Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  Thinking of the damage caused the wound to flare with pain once more. As he twisted into his run, turning across the bow, the rough-edged diamond of scar tissue on his belly tightened. It jabbed him with pain, enough to make him wince and, for a moment, drop off his pace.

  At the same instant, he saw a figure in the lee of a curved support beam, a man leaning forwards on the battlement-like grids that had once housed macroscopes and laser-rangers. The warrior came to a halt, moderating his breathing, and his hand fell to his scar.

  ‘Still healing, is it?’ said the man. He smiled nervously and then pointed at the legionary. ‘The cut, I mean.’ His voice had a sing-song intonation to it, similar to the accents of the Keltian Colonials.

  ‘What do you know of it?’ demanded the Blood Angel. The man’s words seemed like an imposition; his face was unfamiliar, but the clothes he wore made it clear that he wasn’t any sort of naval crewman or Legion serf. The data-slate in his hand was an elaborate civilian model, with folding lenses on retractable arms and a stylus on a bronze chain. A remembrancer, then, he decided. There were a handful of them among the ships of the task force, although most remained in a billet on the fleet’s command ship, the Ignis.

  ‘I know who you are, my lord. Brother Meros, of the Ninth Company’s exalted bloodline. If you don’t mind me saying, you’re a subject of some interest.’

  Meros took a step closer. ‘Whose interest?’

  The remembrancer retreated in kind, his cheeks flushing red as he finally understood he was presuming too much. ‘I mean no disrespect. But the story about you on Nartaba Octus… Well, me and my fellow artists came to hear of it, and I being the one here on the Hermia…’ His voice trailed off and he swallowed hard. ‘You fought off a pack of eldar reavers alone. One lone Apothecary against a troop of them, all to save a dozen people at the Octus outpost.’

  ‘That was duty,’ Meros said, with a sniff. ‘Nothing to make a story out of.’

  ‘If you’ll pardon my presumption, my lord, but that’s for me to decide, not you.’ He gave a slight bow, flicking unkempt brown hair out of his pale eyes. ‘I’m Halerdyce Gerwyn, remembrancer-at-large by the Emperor’s decree. Recorder of tales and such.’ He retraced his steps, closing in on Meros once again. ‘And that duty you spoke of? Taking a fatal round in your gut there and living to talk about it, to run around these passages? Coming back from the very embrace of death? That’s a fine story indeed. Stirring, I’d even say.’

  Something about the man’s manner amused Meros, but he kept that hidden. ‘Would you not rather be remembering tales of greater men than I? Primarchs and the like?’ He nodded at the walls. ‘Azkaellon, the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard, is aboard this ship. I would think posterity would rather know the deeds of a hero of his stature than a lowly legionary like me.’

  Gerwyn snapped his fingers. ‘Ah, that’s where you’d be wrong. The Great Crusade is as much about the single soldier as it is about the exalted commander.’ He paused. ‘At least, I feel it to be so.’ He gestured with his data-slate. ‘And if I could confide a truth to you, my lord? Your man Azkaellon frightens me some. He prowls this ship like he’s hunting something.’

  ‘It’s not you,’ Meros told Gerwyn, ‘so be at ease.’ Still, the remembrancer’s words struck a chord with the Apothecary. The Guard Commander’s presence in the fleet was unusual and his actions during the Nartaba sortie had only done more to give question to what he was doing there. Meros had heard barrack-room hearsay of how the Sanguinary Guard had refused to become involved in the defence of the Octus science colony, instead disappearing into the wilds with no word of explanation. But then again, a warrior of Azkaellon’s rank did not need to explain himself to anyone but the primarch himself.

  All this he kept to himself, seeing no reason to fuel the remembrancer’s need for more grist to his fiction’s mill. Another thought occurred to him. ‘You were up here watching me.’

  ‘No!’ Gerwyn insisted. ‘Well, yes. And no.’

  ‘Which is it?’ Meros folded his arms, eyeing the slim man coldly.

