The Path of Heaven

by Chris Wraight

  Follow.+ Arvida was no longer addressing Veil.

  The images shifted, moving from Veil’s memories, tracing a line out from them and hunting down the soul-warmth of this new man. Arvida’s mind swept down darker corridors, floating through sealed doors. He saw more great charts engraved on marble, etched with snaking tracery and marked with the names of many worlds. He saw plans, devices, and heard voices raised in argument. Strange faces came in and out of view – bloated, black-eyed, curious and malign.

  Dimly, he was aware of some commotion back in the world of the senses, but by then he was too deep to care. The olive-skinned man turned back and smiled, revealing juvenat-pristine teeth. Another chart hung on the wall, lined with gold. Arvida saw the spidery tracery on it, backed with obsidian, carved by the man’s own hand. There were attendants there too, black-robed, wearing masks that obscured their faces. The smell of incense – musky, heady – filled his nostrils.

  The man was gesturing, but it was hard to follow the movements. The trace was weakening. Soon it would be gone. Arvida focused on the wall, on the chart of gold. He saw words carved against the stylised void, crafted in runes that leaked their age into the vision like smoke.

  Dark Glass,+ he sent, recognising the script. There were others, a string of worlds along a warp-conduit. He saw more lines of gold, picking out a pattern down through layers of the Ocean, heading back towards a young yellow sun. Something about the pattern was familiar, and it set his teeth on edge.

  Then the man turned again, looking straight at him. He was still smiling, but the expression was cold.

  You do not belong here.+

  Arvida snapped back, and the visions tumbled into clouds of grey. That should not have been possible – he was observing events of the past, glimpsed as reflections of reflections, sealed into the timeline like insects in amber...

  He reeled, feeling the ground – the real ground – lurching. He heard cries of pain, muffled and distant. ‘Release me!’

  He couldn’t open his eyes – it was as if they had been welded shut. The pain of the flesh-change thundered in his temples, and blood boiled up in his chest.

  Brother,+ came Yesugei’s mind-voice, lancing through the confusion, cutting out the tumult. Arvida latched on to it, clinging like a drowning man to flotsam. +You are hurting him.+

  Someone was screaming now. Arvida fought his way back to the surface, clawing away from the visions that clustered around him. Right at the end, as he felt the images fade and ripple into nothing, he saw a shadow gazing up at him from the depths – an immense figure, crimson-maned, one-eyed, stumbling blindly amid the disintegrating walls of aether-magick.

  Then he was out, panting, flushed, his vision shaky. The mortal was on his knees, crying with pain. Arvida realised he still held his hand, but his gauntlet had crushed it. Blood welled up from the burst mass between his armoured fingers.

  He released his grip instantly, and Veil collapsed, cradling his broken hand. Arvida got to his feet, his head hammering, his breath still short. Yesugei was also standing, looking at him with concern.

  ‘What is wrong?’ he asked, but Arvida was not listening. He fell back against the cell wall, staring around him as if seeing them for the first time.

  ‘I thought I saw…’ he slurred.

  Yesugei came up to him, grabbed him by both shoulders. ‘What? What you see?’

  Arvida blinked hard. He swallowed back the vomit that had risen in his gorge. He felt the Change subside, frothing like sea-foam as it sank back into quiescence.

  He had seen so much. The world of the senses solidified around him, bringing the pain back with it, driven like spikes into his now-open eyes.

  ‘What you see?’ Yesugei asked again, more firmly. Veil whimpered in the corner, ignored.

  For a moment, Arvida had no words for it. It felt as if his mouth would shatter if he opened it. He stared at Yesugei’s scarred face, and it briefly seemed as if his gene-father stared back at him, superimposed on the wind-beaten Chogorian features beneath.

  ‘I know,’ he croaked, tasting blood at the back of his mouth.

  ‘What do you know? Tell me.’

  Even then, he could not utter that truth. But there was another truth to impart, the one he had been sent to delve for.

  ‘I know where he is,’ he said, committing the star chart to memory before the image faded. He swallowed hard, pushing all else down, away from where it could cloud his judgement. ‘You want this man Achelieux. I know where he went.’

