He reached up and removed the helmet, mag-locking it to a thigh plate, taking a breath of damp air laced with heavy pollutants. He met his own gaze on the water’s surface.
The Knight Errant Nathaniel Garro looked back at himself, measuring the scars that were the map of his war record. He felt old and empty, a sensation that had been banished from him for a long while but now returned in full effect. The last time he had experienced such a thing, it had been as the madness unfolded over Isstvan V. As he stood aboard the frigate Eisenstein and slowly came to the shattering conclusion that his legion had betrayed him. As the Warmaster Horus’ rebellion had been birthed before him, the very personal treachery of his brethren and his primarch Lord Mortarion hollowed him out.
Perhaps, if he had been without courage and honour, Garro might have faltered in that moment, might never have recovered from what he witnessed. But instead, he found a new kind of strength. Emboldened by the singular truth laid bare before him – that of his unswerving loyalty to Terra and the Emperor of Mankind – Garro defied the traitors and set upon a flight into danger, racing back to the Solar System with word of warning.
Had he been without focus, Garro’s future and that of the refugees he brought with him might have ended with that deed. But his loyalty found reward, of a sort. The Emperor’s right hand, the great psyker and Regent of Terra Malcador the Sigillite, took the reins of Garro’s purpose. The former Battle-Captain of the Death Guard became Agentia Primus of the Sigillite’s clandestine task force. He became a Knight Errant, legionless but charged with great deeds.
Or so he had believed. After years of working to Malcador’s byzantine orders, recruiting others like himself, chasing down Horus’ spies, secretly crisscrossing the stars beneath the shroud of a tormented galaxy, Garro’s certainty of purpose became clouded. More and more, he was coming to believe that fate had spared him at Isstvan for something larger than just the Sigillite’s enigmatic designs. Already he had openly challenged Malcador’s commands, in the Somnus Citadel on Luna and in the halls of an unfinished fortress on distant Titan. How long would it be before he spoke his doubts aloud and in the fullest? Garro could not hold to silence forever. It simply was not in his character.
His craggy face twisted in a scowl, annoyance flaring. He had been foolish to come here. Some sentimental part of his spirit hoped that walking these lands would take him to a calmer place, where he could quiet his uncertainties and find a measure of peace. But that was not happening, and he knew it would never come. He resented the lack of answers, the directionless unawareness that pushed and pulled at him whenever his thoughts should have been at rest. More than anything, he wanted to come to a place of tranquillity and in it, find understanding. Garro was a legionary, a soldier born to duty, but the one before him was not right. It was not enough.
Everyone in the galaxy had been changed by Horus’ sedition, if they knew it or not. Garro knew with great clarity how he had been altered. Something had broken free inside him as his Legion’s sworn oaths had blackened and disintegrated. He was more than just a weapon of war, to be directed at a target and told to fight or perish. A heavier mantle had fallen upon him, a champion’s duty.
Have faith, Nathaniel. You are of purpose.
The words echoed in his thoughts. The woman Keeler, she had opened his mind to that truth. She understood. Perhaps for Garro to understand too, he would need to find her again and–
On the wet breeze he sensed the stale odour of animals, and froze. Garro listened and picked out the footfalls of two quadrupeds, stalking him across the shale and mud. He turned his head and picked them out against the dark stone.
Lupenate forms, the pair of them. Predators evolved from the wolves that had once stalked the woodlands of this region, in the times before the trees had died off, never to return. Their large bodies were long and sinuous, their fur slick with secreted oils that sloughed off the toxic rains and made their thermal aspects harder to see. Arrow-shaped ears twitched and stiffened as they tracked Garro’s smallest movement, while narrow eyes fixed him with a gelid, hungry gaze.
Normally, lupenates stayed away from the edges of human-habited zones, preferring to prey on the odd unwary traveller caught out alone. That a hunting pair had come so close to the shanty towns in the pit could only mean their life cycle was being disrupted as well as everyone else’s on Terra. The global day-and-night preparations for Horus’ inevitable invasion trickled down to even the most insignificant of the planet’s creatures.