  ‘I’ve been coming up here since the start,’ he said. ‘It’s quiet, isn’t it? And a gorgeous view.’ Gerwyn nodded at the windows. Beyond the armourglass, the lines of the mighty battleship Ignis were visible, the vessel a huge hammerhead of crimson and obsidian a few kilometres off the starboard bow. ‘And when I heard you were running the corridor…’ He shrugged. ‘Look, my–’

  The Blood Angel held up a hand. ‘Just Meros will do. Don’t saddle me with titles.’

  ‘Uh. Aye, Meros, then.’ Gerwyn swallowed once more. ‘I didn’t intend to intrude. Well, perhaps a little. But not so it would bother you. I wanted to write the story.’

  ‘Show me.’ Meros held out his hand, indicating the slate.

  ‘It’s not done yet,’ said the remembrancer, reluctant to hand over the device. Instead, he held it up to show the warrior a set of narrative panels, each a small picture accompanied by a block of text below it. The first was a fanciful representation of a Blood Angel in the white and red armour of a Legion Apothecary, a bolter in one hand and a chainaxe in the other, facing a wall of feral, night-clad eldar. ‘I’m a sequentialist,’ Gerwyn explained, the words spilling out of him. ‘A bit of a scribe, a bit of an artist, the best of the both. I know some look down their noses at my craft, think it’s not so grand as those who write operas or chip away at marble, but I’ll warrant more people read these serials across the Imperium than you’d know…’

  The Apothecary kept his expression neutral, studying the pictures. Another panel was a close-up of the fictional warrior’s face and it was a passable rendition of Meros’s careworn aspect, but cast in a fanciful and overly heroic light. ‘I don’t disapprove,’ he said, ‘but keep your work on the right side of truth, remembrancer.’

  ‘Of course!’ Gerwyn nodded happily. ‘I’ll have a copy printed and bound for you when it is complete.’

  ‘No need,’ Meros told him, turning to walk away. ‘I was there. I remember.’ He paused, and tapped the place where the scar sat on his flesh. ‘I already have my own record of that day.’

  When Gerwyn spoke again, the brisk manner he had shown before was gone. ‘Were you… afraid? They say the Emperor’s Angels are never troubled by such things, that there is nowhere you fear to tread.’

  ‘That is true and untrue,’ Meros told him. ‘The matter of which changes, dependent on the circumstance.’

  ‘I am. Afraid, I mean.’

  The admission came out of nowhere, and Meros was uncertain as to how he should react. The Apothecary felt the sense of distance between the two of them very distinctly in that moment: he, the improved post-human, engineered to be above such things; Gerwyn an ordinary soul, ill-prepared for the dangers of a lethal universe.

  He went on. ‘Last time, when we translated space to Nartaba, I was up here. I wanted to see what the warp looked like, even if it was just a shadow of it.’

  ‘That’s not for men like you,’ Meros told him. ‘It’ll burn your eyes from your head. It pulls at your reason.’

  ‘Aren’t those just stories too?’ Gerwyn managed a weak grin.

  ‘You should go below,’ said the Apothecary. ‘Come–’

  Meros never finished his words; without warning, out across the bow of the Hermia, a brilliant, shimmering aura folded out of the darkness. It peeled open, petals of spatial reality folding back like the layers of bloody skin around a wound. The remembrancer shouted wordlessly and stumbled back towards the bulkhead behind them, raising his hands to hide his face from the sudden plume of hellish light. Then the Hermia’s warning klaxons began a shrill chorus, the deck conducting a rumble as multiple autonomic gun batteries turned to face the still-forming warp gate.

  The Apothecary saw the slit in space-time yawn open and eject an iron spar from its shimmering depths. It was a starship of Imperial design, similar in mass and structure to the Hermia. But where the cruiser was adorned with livery and symbols showing its allegianc
e to the IX Legion Astartes, the new arrival was flying the stoic colours of Terra’s grand army. The ship’s engines were alive with full thrust, and it came uncomfortably close to the Hermia’s crimson hull as it fell back into normal space.

  The cruiser’s deck tilted sharply and Meros gripped a guide rail to steady himself as the gravity plates in the deck struggled to keep up with the abrupt course change the Hermia’s helmsman was making. The massive ship veered off, making distance as best it could.

