The Master of Mankind

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Jaya did so. She walked towards him, and as proud and straight-backed as she was after over thirty years of leading armies in Highrock’s name, she barely reached the Custodian’s armoured stomach. The warrior towered three heads taller than her. She held back a little, to maintain her dignified posture and not indulge in the foolishness of craning her neck.

  ‘You are Jaya D’Arcus, Warden of Highrock, Baroness of House Vyridion. Is that so?’

  ‘Actually, I have rather more titles than that.’ Since being fed and watered, albeit with a brief and dubious feast of yet more stale water and nutrient gruel, she was finding her voice again. ‘Marcher Lady of the Eastern Barrens, First Scion of the Envolius Reach, Crusader of the… Well, I won’t bore you with my list of honours.’

  ‘We would be here for some time if she did,’ said Devram Sevik with immaculate politeness, from the first rank of courtiers.

  Behind the Custodian, the tattooed woman smiled faintly, as did the Blood Angel. The Custodian did not.

  ‘I am Diocletian of the Ten Thousand,’ he told her again, this time including all of her court in the proclamation of his name. ‘With me are Dominion Zephon of the Ninth Legion, and Sister Kaeria Casryn, one of the Emperor’s own Oblivion Knights.’

  The latter title meant nothing to the courtiers. Diocletian’s sonorous voice carried to them with little effort, even against the wind that pulled gently at his red plume. ‘It’s said that House Vyridion abandoned the Emperor and turned its cloak to march beneath the rebel banners of the Warmaster.’

  Silence greeted this announcement, into which the Custodian cast his lure. ‘So tell me, scions of Highrock. Are you guilty or innocent?’

  The courtiers stood resolute in silence, dignity incarnate, bound by oaths of fealty considered arcane even here at the heart of the Imperium. The baroness would speak for them. And speak she did.

  ‘Guilty.’

  The Custodian seemed to hesitate. He turned back to the Oblivion Knight, who dipped her head, bidding him continue. From the golden warrior’s pause, Jaya wondered if her admission of guilt had taken the man by surprise.

  ‘Guilty,’ Diocletian repeated her confession. ‘And yet your hearth-ship entered Terran skies and you surrendered into imprisonment. That speaks of repentance, or at least a willingness to be punished for your sins.’

  ‘You did not ask of repentance or punishment,’ Jaya replied. She stood straight, her hands clasped behind her back, loathing the unwashed smell rising from her dirty uniform. ‘You asked if we had marched with the Warmaster’s rebels, and we have done exactly that. We have fired our weapons in anger upon souls loyal to the Emperor.’

  ‘I see.’ Diocletian rested his spear upon one shoulder guard. The setting sun turned his armour to fiery bronze. ‘Your scions marched alongside the Third Legion, conquering two worlds. You are responsible for the destruction of several hundred warriors and war machines of the Iron Hands, as well as innumerable thousands of their Army reserve elements. You personally slew Baron Kells of House Riathan at the Battle of Mount Galheim.’

  ‘In single combat,’ Sevik pointed out.

  Diocletian’s attention snapped to the courtier. ‘Are you your mistress’ herald?’

  ‘No, Custodian.’

  ‘Does she need you singing her achievements to the sky as if this were some tawdry baronial procession?’

  ‘I suspect not, Golden One.’

  ‘Indeed she doesn’t. So be silent.’ Diocletian paused again, and then added, ‘Slew Baron Kells of House Riathan… in single combat.’

  Jaya nodded. ‘As you say.’

  ‘That’s an impressive roster of treachery for such a brief involvement in the war. Tell me why you fired upon souls loyal to the Emperor, baroness.’

  ‘Vyridion’s oldest oaths are to the Children of the Emperor. It was Prince Fulgrim who descended to Highrock, bringing the Emperor’s light to spell the end of Old Night. We marched with his Legion throughout the Great Crusade for three generations, as we vowed in our Declaration of Allegiance. When he called us to war again, we answered.’

  ‘A matter of loyalty, then.’

