‘You are arguing with a machine,’ said Nefertari by my side. Lheor ignored her, as always. He was drawing breath to speak when Telemachon’s soft words broke through our halting conversation.
‘You are beautiful.’
We all turned. Telemachon stood before the Anamnesis, his palm pressed to her containment tank. She drifted closer to him, no doubt drawn by his rare behaviour.
‘We are the Anamnesis,’ she told him.
‘I know. You are lovely. A being of unbelievable complexity, presented in this beautiful form. You remind me of the Nayad. Do you know of them?’
She tilted her head again. I felt her thoughts flashing back and forth in impossible flickers between her crown of cables and the hundreds of mind-engine pods across the chamber. The brains of prisoners, scholars, savants and slaves, all linked to her in a gestalt hive-mind.
‘No,’ she said at last.
‘They were a legend,’ Telemachon told her, ‘on Chemos, my home world.’ The silver face mask looked so apt in that moment, staring in serene admiration. He was a man gazing upon the visage of a heavenly afterlife. No wonder humanity had once buried its kings and queens in such masks. ‘Perhaps they have deeper roots on Old Earth. I can’t say for certain. Chemosian legend tells us that our world once had seas and oceans, in an age when Chemos’s sun burned bright enough to inspire a wealth of life. The Nayad were a species of water spirits charged with watching over the oceans. They sang to the beasts of the deepest waters, and their songs soothed our world’s soul. When their music finally came to an end, the oceans dried up and the sun grew darker in the dusty heavens. Chemos itself mourned the loss of their songs.’
The Anamnesis’s eyes were wide. ‘We do not understand.’
‘What don’t you understand?’ he asked in his storyteller’s voice.
‘We do not understand why the Nayad ceased their music. Their actions caused global flux of extinction-level severity for many species.’
‘It’s said that their song simply came to an end, as all songs do. The Nayad vanished from our world that day, their duty done and their lives lived in full. Never to return.’
I stood in stunned silence. Even Nefertari refrained from baiting the swordsman in that moment, though I could see her knife-like smile as she watched the warrior who had once hungered so fiercely for her death.
Lheor, however, cut the quiet with one of his gunshot laughs. ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Little ocean goddesses singing to fish?’
The Anamnesis turned to Lheor as he shattered the spell of Telemachon’s story. I saw the embers of anger in her gaze. It heartened me to see her feel any emotion at all.
‘And Chemos has never had oceans,’ Lheor added. ‘So it can’t be true.’
Telemachon lowered his hand, evidently with some reluctance. I could feel his stunted thoughts, how they flailed and misfired, too coldly bland to link with any emotion.
Once more I was struck by what I had done to him. Ahriman had massacred our Legion by damning them to existence as Rubricae, but here was the very sin I laid at his feet, performed by my own hand. Even on the scale of a single soul rather than an entire Legion, the bitterness of hypocrisy was an unwelcome taste.
Telemachon was still speaking with the Anamnesis, choosing to ignore Lheor’s interruptions.
‘Abaddon told us that you’re unlikely to survive merging with the flagship’s machine-spirit. That it will swallow your consciousness within itself.’
The Anamnesis floated lower, almost standing on the bottom of her tank. The swordsman was taller than her now. Cables connected to her skull rippled like hair in the nutrient water.
‘Khayon vocalised the same concern.’ Her words came from the chamber’s speakers again. ‘His voice patterns indicate emotional duress in this matter. He sees us not as the Anamnesis construct, but as the human Itzara. This is a flaw in his reasoning. It limits his objectivity.’
Telemachon shook his head. ‘No,’ his smooth voice assured the machine-spirit, ‘I don’t believe so. There’s a difference in how you look at him, and how you look at the rest of us. It took me mere heartbeats to see it – a quiver of emotion in your eyes when you look his way. His sister lives within you, buried but not dead. Are your thoughts coded and programmed to deny it? Is that denial necessary for your function?’
She said nothing for several seconds, staring dead-eyed at the swordsman. ‘We... we are the Anamnesis.’
‘As stubborn as your brother.’ He looked away at last. ‘Are you ready, Khayon?’
