The advanced optics on Nagasena’s scope, obtained at ruinous cost from the Mechanicum of Mars, penetrates the marble frontage, displaying a coloured thermal scan of the building’s interior. Through a fine copper-jacketed wire, that image is displayed on Kartono’s slate.
Perhaps sixty people are inside the temple, and the Legiones Astartes are immediately apparent in their heat signatures as well as their size. It is impossible to pick out which of these people might be Kai Zulane. As Antioch had said, there are five of them, and they are gathered around a much smaller individual. Their heat signatures blur. Something behind their overlarge bodies is scattering the readings from his optics, wreathing the entire image in a grainy static that makes Nagasena’s eyes itch.
‘So much for those expensive bio-filters,’ grunts Kartono, slapping a palm against the side of the slate. The image quality does not improve, but they have enough information to mount an assault on the building with a high degree of success.
‘We should storm the building,’ says Golovko. ‘We have over a hundred men now. There’s nowhere left for them to run. We can end this within the hour.’
‘He’s right,’ says Saturnalia with obvious reluctance to align himself with the Black Sentinel. ‘We have our quarry boxed in.’
‘And that makes them doubly dangerous,’ says Nagasena. ‘There is nothing more dangerous than a warrior who is cornered and has nothing left to lose.’
‘Just like the Creatrix of Kallaikoi,’ says Kartono.
‘Exactly so,’ snaps Nagasena, unwilling to relive that particular memory right now. He still bears scars that will never heal from that hunt.
Saturnalia takes the slate from Kartono’s hands and holds it up in front of Nagasena, as if he has not yet seen it. He taps the hazed images of the five men they have come to kill.
‘There is no reason not to go in,’ says the Custodian. ‘We have our orders, and they are clear. Everyone here is to die.’
Nagasena has read and reread their orders, searching for a way to interpret them in a manner that will not scar his memories for life and result in the deaths of so many innocents, but Saturnalia is right; their orders are without ambiguity.
‘These are Imperial citizens,’ he says, though he knows he is wasting his breath trying to convince Saturnalia to alter his course. ‘We serve them with our deeds, and to betray them like this is wrong.’
‘Wrong? These traitors have been welcomed amongst these people, and they are guilty by association,’ says Saturnalia. ‘I am a warrior of the Legio Custodes, and my duty is the safety of the Emperor, a duty in which there can be no compromise. Who knows what treachery these men may have already spread among the people of the Petitioner’s City? If we allow any they have touched to live, then their betrayal will fester like a rank weed, drawing nourishment from the darkness and growing even greater and more deeply entrenched.’
‘You can’t know that,’ protests Nagasena.
‘I don’t need to know it, I just need to believe it.’
‘This is your Imperial Truth?’ asks Nagasena, almost spitting the words.
‘It is just the truth,’ says Saturnalia. ‘Nothing more, nothing less.’
Nagasena’s eyes lock with those of Kartono, but he sees nothing in his bondsman’s eyes that give any clue to his emotions. Clade Culexus saw to that. He grips the tightly-wound hilt of Shoujiki and knows he should walk away, but that would be as good as signing his own death warrant. For good or ill, he is bound to this hunt until its end.
He nods, and hates that Saturnalia and Golovko share the triumphant grins of conspirators.
‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Let us get this over with.’
Before any attack order can be given, Kartono gives a shocked breath of surprise. He consults the imagery on his slate and looks up in confusion.
‘We may have a problem,’ he says, pointing down into the canyon. ‘New arrivals.’
ATHARVA WATCHED TAGORE rise from the bench and walk stiffly across the nave as he made his way towards their gathering. The warrior’s aura blazed with anger, the swirling colours of angry bruises and hot, pumping blood. Just touching that fire enflamed Atharva’s own aggression, and he rose into the lower Enumerations to better control himself.
‘We may have a way off Terra,’ said Asubha as Tagore joined them.
The World Eaters sergeant nodded, his teeth still clenched and his skin drained of colour.
‘How?’ he asked.
‘Tell him,’ said Atharva, gesturing to Palladis Novandio.
