenris.'
'When my life's work seemed to be stagnated,' said Hawser, 'I felt I should make one last voyage, broader and bolder than any I had made before, and close with some truth, some reality, greater than any I experienced in my career. Instead of probing mysteries of the distant past, I fancied to investigate curiosities of a more modern vintage. The Legions Astartes. Each one bound up in its own coat of mysteries, each one wrapped in its own trappings of ritual and lore. Mankind trusts his future to the diligent service of the Legions, yet does not know them. I thought I would choose a Legion, and go to them, and learn of them.'
'An ambitious thought.'
'Perhaps,' Hawser admitted.
'A dangerous one. No Legion makes its stronghold a welcoming place.'
'True.'
'So there was an element of bravado? Of risk taking? You would end your career with one last, bold flourish that would seal your reputation as an academic and repair your damaged pride?'
'That's not what I meant,' said Hawser sourly.
'No?'
'No.'
Longfang fixed his eyes on Hawser. The vox-feed built into the helmet seal of his collar warbled and chittered. Longfang ignored it.
'I see anger in your face, though,' the priest said. 'I think I've come closer to the truth than you have so far. You still haven't really answered. Why Fenris? Why not another Legion-world? Why not a safer one?'
'I don't know.'
'Don't you?'
Hawser couldn't answer, but he had a nagging feeling he should have been able to.
He said, 'I was told it was good to face your fears. I have always been afraid of wolves. Always. Since childhood.'
'But there are no wolves on Fenris,' Longfang replied.
The priest moved to rise from his kneeling position. He seemed to struggle, like a weary, arthritic old man. Forgetting himself, Hawser stuck out his hand to offer support.
Longfang looked at the proffered hand as if it was a stick that had been used to scrape a midden hole. Hawser feared the priest might lunge forwards and snap it off with a single, furious bite, but he was too frozen to withdraw the offer.
Instead, grinning, Longfang closed his massive, plasteel gauntlet around Hawser's hand and accepted the support. He rose. Hawser meshed his teeth and let out a little squeak of effort as he fought not to collapse beneath the weight the huge rune priest leant on him.
Upright, Longfang towered over him. He let go of the skjald's hand and looked down at him.
'I'm grateful. My joints are old, and my bones are as cold as dead fish trapped in lake ice.'
He shuffled away towards the waiting packs, his wild, thin hair catching the light of the deck lamps like thistledown. Hawser rubbed his numb hand.
'You're leading a drop now?' Hawser called out after him. 'To the surface? A combat drop?'
'Yes. You should come.'
Hawser blinked.
'I'm allowed to come?'
'Go where you like,' said Longfang.
'Three weeks I've been on this ship, getting accounts of this war second-hand,' said Hawser, trying not to sound peevish. 'I thought I had to ask permission. I thought I had to wait until I was permitted or invited.'
'No, go where you like,' said Longfang. 'You're a skjald. That's the one great privilege and right of being what you are. No one in the Rout can bar you, or keep you at bay, or stop you from sticking your nose in.'
'I thought I had to be protected.'
'We'll protect you.'
'I thought I'd get in the way,' said Hawser.
'We'll worry about that.'
'So I can go anywhere? I can choose what I see?'
'Yes, yes.'
'Why did no one think to tell me that?' Hawser asked.
'Did you think to ask?' replied the priest.
'This is the logic of the Vlka Fenryka?' Hawser said.
'Yes. Catches in your flesh like a fish-hook, doesn't it?' replied the priest.
THE PACKS LONGFANG was leading down were not familiar to Hawser. He knew just a few of the warriors by name and reputation.
Their blood was up, but they seemed subdued. There had been a tone of this in the air for days. As the Stormbirds made their long, silent dive from the strike ship, Hawser strapped in beside Longfang.
'You said I looked discomforted, but there is a grim look in these eyes,' Hawser said.
'All of Tra wants to be away from here,' said Longfang. 'The glory's gone from this war.'
'Gone to Ullanor,' said a Wolf strapped into the row of arrestor cradles facing them. Svessl. Hawser attached a name.
'What's Ullanor?' Hawser asked.
'Where, you mean,' replied another Wolf, Emrah.
'Where is it?'
'A mighty victory,' said Svessl. 'Ten months ago, but word has just reached us. The Allfather made a mighty slaughter of the greenskins, laid them out on the red ground. Then he sank his sword tip into the soil and announced he was done.'
'Done?' asked Hawser. 'What do you mean? Are you talking about the Emperor?'
'He's done with the Crusade,' said Emrah. 'He's returning to Terra. He's left His anointed successor to continue the war in His absence.'
Longfang turned to look at Hawser. His eyes were hooded and dark, like lightless pools.
'Horus is chosen as Warmaster. We enter a new age. Perhaps the Crusade is nearing an end, and we will be put aside to let our teeth grow blunt.'
'I doubt that,' said Hawser.
'Ullanor was a great war,' said Longfang. 'The greatest of all, the culmination of decades of campaigning against the greenskins. The Rout had heard of it, and hoped that we would be able to stand with the Allfather when the culmination of the struggle came. But we were denied that honour. The Wolves of Fenris were too busy on other errands, fighting dirty fights no one else wanted to fight in other corners of the galaxy.'
'Fights like this one?' asked Hawser.
The Wolves nodded. There were several growls.
'No thanks we'll get for this,' said Longfang.
THE BITTER TRUTH had emerged later, after Ogvai had been granted theatre command, after the commander of the Expedition had agreed to let the iron priests blast the graving dock out of orbit, after it had impacted. The Instrument cradled within the graving dock's girderwork embrace was not the kill vehicle feared by the expedition's threat assessors.
After Tra had seized the facility, the Mechanicum had begun to examine it, especially the control centre area so scrupulously spared by Fultag's assault. The implications of that examination only became clear once the graving dock, at the Expedition commander's pleasure, had been used as a giant wrecking ball.
The Instrument was a data conveyor. The Olamic Quietude had been in the process of loading it with the sum total of its thinking, its artistry, its knowledge and its secrets. The intention was presumably to launch it, either as a bottle upon the ocean in the hope of some salvation, or towards some distant, unknown and unknowable outpost of the Quietude network.
Knowing what had been lost and, perhaps, understanding how that would reflect upon him in the eyes of men even more senior than himself, the commander of the Expedition Fleet flew into a recriminatory rage. He blamed poor intelligence. He blamed the slow function of the Mechanicum. He blamed factionalism in the Imperial Army. Most of all, he blamed the Astartes.
Ogvai was on the surface by that time, leading things, at the bloody end of the matter. When he heard of the commander's wrath, he transmitted a brief vox-statement, reminding the commander and the senior fleet officers that they had insisted he solve their problem and break the deadlock, and had approved his use of all resources. They had given him theatre command. As was ever the case, the Astartes had not made a mistake. They had simply done what was asked of them.
Once the message was transmitted, Ogvai vented the spirit of his real responses on the warriors of the Quietude.
THE STORMBIRD FELL as a bad star falls.
Hawser had dropped to the surface with Tra before, but this time it was the suicidal plunge of a combat run. Inertially locked straps and an arrestor cage kept him stuck to the seating rig. The graduated compression provided by the tight bodyglove he was wearing as a base for his lightweight environment armour kept the lymphatic and venous systems of his limbs functioning. His heart banged like an x-ray star. His teeth chattered.
'What story will you tell about this?' Svessl asked, seeing his fear and enjoying it.
'Not many hearth stories to tell about soiling yourself,' said Emrah. Wolves laughed.
'What angered you the most?' Hawser asked, as loudly as he could, to any who would listen.
'What?' asked Emrah. Others turned to look his way. Full helms and knotwork leather masks glared at him.
'I said what pissed you off the most, Wolves of Tra?' Hawser asked, raising his voice above the howl of the engines and the judder of the airframe. 'Was it that you missed the fight at Ullanor? The glory? Or was it that our Allfather chose Horus as Warmaster, not the Wolf King?'
They may kill me, thought Hawser, but at least the process will take my mind off this hellish descent. Besides, what better time to ask a pack of Wolves an awkward question than when they are all lashed into arrestor cages?
'Neither,' said Emrah.
'Neither,' agreed another Wolf, a red-haired monster called Horun |
howl of the engines and the judder of the airframe. 'Was it that you missed the fight at Ullanor? The glory? Or was it that our Allfather chose Horus as Warmaster, not the Wolf King?'
They may kill me, thought Hawser, but at least the process will take my mind off this hellish descent. Besides, what better time to ask a pack of Wolves an awkward question than when they are all lashed into arrestor cages?
'Neither,' said Emrah.
'Neither,' agreed another Wolf, a red-haired monster called Horune.
'We would have liked a taste of the glory,' said Svessl, 'to stand up in a great war and be counted.'
'Ullanor was no greater than a hundred campaigns of the last decade,' Longfang reminded the warrior.
'But it's the one where the Allfather laid down His sword and said His Crusade was done,' Svessl replied. 'It's the one that will be remembered.'
And that's what counts to you, thought Hawser.
'And the Wolf King would never have been named Warmaster,' said Emrah.
'Why?' asked Hawser.
'Because that was never his wyrd,' said Longfang. 'The Wolf King was not made to be Warmaster. It's not a slight. He hasn't been passed over. The Allfather has not played favourite with Horus Lupercal.'
'Explain,' said Hawser.
'When the Allfather sired His pups,' said the priest, 'He gave each one of them a different wyrd. Each one has a different life to make. One to be the heir to the Emperor's throne. One to fortify the defences of the Imperium. One to guard the hearth. One to watch the distant perimeter. One to command the armies. One to control intelligences. You see, skjald? You see how simple it is?'
Hawser tried to make his nodded reply obvious through the vibration shaking him.
'So what is the Wolf King's wyrd, Heoroth Longfang?' he asked. 'What life did the Allfather choose for him?'
'Executioner,' replied the old Wolf.
The Wolves were quiet for a moment. The Stormbird continued to shiver with intense violence. The engines had reached a strangled pitch that Hawser hadn't believed possible.
'What pisses us off,' said Emrah suddenly, 'is that we weren't present at the Great Triumph.'
'They say it was a fine sight,' said Horune, 'a whole world laid bare to salute Horus's ascendancy.'
'We would have liked to gather there,' said Longfang, 'shoulder to shoulder with brother Astartes, in numbers not seen since the start of the Crusade.'
'Shoulder to shoulder with Wolf companies we haven't seen for decades,' added Svessl.
'We would have liked to raise our voices and join the roar,' said Emrah. 'We would have liked to shake our fists at the sky, and show our proud allegiance to the new Warmaster.'
'That's what's pissing us off,' said Svessl.
'That, and you reminding us about it,' said Horune.
THE STORMBIRDS PUNCHED through the dense impact pall, poisonous vapour slipstreaming off their sleek wings and spiralling in the thunderclaps of their wakes like ink in fast water. Under the clouds, a nightmare rim of firestorms burned around the titanic entry wound. It was a kill-shot that had taken out a planet. The depth of the wound was astonishing. It did not look geological to Hawser. It looked as anatomical as the analogies filling his imagination. An exposed, surgical void of pulverised organs, muscles and bones, all tinted orange, all partially blackened as if blown out by a penetrating incendiary round.
Slower-moving Imperial Army dropships, vessels of much mightier draughts, were descending into the scalding pit. The Stormbirds streaked past them, and outpaced their Thunderhawk and gun-cutter escorts. The Astartes craft, in tight formation, passed below the level of the pit's burning lip and knifed into the sub-glacial void, down through smoke, through burning air, through the shattered ruins of the Quietude cities.
The cities ran deep. Hawser was astonished to glimpse the complex, interlocking layers of them, rising up like cyclopean towers from profound geological foundations. He was also stunned by the degree of destruction. Upper levels had all been vaporised, and below that, the municipal stages and sections had been crushed down into one another. Tower structures had collapsed and pancaked into themselves, held in place only by the remaining mantle of super-thick ice that acted like a setting resin around the delicate, shattered wreckage. Hawser was reminded of the way Rector Uwe had always folded almonds and pecan nuts in a white napkin after supper, before striking the parcel with the back of a spoon. The debris would have flown everywhere but for that enveloping medium.
The ship's thrusters were suddenly making an entirely different type of anguished scream.
'Ten more seconds!' Longfang yelled. The Wolves began to beat their swords and axes against their storm shields.
A savage change of momentum hammered Hawser's innards. The bird had just used the bottom of its powerdive and ferocious upturn to dump colossal amounts of speed. Before he could adjust, the most violent impact of all occurred. They just fell. They fell hard into something with a noise like the steel gates of the Imperial Palace falling off their hinges.
They'd landed. They had landed, hadn't they? Hawser couldn't be sure. They looked to be moving still, but that could simply have been his head and his bewildered senses. There was a shrieking noise from outside, metal-on-metal. The Wolves were slamming aside their arrestor cages and leaping up.
