Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  Humans were so frail, even in the absence of wounds. It was hard for the legionary to imagine that he had once been like them, before he survived the trials and earned the right to gene-implantation and enhancement. He had pity for them, the ones who would forever remain ordinary. They would never see the universe as clearly as he did, never be so certain and sure of purpose…

  The thought curdled. What am I certain of now? Meros asked himself. His rigid, ordered view of things was being challenged. Assumptions the warrior had built his life upon were turning to sand, falling through his fingers.

  I have travelled far and I have seen the incredible, he thought. That is a gift I was given in return for my service to this Legion. But until Signus, he had never experienced the impossible. That was the shadow of which he had spoken, and one look in the eyes of Raldoron and the other commanders had made truth clear to him.

  They know it too.

  The sensation that came with the realisation was strange and new. A prickling cold across the surface of his thoughts, a hollow in his chest. Could it be… an echo of fear?

  Impossible. That word again.

  ‘There is nowhere we fear to tread,’ Meros muttered, the words of the inscription in Baal’s Sepulchre of Heroes returning to him.

  ‘Hey!’ Someone was calling out, jogging towards the Apothecary, and with that his moment of introspection disintegrated. ‘Lord Meros!’ It was Gerwyn, the remembrancer he had met aboard the Hermia. The man seemed smaller than he recalled, as if his clothes were hanging too large upon him.

  The Blood Angel gave him a nod. ‘You transferred to the flagship, then.’

  ‘Aye,’ Gerwyn returned the gesture, his hands moving, nervous with energy. The sequentialist’s eyes were haloed in grey and his complexion was pale. ‘I’m billeted with the rest of the troupe up in the Swan Tower.’

  Meros knew of it: a golden minaret on the dorsal surface of the Red Tear, largely used for ceremonial purposes. The primarch had graciously turned it over to the remembrancer contingent so that they could make it their own.

  Gerwyn was still talking, idle words of little interest to the Apothecary about the man’s relationships with the artists, playwrights and journalists who documented the fleet’s mission. Meros noted something, and pointed.

  ‘Where is your drawing slate? Did you lose it?’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. I, uh, I just don’t have it with me.’

  That seemed like an odd thing to Meros. A scribe without a notebook was like a legionary unarmed: incorrect, incomplete. He said as much.

  ‘Ah, you see true.’ Gerwyn deflated a little. ‘In all honesty, I have not had the focus in recent days to complete my serial. The illustrations go undone, the text half-conceived.’ He waved a hand in front of his eyes. ‘Troubled sleep, that’s the root cause.’ From a pocket, he produced a tiny envelope and opened it. Inside there were two white capsules. ‘I came down here to ask your brother-medicae for respite, lord. They say these will help me rest.’

  The pills were somnolents, strong by human standards. ‘They will do so indeed.’

  Gerwyn gave him a doubtful look. ‘I hope for some brief oblivion.’ He gave a weak chuckle. ‘I’m forgetting what sleep feels like.’

  ‘I don’t sleep,’ Meros told him. ‘The warriors of the Legiones Astartes are beyond that need.’

  ‘Huh.’ Gerwyn rolled the tablets around in his palm before returning them to the envelope. ‘I don’t know if I should be envious or commiserate with you for that.’

  ‘Explain.’

  The remembrancer baulked, as if Meros had done something to frighten him. ‘No, it’s… it’s just that I want to sleep but I can’t. It’s hard to. After what happened in the chambers.’ Gerwyn must have seen the frown on the Blood Angel’s face. ‘You know about the suicides? And the ones who went mad, out of nowhere?’

  Meros thought of the frenzy he had glimpsed in the eyes of the Stormbird pilot. ‘I know.’

  Gerwyn leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Do you know how many? Over a dozen in the Swan Tower alone, and not in the quiet way of it. Horrors, lord. Horrors to hold a man awake at night.’

  ‘There are more beyond the eight?’

  ‘Eight?’ Gerwyn’s eyes went wide and he almost choked on the word. ‘Eight hundred, more like! I’ve heard word from a sculptor on the Chalice of enginseers choking themselves with spindle oil. They say the sergeant-at-arms on a picket destroyer ate his own lasgun.’ He backed away, blinking as he regained his composure. ‘None of your kind, mind. Only the lesser of us…’ His voice trailed off into a shudder. ‘I should go. Forgive my interruption. Begging your pardon.’ Gerwyn made a clumsy bow and marched off at a pace.

