by Various
He saw the glint of the blade just an instant before the power field was activated. The static edge of the tip brushed his temple, and went still.
‘Do not move.’
The electric wasp buzz of the blade filled Qruze’s ear. He could half see someone at his left shoulder, sharp features and a grim mouth framed by the shadow of a deep hood. He had been discovered, and that meant that all aspects of the mission were compromised.
Truth and loyalty now meant nothing. He would have to kill, but given the skill implied by how completely his enemy had surprised him, that would be no easy task. Qruze swallowed. He needed to wait for the powerblade to move.
‘You may speak,’ the blade-wielder went on, ‘but if you move in any other way you will die.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good. Now tell me why you are here, Iacton Qruze.’
‘They are not coming for you,’ Luther assured him.
Loken was silent. He had come here to find an answer to a simple question: where did the Dark Angels of Caliban stand? For the Emperor, or with Horus? Rogal Dorn himself had demanded the answer and, with his brother Iacton Qruze, Loken had come to find it.
But the answer was not simple. His near-death on the murdered planet of Isstvan III had given him a hunter’s instinct for the vile scent of the warp’s corrupting influence, but in facing Luther he could feel the shift of immaterial energies. The coiling touch of temptation.
He was no psyker, but at that moment he felt that somehow he perceived something beyond mortal senses, as if scent and sight stretched into another realm altogether.
Luther’s eyes were fixed upon him, unblinking. Loken shook his head, and gazed into the shadows in the corner of the cell. The sensation was insubstantial, but Loken could feel it in every word Luther uttered, tasting the secrecy and the shadows of choices already long made. He could feel it in the fact of his own captivity in the dungeons of the Dark Angels.
‘I am here alone.’
Luther smiled as if at a subtle joke. He stepped closer, slipped the cowl from his head. His face was strong but without the blunt brutality of most Space Marines – he was human still, at least in part. There was an openness to his features, an air of supreme confidence bound to intellect. It was the face of trust and brotherhood, the face of someone you could believe in and follow to the last.
Loken had heard of Luther’s quality as a leader. He had seen something of it long ago, but as he looked back at the Dark Angel he realised that the reputation missed the essence of the man. He was a fulcrum around which conquests and loyalties turned. Such power had unified Terra and created the Imperium, and then that same power had turned it upon its head.
Looking into Luther’s dark eyes, Loken realised that he had known such a quality before. For an eye-blink instant he felt he was looking at Horus himself – Horus from a more noble time.
Luther turned away, and walked to a low block of mould-covered stone at the foot of the wall. He sat, his eyes gazing into some imagined distance. Loken watched him, though in his head he flicked between strategies. Questions and possibilities.
He had taken a risk in letting himself be taken. He might have been killed out of hand, but it had been the only way for this meeting, this test to take place. Now Loken had to make a choice that he had not anticipated.
‘Do you dream, Cerberus?’ Luther asked, his voice tinged with melancholy.
‘I dream.’
‘Of what?’
‘I dream… of my brothers.’
‘Who are they? The brothers in your dreams, who are they?’
Loken gritted his teeth. ‘The dead.’
‘Ah. I cannot dream. Ever since the Imperium changed me I have not dreamed. I can remember it, though. What it was like, and so forth.’ Luther nodded and Loken felt a jolt of surprise; there was understanding in Luther’s eyes, understanding and pity. ‘This is not the first time you have been left to fate. I can see it in your manner.’
Loken felt as though Luther’s words had peeled back a scab formed over the past, as if the torment he had suffered were merely a specimen pinned out under Luther’s calm gaze.
He remembered the sky falling and him falling with it. He remembered the face of Tarik, grinning for the last time, and the wind of Isstvan carrying the stink of a murdered brotherhood.
Horus had betrayed him, had tried to kill him and then left him on a dead world.
‘It takes something from you doesn’t it?’ Luther murmured. ‘Being deserted hollows you out, and leaves a void inside. People might say that it hurts, that the psyche aches from the wound.’