'On! On!' Longfang yelled. Hawser realised they'd all been speaking Wurgen for the last ten minutes.
The boarding ramp was opening. Light flooded into the green twilight gloom of the drop cabin. Heat came with it, roasting, fireball heat that Hawser could feel sucking into his lungs down the chimney of his throat like a backdraught, despite his armoured breather mask.
'Great Terra!' he coughed.
The metal-on-metal squealing from outside was getting louder. They were moving. They were juddering and moving backwards.
The whole Stormbird was sliding.
Fleeting, jerking silhouettes loomed across the fire-bright gap of the open ramp in front of him. The Wolves, deploying. He could hear them howling.
No, it wasn't howling. It was the wet leopard-growl, amplified: the resonating, deep-chest purr of a megafauna predator. It was a paralysing, infrasonic panther-snarl throbbing and then surging up from the specially adapted larynxes of apex carnivores.
He followed them out into the light and the searing heat. Some of them brushed against him as they charged out down the ramp, knocking him aside, spinning him. He had no idea what he should be doing. A giant plasteel hand grabbed him by the scruff of his suit and his feet dangled off the ramp for a second.
'Stay with me!' Longfang growled in Wurgen.
Hawser followed the old priest as he lumbered forwards. He focussed in on the details of Longfang's armour, as he had done when instructed to follow Bear. Bear's armour had been simple compared to Longfang's, but then Bear was an ill-tempered youngster beside the veteran priest. His grey armour had been more modestly adorned and decorated.
Longfang's case of armour was old, a work of art that owed its richness to both the armourer and the etcher. It was covered in runic symbols, some of which had been picked out in brass, or gold leaf, or glossy red enamel. Apotropaic eyes had been scratched, emphatically, into the shoulder guards. Besides the huge, gossamer-white pelt, Longfang was draped with skeins of beads, strings of charms, small trophies, and clattering amulets.
They came out from under the Stormbird's shadow into the glare of a chemical firestorm. The Stormbirds had set down on a series of ornate platforms extending from monumental, fluted towers half encased in the surrounding ice-mantle. Great portions of the towers and their more massive neighbouring structures were ablaze. The wall of heat was oppressive. Light-rich flames boiled and tumbled up the ice chasm towards the top of the pit, drawn as if up a flue. Frequently oxygenated by sources Hawser couldn't identify, the firestorms swelled and flared, rushing white-hot and spitting out clouds of molten sparks and incendiary cinders that blizzarded into the depths below. Hawser realised some of the vertical firestorms were bigger than cities he had spent whole chunks of his life living in. His mind could barely cope with the scale. He found himself focussing on single sparks, drifting silently in the air in front of him, as large close up as the firestorms were far away. To hold focus on a single, drifting spark was to hold on to a precious moment of sane tranquillity.
The air was full of sparks. There was also a strange smell, more than decay and burning. It was the smell of some synthetic substance that should never have been exposed to heat.
Portions of the pit's upright city were collapsing into the yawning gulf below. Wars were happening on different levels. Hawser could see Imperial Army troops drop-landing on platforms above him, lit up by enemy fire as they swung in towards leaf-shaped platforms. To the west of his position, and slightly below, a tide of Expedition drop-troops assaulted across the spans of three or four intact inter-tower bridges, as gun-cutters and blitz ships swept in over them and raked the facades of the ancient citadels.
Longfang's packs were driving in across the ornate platforms towards imposing, sullen mansions. The polished, orange material tiling the mansions and the platform surface was pitted and scorched. Everything was orange. The world was orange. It was partly the firestorm, and partly the ubiquitous material that the Quietude constructed everything from.
Again, for a split-second pang, Hawser was reminded of Vasiliy. To think she was a world and a life ago now was not even ironic.
Debris, including chunks of fallen masonry of considerable size, landscaped the platform. What had this place once been, Hawser wondered as he ran forwards through the murderous heat and the winnowing sparks. The landing s |
g was orange. The world was orange. It was partly the firestorm, and partly the ubiquitous material that the Quietude constructed everything from.
Again, for a split-second pang, Hawser was reminded of Vasiliy. To think she was a world and a life ago now was not even ironic.
Debris, including chunks of fallen masonry of considerable size, landscaped the platform. What had this place once been, Hawser wondered as he ran forwards through the murderous heat and the winnowing sparks. The landing stage of a parliament hall? The platform of a defence station? The private jetty of an aristocratic residence? Did the residents once look out over the platform and admire the view of the glowing ice caves beneath, or was it just a functional cavity to them? Had there been beauty here, before Ogvai's kill-shot? Deliberate beauty, or just the accidental marvel of the nature that only human eyes recognised? Did the beings of the Quietude have souls?
He fancied perhaps they did. The platforms had ornate decorations worked into them, especially on their undersides, where they fanned out like ribbed lilies or acanthus leaves. Similarly, around the high, wide door spaces and side columns of the mansions they were attacking, there were simple lines of relief that suggested an aesthetic.
Enemy fire licked at them, most of it gravity rifle shot that pulverised the platform surfaces into dust where it hit. He heard the unmistakable sound of bolters firing and saw Horune and the others ahead, bounding away across the tumbled slabs and crushed stonework. He made a mental note to improve his next story; he had no idea an Astartes could move so fast.
The metal-on-metal shriek came again. He turned.
The Stormbird that had brought them in was sliding backwards. Unlike the other Stormbirds in Longfang's flight, which had touched down securely on other landing levels and were already cycling back up for take-off, this craft had been forced to use the lip of its target platform by an overhead collapse. That it had landed at all was a testament to the devotion of the flight crew.
The weakened platform was shredding. The rear half of the Stormbird's bulk was tipping off. The metal-on-metal shriek was the sound of the Stormbird's landing claws as they tried to dig in and anchor on. The skids tore squealing gashes as they slipped backwards. The pilot was trying to fire mooring lines from under the nose. Each grapple rebounded from the polished orange tiles.
A Stormbird was a large transatmospheric craft with a broad, threatening profile designed to menace. It was considerably more substantial in both mass and sheer craftsmanship than the bulk-produced landers like the Thunderhawk and the dropfalcon models that had been churned out of constructor factories as short-term, utilitarian solutions to the Crusade's material demands. A Thunderhawk wasn't designed to last: it was just a cheap, functional, template-pressed disposable.
The Stormbirds were legacies of the Unification Wars on Terra, superb machines that were far more costly and time consuming to manufacture. Armadas of them were assembled for the Expansion, and only when the true scale of the Great Crusade became apparent was it realised that a cheap bulk supplement would be needed. They were not the sort of things that should look vulnerable or ungainly. They were lords of the air, soaring creatures that could dive from orbit straight down into the fires of hell, and survive.
Yet this one was stricken. It was doomed. Its backwards slide was accelerating. Its nose was tipping up, and the angle of that inclination was increasing. Metal shrieked on metal until the landing claws began to tear free, lifted too high by the dipping tail. Hawser could clearly see the frantic, chalk-white faces of the flight crew through the tinted cockpit canopy as they fought to stabilise their situation. The engines suddenly started racing, and hurricanes of loose debris and grit swirled into the intakes as someone tried to throttle up and... what? Push the ship back onto the platform? Relaunch?
The Stormbird tipped. Hawser saw it pass the point of no return. The boarding ramp was still down, and it looked for all the world like an open beak, like the ship was a fledgling bird, too damaged to fly, squawking in terror as it pitched from a nest.
With a sudden, jarring lurch, it was gone, and the shredded lip of the platform was gone too. Hawser felt the deck quiver as the Stormbird let go.
He mumbled something, something obscene and incoherent, unwilling to accept what he'd just seen. Part of his mind told him that the Stormbird would surely restart its engines as it fell and fly back up to them, magnificent and phoenix-like. Another part told him what a fool that made him.
He realised Longfang was shouting at him. There was a far more immediate issue.
The weight of the Stormbird, and the violent way it had quit its perch, had entirely undermined the integrity of the damaged platform.
Everything they were standing on was giving way.
He had once witnessed the explosive demolition of a stratified favela in Sud Merica. The slum hive, cleared of inhabitants and protesters by the Unification authority, was a towering ziggurat, a landfill mountain that had cast its shadow across a river basin for sixty generations. Hydroelectric projects would replace it and, during that work, Hawser and Murza would be granted access to explore the impossibly ancient foundations for relics of the Proto-Cruxian faith that was said to have persisted there like an isotope in the water table.
The demolition had brought the vast structure down like an avalanche, folding level into level, collapsing storey into storey like riffle-shuffled playing cards. He had been astonished by the seismic violence of the destruction, and by the overwhelming noise. Most of all, he had been staggered by the quantity of dust exhaled by such annihilation.
The platform went the same way. It disintegrated, letting the rubble and massive fragments fallen from the city above slide off into the gulf. Noise was vibration and vibration noise, and there was no division between them, and both of them were a visual blur. Orange tiles and support beams exploded and shattered in clouds of dust like flour.
Hawser ran towards the mansions. His future fell away behind him in the pit in a raging landslip. The ground steepened in front of him, and he realised he was running uphill. An elephantine block of stone, part of some city structure demolished far above, slithered towards him. Its impact had undoubtedly contributed to the platform's fundamental weakness.
As it rushed down at him, he leapt up the face of it, hurling himself before it could turn him into a long red smear. He landed on the top of it, a hard, awkward landing that badly bruised his hip and ankle, but held on, his hands wrapped around the stub of a shattered finial.
The block kept sliding. Righting himself, he leapt again, clearing the slab and coming down on the other side, on the slope of the expiring platform. He scrabbled up, loose rocks pinging off his shoulders and his face mask. One hit so hard it crazed the left-hand eyepiece, and stunned him.
The noise of the tumult reached a peak. Blind, scrambling, he ran into something and found it was a wall.
'Sit down. Sit down!' a voice snarled in Wurgen. 'You're safe there, skjald.'
He could barely see. Most of the platform had gone, leaving a jagged strand of rockcrete stuck through with severed rib beams and shorting power lines. The destruction had exhaled so much dust into the air that there was a strange, farinaceous haze.
Hawser was hunkered right up against the foot of one of the mansion walls, spared from the fathomless drop by a ragged shelf of surviving platform no more than two metres broad at its most generous. Wolves were crouched with him, their pelts and armour dusted with yellow powder.
'Are you alive?' the Wolf beside him asked. Hawser didn't know his name. The Wolf had eschewed his full plate helm for a knotwork leather protector that had entwined furrows in the shape of Fenrisian sea-orms forming the nasal guard and the heavy brows.
'Yes,' said Hawser.
'You sure?' asked Serpent-mask. 'I see fear in that wrong eye of yours, and we don't want fear tripping us up.'
'I'm sure,' Hawser snapped. 'What's your name? I want to make certain my account of this day records your concern for me.'
Serpent-mask shrugged.
'Jormungndr,' he said. 'Called the Two-bladed Serpent. You insult me, skjald, that you haven't heard of the famous Two-blade.'
'I have,' Hawser lied quickly. 'But I have been shaken by that tangle with death, and I was slow to recognise the trait marks on your face guard.'
Jormungndr Two-blade nodded, as if this was acceptable.
'Follow,' he said.
Svessl had blown a way into the nearest of the structures Hawser thought of as mansions.
They passed through a gatehouse into a courtyard beyond. In amongst the debris of rubble, he saw the first of the enemy dead: graciles and robusts, and also other smaller forms new to him. The pale yellow dust, sifting in the air, stuck to the spattered pools of purple Quietude blood.
The Wolves were surging into the courtyard and splitting in all directions. Cloisters and inner entrances beckoned. Hawser, uncertain which way to go, heard enemy fire, and then answering blasts of bolter shot. The gunning bolters, often one at first and then joined by an emphatic chorus as multiple weapons were brought to bear on an identified target, had a distinctive metallic grinding note behind their deep shot-boom, like a bitter aftertaste.
He could hear other sounds, deeper, bigger sounds. They were the vast, echoing, booming noises of the unstable cities, creaking and swaying, uttering their slow and monumental death knell out across the immense gulf of the impact pit.
Hawser found himself walking slowly through the mansion zone, crossing from courtyard into cloister and back again. H |
ons were brought to bear on an identified target, had a distinctive metallic grinding note behind their deep shot-boom, like a bitter aftertaste.
He could hear other sounds, deeper, bigger sounds. They were the vast, echoing, booming noises of the unstable cities, creaking and swaying, uttering their slow and monumental death knell out across the immense gulf of the impact pit.
Hawser found himself walking slowly through the mansion zone, crossing from courtyard into cloister and back again. He felt immune to the battle that rang around him, incidental, close by, but not near enough to trouble him. Sparks sailed like stars through the dusty air. He stepped from the shadows of the covered walkways into the bright orange glare of the open courts, where the light of firestorms cast shadows of him, long and lean across the tiled ground.
