by Dan Abnett
Lucius had made a single art of the sword. Frustratingly, his firearms skill was such that he never seemed to need to hone it on the ranges. It was Lucius's proudest claim to have 'personally worn out' four practice cages. Sometimes, the Legion's other sword-masters, warriors like Ekhelon and Brazenor, sparred with Lucius to improve their technique. It was said, Eidolon himself often chose Lucius as a training partner.
Lucius carried an antique long sword, a relic of the Unification Wars, forged in the smithies of the Urals by artisans of the Terrawatt Clan. It was a masterpiece of perfect balance and temper. Usually, he fought with it in the old style, with a combat shield locked to his left arm. The sword's wire-wound handle was unusually long, enabling him to change from a single to a double grip, to spin the blade one-handed like a baton, and to slide the pressure of his grip back and forth: back for a looping swing, forwards for a taut, focussed thrust.
He had his shield strapped across his back, and carried the megarachnid blade-limb in his left hand as a secondary sword. He had bound the base of the severed limb with strips of steel paper from the liner of his shield to prevent the edge from further harming his grip. Head low, he paced forwards through the endless avenues of stalks, hungry for any opportunity to deal death.
During the twelfth attack, Tarvitz witnessed Lucius at work for the first time. Lucius met a megarachnid head on, and set up a flurry of dazzling, ringing blows, his two blades against the creature's four. Tarvitz saw three opportunities for straight kill strokes that Lucius didn't so much miss as choose not to take. He was enjoying himself so much that he didn't want the game to end too soon.
'We will take one or two alive later.’ he told Tarvitz after the fight, without a hint of irony. 'I will chain them in the practice cages. They will be useful for sparring.’
They are xenos.’ Tarvitz scolded.
'If I am going to improve at all, I need decent practice. Practice mat will test me. Do you know of a man who could push me?'
They are xenos.’ Tarvitz said again.
'Perhaps it is the Emperor's will.’ Lucius suggested. 'Perhaps these things have been placed in the cosmos to improve our war skills.’
Tarvitz was proud that he didn't even begin to understand how xenos minds worked, but he was also confident that the purpose of the megarachnid, if they had some higher, ineffable purpose, was more than to give mankind a demanding training partner. He wondered, briefly, if they had language, or culture, culture as a man might recognise it. Art? Science? Emotion? Or were those things as seamlessly and exotically bonded into them as their technologies, so that mortal man might not differentiate or identify them?
Were they driven by some emotive cause to attack the Emperor's Children, or were they simply responding to trespass, like a mound of drone insects prodded with a stick? It occurred to him that the megarachnid might be attacking because, to them, the humans were hideous and xenos.
It was a terrible thought. Surely the megarachnid could see the superiority of the human design compared with their own? Maybe they fought because of jealousy?
Lucius was busy droning on, delightedly explaining some new finesse of wrist-turn that fighting the megarachnid had already taught him. He was demonstrating the technique against the bole of a stalk.
'See? A lift and turn. Lift and turn. The blow comes down and in. It would be of no purpose against a man, but here it is essential. I think I will compose a treatise on it. The move should be called "the Lucius", don't you think? How fine does that sound?'
Very fine.’ Tarvitz replied.
'Here is something!' a voice exclaimed over the vox. It was Sakian. They hurried to him. He had found a sudden and surprising clearing in the grass forest. The stalks had stopped, exposing a broad field of bare, red earth many kilometres square.
'What is this?' asked Bulle.
Tarvitz wondered if the space had been deliberately cleared, but there was no sign that stalks had ever sprouted there. The tall, swishing forest surrounded the area on all sides.
One by one, the Astartes stepped out into the open. It was unsettling. Moving through the grass forest, there had been precious little sense of going anywhere, because everywhere looked the same. This gap was suddenly a landmark. A disconcerting difference.
'Look here.’ Sakian called. He was twenty metres out in the barren plain, kneeling to examine something. Tarvitz realised he had called out because of something more specific than the change in environs.
'What is it?' Tarvitz asked, trudging forwards to join Sakian.
