[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  Here Deltrian paused again. Talos wondered if he had spoken the oath incorrectly. He’d studied the texts, but this was the first time he had undertaken the ritual himself.

  “Your avowal aligns with the First Oath. My secrets will be employed in our mutual favour.”

  “Wake him, Deltrian.” Talos met the tech-priest’s gaze, his voice lowered. “A storm is coming. A reckoning. We need him to stand with us.”

  This, too, was a break in the prescribed ritual. Deltrian paused to process it.

  “You are cognitive of the probability of failure? This warrior-unit has resisted reawakening on all four previous attempts.”

  “I know.” Talos watched the sarcophagus, golden with great deeds, being fastened in place on its war machine body. “He has never awoken. He did not wish to be entombed.”

  Deltrian said nothing. To refuse the honour of becoming so close to the Machine-God made no sense to the Mechanicum priest. With no comprehension of the emotions at play, he simply remained silent until Talos spoke again.

  “May I ask a question?”

  “Permission is granted, with the acceptance that no lore of the blessed Mechanicum shall leave the minds of its holy servants.”

  “I respect that. But I will be leaving an… honour guard here. To watch over the ritual. Is that an unacceptable breach of tradition?”

  “It was once considered tradition to maintain an honour guard in the Hall of Remembrance at all times,” Deltrian said. In a moment of almost eerie humanity, the machine man tilted his head to the side while the smile remained on his unchanging face. “How times change.”

  Talos nodded to that, smiling himself.

  “Thank you for your patience, Deltrian. Cyrion, Mercutian and Xarl will remain here. They will not interfere with your work and worship, I assure you.”

  “Your orders are recorded.”

  “I wish you well, honoured tech-priest. Please summon me for the final stage of the rite. I wish to be present.”

  “Compliance,” the augmented man said. After several seconds, Deltrian added almost awkwardly, “Talos?”

  The Astartes turned with a growling whirr of armour joints. “Yes?”

  Deltrian gestured with a long-fingered skeletal hand to a wall-mounted life support pod. Within its glass walls, suspended in amniotic fluids and connected to external systems by a tangled weave of cables and wires, the naked form of Princeps Arjuran Hollison floated in chemical-induced slumber.

  The tech-priest emitted a blurt of machine code from his throat-vox; the sound equation of a pleased smile. “This one will have many uses. Much to be learned from him. My thanks for the gift of this most valuable weapon.”

  “Return the favour,” said Talos, “and we’ll consider the matter even.”

  “We need to discuss matters of rank.”

  Bare-headed, sporting a short black beard salted with flecks of grey, Adhemar walked alongside Talos through the darkened halls of the Covenant. They were descending deeper through the ship, heading from the artificer and machinery deck, making their striding way to the mortal crew quarters.

  “What is there to discuss?” Talos asked. A rare vitality was flowing through him. Hope. Something he’d not felt in a long time. He’d not lied to the tech-priest; a storm was coming. He could feel it in his blood. It threatened to break with every beat of his heart. 10th Company would be changed forevermore.

  The two Astartes’ bootsteps echoed from the black steel around them.

  “I outrank you.” Adhemar’s voice came as if he were grinding rocks with his teeth.

  “You do,” Talos agreed. “Why does that seem to make you uncomfortable?”

  “Because rank means nothing with the 10th ruined. Beneath the Exalted is the Atramentar. Above the Exalted is no one but his hateful gods. All else is unworthy of his notice. Ninth Claw has been leaderless for three months now.”

  Talos exhaled, shaking his head. Truly, the Legion had fallen apart.

  “I had no idea.”

  “I am First Claw now,” Adhemar affirmed. “But who leads First Claw? The former brother-sergeant of Seventh? Or the former Apothecary of First?”

  “Do I look like I care?” Talos rested his hand on the pommel of sheathed Aurum. “I’d be satisfied with the company holding together for the duration of this war. You lead. You earned your rank.”

  “Has it never occurred to you that perhaps you’ve earned a higher rank than the Exalted grants you?”

  “Never,” Talos lied. “Not for a moment.”

