by Nick Kyme
‘Vandius lives, but barely,’ he called back. ‘Fennion too.’
‘Can you walk, Iulus?’ asked Sicarius, as the other sergeant shambled into view and sat down heavily next to where Vorolanus had slumped Vandius against the gorge wall.
‘I’ll only slow you down. I can scarcely stand. I’ll stay with Vandius,’ he said. ‘Someone should watch him.’
Sicarius nodded, hiding his dismay at the condition of his warriors, but Daceus knew him well enough to guess what he was feeling.
‘I won’t abandon the mortals. We three must go,’ he decided.
‘Back to Farrodum? That’s half a day’s march at least. Even for us.’
‘Then we have to make all haste, Daceus.’
‘Or perhaps not…’ Scipio was pointing to the horizon, where a black angular shape flew towards them.
Daceus narrowed his eye. ‘Is that…?’
As the shape grew closer, it was possible to make out swooping wings, prow and a battered fuselage.
‘Glory to Guilliman,’ uttered Sicarius.
Haephestus had found them.
THIS IS YOUR FATE
The orks had gathered in a mob outside the old keep. Their fear of the off-worlder made them hunker together, despite the fact they outnumbered him more than twenty to one. Silence had fallen, barring the quiet drumming of rain. It gathered in pools and slowly turned the mud into a quagmire. Pillium’s body and close-shaven scalp glistened, his many scars even more pronounced. He took in the high walls on three sides, the old keep in front of him. He had been here before. Perhaps he had never really left. The arena beckoned again.
The eyes of the mob regarded him, measuring, deciding, but Pillium ignored them. He wasn’t here to entertain. He was here to prove his worthiness. He hefted the spear – an uncommon weapon for a Space Marine, but he liked the feel and the balance of it.
‘This is your fate,’ he repeated, crushing the ork’s neck beneath his boot and ceasing its writhing.
A greenskin muscled to the front of the mob, the lower jawbone of some primordial beast strapped to its jutting chin. The tips of its canines reached up to be almost level with the ork’s narrow eyes. And then the strangest thing happened. The beast smiled. It grunted twice in its crude language and the mob divided into two flanks, with Jawbone charging up the middle. They were trying to outflank him.
Despite the protests of his wounded body, Pillium moved quickly. He went left, refusing to be caught in the crude pincer movement. He stabbed the first ork through the neck, a punch-dagger blow with the sword. In, out. A slash carved up the face of another, a spear thrust disembowelled a third and then Pillium was moving again, surging through the throng of greenskins, trusting to shock and awe to get them off balance. He struck with all the intensity and suddenness of an artillery barrage and was only scarcely less devastating.
He parried a loose blow against the haft of his spear, turning defence to attack as he spun the polearm around, forcing the orks back before spearing the one who had tried to strike him. One thrust. The leaf-bladed spear severed the spine and came back out again with a gut-grinding twist. A short back step saw another axe slash wild, Pillium hacking off the unfortunate greenskin’s head while it was overbalanced.
He revelled in it, the cold calculus of battle, the split-second measuring of effort and strength and speed. His accountancy of war was effortless, pure. But twenty against one was never a balanced fight, and the equation was bound to run foul at some point.
The first cut raked his arm, deep enough that Pillium felt it. His sword wavered, just a fraction, but it was enough to let in the second blow. This one bit his torso, the gash leaking all the way down to his fingers. He lost the sword, the grip sliding from his wet hand.
Three, four, five more cuts. None fatal, all debilitating in their own cumulative way. Pillium felt his reactions slowing, he felt the dulling of senses that comes from blood loss and pain and old injuries reopened. He barged a pair of greenskins, bracing them against the spear haft, ramming it up under their brutish chins and pushing hard. They reeled, the orks, scampering against his strength, and sprawled onto their backs. Pillium could not capitalise. He had to turn to fend off a jab aimed at his neck. It skidded against his hasty defence, ripping up his other shoulder instead.
