by David Guymer
'What do you have in mind?'
Moses had come up with all manner of theories on the sorts of activities that the Emperor's Children might consider diverting. None of them good.
'Trust me,' said Paliolinus. 'You'll like it.'
On either side of a large hemispherical dais, huge grinding pistons rose and fell in the smoke-wreathed penumbra of a Medusan night. The distant clangour of hammers and presses trembled through the sheet flooring. Steam rose from the gratings, condensing almost as soon as it hit the cold air to dew on the handrail that circumferenced the curved edge of the dais. The cavernous space was pungent with hot oils and solder and the visceral power of the machine.
The Anvilarium reminded Akurduana of the manufactories of the Urals, though even the X Legion's colossal flagship, for all its youthful distemper, could not rival those cathedrals of industry for scale.
Flattening the damp sheaf of parchment between his hands, Akurduana examined the charcoal sketch he had made of the scene with a critical eye. He had captured perfectly the sense of motion, the way the surfaces trembled, how the interplay of hanging vapours and the lume stones embedded in the ironglass and gilt candelabrum crafted a chiaroscuro of black and grey. But his attempts at conveying the sense of awe that he had been hoping for had not been borne out. His intent had been to evoke the memories of Manraga, or Narodnya, but the Dark Age grandeur of those gothic forges was nowhere to be found in his work.
In a moment of anger he tossed his stick of charcoal aside, over the outer rim of the dais and far, far to the lower enginarium decks.
'Captain.'
Startled from his reflections, Akurduana looked up.
A single bridge traversed the heaving machine pits from aft. The heavy-booted step of Captain Gabriel Santar rattled the gang-plates and twanged the cable stays like a score plucked along a tuneless harp as he crossed to the dais. Though he had removed his helm and gauntlet, he remained otherwise clad as he had been on Vesta. He smelled of grease and sweat and engine heat. His features still bore Vesta's chill in their crags. The immense armature of his Cataphractii plate glittered with trembling droplets of condensed vapour.
Akurduana wondered if it was a deliberate show of strength. 'Gabriel.' He dipped his head respectfully. 'It was an honour to match swords. You did well. Your choice of drop site was just a little obvious. And Amadeus does tend to forget that I was there in Central Afrik. And the Panpacific.' He sighed. 'The Imperium was smaller then. I was not on Rust, of course, but he never was one to vary a winning formula.'
Santar shrugged off the platitude. 'You're early.'
'I enjoy the solitude. It is hard to find on your ship.'
The loss of the III Legion's gene stocks after the battle of Proxima had decimated the Legion's strength. He had been one of the Two Hundred. With Fulgrim's aid they had recovered, but they were still not a numerous Legion. Like many of his brothers, Akurduana had come to prefer it that way. Empty halls left room for reflection. 'What were you doing?' said Santar, leaning forward.
Akurduana folded the flawed sketch and tucked it away in his sleeve. 'Nothing. A diversion.'
'Is it any good?'
'It depends what you want from it.'
'Do you think it good?'
Akurduana frowned. 'No.'
'I've been supervising the return of my company and equipment from Vesta. And you've been… drawing?'
'I assure you, the warriors you loaned me are in capable hands. But when one finds that one has attained perfection within a certain field, there is little point in pursuing it further.'
The Iron Hand bridled. 'Perfection? A bold claim.'
Akurduana shrugged. Perhaps, but it had been three hundred years since he had been reborn unto the Emperor's likeness, and he had not been beaten yet. Santar remained quiet.
It fell to the machines of the enginarium to fill the gulf between brothers.
'You did well enough too,' the legionary finally conceded. He looked awkward, as though ill-accustomed to hearing praise spoken aloud in this place. 'I've never seen those handled with such skill.'
He referred to the two blades that rested in silk scabbards at Akurduana's hips. Timur had a grip of woven gold, its blade slightly curved, and a shaped pommel in the form of a stallion's head with a tassel of black horsehair. Athenia was longer, its fuller deadly straight, its crossguard narrow, Grekan runes of abstract meaning glittering the length of the thinly covered blade. They were charnabal sabres, forged to unique ritual and alchemical preparations by a master maker of old Terra. To possess one was the Legion's highest honour for swordsmanship.