‘At the top of this scarp is the dwelling place of Vadok Singh, one of the Emperor’s war masons,’ said Palladis with such bitterness and reluctance that it almost made Atharva flinch. ‘He oversees all aspects of the construction work to the palace, and he likes the high perch.’
‘So?’ demanded Tagore, wearing his impatience like a spiked cloak.
‘The warmason likes to observe some of his grander constructions from orbit,’ clarified Palladis. The man did not want them to leave, and only Atharva’s insight had made him divulge this latest morsel of information.
‘You understand now?’ said Severian.
‘He has an orbit-capable craft?’ demanded Tagore, his anger morphing into interest.
‘He does,’ said Palladis.
‘We can get off world,’ said Subha, punching a fist into his palm.
‘Better,’ said Asubha. ‘If we can get to one of the orbital plates, we can get aboard a warp-capable craft.’
‘So we are agreed?’ said Atharva, with a sidelong glance at Palladis Novandio. ‘We are bound for Isstvan?’
‘Isstvan,’ agreed Tagore.
‘The Legion,’ said Asubha and his brother together.
‘Isstvan it is,’ said Severian. ‘I will find us a way to the warmason’s villa.’
Atharva nodded as the Luna Wolf slipped away into the darkness at the rear of the temple.
‘Where will you go once you are off-world?’ asked Palladis Novandio, unable to mask his disappointment. ‘You would not consider remaining here? Where else should the Angels of Death be but a temple dedicated to its name?’
Tagore rounded on the man and lifted him from his feet.
‘I should kill you now for what you have allowed to take root here,’ snarled the World Eater. ‘You call a building a temple, and people will find gods within it.’
‘What are you talking about, Tagore?’ said Atharva.
Tagore held Palladis Novandio at arm’s length, as though the man carried some virulent infection. ‘He is a promoter of false gods. This is no place of remembrance. It is a fane where the Emperor is held up as some kind of divine being. All this, it is all a lie, and he is its chief prophet. I will kill him and we will be on our way.’
‘No!’ cried Palladis. ‘That’s not what we do here, I promise.’
‘Liar!’ bellowed Tagore, drawing his fist back.
Before Tagore could unleash his killing power, the doors of the temple were flung wide and two enormous figures were silhouetted in the glow of a hundred lamps and flickering torches from outside. Fear billowed in with them on a wave of ash-clogged wind, and Atharva suddenly sensed the predatory minds of hunters beyond the walls of the temple.
He recognised Ghota from the battle outside Antioch’s surgery, but the second warrior took his breath away with his sheer scale.
Enormous beyond even Ghota’s monstrous size, the warrior was taller than Tagore and broader in the shoulder than Gythua had been. He was clad in a suit of burnished war plate the colour of bronze and midnight. Fashioned in a form worn by a band of warriors long dead, he wore the armour as though born to it. At his side was an outdated model of bolter, and across his back was sheathed a vast-bladed sword.
‘I am the Thunder Lord,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘And you have something I want.’
TWENTY-TWO
Living History
Temple of Blood
A Worthy Foe
THE WARRIOR BEFORE him should no
t have been possible. His kind were all dead and gone, slain in the last battle of Unity. It was a measure of their heroic sacrifice that they had all died to win the last and greatest victory for the Emperor. Yet here he was, towering and magnificent, terrible and shocking. The skin of his face was grey and dead, his eyes blood red, and his aura too bright to look upon. His presence had a gravity all of its own, demanding all attention and fear.
‘You are Babu Dhakal?’ said Atharva, though the question was unnecessary.
‘Of course,’ said the Thunder Lord.
As though Babu Dhakal and Ghota projected some form of force field before them, every man, woman and child retreated to the back of the temple, huddled in the shadow of the faceless statue. Atharva caught sight of Kai and a blonde-haired woman with a bandanna tied around her temple. He saw what she was immediately, and wanted to smile at the fortune that had sent him an astropath and a Navigator. Truly, the cosmic puzzle of the universe was revealing itself to him little by little.
Tagore bristled at his side, and he felt the spiking anger that threatened to boil over at any minute. Subha and Asubha followed their sergeant’s lead, though their battle-rage was nowhere near as volatile as Tagore’s. He could not sense Severian’s presence, and hoped he had been able to escape the temple already.
