The Emperor's Gift

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘The Wolves aren’t animals. No beast is bound by honour, nor does it sacrifice itself for others outside its pack.’

  Kysnaros knuckled his tired eyes. ‘And how well I’ve learned that lesson. But there must be some answer, somewhere. Joros gave me little counsel, beyond swearing he could arrange for his men to fire when the final order came. He suggested we posture, so we did. He assured me the threats would work, so we threatened. He swore taking Grimnar captive would end the war, so we ambushed and betrayed them at an armistice. The blame is mine and mine alone. I will not hide from it, and I’ve recorded my culpability in the archives myself. But I’d never even met one of the Adeptus Astartes before. Joros was a mutual commander and advisor in the face of the Wolves’ intolerable independence. He was difficult to work with, but what could I do? As I said, I have no desire to demand more resources from Titan’s fleet. I couldn’t demand another leader for so few Grey Knights, when they had a duly elected one already here.’

  We didn’t elect most of our commanders – Joros was a Brotherhood Champion who ascended over our last Grand Master’s body on the battlefield – but now was hardly the time to duel over the details.

  ‘We stand on the edge of civil war, lord. What would you have of me?’

  ‘The Fenrisians respect you, do they not?’

  ‘One of them did. I should add, that was before we betrayed him and his High King.’

  ‘No, your tale has spread more than you imagine. You’re the right choice, I know it. You have to do this thing for me, Hyperion. The Wolves will send their ambassador to us in less than two hours. I need you to meet with him, alongside me. We can end this. We will end it. We can’t let pride and stupidity push us past the point of no return.’

  I could still kill him. I could kill him now, and end this with a single lost life. One murder was all it would take. One instant of casting aside all honour, all righteousness, for the sake of expedience and pragmatism. One sin to spare thousands of lives. Joros would be proud to hear me think it.

  ‘Hyperion.’ The Lord Inquisitor looked at me for a long moment, meeting my stare with his green eyes. ‘I have a question.’

  ‘Ask it.’

  ‘No Grey Knight has ever fallen. No Grey Knight has ever served the Archenemy, or tasted the taint of the Ruinous Powers. No Grey Knight has ever succumbed to mutation, or corruption, or any heresy of thought and deed. Will you tell me why?’

  I searched his face for any signs of mockery. More than that, I searched his soul. I wasn’t gentle, either. It was a ransacking, a violation; the wards I held around my mind crumbled as I slipped free of my own consciousness, and rifled my way through his heart. I sensed a thousand fears, hopes, concerns, joys… but no mockery, and no sour tang of deception. None aimed at me in that moment.

  He smiled, barely, as he allowed my painful intrusion unopposed. ‘I’m glad you see my sincerity. Perhaps I can explain the question better.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, and withdrew from his consciousness like a blade unsheathing from a wound. He grunted at another stab of pain, and wiped his bleeding nose.

  ‘You stand before me here with murder in your eyes. Such deeds, such emotions, pull at the Dark Gods’ attentions. But no Grey Knight has ever fallen to them. Are you free to act with impunity, forever protected purely by genetic divinity? Can you revel in bloodshed and sin, knowing you cannot be corrupted?’

  He raised a finger, cutting off my answer. ‘Or,’ he continued, ‘is it a struggle to always remain pure of thought and deed, against the madness and malice that would stain all other souls?’

  I wasn’t sure how to reply. ‘You’re asking the fundamental question that lies at the heart of our order. We ask it ourselves, from the moment we first don the grey and silver, to the night we inevitably die in battle. Philosopher-soldiers among our ranks have written treatises on the subject for millennia.’

  Kysnaros nodded. ‘And do you have the answer? Hyperion, what is the Emperor’s Gift? A license to do as you please, safeguarded against the evils that wrack our species? Or is it a sacred charge, a responsibility you have to live up to, fighting every second to remain purer than the species you’re sworn to defend?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of us know.’

  He was still meeting my eyes. ‘But what do you believe?’

  What did I believe? Did I even wish to share it with an outsider? Annika had asked me it herself, on countless occasions. Each time I’d changed the subject, or simply walked away.

  ‘I believe each of us makes that choice ourselves.’

