by Nick Kyme
I found myself in the Silo, with a burly, half-armoured warrior standing over me. Gone was the Afrik sun, and in its place the dinginess of a lower Swathe dive bar. The warrior had craggy features, with a bald, scar-laced scalp, and brandished a metal hook. It had the look of an improvised weapon.
Gone the power armour he once wore, a studded leather hauberk now served in its place.
‘Gairok…’ I slurred his name as I tried to piece together the fragments of what had happened between leaving Tarrigata’s and this moment.
Rather than strike me down, Gairok offered his hand. His skin shone red in the flickering lumen light.
‘Stand, brother,’ he said. Aspirated blood spattered his face. The veins in his neck bulged, and he breathed with feverish intensity. The grin that cut a white crescent in his features looked forced. Pained.
‘Gairok,’ I said again, standing and looking around. The dead surrounded us, gutted and torn up, all the wretched patrons of the Silo. The sweet, cloying scent of alc-grain mingled with the coppery stench of blood. The floor of the bar shone with it.
‘Did you… did you do this, Gairok?’ I asked, and felt the reassuring grip of my short sword as I slid it from the scabbard.
Gairok blinked, once, twice. His eyes were bloodshot. Sweat lathered his skin. I saw it almost glitter in the lumen light. His grin became a frown, a rabid beast struggling to comprehend its illness. How far was I from such a fate? The hand that gripped the hook tightened, and I felt my body tense.
He had been vital, strong of mind and purpose. I didn’t recognise the man in front of me.
‘Where are you, Gairok?’ I asked, trying to ignore the blood.
I have never seen him so weak. Gairok held the breach at Abyssna. He fought on the Sibir ice plain when the atomics rained down.
‘The Afrik sun is hotter in the breach, Dah,’ he said, but his mind was absent and his words a pale echo of those spoken to me years ago.
‘This isn’t the Abyssna, brother. Gairok… Where are you? Try to think.’
He cast about, lost, searching the dead. None answered. ‘Sibir… No… hnng…’ He pressed a hand against his skull as if trying to keep his tattered sanity from spilling out, until his words slurred beyond comprehension.
Then he came at me with the hook, eyes wild, spitting froth.
‘Unity!’ he cried, barely articulate, a moan of despair as much as it was a remembered shout of triumph.
I blocked the overhand blow with my forearm, though Gairok’s strength was ferocious. With the other hand I slid out my short sword and rammed it deep into my brother’s chest. He struggled at first, madness lending him strength, until I carved and carved, and the blood and innards sluiced out onto the dirty floor. Gairok grew limp and I cradled his body to the ground to stop him from falling.
As he lay there amidst the dismembered corpses of his madness, I gently withdrew my blade.
Blood bubbled in the froth on Gairok’s lips. It reminded me of Kabe.
He blinked again, and I saw some lucidity return in his eyes.
‘We were… not meant… to last.’
The last of his life choked out of him and I held him until it was over. There was blood on his Legion tattoo and I wiped it away before I could no longer hold up my head.
I knew Kabe, I had fought alongside him as a sword-brother, but Gairok had been my friend. I wept for his passing, choking to death in some dirty Swathe bar.
‘Where is the honour for us?’ I asked the darkness, but silence answered.
My own words came back to me then.
We have lived too long.
I got to my feet, heavy with grief, and hauled Gairok onto my back. I wouldn’t leave him here, not like this. Something was wrong with us. I hoped Tarrigata would know what to do.
Tagiomalchian descended through a cloud of smog. The monofilament wire held him steady, thin enough to be invisible to the naked eye, robust enough to harbour a load many times his weight.
Drawn up over armour, the falsehood Tagiomalchian wore kept him hidden from sight.
A counter cycled down on his retinal display. When it hit fifty metres, he disengaged the mag-clamp and fell the rest of the way to the ground. A tiny grav pulse built into his armour cushioned his landing and he rose up from a crouched position to cast his gaze across the vast shanty town before him.
‘Landfall achieved. I remain undetected,’ he said, the sound of his voice baffled by the ambient neutralisers built into his helm array.
