[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  “Assassins come. One will reach this palace. Her name is…”

  “M’Shen,” Talos whispered. He had dreamed the name himself.

  “Yes.” The primarch’s tongue flicked out to lick at the trailing drool. “Yes. And she, too, does the work of justice.”

  The Night Haunter handed the helm back to Talos, closing his eyes as he lowered his slender, armoured form onto the throne. “I am no better than the millions I burned on Nostramo. I am the murderous, corrupt villain that the Imperial declarations name me. I will greet this death gladly. I punished those who wronged. Now my own wrongs will be punished in kind. A delicious and balanced justice. And in this murder, the Emperor will once again prove me right. I was right to do as I did, just as he is right to do as he does.”

  Talos stepped closer to the throne. The question that left his lips was not the one he’d intended to voice.

  “Why,” he said, eyes burning with something akin to anger, “do you call me Soul Hunter?”

  The Night Haunter’s black eyes gleamed, and the enthroned god smiled again.

  “And we’re down,” Septimus said. “Docked and locked, powering down now.”

  Talos rose to his feet, leaving the restraint couch.

  “Septimus, see to the Navigator. Ensure her surgery occurred without complications.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “First Claw, Seventh Claw,” Talos said. “With me. We are going to speak with the Exalted.”

  “The war on the surface is costing us dearly.”

  “The losses are acceptable.”

  Talos eyed the Exalted’s visage, twisted and leering in a parody of pale Nostraman flesh.

  “Acceptable?” the prophet asked. “By what standards? We have lost nine Astartes since we made planetfall. The Warmaster is throwing us against the hardest targets on Crythe.”

  “And we break them.”

  Imbedded within every pure Astartes was the capacity to generate acidic spit. In loyalist Chapters descended from flawed gene-seed, this ability was occasionally hindered, stunted or absent altogether. The Night Lords were not impure. At the Exalted’s obdurate display, Talos felt his saliva glands tingling, responding to his annoyance. With a whispered curse, he swallowed the burning venom, where it would dissipate harmlessly in his stomach acids. It stung on the way down his throat.

  “Yes, we break them. And we break ourselves upon them. We are fighting the Mechanicus. The Warmaster is bleeding us against targets ill-suited to our Legion’s warfare. Titans and servitors and tech-guard? We are wasted against an enemy too inhuman to feel fear.”

  “It is not the role of a warrior to whine when he is deployed outside his ideal battlefield, Talos.”

  “Then by all means,” Adhemar interjected, spreading his arms wide, “come down to the surface, Excellency. Bloody your claws with the rest of us. Allow your precious Atramentar to fire some bolts in anger. See for yourself!”

  The older Astartes grinned, wolf-like and keen, as the Atramentar either side of the Exalted’s throne growled through their tusked helms. “We just crippled a Titan,” Adhemar’s dark eyes shone with amusement, “so don’t think you raising those weapons is any deterrent to us telling the truth.”

  The Exalted burbled a wet chuckle. “You are in fine spirits for a sergeant that so recently led his men to their deaths.”

  The smile was wiped from Adhemar’s face. Talos looked between the two Atramentar—Garadon and Vraal—in their bullish Terminator plate. Tense. Ready.

  But they would not act. He was sure of it.

  “Enough of this madness,” Talos said. “We are hurled like fodder against insane resistance, and ordered to scout ahead of the mortal armies. Scout ahead? Astartes? This is no way to wage war. Fear is our greatest weapon, and that blade is blunted in this conflict.”

  “You will fight because it is the will of the Warmaster,” the Exalted sneered. “And it is my will.”

  “Seventh Claw is destroyed.” Talos’ fingers ached to draw Aurum. He knew, with icy certainly, he could ascend the dais and ram the golden blade home in Vandred’s chest before the Atramentar cut him down.

  Sorely, sorely tempting.

  “Did you harvest their gene-seed? You were my Apothecary once. It would grieve me to think you had forgotten your former duties completely.”

  “I cut them from the bodies of the slain myself,” Talos replied. And he had. With his combat knife, he’d cut the progenoid glands from the chest and neck of each killed warrior. Adhemar, with tears in his eyes, had packed the discoloured organs in freezing gel, storing them in a sealed stasis crate aboard Storm’s Eye.

