by John French
The damage…+ began Astraeos.
One of the command crew overloaded the plasma couplings. Courage, or madness, it cannot be known.+ Ahriman paused, pivoting in the space above the burnt and twisted deck. +I can hear the screams still – they cling to the hull. But it is a storm without order, only the colour and texture of terror. And amongst it…+
His sending trailed away, and that hesitation sent ice across my skin.
Master?+ sent Sanakht into the empty moment.
Ahriman shook his head, and turned his gaze on me.
Discover what happened here, Ctesias. We make passage to Samatis in two cycles. You have until then.+
A protest began in my thoughts, but it died before forming fully. I could feel the skin of my face prickle inside my helm as Ahriman’s gaze held steady on me. I knew without testing the feeling that this was not a command I could refuse. Of his Circle, I was the one who knew most of the ways of daemons. I was most suited to getting him an answer. Our kind does not like mysteries; they damage our pretensions of infallibility.
As you will it,+ I replied, bowing my head.
Ahriman nodded and gestured to Sanakht.
Sanakht will watch over you, and keep you alive should there be need.+
I could tell from the swordsman’s posture and silence that he had already received the command from Ahriman by thought, and liked it less than I did. I nodded at him, once. He turned away.
Two cycles, Ctesias,+ sent Ahriman, as he floated towards a ragged hole in the bridge wall. The firefly lights of circling gunships moved against the night beyond. I saw one craft change course and begin to close on our position. +Two cycles and then you will have an answer to what happened here.+
I worked through a sunless cycle of day and night. Sanakht watched over me, his half broken soul filling the edge of my senses with itches of impatience. I moved through the dead ship brushing its every wall and rivet with my mind.
Emotions are the currents of the warp. Strong emotions send ripples through it, and leave a mark on the place they occurred. Most marks are shallow, and fade quickly. The strongest emotions leave more permanent impressions. The Fall of Ignorance was a tattered wound, a confusing blur of impressions, so thick that it took hours to tease out shadows of what had happened on board.
Ahriman was right, of course; the ship had died within the warp, and its Geller field had not failed. The daemons that had destroyed it had come from within, and its explosive death had come at the hands of its own, panicked crew. But amongst the wash of terror and the dark splashes of death, there was something else.
The Fall of Ignorance had been the ship of a warband ruled by a priesthood of psykers, who worshipped a selection of poorly chosen daemons and aspects of the Changer of Ways. Like many of the warbands that had been drawn to serve Amon and had then transferred their loyalty to Ahriman, they were not Thousand Sons, but opportunist and mercenaries drawn to power and the possibility of more of it.
Rather like myself, in fact.
Even their most potent sorcerers were weaklings and children compared to Ahriman and the rest of the Circle, but their powers were still considerable. And in all the churned mess of death, fear, rage and desperation I could find no trace of their arts. The wounds left by conjured lightning and the imprint of infernal fire were absent. They had died without raising their most potent weapon in their defence.
That worried me.
I kept moving, trying not to linger on possibilities.
A pattern emerged as I walked and floated through the wreckage. At first it was faint, but the deeper Sanakht and I went the clearer it became. The destruction and terror on the ship radiated from a single central point, like the blast imprint of a bomb detonation. At the centre of the pattern was a corridor. A bare strip of walls, floor and ceiling in an area of the ship which had been inhabited by higher orders of human crew: skilled serfs, favoured attendants, and thralls. It looked like nothing, just an empty corridor, with sticky splatters of blood adhered to the walls. It was the start though, the central point, and if I was to give Ahriman answers then it was the place I needed to truly begin my work. There I would call back the past to witness for us.
I breathed out the last word of my conjuration, and it formed a glowing cloud in the airless void. The cloud solidified, squirming over itself like a snake. I watched it. Static fizzed across my helmet display. My inner eye saw it grow, the coils of light thickening until it was a fat knot in the dark. I could see other shapes within it now, hands and faces stretched into ropes of grainy light.