Garro had drawn his sword without being aware of it. The power blade Libertas, his stalwart war companion for a hundred years and a thousand conflicts, could slice through tank armour when fully charged. His lip curled. These animals were not worth that expenditure of energy.
‘Go!’ he barked at them, planting the sword in the ground with its hilt facing the sky. Garro took a menacing step toward the predators. ‘Be gone!’
But the lupenates were starving and agitated beyond rationality. They attacked, flashing forward in a glistening arc of motion. Both leapt at him, smelling his breath, claws and teeth aiming to gain purchase on the bare flesh of his face.
The legionary’s arm blurred and he snatched the closest of the creatures from the air at the top of its arc, grabbing it by the throat. The second he batted away with the back of his gauntlet – he saw it crash into the rocks with a furious yelp.
The lupenate in his grip spat venom at him, missing his face but spattering on his chest plate. The droplets sizzled where they landed, scorching the slate-coloured armour. Garro’s lips thinned and he threw the creature in the direction of the standing sword. His aim was true enough, and the blade so sharp even in its inactive state, that the force of the throw bifurcated the creature and sent its parts tumbling over the edge of the pit. He stalked across to the second, wounded animal and stamped down on its head, crushing its skull beneath his heavy ceramite boot before it could rise.
Grim-faced, Garro returned to recover Libertas. If he had believed in omens, the appearance of the lupenates would mean ill portent.
‘A wolf,’ said a careful voice, ‘attacking out of blind hate and savagery. That reminds me of someone.’
Garro withdrew his sword and replaced it in the scabbard, noting that the rain had suddenly stopped. ‘Horus is not a savage. Unless he needs to be.’
He turned and found Malcador studying the dead animal with mild disdain. Quite how the Sigillite was able to approach him without sound or signal, the legionary did not know. Garro had learned not to ask such questions, as there were never any answers that satisfied him.
‘Was it necessary to kill them?’ said the other man, rolling back the cloak that concealed his gaunt features. Pale, silver hair fell to his shoulders. ‘The beasts have as much right to be here as you.’
‘I gave them the chance to withdraw,’ said the warrior. ‘I would grant the same to any foe.’
‘Honourable in all things.’ Malcador gave a small shrug and looked away, dismissing the moment.
Is he actually here, Garro wondered? I could be perceiving some fragment of him projected by a psyker’s might… It was very possible that in all the times Garro had stood before the Sigillite, he had in fact never stood before him, at least not in the most literal sense. The Regent of Terra’s psionic power was said to be second only to that of the Emperor himself, and the Emperor…
Divine was not a word that Garro would have used, but there were few others that could encompass the power of the Master of Mankind. If the Emperor were not a god, then he was as near to it as had ever existed. The image of a golden icon, of a two-headed aquila dancing on the end of a chain, flitted through his thoughts and he pushed it away.
The Sigillite looked toward him, as if he could smell the memory just as the wolf-things had caught Garro’s scent. ‘You have not found what you are looking for, Nathaniel,’ he said. ‘This has become troubling to me.’
&nb
sp; ‘I perform my duties to your order,’ said the legionary.
Malcador smiled. ‘There’s more to it than that. Don’t deflect. I chose you to serve because of your honesty, your… simplicity. But as time passes, the clear view I have becomes more clouded.’ The smile faded. ‘Duty turns to burden. Obedience chafes and eventually becomes defiance. It was this way with the Luna Wolf.’ He nodded toward the dead lupenate. ‘I did not see it until it was too late. And so I am watchful for the same patterns now, closer to home.’
Garro stiffened. ‘After I tallied all the things I lost in order to prove my allegiance,’ he began, ‘my legion, my brotherhood… I told myself that the next man who dared to suggest I was disloyal would bleed for it.’
‘Ah, but your promise contains a fatal flaw,’ Malcador replied, ignoring the threat. ‘You begin from the assumption that loyalty is a fixed point, immutable once established…’ The Sigillite broke off, and turned to look eastward, his eyes narrowing as if attracted by something only he could perceive. After a moment he turned away and continued, speaking as if nothing had happened. ‘But it is a flag planted in sand, Nathaniel. It can and will drift under the action of outside forces you may never see, until you are challenged. You were loyal to Mortarion, until the moment you were not. You were loyal to the Warmaster, until you were not. You are loyal to me–’
‘I am loyal to the Emperor,’ Garro corrected him, ‘and on my life, that flag will never fall.’
