by David Guymer
Amar left them to their horror, labouring up the high steps with wheezing breaths to stand by the primarch's side, occupying the position opposite Forgebreaker, and then leaned in to whisper in his ear.
The Librarian had nothing of consequence to utter, but Ferrus wanted the Gardinaal to see him whisper. And so he watched as he listened to the Thousand Sons legionary tell him nothing, leaning towards his warhammer as if its counsel might differ. But he did not rise.
The only thing more profoundly superhuman than his temper was his will. And what would please his father and shame his brothers more than the belated surrender of the Gardinaal?
'You returned my son, Trurakk, to my Legion, and convinced Captain Akurduana, whom I am beholden to trust, that I should take you on your word.' The words came slowly at first, like molten steel trickling into a cast, but then with greater urgency and alacrity as they continued to pour from him. 'For that reason alone have I admitted you here. Declare your surrender before me now, for I am Ferrus Manus, primarch of the Tenth Legiones Astartes, the Iron Hands, and my decree is inviolate. Do this for me, and I will not obliterate every last trace of your civilisation from your eleven worlds.'
'To be a fly on that wall,' Akurduana mused.
'A what?' asked Santar.
'He means he's curious to know what they have to say to the primarch,' Morn chuckled.
Santar shot him a poisonous look. 'Presumably 'We surrender.'
'There is little of their empire left to argue over.'
Akurduana glanced towards the black door, apparently doubtful, though his expressions were so mixed and changeable it was difficult to tell.
'What is it?'
'Nothing.' The Terran was the single worst liar Santar had ever met.
'You know something of the primarch's thinking I don't?'
Akurduana's smile was strained. 'Only a confidence I cannot repeat.'
Santar looked from him to Urien and Morn. They looked back, silently disapproving. The III Legion captain had managed to become firmly liked by those that had served under him on Vesta and on Gardinaal. He scowled at them both, then turned back to Akurduana. 'Go.' He waved off down the corridor. 'The primarch appointed you First Captain and equerry for as long as the compliance of Gardinaal required. Well, Gardinaal is compliant. They've surrendered. So you can go and… draw something.'
Akurduana held his gaze a moment, then bowed coldly, one gauntlet to the brilliant gold of the palatine aquila on his breast-plate. 'It appears you outrank me, First Captain, so perhaps I will pass by the apothecarion and look in on Ulan Cicerus. And the young hero, Trurakk, too, perhaps. He was, for a brief spell at least, one of mine.'
'Go do that,'
Santar crossed his arms and turned his back, not even listening to the legionary's footsteps as he departed. Eyes forward.
The servile mortal, Venn, however, watched him all the way.
In a grinding hiss of pistons sliding through imperfectly lubricated metal jackets and a gurgle of fluid hydraulics, Strachaan approached the dais. Amar bristled, the blued steel of his sword sliding a finger's width from its scabbard, but Ferrus stilled him with a raised hand. His heart pounded with the expectancy of his triumph. He gripped the arms of his throne fiercely as the lord of the Gardinaal reached the steps.
There, level with the seated primarch on the high dais, the construct stopped. The pale light from the lumen manifold fell across his visor grille and banded his mummified organic features with anaemia and shadow. He was withered and blind, sockets in the sunken flesh where eyes had once been, copper wiring splotched with black spots of corpse rot erupting from his temples to slave into the control systems of his helm.
'What are you?' Ferrus asked.
The Gardinaal's voice emerged from several augmitters positioned across his skeletal scaffold body, several overlapping and imperfectly synchronised voices all speaking at once. 'To permit individuals of the highest caste and most supreme achievement to perish with their flesh bodies would be wasteful. Transferring their consciousness to a machine matrix allows the best of us to rule forever.' The pattern of shadows shifted, the lord's husk of a face creasing into a rictus. 'I have ruled among the High Lords for over thirty-six hundred years.'
Ferrus felt an odd prickling of unease. 'Are you alive, or dead?'
Strachaan's augmitters grizzled in amusement. 'To me, primarch, that question is meaningless.'
The primarch's vision shimmered with a silver haze, the Gardinaal hardening against the background until he shone as though he were clad in precious metal, brighter than the feeble lighting could have permitted alone. Swallowing his aversion to the Gardinaal and the technology that made him live, he held out a hand, the metal writhing. 'Surrender to me.'