‘You killed a warrior of the Legiones Astartes,’ said Tagore, the words a guttural bark towards Ghota. ‘I’ll have your heart for that.’
Ghota grinned and bared his teeth. ‘I beat you once, I can do it again, little pup.’
Babu Dhakal raised a hand to forestall Tagore’s anger.
‘I did not come here to fight you, Legiones Astartes,’ he said. ‘I came to offer you something. Would you be prepared to listen?’
The unexpectedness of the warrior’s words took Atharva by surprise. He had not sensed any desire to parley in Babu Dhakal, but then he could barely stand to turn his psychic senses upon him without fear of being overwhelmed.
‘What is it you want?’ he asked in a voice that didn’t betray his unease.
‘There are men beyond this building who wish to kill you,’ said Babu Dhakal.
‘I know this,’ said Atharva, and Babu Dhakal laughed, the sound turning into a wet, animal gurgle in his ruined throat.
‘You know it because I now allow you to know it,’ said the warrior.
‘Once I have broken you across my knee, I will kill all of them too,’ promised Tagore.
‘There are a hundred at least, a Custodian, a clade killer and a man who carries something more deadly than anything any warrior here can face.’
‘A weapon?’ asked Subha.
‘No, the truth.’
‘Who are you?’ demanded Atharva. ‘I know your name to be meaningless. Babu simply means “father” in the ancient tongue of Bharat. And Dhakal? That is simply a region of this part of the mountains. So who are you?’
‘I have had many names over the years,’ said Babu Dhakal, ‘but that is not what you mean, is it? No, you want my true name, the one I bore in the battles to win this world?’
‘Yes,’ said Atharva.
‘Very well, since I am here to trade, I will offer you my name as a gesture of good faith. I no longer remember my mortal name, but when my flesh was reborn into this new form, I was named Arik Taranis.’
The name had a weight all of its own, a silencing quality that stole the anger from the World Eaters and dumbfounded Atharva with its historic resonance. There was not one among them who did not know that name, the battles he had won, the foes he had slain and the great honours he had earned.
‘You are the Lightning Bearer?’ asked Tagore.
‘A title given to me after the Battle of Mount Ararat in the Kingdom of Urartu,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘I had the honour of raising the Banner of Lightning at the declaration of Unity.’
Atharva could barely believe his eyes. This warrior was history wrought into living form: the Victor of Gaduaré, the Last Rider, the Butcher of Scandia, the Throne-slayer…
These and a hundred other battle-laurels earned by this warrior tumbled through Atharva’s memory, finally culminating in the end of that great warrior’s legendary life atop a once-flooded mountain.
‘History says you are dead,’ said Atharva. ‘You died of your wounds once the banner was raised. You and all your warriors fell in that battle.’
‘You look like a clever man,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘You should know better than to take what history says literally. Such tales as are told of us come from the mouth of the last man standing, and it would not do for the Emperor to have to share his victory with others. Where is the glory when you conquer a world with an unstoppable army at your back? To begin a legend, you must win that war single-handedly, and there must be no one left alive to contradict your version of events.’
‘Are there others like you?’ said Subha.
Babu Dhakal shrugged. ‘Perhaps others escaped the cull, perhaps not. If they did, they are probably dead by now, victims of their own obsolescence. Our bodies were designed to win a world, not conquer a galaxy like yours.’
Atharva listened to Babu Dhakal’s words, amazed at the lack of bitterness he heard. If what the warrior was saying was true, then he and all his kind had been cast aside by the Emperor in favour of the Legiones Astartes gene-template. Yet Babu Dhakal appeared to bear his creator no ill-will for this monstrous betrayal.
‘So how is it that you are still alive?’ asked Atharva, now beginning to suspect what Babu Dhakal might want from them.
‘I am a clever man,’ said Babu Dhakal. ‘I learned what I could from my creator in the years of war, and I came to know much of his ancient science. Not enough to halt my deterioration, but enough to cling onto life long enough for fortune to smile upon me.’
‘Speak plainly,’ ordered Tagore. ‘What is it you want?’