  Out in the black, the warp rift irised shut with a puff of abnormal radiation and sickly, false-colour emissions. Gerwyn was shaking as he dared to look up. ‘Is it gone?’ he asked, his voice barely audible over the sirens.

  ‘The ship?’

  ‘The warp rift!’

  ‘Aye,’ nodded Meros. ‘The fool commanding that vessel must be desperate or stupid to exit the warp so close to a translation point…’ He frowned. Such tactics were sometimes used by privateers on well-travelled cargo lanes, or by shipmasters attempting to blockade a star system. The Blood Angel jogged to the portside range of the gallery and peered out, watching the new arrival bleed off forward velocity on massive, jagged spars of thruster flame.

  Puffing out his breath, the remembrancer came stumbling after him, in time to witness a flicker of silver emerge from the flank of the Imperial Army cruiser.

  ‘Is that a shuttle?’ said Gerwyn. ‘It is. Coming this way.’

  Meros said nothing, scrutinising the shape of the approaching craft. It resolved into the shape of a Thunderhawk, turning sharply as it made for the docking port of the nearest ship – which happened to be the Hermia. Already the big cruiser was applying thrust to its main drives once more, angling down and away, gathering speed as if it were eager to get away as fast as possible.

  The Thunderhawk came around and dived past the gun gallery, giving Meros and the remembrancer a clear look at the brazen sigil painted on its wings; the silhouette of a snarling Fenrisian wolf-head, set against a steel-grey diamond.

  ‘The… the sons of Russ?’ Gerwyn turned to the Blood Angel, brimming with new questions; but the look in Meros’s eyes killed them before they could be uttered.

  ‘Return to your quarters and stay there,’ the Apothecary told him, breaking into a full sprint once more.

  The Sanguinary Guard’s face hardened as he strode across the deck of the Hermia’s tertiary shuttle bay, his flinty eyes narrowing to slits. A semi-circle of legionaries were already taking up stations around the edge of the vacant landing pad, bolters at the ready, but he ignored them and marched forwards, watching the silver-steel Thunderhawk float in through the glittering membrane of the protective atmo-field. Chilled by the touch of space, the ship’s fuselage instantly grew a thin sheen of frost from the moisture in the air, dissipating anew in faint wisps of vapour.

  Azkaellon defied safety protocols and stood directly beneath the prow of the Thunderhawk as it turned in place, hovering on the thrust from flaring exhaust nozzles. He glimpsed a hazy shape moving behind the armourglass of the cockpit canopy, and then the craft was coming down, kicking up fumes across the pad. He glared at the ship as if he were staring down a great animal, watching it settle on its landing skids as the downdraft buffeted him, whipping at his dark, shoulder-length hair.

  The keening whine of the engines had barely faded before the drop-ramp in the Thunderhawk’s belly fell open with a grunt of hydraulics, and as the Guard Commander had expected, a party of warriors in full armour and battle pelts rode it down to the deck. They looked ready for deployment into any war that might want them, even though this was a place of equals and allies.

  But do the Space Wolves count any Legion as their equal? Azkaellon resisted the temptation to fold his arms over the barrel chest of his ornate artificer armour, instead giving full scrutiny to the sons of Russ as they scanned the bay from the end of the ramp. He noted that not one of them had yet stepped off and onto the deck of the Blood Angels starship.

  The Wolf at the head of the pack spoke first. ‘Who is in charge here?’ The warrior bore the rank marks of a captain, and complex tribal runes about his breastplate that hinted at many battles in his past. A black-furred pelt hung from his shoulders and he was armed with a thickset bolter of unfamiliar pattern in a fast-draw holster at his hip. Across the captain’s chest was a short scabbard, angled downwards so that the combat blade it held could be quickly unsheathed; the cover was studded with flecks of quartz and the weapon’s grip was covered in crimson leather.

  The legionary stepped off the ramp and advanced, glancing around as if he were entering a combat zone, and Azkaellon knew full well that the Wolf captain was perfectly aware of who had seniority of command. The significance of the Sanguinary Guard’s golden armour was unmistakable, yet the visitor chose not to acknowledge it.