  “I see the lie in your eyes, brother. You are not gifted with deception. You know full well you should lead First Claw. You merely offer me the position from respect.”

  “Maybe. But the lie is sincere. You have the rank. Lead and I would follow.”

  “Enough games. I have no wish to lead your—our—squad. But hear me well. Your actions for the betterment of the Legion may be altruistic and made without thoughts of personal glory. But they do not look that way to the Exalted.”

  They waited at the sealed doors to an elevator, staring at one another in the pitch blackness, seeing each other’s features perfectly. Talos breathed slowly before answering. Even the mention of the Exalted was fuel for his suppressed fury.

  “These are not your words, Adhemar. This talk of suspicion and deception… It is not your way to learn of such things. Who is this warning from? Upon whose behalf are you speaking?”

  From the hallway behind them, a voice said: “Mine.”

  Talos turned slowly, cursing himself for being too lost in his inner conflicts to have heard another close by. Even though the newcomer was unarmoured and wearing only the traditional Legion tunic, the prophet should have heard his approach.

  “My behalf. Adhemar speaks on my behalf.”

  Adhemar nodded his head in respect, as did Talos, to Champion Malek of the Atramentar.

  Xarl and Cyrion had never been close. Conversation, such as it was, always remained stilted between them when it occurred at all. Idle chatter was not an Astartes trait, and that tendency was only magnified when the two Astartes in question despised one another.

  Bolters held to chests, they walked in opposite directions around the marble-tiled chamber of the Hall of Remembrance, passing each other twice on each circuit. Mercutian, his armour sigils yet displaying his allegiance to Seventh Claw, stood guard at the great double doors, his helm turned to face the form of the Dreadnought.

  Deltrian puppeteered his servitors with occasional blaring snarls of machine code. According to his directions, the cyborged minions went about the painstaking process of readying the Dreadnought for a full reawakening. Upon its front, the mounted sarcophagus stared across the room, brazen with its glory in a way Malcharion never was in life.

  On the sixth time Cyrion passed Xarl, he opened a vox-channel to his brother.

  “Xarl.”

  “Make this good.”

  “What are the chances of this working?”

  “Of the war-sage waking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am… sceptical.”

  “As am I.” A pause stretched out, and the channel fell dead after several minutes. Cyrion blink-clicked it open again.

  “The Exalted will not allow it to happen.”

  “That is not news to me, brother.” Xarl sighed over the link. “Why do you think we are here? Of course the Exalted will attempt to stop this ritual. What still eludes me is why. I can scarcely believe things are falling apart so completely.”

  “The Exalted fears this. He fears Talos, but he fears the awakening of Malcharion even more. You haven’t sensed what I have.”

  “I have no desire to. Let us not dwell on talk of your corruption.”

  “I sense fear. I do not feel it. It’s a… perception. Like people whispering on a detuned vox, where only scraps of meaning break through.”

  “You are touched by the Ruinous Powers. Enough.”

  Cyrion pressed on. “Xarl. Listen. Just this once. Whatever w
ar is taking place within the Exalted, it is one Vandred lost long ago. He barely exists as the man we followed into battle after the Siege of Terra.”

  They passed one another again, neither warrior giving sign of acknowledging the other, despite their argument over the vox. Mercutian still stood in orderly silence.

  “Enough,” Xarl snapped. “Do you think I will react favourably to learn you understand the mind and soul of that twisted wretch? Of course you know his secrets. You are as warped as he is. His corruption is on the outside, bared to the eyes and displayed in the ravaging of his flesh. Your decay is within. Hidden, and all the darker for that fact.”

  “Xarl,” Cyrion said, his voice softer. “My brother. In the name of the father we share, listen to me now if never again.”

  Xarl didn’t reply. Cyrion watched his silent brother approaching as they came around to meeting on another half-circuit of the chamber. As they passed, Xarl gripped the rim of Cyrion’s shoulder guard. It was a strange and awkward moment. Even though the red lenses of both their helms, Cyrion felt his brother making eye contact for the first time in several years.

  “Speak,” Xarl said. “Justify yourself, if you can.”

