Why did they not retreat? The creature had its meal. It would not give it up, and while it had the boy, it would not eat them. They had no weapons that could hurt it, but continued their fruitless attacks regardless, putting themselves in harm's way. It was illogical.
Perturabo intended to go. To his surprise he found he, too, wished to stop the beast and save the boy. He wondered at this instinct to go to the shepherds' aid. He began to descend, then stopped. His rapidly maturing brain calculated the likelihood of victory. He did not find the result to his liking.
The serpent rippled, putting on a startling turn of speed and outpacing the shepherds. The brush of its hide knocked the men down, and it was away over the rocks.
One shepherd wailed louder than the rest as the beast carried off its prize. He caught sight of the young primarch, and cried out in a language Perturabo had never learned, but which he understood.
'Help us!' he wailed. 'Help us!'
Perturabo's half-formed mind judged the shepherd. Was he weak, or was he deserving of help?
He thought on this for a full minute.
Perturabo turned away, and headed back for the ridge.
The LeBons' liaison was a giant slab of genetically altered meat encased in armour, and in that he was a typical example of the Emperor's enhanced warriors. His face was squat and bullish to the point of inhumanity, with a neck so thick his head appeared to be an extension of his shoulders, and a brow that looked borrowed from Olympia's cliffs. Olivier had assumed that spending time with the Legions would make their members easier to distinguish, but he had found the contrary to be true. He had given up trying to see the differences between them, and had come to rely on the markings they wore on their battleplate.
This one was called Krashkalix. He was a sub-captain of the IV Legion.
Krashkalix opted to sit with them in the Speeder's cramped transport compartment.
'I apologise that you were kept waiting, and that the primarch is not here.' Krashkalix was forced to shout over the teeth-rattling thrum of gravity impellers holding the vehicle aloft. The mountainous terrain made for shocking turbulence, and the machine bounced through it. 'He was called away to the Sak'Trada deeps several months ago. The Great Crusade waits for no one.'
'We understand,' Marissa shouted back. 'We meet with the primarchs if we can, but we understand their duty to the Emperor supersedes all other considerations.'
This satisfied Krashkalix. 'As it should.'
Olivier disagreed, but could have left it there. He did not.
'Our lives are a constant chase after your genefathers,' he said. 'They are never where they are supposed to be, and if they are, they never have time for us.'
He's going to frown, thought Olivier to himself. Space Marines often frowned. Their capacity for expression was severely limited.
Krashkalix frowned.
There we go, thought Olivier. He gained a sort of weary satisfaction from being right.
'We are, in short,' Olivier continued before the Space Marine's inevitable objection to his words, 'frequently disappointed.'
'I am sorry, but we fight for the Imperium, for the whole future of mankind,' said Krashkalix.
'There's a war on?' offered Olivier.
'You mock me,' said the Space Marine stolidly. 'I understand you too have your duties to perform. You were not forgotten. Perturabo himself ordered me to meet with you as soon as you arrived. He regrets he cannot speak with you personally. Truthfully. You come at a difficult time. The satrap Dammekos died not a month ago. There have been problems establishing who should take his place as governor. We Iron Warriors are few here. We prefer not to become involved in politics, yet we have no choice. The situation is tense.'
The news that they had not been forgotten made Olivier think of the statues, and of Fulgrim. Another vain one then, he decided.
'You are right that we all have our duties to perform,' said Olivier. 'If conquering the galaxy seems hard, then ours is merely impossible.'
'Regrettably the future of mankind must have priority over the past,' said Krashkalix. 'Maintaining stability in the present is task enough.'
Olivier shrugged. 'If you say so.'
'I apologise for my husband.'
Krashkalix looked at them both. 'You are pair bonded?'
'It was inevitable, we spend so much time together.' Marissa patted Olivier's hand.
The Space Marine looked neither impressed nor disinterested, but kept his expression of bovine indifference.
'I must disagree with you a little, sub-captain. The past is important,' Marissa said, 'because if we don't know where we have come from, how can we value what we have?'
'These are not the concerns of the Iron Warriors. We are conquerors. We erase pasts, but it is not my place to question the wisdom of the Emperor's servants,' said Krashkalix, though the way he said it suggested to Olivier that he clearly did question it. The LeBons were used to this, the unwilling babysitter spouting apologies and platitudes through gritted teeth. Olivier wondered if escorting remembrancers was a punishment detail. If it was, what had Krashkalix done?
'As the primarch is not here, what do you wish to do?' said Krashkalix. 'If there is anything I can enable for you so that you might accomplish your task more quickly—'
And stop being a nuisance to me, Olivier added to himself.
'—then you need but ask. You have the authority of the Sigillite himself. I am bound to obey.'
But I'm not happy about it, Olivier thought, adding the subtext.
'Thank you, sub-captain,' said Marissa brightly. 'We'll do what we usually do in these sorts of circumstances.'
To wit, every time we have written one of these damned books, thought Olivier.
'We shall gather information and begin to compile notes for the biography,' said Marissa. 'The interview with the primarch can wait until his return. To begin with, it would be appropriate to visit places of importance from his youth. We have of course begun our research, but I find visiting the sites to be most useful.'
