by Nick Kyme
Already battered by the resurgent Salamanders, the eldar capitulated and fell back.
Victory cries extolling the Legion, the 5th and the 14th Fire-born, appealed to Vulkan’s pride as he heard them on the breeze. Beneath the snarling visage of his drake-helm, he smiled and was aware of someone approaching.
Numeon regarded his primarch from the edge of the devastation.
The rest of the Pyre Guard were just stepping from the Stormbird and cutting down the enemy stragglers.
“I didn’t think you would jump,” Numeon confessed.
Vulkan lifted his head and stood.
“It was an impulse.”
The equerry appraised the circle of broken node stone.
“I also thought it would be more difficult.”
Vulkan raised an eyebrow. “You think that was easy?” When he removed his drake-helm he was still smiling. Rolling his shoulders and then stowing Thunderhead, he turned his attention to the dead psykers. “Dabbling with sorcery has its own rewards.”
Numeon followed him as he walked beyond the circle and out into the emptying battlefield. “So it would seem, my lord.” He regarded the burned and headless eldar corpses impassively. “Hard to tell now, but I didn’t see their seer amongst the coven.”
Vulkan didn’t need to look, he knew. “The female was not amongst them, which is… perplexing.”
“She has likely already fled. They must realise this is a war they cannot win.”
“Perhaps, but then why fight it at all?”
The eldar were on the run again now, all attempts at a tactical withdrawal abandoned in favour of individual survival. They had nothing left to protect and so no reason to linger in a fight for which they were unsuited.
As with the previous battle in the jungle, the natives began surfacing with the cessation of hostility. They appeared moribund, even terrified by their liberators, and clung to each other for support. Some of the children amongst them were sobbing. A girl-child leaned down to touch a dead eldar’s finger until her mother chastened her and she shrank back into the gloom. Army units with attached remembrancers were already gathering the refugees together.
“Do they seem less than pleased to see us, Numeon?” Vulkan asked.
“I find it hard to differentiate their reactions from that of any human I encounter, my lord.”
Vulkan sighed, unable to be completely dispassionate. “They are scared, but of us, not of the aliens. I wonder if—” He stopped when he saw the bodies of the tribespeople amongst the dead. Vulkan’s brow creased with consternation. “I didn’t realise that civilians were at risk inside the battle zone.”
Army medics and field surgeons were dragging away dead natives along with the Phaerians. Most were men and women, but Vulkan saw children too amongst the slain. The cold face of a girl-child, clutching a wooden effigy, haunted the primarch for a moment. Were it not for the dark stain colouring her hemp smock, she might have been asleep. In repose, the girl-child’s face looked particularly innocent. Vulkan had seen horror like this before, after the raids and when Nocturne’s surface split with anger. He had witnessed bodies dragged from the rubble, choked by ash or burned black by fire.
“A warrior chooses his path. It is violent and the threat of death ever present, but these people…” He shook his head slowly, as if only just comprehending. “This was not supposed to happen.”
Numeon was lost for an answer. When Varrun approached with a hololithic wand, the equerry’s frown turned into an expression of relief. “Word from the Legions, my lord.”
Still distracted, gaze lingering on the humans, Vulkan took his time to respond. “Set it down,” he said at length, and Varrun impaled the wand into the ground and activated it.
Spilling out from a triangular apex of hazy light, an image of Ferrus Manus resolved itself.
Both Pyre Guard sank to one knee immediately in deference to the other primarch.
Ferrus Manus was still wearing his battle-helm and his armour bore evidence that he’d been in the thick of the fighting for the desert region. The gleaming plate was sand scoured and reflected the light of the sun behind him. He removed his helm and his silver eyes glittered like chips of ice.
Ferrus was typically taciturn. “Are the jungles won, brother?”
Vulkan nodded. “The eldar node has been neutralised. An easier fight than we first believed but with its share of blood spent to the cause. How fare my brother Legions?”