  “Imagine,” Cyrion began, “a secret voice within everyone. A voice that speaks of their fear. When I am with you, with Talos, with Uzas… all is silent. We are Astartes. ‘Where fear fills the mortal shell, we are hollow and cold.’”

  Xarl smirked as Cyrion quoted Malcharion’s writings. Apt, very apt.

  Mercutian’s voice crackled over the vox. “Keeping secrets from your new squadmate?”

  “No, brother,” replied Cyrion. “Forgive us this momentary disagreement.”

  “Of course.” Mercutian’s link went dead again.

  “Continue,” Xarl said.

  “It’s… different around mortals. I hear their fears, like a chorus of shameful whispers. You kill a mortal and see the light die in his eyes. I hear him silently weeping, hear him whispering of a home world he will never see again, of a wife he was so afraid he would never lay eyes upon one last time. I… rip these thoughts from every mind I am near.”

  The taint of the psyker, Xarl thought. In the years of the primarch’s glory, such wretches would be purged from the Legion, or shaped according to rigid codes of behaviour and use. A wild psychic talent was an open door to possession and corruption by the soulless beings of the warp.

  “Continue,” he said again. The word was much harder to speak this time.

  “You cannot imagine what the Exalted sounds like to me, brother.” Cyrion’s own voice was broken and hesitant, struggling to give the concepts a form in words. “He shrieks… lost in the darkness of his own mind. He shouts our names, the names of Legion brothers dead and alive, imploring us to find him, to save him, to kill him.”

  He took a breath before continuing. “That is what I hear when I stand near him. His torment. His terror at the loss of control he suffers throughout his existence. He is no longer Astartes. His possession has allowed him to feel fear, and it has rendered him truly hollow. Terror bores through him like the tunnels of a hundred worms.”

  Xarl realised he was still holding Cyrion’s shoulder guard. He released it immediately, fighting down the snarl in his voice. “I could easily have lived without that knowledge, brother.”

  “As could I. But my revelations were not spoken to make you uncomfortable. The Exalted is two souls—Vandred, shrieking his slow way into oblivion, and something else… something formed from his hatred and meshed with the mind of another. When Talos threatened to awaken Malcharion, it was the first time I have heard both souls howl. Vandred’s remnants and the daemon that claims him; both feared this moment.”

  “We are here,” Xarl insisted. “We stand watch over the rites of resurrection. If the Exalted truly fears this event and sends… dissuasion, it will not matter. Threats and oaths. Who of the Atramentar is truly ignoble enough to make war upon his brothers? Malek? Never. Garadon? He is the Exalted’s creature, but he is no match for three of us. Any of the Atramentar would fall, and the Exalted is precious with the lives of his chosen elite.”

  “You assume their lives are equally valued. No, brother,” Cyrion said. “He will send Vraal.”

  Both warriors turned as the great doors rumbled open again. Cyrion was already voxing to Talos.

  “My brother, it’s beginning.”

  The reply was terse. “First Claw. At any sign of aggression, you will engage and slay the target. Ave Dominus Nox.”

  “Cyrion,” Xarl racked his bolter as one of the Atramentar entered the Hall of Remembrance, “I hate it when you are right.”

  Malek shared the lift to the lower levels with Talos and Adhemar.

  “You cannot afford to be this naive,” he said, his face as grim and set as white granite.

  “I am not being naive,” Talos said. Despite his respect for Malek, the Atramentar’s tone fired his blood. He couldn’t keep the edge of defiance from his voice. “I am acting in 10th Company’s best interests.”

  “You are acting like a blind child.” Malek’s voice was iron-stern now, and his black eyes glared. “You talk of 10th Company’s best interests? That is exactly my point. 10th Company is dead, Talos. Sometimes preservation of the past is a step backwards. I do not advocate change for change’s sake. We are talking about the reality of our war.”

  “The Night Haunter would never—”

  “Do not dare speak of our father as if you know him better than I,” Malek’s eyes narrowed, and his voice became an animalistic growl. “Do not dare assume you were the only one he held private counsel with in his final nights. Many of us ranked among his chosen. Not you alone.”