'I think I know, captain.’ Sakian replied, 'but I don't like to say it. I saw it here on the ground.’
Sakian held the object out so that Tarvitz could inspect it.
It was a vaguely triangular, vaguely concave piece of tinted glass, with rounded corners, roughly nine centimetres on its longest side. Its edges were lipped, and machine formed. Tarvitz knew what it was at once, because he was staring at it through two similar objects.
It was a visor lens from an Astartes helmet. What manner of force could have popped it out of its ceramite frame?
'It's what you think it is.’ Tarvitz told Sakian.
'Not one of ours.’
'No. I don't think so. The shape is wrong. This is Mark III.’
The Blood Angels, then?'
Yes. The Blood Angels.’ The first physical proof that anyone had been here before them.
'Look around!' Tarvitz ordered to the others. 'Search the dirt!'
The troop spent ten minutes searching. Nothing else was discovered. Overhead, an especially fierce shield-storm had begun to close in, as if drawn to them. Furious ripples of lightning striated the heavy clouds. The light grew yellow, and the storm's distortions whined and shrieked intrusively into their vox-links.
'We're exposed out here.’ Bulle muttered. 'Let's get back into the forest.’
Tarvitz was amused. Bulle made it sound as if the stalk thickets were safe ground.
Giant forks of lightning, savage and yellow-white phosphorescent, were searing down into the open space, explosively scorching the earth. Though each fork only existed for a nanosecond, they seemed solid and real, like fundamental, physical structures, like upturned, thorny trees. Three Astartes, including Lucius, were struck. Secure in their Mark IV plate, they shrugged off the massive, detonating impacts and laughed as aftershock electrical blooms crackled like garlands of blue wire around their armour for a few seconds.
'Bulle's right.’ Lucius said, his vox signal temporarily mauled by the discharge dissipating from his suit. 'I want to go back into the forest. I want to hunt. I haven't killed anything in twenty minutes.’
Several of the men around roared their approval at Lucius's wilfully belligerent pronouncement. They slapped their fists against their shields.
Tarvitz had been trying to contact Lord Eidolon again, or anyone else, but the storm was still blocking him. He
was concerned that the few of them still remaining should not separate, but Lucius's bravado had annoyed
him.
'Do as you see fit, captain. I want to find out what that is.’ he said to Lucius, petulantly. He pointed. On the far side of the cleared space, three or four kilometres away, he could make out large white blobs in the far thickets.
'More trees.’ Lucius said.
Yes, but-'
'Oh, very well.’ Lucius conceded.
There were now just twenty-two warriors in the group led by Lucius and Tarvitz. They spread out in a loose line and began to cross the open space. The clearing, at least, afforded them time to see any megarachnid approach.
The storm above grew still more ferocious. Five more men were struck. One of them, Ulzoras, was actually knocked off his feet. They saw fused, glassy craters in the ground where lightning had earthed with the force of penetrator missiles. The shield-storm seemed to be pressing down on them, like a lid across the sky, pressurising the air, and squeezing them in an atmospheric vice.
When the megarachnid appeared, they sho
wed themselves in ones or twos at first. Katz saw them initially, and called out. The grey things were milling in and out of the edges of the stalk forest. Then they began to emerge en masse and move across the open ground towards the Astartes war party.
Terra!' Lucius clucked. 'Now we have a battle.’
There were more than a hundred of the aliens. Cluttering, they closed on the Astartes from all sides, an accelerating ring of onrushing grey, closing faster and faster, a blur of scurrying limbs.
'Form a ring.’ Tarvitz instructed calmly. 'Bolters.’ He stuck his broadsword, tip down, into the red earth
beside him and unslung his firearm. Odiers did likewise. Tarvitz noticed that Lucius kept his grip on his paired blades.
The flood of megarachnid swallowed up the ground, and closed in a concentric ring around the circle of the Emperor's Children.
'Ready yourselves.’ Tarvitz called. Lucius, his swords raised by his sides, was evidently happy for Tarvitz to command the action.
