Hammer and Bolter Year One

by Christian Dunn

  ‘No other could have seen me through the tempest, there is no shame in such a feat. We are here upon the Blighted Isle and I can find my way alone here. Rest up, for it will not be long ere we must go south again, and even I cannot walk on water.’

  Indraugnir laughed with a deep rumble.

  ‘With the Sword of Khaine in hand, perhaps you could carve apart the seas and cross the dry wound to Ulthuan.’

  ‘I would rather be carried by a friend,’ replied the Phoenix King. ‘Fare well, and I shall return soon with my prize.’

  The Blighted Isle was lifeless, a barren rock broken by stone spires; home to no plant nor animal nor bird nor the smallest insect. Aenarion set off away from the dawn, picking his way through the scattered rocks. Soon he spied higher ground to the west and set off with purpose. Pulling himself up a steep ridge, the king saw that the morning had all but passed and the sun was not far from noon. Yet the circle of light hung in a dark sky, its light weak, a pale disc that seemed more like the moon.

  Crossing the ridge, Aenarion felt a pull to the south, and the sharp, luring whisper returned to his ear. Yet even as he turned in its direction, a mist rose from the naked rock, surrounding him until the sunlight was no more than a faint sheen in the air. Shadows stirred in the fog and Aenarion thought that the daemons had returned. He circled slowly on his heel as the shapes resolved into vague silhouettes, tall and slim, robed with cloud like gowns. They crowded closer, just out of reach, grey figures that stretched towards him with pleading hands, their insubstantial bodies evaporating and reforming.

  Dark mouths opened and the fog swirled with hoarse whispers. ‘He walks among us.’

  ‘The Doom of the Elves hath come’ ‘Spare us!’

  ‘Mercy!’ ‘Not the blade!’ ‘Free us!’ ‘Give us peace!’ ‘Justice!’ ‘Show us pity!’ Aenarion swiped at the apparitions with his hand and stumbled back

  from their advance, only to find more behind him. There were thousands, a great mass of wraiths that grew in number with every passing heartbeat. ‘Leave me be, foul spirits!’ he snarled. ‘The dead have no business with the living. Torment your slayers, not I!’

  A quiet female voice beside Aenarion quelled all the others. ‘They are the spirits of the Dead Yet To Be, Aenarion.’ The Phoenix King spun around, recognising the voice. ‘Astarielle?’ he cried.

  It was she; a shimmering ghost of white and palest green among the melancholy grey. The Phoenix King looked upon her beauty again and wept. He stepped forwards to embrace her slender body, but his arms passed through air without substance, leaving only a cold sensation that prickled his skin. As the spirit of Astarielle reformed, he saw now that there were rents upon her flesh and silver blood spilled from a wound in her breast. Aenarion gave a wordless moan and fell to one knee.

  ‘My beautiful wife! What horrors have been inflicted upon you? Is there to be no peace for your spirit?’

  ‘In peace I lived, but in violence I died. To peace I will return, but not before I have spoken. Give up this quest for vengeance, Aenarion. Shun the lure of war and find it in your heart to treasure the memory of my life, not the haunting of my death.’

  ‘Look what they have done to you, my beautiful wife. Look at the destruction they have wrought upon your realm.’

  ‘All things die and then grow again. Even Averlorn has its seasons, though they last longer than the lifetimes of elves. What seems permanent now is but fleeting in the eyes of the world. The future cannot be born out of grief and anger, but is created anew with hope and love.’ ‘My love died with you, Astarielle,’ said Aenarion, regaining his feet. ‘This is your shade, fleetingly here, but soon it will be gone. Only in death will we join each other again, but I cannot needlessly throw aside my life and abandon our people. When the daemons are destroyed and Ulthuan is safe, I will return the Widowmaker to its black altar and let loose my grip on the world. Then we shall be united.’

  ‘There are things that you are not to know, but you must believe that all is not as bleak as it seems. You sought sacrifice to end the woes of the elves, but there is greater sacrifice to come. Though in times to come we shall spread our gaze across the world and rule the seas, it will be but a brief respite in the dwindling of our people. You now must make that choice. Look to your heart! We must forego that power that makes us strong, that the daemons might be caged again within their terrible prison, and with their passing so too will our glory fade.’

