by Nick Kyme
A Salamander went down clutching his shattered gorget. Another spun, a gaping cleft in his torso. A third’s head jerked back, his battle-helm’s eye slit ventilated and a plume of matter bursting out of the back.
One of the oncoming Death Guard took a hit to the shoulder that blew off his pauldron. A second punched through his chest, a third his right leg greave. He grunted, stumbled but kept on coming.
‘Blades!’ yelled Nemetor, stowing his sniper rifle and drawing a chainsword when he realised they were about to engage hand to hand, and saw his men do the same.
A well-drilled phalanx came down at them, roughly ninety warriors against forty, tugging axes and mauls from their belts. There was enough time to roar a challenge, before the clash. Nemetor barrelled into his first opponent, using his bulk to topple the legionary. A second went down to a heavy blow from the Salamander’s chainblade. A third he head-butted, making his enemy crumple. Even Barbarus-born Death Guard couldn’t resist Nemetor’s sheer physical strength.
It struck Numeon as he watched that the honorific of ‘Tank’ was well deserved. But it might also prove the captain’s epitaph, as the numerically superior Death Guard had already overrun the smaller reconnaissance company and were attempting to encircle them.
Vulkan single-handedly prevented that, hitting the overlapping warriors and cutting them apart with his flaming sword. Numeon and the Pyre Guard joined him fractionally later and a dense, chaotic melee erupted.
Further Death Guard reinforcements were entering the fray. They were well drilled and led by a hulking warrior in heavy armour. Numeon caught site of the section leader striding down the slope. Thick plates banded the Terminator’s shoulders, a rounded war-helm sitting like a bolt between them. A metal skirt of horizontal slats protected the warrior’s abdomen and in a gauntleted fist, he clenched a pole arm with an arcing blade at its summit.
His men gave their commander a wide berth, inviting a clutch of Salamanders to attack him. The brute lashed out with the power scythe, and four legionaries fell back with limbs and heads cleaved off. He advanced, an upwards swing bifurcating his next opponent. As he moved on he crushed the stricken Salamander’s head underfoot and left a dark smear in his wake.
This was one of Mortarion’s chosen, his elite cadre. The Salamanders had encountered them before, during the Great Crusade, in the joint campaign to settle the world of Ibsen. They were the Deathshroud, and had no equals amongst the XIV Legion.
Chainsword snarling, Nemetor met the formidable warrior in single combat.
It was a fight the brave captain was unlikely to win.
‘Nemetor!’ Numeon roared, pushing to even greater efforts as he fought to reach his brother-captain.
Death Guard and Salamander exchanged blows, the combat already lasting much longer than any previous engagement of Mortarion’s chosen warrior. It took eight seconds for the Deathshroud to cut Nemetor down. His scythe blade sheared the Salamander’s chainsword in half, the teeth exploding from the still churning belt and embedding in Nemetor’s armour. The backswing raked his chest, opening up ceramite and smashing Nemetor off his feet. He was about to be subjected to the same desultory end as his battle-brother with the crushed skull when Vulkan intervened.
The primarch parried the scythe with his sword blade before reaching inside the Deathshroud’s guard to land a blow with his gauntlet. One of the warrior’s retinal lenses cracked on impact, revealing a bloodshot eye, burning with hate. Half of the legionary’s war-helm was badly dented and a dark fluid was leaking out from under his gorget.
He roared, putting his anger into a two-handed swing that Vulkan stepped aside before cutting horizontally with his sword and slicing clean through the Deathshroud’s waist. Coughing blood against the interior of his half-crushed helm, the dying legionary reached for a canister mag-locked to his belt. It was another of the dirty bombs that he had unleashed on Nemetor and his company. Vulkan crushed the Deathshroud’s fingers under his boot. Sheathing his sword, the primarch wrenched the power scythe from the legionary’s grasp and snapped it over his knee in a flurry of agitated sparks.
It was enough to break the spirit of the Death Guard, who were now engaged by assaulting Firedrakes and fell back in good order. The Pyre Guard were putting the others to the blade when Numeon leaned down to rip off the Deathshroud’s helmet.
A pallid-skinned, mashed-up face greeted him. To Numeon’s surprise the warrior did not spit or curse – he grinned, exposing a raft of broken teeth. Then he began to laugh.
