KNIGHTS OF MACRAGGE

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Sicarius!’ Daceus roared. ‘Sicarius!’

  He had almost lost all sense of geography, hemmed in by the greenskins and surrounded by the obelisk’s unnatural fog. He cried out to his only true north.

  A brilliant flash, azure lightning on a winter’s day, cut through the fog, drawing it apart like curtains. It peeled away to admit the Suzerain, his sword unleashing flares of bright magnesium fire wherever it struck. He seemed untouched by the fog or the barbaric drumming, as deadly and focused as an ice storm.

  Sicarius wasn’t alone. Vandius stood at his right shoulder, his own sword art carefully looping and cutting around his captain’s, two masters at their work in perfect synchronicity. The orks fell back from this onslaught, clutching the stumps of severed limbs or crumpling down headless to be broken underfoot. They reeled from the attack, stampeding towards the gates as a merciful gap in the throng of bodies began to form. Those that reached the portcullised gates found only an impasse or the stinging cuts of thrust spears and loosed arrows. Most piled towards the middle gate and the line of desperate warriors that held it, Fennion exhorting them to fight on and make the orks pay for every inch they took.

  Daceus gasped, sucking in a relieved breath, punch-drunk but able to rise. Sicarius reached out a steadying hand, taking advantage of the momentary respite to get one of his Lions back onto his feet.

  ‘Blood of Guilliman…’ breathed Daceus. ‘I saw only… only rage. It felt unfettered. Primal.’

  ‘Courage and honour, Retius.’ Sicarius’ teeth clenched. ‘We all feel it.’

  Repelled at the gates, the orks swilled back into the courtyard, their numbers intensifying again.

  ‘The obelisk must fall,’ Sicarius shouted, the drumbeat growing ever louder and merging with the orkish voices like thunder on the wind.

  ‘Go!’ cried Vandius, cutting down three orks in as many strokes of his sword. ‘Go and destroy it.’

  Daceus urged Sicarius on. The obelisk was close, and the horde around it had thinned as they had run for the gates. ‘Cato, only you can do this. I’ll stay with Vandius.’

  Sicarius clasped the other warrior’s forearm and then went to his business. He hacked down a greenskin in his path, then two more, leaving a glittering trail of pure light in his wake. Above, crossbow quarrels hailed down relentlessly, a greenskin finally succumbing to half a dozen shafts. Sicarius rushed through the bolt storm, not so much as grazing his armour, finishing any ork injured by the archers. Then it slowed and finally stopped as quivers emptied, and all eyes went to the heavens as the green storm reached its crescendo. Two faces manifested in the clouds, large enough to fill the entire sky. Men screamed. Some fled, abandoning their weapons as the sight rendered them insane.

  A lightning blast speared from the thunderous dark above, spat from the mouths of the gods. It came unerringly for Sicarius, an arcing green fork sent to obliterate.

  Vedaeh watched the battle from the wall, cowering behind one of the merlons as the thunder rolled overhead.

  It was reaching its zenith, clouds coiling like serpentine tails or tongues, and the storm would soon vent its wrath. She thought she saw faces in the emerald-tinged darkness, two leering, bestial gods. The orks saw it too, or at least they turned and bellowed at the unquiet heavens, roaring fury and exultation.

  Then the lightning fell, a jagged bolt like a cast spear but as thick as an ancient oak.

  It struck Sicarius, who had raised his sword, crying out the name of his primarch.

  ‘Guilliman!’

  His voice shook the courtyard, pure as a clarion cry, as a dazzling flare of green then white light erupted from the Tempest Blade as the lightning fork struck it.

  Vedaeh’s eyes streamed with tears and she clung to the merlon for fear of falling.

  The orks shrieked, agony rolling through their ranks like a wave as they recoiled and covered their eyes against the brilliant light. Even the feathered shaman stumbled, almost slipping from his perch, a fledgling fearful of tottering out of its nest.

  The light faded and Sicarius stood unscathed, a coruscating bolt of lightning running down his sword, the blade absorbing it like a piece of frozen fire. Then he ran, charging for the obelisk. He cut down the first of the bearers, and the rope went slack in its dead hand. The second he killed saw the obelisk teeter, leaning so hard that the shaman had to cling on, its claws digging urgent furrows in the wood.

