by Guy Haley
Dammekos, the Tyrant of Lochos, was vital.
A great will was caged in his modest flesh, and from behind his plain face a sharp intelligence looked out upon the world. He masked his eagerness at the party’s approach, but Perturabo saw it all too clearly, and suspicion stirred in his breast as to what this man desired of him.
The men and their charge halted at the dais of the throne. Miltiades grasped Perturabo’s shoulder and pushed down to force the boy to kneel. Although he was a head shorter than the sub-optio, Perturabo was as immovable as bedrock, and resisted without effort.
Dammekos waved Miltiades away irritably, too excited by his guest to care for the niceties of deference. Miltiades stepped back, and he and his three men knelt.
A herald came forward.
‘All hail Dammekos,’ he called in a clear, beautiful voice, ‘eighth of his name, Tyrant of Lochos, third of the twelve Tyranthikos, Lord of Irex, Kerroitan, Domminiki, and the Septologies of Alka. All hail Dammekos!’
The soldiers in the hall stamped once The herald stepped smartly back.
Dammekos adjusted his sceptres.
‘Well then, Miltiades, what have we here?’ His voice was quick and prying. Not unpleasant, as there was a generous measure of warmth to the words, but his charm could not mask his intellect, nor his greed. ‘The mythical boy of Chaldicea, I’ll warrant. No myth at all!’
‘It is he, tyrant,’ said Miltiades.
‘I admit, I had not expected you to return so early, Miltiades,’ said the tyrant. ‘You have outdone yourself. You only set out last night! Weren’t you just saying last week how long it would take you to cover Chaldicea to find him? It appears you were wrong.’ His courtiers laughed. They whispered behind their hands. Miltiades looked up. ‘We found him here, my king, climbing the Phrygean cliffs. We got little further than the Irex road. Shepherds saw him yesterday, attempting the climb. We went to meet him.’
‘And where are these shepherds?’
‘With their flocks, my king,’ said Miltiades.
‘Miltiades!’ Dammekos scolded affably. ‘What kind of example are you setting to our guest? Where is your sense of generosity? See to it they are rewarded - five lochans apiece.’
‘It shall be so, my king,’ said Miltiades.
Dammekos turned his attention directly upon the boy. Until then he had been examining him covetously but had not engaged with him, as if Perturabo were a work of art he might purchase rather than a thinking being. Now Dammekos smiled broadly and looked into Perturabo’s ice-blue eyes.
‘You must be the boy who has been roaming the Chaldic highlands. You must be,’ he mused. ‘I do not see how it could not be you. I have never seen so finely formed a youth. You outmatch the stories.’
‘I do not know if this person is me,’ said Perturabo mildly. Now it was Dammekos’ turn to be appraised by the boy. The king smiled indulgently at the boy’s boldness.
‘You do not know?’
‘I have no memory from before yesterday. I was halfway up the cliff. I finished my climb. That is all I remember.’
‘How came you to be climbing the cliff?’
‘I do not know. I remember nothing,’ said Perturabo.
‘My king!’ hissed Miltiades. You will address him as ‘my king!” Perturabo looked back at the officer. ‘He is not my king. Or if he is, I do not know him.’
Dammekos let out a disarming laugh. ‘Now now, sub-optio, we cannot rebuke our guest for neglecting the proper form of address. If he remembers nothing, how can he know what to say?’
‘Then he should learn, my king,’ said Miltiades. ‘He is in your hall.’
‘He will, we can be sure of that. But he is correct. If he does not know who he is, then how can he know me for his master? For now, let us be kind and forgive him his ill manners. Tell me boy, there have been reports for several months of a youth of your description coming from the plateau of Chaldicea. What do you know of that?’
‘I said I know nothing.’
‘It must be you,’ said the king again. ‘The wanderer who comes down from the mountains. The boy who slays jalpidae, and who bested a hydraka with a wooden dub. The child who wields a smith’s hammer with the skill of an artist.’
Perturabo looked at his hands. The cuts inflicted by his climb had scabbed over already. Was that normal? They were thick and heavy, digger’s hands. Could such hands be artful?
