Hammer and Bolter 7

by Christian Dunn

  Duerr saw then why his army had halted. The path ahead was blocked. A single massive beastman stood waiting, its every muscle bunched and tensed in readiness. Though the beast was wreathed in shadow, Duerr could see clearly the form of its four horns, one of which was broken off at the tip. It was the leader of the war herd that had pursued him through the Drakwald long weeks before, returned for its meat. Likely it had never left, but skulked out of sight in the dark, dank forests, biding its time for the trapped prey to emerge.

  Though all but rooted to the ground with horror, Duerr knew what he must do. After all, this was the reason he had imbibed the ancient wisdom Koth had taught him, and why he had spoken that dread word of power from beyond the grave; to command this army of dead things to deliver him through the perils of the Drakwald that he might gain his freedom and escape alive.

  ‘Kill it!’ Duerr ordered the beast lord of his undead herd, his heart swelling with the desire to avenge himself. ‘Stamp it into the ground! Grind it beneath your hooves!’

  Grinning savagely, Duerr waited with bittersweet anticipation for his order to be obeyed. But it was not.

  The two beast lords, one towering and skeletal, the other shorter of stature but very much alive, squared off against one another. The war herd of the living beast lord loomed from the shadows behind, but did not approach or attempt to intervene. Instead, the two armies backed off, making a space for their leader to face one another.

  ‘What…?’ Duerr stammered, before the truth of what he was witnessing dawned. He spun suddenly about to face the ranks of undead beasts behind him. ‘Kill them! Just kill them!’ he bellowed.

  But none heeded Duerr’s orders. Instead, the two beast lords began to circle one another in the space cleared for them by the herds. The living one huffed and snorted as its hooves stamped upon the rotten ground. The dead one moved with an oddly disjointed gait, patches of rusted mail rattling against dry, black bones. Though the shadowed pits of its eye sockets were empty, Duerr’s wizard’s sight perceived the dark unlife glinting deep within, responding to, and glorying in, this challenge.

  Duerr backed away, his gaze fixed upon the sight unfolding before him. The instant his back pressed up against a rotten tree trunk, the living beast lord bellowed deafeningly loudly and launched itself at its rival. The other moved sideways and raised its shield, but the wood splintered under the attacker’s two-handed cleaver. Splinters as deadly as crossbow bolts showered outwards, but the dead lord recovered, discarding the remnants and diving forward. The living beast lord’s momentum carried it forward as its opponent stepped aside and both turned as one, their positions traded.

  The beast that was living flesh snorted loudly, its breath so hot that it steamed from its flared nostrils like sulphurous smoke. The other redoubled its grip on its weapon, a sword of ancient fabrication clearly not made by the hand of his race or any other that Duerr knew of. Once more, the two circled the open ground, Duerr pressing himself against the tree all the while as the living beast lord’s great, rippling back hove near.

  ‘Morr…’ Duerr breathed, desperately seeking to harness something of the power he had felt at the moment he had brought his army of dead things into existence. But he knew in that moment that the god of death and of dreams would not aid him; that this thing he had done was nothing of Morr’s work. Morr was the god of rest, of eternal slumber and of oracles. This night, Duerr had blasphemed in the worst possible manner. Better that he died, he realised as the living beast lord stepped backwards towards him.

  ‘Morr!’ Duerr bellowed, his mind all but shattered with grief and horror. ‘Morr, forgive–’

  But he never completed his prayer, for the beast lord turned and bellowed its savage war cry directly into Duerr’s face. Noise, and the creature’s vile breath, forced him back hard against the tree trunk, knocking his head and causing his vision to blur. As he slid to the ground, he saw the beast turn in time to block a downwards blow from the undead lord and strike a savage counterblow in return.

  The beast lord’s two-handed cleaver struck the undead thing through the middle. Had the target had guts, they would have spilled across the clearing, but instead, the blade severed the exposed spine and brought the two halves of the unliving beast crashing to the ground. Its lower half came to rest amongst its followers, while the upper lay clawing the ground at the victor’s feet.