  Sicarius used it. He sped for the obelisk, slaying every greenskin sent against him until he was running up the thing like a ramp.

  Daceus and Vandius had followed him, and now Pillium and Vorolanus emerged through the fog too, having descended into the melee, slaughtering greenskins like cattle and tearing into the other rope bearers. The gates had all but been forgotten in the greenskins’ urgency to stop the Ultramarines. Vedaeh knew it was too late for that. She looked on breathlessly as the obelisk lurched dangerously, the wooden axles of its wheels snapping as it began to topple over. Two giant orks strained to hold on to it, their shaman clinging to it like a drunken spider.

  Sicarius paused for a few seconds to adjust his footing, and the wood writhed beneath him as if filled with some kind of restive anima. Every step took him closer, until the shaman was before him.

  A defiant roar tore from the beast’s throat but Sicarius saw the fear in its narrow porcine eyes. They were white, a gift or deformity from its brutish gods. It did not matter. Death had found it anyway.

  ‘We. Are. Macragge!’ Sicarius shouted back.

  It hissed, spitting some brutish invective that he brushed aside with a sweep of his sword that cleaved the ork’s head from its shoulders.

  The shaman fell, loose-limbed, feathers fluttering and coming away from their false pinions. The orks wailed and at last the final two rope bearers let their burden slip. The shaman struck the ground hard and a moment later was crushed by the felled obelisk.

  Sicarius rode it down, leaping off at the last moment to land in a crouch, his sword tip held downwards and to the ground.

  ‘Guilliman…’ he breathed, gratified to see his brothers alive and coming to his side.

  The orks fled, boiling out of the city like wasps deserting the hive. They dragged their injured with them, chased by the raucous cheers of Farrodum’s warriors. The men bellowed as the skies began to clear and a palpable sense of relief took hold. Some cried. They hugged one another as their fear slowly drained away, and laughed and jeered at their enemies.

  Only the knights of Macragge did not celebrate. They stood like towering armoured islands amidst the wash of humanity, watching as the orks departed. Not a warrior amongst them so much as raised a sword. They were silent as sentinels.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Scarfel, coming up by Sicarius’ side. He had a shallow cut to his forehead and his sword was badly notched, but he looked ebullient. ‘We won, didn’t we?’

  Sicarius shared a glance with his brothers and spoke aloud what they were all thinking.

  ‘We did. But the orks will return. They always do. And next time they will bring their entire tribe.’

  THE HALL OF TRIUMPHS

  It was called the hall of triumphs. As far as Daceus could tell, it was on account of the various threadbare tapestries and faded banners depicting the battles of Farrodum and its greatly diminished army. Whoever the artist had been, he or she had a gift for the fatalistic. Every piece described a desperate last stand or a glorious charge into the bone-swine hordes. Several depicted the baron himself or what might possibly have been his father; it was difficult to ascertain genealogy based on a crudely rendered painting on cloth. In contrast to the beleaguered army, the baron or barons were triumphant, often drawn with a foot on the head of an enemy, with sword aloft, or at the head of a glittering warhost, armour shimmering in the painted sun.

  It smacked of vainglory and delusion, if the current state of affairs was any measure.

  The entire company of the knights of Macragge had been gathered for an audience with the baron, who had
yet to occupy the empty golden throne sitting at the summit of a raised stone dais at the back of the room. Here, too, was the largest and most expansive tapestry, a huge curtain of cloth that had painted upon it an effigy of the baron as a towering, deific figure who blessed his diminutive subjects with an outstretched hand. In this rendering, he had the raiment of a priest-king, a staff and not a sword in his hand.

  ‘I do not think I am going to approve of the potentate of this land…’ muttered Daceus, earning a look of agreement from his captain.

  Vedaeh had been invited to the gathering too, at Sicarius’ request, and she stood at the head of the Ultramarines, hands clasped over her stomach as she waited patiently. She was surrounded by warriors in chipped blue ceramite, their long cloaks brushed and cleaned but still carrying the scars of recent battle like their wearers. Pillium stood a head taller than the others and occupied the rearguard of their formation. Daceus stood to the left and one step behind Sicarius; Vandius to the right. Fennion and Vorolanus stood behind them and so the six were arranged.