He looked at his shadow, so distorted and extended, so longshanked and shifting in the flamelight. The pelt Bitur Bercaw had given him on the night he awakened in the Aett was still around his shoulders. He wore it at all times. The grey wolf pelt lent his spectral shadow a strangely hunched neck and shaggy back.
Much of the mansion complex's infrastructure had been ripped out. He saw walls and ceilings where flush, polished panels had been torn out, revealing curiously organic layers of machinery. The purpose of the sub-layer systems was not apparent. They seemed to be complex arrangements, patterns that were both circuits and organic valves, power cables and blood vessels intertwined. Smouldering energy fumes wept out of torn and dangling tubes. Unidentifiable fluids dribbled from ruptured ducts.
He looked around. He looked up. The spavined city rose above him as if it was trying to claw its way out of its icy grave. Tracers of weapons fire, like bright lattices, criss-crossed the smoke-streaked air. Heavy weapon beams scored destructive lines several kilometres long across the darkness of the pit, projected by assault craft on attack runs. Where they touched, the city structures dissolved in walls of light and threw out arches of burning gas like solar flares. Flurries of missiles, visible from their exhaust flares alone, raced like schools of comets, spat out by gunships too dark to be seen in the smoke. At roof-level, to his left, two distant Warlord Titans were leading the Army in towards a bastion gate across a horizon formed by an inter-tower bridge. Clouds of tiny munition impacts billowed around their inexorable figures like fireflies at dusk.
He heard the deep, booming, background instability of the cities again. It sounded like a bell tolling in the core of the planet.
A sharper sound made him start. Concussion slapped him. Directly overhead, a formation of bulk landers was attempting to deliver platoons of Outremars onto upper platforms that jutted out like theatre balconies. One had been hit by ground fire. It had exploded in a staggering welter of flame and whizzing debris. The landers in formation with it attempted to steer out of the blast wash. One clipped another and they both had to pull off the drop target hard, engines protesting. A third was struck soundly along its flank by projectile debris from the lost unit. It shivered, mortally wounded. Black smoke began to gout from its port-side engines. It tried to get nose-up. It tried to get close enough to the platform to drop its ramp and let its cargo of soldiers deploy.
It hit the platform instead. The planing impact tore the underside away, peeling it off like the lid of a tin can. As the main hull began to disintegrate and the four engines exploded in a quick, fiery series, it began to rain bodies.
The Outremar troopers spilled by the wreck fell on the mansion complex, helpless, tumbling, flailing. Some were already dead. Some were still screaming when they made impact. They hit roofs, terraces, the canopies of cloisters, the open tiles of the courtyards. They glanced off sloping walls and made multiple further impacts before rolling to a halt. Burning debris rained down with them. Some of the bodies were on fire, or partially dismembered. Some struck with such force, blood spatter went five or six metres up the face of walls. Others landed whole and lay as if asleep.
Staring up, mesmerised by the human hail, it took Hawser a moment to register that there was every possibility he might be struck by some of the falling bodies. One came rushing down at him and he flinched to his left. It hit the tiled courtyard ground with a noise like smashing eggs and snapping celery. He looked down at the anatomically impossible position it had chosen to rest in for the remainder of eternity.
Another body impacted a few metres to his right like a bag of blood bursting. Hawser backed away. He looked up again in time to see a whirling piece of burning machine debris dropping towards him, end over end.
He ran. He made it to the cover of the nearest cloistered area as the wreckage struck. Then a human body smacked into the awning roof above him, splitting as it shattered orange tiles and produced a vile trickle of blood that pattered down onto the ground. He ran again, and sought greater sanctuary in the more substantial archway of the mansion proper.
He cowered briefly. The terrible downpour of bodies subsided. He looked up and took a step out of the shadowed archway.
A Quietude super-robust lunged at him. The towering beast had two heads and three surviving upper limbs. Something akin to a plasma beam had blown the other one off. The face-plates of its heads displayed hologram masks of psychopathic rage. It was wielding two large, hook-bladed weapons like tulwars with its upper limbs. It sliced at Hawser.
Hawser wasn't sure how he moved out of its path. He threw himself away from it and hit the tiled ground of the courtyard several metres back from the archway, landing in a clumsy and painful tumble. The super-robust came after him, slicing with one blade, then the next. The tip of one hooked blade struck sparks off the tiles. It reached out with its third limb to seize him so it could pin him and butcher him.
He evaded again, this time more aware of what he was doing, of how superhumanly fast his reactions were, how ridiculously instinctive. The wolf priests, geneweavers and fleshmakers of the Vlka Fenryka, had done so much more than repair his wounds and shave years off his life. They had given him so much more than the enhanced vision of a wolf.
They had accelerated him, his senses, his speed, his strength, his muscle power, his bone density. Even without any combat training, he had snapped the limbs of the G9K malcontents who had outnumbered him.
Nevertheless, a super-robust of the Olamic Quietude, spiking on battle-stimms, would kill him easily.
He ducked a lateral sweep, and then rolled to avoid a downward slash. The super-robust kept coming, kept swinging. Hawser slipped in a pool of Outremar blood, and lost his footing.
Longfang slammed into the super-robust from behind. The priest had appeared without warning, moving like a phantom. There was no hint of infirmity about him, no creak of age. His eyes were bright and wild, and his long white hair flew out like a mane. This was not a man who needed the hand of another to help him get up off his knees.
Longfang expertly hooked his arms around the super-robust from behind in a grip that resembled a wrestling hold. He lifted the enemy warrior away from Hawser while keeping its limbs locked so it could not strike with either tulwar. Longtooth grunted with the effort. Having turned it aside, he sent the super-robust staggering forwards with a serious kick to the arse to create some safety distance, and drew his sword, a huge broad blade that slept in a knotwork scabbard across his back. It had a two-handed grip, and a runic blade that glowed like frost. As soon as it was drawn, it began to keen, a weird song only wights or the soulless could sing. Power crackled and hissed through its fierce edge.
The super-robust turned around and strode back to face and kill the interloper who had interrupted its attack. It seemed undaunted by the searing glimmer of the glacial blade that was whispering a death-lament for it. It flung itself forwards with its powerful upper limbs raised, raining alternating downstrokes with its tulwars. Longfang grunted, reacted, let his long blade and the armour of his left forearm soak up the multiple impacts. The super-robust was as strong as a template construction press. Hawser saw that the old priest had to plant one foot back to brace against the assault.
With a growl-bark, Longfang put a full body spin and the weight of his shoulders into the answering stroke. The blow sliced the third limb clean off the Quietude warrior's torso. It staggered back, but it felt no pain. It resumed its drive at Longfang, chopping down alternating blows again. This time it had effect. The hybrid alloy of one of the tulwars smote through the forearm guard of the rune priest's intricate armour. Leather bindings split, and snake-stones, bezoars, sea-shells and beads made of nacre scattered across the courtyard tiles. Blood gushed out, down to the cuff, dripping off the ridges of the huge gauntlet.
Longfang let out a wet leopard-growl that palpitated Hawser's guts. He hacked at the super-robust with his frostblade, driving it backwards across the blood-stained, fire-lit yard. The last blow in the savage series cracked the top fifteen centimetres off the left hand tulwar and stove a deep crack across the super-robust's barrel chest.
At that point, two more super-robusts bounded into the courtyard. The first, armed with an accelerator hammer, went immediately to reinforce the unit fighting Longfang. The second, its hologrammatic face expressing first curiosity and then undisguised antipathy, turned for Hawser.
Heoroth Longfang had no intention of breaking the skjald-bond. He had told Hawser to go where he liked because he would be protected by Tra, |
hand tulwar and stove a deep crack across the super-robust's barrel chest.
At that point, two more super-robusts bounded into the courtyard. The first, armed with an accelerator hammer, went immediately to reinforce the unit fighting Longfang. The second, its hologrammatic face expressing first curiosity and then undisguised antipathy, turned for Hawser.
Heoroth Longfang had no intention of breaking the skjald-bond. He had told Hawser to go where he liked because he would be protected by Tra, and that was a compact he intended to honour, or forfeit with his life. A long and, for the most part, secret heritage of genetic engineering had culminated in the ability of Imperial Terra to manufacture hyper-organisms like him. He leapt with all the agility and power that heritage had provided him with, not as a man leaps to jump an obstacle, but as an animal pounces to bring down its prey. He left his immediate adversaries standing, almost awkwardly, suddenly devoid of a combat opponent.
He landed behind the super-robust rushing Hawser, and saved the skjald's life for the second time in ninety seconds. The hissing frostblade went up over his white-haired head in a two-handed grip, and then came down in a single, splitting blow of extraordinary force that sheared the super-robust's torso medially. The sectioned halves parted in an explosive cloud of purple bio-fluid liberated by the rupture, and fell heavily in opposite directions.
There were beads of glittering purple blood in Longfang's fine white hair. He looked at Hawser with his tired gold and black-pinned eyes. He knew what was coming.
'Find cover,' he said.
Shock took him away. There was a bang like a sonic boom. Heoroth Longfang was simply removed, sideways, from Hawser's field of vision.
Hawser reeled from the concussive blow, stunned, dazed, his breather mask cracking, his nose filling with blood from vessels burst by the over-pressure. The super-robust's accelerator hammer had buried itself in Longfang's left side and hurled him clean across the courtyard. The priest hit a wall, cracking the tiles, and landed on the ground.
Both super-robusts hastened to finish him as he tried to rise. Blood was leaking out of Longfang, from his lips, from the waist-joint and hip seals of his runic armour.
As the Quietude brutes closed in, Longfang raised his hand, as if he could fend them off with force of will alone, as if he could unleash magic, or even maleficarum, under such a miserable duress. For a moment, Hawser almost believed he could. He almost believed the wights of the Underverse might come howling down like an ice storm in response to Longfang's furious will.
Nothing happened. No magic, no ice storm, no maleficarum. No wights from the Underverse wailing with rapturous glee.
Hawser snatched up a blood-flecked Outremar lasrifle, yanking the weapon's strap free of its previous owner's broken arm. The rifle had fallen out of the sky, but its mechanism was intact. He opened fire, raking the two super-robusts. His shots struck their backs and shoulders, denting the plasticated finish of their armour, scoring little holes and blemishes. The super-robust with the accelerator hammer even took a shot in the back of the head, causing its neck to whiplash slightly.
Both stopped, and turned slowly, smoke wisping from the superficial damage.
'Tra! Tra! Help here! Help here!' Hawser yelled, in Wurgen. He started firing again, unloading the entire energy clip at the super-robusts. They paced towards him, and the paces became faster and turned into running strides. The hammer and the tulwars were lifted up to strike. Hawser backed away, blasting, yelling.
Jormungndr Two-blade entered the courtyard. He came in over one of the cloister roofs where Outremar bodies had collected like autumn leaves. True to his name, he had a blade in each hand, a matched pair of power swords, shorter and broader than Longfang's hissing frostblade.
He uttered the loudest roar of all, and landed hard on the tiles in front of the charging super-robusts. The impact made a sound like a dropped anvil, and pavers cracked under him. He met their united attack aggressively, hammering aside the super-robust with the tulwars with his right blade, and then blocking the hammer with his left.
The super-robust with the tulwars re-joined without hesitation, hacking at him. Two-blade blocked and parried with matching speed, allowing neither of the tulwars to slip past his guard. Simultaneously, his left-hand weapon fended away the follow-up swing from the super-robust with the hammer.
Now that one of the tulwars had lost a section in the clash with Longfang, the mis-matched lengths played to the super-robust's advantage. As his left-hand sword was occupied with the other opponent, Two-blade found it supremely difficult to counter the rain of blows from the twin swords unless he managed to catch both down near the hilt. Twice, the broken tulwar flew past a parry that had blocked the long hook of its partner and gouged Two-blade. Within a few seconds of the struggle beginning, Two-blade was bleeding from a deep injury in his right arm.
He resolved the problem directly. Ducking a vicious but telegraphed swing from the accelerator hammer, he kicked out at the super-robust with the tulwars, catching it in the left kneecap. The huge plasteel boot delivered a torsion injury that twisted the super-robust off balance, and Two-blade put his right-hand sword through one of its faces.
The super-robust tottered backwards with sparks shorting and spitting from its splintered face mask. Purple gore splashed down its chest from under the mask's rim.
Jormungndr Two-blade did not pause to enjoy the satisfaction of this advantage. He had to jerk his head back hard to avoid the hammer again. The evasion was whisker-close. The hammer-wielder had thrown such bodily force behind the latest blow that the swing had described an almost complete circle. The hammerhead, missing Two-blade on the downward half of the orbit, ended up striking the ground of the yard and creating, with a painful, plosive bang, a radiating crater in the tilework that looked like a bullet hole in a mirror, or the ripple of a stone hitting the surface of still water.
