by Guy Haley
That had been the greatest lie of all. The universe was Nostramo writ large. Surviving in the stars was the same as surviving the streets of home. It made him almost nostalgic for the days he and his brother lived moment to moment, and fed on the weak.
So he perpetuated his tally of atrocity for survival’s sake. If that had one redeeming factor, it was that he was no longer a hypocrite.
His brother drew his sword, that strange gift from Skraivok, and flicked the tip across the throat of a soldier. The others flinched in horror as their comrade’s hot blood sprayed over them.
‘You!’ Kellenkir placed the sword tip against Govenisk’s chest. Kellendvar’s sense of misgiving increased. He experienced a moment of profound vertigo where he could not tear his attention from the sword. It hummed in his brother’s hand, eager for blood itself.
‘Speak. Tell me which tunnel the Ultramarines took, and you shall die easily. Do not, and you are next. I will begin with your left eye.’ He moved his sword to hover millimetres from the soldier’s face. ‘The pain you will experience as I pull it slowly from your face will be unbearable. If the cries of your comrades did not illustrate it adequately for you, experiencing it will.’ Kellenkir put up his sword. ‘Varathor, a knife.’
A cruelly serrated blade was pressed into his hand. The warrior behind Govenisk gripped his head in crushing hands. Kellenkir came towards him. The soldier let out a series of choking sobs as the blade came close to his face.
‘And now we begin,’ said Kellenkir.
‘No! Mercy! Please, please!’ shouted Govenisk. ‘The middle tunnel, they went down the middle tunnel!’ He squealed pathetically. His captor released his head, and he pawed at Kellenkir’s greaves with filthy hands. Kellenkir pushed him back with his foot.
‘Maybe I will take an eye anyway, so that I can be sure you are telling the truth.’
‘No!’ screamed the man. ‘Please, please, do not hurt me! I do not lie, it is the middle way, the middle way!’ He collapsed forward, weeping without restraint upon Kellenkir’s boot. His fellows looked sidelong at him, disgust on their faces at his craven capitulation.
‘Do not judge,’ said Kellendvar quietly. ‘Someone always gives in, in the end. If he had not, it would have been you, or you,’ he said, pointing. ‘Once the knives began their work.’ He looked around at the broken bodies of his own brothers, eighteen of them, piled up around the edge of the clearing. ‘You were worthy foes, for mortals. Think on that as we send you screaming to your deaths.’
‘Does the human speak the truth?’ asked Bordaan.
‘He does,’ said Kellenkir.
‘Then let us finish them and be on our way.’ Bordaan unclipped his bolter and aimed it at the man sobbing on the floor.
‘Not that one! He is mine,’ said Kellendvar. He strode forward, pulled up the squirming man by his hair. The man gripped Kellendvar’s wrist to lessen the pain, but would not look at him.
‘Look at me!’ shouted Kellendvar.
The soldier did as he was commanded. He was sobbing, snot and tears running down his face.
‘Your name is Govenisk?’
‘Yes, yes, Govenisk, my lord.’
‘Well, Govenisk, you have our thanks for your information.’ Kellendvar pushed his combat blade into the man’s belly and slid it upwards. Govenisk screamed loudly as he was eviscerated. Kellendvar dropped him into the mess of his own spilled guts.
‘A coward’s reward. Kill the others cleanly.’ He turned his back on the captives. The shrill cries of the Sothan irked him.
His brother was examining his new sword, holding it up to the light with a look of childish wonder on his face.
‘Are you well, brother?’ asked Kellendvar.
Four shots rang out. Brain matter and chips of bloody bone pattered against the back of his armour. Four bodies slumped into the crushed vegetation, and Govenisk screamed on in agony.
‘I am, I am well! Very well! Exultant, radiant!’ Kellenkir enthused. The exposed skin of his face and arms were caked in blood. ‘Do you see how beautiful my new sword is?’
‘Any gift from Skraivok should be treated with caution,’ said the headsman. ‘I do not trust it. It seems… uncanny.’
‘I was inclined to the same opinion as you, brother dear,’ said Kellenkir. He held the sword lightly, at a low guard. Kellendvar stepped to the side. Kellenkir tracked his movement, point towards his brother. ‘But I have grown to like it a great deal. A simple blade, but so light and sharp. Try it!’ He made no indication of holding it out to his brother, but continued to hold it as if ready to strike.
‘I do not wish to touch it.’ He gestured at his brother’s bare arms and head with his bloodied knife. ‘Put your armour back on. We go into the tunnels.’
‘Ha! You are ordering me now, little brother? Things do change.’ He looked at the pile of ruined meat that had been the Sothan Auxilia. ‘Such a conundrum. I do not need to clad my face and hands in ceramite. Victory is already ours, and we face only a hundred Ultramarines.’ With that he turned and clambered up the cliff face, and disappeared into the middle entrance.
Kellendvar cursed him inwardly. ‘Move out,’ he ordered the others.
‘Should we not wait for reinforcement, headsman? They will be with us soon.’
‘Leave a squad of five behind. Have them vox the others and inform where we’ve gone as soon as they get into range.’ He looked up at the looming peak. ‘This war would be easier if the damned mountain held its tongue.’
