Octavia let the subject drop. Feints within feints, distractions within distractions… Nothing the Eighth Legion did was ever simple. Well, except when they ran away.
She tossed the coin again, and dutifully, Hound stumbled over to get it. As he crouched by the door, wrapped hands struggling to scoop the coin from the floor, the bulkhead rattled open. Hound staggered back, trundling over to his mistress. The humans watched an immense figure filling the doorway, its helm panning left and right, examining them each in turn.
The Legionary stepped into the chamber. His armour was almost devoid of ostentation, without a single skull or oath scroll bound to the ceramite. With every Night Lord bar the Atramentar deployed to the surface, Septimus knew who this had to be.
He didn’t salute. He wouldn’t salute.
The warrior regarded the four of them, silent but for his armour’s voice, thrumming with each movement. In one hand he clutched a black staff, topped by the skull of a creature bearing a grotesque abundance of teeth.
“This chamber,” he growled in Gothic. “It reeks of mating.”
Maruc’s face screwed up in a crinkle of confusion. He wasn’t sure he heard that right. Hound glanced blindly in the direction of Octavia and Septimus, which was the only cue the Night Lord needed.
“Ah. Not mating. Desire. The smell is your biological attraction to one another. Your scents are histologically compatible.” The Night Lord snorted, a beast snuffling an unpleasant scent from its senses. “Another foul flaw of the human condition. When you do not stink of fear, you stink of lust.”
Octavia had narrowed her eyes at the beginning of his tirade. She had no idea who this was, but her value made her brave.
“I am not human,” she said, more cattily than she’d intended.
The warrior chuckled at that. “A fact the slave staring at you with desire in his one remaining eye would do well to remember. Homo sapiens and Homo navigo were never meant to mix with any graceful genetic fusion. The balance of your pheromones is a curious one. I am surprised you do not repel one another.”
Septimus didn’t hide the ice in his voice. “What do you want, Ruven?”
“So you know me, then.” The Legionary’s slanted eye lenses fixed upon the artificer. “You must be the seventh.”
“I am.”
“Then you should treat me with more respect, lest you share the same fate as the second.” Ruven chuckled again, a low baritone song. “Have you ever seen a soul ripped from its housing of flesh? There is a moment, just a single, beautiful moment, when the body remains standing, every nerve transmitting a tide of electrical fire from the misfiring brain. The soul itself thrashes, still bound closely enough to its corpse that it shares the agony of a detonating nervous system, but unable to do anything beyond writhe in the aetheric currents.”
Ruven gave a contented sigh. “Truthfully, I have rarely seen a more perfect embodiment of terror incarnate. I thanked the second for the gift of his death, for I learned a great deal about the warp, and my own powers, that night.”
“You killed Secundus.” Septimus blinked. “You killed him.”
The masked warrior performed a courtly bow. “Guilty.”
“No.” Septimus swallowed, trying to force himself to think. “Talos would have killed you.”
“He tried.” Ruven stalked around the armoury, examining the tools of Septimus’ trade. He stopped when he reached Hound. “And what are you, little wretch?” Ruven nudged the attendant with the side of his boot, knocking Hound from his seat. “Navigator Etrigius took poor care of his slaves, didn’t he?” He looked at Octavia. “You have inherited the dregs, girl.”
Hound snarled up at him from the floor, but Ruven was already moving on. “Septimus, you vastly overestimate your master’s abilities—and his sense of prudence—if you believe Talos could ever kill me. After Secundus, he did try, and I commended his enthusiasm every time. Ultimately, while he never forgave me, he abandoned the tedious attempts at revenge. I believe he grew tired of failure.”
Octavia raised an eyebrow. Abandoning revenge? That didn’t sound like Talos.
Septimus was less inclined to hold his tongue. “You did this to my face,” he said. “The prison world, in the Crythe system.”
Ruven peered down at the mortal, regarding the expensive, subtle augmetic work at his temple and eye socket.
“Ah, so you were the Thunderhawk pilot. What a well-trained rodent you are, boy.”