  ‘Never!’ snarled Aenarion. ‘We will rise anew from this war, greater than ever. Though your entreaty would break the heart of an ice fiend, my mind is set.’

  Silver tears rolled down Astarielle’s cheeks as Aenarion turned from her. The Phoenix King stalked away with a whisper.

  ‘We will be together again, my love, but not yet. There is something yet that I must do.’

  It was not long before Aenarion came to a wide expanse near the centre of the Blighted Isle. Here, jagged black rocks marked with lines of red thrust up into the ruddy skies like a circle of columns. The ground within was as flat as glass and black as midnight. At the centre there stood a block of red-veined rock and something only partly visible shimmered above it.

  Even as his thoughts touched upon the Godslayer, there came to Aenarion’s ears a distant noise; a faint screaming. The ring of metal on metal, of fighting, echoed around the shrine. Aenarion heard a thunderous heart beating, and thought he saw knives carving wounds upon flesh, and limbs torn from bodies on the edge of his vision. The red veins of the altar were not rock at all, but pulsed like arteries, blood flowing from the stone in spurting rivers of gore. He realised that the beating heart was his own, and it hammered in his chest like a swordsmith working at an anvil.

  Aenarion stood transfixed before that bloody shrine. The thing embedded in the rock danced and wavered before the Phoenix King’s eyes, a blur of axe and sword and spear and bow and knife and strange weapons not known to the elves. Finally a single image emerged, of a long-bladed sword, cross-guard curled into the rune of Khaine, its black blade etched with red symbols of death and blood.

  Aenarion reached out... and stopped, his fingers a hair’s-breadth from the hilt of the sword. All became silent; not a movement stirred the air as the world and the gods held their breath.

  Aenarion knew this would be his doom. All of the warnings came back to him, the words of Caledor merged with dire predictions of the daemons and the pleading of his dead wife. It all mattered nothing to him, for his sprit was empty and only the Sword of Khaine could fill the void within him.

  The ground shook and rock crumbled as Aenarion’s fist closed upon the hilt. He pulled the sword free from its stone prison and held it aloft. Blood seeped from the runes etched into the blade and poured in thick rivulets across his hand and down his arm, trailing crimson across his armour.

  Godslayer, Widowmaker, Doom of Worlds, Spear of Vengeance, Deathshard, Icefang and Heavenblight. By many names it was called, by mortal and daemons and gods. But one name alone it truly held: Sword of Khaine, the Lord of Murder.

  Now it was the Sword of Aenarion. The doom of the elves was sealed.

  AN EXTRACT FROM THE GILDAR RIFT

  Sarah Cawkwell

  ‘Incoming unidentified ships.’

  The words were spoken in an emotionless, flat monotone by the servitor at the sensor lectern and they cut through Arrun’s mood with all the accuracy and cruel savagery of a chainblade. He rose immediately from his command throne and took the steps down to the pulpit where the servitor stood. It turned its head to him and fixed him with eyes that gave away nothing.

  ‘Unidentified? No. That is unacceptable. Activate any working augur banks and sweep them for their designations immediately.’

  ‘Compliance.’ The servitor turned away, a faint hiss of hydraulics audible as it did so. The tech-priests were still chanting their apparently endless blessing and Arrun coolly bit back the urge to banish them from his deck. He turned to a young man seated at one of the control panels.

&nbs
p; ‘Run the manifests and schedules. Determine what is due into the system today. I checked it myself this morning. There was nothing slated for either arrival or departure. Prepare to send out a response ship. These intruders will answer to me.’

  ‘Yes, captain.’

  Arrun balled his hands into fists at his side, furious at this unwelcome intrusion. These fools would learn swiftly what it cost to cross the path of the Silver Skulls. They would not be the first to learn that lesson.

  A few more clicks and the servitor spoke again. ‘Profile fits Infidel-class design. No identifiable livery.’

