War Without End

by Various

  Arvida, who sat opposite him across the desk, stared down at his own clasped hands. ‘I thought I could get out.’

  ‘The ship you took would not have cleared fleet. What were you thinking?’

  ‘There would have been a way.’

  Yesugei shook his head, mystified. ‘But you change your mind. You never take off. Why?’

  ‘I was running. Orzun did not run.’

  Yesugei’s brow creased in a frown, distorting the tattoos across his dark skin. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘I am not Ahriman. You see that? I don’t have his power, and if I did then I would not use it in the same way. I am grateful – believe me, very grateful. But you’re trying to recreate something that no longer exists.’

  Yesugei looked surprised. ‘I never–’

  ‘Yes, you did. I could feel it. You wanted to bind me to your Legion. In the end, you would have had me clad in white, with a curved sword and a skull-topped staff, and soon I would be speaking Khorchin just as you do.’ Arvida smiled dryly. ‘Just because my brothers brought ruin down on themselves does not mean I can forget them now.’

  ‘No Legion left on Prospero, Revuel. No cults now.’

  ‘Does it matter? Would it matter to you, if Chogoris had been burned and you were the last one left? I don’t think so.’

  Yesugei tilted his head, acknowledging the point. ‘I was there, you know, when Magnus and the Khan and others make their pact. I thought it can come back, even if your primarch is gone. Perhaps not.’ He looked up, fixing Arvida with his golden eyes. ‘So you will go? You will leave us?’

  Arvida nodded. ‘I have to. Just not yet, and not like that. It would have been… discourteous.’

  ‘See? You are already half White Scar.’

  Arvida laughed. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Where you will go?’

  ‘I see portents, here and there. Beyond these moments, nothing.’

  ‘You are legionary,’ said Yesugei. ‘Not designed to fight alone.’

  ‘I was alone for a long time.’

  ‘Yes, and nearly killed you.’

  ‘I will know the moment when it comes. You, of all of us, should understand that.’

  Yesugei picked up the box again and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘You left this for me.’

  ‘It was Ahriman’s. As far as I know, it’s the last thing of his intact in the galaxy. I thought you should have it.’

  Yesugei toyed with it. ‘Do not know. It has strange shadow.’ Then he smiled, guiltily, as if chiding himself. ‘But it is fine gift. I will keep it. Who knows? Perhaps one day it will find way back to owner.’

  ‘Only if it can cross the veil. Ahriman is dead, just like the rest.’

  ‘We must assume so. But there are days when I cannot believe it.’ Yesugei stowed the box away. ‘I hope you can stop running, brother. What is left to run from? All is in the open.’

  Arvida looked wary then, as if that were not entirely true.

  ‘No more running,’ was all he said.

  The tribunals drew to their conclusion. Other defendants did not survive the judgement, either because they had committed crimes against the Legion’s codes of war, or because of the blood oath. The majority were inducted into the sagyar mazan, the bringers of vengeance, and were deployed in fast attack squadrons and given coordinates for immediate launch.

  The rest of the fleet was instructed to form up for void-passage, and movement between vessels was curtailed. The time that Yesugei and Arvida had to spend in training ran out, and the Stormseer was increasingly called upon to perform other duties.

  On the last day before the Swordstorm powered into the warp, Arvida made his way down the ship’s vast forge-levels. The level of industry there was intense, as the metal-beaters churned out weapons in a ceaseless stream. No one was under any illusion that they would not be needed.

  He found the master of the forge, a hulking Terran named Sonogei. He withdrew the wrapped pauldron that he had carried down with him and pulled back the fabric covering it.

  ‘It is not one of ours,’ said Sonogei, staring at the crimson plate.

  ‘It is Fifteenth Legion,’ explained Arvida, showing him the raven’s head device set within the star. ‘The one I used to wear. Can it be mended?’

  Sonogei took the pauldron and hefted it expertly, running his eyes down the lower-edge connectors. His servo-arms whirled, producing a scanning augur-needle, and a glowing green line slipped across the pitted surface.