They could hear the dry, febrile chittering as it came closer. The drumming of four hundred rapid legs.
Tarvitz nodded to Bulle, who was the best marksman in the troop. The order is yours.’ he said.
Thank you, sir.’ Bulle raised his bolter and yelled, 'At ten metres! Shoot till you're dry!'
Then blades!' Tarvitz bellowed.
When the tightening wave of megarachnid warriors was ten and a half metres away Bulle yelled, 'Fire!' and the firm circle of Astartes opened up.
Their weapons made a huge, rolling noise, despite the storm. All around them, the front ranks of the enemy buckled and toppled, some splintering apart, some bursting. Pieces of thorny, zinc-grey metal spun away into the air.
As Bulle had instructed, the Astartes fired until their weapons were spent, and then hefted their blades up in time to meet the onrushing foe. The megarachnid broke around them like a wave around a rock. There was a flurried, multiplied din of metal-on-metal impacts as human and alien blades clashed. Tarvitz saw Lucius rush forwards at the last minute, swords swinging, meeting the megarachnid host head on, severing and hacking.
The battle lasted for three minutes. Its intensity should have been spread out across an hour or two. Five more Astartes died. Dozens of megarachnid things fell,
broken and rent, onto the red earth. Reflecting upon the encounter later, Tarvitz found he could not remember any single detail of the fight. He'd dropped his bolter and raised his broadsword, and then it had all become a smear of bewildering moments. He found himself, standing there, his limbs aching from effort, his sword and armour dripping with stringy, white matter. The megarachnid were falling back, pouring back, as rapidly as they had advanced.
'Regroup! Reload!' Tarvitz heard himself yelling.
'Look!' Katz called out. Tarvitz looked.
There was something in the sky, objects sweeping down out of the molten, fracturing air above them.
The megarachnid had more than one biological form.
The flying things descended on long, glassy wings that beat so furiously they were just flickering blurs that made a strident thrumming noise. Their bodies were glossy black, their abdomens much fuller and longer than those of their land-bound cousins. Their slender black legs were pulled up beneath them, like wrought-iron undercarriages.
The winged dades took men from the air, dropping sharply and seizing armoured forms in the hooked embrace of their dark limbs. Men fought back, straggled, fired their weapons, but within seconds four or five warriors had been snatched up and borne away into the tumultuous sky, writhing and shouting.
Unit cohesion broke. The men scattered, trying to evade the things swooping out of the air. Tarvitz yelled for order, but knew it was futile. He was forced to duck as a winged shape rushed over him, making a reverber-ative, chopping drone. He caught a glimpse of a head crest formed into a long, dark, malevolent hook.
Another passed close by. Boltguns were pumping. Tarvitz lashed out with his sword, striking high, trying to drive the creature back. The thrumming of its wings
was distressingly loud and made his diaphragm quiver. He jabbed and thrust with his blade, and the thing bobbed backwards across the soil, effortless and light. With a sharp, sudden movement, it turned away, took hold of another man, and lifted him into the sky.
Another of the winged things had seized Lucius. It had him by the back and was taking him off the ground. Lucius, twisting like a maniac, was trying to stab his swords up behind himself, to no avail.
Tarvitz sprang forwards and grabbed hold of Lucius as he left the ground. Tarvitz thrust up past him with his broadsword, but a hooked black leg struck him, and his broadsword tumbled away out of his hand. He held on to Lucius.
'Drop! Drop!' Lucius yelled.
Tarvitz could see that the thing held Lucius by the shield strapped to his back. Swinging, he wrenched out his combat knife, and hacked at the straps. They sheared away, and Lucius and Tarvitz fell from the thing's clutches, plummeting ten metres onto the red dust.
The flying clades made off, taking nine of the Astartes with them. They were heading in the direction of the white blobs in the far thickets. Tarvitz didn't need to give an order. The remaining warriors took off across the ground as fast as they could, chasing after the retreating dots.
They caught up with them at the far edge of the clearing. The white blobs had indeed been more trees, three of them, and now Lucius discovered they had a purpose after all.
