From a pouch at his waist the warrior produced a silver disc, like the blank die of a coin, and placed it upon my workbench. He slid it towards me and told me that he wanted medals made, each bearing the image of a wolf’s head and a crescent moon. Rarely do I take such specific commissions. I prefer to bring my own design sensibilities to each project, and told him so. The warrior was insistent to the point where I felt it would be dangerous to refuse. A wolf’s head and a crescent moon. No more, no less. I was to craft the mould for such a medal, which he would then take to the engineering decks to have produced in greater numbers in a hydraulic press.
So banal a task did not interest me, but I nodded and told him a mould would be ready within the day for him. I did not miss the similarity in motif to that required by Hastur Sejanus, but said nothing. Words could only antagonise this warrior, for he had the air of one to whom casual, shocking violence was no stranger. To fear the Legiones Astartes was natural; they were, after all, bred to be killers, but this was something else, something more immediate than simply the recognition of his purpose in existing.
He left, and I immediately felt the air of my workshop become lighter, as though it had been pressing down on my skull. The animal part of me knew I had been in terrible danger, and screamed at me to flee, but my higher self could find no reason for that fear. If only I had listened to my instinctual heart and fled, but where could I hide aboard this starship that one of the Warmaster’s chosen would not find me?
I turned my attention to the silver, pushing aside all thoughts save those of working the metal. Such a simple task should have taken only a few hours, but I found I could not free myself from thoughts of the warrior and his threatening presence. Each carving lacked life and any spark of inspiration, so I turned to the same dusty books I had consulted when crafting the reliquary for the Lord General.
Within their pages, I found plentiful references to wolves and the moon: the Neuroi of ancient Scythia transforming into wolves once a year; the fear that the eyes of a she-wolf could bedazzle the senses of men. Some saw wolves as omens of victory, while others saw them as heralds of the world’s last days. In the end, I found a fragmented tale of a chained wolf that broke its bonds and swallowed the sun before being slain by a one-eyed god. Given that my carven wolf was to be set against the moon, it seemed an apt choice.
With the design set in my mind’s eye, I quickly sculpted the piece, rendering the wolf with simplicity and elegance. A noble creature, set proudly against a crescent moon, head tilted back as though about to loose a wild howl. Though the work was not difficult, and the design plain, I was, nevertheless, proud of it. I felt sure my nameless patron would be pleased with the final piece, and my fear of the violence that lurked at his core receded.
As promised, he returned the next day as the ship’s bells sounded the beginning of the evening cycle. He demanded to see what I had created and smiled as I placed the silver carving on his absurdly huge palm. He turned it this way and that, letting the light catch the embossed image. At last he nodded to me and complimented my work.
I bowed my head, pleased my creation had met with his approval, but no sooner had I raised my gaze than his hand fastened upon my neck. Fingers like iron cables closed around my throat and I was lifted from my feet, kicking the air as I felt the inexorable pressure of his grip. I looked into his eyes, struggling to understand why he was doing this, but I could see nothing to explain his murderous attack.
I could not cry out, for his hand prevented anything other than a strangled wheeze escaping my mouth. Something cracked and I felt a tearing pressure inside me. Then I was falling, landing hard on the floor of the workshop and scrabbling my feet as I struggled for breath. Only tiny wisps of oxygen made it through my ruined throat to my lungs, and I watched as he knelt beside me, with a sardonic expression on his blunt features.
Words struggled to reach my cyanotic lips, a thousand questions, but I had breath for only one.
‘Why?’
The warrior leaned down and whispered in my ear.
An answer of sorts, but one that made no sense.
I was dying. He could see that. Within minutes I would be dead, and without waiting to watch my last moments, the warrior turned and left my workshop.
I am stronger than I look, and though I cannot know for certain, I do not believe I am dying as swiftly as my killer might have imagined. I draw the thinnest of breaths, enough to sustain me for moments longer, but not enough to live. My sight grows dim, and I feel my body dying.
This silversmith is no more, and I fear no one will ever know why.