  The Endurance broke the veil with its customary brutality, slicing apart the matter of the universe in a blaze of cascading silver. After-ripples of violence juddered across the void, leaking plumes of crackling aether-matter amid trails of dirty smog. The immense warship thundered into full physicality, row upon row of heavy gunnery sliding through the abyss. Seconds later the others came, punching through like thrown spears amid the seething clouds of real space entry.

  Mortarion strode to the edge of the bridge’s command dais. Ahead of him, the cathedral-sized viewport unfurled its warp shutters, exposing a crowded view of local space. War vessels had assembled, hundreds of them, all bearing the death’s-head sigil of the XIV Legion on their pale prows. As the Endurance came among them, idents began to flicker into life across cogitator lenses – the Indomitable Will, Reaper’s Scythe, Moritatis Oculix, Stalwart.

  Mortarion did not need to watch the runes to know who had answered his call. He recognised the hull of every battleship in his warfleet, and scoured the void ahead for those he had summoned. The vista was clogged with detail – minor escort wings casting shadows across the flanks of the greatest beasts, tenders ferrying supplies from carriers to line battleships, refit shuttles in Mechanicum-red hovering around colossal engine clusters and thruster rings.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  Below him, in the pits and channels of the Endurance’s command bridge, masked thralls kept their heads down. The Deathshroud stationed around the edges of the throne dais said nothing, as ever, but stared silently through their slanted armour-masks. Great coils of green-tinged smoke drifted up from rusted brazier-columns standing sentinel over the teeming crew-stations, and the air stayed humid and close, thick with screens of dust.

  ‘Where is the Terminus Est?’

  More idents scrolled down the lenses, now picking out the new arrivals – commandeered ships from other Legions, older Barbarus craft pressed into service, auxiliary vessels with Army regiment insignias scoured out and replaced with the death’s-head emblem. The fleet was enormous, the greater part of the entire Legion pulled back together from a hundred different separate engagements. Even as the augurs added to the muster-list, yet more emerged from the Mandeville points and steamed across real space to join the throngs.

  No one on the Endurance’s bridge could answer the primarch. Ulfar, the ship’s master, ordered extra scans but offered no opinion. Trangh, the master of the watch, looked up from under his cowl, but shook his head. The Navigator transmitted nothing from her cloistered chambers, and shut the comm-links down.

  Only Marshal Gremus Kalgaro, Siegemaster of the Legion and successor to the fanatic Rask, standing less than three metres from the primarch’s side in his bloodstained artificer plate, grunted audibly.

  ‘First Captain Typhon may not have received the summons, lord,’ he said, his voice a low growl.

  Mortarion shot him an acid look. ‘Oh, he received them. This is the first order he has actually defied. What do I make of that? Has he recanted his choice?’

  Kalgaro lowered his eyes. ‘Unlikely,’ he muttered.

  Mortarion limped stolidly across the dais, thudding Silence’s iron heel across the adamantium deck. ‘Then summon those who deigned to heed.’

  All across the comms-level, cable-shackled crew hastened to obey. One by one, ghostly green outlines of Legion commanders shimmered into view, arra
nged in a rough semicircle around the primarch. Some wore their helms, others showed their battle-scarred faces. All were dour, heavy, rundown.

  ‘Know that I do not take you from your duties without cause,’ Mortarion told them, pacing among the luminous spectres. ‘The Warmaster prepares the final approach to Terra, and demands the elimination of the Fifth Legion on our flanks. This honour he gives to us. We have their coordinates, which are being sent to your ships as I speak.’

  None of the hololithic faces so much as twitched. The commanders were all of Barbarus, stolid and inured to total war even before the coming of the Emperor. They had trained their guns on their own kind at Isstvan, then slaughtered their fellow legionaries across the dark sands of the Urgall. They did not question orders.

  ‘The Khan and his depleted Legion have admitted the inevitable, and drawn their forces together at Aerelion. You know he has avoided pitched battle, but now there can be no more evasion. The raids are over. We make for the warp within the hour – prepare your ships for immediate despatch.’

