by John French
‘The storms pushed us out just here…’ said Maloghurst to himself. Planets and star systems drew the currents of the warp to them like stones in a river, he knew that much. It was not surprising that a ship forced from it would exit close to a system, but to exit here in sight of the enemy’s guns…
‘Brace, brace, brace!’ called a mechanical voice. A second later the ship shook. The light of the void shields above the dome snapped. White flare-light blanked the void and stars.
‘Nova shell detonations!’ shouted a Legion deck officer. The screens dimmed as they compensated for the light of the explosions.
‘The Black Wolf reports shields down,’ called another voice. ‘Hull-wide fires.’
‘Three enemy ships identified as the Angel Absolute of the Ninth Legion, the Crusader’s Blade and the Stoneheart of the Seventh Legion.’
‘Enemy boarding waves in the void!’
Maloghurst watched as the three Legion vessels burned close and then kicked away as they loosed their volleys of gunships and boarding torpedoes. The boarding elements would be in defence turret range at the exact time that the enemy’s main guns began to fire. They would be riding into the detonation volumes of the thousands of macro shells. Dangerous. Very dangerous, but it would mean that some of them would reach their targets.
‘Brace!’
The void beyond the dome vanished in rolling blooms of fire.
‘Enemy boarding wave in turret range,’ called a flat mechanical voice. ‘Auspex and targeting systems at sixty-two per cent veracity. Firing.’
Maloghurst saw the short-range projection of the Vengeful Spirit flare with target kill markers.
‘Breach impacts, sections forty-two to forty-eight, level six-one-five!’
The deck lurched. Warning sirens began to sound. Maloghurst felt the memory of the plane of slaughter rise in his mind’s eye, its ground trembling with the drumbeat of explosions, the sky burning as the blood soaked the earth to mud.
‘Battles fought for pride, festering ambition, desires realised in darkness, all tip the balance one way or another,’ came the memory of Amarok’s voice. ‘And all the while Horus is getting weaker.’
‘We have to go,’ he said, his voice dry. He could taste iron on his tongue. ‘You fool. Pull back. Pull us back and get us into the ether!’
Aximand turned his head to look at him.
‘Craven,’ he spat.
‘This is not chance, brother,’ said Maloghurst, trying to blink away a sudden wash of nausea. ‘For the Warmaster, we must leave. We must flee.’
‘No,’ growled Aximand and flicked a gesture at the edge of the chamber. Legionaries moved forwards, all wearing the gold-dipped skull faceplates of his warclan. ‘I command here.’
‘Horus commands,’ said Maloghurst.
‘And I am his truest son,’ said Aximand, his voice the fall of an axe edge. ‘And when he returns, he will see that I alone served him truly.’
Maloghurst looked at the circle of warriors, at the levelled muzzles of their guns. There was no point in saying that they could not do this, that he was the equerry of the Warmaster. It would make no difference. He saw it now. He saw the cracks in the Legion and its warriors. Pride, anger, fear even, perhaps – cracks that Horus and even Maloghurst himself had used to make them what they needed to be but which now yawned wide. Without Horus they were just warlords and killers trying to follow a dream they did not understand.
He smiled coldly. Aximand looked back, the light of the battle gleaming in his eyes. For a second he fancied he thought he saw a spark of doubt in that gaze. The deck shook.
‘You are no Little Horus,’ he said. ‘You do not have the strength.’
‘Take him,’ said Aximand, and the skull-faced warriors closed around him.
Layak
They stepped from twilight into dead, red sunlight. Layak caught his breath as he looked around. His mask tightened on his face, and its mouth snarled wider. They stood on a mesa of black glass. Its summit was rippled, as though shaped by the retreat of a gently lapping sea. Things moved beneath the solid surface, though, pale things with manes of feelers and segmented bodies. Auroras of pink, emerald, gold and cyan billowed and folded in against a black sky above them. The sun itself was a ragged circle that lit the land beneath, but left the rancid sky untouched.