Two-blade struck the super-robust with his left-hand sword. The super-robust deflected the slash with the long haft of its hammer, bringing it up level in front of its face like a stave, before swinging it up higher for another downward, post-setting blow. Two-blade managed to get his swords up and crossed against each other, and caught the neck of the hammer in the V formed by their blades. Even so, the impact drove him down onto one knee.
Straining, Two-blade kept the swords locked. The super-robust with the tulwars was recovering its wits as its secondary head took over its biological operations. It moved in from the side to attack Two-blade while his weapons were occupied.
Two-blade sliced his swords together, uttering a bellow of effort. The swords scissored the neck of the accelerator hammer. The hammer head was not entirely cut off, but the haft just below the head exploded and buckled as the Astartes' blades sliced through grip, trunking, liner and core.
Two-blade came up off his knees and drove in against the super-robust, head-down, stabbing it repeatedly through the torso with murderous, under-arm punches, first with the right sword, then the left, and then alternating, jabbing blow after vicious blow. He drove it backwards, killing it three or four times over to make sure it was dead. By the end, it was only held upright by his blades.
He let it fall. The other one had reached him. He spun to greet its tulwars, and delivered a rotating lateral slash that knocked it flying. It landed on its face, and tried to rise. Two-blade pounced onto its back, held it face-down with his knee, and drove a sword down through it, pinning it to the ground.
Purple liquid began to creep out from under it.
Hawser crossed the yard to where Longfang lay. Two-blade wrenched his sword out of the super-robust's corpse and followed. Two-blade's escalated Astartes metabolism had already kicked in, and his wounds had stopped bleeding.
Heoroth Longfang's wounds had not stopped bleeding. The priest had propped himself against a wall, his legs out straight in front of him. He was breathing hard. Blood was seeping out of far too many of the seams in his armour.
'A fine day for sitting on your arse,' remarked Jormungndr Two-blade.
'I like the weather here,' replied Longfang.
'We'll do all the work, then,' said Two-blade. He was silent for a while, staring down at the old rune priest.
'I'll send Najot Threader back to you, when I find him.'
'Not necessary,' replied Longfang.
'I won't let you go without honour,' said Two-blade. There was a tiny hitch in his voice that surprised Hawser. 'When I find Najot Threader-'
'No,' Longfang replied more emphatically. 'Eager though you are to see me off, I'm not going anywhere. I just need to rest. Enjoy this nice weather for a while.'
Hawser looked at Two-blade, and saw he was smiling a broad smile under his mask that showed his teeth.
'I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it,' he said.
'There's a good boy,' said Longfang. 'Now go and kill something. The skjald here can stay and keep me company.'
Two-blade looked at Hawser.
'Amuse him,' he said.
'What?' asked Hawser.
'I said amuse him,' replied Two-blade. 'You're Tra's skjald. Amuse him. Take his mind off what's coming.'
'Why?' asked Hawser. 'What's coming?'
Two-blade snorted.
'What do you think?' he asked.
The big Wolf knelt down quickly, and bowed his head to Longfang.
'Until next winter,' he said.
Longfang nodded back. They clasped fists, and then Two-blade stood and walked away without looking back. His massive plasteel boots crunched on the grit coating the courtyard ground. By the time he was on the far side and vanishing from view, he had accelerated into a run.
Hawse |
e his mind off what's coming.'
'Why?' asked Hawser. 'What's coming?'
Two-blade snorted.
'What do you think?' he asked.
The big Wolf knelt down quickly, and bowed his head to Longfang.
'Until next winter,' he said.
Longfang nodded back. They clasped fists, and then Two-blade stood and walked away without looking back. His massive plasteel boots crunched on the grit coating the courtyard ground. By the time he was on the far side and vanishing from view, he had accelerated into a run.
Hawser glanced back at Longfang.
'I know it's an indelicate question, but what is coming?' he asked.
Longfang laughed and shook his head.
'You're dying, aren't you?' asked Hawser.
'Maybe. You don't know much about Astartes anatomy. We can shrug off a hell of a lot of damage. But sometimes there's a hell of a lot of pain in that process, and you're never sure if you're going to get there.'
'What should I do?' Hawser asked.
'Your job,' said the priest.
HE SAT DOWN beside the priest.
Longfang's skin looked even more translucent than before. He was speckled with blood, both purple and red, both human and foe. Some of it was drying and streaking.
His respiration was laboured. Something was critically wrong with his lungs. Every breath produced a blood mist.
'So I... I am to amuse you, then?' asked Hawser. 'You want me to recite an account?'
'Why not?'
'You might want to tell me some of yours,' said Hawser. 'You might want to tell me anything that matters to you. In case.'
'You'd be my confessor, would you?' said Longfang.
'That's not what I meant. Aeska Brokenlip told me that the accounts that entertain the Rout most are the ones that scare them.'
'True enough.'
'So what scares you?'
'You want to know?'
'I want to know.'
'What scares us most,' said Heoroth Longfang, 'are the things that even we can't kill.'
EIGHT
Longfang's Dream of Winter
'WE ARE THE Allfather's killers,' said the rune priest.
'You're soldiers,' said Hawser. 'You're Astartes born. Astartes are the finest warriors Terra has ever manufactured. You're all killers.'
Longfang coughed. Blood from the mist he was exhaling was beginning to collect around his mouth and soak his beard. It dripped onto the gossamer-white pelt he wore.
'That's too simple a view,' he said. 'I told you this. A role for each primarch-son. A role for each primarch's Legion. Defenders and champions, storm troops and praetorians... we all have our duties. Sixth Legion are the executioners. We are the last line. When all else fails, we are the ones expected to do whatever is necessary.'
'Isn't that true of all Legions?' Hawser asked.
'You still don't understand, skjald. I'm talking about degree. There are lines that other Legions will not cross. There are divides of honour and fealty and devotion. There are some acts so ruthless, some deeds so unpalatable, that only the Vlka Fenryka are capable of undertaking them. It's what we were bred for. It's the way we were designed. Without qualm or sentiment, without hesitation or whimsy. We take pride in being the only Astartes who will never, under any circumstances, refuse to strike on the Allfather's behalf, no matter what the target, no matter what the cause.'
'It's why the Sixth Legion Astartes is considered so bestial,' said Hawser.
'That's secondary,' Longfang replied. 'It's a by-product of our ruthlessness. We are not feral savages. It's just that two centuries of doing things that other Legions find distasteful have earned us that reputation. The other Legions think we are untamed, untrained dogs, but the truth is that we are the most harshly trained of all.'
Longfang was about to say something else, but a tremor ran through him. He closed his eyes for a moment.
'Pain?' asked Hawser.
'Nothing,' Longfang replied with a dismissive wave of his right hand. 'It'll pass.'
He wiped the blood from his mouth.
'We are the Allfather's killers,' he repeated. 'It is a matter of honour that we will face anything down. This also may explain why others may regard us as deranged. We deny fear. It plays no part in our lives. Once we deploy, fear is gone from us. It doesn't ride with us. It doesn't stay our hands. We exclude it from our hearts and from our heads.'
'So the stories?' asked Hawser.
'Think of the extremity of our lives,' said Longfang. 'The unremitting punishment of Fenris, the unstinting combat against mankind's foes. Where do we find release from that? Not in the dainty pleasures of mortal men. Not in wine or song, or womenfolk, or banquet feasting.'
'What then?'
'The one thing denied to us.'
'Fear.'
Longfang chuckled, though the chuckle was half-drowned in blood.
'Now you understand. In the Aett, at the hearth-side, when the skjald speaks, then and only then do we allow the fear back. And only if the account is good enough.'
'Letting yourself feel fear? That's your release?'
Longfang nodded.
'So what sort of account? A tale of war, or of hunting an ocean orm and-'
'No, no,' said Longfang. 'Those are things we can kill, even if it's hard and we don't succeed every time. There is no fear there. A skjald has to find a story about something we can't kill. I told you that. Something that is proof against our blades and our bolts. Something that will not fall down when you strike it with a back-breaker. Something with a thread that cannot be cut.'
'Maleficarum,' said Hawser.
'Maleficarum,' the priest agreed.
He looked at Hawser, and coughed again, aspirating more particles of blood.
'Make it a good one, then,' he said.
'I was born on Terra,' said Hawser.
'Like me,' put in Longfang proudly.
'Like you,' Hawser agreed. He began again. 'I was born on Terra. Old Earth, as it was called in the First Age. Most of my life, I worked as a conservator for the Unification Council. When I was about thirty years old, I was working in Old Franc, in the centre of the great city-node Lutetia. It was ruins, most of it, ruins and sub-hive slums. I had a friend. A colleague, actually. His name was Navid Murza. He's dead now. He died in Ossetia about a decade later. He wasn't a friend at all, really. We were rivals. He was an extremely accomplished academic and very capable, but he was ruthless too. He'd use people. He didn't care who he had to go through to get what he wanted. We worked together because that's how things had turned out. I was always wary of him. He frequently took things too far.'
'Go on,' said Longfang. 'Describe this Murza so I can see him.'
A CLAVIER WAS playing. It was a recording, one of the high quality audio files that Seelia insisted on listening to in the pension. Hawser was sure that Murza had put it on. Hawser was sure that Murza was sleeping with Seelia. The woman was gorgeous and dark-skinned, with a cloud of tawny hair. During the first few days of the Lutetian placement, she'd seemed quite interested in Hawser. Then Murza had turned up the charm and that had been that.
If Murza had put the music on, then Murza had got back to the pension ahead of him. They'd become separated during the headlong flight. Hawser let himself in through the side entrance, using the gene-code keypad, and made sure the shutters were secure. The work gang who had tried to trap them at the old cathedral site knew where they were based. Some of them had come to the pension to discuss details with members of the Conservatory team.
Hawser took off his coat. His hands were unsteady. They'd nearly been beaten. They'd been threatened and nearly been assaulted, and they'd been forced to run for their lives, and adrenaline was thumping around his body, and that still wasn't the reason he felt so badly shaken.
It was getting dark. He turned on some glow-globes. The whole team had scattered into the backstreets. They'd make their way back to the pension, one by one, given luck and time.
Hawser poured himself an amasec to steady his nerves. The bottle of ten year-old, his preference, was missing from the tray. He made do with the cheaper stuff. The decanter clink-clinked against the glass in his fidgety hands.
'Navid?' he called out. 'Navid?'
There was no answer except the melody of the clavier, an old pastoral piece.
'Murza!' he shouted. 'Answer me!'
He poured himself another amasec and went up the stairs into the dorm level.
The pension was a fortified manse in a gated block called Boborg, just off a thoroughfare called Sanantwun. It was one of a number of safe-homes that a big Uropan mercantile house used as accommodation for visiting trade delegates, and the Conservatory had leased it for a three-month period. It came furnished, with servitor staff, and was as safe as anywhere in Lutetia. The city was a sprawling, blackened, uncouth place, venerably old, but deteriorating into slums. Though Hawser appreciated it for its history, he couldn't understand why anyone would choose to live there any more if they didn't have to. For the wealthy and aristocratic who still dwelt in the city-node, and there were many enclaves, surely the Atlantic platforms offered a much higher standard of living, and the superorbital plates vastly more security.
Halfway up the stairs, at the turn, there was a tall slit of a window that allowed a view of the city over the block wall. It was getting dark, and the roofs were a lumpy black slope like the scaly ridge of a reptile's back. The largest ragged lump, sticking up like a broken thorn, was the dead cathedral. It looked like a fang-shaped mountain, dwarfing other mountains around it. The sun, gone from the sky, had left pink smears on the western horizon behind it. Most of the evening light was the artificially bright and oddly unreal radiance cast by the plate that was presently gliding over the city in a north-western direction. Hawser wasn't exactly sure which one it was, but from the time of day and the geography of its leading coast, he believed it to be Lemurya.
Hawser sipped his drink. He looked up the rest of the flight of stairs.
'Murza?'
He went up. The music got louder. H |
ne from the sky, had left pink smears on the western horizon behind it. Most of the evening light was the artificially bright and oddly unreal radiance cast by the plate that was presently gliding over the city in a north-western direction. Hawser wasn't exactly sure which one it was, but from the time of day and the geography of its leading coast, he believed it to be Lemurya.
Hawser sipped his drink. He looked up the rest of the flight of stairs.
'Murza?'
He went up. The music got louder. He realised how warm it was in the pension. It wasn't just the amasec in his belly. Someone had cranked the heating system right up.
'Murza? Where are you?'
Most of the bedrooms were dark. Lamplight and clavier music were coming out of the room Murza had picked when the team first moved in.
'Navid?'
He went in. The rooms were only small, and Murza's was almost stifling with heat. It was cluttered too, piled high with kit bags, discarded clothes, books, data-slates. The music was playing from a small device beside the bed. Hawser saw female garments jumbled amongst the others on the floor and a kitbag that wasn't Murza's. Seelia had moved her lovely, trusting self in with him.
