by Dan Abnett
‘Eeron Kleve of the Iron Hands,’ said Kleve, bowing. He and his men were shrouded from head to foot in black cloaks. Now they had returned to realspace, their mourning had begun.
‘I am Gantulga,’ said the White Scars leader, with more of a snap of the head than a bow. He had a sword, drawn and gleaming, in his left hand.
‘Welcome both,’ said Guilliman, clasping Kleve’s hands. ‘Accept my offer of shelter from the storm. I hear you were several ships together, Kleve?’
‘A White Scars strike force and my own barge, lord,’ answered Kleve. ‘Most of us made it through the turmoil in formation. Two vessels were lost.’
‘You come to me with blade drawn?’ Guilliman asked the White Scar.
‘Yes, but with my other hand open,’ said Gantulga, offering it to Guilliman. ‘We did not know what was in your light, Lord of Ultramar, so I kept one palm empty and a sword in the other.’
‘What do you think of the light now?’ Guilliman asked.
‘I like it well enough,’ said Gantulga. ‘It is not the trap I feared. But I marked your words to the Imperial Fist. The actions of Horus…’
He said the name like a snake-hiss, as if it burned his mouth and he wanted to spit it out.
‘The actions of Horus are treachery, Lord of Ultramar–’
‘Heresy, I would say,’ said Guilliman. ‘It was treachery at first. To turn against brothers, to kill for personal advancement and power. But we have seen them, seen how their minds and bodies have been corrupted. Their very belief systems have been warped. This is no longer Horus’s treachery. It is his heresy.’
Gantulga nodded. ‘Heresy comes in many forms,’ he said. ‘It can be blatant, like the one which now tears down the stars, but it can be subtle too, accidental. To make example, the building of a new Imperium when the old one is not yet pronounced dead.’
Guilliman’s smile was as bright and sharp as the White Scar’s blade.
‘I am not building my own Imperium, Gantulga. I am preserving what’s left of the original.’
With his free hand, the White Scar stroked his long moustaches thoughtfully.
‘Then I would make sure of your purpose, Lord of Ultramar,’ he said. He sheathed his sword.
‘With that blade drawn,’ said Guilliman, ‘I thought you Scars were preparing impatiently for war.’
They could still hear the scraping of the whetstone. It was coming from behind their group.
‘No, lord,’ said Kleve. ‘That would be the Wolves.’
The men with Kleve and Gantulga stood aside, and the pack of Space Wolves was revealed. They crouched rather than bowed or knelt, hunched and huddled in their armour and pelts upon the black and white paving. One was sharpening his war-axe with long, steady strokes of the honing flat. All of them had removed their helms, but they still wore their tight leatherwork hoods and masks, fright-masks curled in perpetual snarls, worked with figures and spirals. Their eyes shone yellow
‘Fenrys Hjolda,’ said Guilliman. ‘You are far from home.’
Their leader rose out of his squat, unwrapping the fur cloak he had gathered around his forearms, and allowing it to fall loose.
‘Not your home, Jarl Guilliman,’ he said.
‘Let me know you,’ said Guilliman.
‘Faffnr Bludbroder,’ said the Wolf, ‘and my pack.’
‘Ten of you. A squad.’
‘A pack. In fealty to Sesc Company, of the Rout, of the Vlka Fenryka.’
Guilliman glanced at the warrior sharpening the axe. Apart from Faffnr, none of the Wolves had risen or shown any deference.
‘That axe looks sharp enough to me, brother,’ said Guilliman.
‘No axe can ever be too sharp,’ the man replied without looking up.
‘Bo Soren,’ Faffnr growled. ‘Ask forgiveness for your tongue.’
The Wolf looked up at Guilliman. He bared his teeth.
‘I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it,’ he said.
Faffnr looked at Guilliman. ‘Bo Soren can be insolent,’ he said, unapologetically.
‘Bo Soren is a Space Wolf,’ said Guilliman.
‘You make a good point, jarl,’ said Faffnr.
‘Of all today’s visitors, you intrigue me most.’