  They, too, were surrounded. Daceus had counted thirty armoured warriors standing silently in alcoves to either side of the hall, which was long and in an obvious state of disrepair. Braziers had been lit, and cast their trembling glow upon dark stone and even darker wood. A ragged pelt, stitched and dyed crimson, ran half the length of the hall and ended at the foot of the dais.

  At the dais itself stood Scarfel, his armour polished though still dented, his helmet under one arm and his hand resting easily on the pommel of his sheathed sword. Daceus liked the old campaigner and admired him for his courage. Much about Scarfel reminded him of himself, and a bond had naturally formed. Behind Scarfel, and to the left of the throne loomed the largest man of Farrodum Daceus had seen yet. Wearing a cuirass of black plate over a hauberk of chainmail and thick, heavy boots, he came close to the size of an Adeptus Astartes initiate. Considering the man had no visible physical enhancements, it was impressive. He carried a sword to match, a double-handed and broad-bladed weapon that he held downwards, both hands on the pommel. His helm was closed, wide cheek-plates and a slitted visor offering little in the way of the man’s actual face under all the metal.

  ‘We should recommend this one to the sons of Dorn,’ Vandius had remarked under his breath, earning a gruff laugh from Daceus that Vedaeh had silenced with a glare as they made entry to the hall and the giant black-armoured warrior had been revealed. He had little time for the chronicler and thought her influence on the Suzerain deleterious. Cato had his own mind, Daceus had no doubt about that, but the way she insisted the Ultramarines kowtow to the natives sat poorly. Yes, they needed to find the power source and then have Haephestus determine a way to get it back to the Emperor’s Will – assuming the Techmarine was still out in the wilds somewhere – but they were warriors, not diplomats. The mantle fell uncomfortably on Daceus’ shoulders, and he railed against its burden and how it blunted their efficacy. Still, he had to concede, it would not serve them at this point to make enemies of their hosts. Particularly in the current situation. Daceus had also noticed archers amongst the guards, though these made a practice of hiding in the vaults above the hall. A deep parapet extruded, largely closed off from view, but he had seen the watchful eyes regarding them through the narrow embrasures as the Ultramarines had taken up position in front of the throne.

  And there they waited, patiently, quietly and unmoving until their host arrived.

  ‘I have never heard of this land, this Macragge,’ said the baron, resting languidly on his throne. He looked young, Sicarius thought, and wore crimson robes with a gold trim that caught the firelight. An ostentatious crown nestled on his brow, amongst thick dark hair that fell almost to his shoulders, though he had no beard to speak of. The sword he wore at his hip looked finely made and scarcely used. He turned to who Sicarius assumed was the vizier, standing below him on the lower step of the dais. ‘Have you heard of it, Nehebkau?’

  The vizier shook his head, though there was an element of tedious theatre to it, as if it were a conversation played out many times already and repeated here for the strangers’ benefit. The vizier was a fat-faced man dressed in long, lustrous jade robes, with a compass-like amulet hung around his bulging neck. He had cultivated a sharp beard that extruded in a point like a dagger from his flabby chin, the rest of his scalp contained beneath a tan leather skullcap. The minor slope of his shoulder, the slightly hunchbacked shape to his bearing suggested an old leg injury that made Sicarius wonder if the vizier had seen more battles than his liege lord. He appeared unassuming but curious, the look of a keen scholar about him, and he held a simple bronze staff with a sapphire fixed to the end.

  The baron looked Sicarius up and down like a man inspecting a thoroughbred horse. There was fear there too, though.

  ‘Are you from the south then?’

  ‘We are, my lord,’ Sicarius replied, and felt Daceus stiffen in anger at the use of the word. They should not be bowing and scraping to these men. They should have declared their presence and the needs of their company, but, diminished as they were, that way held no guarantee of success and would only have led to death. And there was something else, something Sicarius had felt but not yet been able to identify. Sicarius would commend Daceus on his resolve later, though he was more concerned about Vedaeh, who looked tense enough that she would shatter at any moment. ‘And we thank you for taking us into your fine city of Farrodum.’

  Vandius bowed his head at that, to better hide the grim smile on his face.

  The baron wafted away the flattery like an odour he didn’t care to experience.