'You do not wish to acquaint yourselves with recent information?' asked the sub-captain.
'We could speak with his family. I had hoped for an audience with Dammekos, but his sister still lives,' said Olivier. 'Perhaps she will speak with us?'
Again, the frown. 'Relations between Governor-elect Calliphone and the Legion are currently poor. The royal family may not consent, and I cannot command them.'
'Then we shall speak with them in good time. We will probably be here for several years,' said Marissa.
'That's how long it usually takes,' said Olivier offhandedly.
'I am a linear thinker,' continued Marissa. 'I like to begin at the beginning. Sites from his youth to start with.'
'Very well,' said Krashkalix. 'The Legion has arranged accommodadon in Lochos. You may spend the evening refreshing yourselves, and regarding the many improvements my lord has made to the capital. Then tomorrow I shall take you to the place where my father first arrived on this world.'
Perturabo knew what he needed without being told. His growing mind was a library full of books he had yet to read. He had only to think on a matter and information welled up inside him. Sometimes it stayed only a short while before sinking back into the depths of his subconscious, but more of it remained within his grasp with every passing day. As his mind grew, so did his body. The raw skins he had taken no longer covered him, so he saw that he was getting larger. If he went back to it he would no longer fit within the vessel that had borne him to the world of mountains, caprids and men.
He smelt what he needed on the air, scenting it like a hound from kilometres away, a hard smell, rich with possibility. Fire, and metal.
For the first time, he descended past the treeline on the mountain, and headed for the green valleys where men dwelled in numbers.
He followed the smell into a village. A ringing sound beat out steadily as a heart. He zeroed in on it, clambering over walls, pushing his way through hedges, moving in a stra
ight line towards his goal. A crowd of children playing in a field saw him first. He glowered at them, and they ran screaming.
By the time he reached the village, the alarm had gone up. It was a small place, twenty households of hard highland families set around a paved square on the round shoulder of the mountain. He found a road, and walked that, his bare feet planted firmly upon the uneven cobbles. There was a crowd in the square when he arrived. They did not dare stop him as he walked towards the forge.
The smith was engrossed in his work, and only looked up when Perturabo pushed his way within. The smithy was enclosed, a red and black world of secrets. The smith was a powerful man, thickly muscled and wise in his arts. Perturabo was as powerfully built as he. The smith knew not to protest.
Perturabo looked around, knowing the names of the tools and the items as he set eyes on them.
'Give me iron. Give me charcoal. High grade, long burn. Give me tools. Give me them now,' he said. He extrapolated the words he must say from the limited exposure he had had to the shepherds' speech. What left his mouth was tangled, but comprehensible. It was the first time he had ever spoken with another human being.
The blacksmith did as Perturabo asked. Authority cloaked the young primarch. Fear did the rest.
For hours Perturabo laboured in the forge, crafting an artefact he had never beheld, but whose shape was carried in his soul. The knowledge to work the metal, to beat iron into steel, to temper and to hone came to him as instinctively as the shape. In the beginning, the blacksmith held back, though he would not leave his domain. In the end, he came forward to assist. Those were superstitious times. The gods were prayed to and honoured, but never evident. Here was the proof of their being. Only an emissary of the gods could be so strange, and appear so mysteriously, and work the smith's magic despite being so feral.
Perturabo allowed the smith to help.
The whole day passed before the work was done. At its conclusion Perturabo held up a plain, iron sword to his face and sighted along the edge. It was the first sword he had ever seen. He grunted in satisfaction, and turned to go. He had said nothing since his initial demands.
'Who are you?' asked the blacksmith in wonder.
Perturabo paused at the threshold of the smithy.
'I am Perturabo,' said the boy.
Outside, nervous men waited in silence, their useless weapons held in trembling hands. Perturabo walked by them, and they let him go.
The supposed site of Perturabo's arrival at Olympia was a cold, wind-blasted place marked by a simple cairn of stones. Olivier wondered why there were not greater monuments there, because it had become abundantly clear that Perturabo liked monuments. There were monuments in Lochos, there were monuments on mountain tops. There were monuments at the sides of roads. Many of them depicted legionaries of the Iron Warriors, both as individual, helmless heroes and as faceless representations of the Legion as a whole. But there were just as many statues of Perturabo. Krashkalix proudly stated that many were the work of the primarch himself.
There was nothing so remarkable about the landing site.
The Speeder hung off the mountainside, engines buzzing noisily. One of the many faces of the huge, blocky mountain garbed in ice that looked out of the Chaldicean uplands, the slope was a bare few degrees from qualifying as a cliff. There was nothing alive there. Olivier found it hard to breathe. No sign of human habitation was visible, not even the ubiquitous ancient mines and quarries that scarred Olympia. They had overflown many of them. What at first appeared to be natural formations turned out to be vast workings from the Dark Age of Technology. But not on that mountain. Perturabo had arrived in a pristine environment. It was cold, bleak and woeful to the human soul. Nobody could possibly go up there of their own volition.
'What a sad place,' Olivier muttered.
'It was definitely here?' asked Marissa.
