Perturabo waited. Encouraged by his silence, the man continued.
'A hydraka lairs not far from here.' He pointed to the north-west, where pinnacles of rock crowded out the sky. 'Three valleys over, near an outcrop like a horned head. We dare not graze in that territory, as the hydraka kills everything. There are many good pastures there, but we cannot use them.'
'It hurts you?'
'Yes.'
'Then I will kill it,' said Perturabo.
The shepherd looked almost regretful. Perhaps he did not expect such swift agreement; perhaps he had realised the strange boy might die on behalf of his greed. Whatever his misgivings, his attempts to dissuade Perturabo were half-hearted. 'The hydraka are powerful, and cunning. They are like the jalpidae, but with many heads. You must cut quickly to destroy it, for they heal blade wounds fast. It will disarm you. It will kill you.'
'It will not,' said Perturabo certainly.
He left the village. That night, he feasted on jalpida flesh, not knowing it was poisonous to mortal men. It did him no harm.
The next day he set out towards the outcrop. As he made his way down the path from the high peaks where he slept, he found a bundle wedged under a rock. Curious, he opened it out, and discovered a suit of clothes like those the shepherds wore cut for his muscular youth's body. The workmanship was inadequate. Perturabo saw a myriad ways it could be bettered. He improved the suit before discarding his skins and donning it.
On the way to the valley of the hydraka, he stopped to cut himself a wooden club from the heartwood of a tree. The shepherd was right. The hydraka healed his sword cuts quickly, and it wrenched his blade from his hand with a venomous mouth and cast it aside, but when Perturabo crushed three of its five skulls with his club it died just the same.
The heads he delivered to the same farmstead, and the next day more gifts were left out for him. Food, and utensils - a bowl, spoon, knives and more. He had none of these things before, but the moment he saw them he knew what they were and he recognised their work as inferior. He abandoned the gifts, and made his own.
A week later, a storm of rising knowledge dislodged his memories, and he forgot that any of this had happened.
Six months after that, he found himself clinging to the Phrygean cliffs, and his life began in earnest.
The Speeder took the LeBons to a small town high in the mountains. Modern buildings clinging to sheer rock defined the majority of its streets, but the centre was an unevenly paved square atop a knoll in the narrow space between where one cliff ended and another began. The square was old, and the buildings around it also, made of rough stone long before the Emperor had come to Olympia. A primitive smithy stood slightly away from the rest of the buildings. Smoke drifted from its chimney.
An idealised statue of Perturabo occupied the square's middle. Cast in gold, the primarch stood over an anvil, his smith's hammer raised to strike. The masonry of the statue pediment was flawless. The artistry was sublime. So much gold - on impoverished Olympia it was worth an incalculable amount.
In style and wealth, the monument was a ridiculous contrast to its surroundings.
A simple flap of hide divided the forge from the outside world. Krashkalix made straight for it and held the curtain open for the remembrancers. Heat washed out. A smith was at work within.
'In here,' said Krashkalix.
'A shrine?' said Olivier incredulously.
'A museum,' Krashkalix corrected him.
'It looks like a shrine to me,' said Olivier. 'We've seen this before, near worship of the Emperor's sons by their legionaries. We don't want that, we want the truth.'
'Hush, Olivier,' said Marissa.
'I will not be quiet when I see the Imperial Truth ignored.'
Krashkalix looked at the floor. The Legions did revere their genefathers. Olivier was convinced it would one day lead to trouble.
'Worshipfulness is not why I brought you. You wanted to speak with people connected to the primarch. You wanted to speak with people who are honest.'
'Yes,' said Olivier. 'We did.' He looked around the small town. Like Lochos, it was underpopulated. The few people who had come out to see the strangers were old.
'The resident smith is Gerademos, the grandson of Andos.'
'Andos? As in, Perturabo's foster-brother? What's he doing here?' asked Olivier in surprise.
'Why don't we ask him, dear husband?' said Marissa, and went inside.
Olivier took a deep breath of cold air. Krashkalix stopped him before he could go in.
