ASHES OF PROSPERO

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Never mind. You tried.’

  ‘No… I see nothing. Not the sworl of warp space, nor the reality of our universe. The maze is empty.’

  +That cannot be so. The Portal Maze is built around strands of the immaterial. Even refracted and distorted, the reflection of the mortal realm should be there. Maybe some power is deliberately blinding her.+

  Njal positioned himself so that only the Navigator could see his face. ‘My passenger thinks that you do not see what is there.’

  Majula shook her head and crossed her arms.

  ‘It is empty. A forced void, as though it was gutted, and its heart torn from within by incredible power.’

  ‘The Planet of the Sorcerers…’ Njal pictured the tearing of the barrier as the wyrd-born daemonworld ripped through the fabric of reality. ‘Magnus used the Portal Maze, or part of it, to assist in bringing forth his world from the warp.’

  +Why would he do such a thing? The Portal Maze was one of our greatest creations. The invasion of your predecessors caused damage, but what you claim would be a wanton act of destruction.+ Izzakar’s disbelief touched on Njal’s thoughts, tendrils of doubt that the Rune Priest had to force back with effort before they infected his own thinking. +Unless there was no other way.+

  ‘Magnus cares nothing for what was wrought in his time as a mortal. He has been damned, taken by the Dark Powers as one of their princes, to rule the physical world in their stead. He would sacrifice every last warrior of the Thousand Sons for that cause.’

  ‘Something is coming,’ warned Majula. She pointed, still fixated upon the semi-functioning portal gate.

  Njal let his wyrdself break free and approached the crackling boundary plane that separated the juxtaposed realities of his universe and the Portal Maze. He dared not let his thoughts settle in its static-flecked perimeter but from their fluctuations he could detect the disturbance that had alerted the Navigator.

  ‘They are marching,’ she whispered. ‘They are marching forth.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Njal. He signalled to Arjac. ‘Wolf Guard, bear your weapons upon the breach.’

  A grind of pneumatics and thunderous tread announced the approach of Bjorn the Fell-Handed and his two Dreadnought brothers. The Ancient One’s assault cannon lifted towards the warp-swirl.

  ‘Trust nothing that comes from this place, Stormcaller,’ the Dreadnought intoned.

  ‘What if it is the Old Guard?’ asked Arjac. ‘Our lost kin returned?’

  ‘It is not, Son of Fenris,’ Majula said sharply, taking a heaving breath. ‘I see them more clearly now. Crimson-clad they are, beneath the moon and stars. Lightning-born, warriors of Prospero.’

  ‘Crimson-clad?’ Arjac raised his shield, hammer drawn back as though he expected a monstrous beast to erupt from the pulsating gateway. ‘What foe is this?’

  A buzz of excitement itched at Njal, but it was not his own.

  +Can it be? Of course, why would we assume that only I survived of my company and cabal?+

  ‘Weapons ready!’ called Njal. ‘She speaks of the Thousand Sons in their Prosperine livery. Only since their fall did they change their colours to the azure and gold of their new allegiance. These warriors have been trapped in the Portal Maze since our fore-brothers razed this city.’

  Desperation throbbed through the Rune Priest’s mind.

  +Hold your fire! They know nothing of what has passed since the Wolf King’s wrath fell upon Tizca.+

  ‘Why would that stay our hands?’ Njal replied, barely breathing the words, his face averted from the others. ‘We are here to finish the task the Old Guard began.’

  +Folly! We can seek alliance. They will answer to my command.+

  ‘Your corpse lies somewhere in the Portal Maze.’ Around Njal, the Wolf Guard levelled their weapons at the othergate. ‘I do not think they will listen to our demands.’

  In the ebb and flow, it was possible to see a shadow growing – a body of warriors approaching as though from a distance. They carried icons of moons and stars above them, as Majula had said, and banners hung still against their poles. The red and gold armour of the Thousand Sons resolved into more detail, squads of time-lost legionaries advancing in step, their marks of armour ancient by the standards of the 41st millennium.

  ‘What are your orders, Stormcaller?’ asked Arjac. ‘Do we open fire?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the Rune Priest replied. ‘Our fire might not pass the portal boundary and we don’t have unlimited supplies. Better to conserve what ammunition we have for when it is most needed.’

