KNIGHTS OF MACRAGGE

by Nick Kyme

  ‘I can speak to him, if you want?’ Vedaeh suggested gently. ‘I have some experience ministering to troubled minds. Perhaps I can help him. Help you both.’

  Reda seemed to consider that.

  ‘Let me talk to him first. See if he’ll agree to it.’

  ‘You think he won’t? Why is that?’

  Reda was about to answer when the blaring of horns sounded across the city, signalling the return of the scouts.

  ‘Scipio and Vandius are back,’ she muttered, briefly forgetting Reda.

  From her excellent vantage in the tower, Vedaeh could see the main gates where three figures waited to be reunited with their brothers. They stood in a row, a few feet between each of them, Sicarius in the middle with Daceus and Fennion left and right of him. Their ragged cloaks stirred lightly in the breeze but did little to hide the battle scarring on their armour. They might not be from this place, this time, but they had the look of well-seasoned medieval knights.

  She feared for them then, these three though soon-to-be five who would march out and face the horde. They would do it because honour and duty demanded it. They had made their oaths, kneeling in darkness, a sword hilt pressed to their foreheads, not only to the people of Farrodum but to each other. A Space Marine would rather die than break his vow. The wilderness would succumb again, Vedaeh knew, drowned in blood and churned underfoot. No place was ever sacrosanct. Peace would surrender itself to war, and so the wheel turned ever onwards. She trembled, wiping an errant tear that had run unchecked, chilling her skin as it dried into a salty tract.

  Across the courtyard, she saw the baron watching from a high parapet. He hadn’t seen Vedaeh, or she was beneath his concern, but he watched the Ultramarines closely. His advisor, the vizier, stood behind him, content to be in the noble’s shadow. Unlike the baron, who wore a thick furred cloak to ward off the cold, the vizier had only a thin robe but gave no outward sign of discomfort. He had several layers of fat, however, which likely offered some insulation. Several townsfolk had gathered to see the knights off – or see them arrive, depending on whose point of view you had. They carried garlands of wild flowers and held close their children, who looked on with awe at the warriors. None of the usual terror or religious fervour pervaded here. The reaction of the crowd was as if to cheer on the champions about to risk their lives to rid the common folk of tyranny and fear.

  ‘For they shall know no fear,’ said Vedaeh, repeating the old aphorism and thinking on how in less ‘enlightened’ times it would be easy to consider them as heroes, and not the scarcely human demigods she knew. To see a Space Marine meant death. As an Imperial citizen, you should never wish for it. Seldom were they truly liberators. They were bred to kill and they did it ferociously well.

  Sicarius had stepped forwards to meet Vorolanus and Vandius. He greeted them warmly. The old castellan, Scarfel, nearly fell off his horse, and Vedaeh briefly considered he must have ridden hard and all night to return so quickly. The two Adeptus Astartes barely looked fatigued at all. They exchanged a few words, Sicarius then turning to Scarfel, a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. He was sending the castellan back. The gesture was heartening but it was really a facsimile of compassion. It also meant one thing – the knights of Macragge would fight the orks alone.

  They didn’t linger, Scarfel’s sentimentality wasted on them as he watched them depart into the mist, and then, like the low hills, they were suddenly gone.

  ‘Do you think they’ll come back?’ asked Reda.

  ‘I have never known a fight that the Adeptus Astartes cannot win.’

  ‘With bolters and chainswords, perhaps. With powered war-plate and gunships. They have swords and lumpen armour.’

  ‘They are also sons of Guilliman, and that’s ingrained.’

  ‘Five against Throne knows how many.’

  ‘My point still stands. They’ll die before letting even one greenskin live.’

  ‘And if that happens?’

  Vedaeh regarded the baron. He was no longer looking north, and instead had turned his attention southwards.

  She couldn’t see what had caught his interest, not at first. Then a handful of mounted figures emerged through the white fog, at their head the baron’s henchman. The grim cast to the warrior’s face, the way he rode hard across the rugged landscape, bothered Vedaeh. He looked scared.