Do you take pride in what you have become?+ Sanakht asked as he watched me.
‘Pride?’ I replied in my mundane voice. ’A strange question to ask.’
A fair one, given what you are.+ His sending nudged my thoughts. The conjured image before me flickered. Angry black cracks formed across its edges.
‘Please stop that. I realise that your capacities are even more limited than they were, but this is both delicate and difficult, and prone to unpleasant results if it goes wrong.’
I spoke a string of silent sounds, and the shadows in the corridor flickered and thinned.
‘Given what I am…’ I repeated his words carefully, aware that I should just ignore him, but let my annoyance override prudence. ‘I take it you know what I am then?’
‘You are an agent of your own desires – a creature without honour, who has sold himself over and over again. A failure.’
‘Failure?’
‘You have bartered away all that you had for petty power. Nothing exists in your universe that you would not sell to take another breath. You are the greatest of failures. You are a shell where a warrior once stood.’
‘Strong words, brother.’ I let the last word slide from my lips like a slug. ‘You are of course a warrior of ideals, without weakness or failing. I can see that in those you gave your loyalty. Tell me, did Magnus lack something greater and more worthy? Was that why you decided to defy him? Were Ahriman’s high motives so fleeting in your soul that, when Amon came and offered a future of oblivion, you took to it without pause? And when he fell to Ahriman, did the new dream take the place of the old before or after Amon’s corpse hit the floor?’
His swords were a blur in his hands before I realised he had drawn them. I pulled a fragment of my will away from the construct, and slammed it into him. It was not much, but it was enough to rock him backwards for an instant. The sphere of energy bulged and flickered. Frost flicked up the walls, and I felt sores open on my skin as I fought to keep my mind aligned.
‘Careful,’ I said, softly. ‘Remember, this is not something either of us wants to be close to if my concentration slips.’ He looked at me, the edges of his swords sparking in the pale light. He shook his head, and sheathed the blades. To be honest I do not think he intended to kill me. If he had, then this tale might have been very different in the telling.
‘Am I proud? That was the question wasn’t it?’ I asked. The psych-construct before me rippled. ‘Proud of my skill? Proud that, against the odds, I still survive while living in the underworld of a universe that is populated only with enemies?’
I turned my head towards him, and the knot of pale light unravelled. Tendrils of ghost energy whipped through the dark and struck the walls, floor and ceiling. Growths of shape and shadow spread outwards, churning with blurred shape and movement. Whispers and broken voices began to babble in my ears. Sanakht flinched as the backwash from the manifestation hit his mind.
I smiled.
‘Proud? Yes, I suppose I am.’
He turned to reply, but then the past filled the corridor before us, and stole what he was going to say from his tongue.
A human made of shredded light rose from the dark. The ghosts of robes and limbs blurred at his edges. The vision was not real, of course. It was an imprint left by what had happened here, pulled from the warp and
cast into being like an image projected onto a wall. I could see a face, but it was not the face that he had worn in life. Pit-black eyes bulged above a billowing slit of a mouth. It was the face of his soul. The face of a human psyker, not powerful, but one of those kept by some of Ahriman’s followers as thralls. And he was running for his life.
I watched as he turned and looked behind him, the image exploding in splinters of light as his mind shattered with fear. I heard the ghost of his scream, faint and distant, as though it was coming from far away. I looked behind us, at where he had looked.
In that moment, just as the image of a dead man looked behind him, I saw a shadow blot out the darkness.
And I heard a howl.
What was that?+ sent Sanakht. The ghost images were draining away into the airless dark. I was shivering, my fingers rattling inside my gauntlets. Cold danced on my spine. +Ctesias, did you hear that?+ In my head the sound of the howl rose again and again. +Ctesias?+
I was breathing hard, the blood a rising drum beat in my skull. Sanakht’s swords were drawn and he was turning his head as though trying to catch a sound.
I hear wolves,+ he sent.