The same voice from the Coronus replied, similarly shrouded. Only Tagiomalchian could hear it.
‘Target location identified,’ it said over the vox. A hololithic schematic overlaid the terrain Tagiomalchian saw through his retinal lenses. ‘Your quarry is in the Swathe.’
‘Status request.’
‘Covert.’
‘Duration?’
‘As long as possible. Until detected.’
‘Kill or capture?’
‘Kill. And eradicate all trace.’
‘Confirmed. Request data inload.’
It took a few seconds. A small beacon lit up on the hololithic render.
‘Deeper than I thought,’ Tagiomalchian murmured, not intending to be heard, but the baffle also focused vox-audio to the listener.
‘It’s a warren, Tagiomalchian, and there are rats lurking within.’
‘Then I had best start digging.’
Sump harvesters plied the chemical soup coagulating at the edge of the Swathe. Their nets and hooks dragged and snapped for salvage. Smoking ragsticks, coughing up their cancer-ridden lungs, slowly dying from the toxins in their blood, they gave no heed to the golden warrior striding in their midst. They didn’t even blink.
Gairok was a heavy burden, and it took several hours to reach the arena. As I neared the outskirts, I saw the smoke. Tarrigata’s hab was in flames. Laying down Gairok’s body, I drew my sword and ran. I thought it might be the work of Radik Clev, retaliation for what I had done to his chrono-gladiator. Upon entering the shanty town, I knew it wasn’t revenge. Madness reigned here. I found the dead. Eviscerated, beheaded and dismembered, they littered the place, ripped up like a butcher’s leavings.
A pressure began to build behind my temples and I pressed a hand to my head to ward it off. Pain, like a fathomless dive into a deep ocean, threatened to put me down, but I resisted. I smelled smoke, from Tarrigata’s hab, from the Abyssna, and struggled to tell which was real and which was not.
A chill pricked my face, but I knew the atmosphere in the Swathe was sweltering. I remembered the Sibir ice plain and dared not look up for fear of seeing the atomics falling again. Then I was at Ararat, bellowing with Arik Tyrannis as he raised the Lightning Banner.
And then Hy Brasil and Ursh and Albia.
My skull throbbed. The dreams of Unity were relentless, and I powerless to command them.
In the end I focused on my sword, and held it tight across my body, thinking of its solidity, its permanence, its reality.
I resurfaced from the dream, sweating, skin burning with fever. I was on my knees, a watery pool of sick in front of me. I spat the taste of it from my mouth and hurried to Tarrigata’s hab. As I kicked down the door, heat and smoke assailed me. I hadn’t seen Vezulah during the frantic rush through the shanty and wondered if I would find him within, blood-mad like Gairok had been. I plunged inside, holding my breath and warding my face with my forearm.
A few of the shelves had collapsed, either in the heat or during some struggle that had preceded this mess. I hacked through one, vaulted another until I found Tarrigata on his side, choking from smoke inhalation.
He turned his head at my approach. Fear contorted his face. He cried out, a pathetic, plaintive sound, as I swept in and gathered up his frail body into my arms. Thin fingers raked at my skin like needles. He fought, but with the strength of an enfeebled child.
‘Be still,’ I warned him, ‘or we’ll both die in this shithole.’
His struggles eased,
either at the sound of my voice or because he had used up what fight he had left. The fire was rising, spreading across the walls and ceiling. It crawled like a mudslide, hungrily devouring everything it touched. I heard shattering glass and realised the flasks were slowly cooking off. The chemical mixtures within would act as an accelerant.
Cradling Tarrigata against my body, I smashed headlong through the back of the hab and kicked through the rear door to emerge on the other side. We had barely made it two metres when the old shack and furnace exploded, sending up a plume of fiery debris and smoke into the air.
No crowd had gathered. Everyone was either dead or in hiding.
I carried Tarrigata clear and set him down on an old, threadbare chair. Its arms were missing and patches of the synth-leather had flaked away to reveal mildewed sponge beneath. His breath rattled, and his skin looked so pallid that I knew he didn’t have long.