The bodies of the taken Astartes were impaled upon the thorns of the trees, rammed onto the stone spikes, their armoured shapes skewered into place, allowing the winged megarachnid to feed upon them. The creatures, their wings now stilled and quiet and extended, long and slender, out behind their bodies like bars of
stained glass, were crawling over the stone trees, gnawing and biting, using their hooked head crests to break open thorn-pinned armour to get at the meat within.
Tarvitz and the others came to a halt and watched in sick dismay. Blood was dripping from the white thorns and streaming down the squat, chalky trunks.
Their brothers were not alone amongst the thorns. Other cadavers hung there, rotten and rendered down to bone and dry gristle. Pieces of red armour plate hung from the reduced bodies, or littered the ground at the foot of the trees.
At last, they had found out what had happened to the Blood Angels.
THREE
During the voyage
Bad poetry
Secrets
DURING THE TWELVE-WEEK voyage between Sixty-Three Nineteen and One Forty Twenty, Loken had come to the conclusion that Sindermann was avoiding him.
He finally located him in the endless stacks of Archive Chamber Three. The iterator was sitting in a stilt-chair, examining ancient texts secured on one of the high shelves of the archive's gloomiest back annexes. There was no bustle of activity back here, no hurrying servitors laden with requested books. Loken presumed that the material catalogued in this area was of little interest to the average scholar.
Sindermann didn't hear him approach. He was intently studying a fragile old manuscript, the stilt-chair's reading lamp tilted over his left shoulder to illuminate the pages.
'Hello?' Loken hissed.
Sindermann looked down and saw Loken. He started slightly, as if woken from a deep sleep.
'Garviel.’ he whispered. 'One moment.' Sindermann put the manuscript back on the shelf, but several other books
were piled up in the chair's basket rack. As he re-shelved the manuscript, Sindermann's hands seemed to tremble. He pulled a brass lever on the chair's armrest and the stilt legs telescoped down with a breathy hiss until he was at ground level.
Loken reached out to steady the iterator as he stepped out of the chair.
Thank you, Garviel.'
'What are you doing back here?' Loken asked.
'Oh, you know. Reading.’
'Reading what?'
Sindermann cast what Loken judged to be a slightly guilty look at the books in his chair's rack. G
uilty, or embarrassed. 'I confess.’ Sindermann said, 'I have been seeking solace in some old and terribly unfashionable material. Pre-Unification fiction, and some poetry. Just desolate scraps, for so little remains, but I find some comfort in it.’
'May I?' Loken asked, gesturing to the basket.
'Of course.’ said Sindermann.
Loken sat down in the brass chair, which creaked under his weight, and took some of the old books out of the side basket to examine them. They were frayed and foxed, even though some of them had evidendy been rebound or sleeved from earlier bindings prior to archiving.
"The Golden Age ofSumaturan Poetry7.' Loken said. 'Folk Tales of Old Muscovy7 What's this? The Chronicles of Ursh7'
'Boisterous fictions and bloody histories, with the occasional smattering of fine lyric verse.’
Loken took out another, heavy book. 'Tyranny of the Panpacific,' he read, and flipped open the cover to see the tide page. '"An Epic Poem in Nine Cantos, Exalting the Rule of Narthan Dume"... it sounds rather dry.’
'It's raw-headed and robust, and quite bawdy in parts. The work of over-excited poets trying to turn the matter
of their own, wretched times into myth. I'm rather fond of it. I used to read such things as a child. Fairy tales from another time.’
'A better time?'
Sindermann baulked. 'Oh, Terra, no! An awful time, a murderous, rancorous age when we were sliding into species doom, not knowing that the Emperor would come and apply the brakes to our cultural plummet.’
'But they comfort you?'
They remind me of my boyhood. That comforts me.’
'Do you need comforting?' Loken asked, putting the books back in the basket and looking up at the old man. 'I've barely seen you since-'
'Since the mountains.’ Sindermann finished, with a sad smile.
'Indeed. I've been to the school on several occasions to hear you brief the iterators, but always there's someone standing in for you. How are you?'