‘What host?’ Mordaine demanded. ‘There was no…’
No!
‘Tell me, Haniel Mordaine, did you ever wonder why the grand master chose a dilettante like yourself as his interrogator?’ the Calavera asked. ‘A man of modest talents compromised by many vices.’
Because he believed in me! Mordaine wanted to shout, teetering between hope and terror. Because he recognised the honour beneath my shame!
‘Did you ever question why he kept you close above all others?’ that insidious whisper slithered on, cultivating doubts that had always been there, waiting to be unearthed. ‘Why he shared so many mysteries and revelations with an acolyte who lacked the wit to comprehend them?’
Because he saw greatness where others saw only mediocrity!
‘Why he still haunts your thoughts like the imminent shadow of your true self? An annihilating, irrefutable truth,’ the Calavera said, driving the blade home.
All the tests and the rituals and that ceaseless, soul-wracking assessment…
Uzochi was going to shoot! Mordaine saw it in the madman’s glassy, hate-ravaged eyes. He fired first, his pistol surging up as if of its own accord. The Calavera made no move as the bolt seared past him and punched through Uzochi’s forehead. The Shark’s mouth gaped open, spilling smoke as his gun crashed to the ground. He stared at Mordaine, but his eyes were empty. There was nothing behind them any more. That vacant condemnation transfixed Mordaine long after the corpse had toppled, for it signified what he’d always been himself: a vessel devoid of substance.
But no longer… The pistol slipped from his grasp and hope followed it.
LIGHT
All roads end in ruin, yet not all ruination is equal. The fall may reap the Void or it may see the Light.
– The Calavera
‘Will I die?’ Mordaine asked some time later. He hadn’t moved. Uzochi’s sightless eyes still held him in thrall.
‘You are not possessed,’ the Calavera answered. ‘Your mind has been imprinted with the template of another, but Aion Escher’s spirit is gone. You will experience changes as the new pattern asserts itself, but your self will remain.’
‘But will it still be me?’
‘I cannot answer that, Haniel Mordaine.’
‘I don’t even know if it was me that shot Uzochi,’ Mordaine said bleakly. ‘Why would I do such a thing?’
‘Because you want to live.’
Do I? Mordaine wondered. Or is that the other?
‘All of this…’ He gestured vaguely at everything and nothing. ‘My exile with Kreeger, the fall of Vyshodd and that infernal interrogation… You engineered it all to awaken the sleeper inside me?’
‘It was one of many synchronous, intertwined objectives,’ the Calavera said. ‘Each facilitated the other. As the revolution galvanised your quickening, so your presence sparked the revolution and both served to enlighten another significant piece. Farsight.’
‘No.’ Mordaine shook his head, appalled at the immensity of the ancient’s conceit. ‘I won’t accept it. You couldn’t possibly contrive such a thing. There are too many variables, too much scope for chance to play havoc.’
‘Your prisoner awaits,’ the Calavera declared. ‘Is that not so?’
Hesitantly Mordaine opened the cell door. The room beyond was empty.
‘The threads of fate will twist, fray and sometimes snap in the winds of Chaos,’ the ancient warrior said. ‘You are correct that nothing is certain, but much is likely for one who can see.’
‘You knew…’ Mordaine was aghast. ‘You knew I would defy you today.’
‘I knew nothing, but suspected much.’
And seeing changes what is seen, Mordaine thought, though he doubted the intuition was his own.
Later still, Mordaine asked about the xenos.
‘He continues his journey,’ the Calavera answered.
The interrogator didn’t question how or where the alien had gone. The answer would prove a mundane revelation alongside the others. Instead he asked the question that really mattered: ‘Was he truly O’Shovah?’
‘Would you trust my answer?’ the Calavera asked in turn.
‘What would you gain by lying?’
‘What would you gain by a truth you cannot recognise yourself?’ the ancient countered.
Mordaine closed his eyes, seeking to sever himself from the cat-and-mouse ritual that bound him. He found refuge in pragmatism: ‘What happens now?’
‘The mechanisms of this transport are rudimentary,’ the Calavera said with merciful directness. ‘You will master them without difficulty.’
‘To what purpose?’ Mordaine asked, aloof and sightless.
‘You will continue your journey to Yakov Hive, where the conclave’s retribution force awaits your command, interrogator.’
‘My command?’ No emotion. No investment. ‘I was under the impression the conclave had condemned me…’ Mordaine stopped, quelling a flicker of anger. ‘That was another lie, wasn’t it? I was never implicated in the grand master’s murder.’
‘Indeed not. You were operating covertly to draw out his enemies.’
‘You’ve been covering my tracks from the start,’ Mordaine said levelly. ‘There was no hunt.’