  The beast lord bellowed such a roar of triumph that the trees bowed and the canopy thrashed as if the storm that had whipped the forest when Duerr called forth the undead beast herd was returned. The sound left Duerr stunned and half-deafened, his balance shot and his vision all but gone. As he slumped to the ground, he saw the victor raise its cloven hoof high above the dead-thing’s bovine skull head, and bring it crashing down with such force that the land itself cried out in pain.

  The skull splintered into a thousand fragments and the undead beast lord was slain a second time. Slumping to the ground, Duerr rolled over onto his side in time to see the dead beastmen prostrate themselves before the victor.

  The challenge was won; dominance was established; the herd was one and the rival beast lord was slain.

  But Duerr knew that one more matter needed to be decided: his own fate. He felt his end drawing near, even as the heavy, cloven tread of the beastmen approached.

  Imagining the beast lord’s hoof raised above his head, poised to end his existence, he looked away across the ground. His blurred gaze settled upon a nearby object, a black-stemmed plant mere feet from his head, trampled into the ground. It was manbane, the very herb that he had so foolishly ventured into the Drakwald to obtain, so many weeks before.

  He screwed his eyes tight shut as the Beastmen gathered all about him. He waited for the inevitable, yet the killing blow never came. Instead of a cloven hoof slamming down upon his head, a stream of near-boiling acrid liquid struck him hard. Another joined it, then a third. One after another, the beastmen of the Drakwald demonstrated their disgust for this human, whose life was so meaningless to them that they would not even deign to snuff it out.

  And high atop the Tower of Koth, the ancient Necromancer returned to his studies of texts not read by mortal eyes for uncounted millennia, content to ignore the passage of the ages and the folly of man, until the end of time itself.

  THE LAST REMEMBRANCER

  John French

  ‘In an age of darkness the truth must die’

  – Words of a forgotten scholar of ancient Terra

  They murdered the intruder ship on the edge of the Solar System. It spun through space, a kilometre-long barb of crenellated metal, trailing the burning vapours of its death like the tatters of a shroud. Like lions running down a crippled prey two golden-hulled strike vessels bracketed the dying ship. Each was a blunt slab of burnished armour thrust through space on cones of star-hot fire. They carried weapons that could level cities and held companies of the finest warriors. Their purpose was to kill any enemy who dared to enter the realm they guarded.

  This star system was the seat of the Emperor of Mankind, the heart of an Imperium betrayed by its brightest son. There could be no mercy in this place. The ship had appeared without warning and without the correct identification signals. Its only future was to die in sight of the sun that had lit the birth of humanity.

  Explosions flared across the intruder ship’s hull, its skin splitting with ragged wounds that spilled dying crew and molten metal into the void. The two hunters silenced their guns and spat boarding torpedoes into the intruder’s flanks. The first armoured dart punctured the ship’s command decks, its assault ramps exploding open and disgorging amber-yellow armoured warriors in a roar of fire.

  Each boarding torpedo carried twenty Imperial Fists of the Legiones Astartes: genetically enhanced warriors clad in powered armour who knew no fear or pity. Their enemy bore marks of loyalty to Horus, the Emperor’s son who had turned on his father and thrust the Imperium into
civil war. Red eyes with slit pupils, snarling beast heads and jagged eight pointed stars covered the hull of the ship and the flesh of its crew. The air had a greasy quality, a meat stink that penetrated the Imperial Fists’ sealed armour as they shot and hacked deeper into the ship. Blood dripped from their amber-yellow armour and tatters of flesh hung from their chainblades. There were thousands of crew on the ship: dreg ratings, servitors, command crew, technicians and armsmen. There were only a hundred Imperial Fists facing them but there would be no survivors.

  Twenty-two minutes after boarding the ship the Imperial Fists found the sealed doors. They were over three times the height of a man and as wide as a battle tank. They did not know what was inside but that did not matter. Anything kept so safe must have been of great value to the enemy. Four melta charges later, a glowing hole had been bored through two metres of metal. The breach still glowing cherry red the first Imperial Fist moved through, bolt pistol raised, tracking for targets.