The primarch of the Iron Hands growled, “Still contested, but I shall not be denied. We encountered difficulty with our mechanised elements. Much of my force is on foot and the Army divisions are coping poorly.”
The Iron Hands mantra, Flesh is Weak, was almost written indelibly into Ferrus’ scowl. He respected humans but was also frustrated by their frailty.
Vulkan decided to change tack. “And what of the Death Guard? Has our brother lived up to his dogged nature?”
The answer came reluctantly. “Mortarion has levelled the node, though I question what is left for humanity to colonise. I fear he has turned the ice fields into a tainted waste and damaged much of the continent’s geology into the bargain.”
A crackle of interference marred the image for a moment. Distant explosions rippled behind Ferrus, but he paid them no heed.
“The jungle region borders the edge of the desert. I can divert some of my divisions to provide reinforcement, brother,” offered Vulkan when the hololith was restored again.
Ferrus’ crag-like coldness expressed exactly what he thought of that suggestion.
“Unnecessary.”
“Then your victory will be close at hand.” Vulkan tried not to make his tone consoling. That would only enrage his brother.
“The desert continent is vast, but it will yield to me.” Behind him, bolter fire chorused amongst the low crump of explosions that were growing increasingly less distant. Ferrus turned his ear a fraction. “We are engaging again. Consolidate your forces in the jungle and await further orders.”
The hololith blanked out with the severance of connection.
“Pride, not flesh, is weak,” returned Numeon with a resigned shake of the head.
Vulkan’s eyes were downcast, and he muttered, “You wouldn’t understand.”
Their father had sought to make them perfect, much more than human in every sense. Vulkan and his brothers eclipsed their Legionary sons with their greater strength, skill and intellect, but they also possessed very human flaws. To be one amongst so many sons made it difficult to attain a father’s love and validation. Pride, in one form or another, drove them all in its way. It created fraternal rivalry, too, and Vulkan wondered if it would ever become more than that.
“Lord?”
Numeon’s voice brought him back.
Across the battlefield, a Salamander was approaching. A sheathed chainsword sat on his back, and his gait betrayed some injuries. He bowed before his primarch, having already removed his battle-helm.
Salamanders meet eye-to-eye.
“Rise, Salamander.”
The warrior obeyed, standing and saluting against his plastron.
“Captain Heka’tan,” Vulkan asserted, looking down at the warrior, “of the 14th Fire-born. You are tempered, my son.”
Heka’tan’s armour was scorched and battered from battle. He’d also lost his sidearm and was favouring his left leg. His left eye was swollen and there were several deep gashes upon his forehead. The suggestion of an honour scar on his thick neck was visible just above the upper rim of his gorget.
“The anvil was indeed testing, my lord.” He bowed his head again.
“You’ve no need to be so humble. You are a captain and have shed blood for your Legion this day. We are victorious.”
Heka’tan didn’t look so sure.
Vulkan’s eyes narrowed. “You have something to tell me, Captain Heka’tan?”
“I do, my lord. We have found the Army scouts that located the node.”
Since the coordinates had
been broadcast to the rest of the Imperial forces all contact had been lost with the advance reconnaissance sections.
Sensing the captain’s fatalism, Vulkan became solemn. “And they are dead.”
“Not all of them, primarch.” Heka’tan’s fiery gaze could not hide his apprehension. “There was a sole survivor, a non-combatant.”
“A remembrancer?”
“So I understand, my lord.”
“And is he unharmed?” It was almost as if Vulkan already knew the answer by the expression on Heka’tan’s face.
“Miraculously so.”
Vulkan broke eye contact to look into the distance where the pursuing Imperial forces were harrying the enemy deeper into the jungle. He purposely averted his gaze from the growing piles of dead natives. “Where is this survivor now?”
Heka’tan paused. “There is more.”
Looking back down, Vulkan’s blazing eyes were questioning.
“He says there is another node, much bigger and more powerful than the one you destroyed.”
A muscle spasm in Vulkan’s cheek gave the only hint of his displeasure.
“Take me to him at once.”