  ‘A debt is owed to you and your kind…’ he said, and leaned over to whisper into the vizier’s ear. Sicarius caught every word as clearly as if he had spoken them aloud.

  Was it the castellan’s notion to bring them here stinking and dressed like beggar knights?

  His jaw tensed, but he thought of poor Vedaeh and kept his composure. He gave the shallowest shake of the head to Daceus, who mouthed Our kind?! It was fortunate he had not heard the rest of what the baron had said.

  ‘Our castellan, Scarfel, has vouched for you and spoken warmly of your valour.’ He glanced at Scarfel, who sketched a short, simple bow. ‘He tells us of how you turned the tide against our aggressors. He also states that you claim the beasts will return, and that you might yet rid us of their plague?’

  ‘I would recommend hunting them down and slaying them,’ said Sicarius, his eye straying to the vizier, who gave nothing of his thoughts away. ‘They have suffered a defeat but they will lick their wounds, gather a larger force and return. We should attack them in their lair before that happens. Your castellan mentioned a gorge?’

  ‘Yes, the gorge,’ replied the baron, almost dismissive. ‘We took warriors to the gorge, an army of them.’ He gestured around the room. Sicarius noticed Scarfel’s expression darken at the memory. ‘This is what remains. Most did not return. We would be foolish to attack again. No, we must refortify the city walls and hold the bone-swine off until they tire of battering impotently at stone and wander off.’

  ‘With respect,’ began Daceus as he stepped forwards, though he actually meant the opposite. The hulk in the black war-plate stirred, but an amused glance and a wag of the finger from the baron put his dog to heel again. ‘Orks do not just wander off. Now they know you are–’

  ‘Orks?’ asked the baron, interrupting and momentarily perplexed until his frown smoothed to a smile, ‘Ah, you mean the bone-swine, yes? Carry on, carry on.’

  Daceus gritted his teeth, prompting a surreptitious calming gesture from Sicarius that thankfully went unseen by the baron, though he thought he caught the slightest reaction from the vizier.

  ‘They do not wander off,’ Daceus concluded firmly. ‘They know you are here and will not be satisfied or deterred until they have breached your walls and killed or eaten everyone within. Orks do four things really well,’ said Daceus, counting them off on his gauntleted fingers. ‘Eat, fight
, shit and make a mess. Those last two are usually connected. I would wish none of them upon your city.’

  ‘All very well, but what are we to do?’ asked the baron. ‘Or are you hard of hearing as well as half-blind, southerner?’

  ‘Daceus is one of my sword brethren,’ Sicarius quickly interceded before words were spoken or deeds done that could not be unsaid or undone, ‘and speaks the truth. You cannot defeat the orks alone, but you are not alone.’ Sicarius opened his arms in an expansive gesture indicating his warriors. ‘Allow us to fight them on your behalf.’

  The baron’s eyes narrowed, the prospect of ridding himself of the orks evidently intriguing, presumably as well as the fact that he had an aversion to all four of the evils Daceus had mentioned. Sicarius found he did not like the conspiratorial look there.

  ‘What do you propose?’

  Sicarius called fowards Vorolanus, who came to stand beside him.

  ‘Scipio is our finest scout. He and Vandius,’ he nodded to the Lion, who remained as impassive as a statue throughout the exchange, ‘will venture to the gorge and gauge the strength of the enemy, their numbers and disposition. From this, I will devise a strategy to destroy them. All of them.’

  ‘Bold,’ remarked the baron, stifling a yawn – but it was feigned. He was more interested and desperate for the knights’ help than he let on. ‘You could do that,’ he asked, ‘kill them all?’

  Sicarius nodded slowly. ‘We only need a guide to take us to the gorge.’

  At this, Scarfel stepped up. ‘I would gladly do it, my liege,’ he told the baron, but with a comradely look to Sicarius.

  The baron frowned, as if bored, then shrugged as if it were a matter of little import. ‘Very well. See it done, castellan. Take these knights to the gorge and have them make their plans. What then for the rest of your… men?’ he said, a sneer still clinging to his face despite attempts to conceal it.

  ‘We fortify the city, help rebuild the walls,’ said Sicarius, a fiery glint in his eye that saw the baron shrink a little in his pampered arrogance. ‘We make ready for war as we have always done.’