'Be careful repeating what he says. Gerademos is not afraid to speak his mind. He speaks the truth, mostly, but it is an unfortunate version of the truth.'
'And he is allowed to?' said Olivier.
'He is our gene-lord's kin,' said the Space Marine. 'I said we prefer not to become involved in politics.'
Olivier followed his wife into the broiling interior. Krashkalix came last, stooping low to clear the lintel. The hide flap fell, cutting out the glare of the day and leaving them in ruddy dark.
The blacksmith was twisting wire around a bundle of iron rods to hold them together. Then he set a modern machine that worked a set of bellows going and thrust the bundle into the fire and spent a long time adjusting its position while it heated through. He ignored the LeBons and their escort for five minutes while he did this. Eventually, as Olivier's patience was running out, he spoke.
'I won't speak with him here.' The blacksmith didn't look up from his work.
'I'm sorry?' said Olivier.
'The legionary, he has to go. Whatever you want, I won't talk with him in here.'
'How do you know we want to talk? We could just be visiting. Surely you have visitors.'
'Not many. Not as many as Perturabo would like.' Gerademos pulled the bundle, now glowing orange, from the fire and set it on his anvil. 'The Speeder,' he said. 'There're only a few Speeders about. And you have one of them escorting you. You're off-worlders, high rankers. You want something all right. I won't talk in front of him.'
Olivier looked at Krashkalix. The sub-captain employed the obligatory Legiones Astartes frown, nodded, and left.
'I assume you've come here to talk about the primarch.' With three taps to sight his aim, Gerademos began to beat the softened metal, his blows welding the iron bars into one piece.
'Assumptions are unreliable,' said Olivier. Marissa gave him a serene look. It was a rebuke nonetheless.
'They take all the best,' he said, between striking the metal. 'Not only the boys for the Legion, but nearly all of the young. They take them for the fleet, and the shipyards and for the auxiliaries and they leave the dregs behind. But just because I haven't been chosen does not qualify me as an idiot,' said the smith. The metal sang under his attentions. 'You're here to talk about the primarch. You're not the first.'
'Then tell us about him,' said Marissa.
'Why should I? I have no love for Perturabo.' He spoke openly, without fear. Gerademos pushed the iron back into the fire. Creaking leather pumped by gleaming technology breathed life into the coals, and the heat intensified. After a few moments, the smith took out the metal and recommenced the welding in silence.
Olivier looked over at Marissa. Her role in their partnership was to break down the barriers their subjects erected around themselves. It wasn't something that had been assigned, but an easy practice they had fallen into during their long marriage. He enjoyed watching her talent at work. They still had that. There wasn't much else.
Marissa moved around the cramped forge, looking at this or that, though never once touching. She stopped before a pile of what Olivier at first took to be scrap bronze, but when he looked closely, he saw that there were traces of magnificence clinging to it.
Marissa pointed at the mangled metal. 'This must have been marvellous. Is this the work of your ancestor? What happened to it?'
'That? That is not the work of my grandfather. Perturabo made it with his own hand.' Steam whooshed around Gerademos as he plunged the metal in
to the quenching barrel. 'And by his own hand he destroyed it.'
'Why?' asked Olivier.
Gerademos thrust the metal back into the fire. Cherry glow lit his face. Ruby coals reflected in his eyes as he leant against the sill of the coal bed. He was tense; he didn't want them there. He turned around.
'I tell you what. I will tell you of my ancestor, Andos, who grew up with the primarch, and lost everything to him. You can draw whatever conclusions from that you like. Then you're leaving.'
'Thank you,' said Marissa warmly. 'That seems fair.'
'Andos was a noble man,' Gerademos began. 'He was kind and thoughtful - indeed, he was so different to the rest of Dammekos' kin there were whispers he was a foreign seed sprouted in the poison soil of that house.'
'Is it true?' asked Olivier.
'No. I myself have been gene-typed to settle the matter. Dammekos was my great-grandfather.'
'Then you could be rich,' said Olivier.