‘We are outnumbered, forty-one to over a hundred.’
‘Time is of greater concern than numbers,’ said Kellendvar. ‘The Ultramarines know something we do not, else why do they make such haste towards their own suicide? Come! This encounter has cost us far too much time. We enter the workings of the beacon now.’
Darkness more complete than any Kellendvar had ever known embraced him, and he faltered. He, who loved the night for the safety and opportunity it brought!
His brother Kellenkir moved ahead of him, alone. An ogre in the dark. He had to catch up, and jogged after. His men followed.
The tunnel ran straight for a long time. Kellenkir stayed always ahead of them. When they reached a branching, he moved unerringly, marching down each passageway as if he frequented them by habit. Lacking any other guidance, Kellendvar saw no reason not to follow him. The tunnel’s smooth black stone carried no scratch or mark to indicate which way their foes had gone. Kellenkir’s guess was as good as anyone else’s.
Kellenkir spoke rarely, and took to humming a disturbing tune full of odd pitch changes and dissonance. At first Kellendvar took it to be an unrelated collection of notes, a further display of madness. Over time he noted a pattern emerging from the tune, increasing in complexity each time it repeated. That worried him more, for it was a hideous melody that did nothing for his mood. The naked sword at Kellenkir’s side glinted with a leaden light from time to time, until he looked directly at it. Kellendvar had the impression the sword was taunting him, or had grown lax and allowed its true nature to be partially revealed, only growing dark when aware it was being directly observed. He could not keep his eyes from it. The presence was maddening, distracting, so arresting it began to overwhelm his perceptions of his brother, as if Kellenkir was carried by the sword and not vice versa.
An unwelcome tone came into Kellenkir’s voice when he did speak, mocking even the simplest pronouncements and orders. He was a cruel man by any mortal’s reckoning, but although Kellendvar did not agree with his brother’s insane creed, there had always been an internal logic to his actions. In the bloody deeds he did, Kellenkir had been attempting to prove something.
The sight of his brother, his arms deep inside the man’s chest cavity, rose in Kellendvar’s mind, the peace upon his face as he killed. This was something new. There had been anger in Kellenkir aboard the Nycton. This new serenity did not bode wel
l.
The passage sloped downward for several hundred metres, its angle becoming more extreme. The smooth stone proved treacherous, and the Night Lords slipped and cursed as they proceeded. The further they went, the steeper it became, and their progress slowed to a crawl.
Kellenkir was unaffected. He strode forward as easily as he would upon level ground. Concern gripped at Kellendvar as his brother once more drew ahead, becoming a grey blot on the darkness, then a smear.
‘Kellenkir!’ he called. His brother had discarded his vox-beads. ‘Kellenkir!’ his voice boomed from his helm-grille, but there was no echo, and it dwindled far quicker than it should.
Kellenkir disappeared into the dark, moving easily. Kellendvar could not match his stride and broke into a sliding jog. His feet skittered, every third step was a stumble. There was no way to see ahead; the dark was perfect and jealously hid its secrets. Not his own eyes nor the technology of his battleplate could draw its veil aside. He would have to chance whatever pit or wall awaited him. His thoughts were only on his brother.
‘Headsman!’ called his second.
‘Follow!’ His reply was a snarl. ‘Slowly.’
Kellendvar outpaced his warriors, the sound of their cursing and rasping steps fading more quickly than the dim glow of their helm lenses. Darkness enveloped him, close as a second skin.
‘Kellenkir!’ he yelled once more.
He slipped. A foot placed wrong, heel down too hard on the stone, and his leg skidded out from under him. Flailing his arms, he went down with a hard crash. The tunnel steepened further, and he slid down its shaft on his back.
He put his hands out to control his descent. He thus prevented himself from going into a spin, but he could not prevent his acceleration, not entirely.
Blackness yawned before him, seeming infinitely vast in scope, but it was not so. The tunnel bottomed out, and he came to a grinding halt.
An alarm chimed in his helm. He cut it off. Total silence fell.
A white face materialised suddenly out of the dark, daemonic in aspect. A human face distorted by a diabolical lens. The chin was stretched, cheekbones exaggerated, eyes sunk in angular sockets. Large bumps, smooth as sebaceous cysts but too regularly spaced to be so, marred the forehead. The thing’s eyes were red and marbled. A black tongue licked at a lipless mouth.
Kellendvar yelled and yanked his bolt pistol from his thigh.
His brother looked down at him, the daemon’s visage gone.
‘Why the fuss, little Kell? What’s all this about?’
Kellenkir had not called him ‘little Kell’ for a long time – not since they were boys, surviving in the deep sub-urban wastes of Nostramo Quintus.
‘Kellenkir! I thought…’
Kellenkir held up a finger still painted with the blood of the Sothans to his lips. ‘Hush!’ he said. ‘I have found something.’
Kellenkir reached out a hand. Kellendvar took it reluctantly and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.
‘This way! Come.’
They went along a curving corridor. From behind, Kellendvar heard his men reach the bottom of the slope, some arriving on their backs as he had. He was unaccountably relieved; he no longer felt safe alone with Kellenkir.