Murza had left Seelia to run home on her own through the slum-streets of Lutetia after curfew, which was fairly standard behaviour for Navid Murza.
Hawser took another sip, and tried to quell his anger. Murza had got them all into danger, and not for the first time. That wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was something he didn't really want to consider but knew he was going to have to face up to.
The bedroom wasn't just hot. It was fuggy. Humid.
Hawser pulled open the folding door into the wash closet.
Murza was sitting in the bottom of the little shower stall with his knees tucked up under his chin and his arms wrapped around his shins. He was naked. Water, hot water from the stream coming out under the stall's worn plastek bubble, was hosing down on him. He looked forlorn and blank-eyed, his dark hair plastered to his scalp and neck. He was holding the decanter of ten year-old amasec by its neck.
'Navid? What are you doing?'
Murza didn't answer.
'Navid!' Hawser called, and rapped his knuckles on the clear plastek bubble. Murza looked up at him, slowly focussing. It seemed to take him a long time to recognise Hawser.
'What are you doing?' Hawser repeated.
'I was cold,' Murza replied. His words came out slurred, and his voice was so quiet, it was hard to hear over the rush of the water.
'You were cold?'
'I came back here and I needed to be warm. Have you ever been that cold, Kas?'
'What happened, Navid? That was a disaster!'
'I know. I know it was.'
'Navid, get out of the shower and talk to me.'
'I'm cold.'
'Get out of the damn shower, Navid. Come out here and tell me what you think you were playing at setting up a deal like that?'
Murza looked at him and blinked. Water dripped off his eyelashes.
'Are the others back?'
'Not yet,' said Hawser.
'Seelia?'
'None of them.'
'They'll be all right, won't they?' Murza asked. His voice slurred again.
'No thanks to you,' Hawser snapped. He softened slightly as he saw the anguished look in Murza's eyes.
'They'll be fine, I'm sure. She'll be fine. We've planned for this. We know the contingency plan, the back-up. None of them are stupid.'
Murza nodded.
'I'm not so sure about you,' Hawser added.
Murza grimaced and lifted the decanter he was holding to his mouth. A lot of the amasec was already gone. He took a big swig, swallowed some and then swooshed the rest around inside his cheeks as if it was mouthwash.
When he spat into the shower floor, Hawser saw blood swirling away down the chrome drain.
'What did you do, Navid?' he asked. 'What the hell did you do to that man? How did you know how to do it?'
'Please don't ask me,' Murza replied.
'What did you do?'
'I saved your life! I saved your life, didn't I?'
'I'm not sure, Navid.'
Murza glared at him.
'I didn't have to do that. I saved your life.'
He spat again, and more blood swirled in the water.
'Get out of there,' said Hawser. 'You're going to have to explain everything to me.'
'I don't want to,' replied Murza.
'That's bad luck. Get out of that cubicle. I'll come back in ten minutes. You'll need to be ready to explain things. Then I'll decide what we tell the others.'
'Kas, no one else has to know about-'
'Get out of there and we'll discuss it.'
Hawser went down to the common room, refilled his glass and sat in an armchair trying to steady his wits. He'd been at it five minutes when the others came back, first Polk and Lesher, then the twins from Odessa, then Zirian and his pale, tearful assistant Maris. Finally, just as Hawser was really beginning to worry, Seelia appeared, escorted by Thamer.
'Are we all here?' she asked, trying to sound confident, but clearly exhausted and rattled. Several of the returning team had already disappeared to wash and change.
'Yes,' said Hawser.
'Even Navid?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Bastard,' Thamer muttered.
'I'm going to talk to him,' Hawser said. 'Just leave it, please.'
'All right,' said Thamer, sounding unconvinced.
Hawser told Polk and the twins to prepare some supper for the team, and got Lesher and Zirian to begin planning some other ideas so that their placement wouldn't be an entire waste of time. He knew it would be, but at least the semblance of activity kept their minds off the day's unpleasantness. He couldn't get the image of the pistol out of his mind. He kept seeing the black hole of the end of its muzzle aiming at him.
He went back upstairs. Murza's shower was off, and Murza was sitting on the end of his bed wearing an undershirt and combat trousers. He had not bothered to dry himself off. Water dripped from his hair. He'd poured some amasec into a small porcelain cup and was drinking from that, nursing it morosely with both hands. The decanter was on the floor beside him.
'We shouldn't have gone into that,' said Hawser, jumping straight in without preamble.
'No,' Murza agreed without looking up.
'Your call, and it was a bad one.'
'Agreed.'
'You assured us the intelligence was good and we'd be safe. I shouldn't have listened to you. I should have had security checked, and I should have set up a proper route for abort extraction, a vehicle, probably.'
Murza looked up at him.
'Yes,' he said. 'But you didn't, and you didn't because you're supposed to be able to trust me.'
'Why do you do it, Navid?'
Murza shrugged. He reached one hand up to his mouth, and probed under his lip with a finger as if one of his teeth was loose. He winced.
'Do you get greedy?' Hawser asked.
'Greedy?'
'I know what that feels like, Navid. We're two of a kind. We're driven by a real hunger to discover and preserve these things, to find the lost treasures of our species. It's a worthy, worthy cause, but it's an obsession too. I know it. You know we're more alike than either of us care to admit.'
Murza raised his eyebrows in a slightly amused agreement.
'Sometimes you go too far,' said Hawser. 'I know I've done that. Pushed too hard, paid too much of a bribe, gone somewhere I shouldn't have gone, faked up some paperwork.'
Murza sniffed. It was a sort-of laugh.
Hawser sat down on the end of the bed beside him.
'You just take it further than I do, Navid,' he said.
'Sorry.'
'It feels like you don't care who gets hurt. It feels like you'd sacrifice everyone just to get what you want.'
'Sorry, Kas.'
'That's greedy on a whole new level.'
'I know.'
'It makes me think that it's greedy in a very different way. Not a worthy way, a selfish one.'
Murza stared at the floor.
'Any truth in that?' asked Hawser. 'Is it a selfish flaw, do you think?'
'Yes. Yes, I think so.'
'All right.'
Hawser picked up the decanter at Murza's feet and refilled his own glass. Then he leaned over and poured some amasec into the porcelain cup Murza was clutching.
'Listen to me, Navid,' he said. 'Today you could have got us all hurt or worse. It was a total screw-up. Things like it have happened before. I'm not going to let them happen again. We play by the rulebook. We don't mess around with safety and take chances from now on, all right?'
'Yes. Yes, Kas.'
'All right, let's draw a line under that. It's done. Conversation over. Clean slate tomorrow. It's not what really troubles me, and you know that.'
Murza nodded.
'You did something this evening in the shadow of the dead cathedral. I don't know what it was. I've never seen or heard anything like it. I think you said a word or something like a word to that thug with the gun and knocked him right over.'
'I think...' said Murza very quietly. 'I think I quite probably killed him, Kas.'
'Fug me,' Hawser murmured. 'I need to know how that's even possible, Navid.'
'No, you don't,' Murza replied. 'Can we not just leave it? If I hadn't done it, he would have shot you.'
'I accept that,' said Hawser. 'I accept you did it for good reasons. I accept you saved my life, probably, and reacted in a bad situation. But I need to know what you did.'
'Why?' asked Murza. 'It'd be so much better for you if you didn't.'
'Two reasons,' Hawser replied. 'If we're going to work together at all from this point on, I'm going to need to be able to trust you. I'm going to need to know what you're capable of.'
'Fair enough,' Murza replied. 'And the other reason?'
'I'm greedy too,' said Hawser.
HAWSER STOPPED SPEAKING. For a moment, he thought Longfang was asleep, or worse, but the rune priest opened his eyes.
'You stopped,' Longfang said in Juvjk. 'Keep going. This man Murza you talk of, he has maleficarum in him, and yet you toast with him like a brother.'
Blood was still misting out of Longfang's mouth with every halting breath. The fold of gossamer-white pelt below his chin had become quite dark and wet.
Hawser took a deep breath. His throat was dry. The rumble and flare of the doom come to the Quietude's cities continued to roll around the vast, firelit dar |
but the rune priest opened his eyes.
'You stopped,' Longfang said in Juvjk. 'Keep going. This man Murza you talk of, he has maleficarum in him, and yet you toast with him like a brother.'
Blood was still misting out of Longfang's mouth with every halting breath. The fold of gossamer-white pelt below his chin had become quite dark and wet.
Hawser took a deep breath. His throat was dry. The rumble and flare of the doom come to the Quietude's cities continued to roll around the vast, firelit darkness of the space around them. In the distance, beyond the high, tiled walls of the mansion complex, apocalyptic firestorms coiled up the far side of the pit, consuming citadel structures in showers of sparks like heartwood caught in a bonfire. Closer at hand, bolters and plasma weapons traumatised the air with their discharge.
'This man,' said Longfang, 'this Murza. Did you kill him? Because of his maleficarum, I mean. Did you cut his thread?'
'I saved his life,' said Hawser.
'YOU'VE NEVER TOLD me much about your childhood, or your education,' Hawser remarked.
'I don't intend to start now,' Murza replied.
He hesitated.
'Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to be sharp. It's just that it's all so complicated, and it will take time we haven't got. Here's the simple version. I was privately educated. The schooling was a tradition that mixed classical training with an emphasis on the esoteric.'
'Esoterica is a very important branch of classical study,' said Hawser. 'For millennia, occulted knowledge has been passionately, jealously guarded.'
Murza smiled.
'Why is that, Kas, do you suppose?'
'Because men have always believed in supernatural forces that would grant them great powers, and give them mastery over the cosmos. We've been thinking that way since we watched the shadows play on the cave walls.'
'There is another possible reason, though, isn't there?' Murza asked. 'I mean, there has to be, logically?'
Hawser sipped his glass and looked at Murza beside him.
'Is that a serious question?' he asked.
'Do I look like I'm serious, Kas?'
'You're smiling like an idiot,' said Hawser.
'All right... Did what I did tonight look serious?'
'Are you suggesting that was something? Some kind of... what? It was a trick.'
'Was it?' asked Murza.
'Some kind of trick.'
'And if it wasn't, Kas, if it wasn't, then there's another, logical reason why certain knowledge has always been very jealously guarded. Wouldn't you say?'
Hawser stood up. He did it rather suddenly, and swayed, surprised by how considerably the amasec had gone to his head.
'This is ridiculous, Navid. Are you saying you... you can perform magic? You honestly expect me to believe you're some kind of sorcerer?'
'Of course not.'
'Good.'
'I haven't studied for anything like long enough.'
'What?' said Hawser.
'Sorcerer's the wrong word. Better terms would be adept or magus. At my very junior level, acolyte or apprentice.'
'No. No, no, no. You had a weapon of some kind. Something small, concealed. Under your cuff or in a ring. Digitally based.'
Murza looked up at him. He ran his left hand through his dripping hair, trying to comb it back. There was a glitter in his eyes, an appealing, predatory thing. Navid Murza had always benefited from excess charisma. It was what carried him so far.
'You wanted to know, Kas. You asked to know. I'm telling you. Do you want to hear it?'
'Yes.'
Murza got dressed. Hawser went down to the others and made up some excuse about stepping out with Murza to 'have a serious talk about his shortcomings'.
Murza was waiting for him on the small, rusty landing platform at the rear of the pension. It was dark and surprisingly cold. The petrochemical whiff of traffic exhaust mixed with the vent-off of cooking smells from the eating houses along Sanantwun. Beyond the secure walls of Boborg, the lights of Lutetia glimmered like a draped constellation.
Murza was wearing a long coat, and he had a small rucksack over his shoulder. He'd called a skike for them, and it was sitting on the platform with its potent little lifter motors revving. They checked with the Boborg watchman, signed their gene-codes out of the gated perimeter, and took the little transponder that would admit them back into the pension's airspace later.
'Where are we going?' Hawser asked as they ducked in under the rain hood and took their seats behind the skike's centrally-mounted servitor pilot.
'It's a secret,' Murza smiled back, locking his seat-belt in place. 'It's all about secrets, Kas.'
He pressed the 'go' switch, and the skike rose off the platform with a whine, carried by its three engines, the two under the passenger cage and the other one under the nose forks. At rooftop height, it rotated to face north, and then took off at a high rate of knots. From the high vantage, with the cold wind in his face, Hawser could see what seemed like the whole spread of night-shadowed Lutetia. They shared the darkness with the zipping running lights of other skikes and speeders.
'You look nervous?' Hawser said to Murza.
'Do I?'
'Are you nervous?'
Murza laughed.
'A little,' he admitted. 'This is a big night, Kas. It's been a while coming. I've wanted to tell you about this stuff for years, since we first met, really. I thought you'd understand. I knew you'd understand.'
'But?'
'You're so serious! There was always a danger you'd go all disapproving and older brother on me, and spoil everything.'
'Am I really like that?'