  ‘Be wary of sorcery,’ warned Bjorn. ‘The wyrd-gift ran through their Legion like the gene-seed of Magnus himself.’

  The red-armoured host, perhaps two hundred strong, seemed only a few dozen metres away. They made no manoeuvres that suggested they were even aware of the Space Wolves outside the breach, though their formation was one of preparedness.

  ‘Return fire immediately against any hostile act,’ Njal told his warriors. He eased his spirit into Nightwing and sent the psyber-raven flying above the tear through realities. From that angle he could see no more of the Thousand Sons than on the ground, the image oddly flattened as though painted on the floor rather than something three-dimensional.

  +I beseech you, Son of Fenris, do nothing rash. Do not allow long millennia of dogma to turn opportunity to tragedy. These are my brothers. They know nothing of Magnus’ fall from Enlightenment.+

  ‘So you admit the treachery of your primarch?’ whispered Njal.

  +I cannot ignore the evidence. But I do not share in Magnus’ crime and nor do my warriors. They will be as appalled as I am by the fate that has befallen the Thousand Sons.+

  ‘Not befallen, sorcerer. Chosen. Never forget that your brothers sided with Horus against the Emperor. They picked the path of damnation.’

  If the sorcerer was going to debate the point his argument was cut off when the portal tear fluctuated wildly. Arcs of purple flared to the ground from the edges, their flashes casting impossible shadows from the advancing column within.

  The lead squad of Thousand Sons stepped out of the breach surrounded by an aura of azure power, the vexillor at their head holding high the icon of his company. The portal’s crackle was lost in the crash of boots striding in unison.

  The order to open fire was on Njal’s lips, the staff in his hand gleaming with psychic power as he readied bolts of vengeance.

  The vexillor faltered in his next step and the legionary to his right stumbled also, the creak of armour and the steady step replaced with a clutter of banging ceramite as one warrior tottered into another. As though suddenly finding the footing unstable, the whole squad staggered, their perfect coordination lost within two strides. The icon crashed against the tiles from the standard bearer’s fingers even as his legs buckled and he plunged face first to the floor.

  The rest of the squad collapsed likewise, not with any great flailing or drama, simply lowering to their knees and then falling face down.

  One of the legionaries’ helmet lenses caught the edge of a dropped bolter and cracked open. White dust spilled from the gash, sparkling for a moment with wyrd power before the escaping soul dissipated, leaving only a drift of ash-like residue.

  Njal laughed hoarsely. ‘Dust. All is dust!’

  In Njal’s head, Izzakar was a knot of wordless anguish that burned like acid.

  Unknowing or uncaring of what had befallen their advance guard, the rest of the Thousand Sons continued their deliberate advance. Each squad stumbled over the remnants of those that preceded them, armour clattering into a heap of lifeless ceramite. Not a word of surprise was uttered, the only sound was an accumulating noise of piled armour and the scratch of dislodged plates sliding across each other.

  +What is happening? What curse is this?+

  Njal watched the unfolding scene with contempt, but as suits of armour piled by the score across the portal entrance the confusion and pain of Izzakar was real and raw in his mind, impossible to shut out entirely.r />
  ‘The price of treachery,’ said the Stormcaller. ‘They join their Legion brothers in lifelessness.’

  +I… What does that mean?+ The sorcerer’s distraught tone became accusing. +What have you hidden from me, Fenrisian dog?+

  The attention of the others was fixed on the spectacle of the collapsing legionaries. Njal spoke softly and quickly, masking words by rubbing a hand across his face.

  ‘I neither know nor care how or why, but the same curse was laid upon all of your brothers save a few. They are nothing but dust and unknowing spirit trapped inside their armour. Your whole Legion, those that survived the treacherous attack on the Emperor, are empty vessels for the powers of the abyss.’

  The last squads of Thousand Sons emerged from the undulating energy curtain and clattered to ruin among the remains of their Legion brothers. Silence descended and within the Portal Maze the emptiness returned.

  Several of the Space Wolves moved closer, weapons trained on the lifeless armour.

