‘You are staring,’ he pointed out.
‘You were lucky not to lose your eye.’
‘That is a curious choice of words. Half of my skull was replaced by layered metal bonding, and I am reliably informed by Cyrion that the left side of my face looks like I lost a fight with a crag cougar.’
He stroked gauntleted fingertips down the sides of his face, where the scars of surgery were slowly fading. Even his post-human biology struggled to erase the damage done. The scars on the left side of his face ran from his temple to the edge of his lips. ‘These scars are not a mark of fine fortune, Octavia.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ she said. Something in his manner put her at ease – a touch of almost fraternal familiarity in his measured tone and honest eyes. ‘What’s a crag cougar?’
‘A beast of my home world. When next you see one of the Atramentar, look to their shoulder guards. The roaring lions on their pauldrons are what we called crag cougars on Nostramo. It was considered a mark of wealth for gang bosses to be able to leave the cities and hunt such creatures.’
‘Mistress,’ Hound interrupted. She turned at the break in her history lesson.
‘What?’
Hound looked awkward. ‘I killed a crag cat once.’
She tilted her head, but Talos answered before she could. ‘Hill Folk?’ His low voice resonated in the chamber.
Hound nodded his ruined head with its crown of scraggly grey hair. ‘Yes, lord. And I killed a crag cat once. A small one. Then I ate it.’
‘He probably did,’ Talos conceded. ‘The Hill Folk lived away from the cities, eking out an existence in the mountains.’
Octavia was still watching Hound. ‘Just how old are you?’
‘Older than you,’ Hound confirmed, nodding again as if this answered everything. Bizarre little thing, she thought, turning back to Talos.
‘How’s the arm?’
The warrior had glanced down at his armoured left arm, closing the hand into a fist. On the surface, encased in armour, it looked no different to his right limb. A different story lay beneath the ceramite: a limb of dense metal bones and hydraulic joints. The subtle grind of false muscles and servos was still new enough to be novel. He still felt a faint amusement at the vibration of small gears in his wrist or the crunching clicks when the plasteel elbow joint moved too fast. For her benefit, he offered his hand, tapping his thumb to his fingertips over and over in quick succession. Even the most subtle movements made his growling armour thrum.
‘Cyrion lost his arm at Crythe,’ he said. ‘I consider this an unfortunate thing to have in common with him.’
‘How does it feel?’
‘Like my own arm,’ he shrugged, ‘but less so.’
Despite herself, she felt a smile. ‘I see.’
‘I believe I will speak with Deltrian regarding the repairs,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to join me?’
‘Not at all, thank you.’
‘No,’ Hound piped up, still lurking by the door. ‘No, sir.’
Vox-speakers across the ship crackled to life. The Exalted’s bass drawl rumbled through the corridors, ‘Translation into the empyrean in thirty rotations. All crew to their stations.’
Octavia looked up at the speaker mounted on the wall. ‘A polite way of saying, “Octavia, get back to your room”.’
Talos nodded. ‘Return to your chamber, Navigator. Watch for the ghosts that walk these halls, but pay them no heed. How far are we from our destination?’
‘A day from the Maelstrom’s edge,’ she said. ‘Maybe two. There’s one more thing.’
‘Which is?’
‘The Void-born’s father. Septimus told me not to trouble you with this, but I think you should know.’
Talos inclined his head for her to continue, but said nothing.
‘Sometimes in Blackmarket, and elsewhere on the crew decks, he tells us all how the ship is damned, cursed to kill us all in the coming nights. Some of the older crew have been listening and agreeing for a while... You know how they were about the girl. But now the new crew, the Ganges crew, they’re starting to listen. Arkiah blames you. The girl had your Legion medallion, and she still... you know.’
‘Died.’
Octavia nodded.
‘I told Septimus to deal with this,’ the warrior intoned. ‘But thank you for bringing it to my attention. I will end the situation myself.’
‘Will you kill him?’