Septimus clenched his teeth, fisting his hands to fight the overwhelming urge to reach for his pistols. “You sent those prisoners to kill us on Solace.”
Octavia’s confidence was evaporating now. While Septimus had been left for dead on Solace, mutilated in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit, the survivors had beaten her to the edge of consciousness and dragged her by her hair into the bowels of the prison complex.
“That was you? You sent them? Four hours,” she whispered. “I was down there in the dark, with those… animals… For. Four. Hours.”
Ruven shook his head, dismissing their melodramatic human nonsense. “Enough of this whining. My armour requires maintenance.”
“I am not your artificer.” Septimus almost laughed.
“You tend First Claw’s weapons and armour, do you not?”
“Yes, I do. And you are not one of First Claw.”
“I was once. I will be again.”
“Then you may order me to tend to your armour if First Claw ever accepts you again, and I will still refuse. Until then, get out.”
Ruven glanced at each of them in turn. “What did you just say?”
“Get out.” Septimus rose to his feet. He didn’t go for his guns, knowing such a gesture was worthless. The Legionary could slaughter them all in a heartbeat if he chose. “Get out of my master’s armoury. This is the domain of First Claw and those in service to them.”
Ruven stood in impassive silence. This was something he’d simply not expected. Curiosity and amazement far outweighed any anger.
“Get out.” Octavia, unlike Septimus, had drawn her pistol. She aimed it up at the sorcerer’s horned helm.
Hound followed suit, his grubby shotgun emerging from a split in his rags. “Mistress says to go.”
Maruc was last, aiming his polished-iron lasrifle. “The lady asked you to leave.”
Ruven still didn’t move. “Talos used to train his slaves to much higher standards,” he said.
Now Septimus drew his pistols, aiming both of them at the Night Lord’s faceplate. Meaningless gesture or not, the slaves stood united.
“I told you to get out,” he repeated.
“You do not sincerely believe this display is actually threatening, do you?” Ruven took a step forward. Twin red dots wavered over his left eye lens, as Septimus thumbed the safeties off. The Legionary shook his head. “You live only because of your value to the Legion.”
“No,” Septimus glared, one of his eyes dark and human, the other glassy and artificial. “We live because you are alone on this ship, and loathed by all who sail her. My master shares much with me. I know the Exalted seeks the smallest, meagre reason to execute you. I know First Claw would kill you before trusting you again. You have no rights over our lives. We live not because of our worth, but because you are worthless.”
Before Ruven could reply, Octavia reached her free hand to her bandana, hooking her fingers under the edge of the cloth.
“Get out.” The pistol trembled in her other fist. “Get out.”
Ruven inclined his head, conceding the point. “This was most educational, slaves. I thank you for it.”
With that, he turned and stalked from the room. The bulkhead sealed behind him.
“Who the hell was that?” Maruc asked them.
“A bad soul,” Hound was scowling. His sewn eyes seemed puckered, squeezed tighter than usual. “A very bad soul.”
Septimus holstered his guns. In three steps, he’d crossed the room, taking Octavia in his arms. Maruc looked away, a sudden feeling of awkw
ardness prickling his skin. It was the most he’d seen them touch, and he knew Septimus well enough to judge that it’d taken all of the artificer’s courage to be so bold. He could point a gun at a demigod easily enough, but could barely muster the stones to offer a little comfort to someone he cared for.
She writhed out of his embrace almost immediately. “Don’t… touch me. Not right now.” Octavia shivered as she slipped from his arms, but her hands didn’t stop shaking once she was free. “Hound, let’s go.” Her voice quavered on the simple command.
“Yes, mistress.”
Once the door sealed again, the two men were left alone. Maruc placed his rifle back on the workbench. “Well, that was exciting.”
Septimus was still looking at the closed door. “I’m going after her,” he said.
Maruc smiled for his friend’s benefit, despite the way his heart still raced in the wake of the confrontation with the Legionary.
