by Various
‘I remember it all,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t want to. I tried to forget, but it looks like I can’t.’
‘It’s like the dead things at the bottom of the sea,’ said Torgaddon. ‘Maybe they were tied to anchors or boulders, but somehow things got rotted up and those dead things are floating up to the surface. We never knew they were there all along, but we’re seeing them now.’
Loken looked up at Torgaddon, who held out a hand to him.
‘You’ve hidden here and lied to yourself for too long, Garvi. It’s time you got back in this war, whether you fight in the shadows or the light of day. Right now, the Imperium has foes in both. You’re going to have to go down the hole and see how dark it gets, and I warn you it’s going to get very dark indeed before this is over.’
Loken took Torgaddon’s hand and let the big man pull him to his feet.
‘I told you, I’m not built for this kind of fight,’ he said.
‘You’re built for every kind of fight,’ said Torgaddon. ‘You know this and you need to stop thinking as if the Imperium is on the back foot. You’re a Luna Wolf, and nothing is more dangerous than a cornered wolf.’
‘So you think we’re cornered?’
‘All right, maybe that wasn’t the best expression,’ admitted Torgaddon. ‘But you know what I mean. Strong enemies know when you’re weak. That makes them hungry, and that’s when they come for you. So what do you do?’
‘Don’t let them know you’re weak.’
‘Or better yet, don’t be weak,’ said Torgaddon. ‘Be strong. I remember something the Warmaster said back in the day, you know, back before everything went to shit. He said that man has control of action alone, never the fruits of the action. Take control of your actions, Garvi. Remember that when things look their worst, you can only do what you think is right at the time.’
Loken heard the clatter of the airlocks on the far side of the dome.
‘I have to go now,’ said Torgaddon, holding out his hand again.
Loken looked at the proffered hand, but didn’t yet take it.
‘Are you really here or is this just my mind’s way of convincing me to do something I know I have to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ confessed Torgaddon. ‘Either explanation sounds unbelievable, but what do I know? I had my head cut off.’
‘Don’t joke, Tarik,’ said Loken. ‘Not now.’
‘I don’t know what to tell you, Garvi,’ said Torgaddon, suddenly serious, and the transformation was as unsettling as anything else Loken had experienced recently. ‘I don’t have a neat explanation all tied up with a bow. I feel real, but I think something terrible happened to me after I died.’
‘After you died?’ said Loken. ‘What could be worse than dying?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Torgaddon. ‘But I think you’re the only one who can undo it.’
Loken heard footsteps drawing near, the harsh ring of armoured boots telling him that another legionary was approaching. He looked back along the path, seeing a long, broad-shouldered shadow thrown out over the flagstones, and closed his eyes. He wanted this all to be a dream, but knew it was all too real and all too hideous to be so easily dismissed.
When he opened his eyes, Torgaddon was gone, if he had ever really existed.
Loken let out a breath that felt as if it had been caught in his chest for an eternity, as a warrior armoured in steeldust war-plate without Legion markings rounded the corner. Iacton Qruze, once known as the half-heard of the Luna Wolves, now one of Malcador’s Knights Errant, nodded in respect to Loken and held up a hand in greeting.
Loken returned the gesture and said, ‘Qruze, what brings you to the garden?’
‘You are summoned,’ said Qruze. ‘And this time you need to answer.’
‘Who summons me?’
‘Malcador,’ said Qruze, as though there could be no other summoner.
‘Then I will come,’ said Loken.
‘You will?’ said Qruze, apparently surprised by Loken’s answer.
‘Yes,’ said Loken, bending to lift a flattened stone from the waterfall’s edge. ‘Give me a moment.’
He hurled the stone out over the lake, smiling in satisfaction as it skipped and bounced over the water, before ricocheting back into the centre of the pool to land in the reflected image of the Solar System’s precious third planet.
Qruze watched the stone’s trajectory with a curious expression.
‘What was that all about?’ he asked at last.