THE REMEMBRANCER CUT an unassuming figure. Dressed in plain robes of an obscure Terran style, the survivor sat on the ground with his eyes open and alert. It was only the fact he was surrounded by the bodies of the Army scout division sent to locate the node that made his presence in the jungle incongruous.
“You are the primarch of the Salamanders Legion?” he asked.
“I am.” Vulkan approached slowly, bidding his Pyre Guard to wait outside the circle of the dead Army scouts.
It was an order that displeased Numeon and the others, but they obeyed nonetheless.
Vulkan looked around at the massacre. From the position of the bodies and how they’d fallen, it appeared the scouts had made a last stand. His shifted his gaze to peer deeper into the jungle.
“You were followed?”
“From the site of the fourth obelisk, yes.”
“And you got as far as this point before the eldar caught you.”
“Precisely.”
When Vulkan looked back at the man, who seemed wise but somehow youthful at the same time, his eyes were penetrating.
“How is it they all died and you alone lived?”
“I hid.”
Vulkan stared at him, trying to ascertain if what the remembrancer was saying was the truth.
The man seemed content to sit amongst the dead and hadn’t yet moved.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I am still deciding,” Vulkan answered honestly. He stepped towards him.
Numeon’s armour shifted before he warned, “Primarch…”
Vulkan held up his hand to cool his equerry’s anxiety. The remembrancer’s gaze flicked over to the Pyre Guard and back again.
“I don’t think your bodyguards like me.”
Vulkan was standing before him and looked down on the man. “They just don’t trust you.”
“That’s a pity.”
“What is your name, remembrancer?”
“Verace.”
“Then come with me, Verace, and tell me all you know about this obelisk.”
Vulkan turned and as he was leaving the site of the massacre he passed by Numeon.
The primarch kept his voice low. “Watch him closely.”
Verace got to his feet and smoothed down his robes.
Numeon glared at him, and nodded.
There was something… strange about this Verace, but Vulkan wasn’t threatened by him. After all, what threat could a flesh and blood human pose to a primarch? But as he was walking back to the Stormbird, Vulkan was reminded of a time when he’d met another stranger, one he’d known as the Outlander…
VULKAN KNEW HIS grip was failing. Even with his prodigious strength, he knew he couldn’t hold on to the edge of the cliff with one hand and still cling to the drake hide with the other indefinitely.
It had been a magnificent beast of vermillion scale, thick and gnarled like overlapping shields. The firedrake’s ribbed belly was taut with muscle, its jaws wide and powerful. The grumbling mountain had summoned it and the drake had answered, emerging from its lowest deeps.
The spear Vulkan had forged to kill it was lost to the lava chasm below him. Hours of crafting had been undone in an instant when the mountain’s blood reclaimed the weapon; just as his life would be undone should he slip.
The sun baked his naked back but the heat of it was ebbing. Steam and smoke clouded Vulkan’s eyes, filled his nose with sulphur and ash. Hours had passed since the volcano had erupted and tossed him over the edge. Only his superlative reflexes and strength had saved him, or forestalled his death at least.
Even Vulkan, champion of Hesiod and slayer of dusk-wraiths, could be destroyed by lava.
After the defeat of the slavers, word had spread quickly around the major townships of Nocturne. Within weeks, the tribal kings of the other six settlements and their emissaries had greeted the leaders of Hesiod and asked to meet the black-smiter’s son who was rapidly becoming a legend.
As he hung precariously on the rocky precipice, Vulkan considered this would be a poor end for such a figure. He slipped and for a moment thought it was over. A sense of falling overtook him, but he reached out to salvage a desperate handhold on a lower crag. Dust and grit fell in a hard rain, beating against his body, but he held on.
