War Without End

by Various

  They both froze. The point of Arvida’s sword rested under Yesugei’s chin, angled upward.

  Yesugei started to chuckle. He let his own weapon fall.

  ‘You saw!’ he said, delighted. ‘I feel you do it.’

  Arvida broke away. Despite himself, he could not pretend that he wasn’t pleased. The sight – the Corvidae-sight – had returned.

  ‘It was just a flicker.’

  Yesugei clapped him on the shoulder. ‘But will return. You know it.’

  ‘Perhaps. You fight well, for an old shaman.’

  Yesugei laughed, and pulled back, raising his blade again and falling into a combat stance.

  ‘Then we do it again,’ he said.

  The duels lasted for six more hours before Yesugei let him rest. By that time, Arvida’s body was drained and his mind numb. He limped from the sparring chamber, feeling the old wounds flaring and old exhaustions returning.

  Yesugei came with him. Arvida was glad to observe that the Stormseer was at least breathing heavily – the pain-giving had not been entirely one-way.

  ‘How many times?’ asked Yesugei, following Arvida out into a wide corridor.

  Arvida shrugged, still walking. ‘Maybe three times. They were just fragments.’

  ‘But that is start.’

  They walked down a long corridor. Serf menials in white tunics shuffled past, hurrying from one task to another. They all saluted – at Yesugei with joy, at Arvida with a wary curiosity. As ever, the Swordstorm was bustling with movement and energy, like a great beast coiled for the pounce.

  ‘You still have not told me where the fleet is heading,’ Arvida remarked.

  ‘Yet to be decided,’ said Yesugei. ‘Legion is not yet ready, so we remain hidden. Will not be long now. The Khan will extend his fingers, seeking out enemy, and then the ordu will be summoned.’

  ‘The enemy will find you, if you don’t move soon.’

  ‘He knows,’ said Yesugei.

  The spaces around them began to open up. They were heading towards the more populated zones of the flagship, and great lumen-chandeliers hung overhead, making the gilt and marble of the corridor walls shimmer. They entered a long hallway lined with mirrors, over which ten metre-tall calligraphic scrolls hung. Arvida had begun to recognise what some of the texts indicated, even if he couldn’t translate them. Some were records of battles fought and won, others were lists of Legion personnel, perhaps lost during the Great Crusade. Some of the largest and most prestigious scrolls seemed to contain – Arvida guessed by the layout and the decorative borders – poetry.

  Ahead, at the far end of the hall, a squad of White Scars came marching towards them. Unusually, they were wearing their helms and carried blade weapons unsheathed in armoured hands.

  Yesugei saw them and a flicker of unease passed across his scarred features. A second later, Arvida saw why.

  In the centre of the squad, walking along with them, was a lone legionary. Unlike the others he wore no armour, only a white shift. His hands were bound at the wrists in adamantium shackles and some kind of torc had been placed around his neck. His tunic bore a single rune daubed in red on the linen.

  Yesugei stood aside to allow the squad to pass; Arvida did also. The escorted warrior did not make eye contact with anyone. He stared straight ahead as he was marched along, saying nothing, his shoulders proudly pushed back.

  Arvida couldn’t take his eyes off the legionary’s face. The warrior wore a curious expression – dejected, beaten, yet resolutely defiant. There was no self-pity in that face, nor was there any fear, just a bleak kind of certainty, as though his body were no longer truly his own and he was now being dragged along by the currents of fate.

  No son of Prospero would ever have looked that way. Magnus’s sons had a different temper, a belief that all situations could be overcome with the application of wisdom, and that the laws of men were subordinate, should conflict arise, to the law of reason.

  We were a reasonable people, Arvida thought. We were never zealots. And yet for this, the fury of the universe was unleashed upon us.

  ‘The tribunals?’ Arvida asked, once the squad had moved out of sight.

  Yesugei nodded. ‘I knew him.’

  ‘What will happen?’

  Yesugei did not answer but started to walk again. They went on in silence until they reached the Stormseer’s private chambers.