'You know you are,' chuckled Murza.
'So this interest of yours has been going on for a long time?'
'When I was still quite young, at the end of my schooling, I was inducted into a private society dedicated to the rediscovery and restoration of the powers man used to command.'
'So, some foolish schoolboy club?'
'No, the society is old. Hundreds of years old, at least.'
'And does it have a name?'
'Of course,' smiled Murza. 'But it's too soon to tell you that.'
'But its remit is essentially similar to the Conservatory's?'
'Yes, but more specific.'
'It only concerns itself with what I might regard as occult material?'
'Yes,' said Murza.
'Is this why you joined the Conservatory, Navid?'
'Conservatory work gave me great access to the sorts of material the society was seeking, yes.'
Hawser glowered. He looked out of the skike to give himself time to check his annoyance. The superorbital plate Lemurya had long since slid out of the sky, but the immense moonshadow of Gondavana was passing silently over the world, east to west like a giant cyclonic pattern, and the slightly smaller ghost of Vaalbara was crossing beneath it, south-west to north-east.
'So what do I conclude from that, Murza?' Hawser asked at length. 'That for years you've been passing stuff to this mysterious society? That the Conservatory work is just a cover for you? That you've been exploiting the Council's investments and-'
'You see? You see this? Just like an older brother! Listen to me, Kas. I have never betrayed the Conservatory. I have never withheld anything, not a single find, not a book, not a page, not a button or a bead. I have dedicated myself to my work. I have never given the society anything that I haven't given to the Conservatory.'
'But you've shared?'
'Yes. At certain times, I've shared certain discoveries with the society. Isn't sharing the point? Isn't that the guiding principle of the Conservatory?'
'Not in such a clandestine way, Navid. There's a nuance here, and you know it. You're observing letter, not spirit.'
'Maybe this was a mistake,' said Murza, sullenly. 'We can get the skike to turn back.'
'No, we've come too far,' Hawser replied.
'Yes, I think we have,' said Murza.
LONGFANG LURCHED FORWARDS violently as another spasm of pain shook him. Hawser recoiled. He wasn't sure what to do. There was little help he could offer. He couldn't do anything to make the rune priest more comfortable, and he felt in some physical danger from the convulsions. An armoured Astartes, even a dying one, was not something a human being could cradle in his arms.
'I'm not dying,' said Longfang.
'I didn't say you were,' said Hawser.
'I can see it in your eyes, skjald. I can see your thoughts.'
'No.'
'Don't tell me "no". You're afraid of me dying. You're afraid of what to do if that happens. You're afraid of being left here on your own with a corpse.'
'I'm not.'
'And I'm not dying. This is just healing. Sometimes healing hurts.'
Hawser heard a sharp noise from somewhere close by. He glanced at Longfang. The priest had heard it too. Before the priest could do or signal anything, Hawser had put a finger to his lips and signed for quiet. He got up off the ground, and picked up the nearest weapon.
Slowly, with the weapon raised, he edged around the courtyard, checking each archway and cloister. There was no sign of anything. The noise had probably been debris falling from above, a false alarm.
Hawser went back to Longfang, sat down with him again, and handed the weapon over.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I needed something.'
Longfang looked down at the frostblade in his hands and then back up at Hawser.
'You realise I'd have killed any other man for taking this without asking, don't you?' he said.
'You'd have had to get up first, wouldn't you?' Hawser replied.
Longfang laughed. The laugh turned into a bloody cough.
'I don't remember Terra,' he said.
'What?'
'I don't remember it. I'm oldest of all, and I don't remember it. I was made there, one of the last few that was, and I remind all the brothers of our proud link to the birth-sphere. But the truth is, I remember very little. Dark barrack fortresses, exercise camps, fight-zones, off-world expeditions. That's all. I don't remember Terra.'
'Maybe one day you'll go back,' suggested Hawser.
'Maybe one day you'll finish this account and tell me something about it,' replied Longfang.
THE SKIKE DROPPED them in a puddle of floodlights outside a sulking monster of a building in the western quarter of the city-node.
'The Bi |
nd all the brothers of our proud link to the birth-sphere. But the truth is, I remember very little. Dark barrack fortresses, exercise camps, fight-zones, off-world expeditions. That's all. I don't remember Terra.'
'Maybe one day you'll go back,' suggested Hawser.
'Maybe one day you'll finish this account and tell me something about it,' replied Longfang.
THE SKIKE DROPPED them in a puddle of floodlights outside a sulking monster of a building in the western quarter of the city-node.
'The Bibliotech,' said Hawser.
'Indeed.' Murza was smiling, but his nerves were getting worse.
'I called ahead. I'm hoping they'll meet you.'
'They?'
Murza led him up the steps into the vast portico. The ancient stone columns soared away into the darkness above them. The floor was tiled black and white. Hawser could smell the dry air of climate control. He'd been to the Bibliotech many times before, for study and research. Never in the middle of the night. The sodium lamps cast a frosty, yellow glare on everything.
'The society has had its eye on you,' Murza said. 'For quite a while now, in fact. I told them about you, and they think you might be very useful to them. A useful ally, like me.'
'Do they pay you for what you deliver to them, Navid?'
'No,' Murza said quickly. 'No money. I'm not rewarded financially.'
'But you are rewarded. How?'
'With... secrets.'
'Like how to kill a man with a word?'
'I shouldn't have done that.'
'No, you shouldn't.'
Murza shook his head.
'No, I mean that was beyond my skill-set. Way beyond my skill-set. It was an abuse of my power. I don't have anything like that level of control, which is why I damaged my mouth trying to do it. Besides, Enuncia shouldn't be used for harm.'
'What's "Enuncia", Navid?'
Murza didn't answer. They had already taken stimm shots to lessen the effects of the alcohol in their systems, and used enzyme sprays to neutralise the stink of amasec in their mouths. The Bibliotech's book priests were waiting for them, robed and silent in their ceremonial vestments. Murza and Hawser removed their boots and outer clothes, and the book priests dressed them in the visitor gowns: the soft, cream-felt, one-piece robes with integral gloves and slippers. The book priests fastened the robes around the men's throats, then gathered their hair and added tight skull caps. Murza took two data-slates out of his rucksack and led the way into the Bibliotech. Book priests opened the towering screen doors.
The grand hall was empty. None of the long reading desks was occupied. Three hundred pendant lights hung from the high ceiling on long brass chains, and lit the great length of the room in pairs that marched away from them. It was like stepping into the stomach of a great whale. The light from the pendant lamps reflected in soft, brushed spots off the warm wood of the reading desks, and glittered wetly off the polished black ironwork of the shelf cages lining the walls.
'Where are they then?' Hawser asked.
'They're all over the world,' Murza replied cockily. 'But I'm hoping a few of the members who operate in Lutetia will be able to meet us here.'
'This is about recruiting me, then?'
'This could be the most exceptional night of your life, Kas.'
'Answer the damn question!'
'All right, all right,' Murza hissed. 'Keep your voice down, the book priests are looking at us.'
Hawser glanced and saw the disapproving faces of the priest officers peering in through decorative holes in the screen door. He lowered his voice.
'This is about recruiting me?'
'Yes. I don't know what it is, Kas. I just can't seem to keep them happy. They keep wanting more. I thought if I brought you in-'
'I don't like any of this, Navid. I don't like where this is going.'
'Just wait here, all right? Wait here and then hear them out.'
'You probably can't keep them happy because you're such a liability, Navid! I don't want to get drawn into your games!'
'Please, Kas! Please! I need this! I need to show them I can deliver! And you'll see! You'll see what it can do for you!'
'I'm not meeting anybody without knowing their names.'
Murza handed him one of the data-slates.
'Sit down here. Read this. I've marked the file. I'll be back in a minute.'
He hurried away.
Hawser sighed, and then pulled out a chair at one of the reading tables. He switched on the data-slate, lit it, saw the item Murza had called 'For Kasper', and selected it. It had a little marker image in the shape of a toy horse beside it. Preferring to read things on a large view, he plugged the slate into the reading table's terminal jack, and opened the full screen. A seamless slot in the edge of the wooden desk top opened, and a hololithic screen a metre square projected up in front of Hawser, tilting to the optimum angle.
Images began to form and move.
It was random notes at first, digital facsimile pages copied from Murza's tattered work journal. Hawser had seen the kind of thing before, because he had peer reviewed and worked up a lot of Murza's material over the years. They counted on each other for that. Quite often, after a Conservatory expedition, one of them would supervise the physical archiving of any artefacts recovered, while the other collated and audited their working notes for the Imperial Catalogue and for scholastic publication. He was used to Murza's short-hands, his annoying tics, his habit of skipping, and sometimes annotating laterally.
It was definitely Murza's rough journal. Hawser found himself smiling at the old copperplate typeface that Murza always chose to work in, and the occasional doodles and sketches that he'd copied into the memory.
The pages seemed to have come from a number of different sources, though. They were extracts, bits that Murza had snipped and sampled from his journal from different times. Hawser recognised notes recorded during more than a dozen different expeditions they had made together over the previous few years. If this was all linked to Murza's underlying obsession, then his madness did indeed run back a long way. Hawser saw reference to an expedition to Tartus that he knew Murza had made the year before their first meeting.
He looked up from the light screen. A sound.
One of the book priests, perhaps? There was no sign of anyone.
He went on reading, trying to make sense of what Murza had loaded into the file. There seemed to be no particular connection between the facts and locations Murza had put together. What was he missing? What had Murza found?
Just his own madness?
He looked up again.
He could have sworn that he'd heard footsteps, soft felt steps approaching across the stone tiles of the Bibliotech floor. Murza returning, perhaps.
There was no one there.
Hawser got to his feet. He walked down the table to the far end and back again. He stopped. He swung around sharply.
He thought he caught a glimpse of someone flitting past the backlit holes of the main screen doors. Just a glimpse. A robed figure.
'Navid?' he called out.
There was no reply.
He went and sat down again, and turned the display to the next sequence of pages. These were annotated pictures of excavation finds, artefacts removed from dig sites around the world. The annotations were all in Murza's style. Two of the artefact specimens were from lunar excavations.
Had Murza been to the moon? He'd never said so. That was special permit work. You needed direct Council authority.
Hawser sat back for a moment. Maybe this was Murza simply studying artefacts retrieved by other field workers. He tried to find dig dates and source codes.
There weren't any.
The artefacts were all figurines or amulets, worked in stone, in clay, in metal. They were, in no particular order, a sampler of the uncounted ethnic cultures that had formed the long and half-known patchwork of mankind's history. Some were a thousand years old, some were tens of thousands. Some were so old or obscure in origin that it was impossible to cite their provenance. There was no commonality of age, or geographical location, no shared thread of ritual significance or religious practice, no unity of script or language. A five hundred year-old Panpacific Dumaic battle standard had been placed in the file between a four thousand year-old ceremonial synapse shunt from the Nanothaerid Domination and a thirty thousand year-old votive bowl from Byzantine Konstantinopal. There was absolutely no-
There was one linking element.
Hawser began to see it. He was trained to notice these things, and he'd been doing his job well for a long time. He had a memory that leaned towards the eidetic, and as he switched between the holo-images, rotating some in three dimensions with quick gestures of his felt-gloved hands, he saw what Murza had seen.
Eyes. Stylised eyes. A whole varied symbology of eyes, of eye-like dots, of circumpuncts, of monads, of omphalos, of aversion marks.
'The all-seeing singularity,' Hawser whispered to himself. You idiot, Navid. This is so simplistic. Every culture in human history has noted and reflected the significance of the eye in its ritual and art. You are making connections where there are no connections. These tiny similarities are only due to the fact that all of these things were made by human beings. For fug's sake, Navid. You're seeing some kind of conspiracy in history, some kind of illuminating tradition, an occult continuity, and it's all nonsense! Your mind is simply making sense of shadows on the cave wall! There is no sense! They're only shadows, Navid, they're only-
Hawser blinked. His skin was prickling. It was the dry heat of the Bibliotech and the over-warmth of the felt robes. He had stopped at the annotated image of an uraeus or wedjat. It was an amulet, partially damaged, formed in the traditional eye-and-teardrop shape. Navid's careful note indicated it was between thirty and thirty-five millennia old, and was composed of carnelian, gold, lapis lazuli and faience.
'The wedjat/uraeus perfectly typifies ABSOLUTELY a |
only shadows, Navid, they're only-
Hawser blinked. His skin was prickling. It was the dry heat of the Bibliotech and the over-warmth of the felt robes. He had stopped at the annotated image of an uraeus or wedjat. It was an amulet, partially damaged, formed in the traditional eye-and-teardrop shape. Navid's careful note indicated it was between thirty and thirty-five millennia old, and was composed of carnelian, gold, lapis lazuli and faience.
