Saturnine

by Dan Abnett

  ‘Brother-sons,’ said Dorn. ‘Under a mask of absolute confidence, we have prepared this place of war, and drawn up our strengths. When the hour comes, and it closes on us fast, you seven will be the leaders of the combat. Every one of you is more than proven in battle. Every one of you is sworn to Terra. And every one of you, each in his own way, is fired by a personal longing to annihilate our enemy.’

  There was silence. Haar nodded gently. Sigismund tilted his head back slightly, and clenched his jaw.

  ‘And none of you more so than me,’ said Dorn. ‘You will follow me into this action.’

  There was a murmur.

  Garviel Loken, Nathaniel Garro and Sigismund lead out the seven…

  ‘You will lead us, lord?’ asked Sigismund.

  ‘In person,’ Dorn replied. ‘You have been briefed by Diamantis. Instructed, and assigned your complements. Mistress Elg will run tactical operations from the forward command established here. Its cipher is Trickster. Narrowband datacast only. Secrecy is paramount. General vox and links are forbidden for the duration. You will listen to her, and apply her data scrupulously. I will be doing the same. Mistress?’

  Elg, tall and severe, stepped forward.

  ‘Praetorian,’ she said. ‘Function is established. A hardline link to the Grand Borealis is ready. Our systems here are modest, for they have been established rapidly and needed to be portable, but Bhab can supply us with larger-scale acoustic data via the Sanctum listening watch. Due to the absolute secrecy of this undertaking, very few in the Grand Borealis are even aware of it. Only Master of Huscarls Archamus and my colleague Icaro have been read in. They will serve as data liaisons.’

  Dorn nodded.

  ‘I dislike secrecy intensely,’ he said, turning back to the commanders. ‘It is deceit, and it deserves no place among the honest and honourable doctrines of Fair War. Secrets are volatile and unstable. They are never stored safely. When they emerge, the mere fact of them can damage the friends and brothers around us.’

  He paused, and looked down for a moment. He thought of the tactics he had chosen. The bitter choices. The Eternity Wall space port, dying already, no doubt, because he had elected to sacrifice it for this chance. He thought how he had kept that awful choice from almost everybody, most particularly his beloved brothers Jaghatai and Sanguinius. He had deceived and handled them both, either through psychological manipulation or a simple withholding. But he had weighed it, and found it necessary. Victory was the only goal, and he could not afford for either of them to be distracted, or to have them question him. They could not question what they did not know.

  The thought of Sindermann, charged to gather up a history that would secure them the promise of a future. Dorn knew that very little of the old man’s history would ever or could ever be published or broadcast. Most of it would be sequestered and redacted forever.

  And he thought of Vulkan. For a long time, only he and the Sigillite had known that Vulkan was alive, and had returned to Terra. Dorn had considered that an imperative secret. Keeping it allowed Vulkan to pursue his very singular defence of the Palace unhindered, free from any urging that he should be deployed on the Palace fields. But Malcador, to Dorn’s dismay, had chosen to divulge the news of Vulkan’s presence to Sanguinius and the Khan, bringing them into a circle of trust that Dorn had been certain excluded them. The Sigillite had done this in front of him. To save face, and to disguise any notion of dissembling, Dorn had been obliged to feign shock.

  He had thought the Khan and the Great Angel would see through him in an instant, see his unpractised acting for what it was.

  But they had not.

  The lies were becoming too easy. The dissembling too ordinary. Deceit had become a necessary tool in his arsenal, and he despised it almost as much as the ones who had forced him into it.

  He became aware that he had stopped speaking. I he commanders were staring at him, ready but puzzled.

  ‘Fair War,’ he said. ‘I have always prosecuted fair wars. I have chosen honour. But this is not Fair War. It is foul. It is unseemly and it is inhuman, and the very fact that brothers have turned against us shows us that we cannot trust ourselves. In this dark age, we must match our foe or be destroyed. We must embellish our grand arsenal of honour, courage and fortitude with more unwholesome devices. The inevitable weapons of surprise, deceit, entrapment and dishonesty. And we must, I am sorry to say, set aside mercy and become merciless.’

  He looked at the seven warriors.

  ‘Questions?’ he asked.

  ‘Just an observation, great lord,’ said Loken. ‘If we destroy our enemies here, and end this, does it matter how?’