  ‘I didn’t know scouts had been despatched southwards,’ said Reda, following Vedaeh’s eye to the returning hunting party.

  ‘Nor did I,’ Vedaeh replied.

  Reda frowned, narrowing her eyes at the chronicler. ‘Are you worried?’

  ‘I am. You should get Vanko. Now, Arna.’

  She was already running by the time Vedaeh had turned around.

  CATACOMBS

  A sense of disconnected urgency drove Reda as she ran through the city streets. She knew something was wrong, just not exactly what. It reminded her of a soldier’s instinct for danger. Anyone who had served in the Navy or Militarum for any length of time had it, that self-certain belief that something was about to go extremely and irrevocably badly. That it was Vanko she ran towards only made it worse, because it wasn’t just her own safety that was potentially at stake but his too.

  The crowds were still making their way back to their homes after seeing their champions off, and Reda had to pick her way through their dawdling masses. Every few bodies she would catch a glimpse of a man in an old military uniform, his face obscured as ever. This only heightened her concern and made her run harder. She wanted to shut her eyes to him, to not remember. She wanted to believe he wasn’t always a harbinger of something awful and she hoped his presence now didn’t presage the unthinkable.

  She reached the old keep after what felt like an hour but was actually much less than half that. The same watchmen let her through, the same empty halls presented themselves. She only slowed when she reached the cells, taking a firm grip of her maul as she heard the gaol’s occupants. It was worse than before. They banged their heads against the doors and rattled the bars of the viewing slits like caged beasts driven mad by confinement. That might not be far from the truth. But it was the sounds that disturbed her the most. Before, she’d heard weeping and moaning; now they screamed until they were hoarse, one word repeating over and over.

  Eye! Eye! Eye! Eye!

  Reda was halfway down the cells when she saw where Vanko should be. His door was open. She ran to it, pulling the maul from the hoop of leather on her belt but confronted only shadows as she burst into the small room. The door was undamaged. He’d either picked the lock or been released.

  At her feet, the food she had brought had spoiled and the blankets were untouched.

  ‘Throne of Terra…’ the words caught in her throat as she saw the warp eye repeated across every inch of wall and floor, dizzying in its multiplicity.

  She edged out of the room, stifling tears as she hurried back into the shadowy halls, reaching down within herself for that cold core that had kept her alive for so many years in the hazardous depths of an Imperial starship. She hardened herself again to grief, and pushed down selfish desire, smothering it with duty. And she cursed Barthus for ever sharing his madness, and then she cursed herself for ever letting Vanko become a part of it.

  She had been about to take a left fork that would bring her to a stairway and back into the outer halls of the keep, determined to find Vanko and not sure how he could have slipped past her, when she saw something farther down the corridor in the opposite direction. He was standing right at the very end. The man with the old military uniform, his face obscured by shadow.

  ‘Father…’

  She had never known him, not really; only what she had been told. She had lied to Vedaeh, though. She knew how he had died. A missive had been sent to her, when she was still a low-level Naval rating aboard a minor starship. Vutich Reda had died during the Urid campaign, a relatively minor action that had seen an understrength Militarum force engage and eventually destroy a xenos cult uprising on the s
ystem’s primary world, Karbak. He had been killed in battle during one of the last major combat actions of the campaign. His death had earned him posthumous decoration, the Medallion Crimson, an award traditionally given to soldiers for continuing to perform their duties in spite of horrific injury. Reda didn’t know if that was actually true, but the missive did disclose that Vutich Reda had been burned egregiously. She could not imagine what that was like, though she sometimes awoke to the feeling of her skin being eaten away by acid or fire. Her father then had become an enigma, a literal faceless man whom she dared not confront for fear of what it might reveal. Better to be ignorant, to try to manage her fear.

  Now she had to run towards it.

  The apparition had gone by the time she reached where it had been standing. She let out a long breath, ashamed at the relief she felt, and she faced what appeared to be a dead end. Except it wasn’t. A cold, foul-smelling breeze whistled through the brick. Reda put her face towards it, trying to trace its source. A column of bricks jutted out ever so slightly from the rest, ruining the flush finish. It could have been mistaken for a simple deformity. In the darkness, it would have been missed completely if you weren’t looking for it. Reda realised what it actually was.