  Once inside, Yesugei went over to an iron-bound chest and withdrew a package wrapped in cloth. It was large, heavy, and he held it in both hands.

  ‘This was first day,’ he said, handing it to Arvida. ‘First day remembering your sight. From here, you will be restored.’

  Arvida took the package, and pulled back the cloth. Underneath was a pauldron, newly forged and painted in dazzling white. The armoured rim was crimson and the device on the face was something he had never seen before: the serpentine star of Prospero set atop the lightning-strike of the Khans.

  ‘I had it made,’ said Yesugei. ‘Your shoulder guard is your weakness.’

  Arvida held the new pauldron up, rotating it in the light. It was well-crafted, just as all Legion wargear was well-crafted. The sigils were subtle and drawn in the free-form Chogorian style, ringed by immaculate Khorchin lettering.

  It was a beautiful thing. Arvida already knew that it would fit perfectly with his own battleplate, completing his protective shell and making him whole again. There could be no complaint with its substance.

  ‘What you think?’ asked Yesugei.

  Arvida studied it carefully. It was a fine gesture from one Legion to another. He did not need to ask how much care had gone into its creation, for the quality was evident.

  His eyes flicked up at Yesugei’s expectant face. The Stormseer was looking back at him eagerly, his thoughts unhidden.

  A new Ahriman, Arvida mused. A new axis to replace the old.

  He pulled the cloth back over the surface of the plate, obscuring the hybrid Legion symbol.

  ‘It will take some getting used to,’ he said, truthfully enough.

  At first, all that he pulled from the rubble was worthless. A few scorched trinkets, their beauty melted. He doubted the Wolves had looted anything – the destruction they brought was too complete, and in any case they were not robbers, just murderers.

  There was no sunrise and no sunset, just a blank screen of darkness broken only by the faint muttering of ghosts. As his body weakened, it became hard to know what was real and what was imagined. His future-sense atrophied and every exercise of cult powers brought pain.

  He kept searching. The quest for a sliver of the past became the one fixed point for him and he pushed on, rooting through every library and archive until his eyes were red with fatigue and his fingers trembled.

  He couldn’t get close to the heart of the old city. It was plagued by the revenants of psychneuein, swarms of them, and for every one he warded off with fire, another five homed in on him. They were protecting something, or perhaps just hovering around it. But whatever it was, Arvida no longer had the strength to penetrate their cordon to reach it.

  He turned to the lesser spires. Most were husks, hollow like storm-blown trees, blown apart by incendiaries and then stripped bare by ravening infantry packs. One, though, set further out from the haunted Occullum Square, had survived partially intact.

  Arvida climbed a long, winding spiral stair to reach the summit. He entered a circular chamber, open to the elements and with its ruined walls poking up like broken ribs. Lightning seemed drawn to it, and arced around the jagged crown in a lattice of silver.

  He stalked through the remains – a splintered desk, scraps of flaking parchment, and cracked and headless statues. He kicked aside heaps of refuse, exposing an elaborately tiled floor. He saw sigils glimmer in the flashes of light. There were idealised serpents, and the ubiquitous eye of knowledge, and the symbo
ls of the Enumerations, and esoteric images from a dozen worlds tracing a ceremonial line back to Terra.

  He brushed aside the dust from a stone door lintel, revealing the raven’s head of his order engraved there. In an instant, he remembered the place as it had been, lit with candles and smelling of book-leather.

  Ahriman’s library.

  He had only visited it twice, and only once in the presence of its master. Ahzek Ahriman had been the head of his cult discipline but not his military commander, so their links were not close. Arvida remembered a smooth, pleasant face animated by intelligence and a ready, eager appetite for wonder.

  Presumably Ahriman was dead, as were Amon and Hathor Maat and all the others. He had not seen their ghosts, though. Why was that?

  Prospero’s crystal dust lay in clumps, just as it did everywhere. He pushed it aside, watching the black spores clot against his gauntlets. As he moved, his right shoulder guard clicked again – the armour-seal had broken and every movement levered the gap a little wider.

