Saturnine

by Dan Abnett

  He closed his eyes. He breathed deeply. Sooty wind from the canyons of the circuit walls shivered the feathers of his pinions. He tried to locus on the scraps of the fading visions, attempting to pull them back. The one of Perturabo, the chart, the shell cases, a departing ghost, almost just a memory. Bring that back. See that again. See better. See more.

  There.

  The smoking iron of willpower. The texture of the old paper chart. The weight of the bolter shells. A smell of dust and smoke. Sanguinius was briefly invested in a body that was heavier and slower than his own, a body too dense to soar and fly, a body as heavy as a neutron star, but flimsy compared to the concentrated mass of the unswerving mind within it. Perturabo’s mind was a weapon. It was all weapons at once. It was fast becoming the weapon, the apex of obliteration.

  The touch of it made Sanguinius shiver. The cold of it, the absolute zero of a negative star. But he forced himself to keep looking. He needed to see-

  Shell cases placed at Gorgon Bar, at Colossi Gate. At other points too, but he couldn’t resolve them. The names on the chart were hard to read. His hand, my hand, taking up another shell case. It seems hot to the touch, as if just fired, but it is fresh. What is that heat? Ambition. Yes, ambition and desire. And it has another flavour, the touch of another upon it. The print of someone who is no longer present, but was there recently, someone who picked up that shell and handed it to the Lord of Iron and, in doing so, invested it with terrible meaning and significance.

  The shell turns in iron fingers, thoughtful. At his side, in the smoke that drifted across the bridge span, Sanguinius’ fingers turned and rippled, unconsciously miming the action.

  That trace. The scent upon it. The imprint of someone…

  Abaddon.

  Lupercal’s first and chosen, the finest and brightest of all the First Captains, once a credit to all Legions and a model of warriorship. He gave it to Perturabo. He gave it its meaning.

  The iron hand starts to move, thoughtful, considering a placement, as a master gauges his next play in regicide. It reaches over to set it down, to set it down upon the chart. Where? Where? What is the move? Where will you put it?

  Sanguinius shivered. The vision was already fleeting again, sliding into nothing. He couldn’t hold it. His will could not match the iron ingot of Perturabo’s will, or the whim of whatever numinous cloud of knowing steered the visions to him.

  ‘Just let me see it,’ he whispered.

  The hand, the shell, move. Reaching out-

  Gone.

  Sanguinius opened his eyes. So close. He’d almost controlled it. But the battlements were behind him now, and the ritual potency of the blood drenching them was-

  He reached up, hand shaking, and smeared drying blood from the breast of his plate. He squeezed the matted strands of his hail until drops ran across his palm. Gene blood. Kin blood. The blood of Perturabo’s branch. If there was power in it…

  He put his hand to his mouth and tasted it.

  The chart, for a second, very clear. The hand, the shell, going down-

  Then fire. Raging fire. Pain beyond any bearable threshold The chart and the shell and the weight of Perturabo were swept away in an instant, eclipsed by agony. The first vision again, the one that had originally come, unbidden, as the day’s battle ended. Rage beyond measure. The eyes of another.

  Not this. I don’t want to see this. I want to see-

  The vision could not be reasoned with. It could not be commanded. Sanguinius tasted blood in his mouth. He saw flames, an inferno, spitting fat, burning human long bones like logs. Pitiful corpses stacked up like split firewood. Dead machines and fractured walls. Stacks of skulls, grinning at their own doom.

  He knew that none of it was enough, nor would ever be enough.

  A sky bridge, like the one he stood on, but greater, more massive, and broken. A gateway plinth, its proud stone lion gone except for the stumps of paws. Rubble. A plaque on the plinth, cracked. Inscribed there, etched into heat-brittled stone, the name of the place.

  Pons Solar.

  Then the agony increased, more than any pain should be allowed to be, more than any frame, mortal or immortal, could bear to contain. A pain that begot pain. A pain that wanted to be shared with all others.

  Sanguinius knew whose eyes he saw through. It wasn’t the vision he had chosen to see, but it was the brightest, and it dispelled all others.

  He fell to his knees in the middle span of the bridge at Gorgon Bar, and screamed out a pain that was his own, and a rage that did not belong to him.

  Angron. It was Angron’s.