  Another door.

  She got her fingers around the protruding edge and pulled hard. It didn’t yield much but gave up enough of a gap that she could feed her maul into it and use it to lever the door the rest of the way. Darkness lurked beyond, though with the faint promise of light, little more than a pale smudge of white beckoning her.

  ‘What do you want me to see?’ she asked the dark, though she wasn’t sure if she addressed her father or Vanko or both.

  A short platform led to a stairwell. With little choice, she descended, and about halfway down heard voices. She quickened her pace, but slowed again as she came to the end of the steps.

  They had led Reda into a subterranean catacomb, a procession of crumbling arches like rib bones disappearing into further darkness. Low-burning torches had been lit, held up by wall sconces. The flames flickered inwards like mercurial fingers of light, beckoning her.

  He was there too, standing in the shadows, his face obscured as always. Reda wanted to scream at him, to tell him to leave her alone, but he wanted her to find something. The voices grew louder too. They sounded agitated. As she went further into the catacombs, she realised they must stretch under most of the city, a subterranean realm forgotten by all except those whose voices she heard.

  Closer now, she saw shadows, dark and elongated against the ground. The stench, the one she had remarked to Vedaeh about up in the tower, had grown stronger too. It must be coming from down here. Subconsciously she gripped the maul a little tighter. She went slowly, never taking her eyes off the shadow. The voices were muffled, distorted by the strange acoustics of the catacombs, but she thought she recognised one of them.

  ‘Vanko…’ she whispered.

  ‘Here.’

  Reda nearly broke open his skull, her heart pounding as she turned on Vanko, who had been waiting in the dark for her.

  He was crouched down, which is why she had missed him, eyes dead ahead, fixed on the shadows too.

  ‘What are you doing down here, Vanko?’ she whispered. ‘What in the hells of the warp did you write on the walls?’

  He had the look of an addict who was trying to straighten out.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry.’

  ‘The eye demands?’ Reda snapped, her voice a loud rasp.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vanko said again. ‘I saw something, I did. A glimpse. I think I understand it now. The eye, it helped me see.’

  ‘You’re not making sense, Vanko. If Sicarius or any of the Adeptus Astartes hear you talking like this, there’ll be nothing I can do to stop them from executing you.’

  ‘I know, I know. I think it was the future. That’s what Barthus gave me. I had to open the door, lead you here. You had to see it too.’

  ‘See what?’ she hissed, her anger boiling over. The other voices stopped.

  Vanko gestured to the shadows as they began to move.

  The medicus stepped into the light cast by the braziers.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Cwen.

  Reda had heard two voices in the catacombs – the owner of the one she recognised was standing in front of her, and now she knew the other one wasn’t Vanko.

  ‘Looking for him. Who are you hiding?’

  Cwen looked downcast. She quietly turned and Reda followed her, Vanko just behind.

  It was a man. Slumped against a dirty wall, sitting on a bed of straw. There were blankets, mostly threadbare. He looked ragged, thin, although judging by the scraps at his bare feet Cwen had been trying to keep him fed. He also wore a chain through an iron ring fixed to his ankle. He took one look at Reda and said, ‘You’re not from here.’ His voice was reed thin and husky from the wretched air, which stank like a combination of trenchrot and groxshit.

  Cwen went to him, padding softly against the cold floor. Their eyes met and she touched her palm to his cheek. She rested her forehead against his and the two of them briefly closed their eyes, sharing a moment of peace. After a few seconds, the man gave Cwen’s shoulder a light squeeze and she stepped back, her fingers slow to leave his face, lingering like the last kiss of leaves on an autumnal branch, reluctant to depart.

  Chains rattled as the man got to his feet, a tepid sort of fever seeming to seize him all of a sudden now that Cwen had withdrawn her presence.

  ‘You’re not from here,’ he repeated, louder this time. ‘You’re not even from this world. This place, everything you’ve seen is a lie. It’s all a damn lie,’ he said, turning to Cwen and jabbing an angry finger at Reda. ‘She knows the truth. Deep down, she knows. They both do.’