  “I know this. I am speaking of the legacy he wished for us.”

  “He wished us to survive, and to defy the Imperium. That is all. Do you think he cared about the ranks we marched in and the titles we wore while we did our duty? We are barely over thirty Astartes. Squad unity is destroyed. Leadership is weak. Resources are stretched to the limit. We are not 10th Company of the VIII Legion. We haven’t been for almost a century of our own time… and ten millennia of the galaxy’s span.”

  “Do you truly remain blind to what you are doing?” Malek finished. He shook his head, as if the mere thought was impossible to fathom.

  “I am willing to concede—”

  “The question was rhetorical,” Malek grunted. “Anyone can see it. You chance upon a hundred servitors just as our resources are almost bled dry. You walk the surface of our shattered home world, and anyone with their eyes open saw that as an omen. Then you steal a Navigator, of all the things to discover! Now a Titan princeps. You rail against the Exalted and speak of awakening the war-sage.”

  Adhemar cut in. “Talos, my brother. You are rebuilding the company to your vision. The Navigator was the boldest step. If the Covenant somehow lost Etrigius, the entire company would depend upon you, upon the Navigator you control. We couldn’t even break into the warp without your… permission.”

  “Etrigius is in fine health,” Talos said. But they were words he couldn’t back up. Navigators may enjoy inhuman longevity because of their mutations, but Etrigius—who forever kept himself shrouded in his personal observation chambers close to the ship’s prow—had barely been seen by anyone except the Exalted in decades. Octavia had access to his section of the ship, but her meagre reports through Septimus had mentioned nothing of Etrigius’ mental or physical state. He seemed unchanged.

  “I am of the Atramentar,” Malek said, the tones heavy with import. Talos understood immediately. Malek would never break an oath to reveal the secrets of his liege lord, even if he despised the Exalted. But he was free to let Talos know he had obviously accompanied the Exalted into Etrigius’ presence.

  Perhaps the discovery of Octavia on Nostramo’s surface was a more direct threat to the Exalted than Talos had realised.

  She would need to be guarded. Guarded vehemently. And Malcharion’s reawakening…

 
“Mercutian, Cyrion and Xarl stand watch in the Hall of Remembrance,” he said to Malek. The robed warrior nodded, his statuesque face resigned.

  “That is probably wise. How long has the ritual been taking place?”

  “Four hours. The Dreadnought’s chassis was being powered up and consecrated when I left. They had not yet begun to wake the sleeper.”

  “The odds are not in our favour,” Adhemar said. “He has never awoken, even once.”

  “And he did not go into that sarcophagus willingly,” Malek added.

  Talos’ vox crackled live, interrupting further discussion.

  “My brother,” said Cyrion. “It is beginning.”

  Vraal strode into the Hall of Remembrance.

  The roaring lion’s head of his right shoulder guard, marking him as one of the Atramentar, sported a pattern of random gashes and cuts, the marks of infrequent repairs after countless battles. The rest of his Terminator war-plate followed suit. Scars marred the midnight surface, the lips of these carved chasms gun-metal grey where repainting was in order.

  Old blood still flaked his gauntlets. Although any matter on his lightning claws was burned away each time he activated them, gore would streak his gauntlets for weeks after he bloodied himself in battle.

  The others misunderstood this as irreverence. As disrespect. It was almost laughable.

  What greater honour to the machine-spirit of his armour was there than to display the wounds it had won in battle? What nobler reverence could be paid than revealing with pride all the scars that had failed to see him slain?

  Thrusting from his armour’s hunched back were trophy racks made from bronze spikes, each with Astartes helms and their oversized skulls clattering together with every step he took.

  Vraal licked his teeth as his red-tinted displays locked onto every living being in the chamber. There, the servitors tending the silent Dreadnought, like mindless worshippers. There, the tech-adept Deltrian working over a console of arcane lights and switches and levers. There, the new blood of First Claw, dour Mercutian, standing in the shadows of the great doors to Vraal’s left. There, Cyrion and Xarl, bolters held to chests.