He had two.
'Is it true that you once fought the Emperor?'
Akurduana burst with laughter.
'Is that what Gaius says? I am not quite that good, but like all good tales there is some truth to it. My father by birth was Battle-King of the Turkic Nomadiaspora. He fought Unification to the bitter end.' His smile grew strained. His memories of mortal childhood were dim, but filled with warmth and an affection he could no longer reproduce. Holding on to them was like holding a beautiful sword by the blade. 'I am told he did indeed face the Emperor sword to sword in defence of the Bosporus canyon. I was his firstborn, last heir to the Bosporic Turks, a token of the Nomadiaspora's compliance to the Emperor of all Mankind. There were many like me then, tithed from collapsed or compliant dynasties to raise the Third.'
'And how many of those continue to Crusade?'
He shrugged.
'I'd consider it an honour to cross blades with you once more in the cages.'
Akurduana sighed, reached up to take Santar's vapour-dampened pauldron in his hand, and smiled ruefully. 'Take a place in line, brother.'
Before the Iron Hand's frown could develop further, the doors at the aft end of the footbridge irised open and a procession of disparately robed and liveried figures filed through. Santar pivoted his enormous armoured frame to look over his shoulder, granting Akurduana a view.
Leading the procession with giant strides was Lord Commander Amadeus DuCaine.
Like Akurduana, he had taken advantage of his respite to change and to bathe, and was clad now in a sleeveless vest and breeches of coarse black animal hair, covered by a fur-lined cloak trimmed with silver that hung to his knees. His muscular forearms were clapped in silver torques bearing the icons of the Storm Walkers, symbols of the past and a clear allusion to a powerful present. Even without the archaic bulk of his Thunder Armour, the Lord Commander's presence was immense. His features were old Nordic, his body put together like the storm god of the Vikingyr. His short hair was granite-grey, towelled dry and spiky. His face was a legacy of conquest written in transhuman flesh, both record of honour and testament to the determination of the X Legion continually to return so battered a frame to the front line. Shrugging off the regimental staffers that harried his steps, like a warrior-king pursued by attention-starved hounds, DuCaine crossed to Santar and Akurduana.
'You put on your usual good show. They'll be talking about the day you put Santar on his arse for years.'
Santar crossed his arms and said nothing. So that was why the legionary was so keen to face him again - to recover pride.
Akurduana shook his head. Another good reason to avoid entering a cage with the First Captain. No need to rub salt in that wound.
'Look alive,' DuCaine grunted, as the murmurs of the gathering officers abated, and straightened his back to stand to attention.
Set in the uncurved edge of the dais opposite the bridge was a door, a masterpiece of glittering diorite, white marble and iron. The vertical seam carried a relief of a hammer striking an anvil, impact fractures picked out in veins of silver. Elsewhere in the diorama were three-headed chimerae, ocean krakens and other legendary beasts of Medusa. It was the portal to the Iron Forge, the primarch's most closely guarded Reclusiam, and in a hiss of steam and a wave of drying heat, the doors parted. Akurduana's skin tightened as it was dried, his hearts beating faster. As if he were a questing
knight of old before the lair of a dragon. He swallowed hard.
A week of exercises, feasts and cultural indoctrination, and this would be his first time in the presence of Ferrus Manus himself.
Conversation ceased. Men dropped to their knees. Two veterans in the armour and markings of the Avernii Clan strode through the gate and took stations either side of the glowing portal. The dulled steel of their Terminator plate steamed up at once, wreathed in the vapours that climbed from the decks below, but for the white fire of their helmet lenses. Past the sentinels marched two more warriors. The embossed nameplates on their high gorget rims identified them. Veneratii Urien. Harik Morn. Akurduana knew both warriors well. Neither one acknowledged him or any other as they emerged. They bore the primarch's banners.
To the left, a metaphor for the symbolic hand that was taken by so many of the Iron Hands, went the Iron Gauntlet of the Legion. The banner's device was stitched in silver on a field of black velvet. The edges were ripped and torn, as though attacked by dogs, re-sewn hundreds of times over to be made fit for the Emperor's war. Symbols within symbols. To the right went Ferrus Manus' personal standard. An opus in velvet and an abundance of silver, it depicted hit vanquishing of the silver wyrm, Asirnoth.
