The thought was like a needle blade piercing my soul. ‘Are you afraid?’
He paused, and put the stick and knife down. ‘Yes,’ he said and patted my leg. He smiled sadly. ‘But fear is a gift. It has kept me alive, many times.’
Fjara could be brutal, at times, but he cared for me in his own way, and I went with him, repeated his prayers, but even though I prayed I felt nothing.
We never stayed in the same camp. We moved at night. We did not stop to gather food. Other groups of the devout came to us and gave us roots and grubs, but sometimes they gave us slab. Real slab! Fresh from a tin, stolen from who knows where, just how I had dreamt as a child, still sealed in its own wet, gelatinous skin.
It gave me cramps the first time I ate it. My body was not used to food so rich. But I did not fear pain. I never refused slab.
After we had shared food together, Fjara would lead us in prayer. He had simple ways of explaining the world. His favourite was to talk of the night sky. It has two halves, he explained, pointing corewards, where thousands of stars glimmered, and then rimwards, where the stars failed.
‘The light is the Imperium of Man,’ Fjara said. ‘The dark is nothingness. The lair of traitors and heretics and the damned!’
We always turned corewards for the prayers. We lifted our faces up to the gleaming freckles of light that filled the southern night sky, and Fjara would call out, ‘Hear us, oh Holy Terra!’ before beginning his prayers. Around me, the others were trembling, or speaking in strange tongues, or falling to their knees. But the truth was the God-Emperor did not speak to me. When I stared corewards, into the heart of the Imperium, the light of His worlds cast little light, and no warmth.
Behind me I could feel the darkness – vast, silent, all-powerful! And it was the darkness that kept us hidden from those that wished us ill.
So I lived as Fjara’s attendant, always one step ahead of those who would betray us to the Mansa. We all aged quickly in the chattel-camps, and Fjara had already been an old man when he was enslaved. But now he had more white in his beard than grey and as a preacher, there was a bounty on his head that the gangers would take. It was only a matter of time.
One night, at Rust Tower, we arrived at the gathering and found a scene of slaughter. I knew the men and women there. But they each stood a metre above the ground. Gangers had caught our congregation and impaled every one of them. Their corpses stared up at the sky, barbed shafts of steel erupting from their open mouths. Fjara made the sign of the aquila as he tried to shield my eyes.
One of the men remained alive. ‘It was not I who betrayed you…’ he whispered. But it was clear. Someone had. The servants of the Mansa were drawing in.
Fjara tried hard, but he walked slowly and with pain.
‘We must keep moving,’ I told him. ‘Fjara. The Emperor demands you move!’ I was like a walking stick, helping him along, but I knew that the Emperor did not protect. He would let it happen. He was not coming to save us.
It was halfway through that night when we heard the sirens of the cyber-hounds, and I knew that they were on our scent.
I did not follow his god, but he had cared for me as a father. It was a matter of pride. I could not let Fjara end his days sacrificed like an ox on a pagan altar. I half-carried him to a little foxhole we used to hide. It was with cold clarity that I knew what I was going to do.
‘Sleep,’ I told him. ‘I will keep watch.’
He was reluctant but at last he nodded and closed his eyes.
When his breath started to slow I put my hand over his mouth and drove my knife into his belly. It was just a piece of sharpened scrap, but it was sharp and he was old and weak, and I was strong enough to hold him down as I drove the jagged blade up for his heart.
Blood bubbled up from his mouth. ‘Why?’ he hissed, the word whistling between his bloody teeth.
I put my hand over his eyes. He tried to push me away, but I was not a child any longer. My creed was darkness. It was an act of my faith. He had to understand, there was no light in the world. Light had not saved him.
The last thing that he would see of this world was darkness.
III
‘The chattel-camps tolerate no weakness. They breed the finest Ghulam,’ Mamzel Grimina told me as she ground my teeth down into spikes.
She was a heavy-set woman with strong hands and a thick, stained leather apron. I was a woman now, and sitting in a great metal chair. There were clamps on the armrests, but I refused them. I opened my mouth as she stepped up close.
