Kingsblade

by Andy Clark

  ‘What does the map tell you, son?’ asked Tolwyn as he clapped his hands loudly. Liveried servants hurried in from the habitent’s service annex, carrying carafes of Iyrnmount vintage, and platters of food brought all the way from home.

  ‘It tells me that we’re winning, father,’ said Danial, smiling as he sat with his kin. ‘It’s good to see that our scouts have linked up with another of the Donatosian regiments.’

  ‘Yes,’ mused the king as he picked at the food in front of him. ‘Poor, half-starved creatures. Makes you feel guilty for all this, eh?’

  Danial paused with a glass of wine in hand, looking afresh at the luxuries his station afforded him. Jennika shook her head.

  ‘No. It doesn’t. They have endured hardships I can’t readily imagine, but we have fought hard for this world, father. And tomorrow we fight for it again, harder than ever. I’ll not reject that which gives me strength to win that fight.’

  ‘Hah, well said, my daughter. Ever the pragmatist.’ Tolwyn smiled at his two children, a contemplative expression that Danial found a little disconcerting.

  ‘Both of you, now… Knights. Grown. Become. Fighting in full panoply from thrones of your own. Makes this old man proud, as it would have done your mother.’

  ‘You make us proud, father,’ said Danial immediately, feeling oddly defensive. ‘It’s from you we get our strength.’

  ‘You do yourself and your sister a disservice, Danial,’ replied Tolwyn. ‘You are each of you strong and brave in your own ways. The draconsfire burns in you both. I see it brighter every day. Soon it’ll eclipse mine, I think.’

  Danial frowned, uncomfortable at his father’s maudlin tone. He was glad when Jennika scoffed, breaking the mild tension.

  ‘You, my heroic father, are the draconsfire incarnate. Emperor knows we’d have to set ourselves alight and go jump in a fuel dump to eclipse you.’

  Tolwyn gave a horrified laugh.

  ‘I pray you, daughter, don’t try anything so drastic! Let us away from the gloomy and the macabre, eh? I have gifts for you, on the eve of this momentous battle.’

  Tolwyn gestured to one of his servo-skulls, the chimaer, and the brass-chased drone hummed away. It returned, projecting a flickering grav field beneath it. In the shimmering white light hung two small objects, which the servo-skull deposited into Tolwyn’s waiting hands. The High King stood, suddenly solemn, and bade his children do the same.

  Tolwyn turned first to Jennika and reverently slid a finely worked gold claw-ring onto her right index finger.

  ‘This belonged to your mother. It is a digi-laser. Beautiful, but also deadly… just as she was. Much as you now are.’ Tolwyn smiled at Jennika, lost for a moment in contemplation.

  ‘Thank you, father.’ She smiled fiercely. Tolwyn nodded and turned to Danial.

  ‘And for you, my lad, who will one day wear the mantle of king,’ Tolwyn placed a fine gold chain around Danial’s neck, suspended from it a small, pentagonal medallion graven with the image of the dracon.

  ‘This belonged to your grandfather. He wore it when he fought in the Praxian Crusade. Said it always brought him luck.’

  Danial’s heart swelled at being entrusted with such a precious relic of his house.

  ‘Thank you, father. I will be worthy of it, I swear.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you shall,’ said Tolwyn, solemnly. ‘But remember, both of you, that tomorrow will be a battle unlike anything either of you has faced. Yes, even you, Jennika. This will be a battle for the ages, a spectacle of unbridled martial fury. I want you both to come through it alive, is that understood? Both of you.’

  Danial didn’t miss the subtle look that passed between his father and his sister at that moment, and felt the sting of shame at it. He would be worthy of the gift he had been given, he vowed. He would live up to his house and his name, and others would not have to spend their energies protecting him from harm.

  ‘Well,’ said Tolwyn brusquely, suddenly brightening, ‘that’s that. Now, a few glasses of wine before we fight tomorrow, and a few war stories I think. Tell me, both of you, I want to hear your exploits thus far. What glories have you earned?’

