by Dan Abnett
Naud’s house was a treasure trove of art, some of it mystifyingly alien to Loken’s comprehension. The art was elegantly displayed in lit alcoves and on free-standing plinths with their own shimmering field protection. He understood some of it. Portraits and busts, paintings and light sculptures, pictures of interex nobles and their families, studies of animals or wildflowers, mountain scenes, elaborate and ingenious models of unnamed worlds opened in mechanical cross-section like the layers of an onion.
In one lower hallway in the eastern wing of the house, Loken came upon an artwork that especially arrested him. It was a book, an old book, large, rumpled, illuminated, and held within its own box field. The lurid woodcut illuminations caught his eye first, the images of devils and spectres, angels and cherubs. Then he saw it was written in the old text of Terra, the language and form that had survived from prehistory to The Chronicles of Ursh that lay, still unfinished, in his arming chamber. He peered at it. A wave of his hand across the field’s static charge turned the pages. He turned them right back to the front and read the title page in its bold woodblock.
A Marvelous Historie of Eevil; Being a warninge to Man Kind on the Abuses of Sorcerie and the Seduction of the Daemon.
‘That has taken your eye, has it?’
Loken rose and turned. A royal officer of the interex stood nearby, watching him. Loken knew the man, one of Naud’s subordinate commanders, by the name of Mithras Tull. What he didn’t know was how Tull had managed to come up on him without Loken noticing.
‘It is a curious thing, commander,’ he said.
Tull nodded and smiled. A gleve, his weighted spear was leant against a pillar behind him, and he had removed his visor to reveal his pleasant, honest face. ‘A likeness,’ he said.
‘A what?’
‘Forgive me, that is the word we have come to use to refer to things that are old enough to display our common heritage. A likeness. That book means as much to you as it does to us, I’m sure.’
‘It is curious, certainly,’ Loken admitted. He unclasped his helm and removed it, out of politeness. ‘Is there a problem, commander?’
Tull made a dismissive gesture. ‘No, not at all. My duties are akin to yours tonight, captain. Security. I’m in charge of the house patrols.’
Loken nodded. He gestured back at the ancient book on display. ‘So tell me about this piece. If you’ve the time?’
‘It’s a quiet night,’ Tull smiled again. He came forward, and brushed the field with his metal-sleeved fingers to flip the pages. ‘My lord Jephta adores this book. It was composed during the early years of our history, before the interex was properly founded, during our outwards expansion from Terra. Very few copies remain. A treatise against the practice of sorcery.’
‘Naud adores it?’ Loken asked.
‘As a… what was your word again? A curiosity?’ There was something strange about Tull’s voice, and Loken finally realised what it was. This was his first conversation he’d had with a representative of the interex without meturge players producing the aria in the background. ‘It’s such a woe-begotten, dark age piece,’ Tull continued. ‘So doomy and apocalyptic. Imagine, captain… men of Terra, voyaging out into the stars, equipped with great and wonderful technologies, and fearing the dark so much they have to compose treatises on daemons.’
‘Daemons?’
‘Indeed. This warns against witches, gross practices, familiars, and the arts by which a man might transform into a daemon and prey upon his own kind.’
Some became daemons and turned upon their own.
‘So… you regard it as a joke? An odd throwback to unenlightened days?’
Tull shrugged. ‘Not a joke, captain. Just an old-fashioned, alarmist approach. The interex is a mature society. We understand the threat of Kaos well enough, and set it in its place.’
‘Chaos?’
Tull frowned. ‘Yes, captain. Kaos. You say the word like you’ve never heard it before.’
‘I know the word. You say it like it has a specific connotation.’
‘Well, of course it has,’ Tull said. ‘No star-faring race in the cosmos can operate without understanding the nature of Kaos. We thank the eldar for teaching us the rudiments of it, but we would have recognised it soon enough without their help. Surely, one can’t use the Immaterium for any length of time without coming to terms with Kaos as a…’ his voice trailed off. ‘Great and holy heavens! You don’t know, do you?’
