by John French
Aximand was almost there, a red cloak spilling from his shoulders, eye-lenses red in the tusked grotesque of his faceplate, a devil-king come to deliver the last gift to a crippled foe.
‘Come to me!’ breathed Sigismund.
Pillars of light unfolded in mid-air across the deck. Blast waves tore out. The Sons of Horus caught in the glare blurred to shadows before they came apart. Figures in yellow armour stood in their place. Sigismund saw the shapes of boarding shields locked in defensive circles. Bolters fired, and the sound of explosions chased the fading thunder of teleportation. Traitor legionaries fell, punched off their feet by impacts. The circles of Imperial Fists broke apart and flowed back together, shields locking into a single wall. Sigismund saw the twin axe emblem burned into the pitted yellow, and Rann’s black shield at the centre of the line as it charged. They fired as they came, shooting from the loopholes in their high shields. It was brutal perfection, like a perfect axe blow to shatter a skull. And as Sigismund rose, his own blade cutting into the enemies surrounding him, he heard the shield-wall crash into the Sons of Horus.
The mass of sea-green warriors reeled back, but they were neither humans nor newborn Space Marines. They were the XVI Legion as they had once been, warriors who had earned in blood and death the high place from which they had fallen. They reformed to meet the Imperial Fists shield-wall. Gunfire punched out. Streams of plasma and melta-beams struck a single shield and vaporised both shield and warrior. The scattered Sons of Horus came together in a narrow wedge to force open the break in the shield-wall before the gap closed. A command roared out above the heads of the Imperial Fists, echoing across the vox.
‘Open!’ shouted Rann.
The wall pulled apart, wide spaces appearing between the shields. Warriors in yellow and black charged through the openings. Enamelled laurels crowned their helms, and the swords in their hands lit with blue fire. At their head ran Boreas, his white tabard of office flecked with blood and burned by flame. The Templars struck the Sons of Horus as the shield-wall closed behind them.
It was as though a thunderbolt had reached ahead of the closing storm front. The bridge was suddenly a press of bodies and weapons grinding together like bloody teeth. Power weapons split flesh and armour, and now the deck was a swirl of hacking, slicing and battering. Sigismund saw Boreas put his sword through a warrior in sea-green, and fire half a clip of bolt-rounds into the face of another before kicking the corpse off his blade in time to meet the downward cut of a chainglaive. Another slice of time, and the jaws of battle closed over Boreas.
Sigismund was cutting forwards against the tide; he could feel his wounds clotting inside his armour. There were warriors in green and bronze all around him. Another line of pain across his ribs as a blow from behind lashed into his side. He reversed his sword and stabbed it up under his arm. He felt it punch home and ripped it back, spinning the blade in his hands and bringing it down and up to cut the warrior in front of him from groin to shoulder. He stepped forwards and paused.
The fingers of his left hand would not close on the grip of his sword.
There was something in his side, something embedded in his ribs, something scattering pain into his nerves.
‘Lord!’ He heard the shout, close by but dim against the din of clashing blades and gunfire.
He could taste iron in his mouth.
The battle parted in front of him.
His left arm was numb, his strength draining red onto the deck.
Horus Aximand came for him. Little Horus did not offer words or posture for the kill. Those were the mistakes of lesser warriors, of those who believed that contempt led to victory. Aximand simply charged and swept his great, broad-bladed sword up in a killing blow.
Sigismund stepped back, but Aximand’s first cut became the second and the third. Sigismund parried the last one-handed and felt the force of the impact tear the muscles in his right shoulder. Little Horus kept coming, swinging faster and faster. Sigismund cut back but found only air; Aximand was fresh and Sigismund could feel his world contracting away from the battle around him. This was a moment that the Sons of Horus had left for their lord, weakened prey for the teeth of the alpha wolf.