‘I do not know this person,’ said Perturabo.
‘Shall we see then?’ said the tyrant pleasantly. He bent forwards in his throne, embracing his sceptres to him. ‘Shall we find out together if you are this boy?’
‘You mean to test me?’
‘If you are agreeable to the proposition.’
‘What if I fail?’
‘You will not be harmed,’ replied Dammekos. ‘I am sure such a fine example of manhood could be found a role here of some sort. You will be cared for.’
‘And what if I pass?’ said Perturabo suspiciously.
The king smiled. ‘Then we shall see. Pass or fail, in either case I promise no harm will come to you. What manner of king would I be to slay a living legend, one that brings joy to my people? Tyranny is an art. You will not find me an artless man.’
‘I agree to your test then,’ said Perturabo. He had nothing to lose, and he was curious to see if he was this boy, and what the test would be.
The king raised a hand and nodded. A gong sounded. A door in the side of the hall was flung open, and a bald eunuch heavy with flab-coated muscle strode in. Behind him, six of his fellows dragged a portable cast-iron forge into the room. Great heat radiated from the metal cylinder holding its fires, and an orange light glowed through a grill in the door. Bellows were set up, along with a quenching butt. Lastly, an anvil was brought within and placed upon a tree stump. The wood was freshly felled and still yellow, while the anvil’s dull grey was as yet unmarked. Both were new, untested. Perturabo was pleased with the parallel.
The eunuchs opened the side of the portable forge and removed a plate from the tapering roof, exposing a bed of fiercely glowing charcoal. The eunuchs pumped the bellows and the coals glowed brighter. Thin smoke streamed from the short chimney, winding its way up into the palace’s hammer beams. A barrel of iron rods was set beside Perturabo, and a wooden carryall full of tools.
Everyone in the hall looked at him expectantly. Perturabo looked at the king.
‘Begin,’ said the tyrant.
Perturabo let his instinct guide him. He decided then and there to make a sword. He took up a bundle of iron rods and sorted them, testing their weight and their tone by striking them upon the anvil. He listened carefully to each. He had no idea which ones to choose, so selected those that felt right. He thrust them deep into the fire without gloves, his hands coming so close to the flames that the king’s courtiers gasped, but Perturabo did not fear the flames and did not flinch from them, instead continuing to hold the rods as they took on the heat of the furnace.
‘Bellows,’ he said, releasing the metal. The eunuchs recognised the power in him and obeyed instantly, pumping long, curved bellow irons until the fire roared and the metal turned white.
To draw out the metal, Perturabo put on a thick hide glove, sized for an adult but already tight on his fist. He did not use the pliers offered him, but dragged out the metal in his gloved hand and commenced beating upon it with the smith’s hammer. He worked slowly, methodically. The iron was unyielding; it required the application of heat to change it. Only in this way could its uncompromising nature be moulded into a weapon. There was a warning there, perhaps, but Perturabo did not recognise it as such, being drawn into his work with the total absorption shared by geniuses and the simple-minded alike. He worked far faster than any smith known to the court, striking the metal as quickly and surely as the steam hammers in the foundries. Showers of sparks rained from the blade taking shape under his hand, skittering away across the marble flagstones.
For hours he worked. The court receded from hi
s attention. There was only the iron on his anvil. With his indomitable will he shaped it, refusing to acknowledge its strength as he forced it to accept its new form. Iron was honest and true, without guile.
A warrior’s metal, with none of the sickness of gold, he thought.
How did he know that? Did it matter? He liked the iron; he did not care for gold. It sang to him as he struck it, and his heart knew the refrain.
Seven times the blade went into the fires, came out, was beaten and quenched. Mists of metallic steam billowed from the water butt, filling the hall and raising the temperature as the morning passed. Dammekos watched, fascinated. The rest of the court grew restive, requiring food and drink but unwilling to leave before their master. Neither the tyrant nor the boy noticed.
One last time the blade went into the water. Perturabo wiped the sweat from his brow and held up the weapon by its tang. Dammekos gestured that Miltiades take it.
The blade was plain and unadorned, lacking fitments and yet to be ground to an edge, but it was clear that it was fit for its purpose.