‘Only your hunt,’ the Calavera corrected. ‘A hunt which has exposed a xenos conspiracy that extends to the heart of the Tau Empire. It was fine work. I envisage you will be elevated to the rank of inquisitor within two years.’
‘And you’ll have your cardinal back on the board.’ Mordaine opened his eyes and confronted the warrior with detached hostility. ‘What if I change sides, Calavera?’
‘You will not. Once you recall the reasoning behind your allegiance you will make the same choice again.’
‘You expect me to believe your intentions are benevolent?’
‘I expect you to recognise that I offer the least of all probable evils.’ The giant inclined his head. Perhaps there was genuine respect there. Then he turned and stalked towards the carriage door.
‘Where are you going?’ Mordaine called after him, feeling a stab of perverse terror at the prospect of his tormentor’s departure.
Tormentor or mentor?
‘I continue the war, Haniel Mordaine.’ The Space Marine yanked the hatch open, awakening the storm outside. ‘Do not linger alone in the Ghostlands,’ he warned. ‘There is danger here.’
The giant stepped into the bleached fury outside, becoming a shadow and then nothing at all.
All roads lead to ruin, but at the end of a very few there may be Light.
It was another stray intuition from the restive sediments of intellect embedded in Mordaine’s mind, but the next impulse was entirely his own.
‘O’Shovah,’ he called into the wind and white darkness, ‘wherever you are, xenos, may the God-Emperor watch over you.’
Smiling bleakly at his heresy, Haniel Mordaine turned his back on the void and went in search of his own annihilating, irrefutable light.
About the Author
Peter Fehervari is the author of the novel Fire Caste, featuring the Astra Militarum and Tau Empire, and the Tau-themed Quick Reads ‘Out Caste’ and ‘A Sanctuary of Wyrms’, the latter of which appeared in the anthology Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters. He also wrote the Space Marines Quick Reads ‘Nightfall’, which was in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology, and ‘The Crown of Thorns’. He lives and works in London.
An extract from 'Blood Oath' by Phil Kelly, taken from ‘Damocles’
A thousand decapitated heads. One for every battle-brother in the Chapter.
By the time they had left Tarotian IV, the Third Company’s kill count had been closer to a million. He had killed over a hundred rebels himself. It was often the case. But like all White Scars, Kor’sarro knew the value of symbolism, and a round thousand was enough to make the point.
He wanted to be there to see them. An ending, of a sort, a cauterising of the wounds the Chapter had sustained on Tarotian IV.
Kor’sarro Khan stared out into the heat haze of Plain Zhou. From his vantage point within the highest eyrie in the fortress-monastery, it felt like he could see to the edges of the world. His topknot of greasy black hair flew erratically in the thermals, its thick strands mimicking the victory pennants waving high above.
Though the khan’s narrowed eyes flicked from scrub to bunker to a herd of stallions galloping in the distance, his hands had their attention elsewhere. Calloused fingers worked mechanically but precisely at the balcony’s edge, always in motion. The tip of the khan’s curved dagger scratched like an awl, carving the Khorchin word for ‘seeking’ onto the side of a dormant bolt shell.
Forty-nine more of the deadly little cylinders shone in the evening sun, ranged along the balcony neat as dominoes. Those to the khan’s left were finished, and those to his right were bare. Three full crates hid in the shadow of the buttress arch, the tiny golden curls of swarf around their bases rolled back and forth by a playful wind.
The thud-stride-thud of Sudabeh crossing the eyrie yurut’s rugs in full battleplate made the khan’s cheek twitch. He placed the last of the unfinished shells to one side.
‘Sunning yourself between hunts, my khan?’ said the newcomer.
‘Stormseer. Your… gifts.’ Kor’sarro looked at the sky for a second. ‘They are wasted here.’
‘Anyone with half a nostril could tell that you’ve been standing in the sun. If you ever run out of promethium, you could scrape your skin and use the run-off to feed Moondrakkan’s engine instead.’
‘Ha!’ shouted the khan, grinning and clenching his fist in triumph as if Sudabeh had helped him solve a difficult problem. He would not take the Stormseer’s bait today, he was in too good a mood for it.
Like all White Scars, Kor’sarro loved to feel the play of the elements first hand. For the last three hours he had been meditating in the boiling heat of Quan Zhou, clad in little more than loose white fatigues. His olive leather-like skin practically glowed, shining with oily sweat.
The khan raised a thick bare arm covered in zigzag scars, revealing a tuft of armpit hair that protruded from the sutured edge of his torsal glove. ‘Have a proper sniff then, naysmith.’
