by Guy Haley
Fortreidon pulled his bolt pistol from his holster and blasted the creature square in the chest. It exploded mid-screech.
Perturabo surveyed the battlefield with a look of exultant pleasure. The tactic had been his, and it was sound.
‘Kill them!’ commanded the Primarch. ‘Kill them all!’
What had been a close-fought battle became a massacre. The hrud’s weaponry malfunctioned spectacularly under the aegis of the shield, or lost the more esoteric properties that cheated the armour of the Space Marines. Their natural advantages lost, the hrud were revealed as feeble physical specimens. Horrific to look upon though they were, they had little strength, and were no match for the raw might of the Legiones Astartes.
The Iron Warriors set upon the foes with merciless rage. Perturabo led from the front, the cannons mounted on his forearm; spewing streams of solid shot into the aliens. He stamped forwards, killing any hrud found by his fists or by his guns. Their bodies fell like rain from every level of the cavern, and now they did not dissipate into mulch, but stayed whole as any mortal creature. Even in the middle of that terrible carnage, the vulture servitors of the Magos Biologis crept onto the battlefields, sealing examples of the creatures into stasis caskets and dragging them away Terrible tides pulled at Fortreidon. Every creature he slew left him more influenced by the stasis field than before, and where many died he struggled against the arrested flow of time like an insect trapped in thickening amber. There came a point when most of the enemy were dead, and the combat proceeded at glacial slowness. The Iron Warriors descended on the last survivors like nocturnal insects to lumens, now seeking the creatures out for the warping effect they had on time that counteracted the slowing of the stasis field.
Fortreidon found himself by a cavity in the wall. Black-clad, flexible bodies rolled under his feet. Green streaks of alien plasma were now a rarity. He was alone, but by the wall time flowed more or less as it should. He was still under the stasis umbrella, so the passage of events should have slowed to a crawl.
It could only mean that hrud were close.
Determined to find their hiding place, he stepped through a door, finding himself in a long corridor. He was too incensed to call for aid. The doleful battle humour of his breed was hard on him. If there were enemy here, he would kill them himself for glory and for vengeance. He needed no help.
Oval doors opened off the way, and he entered one. The interior was completely dark.
A poorly aimed shot streaked over his shoulder. He fired back, hearing the explosion of the mass-reactive bolt in its target and the collapse of a body to the floor.
He activated his light-intensification vision.
The room was full of the hrud, but these were no fighters. The young, the old, the infirm, he guessed.
One raised its hand on the end of a snaking arm. A gesture of surrender perhaps?
Anger swelled in Fortreidon’s chest.
Kill them all, the primarch had said.
‘Iron within, iron without,’ he said, and opened fire.
SEVEN
NAMING DAY
809.M30
LOCHOS, OLYMPIA
There were few places in his kingdom that Dammekos did not feel entitled to be. Perturabo’s study was one of them. The youth had sought a place of isolation, creating his refuge in the attic spaces of the palace’s western tower. Rafters and the undersides of pantiles were his ceiling. Cold winds blew in through the ventilation lights for most of the year, and on the few hot days the attic roasted. Perturabo had never been bothered by something as feeble as mere temperature, and he worked there day and night whatever the weather.
Dammekos commanded his guards to remain at the tower’s base and ascended the fifteen flights of stairs alone, emerging into his foster-son’s lair.
Thin beams of sunlight admitted by gaps in the roofing sliced through dusty air. Cages hung from crossbeams, doors open, birds resting inside.
The boy had become a man, and still he hid in his attic like a bullied child. He sat at a draughtsman’s board, lit by a precious lumen light, his giant frame bent over his work in what unkind eyes would have seen as a parody of concentration. Perturabo would have heard Dammekos coming as soon as he set foot on the stairs - his senses were as sharp as his mind - but he said nothing in greeting He had heard, but he did not care.
Dammekos picked his way through the lattice of roof supports to the open space in the middle of the attic marvelling at everything he saw.