'The wedjat/uraeus perfectly typifies ABSOLUTELY ambiguity of eye as symbol/motif,' Navid's rambling note went on, 'espc. in the Faeronik Era, it seems it was both a talisman of protection, of guarding, AND of wrath & malice. It is good & evil AT ONCE, it is good & light and dark, it is positive & negative. The wedjat, later known as the Eye of Horus, may perhaps be said to represent DUPLICITY: a thing or person that can present one face to the world & then turn to present a contrary aspect. But this 'traitorous'or 'treacherous' interpretation may be offset/modified/qualified by notion that wedjat is COSMOLOGICALLY NEUTRAL. Eye is both aggressive AND passive, protective AND proactive. Alignment depends upon WHO or WHAT is employing device.'
It was a simplistic conclusion, one that Hawser felt was beneath Murza's range as a scholar. Why had Navid made these jottings with such haste and imprecision. Hawser wondered-
Hawser wondered why he couldn't stop looking at the eye on the hololithic projection. It was gazing at him, as if challenging him to look away and defying his dismissal of Navid Murza's scribblings. It was staring at him. It was unblinking. The pupil was static, black iris set in blue, hard as the sky. It made his eyes water. He couldn't blink. He couldn't break its stare. He tried to turn his head or fight off the force that was pinning his eyelids open and making his eyeballs itch and well up. His hands tightened on the edge of the reading table. He tried to push himself away, push himself back, break contact, as if the image was a live electrical wire he had brushed against and couldn't break away from. It was like trying to haul out of the undertow of a bad dream that didn't want to let him go.
The eye was no longer blue.
It was gold and black-pinned.
The back of his head hit the floor with a crack. Pain arrowed into his skull. He'd managed to tip his chair over and had ended up on his back. With his felt-slippered feet sticking up in the air, it would have been comical, except for the pain. He'd struck himself a serious blow hitting the floor.
Maybe he was concussed. He felt sick.
He felt weird.
What had just happened? Had Murza built some kind of hypnotic feedback pattern into his file? Was there some subliminal imaging?
He got up, and leaned hard on the edge of the table to steady himself. Then he pulled the data-slate link out of the table-jack without looking directly at the hololithic display. The light screen went out. He took a few deep breaths, and then leaned down and righted the chair. Bending over made his head pound and his stomach slosh. He stood up straight again to get some stability.
There was someone at the far end of the room.
The figure was about twenty metres away, at the end of the reading tables, standing by the inner stacks furthest from the screen door entranceway. It was looking at him.
He couldn't see its face. It was wearing the same soft, beige felt robes of the Bibliotech he was, but it had raised the suit's hood, like a monk's cowl. Its arms were by its side. Everything about its outline was soft, almost plump. In the cream library robes, it looked like the naked form of a person who had lost great amounts of weight very dramatically, and whose flesh had become baggy and empty. In the Bibliotech's half-light, it looked like a ghost.
Hawser called out, 'Hello?'
His voice rolled around the twilight cavern of the Bibliotech like a marble in a foot locker. The figure did not move. It was staring right at him. He couldn't see its eyes, but he knew it was. He wanted to see its eyes. He felt as if he needed to.
'Hello?' he called out again.
He took a step forwards.
'Navid? Is that you? What are you doing?'
He walked towards the figure. It remained where it was, staring at him, its creamy form so soft in the gloom, it seemed phantasmal.
'Navid?'
The hooded figure turned suddenly and began to walk away towards the carved black ironwork screen into the inner stacks.
'Wait!' Hawser called out. 'Navid, come back! Navid!'
The hooded figure kept walking. It passed under the ironwork frame and disappeared into the shadows.
Hawser started to run.
'Navid?'
He entered the inner stacks. Rows of shelving fanned out before him in the low light. The beautifully made wooden stacks were each twelve metres high, and each row ran off as far as he could see. Sets of brass library steps with complex gears were attached to each stack at intervals and could be run along the shelves on inertia-less rails to allow readers access to the higher levels. As Hawser moved, his body heat triggered catalogue tags on adjacent shelves. Hololithic tags lit up, and a pleasant voice spoke.
Eastern Literature, Hol to Hom.
Eastern Literature, sub-section, Homezel, Tomas, works of.
Eastern Literature, Hom to Hom continued.
'Mute,' Hawser instructed. The pleasant voice faded. The hololithic tags continued to flare up and then gradually fade as he hurried past.
'Hello?' he called. He ducked back and tried another row. How could a walking figure have vanished so quickly?
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned in time to see the hooded figure, just for a second, as it crossed a division between stacks. He broke into an urgent sprint to catch up with it, but when he got to the division, there was no sign.
Except a couple of hololithic shelf tags slowly fading away again, as if passing body heat had only recently brought them to life.
'Navid! I've had enough of this!' Hawser yelled out. 'Stop playing games!'
Something made him turn. The hooded figure was behind him, right behind him, silent and ghostly. It slowly raised its hands up from its sides, raising them out straight like wings, or like a celebrant priest invoking a deity.
The softly gloved right hand held a knife.
It was a ceremonial blade. An athame. Hawser recognised its form at once. It was a sacrificial blade.
'You're not Navid,' he whispered.
'Choices have to be made, Kasper Hawser,' said a voice. It wasn't Murza, and it wasn't the hooded figure either. Fear crushed Hawser's heart.
'What choices?' he managed to ask.
'You have much to offer, and we would be pleased to have a relationship with you. It would be of mutual benefit. But you have to make a choice, Kasper Hawser.'
'I still don't understand,' Hawser replied. 'Where's Murza? He said he was bringing me to meet with the people he works with.'
'He did. He has. Navid Murza is a disappointment. He is rash. He is unreliable. An unreliable servant. An unreliable witness.'
'So?'
'We are looking for someone more suited to our needs. Someone who knows what he's looking for. Someone who can recognise the truth. Someone who can see with better eyes. You.'
'I think you've mistaken me for some kind of idiot who wants to join a pathetic secret club,' Hawser answered fiercely. 'Take off that stupid hood. Let me see your face. Is that you, Murza? Is this another of your stupid games?'
The hooded figure took a step forwards. It almost seemed to glide.
'You have to make a choice, Kasper Hawser,' said the voice.
Hawser realised the voice was coming from all around him. It definitely wasn't coming from the figure. It was the soft and pleasant system voice of the stack shelves. How could anything or anyone speak to him through the Bibliotech's artificial system?
'You have to make a choice, Kasper Hawser.'
Hawser heard Navid cry out. It wasn't a vocalisation. It was a tremor of pain. He turned his back on the hooded figure, and started to stride down the aisle, not quite running, but moving more urgently than a walk.
'You have to make a choice,' the shelves whispered to him as he walked by. 'You have to make a choice. See for us, and we will show you such things.'
'Navid?' Hawser called out, ignoring the voice,
A four-way junction in the stacks lay ahead. A set of library steps had been rolled to the end of one of the adjacent stacks, and Murza had been bound to its brass rail by his wrists. He was lying on the floor, half twisted, with his legs stretched out into the centre of the junction area and his arms pulled up painfully by the restraint. He looked half-drugged, or woozy as if he'd been felled by violence.
There were six more hooded figures standing in a vague semi-circle around him.
'You have to make a choice,' said the voice.
'What are you doing to him?' Hawser demanded.
'You have to make a choice. See for us, and we will show you such things. Things you cannot imagine.'
Murza let out a low moan.
Hawser ignored the hooded figures and crouched down by Murza. He tilted the man's face up. Murza was flushed and sweaty. Fear pricked his eyes.
'Kas,' he stammered. 'Kas, help me. I'm so sorry. They like you. You interest them.'
'Why?'
'I don't know! They won't tell me! I just wanted to make an introduction, that's all. Show that I was useful to them too, that I could bring them the people they needed.'
'Oh, Navid, you're such a fool...'
'Please, Kas.'
Hawser looked up at the robed figures behind him.
'We're going to walk out of here now,' he said, with more conviction than he actually felt. 'Navid and I, we're going to get up and walk out of here.'
'You have to make a choice, Kasper Hawser,' said the pleasant, artificial voice.
'No, I don't.'
'Yes. We have extended an invitation to you. We do not extend invitations like this to just anybody. You are a rare creature, and this is a rare offer. Do not underestimate the potency of the things we are inviting you to share. They are the things yo |
We're going to walk out of here now,' he said, with more conviction than he actually felt. 'Navid and I, we're going to get up and walk out of here.'
'You have to make a choice, Kasper Hawser,' said the pleasant, artificial voice.
'No, I don't.'
'Yes. We have extended an invitation to you. We do not extend invitations like this to just anybody. You are a rare creature, and this is a rare offer. Do not underestimate the potency of the things we are inviting you to share. They are the things you have spent your life seeking.'
'This is a mistake,' said Hawser.
'The only mistake would be if you said no, Kasper Hawser,' said the voice. 'A yes is far simpler. The signifier of yes should be easy for a man of your education to recognise. It is around you.'
Hawser blinked. He looked at Murza, the figures, the looming shapes of the stacks, the extending perspective of the aisles.
'Of course,' he said. 'A ritual conducted on a crossed point, representing the unity of approaching directions. Eight adepts offering admission to one novitiate. Identities are masked, representing the mysteries awaiting beyond initiation. This is a variation on the initiation rites of the witch-cults of the Age of Strife. Which one? The Knower Sect? The Illuminated? The Cognitae?'
'It doesn't matter,' said the voice.
'No, because that's the whole sell, isn't it?' said Hawser. 'Caveat emptor. The initiate gets to know nothing: no truths, no names, no identities, until after initiation, when it's too late. Revelation breaks the compact of secrecy. I know what you want from me.'
'You have a choice to make.'
'Eight adepts, but there can be only eight. The sacred number. One must step aside to let a replacement in. And one has made a mistake and broken the compact of secrecy.'
Murza moaned again. He pulled weakly at his bonds, making the set of brass library steps rattle.
The hooded figure with the athame held the blade out to Hawser.
'Oh, please, Kas,' Murza whimpered. 'Please.'
Hawser took the blade.
'You really have got yourself in a mess, Navid,' he said.
Hawser made a quick, simple, strike with the dagger. Murza yelped. The cord binding his wrists parted.
Hawser turned to the hooded figures, brandishing the athame.
'Now fug off!' he said.
The semi-circle of figures hesitated for a moment. Then they began to tremble. Each soft, cream suit began to shudder, as if pressurised air hoses had been attached to them to inflate them. They swelled slightly, in ugly, lumpen ways that evoked malformation and defect, and they began to writhe, stirred by ethereal things moving inside them. The felt suits grew plump, distending like balloons. A whine began, a high-pitched note growing louder and louder. It was a shrill wail coming from the stack voice system. Murza and Hawser clamped their hands to their ears. When the noise reached its peak, it cut off abruptly. The hoods of the shuddering figures slipped back and released vapour into the gloomy air. The vapour was golden and it vanished almost as soon as it emerged, like smoke, from the neck holes of the suits. Empty and slack, the seven felt body-robes fell softly onto the floor.
Hawser stared down at the empty suits, at the impossibility of them. There had been men inside them. Even the most subtle and fine-scale teleportation work could not have removed them from inside their robes. He realised he was breathing hard, and tried to contain his panic. He had a peculiar fear inside him, a kind he only rarely experienced, a kind that had followed him from childhood at the commune, from the nightmares he'd had of something scratching at the door.
Murza was clinging to the base of the library steps he'd been tied to. He was sobbing.
'Get up, Murza,' Hawser said. He felt something on his cheek, something too cold for a tear.
It had begun to snow in the library.
The snow was gentle and silent. It drifted down out of the fusty darkness above the stack tops, and glittered like starshine as it passed through the glow of the aisle lamps.
'Snow?' Hawser whispered.
'What?' Murza murmured.
'Snow? How can it be snow?' Hawser said.
'What are you talking about?' Murza said, not really interested.
Hawser stepped away from him, looking up into the darkness, his hands out, upturned, to feel the cold sting of snowflakes landing on his palms.
'Great Terra,' he whispered. 'This isn't right. Snow, that's not right.'
'Why do you keep talking about snow?' Murza moaned.
'This isn't how it happened,' said Hawser.
'It's enough like how it happened for the story to stay true,' said Longfang.
Tra's rune priest was lying at the mouth of the aisle to Hawser's left, propped up against the stack as if it was the orange-tiled wall of a mansion in a city near another star. The blood down his front had caked dry like rust, and he was no longer breathing out a bloody steam, but his lips were wet and red, in sharp contrast to his almost colourless skin.
'How can you be here with me?' Hawser asked.
'I'm not,' said Longfang, his voice a sigh. 'You're here with me. Remember that? This is only your account.'
'Kas?' Murza called. 'Kas, who are you talking to?'
'No one,' said Hawser.
The snow was falling a little more heavily. Hawser knelt down beside Longfang.
'So, did you like my story?'
'I did. I felt your fear. I felt his more.'
Longfang nodded his head towards Murza.