The Anvilarium had no table or chairs, no inbuilt precedence by which to arrange those present, and so low and high, mortal and giant transhuman mixed, like so many immiscible fluids forced into a crucible. The mortals were all men and women that Akurduana had been shown picts of, or traded brief introductions with over the past days, all of them palpably uncomfortable to be rubbing shoulders with the giant legionaries of the X and III. In addition to Caius Caphen and Paliolinus, Akurduana recognised faces that belonged to names such as Vaakal Desaan, Autek Mor, Ulrach Branthan, Shadrak Meduson. He had yet to meet any of them personally.
The arrival of the standard bearers and their massive wargear forced them all back to the rim of the dais, and without further herald, the primarch of the Iron Hands entered his Anvilarium.
Akurduana fell to his knees with a gasp. He had meant to take his cue from the Iron Hands around him, but the act of obeisance was instinctual, the only rational recourse to the presence of a demi-god.
The primarch was to Fulgrim as iron to gold. He was a rugged, brutal giant, his height and breadth staggering even to one who had fought alongside such beings and seen them bleed as other men. His pale flesh was knotted and scarred, for his heart was that of a conqueror. He had brought to heel the most hostile of worlds known to the Imperium of Man, his own, and never once had he shirked from leading by example. His brow was furrowed and judgemental. His shale-coloured hair was cropped short.
His armour was black, every surface hand-forged and perfect. Master Adept Malevolus - the same Master Adept Malevolus that had crafted Horus' famous war-plate - had had a hand in its making, but the instinctual metallurgy of Ferrus Manus himself was present in the acme of every accoutrement and curve. A high gorget of black iron rose at the back of the neck, silver edge-trims studded with rivets. The gauntlet emblem on his mangled shoulder guard had been fashioned from a single piece of hand-beaten iron. Over the opposite shoulder there hung a cloak of thick mail rings, the immense warhammer, Forgebreaker, hefted across it. The hand that gripped the ebon haft was molten, iridescent metal emitting a siren chorus of brushed steel as it lapped about the primarch's forearm with an apparent life of its own.
His eyes captivated the chamber. They were like silver coins, unreflective, remote, and yet utterly enthralling. Akurduana felt the awe he had earlier sought to conjure through his art rise in him unbidden.
Ferrus Manus was not renowned for his beauty. He did not haunt the dreams of men in the way of Fulgrim or Sanguinius or Homs, but he was beautiful, as a chamabal sabre or a hand-wrought suit of armour could be beautiful. Akurduana saw now why Fulgrim loved this Gorgon so, and why that love was reciprocated so fiercely.
He was perfect, perfect in every way.
'My sons,' said Ferrus, his voice like beaten lead, his demand for absolute perfection in all things like a hand pressing bowed heads towards the ground. 'You shame me.'
The Iron Hands adored their brutal father, but biddable they were not. They responded to their primarch's accusation with predictable outcry. It could not last. Their choler was, to his, as a candle flame to a vacuum.
'I did not propose this exercise with my brother in the expectation of seeing my warriors bested.' Santar made as if to speak out, but a look from his primarch silenced him. 'It was to demonstrate my Legion's prowess, and by reflection my prowess.' The effort of marshalling his frustrations was clearly immense. Akurduana doubted he made the effort for his own legionaries' benefit. 'It seems that the Third Legion has much to teach us.'
'We'll adapt, do better next time,' DuCaine spoke out. 'That was the point, wasn't it?'
Ferrus Manus smouldered for what felt like half a minute.
'There will be no next time. While you were engaged on Vesta, word was received from the Ultramarines of the 413th Expedition. Our brothers call for aid.'
A warship of the III Legion would have rejoiced at news of another Legion's crusades. Space was vast, dispatches rare, and so even word of their brothers' travails came as a rare gift in what could be a lonely war. The same, he was sure, would ordinarily have been true for the Fist of Iron, though he suspected that news of another's glories would be less a cause for celebration than a goad towards greater triumphs of their own. But pride had been stung, and the Iron Hands brooded as Ferrus went on.