  For a long moment, Meros stood in the infirmary corridor, turning over the serialist’s words in his mind. Eventually, he went to a cogitator alcove in one of the secondary laboratoria and activated a data-trawl.

  A machine-slave stuttered into life. ‘I exist to serve,’ it piped.

  The Apothecary spoke into the vox pick-up. ‘Death notices. Sort by the following criteria. Time index, Signus Cluster arrival to present. Non-legionary only. Self-inflicted trauma.’ He paused. ‘Unusual circumstances. Begin.’

  ‘Compliance,’ said the machine. On the gas-lens screen above the cogitator, panes of data began to appear, one overlaid across the next.

  There were many more than eight.

  Kano blinked, struggling to take in what his battle-brother had told him. The way of the psyker’s path was complex and always in flux, and he had learned in his first years of service to the Legion that his greatest weapon was also the gateway to madness and destruction. Too many times, Kano had fought renegade telepaths or mutants fuelled by baleful psychic fires, and seen them consumed by the very warp energies they had tried to master.

  The vision of the bloody-winged spirit that had assailed him in his vivid dream had not faded with the passing of the days. It was this sight that had compelled him to seek some kind of answer, first following his curiosity down to Holst with Meros and the others, there confronting more signs and lunacy. And now, leading him to Ecanus.

  The vision had been so potent, so very personal, that it seemed as if it had been ripped from the deepest halls of Kano’s psyche. From the threads of my soul, he thought, if there is such a thing.

  How could another have experienced so powerful a vision that was so much alike in detail? Kano listened as Ecanus relayed his own experience, unable to speak. Every factor was similar, every instant unchanged.

  Only one thing seemed different, one small detail. ‘The eyes of the thing,’ said Kano. ‘Were they familiar to you? Known, but lost in memory, impossible to place.’

  Ecanus shook his head. ‘I looked into its eyes. But they were not known to me. Whatever that angel of pain is, I’m thankful he isn’t of my comradeship.’

  They both fell silent, yellow strobe lights playing over them in shifting waves as the elevator continued its long climb past service decks and storage tiers.

  ‘I never expected this,’ Kano admitted. ‘I came to ask your advice and instead find common cause.’ He glanced at his old comrade, his mind racing. ‘The others – Brother Deon and Brother Salvator. Novenus and the rest of them…’ The names of other Librarians – Epistolaries, Codiciers and Lexicaniums – turned in his thoughts. He wondered where in the fleet they all were, and what questions they were asking. ‘What if they saw this too?’

  ‘What did we see?’ Ecanus asked darkly. ‘I don’t know. I touch the memory of that dream with even a momentary thought and my hearts tighten in my chest. My skin becomes ice. I smell smoke and blood and decay.’ He grimaced. ‘And now you say you have shared it with me. I can no longer dismiss it as if it were some trick of the brain.’

  The platform rose ever upwards. Kano stared at the floor, half-expecting it to open up and swallow him back down into the depths. ‘If you and I saw the red angel, and the others did too–’

  ‘Wh
at?’ Ecanus’s voice hardened. ‘Shall we venture out, you and I, and secretly comb the fleet for every psyker stripped of his hood, question and gather… And then what?’

  ‘We go to the Angel. He will listen to us. He shares the gift.’

  Ecanus shook his head. ‘We would never be permitted to see him! Between them, Azkaellon and Berus know everything that happens within the Legion. What suspicion do you think they would build if they learned of this intent?’

  ‘They would imagine a transgression alike to the disobedience of the Thousand Sons.’ The voice came from all around them, rough and broken.

  Kano whirled, his hand slipping beneath his robes for the combat knife holstered there. ‘Who speaks?’ he shouted, his words echoing off the containers. ‘Show your face!’

