by Nick Kyme
An energy blossom flashed as the improvised missile struck a protective field surrounding the last skiff, but Vulkan hadn’t slowed and was charging through it. Skin burning as he passed through the energy shield, he landed on the deck of the vehicle and faced off against a cadre of warriors. They looked brawnier than the others and toted bladed glaives that crackled with unnatural power. Each wore a face-plate as white as alabaster in stark contrast to the visceral red of their ornate armour. The ghosts glared at the interloper imperiously. Behind them, the slaver-lord looked through the jagged eye-slits of a horned helm. A rasped utterance through the fanged mouth grille unleashed his warriors.
One of the ghosts advanced silently and swung his glaive, but Vulkan dipped from the blow that left a blazing trail in the air behind it. A second glaive jabbed at him and this time Vulkan swatted it down into the skiff’s deck plating, but was left with a smoking haft in his hand. Another blow reduced his other hammer to ash as he was forced to parry again.
Rising from his seat, the slaver-lord snarled his displeasure at the Nocturnean’s continued existence.
With their enemy disarmed, the ghosts’ arrogance overflowed and they prepared to finish him.
Vulkan growled with contempt. “I need no weapons to kill the likes of you.”
In a devastating display of speed and brutality, he took the bodyguards apart. Impaled and beheaded by their very own blades, Vulkan threw their shattered remains over the side of the skiff and into the melee below.
Levelling a finger at the slaver-lord, he promised, “This terror ends with your life.”
The dusk-wraith pulled a glittering sword from the scabbard nestled next to his throne. A dark mist coiled from the blade and pricked at Vulkan’s nose. A hollow, hacking sound escaped from the slaver-lord’s lips. It resonated through the mouth of his monstrous fright mask. It was laughter.
Vulkan then noticed a needle-like gauntlet on the dusk-wraith’s other hand. He pointed it at the Nocturnean in mocking symmetry of the threat he’d just received.
“Paaaiin…” he hissed.
Even with superhuman speed, Vulkan couldn’t reach the slaver-lord before he unleashed the gauntlet weapon.
“Son!”
N’bel’s voice rang out above the clash around him. Instinct told Vulkan to reach out with his open hand. A subtle change in the breeze suggested something moving through it. His senses alive to everything, Vulkan’s fingers closed around the worn haft of a smiting hammer and plucked it blindly from the air. It left his grip a split second later, spinning towards the slaver-lord then splitting his ugly mask before the thought had even entered his mind that he was doomed. His face cloven in two, the slaver-lord dropped his sword and toppled off the end of the skiff.
Vaulting down to the square, Vulkan set about the other dusk-wraiths without slowing. He was of the killing mind, a warrior spirit flaring within that both terrified and excited him. Seizing a passing dusk-wraith he crushed its head to paste within its helm. Another he broke apart upon his knee. A third, fourth, fifth… Vulkan battered them with his bare fists as all the terrors the slavers had committed against Nocturne over the centuries were repaid in violent and bloody retribution.
The battle was over swiftly.
Unprepared for such stern resistance, the remnants of the dusk-wraith raiding party withdrew before they were utterly destroyed. Frenzied with battle-lust, only the witches lingered. There was one amongst them who had a last knife to stab and twist before she was done.
She was at the opposite end of the square, dancing around the spears and swords of the Nocturneans, leaving decapitated bodies with every turn and pirouette. Vulkan’s eyes became hate-filled slits when he found the laughing witch.
That anger turned into panic when he saw who rushed next into her killing arc.
“Father!”
Vulkan was much more than human. He possessed strength, speed and intelligence greater than any man, it was how he knew he was different to his kith and kin, but even he could not reach N’bel before those murderous knives.
Cursing his earlier wrathful abandon for losing the hammer with which he’d killed the slaver-lord, Vulkan clenched his empty fists. The only man he had known as father was about to be butchered while he looked on. Every step across the blood-soaked square felt like ten leagues as the witch’s blade circled and flashed… carving… hypnotising… deadly.
Tears of fire blurred the Nocturnean’s sight, the scene unfolding before him framed by a crimson haze. It would be forever scarred into his memory.