  Even as he spoke, Mortarion kept checking the muster-logs. At any moment, he half expected the faces before him to be joined by one more – the greatest of his servants, the one who from the start had been the most loyal, the most diligent.

  ‘There will be others in this armada. The Third Legion is due to join us, if they can keep pace. I know what that means to you, and I share your disgust. Swallow it. This alliance will not be lasting – with their numbers, we have the means to end the Fifth Legion cleanly. After that, we will be at the Warmaster’s side. This he has promised me.’

  Calas’ absence nagged at him, spoiling like a poison embedded in wine. There had never been any explanation, just a sudden silence, echoing through the void. Typhon might have been killed, though that was hard to imagine. Even harder was the thought that he had turned to some other cause. That was surely impossible. What other cause existed for them now?

  ‘Remember your vows. Those of you still consorting with the warp-fouled, cease. All licence for residual phosphex and bio-weaponry is given – you have your stocks, see that they are deployed in full. I wish to give my brothers a lesson here, not that I have much hope it will be heeded. We are flesh. We are mortal blood. This is enough. It will always be enough.’

  Somewhere far below, though, Grulgor still drew foetid breath. The spirit of Lermenta haunted the ship’s bilges, lingering over the treasures taken from the worlds of sorcerers. Every vessel in the fleet had its secrets now, monsters and daemon-spoor buried amid glyphs and rune-scripts. It was hard to recover that which had been unlocked – hard, but not impossible.

  ‘We have not fought beside one another, all together, for more than two years. The galaxy has forgotten what the sons of Barbarus are capable of. It is time to remind them.’

  But Typhon would have made it complete. His return would have removed the last scintilla of doubt.

  ‘Now go, prepare your ships,’ snarled Mortarion, pushing the irritation deep down. That would be the end of it – grand speeches were not his way and never had been, for the lure of fresh killing was enough. ‘Arm every warrior and make ready every weapon. We leave within the hour.’

  Fourteen

  Ilya took her place in the chamber of kurultai, and ran her eyes over the throng, trying to ascertain how many warriors had made it and how many were missing. The khans of many brotherhoods sat in ranks, all facing a low stone-flagged platform. Flames burned in ceremonial pillars, and the banners of the old Chogorian realms and empires stood behind the platform, all traced in gold and red, hung from wooden poles and lashed in place with leather thongs.

  The Stormseers sat around the edge of the platform, two dozen of them, all that remained of the entire Legion’s complement. Yesugei was with them in the place of honour, as was Arvida. Ilya sat beside them both, given her position by the ever-respectful ordu. The commanders of the Legion sat on the other side of the semicircle: Ganzorig and Qin Fai, the two noyan-khans of the Hordes, Shiban Tachseer, Hai-Shan, Namahi of the keshig, Jubal Ahn-ezen. Other famed warriors, tempered during the long-running battles of the war, sat close by – Ainbaatar of the Brotherhood of the Night’s Star, Khulan of the Brotherhood of the Golden Path.

  Facing them all, seated on the old plains-chair, was the Khagan, the Khan of Khans, wearing the long kaftan and leather jerkin of the Altak. His unarmoured hands rested on his knees, his severe face gazing down from the high vantage, half hidden in the flickering firelight. His oil-black air was unbound and hung across his shoulders. For some in the chamber, this was the first time they had laid eyes on their liege-lord for years.

  Ilya did not look at Shiban, sitting across the semicircle of the hall from her, nor at Arvida close by. The atmosphere in the chamber was tense, fuelled by rumours and counter-rumours.

  The last of the khans took their places. A gong sounded, the lumens faded and the flames reared up in their burnished bowls to compensate.

  ‘My sons,’ said Jaghatai in Khorchin, sweeping his gaze across the assembled throng. ‘You have fought through fire and pain to reach this place. The road has been long. Many who ought to stand with us now are gone.’

  Ilya felt her pulse pick up. After five years with the White Scars, she could follow their language with some ease, and thought it was never more beautiful than when spoken by the primarch. His voice, in that place, still had its old wind-burned resonance – low, measured, stained with quiet power. The khans, the zadyin arga, the lords of the Legion, they all listened intently. Even now, there were no guarantees, and none knew yet how he would rule.

