by Various
Kendel grasped the cable as it swung low, and she left her doubts behind as it pulled her up and away.
Sorkad threaded them through a gauntlet of fire from the planet’s automated gun-satellites, and the Velox took several hits along the way – but none were enough to wound the ship fatally, and it limped out to a holding orbit beyond the reach of the cannons.
Gallor took the news of his battle-brother Kyda’s end with stoic calm, as if he had already known it to be so. In turn, he reported on Pau Yei’s condition. The astropath was unconscious, clinging to life after being severely wounded and then exhausting herself with a psychic cry for help.
The Death Guard spoke of the slight little witch-kin with new-found respect. It was undeniable that Pau Yei had saved them all.
They entered the bridge to find Sorkad and Qelvyn waiting. ‘We can make the Mandeville point and reach the warp,’ said the pilot. ‘If you wish it.’
‘We have to warn Terra,’ added the soldier. ‘The Proximans will already be calling in ships to chase us down. We can’t stay here.’
‘Orders?’ said Sorkad.
Kendel went to the canopy and peered out at the planet. ‘An entire population turned to the Warmaster’s banner,’ she said aloud. ‘So close to the Throneworld. And yet if we race home with word of this incident, we give them precious time to reinforce, to prepare a response.’
‘Malcador will–’
She silenced Gallor with a look before he could finish the sentence. ‘In this moment, in this place, I am the Sigillite. His authority is mine.’
Kendel recalled her old friend Emrilia’s anger when they met on Luna: If it were my choice, I would have you executed for your temerity.
And with that, she realised she had only one more card to play.
‘Agentia, what are your orders?’ repeated Sorkad.
She glanced at the pilot, then to Gallor and Qelvyn. ‘Where is the nearest Imperial warship of battle-barge tonnage?’
‘An orbit distant,’ said Sorkad. ‘The vessels Unfettered and Allegiant are taking on supplies over Proxima Secundus.’
She held up her hand to show the brand on her palm. ‘Bring them here, at best speed. Brook no disagreement, accept no refusal. You will invoke Lord Malcador’s word and override all other orders they may have.’
‘To what end?’ said Gallor. ‘The Unfettered and Allegiant are world-killers. They are not equipped for an invasion or a measured counter-strike.’
Kendel nodded and licked her lips, a single word pushing at her to be spoken aloud. Her heart was beating hard in her chest.
‘I have been granted the ultimate authority and I know now that it must be exercised. How can we defeat the zealous and the faithful? Not through words or hopes. Only by fire and death.’
She met the Death Guard’s gaze and saw a flicker of surprise there. He understood what she was about to say, and it horrified him as much as it did her. What she intended to do was beyond the remit of any ordinary soul.
‘No…’ he began. ‘It is unspeakable. You do not have the right. No human has ever…’ Gallor hesitated. ‘Not even a grand admiral. None less than a primarch, or the Emperor himself…’
But still he fell silent, finally accepting that there was no other choice to be made. There was a cost to taking the Warmaster’s side, and it was going to be paid. An example had to be made. An execution was required.
‘Bring them here,’ Kendel repeated, ‘and in Malcador’s name, give their captains this command.’
The witch-seeker raised her hand and pointed at Proxima Majoris.
‘Exterminatus.’
Templar
John French
‘The value of a warrior can be seen in their deeds, and in their deeds alone.’
– Khârn the Bloody
Sutaris
990.M30
The water danced on the curved blade. Sigismund watched it run from the perfectly still edge. Above him, the iron clouds rolled wet curtains of rain across the broken landscape. Fires still burned close by, clinging to wrecks and rubble, fighting the downpour. Ten thousand warriors stood on the slopes of the macro-crater, blood and battle marking their armour. All were looking down at him, their faces a wet blur on the edge of sight.
He was barely aware of the silent throng. The legionary opposite him was the only thing that was real now. Every twitch of the White Scar’s pale armour, every breath between his sharpened teeth, every raindrop upon the silver smile of the guan dao blade – Sigismund saw and felt them all.