  ‘Infidels?’ The word immediately sent the hairs on the back of Arrun’s neck standing on end. Once one of the favoured fighting ships of the Legiones Astartes, but now no longer used. Knowledge of their construction had long been lost and no Chapter of Adeptus Astartes or even the Imperial Navy had any remaining. At least, that was what Arrun had believed. Infidels were almost mythical. Any such vessels still flying were antiquities left over from the time of the Great Heresy.

  ‘Confirm. Infidels. They are not responding on any known vox frequency codes. They are not transmitting verified data.’ It chattered mechanically, turning to interface with the other console. ‘Augury data confirms identification. Both vessels recorded as Infidel Raiders. Records are incomplete.’

  Infidel Raiders. One of the escort vessels commonly favoured by a number of Traitor Legions of the Adeptus Astartes. The servitor made another chattering noise as it calculated distances. ‘They are not yet in weapons range. They are holding position just beyond our ship’s capability.’

  ‘Clever,’ muttered Arrun. ‘Very clever.’ He moved across the bridge to the schemata that were displayed as a shivering, unstable hololith. Just like that in the strategium, it showed the positions of the fleet currently deployed within the Rift. He turned to the tech-priest maintaining the image.

  ‘Improve quality.’

  The tech-priest nodded and, murmuring words to the Omnissiah, turned a few dials on the console that projected the image. It came into sharper focus and Arrun traced a line across the bottom section of the display. It rippled in the wake of his hand’s passage and the tech-priest shot him an unseen look of irritation as it fiddled again with the dials.

  ‘They crossed in through the fringes of the Rift,’ Arrun said, more to himself than any of the others. ‘It’s used a lull in augury sweeps. Whoever this is, they planned ahead.’ He turned to one of the humans standing close by. ‘Muren, make a note of that and make arrangements to contact one of our smaller patrols to work that area.’

  ‘Yes, captain.’

  Arrun tapped at a small console, his fingers moving with nimble, practiced ease and on the rendered hololith before him, the flickering representation of the Quicksilver relocated from its current position to the point that it should have been. He similarly moved a number of the other ships to new locations on the plan and scowled deeply.

  ‘We are the only ship in range should the need arise and unless they make a move from their current position...’

  Arrun stood away from the plinth and turned to the occulus. At this distance, the two ships were little more than dots on an endless sea of stars.

  If what the servitor stated was correct, they were Infidel-class. The escort ships were well known as being favoured by the Legions who had turned their backs on the light of the Imperium. That, combined with the continued lack of communication and the generally hostile manner of their approach suggested that they were more likely than not perfect fits to that profile. The mathematics needed no further thought. This, more likely than not, was enough to make a decision.

  Arrun’s brow furrowed and a surge of hatred bubbled up in the pit of his stomach. Cool, clinical detachment overrode his moment of anger and he began to bark orders. Every bellowed command was obeyed immediately, without question. Daerys Arrun ran a smooth, ordered ship and his crew, Space Marine, human and servitor alike, bowed before his will without hesitation. In a moment, the irksome chanting of the tech-priests had been blissfully drowned out by the overall volume of noise.

  ‘Enemy craft are accelerating. Augury readings are returning power spikes in their forward lances.’

  ‘Bring us around. We’ll meet them head on. Run the design through the cogitator. I want every weakness brought up. Whoever they are, they’re unannounced and uninvited. I will not stand for interlopers in my system.’ He clenched his hand into a fist. ‘Alert the gun decks. Load all cannons. Present forward batteries and prepare to fire on my word.’ He paused briefly. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Marks are continuing to increase speed, but they are no longer on a direct heading. They’re still holding just on the edge of firing range.’

  ‘This is the captain. All hands hear this. Take us out of geostationary orbit. We’ll...’

  ‘Captain Arrun?’ The only questioning tone so far came from the Prognosticator at his side. Arrun turned. The Prognosticator was so quiet, he’d not even noticed the psyker’s arrival. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘They won’t come to us, Prognosticator. So I’m taking the fight to them. They’re piloted by traitors. I won’t suffer their kind to continue their mockery of an existence.’