  Sigismund and Garro both smiled quietly. So did Malcador, up on the dais. Haar snorted, amused, and turned the snort into a cough. Thane and Bel Sepatus scowled.

  ‘Ordinarily, captain?’ Dorn asked. ‘Absolutely yes. Tonight, no. But I notice that you have chosen to sweep your own deceptions away. Or is this just more deceit?’

  Loken glanced down at himself.

  ‘I have always been a Luna Wolf, my lord,’ he said. ‘Loyal, to the death. I want them to see that as they die.’

  ‘Hell, yes,’ muttered Gallor.

  Dorn stared at Loken, and nodded gently. ‘Your livery, captain, once represented the best of us. I hope it will again. Anything else?’

  ‘My lord,’ said Sepatus. ‘You are here, and committed to engage. We are told the good Archamus is participating from Bhab. My questions are… Who will be running the siege defence? Should my genesire not be informed?’

  ‘I am running the siege, captain,’ said Dorn. ‘I have been from the beginning, at every hour, at every moment, wherever I go and whatever I do. This will be no different. And, like me, Archamus can multi-task. The Grand Borealis is efficient and well prepared. The tacticians and the War Court offer fulsome support, as they have since day one. My dear brother does not need to be informed yet. You know as well as I do how occupied he is at Gorgon Bar.’

  ‘But,’ Sepatus pressed, ‘grace prevent it, if you should fall-‘

  ‘I won’t,’ said Dorn.

  ‘My brother Bel Sepatus seems to doubt your prowess, my lord,’ said Thane. There was some laughter from the line. ‘But his concern is valid,’ Thane went on, more sombre. ‘You are the foundation of our defence. The architect of our fate. Is it wise to risk you by placing you at the forefront of a known flaw in this fortress?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sigismund. ‘At a place where the very worst of our enemy is fully expected to stream in and unleash fury?’

  ‘I have done my utmost to make this palace a true fortress,’ said Dorn. I’ve built it from the ground up, diligently… some say obsessively… making sure that it is impenetrable and secure. But that is an impossible task. There will always be cracks, there will always be flaws. No fortress of mere stone and steel in our galaxy is truly impervious. So I must place myself directly before those cracks, and block them with my own flesh and fury.’

  He gazed at them steadily.

  ‘I am the fortress now,’ he said.

  Sindermann shivered. The hairs on his neck stood up.

  ‘Now, each in turn,’ Dorn said to his commanders, ‘make your oaths of moment to me.’

  * * *

  ‘Here they come,’ said Rann.

  The assault force was driving out of the ruins of the third circuit wall. Columns of Iron Warriors, advancing shield-blocked, preparing for mass escalade. Motorised gun carriages and mobile artillery moved with them in escort, clattering over the rubble. They were already firing, hefting penetrator shells at the wall beside Katillon guntower. In the shadowy cover of the circuit mins, heavy petraries were being prepared, and brutish, armoured siege towers were being rolled out behind the advancing legionaries.

  ‘My lord?’ Rann urged.

  ‘I see it, Fafnir,’ Sanguinius murmured. They were coming at Katillon, the site of their defeat the day before. They were coming at Kat
illon, because it was buckled, and wounded. Huge elements of the traitor host, beastkin and human wretches, were swarming out of the enemy line at six, no, seven different places, to harry and occupy the defenders’ attention, and dilute any response to the main strike. Wall units were already beginning to chop them down in their hundreds.

  He could see. But it was a blur.

  ‘My lord?’ said Rann, with greater urgency. Sanguinius leaned on the bulwark for a moment, both hands flat on the warm stone, to brace his body and wings. The pain had returned. The otherness flooded into his head like a caustic rip-surge.

  ‘My lord, are you unwell?’ Rann asked. Sanguinius rose upright.

  ‘No,’ he said. He was lying. The pain was as great as it had been at any point before. He breathed hard, and showed the calm face Rann and the others expected to see.

  ‘Rann? Aimery? Lead repulse forces to receive and block the main strike,’ he said. ‘Katillon must hold. Lux? Stand in support, all your men. Halen, order blanket suppression fire from all wall deployments to curb the enthusiasm of the distraction charges. Have the guns of Katillon and Benthos target the war machines. I want those petraries smashed before they start to loose, and the siege towers ruined before they even brush the wall.’