N’bel lifted his spear…
…the witch would cut him open and spill his guts…
Her eyes flashed and her gaze met Vulkan’s across the carnage. Even in the act of murder she exuded arrogance. He would remember those eyes, dagger-thin and filled with a sickening ennui. They would haunt him, though not in the way he thought…
N’bel was hopelessly outmatched. His spear thrust was already travelling wide even as the shimmering falchions sought out his vital organs… but the blows never fell. With a roar, Breughar threw himself in harm’s way. To the metal-shaper’s immense credit, he parried one of the blades and it carved a heavy wound along his forearm that drew a scream from the burly tribesman. With the second blade his fortune faded and it sank deep into his belly, ripping free with a terrible sluurch of rent skin. Breughar’s innards slopped onto the ground in a steaming pile of offal. For a moment he stood transfixed by the realisation of his own death, then he fell and was still. Blood pooled beneath the body, expanding in a ruddy mire that touched N’bel’s feet. Dazed and prone from when the metal-shaper had thrown him aside, he could barely lift his arms to defend himself.
Amused at the human’s pointless heroism, the witch closed on N’bel but Breughar’s sacrifice had bought Vulkan the time he needed. Mountainous and filled with righteous anger, the Nocturnean was upon his enemy.
“Face me!”
She recoiled like a snake as Vulkan came at her, fists swinging. The witch was hard-pressed to avoid the blows and could fashion no riposte. She back-flipped and wove and twisted until there was enough distance between them to taunt him and then flee. The rest of the witches were dead or dying. She alone escaped the massacre.
Outside the shattered walls of Hesiod, a tear opened in the fabric of reality. Endless darkness beckoned from inside the tear and the screams of the damned echoed in the breeze, promising hell and torment for all who entered. It swallowed the witch last of all before shuddering closed behind her, leaving only the scent of blood and the chill of near-death.
It was over.
Hell-dawn ended and the Nocturnean sun rose to its zenith.
N’bel met Vulkan at the gates. The black-smiter was still shaking but he lived.
“Breughar is dead.”
An unnecessary fact. Vulkan had seen the man die.
“But you live, father, and for that I will be eternally grateful.”
His voice still trembled with an undercurrent of the rage that had consumed him during the fight. His chest heaved like a bellows, drenched in alien blood.
“We live, son.” He put his hand on Vulkan’s arm and something about the feel of those old and calloused fingers calmed the Nocturnean, siphoning the tension away.
“Such hate. I felt it, father. It touched me as sure as I can feel your hand upon me now.”
He turned to face the old man, his eyes ablaze like balefires.
“I am a monster…”
N’bel didn’t recoil, but held Vulkan’s cheek.
“You are a true Promethean son.”
“But the fury…” he looked down. “The way I killed them with my bare hands…” before meeting his father’s gaze again. “I am not a black-smiter, am I?”
The people of the town were gathering. Despite all the death that muddied their streets, the mood was exultant. Vulkan was being hailed as a hero.
N’bel sighed and in it, all of his latent fears about losing his only son were borne away. �
��You are not. You are from up there.”
Vulkan followed his father’s outstretched hand to the hot sky above.
The sun burned down like a single glowering eye, wreathed in smoky cloud. Vulkan closed his eyes and allowed the heat to warm him, N’bel’s voice distant in his mind.
“You came from the stars…”
THE EDIFICE RESEMBLED a stone menhir Vulkan had seen worshipped by debased and primitive cultures. Such backward religions were beyond compliance, and the Salamanders had burned entire worlds corrupted by graven beliefs. Here, on One-Five-Four Four, it represented a nexus of the enemy’s power, but would be torn down just the same. Something about its presence unsettled the Phaerians who were lashed into obedience by the discipline-masters and driven on into the cracking guns of the eldar.