‘Are we not welcome to your hall, Jarl Guilliman?’ asked another of the men.
‘Hush your noise, Herek,’ said Faffnr.
Biter Herek let out a low, bubbling growl.
‘You are all welcome to my hall, Faffnr Bludbroder. What intrigues me is that everyone else sought a safe haven. From the flight data of your vessel, I see that Macragge was your intended destination.’
‘It was.’
‘We rode out the storm to get here,’ said Biter Herek.
‘We have a duty here,’ added Bo Soren.
‘A duty?’ echoed Guilliman.
‘Bo Soren has a big mouth,’ growled Faffnr.
‘Necessarily, for he has a great many teeth to fit into it,’ said Guilliman. ‘What is your duty, pack-leader?’
‘Our duty is what our duty has always been – to do what others will not. To do the unthinkable, if the unthinkable must be thought.’
‘Your reputation as the sanction is well known,’ said Guilliman, ‘and perhaps undeserved. We all serve according to our courage.’
‘Wolves serve beyond that. We are the executioner’s sons.’
‘Who have you come to execute, Faffnr Bludbroder?’
Faffnr hesitated. He reached under his pelt and produced a sheaf of parchment.
‘I see no point hiding it,’ he said, holding the document out. ‘Read for yourself, Jarl Guilliman.’
‘No, tell me in your own words.’
Faffnr kept the parchment extended.
‘Look at it at least. See the seal of the Wolf King, and beside it the sigil of Malcador. Know where this instruction comes from, and the authority it contains.’
Guilliman took the document, unfolded it and studied the marks.
‘Authenticate it if you must,’ said Faffnr.
‘I don’t have to. This is real.’
‘You heard the fate that befell Prospero?’ asked the pack-leader.
‘The Wolves were unleashed to issue sanction to Magnus.’
‘Yes. Not so undeserved a reputation after all, eh?’
‘Go on.’
Faffnr paused. In the eye slots of his straked and knotted leather hood, his golden eyes blinked once, twice.
‘If one can fall, more can fall. More have fallen. Half have fallen. It has been decreed that a company of Wolves be sent to the hearth-side of every one of the Emperor’s sons, to watch them.’
‘For what?’ asked Guilliman.
‘For signs of treachery, of heresy.’
‘And if such signs become visible?’
‘Then we are to act.’
‘Act?’ asked Guilliman. ‘You’re saying that you are here to watch me? To shadow me? And if you perceive my actions to be in any way untoward, what? You are authorised to enact sanction?’
‘By the Sigillite, so authorised.’
Guilliman laughed. ‘You would… cut my thread?’
‘If needs be. Primarchs are not invincible. Some already sleep upon the red snow.’
Guilliman raised his hand, indicating that his bodyguard should back down. The Cataphractii had cycled up their weapons at Faffnr’s last response.
‘Faffnr Bludbroder,’ said Guilliman, ‘do you really think that your pack could take me down?’
Faffnr shrugged. ‘Perhaps not. You are Jarl Guilliman and your prowess is the stuff of saga. But we have our duty, and we would try. If you were, say, without your bodyguard and cornered in a room with us–’
‘My dear Faffnr, then you would be cornered in a room with me.’
‘We are the executioner’s sons, Jarl. Even if you took us all, I doubt you’d leave the room whole.’
Guilliman glanced at a nearby adjutant. ‘Find them somewhere to sleep.’
‘Your hearth will do,’ said Faffnr.
‘Then show them to my hearth,’ said Guilliman.
The light of the Pharos, the distant xeno-tech of Sotha, illuminated Macragge as a lone, bright beacon in the encompassing dark, and that day it brought one other visitor to the heart of Ultramar: not a storm-lost ship, or a bedraggled convoy; not a broken battle-barge or a cargoboat of refugees.
Not a vessel at all.
It brought a flash, high in the warp-dappled skies above Macragge Civitas, a flash, and then an object falling like a stone, streaking out a tail of fire as it scored through the atmosphere.
Guilliman left his guests behind, walking back to the door of the Audience Hall with his Invictus guard at his heels and Euten at his side.
