by Various
All returned to dark. Ven stood, hands on his stiff knees. The boat rocked as waves washed out from the distant impact.
‘That was no star,’ he said. ‘It was a sky-ship. Come, we must go to them, and lend what aid we can.’
Dawn came, striping the sky with lashes of light. The ocean glowed orange, and amidst the patches of burning fuel was a blocky shape, hard lines all at odds with the curve of the waves. It filled me with great fear, but Ven sailed on, his hand steady on the tiller.
Let me tell you boy, myths and legends are one thing when in their proper place… but in front of you, like that… Ach, you’ll never understand.
We drew close. The sky-ship was dull blue, all streaked and scored. It lay canted at an angle, a skerry made all of metal. The prow of the ship was out of the water, a wheelhouse with many brilliant windows at the top. They glinted in the sun, scorched though they were.
It dwarfed our fishing smack, ten times its length, maybe twenty. Its true size was hidden by the waves. Not even the biggest house in the village would have come close to it.
Sareo pointed. ‘To the front, captain. The wheelhouse. Let us look for a way in.’
‘You’re no expert in star vessels, cousin,’ I snorted.
‘No, but Ven is.’
The old captain kept his gaze level. ‘I am not. I have seen them but twice. I will bring us a little closer.’
As we came in, Sareo rose from his perch. ‘I see something!’ he said, leaning out. ‘What is that Ven, that sigil?’
Again, Ven’s eyes failed him. ‘Describe it to me, all I see is a smear of blue.’
‘Blue it is – a field of blue with a many-headed serpent set upon it.’
The captain was silent for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It is blackened… but aye, I am sure.’
‘Then it may be a badge of the Legions.’
The word was unfamiliar to me. ‘Legions?’ I asked.
‘The giants, Tidon,’ Ven snapped. ‘Young fool, do you know nothing?’
‘But why is it here?’
‘I do not know. For that we must venture inside.’
‘There, then. There is a door.’ I pointed out a square hatchway aft of the wheelhouse, made of the same metal as the hull, a perfect seal around it made to keep out the cold night in the sky.
Ven deftly brought us below the hatchway. The bulk of the ship glimmered in the dark water beneath our keel. ‘Sareo, Tidon, go in.’
Sareo turned. ‘You will not come with us, captain?’ He looked doubtfully at me. He thought me too young, and I was.
‘If only I could…’ Ven muttered. ‘I am old. I will wait here. But I am still the best sailor! Each member of a crew must play to his own strength.’
There was a roiling in the surface of the sea. Air bubbled from beneath the star vessel, carrying with it strange, chemical smells.
The Legion ship lurched, casting up a wave that sent our little boat bobbing away.
‘Go quickly,’ the captain urged us. ‘We have little time.’
Ven brought our boat in to the sky-ship again. It gently kissed the hull of its distant cousin. I leapt first, for all my fear, and then came Sareo.
The hull was sloped enough that we could clamber easily to the door. It was surrounded by thick, black and yellow striping and strange symbols. Some were pictographs clear in purpose, others stencilled boldly in the script of the giants. I could not understand it.
‘What says this, cousin?’
Sareo stared, puzzling out the unfamiliar sounds. ‘Access… Access Hatch Four. And these, they are instructions to work the door machinery.’
‘A machine? Like our engine?’
‘No, not alike. Different. Dangerous.’
‘Can you open it?’ I asked.
He grabbed a handle sunk into a circular recess in the skin of the ship, and tried to twist it round. It would not move.
‘The mechanism is not functioning. There are instructions.’ He paused, mouthing silently to himself. ‘Stand back, the words say to stand back. No. Go further, behind that faring. Careful you do not slip into the sea! There. Duck down. Cover your face. Do not be afraid of the noise. Now, I must turn this… and depress this.’
A shrill noise came from the downed ship’s door. Sareo ran to take refuge beside me. A smooth, metallic voice spoke.
‘Warning. Warning. Warning.’
There were four flashes of fire. Smoke drifted on the breeze.
I unwrapped my arms from my head. ‘Is it… Is it done?’
‘Aye,’ Sareo replied.