‘Don’t know what?’ Loken snapped.
Tull began to laugh, but it wasn’t mocking. ‘All this time, we’ve been pussy-footing around you and your great Warmaster, fearing the worst.’
Loken took a step forward. ‘Commander,’ he said, ‘I will own up to ignorance and embrace illumination, but I will not be laughed at.’
‘Forgive me.’
‘Tell me why I should. Illuminate me.’ Tull stopped laughing and stared into Loken’s face. His blue eyes were terribly cold and hard. ‘Kaos is the damnation of all mankind, Loken. Kaos will outlive us and dance on our ashes. All we can do, all we can strive for, is to recognise its menace and keep it at bay, for as long as we persist.’ ‘Not enough,’ said Loken.
Tull shook his head sadly. We were so wrong,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘About you. About the Imperium. I must go to Naud at once and explain this to him. If only the substance of this had come out earlier…’
‘Explain it to me first. Now. Here.’
Tull gazed at Loken for a long, silent moment, as if judging his options. Finally, he shrugged and said, ‘Kaos is a primal force of the cosmos. It resides within the Immaterium… what you call the warp. It is a source of the most malevolent and complete corruption and evil. It is the greatest enemy of mankind – both interex and Imperial, I mean – because it destroys from within, like a canker. It is insidious. It is not like a hostile alien form to be defeated or expunged. It spreads like a disease. It is at the root of all sorcery and magic. It is…’
He hesitated and looked at Loken with a pained expression. ‘It is the reason we have kept you at arm’s length. You have to understand that when we first made contact, we were exhilarated, overjoyed. At last. At last! Contact with our lost kin, contact with Terra, after so many generations. It was a dream we had all cherished, but we knew we had to be careful. In the ages since we last had contact with Terra, things might have changed. An age of strife and damnation had passed. There was no guarantee that the men, who looked like men, and claimed to come from Terra in the name of a new Terran Emperor, might not be agents of Kaos in seemly guise. There was no guarantee that while the men of the interex remained pure, the men of Terra might have become polluted and transformed by the ways of Kaos.’
‘We are not—’
‘Let me finish, Loken. Kaos, when it manifests, is brutal, rapacious, warlike. It is a force of unquenchable destruction. So the eldar have taught us, and the kinebrach, and so the pure men of the interex have stood to check Kaos wherever it rears its warlike visage. Tell me, captain, how warlike do you appear? Vast and bulky, bred for battle, driven to destroy, led by a man you happily title Warmaster? War master? What manner of rank is that? Not Emperor, not commander, not general, but Warmaster. The bluntness of the term reeks of Kaos. We want to embrace you, yearn to embrace you, to join with you, to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, but we fear you, Loken. You resemble the enemy we have been raised from birth to anticipate. The all-conquering, unrelenting daemon of Kaos-war. The bloody-handed god of annihilation.’
‘That is not us,’ said Loken, aghast.
Tull nodded eagerly. ‘I know it. I see it now. Truly. We have made a mistake in our delays. There is no taint in you. There is only the most surprising innocence.’
‘I’ll try not to be offended.’
Tull laughed and clasped his hands around Loken’s right fist. ‘No need, no need. We can show you the dangers to watch for. We can be brothers and—’
He paused suddenly, and took his
hands away.
‘What is it?’ Loken asked.
Tull was listening to his comm-relay. His face darkened. ‘Understood,’ he said to his collar mic. ‘Action at once.’
He looked back at Loken. ‘Security lock-down, captain. Would… I’m sorry, this seems very blunt after what we’ve just been saying… but would you surrender your weapons to me?’
‘My weapons?’
‘Yes, captain.’
‘I’m sorry, commander. I can’t do that. Not while my commander is in the building.’
Tull cleared his throat and carefully fitted his visor plate to his armour. He reached out and carefully took hold of his spear. ‘Captain Loken,’ he said, his voice now gusting from his audio relays, ‘I demand you turn your weapons over to me at this time.’
Loken took a step back. ‘For what reason?’