Loken tried to bring his attention back to the present, but could not. They had left him, to the ashes and the tainted ruins! They had left him amongst the dead, amongst the cursed dwellers of the netherworld! He had only been called back to fight in a war of revenge and broken futures…
Luther went on. ‘It’s not true though. Abandonment does not leave pain. You wish it did because that would be better than the truth. It leaves nothing. Not hope, not pain, not forgiveness.’
Loken was silent. He could feel his muscles bunched inside his armour, his skin prickled with sweat as his hearts surged stimulant-laden blood through him. He let out a breath and stilled his body to calm. Luther watched him closely.
After a long pause, he frowned and stood. He pulled the torch from the iron bracket and came to stand so that he was no more than an arm’s reach away. He raised the torch, and the heat prickled Loken’s bare features. ‘There is something about your face… I am sure we have met before.’
Luther tilted his head and took a step back.
‘On Cardensine perhaps? Now that was a battle. The warriors of seven Legions in the field, enemies so thick they mashed the dead to pulp under their feet. Or Zaramund? Yes, perhaps it was there. We fought alongside the Luna Wolves there. Brave warriors, swift as a lance strike, and as hard as the rock of Cthonia. Yes, perhaps it was there.’
Loken looked back at Luther, his face revealing nothing. Inside him, memories spun – Cardensine, the Lion raising his sword to the sky as battle-fire burned its night away. Zaramund, where Loken had stood among the ranks and watched Luther follow Abaddon over the cratered redoubts. It had been no more than a few decades ago.
He felt cold. He should not have come to Caliban. Luther was not a man to be judged at a glance – he was something more important, more pivotal to the course of the war than even Lord Dorn had dared to imagine.
‘Do you remember the fields of Zaramund?’ Luther asked him, pointedly.
‘I remember nothing,’ Loken snapped.
‘There is a brush of Cthonian in your words, “Cerberus”, few though they have been.’
Loken looked away. Luther smiled then, his mouth splitting his face with a broad crack of shadow in the torchlight.
‘So what led you here, wayward son of Cthonia?’
Loken stared, unable to hide his shock. Had they been wrong? Had news of the Warmaster’s rebellion already come to Caliban?
‘The Legiones Astartes do not fight their own kind,’ said Luther, his demeanour becoming more threatening, ‘nor come as spies into each other’s realms. I have asked you why you came here, and you have said nothing. So now I must wonder who sent you. The Lion, my sworn brother? Does he doubt that I keep to my appointed duty? My unique honour?’
For a moment Loken thought that he saw something play across Luther’s face, something ugly breaking through the veneer of perfect control. Then Luther shook his head, his eyes straying to the shadows. Loken felt the touch of destiny again in the cramped cell, a hard shape of blade-like angles and raw ambition.
Then it was gone, fading back into dull unresolved sensations.
‘No. Not my brother. Not the Lion. But who then, and why? Do you carry a message for me? Is that it?’
They did not know. It
was as Loken and Qruze had first surmised, then – Horus’ influence had not yet spread as far as the fortress of Aldurukh. That should have made matters easy. Dorn had given them a message to relay to the Dark Angels of Caliban, if they were free of treachery.
Luther stared straight at him. ‘…or are you a message yourself?’
Loken opened his mouth. He felt the words forming upon his tongue – the revelation of Horus’ betrayal, the war that divided the Imperium, and the call for the I Legion to reaffirm their loyalty to the Emperor. He could speak that truth, could loose it with but a few words. He felt the temptation of it, the need to resolve the unanswered question.
But darkness and treachery circled the home of the Dark Angels. Loken could still feel it like a ghost of the winds of Isstvan. He thought of the intelligence and power of Luther, and the suspicion inherent in his questions. Loken had once been a warrior, able to resolve such matters with the simple martial logic of war. Now he served only guesses and half-truths. Could he be sure of the effects his words might ultimately have?