Perturabo had put in a floor of sturdy planks to cover the tower’s exposed joists, and had installed shelves, a desk and a massive bed sized to his superhuman frame For such a meticulous being his study was a wonder of disorganisation. Scrolls of painstakingly inked designs were piled in untidy heaps, marred with wine rings and spatters of ink from more recent projects. Models of astounding intricacy sat on surfaces next to abandoned plates and the crocks of forgotten meals. Books on language shared space with long essays on architecture, maths, astronomy, history and more, all of them written in Perturabo’s delicate handwriting. Images of fantastical machines and cityscapes littered the floor.
Dammekos came into the open centre of the study, barely daring to breathe. Still Perturabo said nothing, and Dammekos’ awe turned hard.
‘You are hard at work on your follies again, my son?’
Perturabo grunted. ‘You know I don’t like that word. Why do you taunt me with it?’
‘Follies or son, Perturabo?’ said Dammekos. There was bitter blood between them. Perturabo resented Dammekos for reasons the tyrant barely understood; Dammekos was angry that the youth rebuffed every affection he attempted to bestow upon him. Their conversation had become spiky with insinuated hurts and barely guarded criticism. As always, Dammekos regretted his jibe; Perturabo would nurse the insult for weeks. He bore grudges that could outlive mountains.
Dammekos scooped a sheet of paper from the floor. It was an armoured fighting vehicle of some kind. The image looked impressive if impractical, but Dammekos suspected Perturabo could make it work. There was variety in all Perturabo did. The breadth of his knowledge was astounding, and frightening.
‘There are such treatises here,’ said Dammekos, attempting an emollient tone. ‘The wise men of this city should be made aware of them.’
‘Why should they be interested?’ said Perturabo gruffly. ‘They have their ancient certainties. I would hate to upset them by presenting them with the new.’ Perturabo bent closer to his scroll. His steel-nibbed pen scratched over the thick paper, never a mark wrong. The boy’s massive shoulders hunched with tension as Dammekos stood behind him, as if willing the tyrant to leave, but he said nothing and continued with his draughtsmanship. Dammekos watched as a great building took shape under his quick fingers.
‘Is that a theatre? It is magnificent!’
Perturabo sighed and took his pen from the paper. ‘What do want, my lord?’ he said with a pained expression. Dammekos hid a frown. For all his might and intellect, Perturabo behaved with the same casual disdain for his elders that all young men had.
‘I mean no harm. It is time you grew out of such petulance Your naming day approaches. You will soon be of age, as I reckon it. It is a great day, a celebration of your coming to manhood. There will be feasting, and sport of all kind.’ Dammekos tried to make it appealing. Every other Olympian youth looked forward to his naming day with great anticipation. Why could his foster-son not be the same? ‘Have you chosen your name yet?’
‘You know my name,’ said Perturabo. He looked to a dusty, fragmentary codex on one of the tables. A copy of a copy of a copy of an ancient work, none before Perturabo had been able to read its ancient language. ‘It is written in these records. It has meaning.’
‘Then do you care to tell me what it is?’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Perturabo.
His arrogance annoyed Dammekos. ‘You must choose an Olympian name. It is custom.’
‘Or what, the gods will be angry? Your ceremony
means nothing to me,’ said Perturabo. ‘My growth rate suggests to me that I was approximately six years old when you took me in. I came to true manhood before my twelve birthday. Sixteen is just a number, even more so for me than for any other boy. I have been mature for years.’
‘Then act like it,’ said Dammekos, his patience wearing out quickly, as it always did when he spoke with Perturabo. He had sons of his own. He could not understand why his relationship with Perturabo should upset him so much, but he returned to pick at the wound over and over. ‘You are the most honoured youth in this city, and you behave poorly.’
‘Do you expect gratitude? For the endless tests? For the snivelling intellectuals who come to denounce me as a fraud? For the members of your court who would see me dead?’
‘These are unpleasantnesses that any highborn of Olympia must suffer. It is the price of power.’
‘When will you see, my lord, that I am not like you?’ Perturabo’s anger was always sudden, his shout deafening. The avians in their cages cooed unhappily. Nevertheless, he held his pen away from his work so as not to spoil it. A single drop of ink fell to the floor.
