Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  All sensoria told them without doubt or contradiction that they had reached the Segmentum Solar, and were only a few weeks’ travel from the sovereign territory of the Emperor. Through the vagaries and madness of the warp, they had in fact travelled far beyond Nocturne, by any logical reckoning.

  Numeon cut a lonely figure, standing before the fully wide iris of the ship’s main oculus. Having returned to real space, the Charybdis’s shutters were up and the aperture before the Salamander commanded a wide and imposing view.

  Enginseers had managed to restore motive function to the ship’s plasma drives. By all accounts, the warp engines also remained functional, but they had no need of them now. A heading was struck with an ambivalent fusion of hope, despair and melancholy.

  Adyssian had appeared to wear the worst of it. Now absent from his command throne, the shipmaster had looked a ragged and hollow figure as he left the bridge to Esenzi.

  Circe lived, but she had been committed to the apothecarion under care of the vessel’s medicae. The Navigator had regressed into a catatonic fugue state and had not uttered a single word since translation back into real space. Whatever horrors had been visited upon the crew and Adyssian, she had been subjected to also.

  The bridge was all but barren, occupied by a skeleton crew scavenged from whoever was left. Barring Adyssian and Esenzi, the rest had been killed by the sirens. Despite the cleansing efforts of servitors, the deck was still stained red.

  So many slain…

  Numeon held the fuller but still found no comfort in its touch. He felt something, though, something worse than disappointment or anger and frustration. Relief.

  It was over. At last. With Terra within reach, he could relent.

  ‘Let’s hear it again,’ he said to Zytos, who was standing nearby with Dakar and Abidemi. Kaspian Hecht was the only other legionary on deck, having arrived with Numeon. Arms folded, he leaned against a bulkhead column, aloof and estranged from the others, as he had always been since coming aboard.

  Zytos put a consoling hand on Numeon’s shoulder.

  ‘No one could have asked more of you, brother-captain.’

  Numeon nodded, grateful but unreceptive.

  ‘Shipwide, this time,’ he said. ‘Broadcast it across every vox. What’s left of our company, legionaries and crew should know that Terra endures.’

  After a few moments of static, the message relayed through every voxcaster on the Charybdis. From the barracks to the enginarium, every man and woman of the crew, every legionary stopped what they were doing.

  In the apothecarion, where he helped minister to the likes of Gargo and the other wounded, Ushamann raised his head to listen.

  At Circe’s side, Adyssian gently clasped her hand in the hope that she would hear too.

  Patrolling the corridors of the ship, making it secure and trying to atone for his previous failure, Xathen stopped and looked up at a crackling vox-unit nearby. His warriors did the same, lowering their weapons and taking heed.

  Alone in the solitorium, Var’kir opened his eyes and paused in his meditations.

  For a few moments, all ceased as the ship held its breath in rapt attention at the words of the Seventh Primarch.

  ‘Sons and daughters of the Emperor,’ intoned a deep, stentorian voice, laced with static and signal artefacting, ‘Terra stands. Heed my words, the words of Rogal Dorn, Lord of the Imperial Fists and the Emperor’s appointed Praetorian. Terra. Still. Stands. We endure, unbowed and defiant against the treachery of Horus. The Emperor beseeches you, return to the Throneworld. All loyal Legions must return to the Throneworld immediately.

  ‘Terra stands. Ave Imperator.’

  The message ended there, but was being broadcast on a voxed and astropathic repeat from the Imperial Palace. Zytos cut the recording.

  It was a call to arms. Horus must be headed to Terra. Dorn needed all loyal sons to stand up in its defence.

  ‘Guilliman said it was over,’ said Numeon. ‘He was wrong. An entire Legion… nay, three Legions trapped on the other side of the storm, languishing in desperate ignorance.’ He shook his head. ‘If they knew…’

  ‘If they knew, then every loyal son still on Macragge would leave Imperium Secundus and race to Terra,’ said Zytos, finishing the thought. ‘We can be the messengers, brother-captain. It has meaning. Purpose.’

  ‘Once we reach Terra, there will be no return. Dorn won’t allow it,’ Numeon voiced his thoughts aloud. He turned to Esenzi, sitting on Adyssian’s command throne. ‘Can we hail them?’