Sigismund read Aximand’s next cut and hammered a backhanded counter at his head. Aximand met the blow and the two swords ground against each other. Sparks arced out from the competing power fields. Little Horus forced his blade forwards. Sigismund jerked back, releasing his locked blade, but Aximand had felt the pressure give and was lunging forwards. Sigismund raised his sword. But the parry never met.
A long blade slammed Little Horus’ sword down.
Boreas rammed his weight forwards into Aximand as the lord of the Sons of Horus dragged his blade back up and turned to meet this new opponent. Boreas punched the pommel of his sword into Aximand’s right eye-lens. Red crystal shattered. Boreas struck again and again, giving Aximand no space to cut. Armour crumpled. Blood spattered from torn ceramite.
Boreas stepped back, raising his sword to cut down and in. It was perfectly timed, the product of experience and training and the lessons of ten thousand battlefields. It was also a mistake. The blow would not land. Not because Boreas had made an error in technique, but because the opponent he was facing was a lord of traitors, a son of Horus schooled by the Warmaster both before and after his fall. Aximand twisted and rammed his faceplate into Boreas before the Templar could strike. Sigismund saw Boreas stagger, then the press of battle closed over his view.
Sigismund shoved forwards but a warrior with a crested helm barred his path and swung a two-handed mace. A shield caught the blow. Light and lightning exploded off the black-faced shield. The warrior with the mace staggered. Rann rammed his shield forwards and buried his axe in the warrior’s neck.
‘They have teeth after all,’ growled Rann, pulling his shield close as a squall of bolt-rounds exploded off it. Sigismund was at Rann’s side, the old patterns of war slotting back into place without question. There were Imperial Fists all around them now, forming a triangle of overlapping shields.
‘Low!’ shouted Rann as a beaked hammer’s head hooked over the top of his shield to pull it down. Sigismund braced, holding his sword low in his one good hand. Rann gave for an instant and then surged forwards, muscle and armour and decades of sharpened skill flowing into the movement. The shield went high, yanking up the hammer hooked over its edge. Sigismund stabbed his sword up and under the bottom of the shield. He felt it ram home through armour and into meat, and pulled it back before the dead weight could pull it down.
In the brief opening he glimpsed Boreas and Aximand. There were Sons of Horus all around Boreas now, and blood lacquered the First Lieutenant’s armour.
‘The teleport sequence is initiated,’ called Rann. ‘The Persephone will be in range in four minutes. Think we can live until then?’
Sigismund shook his head.
‘We advance to Boreas’ side,’ he shouted to Rann. The Assault captain’s laugh boomed out.
‘You really do want to die, don’t you? Boreas was right. We came for you and you want to die to these dogs? The ship is crawling with the bastards.’
‘Our oath was to this moment,’ shouted Sigismund.
‘And our duty is to the war,’ roared Rann.
‘We will not abandon him.’
Rann glanced around at him, green eye-lenses unreadable in his helmed face.
‘All right. As you will it.’ He braced into the shield. ‘Forwards on my lead!’ The shield-wall surged ahead, battering into a gale of gunfire and blades.
One pace, two paces, muscle and servos screaming as they absorbed blows, bolters firing into their path.
‘Opening!’ shouted Rann and a second gap opened in front of the shield-wall. Sigismund saw Boreas again. He was on the deck, his armour and body a bloody ruin. Aximand stood above him in triumph, sword reversed and descending for the final blow.
Sigismund’s sword met the down-thrust. Light sheared from its edges. Aximand jerked back from the contact. Sigismund stood above Boreas, beyond the wall of shields.
‘Brace for teleport extraction!’ shouted Rann into the vox, but Sigismund was not listening. He was taking another step, his eyes reading the arc of Aximand’s rising sword, his own muscles and blade aligning. Nothing else was real. Nothing else mattered. His truth was and always had been an echo of this moment, the descent of the sword like breathing out, like life.
His first blow struck Aximand’s sword arm and took hand and blade off at the wrist. A second cut followed the first. No pause. No breath drawn. Blood falling as the tip and edge of Sigismund’s sword passed through chest-plate. Blood flared bright on green armour, the colour of a sea in storm.