Yet, what is this?
Is that a draught of wind across my skin, the sound of a shutter door opening?
It is! I hear a cry of alarm, and heavy footsteps. Something huge and pale looms above me. Beautiful features swim before me, like the face of a rescuer viewed from beneath the waters of a still lake.
I know this warrior.
No finer figure in Mark IV plate.
Hastur Sejanus.
Even as he lifts me from the floor, I know he will not be able to save me. I will not survive, no matter how swiftly he brings me to the medicae, but I am sanguine. I will not die alone, someone will watch as I shuffle off this mortal coil. I will be remembered.
As he lays me upon my workbench, he is not careful of my possessions, and sweeps a tray of completed commissions aside. My head lolls to the side and I see four rings fall onto the floor. I watch him accidentally tread on one of them, flattening it completely beneath his bulk.
It is the ring I made for him.
He leans over me, his words urgent, and his grief at my passing is genuine.
Sejanus barks questions at me, but I can make little sense of them.
Life is slipping away. My eyes close, but before I am gone, I hear Sejanus ask his last questions.
‘Who did this? What did he say?’
With my last spark of life, I dredge the dying memories left to me and force my killer’s last words up through my ruined larynx.
‘I can’t say.’
~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~
The VIII Legion ‘Night Lords’
Jago Sevatarion, ‘Sevatar’, First Captain, Commander of the Atramentar
Tal Vanek, Battle-brother, First Company
Orrin Valzen, Primus Medicae
Malithos Kuln, Ninth Captain
Naraka, ‘the Bloodless’, 13th Captain
Var Jahan, 27th Captain
Ophion, 39th Captain
Cel Herec, 43rd Captain
Krukesh ‘the Pale’, 103rd Captain
Tovac Tor, ‘Lackhand’, 114th Captain
The XIX Legion ‘Raven Guard’
Alastor Rushal, 89th Captain
VIII Legion Personnel
Ekra Trez, Sin-Eater
Taye Karenna, Wing Commander, ‘Veiled Ones’ Squadron.
Kul Kyven, Naviseer, ‘Veiled Ones’ Squadron.
Vensent Aurlin, Gunner, ‘Veiled Ones’ Squadron.
Prologue
‘Fall.’
The Knight-Lord of Caliban stood beneath the storm, a silver circlet crowning his brow, his ashen hair rain-painted against his pale features. The knight’s armour was a suit of black ceramite plating, engraved with sculpted lions forged from Martian red gold. Blood ran along the sword in his hands, sluicing away from the steel, rinsed by the downpour.
The other figure was an image cast in a cracked mirror. Where the Knight-Lord’s skin was pale, the other warrior’s flesh was a consumptive’s white, and his armour a midnight reflection of the storm above, crisscrossed with markings of jagged lightning.
The battle raged around them, above them, even beneath them as they waged war atop the piled bodies of their sons, wounded and dead alike. The Knight-Lord of Caliban had waited months for this moment. Now it had come, in the shrieking wind and h
owling rain, punctuated by the staccato cracks of thousands and thousands of bolters.
The knight stepped back, his duty done, the final smears of blood rain-washed from his sword. His brother staggered, clawed hands clasping his own neck. A dark, liquid torrent was gushing between his grasping fingers. He was trying to hold his throat closed, and he was failing.
‘Fall,’ the Knight-Lord said to his brother. His voice was broken, ragged, breathless. ‘Fall.’
The other warrior’s black eyes were wide, trembling as his life flooded through his hands. He spoke without sound, lips working worthlessly, and finally fell to one knee. The wounds in his stomach and chest bled as fiercely as the cut throat. His body, systematically shredded and torn by the kingly blade, seemed to be held together by desperate hate alone.
The Knight-Lord wasn’t a soul given to smiling, nor was he petty enough to mock a fallen foe. He lifted his blade in salute, crosspiece resting against his crowned forehead, honouring a slain enemy.