  ‘It can,’ he said. ‘If you give me your connecting cannon assembly and breastplate, I can make it slot as smooth as oil. But you are the sorcerer? I have already made a shoulder guard for you. The zadyin arga ordered it.’

  ‘I still have it. It is a fine piece. But, forgive me – this armour kept me alive for a long time. I would wear it again, whole.’

  Sonogei looked at him sceptically. Arvida stepped closer.

  ‘I would not ask if it were not important.’ He took the pauldron back, and held its insignia up to the light of the furnaces. ‘You see this? The emblem of my order. I took vows, when I joined, just as you did. I know you understand that. I’ve seen the proof of it.’ Arvida thought back to Orzun, and the final look of triumph on his dying face. ‘I am not a legionary of the White Scars. In truth, I do not know what I am anymore, but I will keep the old icons until I find out.’

  Sonogei shook his head unhappily, but eventually took the armour piece back. ‘Bring me the rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Arvida bowed. ‘You have my thanks,’ he said.

  He walked away. As he did so, the itch started up again, more vigorous than before. Arvida resisted the urge to scratch.

  I knew Prospero would not claim me, he thought dryly, but this? After all I endured, to be eaten by our oldest curse?

  He looked back to where Sonogei lifted the pauldron clear into the air. He briefly saw the star of his old Legion, bathed blood-red in both ink and forge-glow, and proud against a backdrop of flame.

  It still stirred his soul. Even now, after all that had happened, he could not forget the oaths that he had made to that sigil.

  It will not claim me, not yet. There will be a path, one I shall tread as a legionary of the Thousand Sons.

  His confidence grew as he thought on it, just as it had done during the terrible days in ruined Tizca. He would find a way to elude it. There would be a cure, somewhere.

  I will endure. I will remain. The last, the undefeated.

  Then Revuel Arvida, of the Fourth Fellowship, Corvidae, ascended the stairs leading away from the forges. The Swordstorm’s warp drives thundered into life, taking him back to war, to the enemy, and a future that he had not yet learned to see.

  The world was called Terathalion, named for the species of jewel found in its equatorial belt under mountains of copper and iron. Even during the long interstellar silence before the Ipsissimus had made himself known, those swirled green-orange jewels had been mined and cut and polished, adorning the chief treasures of the planet – these were always books.

  For Terathalion was a world of words where documents stored in a thousand human tongues were collated, analysed, annotated and catalogued.

  A library-world, they had called it later. A place where knowledge coalesced, all under the benign guidance of distant masters on Prospero. For a hundred years after its incorporation into the Imperium, sapphire-armoured magisters had been welcome and frequent visitors, prompted by curiosity or sent on assignment by their venerated primarch in search of myriad fragments of learning. Those visits had slowly dried up as the demands of the Great Crusade had drawn more of the XV Legion away from the loose-thrown Prosperine empire until, one day, they had ceased altogether.

  During this new isolation, the world’s temporal masters did not worry unduly, nor did they seek especial clarification. The ga
laxy had been made safe for study, and so Terathalion’s patient work continued unabated. They knew that the Legions would return in time, for it was widely understood that Space Marines left no task unfinished.

  In that, the temporal masters were of course entirely correct, except the ships that eventually emerged from the Mandeville point in the Imperial year 007.M31 and spread out through the local system were not the sleek and gloriously decorated system-runners of the XV Legion, but corpse-grey, vast-hulled leviathans.

  Moreover, it was no mere squadron that had arrived, but an entire battle group. And as the warships took up position above Terathalion’s risibly meagre orbital defences, even the most trusting of the planet’s overseers felt a sense of unease.

  They sent messages to the lead battleship, a colossal Gloriana-class monster with the tactical ident Endurance, but no response was received. Orders were frantically transmitted to the defence grid to mobilise, but by then even that gesture was made far too late.