‘I believe you,’ said the Sigillite. ‘But my point still stands. Your missions, the whole reason why I gave you the grey and my mark to carry…’ He gestured to Garro’s armour, where the small icon of a stylized letter ‘I’ was barely visible. ‘They have been obscured of late by other issues.’
Garro looked away. ‘You speak of what I glimpsed on Saturn’s moon.’
Malcador shook his head. ‘It began long before you ventured to places that are outside your purview.’ The Sigillite wandered to the edge of the pit and looked down, taking in the gloomy settlement far below. ‘You went to the Riga orbital plate at your own bidding. You have been casting out feelers in the time between your missions, looking for something. Someone.’
Garro became very still. Of course Malcador knows, he told himself. How could I have believed he would not see the pattern?
‘Yes,’ continued the Sigillite. ‘I am aware of the Lectitio Divinitatus and the believers who have read Lorgar’s book.’
‘Lord Aurelian? The Word Bearer…?’ Garro’s brow furrowed, unsure if he had heard Malcador correctly.
The Sigillite went on. ‘I know they think of our Emperor as a living deity, despite all his words to the contrary.’ He took a step back. ‘And I know of the woman, Euphrati Keeler. The mere remembrancer who is now revered as a living saint.’
The question slipped out of Garro’s mouth before he could stop himself from uttering it. ‘Where is she?’
Malcador gave a rueful smile. ‘Not everything is clear to me, Nathaniel. Even if that is the image I like to project. Some things…’ The smile became brittle. ‘Some places, even I cannot reach. As curious as that is.’
‘But if you know of them, why do you allow the gatherings to go on unchecked?’
‘There are so many, and more with each passing month.’ The Sigillite opened his arms to the sky. ‘But perhaps you have forgotten that we are embroiled in a war that threatens to consume the galaxy? There are many things of far greater import before me. They are not like the lodges that Horus used to suborn the legions. These believers are little more than groups of worried people drawing solace from the pages of a fanatic’s scribblings.’ He paused, thinking. ‘That book proves my earlier point, when I spoke of malleable loyalty. Lorgar Aurelian was so very faithful when he wrote it. And look at him now.’
Garro nodded. ‘I saw the XVII Legion before Ullanor, and then after Isstvan. Like day and night, they were – but still a commonality of mad zeal in each incarnation.’ He paused, marshalling his words. ‘But I am not a Word Bearer. I am not even a Death Guard any more. I am only the Emperor’s sword, and that I will remain until the day I die.’
‘I believe you,’ Malcador repeated. ‘But even the best of blades can become blunted and careworn if left untended. It is clear that you cannot function fully as my Agentia Primus while you remain distracted by other concerns.’ The Sigillite’s tone hardened, and Garro found himself unconsciously taking up a combat stance.
His war-implants flexed and came alive, as they would if he were about to engage a foe. The very real possibility that Malcador was going to end him sang through Garro’s nerves.
‘You are of no use to me if you are preoccupied. I need agents who are here, in the moment. I need weapons and tools, if I am to end the war before it blackens Terra’s skies.’
‘Speak plainly, then,’ Garro demanded. If the worst were to come, he would meet it head on; this was not the first time he had been ready for such an outcome.
Malcador sighed. ‘After much consideration, I have decided to grant you a leave of absence, of a sort.’ He gestured at the sky, the floating city still blotting out the weak sun above them. ‘Go and find your answers, Nathaniel. Wherever they may lie.’
It was the last thing Garro had expected from the Sigillite. Censure and reprimand, indeed… But not permission. ‘You would allow that?’
‘I spoke the words. I have granted it.’ Malcador eyed him. ‘But there are certain conditions. You will leave behind your wargear, your power armour, your weapons. And more importantly, you will go without the authority I have conferred upon you. In this, you will be only Nathaniel Garro, late of the Death Guard Legiones Astartes. Whatever you want, you will find it on your own.’