Beneath the mesa, a forest swayed. Silver trees murmured, their leaves chiming like bells. Things that might have been moths rose in clouds from one tree as Layak watched. Clouds of fine, grey dust scattered from them as they wheeled. Buildings rose from the canopy here and there, reaching for the sky with slender, serrated towers. Layak could see shapes moving against the horizon. For a second he thought they were striations in the layers of light, then he realised that they were the shadows of vast structures spanning the space between earth and sky like the ribs of a vast creature. They flexed as he looked at them, and he had the sense of both claustrophobia and comfort, as though he and all the world around him had been swallowed into a womb. Or a stomach.
‘This was the cradle of the eldar race,’ said Lorgar.
‘And its grave,’ said Actaea. She had come to stand beside Layak and the primarch. Her blind eyes were flicking back and forth beneath her shut eyelids. The crystal bulb of blood sat in her twitching hands.
‘It is a sacred place,’ breathed Lorgar. ‘Here a god was born. You can hear its birth cry still…’
For a second Layak wondered what his lord meant, but then, just as he was about to speak, every sound and sensation merged. The slow beat of the moth wings, the chime of the leaves and the sigh of the wind rose and blended, adding and combining until suddenly the world was roaring at him, the sound deafening and beautiful, and he knew that if he did not stop listening then he never would.
Around them, the remaining Word Bearers had fallen to their knees.
‘Your brother is here,’ said Actaea. ‘He knows you have arrived.’
‘Yet he waits for us to come to him,’ said Layak, looking at the shadows of cities on the horizon. He was sure that the silhouettes of the towers and domes had altered position since he had last looked.
‘He hides…’ he said.
Lorgar smiled. ‘He is merely letting us come to him. A petty exercising of power, a small thing, but to the exalted prince of the Last-Born God, no pleasure is too small. In this case his pride and arrogance are sacred.’
The primarch looked at Actaea. She was shivering. The calm that she wore like a cloak had been pulled away. She looked hunched, hunted.
‘Can you lead us to him?’ asked Lorgar. Actaea shivered and looked up at him, breathing raggedly, her attention seeming to pull back from somewhere inside her. She nodded, but her hand shook as she raised the crystal sphere of blood to her face.
‘This way,’ she said and then stepped towards the forests and distant sky. Lorgar followed. The Word Bearers rose from their knees and fell into a star formation around him. Only Layak held back, Kulnar and Hebek just behind him. The mask was murmuring hisses into his ears, but beyond that he thought he could hear other voices, familiar voices, saying things that he could not hear but felt that he wanted to know. Hebek turned his head to look at Layak. His eyes burned with mute hate.
‘I do not like it either,’ said Layak under his breath. ‘I do not like it at all.’ Then he followed. Beneath his feet, the pale creatures swam languidly through the black stone, grinning up with needle smiles.
They descended to the forest by a path that slid back and forth across the side of the mesa like the track left by a snake. The ground beneath the trees was dark, dappled by light falling through the shifting canopy.
Dust spores puffed into the air under their steps. Scent coiled through his mouth and nose, despite the seals of his mask showing green and the hooks clawing his nostrils. It smelled of flowers, of crushed spices, of sweat and organs freshly opene
d by a knife. His head spun, and only the cold metal pain of the inside of the mask held his thoughts from racing down paths filled with sharpness and the whisper of false promises.
The trees around them were grey-trunked, their bark soft and moist like the skin of a fish. They had been walking for longer than he could remember, but that was it… He could not…
There were faces…
Faces in the mauve twilight between the trees, watching, moving in and out of sight as they kept pace. He saw long legs, smooth muscle, obsidian eyes… of every creature that he had ever seen or read of in the Sixth Liber Chaotica, or the Books of Ybeion. And more: things he had never heard whisper of, daemons of every variety and form, haired, skin-sheathed or flayed, mute or drooling golden spittle into the mouths of their kin. And each was no more than a glimpse, a sliver of wonder and horror given to him and then snatched away by the sway of the trees.