He began to wrap a chain around his wrist. The White Scar tossed his head, and pointed the tip of the guan dao at the iron links.
‘Why do you do that?’
Sigismund held his gaze steady on the curved blade and kept winding the chain tighter. Tighter.
The other legionary smiled, eyes dancing in a hawk-proud face. He spun the glaive, armoured hands blurring around the weapon’s haft, droplets scattering as it sliced the rain.
‘Are you afraid of losing your sword?’ the White Scar asked, laughter dancing in the words. ‘A blade is freedom, son of Dorn. It is the wind and storm flash. Chain it, and you chain yourself.’
Sigismund was not listening. The world was closing in around him, narrowing to a point that held only the flicker of the blade, and the instant after it. This was his realm, as much a part of his life as the air that filled his lungs, and the iron in his blood.
The chains rattled as he wrapped another loop around his wrist. His pulse slowed with the coiled links. The flow of time became heavy, like oil spreading over ice.
He had not wanted to do this, but the White Scar had insisted. It was not enough that two Legions had bled and died together fighting the same enemy upon the same battlefield. The White Scars had not expected the Imperial Fists to be there. They had not expected to share the victory, and that left something unresolved.
A champion had emerged from their lines and thrust his blade into the ground at Sigismund’s feet. He had looked from the blade to the warrior’s smile, and known that there was no choice.
There was never a choice.
Sigismund fastened the chain to his vambrace. He flexed one hand upon the hilt of his sword, feeling its weight shift in his grip. In the decade he had carried it to war, it had never failed him. He raised it above his head. He felt the muscles in his shoulders settle, listened to the slow rise and fall of blood in his veins.
The White Scar spun his weapon, then snapped it to stillness. Dirty rivulets of water streamed down the creases of his face. ‘Do you not want to know my name?’
Sigismund looked up into the grey of his opponent’s eyes. Jubal Khan – Lord of Summer Lightning, and the Death that Comes with Laughter – was still smiling at him.
‘I know your name,’ he replied.
‘Good.’
Jubal looked into Sigismund’s eyes and nodded. The White Scar held his glaive low at his side, the edge facing back. Sigismund watched him, weighing the rhythm of his stillness, listening to the instant stretch out.
A single droplet of water formed on the blade’s point.
His pulse was still in his chest. His hearts paused between beats.
The drop of water fell.
Jubal whirled forwards. Sigismund cut down, and his opponent spun back, his blade a blur around his body. Sigismund swung again and again, his sword like a smear of steel and scattered rain. He was scything low and high, blade whistling, and the White Scar laughed as he ducked a cut and leapt into the air. The guan dao’s edge winked as it arced down.
Sigismund froze. Jubal’s eyes were wide above bared teeth as his blow fell.
Sigismund jerked aside, the curved razor-edge sighing as it passed his head. His sword flashed out. Jubal pulled back, snake-fast, his glaive rising, and for the first time the two blades clashed with a ring of steel.
The White Scar’s face was locked into a snarling mask, his smile gone. Soaking hair whipped above wide eyes as he ducked and spun aside. The guan dao was a razor blur, the play of weapons a spiral of slices and parries.
‘You are everything they say you are…’ Jubal called out. Sigismund saw the slight twitch at the corner of his eye, and slid past a sudden thrust. ‘…and you are more.’
The words washed over Sigismund. In his mind there was only the feel of his own sword, only the play of cuts and angles and balance that flowed through him like blood and breath.
Like life.
Jubal leapt again, twisting like a bladed hurricane. He was fast, so very fast. ‘But you are missing something, for all your skill!’
He flicked his blade out and cut down, and Sigismund raised his sword to turn the glaive. He felt a blow ring against his forearm, and then Jubal was stepping back, sodden, topknot flicking to the side. Sigismund glanced down at his arm. The links of the chain binding the sword to his wrist had been severed.