The Gardinaal looked back, his dead face inscrutable. 'No.'
Anger hissed through Ferrus' lips.
It had been explained to him that men blinded by rage saw red. Ferrus Manus was not a man. And when he looked upon the Gardinaal, carrying his sovereign defiance all the way to the foot of his throne, he saw only silver.
An argent flash spread through the haze as one of Strachaan's weapons systems discharged. It appeared to drag as Ferrus focused on it, crawling from the emitter cell in the Gardinaal's shoulder as if blunted by the primarch's gaze. Time slowed to a stop. Fury cooled hardened, cladding Ferrus' heart and muscles in an aching chill He saw the particle lash begin to accelerate. He threw out a hand and caught it. Incandescent sparks sprayed across the dais as the beam exploded in his grip. The liquid metal sizzled angrily, churning, diluting the reddened metal around his fist with fresh silver as the last sparks sputtered through his fingers.
Amar, a primarch's reflexes from receiving a particle lash to the face, blinked in hollow-eyed surprise 'Leave us,' Ferrus hissed, as Strachaan began deploying additional hidden weapons systems. Previously dormant systems were aggressively powering up, shields igniting, cloaking him in a violet aurora, claws, cutters, rotary saws and powered grabbers unfurling from his upper limbs and catching the light. His entire armoured harness swelled as gas-filled cells under arcs of electrical provocation shifted phase to become thick shock-absorbent gels. He continued to grow, wreathed in electrical flame and bristling with blades, until he towered over Ferrus Manus, even enthroned upon his dais. 'Tell DuCaine he has a task to complete.' He reached across, fingers boiling, rushing, closing over the grip of his hammer and hardening. And then he rose.
'That was a particle weapon,' said Santar.
'They were supposed to be unarmed,' Urien hissed.
It was impossible to turn swiftly or move deftly in Cataphractii pattern armour, but he and Morn were already grappling with the locking wheel, Santar shouldered in between them to hasten them along with his own strength.
Someone tugged on the skirt of chainmail that hung from his faulds, and he looked sharply down. Tobris Venn stared up at him with yawning great pupils and no emotion.
'I can't allow you to do that, sir.'
Ignoring him, Santar growled down the corridor. The Terminator squad that had escorted them from the embarkation deck had remained on station, and were currently readying weapons and forming up ready to force the portal once it was opened. One of them clomped forwards, hand outstretched, to haul the mortal away.
'I'm sorry, sir, but High Lord Strachaan was most explicit.'
The mortal made a muted gasping sound. At first, Santar thought that the Terminator had broken something - mortals were painfully fragile - but then he saw that his brother was still reaching out for the collar of the man's uniform. The mortal staggered, as though pushed, remaining standing only by tightening his grip on Santar's armour skirt. Santar swore, letting go of the wheel lock, and reached back to deal with the nuisance himself. His gauntlet swallowed the mortal's arm from shoulder to forearm.
The Gardinaal dangled bonelessly from it as he hoisted him a metre off the ground.
'Do you know what—?'
Before he could finish, the mortal
vomited a chemical-white froth down Santar's chest plastron.
The First Captain looked over his inflexible gorget rings with a grimace.
Flailing legs slapped his armour as the mortal began to seize, as though Santar's gauntlet were supplying an electric current. The veins began to rise from his skin, changing colour from purple-blue to a thick, foamy white. His eyes glazed over, head jerking back and forth, a foul stench gasping off his breath. Santar screwed up his face. It smelled like…
The mortal's body began to balloon, skin stretching, splitting, bleeding explosive compound, forcing a shuddering smile for perhaps the first time in his existence.
'Most… explicit…'
* * *
The explosion buckled the door down the middle, but didn't break it. It was diorite, patinaed only with the weaker materials of plasteel and obsidian. A neutron beamer could not breach Ferrus' sanctum, not even if the battle tank it was mounted on followed through. The force, however, was enough to crack the frame in which the portal was mounted, cataracts of broken glass cascading to the flagstones as fissures pushed through the walls. It lifted Amar off the ground as he was crumpled, twisted and tom, skidding and rolling back into the chamber like a rag doll in poorly fitting armour.
