KNIGHTS OF MACRAGGE

by Nick Kyme

  Scarfel brought his horse to a halt as he tried to fight back his grief. ‘You must think me weak,’ he said, gathering himself again, ‘to speak thusly.’

  ‘You are not the first to lament the loss of fallen brothers-in-arms,’ Sicarius told him. ‘You lived and fight on still. There is nothing weak about that.’

  Scarfel nodded, but the shame of that moment long ago had re-etched itself upon his face. He muttered something about riding on ahead, pulled up the hood of his cloak and spurred his horse.

  ‘Bone-swine?’ asked Daceus, when the old campaigner was out of earshot.

  ‘An indigenous beast, most likely. How many monsters have we fought and killed?’

  ‘Never enough,’ replied the veteran grimly. ‘And it seems we’ll need to fight more before we can leave this place.’

  Sicarius’ gaze lingered on the now distant figure of the old campaigner on his horse.

  ‘I pity him.’

  ‘I pity this entire place,’ said Daceus. ‘It’s defeated, cowed almost.’

  ‘But not without its secrets, I suspect.’ Sicarius gestured to the towering spire far away on the horizon. ‘What do you make of that, brother?’

  Daceus frowned. ‘I do not think that’s Farrodum,’ was all he said.

  ‘Nor do I,’ Sicarius replied.

  ‘Who are these people? How did they come to be this way?’

  ‘A lost colony, perhaps? One that never emerged from Old Night.’

  ‘That long, to be so… primitive.’

  ‘It does stretch credulity, I’ll admit. There are records of worlds whose populations have been cast back into a dark age by the onset of the Great Rift. In the Imperium Nihilus…’ Sicarius postulated, ‘there is much we do not know. Feral worlds are not so uncommon.’

  Daceus considered that, the balancing of his captain’s words evident in his face. He scratched at his eyepatch.

  ‘Does that feel likely to you, Cato?’

  Sicarius stared into the fog, seeing the skeletal silhouette of an old acquaintance, and ignoring the balefire glow that he knew no one but him could see.

  ‘No, Retius,’ he said at last, ‘it does not.’

  FARRODUM

  At first, Arna Reda had been glad to leave the Emperor’s Will. The ship had become a tomb, wreathed with dark memories. She had almost died several times during her tenure as armsman, and though she did not entirely leave behind every ghost that prowled its echoing corridors, to see sky again, to feel air and rain – it had been a relief. And she had hoped it would leaven Vanko’s spirits, too. His mood had grown ever darker since what had happened in the sanctum, and she worried that Barthus might have imparted something to him, intentionally or not.

  The journey from the upper atmosphere had been… unpleasant, but she had undertaken combat drops before. Besides, they had survived and, though battered, the air – the sky that she craved – had unfolded before her. That relief was fleeting as the icy wind sawed through her clothes and storm cloak. It touched the bones, chilling them. Bleak was not a strong enough word, Reda decided, and she soon blamed Vedaeh, who had insisted on bringing her and Vanko as her aides or companions. She didn’t know which.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Vedaeh, shivering against the cold and barely keeping pace as she clung to Reda’s shoulder. ‘Had I known…’

  Reda instantly felt ashamed at her unworthy thoughts, realising they sprung from her concern for Vanko. He trudged a few steps ahead, bridging the gap between the Space Marines and the natives who walked sullenly behind them.

  ‘He’ll come around,’ said Vedaeh, guessing Reda’s thoughts.

  ‘I’ve never seen him like this,’ she confessed. ‘He’s different… We’re different.’

  ‘What we endured in the warp, the things we all saw, felt. No one emerged unscathed, Arna. The dreams do not go away, but they fade to the point where we can tolerate them.’

  ‘I saw my father,’ said Reda, apropos of nothing.

  ‘On the ship?’

  ‘Yes, he was there, his face always in shadow but I knew it was him. At first, I thought he was haunting me, a manifestation of the warp, my grief made real.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘I have no idea. He left us when I was young, tithed to the Guard, our world’s contribution to the engine of war.’

  ‘You sound bitter.’

  ‘Just tired. He was proud to serve. So am I, though I chose service defending a starship rather than fighting on a battlefield.’