‘You’re all dead men,’ he whispered.
‘Not before you,’ replied Numeon, and ended him.
He looked up again when he heard screaming. Not from the dying, but savage and guttural war cries. A ruddy smog was sweeping across the battlefield, fashioned from blood-drenched mist and the smoke generated by thousands of fires. Caught in a crosswind, it slashed in from the east and brought with it the brutal challenge of a Legion that revelled in war. It was air to them, sustenance.
World Eaters.
Their brownish-red silhouettes materialised in the smog like phantoms, along with something else.
Something big.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Immortal
‘You have a fine mind, John. We should talk, and consider the options available to beings like us.’
– The Emperor, the Triumph at Pash
When he heard the screaming, Numeon drew his weapon.
It was coming from the infirmary, a gut-wrenching cry of agony that shook the legionary from a dark reverie. He’d heard screaming like that before, on a plain of black sand. And it chilled him, the symmetry he found in the remembrance of one held against the reality of the other.
The cry of agony ceased almost as soon as it began. A noxious stench permeated the air – whether from whatever had just happened in the infirmary or a false sensory remnant from his bleak imaginings, it was hard to be sure. Numeon didn’t move. He kept his eyes on the infirmary door, glaive levelled at waist height with the volkite primed.
Behind him, the dying embers of the pyre crackled into extinction. He paid them no heed, his attention fixed. Others arrived onto the manufactorum floor, drawn by the scream. Numeon kept them back with a warning hand gesture, before nodding in the direction of the infirmary.
‘What was that?’ he heard Leodrakk hiss, and caught the sound of the Pyre Guard’s bolter slide being racked.
‘Came from in there,’ murmured Numeon, maintaining his aggressive posture. ‘Who’s here, besides Leo?’ he asked. He had taken off his battle-helm; it was sitting by the side of the pyre dappled with soot. Without it, he had no visibility of his comrades’ positions relative to his own.
‘Domadus,’ uttered the Iron Hand.
‘K’gosi,’ said the Salamander, just above the quiet rumble of his flame-igniter.
‘Shen?’ asked Numeon, aware of four legionaries in total, and swearing he could make out the growling undertone of the Tech-marine’s cybernetics.
‘He was dead,’ said Shen’ra, announcing his presence with his answer. ‘No man could survive those wounds. No man.’
‘Then how?’ said Leodrakk.
‘Because he isn’t a man at all,’ muttered K’gosi, raising his flame gauntlet.
‘Hold,’ Numeon told them all. ‘Approach no closer. Out here, at a distance, we have the advantage over whatever is in that room. Domadus,’ he added, ‘get Hriak. No one else enters. Leodrakk, guard the door.’
Both legionaries did as ordered, leaving Numeon to maintain watch.
‘We wait for the Librarian, find out what we’re dealing with.’
‘And then, brother-captain?’ asked K’gosi.
‘Then,’ Numeon replied, ‘we kill it, if we have to.’
All of them had heard rumours. War stories. Every soldier had them. They were an oral tradition, a comradely means of passing on
knowledge and experience. What lent these tales credence was that veteran officers of the Legiones Astartes had attested to facts and given them, in detail, in their reports. To falsify an account of a battle or mission-action was no minor infraction in either Legion or Army. All military bodies took such things incredibly seriously. But facts, explainable through scientific means or not, could not accurately and convincingly reference ‘abominations’ or even ‘physical possession’ without coming across as suspect. These were the words of vaunted, trusted men. Captains, battalion commanders, even Chapter Masters. Such testimony should have guaranteed veracity and credence.
And yet…
Creatures of Old Night and evil sorcery had been confined to myth. It was written, in ancient books, that they could reshape men and assume their forms. Towards the end of the Great Crusade, evidence that was concealed at the time – but later brought to light – gave claim that such creatures could even turn a legionary’s humours against his brothers.
In Numeon’s darkest nightmares, the name Samus resonated with eerie familiarity. Here, on Ranos, it had visited him more frequently. It had been the same on Viralis. They were not xenos, and he had seen and exterminated enough aliens to know this was the truth. Numeon knew an old word for them, one that if spoken a few years ago would have earned derision, but that now carried a ring of bitter and forbidding truth.