After a long moment, he spoke. ‘I am nothing.’
Luther nodded, his eyes like sparkling obsidian in a face of pale marble.
‘Very well.’ With a swirl of his robes, he walked to the cell door. ‘I will return, Cerberus, son of Cthonia. And when I do, I will decide what you are. And if you are a herald of treachery then I will know who it is that has turned against me.’
Loken let his eyes close and the darkness became complete. He had to get free. He had made his decision – the message from Rogal Dorn and the revelation of the war had to be protected. The fear that they may have already upset a delicate balance of circumstance itched at the back of his thoughts.
Luther would return with more questions, and perhaps the means to get his answers. The Council of Nikaea had outlawed the use of psykers within the Legions, but he had seen the proof many times over that necessity undid edicts.
He opened his eyes. ‘Why couldn’t he see you?’
‘Because we choose those who see us, and when.’
The small, hooded figure crouched in the corner of the cell, its shape a fold of deep gloom outlined by a cold halo. It had stood motionless while Luther had questioned Loken, the empty space beneath its cowl taking in all that had transpired. Loken could feel the clammy, static touch of its presence, the witch-touch of its words in his mind. There was something familiar about it that he could not place, like the face of a forgotten friend.
‘You touched my mind,’ he said. ‘I could sense things that do not exist – the darkness and warp-taint, the possibilities, the unspoken secrets behind Luther’s words. That was you.’
‘We let you see somewhat as we do. But your senses are limited. Your mind is blind.’
‘What are you?’
‘You have asked us that already.’
‘You did not answer.’
‘We watch.’
Loken snarled. ‘Speak plainly. I do not trust you–’
‘Trust is not required,’ the watcher interrupted him. ‘We have allowed you to see what you must, and that is all.’
‘Is what I sensed real, or merely what you wished me to see? Was it… the truth?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Then you will tell me no more?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you still here?’
‘To set you free.’
Loken felt a static charge spread through the air. Power flowed through his armour once more, and his own muscles twitched as their movement meshed with the suit’s fibre bundles. An acidic burn ran down his spine as interface plugs fizzed with charge. The chains holding him writhed and snapped, and he fell hard onto the cold flagstones beneath him.
The watcher moved towards the door, its form flickering between positions like an image from a damaged pict-feed. Loken clamped his weapons to his armour. The static in the air discharged sparks across the ceramite plates.
The cell door opened and the watcher flickered across its threshold, the dark space of its hood still facing towards Loken.
‘Go. You must tell your masters what you have seen here.’
The corridor was still and silent. The torch flames were a frozen flicker in their iron brackets, the shadows on the floor still. Loken glanced at the Dark Angels flanking the cell door. Each wore pale cloaks over their black armour. Double-handed swords rested point-down at their feet. Ruby eye-lenses stared unseeing as he moved past.
His footsteps scraped on the stone floor. The sound felt alien in his ears, as if he were trespassing into a dream. A dull ache of pounding blood was building in his temples, and the watcher’s final words seemed to be spoken directly into his mind.
‘You have what time we can give you, Garviel Loken.’
He moved down the corridor at a run, footfalls echoing in the dead air. The shadows writhed, torchlight moving in jerks like the flicked pages of a book. He turned a corner.
The Dark Angel had been walking the other way, his hand resting on the pommel of a sheathed blade. Their eyes met as Loken turned the corner, his cold grey to the guard’s red helmet lenses.
The warrior’s blade was in his hand, its length hissing with power. Loken was not here to kill. He was a hidden emissary in a fortress of unknown, and perhaps unresolved, loyalty. His mere presence might have tipped a wavering balance – a death in these dark corridors almost certainly would.
Loken’s hands were empty as he charged, and still empty as the Dark Angel cut down towards his head. Loken twisted at the last moment and rammed his weight forwards, and his shoulder met the guard’s arms at the elbow as the sword fell. The Dark Angel staggered but Loken’s hands were already up, gripping his opponent’s helm at the faceplate and crown.