  ‘As you say,’ she repeated. ‘The war is no clean-cut matter away from Terra. Rumours fly over who is the betrayer and who is the betrayed. Worlds and battles are named with no knowledge of why they were held, lost or fought. The Iron Hands sought to destroy our allies in the Third Legion. We held to our oaths, fighting for the sons of Prince Fulgrim.’

  ‘And attacked several Imperial bastions.’

  ‘A fact I do not deny, Custodian Diocletian. Is this a trial?’

  ‘Yes, of sorts. So let us speak of regret and punishment, baroness. Tell me what brings a very well-armed, well-supplied two-thirds of House Vyridion from fighting at the side of the Emperor’s Children to surrendering their arms in the skies of Terra?’

  ‘We were ordered into the field against the remnants of House Kells. We laid siege to their last citadel. Rather than curse us for our treachery as the Tenth Legion had done, they implored us to see reason, transmitting details of the wider war to our hearth-ship. Maps and charts of the collapsing Great Crusade. Reports of other battles. Names of fallen worlds. Word of the Warmaster’s apostasy.’

  Diocletian snorted, the sound a mechanical bark through his helm’s vocaliser. ‘And you simply believed them? You weren’t concerned that this was enemy propaganda?’

  Jaya felt the threat of anger. ‘We had no way of knowing for certain. One name emerged, again and again, wretched in its terrible possibility.’

  ‘I can guess that name.’ It was Zephon who spoke, his voice soft. ‘Isstvan.’

  Jaya nodded. ‘Isstvan. We could not break the truth apart from the lies. That day we refused to march against Kells. The Emperor’s Children fleet fired upon us as we withdrew. Our support fleet sailed to Highrock with our sacred armours, to return them to the Great Vault. My courtiers and I made the long journey to Terra aboard our empty hearth-ship, with a small contingent of our sacristans.’

  Diocletian’s gaze raked across the orderly ranks once more. ‘And when you arrived?’

  ‘When we arrived, seeking answers, we were imprisoned at once. And there we have remained until you freed us.’

  Diocletian shook his head. ‘You must have known execution awaited you on Terra.’

  ‘Perhaps. We are oathbreakers, thus we knew execution was deserved. Is that why we were being starved?’

  Diocletian sighed, but didn’t answer. The Blood Angel did.

  ‘No,’ Zephon said. ‘That was merely the degeneration of unmonitored servitors. The Palace’s hierarchs are forced to turn their attention to a thousand matters at once, and the breaking down of your servitor jailors was unlikely to have registered at all, until it was far too late.’

  Jaya clenched her teeth. Well. That answered that question. She had almost been executed by the stalled processes of disgusting Terran bureaucracy.

  ‘You were speaking of Terra,’ Diocletian prompted her, ‘and the execution that awaited you.’

  ‘We knew execution was possible. But the truth awaited us, Custodian, and that meant more than death. Better an honourable end than a life spent wallowing in ignorant treason. We made a choice to risk death rather than become the generation whose entry in the Highrock archives records them as deceived into dishonour.’

  Again, Diocletian turned to Kaeria. And again, she nodded. Something in the Oblivion Knight’s eyes made Jaya wonder if the silent sword-maiden was granting permission at all. Surely no one but the Emperor held authority over the Ten Thousand. Perhaps she was offering some subtle advice or judgement instead.

  Diocletian turned back to the baroness with a whir of active armour joints. ‘I can offer you a fate you wouldn’t be ashamed to etch into those archives, Baroness D’Arcus. But I will need more than your word. I will need your life. I will need you to marc
h, fight and likely die for the Emperor.’

  There was no hesitation at all. ‘Send to Highrock for our sacred armours,’ she replied, ‘and our blood and steel will be the Emperor’s coin to spend until the Imperium’s last breath.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  For the first time in all of this madness, Jaya felt the creeping chill of an unease that threatened to become fear. ‘Please explain yourself,’ she said, breathy with restrained panic.

  ‘You made the right choice,’ Diocletian replied. ‘To bring your war suits here would have risked them being melted down out of hate, or gifted to other houses as war spoil. But we can’t send word to Highrock, baroness. Highrock as you knew it no longer exists. It fell to the Warmaster’s forces mere weeks after you were first imprisoned. A dead world orbits the sun in its place.’