  Men started to move. Orders were yelled, trumpets sounded.

  ‘My lord, will you come?’ asked Khoradal.

  ‘In a moment,’ Sanguinius told his captain. ‘I reckoned on two or three strikes. I’ll hold here, and see if I’m correct. Otherwise, we commit too early.’

  Another lie. A half-lie, but another one all the same. Sanguinius would stay put because it hurt too much to move. Khoradal Furio nodded, and moved off. Sanguinius turned and gazed out at the scene below.

  He couldn’t see it at all any more. The pain was like spikes driving into his brain. Butcher’s Nails. Oh, my brother! This is what it must feel like! This is how the Nails bite you! Unendurable!

  Pain blinded him to the unfolding mayhem of Gorgon Bar. He saw that other place again. Eternity space port. Monsalvant Gard. The barrier wall, its surface pocked and cratered like a slab of lunar surface.

  He was standing outside, half a kilometre from the port, facing the Gard. He was walking towards it, crushing brittle rocks and dry skulls under his feet. A screaming host was close behind him.

  He was Angron. He was in Angron’s mind. He was seeing the world as Angron saw it, through a flecked and blotted red haze. Sanguinius had never been this close. His visions had brought him close before, but he had never actually intersected with one of his brothers’ minds. Not this fully. He was inside Angron’s brain. He was inside his pain. He was trapped inside his skull, and could smell the raw-blood meat-stink of the inside of his head.

  And this was no vision, except to Sanguinius. This was now. This was happening now.

  * * *

  Niborran scrambled onto the parapet ledge below Еower Three of the barrier wall, and took the scope that Brohn offered.

  ‘He’s just out there,’ Brohn said. ‘just… out there in the open.’

  Niborran trained the scope down, and adjusted resolution. He could see the figure, standing alone on the strewn rubble of Western Freight, half a kilometre away. Even at that distance, he seemed immense. A hulking, hunch-shouldered ogre in spattered warplate. The huge, leathery pinions of a bat rose from his broad back. Red and gold. Blood red and soiled gold. Spoiled meat and dirty metal.

  ‘Angron,’ Cadwalder murmured. The Huscarl needed no scope to magnify the figure.

  ‘What is he doing?’ Brohn asked.

  It wasn’t clear. The primarch of the XII had advanced alone into the open ahead of his host. Niborran could see them massed in a great, dust-fogged swathe another half a kilometre behind their genesire. Angron was ignoring the portion of his force currently clamouring and ramming at the barrier gates to the west. He had held the remainder of his butcher-swarm back. He had walked into the open.

  He had walked into the kill-zone.

  ‘Is he mad?’ asked Brohn.

  ‘To do what he has done, and be what he has become, I would hope so,’ said Cadwalder.

  ‘Train all wall-mounts and batteries,’ said Niborran.

  ‘What?’ said Brohn.

  ‘Train the guns, Clem!’ Niborran snarled. ‘Did I stammer? He’s walked into our fire field. Right into our kill field, as if we’re nothing. I don’t care what he is. Firing solution on all guns!’

  Brohn, despite his near panic, wasn’t idiot enough to ask for coordinates. It was a single figure, standing in the open. Around them, cued by Clem Brohn’s frantic Hortcode instruction, weapon mounts began to traverse. Batteries panned. Gun-platforms adjusted on gyro-mounts. Loading systems rattled and buzzed.

  ‘Weapons lock,’ said Brohn.

  Niborran stared through the scope. The intense magnification showed him the tattered, bloodstained rags flapping around Angron’s filthy bulk, the massive set of the legs, the dents and notches in the gold plate, the scarring of war, the tattered lizard-wings, the excamated skulls strung-

  He lowered the scope quickly. He could see the figure well enough. He had no need of details.

  Below them, Angron slowly raised a massive war-axe over his head on a tree-trunk arm. He was looking up at them.

  ‘Hear.’

  The word seemed to fall out of the sky like a thunderclap.

  They all flinched, even Cadwalder. The Huscarl brought his bolter up in automatic threat response.

  ‘Is… is he speaking to us?’ Brohn whispered.

  ‘Hear. Hear me.’

  The words rolled around the rubble waste like the echo of an artillery salvo.

