War Without End

by Various

  ‘You are only Kyroptera by the say-so of Sevatar. That makes you no Kyroptera at all,’ said Kellendvar.

  ‘I am the one standing before you, with a fleet at my back,’ countered Krukesh. ‘By my reckoning, that makes me better than most.’

  ‘Didn’t the First Captain kill all the others?’ asked Kellendvar. ‘You’re a dog on a leash, nothing more.’

  ‘Perhaps you have a point,’ said Krukesh with mock equanimity. He held up a finger, as if he had just had the most marvellous idea. ‘I tell you what – how about I offer a place in my fleet to any of your warriors who desire it, and then leave you here to die alone in the dark. If I’m feeling sporting, I might contrive to let Guilliman’s Thirteenth know of your presence. At least you’ll have a glorious death. Isn’t glory what you desire?’

  Skraivok gave Kellendvar a warning look.

  ‘Kneel,’ said Krukesh.

  Kellendvar unhitched his axe and planted its butt on the deck. Together, he and Skraivok got to their knees.

  ‘Welcome to the Umber Prince, my lord,’ said Skraivok through gritted teeth.

  Krukesh accepted their obeisance with a satisfied sneer. ‘Better. You can get up now, if you like. Now, who is this insolent pup?’

  ‘Kellendvar. He is my Headsman.’

  ‘And who is this one, in chains?’

  Skraivok glanced over to a corner where Kellenkir was firmly shackled to a punishment post, furious eyes staring over a corrosion-resistant muzzle.

  ‘That’s Kellenkir. He was the vexillary for the Fourth Chapter,’ said Skraivok with a pained smile. ‘But he’s gone... well, mainly insane.’

  Krukesh looked incredulous. ‘Kill him then.’

  ‘Ah, Kellendvar wouldn’t like that very much, would you, Kellendvar?’

  ‘No,’ said the Headsman, hefting his executioner’s axe.

  ‘They’re brothers you see,’ explained Skraivok. ‘Actual brothers, inducted at the same time. And Kellenkir is quite the warrior.’

  ‘I could have all three of you killed,’ said Krukesh. His escorts raised their bolters.

  ‘It is not wise to taunt him, Krukesh. Kellendvar is unbeaten in the practice cages by any but his brother. It’s why I chose him as my Headsman.’ Then, in a stage whisper, Skraivok added. ‘So you see, he’ll probably kill you first before he dies.’

  Krukesh snorted, and let his threat drop.

  ‘This phenomenon you told me of. The Thirteenth are building some kind of super-weapon on Sotha?’

  Skraivok scratched the back of his neck, worrying at the cable entering the neural port there. ‘Some of the others thought so, which is why they all sneaked away. Cowards. But I’m not so sure it is a weapon. It has an effect on our systems, but not much. It’s more… It’s more like a powerful transmitter array. Or a beacon.’

  ‘A beacon?’

  ‘You’ll see for yourself... my lord...’ said Skraivok with a total lack of sincerity. For the briefest moment, he got an insight as to how Shipmaster Hrantax must feel. ‘You won’t have to wait long. The Ultramarines are terribly conscientious. They’ve fired the thing three times a day, every day, for the last two weeks.’

  ‘Always at the same time?’

  ‘What do you think? It’s the Thirteenth.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Krukesh.

  Hrantax cast a chrono-count up onto the hololithic display. A miniature version of the Sothan System sprang up beneath it.

  ‘Sotha anomaly in thirty seconds,’ droned a servitor. ‘Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.’

  Skraivok watched Krukesh out of the corner of his eye. Looped holographic images of the captain’s favourite victims played over some of his armour plates, interspersed with the Legion’s customary lightning bolts in an endless exhibition of his past atrocities. His personal heraldry and insignia had been lavishly re-applied to his pauldrons. Fresh little affectations dangled from his armour – not just trophies, but cast representations of his Chapter, companies, and veteran squads’ iconography.

  His helmet bore a new, spread batwing crest in blatant imitation of Sevatar’s own. So sure of himself. So puffed up by his survival. Skraivok had never liked him before, but this new Krukesh was detestable.