‘Something Torgaddon and I did on the shores of a water garden’s lake one time,’ said Loken. ‘He could never master it, but I always managed to get stones further than anyone else.’
Qruze nodded, though Loken’s answer was plainly meaningless to him.
‘What’s that on your hand?’ asked the half-heard.
Loken looked down and smiled as he saw a bruise turning to yellow in the shape of a gibbous moon on the palm of his hand.
‘A reminder,’ said Loken.
‘A reminder of what?’
‘Something I still have to do,’ said Loken.
Garviel Loken, now in service to the Sigillite
Patience
James Swallow
It is not a lie to say that I expect to find my former commander dead amidst the wasteland we have made of Nolec Trinus.
The bombardment of the northern continent by twenty thousand Imperial artillery batteries has turned every inch of it into murdered grey earth and heaps of rubble, tilled by a week-long rain of ordnance. How must the Noleci have felt to see their sky blacken as a wall of shells descended? I wonder, in those brief seconds before the first of them landed, did the Noleci realise the depth of their betrayal? Did they understand that this was the consequence of their choice?
They all died, of course, as was fitting. The last of them – those few that managed to survive – emerged from deep-earth bunkers set many kilometres beneath the surface, and attacked us with all their might. We gave them the end they craved. We silenced their cries of hate with our guns.
This is not the first world I have stood upon where a populace has sided with the Arch-traitor Horus. I regret that it will not be the last.
We are walking now, up the hill of rubble that is all that remains of Nolec’s First City. It weathered the attack best, having been protected by a massive void shield – but even that eventually failed under the iron rain. It is just as dead as everywhere else, but here you can actually make out the stubs of shattered buildings, where elsewhere the heaps of cracked stone hint at nothing.
I lead. Following me is the lieutenant and his platoon. They are as drab in their armour as I am in mine. It’s the dust, you see. It coats everything.
I glance at him, the ruby eye-slits of my beaked helm scanning the hard planes of his face. The dust makes him a ghost. It flattens his features, rendering him nondescript. The dried blood from his wounds is caked with it too, as are the blood-smeared faces and breastplates of all his troopers. The Noleci tried very hard to take us with them to their graves.
Only the winged skull across the brow of the lieutenant’s headgear seems to stand out. Before landing here with me, he looked like a man. And before that, before he accepted the same bargain that I did, he looked like any other soldier of the Imperial Army.
But now he and I are different. Our colours have been bled from us. We are grey. The Regent of Terra plucked us from the continua of our lives; he made these men into his elect, dubbing them as his Chosen.
And I? There is no name for what I am. Fallen son? Dusk Raider? Loyalist? Death Guard? I am all and none of those things. I am only Helig Gallor.
The lieutenant and his soldiers call me a ‘Knight Errant’. It suffices.
‘Look there,’ says one of the troopers. She’s pointing through the wreathes of smoke that wash over the land. ‘A ruin
.’
I am almost amused by her words. This whole world is a ruin. But then my genhanced vision picks out what she has seen, clearer and sharper, and I understand. Against all possibility, something is still standing. Wary, I raise my bolter and approach.
It is not an illusion. Pieces of some great basilica actually remain. In fact, as I come closer, I see stained glass in the tall, arched window frames. The depictions there – impossibly, still intact – are full of idolatry and pious imagery of the Emperor of Mankind at his great works. They are intricate things, made with a zealot’s love.
The Word Bearers built it, a lifetime ago when the XVII’s devotion to the Master of Mankind was at its terrible height – before Khur, before Monarchia, and the chastisement of their primarch. I wonder how it was allowed to stand after that. Or indeed, how these remnants still stand now. It must have been at the very epicentre of the void shield, the most protected part of the most protected city on Nolec Trinus.
But no matter. It is a ruin now.
The troopers fall into a phalanx behind me. They are well trained, and we have done this before. Lasguns come to the ready and I direct them with silent battlesign gestures. We believe we are prepared for any advent of horrors.
And that is when I see him.