Aximand staggering, bleeding.
The air around them screaming.
Light expanding to drown sight.
Sigismund raised his sword for the killing blow.
And the world vanished in blinding light.
The Imperial Fists left the Lachrymae to the blades of their enemies. The surviving ships dived for the void and the distant mote that was the sun. Most were wounded, many were burning, and some would die before they reached the battles that waited for them.
On the teleportation deck of the Persephone, Sigismund lowered the sword that he had raised on another ship. The dissipating thunder of teleport discharge faded from the air. Around him, streaked in blood and soot, stood the brothers that had come for him. Behind him, unmoving on the deck, lay Boreas. Blood was seeping from him, pooling on the floor.
‘Apothecaries!’ shouted Rann from nearby.
Sigismund did not speak. The numbness in his left arm had become fire in his flesh. He looked down at his sword, still chained to his other wrist, and then raised it and touched the flat of its blade to his forehead.
Sigismund honours the fallen.
Slayers of kings
Spear of many blades
The truth of knives
Battle-barge War Oath, Supra-Solar Gulf
The holo-images of Kibre and Sota-Nul collapsed into static and then darkness. The psychic projection of Ahriman lingered. The Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons looked at Abaddon for a moment, then spoke in thought.
Farewell,+ he said, and then his image was gone, leaving a ghost of psychic frost on the air. +May all be done as it is willed.+
Abaddon looked unblinking into the space vacated by the two sub-fleet commanders. Above and behind him the council chamber rose and spread out, the empty air silent to its shadow-draped walls.
‘May all be done,’ said Abaddon into the empty dark.
Such was the intent of what they did that the ultimate ends of each part of the attack were known only to the most senior commanders. Of that cadre, only some were aware of the interlocking purposes of their actions. And even then, only a few, a very few, knew the inner knots of the Warmaster’s design. No one else could know, even amongst the highest ranks of the Legion or its closest allies. So, the last gathering of those commanders, before they took to their own paths, had taken place in the empty dark, without aides or companions.
Abaddon stood still at the centre of the room for a moment, his eyes reaching into the dark but not seeing it.
Torchlight danced in the distance.
Blood hazed his sight.
‘This is him?’ came a voice, low but clear and strong. Abaddon looked up and felt the chains tighten around his neck. Two shadows loomed above him. Both held torches of bright flame. ‘He looks barely alive.’
‘We would not have got him if he hadn’t been that way. He went through thirty of the deep-warren gangs before we found him. That was after the rest of his followers had fallen. He was making for a tunnel when we reached him.’
‘He will survive those wounds?’
‘If he doesn’t, then do we want him?’
A low grunt of acknowledgement and then one of the looming shadows came forwards and squatted down. The light of the torch it carried pulled streaks of orange and red across grey-white armour. Dark eyes looked at Abaddon from a face of scar tissue and jagged tattoos.
‘You see us, don’t you, boy?’ said the face.
Abaddon did not reply.
He had been in the deeps leading a raid against the warren holdings of the Headtakers. There had been an ambush. They had been waiting, three clans’ worth at least, come to take the head of the exiled prince. Hundreds of gang killers pouring from tunnels, the boom of frag mines detonating, hard rounds buzzing through the air… They had killed half of his oath siblings with the first blasts. It was butchery and cowardice, but he had come out of the smoke and dust and hit the first ambusher he had seen with a backhanded blow that had split the man’s head along the hinge of his jaw to the back of his skull.
‘You know who we are?’ asked the face, its gaze unflinching. Abaddon met it and nodded.
‘You are the takers of the dead,’ he said.
The face laughed.
‘That we are, boy, that we are.’ The figure held up a coin in armoured fingers. The silver disc’s face was mirror-polished. ‘I have a coin for your life.’