‘I respectfully decline your generous proposal,’ said Sudabeh, using the formal Chogorian dialect. Both men chuckled, two sets of white teeth sparkling in the sun. They had been Space Marines long enough to know that moments of humanity were to be treasured, no matter how simple. In fact the simpler they came, the better.
The khan pulled a cube of meat the size of his fist from one of the ammunition crates, picking off the largest bits of swarf before taking a massive bite. He turned to face his old friend, stale blood running down his long black moustache as he chewed loudly. Eyebrows knitted in mock concern, he motioned the Stormseer forward, his frown fading to a wet red grin.
Shaking his head in resignation, Sudabeh joined his captain on the balcony. He looked up at his distorted reflection in the silvered, eyeless skulls that were spitted on pikes along the balcony’s edge. Most of the trophies were human-sized, but the largest was the size of a Land Speeder.
To the south, a large gunmetal lander was lowering its bulk towards the perimeter of Third Bronze Yurut. The squat ship’s backblast sent waves of plains-dust outwards in concentric circles before its striped underskeleton finally touched down.
‘Cargo?’ asked Sudabeh, squinting through the dust.
‘Trophies,’ the khan replied around a mouthful of raw meat.
The bulk lander’s front jaw lowered with a distant hiss of hydraulics. One at first, then a dozen, then hundreds upon hundreds of human heads poured down the ramp towards the yurut wall. Though the first to emerge bounced and rolled as if freshly taken from the neck, those spilling over the rear part of the lander’s jaw slopped over in a state of advanced decomposition. Their smell was unpleasant on the wind, but the khan’s stomach growled in appreciation nonetheless.
‘Heretics,’ said the khan, savouring the word. ‘Tarotian IV.’
Sudabeh nodded thoughtfully. He watched the servitor work teams retrieve the disembodied heads by the armful and dump them onto the vector carriages parked along the bronze yurut’s walls. Inside each carriage, wizened eyethieves rode the cupolas upwards towards the lances that jutted up from the wall’s crest. As they went, they took it in turns to stoke the carriage’s braziers and burn each trophy’s sockets clean with a length of red-hot iron.
Out past the dropsite, steed-beasts broke from distant herds. They galloped in to fall upon those heads left unattended, gnawing strips of meat from faces and scalps before the low blast of the lander’s horns drove them away. Part of Kor’sarro longed to be back in the saddle at the head of his tribe, hurling his spear into the flank of some doe-eyed zellion or marauding felid with a taste for human flesh.
‘Spit it out, then,’ said Kor’sarro.
‘My khan?’
‘You didn’t hide your scars under battleplate just to come out here and bait me, Stormseer. My temper’s not that tight.’
‘Of course,’ said Sudabeh, his tone suddenly formal. ‘The astropathic choir has a message for you, my khan. The Third Company is needed on Agrellan immediately. We are to eradicate a tau infestation, as loudly and as memorably as possible.’
‘Out of the question,’ replied Kor’sarro, but there was doubt under his tone. ‘You told me yourself, the Tarot indicates that Blackheart’s renegades draw closer with every passing hour. We are needed here, to defend our home world.’
‘Our elders have decided that our duty lies elsewhere, my khan,’ said Sudabeh. ‘Many other companies are ready to repel the Red Corsairs. Chogoris will endure without us, I can feel it. Quan Zhou will stand.’
A wordless pause stretched out, both men staring upwards as if Huron Blackheart’s fleet would glimmer into being at any moment.
‘Tau,’ sighed the khan. ‘So we face their cursed weapon-magicks again.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sudabeh. ‘I believe they seek to use the planet Agrellan as a staging post in order to seize the mineral-rich tithe worlds on the cusp of the Damocles Gulf.’
‘Agrellan,’ the khan continued, fingering his long moustache. ‘Dovar System, yes?’
‘Correct again.’
‘Ha. Terrain?’
‘Unremarkable, for the most part. Technically a hive world, but mostly scorched deserts and open plains.’
The khan’s grisly smile reappeared, bits of meat bleeding between his teeth.
‘Anything else?’
‘It’s haunted,’ said Sudabeh, matter-of-factly. ‘The place was subject to Exterminatus centuries ago. The Malleus alone know why.’
‘No doubt they do. The stain of Chaos is not easily erased.’
‘As you say. Reading between the lines of the data-slate, it seems the virus bombs left a highly toxic legacy. The planet still bears the marks of its former death, both physically and spiritually.’
‘Ghosts, then,’ said the khan, shrugging. ‘Common enough.’
‘Not these ones,’ the Stormseer replied.
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‘Fire and Ice’ was first published in The Tau Empire anthology, copyright © 2016, Games Workshop Ltd.
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