  Lord Inquisitor Kysnaros stepped closer to me, and lifted my gauntlet in both his hands. He aimed the storm bolter on my forearm directly at his heart. I had only to close my fist to fire the weapon.

  ‘Then choose,’ he said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ABOVE THE STORM

  I

  ‘We can’t trust him.’

  When Annika was adamant about something, there was no arguing with her. Galeo might have convinced her through dignified arguments punctuated by meaningful silences, but she rarely listened to anyone else with the same grace.

  ‘We can’t trust him.’ Those were her first words upon leaving our Stormraven, once Malchadiel had flown her over. I’d told her everything, then waited for her response. ‘We can’t trust him.’ She turned to Kysnaros, who stood at my side. ‘We can’t trust you.’ Annika had never been shy about speaking her mind to people’s faces.

  The hangar bay’s noise killed any hope of polite conversation. She was practically shouting over the sound of a Lightning fighter plane being craned and winched into place, while Kysnaros’s smile was so false it might have been painted across a face of blank, tanned flesh.

  ‘I understand your reservations, Annika.’

  She shushed him with a glare. ‘You understand nothing about me. Nothing. I know why you’ve changed your song, Ghesmei. You know there are elements in the fleet ready to move against you. You fear them. So now you’ll try anything to crawl out of the fate you deserve.’

  Kysnaros made no effort to deny it, though neither did he betray any evidence of agreeing. From what I’d sensed of his mind, there was no trace of deception, but arguing with her was as fruitless as demanding the sun refuse to rise.

  ‘Killing me now will change nothing,’ he said.

  ‘No?’ Annika’s pale eyes were thin slits. ‘I don’t trust your judgement in that, either.’

  ‘Annika…’ I said, with an edge of warning. We didn’t have time for this, and even if we did, it would serve nothing. ‘The Wolves have summoned us to meet their ambassador. Come with us. Speak for the ordos. We can end this while it’s still a series of awkward skirmishes that shame us all. Warriors become proud of wars – even those that shouldn’t have been fought.’

  She looked at me as if I were speaking another language. ‘You have no idea who the Wolves are sending, do you?’

  Instinctively, I pushed into her mind, but she hid the answers well. ‘No,’ I confessed. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I can guess. I only hope I’m right.’

  II

  We met above the storm. That’s how high we were.

  The Wolves agreed to meet on a landing platform close to the Fang’s peak, which put us below the atmospheric crest but far above the clouds. I watched the storm from above – a blanket of charcoal smoke, hiding the entire world beneath us – feeling myself a little mesmerised by the sporadic flashes of lightning. Every burst cast a spear of sharp light through the black heavens.

  The air was thin enough that I had no desire to test it. I breathed slowly, tasting my suit’s recycled oxygen supply. I’d been in my armour since just after Armageddon; the ceramite suit’s link-ports chafed where they bonded with my skin, and the internal air supply was beginning to taste of my own sweat.

  While power armour was built to be worn for days, weeks, even months if necessary, that didn’t mean it was pleasant after a few weeks. Waste was minimised by regulating intake,
but the real trouble came in the form of rashes on the skin, which couldn’t be cleaned or disinfected without the armour being unplugged and detached, segment by segment.

  We came down by gunship – Annika, Kysnaros, myself, and Malchadiel piloting. Darford had no shortage of complaints about being left behind, but the others merely wished us luck.

  It was cold on the aerial platform. I knew that from my retinal display’s temperature gauge, though it was obvious enough from the howling wind and the diamond-dust layer of frost coating the tower’s walls. Malchadiel and I were immune to the cold in our armour, as was Kysnaros in his contoured suit. Annika wore a rebreather, but other than that, did nothing more than throw a cloak over her thin body armour. When I’d given her a questioning look, she’d rolled her eyes.

  ‘I was born here.’

  That settled it, then.

  We waited on the platform, facing the wind, not far from the shadow of our Stormraven. It was difficult not to tense when the tower’s bulkheads began to unlock on loud hydraulics. There was no way Jarl Grimnar could have reached Fenris by now, but the ambassador serving in his place was likely to be just as stubborn. War would come, without both sides compromising. Kysnaros spoke for an Inquisition that needed an untrustworthy ally to kowtow to its wishes; the Space Wolves ambassador would speak for an independent army devoted to the Imperium’s people, not its laws.