He wasn’t deaf to the hesitation in her voice. ‘Dead slaves are worthless,’ he said. ‘However, so are disobedient ones. I will kill him if he forces my hand, but I have no wish to end his life. He is an example of human resistance to corruption, for he was able to sire a child despite decades of life in the bowels of this ship. I am not an idiot, Octavia. He is as much an example as his daughter was. His murder would profit us little, and serve only to antagonise the mortal crew. They must be brought to obey through fear of the consequences, not crushed into obedience by hopeless depression. The former breeds motivated, willing workers who wish to survive. The latter breeds suicidal husks that care nothing for pleasing their masters.’
The air between them grew awkward, and Talos grunted an acknowledgement. ‘Will that be all?’
‘What awaits us in the Maelstrom? What is the Hell’s Iris?’
Talos shook his head. ‘You will see with your own eyes, if the ship manages to hold together for long enough to actually reach the docks there.’
‘So it’s a dock.’
‘It’s... Octavia. I am a warrior, not a scribe or a literist. I lack the words to do it justice. Yes, Hell’s Iris is a dock.’
‘You say that like it’s a curse. “I am a warrior”.’ Octavia licked her dry lips before speaking. ‘What did you want to do with your life?’ she asked. ‘I told you the truth: I’d always dreamed of guiding such a warship, and for better or worse, fate gave me what I wished for. But what about you? Do you mind if I ask?’
Talos laughed again, that same whispering chuckle, and tapped the defiled aquila emblazoned across his chest.
‘I wanted to be a hero.’ A moment later, he masked his scarred face behind his skulled helm. Red eye lenses stared at her, devoid of all emotion. ‘And look how that worked out.’
IX
VOYAGE
Reaction was mixed as one of the Legion masters strode into Blackmarket that night. Most stood stock still, freezing in place, variously wondering who had done something wrong, or if their own transgressions were about to be punished. Some fell to their knees in respect, or bowed their heads in greeting. Several fled at the first sight of the master’s red eye lenses emerging from the blackness. Most of these – oil-stained workers from the engine decks – ran down the many corridors leading from the communal crew chamber.
Their escape went ignored. The warrior moved through the parting crowd to stand before a single man who tended a market table, selling scraps of white cloth and charms woven from female hair. Nearby, humans dimmed their lamp packs as a sign of respect in the presence of a Legion master.
‘Arkiah,’ the warrior growled. His vox-voice was a guttural snarl, a rasping coming through the vocabulator in the helm’s mouth grille. The man flinched back, cowed by fear, kept straight only by his stubborn pride.
‘Lord?’
The warrior reached for the gladius sheathed at his shin, his movements deliberate and slow. As he rose with the blade in his hand, eye lenses still locked to the mortal’s sweating features, he growled another three words.
‘Take this sword.’
Talos dropped the gladius onto the table with a clang, scattering trinkets off the edges. The blade was as long as the human’s arm, its silver length turned amber in the dim lighting of the communal chamber.
‘Take it. I am due to meet with the tech-adept, and that meeting goes delayed while I remain here. So take the sword, mortal. My patience is finite.’
With trembling fingers, the man did as he was ordered. ‘Lord?’ he asked again, his voice quavering now
.
‘The blade in your hands was forged on Mars in an age now believed to be myth by almost every soul in the Imperium. It has cut the heads from men, women, children, aliens and beasts. With these hands, I pushed it into the beating heart of a man who ruled an entire world.’ The warrior reached to his belt, where an Adeptus Astartes helm hung on a short, thick chain against his hip. With a jerk, he wrenched the helm free, letting it thud onto the table where the sword had lain a moment before.
Red ceramite, marked by dents and scratches; green eye lenses, both cracked and lifeless. The helm stared at Arkiah in dead-eyed silence.
‘This helm is all that remains of the warrior that murdered your daughter,’ said Talos. ‘I killed him myself, in the running battles that raged across the decks as we fled from Crythe. And when it was done, I severed his head from his shoulders with the very blade you now struggle to lift in your hands.’
The man made to lower the sword, to rest it back on the table. ‘What do you wish of me, lord?’
