by David Guymer
'Yours is a lesser Expedition,' Ferrus said. 'But you should have had the manpower for the conquest of a single world. Except that your landing craft came under fire from atmospheric fighters that you had somehow failed to detect or anticipate. Your auxiliaries were left stranded, and in numbers that were inadequate to repel the armoured counter-assault that followed.'
Cicerus said nothing. His gaze appeared to have turned inwards.
Ferrus gripped the arms of his throne to anchor himself to it. He took another deep breath. 'In response to the Gardinaal's offensive, you led a combined force of Ultramarines, Thousand Sons and a demi-legio of the Legio Atarus to drive them back to their walls.' Cicerus still did not respond. Ferrus needed no further impetus to continue 'To which the Gardinaal answered with saturation atomic strikes. Which, again, you failed to detect or anticipate.'
The Ultramarine's resolve crumbled under the verbal battery. It took him several seconds to rally the strength to reply. 'Half of the outer habs were levelled in the attack.' So quiet even Ferrus struggled to hear. 'The satellite conurbs will be lethally irradiated for decades to come. There was no way to anticipate a response of that order.'
'No way?' Ferrus surrendered finally to the impulse to rise, heavy rings of mail tumbling from his broad shoulders as he pushed himself from his throne. 'Half a demi-legio of god-machines lost, five hundred thousand Army dead and rotting.' He took one step down from the dais, clenched a fist in a jingle of mail. 'Need I speak to you of your own casualties?' The look on Cicerus' face told him that no reminder was necessary, but subtlety was the brother of negligence. 'Eight hundred and fifty-six dead or incapacitated beyond useful service, three hundred and one with gene-seed lost or too thoroughly irradiated for re-implantation. This is a calamity, Chapter Master, and you dare stand before a primarch to dishonour your dead with excuses.'
'They raised the storm,' said DuCaine, quietly.
Constructed of black stone and glass, the primarch's personal chambers were cold, hostile and austere, but Ferrus had always found the darkness calming. Class cabinets displayed weapons and war trophies and gave off a feeble inner light, like columns of luminescent algae in a sunken cave, striking walls of hand-cut obsidian with bands of mineral shimmer. The Lord Commander stood in one such watery pool of light, as did Cicerus, Amar, the Army Commander of the 413th and the senior commanders of the Avernii, Morragul, Vurgaan and Sorrgol Clans who, in expediting their departure from Vesta, had earned their places in his council. The reverberations of the warship's vast foundries all ran through this chamber, the warning tremors of a subsurface volcano that logic and technology struggled to hold in a dormant phase Ferrus pressed fingers into the two stabbing pains in his temples and forced himself to sit back down. His eyes shone in the darkness likes bolts of silver.
First among brothers.
They would see it.
'They raised it,' DuCaine said again. 'They used their counter-attack to draw in your strength, and then annihilated it.' He dropped a fist into his waiting palm.
'The only right response to such commitment is admiration,' said Ferrus, without taking his eyes off Cicerus. 'I trust that your forces stand ready for an immediate return to Gardinaal.'
'Lord?'
'I am offering you and your warriors the chance to redeem yourselves, Chapter Master. The haste of our departure from Vesta necessitated that the bulk of my Legion and all of its mortal auxiliaries be left behind. The Tenth shall spearhead the assault, but we lack the numbers required.'
The Ultramarine blinked up at Ferrus' throne, but appeared to have lost the power of speech. Amar interjected on his behalf. 'My lord, the speed of your response is remarkable, but there is no need for such haste. In spite of the setback on Gardinaal Prime, our ships maintain supremacy over the void. The Gardinaal are trapped on their worlds. We will starve them into submission if we must, but it will not come to that. The vagaries of the warp notwithstanding, Lord Guilliman and the full might of the Twelfth are at most two weeks away.'
Ferrus nodded, then turned to glare at DuCaine. 'Ready the Legion.'
DuCaine and the assembled Iron Lords bowed.
'But lord—' Cicerus began.
'I am here now. My brother will arrive to find a broken world.'
The Ultramarine sagged. 'Yes, lord.'