  ‘I make my offer once,‘ Angron boomed, slow and leaden. ‘According to the rites of this arena.’

  ‘Arena?’ Niborran murmured. He looked at Cadwalder. ‘What does he think this is?’

  ‘Your cause is hopeless,‘ Angron intoned, wide echoes chasing each syllable. ‘You face a foe that cannot be defeated. You are cut off, outnumbered, and defending a ruler too weak to be worthy of your loyalty.’

  ‘Clem?’ Niborran whispered.

  Brohn nodded.

  ‘My offer,‘ Angron bawled. ‘Give. Up.’

  There was a long silence, broken only by the stirring wind.

  ‘What is your answer?‘ Angron demanded.

  ‘This,’ said Niborran.

  * * *

  Sanguinius winced as the entire south line of Monsalvanl’s barrier wall unloaded on him. A deluge bombardment, deafening, earth-shaking, a rain of heavy shells, main battery las and collimated plasma. He felt himself atomised. Shredded to molecules, and then those molecules incinerated.

  There was no pain. There was no pain at all. A moment of pain-free serenity suspended him.

  Sanguinius opened his eyes. He steadied his hand on the oh-so-solid, oh-so-real bulwark wall of Gorgon Bar. He saw the battle accelerating around him. The air full of shot and tracer fire, the Iron Warriors commencing their escalade at Katillon, siege belfries aflame, short of their target, firestorms choking the terrain below the fourth circuit wall.

  It needed his attention immediately. Gorgon Bar needed the Great Angel.

  But Sanguinius knew he had just felt Angron die. Sanguinius had been in his brother’s mind as the guns of Monsalvant annihilated him. It was a moment, a moment of victory, but also grief. The death of a brother was no small thing. It was a momentous event that could only happen twenty times, and it had happened too much already.

  And the worst of it, the heartbreaking part, was that in death, all the pain had finally gone. Sanguinius’ poor, lost brother had finally found release.

  Sanguinius steadied his breath. The oddest part, the most perplexing part of all, was that Angron’s tortured mind had not been there. Sanguinius had shared his brother’s space, and seen, as a vision, Angron’s view of Monsalvant.

  But that was not what Angron had been seeing at all. Angron’s m
ind had been submerged in a vision all of its own. That was why his rage had stilled, briefly. That’s why his berserk incoherence had gone, and some calm articulacy had briefly returned. A moment of lucidity. Angron had addressed the walls. He had issued his ritual challenge. He had seen Monsalvant’s barrier wall as the arena walls of Nuceria, far off in the Ultima Segmentum; he had seen Monsalvant’s defenders as the jeering of the Desh’ea populace. He had been Angron Thal’kyr again, Lord of the Red Sands, Child of the Mountain, railing at the braying audience of the pit.

  He had been home again. He had gone home to die.

  Sanguinius tried to understand what that meant. He tried to decipher what he had seen, Angron’s dying vision locked inside his own. Why that? Why there? Why Nuceria? My visions must have meaning! They must have purpose! Or are they simply heralds of my own impending madness? What truth am I supposed to learn from this?

  Sanguinius closed his eyes again, tight shut, ignoring the carnage of Gorgon Bar, and concentrated, trying to catch some fading trace of the vision that he could dissect and interpret. Nuceria. Nuceria! There was a reason it had filled Angron’s mind and stalled his rage. There was a reason it had been shown to him and, through him, to me.

  And I see it. I see it. The burned core of death, the charred corpse, the total extinction of-

  The Lord of Baal gasped. He opened his eyes. The agony, so brieflyrelieved, nailed back into him. Raw life was bursting up. Rage was renewed. Fury reborn.

  Sanguinius saw the smoking crater in the rubble wastes before Monsalvant. He saw the bombardment fume slowly clearing, the spats of fire still burning around the crater’s lip. He saw charred scraps of exploded bone and half-cooked hunks of meat.

  He saw them twitch and writhe. He saw broken, distorted panels of armour, splinters of pulverised ribs, and loose, fused vertebrae, clumping and wriggling, and locking back into place. He saw new sinew and muscle forming, re-stringing skeletal fragments, harnessing a frame, reforming a shape, sleeving it in flesh. He saw capillaries growing like delicate fern-fronds, in their millions, bringing the blood, delivering the blood to every new extremity.