  ‘That was my intention.’ A figure hove out of the shadows, and like the two Blood Angels he was hooded. Unlike the dark earthy tones of their robes, however, the new arrival’s attire was frost-grey. The lights of a passing deck threw a sheet of illumination across the elevator platform, exposing a craggy face with a white beard, and long hair chained in plaits, adorned with stone beads and metal rings.

  The bare skin about the other legionary’s throat was detailed with runic tattoos, and Kano saw threads of leather and copper beneath the robe. Carved items made of ebony and bone rattled as he walked.

  ‘Son of Russ,’ said Ecanus. ‘Rune Priest.’

  Kano’s eyes narrowed and he eased his grip on the blade. ‘You are Redknife’s brother. Your name is Stiel.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the Space Wolf. He halted and bowed slightly. ‘Apologies. I did not mean to alarm you.’

  His lip curled. ‘When you arrived, you wouldn’t speak High Gothic. Suddenly you do?’

  Stiel gave a casual shrug. ‘What makes you think I speak it now, Blood Angel?’ He made a motion with his finger, a circle to include the three of them. ‘Divisions of birth world and Legion aside, we share commonalities that make us kindred, after a fashion.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ Kano insisted. ‘I’ve shared nothing with you.’

  The Rune Priest smiled, showing canine teeth studded with silver rivet heads. ‘We shared your journey from the Red Tear. Inaction has made your skills dull, cousin. You forgot how to see me.’

  Kano paused, thinking. There had been moments during his passage when he thought he sensed a presence nearby, a motion at the corner of his eye, but he had ignored it, his mind occupied by other concerns.

  ‘And more than that,’ Stiel continued. ‘The sight. The dream. The red angel and the fall.’

  Ecanus studied the Space Wolf carefully. ‘Your captain. He sent you?’

  ‘No. This matter is only for us. At least until we can make sense of it.’ For the first time, Kano heard something like doubt in the Rune Priest’s tone. ‘I will say what you will not, Blood Angel. There is a dark power at work in the Signus Cluster, and we are only now perceiving the ragged edges of it. The veil and the star of eight carved in the surface of a planet, a world gone mad, flesh without bone, and the dream, the dream, the dream…’ He closed his eyes. ‘We cannot turn away from it.’

  ‘The unsanctioned use of psychic ability is an act of treason,’ Ecanus reminded them. ‘We are watched because of that, because of what we are!’

  ‘You have no need to tell a Space Wolf of the dangers of a mind unchecked,’ Stiel replied, with a feral snarl.

  Kano went on. ‘He’s right. Something is amiss. We need to know the full scope of it.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘By the Throne, I think we need to be ready.’

  ‘To do what?’ Ecanus shot him a look. ‘To defy a command from the Emperor and Sanguinius?’ He turned his glare on Stiel. ‘That might be easy for you, but not me. Not us. I’ve heard the stories from the other Legions, with their flouting of protocol, their hidden fellowships, their lodges.’ He shook his head. ‘This is not the way of the Blood Angels. We leave behind the separation of tribe and clan on Baal. We transcend our roots.’ The warrior sighed. ‘We have unity, in the Angel’s name.’

  ‘And yet, you are still divided.’ The Space Wolf cocked his head. ‘Perhaps it takes an outsider to see it. You sons of Baal, with your Wardens and your warrior elite in gold, your winged master in the clouds high above the ranks of red.’

  ‘You don’t know us,’ Ecanus shot back.

  ‘As you wish,’ Stiel demurred. ‘But I know this: your words will mean nothing if darkness strikes a divided house.’

  Kano laid a hand on his comrade’s shoulder. ‘This is not treason, Ecanus. We only speak of brother talking to brother, sharing a common concern.’

  ‘Others will not see it that way.’

  ‘That,’ said Stiel, ‘is why others must not see it.’

  As Harox knew he would be, Tanus Kreed was furious at the battle captain’s unexpected arrival.

  Every servant son of the Legion knew the importance of the rituals, and a warrior as highly placed as he knew it more than most. Harox bore marks that had come from such moments of communion, burned into his skin and his soul. He had felt the sweet kiss of the warp during his pilgrimage.

  But the Acolyte’s anger faded away and became rapt attention with the passing of the moment, the interruption soon dismissed. Kreed’s arms fell into a fold, the bloody short-sword in his right hand hanging forgotten, pointing to the deck. Harox’s commander paid no mind to the rivulets of fluid dripping off the tip, tapping lightly on the black iron floor and pooling around the bare feet beneath his surplice.