  ‘Whatever signal they are using is amplified many times over. I expect an entire astropathic choir has lent its voice to it. We would have to get much closer, my lord.’

  Zytos sensed Numeon’s unease as he returned his gaze to the vista of space encapsulated by the oculus. He was wise enough to keep his voice low, so only his intended recipient could hear.

  ‘Are you considering not continuing on to Terra?’

  ‘It feels like a turning point, doesn’t it? A place where the path diverges. Along one fork lies Terra, along the other…’

  ‘We have tried the other. It almost killed us.’

  ‘I made an oath, brother,’ said Numeon, clenching the sigil tighter.

  ‘As did I, as did we all.’ Zytos moved in closer, and Numeon hated how conspiratorial their voices sounded. ‘But this is Terra. The Imperial Palace. Can we really turn our backs on it?’

  Numeon looked him in the eye. All of his wounds, his trials had never felt so wearisome.

  ‘And yet we turn our backs on Vulkan.’ It wasn’t an accusation; it was a genuine statement of fact. It was almost a request for permission.

  Let it be over. Let it be done. Haven’t I given enough?

  Zytos was about to reply, but Numeon was already leaving.

  ‘Brother-captain,’ he sounded nonplussed, and spoke to Numeon’s back, ‘where are you going?’

  ‘To the last vigil.’

  Fifty-Two

  The last vigil

  Battle-barge Charybdis, sanctum

  Not for the first time, but almost certainly the last, Numeon bowed his head in reverence in the close confines of the sanctum.

  In defiance of reason, he had come here over and over again in search of the miraculous, looking for a sign to give him hope.

  For a while, he thought he had found one but now all Numeon saw was the recumbent form of his dead father. At rest. Not in the earth of Nocturne, but safe at last.

  At least on Terra, Vulkan would be reunited with his father.

  ‘I have failed you, father, and for that I am deeply sorry.’ His half-choked words came out in a solemn rasp, as if speaking them only made the reality of his failure more palpable.

  ‘I have tried. I have. And I have suffered. We all have. But there is no way back to Nocturne, not while the storm rages and the galaxy burns.’

  Vulkan did not answer. Nor did he stir. He remained, as he was, as he had ever been since embarking aboard the Charybdis. Lifeless. A cold corpse.

  ‘I believed if we could return you to the mountain… that in the fires you would…’

  He crushed his eyes closed, breathing deeply to marshal his resolve. Fragments of the vision returned, the Crimson King’s prophecy.

  Rising storm.

  Tides of fire.

  Thunder on the air.

  A burning path.

  The mountain.

  Deathfire.

  Look into the fire, Magnus had told him.

  Numeon opened his eyes. He wanted to give in and accept that at least they were alive and had reached safe harbour. Vulkan would be interred in the funerary vaults of Terra and honoured across the ages.

  But something gave him pause.

  The epitaph on Vulkan’s casket caught his eye.

  ‘The Unbound Flame,’ Numeon said aloud.


  The fire.

  Look into the fire.

  ‘Who has seen the Unbound Flame?’

  Find your path.

  ‘A mountain looms above me, wreathed in mourning cloud…’

  Numeon had thought Magnus meant his path, his destiny.

  Rising urgently to his feet, he realised he had deciphered the Crimson King’s words wrongly.

  Ash had gathered at the base of Vulkan’s casket, perhaps from a past vigil. Numeon touched his fingers to it and renewed the white sigil across his face. It meant resurrection.

  ‘Vulkan lives,’ he whispered, the tears of hope in his eyes, as he headed for the solitorium.

  At the clack of booted feet, Var’kir looked up from his reverie before the burning brazier.

  ‘Are their shadows within the flames, Chaplain?’ asked Numeon, keeping his voice low in respect of the sanctuary.

  ‘I see Zonn, Orhn, Ran’d, Zadar, Kur’ak… I see the dead, brother-captain.’

  ‘But never our father, never Vulkan,’ said Numeon, kneeling down beside Var’kir.