  Six souls lost. Lost to the warp. He imagined his men, brave warriors all, their shades howling as they drifted through the Sea of Souls.

  “Adhemar and Mercutian are First Claw now.” Talos was adamant. “That is not a request.”

  The Exalted shrugged, moving weighty armour and bone spikes. Matters of unit size and assignment were beneath him.

  “And let us be clear, Brother-Captain Vandred. This war will see us dead. The Warmaster will bleed the 10th to the bone, because we are expendable to him. The survivors will, by virtue of no other choices remaining to them, join the Black Legion.”

  “The Warmaster, a thousand praises upon his name, has granted his forgiveness for your… outburst… on the surface of the prison world.” The Exalted’s ruined teeth glistened unpleasantly. “Do not abuse his generous nature, Talos.”

  Talos looked to the Atramentar. Garadon had been there. Had he not explained the truth of the matter?

  “The Warmaster sought to create divisions between the landing party. He wanted me because my second sight is not blinded, as his own seers suffer. I cannot believe you still refuse to the see the light of truth. Garadon was with us. Surely he—”

  “The Hammer of the Exalted relayed all that occurred. The only flaw the Black Legion was guilty of was allowing our Thunderhawk to be overrun by prisoners.”

  “Are you insane?” Talos took a step closer. Both of the Atramentar brought their weapons to bear: Garadon hefting his hammer, and Vraal’s lightning claws sparking into hostile life. “They blew the main ramp door open with explosives.”

  The Exalted did not answer, but the smile revealed all. It knew. The Exalted knew, had always known, and did not care. The loss of Talos, no matter how precious a commodity his prophetic gift was, would be an acceptable sacrifice in the name of the Warmaster’s continued goodwill.

  Talos’ next words came out as a whispered threat. “If you think I will allow you to lead the 10th into the grave because you hunger so feverishly for Abaddon’s good graces, you are sorely mistaken.”

  “You seek to usurp me, Soul Hunter?” The Exalted still smiled.

  “No. I seek leadership for the surface conflict. I want to win this war and still have a company to come back to.”

  “Promoting yourself? How droll.”

  “Not I, Vandred.”

  Finally, the Exalted reacted. It rose from its throne on squealing armour hinges, its slanted, birdlike eyes narrowed.

  “Do not speak his name. He slumbers too deeply. He will not awaken. I am the Exalted. I am Captain of the 10th. You will obey me!”

  “Enough, Vandred. You will not lead us on Crythe, and we are dying to your desire in order to please the Warmaster. We are fighting an enemy that lacks any human emotion. They do not feel fear, and they will not panic. It is costing us life and resources to destroy such a foe in grinding, traditional warfare. If their morale can yet be broken, it will not be done with bolters and blades. So we will use our own machines. The machines they once made for us. I am going to the Hall of Remembrance,” finished Talos. “First Claw, with me.”

  With those words spoken, he stalked from the bridge, guarded by the sacred weapons of the newly-forged First Claw.

  Outside, cyrion stopped.

  With the doors closed behind them, he leaned against the wall, head down, as if stunned. A tremor overtook his r
ight arm, and he held onto his bolter only because his fist tightened in an uncontrolled clenching of tendons.

  In a broken voice that reached only Talos, he said, “Brother. We… must speak. The Exalted’s terrors are flooding him. He is finally drowning in them.”

  “I do not care.”

  “You should care. When you spoke of the Hall of Remembrance, what remains of Vandred within that tainted shell was weeping in fear.”

  The Exalted and its guardians watched the squad leave. As the doors slammed closed in the Astartes’ wake, Garadon lowered his ornate hammer, resting its haft on his shoulder once more. The black lion’s face of his shoulder armour roared silently in the direction of the sealed doors.

  “I will never understand why the primarch honoured Talos so highly,” the Atramentar said.

  Vraal, on the other side of the Exalted’s command throne, voxed his own thoughts. “He is fortunate. Luck favours him. He dreamed of the Navigator. Now he takes a Titan princeps prisoner. The Warmaster himself will praise that capture.”