  * * *

  In the south of the Sanctum Imperialis, the transport rolled to a halt and they got out, pulling up their hoods against the heavy precipitation of sub-void atmospherics.

  Around them lay empty streets, lined with proud mansions and noble halls, all untouched by the war except they were shuttered and boarded. The district had been cleared recently, whole streets in the lee of the massive wall vacated.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Therajomas, his young face pinched and puzzled.

  ‘The Saturnine Quarter,’ Sindermann replied.

  He had reported to Bhab, as per instructions, and a transport had been provided without explanation. Then followed a long drive through the cowering citadel, slowed at times by columns of blank-eyed refugees. Then quieter streets, then empty ones.

  Sindermann glanced around, rain in his face. The transport had already turned and departed. To the east, beyond the high ridge of the Ultimate Wall, the sky was bright with ferocious, churning light. To the west, a similar confusion of flame-cast. Western Projection and Adamant. In the span of the last day, the traitor host had begun fresh assaults on those two wall lines, the first such effort to come from the south. Sindermann had been told the assaults were unremitting, artillery bombardments from dispositions of the turned Mechanicum ballisteria and, it was rumoured, the Iron Warriors’ Stor-Bezashk siege-breakers. The magnitude was terrifying.

  Yet Saturnine was quiet, an empty quarter, bracketed by these two great assaults. Sindermann fancied it had been emptied in case Adamant caved, though why? If Adamant caved, then the Ultimate Wall was breached, and nowhere in the Sanctum Imperials Palatine would be safe any more.

  Nowhere on Terra.

  Therajomas tugged at Sindermann’s sleeve. Two soldiers had emerged from the blank double-doors of a high-gabled mansion, and were approaching them. Long black rain-cloaks over poppy-red diess uniforms trimmed in gold and white. Officers of the Imperialis Auxilia, the Hort Palatine. One carried a torch-pole.

  ‘Sindermann?’ he asked.

  Sindermann showed him his identification and warrant.

  ‘Who’s this?’ the officer asked, glancing at Therajomas.

  Sindermann introduced Therajomas Kanze, and told him to produce his papers.

  ‘I was told one,’ said the officer. ‘Just you.’

  ‘We’re hardly going to leave him out here,’ said Sindermann. The transport’s already gone.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the worst thing that has happened,’ the officer replied.

  He paused. ‘I’ll vox for approval. He can come in and wait at least.’ ‘You are?’ Sindermann asked.

  ‘Conroi-Captain Ahlborn,’ the man replied. His accent was strong. Where was that? Tuniz? Aleppo? The Hort Palatine drew the best from all over.

  ‘You are of the Hort?’ Sindermann asked. The Imperialis Auxilia?’ He’d thought so at first, the red uniforms were right, but as the men had come closer Sindermann had noticed discrepancies. The long black coats were not the grey paletots issued to the Hort, and the badge on them, a silver palatine aquila, was unfamiliar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ahlborn, ‘but seconded to the Command Prefectus Unit for the duration, at the Praetorian’s order.’

  ‘The Command Prefectus Unit?’

  ‘It’s a new initiative,’ said Ahlborn.

  ‘Handling what?’ asked Sinderm
ann.

  ‘Security. Secrecy. Disclosure. Matters of confidence.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Sindermann gently.

  ‘People asking unnecessary questions,’ replied Ahlborn with a tight, cold smile.

  Sindermann nodded, and made a polite gesture of acquiescence.

  ‘Follow,’ said Ahlborn.

  Inside the heavy doors, which Ahlborn’s comrade carefully barred behind them, lay an empty atrium. Gloom and dust presided over a few items of furniture, pulled aside and covered with sheets. A walkway had been laid across the old tiles of the noble townhouse, the linked mesh-and-plastek duckboards of trench systems. Paintings had gone from the high walls, leaving negative shadows. Sindermann wondered who had lived there.

  They walked down long, echoing hallways, following the walkway, and Ahlborn didn’t speak. They descended two levels and then, to Sindermann’s curiosity, passed through a hole that had been cut cleanly through the building’s heavy wall. A heavy melta cut, precision work. The edges were fused smooth. Sindermann could smell the acrid residue. It had only been done a day or two earlier.