‘It is said you sow the seeds of discord among the mortal crew, that you preach this vessel is damned, and all who sail aboard her are destined to suffer the same fate as your daughter. Is that so?’
‘The omens...’
‘No.’ Talos chuckled. ‘If you wish to be alive at the end of this conversation, you will not speak of “omens”. You will speak the truth, or you will never speak again. Do you preach of the Covenant’s damnation?’
Arkiah’s breath misted in the cold air. ‘Yes, my lord.’
The warrior nodded. ‘Very well. That does not anger me. Slaves are not forbidden emotions and opinions, even misguided ones, as long as they obey their duties. What are your duties, Arkiah?’
The ageing man backed up a step. ‘I... I am just a menial, lord. I do whatever is asked of me by the crew.’
Talos took a step closer. His active armour growled with teeth-itching resonance. ‘And does the crew ask you to preach that every one of them is damned?’
‘Please don’t kill me, lord. Please.’
Talos stared down at the man. ‘I did not come here to kill you, fool. I came to show you something, to teach you a lesson every one of us must learn if we are to remain sane in the lives we lead.’
Talos gestured to the helm as he continued. ‘That warrior killed your daughter. His blade tore her in half, Arkiah. She would have taken several moments to die, and I promise you those moments were more painful than anything you can possibly imagine. Your wife also died in the raid, did she not? Slain by a Blood Angel blade? If she was with your daughter at the end, then this warrior likely butchered them both.’
Talos drew his own blade. A Blood Angel sword, as long as the human was tall, prised from the loose fingers of a slain hero. The polished and winged artefact was wrought of silver and gold: its craftsmanship unmistakable, its value uncountable. He slowly, gently, rested the golden blade on the ageing man’s shoulder, the edge just shy of kissing the mortal’s neck.
‘Perhaps this was the last thing they both saw. A faceless warrior towering above them, blade ready to fall, to cut, to cleave them apart.’
Tears stood in the man’s eyes now. When he blinked, they trailed down his cheeks in quicksilver rushes.
‘Lord,’ he said. One word, nothing more.
Talos read the question in the broken man’s eyes. ‘I have come to ease your doubts, Arkiah. I did what I could. I tore her murderer apart. I carry his memory with me, in the taste of his blood on my tongue as I ate his heart. Your daughter died, and you are entitled to your grief. But here, now, you have the murderer’s remains. Use the sword. Break the helm. Take the vengeance you crave.’
At last he found his voice. ‘I do not wish vengeance, lord.’
‘No.’ The Night Lord smiled behind the faceplate, pulling the healing muscles tight. Despite his words to Octavia, his face was a mask of constant aggravating pain now. He’d been considering stripping the skin from the left side of his skull, deadening the nerves, and replacing the scar tissue with bare augmetics. He still wasn’t sure why he felt such reluctance to do so.
‘If vengeance is hollow,’ Talos continued, ‘then you have simply not suffered enough. Revenge is all any of us can hope for, each time we must lick new wounds and wait for them to heal. Every soul on this ship, mortal and immortal alike, accepts that as truth. All except you. You, who insist you’ve been wronged more than any other. You, who dare to whisper dissent into the shadows, forgetting that your masters dwell within that same darkness. The shadows whisper to us, Arkiah. Remember, little human, treachery on this ship is punishable by being flayed alive.’
Talos was no longer speaking directly to him. The warrior turned, addressing the crowd that ringed them both, even as he aimed his words for Arkiah’s ears.
‘So answer me something: do you mumble your traitorous words because of selfish grief, as if you are the only one to have lost something precious, or is it because you truly think your fellows will rise up in rebellion against the Legion?’
‘My daughter...’
The Night Lord was a blur of movement and a purr of servo-joints. One moment he faced the crowd, his back to Arkiah; the next, the weeping man was held aloft by a fistful of greying hair, boots hanging above the decking.
‘Your daughter was one of hundreds to lose her life that night,’ the Night Lord growled, ‘on a ship that falls apart beneath our feet even now because of the damage it sustained. Do you want me to apologise for not protecting her? Or would that also change nothing? Would those words, even true, ring as hollow as worthless vengeance? Will they bring her back?’
