Incarnation - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  The psycannon on his shoulder spun and fired three times. The sickle blade sliced through space, and the rounds were exploding against the tainted metal, the daemon within it howling in pain. Fresh wounds opened on the scarred man’s arms. Covenant cut, sword slicing straight down. The sickle rose, but it was slower, wounded; for a second just a smile of metal. Covenant drove all his strength into the blow. Lightning flared as the two weapons met again, and the sword bit into the sickle. Blood and molten metal fell from the wounded weapon, but it did not break, and now the scarred man was coming forward, spinning the sickle low under Covenant’s guard, and the swords clashed again.

  The Wanderer was watching, his face showing pain but his movements unhurried. Covenant met the eyes, and through them saw a flash of triumph and of pity in that look.

  ‘You are nothing, understand?’ The voice of memory rose in Covenant, as he parried another blow of the sickle.

  ‘Yes, prefect,’ said the boy in grey kneeling on the floor.

  ‘Only the Emperor is real. Only duty matters. And you…’ The whip lashed across the boy’s raised hands. He swallowed the pain but felt tears form at the corners of his eyes. ‘You are too weak to be true, and too flawed to be faithful.’ And the whip lashed down again.

  No. The thought rose through him, past the doubt. No. And the word was an echo of unspoken rage. The rage caught his thoughts and echoed out through the warp. Force ripped from him. The scarred man faltered, scars, tattoos and brands kindling with cold light. Bullets blurred in from behind Covenant.

  ‘Get back, my lord!’ Koleg’s dry shout rose above the din.

  The scarred man’s flesh burst as rounds tore through muscle. He fell, the blade twisting in his hand. Covenant’s psycannon roared instinctively and he was going forwards, his muscles pulling the edge of his sword down onto the fallen figure’s neck. The scarred man gasped a silent scream, and twisted away, blink-fast. Ashen blood drew back into bullet wounds, scars split and spread. Covenant tried to turn, to pull the killing blow around to meet the sickle, but it was already sliding past his guard, and he could feel the hunger at its core hissing in anticipation. The psycannon on his shoulder clattered on an empty chamber as his mind willed it to fire.

  ‘What do they call you here?’ Argento had asked in the cell in the schola.

  ‘Zero-one-three-seven-delta,’ he had answered, looking up into the inquisitor’s eyes.

  ‘A name for the past, not the future. You shall be called Covenant.’

  He rammed his will out at the scarred man, but felt the power drain into the sickle. Time was a slow creep from instant to instant. Sound had vanished from his ears.

  ‘What is the only thing that is worse than betrayal?’

  ‘Failure,’ he had answered. His master had smiled.

  ‘Quite right too, boy.’

  But I have failed, he thought, and saw his own pale face in the scarred man’s eyes as the sickle slid through the last breath of air.

  The scarred man vanished. Flesh and bone blasted to ash. The sickle dropped to the floor, twisting as it fell and then folding and crumpling, the metal glowing with heat as the daemon bound within screamed. Covenant stumbled, cinders stinging his eyes, as above and around him the conjured daemons howled like jackals.

  Memnon turned, panic on his once-calm face.

  A figure walked from a shadowed door. The robes were burning from him, but the features of Abbot Iacto could still be seen on its mask of cracked skin.

  Flames haloed it. Black smoke cloaked it, and its eyes were suns. The floor cracked under its feet. Slabs of stone peeled up into the air. The pillars of the cathedral groaned and shifted.

  A daemon the size of a tank and shaped like a skinned dog leaped forward with a hooting cry. The burning figure turned its head and the daemon came apart. False muscle and bone unwound into nothing, and the thing’s shriek drained into silence. The sounds of battle faded with the figure’s slow measured steps as it came on. Covenant was still, staring at the advancing figure.

  Inside his head, Memnon could feel thoughts and emotions draining away, burning from his soul and pulling into the golden vortex of the advancing figure.