  The space beyond was a bare chamber, tall and wide enough to take half a dozen Land Raiders side by side. The air was still, untouched by the rank haze that filled the rest of the ship, as if it had been kept separate and isolated. There were no jagged stars scratched into the metal of the floor, no red eyes set into the walls. At first it seemed empty, and then they saw the figure at the centre of the room. They advanced, red target runes in their helmet displays pulsing over the hunched man in grey. He sat on the floor, the discarded remains of food and crumpled parchment scattered around him. Thick chains led from bolts in the deck to shackles around his thin ankles. On his lap was a pile of yellow parchment. His hand held a crude quill made from a spar of metal; its tip was black.

  The sergeant of the Imperial Fist boarding squad walked to within a blade swing of the man. More warriors spread out into the echoing chamber, weapons pointing in at him.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the sergeant, his voice growling from his helmet’s speaker grille.

  ‘I am the last remembrancer,’ said the man.

  The nameless fortress hid from the sun on the dark side of Titan, as if turning its face from the light. A kilometre-wide disk of stone and armour, it hung in the void above the yellow moon. Reflected light from the bloated sphere of Saturn caught in the tops of its weapon towers, spilling jagged shadows across its surface. It had been a defence station, part of the network that protected the approaches to Terra. Now the treachery of Horus had given it a new purpose. Here in isolated cells suspected traitors and turncoats were kept and bled of their secrets. Thousands of gaolers kept its inmates alive until they were of no further use: until the questioners were finished with them. There were countless questions that demanded an answer and its cells were never empty.

  Rogal Dorn would be the first primarch to set foot in the nameless fortress. It was not an honour he relished.

  ‘Vile,’ said Dorn, watching as the void fortress grew nearer on a viewscreen. He sat on a metal flight bench, the knuckles of his armoured gauntlet beneath his chin. The inside compartment of the Stormbird attack craft was dark, the light from the viewscreen casting the primarch’s face in corpse-cold light. Dark eyes set above sharp cheekbones, a nose that cut down in line with the slope of the forehead, a down-turned mouth framed by a strong jaw. It was a face of perfection set in anger and carved from stone.

  ‘It is unpleasant, but it is necessary, my lord,’ said a voice from the darkness behind Dorn. It was a low, deep voice, weighted with age. The primarch did not turn to look at the person who spoke, a grey presence standing on the edge of the light. There were just the two of them alone in the crew compartment. Rogal Dorn commanded the defence of Terra and millions of troops but came to this place with only one companion.

  ‘Necessary, I have heard that often recently,’ growled Dorn, not looking away from the waiting fortress.

  Behind Dorn the shadowed figure shifted forwards. Cold electric light fell across a face crossed by lines of age and scars of time. Like the primarch, the figure wore armour, light catching its edges but hiding its colours in shadow.

  ‘The enemy is inside us, lord. It does not only march against us on the battlefield, it walks amongst us,’ said the old warrior.

  ‘Trust is to be feared in this war then, captain?’ asked Dorn, his voice like the growl of distant thunder.

  ‘I speak the truth as I see it,’ said the old warrior.

  ‘Tell me, if it had not been my Imperial Fists that found him would I have known that Solomon Voss had been brought here?’ He turned away from the screen and looked at the old warrior with eyes that had vanished into pits of shadow. ‘What would have happened to him?’

  The flickering blue light of the viewscreen spilled over the old warrior. Grey armour, without mark or rank, the hilt of a double handed sword visible from where it projected above his shoulders. The light glittered across the ghost of a sigil on the grey of his shoulder guard.

  ‘The same as must happen now: the truth must be found and after that whatever the truth demands must be done,’ said the old warrior. He could feel the primarch’s emotions radiating out from him, the violence chained behind a facade of stone.

  ‘I have seen my brothers burn worlds we created together, sent my sons against my brothers’ sons. I have unmade the heart of my father’s empire and clad it in iron. You think I wish to avoid the realities that face us?’