I was. With a final glance back at the Anamnesis, we walked from the Core. Nefertari and Lheor immediately fell into infantile teasing of each other. For my part, I was still wordless in the wake of Telemachon’s actions. If I tell you now that in the years to come our swordsman and storyteller would become Abaddon’s personal herald, charged with declaring the Warmaster’s wishes to the Nine Legions, perhaps you will begin to see why.
The first procession of robed tech-priests filed into the chambers behind us, beginning the hymnal rituals that needed to be observed before they could dismantle the Tlaloc’s soul and ferry the Anamnesis across to the Vengeful Spirit.
‘I have done you an injustice,’ I admitted to Telemachon. ‘One I will rectify now.’
THE SPEAR
The first time I saw the Canticle City was the night we darkened its skies. Many of the Nine Legions’ warbands speak of that battle as though they had been there, telling how they fought valiantly despite being unprepared to face a numerically superior foe. They use it to cast aspersion on us, as though we might be needled by their implications that we lack a sense of honour. Some of the tales even swear that we wore black in that battle, as though we were already the Black Legion in name as well as heart.
Lies, all of them. When other warbands speak such things they are greasing their tongues with untruths born of pride and envy. Many warlords wish the right to claim they were present at one of the Nine Legions’ most defining battles, and those who were truly there hunt for any reason to excuse their defeat. Yet the stories remain, casting a jealous shadow over the Black Legion’s genesis. Brute force, our rivals insist, carried the day. What finer way to justify their failure than to pretend defeat was inevitable?
Quick, savage, clean. That was how it played out. For all the Vengeful Spirit’s strength, only a handful of warriors populated its halls. Even in orbit, our enemies outnumbered us twenty to one.
How then did we win? The answer is simple. We won through the assault’s audacity and through loyalty to one another. We won by going for the throat.
The world was called Harmony. Whether that was a corruption of the original eldar name or merely a delusion of III Legion vanity remains a mystery to me even now. Despite the breaking of the Emperor’s Children at Skalathrax, the Canticle City served as a haven to many III Legion warbands and their allies. A populated world with ore-rich moons claimed in turn by feuding Mechanicum city-states. The system was no more peaceful than anywhere else in the Eye. Dozens of warbands called it home.
All we knew of the cityscape came from Telemachon’s description. We possessed no tactical hololiths, nor any current disposition of its defences. One of my last clear memories before the journey was of my newly freed brother in his silver mask, shaking his head in answer to one of Abaddon’s many questions.
‘Teleportation is as unreliable there as anywhere else in the Eye.’ That fact surprised no one. ‘Planetary assault will only be possible with drop pods.’
Abaddon had shaken his head. ‘That won’t be necessary. We’ll win this fight without setting foot on the world itself.’
I remember precious little of the journey to Harmony. I had a heavy duty at Abaddon’s request, with no attention free to spare for anything else. I began my task before the Anamnesis’s cognition engines were fully installed aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and Abadd
on was at least sensitive to the fact he was consigning me to this difficult duty without even knowing Itzara’s fate.
‘You will see her once we reach the Canticle City,’ he promised me. ‘She will triumph and rule or she will be subsumed and serve. But one way or another, you will see her when you awaken.’
His words were scarce reassurance. Nevertheless, I committed myself to the task he wished of me.
I knelt in the centre of the strategium, reaching out with my senses night after night and day after day. Every iota of my focus was devoted to clinging on to a cold presence outside the ship, holding it in my psychic clutch and dragging it with us through the Eye’s unquiet tides. Imagine hauling a corpse across an ocean of thick fluid. Imagine that gruelling swim with a tired grip that threatens to come loose with only a heartbeat’s distraction.
That was my task. As the Vengeful Spirit sailed, I pulled a monumental dead weight in our wake.
I was scarcely even aware of the passing of time. My brothers told me later that our passage was a matter of several months’ sailing, yet I recall nothing more than the migraine smear of unclear vision and the endless whispers of the Damned and the Neverborn. Time ceased to have any meaning. Sometimes it felt as though I had only just bent to my task – other times I struggled to remember anything of my life beyond the absolute focus necessary to do what Abaddon had asked of me. I remember sweating with the effort it demanded of me. Effort and little else. In that regard, the erosion of my memory is a mercy. I did nothing but concentrate, sweat, curse and ache, for several months.