'And what of the Army?'
This Ferrus addressed to the mortal officer standing at Cicerus' back. He was garbed in a tan-coloured dress uniform that had been misbuttoned, as if pulled on in haste. Over his stony-grey crew cut was a peaked cap with a regimental crest in silver. His padded shoulders were sewn with badges of the 413th Expedition, of Terra, the Jovian satellite Ganymede, and of Ultramar, the rank insignia of a lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Army, and the red helix of the medicae corps. Ferrus frowned.
The soldier stood loosely to attention, hands resting atop one another over the silver-crested head of an officer's cane, face turned down in what Ferrus had taken for awe at his present company. DuCaine emitted a bark of laughter and only then did Ferrus realise that the man's eyes were closed, light snores rippling his lips.
In a crunch of mail, Ferrus relaxed back into his throne and chuckled.
'Here then stands the boldest warrior of the 413th. Clearly I need not fear for the resolve of the Imperial Army.' He brooded a moment, his humour swiftly blackening, like magma exposed to the surface chill. 'Leave me. All of you. Make ready for the onslaught.'
Swiftly and obediently they did so, Cicerus gently rousing the colonel who, with awesome nerve, saluted the primarch and marched after the departing legionaries.
'May I speak freely, lord?'
In keeping with his role as Ferrus' shadow, Akurduana had held his silence until now, saying or doing nothing that could contradict the primarch. He could have been born to be an equerry. Ferrus wondered why Fulgrim had never honoured him with such a position. He waved a hand for the legionary to go on.
'There is an old Terran saying, lord, about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.'
Ferrus gave a snort, reaching unconsciously to his face. Despite the appearance of liquidity, his fingers were perfectly solid to the touch, and though powerful enough to melt ceramite and crush Titan armour in their grip, they were cool, as though there existed a nanolayer of insulating glass between the primarch and his own hands. Although, of course, they were not his. His face, in contrast to their alien smoothness, had been battered by all that Medusa could level at an infant god who had fallen into that hell on a star. He was weathered and beaten. His lip was cleft. His nose was bent, broken multiple times.
'And if a face was impervious to spite?'
'The Hellene of ancient Terra used to believe that ugliness of the body was a reflection of immorality of the soul.' Akurduana put up a beringed and lightly hennaed hand to his breast, forestalling Ferrus' irate frown. 'Don't think me fool enough to insult the Gorgon in his own chambers, lord. My father named you Gorgon, and you embrace it because I happen to believe that you like it. I think, if you would indulge me, that the Gorgon does not care one iota what the Hellene believed.'
'And my brother?' asked Ferrus, lowering his hand to his lap, frowning nonetheless. 'It is in the nature of the beautiful to think naught but the best of themselves.'
Akurduana shook his head, smiling as though Ferrus had just said something funny, a lightness to his spirit that Ferrus could neither grasp nor share. 'Fulgrim is a greater being than Socratus or Xenophon, lord.'
Sitting back with a rumbling sigh, Ferrus turned his face upwards. The ceiling shimmered darkly. 'This I will concede.'
'Cicerus suffers, lord. His wounds are not as plain as Amar's, but they are there. And you know already the casualties the Army has taken. Why are you so determined to take this world without Lord Guilliman's assistance?'
For a time, Ferrus ignored the question. He listened to the rumble of the enginarium, felt the voice and spirit of it. He was connected to every nut and bolt and conduit of his great warship
, through the ultimate unknowable of his primarch physiology and the imbibed techno-mysticism of the world that fluke, fate, however one descried it, had forever hence made his. Reading his silence as simple reticence, Akurduana walked to the front of the throne and lowered himself onto one knee.
'It is beneficial to express such things.'
'As you do,' Ferrus sneered. 'With your drawings? Your writings? Santar spoke to me of these things.'
The words were harsh, but Akurduana did not let them sting him. Fulgrim, too, had a temper.
The legionary closed his fingers around the grip of the sword scabbarded on his right thigh. He drew a finger's width of steel. It winked in the chamber's light. Ferrus tensed, but the blade came no further.