  The old warrior waited a heartbeat before replying. ‘Yet you come here, my lord. You come to see a man who, in all likelihood, has been corrupted by Horus and the powers that cradle him.’ Rogal Dorn did not move but the old warrior could feel the danger in that stillness like a lion poised for the kill.

  ‘Have a care,’ said Dorn, in a whisper like a sword sliding from a scabbard.

  ‘Trust is a weakness in our armour, lord,’ said the warrior, looking directly at the primarch. Dorn stepped forwards, his eyes deliberately tracing the bare grey surfaces of armour that should have displayed Legion heraldry.

  ‘A strange sentiment from you, Iacton Qruze,’ said Dorn.

  The old warrior nodded slowly, remembering the ideals and broken oaths that had brought him to this point in time. He had once been a captain in the Luna Wolves Legion, the Legion of Horus. He was almost the last of his kind, and he had nothing left but his oath to serve the Emperor, and the Emperor alone.

  ‘I have seen the price of blind trust, my lord. Trust must be proved.’

  ‘And because of that we must throw the ideals of the Imperium to the flames?’ said Dorn, leaning close to Qruze. Such focus from a primarch would have forced most mortals to their knees. Qruze held Dorn’s gaze without faltering. He knew his role in this. He had made an oath of moment that he would stand watch over Rogal Dorn’s judgement. His duty was to balance that judgement with questions.

  ‘You have intervened, and so the judgement on this man is yours. He lives at your word,’ said Qruze.

  ‘What if he is innocent?’ snapped Dorn. Qruze gave a weary smile.

  ‘That proves nothing, my lord. If he is a threat he must be destroyed.’

  ‘Is that what you are here to do?’ said Dorn, nodding at the hilt of the sword on Qruze’s back. ‘To play judge, jury and executioner?’

  ‘I am here to help you in your judgement. I do this for the Sigillite. This is his domain and I am his hand in this.’

  An expression that might have been distaste ghosted across Dorn’s face as he turned his back on Qruze.

  On the viewscreen the side of the nameless fortress filled the screen; a toothed set of doors opening to greet them like a waiting mouth. Qruze could see a vast loading bay beyond lit by bright light. Hundreds of troops in gloss-red armour and silver-visored helmets waited in ranks, filling the docking bay floor. These were the gaolers of the nameless fortress. They never showed their faces and had no names, each was simply a number. Amongst them the hunched figures of the questioners stood in loose clusters
, their faces hidden by hoods, fingers augmented with needles and blades protruding from the sleeves of their red robes.

  The Stormbird settled on the deck with a purr of an antigravity field. Ice beaded its sleek body and wings as the warm air met void-cold metal. With a pneumatic hiss the ramp opened beneath the Stormbird’s nose and Rogal Dorn walked into the stark light. He shone, the light reflecting from the burnished gold of his armour, glittering from rubies clutched in the claws of silver eagles. A black cloak lined in red and edged in ivory fell from his shoulders. As one every person in the docking bay knelt, the deck ringing with the impact of a thousand knees. Rogal Dorn strode through the kneeling ranks without a glance. Behind him Iacton Qruze followed in his ghost-grey armour, like a shadow in the sun’s wake.

  At the end of the ranks of crimson guards, three figures knelt and waited. Each wore armour the same gloss-red as the kneeling guards, their bowed heads encased by masks of tarnished silver. These were the key keepers of the nameless fortress. Qruze was one of the few people to have ever seen their faces.

  ‘Ave Praetorian,’ called one of the bowed figures in a booming electronic voice. With one voice every kneeling human echoed the call. The primarch spoke over the fading echoes.

  ‘Take me to the remembrancer Solomon Voss.’

  The man was writing when the cell door opened. The light from the glow-globe above him created a murky yellow halo that cast all but the makeshift desk and the man into shadow. Thin shoulders hunched over a sheet of parchment, a quill in a thin hand scratching out black words. He did not look up.

  Rogal Dorn stepped into the cell. He had removed his armour and wore a black tabard held around the waist with a belt of gold braid. Even without his battle-plate he seemed to strain the dark metal walls of the cell with his presence. Qruze followed, still in his grey armour.