He killed his attacker, a swift punch to its throat, hard enough to crush the larynx. It was still choking to death when he brought the spear up into the guts of another ork, pushing the weapon deep enough that he could drive the greenskin into its kin. They hacked at it, hacked it apart, the improvised meat shield reduced to flesh scraps and bones dangling on strips of sinew.
Pillium wrenched out his spear but wasn’t fast enough. More cuts, every one edging him closer to death. His body was a shredded mess, his face not much better. One eye was half closed from a bludgeon’s gnarled head. Sparks flashed in his vision.
There were six orks left.
He cast the spear, a throw so hard and savage he felt his shoulder pinch with the effort. Two orks were impaled, transfixed to a wooden post holding up a slatted stable roof. He stopped the swipe of a club, grasped the attacker’s wrist and broke its arm across his knee. It was still squealing when he sent a brutal blow into another ork’s midriff. Bones shattered. It collapsed. He broke the squealing ork’s neck to shut it up. This indulgence cost him. Two spears struck him in the back. A crude sword stabbed his torso. Red poured down over everything, thinning with the rain, pooling at his feet in a bloody tract of churned mud. He wrenched out one spear, took another stab for his trouble and broke the second spear off at the haft. The flint tip was still embedded.
Two remained.
He crushed the skull of one with his bare hands, like breaking an eggshell between slowly clenching fingers. That left the leader.
Jawbone had the sword, whereas Pillium remained unarmed. He could scarcely see, clawed fingers of darkness pulling at his vision. But it was scared. He could smell its fear sweat and feel its trepidation. Despite the cleansing rain, the mud-hole stank of offal and death.
One eye left, the other closed over, Pillium spat out a gobbet of blood and flesh.
‘They’re all dead,’ he told the last greenskin.
Jawbone hesitated, confidence sluicing away like the blood and filth underfoot. It stumbled back but got no further as an arrow pinned its foot to the ground and it let out a porcine squeal of agony.
A crowd had gathered, archers and a ragged group of foot-soldiers standing on the rampart overlooking the muddy square. Pillium had no idea how long they had been watching. His sense of time and place was fraying. Water trickled down their faces as they looked on coldly. No cheers or cajoling, just impassive stares beneath the brims of iron helmets. The bowman who had shot the ork held his weapon steady, rain droplets running down the catgut string, a quarrel notched ready to loose.
‘Kill it, then…’ said the baron, Athelnar. He lurked amongst his soldiers, the rain drumming against the thick hood of his cloak. ‘End it, sir knight.’ His black-armoured henchman stood beside him, paler than Pillium remembered, fresh wounds visible on his hard face.
It was the way he said it. Athelnar’s contempt had become something else, something more dangerous. Fear. The air reeked of it. Pillium blinked out the rain from his good eye, shaking his head and hoping some sense would return. His world clarified just long enough to see Jawbone tear the arrow loose and fly at him. Pillium turned the blade aimed for his gut aside, seizing the ork’s wrist and pulling it around and in front of him at just the perfect moment. Arrows turned its back into a pincushion, feathered hafts sprouting like ears of corn. They had been meant for him.
He was an Astartes, an Ultramarine Primaris. He was also unarmed, without his armour and losing too much blood. At least ten archers could draw a bead on him, and the foot-soldiers carried spears. Able-bodied, he could have leapt the rampart and killed these men with his bare hands. It would have been over in seconds. But he was dying and bled from over a hundred cuts.
‘Let them go,’ he breathed, surprised at the weariness in his voice.
The two armsmen had huddled together, she cradling him in her arms. He was bleeding over her but very much alive.
Pillium lowered the greenskin corpse.
‘Let them go,’ he said again, and saw Vedaeh in the crowd. The chronicler looked ill, her face gaunt and waxy, and he realised it was anguish. Grief. For him.
Athelnar hesitated. He saw the henchman say something, a muttered request through clenched and angry teeth. The baron gave the deftest of nods. The archers lowered their bows, though their arrows remained nocked.
Pillium waited. He felt a soft hand grasp two of his fingers, like a child to an adult, and saw Reda. She had tears in her eyes, either that or it was the rain, but she mouthed her thanks with the slightest parting of her lips. He met her gaze and her hand fell away, as she and Gerrant hobbled out of the square and beyond the wall.