'Warriors and sages through history have considered swordsmanship an art. In my father's librarium there is a near complete folio of The Art of War. Why limit one's pursuit of excellence along arbitrary lines? The stylus. The brush. The mind.' He resheathed his steel. 'I do not even see the distinction. You are aware of the new Order of Remembrancers that the Emperor has instituted? It is His desire not merely to conquer the galaxy but to chronicle its conquest, and the hearts of its conquerors.'
'I suppose you approve of this institution,' Ferrus muttered. Akurduana dipped his forehead, feigned humility. 'I might have mentioned it to the Sigilite before I departed Terra for the last time. But if you will not speak your mind to me, lord, or to Santar, then perhaps you can find another in whom you could confide. One from whom you need fear no judgement.'
Ferrus sighed deeply, and rested his forehead on his knuckles.
'I have heard these rumours. And I have heard others. My father considers this first and most difficult part of his Crusade to be nearing its conclusion. It is said that he plans soon to retire from the forefront and better attend to the construction of his Imperium.'
Akurduana looked up at him, stricken. 'Who says such things, lord?'
'They say that he means to promote one from the fifteen to lead the Great Crusade in his name. Why, even now Fulgrim joins Horus and Jaghatai and the Lion at his side, for reasons that none will share.'
'You think the mantle should be yours?'
'There are many that could bear it,' Ferrus conceded, leaving the obvious extrapolation unsaid - that there were many who could not. Jaghatai was too raw, the Lion too aloof, even to the cold eyes of Ferrus Manus. 'Horus has always been favoured. Sanguinius beloved by all. Neither's candidacy would be rejected out of hand. Fulgrim would wear the Emperor's crown with grace.'
Akurduana smiled, taking the complement personally. 'And Guilliman?'
Ferrus snorted. 'There could be worse choices. But to answer one question, yes, I believe it should be mine. I will have the swift compliance of Gardinaal be my affirmation.'
Akurduana bowed, the wire bands and golden clips that held his long hair in its warrior braid skitting off the obsidian flagstones. 'If that is your goal, lord, then for as long as Second Company is under your command I will spare no effort in making it so. I know that Fulgrim would bend his knee to no other before you.' He looked up. His skin was darker than his primarch father's, his eyes and hair the colouring of a Terra that no longer existed except in the genetics and memory of ancients such as Akurduana. But Ferrus could see the Phoenician's perfection in his face. 'I make this oath of moment to you.'
Accepting the gravity of such a pledge, Ferrus nodded.
He sank back into his throne, his uncanny eyes turning inwards. He found his thoughts being steered towards his last memories of his brother, Horus. Ferrus could no longer even visualise him without seeing the radiance of the Emperor upon him, their father's favoured right hand. He was not the greatest of Ferrus' brothers, but nor was he the least, and he had been the first. Ferrus envied his brother those precious years, and he hated that any man, even a primarch, could make Ferrus Manus feel so… mortal.
'I understand that you knew my father,' he said after a time.
'For a brief time,' Akurduana answered. 'As well as any man can.'
'What would he do, were he here?'
'If any of us could answer that question, lord, then we would not need an Emperor.'
Akurduana smiled. Ferrus did not. He seldom did.
SIX
Four days was not enough time for a feat on this scale, but as was their way, the warriors of the Emperor's Children Second Company had excelled.
Flags of Imperial Gardinaal and the Aquila Resplendent preempted the inevitable triumph of the coming days, suspended amidst the clan banners of the Practice Hall in a chequer pattern of red and gold, silver and black. They hung from the ceiling ductwork, pregnant with the hard work of the Chapter serfs and regimental chefs of the 52nd who had set up over the open forges below. Hot plates, tandoors, tagines and huge induction kilns bubbled and spat, obliterating all thought and odour of war with the spice of half a dozen worlds and a hundred culinary traditions. Second Company itself retained the services of an artisanal victualler from the culinary schools of Anatolia much favoured by their captain. The Space Marine sense of taste was intense, and trace scents of paprik and sumac were enough to send Akurduana's aptly named Remembrancer organ on a dizzying meme-spiral through the pepper silos of the Bosporic trench and back.