  ‘You see now why I had to hide him away,’ said Cwen, as she looked from the man back to Reda. ‘This madness… He wasn’t always like this.’

  ‘Your husband, I presume. The one you said died in the war.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that too. It’s easier, safer if I say that he’s dead.’

  Reda scowled. ‘Meanwhile, he lives in this pit.’

  Cwen gave her a firm look. ‘It’s that or death.’

  Deciding on the bold approach, Reda took a step towards the man.

  ‘What do you mean, “the truth”?’ she asked. ‘What “truth”?’

  ‘I told you he’s mad,’ said Cwen. ‘Fanciful tales of flying ships and empires in the stars.’

  Reda and Gerrant exchanged a glance.

  He didn’t look mad, she thought. He looked scared and even a little relieved.

  She took another step until they were almost face-to-face.

  ‘What. Truth?’ she repeated, slowly and firmly. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘He doesn’t know–’ Cwen began but was interrupted.

  ‘That you’re from the Imperium,’ he said, then gestured to Cwen, ‘and so are we.’

  FLENSED BONE

  It had taken several gruelling minutes to pull the broken blade from his body. Haephestus did not consider himself an Apothecary and he doubted Venatio would approve of his crude methods but they had proven effective. The hold, now sealed, still reeked of burnt flesh. He had opted for cauterisation over sutures. The pain had been considerable but he, like his brothers, had been made for such discomforts. It was as commonplace as breathing for one of his kind.

  His other task was considerably more delicate, taking hours, and here he had exercised a surgeon’s care. The upper half of the dead body he had cut in two lay on the bench, the tools swept away to make room for it. Phosphor lamps had been clamped to guide rails immediately above the remains, and lit the grim scene with brilliant light. Haephestus leaned over the corpse, determined to uncover its secrets. He found the skull had suffered a deep fracture that had partially collapsed the left temple. This, Haephestus reflected as he considered the flensed bone, still red from where he had peeled back the face, was curious.

  It mean
t two things. Firstly that his initial attack against the native had been stronger than he had intended. Regulating impact and potential damage was difficult for an Adeptus Astartes when his intent was to subdue, not kill. So often, the calculation need not be made. In this instance, the blow that had seen the swordsman collide with the hold’s interior wall had been significant. This led to the second thing. The injury that the man had sustained to his left temple would almost certainly have killed him. In the face of these facts, a startling question presented itself.

  ‘How did you return from your mortis state?’

  He had witnessed greenskins fight on long past the point where they should be dead, often absent limbs or even, in some rare cases, heads. Cybernetic organisms such as combat-servitors or Mechanicus skitarii could maintain some fighting efficacy after suffering injuries that should rightly have killed them, but this man, to every available piece of evidence, was mortal. He supposedly possessed none of the greenskins’ resilience, nor the endurance of the part-man part-machine. And yet here they were.

  Not only had motor function returned and a limited, albeit feral, cognition, the man had also manifested significantly increased strength. Certain adrenal conditions could explain the latter, but only to a degree. Further analysis was needed.

  The scalpel blades attached to Haephestus’ exposed mechadendrites twitched. They slid back into their sheaths as a diamond-edged saw started up. The teeth went from a gentle burring to a falsetto whine as they bit into ruddy skull bone. With a surgeon’s exactness, Haephestus slowly cut a perfectly rectangular hatch in the crown of the skull, which he then removed to expose the cranial vault.

  The matter inside looked ordinary enough. No sign of abnormal swelling or mechanised inputs of any kind. He further intensified the light, combining the improved illumination with the scrutinising magnification of his bionic eye. Only then, between the irregular folds of the cerebral cortex, was he able to see what he could only describe as minuscule boreholes that appeared to tunnel down into the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala. Cutting through the cerebellum with a fresh scalpel blade revealed tiny bore tracts. He went deeper, severing an entire cross section of the brainpan. He was about to dissect further when something stirred in the dead meat and burrowed upwards into the light.