We went back to the door. The paint was marred by starburst patterns of black. Sareo bent down and twisted the handle again. This time it turned.
‘Now help me.’
We heaved open the door, and gazed down into the sky-ship’s interior. A sense of dread welled up within me. ‘It is dark in there, Sareo. How do we know it will not sink and drown us both? No! Don’t go in!’
Sareo lowered himself into the opening. ‘Stop being so foolish. I will not let you drown. It’s perfectly safe. Follow me cousin, follow me.’
I followed Sareo into a short corridor, half-lit by the wondrous lamps of the Imperium, some of which now burned erratically. The vessel sloped sternwards, and water lapped not far from the hatch. Lost lamps shone greenly in the depths.
Sareo moved quickly and surely. ‘Do not be afraid. The giants will thank us. We are their rescuers. Think of that!’
‘But, the lights…’ I whispered. ‘The water…’
‘Stay calm. The vessel is surely holed, and will take on water as readily as any craft of Pelago. We must hurry. There is no profit to be had going aft. Let us head upwards, to the wheelhouse. It is still above the water. The pilots might live.’
We made for another doorway up the corridor. It was difficult going. The ship was wallowing, rolling onto its side, and we were forced to brace our feet against the wall and the deck, proceeding like glimmer crabs picking over a reef.
Sareo banged on the sealed hatch.
‘Can you open it?’ I asked.
‘No, we must force it open. See, there are tools in that alcove there.’
I scrabbled at a panel in the wall, painted over with strange words. ‘Here?’
‘Aye.’
Sareo pushed me out of the way and pressed the panel’s edge. It opened and I looked inside, unsure what I was searching for.
‘Is there a pry bar, Tidon?’
‘Yes, cousin.’
The work was hard, the ship’s interior close and hot. We sweated to pull the door open, fingerwidth by fingerwidth. Fearsome noises haunted the ship, but with Sareo with me, I did not take fright.
We squeezed through the gap we made. On the other side, the way was wider, set with rows of large seats facing each other. Between, two corpses lay on the deck – one in blue, one in grey.
I could not believe my eyes. ‘They are… so huge…’
‘They are dead,’ Sareo replied flatly.
‘What happened?’
‘They killed each other.’
They were locked together even in death. A knife jutted from a join in the blue giant’s armour. What had killed the one in grey, I could not tell.
‘Why do they fight? I thought them all brothers.’
‘I do not know, but it augurs ill. There is another door. Perhaps in there, in the wheelhouse, we will find answers.’
We clambered over the corpses. The second door yielded as unwillingly as the first. The ship rolled further to starboard as we worked, spurring us to greater action.
We forced it wide to reveal a broad cabin full of dead devices. Two massive forms were strapped into a pair of seats, back to back, by the fire-blacked windows. A pair of half-men – creatures of flesh joined with their machines – were also within. None showed any sign of life.
I looked around in confusion. ‘Is this the wheelhouse? I see no wheel. How does so large a ship sail with no wheel?’
‘It is
not a ship as you would understand it, cousin. It is science. The wisdom of the stars.’
Sareo made forwards, pulling himself up the sloping deck. Both the seated giants were in grey armour, hung all about with pelts and charms.
‘Such savages!’ I choked, covering my mouth. ‘They stink!’
‘Their customs are different to ours, that is all. Look not to their trinkets – look instead at the craft of their machines, and then tell me if it is they or us who are the savages.’ Sareo leaned down. ‘Help me here.’
Sitting, their lifeless eyes were level with ours. I stood back as Sareo fiddled around the base of the first giant’s helm. He hit upon a catch, and it came free.
He passed it to me; it filled my arms and was almost too heavy for me to carry. Beneath the helmet the giant had a thick red beard and braided hair, and tattoos writhed over his face. The tips of long teeth protruded between his lips.
Sareo pressed fingers to the warrior’s thick neck.
‘This one lives…’
He went to the second and removed his helmet too, more quickly this time. It was only then that I saw the giants’ blood staining the deck beneath our feet.
‘This one does not.’
Sareo was distracted, looking for some other sign of injury, and did not see the first giant move.