‘I don’t have to give a reason, dammit! I’m officer of the watch, on interex territory. Hand over your weapons!’
Loken clamped his own helm in place. The visor screens were alarmingly blank. He checked sub-vox and security channels, trying to reach Kairus, Torgaddon or any of the bodyguard detail. His suit systems were being comprehensively blocked.
‘Are you damping me?’ he asked.
‘City systems are damping you. Hand me your sidearm, Loken.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. My priority is to safeguard my commander.’
Tull shook his armoured head. ‘Oh, you’re clever. Very clever. You almost had me there. You almost had me believing you were innocent.’
‘Tull, I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘Naturally you don’t.’
‘Commander Tull, we had reached an understanding, man to man. Why are you doing this?’
‘Seduction. You almost had me. It was very good, but you got the timing off. You showed your hand too soon.’
‘Hand? What hand?’
‘Don’t pretend. The Hall of Devices is burning. You’ve made your move. Now the interex replies.’
‘Tull,’ Loken warned, placing his hand firmly on the pommel of his blade. ‘Don’t make me fight you.’
With a snarl of disappointed rage, Tull swung his spear at Loken.
The interex officer moved with astounding speed. Even with his hand on his blade, Loken had no time to draw it. He managed to snatch up his plated arms to fend off the blow, and the two that followed it. The lightweight armour of the interex soldiery seemed to facilitate the most dazzling motion and dexterity, perhaps even augmenting the user’s natural abilities. Tull’s attack was fluent and professional, slicing in blows with the long spear blade designed to force Loken back and down into submission. The microfine edge of the blade hacked several deep gouges into Loken’s plating.
‘Tull! Stop!’
‘Surrender to me now!’
Loken had no wish to fight, and scarcely any clue as to what had turned Tull so suddenly and completely, but he had no intention of surrendering. The Warmaster was on site, exposed. As far as Loken knew, all Imperial agents in the area had been deprived of vox and sensor links. There was no cue to the Warmaster’s party, or to the Extranus compound, and certainly none to the fleet. He knew his priority was simple. He was a weapon, an instrument, and he had one simply defined purpose: protect the life of the Warmaster. All other issues were entirely secondary and moot.
Loken focussed. He felt the power in his limbs, in the suddenly warming, suddenly active flex of the polymer muscles in his suit’s inner skin. He felt the throb of the power unit against the small of his back as it obeyed his instincts and yielded full power. He’d been swatting away the spear blows, allowing Tull to disfigure his plate.
No more.
He swung out, met the next blow, and smashed the blade aside with the ball of his fist. Tull travelled with the recoil expertly, spinning and using the momentum to drive a thrust directly at Loken’s chest. It never landed. Loken caught the spear at the base of the blade with his left hand, moving as quickly and dazzlingly as the interex officer, and stopped it dead. Before Tull could pull free, Loken punched with his right fist against the flat of the blade and broke the entire blade-tip off the spear. It spun away, end over end.
Tull rallied, and rotated the broken weapon to drive the weighted base-end at Loken like a long club. Loken guarded off two heavy blows from the ball-end with the edges of his gauntlets. Tull twisted his grip, and the spear suddenly became charged with dancing blue sparks of electrical charge. He slammed the crackling ball at Loken again and there was a loud bang. The discharging force of the spear was so powerful that Loken was thrown bodily across the chamber. He landed on the polished floor and slid a few metres, dying webs of charge flickering across his chest plate. He tasted blood in his mouth, and felt the brief, quickly-occluded pain of serious bruising to his torso.
Loken scissored his back and legs, and sprang up on to his feet as Tull closed in. Now he brought his sword out. In the multi-coloured light, the white-steel blade of his combat sword shone like a spike of ice in his fist.
He offered Tull no opportunity to renew the bout as aggressor. Loken launched forward at the charging man and swung hammer blows with his sword. Tull recoiled, forced to use the remains of the spear as a parrying tool, the Imperial blade biting chips out of its haft.