The lesser of the two Gardinaal, the advisor, Dekka, looked at the Librarian's unconscious form with surprise. 'Not exactly the assassination as planned, but as effective as any.' He turned to Ferrus and, feeling something brush his mind, Ferrus looked sharply his way.
The man backpedalled swiftly until his back was to the wall, his undead lord between himself and the furious primarch.
'We know all about you,' boomed Strachaan. 'We know you, and the High Lords believe you can be beaten. They believe I can beat you.'
'I doubt it.' Ferrus dragged his hammer from the top step as he started forward. 'My own father doesn't know me.'
TEN
Ferrus Manus flew at the lord of the Gardinaal with a roar.
Strachaan raised a forelimb to shield his visor grille and Forgebreaker hammered into an energy field. Flares, sparks and convulsions of light rippled across the Gardinaal's upper body, the giant warhammer caught in a mesh of conflicting energies as though Ferrus wielded the north pole of one powerful magnet to attack the south of another. Liquid metal ran from his forearms as though repelled by the energies unleashed, swelling his biceps as he strove to force his hammer through the Gardinaal's face. The energy fields bowed before his strength, shivering off spasms of light and heat, illuminating the grimacing mummy beneath.
A hiss of pistons joints. A glint of red light on buzzing metal. Ferrus saw the spinning saw blade as it swung towards his neck, but did not release the pressure on his hammer.
His understanding of materials and their properties was preternatural and untaught, his insight second to none; he let his armour take it.
The saw shrieked against his pauldron, flaying off sparks, while Ferrus shoved through his hammer with all of his might. It was insufficient to break the energy field, but force was force, the universal laws applied, and the war machine was sent tottering back.
Strachaan's three legs quickly rearranged themselves, his torso spinning around gimbal joints between head and neck and hip and groin. Hatches in the Gardinaal's harness clattered open and shut, particle beams from concealed gun ports firing in sequence to haze the air with small arms fire that broke against Ferrus' armour. The upper half of the Gardinaal was still spinning, cycling through his torso arrays, as he punched out with a power fist. Ferrus batted it aside, smashing the gauntlet to pieces and tearing it from the walker's arm.
Strachaan moaned a curse, the damaged section of limb detaching in a gout of steam. It hit the ground with a clang, a replacement armament unlocking and clicking into place on the truncated limb, even as the third arm swung in.
Ferrus presented the shaft of his hammer to take it, but then stumbled.
The room shifted around him, the light fading, reddening as it bled into the ground. Lava. It flowed in sluggish rivers, bubbles breaking the surface to spew amber fire and sulphurous gases over the shrinking islets of solid rock. Ferrus could feel the heat, the shaking of the volcano beneath him. Glowing pyroclast made patterns in the air, rising up and swirling about in the furnace heat.
The wyrm came at him from nowhere.
He struck it aside with the back of his stave, sending a sword-length chip of scale flying. It reverted to liquid and burned off before it struck the lava flows. A howl of inhuman, greater-than-mortal fury shook the Kiraal, and suddenly the lava sea was all scales, teeth, his iron stave a blur as he countered Asirnoth's rampaging fury…
The blow swept over his guard and hammered into his breast-plate. He blinked, the silver of his vision threaded with a confusion of grey shades as he stumbled back. He shook his head, vision still swimming, and looked down. The Gardinaal's blades had savaged the ceramite. It looked like a mauling, but it was a graze only. He gave vent to a snarl, taking Forgebreaker one-handed, slid his hand to the base of the haft and swung long. He missed. The Gardinaal stepped behind his wild lunge and fired a lightning-edged spear point-blank into his gut. No words. No taunts. Pure efficiency. The spear tip cracked his armour, the molecular disruption field widening the breach with a crumping discharge that hurled Ferrus Manus from his feet.
He plunged through a glass cabinet, shattering it, metal raining to the ground as suspension fields failed and treasured relics from Medusa and beyond fell out of the air.