Alive, then. He stands there, as grey as the rest of us, as bleak and stony as the ashes about him. I have seen statues with more animation to them. A ripped cloak crackles briefly as the wind catches it, burned and torn as mute evidence of a battle hard-fought. That unvoiced story shows in scars over his armour and the dulled gold of the eagle cuirass that differentiates his wargear from mine. He rests upon a great sword that is streaked with the blood of monsters.
I know he hears us coming. I imagine he heard our approach long before we saw him. His head is bare and he is listening. For what, I am not certain, until the smoke rises like a curtain and the rest of the scene is revealed.
The Chosen of Malcador are hard souls, brave men and women gathered from some of the most brutal warzones in the galaxy.
And yet, as one, they balk at the sight of the thing.
I have no words for what the creature is. I will call it a dragon, because that is the name of a terror that I recall from legends of old. But it is not that. No logic of evolution or tale of fancy could ever have spawned something so grotesque, so utterly twisted and sickening. It is an assembly of talons and wings, eyes and teeth, scales and fur. Collected from a million nightmares, it should never exist. But mercifully, it appears to be quite dead.
The dragon-thing lies in a lake of its own ichor, and I gather from the myriad cuts upon the beast’s flesh that it was the sword that ended it.
I have seen things like this before. I regret that this will not be the last.
I advance, warning the lieutenant to stay back with a nod of my head. I address the warrior we have come to find. ‘My lord Battle-Captain–’
He does not let me finish.
‘Patience.’ The word is an admonishment. His tone is one of a tutor towards a novice acting out of turn. He sniffs the air. Is that a faint smile on his lips?
Despite myself, I hesitate. I draw a breath. I begin again.
‘Captain Garro. I am Gallor, tasked by the Sigillite to ascertain your status. We have not heard from you in many days. Why did you not answer your vox, my lord?’
Garro does not look away from the dead monster. ‘Damaged. The venom of the daemon corrodes like acid. It ruined my helm and I was forced to discard it.’ One gauntleted hand leaves the top of his resting sword. He beckons me. ‘I could not return. Not yet.’
‘My lord? I do not understand.’
I was not there when the dragon first appeared, ripping its way out of a shrieking hole in reality, but I have been told of Captain Garro’s response. Of how he alone teleported down here from a ship in orbit, the bombardment still in progress, to find it and kill it. He was not expected to survive, and the cannonade was not going to be stopped for one warrior of the Legiones Astartes, even if he was Malcador’s Agentia Primus.
I came here out of duty, in search of proof of his death, in part because we are both Knights Errant, but also because he and I share more than that. We are… We were Death Guard. Sons of Mortarion, scions of the XIV Legion in better days. I thought it fitting. Now he makes me feel foolish for assuming.
A scowl grows on my face. There is no time for this. The war goes on and we have no reason to be here. I stride to Garro’s side and grab his arm. ‘Captain. Our work is done on Nolec Trinus. Malcador’s will has been met. We are to move on.’
‘Is that so?’ He looks at me for the first time. ‘Helig Gallor. The mantle of the Errant fits you well. It has been a long time since we spoke. Before the flight from Isstvan, I believe.’
‘Aye.’ In truth, longer than that.
In my service to Garro’s command of the Seventh Company of the Death Guard, I did little to draw the battle-captain’s notice. It was only an accident of place that put me aboard the frigate Eisenstein when the Warmaster showed his treachery. And while I am grateful every day for being one of the seventy souls who escaped that madness, it has always seemed a quirk of fate that made it so.
He did not choose me. I was there because I was loyal.
I am here now for the same reason.
Garro was born of Terra, and I am a child of Barbarus, our primarch’s adopted home world. It places distance between us, distance that the unity of Legion once masked. With that gone, with no connection between us but storm-grey armour, I feel less able to ignore the disparity.
‘We will not leave here, not yet,’ he says. ‘The Death Guard have always been patient, brother. Exercise some of that patience now.’