And, if further rumours were to be believed, the patronage of such beings was sought out and courted by the Word Bearers. They had found a different faith, the followers of Lorgar. In his gut, Numeon knew that was why they were here. He felt it.
‘Something comes!’ hissed K’gosi.
The Salamanders aimed weapons as a man-shaped figure staggered through the infirmary to reach the door to the manufactorum. It was dark inside and only a silhouette was visible through the window.
‘If it is allowed to speak, it might be the end of us,’ said Shen’ra.
‘Agreed,’ said K’gosi.
‘Wait…’ said Numeon. For despite those misgivings and the threat of something unknown gnawing at the resolve of every legionary in this war, this felt different.
With a low creak, the door opened and the man they knew as John Grammaticus stepped through its open frame. His hands were raised, and when he was no more than a metre beyond the doorway he stopped.
‘Who are you?’ Numeon demanded in a belligerent tone.
‘John Grammaticus, as I told you.’ He seemed calm, almost resigned, despite the fact he faced off against four battle-ready Space Marines.
‘You could not have lived,’ Shen’ra accused. ‘Your wounds… I saw you die on that slab in there. You could not have lived.’
‘And yet, here I am.’
‘Precisely our problem, Grammaticus,’ Numeon told him. ‘You live when you should be dead.’
‘I am not the only one.’
The slightest pause betrayed Numeon’s doubt before he answered. ‘Speak plainly,’ he warned. ‘No more games.’
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you,’ Grammaticus confessed.
‘We should kill him now,’ said K’gosi.
Grammaticus sighed. ‘It would do no good. It never does. May I put my arms down yet?’
‘No,’ said Numeon. ‘You may talk. If I deem what I hear to be the truth, you may put your arms down. If not, we’ll bring you down a different way. Now, how is it you are still alive?’
‘I am perpetual. That is to say, immortal. Your primarch is, too.’
Numeon frowned. ‘What?’
‘Kill him, Numeon,’ K’gosi urged, ‘or I’ll burn him to ash where he stands.’
Numeon put out his hand to ward the Pyroclast off. ‘Wait!’
‘He’s lying, brother,’ murmured Leodrakk, edging up beside Numeon.
‘I’m not,’ Grammaticus told them calmly. ‘This is the truth. I cannot die… Vulkan cannot die. He lives still, but he needs your help. I need your help.’
Shaking his head, Leodrakk said darkly, ‘Vulkan is dead. He died on Isstvan with Ska and the others. The dead don’t come back. Not unchanged, anyway. Just shells, like on Viralis.’
K’gosi was nodding. ‘Fire cleanses this filth, though…’ He advanced a step, close to touching Numeon’s outstretched hand with his breastplate.
‘Stand down.’ Numeon saw the Pyroclast in his peripheral vision, the chain mask and scale long-coat lending him the appearance of an executioner. It might yet be his role.
‘I want to believe him as much as you do,’ said Leodrakk, switching to Nocturnean, ‘but how can we? Vulkan alive? How would he even know? We’ve already lost enough to treachery.’
‘We all wish the primarch were still with us,’ added K’gosi, ‘but he’s gone, captain. He fell just like Ferrus Manus. Let this go.’
‘And you, Shen?’ asked Numeon. ‘You have said little. Am I deceived, a fool to believe our lord primarch yet lives?’ He risked a side glance and saw the Techmarine’s face was pensive.
‘I can’t say what Vulkan’s fate is. I only know we fought hard and bled greatly on Isstvan. If anyone could have survived, it would have been him.’
‘Brother…’ snarled Leodrakk, unhappy at what he saw as Shen’ra’s capitulation.
‘It’s true,’ the Techmarine replied. ‘Vulkan could be alive. I don’t know. But this man was dead. He was dead, Numeon, and dead men do not speak. You are our captain and we will follow your orders, all of us. But don’t trust him.’
Before Numeon could answer, Leodrakk made one last plea. ‘It’s likely we’ll die here. But I won’t have us killed because we were too credulous to act against the danger in our midst.’
‘I am not the one who is in danger,’ said Grammaticus, in perfect Nocturnean.
The shock around the legionaries was masked but noticeable.
‘How do you know our language?’ asked Numeon.
‘It’s a gift.’
