Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  ‘Lady,’ he said, and bowed his head.

  ‘Master of Huscarls,’ she said, her voice cracking with age and fatigue. She turned her head towards him, the white mane of hair shifting as though rising on a breath of air that was not there. ‘You requested audience with the primarch. I am here to take you to him.’

  ‘Aboard the Phalanx?’

  She nodded and began to walk down the corridor, back bent forwards, staff tapping a slow rhythm on the deck. They climbed up through the frigate’s decks and crossed the docking limb to the Phalanx. An hour of travel saw them pass through chambers hung with hundreds of victory banners, and pass under the stone gaze of long-dead heroes. Archamus knew them all. Many of them he had known in life. Some he had seen die. He had the sudden feeling that he was alone, a relic of an age that belonged to the dead who now were stone.

  ‘You are over a century older than me,’ said Armina. It was the first thing she had said in hours, and it surprised him enough that he could only blink, as she continued. ‘When I was born you were already a warrior, already a leader of armies. When you bore your Legion’s banner I was a girl playing in the dust of what was once the Achaemenid Empire. When the Emperor took my sight I was still a girl, and you had served the Imperium for over a century. Yet here we are – the aged warrior and the crone.’

  ‘You are looking in my mind,’ he growled.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The surface at least.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If your eyes are open they see the world around them,’ she said, and sucked in a wheezing breath.

  ‘Did your observation have a point?’ he asked.

  ‘Age is not time. It is the mark of service.’

  ‘As you say,’ he replied.

  They walked on in silence, their steps marked by the tap of Armina Fel’s cane.

  Dorn waited for them in a small planning chamber close to the main strategium. Archamus noted that the Huscarls guarding the corridors and entrance to the chamber waited for the astropath to speak, rather than him, before admitting them.

  I am not one of them, he realised, and felt something cold pass over the burned skin of his back. It was as it should be, but it felt like something else. Like a judgement.

  The primarch did not look up as Archamus entered. Parchment and data-slates lay on the circular table, arranged in neat islands. Dorn wore armour, but had stripped the gauntlets from his hands. A set of multi-legged callipers lay under the fingers of the right, a brass stylus in the left. When he spoke it was to Armina Fel rather than Archamus.

  ‘Phaeton?’ he said, as though posing the next question in a discussion that Archamus’ arrival had cut into. Armina Fel shook her head.

  ‘No word. Though that could mean nothing.’

  ‘Every silence means something.’

  ‘Our communication with Phaeton has been facilitated by the relay station at Ashela. If there has been a problem with the station...’

  ‘Whether we have lost a forge world, or if the enemy have taken Ashela station to blind us, it is becoming difficult not to presume the worst.’

  ‘We will renew our efforts, lord,’ said Fel, then dipped her head and shuffled out of the chamber. Dorn turned his eyes back to the parchments beneath his stylus. Archamus waited, feeling the moments pass with the scratching of lines and figures.

  ‘How many did you lose?’ said Dorn at last, looking up at Archamus.

  ‘Four,’ said Archamus. He did not need to ask what his primarch was referring to. The mission to the Hyrakro manse was hours old, but there was nothing in the actions of his Legion that was beyond Dorn’s sight. ‘Three brothers in the gunship that was lost, one on the ground.’

  ‘A heavy price for one man.’

  ‘It was a flawed mission in both planning and execution, too rushed and without contingency for wider possibilities.’

  ‘And the target of the raid?’ asked Dorn, his voice cold and emotionless, as his stylus continued its path across the parchment.

  ‘Is in chains on the Unbreakable Truth. The... He is being put to the question now.’

  ‘Has he given you answers?’

  ‘Not yet, my lord, but...’ Archamus felt the words drain out of his mouth.

  Dorn’s stylus stopped in its movement over the parchment. The primarch looked up. ‘Why are you here then?’

  ‘This task, lord. It... is not what we are. It is... not the war we were made for, nor the war we should be fighting.’