In the distance, Garro heard the sound of powerful engines on a fast approach. A dropship was coming in. The warrior reached for his sword and removed it, scabbard and all, from his armour. ‘I will not leave Libertas in the hands of another,’ he intoned. ‘All else, I agree to.’
‘And still you challenge me, even in this…’ Malcador folded his arms. ‘Very well. Keep the sword. Perhaps you will need it.’
A Thunderhawk in unadorned grey livery crested the far ridgeline and tore over the pit, slowing to a hover on jets of flame. It pivoted in place as the pilot looked for somewhere to set down. Garro had done nothing to summon the dropship, nor seen Malcador do likewise, and yet here it was.
‘They will take you where you want to go,’ said the Sigillite, his words carrying over the howl of the engines. Garro raised a hand to shield his face as the Thunderhawk settled on the wide crag, the down-draft blasting a spray of rainwater up and about him. ‘But do not tarry. Horus is coming and we must be ready. I will array every servant of the Emperor in preparation to resist him, and you are counted in that number. Am I clear?’
Garro nodded as the Thunderhawk’s thrusters fell to an idling growl. ‘Aye,’ he replied, turning back to look at the Sigillite. ‘It is–’
He stood alone on the ridge, as the rain began to fall once again.
TWO
Sanctuary
Last words
Confrontation
Ndole cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, toward the back of the ground-effect truck where the big man sat cloaked in shadows. He was large enough to fill the cargo bed of the hovercraft, even bent forward with his head turned down. The big man’s eyes were closed, but Ndole knew he wasn’t sleeping. His kind weren’t capable of that, so someone had once told him.
The driver’s lips thinned and he forced himself to concentrate on the path ahead. A haze of displaced sand moved in a constant wave front before the vehicle. Kicked up by its screaming blowers, the microscopic particles of rusty metal and mineral glass forever scoured at the truck’s exterior. Ndole leaned in and out of shallow, drifting turns as he guided them over the desert landscape. He kept them on rivers of sand that snaked through the larger pieces of d
ebris that studded the terrain; here the remains of a massive bat-winged stratocarrier from the Unification Wars, there a beached ocean liner half-buried under the skeleton of a derelict arcology dome. Smaller clumps of metallic waste formed hillocks of corroded iron, all of it the collapsed remains of civilizations that had died before the Age of the Imperium.
He knew he had to keep his attention on the journey, because at the speed they were travelling across an area this cluttered, even a glancing collision could tear the truck in two and leave them stranded out here. Ndole had no doubt the big man would survive something like that, but he rated his own chances far lower.
It was hard not to keep stealing a peek, though. He had never seen a legionary close at hand before, and to think one of them was here, in his vehicle… Was it a dream or a nightmare? He hoped neither, and reflected on how he had come to give the warrior passage.
It wasn’t as if the big man had threatened Ndole to make him obey. It wasn’t as if he had to. Back at the border settlement, where the Wasted Ranges ended and the Nordafrik Territories really began, everyone in the tap house had heard the screech of the dropship passing overhead. It worried them all. Ndole listened to the server fret about how it could mean the bastard archtraitor was finally here, but he knew that it would not be a ship that came to warn them of that. Ndole fully expected his first sign of Horus’ invasion to be the sky catching fire.
The dropship must have let the big man out at the edge of the settlement, because a few seconds later, two panicked youths in rad-capes came hurtling through, falling over themselves to warn of the new arrival.
He came in only a moment after them. Curious, it was, the sight of a legionary without his power armour, but no less intimidating. At first, he had thought the man might have been a genhanced worker from the breaker’s station, but something in his bearing – and a myriad of scars – spoke otherwise. Even in the hooded grey cloak, the warrior blocked the doorway with his bulk, and had to lower his head in order to enter. As he did that, the gigantic sword on his back briefly became visible and panic exploded. Everyone ran, fleeing for the rear exit. They did not do it because of anything the big man said or did, but because the sheer fact of his presence broke their nerve. And when one fled, all fled.
Garro: Vow of Faith Page 2