I cried out to warn him. ‘Sareo!’
The giant grabbed Sareo’s shoulder in one armoured gauntlet, forcing him to his knees.
‘What… What are you doing?’ he slurred.
‘We are here to help!’ I pleaded. ‘Please, you are hurting him!’
The giant looked down at Sareo with puzzlement. He let go. Sareo tumbled forwards with a gasp.
The savage warrior slammed at the belts that crossed his body. He fell from his seat, stood unsteadily and looked at us with pale yellow eyes.
‘Atmospheric re-entry. Too violent.’ He shook his head. His long braids swung.
‘We have to get off the ship,’ Sareo insisted, his voice pained. ‘We are sinking.’
‘Sinking?’
‘You are in the water, the oceans of Pelago. Follow us. Quickly now!’
The grey warrior moved falteringly. I cowered.
‘Come on, Tidon!’ Sareo called back.
We pushed out of the wheelhouse. The gap we had made was not wide enough for the warrior, but he grasped the edge of the door and forced it back.
We stumbled down the gangway and over the corpses. The giant wrenched at the second door, and then his strength was spent. The slope was steepening, threatening to tumble us into the water below. The warrior stumbled. Sareo steadied him on one side, I on the other. I dropped his helm, and it splashed into the water.
‘Tidon!’ Sareo cried.
‘I’m sorry!’
The giant was so weak, but we pushed and pushed until he hauled himself up through the hatch and out into the sunlight. He staggered down the unsteady hull towards the fishing smack. Ven steered as close as he could.
‘Quickly, quickly!’ he called.
Sareo gestured urgently. ‘Onto the boat, sir giant.’
The warrior fell onto it, his weight lifting the stern out of the water, and lay still. Ven tried to rouse him, but he was unconscious. Instead Ven wrestled feebly to pull the giant further on.
The sky-ship was slipping lower into the ocean. ‘Get aboard!’ the captain shouted to us. ‘To the prow, both of you! Your weight might counterbalance his!’
Sareo looked back. ‘There may be more surviv–’
‘You have no time! We must be away, or the wreck will drag us all down with it!’
The lip of the open hatch reached the water. A foamy rush spilled over, and the ship began to sink faster. Sareo shoved at me urgently, and I leapt the gap.
Ven beckoned wildly. ‘Now, Sareo, now!’
He jumped, but landed awkwardly with a cry of pain.
‘Sareo!’
‘It is his shoulder,’ I explained. ‘He… the giant… He hurt him.’
Sareo grunted. ‘In error. It is only bruised. Come now, Tidon, to the prow!’
Our weight stabilised the boat enough so that Ven could work the engine. He swung us out and around, away from the sky-ship. ‘Tidon, raise the sail. We must be quicker!’
I set the canvas swiftly, catching the wind. We drew away as the wheelhouse vanished under the water. The ocean boiled. Wave slapped into wave, foam swirled, and then there was nothing, as if the ship had never been.
‘The ocean takes everything,’ Ven murmured. ‘Even a sky-ship is no proof against it.’
We set sail for home. Sareo and I managed to get the giant further into the boat, and our ride became smoother. Daygulls wheeled, their cries like the cries of the dead upon the waves.
I was seated by the giant when he awoke. He groaned, sat and stared about him. He was fierce, his gaze uncompromising. None of us could hold it.
‘Where am I?’ he demanded.
‘Pelago,’ said Ven. ‘Fifth world of the sun of Gollim.’
The giant stood. Steelcord is a tough fibre, but the boat was flimsy beneath his great weight, and it rippled under his movement. He examined it, then the sea, then each of us, with a look of distaste.
‘A backwater world. Have you even acceded to compliance?’
Ven nodded. ‘We have. We welcome you, our saviour.’
‘Welcome me not, for you do not know what follows me. You, old one – you are the captain of this vessel?’
‘I am Ven. This is my sister’s son, and his cousin.’
Sareo and I bobbed in turn. The grey warrior ignored our awkward bows.
‘Then I direct you to take me to the nearest point of Imperial authority. I have grave news that must be delivered.’