  ‘If time remained, I would give honour to them all,’ Jaghatai said. ‘But every hour we remain here is perilous. We must move again, but now the only question remains – to where? You all know the pattern of this war. The enemy bends the warp to his will with storms we cannot pierce. Our routes to Terra are watched, or blocked, all by forces that outnumber us many times over. We have tried to break free, and have been cast back every time. Survival has been secured by remaining asunder, by running apart, by deception. That cannot suffice any longer, for the noose has tightened. Only two choices remain – to attempt the Throneworld again, or to make our stand here, far from home, and hope to wound my brother so deeply that the sacrifice will not be wasteful.

  ‘For, doubt this not, if we engage the Warmaster’s forces here, there can be only one outcome. Many Traitor Legions ply their way towards Terra, supported and aided by their countless mortal armies. We are strong enough to draw his attention, but not to end him.’

  That brought a low ripple of murmurs. Many of the khans would have disputed that, given the chance, yet none openly gainsaid their lord. Ilya felt her grip on her seat edge tighten.

  ‘And if we honour our oaths?’ Jaghatai went on. ‘Are all ways barred to us now? Maybe so, maybe not. We have been pursuing one hope, little more than a rumour. In another age, we would not have stooped to such, but the times are straitened.’ His dark gaze moved to Arvida. ‘Sorcerer, you will tell.’

  Arvida stood, turning to address the rows of khans. Ilya thought he moved awkwardly, as if carrying an old wound. Had he been hurt at Kalium?

  ‘We have a name,’ said Arvida, also in Khorchin. ‘It is Novator Pieter Achelieux, known to us through the service of General Ravallion. Of all those of the Navis Nobilite, it is believed he holds the greatest chance of divining a route for us. The general vouched for him, and amid the last sequence of raids he was sought on the world Herevail. We did not find him there, but now we have a location: the Catullus Rift. To the best of our knowledge, there is nothing there worthy of attention from the enemy. It is an isolated place, of no strategic import and with no recorded activity. If we wish to seek this man out, that is where we must go.’ Arvida looked back up to the high dais. ‘If we wish to seek him out,’ he said again.

  The sorcerer resumed his place.

  ‘So this is the sage�
�s counsel, the one we have been fighting for,’ said Jaghatai. ‘It is in our power to reach Catullus. If this man exists, we may find him. And if he has the power over the aether we hope, that will give us our way home.’

  ‘And if he does not?’ Shiban asked.

  Ilya’s heart sank. The scepticism in his voice was plain.

  ‘Then, Shiban Tachseer,’ said Jaghatai, ‘it may be as good a place as any to meet the enemy.’

  Shiban smiled – a strained expression on his scarred face. ‘Forgive me, Khagan, but this is kurultai, where all words may be spoken. Many have already fallen chasing this dream. Every battle we fight takes us further from where we need to be. There are other choices.’

  ‘There are,’ said Jaghatai.

  ‘Our home,’ said Shiban, turning to face his brothers and eliciting another subdued wave of agreement from the chamber. ‘If we cannot break open the path to Terra, we may yet return to Chogoris. We know nothing of its fate. Perhaps its people fight on, or perhaps it is laid waste.’ He looked up directly at the primarch. ‘If it is honour we are to satisfy, then we should first tend to the hearths of those who raised us.’

  ‘We cannot go back to Chogoris,’ said Yesugei. There was no triumph in his voice, only sadness. ‘It would be beyond our strength to try.’

  ‘And yet Terra is not.’

  ‘If Terra falls, nothing else remains.’ Yesugei did not look at Shiban, but addressed the primarch, as all at kurultai did. ‘The war would be over. Horus would be free to scour the rest of the galaxy, world by world.’

  ‘There are rumours,’ said Ganzorig, Hasik’s successor. ‘They say Ultramar still stands, that the Raven is still alive, in spite of everything. The Warmaster cannot be everywhere.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Yesugei. ‘But hand him the Throne and that will change.’