  Dorn put the stylus down and straightened.

  ‘Necessity,’ he said.

  ‘It is not what we were made for. We are conquerors, we are builders, we–’

  ‘We are the last line against the darkness. Darkness, Archamus, not defeat but the swallowing of all that was and might be. We cannot fail.’

  ‘And the necessities we face...’

  ‘Are vile. Are terrible,’ Dorn put the callipers down, and for a second Archamus thought he saw a flicker of weariness in his primarch’s eyes. ‘Are inevitable.’

  ‘Lord, is that not what the Alpha Legion might say? That victory matters more than how that victory is won? So much of this war happens in the dark. We hear its echoes, or see its fires on the horizon, but never know what might have been won or lost already. All unknown, all weights on the balance of disaster or survival. But that victory if won will be won here, and rest in our hands. The Imperium will stand, but only if the choices we make are pure.’

  Dorn looked at Archamus, dark eyes boring into him, his face utterly still.

  He remembered the Alpha Legionnaire’s dead eyes looking up at him. We know you. We know you all...

  Archamus shook his head.

  ‘Why are we doing this? Of all the threats that might come against us, this is not one that demands such attention, let alone such secrecy. The more I think of it, the more I consider what has happened, the less sense it makes. A unit of Alpha Legion, ten units, a hundred. What could they truly do? And for what threat they do pose, the hunter cadres of Malcador’s Chosen are more skilled in hunting such foes.’

  ‘Because I trust you,’ said Dorn. ‘And understanding is not required.’

  Archamus blinked and bowed his head.

  ‘By your will,’ he said, and half turned to leave, but then stopped and the old question, asked of him decades before, rose to his lips. ‘What are you afraid of, my lord?’

  Dorn was silent for a second, and Archamus felt as though he could feel the tremor of vast thoughts turning behind the face of his primarch. Archamus held himself still, eyes steady, even as the instinct to kneel and ask forgiveness pulled at his old flesh.

  ‘What will it cost?’ said Dorn at last. ‘We will have victory, because I will not allow us to fail. But what will that victory cost? Because, at the last, whatever that cost, it must be paid.’

  ‘And what of the future we were to build, lord. Will it be built in the ashes of our honour?’

  Dorn was silent, and for a moment Archamus thought he saw other faces in the shadow lines of his lord’s face: Mortarion, Corax, Curze.

  ‘That,’ said Dorn at last. ‘That is what I am afraid of.’

  Archamus bowed his head, unable to hold his primarch’s gaze any longer.

  ‘I will follow your will and this duty to the end,’ he said, and brought his hand to his chest in salute. ‘I will not fail you.’

  ‘No, you will not,’ said Dorn.

  Armina Fel watched Archamus leave. The glow of his thoughts was like fire embers, brightness and heat crackling under cold layers of ash. She stepped back into Dorn’s chamber. The primarch’s mind was briefly a flame that shrank to darkness, hidden by force of will.

  ‘What are your orders, lord?’

  ‘It is time. Once Archamus’ ship is loose, the Phalanx will move to the rendezvous with the fleet off Neptune. You are prepared?’
>
  ‘Everything has been arranged between the other principal astropaths and me.’

  Dorn nodded once in acknowledgement, and Armina knew that the gesture was both acknowledgement and dismissal. She did not move.

  ‘Master Archamus... You did not tell him, lord?’

  Dorn’s mind flickered, but remained closed and dark.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He has his duty, and I have mine.’

  ‘Should he not–’

  ‘Make what preparations you need to, mistress. We leave within the hour.’

  ‘Of course, lord,’ she said, and bowed her head.

  Kestros was watching the monitor when the door opened. He did not look up. It was Andromeda. He could tell from the rhythm of her steps on the stone floor, light and smooth, like the movement of a feline predator. She stopped just beyond his arm’s reach and looked at him for a second.

  ‘I thought you were having your chest split open and sewn back together,’ she said.