As with anything not directly related to war, Akurduana possessed little talent for the victualler's craft. That had not kept him from persisting at it long after his stubbornness had driven half of the III Legion to despair. The very fact that the Emperor had not predisposed him with the ability was all the reason Akurduana needed to pursue it. For where was the reward in excelling where one had been designed to excel?
He frowned critically, drawing the thick wax tip of his pencil over the lithographic plate The Mechanicum assayers that had performed the preliminary surveys of Vesta had discovered the limestone formation just below the permafrost layer. Akurduana had immediately been struck by its perfection. A cut and machined plane of the Vesta limestone now rested on the easel before him.
In the raised wax layered atop it, he could see the X Legion commanders who had answered the invitation to the pre-victory feast, looking about in amazement at what had been wrought on their Hall. Elsewhere, larger groups of Emperor's Children drew the Iron Hands that had been incorporated into their squads between the victual stalls and fighting cages. The other figures that made up the scene he had deliberately downplayed, brushes of feeling and motion that were essential to the mood of the piece but only in a collective sense. Thousand Sons. The officers of the two Expeditions' Army regiments. Their faces portrayed awe, shock, powerful emotions that broke Akurduana's heart to recreate, and that would shatter Fulgrim's doubly, for the primarch had a superhuman's capacity for empathy. Akurduana rubbed a tear into the coppery skin of his cheek.
He moved his attention to the crowded area at the very heart of the scene, scratching off a piece of wax under his thumbnail and thoughtfully reapplying it. He hissed out through his teeth in frustration.
He just could not capture Ferrus Manus as he saw him.
The primarch stood a metre above his greatest warriors, no trace of the brooding giant Akurduana had left in his chambers as he circulated among the Legions' warriors. On the surface Ferrus was the most uncomplicated of beings - plainspoken, logical, reasoned - but he was coming to see the increasing layers of opacity. There was hostility, and even outright misdirection, beneath that tempered facade.
Akurduana could respect that. Nothing of worth ever came easily.
He drew back to examine the restored likeness. It was…
It was…
He snarled, crushed the wax pencil to flakes in his fist.
… It was nowhere even close to good enough!
He did not know why he even tried. Snatching up the cloth with which he had intended to wrap the plate for a return to Pride of the Emperor and subsequent printing, he made to toss it over the bathetic attempt. It was all he could do not to break it in half under his boot.
'
Why not use an imager and save yourself the headache?'
Amadeus DuCaine was as pristine as an antique Thunder Warrior figurine. His ancient armour had been polished until even the black shone with the captive luminosity of all the stars it had ever basked under. The veil of chainmail that sailed from his shoulder plates had been oiled. The spikes that followed the rear rim of his gorget had been sharpened. His heavy black cloak had been steamed and pressed. The Eye of Horus, etched in platinum into the cheek guard of his tall helm, glinted from under the crook of his arm. Even the steel plate fixed over his missing eye had been pressure cleansed, every last bolt.
Akurduana dropped the silk covering and shrugged the red lacerna cloak from his shoulder. They all had their rituals.
'There is a certain art in imagery, I will acknowledge. But to craft an image rather than simply recreate one, it is…' His face contorted in an agony of frustration. 'It is more than I can achieve.'
'Careful, my friend.' The Lord Commander took Akurduana's jaw in a playful grip. 'You'll give yourself age lines. Before you know it, you'll look like me.'
Akurduana shook off his friend's hand with a snarl, in no mood to be mocked, and massaged his chin. His fury dissipated almost immediately, however, his expression at once turning regretful. 'You Iron Hands claim to be so logical, so tell me, brother, is it logical to assume that a man with a few scars is a better warrior than one without?'
'Medusa's a black pit,' said DuCaine, with feeling. 'No one climbs out of it without some kind of a scar. I don't think they know what to make of a man without.'
'You talk as if Chemos is a glorious Eden.'
'If you can see ten metres and stand straight without being knocked down by the wind then it's better.' DuCaine's brow cragged with additional furrows. 'And you found Fulgrim there waiting for you. That must have brightened it for you somewhat.'