My choler rises. I speak quietly, but with cold intent. ‘I realise now that I stopped being a Death Guard when we were abandoned on Luna. When our Imperium declared us untrustworthy and made us prisoners in all but name. You were not there to see that, Captain Garro. Not all were given Malcador’s blessing.’
‘You were,’ he says coolly. ‘The Regent deemed you suitable, after a time.’ The tone of his voice seems to suggest that Garro himself might not have made the same judgement.
And that is the end to whatever of my patience remains. I turn towards the lieutenant and cut the air with the blade of my hand. ‘Break vox silence and contact the ship. Have them vector a Stormbird to this location. We have found what we are looking for.’ My gaze drifts back to Garro. ‘It’s time to quit this place.’
The lieutenant doesn’t answer me. He’s looking away, into the smoke-haze. As I see a creeping shock roll over the bloodied, battle-worn faces of the troopers at his side, I hear the sound of massive lungs taking a heavy, shuddering breath.
Garro moves, stepping back, the great sword coming up as if it weighs nothing. ‘Patience rewarded,’ he says, almost to himself.
I turn. The dragon-thing is coming back to life.
It was dead and now it is not. I am as certain of one state as I was of the other only a moment before.
My hands tense around my bolter. Once, I would have been shaken by such a thing.
Once. Not now. Not with all that I have seen.
It rises, shaking off the dust. Tentacles unfold from filth-caked orifices, mandibles snap and rheumy eyes blink open. A whip-like serpentine tongue invades the air, tasting it.
‘It feasts on blood,’ Garro explains, lecturing me once again. ‘But it is greedy. One life is not enough to draw its interest.’ He indicates the Chosen who have accompanied me, as they enter battle formation and charge their weapons. ‘It will only fully inhabit its flesh vessel when there is a large enough mass of prey to attract it.’
I understand. One Space Marine is not enough to tempt the daemon’s essence to manifest itself – but two of them, and a cohort of bloodstained Chosen, are. I see a warrior’s need for battle in Garro’s eyes
.
‘Join me in this,’ he says. It is not an order, but an invitation offered to an equal.
I nod.
And, together, we kill the beast for the final time.
The Watcher
C Z Dunn
‘Please. We may not have much time.’
The Knight Errant quickens his pace at the urging of the former Mechanicum adept. It has been three minutes since Tharcadian Semuel entered Ison’s chamber within the fortress watch-post to tell him of the shuttle, and only five minutes since the craft had been forced to land.
‘What is it, Semuel?’ he asks calmly. ‘What has been returned to us?’
The red warning lights flashing in the hangar bay reflect from the metal that makes up more than half of Semuel’s body, his devotion to the cult of Mars apparent in every aspect of his appearance. He regards Ison through the slit of his visor, perma-grafted over his eyes with rivets bonded to flesh. Ison thinks it gives Semuel the aspect of an underhive thug or fringe world criminal, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Semuel is a good man – an honourable man, as Ison well knows.
‘My mind is open to you, Lord Ison. Take the information that you need.’
Lord. The word almost makes Ison wince. Once, long ago, he would have revelled in all the honorifics lavished upon him by mortal servants. Since childhood, his gifts have elevated him above other men and, by virtue of being born on a civilised world, he has not been made a pariah nor shunned or cast out for them.
But now he has made himself an outcast, even from his own former Legion.
‘That is selfless of you, tech-priest. But I would not put you through that sort of intrusion unless it were absolutely vital. Besides, it seems we are–’
Ison stops dead in his tracks.
‘Holy Terra!’ he gasps. ‘Is that… Is that a… Space Marine?’
The thing before Ison resembles a legionary no more than a piece of parchment folded to form wings might resemble a Thunderhawk. What the torn, bleeding remains do look like is meat – crudely butchered meat, left out to rot and spoil. Blood trickles down the side of the ammunition crates, upon which the Space Marine has been placed, from weeks-old wounds that refuse to clot. The weak beating of a secondary heart visible through the deep gouge in his ribs is the only other sign that he yet lives.