Abaddon did not move but held his face and gaze still. There was pain in his side. He could taste blood. He was going to die, but he was not going to give these creatures that looked like men the trophy of victory. If they had come for his life and soul, then they would have to rip it out of him. The takers of the dead had always been there. They lived in the night and stars that circled through Cthonia’s skies. They watched, judged and took the worthy up to the dark to become like them. Some thought them just a story, but whole clans had vanished during the gang wars of recent years and were never seen again. The takers were real.
‘We have been looking for you,’ said the face, ‘for the exiled prince who killed his father rather than murder his oath-companions and become a man.’
Abaddon remained silent. The other figure, still half out of sight, shifted and gave a bark of laughter.
‘You won’t get anything from him, Syrakul. Look at him. He is not a talker. There’s too much anger looking for a way out. That’s why he is here. That’s why he nearly died in those tunnels and got everyone who believed in him killed. He may be a killer, but he is filled with so much fire that he will burn everything he touches.’
The second figure stepped into Abaddon’s blurred sight. This one wore the same grey-white armour as the first and held a comb-topped helm under his left arm. Abaddon’s eye caught the sign of a crescent moon marked on the helm above the right eye. The man’s skin was the black of polished cinder-wood. A close-cropped mohawk of hair ran across his scalp. Wide, silver-grey eyes glittered above a smile. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? You will look upon us and not say a word, even if we reach into you with knives and cut out your soul.’
The first figure, the one called Syrakul, stood.
‘Is my brother right, boy?’ asked Syrakul. ‘Or do you have more than anger flowing in your veins, Abaddon?’
He felt his face twitch at the sound of his name, and his eyes flicked between the pair looking down at him.
‘Yes. We know your name,’ said the figure with grey eyes. ‘We know who you are, and what you have done. We know that you killed almost all the clan of your birth, and that those that remain have hunted you ever since. We know that you killed everyone sent against you, and then found who sent them and did to them what they failed to have done to you. We know all this. We know you are a killer, and a survivor, Abaddon, son of Tarkerradon. What we don’t know is if you have the strength to be more.’
‘I don’t…’ Abaddon forced the words out through broken teeth and pain. At some point in the fight after the ambush, something had shattered half the bones of his face. ‘I don’t want to be a king.’
Laughter boomed out a
gain.
‘That is something you will never be, Abaddon,’ said the warrior with grey eyes. ‘Either you will die here, or you will become one of us. We are the slayers of kings and the killers of tyrants. We are brothers in war, and blood. We live for each other and die for the future we make, and that is all we will ever be. Can you be that, Abaddon?’
He looked up at them. The pain was trying to pull him down into its grasp. He sucked a breath, heard the chains clink. In his mind he saw the cave of becoming again, his father falling from his bloody hand, him turning fast but too slow as one of the guards yanked back Kars’ head and sawed a knife across his blood-sibling’s throat.
‘Is what you say true?’ Abaddon asked, pulling the words from the pit of his pain. ‘Do you swear that it is true?’
Syrakul glanced at his companion, and then nodded.
‘It is true, boy. By the oath I took on this moment, it is true.’
Abaddon tried to rise but the chains held him.
‘I am…’ he said, hearing his voice rasp. ‘Then I am yours.’
They did not move. He could feel them watching him, weighing him in their eyes.
‘Break the chains,’ said the grey-eyed warrior.
Syrakul stepped forwards and took hold of the links of Abaddon’s bonds and broke them as though they were rotten rope.
Syrakul and the grey-eyed warrior watched him. Abaddon drew a breath and then pushed himself upright, inch by agonised inch until he stood, bloody, his face a broken mass. His left arm hung by his side, broken, the hand hanging by a strand of skin and sinew. Pain shook through him.
The grey-eyed warrior exchanged a look with Syrakul, and then nodded.
‘I am Hastur Sejanus. There is a long road ahead of you, Abaddon, and much of it will be marked with greater pain and loss than you have known. There is no reward at the end except to be one of us, to be a brother of warriors and wolves. If that is not enough, then it is better to never begin.’