  The placid people of Terathalion had never witnessed the full firepower of a Legion fleet before, and so they could hardly be blamed for not knowing what to expect. They were still looking up into the skies when the bombardment began, turning the skies white as the clouds boiled away. Mass drivers annihilated the outer ring of defences before pinpoint lance strikes destroyed every command-and-control node across the northern hemisphere. A rain of incendiaries ripped through the urban centres, falling for hour upon hour in an unrelenting barrage that left barely one stone standing atop the next. Sheets of promethium flame swept through what little remained, scorching it black.

  The books burned. Millennial tomes that had been secured in vacuum chambers were ripped apart as the armourglass casings shattered. Archives became white-hot tunnels, atomising irreplaceable volumes in puffs of burning dust.

  When the bombardment finally relented, the few survivors crept slowly from whatever refuges they had been able to find, their ears ringing and their eyes streaming. For a moment it seemed to them like some awful error had been committed, and that the worst was over, and that – satisfied with the apocalyptic destruction they had wrought, for reasons that were still entirely mysterious – the attackers would now move on to their next target.

  But then dirty contrails of drop pods split the smoke-barred skies. All across Terathalion’s newly tortured surface, clusters of adamantium teardrops crashed to earth, disgorging squads of pale-grey Space Marines from the impact-rubble. More and more landed, until whole battalions of warriors stalked through the rapidly toxify­ing atmosphere, their faces hidden behind slope-grilled helms. With horrifying efficiency, they ground their way from one ravaged hab-section to the next.

  They asked no questions and made no demands. As aftershock thunderheads boiled across the rubbled cityscapes and heavily acidic rain began to drum from still-hot metal, the survivors of ruined Terathalion were hunted down like vermin.

  In Geryiadha, once the world’s fifth most populous city and home to satintree groves and fountain-gardens, the concentration was more intense than anywhere else. In the main boulevard – now a pitted trench of smoking rockcrete debris – the air itself shimmered and broke open, leaking arcs of neon. Dust swirled and whipped into serpents, and masonry blocks rolled clear. A sphere of silver suddenly flashed into life, laced with writhing black energies. A sharp snap rang out, shattering the orb’s fragile skin and sending shards bouncing away across the detritus.

  At the centre stood eight massive figures. Seven of them strode out immediately, hefting long scythes in heavy gauntlets. Their thick battleplate was gouged and charred, as though they had just come from some furious battle against sterner foes than anything a library-world might reliably muster.

  The eighth towered over even those leviathans. His archaic armour, lined with rust and marked with what looked like deep blade-cuts, steamed with warp-frost. Yellowed eyes glinted from beneath a shroud-white cowl, set in a gaunt face ringed by rebreather tubes and feeder-vials. His expression was haunted, even though there was nothing on the planet that could possibly harm him, and his fingers twitched as he hauled his own great scythe into position.

  The crackle of flames rumbled on in the distance, punctuated by the muffled crack of bolter fire. Forge-hot winds tore across the disintegrating urban vista, fuelled by the infernos raging in the hollow hab-spires.

  The primarch Mortarion drew in his first rattling breath of Terathalion’s smog-choked atmosphere, and swept his gaze across the boulevard.

  ‘Find it,’ he rasped.

  Seventy years earlier, and half a galaxy away, Malcador the Sigillite had been occupied when the alert came through. The First Lord of Terra was always occupied, for the civil affairs of the expanding Imperium were more than one man could possibly handle.

  In a sense, of course, he was far more than one man. He was an aberration, just as all the powerful of the galaxy were aberrations – a random fluctuation in the psychic tides, an anomaly amidst the quadrillions that made up the burgeoning mass of humanity.

  Still, that did not enable him to escape from the burden of all empires. Whenever one executive order was signed off, another nine would take its place. With every compliance came more demands for iterators, cultural assimilators, remembrancers, terraformers, trader treaties. He looked down at the long list of incoming diplomatic communiqués, and his ancient heart sank.

  When the alert flickered across his display feed, then, it was welcome.