The forest pressed closer and closer, and the faces came nearer with every glimpse. He had glimpsed realms of the Dark Prince where the cacophony of sound was such that it blurred the solidity of objects. Here, though, all was softness…
Layak wanted to sit down, to sit on the soft ground and let its soft dust cover and fill him, and wait for all the things that were watching from behind the tree trunks to come and find him, snuffling and giggling and sharp, and then…
‘Sul-nu, Is’nag, sutep’ashn…’ He spoke the words of warding as clearly as he could through the thick mass of spore powder that clogged his mask’s speaker-grille. He heard laughter as he forced out the words. But he kept speaking and kept walking.
Only Lorgar and Layak’s blade slaves moved as though unconcerned. Actaea was shaking, thoughts manifesting around her as spirals of light and the shadows of feathers. All of her power was focused on the sphere of blood that she clutched close to her face. She did not look beautiful or regal now. She was hollowed and hunched, a crone with the skin of a girl, forcing herself to take the next step by will alone.
Layak saw one of his Word Bearers halt ahead. Layak was about to lash a command at him, when the warrior dropped his weapons, unfastened his helm and took a breath. The breath never ended. The warrior breathed and breathed, his neck swelling as the spore-laden air poured through his lips. The brothers near him stumbled to his side, moving as though wading through molasses. Lorgar raised a hand, and Layak felt the psychic force behind the gesture.
‘This is a sacred place,’ said Lorgar. ‘It must have its due.’
The warrior fell to his knees. His armour was splitting, wet vents yawning wide to breathe and breathe. A ripple of low hoots and cries chuckled from the forest. Grey roots were reaching up from the dust. Each of them was covered in smiling mouths. They pulled him down into the ground. A long psychic scream touched Layak’s mind and then was silent. A red stain spread across the ground where the warrior had been standing. Crystal roses began to grow from the spot, petals wet and bright.
‘It is close,’ hissed Actaea, voice trembling with effort. Blooms of darker red had blossomed on her robes. ‘Very close.’
Lorgar nodded. Behind the primarch, the grey trunks of the forest swayed and shivered. Beyond them there was something else, something that he could not quite see.
‘You know your duty, my son,’ he said. Layak nodded. He knew what he had been asked to do, what he was here for. He knew.
Lorgar stepped forwards. Layak followed, and suddenly the forest was behind them, and above them were towers and walls and domes reaching up and up to a perfect, powder-blue sky.
Layak halted. Beside him, the surviving warriors were frozen in reverence. Actaea folded slowly to the ground, her hands crooked claws around the sphere of blood that had led them here.
Lorgar closed his eyes briefly, as though to see the sight for the first time again.
‘The City-Palace of the Princeling of Perfection,’ he said. ‘The gods have blessed us.’
Above them, trumpets wailed from the towers.
Volk
The chamber was spherical. Fused black glass skinned its walls. Stalactites projected inwards from them, their tips needle fingers pointing to the thing that lay at its heart.
To Volk’s eyes it was a vast statue cut from a lump of black stone. Its features were crude and seemed to have been hacked into the stone in blunt relief. Its limbs were held tight to its bulk, its legs folded beneath, its arms clutched close. It reminded Volk of a primitive gargoyle. Rows of teeth snarled from beneath lidless eyes. Wings sat curled on its back, and each of the eight arms folded across its torso and back held a different weapon: a knife, an axe, a sword. Chains bound it, looping over it, punching into the stone and radiating away to the edge of the chamber. The links glowed yellow and white with heat. Pools of molten metal hung in the air, filling from cascades that poured from openings dotting the inner surface of the chamber. The statue’s serrated smile gathered shadows from the furnace glow.
Volk wanted to look away, but his gaze held on the statue. Memories filled him, pressing into his mind like claws into wet clay. He felt the bite of a stone edge in his neck, and knew that the hand that had knapped the flint was the first to make such a tool not to cut wood or kill for food, but for murder. He felt the heat on his face as the hammer fell on the twisted rods of steel, blow by blow making them a sword that would carry a song of conquest into the future. He felt the kick of the rifle butt into his shoulder, tasted the black powder smoke in the back of his throat, felt the caress of a thousand tools of death as they touched history for the first time.