Sigismund lunged. Jubal swayed like a tree in the wind, and the sword sliced through empty air. An armoured heel flashed out and snapped Sigismund’s head back with a crack of bone and a spray of blood. Rainbow explosions detonated in his vision.
The cries of the watching White Scars roared into the deluge.
Sigismund reeled, his own blood blinding him, thoughts raging inside his skull: anger, and pain, and doubt, and…
Everything was still.
He let the drumbeat of his hearts roll through him. His world was the moment, his existence was the sword in his hand. There was nothing else. There needed to be nothing else.
Jubal’s next move was already unfolding. Sigismund could not see it, he could not see anything, but he could feel it, like the silence before thunder.
His sword met the blow.
The force of the impact shook his teeth in his skull. He felt his sword move, felt it ring as it deflected strike after strike. He was going backwards, his vision a clotting blur, his feet skidding in the mud.
Jubal was a scything spiral, delivering blow after blow. He was fast, faster than the wind, faster than the blink of distant lightning. But there, suddenly – like a flicker of sunshine through storm clouds – was an opening.
Sigismund shifted and cut downwards. He felt the impact, and struck twice more before the clang of the first strike had faded. Then Jubal was gone, spinning back out of reach.
Sigismund paused, checking his instinct to follow the White Scar. The sound of rain pattering on ceramite filled the waiting quiet.
Jubal stood once again at the edge of the circle. Blood marked his armour, diluting in the rain as it ran over the ivory-white plates. The guan dao was steady in his grip, but his left arm was twisted, the elbow joint leaking red. His gorget was crumpled, and cracks spidered his right thigh plate. The dancing glimmer had gone from his eyes – his gaze was suddenly older, patient, knowing.
‘I will not beat you,’ said Jubal, and there was weariness in his words. ‘I know this. You know it too.’ His lips cracked wide to show sharp, white teeth. ‘But the song was worth the singing.’
Sigismund opened his mouth, forming words with a jaw that felt broken. ‘You were beaten because you lack focus.’
‘And you lack joy.’
‘We exist to serve.’
‘And there is nothing more?’
Sigismund shook his head. ‘Nothing more.’
Jubal looked around, blinking, as though seeing the watching ranks of legionaries for the first time. Then he turned back to Sigismund, and spun his weapon with his good arm.
‘Come, let us finish this,’ he said.
‘Have you killed a Space Marine before?’
The crone’s voice pulls him from the memory. He opens his eyes slowly; the hold of the gunship is a shadow-filled cave. Amber light sheens the armour of the warriors seated beside and opposite him. There are twenty. Half are the chosen of his Templars, their white surcoats reduced to folds of grey in the gloom. The other half are Seneschal Rann’s men, their battered armour and shields marked by the twin axes of the line-breakers.
Around them, the frame of the gunship rattles and sings as it plunges through the void, and the distance to the comet shrinks with each passing minute.
News had come from Isstvan of the death of a primarch and the treachery of four more Legions. Within the Solar System, remnants of those new betrayers linger still – perhaps forgotten, perhaps ready to strike. They must be hunted down and destroyed. Rogal Dorn has tasked Sigismund with that duty, and he would see it done by his own hand.
His eyes move to the emissary. She sits between the armour-bloated forms of her gene-bonded bodyguards. Her exoskeleton gleams with chrome and polished carbon. Beneath the crystal of her visor, her face is a landscape of wrinkles, and hard bones under pale skin, but her eyes sparkle darkly as she stares back at him.
Her name is Harpocratia Morn, and Sigismund would not have chosen to have her here. That decision, like many others in recent times, is simply one that he has to accept.
She smiles at him, lips twitching as though amused by a joke only she has heard.
‘So,’ she asks again, ‘have you?’
‘Be silent, crone,’ growls a harsh voice. It is Rann, of course. The captain of the assault cadre is not wearing a helm yet, and his black hair stirs from his sharp face as he leans towards Morn. ‘Your words itch like flies. Keep them to yourself.’