It was Nefertari who fed me nutrient pastes and brought water to my lips. It was my bloodward who massaged and worked my muscles, preventing cramps and ensuring I did not waste away. I never thanked her, for I never knew she was there. She and Gyre watched over me in my meditative kneel, the alien leaving only to rest in her Aerie, and the wolf never leaving my side at all.
I had restored Telemachon before undertaking my duty. The swordsman would confess to me later that he came to stare at me many times during the journey, considering whether to strike or stay his hand. He made his resistance sound like he was granting me mercy, but I am not a fool. He feared Gyre and Nefertari then, just as he always has since. To act against me would invite destruction at their claws.
I sensed none of this tension at the time. There I knelt, silent and lost in focus, pulling an infinite weight of cold steel and dead iron through the void behind us.
Eventually there was a voice. It was a deep, guttural tone, penetrating the seething pressure of my concentration. It spoke my name.
‘Khayon.’
I felt a hand on my shoulder. A fraternal touch, firm and grateful. It brought me back to myself slowly, so very slowly.
The bright lights of the Vengeful Spirit’s cavernous bridge were acid in my eyes. Sound returned to me in a rush of chattering servitors and shouting crew. It took almost a full minute for me to be able to see the occulus screen, where a beautiful planet of red earth and black seas turned before us. Its lone landmass bore a single great manmade scab visible from orbit, the black and grey of what could only be the Canticle City.
‘Water.’ The word was a dry croak from my parched throat. ‘Water.’
Nefertari brought water to my lips in a tin cup. The metallic flavour of filtration chemicals and old mould coursed across my tongue in a cooling rush. Never had I tasted anything so sweet.
Reality returned to my strained senses, little by little. The ship was shaking around me. I had awoken while the battle was under way.
‘Itzara?’ I asked my bloodward. ‘The machine-spirit...’ I could barely speak. My desiccated throat refused to open. ‘Is she...?’
‘She lives.’ Nefertari pressed cold fingertips to my forehead. Her skin was flushed with the health of a recent feeding and her black hair was a hand’s breadth longer than it had been before I entered my trance. Months had passed. I was having trouble processing that fact.
‘She won?’
‘She lives,’ the eldar repeated.
‘Khayon.’ Abaddon’s presence restored my scattered thoughts. He stood nearby, the past come to life at my side. Gone was the patchwork armour of the pilgrim in Hell, replaced by the pitted and cracked suit of war-plate cast in Justaerin black. He was armed with a plain power sword and nothing more. I expected his hair to be lifted back and worked into its ornate, tribal topknot, but it remained in a filthy snarled fall against his features. ‘Are you ready, my brother?’
I was not sure of the answer to that question. Sluggishness reigned; the interior clockwork of my mind felt thick with rancid oil. I forced my stinging eyes to seek out the occulus. Everything was happening too quickly for me to keep pace. Orders were spoken in languages I understood, yet still their meaning was lost on me.
A fleet ringed us, chased us, sought to block us – escort frigates tearing ahead of their parent cruisers in eager attack runs. Weapons-fire hammered uselessly against the Vengeful Spirit’s inviolate shields.
I saw Tzah’q, performing his overseer duties aboard this new command deck. The Tlaloc’s crew of thralls and slaves called out reports and manned their stations with a sense of controlled, ordered urgency. I sensed their razor eagerness, their hunger, and felt the air around them thicken with their ripening auras. Experience calmed them where they might otherwise have panicked. All were working, calling out reports, doing what they were told and what they were trained to do.
‘Ultio,’ Abaddon called across the bridge. ‘Speak.’
‘Void shields holding,’ came the voice of the Anamnesis, echoing across the cavernous chamber.
‘Be ready. We’re about to cast the spear.’