'Rich?' Gerademos smiled humourlessly. 'I would have nothing to do with him. He was as bad as his foster-child,' said the smith angrily. 'Andos was a great craftsman. Were it not for Perturabo, he would have been the genius of this age. There was little art or craft he could not turn his hand to, nothing he could not make beautiful. None could surpass him, except Perturabo. Do you think Dammekos, his own father, saw that? He did not. Dammekos was bedazzled by Perturabo, and what service the foreign youth could do for him.'
Gerademos pulled out the iron and commenced working it with his hammer. Between ringing strikes he continued his story.
'But Perturabo did see Andos' worth, and it made him seethe. He goaded Andos constantly into competition, vying with him to see who could make the most marvellous art or fashion the finest weapon. Everyone knew Perturabo exceeded Andos in every way, none more so than Andos himself, but the mere possibility that anyone, even his own adoptive brother, could better Perturabo's talents, stoked his rage. Perturabo always had an excess of rage. So Perturabo contested with Andos, and beat him, and contested with him again, and beat him, and each time he exulted in his triumph. It was pathetic, like a ten year-old crowing that he has outmatched his three year-old brother in the wrestling ring.'
'This does not accord with the official accounts of his life,' said Marissa.
A hard strike sent a fan of sparks from the iron. Gerademos held up the iron in his tongs and peered at it critically. It was taking on the shape of a sword. The metal cooled to a dull ruby, and he thrust it back into the coals. The bellows began their pumping once more.
'Of course it doesn't. Perturabo wrote the official accounts. Before the Emperor came, he presented a face to the world that he thought of as calm and commanding, but was in truth sullen. He hid his envies, though not all of his rages. This story was told to me by my father, who heard it from my grandfather. You want a true account of the primarch, you won't get a better one than this.
'One day, Perturabo challenged Andos yet again. By this time my grandfather's patience had run out. He had come to middle-age, and had withdrawn to his workshops. He had no desire to prove anything to anyone, only to continue his business in the shadow of the Warlord of Lochos as best he could. Perturabo would not let him be. He pushed and pushed, demanding another matching of skill. Andos' own temper was slow to kindle, but it finally caught as any man's eventually will, and so he took Perturabo's challenge. They were to make statues of Shashal of Drast - he's one of our culture's heroes,' he said sourly. 'Yet another bloody murdering tyrant. We have an addiction to them.
'This time, Andos strove harder than he ever had before. He put all his talent into that statue. Perturabo finished well before, but Andos would not hurry. Weeks went by. Perturabo's ego was soothed by what he thought of as another victory. That is, until Andos was done and the statues were set side by side, and unveiled.'
The smith took the metal from the fire, and began again to beat upon it, speaking between strikes.
'Perturabo's statue of Shashal was perfect in every way. There was not a single flaw. In composition it was arresting. As a depiction of the human form it was a marvel. Shashal looked like he might step down from his pedestal at any moment, that he would breathe and live as a revenant in bronze. The people of the court were moved to tears.'
'So why did he destroy it?' asked Marissa.
Gerademos snorted a bitter laugh. 'Because there was a problem, and for Perturabo it was a very big problem.' Gerademos' hammer rang off the metal. 'Andos' statue was better. A lot better. Perturabo's was technically period all right, but Andos somehow trapped the man's soul in bronze. When viewed from different angles, the statue revealed another facet of Shashal's character. Andos depicted pathos and tragedy. Through subtle means he told the story of Shashal's life in that one, single figure. Compared to Andos' statue, Perturabo's looked hollow. The way they tell it, there was never a finer piece of art made on Olympia, and Perturabo knew it. His face went grey. But he congratulated my grandfather, and the court gave Andos high honours. They were going to set the statues side by side above the Kephalon gate at Lochos in honour of both men. That never happened.'
'Because Perturabo destroyed them both,' said Marissa.
The hammer clanged again many times before Gerademos answered. 'You catch on quick,' he said. 'He obliterated Andos' statue completely. Of course, no one said anything about it. It went unremarked upon like all the rest of Perturabo's petty rages. His own statue he smashed into that mangle you see there, but he was careful to leave enough of it so that its artfulness can still be glimpsed. One of our noble lord's more subtle lessons for us. Andos and Perturabo never spoke again. Grandfather let himself age naturally, and died nearly ninety years ago. Such a waste of a talent, gone while his parasitic sister and father ruled over us.' He shook his head angrily. 'Andos had something Perturabo never had.'