  The Prognosticator looked out of the viewport. The two ships were moving ever closer. Brand stared at the screen as though his psychic powers could somehow reach through the womb of plasteel and armaplas that surrounded them. Indeed, having seen what his psyker advisor was capable of, Arrun didn’t rate the chances of the ships had they been a very little closer. Brand’s eyes burned with a momentary fervour.

  ‘You should use caution,’ he said in his whispering voice. ‘The shape of the future is unclear to me. I should read the signs.’

  ‘Understood, Prognosticator.’ Arrun felt a moment’s uncertainty at Brand’s words. The Prognosticator’s connection with the Emperor’s will was not a thing to be taken lightly, but he would not permit this sortie to continue without intervention. He hesitated briefly. Protocol demanded that the Prognosticator cast the auguries, that they wait for the Emperor’s guidance in this.

  Daerys Arrun, however shrewd and brilliant his strategic mind may have been, was also exceptionally arrogant. He had neither the time nor the inclination to observe protocol in this instance. He took a deep breath and shot Brand a peculiar glance that was somewhere between defiant and apologetic.

  ‘We don’t have the time, Prognosticator. In this, you will need to trust to my judgement for once.’

  If the other was shocked at this blatant disregard for what was undoubtedly the strongest of the Silver Skulls traditions, he did not show it. Instead, he turned away and took a seat to the right of the command throne. His hard green eyes gave away nothing of his reaction to the insult that had just been made to his face.

  ‘Orders, Captain Arrun?’

  Aware that he had just transgressed and that there would be a discussion on the matter later, Arrun turned away from the Prognosticator and nodded.

  ‘Power up shields and begin loading prow cannons. Cogitator operators, begin calculating firing solutions’ He took a deep breath. ‘Reroute power from the Resurgent banks.’

  ‘Captain, you will delay the...’ Correlan’s voice snapped over the ship-wide vox, but Arrun ignored it.

  ‘Yes, captain.’

  Scant seconds later, the huge strike cruiser hauled herself free of Gildar Secundus’s orbit and began cutting through space, closing the distance between herself and the Infidels with ponderous majesty.

  There had been much trade activity in the Gildar system in the past few weeks. Many cargo vessels had come and gone, each without incident, each without question. Gildar Secundus was the usual destination but there were other, smaller worlds in the sector that received regular shipments from all across the Imperium.

  None of them had been suspicious. None of them had raised any call for alarm. All of the ships that came into the system conducted their business swiftly and without lingering too
long. It was possibly the presence of the Silver Skulls that encouraged such expediency, but it worked. They came, they transacted and they left.

  But the ships did not always leave with the same numbers aboard with which they had arrived. Even this was not by itself cause for misgiving. People came and went all the time. Sometimes, larger vessels travelled through, bringing and removing regiments of young men and women to their assignments with the Imperial Guard in other systems. All these were entirely normal activities. Nobody paid attention when a ship came in with two hundred souls aboard and left with one hundred and eighty.

  Had Daerys Arrun scraped beneath the surface, he would not like what lay there.

  He would have found tiny things. But tiny things that came together to form a far bigger picture. A team of prospectors returning to the habs of Gildar Secundus from the plains had mysteriously disappeared. Local law enforcement officers reporting a spate of murders that shared no apparent reason or commonality. Mechanical failures that caused system shutdowns and rolling blackouts. All small things that happened with systematic regularity on Imperial worlds. There was nothing unusual in it. But thanks to tireless planning and effortless cunning, on the many worlds of the Gildar system, things were beginning to fall into place.

  The wind howled around the comms-tower which served the Primus-Phi refinery. It whipped up and bore the endless red dust with it. It pattered constantly against the armaplas of the window, scoring and pitting it. Not that the panel served much of a purpose; during these storms, it reduced visibility to nothing more than a dark red haze. Officer Evett shivered at the thought of going out into the howling dust storm and thumbed the rune that closed the armoured shutters. The interior lumen-strips flickered briefly as the heavy panels locked into place, but at least the eerie screech of the relentless gale outside was instantly muted.