  He said nothing. They had closed him up an hour before. The right-hand side of his chest was a layer of grafted flesh over a frame of plasteel and ceramite bolted to his bones. The pain was a storm still crackling through him, and he could taste blood with every breath.

  When he neither moved nor answered, she turned to look at the monitors.

  There were nine screens, each hung with cables and showing a different angle of the same image: the slumped form of Dowager-son Hyrakro. Chains led from loops on the wall to manacles locked around his wrists and ankles. He wore a plain shift of off-white, stained by sweat.

  ‘He has been here for almost thirteen hours. The temperature in the cell will mean that he must soon begin to suffer adverse physiological effects.’ Kestros paused, breathed, blood and pain bright on the edge of everything. ‘I also notice that he has no water.’

  Andromeda nodded. ‘As it should be.’

  He felt the muscles in his jaw tighten, his eyes still on the screen. As he watched, the man shook his head as though trying to shake himself awake. A low moan came from a vox speaker hung in the dark behind the screens.

  ‘I am not going to kill him or tear him apart,’ she snorted, and shook her head. ‘You really are a creature of paradox. You will wade through blood and kill without mercy, but a thirsty man in chains brings out your righteous side.’

  ‘You claim to know us so well...’ he began.

  ‘Better than you know yourselves,’ she spat. ‘My kind are numbered for our lives. I am Andromeda-17, but Andromeda-15 died by the hands of the Emperor’s warriors. By your hands. You think that a veneer of honour is enough, that ideals wash blood from you?’

  Kestros looked at her. The pain was there, holding his anger in a cage of sharp edges. She was staring at him, eyes dark and glittering, the slightest hint of teeth showing between her lips.

  ‘You hate us,’ he said, speaking the realisation as it came to him. She let out a breath and glanced away.

  ‘How much love do you think winning an empire by slaughter buys?’

  ‘We are the necessity of greater futures,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘You still think that? Blindness really is the greatest comfort.’

  He let the questions go unanswered and the silence deepen. On the screen Hyrakro shuddered and stilled. The clinking of chains came from the speakers. Her words rolled around his thoughts, blurring with the lightning crackle of pain. She was trying to goad him. He knew that, but still there was the problem that she was here, and the will of both Archamus and the primarch had placed her there. Why would that be if everything she said was wrong?

  ‘Why did you agree?’ he asked. ‘Why did you agree to serve the Emperor at the side of those you hate?’

  Her expression shifted. Anger? Scorn? Surprise? Then she shrugged.

  ‘It intrigues me,’ she said, nodding at the screen, ‘and I can’t say that I like the alternatives offered by being on the other side.’ She shivered. ‘I am going to get on with this.’ When she reached the door, she glanced back and jerked her chin at the screens. ‘Feel free to stay and watch if you like.’

  The air in the cell was a thickening soup flavoured with sweat and the smell of machine oil.

  Dowager-son Hyrakro could feel the moisture covering his body like a liquid second skin. He had been there for... He was not sure how long he had been there. He was trying to think of what was happening, and what might help get him out of the chains and heat, but his thoughts kept circling back to water.

  Water. Cold and vast.

  Water held in oceans and falling from the sky.

  Water roaring down the pipes to fill deep pools.

  Water sliding over the lip of a silver jug into a crystal glass.

  Water–

  The door to the cell opened. He blinked. His eyes had begun to close, pressed down over his eyes by heat and–

  The slosh of liquid against metal.

  He came to his feet, eyes staring at the silver jug and crystal cup. He lunged forwards, sweat scattering from him. The chains snapped taut, and the manacles yanked into his wrists and throat.

  ‘It is warm in here, isn’t it?’

  He noticed the figure carrying the cup and ewer. A woman. No, a girl. A girl in ragged grey with a thin pale face and chromed hair. She took another step, and the sound of water sloshing in the silver jug was like the crash of ocean waves. He reached again, the noise of the chains rattling taut lost under the silken sound of water.