  Annika was right. It would be simpler just to kill Kysnaros.

  With a storm hurling hail at the fortress below us, and the wind blasting through the tower tops, we faced the opening bulkhead. Dull red lighting did nothing to illuminate the figure within, but I knew what it was as soon as it started walking forwards. The platform shivered with each step it took, and once it was out in the moonlight, its riveted, armoured hull was unmistakable.

  Annika burst into tears. I’d never seen anything like it – one moment she was composed, staring daggers at Kysnaros; the next she was weeping softly, her hands up to her rebreather mask, the tears freezing into silver trickles down her cheeks.

  I turned from the advancing war machine to glance at her. ‘Mistress?’

  She was already sliding down to her knees, still weeping, staring up at the approaching figure.

  ‘He’s real,’ she said in a whisper over the vox. ‘Don’t you understand? Don’t you see? He’s real.’

  The Dreadnought stomped closer, drawing to a halt some ten metres away. Moonlight became bladed lines on the edges of its dense armour plating. Tribal paintwork marked its old, old hull. One of the war machine’s arms was a heavy, brutal rotary cannon – lowered and aiming away from us. The other arm was closer to humanoid, ending in a curved, vicious array of metal talons.

  I looked at the sarcophagus fronting the armoured walker, showing ivory and bronze carvings of wolves, Fenrisian runes, and talismanic scripture. Rising from the thing’s back, flapping in the wind, was a faded war banner depicting a lone Wolf in armour of pale grey, his left hand rendered as curving claws of white fire. He stood proud, facing the setting sun in the west, with one boot on a pile of ancient helmets. I recognised the colours of the Bearers of the Word, the Warriors of Iron, the Lords of the Night… Those most ancient of foes, forming the Legions of the Eye.

  Annika wouldn’t stop weeping. It wasn’t a display of undignified wailing – but the soft, muffled weeping was becoming unnerving. They were a pilgrim’s tears, shed in a temple at the end of a long journey.

  ‘You’re real,’ she whispered to the towering war machine.

  ‘Of course I’m real.’ The Dreadnought’s voice was bionic thunder. ‘Get up off your knees, foolish girl.’

  Kysnaros looked between Annika and the war machine, his face behind the rebreather betraying his confusion. He dearly wished to begin negotiations, but suddenly had no idea how.

  ‘I am Ghesmei Kysnaros,’ he said to the Dreadnought. ‘A ranking lord in His Holy Majesty’s Inquisition.’

  I was only peripherally aware of their conversation. The name inscribed on the sarcophagus couldn’t be real. If it was, it meant…

  Oh. Throne of Terra.

  ‘My lord,’ I said, as I went to one knee myself.

  The Dreadnought turned slightly on its waist axis, with a low growl of sacred mechanics. ‘Enough of this. Get up.’

  ‘…and a duly appointed representative of the God-Emperor…’ Kysnaros finished, still unsure where to look.

  ‘God-Emperor?’ The Dreadnought made the sound of gears slipping, grinding together. From the booming augmetic tone, I assumed it was supposed to be laughter. Either that, or an internal weapons system reloading. ‘Calling him a god was how all this mess started.’

  Kysnaros was wrong-footed again, thrice now in a single minute. ‘What do you… I don’t–’

  ‘Nothing. Times change, and that’s the truth of it.’ The war machine turned again, facing all three of us. ‘Now. What brings you into the night sky above Fenris, and why shouldn’t I break your little fleet into pieces with this castle’s many, many guns?’

  The Lord Inquisitor straightened his back at that. ‘Please name yourself, sir, as I have done. Then negotiations may begin in good faith.’

  ‘Are you blind, little man? It’s written on my coffin.’

  I couldn’t let this go on any longer. Not only was it blasphemy, it bordered on excruciating.

  +His name is Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed. First Great Wolf of the Chapter, and second High King of Fenris after Jarl Russ, the primarch himself. They woke him to deal with us.+

  Kysnaros’s eyes never left the armoured shell, and the black iron coffin bound on its front.