Titus Prayto was waiting for him.
‘The Wolves aren’t lying,’ Prayto said.
‘I didn’t think they were,’ said Guilliman.
‘Should I–’ Prayto began.
‘Watch them, Titus? Guard the guard dogs?’
‘I urge caution, my lord,’ said Prayto. ‘The Wolves are mercurial beasts at the best of times, unpredictable and quick to find their temper. It is their asset in battle, but it is not suited to the realm of the court. They are tired and they have endured much. They are living on their nerve-ends. I read this in them.’
‘You don’t need to have the sight to read it,’ muttered Euten, casting a disapproving glance over her shoulder in the direction of the Fenrisian huddle. ‘And they reek like–’
‘Enough, Euten,’ said Guilliman. ‘Faffnr seems an honest man, straightforward. He made no attempt to hide his duty, or the egregious burden of it.’
‘Nonetheless, I urge caution, my lord,’ said Prayto, ‘precisely because of that. He is like an open book. He is determined to perform his duty even though he knows it is a thankless task. He does not want to make an error. He is aware that the best of us have made many errors so far, not seeing the truth behind the traitors’ masks before it is too late, expecting the best because we trust they are our brothers. At Isstvan. At Calth.’
‘I understand, Titus.’
‘No, my lord, you do not. It means that honest Faffnr is too determined not to fail. He will jump at the slightest thing, the merest doubt. He will err on the side of caution, because the alternative failure is too grim to bear. He and his men are a risk to you, because they would rather strike at you in error than allow the slightest possibility of your disloyalty.’
‘I have nothing to hide,’ Guilliman said.
‘Do you not?’ asked Prayto boldly. ‘What about me? What about the Librarius? We have learned that the Wolves were unleashed on Prospero because your brother defied the Edict of Nikaea. You do the same. Faffnr is looking for the slightest sign. The slightest sign. And I am it. I am proof of your heresy, lord. I am evidence of precisely the wretched warpcraft they have been told to hunt for.’
‘Your counsel is noted,’ said Guilliman. He looked back at the Wolves one last time. ‘I think I can handle them. Teach them to come to heel, perhaps. That’s why I want them where I can see them.’
‘You take liberties with your own safety, lord,’ murmured Euten.
‘Not now, Euten–’
‘You are everything, my lord, and you cannot be everything. The only primarch, the only son, the only loyal son we know yet lives.’ Euten began to count the roles off on her fingertips. ‘You are Lord of Ultramar, king of this world, master of the Five Hundred, commander of the Thirteenth Legion Ultramarines, last champion of the Imperium. You are also the Emperor’s proxy, and protector of the Throne. Like the word or not, you will be a regent. You are his surrogate, and possibly his heir. You may indeed, by default, be Emperor already.’
‘Mamzel!’
‘I will have my say, Lord of Macragge!’ the old woman protested. ‘You cannot be all of these things. You are too valuable to risk. Let others command the forces. Let the tetrarchs do that! Let others do the dirty work. Delegate! Formally appoint commanders from the forces you are assembling. As a figurehead alone, you are too important. If fate overcomes you, the Imperium is most surely done.’
Guilliman looked at Prayto.
‘Tell Mamzel Euten what I am thinking, Prayto,’ he said.
‘My lord is thinking that he does not wish to call himself regent. If he is building what amounts to a new Imperium, it would be unseemly to place himself on the throne.’
Euten snorted. ‘Tell my beloved lord that he may yet have to if there is no other heir!’
‘That would make me no more loyal than Horus Lupercal,’ said Guilliman. ‘I will not countenance it.’
He saw that Prayto was looking at him.
‘What, Titus? Something else?’
Prayto hesitated.
‘No, my lord.’
Figures approached through the broad hall doorway. Flanked by Ultramarines in artificer plate, Valentus Dolor approached. Dolor was one of the four tetrarchs of Ultramar, the four princes who ruled the master worlds of the fiefdoms that made up the realm, and whose rank was second only to Guilliman’s. Dolor’s fiefdom was Occluda. He was a giant, and his master-crafted, modified Mark III plate was painted in the Ultramarines livery, reversed – blue for white and white for blue.