  “You sound disgusted, brother,” Garadon’s own voice was as cool and toneless as ever. “Does his fortune offend you?”

  Vraal had still not retracted his lightning claws. They hissed and sparked in the gloom of the bridge, sending harsh illumination flashing along the contours of his bulky Terminator armour like sheet lightning.

  “It does. He offends me with each breath he draws.”

  “Vraal,” the Exalted slurred, its voice thick with bitter mucus.

  “Yes, my prince?”

  “Follow them. I do not care how it is done, but the ritual of reawakening must be desecrated.”

  “Yes, my prince.” Vraal nodded his tusked helm. The servos in his ancient war-plate growled at the movement.

  The Exalted licked its fanged teeth, uncaring of the blood it drew. “Talos must not be allowed to awaken Malcharion.”

  XIV

  CAPTAIN OF THE 10TH

  “I do not want this.

  I have served with loyalty and honour…

  Throw… my ashes into the void. Do… not… entomb me…”

  —Final words of the war-sage Malcharion

  The sleeper dreamed.

  He dreamed of battle and bloodshed, dreams that warped the boundary between memory and nightmare within his sluggish mind.

  A world. A battlefield. The battlefield. Armies of millions laying waste to each other in a relentless grind. Bolter fire, bolter fire, bolter fire. So loud it bleeds into other senses. So loud it becomes blinding, so loud it tastes of ash. The sound of bolters firing is more familiar to him than the sound of his own voice, so deeply is it ingrained within him.

  The spires of a palace that spans a continent. The towers of a fortress like no other—a bastion of gold and stone to rival the imaginations of even the greediest gods.

  He would die here. This he knew, for it was memory.

  He would die here, but would not be granted peace.

  And still, the bolters fired.

  The ornate platinum surface of the sarcophagus stared back in silence, still draped in thin, gentle tendrils of wisping steam as the stasis field powered down.

  It was ornate and beautiful in the way Storm’s Eye would never be. The Land Raider, enhanced by vicious spikes and ornate armour restructuring, was artistry of a sort: revelling in the Legion’s reputation, fitted with chain racks to display crucified enemies even as the battle tank cut down hundreds more.

  Storm’s Eye was limitless aggression and the infliction of woe upon the enemy. The machine-spirit within, reflected by the ceramite without.

  But this was artistry of a different, nobler breed.

  The sarcophagus was rendered in platinum and bronze, depicting one of the greatest days of battle ever to take place in the history of 10th Company. A warrior in ancient war-plate stood, head raised back to the sky, clutching two Astartes helms. His right boot rested upon a third, driving it into the ground.

  The image had never been defiled with exaggeration. No mound of skulls, no cheering crowds. Just a warrior alone with his victory.

  The helm in his right hand sported a jagged lightning bolt etched onto its forehead, with a barbaric rune upon its cheek. The helm of Xorumai Khan, swordmaster-captain of the White Scars 9th Company.

  The helm in his left hand was crested and proud, even when torn from the body of its wearer. It was marked only with a clenched fist upon the faceplate, and the High Gothic rune for Paladin. Here was the helm of Lethandrus the Templar, a renowned champion of the Imperial Fists Legion.

  Lastly, beneath the warrior’s boot, the helm of a third Astartes. This helm was winged, marked by a tear-shaped drop of blood—displayed here as a ruby—on the helm’s forehead. Raguel the Sufferer, captain of the Blood Angels 7th Company.

  The warrior had slain these three souls in the span of a single day. A single day of hive warfare outside the walls of the Imperial Palace, and the warrior had cut down three champions of the loyalist Astartes Legions.

  Clanking cranes lifted the huge sarcophagus from its stasis pit in the marble floor of the Hall of Remembrance. Servitors operated the lifting equipment, their mono-tasked mechanical precision a necessary part of the ritual of reawakening. Talos watched the hulking coffin of platinum, bronze and black ceramite—the size of two Astartes in full Terminator plate—as it was lifted clear of the pit’s restraints. Tubes, feeds and cables, each with a sacred use, trailed down from the sarcophagus as it hung aloft. These fibrous snakes dripped coolant, beads of moisture collecting in the funereal air after such a long immersion in the stasis field.