  He hunted through the library’s remains diligently, but after an hour or so he began to lose hope. There were a few of the familiar bits and pieces, but nothing suitable. Beyond the skeletal chamber walls the wind picked up, hot and bitter.

  He was about to turn back, when his trailing hand caught on something buried in the ash flakes. It felt oddly warm, as if powered by a heat source, but when he picked it up he realised that that was not possible.

  It was a tin box, battered and scratched, and with the last remnants of a fabric binding clinging to the hinge-line. Sheltering it in his cupped palm, Arvida carefully prised it open. A faded figure stared back at him – a lady, dressed in robes and carrying a rod of queenly office, her face smudged.

  Manipulating the contents was difficult in his gauntlets so Arvida moved over to the desktop and gently tipped them out on to a cleared area. It was a pack of card-wafers. Shielding them against the wind, he ran his eyes over the pictures on each card’s face. He did not understand most of them, but some were vaguely familiar. They were crude depictions, their colours bleached by time, but the poses and configurations were suggestive.

  Why this? he found himself thinking. Of all the treasures, all the riches, why this?

  It was one of Ahriman’s amusements, no doubt. A fortune-telling deck, tainted with a little warp-wisdom, or possibly just very old. He had seen similar things in his time, and had always found them unimpressive scrying aids. Far better to tap the Great Ocean directly, plugging into the heartblood of the empyrean.

  ‘That is not yours,’ came a voice from behind him.

  Arvida whirled to face it, clamping his palm over the cards to prevent them from gusting away. He had already drawn his bolter with the other hand.

  A Space Marine stood before him, his face exposed. He was a White Scars legionary, one of Jaghatai’s savage mystics. He wore the same strange, dejected expression that he had done on the Swordstorm.

  It was then that Arvida realised he was dreaming again, and that even the solid things around him were memories, and the ghosts in the wind were memories of memories.

  ‘I am the last,’ Arvida replied, slinging his bolter and collecting the cards up again. ‘It is as much mine as anyone’s.’

  ‘This world is cursed,’ said the nameless White Scars legionary. ‘Leave it. No good can come of it.’

  Arvida felt his damaged pauldron click as his arms moved. ‘Leave it? That is what you would recommend. You’re uncurious, the lot of you.’

  ‘Put it back.’

  Arvida laughed at him, though it made his parched throat flare with pain. ‘What does it matter? I will die here. Permit me one last remnant to hold on to before the end.’

  ‘You will not die here.’

  Arvida stopped in his tracks. Of course he wouldn’t. He’d always known that, even during the darkest moments. Why did he even say it?

  He looked up at the legionary again, intending to ask why he was there and what he portended but, with a dreary predictability, there was now no sign of him. The bitter wind swirled around the remains of the library, whipping up the top layers of dust and driving them in eddying patterns.

  Arvida took up the tin box, sealed it again and locked it securely at his belt.

  ‘One last remnant,’ he said to himself, making for the stairwell.

  ‘You should let me see it,’ Arvida had said.

  ‘You will not be admitted,’ Yesugei had replied.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For the Legion only.’

  ‘But I am of the Legion,’ Arvida had countered, pointedly turning his shoulder to reveal the hybrid pauldron that he now wore. ‘That is, if you still wish me to be.’

  Yesugei had smiled, recognising the trap he had set for himself. He had left then and did not return for some time, no doubt making representations in the places where representations needed to be made.

  Two days later, he came back. By then, Arvida’s sight was almost as acute as it had been before Prospero’s destruction and he sensed the Stormseer’s arrival at his chamber several minutes before he actually arrived.

  ‘It is time,’ Yesugei announced. He was wearing ceremonial robes of white linen, lined with close-written Khorchin picked out in gold. His shaven, amiable head gleamed under the light of the lumens, exposing every tattoo and scar.

  Arvida was helm-less, though still in armour, fresh from a punishing practice bout with the cages’ automata. The star-and-lightning sigil was on his right shoulder guard; the new pauldron had already proved its worth and saved him from taking new wounds.

