by Various
Arvida found the exercise taxing, but it was preferable to having Yesugei whispering in his ear the whole time. He also suspected the Stormseer of using the thought-speech to test how quickly Arvida’s precognitive abilities were recovering.
‘State your name,’ said the Khan, though his lips formed different word-forms to Arvida’s eyes.
‘I am called Orzun, of the Brotherhood of the Hooked Blade.’
The condemned warrior looked directly at his primarch, neither cowering nor insolent. The disparity between them was evident, though the similarity was, too.
‘State your crime.’
‘I listened to the lies of the Warmaster’s servants and joined myself to those who planned to subvert the Legion. I was swayed by the words of Hasik Noyan-Khan. I killed brothers of the ordu on the attack frigate Ghamaliz when resistance was encountered and only ceased my insurrection when we were shown that the Noyan-Khan had been laid low and the Khagan had returned.’
The Khan’s gaze never wavered. It was steel-hard, as if by relaxing it a fraction he would allow the doubts back that had crippled the Legion’s resolve.
‘And what is your allegiance now?’
‘To the Khagan, to the ordu of Jaghatai and, through him, to the Imperium of Mankind. In my pride and folly, I erred.’
‘For what reason?’
‘I was told that the Emperor had forsaken the Great Crusade to commune with xenos. I believed the Warmaster’s grievance was just. I believed that you and he were brothers in arms and that our movement would ease the passage towards your alliance.’
‘You did not seek the gifts of the yaksha, nor those of the zadyin arga?’
Orzun shook his head vehemently. ‘I did not. I am a warrior, a bearer of the guan dao. I only wished to see the blades of the Khagan and the Warmaster wielded side by side.’
‘Others did what you have done. Where their faith was good, and where the blood-crime was not grave, they have been allowed to serve again. They have become the sagyar mazan, and have taken vengeance to the enemy. Should they live, they will return to the Legion, their crimes dissolved. I have studied your case, Orzun of the Brotherhood of the Hooked Blade. That path stands before you, should you wish to take it.’
‘With regret, Khagan, I cannot.’
The Khan’s face remained stony, as if inuring himself to impending grief. ‘Tell me the reason why.’
‘I swore the blood oath.’
A low murmur ran around the auditorium. So, Orzun was one of them.
‘You choose death, when life is offered,’ said the Khan.
‘I swore on the Path of Heaven, and called on the eternal void to take me and devour my soul if I reneged on my vow. I followed the rite of the tsusan garag and committed myself to the universe’s binding. The choice was wrong but the oath remains, as does the fate of the oathbreaker, just as it has been since we walked the endless grass.’
‘This war is different. Greater powers than you have already proved faithless.’
‘Then the void will damn them also.’
‘I can release you. I am the Khagan, the giver of the law. You do not need to do this.’
Orzun’s face, for the first time, flickered with uncertainty. He looked up at the warriors around him, then at the emblem of the Legion, then finally back at his primarch.
‘I have sworn it,’ he said. ‘It can never be taken back. Not even by you, lord.’
The Khan held his warrior’s gaze for a few moments more, scrutinising him for any chance of a recantation.
‘You were a fool, Orzun,’ he said. ‘Even if I had joined fates with my brother, I could never have tolerated this vow to persist. The blood oath is sacred, presided over by the zadyin arga and reserved for the settling of vendettas. You allowed them to trick you, to make it a sordid mockery. You have destroyed yourself, and at a time when I have need of warriors like never before.’
Orzun remained implacable as his master spoke. He knew it, just as every soul in the chamber knew it. That would not change his mind.
‘This is the final time of asking,’ said the Khan. ‘Will you renounce what you have sworn?’
Orzun’s reply was instant. ‘I would have fought with you until the gates of Terra, lord. I would have died there with a smile on my lips. But I will not become like those who ruined me. I will not speak falsely, not to any man, nor to the old gods, and I will not break an oath. I no longer deserve the life I was given.’
‘Then you know what must be done,’ said the Khan, drawing his sword.
He stepped down from his lectern and paced towards Orzun. The warrior stiffened, but did not move. The Khan stood over him, angling the point of his blade at Orzun’s unprotected chest.
‘Of all the treacheries my brother set in motion,’ he said, ‘this is the worst. He has corrupted that which was once whole and turned our sharpest blades against us. I wish you had not sworn, for you are worth a thousand of every traitor who broke his own vows. You could have fought with me at Terra. When I am there, your name will be engraved on my own armour, as will the names of all others who would not damn themselves by revoking the tsusan garag. I will use those names to bring malice to my sword-edge, and so even in this you will still serve.’
Orzun never looked away.
‘If I may ask, lord,’ he said, his voice still firm. ‘How many have renounced?’
The Khan shot him a wintry smile, as if the question itself were ridiculous.
‘None,’ he said, and pushed the blade through Orzun’s heart.
‘How many are there, like him?’ asked Arvida afterwards.
‘Not many,’ said Yesugei. ‘Even Hasik did not swear the blood oath, they tell me.’
‘Then the Khan has not wounded the Legion overmuch by ending them.’
