by John French
And through the carousel of shape and shadow he saw new faces rise, faces of hounds cast of fire and brass, faces of pale flesh with razor-cut smiles, faces lost beneath clumps of tumours and veils of boils, faces that held other faces within them. He felt the heat of the fires of Isstvan V again. He could feel fingers he no longer had burning to black twigs, and eyes boil again in the empty sockets of his skull.
A sudden burst of red and orange light spiralled down the tunnel walls. The creature moved aside, so that Hrend could see the disc of light that was the tunnel’s mouth. The angry glow grew and stuttered, and he heard the roar of gunfire, the scream of energy splitting armour. His vox activated. Noise screamed into his mind. He recognised the voices: Jarvak, Orun, the crews of his cadre, the crews who had been strong enough to reach here. They were dying.
‘This is not an end,’ said the creature. ‘This is a crossroads.’
‘We will destroy you.’
The creature wore Perturabo’s face again to smile.
‘You cannot destroy what will be,’ said the creature. ‘You can only choose.’
The shadows began to crawl away as furnace light swelled through the dark. Hrend’s metal body began to glow with heat. Fire was pouring inside his iron coffin. He was burning away. The fluid around him boiled. His flesh sloughed from his bones. Black blisters formed across his sight as the last moisture in his corpse became smoke. He could still see, but the world was not as it had been.
‘See, Ironclad,’ purred the creature. ‘See what you can be.’
Then he realised that he was standing, that his own limbs were unfolding beneath him. He was a glowing, molten god, his skin the cracked black skin of cooling lava. He felt his thoughts cut free of all concerns. He was a line running through time, a summation. He had been there when the first fortress fell. He had lived as the shell fell through from a clear sky onto a town that would cease to be. He had broken the skin of worlds, and roared his existence in the voice of the firestorm. There was only one beat and measure to this life and that was the heartbeat of the firing gun and the noise of bones breaking under the fall of hammers. He was not flesh. He was not blood, or fragile bone. He was obliteration, and he stood beneath the fire shroud of worlds.
The vision dissolved but still he stood. His armour was fading to red and black heat. He could feel it. He could feel it as though it were the heat of his own burning blood. He looked down. His arms were there, glistening, wet, like blood and muscle. Shackled power and heat coiled in his hands. He let out a breath. Smoke and steam hissed into the air. He raised his head, with a rattle of cogs and crack of bones.
‘Your Legion will be as you,’ said the creature. ‘They can live, you can live. You can all be more than you dreamed. This is the truth of iron. Iron within and without, iron in the veins, iron screaming to the sky. It is the truth you have reached for all your life. Through pain, and death, and the drum of guns, you have walked here. You can be more than this. You can rise from it.’
He could see it, he could feel it: a Legion of iron and death, burning the stars, cowed by none and broken by nothing. It was what they were always supposed to be, what they should have been. Decimation, dishonour and betrayal would mean nothing.
‘Call to your Legion, Sollos,’ the voice sounded like a song hissed through a skull’s teeth. ‘Call to your Perturabo. Call to your brothers. Bring them here. Bring them to the gate of the gods.’
He felt his thoughts reach for the vox, and he knew that all he needed to do was to speak, and his call would reach through the storm above, and bring his father to the weapon he had murdered a world for.
And then he remembered the light of the ghost world beneath a black sun, and the shrieks of the Emperor’s Children. The true face of his father, shrunken, but still strong, looked at him out of the core of his being.
‘No,’ said Hrend, his voice shaking as it fought to rise above the echoes of battle spilling down the shaft from above. He could feel the heat of his body pulling at his thoughts, could hear the thud of shells coughed into flight, and hear the scream of melting metal. The song of destruction called to him. It was him. It was the voice of his shadow.
‘No,’ his voice growled out, rising in power with every word forced out. ‘You will not take our strength. You will not make us slaves to darkness.’
