Shadowsword

by Guy Haley

  ‘I cannot condone murder!’ hissed Bannick.

  ‘We’re all murderers. You gonna tell me you not, bossman sir. You gonna say you never kill a man?’

  Bannick set his jaw.

  ‘Twenty-six!’ called out the peacekeeper. The whip hissed through the air. Sweat and blood dripped off Gollph’s pink skin, but he made no noise.

  ‘But some murderers, they be heroes,’ said Shoam. ‘Best honour men like that, eh, boss? Best stick by them and do what’s right by them. You never know when you might need them help you.’

  Bannick had no reply, and they stood in silence until the last lash landed on Gollph’s skin.

  ‘The punishment is concluded. The crew of Cortein’s Honour have paid their due.’ Sholana beckoned. The men ran to Gollph and unlooped his wrists. Shoam remained by Bannick’s side, watching with his dead, red eyes. Gollph took a step, then staggered. Seven pairs of hands grabbed him gently. Meggen and Vaskigen looped his arms around their necks. The others gave him water, poured it on his wounds, prepared bandages. Bearing the sagging Gollph between them, they rushed him from the square.

  ‘Get the medicae!’ Meggen said urgently. Epperaliant ran ahead towards the surgeon’s tents.

  Shoam gave Bannick a lazy salute and sauntered after them. ‘Be seeing you, sir,’ he said.

  Bannick remained where he was. This was his men’s moment, not his. Let them bond over Gollph’s punishment. It sounded callous even to him, but there was benefit to this misfortune.

  Gollph would come back to the tank a hero. Whatever residual prejudices there were against him would have been eradicated. He had already proven himself up to the role of loader; now he had proved he was an excellent fighter, and had shown self-sacrifice for his fellows.

  As the first Atraxian was strung up to receive his flogging, Bannick couldn’t prevent satisfaction taking the place of disgust at Gollph’s beating. This mongrel crew that had given him so much cause for concern was becoming the kind of group one needed to run a Baneblade effectively. Maybe there was something in what the Adeptus Mechanicus did in allowing the tank to choose its own. A cocktail of emotions overwhelmed him: guilt at having doubted the intentions of the Emperor-Omnissiah as expressed by Cortein’s Honour; guilt at turning Gollph’s undeserved punishment to his advantage; relief it had all been dealt with; grim satisfaction at Shoam’s murderousness. He was, he realised now, no different to the other nobles scheming for position on Paragon; if anything he was worse, because it had taken him longer to realise it.

  The Atraxian moaned piteously as the first lash landed. Bannick left the principia.

  As he was walking along the via principalis to the porta dextra, a runner caught up with him.

  ‘Honoured Lieutenant Bannick! I have orders for you from General Lo Verkerigen.’ He saluted and handed over a sealed orders tube.

  Bannick snapped the metal twist seal and drew out a flimsy. He scanned it quickly. The defence of the planet was collapsing, but outside the capital Magor’s Seat, there were a number of isolated pockets of resistance that needed tackling. The Seventh were being sent north. He rolled up the orders and handed the tube back to the runner.

  ‘Report orders received and understood,’ said Bannick.

  Chapter Eleven

  A dangerous offer

  IMPERIAL GOVERNOR’S PALACE, MAGOR’S SEAT

  GERATOMRO

  085198.M41

  Governor Dostain was planetary governor, master of all he surveyed. The lords and ladies of Geratomro bowed their heads and fell to their knees.

  ‘Lord Dostain! Saviour of Geratomro! Lord Dostain the Great!’ cried the herald. Never had the man seemed so sincere in his blandishments.

  Dostain raised his chin proudly. Not the three he possessed in reality, but a square jaw on a handsome face. It was still his face, but it was idealised, improved, altered. A face on a head full of wild ideas, a head upon a body that rippled with muscle under its pleasing coat of fat. A heady perfume filled his nostrils. His senses were alive with the pleasure of power. He felt full of confidence. No man could challenge his judgement without their arguments dying on their lips. He was wise beyond compare, immeasurably clever. A feast of unbelievable size was piled high on the creaking tables that ran the length of Magor’s Hall. Around him were arrayed his twenty wives, the finest females the world had to offer, and they looked to him adoringly. Chief among them was Pollein, lovely, loving Pollein. She held a brimming goblet of purple wine to his mouth. He sipped it and smiled at her. She dropped her head coyly. There was nothing they would not do for him, a devotion he would take full advantage of every night.