Tull leapt back, and drew his own sword over his shoulder from the scabbard over his back. He clutched the long, silver sword – a good ten fingers longer than Loken’s utilitarian blade – in his right hand, and the spear/club in his left. When he came in again, he was swinging blows with both.
Loken’s Astartes-born senses predicted and matched all of his strikes. His blade flicked left and right, spinning the club back and parrying the sword with two loud chimes of metal. He forced his way into Tull’s bodyline guard and pressed his sword aside long enough to shoulder-barge the royal officer in the chest. Tull staggered back. Loken gave him no respite. He swung again and tore the club out of Tull’s left hand. It bounced across the floor, sparking and firing.
Then they closed, blade on blade, The exchange was furious. Loken had no doubts about his own ability: he’d been tested too many times of late, and not found wanting. But Tull was evidently a master swordsman and, more significantly, had learned his art via some entirely different school of bladesmanship. There was no common language in their fight, no shared basis of technique. Every blow and parry and ripostes each one essayed was inexplicable and foreign to the other. Every millisecond of the exchange was a potentially lethal learning curve.
It was almost enjoyable. Fascinating. Inventive. Illuminating. Loken believed Lucius would have enjoyed such a match, so many new techniques to delight at.
But it was wasting time. Loken parried Tull’s next quicksilver slice, captured his right wrist firmly in his left hand, and struck off Tull’s sword-arm at the elbow with a neat and deliberate chop.
Tull rocked backwards, blood venting from his stump. Loken tossed the sword and severed limb aside. He grabbed Tull by the face and was about to perform the mercy stroke, the quick, down-up decapitation, then thought better of it. He smashed Tull in the side of the head with his sword instead, using the flat.
Tull went flying. His body cartwheeled clumsily across the floor and came to rest against the foot of one of the display plinths. Blood leaked out of it in a wide pool.
‘This is Loken, Loken, Loken!’ Loken yelled in this link. Nothing but dead patterns and static. Switching his blade to his left hand, he drew his bolter and ran forward. He’d gone three steps when the two sagittars bounded into the chamber. They saw him, and their bows were already drawn to fire.
Loken put a bolt round into the wall behind them and made them flinch.
‘Drop the bows!’ he ordered via his helmet speakers. The bolter in his hand told them not to argue. They threw aside the bows and shafts with a clatter. Loken nodded his head at Tull, his gun still covering them both. ‘I’ve no wish to see him die,’ he said. ‘Bind his arm quickly before he bleeds out.’
/>
They wavered and then ran to Tull’s side. When they looked up again, Loken had gone.
HE RAN DOWN a hallway into an adjoining colonnade, hearing what was certainly bolter firing in the distance. Another sagittar appeared ahead, and fired what seemed like a laser bolt at him. The shot went wide past his left shoulder. Loken aimed his bolter and put the warrior on his back, hard.
No room for compassion now.
Two more interex soldiers came into view, another sagittar and a gleve. Loken, still running, shot them both before they could react. The force of his bolts, both torso-shots, threw the soldiers back against the wall, where they slithered to the ground. Abaddon had been wrong. The armour of the interex warriors was masterful, not weak. His rounds hadn’t penetrated the chest plates of either of the men, but the sheer, concussive force of the impacts had taken them out of the fight, probably pulping their innards.
He heard footsteps and turned. It was Kairus and one of his men, Oltrentz. Both had weapons drawn.
‘What the hell’s happening, captain?’ Kairus yelled.
‘With me!’ Loken demanded. ‘Where’s the rest of the detail?’
‘I have no idea,’ Kairus complained. ‘The vox is dead!’
‘We’re being damped,’ Oltrentz added.
‘Priority is the Warmaster,’ Loken assured them. ‘Follow me and—’
More flashes, like laser fire. Projectiles, moving so fast they were just lines of light, zipped down the colonnade, faster than Loken could track. Oltrentz dropped onto his knees with a heavy clang, transfixed by two flightless arrows that had cut clean through his Mark IV plate.
Clean through. Loken could still remember Torgaddon’s amusement and Aximand’s assurance… They’re probably ceremonial.