  The nobles of House Draconis might have been less convivial had they known about the shadowed figure kneeling in a bloody octagram in a distant corner of the macrofactorum. Around it lay the bodies of eight dead guards. In the air before it hung a dark and terrible tear in reality, and from it echoed the whispering voice of something monstrous…

  The next morning dawned hard and angry. The sky churned with petrochemical clouds and a hissing rain fell across the encampment as Danial climbed through the pilot’s hatch of Oath of Flame and down into his throne mechanicum. One by one the neural jacks mated, and he winced as data-ghosts streamed through his mind. Welcome, young Knight, they whispered. Welcome, Danial Tan Draconis. Runic displays scrolled across his retinas as he buckled his restraint harness and slid on the haptic gauntlets. The Oath rumbled and shivered as its power plant awoke, and the Knight’s machine-spirit growled its mechanical greeting to its master. Danial smiled unconsciously, the worn leather and cold metal of his cockpit truly welcoming for the first time. His hands flickered across the runic panels surrounding him, engaging auspex feeds, regulating power streams, activating vox pickups. As he worked he muttered prayers of readiness and awakening, feeling his heart thump at the proximity of real, glorious war.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ barked Sire Markos over the vox.

  ‘Just a couple of us out here, Markos,’ replied Jennika without missing a beat, ‘only Suset and I. Not forgetting your male comrades in your dotage, are you?’

  ‘Just acknowledging the weaker sex like a good gentleman should, Lady Jennika,’ replied Markos, and Danial couldn’t help but grin as he pictured his sister’s face.

  ‘You’re lucky I am a lady, Sire Markos, or I’d tell you precisely where you could insert your outdated notions of male supremacy,’ she shot back. ‘As it is, that’s going to cost you on the duelling field later.’

  ‘It’ll be my honour to knock you on your arse, my lady,’ said Sire Markos, his grin audible. ‘Now, enough uncouthness. Knights of House Draconis, we are marching to war.’

  A chorus of cheers and shouts rang over the vox, and Danial’s voice was amongst them.

  ‘This is going to be a fight they weave tapestries of, and tell about in tale and song for centuries to come,’ said Sire Markos, now serious. ‘We’re going straight up the middle into death or glory, and making sure those songs are worth the listening!’

  ‘In Excelsium Furore!’ bellowed Sire Garath, and as Danial’s sensorium expanded out through his auspex, he watched the big Knight’s steed clash its thunderstrike gauntlet against its reaper chainsword. Sparks showered down amidst the hissing rain, and the rest of House Draconis cheered again.

  ‘Wield the fires within!’

  ‘May the draconsfire burn within you all,’ cried Sire Markos, his Warden taking its first booming step away from its armature and raising its auto-pennants. Behind him, the Sacristans’ armoured Crawlers engaged their engines with bass rumbles, and lit their beacons. ‘Now, let’s go and meet our king. We march!’

  The Imperial encampment emptied like some vast hive of insects. Streaming columns of infantry and tanks massed into assault formations as officers and commissars barked orders. Entire households of Knights advanced into the sheeting downpour, well over three hundred of the towering armoured demi-gods with their Sacristans’ Crawlers following close behind. Brightly coloured pennants snapped and fluttered in the howling wind. Autoloaders cycled and safety runes turned from red to green. As one, the Knights of House Minotos engaged their vox amplifiers, the deafening orchestral din of their martial symphonies ringing across no-man’s-land in a spectacular display of grandiloquence.

  Flights of Imperial Navy aircraft roared overhead, wave after wave of Marauder Bombers and Thunderbolt Fighters etching grey contrails across the sky. On ridges overlooking the encampment, artillery t
anks by the hundred cranked their barrels upward as tense crews waited for the order to open fire. As the first Imperial aircraft neared the hab-mountains, and the High King of House Draconis marched out onto the planes at the head of his Knights, the order was given.

  Danial felt the reverberant shockwave as the Imperial batteries let fly. The skies above darkened with megatons of hurtling ordnance. Knights strode forward around him, dozens of them pounding through mud and stone and rainwater, making for the traitor stronghold. Yet at that moment the kingsward could not take his eyes off the hail of shells as they arced overhead, and fell like a second storm upon the hab-mountains. Rippling explosions marched across the slopes. Wreckage and rubble spumed into the air, enough to build a fresh city out of ruin. Again, the Imperial batteries fired, and again, finding their rhythm, lofting another barrage skyward as each struck home.