‘When will you see that it does not matter what you are, but how you are regarded?’ said Dammekos. ‘You resent me when I have done nothing but show you kindness. I love you as a son.’
‘Fathers do not use their sons,’ grumbled Perturabo.
Dammekos laughed. ‘You’ll tell me next that sons do not use their fathers. But they do, my boy, for food, for protection, for shelter, and love Aye love Don’t look at me like that Day after day our family has reached out to embrace you only for you to slap our hands away. Have you no care for any but yourself?’
‘I care for all men,’ said Perturabo quietly. ‘Why do you think I design these things? For myself? You call them follies, but they are to make the lives of people better. All through my life I have made this plain to you. You look at me and you see an asset for war, not a son. A weapon.’
‘All sons must serve. This is a warlike place. The league plots against us. The oligarchs of Irex plot with them to overthrow our rule of their city. The Tyrant of Messanae works with them. Power breeds jealousy.’
‘That is a lesson I have learnt all too well in your court.’
‘What do you want of me?’ said Dammekos, at a loss for what to say to his brooding foster-son. ‘Do you want me to rage at you? You behave as if you wish me to hate you. I will not. I cannot. Can you not see that I delight in your success? I am as proud of you as I am of any of my children.’
‘Your delight is at the power I bring to your arm. Your pride in me is a reflection only of your pride in yourself.’ Perturabo’s voice rose. His hands clenched. They were enormous, the spatulate, thick hands of a labourer magnified tenfold. ‘Every venture I have undertaken, you have sought to divert towards war. Always towards war. My interest in language you harness to breaking the codes of your enemies. My architecture is fit only for the construction of towers and walls. My mathematics given over to the fashioning of tools of death! All while you trumpet my ability as some kind of understandable precociousness, as if I were a normal child, the prodigy of Lochos!’
He stood, looming over his adopted father. Enormous muscles bunched under his robes.
‘Whatever I do, be it this!’ He snatched up a model of a graceful bridge and crushed it in his fist. ‘Or this!’ He crumpled a plan for a public bathhouse. ‘Or this, this, this, this, this!’ He swept a host of rolled scrolls onto the floor. They bounced across the rugs. Fastenings broke, and some unrolled. New manners of transport, safer water systems, medical instruments - all were carried before his rage.
Dammekos backed off. Perturabo’s pupils, so dreadfully black, grew to swallow the ice of his irises.
Perturabo let out a cruel laugh, thick with self-loathing. ‘Your lack of courage shames you. You have no faith in me, or you would not be afraid. I pledged you loyalty until my death. You will have nothing more from me, be content with that. I shall be your weapon as you so desire. There is nothing more to give.’
‘You cannot live your life alone, my son,’ said Dammekos sadly. ‘One day, you will see that.’
‘Why will I?’ said Perturabo. ‘There is no one else like me anywhere. I am alone. I am not your son. I have no need for love. There is no love in logic, only cause and effect. You require me, so you lie.’
‘I do not lie. I have used you, yes,’ said Dammekos, ‘but that is the way of things. It does not lessen my affection.’
Perturabo’s anger abated as quickly as it had come. He looked regretfully at his scattered possessions. ‘You lie to everyone else. Why should I believe you? I have my own father, and one day he shall come for me.’
‘How can you know?’
Perturabo gave him a look of blistering superiority, and a part of Dammekos sorrowed. Perturabo looked upwards to the roof. There was something his adopted son could see there in the sky. He never spoke of it openly. When he had been discovered, Miltiades mentioned that Perturabo had asked if he could see a ‘star maelstrom’. He had never mentioned it again. A few times, Dammekos had attempted to draw the truth out of him. Perturabo was as masterly at evasion as he was at everything else.
‘I just know,’ said Perturabo.
‘So you have faith.’