  ‘You have to kill it!’ he shouted. Covenant looked around. Memnon shook his head. ‘You do not understand. It is not time, this is not–’ And the burning figure looked at him then, and the burning eyes met his. His eyes burst and boiled. He felt his heart stop. Blood went still in his veins. Muscles froze. He was lifting from the ground, feeling the substance of his being pull apart as something vast reached into his mind, and he felt his thoughts pull apart as countless voices screamed in his skull. The last breath in his lungs hissed from his throat, catching the last word that he would speak in this world.

  ‘…Emperor,’ he said.

  Covenant saw the Wanderer dissolve into smoke. The haloed figure was still walking forwards. He could hear shouts and the sounds of battle, close but far away. His sword was heavy in his hand. The Wanderer’s last words rolled through him. He saw golden and silver faces hanging on a wall, saw the tools spin as they sculpted the mask of an enemy or of a martyr. He thought of Argento, of him sighing and putting his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You choose. That is what we do. We choose between madness and insanity, between darkness and deeper night. We choose when the only thing worse than what we must do is making no choice at all.’

  The burning figure stopped. Covenant could feel the heat through his armour. He did not look at it. He did not move.

  +I…+ came a voice in his head, like the blast of a furnace. +I cannot see…+

  He looked up. The burning figure swayed. The light in its eyes guttered. Covenant took a step forwards. Stone and ash began to drop to the floor, exploding into dust. Someone was at his shoulder, pulling him back, and he could hear voices he recognised. He reached the figure as it struck the floor.

  Charred skin spilt. He dropped to his knees beside it. A blackened hand rose and grasped air.

  ‘Please…’ said a human voice. Ember fires flared in the pits of Abbot Iacto’s eyes. ‘Did it matter?’ The charred body convulsed, cracks spreading across the floor beneath it.

  ‘Covenant!’ called Orsino’s voice, from just next to him. Another hand on his shoulder, pulling him. He shrugged free and stood.

  +I… cannot…+ rasped a voice that was many voices all fading into the distance. +I must…+

  He could hear shouting. Gunfire, close by. His sword was in his hands. The edge lit with lightning.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Covenant said.

  Xilita felt the heat rise up the shaft to meet her. She knelt on the grating. Around her the governor machines had started to vibrate. Pipes blew out in clouds of steam. Alarm bells clanged. Pain was growing in her skin where it touched the metal gantry floor.

  ‘For my sins, forgive me,’ she said, and gasped for breath. The reek of sulphur rose. Beneath her, the distant glow of magma raced up towards her like the exhalation of a tortured god.

  ‘No…’ gasped Josef. ‘No… not yet.’ He bit down on his own tongue, felt pain and tasted blood.

  He pushed up, feeling the pain rise to swallow him, and forcing it down.

  ‘If…’ he gasped aloud. ‘If ever I served You truly… grant me this time.’

  He felt Agata’s hands steady him. He was weeping, he knew, tears freezing on his cheeks amongst the snowflakes. He rose, swaying, feeling the ground pull him back into its embrace, and knowing that if he yielded he would never rise again.

  The monastery loomed above him, lit by growing fires blurred by snow and smoke.

  ‘We must–’

  He began but never finished the words.

  Fire roared up into the dark, punching a fist of burning gas and molten rock towards the heavens. Blocks of stone rose like flecks of dust. Snow flashed to steam as it fell. Six seconds later the shockwave swept down and blew Josef back off his feet as he stared, open-mouthed, at the inferno.

  EPILOGUE

  The
Sorceress stood in the freezing twilight beside the black mirror of water. The sun had sunk behind the bones of the dead hives, and bruise-like shadows were strangling the last of the daylight.

  Sparks of pain twitched up her spine as she shifted her weight on her bionic legs. Beneath the folds of silk and crinoline she moved on sprung arcs of black carbon and brass. The fibre bundles were still meshing with her nervous system, and moments of both minor and extreme pain were her constant companion. It was one of the smallest prices she had paid in her service to humanity, though perhaps one of the least easy to put aside.

  She waited.