  First Claw watched in silent reverence as the sarcophagus was carried across the chamber and lowered with programmed care. Several more servitors waited below the lowering coffin, clustered around the towering form of an armoured carapace three times the height of an Astartes. Their hands, replaced with industrial claws and technical tools, busied over the machine body, making the final preparations for the sarcophagus’ mounting upon its front.

  Dreadnought.

  The word itself sent a pulse of ice through his blood, but it was nothing compared to the reality before his eyes. A Dreadnought: the ultimate blend of man and machine. The form of an Astartes hero, encased within an ornate sarcophagus and forever suspended in amniotic fluids on the very edge of death, controlling the nigh-invulnerable ceramite body of a walking war machine.

  The ritual so far had taken almost two hours, and Talos knew several still lay ahead. He watched the servitors at work, machining clamps into place, locking struts, testing interface ports…

  “My lord,” said Tech-Priest Deltrian. “All is ready for the Third Juncture of the Ritual of Reawakening.”

  The man, robed in black, had augmented himself to the height of an Astartes with none of the inhuman muscle-bulk. To Talos, he resembled the skeletal harvester of life from pre-Imperial Terran mythology. It was an image shared across the stars by so many colonised worlds, even those that had evolved independently of far, far distant Earth. A reaper of souls.

  Deltrian’s face, visible from under the black cowl, seemed to play to this conceit for reasons Talos had never fathomed. A silver skull grinned at the Astartes. The face was formed from chrome and plasteel shaped to the man’s facial bones—perhaps even replacing skin and bone itself.

  A voxsponder unit, like a coal-black beetle on his still-human throat, emitted Deltrian’s mechanical voice.

  The unblinking eyes were glittering emerald lenses, dewy with a faint sheen from the moisture spray that hissed subtly from Deltrian’s tear ducts once every fifteen seconds. Talos had no idea why the tech-priest’s eye lenses must be kept moist, they were hardly human eyes in need of lids and juices to prevent them drying out.

  As with all of Deltrian’s inhumanities, it was something Talos respected as personal, despite his curiosity.

  “You have the Legion’s thanks, honoured tech-priest,” the Astartes said, continuing the traditional phrases expected of him. He
glanced around the marble-floored chamber, its walls thick with arcane machinery, pits sloping into the floor holding even more wondrous technology. He looked back to the tech-priest, and added on a whim: “Our thanks, as always, Deltrian. You are a dutiful and trusted ally to us.”

  Deltrian froze, machine-still. The servitors banged and clanged and fused and attached and drilled. The tech-priest’s emerald lenses clicked and whirred, as if seeking to adopt some form of facial expression. The skull of his face never stopped grinning.

  “You have violated the traditional exchange of vocalised linguistics.”

  “I merely meant to show gratitude for the duties you perform. Duties that too often remain thankless.” Talos’ black eyes didn’t break the sincere stare. “I apologise if I caused you offence.”

  “It was not an error to amend the vocalised linguistical exchange?”

  “No. It was intentional.”

  “Analysing. Processed. In reply, I would state: thank you for your recognition, Astartes One-Two-Ten.”

  Astartes One-Two-Ten? Talos smiled as understanding dawned. First Claw, Second Astartes, 10th Company. His original squad designation.

  “Talos,” the Night Lord said. “My name is Talos.”

  “Talos. Acknowledged. Recorded.” Deltrian turned his death’s head grin on the lowering sarcophagus. “Through the invocation of the Machine-God, through the blessed sacrament of unity between the enlightened Mechanicum and the Legions of Horus, I shall endeavour to revivify the warrior before us if the cause aligns with the First Oath. Make your vow known to me.”

  Slipping back into the formal exchange, Talos replied, “In the name of my primarch, who loved and served Horus as the brother he was, I give you my vow. The VIII Legion makes war upon the Golden Throne and the Cult of Mars. Return to us our fallen brother, and Imperial blood shall ran. Renew his strength with your secrets, and together we will bleed the false Mechanicum of its lore.”