On the orders of the primarch, the Legion had burned the jungle all the way to the psychic node. Like wildlife facing a natural forest fire, the eldar and their beasts had fled before the blaze. Vulkan’s edict was absolute, his advance pitiless. Even when confronted by the human refugees caught between the hammer and anvil of the war, he didn’t relent. All he saw were pale echoes of the noble people of his own beloved world, the hardships of the jungle-dwellers as nothing compared to the harsh plight of Nocturne. In his darker moments, he wondered if he actually despised these sorry humans for allowing themselves to be conquered and wondered if his supposed compassion had evaporated. As the land burned and the sky choked with smoke, he acknowledged it was the presence of the aliens that had affected his mood. That and the remembrances of their ravages from his old life before the starships had come.
War was unmaking; it went against everything his old father had taught him in the forge. Vulkan valued craft, the sense of transition beforehand and permanence afterwards. It brought quietude to his troubled and lonely soul. His true father, he who had crafted Vulkan to be a general, needed a warrior, not a black-smiter. A warrior was what Vulkan would be.
Standing on a vast ridge that jutted clear of the jungle expanse, Vulkan took consolation from the fact that with the destruction of the node the need to linger on One-Five-Four Four would pass and he could put thoughts of his homeworld behind him more easily.
Ibsen. That was its name. If it had a name and not a number, it had a heart. Did that also mean it was worth saving? Vulkan pushed the question aside as if it were a piece of clinker from the furnace.
Though he was surrounded by his Pyre Guard and the two Legion companies looking down on the unfolding battle, Vulkan was very much alone in his troubled mind.
Numeon spoke up, interrupting the primarch’s thoughts. “They breach the outer threshold of the aliens’ domain. I expected a more concerted defence, I must admit.”
Several of the Pyre Guard muttered in agreement. Varrun nodded, the servo-grinding of his armour joints articulating his response.
There were other Salamander captains nearby, and they too felt as the Pyre Guard did. Either the eldar were a spent force or they were holding out for another reason.
Pensively, Vulkan watched.
Unlike the ambush in the jungle, here the aliens were arrayed in number. Beneath their verdant cloaks that blended with the foliage around them, they carried fierce repeating bow-casters and long rifles. Vulkan watched as a discipline-master was shot through the eye and a reddish plume of brain matter vacated the back of his skull. Another quickly took his place and the Phaerians’ heavy-handed push continued.
The eldar used heavy weapon batteries too, more manoeuvrable than those employed by the Army cohorts on account of their anti-gravity platforms. Stuttering las-beams and incandescent plasma bursts reduced the men rushing from the jungle fringes into a grimy red paste. Two-man Rapier turrets and tracked Tarantula guns replied with a harsh staccato of solid shells as the heavy weapons exchange continued.
The overseers and discipline-masters had formed the feral Phaerians into their Army cohorts. Thick blocks of muscular and tattooed men advanced in formation, scatter-locks and auto-carbines tearing up the gloom with their combined muzzle flare.
On the opposite side, crouched behind clumps of ruined alabaster, the eldar unleashed an equally fierce response and the air was stitched with further las-beams and solid shot. Bodies fell on both sides, spun by heavy impacts or simply dropped by kill-shots only to be crushed underfoot by the troops behind them, and the death rate increased as the firing lines closed.
A temple surrounded the menhir. It was an aberrant thing engraved with alien sigils that mimicked the one Ferrus Manus had shown Vulkan via the hololith. The desert node was the only one the Imperium had managed to get a look at before their augurs were permanently disabled. But this one was slightly varied. The runic elements on the flat sides of the menhir were in different configurations. It was language in some form. With time and proximity to the sigils, a dedicated study would unlock its secrets. Vulkan harboured no such desires. He only wanted to destroy it.
He turned to Numeon.
“When the Army cohorts are fully engaged and the bulk of the eldar drawn off, be ready to launch our assault on the node. If we attack decisively and quickly we can destroy it before too many lives are surrendered to the meatgrinder.”
Numeon’s voice was gravelly through his battle-helm. “You think the aliens will lose heart once we’ve brought down their obelisk?”
“The only reason they’re here and not withdrawing to the forest where they can employ their preferred tactics is to defend it. That motivation ends with the destruction of the node. Our opportunity is close. We must just be patient.”