Argonis shifted beside him, and suddenly he was aware of the others standing with him on that lip of stone gazing at the statue. Perturabo stalked forwards, slowly, the shell of his exo-armour moving with a whisper.
Volk tried to move but could not. Heat threaded through him, whispering as it touched servos, spreading in a murmur across interface links.
Son of my son. Volk heard the voice, heard it echo, but knew that it had spoken inside his skull to him alone. It was deep, like the sound of distant guns. I have waited and watched you for so long. I have so much to give you.
Pain flooded him. He was falling without moving, the sight of the cavern a circle shrinking above him as he plunged down and down. Every piece of flesh in his body felt as though it were cooking, the nerves singing as the sinew charred. He tried to claw himself up but the light of the present was growing smaller. All he could remember was the past broken into shards: the first cut of a knife through his skin; the clatter of a gun chamber eating rounds; the roar of enemies charging, more numerous than the bullets ripping them apart; and the hunger for more strength, for a sharper edge, for the power to tear them down and leave them as blood in the mud. He was there screaming the song of the killing edge and the bullet’s kiss.
Do not resist. There is so much that you will be. The voice was a patchwork of gunfire and explosions, the sound stitched together from slices of a life spent living to destroy, endure and destroy again. So long have you endured, but you were not meant to survive. You were meant to be cast down, to burn and break. That is the dream of your souls, and the dream you shall live. I give, so must I take. And I shall give to you, but before that I have a service that you must do for me.
Volk felt the presence rise in him. He could fight, but he did not want to. The voice in his skull did not sound like something to deny. It sounded like the wishes and fears he had held ever since he had come from the wreck cities. He had always been strong, but never strong enough, a killer but never equal to the enemies that came against him. And now he knew he would be.
Iron within. Iron without.
He opened the last stitch of his soul, and the furnace fire poured into him.
He opened his mouth.
‘My son,’ said the daemon. The Iron Circle turned, weapons rising. Argonis’ bolter was in his hand and levelled. Volk’s gaze rose to meet them. His face was a mask over fir
e. Roaring light spilled from the holes of his eyes. The metal of his augmetics was red with heat. The daemon looked down the barrels of the guns and smiled. ‘Sons of my son. I have waited long for your coming.’
The plates and pistons down Perturabo’s back twitched in sequence before he turned.
‘You are the creature that is bound here,’ he said.
‘Bound, preserved, hidden, set free… It is a matter of perspective.’
‘You are bound,’ said Perturabo, and raised the head of his hammer to point at the daemon’s burning grin. ‘And being bound you can suffer. Do not play games with me. I am here for information that you shall give me.’
‘I know,’ said the daemon. ‘You seek your brother. You seek the Eightfold Prince of Slaughter. I know this, Perturabo. I have watched him through the eyes of the guns that fire on his fields of battle. I know that Horus has sent you to bring Angron back, a dog sent to drag its rabid kin back to the hearth.’
Perturabo did not move or speak. Then he was across the gap between him and Volk’s body, his hand clamped around Volk’s throat, lifting him off the floor. He held him there, pistons and servos hissing as they braced. He looked into the fire pouring from Volk’s eyes. His face was impassive.
Heat washed from Volk’s mouth as the daemon chuckled.
‘I am the red in your blood and the edge of your blade, Lord of Iron.’ The voice weighted the title with mockery.
‘I know your kind,’ said Perturabo. ‘I have seen your heart. I have felt the kindness of your lies.’
‘The bastard child of the Emperor cut you deep, my son,’ said the daemon. ‘He took so much from you, your strength, your certainty. I can see it, you are bleeding still.’ Volk’s hand rose. Perturabo’s grip tightened, but the daemon simply tapped the plates covering the primarch’s forearm with a metal digit. ‘All the Iron without will not heal such wounds.’ A muscle twitched in Perturabo’s temple. ‘But a weapon, Perturabo, a weapon to match that of the gods… Then what would the lies of my kind mean? You sought such a weapon on Tallarn. Yes, and had it torn from your grasp by the brother you serve. But you never thought to look within.’