  His lips thinned. It was typical of the VI Legion to indulge in such little gestures of insolence, like dogs snarling and barking at first meeting in order to ascertain who was the alpha. For now, he would play along. ‘I am Azkaellon, Chosen of Sanguinius. You may address me.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the captain, reaching up to remove his helmet. Beneath the ceramite, the warrior had a heavy, ice-scarred face. His scalp was shorn, but he made up for it with a shaggy, unkempt beard braided with silver. ‘Well met, Guard Commander. I am Helik Redknife.’ He offered no other information about himself, no record of great company or honorific, as if his name alone were enough to mark him.

  Azkaellon glanced around, noting that the Blood Angels surrounding him had not relaxed, each of them picking up on his posture and manner. Out beyond the edges of the landing pad, he saw too that some of the Hermia’s crew serfs were pausing in their duties to watch the exchange, and on one of the upper gantries, the Sanguinary Guard spotted a lone legionary in duty robes observing him.

  He looked away. ‘Captain Redknife. You should consider yourself fortunate that you were not burned from the sky. Such an arrival without warning is reckless. The gun crews of this task force remain on high alert, their weapons primed.’

  ‘Fortune has little to do with it,’ Redknife replied briskly. ‘And I have no time for matters of etiquette.’ As he spoke, the remainder of his Space Wolves followed him down onto the landing deck, falling into a rough formation that the untrained eye might have considered careless, almost random.

  For the first time, Azkaellon noted the presence of a Rune Priest standing in Redknife’s shadow. The Wolf cleric’s armour was dressed with scrimshawed bones, his open-faced helm apparently carved out of a great canine’s skull. He was careful to stay at his commander’s shoulder, his hand forever on the hilt of a serrated force sword. The Sanguinary Guard unconsciously mirrored the priest’s gesture, his gauntlet falling to the pommel of his glaive encarmine. ‘I see that is so,’ he said. ‘Not only do you break the simple rules of fleet protocol, but you also defy the Emperor’s edict.’ He jutted his chin towards the Rune Priest. ‘You know that psykers are no longer permitted within the Legiones Astartes.’

  The cleric answered in a tongue that Azkaellon could not understand, but he knew enough to recognise a Fenrisian dialect when he heard it. Redknife gave a brief nod. ‘My battle-brother Stiel is not a witch-mind, Blood Angel, and he forgives you for your error. It is a common misconception.’

  ‘Can he not tell me that himself, in Imperial Gothic?’

  ‘No,’ said the captain. ‘My skald speaks in our ancient way. It is a tradition, you understand?’

  ‘I don’t.’ Azkaellon’s tone grew colder. ‘And I say again: the Decree of Nikaea has forbidden the use of psychic powers. Your… priest… should be returned to the rank and file, not allowed to treat with the warp.’

  Stiel made a hissing noise, but Redknife silenced him with a look. ‘His power is pure. It comes from Fenris, as does mine. That is the explanation I will give you, the only explanation.’ He gestured at the air. ‘Now, we may continue on in this vein or we may cut to the meat of this. Which do you choose, Guard Commander?�
��

  For a moment, Azkaellon entertained the notion of placing the arrogant Wolves in the Hermia’s brig, or ejecting them and their Thunderhawk back into void. ‘A question, then, Space Wolf. Why have you interrupted our journey? There is a vital summons that this flotilla must answer and your unexpected arrival hinders us.’

  ‘I am well aware of your agenda,’ Redknife told him. ‘It is why we made such haste to reach the Nartaba system before you departed. The immaterium grows restless and yours was the only Blood Angels contingent in close proximity that we could be certain of reaching.’ He settled his helmet on a clip at his belt. ‘My unit and I have been given a new posting, an attachment to the command of your primarch Sanguinius.’ The captain held out his hand and one of his squad produced a message tube from a drawstring pouch of cured animal skin, passing it to his commander. Redknife twisted the tube to open it and a leaf of photic parchment issued out.

  Azkaellon took the proffered document and looked it over. His eyes were drawn to a thermal seal branded into the translucent paper. The design resembled a strange mathematical symbol, with an upward-turned eye at its centre.

  ‘This order comes directly from Lord Malcador, the Sigillite and Regent of Terra. My master Lord Russ endorses it,’ explained the Wolf captain. ‘And it cannot be countermanded.’