  ‘No, never Vulkan.’ He met Numeon’s gaze in a gesture of sincerity. ‘I know we have not seen eye to eye on much regarding our father. I wish I could have believed as you did that he could be resurrected, but a swath of ash across your face cannot manifest miracles.’

  ‘We live. That is a miracle.’

  Var’kir nodded, returning to the flame. ‘Indeed, some of us.’

  ‘There is no one aboard this ship who feels their loss more than I. I am responsible for their deaths.’ His mind wandered briefly as he remembered them.

  A hand on his shoulder lifted Numeon from his dark reverie.

  ‘It is a great blow that we failed to reach Nocturne. But at least on Terra we can rejoin this war.’

  ‘Your faith does you credit, Var’kir. It always has. But we didn’t fail – I did. Vulkan still lies in state because I could not get us through the storm.’

  ‘We will go back, Artellus. When the war is over, and Horus’s rebellion crushed, Vulkan shall be laid to rest.’

  ‘I know we will, but it is not I who will lead us. It’s you.’

  Var’kir turned sharply. He frowned, not understanding.

  ‘To where, Numeon?’

  ‘Nocturne.’

  Slowly shaking his head, Var’kir began to rise. ‘I see you are still deluded. I had hoped that–’

  The gauntleted hand seizing his wrist stopped Var’kir from finishing.

  He first looked at it and then Numeon.

  ‘Unhand me, Artellus,’ he said calmly but firmly. ‘This self-­destructive dream has gone on long enough. The dead in our crematoria are testament to it!’

  ‘Look,’ Numeon urged, holding the Chaplain fast as he gestured to the brazier. ‘Look into the flame, Var’kir.’

  ‘I have done so countless times. There is nothing. Only fire.’ He looked down at his wrist again. ‘Now release me, brother,’ he said behind a barrier of clenched teeth. ‘I can no longer be a party to this madness.’

  ‘You saw the Unbound Flame.’

  Seeing he had the Chaplain’s attention, he let him go.

  ‘That proves nothing. I beheld a flame, an endless fire that raged eternal. I saw the immolus, “that which devours all”,’ he said, quoting from the Promethean creed. ‘An ending to all things.’

  ‘And from that flame, Chaplain? What does the creed tell us?’

  ‘From every end there is rebirth, the Circle of Fire. It does not mean Vulkan will return. It could have a hundred other interpretations.’

  ‘Have you considered you could not see Vulkan, because you were seeing something else? Because you were meant to see something else?’

  ‘Speak plainly, brother, or I will leave and recommend you are relieved of command.’

  ‘The endless fire that devours all things,’ said Numeon, ‘is Deathfire, the mountain of Nocturne, the rage eternal. It is the immolus, Chaplain. That is what you saw.’

  For a moment, Var’kir’s conviction wavered, and he frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Look again,’ asked Numeon. ‘Before we hurl our bodies and our souls back into the storm, look into the fire,’ he said, and heard the words of Magnus echoed back at him.

  Var’kir knelt back down. He looked into the fire.

  Fifty-Three

  The gathering of the Pyre

  Battle-barge Charybdis, Igneum

  Zytos had mustered the Legion in the relic hall.

  ‘All are gathered, Numeon,’ he said, meeting his captain at the threshold. Beyond, a flame burned in the darkness of the Igneum. Its crackling embers disturbed the quiet. Long, flickering shadows reached over to the empty table where the sons of Vulkan had last gathered. This time they were standing by a large burning brazier.

  As Numeon approached, he saw how few they had become. Their haggard faces and battered helms lit by the fire, a tight arc of wounded Salamanders. Ash gathered at their feet, drifting like dust motes from the slatted basin of the brazier pan.

  Taking his place amongst the others, Numeon reached into a cauldron and fed the blaze with a fistful of black coal.

  ‘So we are gathered, so we must decide our fate.’

  He looked to the others, trying to gauge their mood. Fewer than half of those who had left Macragge now stood. A heavy toll.

  ‘I do not see a brotherhood defeated,’ he told them, briefly meeting the eye of Var’kir, who gave a shallow nod. ‘I see resolve still.’