  As Harox gave his report, the arching, gloomy corridor outside the sacellum muffled his words in a strange way, deadening the air so that they did not carry. The Word Bearer’s clipped diction had always been harsh, a remnant of an old wound to his throat that had not mended well. With his helm removed it made his grating voice ring in his ears like the snapping of small bones.

  ‘The signal was detected by Amit’s ship, Victus,’ he explained.

  ‘It’s real?’ Kreed wondered aloud.

  Harox nodded. ‘You would know better than I, Lord Acolyte.’ The plans of the higher ranks were always a mystery to him, and more often than not, needlessly so.

  Kreed didn’t bother to address that. ‘Did they reveal the contents of the message?’

  The legionary shook his head. The report from the Red Tear had been direct and to the point, mercifully free of the usual verbose pomposity the sons of Sanguinius liked to heap on their formal communications. A faint vox-signal on an Imperial Army fleet frequency had been detected by a crew-serf aboard the Victus. It had no vocal content, only a numeric code string that matched a standard military distress call. The most likely explanation was that an automated beacon was broadcasting, but at a power level so faint it had not registered until now.

  ‘The asteroid belt might have blocked detection,’ Kreed mused. ‘A ship, then? One that escaped the cull?’ He clucked his tongue. ‘Careless.’

  ‘Not in space,’ Harox corrected. ‘Transmission was traced to the fifth world, Scoltrum. No other returns. No life detections.’

  ‘Ah, of course. The agri-colony.’

  The captain recalled what he had learned before embarking on the mission. Signus V was a bread-basket planet – a large, windswept sphere in the habitable radius of the triple suns. Wildly fertile, it had been transformed into a patchwork of continent-sized farms to feed the Signus Cluster’s colonists and grow trade stock for the greed of decadent Terra and the core worlds.

  Harox had known immediately what was going to happen. Sanguinius would not let such a discovery go unchecked, even if his captains warned him otherwise.

  Kreed knew it too. ‘The Angel’s heart bleeds too much for the humans,’ he grinned. ‘If there is the slightest chance survivors might still be alive down there, he will send ships to see. His weakness will compel him to do it.’ The Acolyte sniffed. ‘For all the great potential of the Blood Angels primarch, I sometimes find it hard to believe that being shares true brotherhood with our master, Lorgar.�
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  This much was true; Harox doubted that the lord of the Word Bearers would have been so easily swayed by the small concerns of the un-Enlightened. ‘Raldoron suspects a trap,’ he went on. ‘As does Amit.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed his commander. ‘But Captain Amit won’t let that stop him from going.’

  ‘Not him,’ Harox said, with a curt shake of the head. ‘Nakir of the 24th Company has been given the order. Ships have already been deployed.’

  ‘Good. That’s good.’ Kreed toyed with the sword, rolling the grip in his hand. ‘Better Nakir goes and dies out there. We don’t want the Flesh Tearer to put himself at undue risk over some minor trivia. Amit will be of use to us when the time comes. Of all of them, he’s walked the greatest distance along the scarlet path.’

  Harox fell silent for a moment, processing his thoughts. This was an unexpected turn of events, after all. ‘Erebus said there would be no survivors out here. How is this even possible?’

  Kreed’s eyes narrowed, and jealousy glittered behind them. ‘Dare I suggest that Lord Erebus’s insight may not be as perfect as some wish to believe?’

  ‘The Dark Apostle would not be pleased to hear you say that,’ noted the captain.

  Kreed’s nostrils flared. ‘Erebus isn’t here.’

  Harox cocked his head, glancing casually into the depths of the corridor’s shadows. ‘Are you certain?’

  The Acolyte’s irritation returned in a rush at the veiled threat, and he gestured sharply with the heavy pommel of the short sword, making stabbing motions. ‘Keep the Dark Page at arm’s length from the Blood Angels and maintain vox silence. Now, go. And if you dare to interrupt a rite again, if the matter is anything less than the heat death of the universe, I’ll take your hearts for it!’