His eyes followed them until they were gone. He spared one last glance for Vedaeh before fixing his gaze on the baron.
‘For Ultramar,’ said Pillium. ‘For Guilliman.’
The arrows were loosed.
THE NARROW SPIRE
Sicarius stood in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit alongside Haephestus. He had just joined him from the hold, having left Vandius and Fennion with the others.
‘They are in need of an Apothecary,’ he said, sitting down in the gunner’s seat.
‘I regret that I was not alongside you at the gorge, captain.’
Sicarius had told Haephestus everything that had happened since they had parted ways a few days ago, of Farrodum, the orks and the battle at the gorge, the grim evidence of which lay bleeding all over the floor of the near-empty hold.
‘You were missed, Brother-Techmarine.’
He stared out of the cracked glacis at the patches of wild land peeking through gaps in the fog. As his eyes went to the horizon, he saw the narrow spire growing closer.
‘We are not headed for Farrodum?’
‘We cannot, captain. Not yet.’
‘Those people are very likely at the mercy of the orks, Haephestus.’
‘If you order me to change course, I will obey, but ever since we crash-landed I have been attempting to track the source of the dampening field.’
‘Is this what prompted you to leave the wilds?’ Sicarius had seen the scorched parts of the hold where the Techmarine had immolated something. He also saw the bloodstains and the dents in the inner fuselage.
‘They found me,’ he said. ‘I suspect they followed your trail back to the ship, and here I was.’
Sicarius cursed under his breath, angry with himself that he had not considered the natives might try to backtrack his route.
‘I had to kill one of them. My life was in mortal danger. But I found something.’
‘Athelnar,’ said Sicarius ruefully.
‘Captain?’
‘The baron of Farrodum. He has betrayed us.’
‘Fear is a pernicious motivator.’
The gunship rattled, its engine shuddering for a few seconds until Haephestus had managed to correct the fault. ‘Fuel is low,’ he explained, ‘and engine functionality is suboptimal but it will keep us aloft.’
‘It’s miraculous that you got the ship airborne at all.’
‘It was in a debilitated state,’ Haephestus conceded.
‘And what did you find?’ asked Sicarius, resuming the earlier conversation as the spire grew ever closer.
‘The one I killed did not stay deceased.’
‘He survived somehow?’
‘No, he was certainly dead.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘I asked myself the same question. I cut open his body to examine it. Please do not ever mention this to Venatio, for the autopsy was crude but yielded information.’
‘On my honour, Haephestus. What did you find?’
‘An organism of sorts, a construct to be more precise. Several in fact, burrowed deep inside the subject’s brain. Behavioural manipulation. It had familiar hallmarks in terms of function and design. Something is deeply wrong here.’
‘I find myself in agreement, Haephestus.’
‘And to answer your initial question,’ the Techmarine went on, ‘no, discovering the origin point of the dampening field was not why I left the wild.’
Through the glacis, the spire came close enough that details were possible to discern. Sicarius even recognised elements of the iconography. It was ancient. Alien.
‘You have only just traced it to a source,’ he guessed.
‘Indeed, captain.’
‘This is it,’ he said, and meant the spire. It was narrow like an antenna. ‘It’s necron…’ He remembered the apparition he had seen when he had been aboard the Emperor’s Will and again in the wilds outside Farrodum. An old enemy. He cast his mind back to the skeletal legions emerging from under the ice. Soulless machine hordes, the necrons were older than the Imperium, and they had very nearly killed him.
‘They are here on Agun, captain.’
Sicarius clenched his fist and smiled bitterly. Damnos simply would not let him go. ‘You’ve found them?’
‘Not as such. There were the constructs I discovered in the dead man. But while perfecting the beacon and attempting to overcome the dampening field, I unearthed a familiar carrier signal. Xenos. I am certain of it.’
Sicarius looked ahead to where the spire now loomed. Lightning arcs crackled across its glossy surface, too small to be a threat or seen from far away, but evidence of function. They could not return to Farrodum. Not yet.