  The pain passed. She held her thoughts still. The quiet of the dead temple seeped into her. The place had been burned and forgotten long before the world around it had risen in grace and then slumped back into techno-barbarism. Ancient soot darkened its pillars and floors, and the bones of its priests now clung to the corners as dust. It was a place that mattered only if you knew what it had been, and had the will to put its ghosts to use.

  The Sorceress bent her head and looked down at the dim reflection in the pool of water at her feet. A black silk hood framed her face. Kohl rimmed her eyes, and painted letters – death marks in the language of the local clans – wound over her cheeks and chin. She closed her eyes, focused her will, and breathed a word into the cold air.

  She opened her eyes.

  A face was looking up at her from the black water, but it was no longer hers.

  ‘You have read the auguries?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ said the High Priest, his voice seeming to come like a distant echo in the air.

  ‘Not what we expected,’ said the Sorceress.

  ‘The presence of the Pilgrims of Hate was… unusual. Their creed was supposed to be confined to Nex and Dammerron. I thought you kept their seed to those worlds… but I suppose the storm winds rise and fire spreads where it will.’

  The Sorceress kept her silence for a lengthening moment.

  ‘The Wanderer is a bad loss,’ she said at last.

  ‘Is he?’ asked the High Priest.

  ‘His skills, commitment and insight–’

  ‘Can be replaced, or bettered, and besides, he performed his function. The prospect fell short of incarnation. At least in whole.’

  ‘Only just.’

  ‘Indeed, but in matters of salvation the margins of success are always narrow.’

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘There is still the question of why this occurred again on Dominicus.’

  ‘You gave an answer to Memnon when he asked. It is a crucible of fate, those were your words. Did you lie?’

  A laugh shivered through the temple.

  ‘No, but after the loss of Revelation, I just thought that it was done. The two went together, child and place. That another prospect should arise there, after all this time… for a while I wondered if somehow she was still there.’ The High Priest lapsed into a silence which the Sorceress did not fill. ‘The next stage is ready?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have identified a vessel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A shadow of a smile on the dark water.

  ‘You were always my best student,’ said the High Priest, ‘but terrible at hiding your emotions.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ she snarled. The water rippled again.

  ‘We do what is needed, remember that,’ he said. ‘Not just what is necessary, but what is needed if humanity is going to survive the night that comes. You saw that. That is why you are here.’

  ‘Covenant…’

  ‘Yes… An opportunity that is no more. At least it simplifies matters.’

  ‘Do you not…’ she stopped herself. For an instant her focus had slipped. Ripples had blurred the reflected image. Then she had brought her emotions back under control.

  ‘Do I not feel sorrow?’ the High Priest asked. ‘Sorrow is a blanket we give to children.’

  She was silent for a second.

  ‘As you say,’ she replied.

  The face in the water was still for a moment, the shadow of its eyes staring up at her gaze.

  ‘We shall speak again soon,’ he said, at last. ‘Farewell, for now.’

  The reflection cleared from the black water, and a second later it began to boil and steam. Inquisitor Idris looked up at the last scraps of light fading behind the metal peaks in the distance.

  ‘Farewell, for now…’ she said to the silence, and then turned and walked away into the twilight. In the pool, the water that had held the face of Inquisitor Argento continued to boil into vapour and air.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Slaves to Darkness, Praetorian of Dorn and Tallarn, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. Additionally, for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written The Horusian Wars: Resurrection, the audio dramas Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies, Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams, the Ahriman series and many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

  An extract from Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne.

  Say nothing, listen with utmost care,’ he said. ‘You understand me. You are in danger – you know this. You can see the tools against the far wall. But do not look at them. Look at me.’

  The speaker held the man’s staring eyes with his own, which were deep grey and did not blink.