  ‘Warm enough to give you a thirst,’ said the girl as she sat down on the floor. She put the jug and cup down in front of her. Hyrakro could see that there were beads of moisture on the outside of the jug. As he watched, a drop slid down the metal.

  ‘Please...’ he moaned.

  ‘Of course,’ the girl said, and filled the cup to the brim. He watched the water splash into the crystal and rise up the sides. The girl put the jug down and slid it over the floor towards him. Water sloshed over the rim of the cup, and he whimpered. ‘Go on,’ said the girl, and he glanced up. She nodded at him. ‘Go on, drink.’

  He reached out, hand a blur, chain rattling... and stopped. His hand was a finger’s breadth from the cup. He stretched, but could not reach it. He collapsed back, his mind throwing up thoughts through the haze of his thirst.

  He was in trouble, he knew that, something to do with the war, something that had brought the Angels of Death to him. They had brought him here, and that meant that the girl was with them. She wanted something from him. That made sense to Hyrakro; everyone wanted something.

  He starred at the cup of water. His tongue was too dry to lick his lips.

  ‘Drink, honoured dowager-son,’ said the girl, and he looked at her.

  Dark eyes glittered above her thin smile.

  ‘I...’ he said, the words hissing across his tongue. ‘I... don’t have anything you want.’

  ‘You should drink, then we can talk about what I want.’ She reached out, dipped a finger into the brimming cup and licked the water from it. ‘Just water – no neurotoxins, no pain enhancers, just an end to thirst.’ She nudged the cup forwards so that it was just in reach.

  He hesitated.

  And then the cup was in his hand, and the water was pouring into his mouth and down his throat, so cool that it seemed sweet. He could feel it running over his chin and spattering down his front, and the cup was empty and he was gasping with relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, still breathing hard, and put the cup down. ‘But I don’t have anything that you want.’

  ‘You are a member of a trading dynasty controlling one-tenth of the trade on a planet that rules the galaxy. I think there is a great deal that you have that I might want.’

  He laughed, the sound bubbling up from the euphoria of quenching his thirst.

  ‘You should check your facts, girl. You called me dowager-son, so
perhaps you should know that my only link to the Hysen is that title. I married in, you see, and then my delightful bride died, and the cartel don’t entrust anything to someone without a living blood tie. No blood, no stake.’

  He licked his lips and looked at the jug of water. The wetness in his mouth was fading, and the heat was pressing his skin again, squeezing sweat from his pores.

  He picked up the cup.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the girl tutted. ‘You see everything is situational – strength, respect, value. In this room, right now, this water is everything to you, or will be by the time the cup you just drank sweats out of your skin. Yesterday when you were sitting, sipping something rare and expensive it would have meant nothing to you. Circumstances change, and everything changes with them.’

  He blinked.

  ‘I... I don’t understand what you–’

  ‘Come on, Hyrakro. You are weak, but not entirely stupid. You might not be of the blood of the Hysen, they might not trust you or give you positions of real responsibility, but you still have privileges, knowledge of how they work, all those little connections and seams in trade operations, all those gaps and grey areas which exist.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking–’

  ‘Don’t! Just don’t even try to be that stupid!’ The girl was shouting, the sound so sudden that it struck him like a whip. She was on her feet, looming above him, breathing into his face as she spat out words. ‘I know already. I don’t need you to confess to know that you do favours, the right credentials for trans-atmospheric shipments, small loads added to cargos, veneers of respectability over layers of excrement. All while you take favours and coin in return, enjoying the sensation of tainting the business of the family who would not let you really be one of them.’

  She straightened, the anger and intensity gone as quickly as it had come. She bent down, picked up the cup and drank a mouthful, made a face and spat it out. ‘In my world those facts are valueless.’ She upended the cup carelessly onto the floor, walked back to the place where she had sat before and resumed her cross-legged position.