‘What ordnance do we still have aboard this vessel, Techmarine?’
‘Two Hellstrike missiles.’
‘How long until we reach optimum firing range?’
Haephestus paused to check the ship’s internal chrono. ‘Imminently, captain.’
Sicarius eyed the crackling spire and saw the gunship reflected in its obsidian flanks. A lightning bolt spat from the surface, arcing lazily like a mass coronal ejection.
Haephestus banked hard, the engine screaming in protest, fuel gauges ticking into the red zone. The crackling energy scorched the wing tip, setting it aflame. Fire warnings blared throughout the ship.
‘That was… unexpected.’
The lightning reached out again, tendrils like questing fingers coming for the gunship. A whip-crack of energy lashed in the ship’s wake as Haephestus put it into a steep dive and Sicarius clung on.
‘If you know how to recite the canticles of function,’ the Techmarine said, teeth gritted as he fought to bring the gunship back level again, ‘then now would be the ideal time.’
‘Bring us back around,’ snarled Sicarius, their evasive manoeuvres having thrown off the attack run.
The lightning arc whipped out again, grinding like a hot blade as it raked the ship’s dorsal aspect. Haephestus went under it and to the side, strafing wide as he attempted to slingshot around for a better angle of approach. Sirens continued to wail and several alert runes lit on the ship’s control console.
‘I will require all of my attention to fly the ship, captain.’
Sicarius nodded, and engaged the targeting mechanism for the Hellstrikes. A reticule appeared across the glacis, crazed by the damaged armourglass but still functional. As the ship continued to bank and swerve, Sicarius carefully aligned the targeting array.
‘I assume I am looking for a weak point?’
‘Affirmative, captain.’ Haephestus heaved at the flight-stick, every turn and sudden change of direction an immense effort. Outside, the lightning storm intensified. ‘A point of minimal armour density.’
The reticule turned green as it passed over a narrow part of the spire, releasing a data-stream across the glacis that Sicarius ignored.
‘I have a target,’ he said.
The cockpit shook, buffeted by the lightning storm that was trying to rip them from the skies.
‘I will keep the ship as steady as
I can, captain.’
The reticule shifted, thrown briefly out of alignment as the ship banked to avoid an arcing green bolt.
‘Bring her back, Haephestus,’ said Sicarius, bellowing over the engine roar. Every one of the gunship’s systems was screaming now.
The door to the cockpit slid open and Daceus stumbled through.
‘What’s happening?’ He saw the spike of obsidian through the prow-facing armourglass. ‘Guilliman’s mercy, is that…?’
‘Hold on, Retius…’ said Sicarius.
The ship came back around again as Haephestus corrected course, wings groaning with the effort. A turbo-fan blew out, smoke, fire and aerial debris suddenly thrown against the glacis, obscuring Sicarius’ view.
He fired, the first Hellstrike dropping from its cradle before its rockets kicked in and it was searing towards the spire on flaming contrails.
It impacted in seconds, the detonation audible inside the ship, which shook with explosive reverberation.
The view through the glacis cleared, but the spire was still standing. It was damaged but evidently still functional.
‘You missed,’ Daceus remarked.
Sicarius swore under his breath. ‘You are welcome to try in my stead, brother-sergeant.’
‘Turning around for a second run,’ said Haephestus, ending any further debate.
The lightning chased them, seemingly determined to bring the ship down.
Haephestus flew through it.
‘Hold on,’ he said, banking steeply, seesawing left then right as a backwash of energy buffeted the ship.
Sicarius aimed the reticule again, fighting with the abrasive movements of the ship, his view marred by the trailing corposant of the lightning arcs. The targeting array turned green then red, flickering wildly. The margin for error was narrow.
‘Bring us in closer,’ said Sicarius.
Haephestus didn’t answer, but the rangefinder on the glacis steadily decreased.
A flash of light coursed overhead, scything off the dorsal-mounted antenna.
‘We are losing pieces of the ship,’ said Daceus, clinging on to the door frame.
Sicarius ignored him. ‘Closer…’