  ‘You seeing him, you think it was something other than the warp bleeding into your dreams?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know, but it felt different, or started to, like he was warning me. Guiding me.’ She glanced across and found Vedaeh looking at her. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘If it’s what you believe.’

  Reda looked down. ‘I don’t know what I believe any more,’ she admitted. She glanced ahead. Her partner trudged on, his cloak fluttering in the wind. ‘I only know that Vanko is in pain and I can’t help him, and that this damn world is colder than a Fenrisian’s arsehole.’

  Vedaeh laughed, louder than she’d intended, and drew a glance or two from the natives behind them.

  Reda pulled her cloak tighter around her neck as the wind began to bite. Ahead there was fog and the slow reveal of the rugged landscape she had come to loathe. ‘I’m bloody serious,’ she said, though with a wry smile. ‘Why did you insist on bringing Vanko and me with you?’

  Vedaeh’s expression grew serious. ‘For company,’ she smiled, brightening but only a little, ‘and because I trust you.’

  ‘You do not feel safe around the Adeptus Astartes?’

  The six warriors marched ahead of them, alert and ready. They looked heavy in their armour, burdened by it, as they must surely be burdened by their losses in the warp.

  ‘It’s not a matter of whether I feel safe or not,’ said Vedaeh. ‘They are almost inhuman, Arna. I feel alone around them. They have no true concept of what it means to be mortal, though I do admire and respect them, especially Sicarius. But whatever part of them was once like us, that part has been excised. They have no mental or emotional architecture to relate to the human condition. The mission, martial brotherhood, the pursuit of an honourable death, these are the things that motivate them. Even Sicarius, though he is the best of them. I see him looking at me sometimes, a tactical problem he does not know how to solve. And I think that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘To confound him?’

  Vedaeh gave an indulgent smile. ‘I suppose I’ve done that on occasion. No, of course not. He needs someone who can act on his behalf when a sword or bolter proves ineffective.’

  Reda knew they had little ammunition for the latter, hence the reason Sicarius and his men carried only their blades.

  ‘An interpreter,’ she ventured.

  ‘Of a sort, yes, I suppose I am,’ said Vedaeh.

  ‘Or a negotiator.’

  ‘It may yet come to that.’ She lowered her voice. ‘These are superstitious, primitive people, Arna. They have not sailed the void or braved the horrors of the warp. They do not know the Imperium or what lies beyond the vault of their own grey skies. I think if they did it would terrify them and the most human of primordial emotions would take hold.’

  The lie about knights of Macragge, the cloaks, the swords and spears, now Reda understood.

  ‘Fear,’ she said. ‘They would fear us.’

  ‘They would fear them,’ Vedaeh corrected. ‘They would kill us.’

  ‘A sobering thought,’ Reda replied, briefly eyeing the dirty and miserable faces of the footmen behind them, slogging uphill through the wet earth.

  ‘One to keep at the forefront of your mind,’ said Vedaeh as they crested a rise. Beyond it, the fog began to lift at last and a city of iron walls and craggy towers emerged resembling a scorched black anvil. Banners hung from its dark battlements, stirring forlornly in the wind, and a stark gatehouse loomed up to meet them.

  F
arrodum.

  And out of the corner of her eye, just at the very, very edge of the receding mist, Reda saw a figure, his face hidden in shadow.

  HORNS

  ‘Are they men?’ the baron asked, squinting at the armoured strangers passing through his city gates. ‘They do not look like men. They are monstrous.’

  He stood at the tower window, its lights doused, cleaving to the shadows. He lingered a few steps back from the south-facing sill, unwilling to be seen by the giants, though he could have sworn one of them looked right at him. The giant had an eyepatch, with a face like a weathered cliff. Privately he wondered if they were golems, with skin of stone instead of flesh.

  ‘I believe they are men, my liege,’ said the vizier, standing off to one side and just behind his lord.

  ‘And this blue livery they wear,’ the baron went on, seemingly ignoring the vizier’s reply, ‘have you seen its like before? I do not recognise the sigil. What is it supposed to be, a horseshoe?’

  ‘Scarfel’s riders reported they referred to themselves as knights, so that could be the case.’