The creature laughed, and the laugh became the shaking ground and the roar of explosions. Hrend felt the furnace heat drain from his remade body. He tried to take a step towards the creature. The force sent cracks racing across his body. The fire at the core of him was dimming.
The creature shook its head, and stepped back towards the exposed patch of black stone.
‘To refuse is still a choice. This end already stalks your Legion. You have already given yourselves. This is the Gateway to the Gods, the place of change, the door between past and present. The Eye of Terror is not amongst distant stars, son of iron. It is within you. It is here. The choice is not if, Ironclad. It is when.’ The light of an explosion blinked down the passage. The creature was gone. A face of empty eyes and razor teeth stared at Hrend from the black wall of stone. It smiled in the stuttered blink of explosion light. ‘So, my son, do you still wish to be iron?’
‘Iron…’ he hissed in a voice of dying static. He reached into the furnace within him, into the stinking core of obliteration, and pulled. ‘Iron comes from within.’
The atoms of his being scattered outwards in a blinding white shock of heat. The earth flashed to vapour in a sphere around where he had stood. Burning gas raced up the mouth of the tunnel, and blew from the surface, in a single, brilliant, spike of fury. The shockwave spilled outwards. The wreckage and still-burning remains of vehicles shook where they lay, and then began to tilt downwards as a gulf opened beneath them. Dust and debris poured down into the expanding crater. The machines tumbled downwards, drowning in the earth spilling after them.
And then silence fell.
The dust plume hung in the air, the storm already pulling apart its substance. Beneath it the wind was already dragging fresh dust over the shallow crater, a vast hand wiping it away as though it had never existed.
On the edge of the desolation the hull of a tank lay on its side, like a fallen grave marker.
‘You have drawn blood amongst my warriors, emissary,’ Perturabo’s voice rose over the roar of engines, as Argonis jumped down from the Sickle Blade’s cockpit. The hangar bay was a mass of stilled activity. Rocket engines were keening, war machines hung in the cradles beneath landers: all ready to fall on Tallarn. Perturabo stood before the brushed steel bulk of a huge tank, ringed by his Iron Circle automata. His augmented bulk swelled and contracted as though in time with great slow breaths. A slit-fronted helm covered his face, and he stared at Argonis with eyes of cold, blue light.
‘You have concealed the truth from your Warmaster,’ said Argonis, forcing strength into his voice. Behind him he heard Sota-Nul and Prophesius come to stand behind him. The Lord of Iron’s gaze did not shift. He was still, but Argonis could feel pressure in that stillness, like a storm surge held back behind a dam.
‘I have done what I needed to,’ said Perturabo. ‘As I have always done.’
Argonis shook his head.
‘It no longer matters, it is over, lord. You will withdraw from this place.’
‘You do not know what you say.’
‘I do.’ Argonis glanced at the waiting craft, and thought of the battle in the void he had seen around Tallarn, and of the glittering carpet of explosions on its surface.
‘This is not a battle fought for strategic gain. It is a battle for…’
‘For a weapon against betrayal.’
‘A weapon hidden from those you serve?’
‘We serve no one,’ snarled Perturabo, and the words sent ice through Argonis.
‘The Warmaster–’
‘He was my brother
before he was Warmaster.’ Perturabo shook his head. ‘I do this for him, for all of us.’
Argonis shook his head.
‘You will withdraw. This battle is over.’
‘We cannot do that.’ Argonis turned to see Forrix step from behind a Thunderhawk. The First Captain aimed a volkite charger at Argonis. With him stood a line of dull-armoured Terminators. All of their weapons pointed at him, and Argonis could feel the death promised by the black circle of each barrel. ‘We must finish this,’ said Forrix.
‘It is over!’ Argonis shouted.
‘That order is not yours to give,’ said Forrix. Argonis looked back to Perturabo.
‘You claim loyalty–’
‘You will not speak to me of loyalty. I have given loyalty many times over, loyalty counted in lives and blood.’
‘I speak as the Warmaster.’