‘It is perfect!’ said Miltiades in amazement. He weighed its balance in his hand, sighting down the edge. ‘Perfect.’ He held it up to his lord. ‘This was done with just a hammer.’
Whispers went around the great hall.
‘It is not finished. It needs sharpening. No weapon is complete until it is honed,’ said Perturabo. Another thing he knew without knowing, as innate to him as his sense for iron.
‘Indeed,’ said Dammekos thoughtfully. ‘You may hone it later, in my engineering workshops.’
‘I thank you. It would…’ Perturabo thought for a moment, unsure of how to describe the emotion he felt at the thought of leaving the blade dull, ‘displease me if I were not to complete my task.’
‘Commendable, young man.’ A calculating look came into Dammekos’ eye. It saw all of the value of Perturabo, but none of his worth; the youth, though new to the world, was sure of that. ‘Perhaps you might wish to work here, and be prenticed to our metalworkers? It would be a fine life.’
‘Perhaps,’ replied the boy. ‘But I feel this working of iron is not my true strength.’
‘Then what is?’ asked Dammekos.
Perturabo looked around. He pointed to the gun at the sub-optio’s waist, a complicated device of bulbous protrusions and flanged edges built around a glass flask crackling with captive lightning. ‘That,’ he said. ‘I would learn its workings. And this…’ He gestured at the high roof. ‘I wish to build, I think. The stone speaks to me, as much as the iron.’
Dammekos clapped his hands in delight. ‘Do you still doubt, sub-optio? The boy is he, the wanderer. Well! Well, well, well. Anoinkai’s hand is in this, it is sure! He is a gift from the gods!’
‘Who is Anoinkai?’ asked the boy.
‘The goddess of fate,’ said Miltiades. ‘How can he be of the gods if does not know that?’ The sub-optio’s hand rested on his sword hilt warily.
‘What are gods?’ asked Perturabo. The term was alien to his ears.
‘The beings above us, who watch from the summit of Mount Telephus and judge all men. These are their likenesses,’ said Dammekos, gesturing at the sculptures either side of him. ‘Gozek and Calaphais, the twin tyrants of the gods.’
Perturabo looked at the statues doubtfully.
‘Has anyone ever seen these beings?’
A shaven-headed man, perspiring in ornate robes, stepped forwards.
A priest, thought Perturabo contemptuously. He recognised his sort instinctively, and just as instinctively, he did not trust them.
‘They are removed from us by their own design,’ said the priest. ‘The divine and the mundane are separate, overlapping spheres that are distinct, but which influence each other.’
Perturabo sneered. ‘A world you cannot see? The existence of such things is illogical. All mortal experience can be encompassed by the rational laws of reality.’ He paused. How could he prove what he had just said? Nevertheless, he felt it deeply, utterly, as an unshakeable conviction.
‘Blasphemy!’ said the priest.
‘Make-believe. A modesty curtain for ignorance,’ said Perturabo.
‘I do not like these gods. They are the enemies of reason.’
‘Then if not from the gods, where are you from?’ asked Dammekos.
‘I do not know.’ He paused again. A fierce yearning tightened his throat. ‘I want to know.’
‘Then stay here, with me,’ said Dammekos. ‘You shall learn all we can teach you. I will help you discover your place of origin, but you must serve our city in return.’
‘In battle?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What of peace?’
‘You made a sword. You could have made a plough.’
‘What of peace?’ Perturabo repeated. A hot feeling stirred in him. He did not like it.
Dammekos smiled unconvincingly. ‘There will be peace. No one attacks Lochos. They see the walls of our city and they give up in despair and retreat. Lochos has not been successfully sieged in six hundred years! War is necessary boy, but never desirable. There is always time for peace.’
The boy’s cold expression froze the tyrant’s mirth. Dammekos’ smile set on his face.
Liar, the boy’s expression said.
‘What use are walls against someone who refuses to give up?’
‘I have not yet met such a person,’ said the tyrant, but in his heart he knew that very person was standing in front of him, dripping with sweat from the heat of the forge. ‘If you are to serve me, I must know you. Tell me your name.’