“You picked the wrong time to grow a backbone. Let her be alone. What she said, about being taken by the prisoners on Solace—was that true?”
Septimus nodded.
“Then the last thing she wants at the moment is a man’s arms around her,” Maruc pointed out.
Septimus crashed down onto his seat, leaning forwards, his arms on his knees and his head lowered. Ash-blond hair fell forwards, curtaining his pale features. His dark eye blinked, his blue lens clicked and whirred.
“I hate this ship.”
“That’s just what she says.”
Septimus shook his head. “It was so much easier before she joined the crew. Come when summoned; do the duty; know your value. I questioned nothing, because there was no one to answer to.” He took a breath, trying to frame his thoughts, but came up empty.
“How long has it been,” Maruc kept his voice gentle, “since you judged yourself by human standards? Not as a slave without any choice, but as a man halfway through the only life he gets?”
Septimus raised his head, meeting Maruc’s gaze. “What do you mean?”
“Throne, it’s cold on this ship. My bones ache.” He rubbed the back of his neck with oil-blackened hands. “You know what I mean. Before Octavia, you did all of these things without ever needing to look at yourself. You did what you did because you had no choice, and you never judged any of your actions because there was no one else to see them. But now there’s her, and there’s me. And all of a sudden you feel like a heretic son of a bitch, don’t you?”
Septimus said nothing.
“Well, good.” Maruc smiled, but it was merciful rather than mocking. “You should feel like that, because that’s what you are. You denied it to yourself for all those years, but now you’ve got other eyes watching you.”
Septimus was already buckling his machete to his shin in crude echo of First Claw’s sheathed gladius blades.
“Going somewhere?” Maruc asked.
“I need some time to think. I’m going to check on my gunship.”
“Your gunship? Your gunship?”
Septimus adjusted his beaten jacket before heading to the door. “You heard me.”
Cyrion reflected, as he occasionally did, on the attitudes of his brothers. After ascending another spiralling flight of stairs, he’d torn through several linked chambers, each with the austere chill and bare decoration of an Ecclesiarchy cathedral, and he was beginning to wonder just where the serfs on this level were hiding.
If this level was even used much at all.
Occasionally, he came across stragglers, but these were unarmed, terrified things, and he doubted killing them would draw much attention at all. Still, he cut most of them down, careful to let a handful flee, screaming, through the monastery.
Hopefully they’d bring the Marines Errant down here, so the Bleeding Eyes would finish their brutally simple missions, and the Claws could be done with the siege completely.
Cyrion was less enamoured of the plan than the rest of his brothers. He didn’t care that the Bleeding Eyes had claimed the right to destroy the secondary generatorum—let them play whatever games they wished, and drape themselves in glory if they so chose. No, what stuck in Cyrion’s craw was a much simpler, much less palatable notion.
He, like his brothers, didn’t care about Vilamus.
The Imperium would no doubt consider this a great tragedy, and scribes were sure to waste oceans of ink in detailing the travesty of its loss. Lord Huron, likewise, would gain much from the siege, and this would be archived in history as one of his boldest, most daring raids.
The day the Marines Errant were doomed to a slow, ignoble demise. The night an Adeptus Astartes Chapter died.
And that was what troubled Cyrion. They were going to be instrumental in striking a vicious wound against the Imperium, yet neither he, nor any of his brothers, cared.
All eyes were on the true prize: the Echo of Damnation. Talos, Xarl, the Exalted, all of them—the battle they hungered for was going to be waged against fellow traitors. They would rather bleed their own allies than focus on injuring the Imperium.
The attitude was not a new one: Cyrion had ventured into the Eye of Terror on countless occasions, witnessing the brutal crusades waged by the remnants of the Legions against one another. Brother against brother, warband against warband—millions of souls shedding blood in the name of their chosen warlords.
He’d fought in those wars himself; against hordes of Legionaries fighting for power, for faith, for conquest or for nothing beyond the pure release of rage, letting fury spill from them like corruption from a lanced boil. On more than one occasion, he’d opened fire on other Night Lords, gunning down brothers whose sin was no more than choosing to follow a different banner.