‘We saw violence on your ship,’ I said. ‘The giant in blue–’
The grey warrior whirled around. In one stride, he crossed the deck to where I stood, causing the boat to rock alarmingly. He towered over me. His lips drew back, showing the full, inhuman length of his teeth. Sareo and I shrank back.
‘You will not speak to me of this again,’ he growled before turning away, leaving us gasping and afraid. ‘Make haste, little captain. Set your sail, or all is lost.’
For the first day after his rescue, the grey warrior would not talk with us. He took little food, and drank sparingly of our water. He evidently had some sea-craft himself, for he remained out of the way as we went about our business. We were wary of this lord of the stars, who sat brooding over some unfathomable woe.
Near noon on the second day, he suddenly broke from his silence as we worked on the remainder of our catch.
‘You do not trust the water.’
Ven looked at him strangely. ‘To swim in these waters is to die, sir giant. Pelago is mostly ocean, and it is an ocean deadly to man.’
The giant stirred himself and stood tall.
‘Are you unharmed, sir?’ asked Sareo.
‘I am, thanks to you. You have saved my life. Normally, that would suffice to put me in debt of honour to you. But I have seen things of late that have robbed me of my trust. I misjudged you, I misspoke and I have abused your hospitality.’
He locked eyes with Sareo, and this time my cousin did not look away.
‘I am mighty Torbjorn, company champion of For, renowned for my skill at arms the breadth of the galaxy. My honour is my life, and I have sullied it. Let me make amends and labour beside you.’
With that, he began to work. The giant was as good a sailor as any I have known since, and he told us that in his youth he had plied the seas of his far-off home world – seas even more deadly than our own. With his aid we made good progress, and soon our catch was all salted in its barrels and the ship was clean.
When our course was set, he told us his story, a manner of story few are privileged to hear.
‘War rages in the heavens, little sailors. Brother pitted against brother. Foul treachery is at hand. The Imperium is ripped asunder.’
‘We know no
thing of it,’ said Ven. ‘We only knew of hope and of unity.’
‘Hope is embattled. Unity is no more. But there is perhaps a little comfort – my brothers have died, but not in vain. We were sent by our father, Leman of the Russ, the Wolf King. In the wake of Magnus’s perfidy, we went quietly, in fives and tens, to watch over the primarchs of the Legions – the lords of those you call giants, and brothers to my Lord Russ. A guard of body in name, a guard of loyalty in fact. My pack was to go to Alpharius of the Alpha Legion, those of blue you saw. We set out into the warp as doubt engulfed the stars.
‘We could not know that Alpharius had already turned against our beloved Emperor. We were received as brothers by the remnants of the Eighty-Eighth Expedition, feasted and honoured. Into the primarch’s presence we came, three days after our arrival. He was a lesser being than our own lord, not much bigger than his sons, with a troubled face under a drawn brow. Would I have marked his perturbation well then my brothers would not have died.
‘“I am Alpharius,” he said. “To what do I owe the honour of a guard of the sons of the Russ?” His words were hard, and only then did I know he saw through our purpose. Our ruse was distasteful to us, but not dishonourable – we were there to guard him if he proved true and, if not, to act in guard of the Imperium. There is no higher calling than that. He bade us kneel, but we did not, for the Vlka Fenryka are proud, and our lord is more than the equal of Alpharius. This angered him. He was ignoble and rash. He railed against us, shouting imprecations for our rightful scouring of Prospero. And then, his sons attacked.
‘Brother Egil died first, his armour split by bolts. Then Grivnir, although he accounted for two of theirs before he fell. Six of us remained, hemmed in by the Alpha Legion high in the galleries about us. They underestimated us. Theirs is the way of stealth and manipulation. Ours is that of open battle, and of fury. We fell hard among them, blades swinging, howling out our wrath and sorrow.
‘Helgist died, then Skalagrim, but the traitors paid the blood-price for their deaths. I fought, my brothers Engal, Gunnir and Holdar at my side. We closed so they could not bring their bolters to bear, for we are their betters when it comes to blade’s sating. Holdar and Engal gained the stairs to the gallery, staying the storm of fire with their corpse-makers.