‘Not the Legion,’ said Yesugei. ‘Himself, though, I think very much.’
Towards the end, the storms worsened. Arvida became aware of the great aetheric barrier smouldering above the clouds. It had ringed the planet, carried like the aftershock of a nuclear detonation and enclosing the world in a seething curtain of warp matter.
It would have been easy to lose hope, then. He could sense well enough that no ship could penetrate such an aegis and that his escape from Prospero was therefore impossible.
But certainty never left. He eked out his dwindling strength, hunting fruitlessly for food or water, warding off the attacks of the translucent psychneuein whenever they drew close. The rhythms of survival took over, punctuating his peripatetic existence.
He kept the cards safe. Every so often, when the lightning was vivid and he could see them more clearly, he took them out and shuffled the deck. No pattern emerged for him to interpret – he would see the number cards alternate with the pictures of kings and scholars and claw-footed devils. If it had once had the power of divination, that power had gone.
Or perhaps the cards still told true, and he could no longer see what he was being shown.
He couldn’t remember when he had last slept. He walked the ruins endlessly, occasionally talking to himself to remain sane. The only other sounds were the crack of thunder, the muffled crash of falling masonry and the half-heard susurration of the ghosts.
For some reason, he was drawn back towards the centre. Despite the danger, his meandering course took him ever closer to the origin. He saw the immense hump of the Pyramid of Photep and spent hours just watching it. The Occullum Square was close by, shimmering with the phantasmic dance of its strange guardians.
‘What are you waiting for?’ asked the White Scars legionary.
Arvida looked up at him. He knew his name now – Orzun. The warrior’s skin was bone-pale, and he had a fatal wound in his chest.
‘I don’t know,’ Arvida replied.
‘You took the cards.’
‘I did.’
‘Leave
them.’
‘Why do you want me to leave them?’ Arvida smiled dryly, aware of the lunacy of talking to a shade. ‘Why do you want anything of me?’
‘All these things are sent as lessons,’ said Orzun. ‘Here is the pattern and we are the brush-strokes.’
Arvida ignored him. He wasn’t really there. Neither of them were.
‘What are you waiting for?’ asked Orzun again, repeating himself as if on a vid-loop.
‘I don’t know,’ Arvida replied, just as before.
Then, far away to the north, where the old Warhound corpse lay and where the armour of his fallen brothers was still scattered in the dust, Arvida felt a tremor. His head snapped up. He stood, peering out into the murk.
He saw nothing, not with his eyes, but he did feel the world’s warp-skin briefly pierced. Somewhere, out in the ruins, something had changed.
He started to move, already plotting a course towards the disturbance. He would have to go warily. Whatever had the power to break the aegis might well have the power to break him, too.
‘Just what do you expect of them, brother?’ called out Orzun, already fading into the gloom behind him. ‘Salvation?’
Arvida didn’t reply. He kept walking.
‘They might take you in,’ Orzun went on, ‘but then they will turn you. They have their own war now, and you are just a weapon in it. Why do you think they will be any different to the ones that came before?’
Orzun’s voice was becoming lost in the howl of the wind.
‘And what of the flesh-change, brother? When will you tell them of that?’
By then, though, Arvida wasn’t listening. He had no idea what had broken into his solitary world, but at least it was something. For the first time in a long while – and he had no means of knowing how long – he was not alone.
When Arvida woke, he knew what he had to do. He looked around his chamber on the Swordstorm for a final time then started to don his armour. As he did so, he saw the extent of the discolouration on his hands. It had spread during the night, welling up under the skin. He could sense the completeness of his psychic recovery, for Yesugei was a skilled tutor, but the Stormseer knew nothing of the XV Legion’s long-dormant curse. When he twisted his helm into position, the air-seal pressed painfully up against the swelling on his neck.
Just before leaving, Arvida opened a metal drawer under his bunk and retrieved the small box. Then he activated the door controls and slipped into the corridor outside.
The Swordstorm was in its nominal nocturnal period and the lumens were set low. Though thousands of the crew still worked, there were slightly fewer moving from deck to deck, which made his task easier.
Arvida went stealthily, treading in the manner he had learned when eluding the ghosts. As he crept along, he opened his mind out ahead of him, tracing future paths like branches of coral.
He saw others moving before they knew it themselves and used that knowledge to stay unseen. He would wait until the way ahead was clear and then hurry down it, already detecting the other souls who would be hard on his heels soon. He watched will-o’-the-wisp outlines of future-bodies moving in a mist of possibility and plotted his course to thread through them all.
Despite this skill, it was not possible to remain entirely undetected and so he was forced to disable some who came across him. He did not kill them – they were all mortals, and so were easy to render unconscious. The trail of bodies, though, limited his time to act. They would be discovered quickly, the alarm would be raised, and more formidable guards would be roused.
Arvida went up the decks, one by one, until he reached a pair of locked doors. He reached for the box, took it out and rested it against the join where the doors met the deck. Then he was off again, head low, picking up speed.
Down, this time – first via the lifter shafts and then using the manual stairways. His future-sight was not perfect. He ran across a group of four menials and nearly let one escape before he was able to immobilise them all.