No.+
I reached for the bolt pistol at my waist. I carry it because I have always carried it, but I seldom use it. My mind is the only weapon I need. Ice was still coiling my spine. It had all become very clear just what had happened to the Fall of Ignorance and, as ever, the truth once known is never comforting.
Not wolves, brother,+ I sent. +That was the call of a hound.+
And, as I sent the word, two eyes opened in the dark-like holes cut into a furnace, and the hound howled as it bounded into reality.
Everything in the universe is balance, or so Magnus once said. For every sorrow there is a joy. For every light a darkness. And for everything that clings to life there is a predator. It is the oldest of balances and the oldest source of fears. The growl from the dark beyond the firelight, the ring of teeth rising silent from dark water, the wings of the raptor circling against the sky. We of the Thousand Sons imagine ourselves transcendent amongst mortals, our powers akin to those of gods. So they are: our arrogance is not unfounded, but we are not separate from the herd of mortality. There are creatures that hunt us, ever hungering for our souls. Of these, the hounds of the Lord of Skulls are perhaps to be most feared.
The hound formed as it leapt. Its head was a cave of flame, its teeth the tips of broken swords. Blood-caked fur and molten scales skinned its red muscle. Its presence filled the passage with the reek of hacked meat and hot iron.
Sanakht reacted before I could form a thought. His swords lit as he cut, bright streaks of lighting and fire. I saw the blows hit, saw the power and beauty as his force sword stabbed into the hound’s muzzle, and the perfect timing as the power sword’s edge opened its flank. I saw the hound land, molten-brass blood spreading in spheres in the dark as it crumpled. Except it did not happen.
The tip of the force sword rammed forward, and the fire in the cutting edge guttered like a blown candle. The power flowing through the blade vanished. The hound dipped its head in midair, and met the dead metal tip with its forehead. The blow sheered into empty air. I could smell burning sugar and meat. A collar of barbed brass circled its neck, glowing with forge heat and hatred. I saw it and wanted to scream. The warp was draining into it, fleeing my mind and leaving me naked before the hungering void. The hound was a hole in my mind’s eye, a stretched shape of shadow.
Iron claws shrieked on plasteel as the hound pounced. Sanakht spun to turn the momentum of his blows back, but his feet were mag-locked to the floor, his movement slowed. The hound arched its head back. Sanakht flinched back as its jaws snapped shut where his neck had been. He released the mag-clamps in his feet and spun into the space above.
I fired my bolt pistol. The hound leapt up the wall, claws gouging into metal plates as it shed the pretensions of gravity. My bolt shells exploded in its wake. Sanakht’s feet hit the ceiling, and clamped to the plating. The hound bounded off the wall, muscle flowing like pistons. Sanakht twisted and slammed the dead metal of his force sword into its muzzle. The blow twitched the head aside, and the jaws snapped shut a hair’s span from Sanakht’s face. If it had been anyone else, I would have thought it a second lucky escape, but while Sanakht was many things, I would never deny that with a sword he was closer to divinity than mortal.
He rammed his power sword up under the hound’s jaw. The lightning sheathed blade exploded through bone and muscle. The hound’s body scrabbled at the air, claws skittering off the ceiling plates. Sanakht ripped the sword down, back through the head and out of its muzzle. The collar around the hound’s neck flashed blue with heat and shattered globules of flesh and liquid brass exploded outwards. Sanakht flinched back, disconnected his feet from the ceiling plates and pushed off.
I heard another howl and had time to turn as a second hound slid from the shadows. I fired. The round hit its shoulder, and ripped a crater in its bulk. Splinters of crimson scale exploded into the vacuum and hissed to ectoplasm. I squeezed the trigger again, just as the hound hit me.