‘If you flinch…’ she started.
The look in my face silenced her. ‘I will not.’
She raised an eyebrow. I ignored her and settled back as the shrill whine of the drill filled the chamber.
‘This will hurt,’ she said as she bent towards me.
‘I do not fear pain.’
‘No?’ she paused. ‘What do you fear?’
I paused to consider this.
‘Failure,’ I told her.
Mamzel Grimina did not lie. She started at the front and worked her way round to my canines, grinding each tooth into a needle point. It was agony. My mouth filled with tooth dust and spit, and the scent of blood filled my nostrils. The strangled moans were my own.
They were as much pain as triumph, for I had been selected when the chattel-camp was cleared and this ceremony marked my transition from the chattel-camps to one of the Mansa’s Ghulam. Ghulam were his slave warriors. But we were also his eyes and ears and hands. We made up the Mansa’s lifewards, his governors and his administrators. And we were his army. The shield of his world, the terror of his enemies, the hounds that kept the wolves at bay.
Afterwards, Mamzel Grimina gave me a cloth to wipe the bloody spittle from my mouth. I spat out blood and tooth-grit, wiped my mouth on the back of my sleeve.
There was a gun on the table behind the chair. It was a captive-bolt instrument, with which you would slaughter a beast.
She took in the daggers in my mouth and smiled with pleasure at her work.
‘Yes,’ she said as my tongue licked over my sharp teeth, tasting the razor edges. ‘You survived the chattel-camps and the drill-pits. All your trials are done. The filing of the teeth is the last test. Those who cannot endure pain are culled.’
‘Pain is a sign of life,’ I told her.
She smiled, her own teeth sharpened fangs like my own. ‘You have learned well.’
After that she gave me a plumed helmet, a breastplate and skirts of mail, a blade of steel, and placed a laslock into my hand. I stepped out that day, for the first time, as a Ghulam warrior. I was young and hard as the glassy rocks of the camps. I looked magnificent.
I could see it in her eyes as she appraised me. ‘Now you are Ghulam! Go out and kill in the Mansa’s name!’
I remembered Fjara’s face as I slipped the knife inside him.
I have already done that, I thought.
IV
In the next ten years my band waged war across a dozen planets. We named ourselves the Warp Vultures. We raided, occupied, pillaged, and we filled the holds of our craft with slaves for our master and released them into the chattel-camps. Fate would decide which were the ones most worthy of the gods’ favour, and the Mansa would harvest the toughest of the survivors.
My wounds became weapons. I fought harder than any others, honed my desperation into a razored blade. But in those years I learnt new lessons too. How to lead. How to excel. How to beat all those about me. I became more deadly, and step by step I rose up the ladder, till I was recalled to Chalice and made lifeward to the Mansa. I felt such pride.
But when I saw the Mansa I laughed at my pride. He needed no protection from us.
He was terrifying.
The Mansa was twice the size of any man I knew, his vast bulk hidden beneath robes of rich silk. Only his head was exposed. Truth was, the Mansa was ugly: his hairless head had fleshy jowls, full lips and heavily lidded eyes. His eyes were amber, snake-like. Giant fangs stuck out from
his oversized jaw and when he spoke his voice was the rumble of falling habs. But I loved him more than any other I have ever met, even though we were nothing to him.
He paid me little attention, until one day – months since I had started in his service.
‘Briar!’ he demanded suddenly. ‘Which was your home world?’
It was all I could do to hold my gaze at his feet. I trembled before him. I – who had the scars of a hundred battles stitched across my skin, made with blade and hard round and searing laser – could barely remember to draw breath.
‘I do not know,’ I stammered. ‘I was nothing until I was lifted from the chattel-camps.’
He regarded me for a long moment and sounded almost weary when he said, ‘You have the look of a Bishrabi. The Bishrabi are tougher than the Magmeta.’
I wanted to speak, but held my tongue.
‘Speak!’ he prompted.
I could not hold his gaze, but he had commanded me. ‘I wanted to say… it is not our blood that makes us hard,’ I told him. ‘I-I-it is the chattel-camps. They cull the weak and make us strong.’