'What is this thing?' asked Marissa.
Gerademos grunted. 'Humanity.'
The blade went into the fire for a minute. He repositioned it carefully, watched the way it absorbed the heat. Marissa waited while he worked, allowing him to calm.
'I have a final question for you, Gerademos,' she said.
'You want to know why I work here, when this place is so closely associated with the primarch?' he said. 'It's remote, for one thing. I'm freer to talk here than I am in the cities. Don't let the statue outside fool you - only off-worlders come here. The legionaries are always on campaign, and the rest of us Olympians don't care. I don't get many visitors, and I like it that way. This smithy was a human place, for human art. By working here, I reclaim it for our own kind. Perturabo's memory is a stain on this place. Perturabo protests he has the good interests of the people at heart, but he's insecure, paranoid as the worst of the satraps. Most here don't like him, but they respect him, and if they don't respect him, they fear him. I don't respect, fear or like the damn kiritoi,' he employed a strong Olympian curse. 'If I ever even begin to feel any of those things for him, I look at the remains of that statue in the corner there. It reminds me that it isn't possible to make the perfect man. There's always a flaw. Andos was the better man, because he was a man. No Emperor made him in a jar. Perturabo is a monster.'
He thrust the metal into the quenching barrel. Steam wreathed him. He pulled it out. The metal had taken on a gentle curve.
'Ah, it's a scythe, not a sword,' said Olivier.
'Why would I make a sword?' said Gerademos. 'Don't you think we've had enough of war?' He threw his hammer into a barrel of tools and picked up a whetstone. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do.' He turned from them, making it clear he would say no more.
'Fascinating,' said Olivier, as they passed the monument on the way back to the Speeder. 'A great insight. I'm surprised he hasn't been silenced speaking like that.' He pitched his voice low to avoid drawing in Krashkalix, who walked several paces behind them.
'Some worlds are more tolerant of dissent than others,' said Marissa.
'I don't think this is one of those worlds,' s
aid Olivier. 'There's him, the protests we heard. Something's going on here. Perhaps we could explore this story further, and get to the bottom of it?' He glanced back at the Space Marine, but Krashkalix showed no sign of having heard.
'No. That's enough. We can't include it,' said Marissa.
'We should,' Olivier said coldly. 'It's the truth.'
'Truth or not, you know we can't,' she said firmly.
'I wish to show you what the Lord of Iron is to his sons.'
That was what Krashkalix said to them in the morning, before he flew them out of Lochos to a castella in the mountains.
Direct viewing of legionary helmet-feed usually brought on Olivier's vertigo, so he took an anti-nausea pill before the immersion helm was placed over his head. The device was made for a legionary, and it took Krashkalix some effort to adjust the internal webbing and pad out the interior so that it fit.
A stream of numbers detailing date, time and location rushed past Olivier's eyes, and he was plunged into the middle of ferocious battle. Despite being prepared for it, he jumped at the sudden noise.
The images had been captured by an Iron Warrior's autosenses. Everything the warrior had seen, Olivier now saw. It was like looking through another man's eyes. The pict-feed behind the Space Marine's visor had been used, and the footage captured the helm plate display as well as the tumult outside.
Energy bolts cracked past the legionary's helm. The view swung about wildly as the warrior pelted up a narrow corridor walled with seamless, rippled stone with the texture and shine of glass. The warrior threw himself into cover, raised his gun and snapped off four quick shots from his bolter. The image shook with the recoil. Multiple cannon turrets raked the way in return. Between the emplacements, Olivier caught sight of the Iron Warriors' foes: black-robed thralls, supported by cybernetic slave warriors toting energy cannons bonded to their shoulders. Line troopers bearing missile launchers came to the fore, unleashing rockets at the turrets and falling back. The guns disappeared in a cacophony of bangs. Smoke filled the corridor. Enemy fire petered out for a moment, and Olivier took a premature breath of relief.
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