Talos hurled the man aside, sending him crashing into a table that toppled under the impact. ‘We lost dozens of warriors the same night you lost your daughter. Dozens of souls who’d stood on the very soil of Terra and watched the walls of the Emperor’s palace tumble to the ground. Warriors who’d devoted eternity to fighting an unwinnable war in the name of vengeance. We lost hundreds of mortal crew. Every mortal on board lost someone or something precious that night, and they swallowed their grief, settling for the hope of revenge. But not you. You must tell everyone else that their losses mean nothing next to yours. You frantically whisper that everyone must piss themselves in fear at an unwritten future.’
Talos sheathed both blades and shook his head. ‘I grieve for her loss, little father, for her life and what it represented in this wretched sanctuary we are all forced to suffer. I regret that all I could give her was the peace of vengeance. But let me be utterly clear, mortal. You live only because we allow it. You drew your first breath in an empire we built, and you serve us as we tear it down. Hate us. Despise us. We will never care, even as we shed blood to protect you when we must. Heed these words, human. Do not dare put your heart’s losses above anyone else’s. The warp always finds its way into fools. Poisonous thoughts are a beacon to the neverborn.’
The crowd watched with rapt eyes. Talos turned, his eye lenses meeting the gaze of every serf in the chamber, one after the other.
‘We sail through bleak tides, and I will lie to none of you about what awaits in our future. The Covenant bleeds, crying out for repair. We draw near to the dock at Hell’s Iris, a place some of you will remember without affection. Once we are docked, remain locked in your quarters unless you are attending to essential duties. Every soul among you with access to a weapon, make sure you carry it with you at all times.’
One of the crowd, a new slave from the Ganges, stepped forward. ‘What’s happening?’
Talos turned to the man, looking down at his unshaven face. It was only then the Night Lord realised he’d been speaking Nostraman. Half the crew were new – they had no experience with the dead language.
‘Trouble,’ Talos spoke in Low Gothic, the Imperium’s mongrel tongue. He was growing more comfortable with it since Octavia came on board. ‘We are making for a haven of renegades in the heart of Imperial space, and will arrive at its borders within a handful of hours. There is a chance the s
hip will be boarded while we linger in dock. If that happens, defend the Covenant with your lives. The Eighth Legion are not generous masters, but we are saints compared to the depraved souls we must ally with. Remember that, should you find yourself tempted by thoughts of escape.’
Talos saved his last glance for Arkiah. ‘Little father. If you defy the Legion with anything more than a selfish coward’s whispered words in the future, I will carve the skin and muscle meat right from your bones. Your flayed skeleton will be crucified at the heart of this very chamber, hanging as a warning to all. Nod if you accept these terms.’
The ageing man nodded.
‘A wise decision,’ Talos replied, and stalked from the chamber. In the shadows of deeper corridors, he spoke four words into an open channel.
‘First Claw, to me.’
He sat with his head cradled in shaking hands, gently rocking back and forth as he sat in the middle of a bare chamber, whispering the names of gods he hated.
One of his brothers called to him over the jagged soundwaves of the vox.
‘I come,’ Uzas replied, rising to his feet.
He lowered the immense blade, releasing the trigger to let the sword’s teeth fall still. The engine in its hilt idled as the warrior listened to his brother’s summons. Sweat bathed him beneath his armour, leaving his skin itching even as it soaked into the absorbent weave of his bodyglove.
‘On my way,’ Xarl voxed back.
The quill slowed in its scratching path across the parchment, then finally stopped. The warrior looked to the skull-faced helm on his writing desk, watching him with its unblinking eyes. Reluctantly, he placed the quill back in its inkpot. A dusting of fine-grained sand trickled over the parchment to help the letters dry, before the warrior reached to activate the vox-mic in his collar.
‘As you wish,’ said Mercutian.
He walked the ship’s corridors, staring into the darkness through red-stained lenses and flickering white targeting cross hairs. A rune chimed on his retinal display, his brother’s name-glyph pulsing for his attention. He blinked at it to reply.
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