  The servitor’s countdown ended. ‘Three. Two. One. Mark.’

  Skraivok waited expectantly. They all did.

  ‘Nothing’s happening,’ said Krukesh. ‘It looks like I’m going to leave you here after all, Skraivok.’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ blustered Skraivok. ‘It’s the Thirteenth! They must be up to something else. Wait, wait a moment longer!’

  ‘No, I don’t think–’

  Krukesh stopped. A frown brought faint shadows to his pale features.

  A strange foreboding took hold of every one of them, and even the crew-serfs looked to their displays and the one undamaged armourglass port in alarm. A pressure built in their hearts, presaging something dreadful.

  Skraivok felt a tickling sensation behind his eyeballs. An instant later, Sotha burst into brilliant light, more penetrating than the rays of the system’s sun. The accompanying electromagnetic pulse overwhelmed the systems of the damaged ship, crashing cogitators, wiping out displays, dropping servitors and sending the command deck into a darkness striated by the terrible, invasive light searing through the viewport.

  The Night Lords shielded their eyes and winced in pain. The lesser men and women upon the bridge collapsed screaming to the floor, clutching at their faces.

  Skraivok waited for night to fall again. It did not.

  He lowered his hand a fraction, daring the light.

  Unlike every other time before, the blaze of Sotha did not abate, but burned constantly. Seconds later, far too quickly for the light to have travelled by any normal, physical means, another light seemed to answer it from afar: a single star burning true in the sickly blaze of the aether-storm.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Krukesh. ‘That, if I am not mistaken, is Macragge.’ His spread fingers held up before him cast a hard black shadow across his face. ‘How very interesting.’

  Macragge. Sotha. What was the connection?

  Then Krukesh activated his vox-link. ‘Prepare the fleet!’ he ordered, ‘And gather my commanders. I think it is time for us to investigate this system a little more closely.’

  Two embattled armies, their forces scattered, glared unblinking at one another across a white and ebon field. They had begun arrayed in perfect formation, their ranks orderly, their pennants standing stiff against a shallow breeze and the faces of their front rank fighters as hard as rock. Raised up on their circular plinths, their lords and spiritual leaders had looked on imperiously – Emperor and Empress standing side by side, displaying to all the strength of their rule and commitment to victory.

  But as was so often the case in war, even with the loftiest of strategic minds, order broke down and chaos took the reins. For if one thing was certain about conflict, it was that it always ended in the reign of chaos.

  War now blighted this hard, unyielding plain. It could only end in defeat for one side or the other. With the clarions of battle not yet faded on the air, much blood was spilled before one of their generals spoke.

  ‘Do you imagine yourself as the Emperor or the Tetrarch, brother?’ asked Fulgrim.

  The Phoenician was leaning back and staring at Ferrus across the finely carved game pieces. He narrowed his keen eyes, easing himself forward so that he was level with his brother, who had sunk down amongst the pieces to contemplate his next move.

  Unlike his more serious sibling, Fulgrim wore loose-fitting robes of pearlescent violet and his silver hair hung loose about his neck and shoulders. An ivory goblet inscribed with curious sigils sat near the tapered fingers of his right hand, adjacent to the gaming table. Fulgrim took a sip of the draught within – it seemed to invigorate him – before saying
, ‘I think you see yourself as the Tetrarch. Am I right?’

  He toyed with the piece that represented the Divinitarch. She was a robed and blind seer clutching her staff of office, an iconic depiction of an iris within the letter ‘I’. Or, in ancient Grekan, the iota.

  Intent on his playing pieces, Ferrus did not look up. ‘Are you trying to distract me, brother?’ he asked, good-naturedly.

  His tone didn’t match his appearance. Ferrus was clad in his Medusan war-plate. Black as a funerary shroud, it looked thick and unyielding. His hair was shorn close to the scalp and his face might as well have been hewn from stone for all the emotion it betrayed.

  Fulgrim leaned back, the light from the single phosphor globe above catching the porcelain cast to the skin of his face and neck. His long, lustrous hair flashed brightly in the lambent glow.