'The 413th is a minor expeditionary force, five regiments of the Imperial Army, two thousand legionary warriors, predominantly Thirteenth Legion. They were tasked with the compliance of a solar empire ruled by a technologically equivalent human offshoot called the Gardinaal. Emissaries of my brother Magnus' Legion were dispatched to negotiate a peaceable transition to Imperial rule. Their industrial capacity and military strength were, apparently, deemed sufficient to justify… concessions.' His mouth twisted with disdain. 'A miscalculation. Strength respects only strength. The Ultramarines stepped in when negotiations failed. At present, that is all we know.'
'We can't answer every plea for help,' said Santar. 'The Twelfth Expedition is not much further from Gardinaal than we are. Let Lord Guilliman bear the burden of his own failure.'
'You cannot be serious,' Akurduana cried, shouting down the muttered chorus of agreement. He stepped into the empty space that had grown around the primarch and his vexillaries. 'Warriors of the Legiones Astartes perish on worlds that are the rightful inheritance of mankind. A blow struck against one is a blow struck against all and against the Emperor himself, beloved by all. Are we to let that stand, we who stand together now and dare to call one another brother?'
A shimmer of approval spirited across the liquid silver of Ferrus' eyes, but the primarch made no further contribution.
'Extensive ground and fleet deployments have been made to numerous joint exercises around Vesta and her nearspace environs,' said Adept Xanthus, Mechanicum representative to the 52nd Expedition.
'Aye,' said Laeric. The Fist of Iron's shipmaster was a bull of a man, thick neck, full beard, broad chest, all constrained within a stiff military-black staff coat bursting with medals. His bald head shone. 'It'll take time to claw it all back.'
The feudal structures of the Iron Hands were difficult for an outsider to understand.
In place of the companies and Chapters of the Principia Bellicosa were independent and often competing clans. Each clan was self-sufficient, distinct in character and strength, but functioned like an interlocking cog in the great war machine of Ferrus Manus' construction. The Legion as a whole was a leviathan. Once in motion it was unstoppable, but its semi-autonomous structures and its many independent hierarchies made it difficult to organise on such a scale. The 52nd Expedition Fleet boasted about two-thirds of the Legion's strength: seventy thousand legionaries, six million Army and skitarii auxilia, and a pool of war machines the envy even of Guilli
man and Lorgar and the very largest of the Space Marine Legions.
It took some turning.
'The Crusade is changing,' said Ferrus distantly. 'The days when I could count my rivals on one hand are gone forever.' He studied his metal hand, it and his eyes setting up a mutually non-reflective play of convection patterns and colour. 'There are those amongst my brothers who doubt me.'
'My lord primarch…' Akurduana stepped forward, denial bursting from his breast.
Ferrus Manus shook his head. 'There are those who doubt. The Crusade is changing, and all must be proven anew. I will save the 413th. I will show Roboute what my Legion is capable of as I drag his warriors from the precipice.'
'Second Company will go wherever you bid, my lord,' said Akurduana. 'We are yours until Fulgrim returns to command otherwise.'
Watching Ferrus smile was like watching steel cool into the shape of a blade.
'Indeed. We will see how much there is to be learned from one another when our weapons are live and our brothers stand or fall by our strength.'
Akurduana smiled to see III and X Legion officers subtly reevaluating one another's measure. Call it strength that these beings aspired to, call it perfection.
Call it competition.
'You have proven your competence,' Ferrus said to him. 'And my brother speaks of you highly.' Fulgrim was more fulsome in his praises than his brother, but Akurduana held his counsel. Fie had the feeling that this had less to do with honouring him than it did with censuring others. And perhaps it was partly about sending a message to his brother primarchs that he could lead. With an even temper and an even hand. The Crusade was changing. Or so went the rumour. 'I would have you assume the role of my equerry, for as long as the compliance of Gardinaal requires.'
Akurduana heard Santar's sharp intake of breath. But the primarch had not, he noted, given him an option to refuse. Unsure what else to do under such circumstances, Akurduana acceded to the unwanted honour with a bow.
'It is my privilege to serve the Gorgon.'
There were two fighters in the cage.