He smiled. A line of fangs, not filed, like mine, but grown from his abhuman jaws. Both a gift and a mark of his honour.
‘Yes,’ he said. He smiled. Then, ‘Briar. Take out your knife.’
I obeyed, though a voice in my head screamed at me that this was sacrosanct within his presence.
His eyes were kind. Don’t worry, they seemed to say. But his fanged mouth said, ‘Cut off your finger.’
I thought I had misheard, but he repeated his words, now loaded with threat. I splayed my hand out, picked the middle finger, put the blade over its central joint, took a breath and rammed the blade down.
‘Give it to me.’
I swayed with the pain, but picked the severed digit up between forefinger and thumb. He held it up, then put it in his mouth. I could hear the small bones crunching between his millstone teeth.
At last he swallowed. The amber light in his eyes flared for a moment. He said, ‘Briar. You have saddened me.’
His disapproval was like a weight of bones upon my chest. I fell onto my face and struggled to breathe.
‘Why have you hidden this from me?’ He put a foot upon my head and pressed down. I thought my skull would burst. ‘You have held secrets from me…’
‘No, lord!’
‘There is a taint in your blood.’
I searched my soul, and was struck dumb. I was consumed with sudden guilt, as I remembered my mother’s face. ‘M-my father,’ I stammered. ‘He was a preacher.’
The Mansa bristled. ‘And you didn’t tell me…’
The confession tumbled out of me. ‘I never knew him. He died when I was taken.’
‘But you hold his blood within your veins. Do I have to bleed it out of you?’
‘If you wish, lord! My blood is yours!’
‘Do you love our enemy?’
‘No, lord! I hate him. I love the darkness. I might be descended from a preacher, but I killed one, too!’
‘Tell me.’
Spittle hung in loops from my mouth as he lifted his foot. I struggled for breath as I pushed myself up. Blood was still leaking from my missing finger. My brain seemed to be pressing against my skull as the images came – Fjara’s face, his last words: Why?
I told my overlord everything.
The Mansa listened silently. When I was done he shook his head in dismay. ‘You should have told me. Why did you not tell me this?’
I tried to speak but my throat was too tight. It was as if his will was constricting my ability to beg for forgiveness.
‘Briar. You are marked. Did you know that?’
I did not.
‘Stand,’ he told me. He beckoned me forward as a holo-map appeared in the air before him. He spun the projection before me. There were worlds I had never heard of. He spoke a word and one system glowed bright, as the rest of the holo-map faded. The Mansa singled one planet out.
Its name was Cociaminus. It meant nothing to me.
‘It is the front line between us and the enemy. They desire it above all things. So we must deny them! Their commander is new. His name is Vichres and he is destined to bring luck to our enemies. The other magisters have begged for my help. They want the Mansa to lead my warriors into the field. They want me to join them. Me? The Mansa! Magister! Warchief of a hundred worlds!’
He roared with anger. It was as sudden as a thunderclap and it made the whole chamber vibrate.
‘They’, I knew, were the other warlords of the outer fringes. All the magisters had come together to resist the enemy. Many of them had paid the Mansa for his Ghulam. We were the most wanted warriors in this sector of space.
The Mansa’s eyes flared yellow. I could feel the heat of his breath as his anger flared. Foolish bystanders and penitents fell to their knees. I trembled like a leaf but I remained standing.
He put a hand upon my shoulder. ‘Briar. Your hand is marked with blood. I make you my khorbaji.’ Khorbaji meant hand, but it was the Ghulam name for etogaur. ‘Take the Warp Vultures to Cociaminus. Show them the might of the Mansa!’
I was chastened by guilt. I wanted to prove my love and loyalty.
‘I will do more than that!’ I said.
The Mansa paused. ‘More? What could you do?’
‘I will bring slaves.’
‘I have millions of slaves.’
‘I will win great fame in your name!’
‘What fame can you add to mine?’ There was a menace in his voice. I knew that I had overstepped myself.
The answer came unbidden. ‘Skulls!’ I hissed.