‘It is not faith. I believe in nothing I cannot deduce,’ Perturabo said. ‘I am not a normal man. Someone put considerable effort into making me. Designing me It is illogical to suggest that they would abandon something that required so much time and expertise. Whoever created me will be looking for me.’ The hulking youth turned his attention back to his drawing. He slowed, paused, then tore the sheet away. Pins popped from the woods and rattled onto the attic floor. Methodically, he ripped the design up. ‘Flawed,’ he muttered.
‘Nobody can do such things!’ said Dammekos.
‘Some can,’ said Perturabo. ‘The Black Judges have such skill, perhaps.’
‘You believe you were made by those monsters?’ said Dammekos in shock.
Perturabo ignored the question. He patiently removed the scraps of paper from the board and tacked another sheet in place. Doggedly, he began again.
Dammekos watched Perturabo a while longer. Perturabo did have faith - faith in his reasoning and his sciences and his art. Men need faith when they are afraid. Perturabo was no exception. The peerless command of logic he possessed was a blind, a false wall in the fortification of his indomitable mind, for no matter what Perturabo said, he was afraid. Why else would he be so intransigent?
Perturabo was frightened of the star maelstrom.
Dammekos had a sudden misgiving. People saw Perturabo’s physicality and prodigious intellect as his chief strengths. To Dammekos, this was not so. It was his foster-son’s absolute pragmatism that made him such a powerful asset to his court, and the strange youth’s faith in reason was the foundation of that. It did not stem from ruthlessness or from a lack of emotion, but from a sincere wish for order at any cost. That Perturabo feared something no one else could see was a crack in the stone of that absolute conviction.
It was the flaw in the bedrock that could bring low the mightiest fortress. Dammekos was a man of his time and place; self-serving, cunning sometimes needfully cruel, but he was wise, and he feared the day that his foster-son’s faith would fail, as it surely must.
The Hall of Pleimodes was full to capacity with Olympians. They ate like the gods, reclining on low couches arranged according to rank, surrounded by delicacies of the highest cost. Music played while dancers wove in and out of the circles of couches, expertly trailing their long ribbons over the heads and the dishes of the feasters. The revellers clapped in delight and howled with laughter as broad strands of silk came fleetingly in the way of hands reaching for choice morsels, or mockingly caressed the more libidinous among them. Such lightness was rare in a society vested in the working of stone. The weight of fortress walls pressed in and down on everything moulding the people they surrounded subtly yet t
otally.
‘Perturabo does not approve, father,’ said Dammekos’ son Herakon. He nodded at his giant foster brother. The tyrant’s family were raised up on a low dais, arrayed around the most laden table of all at the centre of the room, where all could see their wealth. Only waged freemen served them, not helots, and they drank from staggeringly expensive cups of copper, gold and platinum.
‘I can see Perturabo does not approve, but unlike you, my son, I am not stupid enough to say so too loudly.’ Dammekos smiled and waved at Aenan Thulk, one of the twelve Logi of Lochos. He spoke to his son lightly, as if sharing a jest, but his words, hidden just below the level of avlos flutes and stringed phromix, carried serious intent. ‘There can be no division between us. Estrangement provides ingress for the assassin’s knife. You are the eldest, Herakon, but you lack the guile for tyranthood. Guard your tongue better.’
Herakon attempted to return his father’s smile in order to maintain the pretence, but he cringed like a cur stung by a moor asp. Dammekos exchanged pleasantries with Mondak Eumenos, the third Logi. He was of Irex, regarded as an outsider and rude in manner by his fellows, and for good reason. Dammekos had put him close to his own position as a reminder to the other eleven Logi that their status depended very much on his will. Such things were beyond Herakon. Andos was better, but too kindly for kingship. Of his three natural-born children, only his daughter Calliphone had the nous for leadership. That was a shame - there were female tyrants on Olympia, but not in Lochos. Never there.
Herakon was right about Perturabo. Dammekos watched him from the corner of his eye over the heaped food between them. Other boys made merry at their Naming Ceremony. They were forgiven bawdy behaviour. Indeed, it was expected, the occasion being a dividing line between the first and second stages of life, where the appetites of a man might be expressed through the follies of youth. Displays of poetic extemporisation, drunkenness, lechery, feats of strength and more were encouraged.