Argonis did not even see Perturabo move, but suddenly the primarch was looming above him. The deck rang with the echo of his steps.
‘You are not my brother,’ growled Perturabo. ‘Your voice is not his.’
‘No,’ said Argonis, fighting the instinct to turn away, to flee. ‘No, it is not, but I bear the Warmaster’s voice with me.’
He stepped back, his hand pulling a crooked key from where it hung around his neck. Prophesius stepped forward, as though called. Time seemed to have become syrup. The sounds of the chamber around muted. Colours dimmed, and faded to grey. Argonis felt his skin prickle as he reached out to fit the key into the back of Prophesius’s mask.
‘What is… it?’ he had asked Maloghurst.
‘A creation of the Davinite priests. It was once an astropath. Now they call it a metatron, a conduit for voices, a caster of shadows from one place to another, no matter how distant. It is named Prophesius.’
‘Why is it masked?’
Maloghurst had smiled before answering.
The key slotted into the mask. Argonis felt his arm jerk, as though he had just touched a power cable. He could taste cinnamon and ozone. He turned the key. For an instant nothing happened. Then there was a click, then another, and another, and another, rattling together, like a chorus of unwinding springs and turning cogs. The back of the mask split apart. Prophesius’s hands were shaking, fingers gripping the air. The wax tablet dropped from its grasp, melting as it fell. Shrill cries filled Argonis’s ears as he stepped back. Forrix flinched, his aim dropping. Every living creature on the deck reeled. All except Perturabo.
The mask fell from Prophesius’s head. Beneath there was a lump of pale flesh, and a wide, toothless mouth.
For a second the unmasked Prophesius just stood, its mouth flapping bonelessly. Then the mouth opened wide. And opened. And opened. A single, silent word came from within. Argonis felt it ring in the back of his skull, and vibrate in his bones. Glowing ashes and snow were falling in the air, and the word went on and on until it reached somewhere that was not here, but was just a shadow away. Smoke and ash vomited from Prophesius’s mouth. The black cloud billowed, clotted, hardened, became something harder than smoke, yet thinner than light.
An armoured figure stood before them. The pelt and head of a huge wolf covered his shoulders. His clawed hand rested on the head of the mace that lay at his foot. Argonis bent his knees without being aware of the command passing from his thoughts.
Above him the shadow of Horus looked down at the Lord of Iron.
‘Perturabo,’ said Horus, and his voice was the hunger of flames and the crack of breaking ice.
Perturabo did not move.
‘Brother,’ he said, his voice steady.
‘No,’ said Horus, and his shadow form seemed to grow, light draining into the holes that were his eyes. ‘No, not brother. I am your Warmaster, Perturabo, and I have watched from beside my emissary. I have seen what you have hidden from me.’
‘Horus…’ began Perturabo, but Horus’s voice cracked out like a lash of thunder.
‘You have deceived me. You have sought power, and kept it hidden from me. You have spent my forces for your own ends.’
The thundercloud presence of Horus grew larger, looming high, so that it looked down like the cloud of an explosion above a dead city. Argonis felt pressure building in his skull.
Beneath Horus’s eyes Perturabo remained, a vast figure made small, yet still unbowed.
‘Everything I have done has been for the Imperium we will build. Brother, you cannot be blind to serpents within us. I have seen the true face of our allies. I have felt the knife of their treachery. We must hold our own blade above their necks, or we will be unmade. It is almost in my grasp.’ He seemed to shiver. ‘Please, my brother, listen to me now. Trust me now.’
The silence grew in the growing crackle of the storm charge. Then Horus’s shadow shook its head.
‘You have strayed, Perturabo,’ he raised his hand, ‘and now you will hear my will.’ The shadow of Horus seemed to shrink, to become harder. Argonis could barely keep his eyes open. He could feel the spit boiling on his tongue. He saw the shadow of talons reach towards Perturabo.
‘Kneel,’ said Horus.