'Who are you talking to, Kas?' Murza called out. 'Kas, what's happening?'
'He got in over his head,' Hawser said to Longfang.
'He was never trustworthy,' the priest replied. 'You should have smelled that on him from the start. In your tale, he was nicer, a better friend to you, than he is now I see him myself. You're too trusting, skjald. People use you because of that.'
'I don't think that's true,' said Hawser.
'What isn't true?' Murza whined.
'You look old,' said Longfang looking up at Hawser.
'I'm a lot younger here than I am as you know me.'
'We made a better you,' replied Longfang.
'Why is it snowing in here?' asked Hawser.
'Because the snow comforts me,' said Longfang. 'It's the snow of Fenris. Of winter approaching. Get me up.'
Hawser reached out his hand. The priest took it and got to his feet. There seemed to be no weight to him this time. He left a pool of blood on the library floor.
The snowfall grew a little heavier.
'Come on,' he said. He started to shuffle down the aisle. Hawser walked with him.
'Kas? Kas, where are you going?' Murza called out behind them.
'What happens?' Longfang asked.
'I'll take him back to the pension, clean him up. We do some soul-searching. I try to weigh up the huge asset he represents to the Conservation programme in terms of his scholarship, ability and sheer tenacity against the huge liability of him consorting with dilettante occultists.'
'What do you decide?'
'That he was a valuable commodity. That I should keep any inquiry internal. That I believed him when he swore to me he was renouncing all his old connections and associations so he could dedicate himself to th-'
'You should have smelled his treachery.'
'Maybe. But for ten years after that night we worked together. There was never any more trouble. He was a superb field researcher. We kept working together until... until he was killed in Ossetia.'
'There was never any more trouble?' asked Longfang.
'No.
'Never?'
'Never,' said Hawser.
'Kas?' Murza's voice echoed out. It was a long way behind them, muffled by the distance and the snow. 'Kas? Kas?'
'So you liked the account?' Hawser asked. 'It amused you? It distracted you?'
'It was amusing enough,' said Longfang. 'It wasn't your best.'
'I can assure you it was,' said Hawser.
Longfang shook his head. Droplets of blood flecked from his beard.
'No, you'll learn better ones,' he said. 'Far better ones. And even now, it's not the best you know.'
'It's the most unnerving thing that happened to me in my old life,' said Hawser with some defiance. 'It has the most... maleficarum.'
'You know that's not true,' said Longfang. 'In your heart, you know better. You're denying yourself.'
'What do you mean?'
The snow had become quite heavy. It was lying on the ground, and their feet were crunching over it. Hawser saw his breath in the air in front of him. It was getting lighter. The stacks were just black slabs in the blizzard, like stone monoliths or impossibly giant tree trunks.
'Where are we going?' Hawser asked.
'Winter,' said Longfang.
'So this is a dream too?'
'No more than your tale was, skjald. Look.'
THE SNOW WAS a kind of neon white, scorching the eye as it reflected a sun high up on a noon apex, the brief, bright bite of a winter day.
The air was as clear as glass. To the west of them, beyond a vast, rolling field of snow and a mighty evergreen forest, mountains rose. They were white, as clean and sharp as carnassials. Hawser realised the murderous gun-metal skies behind them weren't storm clouds. They were more mountains, greater mountains, mountains so immense the sheer scale of them broke a man's spirit. Where their crags ended, buried like thorns in the skin of the sky, the black-hearted wrath of the winter season Fenrisian storms were gathering and clotting, angry as patriarch gods and malign as trickster daemons. In no more than an hour, two at the most pleading limits of a man's prayers, the sun would be gone and the light too, and the storms would have come in over the peaks on their murder-make. The fury would be suicidal, like men rushing a firm shield wall, and the snow-clouds would disembowel themselves on the mountain tops and spill their contents on the valley.
'Asaheim,' said Hawser, so cold he could barely speak. It felt as if all of his blood had gone solid.
'Yes,' said Longfang.
'A whole great year I lived in the Aett, I never went outside of it. I never saw the top of the world.'
'Now you're seeing it,' said Longfang.
'What are we doing?'
'We're being quiet,' said Longfang. 'This is my tale.'
The rune priest began to advance down the l |
d the snow-clouds would disembowel themselves on the mountain tops and spill their contents on the valley.
'Asaheim,' said Hawser, so cold he could barely speak. It felt as if all of his blood had gone solid.
'Yes,' said Longfang.
'A whole great year I lived in the Aett, I never went outside of it. I never saw the top of the world.'
'Now you're seeing it,' said Longfang.
'What are we doing?'
'We're being quiet,' said Longfang. 'This is my tale.'
The rune priest began to advance down the long white shoulder of the vast snow field. His head was low, his stance wide-spaced. The gossamer-white pelt across his back caused him to almost vanish into the lying snow. He had a long steel spear in his right hand.
Hawser followed him, head down, putting his feet in Longfang's footprints. The prints were shallow: the snow was as hard as rock. Their breath came out of their mouths in long sideways streams like silk banners.
Snow stopped its slow, gentle fall and began coming in from the direction of the mountains, loose flakes driven by the wind in circling, dizzy patterns. Hawser felt it sting his face. The nature of light in the world around them changed. A shadow against the sky tilted. The horizon was filling up with a grey vapour. The sun seemed to look away. It was as though a veil had been drawn, or a screen pulled across a door. There was still sunlight, bright yellow sunlight, at the top of the sky, and it was reflecting its neon-burn off the ridge of the snow line, but down where they were, the snow was suddenly a dark, cold pearl colour.
Longfang pointed. Down at the tree line, huge, slow shapes processed in a loose, plodding group. They were vast quadruped herbivores, part bison, part elk, darkly pelted in black, woolly coats. Their bone antler branches were the size of tree canopies. Hawser could hear the snort and huff of them.
'Saeneyti,' whispered Longfang. 'Stay low and quiet. Their antlers work as acoustic reflectors. They'll hear us long before they're in spear-throwing range.'
Hawser realised he had a spear of his own.
'Are we hunting?'
'We're always hunting,' said Longfang.
'So if they heard us, they'd run?'
'No, they'd turn on us to defend the calves. Those antlers are longer and sharper than our spears, skjald. Remember to put that in your account.'
'I thought this was your account, priest?'
Longfang grinned.
'I just want you to get the details right.'
'All right.'
'And watch the treeline,' Longfang added.
Hawser turned to look at the edge of the forest. He could see its shadowed, evergreen blackness through the snow. The towering tree trunks looked like the ends of Bibliotech book stacks. He knew that even in full sunshine, light didn't dare penetrate the mossy darkness of the fir glades.
'Why?' he asked.
'Because we may not be the only ones hunting,' Longfang replied.
Hawser swallowed.
'Priest?'
'Yes?'
'What is the point of this tale? What is the purpose of telling it to me?'
'Its point is its point.'
'Very gnomic. I mean what am I supposed to learn from it?'
'It's about time we trusted you with one of our secrets,' Longfang replied. 'A good one. A blood one.'
As if to emphasise the word, Hawser realised he could suddenly smell blood. He could smell Longfang's blood. Immediately afterwards, he smelled something else too: the dung-stink and ferment-odour of cattle. He could smell the saeneyti.
The wind had changed. It was bringing the stink of the herd up towards them. The clouds moved, shoved by the wind, racing and scudding. The sun came back out and turned its glare on them like a lamp. They were black dots in a broad neon snow field.
They were painfully visible.
The big bull leading the herd turned its bearded head and made a booming, trumpeting sound through nostrils the size of sewer pipes. It shook its crown of antlers. The herd took off in agitation, hooting and braying, waddling their huge bodies away double-time, kicking up powder snow.
The bull peeled away from the fleeing herd and came back up the slope.
'Shit!' said Hawser. He hadn't fully appreciated the size of the creature. Four, perhaps five metres tall? How many tonnes? And the width of those antlers, like the spread wings of a drop-ship.
'Move yourself!' Longfang shouted. He had his arm crooked back, the spear locked to throw, standing his ground. The bull was coming on. It was too big, too tall, too cumbersome to develop any real speed, but it was inexorable and it was angry.
'I said move!' Longfang cried.
Hawser started to stumble across the snow away from Longfang.
'No. To the side. The side!' Longfang ordered.
Hawser was running away from Longfang and the approaching bull. If it ran Longfang down, it would simply run him down too. Longfang intended him to turn wide, out of its line of charge.
Given the breadth of its antler crown, that was going to be some distance.
The snow was hard to run on. He was already out of breath. It felt like he was struggling with his old, human body, the one he had worn before Fenris, the weak, aging Kasper Hawser. Every step was an effort to lift his feet high enough to clear the snow. He had to bound. The light, fluorescent-bright, burned his eyes.
He looked back in time to see Longfang cast. The spear flashed in the bright sunlight. It seemed to strike the huge beast, but it vanished against shaggy black hair. The bull saeneyti kept coming. Longfang vanished in a welter of pulverised snow.
Hawser yelled the priest's name involuntarily.
The bull swung towards him.
Hawser turned and fled. He knew it was futile. He could hear its muffled thunder, its snorting and grunting, the oceanic surge of its gastric caverns. He could smell its rank breath, its spittle, its giant mauve tongue. It boomed again like a carnyx.
Hawser knew he wasn't going to outrun it. Expecting an antler spike to split through his torso from the back at any moment, he turned and threw his spear.
It weighed too much. It didn't even reach the saeneyti, even though the bull was closing the distance and was scarcely five metres away.
Hawser fell on his backside. Wide-eyed and helpless, he watched death ploughing towards him, head down.
A black wolf hit the saeneyti from the side. It looked like a normal wolf, until Hawser tried to reconcile the size of it compared to the saeneyti bull, which he knew to be the size of the very largest prehistoric Terran saurians. The wolf had gone for the nape of the neck. It had closed its jaws just in front of the humped shoulder mass where the saeneyti carried its winter fat.
The bull lifted its head and let out an excruciating, throttled noise. It tried to twist its head to hook the predator with its crown of antlers and toss it away, but the wolf was tenacious and held on. Jaws clamped, it made a wet leopard-growl that was half muffled by the bull's pelt.
Blood as black as ink was running down the bull's wattle, spattering the snow between its front feet. It was streaming down through the black wool. The saeneyti snorted again, pink froth foaming at its mouth and nose. Its eyes were wild and mad, red-rimmed, staring insanely out from under the thick fringe of winter fur.
It went down hard, front legs collapsing first. It fell onto its front knees, and then the back end followed. Finally, its body went over in a catastrophic roll onto its side like the hull of a capsizing yacht. Hawser could see the saeneyti's huge, protruding tongue shuddering between its yellow teeth, lips peeled back. Its breath pumped out in clouds like a malfunctioning steam engine. Blood vomited out of its mouth across the snow and lay there smoking.
The wolf maintained its grip until the bull gave up its last, trembling rumble, then it let go. Blood dripped from its snout. It padded around the massive corpse twice, moving quickly, head low, sniffing.
It stopped beside the head of its kill, and raised its own head, ears upright, to stare at Hawser. Its eyes were golden and black-pinned. Hawser stared back. He knew if he tried to get back on his feet, the wolf would still be taller than him.
'There are no wolves on Fenris.'
Hawser looked up. Longfang was standing beside him, staring at the wolf.
'That's evidently not true at all,' Hawser replied in a tiny voice.
Longfang grinned down at him.
'Try to keep up, skjald. There were no wolves on Fenris until we got here.'
Longfang looked back at the wolf.
'Twice he's helped protect you,' he said.
'What?' asked Hawser.
'He had a different name last time you were in his company,' said Longfang. 'Then, he was called Brom.'
The black wolf turned and ran for the forest, accelerating as only a mammalian apex predator can. It vanished into the enormous darkness under the evergreens.
After a few seconds, Hawser saw its eyes staring out of the blackness at them: luminous, gold and black-pinned.
It took him another few moments to realise that there were another ten thousand pairs of eyes watching them from the shadows of the forest.
'I THINK YOU should explain,' said Hawser. He felt angry, and curiously cold given the heat washing across the courtyard. 'What do you mean he was called Brom? What do you mean by that?'
Longfang didn't answer. He stared back at Hawser with a sneering look that defied argument.
'This is ridiculous!' Hawser exclaimed. 'This is just some of your myth-making! This is a mjod story! A mjod story!'
He hoped this would provoke a reaction, stir something in the old rune priest that would make him reveal some actual truth.
Longfang remained silent.
'Well, I don't think much of your account then,' said Hawser.
He heard footsteps behind him and turned. Bear was walking towards him, with Aeska Brokenlip close behind him. They were both spattered with Quietude gore. Hawser became aware again of the constant noise around him, the swirling din of end-war circling the pit.
'Tell him to speak plainly to me!' Hawser said to Bear, rising. 'Tell him not to insult me with riddles!'
Bear crouched down besid |