  ‘Then it is permitted?’ Arvida asked, reaching for a cloak to drape over his battleplate.

  ‘The Khan ruled,’ said Yesugei. ‘He remains grateful.’

  Arvida followed Yesugei out of his chamber. ‘Do I need to prepare?’

  ‘Just observe, since you wish to see it. But are you wounded?’

  Arvida turned slightly, hiding his neck where the rash had grown worse. It was no true wound, though it itched madly. His hands, too, fizzed hotly under the skin.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They walked for a long time, passing through parts of the ship that Arvida had not been shown before. Gradually, the proportion of human serfs fell away, until they were surrounded only by fellow Space Marines. The White Scars were decked out in robes similar to Yesugei’s. Some wore armour under them but most did not.

  They assembled in a steep auditorium set high up in the Swordstorm’s command nexus. A semicircle of seats rose from a marble stage marked with the symbol of the Legion. Battle standards hung down over the wall behind it, many scorched around the edges or punched through with charred bolter wounds. Arvida scanned the banners. His Khorchin was still elementary, but he knew enough of the characters to read the names of planets: Naamani, Wahd Jien, Magala, Eilixo, Ullanor, Chondax.

  Several hundred warriors took their places. Arvida found a seat near the top rows, accompanied by Yesugei. Two stone lecterns faced one another on the marble floor, both empty, both draped in Legion colours. Once the audience had settled in position, the doors to the auditorium clanged shut. Artificial lights dimmed, replaced by bronze bowls with tongues of yellow flame.

  Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of the coals. No warrior spoke. The atmosphere became tense.

  After what seemed a very long time, double doors set into the rear wall unlocked and swung open. The same warrior that Arvida had seen earlier was escorted to one of the lecterns. He looked much as he had before, both in real life and in Arvida’s dreams.

  He was no longer shackled, and his arms hung loosely by his sides. His shoulders were still set back, his expression still unyieldingly proud.

  That has always been the weakness of our kind, thought Arvida. Magnus most of all, but none of us are free of it.

  Th
e condemned warrior stood at the lectern and his guards left him.

  A few moments later the doors opened again and one of the eighteen most lethal individuals in the galaxy took his place at the other lectern.

  The primarch was arrayed in what Arvida guessed was traditional dress from his home world – leather jerkin, fur-lined cloak, knee-length kaftan of spun gold, and metal-tipped riding boots. Illuminated screeds hung from his shoulders and a bejewelled and curved scabbard had been threaded through his wide, bronze-buckled belt.

  His head was bare, save for a slender circlet of gold set about his forehead. His long hair had been gathered into a topknot, revealing a harsh, spare face of sun-hardened skin. He bore himself with the unconscious poise of a plains-warrior, though the cultivated dignity in his mien spoke of a more profound heritage.

  The Khan. The Khagan. The Warhawk.

  He seemed to occupy more space than he should, as if his soul pressed up against its physical boundaries too hard. Arvida had seen him fight on Prospero, taking on the Death Lord Mortarion, and it had been the most complete display of swordmastery that he had ever witnessed. Even out of his armour-clad finery and set in the mundane surroundings of a court of enquiry, the raw danger of his presence could not be extinguished.

  There was nothing surplus about the Khan. He was as pure and elemental as a flame, a force of eternity set loose in a universe of petty souls.

  He did not look up at his assembled warriors. His expression gave almost nothing away, save for a vague sense of distaste at what he was being forced to do.

  ‘So,’ he said, his great voice reverberating around the chamber like the soft, dour threat-growl of a tyger. ‘Let us begin.’

  The tribunal was conducted in Khorchin. Arvida and Yesugei had both known this would be the case, and so they had made arrangements. As the participants spoke, Yesugei translated into Gothic and the words appeared in Arvida’s mind just as if the speakers had placed them there. The process was not entirely passive, though, as Arvida used his own future-sense to pick up nuance and inflection from the original utterances. The result was a kind of amalgamated thought-speech, almost indistinguishable from listening to the real thing.