by Nick Kyme
Like a flood rushing to fill a crater, darkness swamped Exor’s sight. His hearing came back briefly, restored by some instinctive physical signal. Nothing at first, but the ambient rhythms of the underhive. It stayed like that for minutes, Exor clinging on.
Breathing, initially heavy but eventually more even, drifted through the mental fog of unconsciousness. It touched Exor’s face, wet and foetid with the stench of raw meat.
An untamed beast will be a slave to its instincts. It cannot think, it cannot reason, it can only react, survive.
‘Get up…’
The words were so distant, like whispers from the summit of a well, they seemed imagined.
‘Get up and let me carry you…’
A man decides, makes choices – he lets his conscience guide him and the fact he has a higher nature. His own survival is secondary to those he would consider as kin.
‘Let me carry you, brother…’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer
Amongst the fire tides, time was fluid. It flowed as easily as the burning waves Xarko swam against.
Unmoored from reality, slipping free of temporal concerns was all too simple. The tides were aligned to the aetheric plane, a place not so easily bent to mortal geography and chronology. Time here flowed differently. Diurnal and nocturnal, these cycles had no bearing in such an uncertain realm. Enter at the nascent dawning of the universe and a moment later emerge to find it inert, surrendered to the inevitable rigours of entropy. But to the contrary, enter in the twilight years of creation and find yourself returning to worlds in youthful bloom only seconds later. Life, matter, existence, all of it could be altered in course by the pervasive nature of the warp.
The fire tides were the warp, and the warp the fire tides.
As an accomplished student of the arcane, Xarko knew of the tacit relationship that existed between the two sides of the veil – the real and the unreal – and the metaphysical implications of that relationship. Geography mattered, timing and context mattered. What to the uninitiated and the ignorant might appear random was a scheme of near-incomprehensible complexity to those with enough esoteric knowledge to discern it. To behold the entire tapestry was to invite certain madness and dissolution, but to perceive a strand, a thread or two of the weave… That came as close as anything not unborn could do to navigating the vagaries of the tide.
Xarko sought such a thread, and swam in pursuit of it. He had been afforded but a glimpse, a narrow aperture through which he could perceive past, future and present colliding together in a fateful continuum. Life. Death. Rebirth. Over and over again. He knew that in attempting to locate what he had seen before in the tides he risked great danger. Only a psyker of considerable ability and confidence would ever trawl this incorporeal sea. Looking had a habit of resulting in finding, except not always the thing you wanted to unearth. Not only life, but the soul was also at stake. Things… creatures with old names, and hunger that was older still, hunted eagerly for the warmth of souls.
Amongst the fire tides, these creatures were the black slivers. As Xarko swam, his body locked safely away in his sanctum aboard the Forge Hammer, he felt the predators lurking at the edge of perception, threatening his mind and soul.
Wary after the last time, the predators did not attack immediately, as if waiting for a better opening or a vulnerability to present itself. Xarko was determined to show them neither, so he swam on. He had passed beyond the chamber, penetrated the first wall and had emerged into the twilight fire sea that so closely resembled the Gey’sarr or the Acerbian from back on Nocturne. It varied with every fresh tide.
For a time there was nothing beyond the usual susurrus of voices, the chronology of the universe laid out for him to listen to and observe. Faces, images wrought from fire, materialised in the deeps but were not the one Xarko was seeking.
He went further, pushing his body even though rationally he knew it was his will he exerted. Physical strength meant nothing here, but manifested anyway as a way for the mind to make sense of what it was experiencing. To an untrained mind, it would appear terrifying, even impossible. The fire would seem to burn and the mind would close in on itself. Some who chose to swim the tides had not returned. Their faces were mirrored in the waves now, stretched taut in expressions of agony and despair. Their bodies were long gone, rendered to ash in the true mountain. Some lived on in a catatonic state, watched over by the brander-priests and shackled in Prometheus’s deepest cells.