  Dostain moaned in his sleep.

  Still it was not enough! He had all he wanted and now he wanted more. There was a hollowness inside him, a vacuum that demanded it be filled with more power, more sensation. A tremor of fear thrilled in him.

  ‘I can give you everything,’ said Pollein. She looked up shyly, and he flinched in surprise. Her eyes were not her own – not perfect grey, but depthless brown. He knew those eyes. He pulled his head back, knocking the wine from her hands all over his rich clothes. She smiled as another girl sponged it away with lingering strokes of her soft hands. He could not break eye contact with those brown eyes. An ancient part of him, bred on Terra in forgotten antiquity, recognised them for a predator’s eyes. The eyes of a great cat.

  Sweat beaded on his perfect upper lip. There was no excess that could fill the abyss he saw in the eyes, not in all the galaxy. Wailing, he fell into them.

  ‘Time to wake up, little boy,’ said a harsh voice.

  He plummeted towards a place he had thought of as Elysium. As he neared it, he knew it for Hades.

  ‘Dostain! Dostain!’ A sweet whisper pierced Dostain’s dreams.

  Screaming, he could hear screaming.

  ‘Dostain!’ Gentle hands shook him, setting up a quiver in his belly that was not all in his fat.

  The Heir the Second came awake, pouring sweat. He patted his bed sheets, peered nervously into the dark corners of his ceiling. Already the terrifying finale to his dream faded. He was left with the taste of incomparable wine in his mouth. Fear was replaced by the longing to taste it again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Pollein’s face came into view.

  ‘Pollein?’ he croaked.

  ‘Indeed, nephew!’

  She hopped astride him, intending in her innocence to tickle him awake, but Dostain was far from innocent himself, and he sat up quickly and shoved her off. He pulled the covers to his chin. She frowned at him, hurt.

  ‘Yes, it’s me, dummy. No need to fight.’

  ‘Sorry. What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve something to show you. Get up.’

  Dostain’s heart, still pumping with adrenaline, had its own ideas about what he would like to see. His cheeks burned. ‘What is it?’ he said. He brought his legs up, half curling into a ball. ‘Throne of the Emperor, Pollein, what is the time?’

  ‘Very late! Very, very late,’ she whispered. She leaned in close. Her perfumed breath stirred his wispy beard. He shivered. ‘He’s here!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Him,’ she said.

  She took his hand and yanked on it. Dostain barely had time to rearrange his nightshirt before she’d hauled him out of bed. She was unbelievably strong for her size. Or maybe he was just fat and weak.

  ‘This way,’ she said. ‘He’s in my chambers.’

  Their feet padded on rich rugs down long corridors. The heirs were quartered apart from each other to discourage assassination. Yellow-robed sentries guarded the passages leading from the heirs’ quarters into the palace, but there were ways between their domiciles. Assassination was supposed to be difficult, not impossible. It served as a useful way of keeping the succession manageable, and ensuring only the cunning survived.

  The
y ducked out of a small window and down a low wall. Pollein led Dostain across the cold courtyard that separated their halls, their bare feet leaving prints in the frost, then through a door that was supposed to be locked but never was, and through a secret passage hidden behind a statue of their ancestor, Magor. Dostain knew the route well. He’d often used it to go to Pollein’s quarters. He’d stand outside, ear to the door, convinced he could hear her breathing, longing to go in and take her in his arms. A greater heir might have done that whether she were willing or not, then forced her into marriage or killed her. She was next in line and might very well do the same thing to him. But he did not know how to cheat the locks on her doors. She might even have been planning to kill him right then. He was too hopelessly ensnared by his infatuation to do anything about it if she were.

  She peered out of the secret tunnel exit and led him into the corridor that led to her rooms.

  ‘Shhh!’ she said in that girlish way that set Dostain aflame. ‘I want this to be a surprise for him.’