  Beyond the light, there was only darkness. It made discerning the exact size of the chamber that they were playing in difficult. A low hiss did resonate on the cool air, though, suggesting at least a sizeable hall or gallery.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, the slightest curl of his lip betraying both a nascent smile and the lie in his words. ‘I merely pose the question – Emperor or Tetrarch?’

  ‘Why not Primarch?’ Ferrus answered, looking up from his deliberations at last to fix Fulgrim with hard eyes reminiscent of knapped flint or obsidian fire-ice. ‘For that is what we are, is it not?’

  Ferrus made his move, a cunning outflank with his last remaining Ecclesiarch. He sat back, arms folded, looking pleased with himself.

  Fulgrim laughed, a genuine expression of warm bonhomie that he seldom felt except for when he was with his brother.

  ‘You should really mask your intentions better, Ferrus.’

  ‘Should I?’ The flicker of a smile manifested but was buried quickly under the crags of Ferrus’s stern features. ‘Who has a better mask than the Gorgon, brother?’ he asked. ‘Tell me that.’

  ‘Now who’s using distraction?’

  Ferrus didn’t answer, but merely gestured to the board with a gauntleted hand.

  Fulgrim’s face darkened a little as he noticed the armoured glove, but he recovered quickly. Who wears armour to a gentle game of strategy, he thought, though the shadows around them seemed to shift uncomfortably at the ire implicit in Fulgrim’s unspoken tone. And the gauntlets? Amateurish.

  ‘Does it bother you,’ he said aloud, addressing Ferrus, ‘being called that? Gorgon. An ugly creature, a monster of Grekan myth, so loathsome it could petrify a man by merely looking at him.’

  Ferrus gave a short laugh.

  ‘I see it as a compliment. Besides, I am ugly.’

  They laughed together at Ferrus’s mild self-deprecation. He only did it in Fulgrim’s presence, the closeness of their fraternal bond evident in his apparent ease.

  Even so, Ferrus still had to rationalise comment. It was his nature.

  ‘My enemies held rigid with fear just at the sight of my stern countenance,’ he said, sighing. ‘Would that all battles were fought and won so easily.’

  ‘Yes...’ Fulgrim replied wistfully, his attention only half upon the board. ‘Would that they were.’

  He leaned forwards again, going to take a sip from his goblet but finding to his dissatisfaction that he had already drained it.

  ‘We are friends, you and I?’ he asked.

  Ferrus frowned, slightly incredulous at Fulgrim’s remark. ‘Did I not forge your sword for you, brother?’

  ‘Is that what friendship is, the forging of swords?’

  ‘I can think of no more tangible a bond of trust than that,’ Ferrus answered, his raw honesty difficult for Fulgrim to see. ‘As warriors, we need to be sure of our weapons in battle. I would not let just anyone forge something I rely upon so keenly.’

  ‘And so does that mean you trusted me then?’

  Ferrus’s brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Trusted?’

  ‘Trust. That you trust me.’

  ‘You are my brother, Fulgrim. Of course I trust you.’

  ‘And do you trust all of your brothers?’

  Now the Gorgon showed his true face, a stern slab of rock that seemed to darken the light with the sudden severity of its expression. ‘You know I don’t.’

  Fulgrim recalled the names. Curze, Magnus, Jaghatai...

  ‘Then ours is a deeper bond,’ he said, relaxing.

  ‘Rare as the ore of Medusa.’

  Fulgrim smiled warmly, forgetting for a moment where he was.

  ‘How do you think two men like us became such firm friends when our humours are so very different?’

  ‘We are far from mortal men, Fulgrim.’

  Ferrus had always revelled in that. The idea that he was greater, more than just ordinary. Perhaps my own demeanour is not so different?

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  Ferrus bowed his head apologetically. ‘Are our humours so dissimilar?’

  You’re right, they’re not. I am the master of mine and you... well...

  ‘And does similarity really promote such a strong bond? Both Vulkan and I are blacksmiths of one creed or another. I respect his craft, but I do not wish he was sitting here in your place.’

  Fulgrim leaned back again, seemingly satisfied. ‘You are noble, Ferrus. I want you to know that.’

  Ferrus smiled, his dark mood lifting.