  Danial saw flickers of light speckle the enemy defences, warning runes flashing up on his auspex as the enemy’s gun emplacements returned fire. Shield boy get your shield up ware overshoot watch forshrapneldonotfear…

  Danial shook the whispers from his mind as they blurred and became useless.

  ‘Onward, my friends, onward,’ cried Tolwyn as the Knights centred their ion shields. ‘The Emperor is with us. Those who die today shall sit at his right hand, and those who live shall burn bright in his holy sight. Press the advance, punish the traitors and make the Emperor proud!’

  Shells screamed down amongst the striding Knights. They exploded with bone-shaking force, showering the Imperial war engines with shrapnel. They slammed into ion shields, their force dissipating amid billows of flame and flickering blue energy. Danial heard cries of anger and pain as the Knights themselves were struck. A Knight of House Pegasson uttered a death scream, which cut out amidst a sudden hiss of static.

  The others advanced unbowed. Danial watched the strategic overlay as Houses Pegasson and Wyvorn peeled off and spread out on the flanks. His auspex filled with the flash of gun muzzles and rocket propellant as the Knights unleashed their weapons, their runes dropping behind on the strategic overlay as Chimaeros, Minotos and Draconis pressed the advantage.

  ‘Here we go then, Da,’ said Luk over a closed channel, ‘glory at last.’

  ‘Glory at last,’ echoed Danial, his voice tight with fear and excitement. ‘Don’t get yourself killed, Tan Chimaeros.’

  Enthroned at the heart of his Crawler, High Sacristan Polluxis drank in the data-feeds and monitored dozens of systems at once. Part of his mental processing power was consumed with the noospheric chatter between the Sacristan Crawlers and the global vox net. With the rest he kept watch upon the shield strength, hull integrity and system-operation of the House Draconis Knights. All of them. He watched as the lead Draconis Knights came into long weapons range of the enemy’s bunkers, hammering battle cannon shells and stormspear missiles into the enemy positions. He saw the Chimaeros Knights adjust their headings slightly in order to move in behind House Draconis, a ritual mark of respect. He observed the Minotos Knights plough on forward, too eager for battle to show the same deference.

  Monitoring the warscape was a herculean task of mental processing requiring Polluxis’ full concentration, and so the High Sacristan felt a twitch of all-too-human irritation as a vox-inload request lit up in the corner of his vision. It was coming from another of the Draconis Crawlers, vehicle thirty-one at the rear of the formation. Polluxis dismissed the flickering rune with a mental shunt, but a moment later it returned, blinking insistently.

  Tasking his Crawler’s machine-spirits to collect data overspill from the noospheric loom, Polluxis rerouted enough of his psyche to accept the incoming vox. As he did so, a wayward enemy shell thumped down to their left, rocking the speeding Crawler with its explosion.

  ‘Acolyte Haladexi, inload,’ demanded Polluxis. ‘Brisk, if you please, acolyte.’

  The voice that returned was fuzzed with background static.

  ‘Omnissiah Regnum Dei, High Sacristan Polluxis. Possible anomalies detected.’

  Analysing the note of concern in the acolyte’s tone, Polluxis transferred another two terabytes of mental data to the conversation.

  ‘Elaborate,’ he requested as shrapnel pattered off his Crawler’s topside.

  ‘Routine support diagnostic has revealed a… a ghost signal, High Sacristan. A recurring artefact in the noosphere over the battlefield. Its nature is unknown.’

  Polluxis’ flesh-face remained impassive as he absorbed the information.

  ‘Liable cause and or function, acolyte?’ he asked. ‘Permission granted to calculate hypotheses’.

  ‘Unknown at this time, High Sacristan,’ came the response through a grumble of static. ‘But it is pervasive. High focus auspex analysis reveals that the artefact is underlying all battlefield vox and sensor traffic. Speculative: if it is something generated by the enemy…’

  ‘Then it may present a hazard,’ finished Polluxis.

  ‘Advise alert High King and House primaries, High Sacristan?’ the acolyte asked. Polluxis shook his head slightly, an unconsciously human gesture.