He went more quickly after that, knowing the danger but unable to risk wasting any more time. He reached his destination, one of the dozens of void-hangar decks, and activated the security doors. The passcodes came to him easily as soon as he touched the keypads, the last thoughts of the previous operator swam into his mind.
He nearly made it out onto the deck without being seen, but the White Scars vigilance was not as casual as it had once been. With the airlock doors looming, alarms started to sound. He heard the thud of boots on the levels above and immediately sensed the numbers coming after him.
He pushed on through the airlock, sealing the doors behind him and depressurising the chamber. Air rushed past, drawn through grilled vents and diverted back into the rest of the ship. The sounds around him sucked away into a numb silence. Ahead of him lay an antechamber filled with racks of maintenance equipment and bulky fuel stations. Beyond the next doorway stood the void-deck, where his target rested.
Arvida hurried to the final rank of door controls, security-locked just like the others. He stumbled on the first attempt to enter the code, his thoughts distracted by the growing clamour in his mind. He sensed pursuers enter the corridors he had just run down, envisioned them discovering the bodies of the human serfs, and imagined them drawing their weapons.
He entered the code again, correctly this time, and the doors slid open. He locked the portal behind him, hoping his immediate hunters were from a different detail and that it would hold them up for at least a few seconds.
The system-runner Tajik stood on the wide deck before him, just as he had foreseen that it would. It was primed for launch, having docked only eight hours previously. Like all such vessels, it was kept in a state of constant readiness in a hangar open to the void. It was small, with a normal complement of only twenty, but it had the crucial feature he required – speed.
Just as he ran towards the ramp, he caught sight of a second set of blast-doors opening on the far right-hand side of the hangar. He swung around to see a lone White Scars legionary charging across the apron, his bolter already firing.
Arvida threw himself to the deck, sensing the bolt-rounds whistling across his back. He scrambled forward, gaining his feet again and bursting up to meet the warrior coming at him.
Arvida fired, hitting his enemy in the arm and sending his bolter tumbling from his grasp. Without missing a beat, the legionary switched to his tulwar blade, and brought it scything for Arvida’s torso. Arvida evaded the strike, but only barely, twisting awkwardly as the metal edge scraped across his armour.
At such range his own bolter was too clumsy, so he reached for his sword. The two of them traded blows in rapid succession, sending showers of armour-flakes bouncing around them on the iron deck.
Arvida sensed peripheral movement – another door had been opened – and felt the presence of at least a dozen souls milling behind the thick bulkheads.
There was no time. He increased the intensity of his swordplay, desperately seeking any way to disable the warrior before him. For a few moments, his opponent gave him nothing, and they remained locked in an evenly matched struggle.
Then, just as he had done with Yesugei, Arvida saw the path of the future unroll. The White Scar’s intentions revealed themselves in shimmer-outlines, betraying his movements and opening up his defence like a book.
Arvida reacted instantly, swiping his enemy’s blade from his hand. It hit the vacuum-silent deck five metres away and skittered harmlessly across the metal plates. Arvida’s next blow punched through the legionary’s armour, piercing his secondary heart and ending the contest. Polyps of blood spurted out, globulous in the vacuum.
It took two more strikes to stop the warrior from getting up and coming after him, by which time more hangar doors were opening. Weapons-fire lanced across the open space. Arvida saw projectile-paths searing ahead like tracer fire, and had to sprint hard to avoid being h
it.
He made the Tajik’s assault ramp and clattered up inside. As soon as he reached the controls, he locked the ship’s hatches, powered up the drives, and keyed in the launch sequence. He could hear the zing and whine of more impacts on the pressurised ship’s hull, and detected heavy outer armour-plates descending beyond the hangar’s void-exit.
Soon they would have the Swordstorm’s shields up. Either that or the armoured screens would close, or his pursuers would disable the Tajik on the deck, or a kill-team would force their way in.
Arvida knew, though, that there would be time for none of those things. As he settled into the cockpit and clutched the control columns, he saw the void glinting back at him through the open exit.
He was out. He was free, evading them just as he had evaded every danger amidst the ruins of Tizca, and there was nothing they could do to catch him now.
Yesugei looked down at the battered tin box. He held it up to the light, running his eyes over the scratches and burn marks. The box itself was not old. Perhaps, in the past, its contents would have been housed in other more elaborate receptacles, like a saint’s bone in a reliquary.
He opened the box, spilling the cards onto the desk before him. One by one, he leafed through them. They were of Terran origin, he could tell, but beyond that he had little idea what their significance was. There were cards decorated with cups, swords, rods and coins. Some showed images of humans, others mythical beasts. As he cycled through them, he felt a faint heat from their surfaces – not physical heat, but the after-image of some psychic inferno.
That did not surprise him. Anything taken from Prospero would have had such a signature.
Yesugei studied the cards for a long time. He spread them out before him, rearranging them into whatever patterns felt appropriate, before pushing them back into a heap. Then he replaced them carefully in the box.
‘Why you do it?’ he asked.