Krashkalix looked discomfited. 'Probable location. By the time the primarch returned to the site, his pod had been removed. Even so high as this, a prize like that would have been spotted and plundered. Olympia is without accessible deposits of many minerals, those having been mined out millennia ago.'
'Could he not be sure?' asked Olivier. 'Most of the primarchs have prodigious memories.'
Again, Krashkalix offered a variation on a frown that expressed awkwardness. 'As does my lord, but he does not remember much of his earliest days on this world. His memory begins with his climbing the Phrygean cliffs near Lochos. The legends of the Chaldicean mountain folk inform what we know of his earliest days. There was a falling star. A strange child was spotted in the mountains shortly after. He killed some of their livestock and was to be hunted, until he slew a jalpida and other local predators. After that they thought him a gift from the gods of the day, and he moved from village to village, crafting wonders and slaying the beasts that preyed on them.'
'Gods no one believes in any more,' said Olivier.
'In accordance with the Imperial Truth,' said Krashkalix. 'No.'
Marissa made copious notes and set to work with her picter. Olivier couldn't raise the interest. Naked stone and a probable landing zone provided few facts. He watched Marissa warily. She should know better than to attach any significance to this place. An avian cawed. Flying level with Olivier's eyes only thirty metres away, there was over a kilometre of empty space beneath its belly. Looking down past the bird made his head spin.
'There's not much to see here,' said Olivier. 'Let's move on.'
Krashkalix nodded. 'There is a commemorative museum not far from here. There is more for you there.'
'Just a minute more!' Marissa said. She bustled about, taking picts and making sketches.
Olivier waited impatiently while she finished. Krashkalix stared off over the distance-misted forests, lakes and rock of Olympia. He was not at all bothered by the cold.
'The city was as impressive as you said,' Olivier said to him. He was hoping to draw out Krashkalix a little. Architecture was not what he wished to learn about.
'My lord Perturabo has many great talents. His wish, when this war is done, is to turn them over to peaceful matters.'
'I heard some call him the Emperor's Architect,' said Olivier.
Krashkalix's frown made a reappearance. 'It is not his preferred title, nor is warsmith, warlord or siege master. None of them encompass the entirety of his skills.'
'But he is a fine architect,' said Olivier.
'Yes.'
Olivier waited a moment. 'I heard shouting, in the streets last night,' he said.
Krashkalix turned to look at him and blinked slowly.
'It sounded like a protest,' Olivier went on.
'There are elements in the populace who object to the demands of supplying the Legion,' said Krashkalix. 'They have become more vocal following the demise of Dammekos.'
'I don't see many young people here on Olympia. The city seemed somewhat empty.'
'The Emperor's wars take their toll on all worlds. Olympia is no exception,' said Krashkalix.
'What will be done with the protestors?'
'They will be punished,' said Krashkalix. He would not be drawn any further, and Olivier went back to slowly freezing to death.
By the time Marissa finished, he was shivering.
Over her wind-reddened cheeks, Marissa's eyes were alight with possibilities. She was crafting Perturabo's story already, weaving another web of lies in her mind.
'Where to next?' she asked Krashkalix.
'The forge of the first sword,' he said. At the legionary's command the Speeder drifted close enough to the rock face that they could step aboard.
Perturabo walked into the shepherds' farmstead carrying the head of the serpent in his arms like an infant. A collection of crude huts and broken-down fencing, the farm made the village with the forge seem grand.
The primarch was covered in blood, and the sword swung naked at his hip. The shepherds had seen him coming. They waited inside, peering fearfully from glassless windows.
The door creaked open. A man came out. Perturabo thought he was the shepherd who had cried out for his aid. He could not be sure. His memories would not settle; they were in constant competition with the knowledge swimming around in his mind and were unseated by it before they could take root. The knowledge was an affliction as much as it was a gift. He hoped the shepherd was the right man. The head was for him.
The shepherd looked at the trophy.
'You killed the jalpida.'
'I did,' said Perturabo.
'You have taken seven of my flock.'
Perturabo stared at him impassively.
'But this has taken far more,' said the man. 'And it took my son. You have avenged him.'
'I have.'
'What is the price?'
Perturabo frowned.
'What do you want?' said the shepherd. 'For the service. Everything has a price.'
Perturabo's quick mind analysed the shepherd's speech patterns, refining his own command of the language as he spoke.
'I do not want anything.'
The shepherd was confused. 'Then why did you help us?'
Perturabo thought. 'It was right. You are weak, I am strong.'
'You have come to protect us.' The man looked hopeful. It was a piteous expression.
The young primarch stared at the shepherd, then gave a single, hesitant nod. 'Yes. That is what I am for. To protect, and to improve.'
Another sentiment crossed the shepherd's face. It was an expression Perturabo was to learn to despise in the coming years. All Olympians, no matter how humble, were skilled in exploiting situations to their advantage. If he had known that then, he would have turned and walked back into the high peaks and dealt no more with men.
'We are poor,' said the shepherd. 'There are many beasts in these mountains that feast on our caprids. Some attack us and take our children, as you have seen. We cannot slay them. Can you?'
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