  The stunned silence didn’t last long. The unbelievable order and dignity held by the massed ranks slowly dissolved, and the gathered courtiers and tech-adepts became the starving remnants of the Seberekan Isolation Compound once again. Jaya, above all the others, looked ravaged. She fell to her knees, struggling to breathe.

  ‘The whole world. The whole world.’

  ‘The whole world,’ Diocletian confirmed. ‘The Emperor’s Children punished you for seeking the truth behind their treachery. They brought fire and ruin to Highrock. Now Third Legion banners wave in the wind above the ashes.’

  Jaya was beyond words. The archives of a noble house that had endured the millennia of Old Night, marching to guard the people whose towns clung to the walls of its fortresses. Hundreds of generations of honourable vigil, defending the weak, adhering to oaths, watching over the sacred armours that had been the lifeblood and salvation of Highrock for thousands of years.

  Fourteen million people, in freeholds and fortress-towns, across the world.

  Gone. All gone.

  Failed by House Vyridion, who had not been there to defend them. Whose refusal to fight with the Warmaster’s armies had brought annihilation.

  Jaya forced herself to her feet, too hollow to weep. She felt pain in a way starvation hadn’t harmed her, deep and cold and cancerous.

  Above them, the engine sounds beyond the clouds drew closer. The sun had almost set now, lingering as a thin sliver, murky with pollution, above the horizon.

  ‘We… we will need confirmation.’

  ‘It will be provided to you,’ Diocletian promised. ‘We have orbital picts and surface imagery for you to study, baroness.’

  Jaya nodded, unblinking, flensed to her core.

  The Oblivion Knight approached her, then. Kaeria met the older woman’s eyes for several long seconds, and the baroness stood before the stare, unflinching.

  Kaeria broke the gaze and looked to Diocletian.

  ‘You’re certain?’ the Custodian replied.

  The Oblivion Knight didn’t answer. She returned to her place by the Blood Angel’s side.

  Diocletian looked down into the baroness’ eyes. ‘I can offer you the Emperor’s forgiveness,’ he said. ‘And I can offer you revenge.’

  Jaya cleared her still-raw throat. ‘I… we… House Vyridion will take both.’

  Diocletian’s cold eye-lenses and golden faceplate revealed nothing of his rare admiration for how the human woman fought back her devastating grief. ‘I thought you might. You have a week to prepare. Perhaps ten days. We can spare no longer.’

  ‘How are we to fight?’ she asked, closing her eyes. ‘How can we serve the Emperor without our sacred armours?’

  ‘I anticipated those very questions, baroness.’ The sky darkened with the arrival of a bulk lander. Its huge silhouette juddered overhead, great clawed landing gear grinding free of its housings.

  ‘And here,’ said Diocletian, ‘is your answer.’

  Nine

  In ambition’s shadow

  In the mist

  Chimaera

  Ra scraped an Imperial Army bayonet along his cheek, shaving dark stubble with the spit-wet edge as he watched the input monitors detailing the reports from the last of the outrider forces. The Godspire was heaving with activity as of the last few days, with the Unifiers and their attendant hosts of servitors returned from mapping and repairing the outward tunnels.

  Squad after squad of Custodians and Sisters alike were reporting the enemy hordes’ advance, divided now across almost forty principal arterials. Grainy pict-feeds showed the hideous shapes of deformed Titans marching behind swarms of marching legionaries, though these were few in number compared to the endless blurred imagery of warp-born entities spilling through the passages.

  Most of the warp’s creatures were repelled by the automated defences established under his predecessors’ ambitious reigns. They had taken their first steps into the webway, originally fighting blade to blade against daemons and devilry, only to turn the defence of the Imperial Dungeon into a gruelling crusade in this secret realm. Now the tide had reached its highest point, and the inevitable backslide was in full effect.

  Jasaric, Kadai, Helios. All dead. Slain in the throes of their glorious ambitions, in their assured need to serve the Emperor’s will as they saw fit.