‘Where is Vezulah?’ I asked him firmly.
The old man’s head lolled to the side and I gently grasped it by the chin, turning it to face me.
‘Tarrigata, you’re dying. I’m sorry. But I need to know.’
Sudden urgency gripped him and he lurched towards me, mouth working but the words struggling to come at first. I leaned in, so the old man could whisper his truth into my ear.
‘He’s… he’s coming.’
Then he slumped back, sagging like a deflated lung and stirred no more.
‘He’s not. Vez is gone.’
I looked down and saw he had pressed the rad pistol into my hands. I didn’t know if he meant for me to use it on myself or Vezulah, but I took it and put it in the empty holster attached to my weapons belt.
I tore a strip of cloth from under my armour to wrap around Tarrigata’s eyeless sockets. Tying the blindfold in place, I took a deep breath and laid my hand upon his forehead.
‘You old bastard, you tried to stop him didn’t you?’
Standing, I looked down on Tarrigata’s withered body. Death had diminished him.
‘That’s my burden now. I’ll stop him. I’ll end it.’
Tagiomalchian swept unseen through the narrow alleyways and tunnels of the Swathe. He moved swiftly, the locator beacon flashing in his retinal lens growing closer with every second. In the distance, black smoke plumed into the sky, casting a funerary pall.
He found the first real evidence of his quarry at a dive bar that had been transformed into a charnel house. The heady stench of low-grade alc-grain and cooled viscera invaded his nostrils. He let it. As an Ephroi he had been trained to seek out evidence. He smelled transhuman blood, then engaged the internal vox.
‘Could be Legion,’ he said, ‘those who escaped the purge.’
‘Proceed with caution.’
Tagiomalchian nodded to himself. He knelt down to turn over one of the ragged bodies. His eyes drew to slits behind his retinal lenses.
‘That’s interesting…’ It looked like a burn mark in the shape of–
A nagging sense of wrongness made Tagiomalchian turn. He had barely reached for his sword when he was smashed off his feet.
I followed the trail Vezulah had left. It wasn’t hard, and I wondered if in some part of his still-lucid mind he wanted me to find him. To end him. I hoped I could; I hoped I could stave off the madness that had turned Gairok and Vezulah too.
I thought of Tarrigata, of the old man choking half to death as he fled for his life. I could not reconcile with Vezulah being responsible for that. Even drifting as he often did, Vezulah would not have raised a hand to the old man. But perhaps he didn’t know. The dreams, I had felt them. Vivid, persuasive. The desire for past glory was an effective blindfold.
I ran through the Swathe, getting fearful looks from its inhabitants. The dregs lingered here in the deeps and they wanted to be left alone in misery and squalor. Some brandished weapons, ready to defend their sorry lives, but they were empty threats. Others took refuge in their hovels, hunkering down and shutting their eyes, as if waiting for a storm to pass.
In an ancient part of the district, I found a Legion mark carved into a stone stairwell. The old lightning bolt led me downwards into a catacomb. I knew this place. It was called the Flood, the deepest part of the Swathe. Ancient columns streaked with grime rose up to a curved and vaulted ceiling. It had been beautiful once, but as with so many things age had stolen its glory. Parts of the Flood had collapsed, surrendering to the agglomerated weight of the levels above. I clambered over a sloping heap of debris, slewed across my path like a bulging sack had split its stitches and spewed into the main thoroughfare, its contents left to sit where they may. I seldom came here. I had no cause, but wondered what Vezulah’s might be.
‘Is this our last battlefield, brother?’ I asked of the dark, and was surprised when it answered.
‘I have fought my last battle already, Dah.’
I found him leaning against the curved catacomb wall, a hand across his stomach holding everything in. Something wet and dark gleamed between Vezulah’s trembling fingers. His broken axe lay next to his body, the blade acid-burned in two.
‘Vez…’ I knelt down beside him. He looked deathly in the flickering glow of the overhead phosphor lamps.
‘Are you armed?’ he rasped.
I frowned, about to gesture to my drawn sword and the broad-blade strapped to my back when I realised Vezulah was blind. A milky sheen covered his eyes, and there were burn marks around the sockets and across his face.