Still the resonance of what he had experienced before eluded him. He went deeper and the black predators began to converge as they sensed Xarko’s mental reserves draining. Strong currents tugged at his body as Xarko went further and further. One sharp pull threatened to drag him into an unseen well, the tendrils of a maelstrom that had begun to swell out in the distance. Pouring more effort into his strokes, Xarko managed to get free of it but was badly shaken and needed a moment to recover.
The predators chose their moment, striking fast and stabbing barbed hooks into Xarko’s flesh. He screamed, pain knifing into his skull as the hooks dragged. He thrashed, kicking out with his legs and managing to dislodge one of the fiends. He kicked again, the equivalent of a mental push, and thrust away from his twin assailants.
Arm over arm, breath sawing in and out of his lungs.
The tides heaved and pounded at his bones. Xarko was nearly at the end of his resilience but he fought on, knowing the black predators were behind him. Strong tendrils of current pulled at his limbs, and he realised the maelstrom could be his escape. He let the currents take him, surrendering to their will. As he was flung past his pursuers, taking cuts from their blades, he saw a face appear in the fiery spume. Half its skin was ravaged by scars, not the branding marks of the solitorium but a wound that had changed its complexion. Here was the thread Xarko wanted, fleeing from his grasp as he was pulled away by fate and his own weary mind.
No.
The word echoed in Xarko’s mindspace, calmly delivered but powerfully resonant. It shook the dark sky above the ocean, and tore strips into it with arcing jags of crimson. Pulled under, Xarko felt the bite of the predators once more and as he turned in the maelstrom’s ferocious undersea spiral, the face dissolved and was replaced by the insistent drumming of his heart…
Thud.
Thud.
The beat became a rap of knuckles, hard against metal. Despite his nausea and disorientation, he could hear the desperation in the sound. Sensation was slow to fade. Psychic echoes clung to the corporeal realm and Xarko struggled to detach them. Visions bled into reality, of the fire, the dark predators. He could smell their spoiled flesh, hear their sibilant whispering grating against the metal of the chamber. With a singular effort, he closed his mind to it, denying a foothold to the voracious denizens of the fire tides. The sanctum resolved, a fire-black circle surrounding him. Steam and smoke rose from his bare flesh.
It took a few seconds to marshal his disorientation and remember exactly when and where he was.
Alive, awake and restored to the physical plane, Xarko tried to stand. He collapsed, grimacing in pain at fresh wounds on his back and torso, souvenirs from his encounter on the other side.
Someone was hammering on the door to his sanctum. Even weakened, he managed to reach out with his mind, touch the surface thoughts of those closest to him and know something aboard the Forge Hammer was terribly wrong.
On instinct, he activated a distress beacon to their forces on Sturndrang, hoping they would hear it.
‘I’ve swum too long…’ Xarko hissed, reaching for his armour with shaking hands.
Makato would not have the deaths of these brave men and women on his conscience. The weight of guilt he bore was already heavy, and he had no desire to add to it.
‘Jedda, Halder, Navaar, Bharius.’ He said each name aloud to honour the promise he had made. They were just the ones he knew. Many others had died to protect this ship, to protect him. Makato hoped someone would rem
ember them and their noble sacrifice.
‘I go to join you soon…’ he murmured to the walls of the empty corridor.
Makato was standing alone outside the blast doors to the bridge. Behind him, on the other side of two metre-thick reinforced ceramite and adamantium, were twenty-eight armsmen and fourteen bridge crew. No captain sat upon the command throne, but consoles were manned and the ship was still in the hands of its crew. Never in all his years of service had it been otherwise.
Swearing on the souls of his father and grandfather, Makato vowed that would not change this day, this hour, this moment.
He knew though that the moment had run out.
Every effort had been made to slow the Renegade Astartes but they had advanced through the ship inexorably, their path bringing them to this nexus where Makato was now standing.
He saw the first of them, their sergeant, appear in the low light at the end of the corridor. Scarcely twenty-four metres separated them but Makato felt no fear.
Instead, he slowly stripped off his uniform, removing the jacket and vest beneath until he was standing naked from the waist up in boots and breeches.