Vulkan’s eyes scanned the outer defences. The temple walls were ceremonial, not designed to withstand any form of concerted attack and certainly not one from the Emperor’s Angels of Death. He perceived rookeries in the upper towers, partially occluded where the jungle canopy had encroached upon them. Pterosaur-riders lurked there in arboreal nests, waiting for the Legiones Astartes to engage. Hidden in the penumbral dark of the forest, he also detected mounted raptor-beasts. The eldar were keeping their assault troops in reserve. He didn’t doubt that they would encounter more witch-psykers too. It was imperative that they neutralise the objective swiftly before the enemy could channel the node’s power.
The first ranks of the Army had gained the outer temple defences and were fighting hand-to-hand. Phaerians were brutish men who fought like savages against the eldar’s graceful lethality. Even so, the Army grunts had numbers, and skill was worth little pitched against such odds. An eldar wearing a mottled green cloak shot a man at close range, punching his heart muscle through his back and spine. Switching from his rifle, he drew a blade on another that flashed like quicksilver and released a crimson spray from the Phaerians throat. Three of his comrades ganged up on the alien, and he was borne down beneath the weighted butts of their auto-carbines. Others died equally grimly: stamped to mulch by Army-issue boots, beheaded by alien mono-wire, gutted on bayonets or slashed apart by falchions. Phaerians moved in packs, shoulder to shoulder; where the eldar roved as solitary killers, finding partners briefly before breaking apart again to seek fresh enemies. It was almost primitive in its brutality.
The bloody tableau unfolding on the battlefield washed over Vulkan. Overwhelming force was not drawing the eldar into a full attack as he’d hoped. But as he regarded the melee dispassionately, he did see the slightest thinning in the aliens’ defences as they began to stretch.
“They are holding back until we are fully committed,” said Numeon, as if reading his primarch’s thoughts. The equerry had just noticed the secreted saurian troops in the lofty arbours and foliage around the temple.
Vulkan’s fiery gaze narrowed to ember-like slits. “Then let’s give them some encouragement. Release the 5th and 14th companies, the Fire-born.”
HEKA’TAN WAS NOT a prideful captain. The ambush in the jungle had cost the 14th more Legionary blood than he was comfortable with, but he was pragmatic like all Salamanders and knew this was simply war. Losing Sergeant Bannon
was a bitter blow—he had fought alongside Bannon for over a century and the flamer division was virtually destroyed by the charge of the carnodons. It had been split and redistributed around the other squads. It seemed strange to have specialists scattered around the 14th but Heka’tan couldn’t deny the tactical flexibility it offered.
His fellow captain of the 5th, Gravius, had sustained losses in his company too. Like Heka’tan, he was humble and understood his place in the war. Even so, when the primarch’s order came down from the ridge, Heka’tan clenched his fist in anticipation of some vengeance. He knew that Gravius would be doing the same.
Crouched at the edge of the battling Army cohorts, Heka’tan turned to Kaitar.
“The anvil calls us, brother. Lord Vulkan would see our wounded self-esteem restored in the tempering flame of the forge.”
Kaitar nodded as he racked the slide on his bolter. On his shoulder guard, he’d inscribed the names of Oranor and Attion in black ash.
“This shall be their requiem.”
“For all the absent dead,” Luminor added, crouched at the captain’s opposite side, his white Apothecary’s plate stained with Legion blood.
Heka’tan’s command squad was gathered about him. All were humble, self-abnegating warriors but like their captain they welcomed the opportunity to avenge the fallen.
“Into the fires of war,” Heka’tan promised, then raised Gravius on the comm-feed.
“The 5th are readying as we speak,” the other captain uttered. “I will take them into the enemy’s flank. We move on your order, brother-captain.”
“Then consider it given, Gravius. Glory to Vulkan,” Heka’tan replied.
Kaitar turned and roared to the others, signalling for the forward squads to march. “Glory to the Primarch and the Legion!”
More than two hundred voices replied as one. “Fire-born!”
Flamers broken up amongst the divisions came forward in the ranks to lay down a curtain of fire before the advancing 14th. Heka’tan led them slowly at first, cutting down the eldar with methodical bolter bursts. He’d kept his big guns in reserve, and as the eldar drew off some of their forces to counter the threat, the captain gave the order for them to shoot.