‘Valentus,’ said Guilliman, ‘present me with good news and save me from my chamberlain’s relentless nagging.’
Dolor looked down at the slender old woman.
‘My good and distinguished friend Mamzel Euten is very small, lord,’ he said. ‘I do not know how she could ever be very bothersome.’
‘Flies are small!’ Euten snapped. ‘Ticks, they are also small!’
‘Ticks get plucked out and squashed,’ said Guilliman. ‘Flies are swatted. Your point, mam?’
‘I find myself temporarily without one, lord,’ said Euten.
‘I do bring good news, lord,’ said Dolor. ‘I knew you’d want it communicated directly. A ship has put in. The pitiful thing has limped all the way from Calth, carrying the wounded and the weary. A sergeant called Thiel is aboard, and commends himself to your lordship.’
Guilliman smiled.
‘Aeonid Thiel. He made a practical choice to remain committed to the Underworld War – it will be good to see him. Have him go to the Residency so that we can talk in private. It’s been a long time since he was so steadfast by my side at Calth.’
‘I will instruct him so,’ said Dolor with a courteous head bow. ‘Is something wrong, Brother Titus?’
Prayto had suddenly winced, and steadied himself against the wall with one hand. With his other hand he clasped his forehead.
‘Something–’ he began.
There was a supersonic bang that shook the windows of the hall and made someone present cry out. Looking up through the tall panes, Guilliman saw a streak of fire stride down the sky. For a stricken moment, he thought of Calth, of the Campanile, of missiles raining down…
But this looked more like a meteorite, an object plunging through the atmosphere.
Others in the hall had hurried to the windows to see.
‘A bad star!’ one of the Wolves spat. ‘An omen star!
‘A broom star!’ snarled another. ‘Maleficarum!’
The fireball was not large. Guilliman could see that. It fell straight down and disappeared behind the towers of the Civitas. There was no explosion, no sunburst of a warhead.
Dolor was already checking a data-slate.
‘Reports of an impact, my lord, in the labouring habs of the southern suburbs. Site is just north of the Octagon Fortress, in Anomie Deme.’
‘Take
charge of this,’ Guilliman told him. ‘Find out what it was. Find out how in the name of the Throne it passed through our orbital screen and detector grid. And someone check there aren’t more of them incoming.’
‘At once, lord,’ said Dolor.
‘Report to me directly when you have anything!’ Guilliman snapped.
He turned to look at the room. All eyes were on him, all the visitors: Wolves, Fists, Hands, Scars, Salamanders.
‘Find them accommodation in the garrison, see to their needs, and begin to assign them duties,’ he said to Prayto. ‘Form them into companies, according to their strengths. Let us make an army.’
He turned to leave.
‘I’ll be in the Residency,’ he said. His bodyguard made to follow him.
‘Stand down,’ he said. ‘I go to speak with an old friend.’
5
He That has
Returned
‘Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot.’
– unknown song of Terran origin, circa M2
Smoke rose above the rooflines of the southern city district of Anomie in a grey horsetail.
Alarms were still sounding, and city watch divisions had moved in to isolate the area and hold back residents and labourers from the fabricatories who had gone out onto the streets to look.
Dolor’s lifter flew along the broad colonnades and boulevards of Strayko above the moving lines of ground traffic and beneath the sweeping arches and bridge spans. At Larnis Gate, where Strayko Deme became Anomie Deme, the traffic circulation was blocked. A Warhound Titan stood watch on the grassy field by the Illyrian Monument, and another strutted with a muscular, crow-like walk across the upper pavement to take up position behind the fabrication plants along Antimon Square.
Dolor’s pilot keyed the authority code, and the sentry Warhound tracked the lifter with its weapons for a second before acknowledging the tetrarch’s right to proceed.
In the restricted area around the impact site, the streets were empty, except for rescue and emergency teams. A major fire, sparked by the impact, had half-gutted the old Antimon machine works, the smoke from it staining the sky.