‘Shang’ji Hiroshimo!’ he said and drew his ancestral sword to cut a shallow wound across his chest, honouring his father.
The black-armoured warrior was approaching with three others when Makato drew a second cut.
‘Shang’ji Yugeti!’
Again the blade sliced his chest, bisecting the first wound, honouring his grandfather.
He stepped forwards, entering a fighting stance with his sword held up and behind him. With the words of his native lands echoing into silence, Makato saluted the leader of the renegades.
He stood no chance, but if he was fated to die, to rejoin his ancestors then he would do it his way, on his terms.
Feeling the rough cord of his father’s old braid between the fingers of his off-hand, Makato muttered a prayer to the Throne, and prepared to meet his death with honour.
Snarling at the sudden scent of fresh blood, Urgaresh signalled a halt.
‘What are we waiting for?’ snapped Skarh. ‘Cut him down and be done with this.’
‘No,’ murmured Urgaresh. ‘We are not animals, not yet.’
He alone advanced, dropping the bolter he had scavenged, uncoupling the clamps that bound the cuirass of his armour to his body. Greaves and vambraces hit the deck with a loud clatter, obscuring the dense thud of Urgaresh’s purposeful footfalls. Gauntlets next, they clattered with the many plates used to form their fingers as they hit the floor.
‘I see you, warrior,’ said Urgaresh, coming to a stop and standing a few metres from the mortal. ‘And accept your challenge. Never let it be said,’ he snarled, revealing sharp incisors, ‘that the Black Dragons are without honour.’
With the sound of tearing skin and the light patter of blood hitting metal, Urgaresh slid his bone blade from its fleshy sheath.
The man raised his chin arrogantly, or perhaps it was defiance. The subtlety of mortal gestures was often lost on the Black Dragon.
‘I am Kensai Makato, grandson of Yugeti, son of Hiroshimo,’ he declared without fear or hesitation.
Urgaresh smiled ugly, a shark’s smile that never reached his cold, dead eyes.
‘Good,’ he hissed, ‘I shall carve it on my sword when you are dead, so none will forget your bravery.’
He gave a stiff nod in the mortal’s direction by way of salute, and attacked.
During the years he had with his father and grandfather, Makato had been well trained. Even before his tutelage in the art of Shogu was complete, he could best all of the household guard. There was not a man among the Bushiko who did not treat Makato’s sword arm with respect.
Countless drills in the training yards had prepared him, under the shadow of Mount Kiamat where the Tahken Dynasts dwelled upon the mist-shrouded peaks, jealously guarding the secrets of their kaisen blades.
Makato’s training could have afforded him a position in many august professions: Astra Militarum, Adeptus Arbites, Protectorate Nobilis, but in the end he chose to serve the Imperial Navy as an armsman, to maintain the generational thread.
But no training, no will of tempered iron could have prepared him for a one-on-one duel with a warrior of the renegade’s calibre.
Urgaresh went in hard, spitting a curse as he lunged at the mortal. Inexplicably, the blow failed to land but he felt a hot line trace his pectoral muscle instead. The Black Dragon turned, chasing his elusive prey and crafting a slash that went high to low.
Again, the mortal avoided the blow, stepping back with the speed of a well-trained swordsman.
Urgaresh snarled, wondering if his muscles had been irrevocably atrophied from their time in cryo-stasis aboard the Fist of Kraedor.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said, as he noticed the mortal looking over his shoulder at the three Black Dragons now standing behind him. ‘You’re fighting me. Don’t insult my honour by suggesting treachery.’
Urgaresh attacked again, filling the corridor with his bulk and favouring an overhead cut he knew the mortal would have to block. Bone scraped against well-honed metal, drawing sparks and filling the corridor with the stink of burned ulna. The mortal avoided the swift counter, a low punch designed to cave his ribs and leave him spitting blood as his organs ruptured. Instead, he rolled aside, allowing the Black Dragon’s bone blade to slide off his sword and embed itself into the deck with the force of its own momentum. Urgaresh drove into the mortal as he tried to slip past again, crushing him into the corridor wall with his shoulder even as his bone blade stuck fast.