Babu Dhakal raised his right arm, and Atharva saw a boxy device attached to the armoured plates of his vambrace. It had none of the elegance of the devices employed by the Legion apothecaries, but it was unmistakably a reductor. Alongside the narthecium, it was an essential piece of an apothecary’s battle gear.
The narthecium healed the wounded, but the reductor was for the dead.
Its one and only purpose was to extract a fallen Space Marine’s gene-seed.
‘I want you to help me live,’ said Babu Dhakal.
KAI READ THE shock in Atharva’s aura, but before the Space Marine could answer, the roof of the temple imploded in a series of detonations that sent timber beams and limestone tiles tumbling to the floor in a rain of flaming debris.
‘Watch out!’ shouted Kai as a piece of burning rafter slammed down in front of him, crushing an aged man beneath it. He and Roxanne backed away in panic from the tumbling wreckage as black-armoured soldiers dropped into the temple on ziplines in the wake of booming stun grenades.
The throaty grumble of heavy vehicles and the chatter of automatic gunfire sounded from beyond the temple doors. The hard echoes of heavy calibre shells impacting on the canyon walls were punctuated by the screams of terrified people.
‘Down!’ cried Kai as one of the soldiers loosed a sawing blast of fire from his weapon. Solid rounds tore up benches and chewed the marble walls. Kai pulled Roxanne to the floor and dragged her away from the soldier, but screaming people blocked every avenue of escape through the overturned benches. A man toppled to his knees before Kai, his chest blown out and his head burned by a las-blast.
‘What’s going on?’ cried Roxanne, blinking away the after-effects of the grenade flashes and covering her head as pulverised marble fragments rained down on them.
‘Those are Black Sentinels,’ said Kai. ‘They’re here for me.’
He risked casting his mind-sense beyond his immediate surroundings, flinching with every rattle of gunfire and disorientating thunder of grenade detonations. Smoke and expanding banks of smoke rolled through the temple, but such obstacles to sight were no barrier to an astropath’s blindsight. He saw soldie
rs fan into the temple, gunning down anyone they encountered with ruthlessly efficient bursts of fire.
A knot of soldiers moving in perfect concert were coming his way, but no sooner had one shouted a warning than a hulking warrior bearing a broken guardian spear was among them. Tagore hacked three men down in as many blows and gutted another two before the others could even react. Two more died with their skulls caved in, and another fell with his neck broken.
Subha fought at his sergeant’s side, killing with artless fury as he strove to imitate Tagore’s furious destruction. Kai shifted his gaze, seeing Asubha moving like a ghost through the clouds of thick smoke. Unlike his brother, Asubha was a methodical killer, picking his targets with a clear precision. A Black Sentinel with an auger was killed first, then another with a plasma-coil weapon. There was clear order to Asubha’s kills, a methodology that was quite at odds with the seemingly random violence of his brother.
Other figures moved through the confusing flares of psychic light. The red of violence filled the air as surely as grenade smoke, and it became harder to pick out individuals amongst the pulsing anger that allowed combat soldiers to function.
A host of figures blazed amid the crimson fog, individuals whose energy and vitality were undimmed and untouched by this unleashed violence. One he knew to be Atharva, another two as Babu Dhakal and his lieutenant. Blinding flares of psychic energy streamed from Atharva, and dozens of soldiers died in the fire he drew forth from the Immaterium. Babu Dhakal moved swifter than any man Kai had ever seen, slipping through the chaos of the fighting as though simply willing himself from one place to the next. Where men came at him, he killed them effortlessly, but where they ignored him, he returned the favour and let them live.
The barrage of gunfire was unrelenting, and the slaughter of the temple’s supplicants was indiscriminate. Kai and Roxanne crawled towards the back of the temple, scrambling over torn up bodies and overturned benches in their desperation to escape. Kai turned to look over his shoulder as a giant in heavy plates of polished armour strode into the temple. Where others were sheathed in crimson or gold, his aura was a pure and lethal silver. Kai felt his entire body flinch as he recognised the baleful, unrelenting purpose of Saturnalia.
The Outcast Dead Page 37