The lack of gravity saved me. If I had fallen, the last thing I would have felt in life… was…
The hound’s paws and chest slammed into me, its mouth yawned wide to bite down on my head. I pitched backwards, and my boots unclamped from the floor. The hound’s jaws closed. A single tooth caught my forearm and slit the armour open like skin. I tumbled down the corridor. Beads of blood scattered after me. Bright, white pain exploded in my skull. Blackness was seeping into me as blood poured out. The warp fled into the distance. Ceiling, walls and floor hammered me as I tumbled over and over, still clutching my staff and pistol.
I could hear the hound bounding after me, its claws ripping metal as it sprung down the corridor. Its hunger filled my mind and I knew that it would never stop, that it would drag my soul back to the blood-soaked dark beneath the Throne of Skulls. It was inevitable. It had been ordained. I raised my pistol, targeting spinning runes as my world turned over and over.
A sword blade hacked down into the back of the creature’s neck. The power field activated just before the edge met flesh. Scales, flesh and bone sprayed out, as the blade cut down and down.
My back hit the wall. I punched my hand into the metal and jerked to a stop. Sanakht was tumbling beside the daemon, pushing his blade deeper into the hounds lower neck. I raised my pistol and fired. Three bolts ripped the creatures head free and blew it into splinters and froth.
I let out a breath as my thoughts and the warp reconnected. That, more than still being alive, was a sublime relief.
Sanakht struck the wall next to me and gripped onto it.
Are you injured?+ he asked.
Your concern is refreshingly unexpected,+ I managed. Blood was still pumping from the slit in my arm. +I am functioning.+
Can you move?+
By way of reply, I kicked off the wall and shot down the corridor. We had to reach our gunship. We had to get back to the Sycorax. My mind reached out, trying to find Ahriman, trying to speak to him, but the only answer was the fading cries of the dead. Sanakht followed, kicking off walls and gantries in the spinning silence
This was not a random attack.+ I sent as we hurtled through the dark. +They were waiting for us. This was their message. The hounds have been loosed to hunt us, to hunt him.+
It was one of the moments of my life where my capacity for something approaching loyalty surprised me. I should have known better. I should not have been so naive.
Which power unleashed them?+
It was a good question, and I should have seen that it was the only question which really mattered. Hindsight makes us all seem fools.
Pick one,+ I spat back.
On the edge of my mind I could hear more howls rising from the distant night.
Ahriman was waiting as we jumped the gunship. I had managed to c
onnect to his mind only minutes before we docked, blurting out a warning as my body fought to staunch the blood flowing from my wound. Sanakht had his swords drawn and lit as we hit the floor. Blood scattered from me as I rose from where I landed. My eyes took in the rings of Rubricae covering the hangar deck. Astraeos and the rest of the Circle stood beside Ahriman, helmed and armoured.
Surprise spilled through me. It was so calm. So still. No blood. No howl of hounds. Bright stablights reflecting on azure armour. I felt myself sway.
It was wrong.
Or was it I that was wrong?
Ctesias,+ sent Ahriman, stepping forward.
The hounds were coming. I had heard their cries. They had tasted my blood, and I knew that they were coming with total certainty.
Ctesias?+
I heard the thought, but it was distant. I blinked and tried to form a sending, tried to open my mouth. But nothing happened.
The world was cracking. Smears of red marked the light touching my eyes. I felt one of my legs slide out from beneath me and the deck met me as I fell to my knees.
Red. Everything was calm, but all I could see was red: the red of thick blood rippling in a pool, the red of a sun hidden by the smoke of a burning world and the red of a sword pulled from the forge. The world was drowning in crimson and I was drowning with it.
And then a portion of my stupidity fell from my mind. I should have known. Of Ahriman’s entire Circle I should have known, and seen, and not been so blind. I am, it seems, not immune to my own form of hubris.
I tried to rise, but I could not.
I felt hands touch me, and try to pull me up.
I forced my mouth open.
‘They…’ I began, and felt thoughts try to reach my own, but my mind was a blur of sharp edges and heat. ‘They are coming,’ I rasped. My breaths were coming fast. The air in my lungs was smoke and cinders.
‘We are ready for them,’ said Astraeos.