The guard fell, and Loken fell with him – they hit the floor with a sound like a hammer shattering marble. The Dark Angel still had the sword in his right hand. Loken saw the blade move, and fastened his grip on his opponent’s wrist.
The punch came from nowhere. Loken’s teeth jarred and his nose cracked under the warrior’s gauntlet. His ears rang. Blood spattered the Dark Angel’s white tabard.
He swung his leg up and stamped down on the guard’s free arm, pinning it to the ground, then hauled himself upright and rained down blow after blow, hammering the front of the Dark Angel’s helm into a crumpled ruin. The red lenses shattered, and dull green eyes glared pure hatred up at him through the fractured sockets.
The guard twisted as Loken drew his hand back to strike again, and suddenly he was on his side, right arm trapped beneath his own armoured flank. The Dark Angel leapt to his feet, sword free and rising.
‘Hold!’
The guard’s head twitched around at the sound of the voice. It was enough – Loken surged to his feet, grappling the Dark Angel’s sword arm as he rammed him into the stone wall. The guard’s head lolled under the barrage of blows, his weapon clattering to the ground.
Loken could hear his own breath heaving from his lungs. Blood framed the green eyes inside the shattered helm.
The Dark Angel shoved him back, his strength seemingly undimmed even after being knocked senseless. He made to lunge for the sword on the floor.
The shot struck the guard in the left eye, and blew out his skull inside the ruin of his helm in a spray of blood and bone fragments. Loken felt the Dark Angel’s battleplate become dead weight in his hands. He knew the sound of a Stalker-pattern bolt-shell, the hissing gasp of its flight and the wet impact of its mercury-filled head. He did not need to look around to know who had killed his opponent.
‘What have you done?’ he cried, carefully lowering the body to the floor.
Iacton Qruze shrugged, striding towards him. ‘It was a necessity, lad.’
‘We could have subdued him! He did not need to die. You may have executed a loyal warrior of the Imperium.’
&n
bsp; ‘He would not be the first, nor do I think the last…’
‘This may have consequences we wanted to avoid,’ Loken sighed. ‘There are unresolved loyalties at play, and you have just tipped the balance against us!’
‘Possibly. But matters have moved beyond our original concerns.’
Loken took a moment to compose himself. He snorted a messy blood clot onto the flagstones, and adjusted the shattered bones of his nose. ‘I do not believe Luther knows of the war… but the seed of corruption is already here. Our message may have prevented it taking root. But we cannot relay that message now.’
‘You are correct,’ Qruze replied, ‘but our mission has yielded something of great worth, and to protect that interest this warrior needed to die.’
Loken frowned. ‘Why, what did you find?’
‘Me, Garviel. He found me.’
A Dark Angel stepped out from the shadows behind Qruze as though solidifying from the darkness itself. Loken felt a shock run up his spine. A skeletal angel spread its bony wings across the breastplate of the warrior’s void-black armour. Rain had soaked his split robe, and drops shook from the hem as the figure stepped forwards.
He moved with a relaxed precision that Loken knew could become a killing movement without a flicker of warning. The face within the rain-soaked hood was as hard and humourless as it had always been.
‘It has been a long time, has it not?’
Loken turned to Qruze, anger running across his scarred face. ‘What have you told him?’
‘We have reached an understanding.’
Loken met the eyes within the cowl.
‘Iacton is right,’ the Angel said. ‘Matters here are more complex than you can imagine. Ignorance is a shield. I fear that the truth you bear would not have an effect that would serve the Imperium, nor my Legion.’
Loken watched as the robed figure knelt by the corpse at their feet. He lifted the power sword and placed it in the fallen angel’s dead grip.
‘I will see you safely out of Aldurukh,’ he assured them.
‘Oh? And what will you do after we are gone?’