‘It is Perturabo.’
‘That is not a name of Lochos. What does it mean?’ asked the king.
‘I do not know,’ said Perturabo. ‘Only that it is my name, and was always intended to be so. As to its meaning, I will find out.’
He looked around the hall, at all the artifice that had gone into its construction, and at the people it encompassed, the clothes they wore and the jewels they displayed. Their weapons, their habits, their footwear - he wanted to know how they all worked.
‘I will find everything out.’
TWO
DANTIOCH
999.M30
GHOLGHIS, THE VULPA STRAITS, SAK’TRADA DEEPS
Barabas Dantioch was tired of the dark. His face longed for bright sunlight, and he went helmless as much as the temperature allowed, but it was never light on Gholghis, not truly. Its small, wan sun shone candle-dim in a sky crowded with stars. Lit by pale white light, Gholghis’ grey rock made for a confusing landscape where shadow and stone were difficult to tell apart, as if the planet had camouflaged itself in order to hide. White dwarfs birthed poor planets as a rule, but Gholghis seemed especially unfriendly, as if resentful of the Iron Warriors’ presence.
Yet there was life of a sort on Gholghis. Primitive lichens clung to shaded rocks, and there were fungi-like plant-animals in the caves. A thin atmosphere gave the garrison enough air to breathe The stone was poor, but when crushed and sintered it made passable blocks for the construction of the fortress. An Iron Warrior worked with what he had.
These thoughts and many others passed through Dantioch’s well-ordered mind as he stood upon the parapet. His grand battalion laboured a hundred metres away, shoring up the weakened west wall. All the while, Sergeant Zolan spoke urgently, as he already had at length.
‘Gholghis is lost, warsmith,’ Zolan was saying. ‘We need to evacuate this place. Krak Fiorina is under nightly siege. Our company at Stratopolae is suffering catastrophic losses. These worlds cannot be held. We’re damned if we stay here by those thrice cursed… things. Look below, the rock of the western facing is rotten through.’
He pointed down the wall to where Iron Warriors laboured with heavy construction units. Cracks in the stone peeked through the shrouding of plastek-covered scaffolding.
There was a watercourse far beneath the wall. For some reason, the alien hrud favoured it as some sort of conduit. Transiting its length
, they simply vanished. How they did this was a mystery, and where they went when they had traversed it equally so.
‘They pass through the bowels of the earth in such numbers,’ said Dantioch, scratching irritably at his short beard, ‘that our wall returns to the dust whence it came.’
‘Everything is failing,’ said Zolan. ‘My squad has multiple issues with its equipment, and my men are not alone.’
Warsmith Dantioch watched a three-storey-tall machine scratch at the ground with bladed shovels while another waited to pump rockcrete into the watercourse. The work progressed slowly; their serfs were all dead, the auxiliaries too. Most of their servitors had aged into uselessness.
‘The primarch orders us to hold the Vulpa Straits,’ Dantioch said. ‘We are iron. We will not bend.’
‘Iron perishes with time, and time is against us. Do you think me so lacking in honour and fortitude that I would suggest a retreat lightly?’ said Zoltan forcefully. ‘There are too few of us left to hold this place Our orders have been superseded by circumstance. There is no point in holding the straits any longer. There will be no settlement here while this migration builds, and we cannot utilise it as a supply line. Warsmith, the hrud have not settled here. They do not seem to be about to change their minds. We should let them pass through and return when they have gone. The Fifty-First Expedition is finished. Let us retreat, regroup and throw ourselves on Perturabo’s mercy, preciously rare as that is, while there are still some of us left to retreat. I am sure you can sway the primarch.’
Dantioch turned a disapproving face on his subordinate.
‘We hold,’ he repeated slowly, as if he were speaking to a mentally deficient serf.
Zolan’s face twisted in anger but he bowed, his palm flat against his heart.
‘As you command, warsmith,’ he said. ‘Iron within.’
‘Iron without,’ responded Dantioch.
Zolan let him be. Dantioch was glad of the respite. He had little to say to Zolan because Zolan was right: Gholghis was lost, and the 51st Expeditionary Fleet had come to the end of its life.