  ‘And you are still procrastinating, brother.’

  ‘Just playing up to your pride.’

  Fulgrim made his next move, opting to place one of his Citizens in a vulnerable position. It was an obvious strategy, and one Ferrus should see coming. But it veiled a second threat, concealed by the hooded board.

  Their battlefield was circular – not an uncommon configuration – and divided into segments, each of which were made up of nexuses conjoined by the curved lines that gave the board its shape. Six spokes jutted from the main nexus, the core. Both primarch’s pieces were currently arrayed around it, though not all were visible. The ‘hooded’ board meant that several of their pieces, predetermined before the commencement of the game, were held in reserve. When deployed, such pieces would remain hidden, represented as lowly Citizens, until such time as they turned or killed another piece.

  The only other way to reveal the identity of hooded pieces was to use a Divinitarch. Ferrus had sacrificed his early on, deeming it tactically more valuable to manoeuvre his Tetrarch into a favourable position.

  The armoured warrior piece, its sword held up in salute against its visored faceplate, had much in kind with its wielder’s demeanour.

  As Fulgrim released the Citizen, Ferrus gave a snort of admonition.

  ‘I won’t be goaded so easily.’

  His thin, serpentine lips pursed. Fulgrim considered his brother’s words but left the obvious rejoinder unspoken. Instead, he returned to the question. ‘You still haven’t answered. Emperor or Tetrarch?’

  Ferrus smiled, engrossed in the board and the game.

  It is good to see him at such ease.

  Fulgrim studied him.

  The angular cheekbones. The sweep of his heavy brow, each line above it like a fissure in the sharp crags of his face. The muscular jawline, peppered with dark stubble. The trunk-like neck. A pugilist’s ears – ugly, small and misshapen. The mild discolouration of his skin from hours spent toiling in the forge. His piercing eyes, ever judging. Every hair, every stalwart tooth, every crease and scar...

  ‘Blind Man’s Fate is a strategy to use against novices, brother,’ said Ferrus in his familiar rumbling baritone. Again, he moved his Tetrarch.

  ‘Novices, or the arrogant pedagogue...’ Fulgrim murmured.

  ‘And which am I?’

  Both. Neither.

  ‘Let us see, shall we?’

  Fulgrim brought his Divinitarch into contact with a hooded Citizen
, and Ferrus was forced to reveal its true identity.

  ‘A Fortress, brother? How intriguing.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Only that, whenever we have played this game, you always favour an attacking strategy.’

  Paying no heed and absorbed in the game, Ferrus took his Fortress down the board towards the core nexus.

  ‘Aggressive...’ Fulgrim nodded approvingly, then made his own move.

  Taking less and less time to deliberate each move, Ferrus swept aside the Ecclesiarch that Fulgrim had just offered him in a killing move that sent a flash of anticipatory triumph across the Gorgon’s face.

  Fulgrim tapped the edge of the table with his thin, sinuous fingers. His fallen Ecclesiarch had apparently dented his preferred strategy. The seconds lapsed, and he did nothing.

  ‘Do you know why they call this game “Regicide”?’ he asked, caressing the ivory stem of his white Empress, she with all the potency but none of the actual power.

  ‘I care not,’ snapped Ferrus. ‘Cease this pathetic stalling and make your move.’

  ‘Patience, brother,’ Fulgrim chided him. ‘Was Narodnya really so long ago that you’ve forgotten how to be patient?’

  Ferrus looked about to snap again when he relaxed, plaintively holding up both gauntleted hands. Again, Fulgrim noticed them and had to stifle a tremor of rage beneath his right eye. A sibilant undertone cut the frigid air.

  ‘What was that?’ Ferrus asked, reacting to the sound.

  ‘Nothing. Just atmospheric recirculation protocols.’

  For the first time since the game began, Fulgrim looked up from the table and into the darkness beyond. He preferred it this way, especially when playing, as it tended to focus the mind. A hazy spotlight flushed the table and its players in sickly yellow. Just beyond this faint corona of illumination, penumbral figures could been seen in silhouette watching the contest unfold. They were still, rapt with attention as the test reached its most crucial phase.