  ‘Then where are their horses, vizier?’ He frowned, and stepped back a pace from the window. ‘I do not like this. Not at all.’

  ‘They claim to be our allies.’

  ‘Well, we have sore need of those.’

  ‘Indeed, my liege.’

  The baron turned from the window, one hand on the pommel of a sword that he wore on his left hip. It was largely ceremonial, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had needed to draw the weapon.

  ‘Cloister them where they can do no harm,’ he said. ‘And have a guard placed.’

  ‘Prudent thinking, my liege. I shall do so at once.’

  The vizier bowed. He was a large man and his long robes pooled out across the floor.

  ‘This Macragge,’ said the baron, as he was leaving, ‘have you ever heard of it?’

  The vizier gazed through the window, though his eyes gave nothing away of his thoughts. ‘I have not, my liege, but I am not so well travelled as some.’

  Vedaeh slept fitfully, both too cold and too warm at the same time. A chill breeze had entered the hall through some cranny or crack and despite the furred blankets they had been given, she could not find a way to balance her temperature. Exhaustion had put her down in the end, as her body surrendered to the rigours of the past hours. She had not been the only one to succumb to fatigue and pain. Pillium had collapsed the moment they passed through the gates. He was taken without escort, despite Vandius’ initial protests. She tossed and turned at the memory of trying to prevent any bloodshed as the Ultramarines looked to defend their own.

  The medicus had stepped in, a young woman, slight but with a serious bearing. Vedaeh had liked her at once. Her presence helped diffuse a volatile situation, and after a few tense moments, the remaining Ultramarines stood down at Sicarius’ unspoken order. They parted ways with Pillium, who was led away on the back of a mule cart, whilst the others were brought through narrow streets crammed with bent-backed hovels to a large gated hall away from the heart of the city. Here they were told to wait until the lord of Farrodum was ready to grant audience.

  Shuffling through the gate, Reda on one arm supporting her, Vedaeh had gratefully sunk down by a firepit towards the middle of the room, which was long, with a vaulted roof, though it appeared not to have seen use for some time. The firepit glowed, recently lit, but was already dwindling. Reda and Gerrant had found wood and stoked it until a decent flame rippled into being, and then crouched by it with Vedaeh to warm their weary bodies. They had been given a little food and she ate hungrily, as did her companions. She remembered little more after that, but other, older memories rose unbidden in her mind, of the horror she had felt aboard the Emperor’s Will. She imagined a dark room, reminiscent of the Reclusiam. Her books were burning, and as the faces of the dead crowded in on her, the faces of other inhuman things joined them; turned into them. The last one had looked like Olvo Sharna, before her features distended, her skin thickening and reddening as a pair of ribbed horns uncoiled from her grotesquely misshapen skull and her eyes turned black. She lunged, now the beast and no longer Sharna, and a giant dark maw ringed with canine fangs reached out, ever hungry…

  Vedaeh screamed, and awoke.

  Damp with feverish sweat, she threw off the furred blanket, shivering instantly in the cold. The firepit had died to a few scattered embers. Her mortal companions were wrapped in each other’s arms. Reda wore her nightmarish dreams openly in the frown on her face, but Gerrant looked inhumanly placid, like the sleeping dead. It worried Vedaeh. To be like that after what they had all endured, it was disturbing. She glanced to the Space Marines but found no reassurance there.

  They did not sleep, they did not eat. They sat or stood, alert and nursing their thoughts in the quiet darkness. She turned away, reaching for the furred blanket again now she was cold.

  No, she thought, her eyes growing heavy, they never sleep.

  They hadn’t really slept for over five years.

  Iulus sat down on one of the stout benches arrayed around the hall, the wood creaking ominously as it took his weight.

  ‘I have had warmer welcomes,’ he said.

  Scipio sat on the opposite bench and had just finished sharpening his gladius. ‘They are afraid of us,’ he said, sheathing the sword. Praxor’s old blade, now deactivated, sat in a scabbard on his back.

  ‘They are foolish if they think this place will hold us.’

  ‘If it keeps them feeling safer and us from having to fight our way out of here…’

  Iulus nodded. He gestured to the sleeping mortals, huddled close to one another. ‘Much longer and they would have perished,’ he said.