I had caught his attention now. ‘Whose skull?’
Looking back, I felt as though I was just a mummer, speaking the lines that another had given me. Were those words gifted to me? I did not know, but I swallowed, understanding the magnitude of what I was about to promise.
‘I will bring you the skull of an Imperial general!’
There was a long pause. He put his hand out and placed it on my head. ‘Not just any skull. Bring me the skull of Lord Militant Vichres!’
V
Memorials claim that Cociaminus had been captured twice, and twice retaken, and was being fought over a third time – but for those of us who were there, it was all just one interminable hell of mud and dust and ice and heat. And there was the enemy, of course, who poured onto the planet by their millions.
Life expectancy was so low that we used to joke that if your disembarkation was delayed by an hour, then your time on Cociaminus was doubled. We joked a lot. We had to. Sometimes laughter was all we had to live on.
Our first glimpse of the place showed a clenched fist of rock, bound about with swirling plumes of poisonous gas. We landed at the same time as Lord Militant Vichres launched his first assault. I thought the gods had given me a sign and demanded my Warp Vultures be put on the front line opposite the young commander. We were thrust straight into the front-line trenches and slaughtered the enemy till they lay ten deep. We were a wall of rockcrete. A hedge of blades. A mincer into which the enemy ran.
But it was all a feint. Vichres turned our flank and smashed into Razal Khan’s Hussars and wiped them out to a man. Defeat tasted like ashes in my mouth. I felt that I had been given a chance, and squandered it. In my pride, I had been crushed.
We held on long enough to slow the enemy, and then, after three months of suffering assaults on three sides, we limped back to the support trenches. We had lost half our number and we had not even seen Vichres.
Many of my captains were furious. I fought three duels before the unrest was quelled. I won each one, but I was wiser after that. We were the Warp Vultures. The Ghulam of the Mansa! Not the wild tribes of the outer dark. A well-forged blade, not a sledgehammer. And I had my geas to fulfil. I understood then that I would have to be much wiser. Craftier. I would have to be more ferocious than any other.
After that I stemmed our losses, as Vichres won victory after victory,
striking when and where it seemed impossible. I had the best troops on Cociaminus. But I refused to fight on anyone else’s terms. If they wanted my Ghulam, then the other commanders had to send me gifts, and there was only one gift I wanted: enemy captives. Any who wanted my help sent them to me. They brought them chained like slaves. Some were caged. Some walked.
I signalled to Yaguden, my shaman.
‘The etogaur wants us to fight,’ I told him.
Yaguden led the captives inside his yurt. We could hear the sound of sharpening knives, and then the muffled cries of pain.
‘Do you eat them?’ a damogaur asked me after he had brought three captives into my camp. His iron mask muffled his voice.
I laughed. ‘Not until we have made them speak…’
‘And do they lie?’
‘They do,’ I told him, ‘but we find the truth.’
He did not understand.
‘Our shamans cut them open to read their guts.’
‘And what do they see there?’
It was my time to laugh. The sight of my fangs made him take a step back.
‘The future.’
That spring, Vichres launched yet another offensive.
Our armies were driven back as far as the tarpits, ten thousand acres of pitch that stretched about the foothills of Hive Harshen. The pits were an impenetrable bastion upon which both trench networks had anchored their respective flanks. And they held our flank. They were the only thing that stopped a total rout.
Many commanders now sent captives to us as tribute to try and persuade me to commit the Ghulam to their warzones. I refused them all. The auguries were not good and I had been given a mission by the Mansa. It was a geas that I could not fail. But as our situation grew more desperate, the Blood Pact commander sent an etogaur to meet me, accompanied by an honour guard of mukaali riders.
We were camping in the Dune Seas, among the sand-blasted detritus of a battle that had been fought before my time on the planet. The desert had flayed the colours and markings from each tank. There was no way of knowing which were ours and which the enemy’s. Each of the tanks bore the mark of its own destruction. The precise wound of a lascannon; the inward cavity of a mine; the molten ruin of a meltagun; the neatly bored hole of a krak missile.
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