  ‘What do we do with these, Lord of Runes?’ asked Arjac, gesturing with his hammer towards the immobile Thousand Sons. ‘They are not dead. Not really.’

  ‘Hammer and fist, my brother,’ said Njal. ‘Conserve your ammunition. Break open these shells so that the tainted spirits within shall never be roused again. Then we shall be rid of the enemy for good.’

  +You tricked me, Stormcaller. You let me believe my Legion survived.+

  With obvious relish, the Wolf Guard pack leader waved his warriors forwards. Seconds later, the crackle of energy fields and thud of pounding power fists preceded the noise of shattering ceramite. Methodical and brutal, the Wolf Guard smashed the mounds of Thousand Sons detritus. Arjac chanted a war-skelt as he did so, swinging his hammer in rhythm to the words. Bjorn joined them, his lightning fist wreathed with bolts of power, each strike slashing a gaping wound through the carapace or helm of a cursed legionary.

  Around them, the air writhed with half-seen souls, a passing psychic breeze hinting at desultory moans of sadness.

  ‘It does survive, in a fashion,’ Njal told Izzakar, away from the others while they continued their brutal work. ‘You believed whatever you wanted to believe, Prosperine traitor. I told you that Magnus had turned, but you would not have it. Look upon his works and know the truth’.

  With the last rays of the day touching the Pyramid of Photep’s broken flanks, its long shadow eclipsing the lesser precincts and libraries about it, the column from the landing grounds met with the perimeter protecting the portal breach. Dozens of thralls and three more makeshift packs of Stormriders reinforced the patrols and guard points on the approaches to the colossal edifice.

  Njal checked with Valgarthr by vox on the situation outside the Pyramid of Photep.

  ‘The area has been secured, Lord of Runes,’ the veteran pack leader reported. ‘The enemy are scattered. I have not pursued, in favour of keeping guard on your location.’

  ‘Yes, you were right. There’s no way to know how many of these damned traitors lurk behind the veil. When we have freed Bulveye and his brothers we might have the strength to purge these ruins. If not, then Tizca can wait for the final wrath of the Space Wolves.’

  The cultists’ attacks had all but evaporated. Here and there in the darkness, a lasgun sparked and a bolt shell would bark out in reply. With their all-spectrum autosenses and motion-tracking targeters, the Space Marines were more than capable of fighting nocturnally as well as in the daytime. The cultists were not, and restricted their sporadic assaults to areas lit by the warp-gleam that shone through breaks in the walls of the pyramids and tome-shrines.

  Valgarthr joined Njal and Arjac at the main breach with a squad of Stormriders. Their armour was pocked with recent battle scars, and stained with blood from close combat. They looked even more ragged than when they had departed Fenris, some with fresh wounds, others with old injuries exacerbated by the fighting. Even so, they were in high spirits, invigorated by the conflict, their hearts lifted by the chance to fight again for the Allfather and Russ.

  ‘The perimeter has settled, Stormcaller,’ the senior pack leader told Njal.

  The broken armour of the Raptora cult Thousand Sons had been cleared away, parts of it set aside by the tech-priests for later reclamation. Some of the suits were sealed together with quick-setting plastek foam to make improvised barricades across the temple entrances – an ignoble end that served as warning to the Tzeentchian cultists.

  Valgarthr cocked his good eye towards the undulating miasma of the breach. ‘We have to enter there.’

  Njal knew that they were at the point of decision. He had not realised it, but he had been delaying this moment, busying himself with the details of securing the site and marshalling the Stormriders. His psychic sight and sweeps with Nightwing had provided invaluable information on the massing cultists and the layout of the broken buildings surrounding their position.

  But now was a step into the unknown. He thought of what had happened to the Thousand Sons that had emerged, trapped for ten thousand years, and of the Old Guard still within. If the Stormriders entered, would they ever return?

  +I can guide you. Just as I opened this gateway, I will aid you in finding your lost brothers. You need to trust me, Stormcaller.+

  Izzakar’s sudden enthusiasm was suspicious. Njal was sure he could not trust the sorcerer, but was equally certain he had no other option. Whatever Izzakar intended, the Space Wolves had come to Prospero for this purpose, and the only way to proceed was beyond the fluctuating barrier-ward.