The air was driven hard from Makato’s lungs. Winded, he felt a bone fracture somewhere in his side, possibly two ribs. Despite his martial discipline, he let out a yelp of pain but managed to get past the hulking warrior whose weapon was lodged in the deck plate.
Turning on his heels, ignoring the scything agony in his side, Makato thrust two-handed and impaled the warrior’s back. The blade went straight through and punched out of the warrior’s chest in a welter of blood. He tried to withdraw, intending to back off and wait for another chance to counter but the warrior turned too quickly and too violently. Eighteen years of his grandfather telling him never to lose his grip on his sword was rendered meaningless as the weapon was wrenched from Makato’s hands.
Fury was lending Urgaresh strength and speed now. Shutting down the pain of breaking his bone blade so he could face his opponent, ignoring the sword sticking out of his chest, he aimed a savage kick that caught the mortal off-guard and sent him sprawling down the corridor.
Dazed, chest throbbing, nerves screaming, Makato looked up at the dull lume-strips above and realised he had landed on his back. Too badly injured to get to his feet, he reached for his father’s braid that had been flung from his grasp and apologised to the spirit of his grandfather for losing his sword.
Makato hoped, despite his defeat and his death, he had made them proud. He smiled at their memory, imagining the monsoon clouds over Mount Kiamat, training with his patriarchs in the brooding shadow of a storm. It had made him feel so alive, so vital.
The heavy, approaching footfalls of his opponent brought Makato back to his senses.
‘Yugeti…’ he croaked, ‘Hiroshimo…’
Briefly mastering his warrior-rage, Urgaresh gave the mortal a second nod as he stood over him grasping a sword. It was a ceremonial piece, beautifully crafted although more like a short sword in Urgaresh’s massive fist.
‘Whoever those men were,’ he said in a rasp, ‘you honoured them.’
Raising the ceremonial sword, intending to drive it through the mortal’s heart, he added, ‘I hope it is fitting I use this blade to return you to them.’
The tip of the blade stopped a hand span from Makato’s bloody chest.
He looked up, craning his neck to do so, trying to understand his sudden stay of execution. The renegade was locked fast, though his face showed signs of exertion. He wanted to kill Makato, but couldn�
�t. Ice rimmed the blade in a thin veil of hoarfrost. Tiny particles of it dappled the renegade’s brow and caused his breath to ghost the air in clouds of vapour.
Unable to crane his neck any longer, Makato collapsed back, closed his eyes and surrendered to unconsciousness.
Urgaresh was furious.
‘Where is your honour!’
Though his eyelids were heavy with accumulated frost, he was able to look up at his enemy.
Standing in the open doorway that led to the bridge was a warrior clad in a deep green, though one arm of his battleplate was painted blue. A high metal collar rose up from his gorget around the back of his neck, where thin crackles of lighting could be seen coursing between its psycho-conductive nodes.
Two eyes blazing with cerulean blue regarded Urgaresh from a face as black as onyx. A white arrow-point beard masked the chin. Three cornrows of close shorn hair bisected the scalp in straits of black and white.
Urgaresh felt his anger renewed as he looked up at the witch.
‘Salamander…’ he growled, fuelled with enough rage to break the bonds foisted upon him.
Xarko held out his upraised palm as if brandishing it could stop the Black Dragon.
It could, and did.
The warrior had broken the psychic bindings causing his initial paralysis but now faced an invisible kine-shield that sealed off the entire corridor. Only when the warrior’s aggregated blows struck against it did the impacts bloom like tiny star flashes in midair.
‘You’ll find no passage through here…’ said Xarko, but he was already beginning to show the sounds of strain in his voice.
Three more warriors joined the first, spitting curses and expletives between blows, though the psychic barrier occluded the sound of their guttural voices.
‘Take him,’ Xarko rasped. He was far from at full strength when he emerged from the sanctum. It was the only reason he hadn’t already incinerated the infiltrators and cleansed the Forge Hammer of their presence.