‘Acid…’ he said, correctly assuming the reason for my silence. ‘Forgot they could do that.’ He laughed, but the effort cost him. ‘He gave them all the gifts, didn’t He. And left us to fester and rot.’ He reached out and grabbed my arm, fumbling with his blindness. ‘We should not have lasted this long.’
I held his head to the light, trying to examine the ghastly injuries to his face. He resisted, as if ashamed of his condition.
‘The gut wound is fatal,’ he hissed, teeth clenched with a sudden flare of pain.
‘Who did this?’ I asked, and let him go. I peered into the darkness but found no attackers lurking.
‘They were among us, Dah,’ he said. ‘Hiding in the Swathe. I fought them. They ran and led me here. Left me to die.’ He grimaced, and I felt the pull of Vezulah’s mortal thread growing taut.
‘Who, brother? Who hid from us?’
‘A mark, red-raw, like a brand…’ He pointed to his left cheek, his finger lathered in blood. ‘They said his name. Said…’
I grabbed his armoured collar, and wrenched him to me.
‘Tell me, brother! Let me avenge you.’
‘Said… he is coming.’
Vezulah let out a long, shuddering breath, and it was over.
I had been wrong. Vezulah hadn’t slaughtered the settlement or left Tarrigata to die. But someone had.
Head bowed, I shut my eyes and felt the heft of the rad pistol against my leg. I considered drawing it. My fingers closed around the grip. A single shot, if it could still fire. Left temple.
I opened my eyes and let the pistol go.
‘For Unity…’ I muttered, and laid my Legion ring in Vezulah’s lap.
‘The enemy within.’ A mark, a name. That’s what Vezulah had said. I had heard stories, most of them from Tarrigata. War was coming. Some said it had already arrived, that traitors were among us.
At the faint clash of steel I looked up.
I got to my feet and ran through the catacombs, chasing the sounds of battle.
Tagiomalchian limped into the catacombs, ignoring the pain beneath his cracked auramite armour. A shredded falsehood lay somewhere in his wake. The cloak had proven ineffective against his quarry, which had sensed him by unnatural means. Its blood, or what passed for blood, slicked the edge of his sentinel blade. The weapon weighed heavy in his grasp. So did the shield on his back, and he knew that the creature had hurt him. But he had also hurt it.
‘Mark my location,’ he said into the vox.
‘You sound injured.’
&
nbsp; Tagiomalchian gritted his teeth. ‘Mark it.’
A brief pause suggested another enquiry was coming, but in the end it didn’t materialise. Instead, a different interrogative.
‘Are you close, Tagiomalchian?’
‘I am.’
‘Is it them?’
Few knew of the attack on the Throneworld by the Alpha Legion. In the end it had been contained and the immediate threat neutralised. Concerns remained. There had been ‘incidents’. One at the Plaintive Reach watch station had been difficult to suppress. Rumours had leaked out into the districts. Madness swept throughout Terra. The Warmaster was coming. Sympathisers had sprung up in the populace. Cults. A purge had been ordered, a cleansing fire in the face of the oncoming corruption.
The harbingers of that corruption stood before Tagiomalchian.
‘It’s them,’ he said, and shut off the vox.
Tagiomalchian had emerged into the flickering light of a subterranean hall. The tunnels had led him here. An icy chill touched him even through his armour. The hall’s original purpose had been obscured by time and invention. An old bathhouse, perhaps, its rusted copper pipes still visible but only partially intact. A pair of handle-driven pumps shaped into the mouths of heraldic gryphonnes fed a deep basin, but were seized in place by decay. Flaking filigree spoke of mythic seaborne beasts, but those artistic images had been perverted.
Something more ancient and primal stood in this place now. Torches burned eagerly in iron sconces, letting off a cloying scent of fouled meat and sour milk. A rimy scum of blood, not water, ringed the edge of the basin where a symbol had been crudely drawn in a tarry black substance. Candles guttered, clumped like overgrown weeds. Their waxy stems gave off the stink of animal fat.