  ‘We go in,’ he declared to his companions.

  ‘I shall enter first, Stormcaller,’ insisted Valgarthr. His pack moved close to their leader, silently adding their weight and assent to his statement. ‘We are the least loss should it go poorly.’

  ‘No loss is minor, pack leader,’ said Bjorn, thudding up behind the Stormriders. ‘And any warrior whose valiant service matches yours is worth ten times their number.’

  +Send in your thralls,+ suggested Izzakar. +They are your most expendable asset.+

  Njal ignored the sorcerer’s callous opinion and lifted his staff. Nightwing flapped from his shoulder to the skull tip, cawing loudly.

  ‘I have eyes that can see beyond the veil. None need risk their lives in experiment.’

  With Lukas most definitely not leading from the front, despite being a step ahead of his companions at any given time, the Blood Claws kept moving. They hacked into the knots of cultists that gathered, avoiding potential ambushes by the simple expedient of moving too fast for their enemies to lie in wait. Lukas and his pack-brothers bounded through fusillades of bullets and las-bolts with pistols blazing. They raced up stairwells and leapt from mezzanines and galleries to reach marksmen and fire teams trying to pin them down at range. They dodged down alleyways to avoid heavy weapons crossfire and sped through underpasses to come upon flanking mobs unawares. Back and forth, seemingly at random, the pack cut a bloody path through the harbourside, until the clash of arms fell silent. They stopped only when the streets were deserted of foes but for those that groaned their last under the uncaring stars of Prospero’s night.

  Cultist blood slicked their armour and weapons, and they had used up almost half of their ammunition. At Lukas’ suggestion, they secured a cellar beneath a worker tenement close to the deep harbour front where the largest vessels had once docked.

  The quays had been stripped of every crane and loader, and even securing bolts had been taken. The deep holes and emptied tramways were evidence of the massive industry that had once thrived here.

  Here the Blood Claws took stock of their situation.

  ‘They must be using the Portal Maze,’ said Bahrd.

  It was from a fortification across the artificial bay that Lukas had seen the bulk of the cultists and mutants spill forth.

  ‘Thank you for keeping up,’ replied Lukas. ‘Of course they’re using the Portal Maze. The tall building over there was once the hub for the port command. There must be a gat
e inside.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Jerrik.

  ‘I may have looked at some charts while we were aboard the Longclaw,’ replied Lukas. ‘Nobody said they were secret.’

  ‘Memorised them?’

  ‘It’s a delight what our enhanced brains can do when we try.’ Lukas tapped the side of his head with the tip of his deactivated claw, pretending to burrow it into his temple. ‘Did you know that throughout the tribes of Fenris there are at least forty-eight variations on the Thegn’s Rusty Harpoon?’

  ‘We need to go in there and try to deactivate that portal,’ said Gudbrand.

  ‘Wisdom worthy of the Allfather.’ Lukas clapped the Blood Claw on the back.

  ‘Um, Lukas…?’ The interruption came from Agthei, who was scrolling a finger across the screen of the auspex Lukas had given him – a device the Trickster had purloined from one of Valgarthr’s Grey Hunter squads on the assumption that it would come in useful at some point.

  ‘Yes, Agthei?’

  ‘I’ve just locked in our positional status, and it has marked out the route we took to get here.’

  ‘Standard positional data capture,’ Lukas said with an air of innocence. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well…’ Agthei turned the scanner sideways. ‘If I do this it looks like our route forms Fenrisian runes, sort of.’

  ‘Saying what?’ asked Artyn.

  ‘It’s the symbols for elk sha–’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ Lukas said quickly, striding back to the threshold of the cellar’s external doorway from where he could see the whole expanse of the dockside. ‘Come along, put that thing to better use and get some readings from that building.’

  He clapped a hand to Agthei’s shoulder and thrust him out into the street. The Blood Claw adjusted the settings of the auspex, muttering conciliatory phrases to its spirit to apologise for Lukas’ blasphemies. The rest of the pack watched the surrounding buildings and what had been the waterfront, now just an expanse of dead earth that stretched to the horizon, baked and cracked by the sun.

  ‘No readings,’ reported Agthei. ‘Nothing at all.’