They passed a prefabricated strongpoint. The Ultramarines that had manned it were all dead.
‘Your work?’ Kellendvar asked.
‘Mine? No,’ said Kellenkir. ‘Our brothers. Battle has swept through here.’ He kicked at a scattering of shell casings and discarded power packs. ‘They have moved on. Others of our kind passed within metres of the heart of this place, and they did not find it.’ There was a sly amusement to his voice, a secret shared.
‘Where have our brothers gone? Have you had any contact with them?’
‘None,’ said Kellenkir. There was an idiot, singsong quality to the way he spoke. ‘The vox is quiet. It is not the voice one should listen to, not down here. Come on, come and you shall hear it as well…’
Kellenkir’s manner was that of an adult attempting to make light of a dangerous situation; one of those deadly games parents must sometimes play to ensure their children’s survival. It brought the past to Kellendvar’s mind, a time when Kellenkir had behaved like that often, a fragment of a life so long ago it seemed like someone else’s.
After their ascension into the recruitment ships of the Legion, and their alteration in the surgeries of the fleets, Kellenkir’s memories of mortal life had faded. Kellendvar kept more of his, but only a few.
Those recollections left to Kellenkir were mainly of their blood father, a man broken by illness and grief who drove them from their home, thereafter coming to find them only when he needed something. These appearances of their father were a harbinger of bad news as surely as those of a night crow. Kellenkir particularly remembered killing him, a deed he recounted with bitter fondness often. That was the murder that had seen them rounded up by the catch-gangs, and sent to the penal induction camps. It was their father who had doomed them to become Night Lords.
That one red day aside, Kellenkir had put much of their previous life away. For him, the Legion offered a new existence that he would not allow to be tarnished by the old. His loyalty to his blood brother alone remained. Even that had become less important to him as time had gone by, much to Kellendvar’s growing sorrow.
Kellendvar often contemplated why this disparity between them had arisen. Was it because of his lesser age? Maybe Kellenkir’s acts in sheltering them both had been too much for him to bear. Kellenkir was only two years older than Kellendvar, but the elder had cast himself as parent and protector. Perhaps Kellenkir’s forgetting their time in the dark streets had been for his own protection.
Whatever the reason, Kellendvar remembered where his brother did not. It had caused him great pain, to see his sibling and guardian drift away from him. First into the embrace of the Legion’s fraternity, then into the black nihilism that gripped him after Isstvan.
There was one night that Kellendvar remembered well.
It was rare night of boyish joy in a grim struggle for survival, a time Kellendvar held dear.
Kellenkir had run down a runty little boy, one of a gang of thieves. There had been nothing for them to eat for several days, and the boy made a welcome feast.
‘Eat, eat, eat!’ Kellenkir said. ‘There is plenty. We sleep with full bellies tonight.’
Kellendvar remembered crying as he bit into the flesh. Not for the fate of the boy they devoured, but for the hunger that bit at his belly. He had never tasted anything so sweet in his life.
Kellenkir’s eyes glowed in the firelight. ‘I’ll look after you, little Kell. I always will.’
Kellendvar nodded solemnly back, meat juices running down his chin, the cramps in his stomach mercifully abating.
Their den was a smoky hollow pecked out of the wall of a hab tower. It was one of the great pillars of Kemno district, the base rooted in the murk far below, the spreading penthouses of the top pressed against Nostramo’s rocky sky. They lived like rats, only fifty storeys up from the dangers of the cavern bottoms. Close enough to the deep streets to hunt, high enough to remain concealed. There was enough room for them to sleep curled on their beds of rags, a space for their meagre belongings, room for a fire of bones and rubbish. They set it always at the back of the den. The acrid fumes hurt their noses and eyes, and lent what little food they could scavenge the taste of burnt plastek, but they dared not light it close to the tear in the building to let out smoke and light to betray them. So they endured it, exchanging the certainty of a swift death today for a slow end by inhaled poison tomorrow. It was safe in their artificial cave, safer than the home they had fled, safer than the streets. The fate of the boy they were eating testified to that.
Kellenkir smiled at his brother. The brutality of their life had already entered his soul, hardening his eyes, but his virtue had
yet to flee completely, and he had been kinder then.
An explosion outside had them cowering. Flashes of light made them cover their eyes and moan in terror. Gangs fought nightly in the streets. There had been a time of peace, it had been rumoured, when the Night Haunter cowed the planet through righteous terror. Kellendvar naively believed all the stories, and whispered to the Night Haunter in the night, that he might come and save him.
But these explosions were not gunshots. Faint music played between the bangs. Kellenkir risked a look outside.
He drew back quickly. Smiling widely at his brother, he beckoned him. ‘Come look, little Kell, look!’
Kellendvar came to the hole in the wall. He trusted Kellenkir completely.
The atmosphere outside was soupy with pollution, but better than that of the cave. Kellendvar coughed, his brother rubbed his back until it stopped.
‘Look! Look up!’
Patterns of light burst in the sky, low-yield, not too bright for Nostraman eyes, all blues and deep violets edging into the very far end of the visible spectrum.