  He nodded dumbly, excruciatingly aware of how sweaty his hand was in hers.

  They went to her room. The door’s simple machine-spirit recognised her scent and opened inwards, inches of plasteel swinging noiselessly back. It reminded him that she had got into his room somehow, and he hadn’t questioned it.

  ‘I better go back,’ he said, suddenly afraid. Maybe he should act first, crush her pretty neck in his hands, but she was so strong, and he didn’t think he could bring himself to do it.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ she said. ‘Listen, he’s in there now. He wants to see you.’

  Dostain calmed enough to listen. Someone was singing tunelessly over a running cascade. Pollein tugged his hand and they went into her chambers. They were so charmingly feminine and disarrayed. He expected there would be bits of twig in her bed, she spent so much time outdoors.

  The singing grew louder. The door to Pollein’s ablutorial was open. Steam came from inside tinged golden with lumen glow. The cascade shut off. The singing ceased a few bars later.

  ‘Dib?’ called Pollein. She clapped her hands in delight. She seemed to sparkle when she was happy. Dostain looked away then looked again, like a clown in the comedia, unable to believe his eyes. She was sparkling, a burst of firefly lights that fizzed out around her head. That strange feeling he’d had upon the mountain returned. Once he could dismiss it. Twice he could not. He moved back from his aunt, but she kept a tight hold of his hand.

  Dostain expected the strange hairy man of the mountain, but instead a smooth-skinned youth came out, a towel wrapped around his waist. He appeared to be a little older than Dostain, but different in every other respect. In place of Dostain’s noble flab, he had a torso as sculpted as a statue’s, and flawless skin that was tanned a light colour, almost gold. His hair was also gold, and his face was beautiful enough to drive Dostain’s desire for Pollein back a moment.

  But the eyes, they were the same. If anything, they were worse. Dostain averted his gaze before it could be captured.

  ‘Hello, Dostain. What a pleasure to see you.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You know who I am.’

  ‘The Devil-in-the-bush,’ said Dostain, risking a glance. The youth gave him an admonishing look.

  ‘You know that’s not my name. Why don’t you call me Dib, like your lovely aunt. That’s fitting, isn’t it? Halfway between a name that is not mine, and one I will not tell you.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘That awful wiry pelt?’ Dib brushed at his shoulder. A hank of matted hair drifted to the floor. ‘Gone, thanks to your aunt here. She’s not just a pretty face. She has magic in her.’

  Pollein squealed in delight. ‘He says I’m talented. Can you believe? Me, talented! And I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘Oh yes you have. You are key, my dear, to a world of wonderful delight.’ He slid an easy arm around her waist. Pollein released Dostain’s hand finally. Dostain was at once relieved and furiously jealous. Dib gave Dostain an outrageous grin, then sat on the bed, dragging Pollein down with him. He patted the sheets the other side of himself and said, ‘Come sit with me. We have much to discuss.’

  ‘I’d rather go back to my bed,’ said Dostain miserably.

  ‘Very well. Then you may sleep in your bed for another twenty-seven nights, before the Imperial forces march into this palace and drag you from it, and send you away to labour as a slave for the rest of your life.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Dostain.

  ‘Again you profess ignorance!’ said Dib, throwing up his hands. ‘If you are going to be obtuse, then I will spell it out for you. Matua Superior fell three weeks ago. Your armies crumble before their advance. The only reason they have not levelled this place from the void is that they wish to take the world as intact as possible.’

  ‘We are a prize, I suppose,’ said Dostain glumly.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ said Dib, and there was the sting of venom in his words. ‘Their general, Iskhandrian of the planet Atraxia, is a canny man. A dozen systems in this sector teeter on the edge of rebellion, and have refused demands like your Aunt Missrine. Teeter, totter, teeter!’ he said, his smile perfect and white and full of malice. ‘If they are too heavy-handed, the others will most likely rebel out of fear. Being merciful to the populace not only keeps Geratomro working and in minimal need of reconstruction, it undermines the efforts of rebellious lords to foment dissent in their own populations. While treating the ruling class with utter ruthlessness discourages other Planetary Governors from taking that final step. I hear they are burning the lords-civil of the defeated cities alive,’ said Dib. ‘Fancy that! That could be you.’