  The Chaplain was almost shoulder to shoulder with Xathen, who looked the least scathed but somehow the most disillusioned. By contrast, Gargo hung on Numeon’s every word. Even the loss of his remaining flesh-and-blood arm had not diminished his belief.

  ‘Feed the flame of our retribution,’ said Numeon, inviting them all to fuel the burning brazier, ‘and see our purpose restored.’

  One by one, the Salamanders took up a handful of black coal and fed the fire. They did so solemnly and in silence.

  All except Xathen. His enemy had escaped him, the one who had killed their Techmarine and brutalised Gargo. Ripped away like smoke before the wind, as whatever foul rite enabled the Word Bearers to simply step aboard the Charybdis expired or was broken. It burned, as did every indignity their former battle-brothers turned renegades had inflicted on them. His mood therefore was particularly sour when he challenged Numeon.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked, lingering before the brazier, the firelight casting dagger-like shadows across his face and armour. ‘Whose fate are we to decide?’

  Ushamann’s gaze gave off a faint cerulean glow, notable in the sea of fiery eyes now focused on the Pyre captain.

  Numeon cursed the Librarian under his breath for the mild betrayal.

  ‘He means for us to abandon our course,’ Ushamann told them. ‘You want us to descend back into the Ruinstorm.’

  A look of confused disbelief crept over Xathen’s face. It was mirrored in several others.

  ‘Is this true?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Numeon. ‘Nocturne is where we are meant to be. For Vulkan.’

  ‘For Vulkan? Our father is dead,’ said Xathen. ‘I would see him put to rest as much as anyone on this ship, but it’s over. You must see that. Var’kir, you know this.’

  The Chaplain nodded.

  ‘I do see, and don’t disagree, Rek’or. I believe as you do, but I have looked into the flame and have seen a path.’

  ‘A route through the storm?’ asked Gargo.

  Xathen frowned. ‘What path? What do you see, Var’kir? As one of the Igniax, what vision does the flame grant you?’

  ‘A path to Nocturne.’

  Xathen slowly shook his head, as if unable to conceive of what he was hearing.

  ‘What is this, if not madness?’
r />   He stepped away from the flame.

  Numeon closed the distance between them, and seized Xathen’s arm before he could turn. He did it with such violence that several Salamanders looked around at their brothers, unsure what was happening or whether to intervene.

  Mu’garna and Baduk went to get involved on their sergeant’s behalf, until a look from Zytos stopped them.

  He swung around his hammer so the shaft was held across his body. No gatekeeper or warden had ever looked so severe.

  ‘Remember your oaths,’ he warned them. ‘We all swore to follow Numeon as our master. Whatever the cost, wherever it would take us.’

  Sensibly, both Pyroclasts backed down.

  ‘It has to be all of us, brother,’ said Numeon. During the brief disruption, his eye had never left Xathen.

  Xathen met his captain’s gaze then looked down at the hand upon his arm until it was released.

  ‘I would welcome death,’ he said. ‘A worthy death, but not as a victim of the storm we barely just survived. Not at the mercy of our enemies. Death Guard, Word Bearers, hellspawn that look like children for Throne’s sake! It ends in ignominy, and Vulkan lost to whatever lurks beyond the veil. If we go back, we will be defenceless. What if our venerable ship gives out at last? Our Techmarine’s headless corpse now lies in our ship’s morgue, alongside the bodies of the brothers I killed.’ He snarled, fighting back his grief and his anger. ‘Zadar, Kur’ak – their blood is against my soul. How? How can this even be done?’

  ‘Belief,’ said Numeon, proffering a handful of coal. ‘But only if we are united. The storm smothers all light. We have no guide from the Astronomican, that is true. But if we can burn through the darkness, hoist a light of our own to our mast, then we will see what lies beyond. Deathfire will become our beacon. We have but to see it.’

  ‘You will get us through the storm through hope?’ Xathen still sounded incredulous. He turned to the others. ‘Does anyone else hear this insanity?’

  ‘Be careful,’ Zytos warned him.

  Numeon raised his hand for calm.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, but then nor does the warp. It is distilled emotion run rampant. Our own shipmaster’s grief was used against us. Our desire to see Vulkan restored. Can you tell me you did not experience something similar?’