  ‘You… You walked in the Age of the Emperor?’

  Bjorn made the gear-grinding chuckle again. ‘Walked, ran, pissed and killed. I did it all. I met the Allfather, you know. Fought at his side more than once. I do believe he liked me.’

  Kysnaros slowly, slowly went to his knees.

  ‘Oh, for… Not you as well.’

  III

  The Dreadnought turned to me, when Kysnaros had explained the story of Armageddon.

  ‘Is that true?’ he asked, unashamedly blunt. ‘You broke the Black Blade?’

  I looked at the sarcophagus bound to the hulk’s front, connected by adamantite bonding clamps and cable-linked life support feeds.

  ‘It’s true, Jarl Bjorn.’

  ‘Just Bjorn. I don’t sit on thrones any more, and I no longer rule anything at all. I saw Angron, both before the Change and after it. Breaking the Black Blade is no mean feat, knight. I fear you earned yourself your own walking coffin with that deed.’

  The thought turned my blood to ice. ‘I would rather sleep in the Dead Fields, alongside my brothers.’

  ‘There speaks a man who believes he has a choice about such things. Heroes never do. Heroes get to be immortal, awoken every few centuries for another war, or to share the Old Tales with yet another generation.’

  As if for emphasis, he took a lumbering step forwards. His claw could have wrapped around any one of us with ease, so to see the gentleness with which he touched Annika was almost heartbreaking. The war machine rotated his wrist servos, rattling and grinding as he rolled his claw. Then, with the flat of one savagely sharp talon, he tilted her head to one side, then the other, showing the tears of ice on her pale cheeks.

  ‘Enough tears now, little maiden. You have the look of the frostborn about you. What tribe, huntress?’

  ‘The Broken Tusk, Great King.’ Her voice was a mouse’s, no louder than that.

  ‘I still remember them. Vicious bastards, every one. A blessing in a battle if they were on your side, and a curse if they weren’t. Awful sailors, though. That’s the sad truth.’

  The Dreadnought stepped back, releasing her cheek. ‘No finer sight on any world than a frostborn maiden. Especially a beauty with black hair. Rare back when I had eyes to stare, and surely even rarer now.’

  I stared at the towering figure, wondering if there was some difference in the process by wh
ich gene-seed was once cultivated compared to the method now. He seemed to be able to determine that Annika was attractive. I wasn’t sure I could make that perception myself, and I had a thousand other questions to ask: about the warrior’s experiences in the age of the Heresy; about witnessing the Emperor in person; about the classes of vessels that once sailed the stars and now no longer saw use…

  ‘So,’ the Dreadnought interrupted my reverie. ‘Move ahead to the part that convinces me not to destroy your little fleet. Or I might just slay you, and end this with no effort at all.’

  Kysnaros bristled, but held his temper. ‘Others will come, Jarl Bjorn. Doz–’

  ‘I told you. Just Bjorn.’

  ‘I… yes. But… Dozens. Hundreds. I didn’t come to see Fenris burn, but mark my words, this world will die if the Wolves don’t compromise. Too many inquisitors view this as the perfect chance to rein in that famous and inconvenient Adeptus Astartes autonomy, and silence a troubling voice once and for all. The Wolves are beloved by the people of the Imperium that know of their existence, but the institutions of the Adeptus Terra are far less well-disposed towards the Sons of Fenris.’

  The Dreadnought seemed to consider this. ‘Small men with small concerns. Make your case, inquisitor.’

  ‘A penitent crusade would appease the Inquisition. A century… Perhaps two.’

  ‘You want us to send an entire generation of Wolves out into the stars, cloaked in shame, to appease fools who fail to serve the Imperium half as well as we do.’

  ‘It’s the only compromise that allows both sides to endure without conflict.’

  ‘You remind me of a remembrancer I once knew.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is, Jarl Bjorn.’

  ‘A remembrancer is a parasite paid to remember things. This one had a tongue like a snake and the heart of a weasel. He’d seek to convince everyone that his poems were works of genius, and that all critics were simply too foolish to appreciate him. That’s what you remind me of. The same failure of conviction. So try harder.’