  ‘Not without more information and or analysis, Haladexi. Re-task all non-essentials to this labour. I wish to know what I am reporting to High King Tolwyn before I trouble him mid-battle.’

  Even as Acolyte Haladexi’s rune winked out, another alert flashed in Polluxis’ peripheral, causing him to let out a blurt of binharic annoyance. The Heavenly Host skimmed above the Draconis advance, the cherubim servitors braving the storm to provide comprehensive auspex cover. Now, it seemed, the weather was having an adverse effect upon the small cyborgs. As Polluxis watched, first one, then another and yet another cherub reported sudden and catastrophic system failure. Polluxis’ eye lenses blinked and his mechadendrites twitched as he saw a pattern in the burnouts. The alerts were coming from those cherubim furthest out upon the flanks of the advance. That could not be right, thought Polluxis, processing the data and rerunning his analysis. Battle or storm damage would not be so selective.

  Unless…

  Sire Daeved swore as his auspex flickered, the pict feed lurching.

  ‘A great sum of use those bloody horrible cherub things are,’ he muttered to himself.

  Explosions burst around his Knight, but Daeved kept moving. Another few minutes and they would break the traitor defences wide open.

  He frowned as he saw the nearby Chimaeros Knights slowing and redressing their aim. Daeved blinked open a vox channel to request clarification, then cried out as it filled with a sudden, deafening scream. His cockpit lights flickered, his auspex filled with insane, runic gibberish. Just before his external pict-feeds were swallowed by a blizzard of static, he saw the nearest Chimaeros Knights open fire.

  At the Knights of House Draconis.

  Danial gritted his teeth as a deafening howl reaped through the vox. The strategic overlay dissolved into static, and his auspex feed fizzed and flickered. His view of the battle became lurching and stilted, a series of still, static-furred images rather than a smooth flow of information. His Knight and throne writhed and growled at the touch of the corrupted scrapcode.

  Danial felt Oath of Flame stagger, and wrestled frantically with his motive gyros to avoid a fall. His Errant tottered sideways, barely keeping its feet. Proximity detonation warnings lit Danial’s vision red as a series of explosions tore apart the ground on which he had stood. He cried out, frantically trying to decipher where the threat was coming from. With his Knight’s sensorium compromised, it took the kingsward several seconds to track the origin of the attack.

  ‘No,’ he said aloud, not liking the note of panic he heard in his voice. ‘No, that can’t be right?’ Fire thundered and boomed on every side, and Danial yelled in horror as he saw Sire Daeved Dar Draconis’ Knight staggered by multiple impacts. The images came at Danial in nightmarish, disorienting staccato, but the fact was inescapable – Daeved’s Knight had been shot from behind.

  Too much was happening at once. The Oath’s au
spex was awash with data-ghosts, static interference and partial target-lock warnings. Sire Daeved’s Knight Gallant was trying to turn around, swinging its ion shield, but one of the Pyrefang’s arms had been torn off, and there was smoke and flame belching from the ragged wound. Traitor shells were still raining down. The ghosts of Danial’s throne were clamouring in anger, filling his mind with a jumbled susurrus of contradictory advice.

  TurnandaddressstanddamageassessmentadvanceonthefoetotheforenoestablishthreatNOLISTENIYOUHEMUSTHEMUST…

  ‘Stop it!’ screamed Danial, desperately trying to silence his ancestors. Something exploded to his left, completely whiting out his autosenses for a moment. A Knight. That had been a slain steed. And now Danial’s threat-alarms were howling again, louder than before.

  ‘…Da?... can you he… me?’

  Jennika’s voice, cutting through the static.

  Danial felt a surge of desperate relief at that sound.

  ‘Jen,’ he shouted, ‘what’s happening? Where is this coming from? What do I do?’ In that moment, Danial Tan Draconis had never felt less like a Knight. Even through his panic, some part of him squirmed with shame at how young and helpless he sounded. His vox screamed, before Jennika’s voice cut through again.

  ‘….betrayed… House Chimaeros… Da, they’re firin… at us! House Chimaeros… firing at us… all a trap… Move, fight back!’

  Danial wanted to believe that the static had distorted his sister’s taut words. House Chimaeros were firing on them.