  They were in another building now, adjoining the first. Here, long galleries were lined with bulk hydroponic tanks. The light of the low-setting solar lamps filled the hallway with a dull glow. The air was ripe with the smell of mulch and recycled water. Sindermann had heard that whole districts and some prestigious buildings had been seized, and turned into crop production centres in a desperate effort to maintain food stocks. He’d never seen it. This place had once been, what? A museum? A court library? Whatever exhibits or books had been held here had been cleared out wholesale, and replaced with something more precious, the basic engines of nourishment.

  There was no one else around. Ahlborn kept them on the walkway route.

  ‘These are high-yield systems,’ Sindermann remarked, gesturing to the banks of crop-tanks as they strode past them.

  Ahlborn nodded.

  They require constant tending to maximise growth,’ said Sindermann.

  ‘They do,’ Ahlborn agreed.

  ‘Where are the farm staff?’

  ‘Dismissed yesterday,’ Ahlborn said.

  ‘Without care, these crops will fail,’ said Sindermann. He stopped and looked at a tank of tubers where the shoots sprouting from the suspended rhizomes looked colourless and wan.

  They’ll be moved,’ said Ahlborn. ‘If there’s time,’ he added.

  ‘Time before…?’ Sindermann began.

  ‘Please, follow me.’

  They came at last to a great hall, a cellar vault or perhaps a water cistern that had been drained. It was warm and damp, like a cave.

  Diamantis was waiting for them.

  ‘The companion is approved,’ the Huscarl told Ahlborn. The Hort-captain nodded.

  ‘Why have you summoned us here?’ Sindermann asked.

  ‘I haven’t,’ Diamantis replied. From his expression, Sindermann could tell that Huscarl Diamantis still regarded the interrogator order as an annoyance.

  ‘I sent for you.’

  The Praetorian stepped through an archway, and entered the hall. Sindermann felt the boy at his side recoil, and drop to his knees. Diamantis and the Hort Palatines had put their fists to their chests. Sindermann wondered if he should do either, or both.

  This was no chance encounter on a rooftop terrace. This was not Rogal Dorn in his father’s old robe, caught off guard. Dorn wore his full battleplate. He was dressed for war. Moving leisurely, he still seemed impossibly powerful.

  ‘Bid him stand up,’ Dorn said to Sindermann.

  Sindermann yanked Therajomas to his feet.

  ‘You have assembled your order, Kyril?’ Dorn asked.

  ‘As you willed it, lord,’ Sindermann replied. ‘Small as yet, but the numbers of the coterie are fine and eager. They are already out, despatched to various points, to witness and record. But you brought me here.’

  Dorn nodded. He glanced at Ahlborn and his companion.

  ‘Refreshment,’ he said. ‘Recaff or tea or something.’

  The men nodded and hurried out.

  ‘I brought you here,’ said Dorn, ‘for the same reason I willed your order back into existence. To observe. To set down for posterity. To provide meaning to what we do. To represent the hope that there will be a future.’

  ‘I am glad to-‘

  Dorn raised his hand, an index finger firm to halt Sindermann’s reply.

  ‘And for you, here, a specific reason,’ he said. ‘You led me here.’

  ‘I did?’ Sindermann responded, baffled.

  ‘Unwittingly,’ said Dorn. ‘But I have been too long in the cosmos to ignore the significance of coincidence and the idle play of fate. So I brought you here to see what you had put into my mind, and observe the consequence. For it may be the saving of us.’

  ‘Then I am honoured, my lord.’

  ‘Understand, Kyril,’ said Dorn, ‘you are at risk. If I’m right, this place will fall in harm’s way and I cannot guarantee your safety.’

  Sindermann shrugged. ‘Terra is besieged, lord,’ he said. ‘You cannot guarantee the safety of any of us.’

  Dorn’s lips tightened, then he nodded.

  ‘This is particular, Sindermann,’ he said. ‘If fate is kind to us, the greatest threat of all is coming here. And will find, to his surprise, we are ready for him.’

  Sindermann ignored the ‘him’. He didn’t want to think about the ‘him’.

  ‘Here?’ he asked. This… place? This cellar?’

  ‘Saturnine,’ said Dorn.