Though his heart was hammering like a hammer upon an anvil in his chest, he tried not to breathe too deeply. This close to the lava trench, the air was a poisonous miasma thick with sulphurous alkalis. He could already feel the blistering around his nose and the skin of his throat. An ordinary man would have died long before now. It only enhanced the belief that he was not truly of these people, that Nocturne was not his birth home. Vulkan’s father, N’bel, had said as much to him before the tournament. He had promised to seal the vault below the forge and did so, but he couldn’t suppress the truth. Vulkan had asked him outright before the events began but the answer hadn’t come. N’bel, stifled by looming grief, couldn’t tell him. Perhaps now, he never would and Vulkan would be forever ignorant of his origins.
Fingers stiff as stone, his arm burning like all the fires of the forge were ignited in it, Vulkan thought about letting go of the hide. With both hands he could probably clamber up the rock face to safety. The bubbling, cracking refrain of the lava below seemed to urge him, or maybe it was trying to entice him to fall.
The last eight days had taken their toll, though. Vulkan didn’t know what strength was left in his limbs. In truth, he could barely feel them anymore and had to constantly fight a strange sense of weightlessness that threatened to loosen his grip unconsciously.
“You will not beat me.”
He spoke the words aloud to galvanise himself.
The lava crackled below in what was beginning to sound like rumbling laughter.
It baffled reason how the pale-faced stranger had managed to match him through every trial. No one knew where he had come from, though some suspected he hailed from the nomadic tribes of Ignea. Vulkan doubted it. When he’d come into the town, this Outlander, as he’d come to be known, was wearing garb unfamiliar to any Nocturnean. From Heliosa to Themis, there were cultural derivations amongst the people of the planet but they shared common traits. The Outlander shared none.
His boasts were utterly audacious. Vulkan remembered the derision he’d caused when claiming he could best anyone in the town, even the champion of Hesiod, in the tournament. Out of respect, perhaps sheer disbelief, Vulkan had kept a straight face.
“Let him enter if he wishes,” he’d said privately to N’bel when questioned. “The fool will either give up or lose his life to the mountain. Let the anvil decide.”
Considering his current situation, those comments now seemed remarkably short-sighted.
Below him, the river of molten rock beckoned and thrust Vulkan back to his potentially fatal present.
How could he fail? What would his people think of him if this pallid outsider beat him?
Vulkan clung to the drake hide by its long tail. As it drifted in the hot vapours emanating from the lava trench he knew he had to sacrifice his pride for the sake of his life. He was about to loosen his grip when he heard a cry from across the craggy mountain summit.
“Vulkan!”
Peering through a thickening belt of smoke, Vulkan saw the hazy outline of the stranger in the distance. The Outlander was bounding over the rocks towards him. Over his shoulder was the largest drake hide Vulkan had ever seen. He blinked back the stinging sensation in his eyes, trying to be sure it wasn’t just a mirage caused by exhaustion and the sulphurous air.
The hide in Vulkan’s defiant grasp was huge, but this… this was massive. It easily eclipsed that of the Nocturnean and suddenly Vulkan’s pride felt all the cheaper because of it.
Moving swiftly, the Outlander hoisted the immense pelt from his back and cast it into a vast lava pool that stood between him and the rocky outcrop where Vulkan was clinging on. Bridging the bubbling morass with the hide, the Outlander leapt across and landed on the other side. Rushing to the edge of the precipice, he thrust his hand down and seized Vulkan’s wrist.
“Hold on…”
In a feat of incredible strength, the stranger lifted Vulkan to safety, drake hide and all.
Exhausted, they lay upon the barren rock for a time before the Outlander rose and helped Vulkan to his feet.
In the distance, the lava pool had claimed the Outlander’s mighty prize.
“We can’t go back that way,” he said, with no hint of remorse.
Vulkan clapped the Outlander’s shoulder, feeling some of his strength returning.
“You saved my life.”
“If you hadn’t clung on as long as you did I might not have been afforded the opportunity to do so.”
Vulkan looked to the lava pool where the last remnants of the drake hide were gradually being consumed.
“You could have returned to the town as champion.”
“At a cost of my opponent’s life? What kind of hollow victory would that have been?”
Swollen flakes of ash were clouding the air and the breeze brought with it the stench of burning. It promised fire to come.