‘I told you,’ the Lion said to his dying brother, ‘I would be the end of you, Curze.’
Chapter I
Fraternity in Shadow
The brothers always met in darkness. Their penchant for convening in a lightless chamber wasn’t for the theatrics of symbolism, nor from a need for secrecy. Some traditions simply existed unchanged from their genesis, born of habit rather than artifice. Once, the darkness had mattered. Now, it simply was.
Red eye-lenses cut through the gloom, accompanied by the grinding purrs of joint servos and active power cables. Mark IV armour wasn’t a silent invention, by any means. It was even louder when it was damaged.
The three brothers stood in silence. Defeat cloaked their shoulders, clinging closer than the shadows in which they stood. Their shame was fresh enough that none of them had even repaired the damage to their armour. Occasional sparks from ruptured joints cast flares of light across the chamber, while the air slowly ripened with the scent of battle emanating from their broken suits of ceramite. The chemical stench of fyceline clashed with the crude tang of promethium. Behind it all was the grey scent of gunsmoke, insipidly close to charcoal.
‘Three of us,’ said one of the brothers. ‘Three of us survived.’
‘There may yet be more,’ said another.
The first scoffed at the notion. ‘There won’t be any more. Have you been blind for the last nine hours? Did you not see what just happened? How many ships did we lose?’
The third brother leaned on the edge of the central table, his crested helm tilting to regard his kindred in turn.
‘We cannot know. Not until the fleet masses again. I saw the Praxis Mundi break apart and take out seven of her escorts. The Lady Sapienta died before her. The Aeternum Dread. The Throneless King. The Obfuscate. Those are merely the cruisers I saw die. I cannot speak of how many frigates and destroyers. Too many to name.’
‘What of the Nightfall?’
The third brother shook his head. ‘Aflame within and breached without. The flagship cannot have escaped. The Dark Angels went for her throat as viciously as the Lion went for Lord Curze’s.’ He paused for a moment, taking a slow breath. ‘The Nightfall should have been the first ship to run. I can’t comprehend why she stayed. What profit was there in trading firepower with the Dark Angels fleet?’
‘I heard the vox-reports,’ said the first brother. ‘Sevatar ordered the flagship to remain in-system, while he recovered companies from the surface whose vessels had already fled.’
The third snorted. ‘How very noble. So he killed himself and lost the flagship. Mark my words – no longer will the name Sevatar be celebrated among our ranks. How did the Angels arrange this? The ambush… the coordination was beyond anything I’ve seen.’
‘Does that even matter?’ the first replied. ‘Unless we strike back with overwhelming force, we’ve just lost the Thramas Crusade.’
‘The Legion must regroup at the fallback junctures,’ agreed the second. ‘We can recommence hostilities once we have our bearings, and the logistics are codified.’
‘Aye,’ said the first. ‘There speaks wisdom. It might be weeks, it might be months, but we are far from finished.’
The third brother called up a tactical display, but the flickering hololithic image stuttered and died before showing anything of worth. The ship had taken severe damage in its flight; many of its systems were still struggling to realign.
‘We face two problems – both bladed, both unkind. First, we must disseminate word of the defeat to all Legion forces in the rest of the sector via our astropathic choirs, so our brothers don’t run headlong into the ambush site we just fled. That will require a wealth of good fortune to work.’
‘And the other problem?’
The third brother hesitated before answering. ‘We must do that which only one Legion has ever had to do. We must choose who commands the remaining forces, with our primarch fallen.’
‘Fallen doesn’t mean dead, brother. Have you received word from the apothecarion?’
‘I have, and it doesn’t bode well. Who among the Legion has ever treated a wounded primarch before? We’re working blind. The wounds have closed, though not cleanly. Blood loss is severe. Cranial damage and oxygen starvation are still both potentially terminal, or crippling. Haemorrhaging is rampant. Organs I cannot even name are lacerated and severed from vein networks we’ve never seen before. If he were human – if he were even one of us – a single one of his wounds would be enough to see him dead. He’s sustained eleven such lethalities.’