His fingers are tapping on the hafts of twin axes locked to the back of his shield. Morn looks at him as though she has only just noticed that he is there. He meets the emissary’s gaze, and bares his teeth. Morn raises an eyebrow and looks back to Sigismund.
‘So what is the answer, First Captain?’
‘Be–’ begins Rann.
‘Be what? The representative of the Emperor and his Regent? The emissary of the Council of Terra? Or merely a general who has stood on fields of blood and victory since before this Imperium was won?’ Morn’s face no longer looks decrepit. It looks hard and cold, like a notched sword that still has a killing edge. She holds Rann’s gaze for a long moment. ‘Which of these things would you have me be, Faffnir Rann?’
Rann says nothing. He is utterly still, fingers frozen where they rest upon the haft of one axe. Then his lips twitch around, and the snarl becomes a grin. He leans back, still grinning, but says nothing.
‘I see why you like silence,’ says Morn, her eyes still on Rann. ‘It suits you.’
The gunship pilot’s voice filters through the hold. ‘One hundred kilometres to target. Ready condition crimson.’
Red lights blink. As one, the warriors grip their weapons. Sigismund glances down to his own sword – the blade is a reflected sliver of polished night held across his knees. A snaking iron chain binds it to his wrist.
He remembers Jubal’s crooked smile, and the rain dancing upon his blade’s edge.
The moment is coming. This is the threshold of the future that the treachery of Horus has made for them. He wants to embrace it, but wonders if that will change anything. He wishes that Morn had not asked her question.
Rann pulls on his plough-fronted helm. Morn arms a pair of chromed serpenta pistols, and he turns to her. ‘Why ask if he has killed our kind?’
‘Because we are about to go into battle against them,’ Morn replies. ‘Because in spite of the ideals of Unity, Space Marines have died upon the blades of their own kind before. Because the answer might mean that he bears a weakness that he does not yet see.’
‘Is that why you are here?’
‘I am here because the Sigillite wishes it.’
‘He will not hesitate,’ Rann mutters, and Sigismund imagines th
at he feels the warrior’s eyes flick to him.
‘You are sure?’ asks Morn.
‘Have a care.’ Now there is no humour in Rann’s words, only a sharpness like an axe’s edge.
The noise of the engines rises in pitch. An alert begins to chime inside Sigismund’s helmet.
‘Forty kilometres to target,’ comes the pilot’s voice again. ‘Breaching missiles loose.’
Sigismund closes his eyes. In the corner of his visor display, the rune to release his mag-harness glows red. He takes a slow breath, feels calm spreading through thought and muscle. He remembers all the faces of enemies and friends reaching back into the darkness.
And through it all, he wonders if he will meet them again before the end.
‘They say that he always kills with one cut,’ says Morn.
‘Only when he isn’t swinging his sword like a farmer swatting flies,’ Rann chuckles, though the words drain to cold sincerity. ‘He has looked defeat in the eye, and smelled its breath too, but no one mentions that.’
‘But you do?’
‘I can say what I like of him. I have bled for the right. And – no matter how good he is – he would take more than a scar if he decided to take offence. You do not have that right, no matter who you are.’
‘But is it true that he has never been defeated, never lost a duel, never failed?’
‘Never,’ says Rann with a shake of his head. ‘It’s one of the things that make him so difficult to like.’
‘Let us hope that he will not break the habit.’
Alert sirens sound. ‘Breach impact countdown commencing.’
‘No,’ says Sigismund, and opens his eyes. The mag-harness holds him firmly, but he looks down at Morn’s dark eyes and sunken face. ‘The answer is no.’
He returns his gaze to the assault ramp. Rann braces himself.
The engine noise is a rising thrum through armour and muscle alike. Sigismund tenses, ready for battle. His sword is a dead weight in his grip.
‘Five…’ The pilot’s voice is a vox-filtered shout over the scream of the fuselage and the blare of sirens.