‘Abaddon,’ she snapped back, her voice not just charged with emotion but saturated with it. She sounded eager to the point of laughter. ‘Let me kill them. Let me tear the iron from their ships’ bones and strangle them in the cold of the void.’
‘Soon, Ultio, soon.’ Affection coloured his voice. Affection for her murderous replies, perhaps. ‘Keep the shields high as we move into low orbit. Run out the guns.’
‘I comply.’
As she agreed to his order, that is when I saw her. The Anamnesis was not locked away and sealed behind guarded doors down in the heart of the ship, as she had been on the Tlaloc. Her containment tank stood at the heart of the strategium, offering her an unparalleled view of the bridge and its crew. The secondary cognition pods storing her vast intellect were affixed across the command deck’s walls and scattered over the ceiling like a hive of rattling, clanking beetles. Many of them had replaced the banners of old wars hanging from the rafters before the Vengeful Spirit’s reactivation.
From the central dais, where Horus Lupercal had once held court, the Anamnesis floated in her armoured life-support shell, predatory emotion making her features twist into a snarl. Her fingers curled in the cold aqua vitriolo, in response to the bloodlust I could sense emanating from her. She looked more alive than I had seen her in the decades since her entombing. Not human, not with that feral expression of violent hunger, but definitely alive. What had changed within her once she bonded with the machine-spirit of this empress among battleships?
Ultio, Abaddon had called her. The High Gothic word for revenge.
Anamnesis, I pulsed to her. My thought-voice was sluggish from disuse.
Khayon, she sent back across the bond. I sensed her distraction, just as I sensed her thoughts were turned entirely towards the pleasure of hunting lesser prey. Vermin crawl across my skin, pricking at my flesh with little scratches of plasma and laser.
I have never heard you speak like this. Who are you?
The answer came in a sensory flood of identity. I am the Anamnesis. I am Itzara Khayon, sister to Iskandar Khayon. I am the Vengeful Spirit. I am Ultio.
Relief clashed hot with urgent confusion. I burned to ask her a hundred questions but there was no
time, no time at all.
‘Now, my brother,’ Abaddon said. ‘Throw the spear.’
The spear. My duty.
I mustered my strength one last time on the immense weight out there in the void. First I raked back the concealing shroud of Aetheria hiding the spear from sight. The enemy fleet immediately turned their guns upon it.
‘Faster, Khayon. Faster.’
‘You. Are not. Helping.’
‘Launch the spear!’
I wrapped it with a strangling grip, feeling every cold contour with the touch of my mind. And then, with every iota of concentration I possessed, I hurled the spear at the world called Harmony.
Blackness closed around me in that moment. My senses deserted me. My memory fled with them.
The others have since told me that I rose to my feet, hands curled into claws as I screamed at the city I was about to kill. I cannot say if that is true for I remember nothing but exultant, dizzying relief when the spear left my psychic hold. Sometimes you are most aware of a burden when it finally leaves your back.
The Vengeful Spirit shivered in sympathy with the Anamnesis in her life pod. Reality coalesced around me in time to watch the spear cut through the enemy fleet, too fast for their ponderous guns to follow, and catch fire in Harmony’s atmosphere.
Abaddon remained at my side, helping me to my feet. Nausea wracked me beyond what my enhanced physiology could tolerate. Queasy with weakness in the wake of my psychic efforts, I watched as Abaddon’s gambit played out before our eyes.
The Canticle City was prepared to repel assaults, with its skyline of armoured bastions aiming defence turrets and flak cannons towards the heavens. But while fighting back an invasion is one thing, resisting a cataclysm is another. Even in my weakened state I could not resist watching the spear fall, seeing it through the thoughts of the doomed souls on the surface.
Daylight died above the Canticle City. Through the wide, upturned eyes of worker menials, pleasure slaves, and III Legion warriors, I saw the gun-battlements light up in helpless rage as a shadow grew in place of the sun. The shrieking hymns broadcast from vox-towers were drowned out by the metal-hammering of defence batteries lighting up the darkening sky. The black shape that swallowed the sun burned as it fell, first aflame with atmospheric entry, then on fire from the rage of the Canticle City’s guns.
The Talon of Horus Page 30