Rogal Dorn stood over him, the rugged yellow of his gauntlet knuckles speckled with silver-red. He glowered down on his brother, his countenance never wavering from one of stem reproach. The warriors of both Legions looked on from the many tiers of the Fist of Iron's command deck with expressions of horror and, though they tried to hide it, fascination. Ferrus had not intended to lose his temper, but part of him exalted that Dorn had pushed him that far, and that his brother had responded in kind. He spat blood on the baffled flooring of his bridge, and clenched his fist…
The remembered horror of the X and VII Legions stretched to an inflection point, became a wheeze of ageing pistons as Strachaan leant back. Forgebreaker burned along the curve of the Gardinaal's chest and Ferrus rose with it. He squeezed his forehead in his free hand, grunting in disorientation, then kicked the Gardinaal in the groin assembly. An explosive counter-force rent the air between his boot and Strachaan with energetic streaks of red.
Ferrus backed warily away. Glass splintered underfoot. A sudden pain stabbed into his head and the chamber swirled, cabinets and murals orbiting him to their destruction as though he were a supermassive black hole. Mountains rose. Mountains fell. The sky wheeled and changed. He was fighting the Elemental of Karaashi through a maze of ice. Facing down the great Yarrk migration at the ford of Jaadan. Battling the mechanised hosts of the mad Iron Father, Stanislas, who had pursued Ferrus mercilessly throughout his childhood, until this day, when he would face the mystic's armada head on and shatter it with his bare hands. His hands. He shrugged them off. They were memories only. His memories. His hardest battles.
Drawn by instinct, he risked a sideways glance and noticed the psyker, spread-eagled as though crucified to the far wall where Ferrus had seen him last. The old man was not in the fight, not physically at least, but he stared hard at Ferrus, eyes dark and bulging from his face Ferrus snarled. He saw what was happening.
Fending off Strachaan with his hammer at full stretch, he turned himself around the relic construct, enough for a clear run at the psyker. Strachaan grabbed his arm as he made to spin away, hauled him back and struck him across the jaw. Lightning flashed through his skull. The rugged yellow of his gauntlet knuckles spattered with silver-red. He roared and flung an elbow for the Gardinaal's face. The elbow was as high as the alien substance that had colonised his arms went. An even line, as the medicae, Riordan, had rightly observed.
There was a sizzle of boiling solder as the living metal met the construct's power fields, then a brilli
ant flash as those fields collapsed and Ferrus' elbow crushed the Gardinaal's grille. Anger growled through Strachaan's augmitters. Ferrus bellowed like a rising mountain as he tossed his warhammer aside. It landed with a heavy clang.
'And you say you know me?'
The Gardinaal looked to put some distance between them, hosing the intervening space with particle beams from his torso mounts. Ferrus splayed his bare hands before him like a shield of molten fury, the rest glancing off his armour.
'Do something!' Strachaan shouted.
Ferrus drew his hands back to form fists, but then staggered as though he had been shot in the eye. His hand went to his head as the ground fell away from him. Clouds boiled in from nowhere as if he were watching the complete life cycle of a world in an eye-blink. The air turned cold, the wind sharp. The ground crumbled, became gravelly and sharp, flat-topped peaks rearing up from a suddenly distant horizon. Ferrus swayed as though the galaxy had caught him unawares with the abrupt termination of its rotation, blinded by a supernova's light. He slumped, breathing in gales, his hand clanging to his thigh.
He was clad in tattered chainmail, strung with a harness of saw-edged Medusan steel. Dents and scratches reflected the light in a million impossible ways, burning, stabbing, glorying, pain and beauty alike, and both falling with equal power on eyes that had never experienced sun or stars. Blood streamed down trembling hands and onto his leg as he pushed down and made himself rise.
The golden warrior strode forward, his pace measured in destinies.
He was the light, a screaming pulsar of blue-white energy that shot into the sky like a spear. He was a beacon around which no clouds could gather, an elegiac that pronounced sovereignty wheresoever it fell. He was the most remarkable being that Ferrus Manus had ever seen or found it possible to imagine, and yet it was no Angel of Peace that walked towards him under the guise of Man.
'His golden armour was fantastically ornamented, but too brilliant to be recalled or described even by a mind such as Ferrus,' as glorious as it had been when the being had first descended from the heavens, despite its punishment at Ferrus' hands. The sword he raised to invite Ferrus to come again blazed with a fire that did not burn. It reminded Ferrus of his hands, only gold where they were silver. Indeed, there was much about this being that was familiar.