Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  Vulkan regarded the drakehide cloak. He pulled it tighter about him.

  ‘What hammer?’ he asked, but his eyes had already strayed from the old man to a thin tract of stone that led from the plateau to an archway and an antechamber, where a metal shape shone with captured firelight.

  An anvil.

  Upon it lay a fuller, a blacksmith’s tool.

  A talisman hung around Vulkan’s neck on a chain. The metal felt cool, despite the lava it had undoubtedly been exposed to.

  ‘Did I…?’

  ‘Forge it? Yes, you did. You laboured for several hours on it, though you shared nothing of what went into its creation.’

  Vulkan turned back to regard the old man.

  ‘I remember nothing of this.’

  ‘But you do remember everything else, don’t you, Vulkan?’

  Vulkan frowned, looking down to his leathern hands, blacksmith’s hands, as if the sight of them might fill the space in his memory regarding the talisman. It appeared to be ornate, fashioned from a gilded metal that had withstood the mountain’s heart-blood. A drake’s fanged visage formed a boss at its middle, and around it were arranged seven hammers.

  ‘They are called black-smiters,’ he murmured. ‘Nocturnean makers­ and metal-shapers, since the eldest days, since before my father found me…’

  ‘Your father?’ prompted the old man.

  ‘My creator,’ Vulkan said. ‘I am His warrior. A general in His war. I remember… Isstvan, and then…’ His face darkened at the memory. ‘I felt light and pain,’ he muttered, gently tracing the talisman’s artistry with his fingers. ‘Macragge… I was on Macragge. The spear, the fulgurite…’ He let go of the talisman to reach for the shard impaling his chest, stopping just short of touching it. Vulkan’s gaze met that of the old man’s, whose eyes had not yet left the primarch.

  ‘I am Vulkan. I died, I really died, and have come back.’

  He remembered part of an old Nocturnean proverb about the dead. That they could never come back. Not the same. It boded ill.

  The old man gestured beyond his perch of stone, to the other side of the vast lava sea.

  Following his gesture, Vulkan’s gaze alighted on a curve of night-black rock jutting like a fin from the magma, almost fully submerged. He had not seen it before, but knew it had always been here. Strange runes had been etched into its surface and they glowed faintly.

  ‘You must take the shadowed road, Lord of Drakes. It leads to a fell place, but that is your path.’ He appeared sad, but resigned to this truth.

  ‘My path?’

  ‘Your fate.’

  Vulkan turned sharply. ‘What do you know of it?’ he asked, suddenly angry. ‘Likely you are a figment of my fevered mind. I have experienced this before.’

  ‘I assure you, I am real, and what I say is the truth. You know this, Vulkan.’ He jabbed a finger at the stone. ‘That is a gate, an eldritch gate you might say. A border between realms.’

  ‘And I must cross this gate?’

  ‘Do you feel your strength returning yet, Vulkan?’

  Vulkan looked down as he thought on that, then clenched his fist.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Below this cavern is a vault. You will need to breach it in order to cross the gate.’

  Vulkan looked down and saw the beginnings of another path, swallowed by lava but leading down from the plateau towards where the gate must be.

  ‘How?’

  The old man gestured back to the anvil. ‘You forged more than just a talisman, Lord of Drakes. Look closer.’

  A great hammer lay upon the anvil, a two-handed weapon with the head of a snarling drake at one end and a jutting spike at the other.

  Urdrakule, its name echoed in Vulkan’s mind, the Burning Hand.

  ‘You must descend into the fire, to the very nadir of this basin… and shatter it.’

  ‘And reveal what lies beneath?’

  ‘Yes, but not yet. Your sons are coming.’

  Vulkan nodded. ‘My sons…’ He placed his left hand against the rough wall of the magma chamber. ‘Nocturne is slipping back into slumber.’ He let out a long, calming breath. ‘Deathfire,’ he said, turning, ‘why am I here?’

  But the old man was gone, and Deathfire was silent again.

  A storm raged beyond the shelter of the mountain. Vulkan staggered from a fissure in the rock, right into the teeth of it. Pyroclastic cloud swept low and aggressively across the desert, bringing with it ash and stinging cinder.

  Vulkan barely felt it, but still huddled within his cloak against the hot wind.

  His strength had yet to return fully and, exposed to the fury of the storm, he realised just how weak he had become. He fell as an arc of lightning speared from the roiling red heavens above. It earthed seven times, each blow more violent than the last, until a massive crater of black glass stood in its wake. Vulkan stood at its still steaming edge and crossed the smoke pall heedlessly, occasionally stumbling, deafened by the roar of eruption and the crack of sundered earth.

  The shadow of a city loomed ahead, large and forbidding. An immense gate was visible despite the distance and the dark, but a crackling void shield dome was the city’s true defence. Lightning struck once more, unleashing a bright viridian flash that flowed across the shield, its curvature revealed in light. An impression of towers and walls was quickly lost to shadow as the energy died away. Ozone stung the air a few seconds later. The city fell back into darkness.

  Thunder bellowed, a displeased god at odds with nature as a great tectonic upheaval took place. Vulkan felt it through his bare feet, a trembling that grew into a ferocious quake. A great fissure opened up in the ground, a maw of spewing sulphur vapour and steam, accompanied by a violent phreatic roar.

  It almost swallowed Vulkan back into the earth, and he had no desire to begin the long climb again. He staggered from its path, the air thick with ash that clung to his body and amassed around his feet so densely that he sank down into its depths, head bowed, humbled by Nocturne’s fury.