  Three artificers worked on Ra’s armour as he watched the feeds, drinking in all the information the screens could offer. He had always made a point of acknowledging their patience and expertise in all the years they had served him; today he barely noticed their existence at all. Acetylene-bright sparks flickered from their tools as they re-fused and reworked the tribune’s battle-worn auramite. He had been out in the tunnels for days himself, overseeing the withdrawals personally and adding his blade to the butchery.

  ‘Tribune?’ called a Mechanicum serf from his console.

  ‘Speak.’ Ra didn’t look away from the three dozen screens. He didn’t stop shaving. He didn’t disturb his artificers’ work by turning to face the speaker.

  ‘Word from Sister-Vigilator Marei Yul.’

  ‘Relay it.’

  The thrall did so at once, augmitting a series of acutely timed clicks – the kind of coded burst from a Sister’s hand-held messenger. For the first time in over a century of life, Ra Endymion winced and held a hand to his half-shaven cheek, drawing away bloody fingers.

  Marei was far from the Impossible City when she heard the echolocation chime. The sound was a familiar one after so long dwelling inside the realm of mist-choked tunnels, but its intensity made her skin crawl. She felt it not only in her instruments but humming through the ground, through whatever aether-resistant materials had been used in the webway’s construction by whatever xenos ancients had dreamed it into being.

  This was new. She’d never felt the Neverborn in such a way before. Always their manifestations were limited to what she could see, hear and kill.

  And there should be silence in this section of tunnels. Rare, blessed silence. The evacuated tunnels were stripped of Mechanicum workers and materials, but Marei had appealed to Commander Krole and Tribune Endymion to remain in the tunnels of western descension, for suspicion of the warp entity that had devoured the Protector and its honour guard of war robots navigating their way here.

  Map triangulation was its own special nightmare in the extra-dimensional realm in which they waged war, but the officers of the Ten Thousand and the Silent Sisterhood had several possible delineated paths for the creature to take, given the tunnels it had so far retreated from in apparent wounded haste. Marei’s case had been simple and clear: the creature was testing the automated defences in several dozen tunnels, seeking a way into the city ahead of the enemy horde. Assassination, she reasoned, not warfare, was its intent. If the automated defences continued to herd it into a path of least resistance, that made one route far likelier than any others. First the tunnels of western descension, then the region called the Bone Garden, where the husks of eldar war machines lay in pitiful state.

  Marei had volunteered,
with Custodian Hyaric Ostianus, to lead the outriders charged with finding the creature and destroying it if possible. Ra had even sent Titan support, one of Ignatum’s precious engines, striding alongside their small warband of grav-vehicles.

  The echolocation chime sounded again. Far from here, but webway readings were erratic at best. More than once the Imperials had been confronted by forces that registered as several kilometres away, or chased nothingness that read as an enemy tide.

  The first thing she did upon hearing the chime was send a mono-beam spurt to Commander Krole via the thumb-sized message beamer in her belt pouch. Several clicks in one of the Sisterhood’s coded non-verbal languages was all it took, rapidly signifying her position and the imminent threat swifter than a spoken explanation.

  The second thing she did was go to Hyaric. The Custodian sat in his saddle, his guardian spear over one shoulder, watching his own hand-held auspex. The great Warhound Titan Ascraeus stood on station nearby, rotating its top half upon its waist axis, panning and scanning, watching and waiting.

  Marei appeared next to Hyaric as if she’d been born from the mist. Her transbonded chainmail whispered with her walk. He looked at her, his rent and restitched face grim.

  ‘My readings cite a single entity,’ he said. ‘Ascraeus’ auspex confirms it. This isn’t the horde.’

  Marei and her Fire Wyrms had served alongside Squad Ostianus since their first days within the webway. She had no need to sign; Hyaric could read her as easily as a data-slate.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied to her expression.

  She glanced to the east, to the endless mist of the labyrinthine tunnels that had brought them here.

  ‘No, remain here and establish a defensive position. We’ll return once we have ascertained the truth of the readings.’

  She met his eyes, and then his eye-lenses once he had sealed his helm into place.

  ‘Jasaric’s death has made Endymion and Commander Krole far too cautious,’ he told her. ‘I appreciate your warning but there’s a world of difference between patience and hesitation, and only one of those is considered virtuous.’