Their greatest enemy was their own inability to unite without unrivalled leadership. Few warriors possessed the strength and cunning to truly hold the disparate armies of the Eye together. Instead, loyalties were sworn at the lowest levels, and warbands formed from those who unified in the hope of surviving and raiding together. Betrayal was a way of life, for each and every soul in those armies was already a traitor once. What did one more treachery matter, when they’d already forsaken their oaths to mankind’s empire?
Cyrion, for all his flaws, was no fool. He knew these fundamental truths, and he accepted them.
But he’d never seen it play out like this before. In the past, even at Crythe, inflicting harm upon the Imperium came before all else. It was the one goal guaranteed to force warbands to unite, even if only for a time.
Yet none of them cared about Vilamus. None of them cared about tearing this worthless, insignificant Chapter from the pages of history. Instead, they were ripping it from the galaxy’s face with all the passion of wiping blood from their boots.
Was this how it began? Was this the path that ended with Uzas, snarling instead of speaking, blinded by his own hatred of everything that lived and breathed? Perhaps this was how all corruption began… in the quiet moments, facing the fact that avenging the sins of the past mattered more than any hope for the future?
Now there was a thought. What would they do, once the war was won? Cyrion grinned as he walked, enjoying the prospect of an unanswerable question.
He had to admit Vilamus was a bastion of the most majestic, bleak beauty, and such things appealed to him. In a way, it reminded him of Tsagualsa, stirring the faint embers of a long-fallow melancholy. Tsagualsa had been hauntingly beautiful—a bastion beyond words, raised by thousands of enslaved workers grinding their lives away into the dust of that barren world.
Cyrion replaced his helm, still tasting the blood of the last three serfs he’d slain. Flickering after-images danced behind his eyes, telling him nothing of any worth. Moments of great emotion in their lives… joy, terror, pain… All meaningless.
His bootsteps echoed as he left the chamber, moving back into the labyrinthine hallways and corridors that linked the subdistricts of this immense, baffling monastery. It would be glorious to be able to claim such a fortress as both haven and home, rat
her than the dank decks of the Covenant, or worse, the Legion’s claimed worlds in the Eye—but its immensity was a weapon against invaders. His retinal map had failed a while ago, and he’d not studied enough sections to commit the entire thing to even an eidetic memory.
Stumbling around lost and butchering helpless Chapter servants was all very amusing, but it wasn’t—
A squad of liveried, armed Chapter serfs ran around the far end of the corridor, cracking lasrifle safeties off and taking firing positions. Cyrion heard the officer yelling orders. It was by far the most organised defence he’d witnessed yet. At last, Vilamus was reacting, its defenders hunting the intruders. He almost charged them, such was the call of instinct, despite the fact more and more of them were filling the corridor’s far end. Their movements were a stampede of footsteps on stone.
In truth, he’d enjoyed the easy massacre so far, but things were about to become a measure more difficult.
Cyrion turned and broke into a run, leading his slow pursuers on a merry chase. Already, he heard them voxing for more of their kindred, calling for other squads to cut him off ahead.
Let them come. The more that arrived, the fewer would be left to defend the upper levels.
Brekash vocalised his anger as a chittering hiss through his mouth grille. The nuances of language within that single sibilate were there for all to hear, but only his brothers in the Bleeding Eyes had any chance of understanding the meaning.
Lucoryphus understood all too well. He rounded on the other Raptor, his claws crackling in echo of his own irritation.
“Do not make me slay you,” he warned.
Brekash gestured to the whining generator, easily the size of a Land Raider battle tank. Another bark of un-language left his vocaliser.
“This is meaningless,” he insisted. “How many of these have we destroyed? How many?”
Lucoryphus replied in kind with a condor’s shriek, the cry of an apex predator foreshadowing his words. “You are being moronic, and my patience bleeds dry. Destroy it, and let us move on.”
[Night Lords 02] - Blood Reaver Page 26