  ‘My lord,’ came the voice from the comm-bead in his collar, the one reserved for urgent transmissions. ‘My lord – he is here, and he will not be dissuaded.’

  Malcador rose from the antique writing desk and reached for his aquila-topped staff. ‘Understood. I will be with you shortly.’

  He walked quickly through his private chambers, then out into the corridors of the Imperial Palace. The courtiers and political delegates shuffled out of his way; either they had no idea who he was and had no interest in meeting his gaze, or they knew exactly who he was, in which case they did not dare to. He passed through the image-lined colonnades, garden chambers and libraries, padding softly on soft-soled shoes.

  Gradually the ranks of unaugmented courtiers fell away, to be replaced by the red and gold of the Mechanicum and the Legio Custodes. None barred his passage – down in the subterranean levels, all knew his name and what his simple aquila staff represented.

  He reached the excavation stratum, and the functionary who had called him hurried over, an apologetic look on his face.

  ‘I am sorry, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘That is all right, Sefel,’ Malcador replied. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the outer portal.’

  ‘Then you should have summoned me sooner.’

  He went more quickly then, ignoring the towering vaults around him, and the low rumble of the creation engines and flashes of light from arc-welders. The air became hotter. Soon he was walking across bare rock, still scored from the drills that had delved into it, and had to step over the bronze-lined cables that lay like serpents across his path.

  Malcador found him just inside the first gate, with the sound of macrohammers ringing through those dark arches. He was standing, staring up at the unfinished portal, his grey face lost in thought.

  Following his gaze, Malcador drew up alongside him. It was an octagonal gateway, three hundred metres across, reinforced with an adamantium collar and ringed with the runes of Old Earth.

  A Titan could have walked through that gate. Perhaps, in time, one would.

  ‘What is it for?’ the watcher asked.

  The question felt premature. The portal would not be finished for decades yet. Its immense frame opened up onto nothing but bare rock – it was a door to nowhere, fashioned at enormous expense and in conditions of the utmost secrecy.

  ‘Why are you here, Mortarion?’ Malcador asked, as gently as he could.

  ‘Wh
at is it for?’ the primarch repeated.

  Malcador placed a withered hand upon Mortarion’s back, making to usher him away but not being so foolish as to actually push. ‘Come with me. We should talk.’

  The primarch glared down at him, his toxin-scarred features etched with contempt. ‘One day, old man,’ he said, curling his gauntlet into a fist, ‘one of us will leave you gasping in the dust. Perhaps it will be me.’

  ‘No doubt you are right. Now, please, come away from the gate.’

  ‘Why? Is it dangerous?’

  Malcador didn’t look up at it. He never liked to look at it.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  Lermenta didn’t run immediately. She’d known that it was the end as soon as she had seen the first augur-pinpricks confirmed. As one of the higher-ranking syndics of Geryiadha’s administrative archival cadre, she was privy to things that others weren’t, although on that day she found that she couldn’t take any particular pleasure in that.

  She had made her way quickly down from the main collation spire and jogged through the rows and rows of bookshelves, allowing herself a momentary twinge of sorrow as the titles passed by in the gloom. By the time the warning sirens were sounding, she had made it out of the core and into open air. She’d looked up, as if she might catch a glimpse of the ships that she knew were falling into position above her. The sky had been a pale, pure green, just as it was every morning during the tithe-season. Like most things on Terathalion, it had always had a sparse beauty to it.

  Now that was all gone, stirred up into fire-edged storms that shed acid rain-like tears. Everything stank of cordite, mingled with the hot-metal aroma of plasma-discharge. She crouched under the shadow of a shattered medicae unit, feeling numb even amidst the burning. Her scholar’s smock clung to her, driven by the racing fire-wind.

  She’d seen whole kill-squads of Space Marines moving through the city zones, cutting down survivors with chilling expertise. They had never made a sound, save for the crunch of boots on bone and the coarse bark of their outsized bolters.