‘Like coming back from the dead?’
‘Not one of mine, per se, but yes.’
Hriak entered the room. Behind his retinal lenses, lightning streaked the pale sclera of his eyes and formed into a dark tempest.
‘Lower your weapons,’ he rasped, stepping into Numeon’s eye line and in front of him.
No one questioned him. They lowered their weapons.
Domadus came in just after, taking up position at the door. His bolter wasn’t aimed at the human but it was in his hand and ready.
‘Are you going to try and prise my head open again?’ asked Grammaticus, warily eyeing the approaching Librarian.
Hriak regarded the human silently for a beat. ‘For a man, you are… unusual. And not just for your ability to cling tenaciously to life.’
‘Interesting way of putting it. But you’re not the first legionary to remark on that,’ Grammaticus replied.
Ignoring the attempted wit, Hriak went on. ‘I have heard of biomancy that can knit skin, mend bones,’ he reached out to touch Grammaticus’s healed body, ‘but nothing like this. It could not bring men back from the dead.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ answered Grammaticus. ‘I serve a higher power who call themselves the Cabal.’
‘A higher power?’ said K’gosi. ‘Do you believe in gods then, human?’
Grammaticus raised his eyebrow. ‘Do you not, even after all you’ve seen?’ He continued, ‘They gave me eternal life. It’s them whom I serve.’
Numeon detected the bitterness in his reply and, coming up alongside Hriak, asked, ‘To what end, John Grammaticus? Evidently you are no creature of Old Night, else my brother here would have urged us to destroy you at once. Nor do I think you’re an alien. So, if not malfeasance, what is your purpose?’
Grammaticus met the Salamander’s gaze. ‘To save Vulkan.’
The tension in the manufactorum suddenly went up several notches.
> ‘So you’ve said,’ Numeon replied. ‘But I thought he was supposed to be immortal, like you? What need of saving would our primarch have?’
‘I said save him, not save his life.’
Leodrakk sneered, his displeasure at this exchange obvious, ‘And what makes you think you can succeed where we, his Legion, failed?’
Numeon bit back the urge to tell his brother they had not ‘failed’, and let Grammaticus continue.
‘Because of the spear. I need it, the artefact your enemy took from me. They are my enemy, too. With it I can save him.’ Grammaticus turned to the Librarian. ‘Take a look if you don’t believe me. You’ll find I’m speaking the truth.’
Hriak gave Numeon an almost imperceptible nod.
Grammaticus saw it too. ‘So, help me. We have a common foe in this, as well as a common goal.’
‘An alliance?’
‘I’ve been proposing one ever since you captured me.’
‘Where is he then?’ asked Numeon. ‘Where is our primarch that we might save him? And how can a mere human, albeit an immortal one, hope to achieve such a feat? You say you need the spear to do it, but how? What power does it possess?’
‘He’s far from here, that’s all I know. The rest is still a mystery, even to me.’
‘Have Hriak tear his skull open,’ snapped Leodrakk. ‘He’ll unlock what he knows.’
‘Please… Help me to the spear and off Ranos. I can reach him.’
Numeon considered it but then gestured to Hriak.
‘Tells us what he knows,’ he said darkly.
The Librarian took a step forwards so he could press the palm of his right hand against the man’s forehead.
‘Don’t do it…’ murmured Grammaticus. ‘You don’t know what–’
He convulsed as the pain of mental intrusion hit him. Then Hriak jerked, and a grunt of agony escaped through his vox-grille.
Numeon reached out to him. ‘Brother…?’ The Raven Guard warded him off with an outstretched hand.
He couldn’t speak. Hriak was breathing hard, the throaty sound affected by exertion as his powers were tested. He fell down to one knee, but maintained eye contact and kept his hand up to show the others he was all right. He let it drop to his gorget, then detached his helmet clamps, releasing a small plume of pressurised gas into the air. Then he lifted the helmet free. Underneath, his skin was pale, almost bone-white. Ravaged by injury, one half of the Raven Guard’s face was pulled up in a permanent grimace. His neck bore the scar of a grievous throat wound. It was deep, and looked grey and ugly now that it had healed. Grammaticus balked at the grim apparition. Since Hriak’s discomfort had begun, his own pain had visibly eased.