  Dostain clutched at his night gown.

  ‘Don’t be disheartened. Do you know why they are doing this?’ asked Dib.

  ‘Because the Emperor is merciful in His wisdom?’

  ‘No!’ snarled Dib, his face twisting into something inhuman. He recovered his smile and his smooth manner. ‘Because they are weak. At any other time they would bomb every major settlement on this dreary mudball into pieces. But they can’t, because if they do and push the others into rebellion they will be unable to bring them to heel. They lack the souls under arms. The other worlds will fight harder because they will have nothing to lose. The Imperium will lose this whole subsector, perhaps forever. They do not want that.’

  ‘They’ll burn me because of what my aunt did.’ Dostain was close to tears.

  ‘No, they’ll probably just mutilate you with cybernetic implants and enslave you, so that’ll be all right, won’t it?’

  Dostain whimpered.

  Pollein sat next to Dib and took his hand.

  ‘There is another way, you know. One that can bring you to power. You will be planetary governor. You will be king! That’s what you’ve wanted all along.’

  ‘How? How can you do that?’

  ‘Dear little Dostain, I am not a little hairy legend, not really. And I’m not a scheming fat boy like you, who has bitten off more than he can eat. I am... Well, I suppose I am a kind of herald for a great and powerful master. I am sent out to find those worthy, those who might rally to our cause. For the few I find that accept me, there are allies I can call. And then there are more allies after them,’ said Dib, making an apologetic face. ‘They’re not very nice but they are very powerful. They can be on your side, but it all depends how willing you are to...’ Dib trailed off.

  ‘Willing to do what?’

  ‘To make a show of commitment,’ he said. ‘These allies I have, they will not come for a quaking milksop. But they will come for a man who can show them his quality, his resolve. Do you want me to tell you what you have to do?’

  Dostain looked to Pollein. She smiled at him and nodded encouragingly. Dostain’s heart melted. He ignored the fact that she was leaning into Dib, her fingers interlaced with
his. Dib inclined is head towards her. ‘You want her too? She can be yours,’ his face seemed to be saying.

  A sudden strength suffused Dostain, a light strong and pure. For a moment, the Emperor had His eyes upon him, he was sure.

  ‘No,’ said Dostain. ‘I do not want to know.’

  He fled the room, the laughter of Pollein and Dib ringing in his ears. He did not stop until he had reached the palace chapel and locked the door behind him.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Road North

  RASTOR TERRITORY

  GERATOMRO

  086898.M41

  Five Atlas recovery tanks roared together, straining to drag Ostrakhan’s Rebirth out of the ditch. Adeptus Mechanicus machine priests on hovering thrones or stilted mecha-legs picked their way around the mud, rebuking the men of the Imperial Guard for their lack of proper reverence. Tow cables creaked against a massive drag beam. The recovery tanks were five monstrous oxen tethered to an unmovable plough, like the legend of Tiw’s Acre from back home on Paragon, re-enacted by giant metal machines. Tank tracks churned in the mud. The Hellhammer didn’t move, and the Atlases burrowed deeper into the mud. They strained and strained, until a tow cable suddenly gave, upsetting the balance of the bar. The tanks skidded forwards, scattering men.

  Horns blared. Enginseers and higher ranking priests blasted orders from vox-emitters turned up to maximum gain. They yelled Gothic and binaric and lingua-technis and forge world pidgin, but it all amounted to the same thing – ‘Stop!’

  The lesser priests slogged their way through the torn-up ground on foot. Hard words were exchanged between the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Mechanicus. Disputes were resolved. The arguments died away. Servitors adapted for auto-worship were brought forwards. Censers wafted scented smoke over the tank’s glacis while machine adepts splattered the hull with holy oils in an attempt to placate its angry soul. Honoured Captain Hannick watched on from the cupola hatch, his arms folded. Bannick caught his eye. The captain raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug at the chaos going on around his command. Bannick grinned and touched the brim of his cap, and went to find Meggen and Kolios.