  ‘I brought you here following testimony from those who know you,’ he said. ‘They came to me, and I am bound to listen. Their words have been recorded. You can see them on the tabletop, those volumes there. No, do not look at them either. Look at me. You are afraid. If you let it turn your mind, it will be the end of you, so I will ask you to remember that you are a human being, a master of your passions. When I ask you a question, you will need to answer it, and if you do not speak the truth, I will know. The truth is all I desire. You have one chance left, so hold on to it. Hold on to it. Clutch it. Never deviate from it. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

  The man before him tried to do as he was bid. He tried to hold his interrogator’s gaze, to keep his hands from shaking uncontrollably, and that was difficult. He looked ill, he stank. Two days in a cell, listening to the screams filtering up from the levels below, would do that to you.

  He couldn’t reply. His scab-latticed lips twitched, but the words would not come. He shivered, twitching, fingers flexing, unable to do what was asked of him.

  His interrogator waited. He was used to waiting. He had overseen a thousand sessions on a hundred worlds, so giving this one a little more time would serve well enough. He sat back in his fine orlwood chair, pressed his hands together and rested his chin on the apex of his armoured fingers.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ he asked again.

  The man before him tried to answer again. His face was ashen, just like all lowborn faces on Terra – Throneworld-grey, the pallor of a life lived under the unbroken curtain of tox-clouds.

  ‘I…’ he tried. ‘I…’

  The questioner waited. A thick robe hung from his armoured shoulders, lined with silver death’s heads at the hem. His hair was slicked back from a hard-cut face, waxed to a high sheen. His nose was hooked, his jawline sharp. Something faintly reptilian lingered over those features, something dry, patient and unbreaking.

  Over his chest lay the only formal badge of his office – a skull-form rosette of the Ordo Hereticus, fashioned from iron and pinned to the trim of the cloak. It was a little thing, a trifle, barely larger than the heart stone jewel of an amulet, but in that rosette lay dread, hard-earned over lifetimes.

  The bound man could not drag his gaze away from it, try as he might. It was that, more than the instruments which hung in their shackles on the rust-flecked wall, more than the odour of old blood which rose from the steel floor, more than the scratch-marked synthleather bonds, that held him tightly in his metal chair.

  The inquisitor leaned fo
rwards, letting polished gauntlets drop to his lap. He reached down to the belt at his waist and withdrew a long-barrelled revolver. The grip was inlaid ivory, the chamber adorned with a rippling serpent motif. He idly swung the cylinder out, observed the rounds nestled within, then clicked the chamber back into place. He pressed the tip of the muzzle against his subject’s temple, observing a minute flinch as the cool steel rested against warm flesh.

  ‘I do not wish to use this,’ the inquisitor told him, softly. ‘I do not wish to visit any further harm upon you. Why should I? The Emperor’s realm, infinite as it is, requires service. You are young, you are in passable health. You can serve, if you live. One more pair of hands. Such is the greatest glory of the Imperium – the toil of uncountable pairs of hands.’

  The man was shaking now, a thin line of drool gathering at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘And I would not waste my ammunition, by choice,’ the inquisitor went on. ‘One bullet alone is worth more than you will ever accumulate. The shells are manufactured on Luna by expert hands, adept at uncovering and preserving the things of another age, and they know the value of their art. This is Sanguine, and none but two of its kind were ever made. The twin, Saturnine, has been lost for a thousand years, and has most likely been un-made. And so, consider – would I prefer to use it on you, and cause this priceless thing some small harm, or would I rather that you lived and told me all you know, and allowed me to put it back in its holster?’

  The man didn’t try to look at the gun. He couldn’t meet the gaze of the inquisitor, and so stared in panic at the rosette, blinking away tears, trying to control his shivering.

  ‘I… told you…’ he started.

  The inquisitor nodded, encouragingly. ‘Yes, you did. You told me of the False Angel. I thought then that we might get to the truth, so I let you talk. Then your fear made you dumb, and we were forced to start again. Perhaps everything you have told me was a lie. See now, I am used to those. In my every waking hour I hear a lie from a different pair of lips. Lies are to me like teardrops – transparent and short-lived. If you lie to me again, I will perceive it, and Sanguine will serve you. So speak. Speak now.’