  He gestured for them to follow him, and they fell in behind him with Diamantis at their heels. Through the broad brick archway, another, still larger cellar cavern yawned. Sindermann and Therajomas both stopped short, dumb with dismay.

  A sub-vox snarl snapped at them, quivering their diaphragms, the growl of a mature carnodon. The huge, Ironclad-pattern Dreadnought swung towards them, motivator pistons hissing, and brought its weapons to bear.

  ‘Peace, Venerable Bohemond,’ Dorn admonished.

  The Dreadnought, dressed in the colours of the VII Legion, stepped hack and replanted itself, limbs grinding. It depowered its weapon systems. Its growl reduced to a warning purr.

  But it wasn’t the Dreadnought that had halted them in their tracks, nor was it the odd chemical stench swimming in the air. Nor, indeed, was it the missing rear wall, gouged out and reinforced, revealing an underground chamber beyond of staggering size, the grain cellars and cisterns of three dozen mansions opened into one vast space and lit by portable lamp rigs, troops and war machines milling in the pools of light.

  Not even that.

  It was the figure standing beside the Dreadnought. The Sigillite, robed and cowled, leaning his frail weight upon his staff.

  ‘Kyril, welcome,’ said Malcador.

  ‘Great lord,’ Sindermann answered, a tremble in his voice. Therajomas had averted his gaze, head bowed. ‘Show respect,’ Sindermann hissed at him.

  ‘He is too bright!’ Therajomas whispered. ‘He is too bright to look at!’

  Sindermann frowned. The awe he felt for the Sigillite was based upon authority and command, on Malcador’s role as a direct instrument of the Emperor’s will. What was Therajomas seeing?

  ‘Come forward,’ said Malcador, beckoning with a bony hand.

  ‘Learn. And find some way to frame it in your chronicle.’ His voice was like dried thistles, brushed against velvet.

  ‘What should I learn first, lord?’ asked Sindermann.

  ‘That this is a trap,’ Malcador replied. ‘One devised by Rogal. Laid fast, but laid well, or so we hope. History has preoccupied your life, Kyril. Here you will see it being made.’

  ‘Or being lost,’ remarked Dorn.

  ‘Is your confidence failing, Praetorian?’ Malcador asked.

  Dorn shook his head. ‘Just my realism showing. This is an extreme gambit. If we’d had longer to-‘
/>   The Sigillite sighed. ‘Time is all we have. To be quicker than the quick. To surprise the surprising. To seize opportunity from the opportunists. Lateral cunning. You said so yourself. We take this chance or we suffer the penalty.’

  ‘A trap for what?’ asked Sindermann softly.

  The Praetorian looked at him.

  ‘I have reason to believe the traitor foe will strike here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps within hours. They seek to exploit a weakness they believe we have not noticed. We aim to block that attempt.’

  ‘And more than that…’ Malcador chided.

  ‘And turn it back upon them,’ Dorn conceded. ‘Blocking is imperative, but there is a greater gain to be made. One that might end our calamity.’

  ‘They will strike here at Saturnine?’ Sindermann asked. He swallowed hard.

  Dorn nodded. ‘I am sure of it,’ he said.

  ‘Because it’s what you would do?’

  ‘Yes, exactly that. One flaw in a perfect defence. I would not ignore that. And neither would he.’

  ‘So a… a blind attack?’ asked Sindermann. ‘A stealth strike?’

  To the head,’ Dorn replied.

  ‘For that… for that to work, you would send your best,’ said Sindermann ‘Not just elite. Specialists. Spear-tip assault, to cut through-‘

  ‘Now he’s getting it,’ the Sigillite murmured. ‘Now he understands.’

  ‘Throne of all,’ Sindermann whispered. ‘You’re laying a trap to kill the Lupercal.’

  * * *

  ‘I have a story for you,’ the soldier said. ‘I hear you are gathering stories, to make a history.’

  Hari Harr looked up at him, squinting against the harsh sunlight, and nodded.

  ‘I’ve been instructed to do so,’ Hari said. To document events and-‘

  The soldier shook his head and smiled.

  ‘I do not need convincing that your work is important,’ he said. ‘Stories are all we have, in the end. Better than gravestones. They last longer.’ He smiled, a big, bright smile. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘gravestones are all we will get otherwise.’