The proclamation hung in the air. None of the brothers wished to add to it.
‘I saw it happen,’ admitted the second. ‘Even recovering him cost us too many lives. I surrendered most of a company in forcing the Lord of the First Legion back. I regret giving that order, I assure you.’
The others nodded. ‘The truth is cold, but we must face it: the three of us lead the Legion now.’
They tasted that truth in a moment of silence, interrupted by the communication feed from the command deck opening in a storm of crackles.
‘My lords,’ said the human captain. ‘Another four vessels have reached the edge of the system.’
‘Name them,’ said the first brother.
‘Auspex coding registers them as the Quintus, Dusk’s Daughter, the Covenant of Blood, and… and the Nightfall.’
The war room’s bulkhead door opened on grinding tracks, admitting the emergency red lighting of the corridor beyond. The figure in the doorway wore a helm to match his three kindred, with its crest of backswept gargoyle wings and skull-painted faceplate. Tourmaline eye-lenses stared at the three warlords gathered in the dark.
He’d come alone, but he’d come armed. A spear rested on his shoulder guard, ending in a deactivated chainblade with several rows of jagged, chipped teeth.
‘I hope you’ll forgive me for being late. There was an ambush. You may have noticed it. Not all of us could just light up our engines and run for the deepest black.’
He walked into the chamber, taking a place at the central table.
‘It is good to see you, Sevatar.’
‘I’m sure it is.’ Sevatar glanced at the tactical hololith drifting in the air above the table, showing a spread of several VIII Legion vessels in the deep void. ‘So this is defeat. Now we know how the Raven Guard and Salamanders felt.’
‘We’ve mustered close to one-twentieth of the fleet’s strength here. We must reform as best we are able in the weeks that follow, and face the facts. We are wounded, but not dead. The Thramas Crusade cannot end here.’
Sevatar said nothing at first. After several moments, during which he realised they weren’t making some foolish jest, he looked at them in turn.
‘The three of you did well to evacuate the primarch. Have you had any contact with the rest of the Kyroptera?’
‘Only to confirm deaths of Jexad,
Shoma and Ithillion,’ the second brother replied. ‘We are all that remains of the Kyroptera now.’
‘So three of the seven are dead,’ Sevatar mused aloud, ‘and the primarch is wounded.’
‘The primarch is dying,’ corrected the second brother. ‘We lead the Legion now.’
‘We’ll see. Either way, the future is grim.’ Sevatar dropped his halberd onto the table, ignoring the resonant clang of metal on metal. ‘This won’t do at all. Of the seven, you three are the ones I like least.’
‘Please be serious, brother.’
Sevatar had a certain way of smiling. Amusement brightened his black eyes first, before tugging at the corners of his lips in soft twitches. It was the smile of a corpse with hooks pulling at its cheeks, or a soul that didn’t really understand humour in the same way as those around him – thus he had to feign it to the best of his limited ability.
Sevatar smiled. ‘Am I to assume you brave creatures have devised a plan?’
‘We have,’ replied the first brother. ‘Once the fleet’s strength is rebuilt, we will strike back. The question is where.’
Sevatar tilted his head. ‘That’s your plan?’
‘It is.’
The First Captain cleared his throat. This moment required a degree of subtlety. ‘Already,’ he said, ‘you are trying to take us down a path we shouldn’t walk. You speak of retribution, of counter-attacking a foe that has proven they can outmanoeuvre us.’
The others hesitated. ‘Of course. What else would we do?’
‘We could fight a war we actually have a chance to win instead,’ Sevatar replied.
‘Run?’ asked another. ‘We have a duty to keep the First Legion engaged here.’
Sevatar raised an eyebrow, though the expression remained hidden behind his faceplate. ‘At the cost of the Legion? You wish to whore our lives away to slake your frustrated bloodlust at being beaten. There is nothing noble in that, brothers. I won’t let you take the Legion to the grave because you can’t admit we lost.’
Shadows of Treachery Page 23