Iaeo fell to the waiting dark. Air rushed past her, pulling strings of blood from her body. She was dying. There was no escaping that fact. It was not even a projection, it was a fact: too much physical damage to live, and that was ignoring what the fall promised at its end. Her mind had responded by working faster, like a candle burning bright and clear before it went out.
And in the stopped-clock world of her fall, she heard the last strands of her creation resolve.
She heard the order to begin a tactical withdrawal roll through Perturabo’s forces.
She heard the Alpha Legion signal channels buzz with confusion.
She heard the click of her last handful of seconds fall into the past.
It had been a long journey, a long way from the beginning of the mission to this end. All the projections had ended, all the variables had resolved. All apart from one. One final strand of unfixed possibility.
She cut away the sound of all the signals and the influx of data, until a single vox signal remained. The voice it carried rattled with static, but it was clear.
‘To anyone that can hear, this is Colonel Kord of the Tallarn Seventy-First. We are damaged, unable to move. Current location grid 093780 in the Hacadia Flats. Please respond.’
No response came. Several communication arrays on both sides had caught it, but she alone heard Kord’s voice. Filters and cut-outs meant that it would only reach the ears of others if she allowed it.
It had been the most tenuous part of the kill-projection, using Kord’s obsession, feeding it, positioning him to ensure that Hrend’s force never returned. It had worked though, and now they were a last unresolved factor.
‘To anyone that can hear, this is Colonel Kord of the Tallarn Seventy-First. Please respond.’
If no one else heard the signal then War Anvil would become just another machine lost to Tallarn.
‘If you can hear, please respond.’
They would survive for a while, but with Perturabo’s forces withdrawing no one would go looking for them, and the loyalists would never hear their cries for help. No one would find what they had found.
‘Please respond.’
They would end in silence when their air ran out.
‘Please…’
A dust storm would come and cover them over, and their machine would become their tomb.
‘…respond.’
She cut the signal.
Two seconds later her fall ended. Her last thoughts echoed in the now empty space of her mind.
Termination complete. No errors.
Six days after it began, the Battle of Khedive ended. It ended not with fire, but with a slow, exhausted fading of fury. Thousands of tanks pulled back, like a storm tide ebbing down a flotsam-strewn shore. Wound
ed Knights and Titans limped from the jungle of heaped machines to stand at the plain’s edge. Thousands died in the hours after the battle faded, their air and fuel finally running out, their crews dying in choking silence. Grey rain fell from the smoke-bloated clouds onto the fires that still burned on the wreckage-crusted plain.
Twelve hours later the Iron Warriors began to withdraw from the surface altogether. Within three weeks Tallarn was all but silent.
One week later General Gorn and his command cadre set foot inside the Sightless Warren.
Four weeks later, when no trace of the Iron Warriors or their allies could be found, a signal was sent to all loyalist forces on the planet, and transmitted by astrotelepathy far beyond the system.
Imperium victor, it read. Tallarn stands.
ABOUT the AUTHOR
John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, the novel Tallarn: Ironclad, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus, including ‘The Dead Oracle’ and ‘Hand of Dust’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.
An extract from Ahriman: Exile
Please don’t take her. I am weak, but please don’t take her from me.
The deck shook beneath Carmenta’s feet as she hurried through the silence of the Titan Child.
I am too weak, she thought. I deserve this, but please let me return to my child. The deck shook again. She stumbled, hit a bare metal wall and slid to the floor. Her polished brass hands shook as she tried to pull herself up. The deck bucked and sent her sprawling. She lay for a second, watching data scroll across her green-tinted vision: the Titan Child was taking damage. Half of the outer belly compartments were open to the void. Fires were burning along the spinal weapon decks. Had she been on the bridge, linked to the ship, she would have felt each injury as if it were to her own body. Instead she watched the Titan Child’s pain in a screed of impersonal data. Even then, she felt a ghost of pain in her torso as she assimilated the information.