  Scipio’s gaze wandered to the metal sconce above, hanging by a rusted chain, its candleholders empty but tarnished by dusty old wax.

  ‘Is this everything?’ asked Iulus.

  On a low table in front of them was a small cache of grenades, all that the Space Marines had brought with them from the ship. It didn’t amount to much and had needed to be carefully smuggled into the city, so as not to alarm the natives. Seven fragmentation grenades in all, and a small reel of det-cord. This last item had come from the gunship. It wasn’t equipment ordinarily used by the Adeptus Astartes, but this mission had ceased being ordinary as soon as they made planetfall.

  ‘No bolt weapons and certainly nothing more exotic. No chainblades either,’ said Iulus.

  Scipio brandished his recently sharpened blade. ‘Only gladii, combat blades and non-active power swords, with the exception of Sicarius’ artificer weapon, of course.’

  The Tempest Blade had been forged by master artisans; it alone had resisted the effects of the warp siphon.

  ‘Not much of an inventory,’ Iulus observed.

  ‘It will serve,’ Scipio replied. ‘How is your arm?’

  The dimming firelight cast by the pit filled Iulus’ face with deep shadows. He looked gaunt, weary.

  ‘Barely functional.’

  Scipio had noticed he kept the arm close to his body, as if it were wrapped in an invisible sling. His armoured greaves and shoulder pad hid the bionic well enough but the pain of it was evident in Iulus’ haggard expression.

  None of the Adeptus Astartes had slept for weeks. Even the rejuvenating effects of catalepsean meditation had been denied them. Fatigue was not something a Space Marine readily succumbed to, but nor were they immune to it. The warp siphon had bled more than the ship and their armoury, it seemed.

  Scipio surveyed the room. Vandius stood by the only door, his blade drawn and stabbed tip down into the earth, both hands upon the pommel like one of the Emperor’s Champions. The sentinel kept his head up, eyes straight, never wavering for a moment. Though Prabian had been an almost unrivalled swordsman in the Chapter, Vandius came a close second. He took all his duties immensely seriously, even for a calling as sober as the Adeptus Astartes. When the standard that had borne the Second Company’s banner had been
irrevocably shattered, he had bound the ancient cloth up and carried it on his person wherever he went, lest the need arise to unfurl it again. Quiet agitation seemed to be his default. He looked restive, even in his guard state.

  Sicarius and Daceus stood off to one side, just at the edge of the firelight, and conversed in low voices. The old veteran appeared to be doing most of the talking, Sicarius clear-eyed and alert as he listened, nodded and occasionally spoke.

  They had changed, all of them, since the warp. Not everyone wore full armour. Vandius had lost his left arm greave, damaged beyond repair as the ship broke warp and the denizens of hell descended. Scipio had only one shoulder guard, the right side split during that same battle. None wore their helms. This was at Vedaeh’s insistence, the mortal chronicler apparently some kind of authority on ancient cultures. She believed that the people of these lands needed to see the Adeptus Astartes as human, or something close to it, or they would be shunned as enemies.

  Scipio had no doubt that he and his brothers could overcome every warrior in Farrodum, but no Ultramarine would countenance such a slaughter, and it would not get them any closer to finding the power source Haephestus had revealed during the augur sweep.

  ‘They have locked us in,’ he said, his gaze straying to the gate.

  Iulus laughed mirthlessly. ‘I doubt that. Vandius could split that door apart with one blow.’

  ‘Best that he does not.’

  ‘Aye, we are to play as ambassadors from a foreign land for now.’

  ‘It fits us poorly,’ said Scipio.

  Iulus could hardly disagree with that and nodded. He was about to say more when the gate was unlocked and opened.

  The Ultramarines turned as one, and the warrior in dark padded armour who entered stopped short when faced with the indomitable figure of Vandius.

  ‘Y-you are summoned,’ stammered the warrior, a squire of some sort, and entirely too young for the blade he wore at his hip. A child carrying a man’s sword. ‘B-by the baron.’ Through the narrow gap in the gate, Scipio could see several other footmen, some with crossbows, others holding spears, and beyond them the brazier light of the city streets. Night had fallen quickly.