  And there he stayed until the mountain stilled and the earth quieted, and the Time of Trial ended.

  A distant thrum of engines woke him.

  Vulkan opened his eyes, disturbing a hardened layer of ash. It broke and flaked away, and the desert appeared before him. Swathes of smoke and thicker agglomerations of ash scudded across the Arridian Plain, driven by winds coming off the Acerbian Sea to the north, obscuring the horizon. Three hovering silhouettes, their outlines trembling in the heat, emerged from a long grey pall.

  Billowing dust clouds spewed out in the wake of their air intakes. The sight reminded Vulkan of a seaborne ship spearing through the ocean, or a gnorl-whale on the hunt. A leonid, native to the plain, fled at the silhouettes’ approach. The creature retreated to a rocky promontory, content to watch, unaccustomed to a greater predator in its hunting ground.

  Vulkan’s eyes narrowed.

  Sky Hunters, he realised. On Scimitar-pattern jetbikes.

  He was remembering, the craft, the creatures… Nocturne.

  They were seeking something, urgently. Why else take jetbikes? Not him. It could not be him. His sons believed him dead. He tried to lift his hand, to hail or beckon, but it resisted as if an anvil held it down.

  I am too weak.

  It had to be the climb. It had taken him hours to summit the crag, and then hours more to find the fissure in the mountain’s flank.

  He could see them clearly now. His head felt heavy, his bones ached. Huddled in ash, wrapped in a hooded mantle of drakehide, Vulkan stayed still. They were coming.

  At last, the lead jetbike slewed to a halt, several metres away. The rider quickly dismounted. He ran across the plain, heavy boots forging deep impressions in the ash, hulking scale-green armour worn as effortlessly as a lightweight huntsman’s cloak. The jetbike hovered, near-s
ilent, gently bobbing up and down. Vulkan heard the low throb of gravitic impellers and the soft rasp of displaced earth.

  The warrior slowed, the urgency of his footfalls decreasing, crunching shards of rapidly formed obsidian glass beneath him.

  Vulkan bowed his head, no longer able to hold it up. He grasped the shard in his chest, the fulgurite. It burned still, but the pain kept him awake. He could feel his body responding, his miraculous physiology reknitting wounds, purging atrophy, restoring vigour. His grip tightened.

  ‘Brother…’ Vulkan heard the warrior utter, not to him but to one of his companions. They were only a few strides distant now.

  The other two had closed, dismounting swiftly to catch up to the leader.

  ‘Numeon?’ asked the warrior of Vulkan.

  They do not know me. They think I am dead. They think I am…

  The name brought an unwelcome pang of grief as Vulkan recognised it.

  A last few footfalls brought the warrior to within touching distance. Vulkan heard his approach, the soft growl of power armour, the low metal grind of a gauntlet’s whirring fingers reaching for him. The smell of oil and ash and heat.

  ‘Is he alive?’ asked another, farther away but also closing.

  The first warrior paused, realising his error.

  He knows something is wrong, but he does not know what.

  Then he fell to his knees as Vulkan looked up.

  The warrior gasped, ‘In the name of…’

  Vulkan… He sees me now.

  The others stopped, one then another, until all three regarded him. Though they wore their helms – snarling, draconic, belligerent – Vulkan knew their mouths would be agape, their eyes wide behind red flaring slits.

  He stood, shrugging off the ash cloak and letting it cascade from his mantle. He felt unsteady, but gripped the fulgurite in a firm hand as he regarded them. His joy almost went beyond words, but he found two in that moment.

  ‘My sons…’

  Themis. Vulkan knew the City of Warrior Kings well, as he knew all of the Sanctuary Cities. He had helped raise them, fought for them, buried their warriors, seen them sundered and then thrive again.

  Barek Zytos had come from a Themian tribe. His broad neck and stern disposition made his provenance obvious. The drakes shaved into the crimson hair on either side of his head suggested he had been a hunter, though he had the gait and demeanour of a brawler. Vulkan knew this too as the warrior regarded him with quiet awe.

  The four of them, the primarch and three of his sons, stood in sight of the city. The warriors had not strayed from his side since being reunited on the Arridian Plain, at the foot of Mount Deathfire.

  They had not spoken either, not until Zytos said, ‘An Apothecary is on his way from the Draconius Gate. He will be close by now.’

  ‘Tell him to turn back. That you were mistaken, Barek,’ Vulkan replied. ‘None other than you three must know I am here.’ He eyed them in turn.

  A hot wind blowing down off the slopes disturbed the edges of the primarch’s drakehide cloak, and filled a brief silence.

  ‘Why not, my lord?’ asked Igen Gargo. A black-smiter, obvious from the deepening of his brow, and the burn scars across his cheeks and nose. Heavy shoulders encroached upon a thick neck. Shorter than Zytos, he had shaved white hair and a thin beard that ran down his chin. It reminded Vulkan of white ash. All three, perhaps out of respect, or perhaps because they would only believe what the naked eye told them, had removed their helms.

  Gargo’s helm was particularly ornate, and hung on a strap of sauroch leather from his weapons belt. Both his arms were bionic. The right looked crude by comparison, though evidently functional. The left carried T’kell’s mark, a masterpiece of artifice.

  ‘Your resurrection… It is… miraculous. The Legion must be told.’

  Zytos quietly ordered the Apothecary to return to the Draconius Gate, citing a false alarm and apologising for his rashness.

  Gargo frowned, looking from primarch to battle-brother.

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Zytos, ‘but if it is Vulkan’s will…’

  Vulkan nodded, and turned to the last of the three.

  ‘Atok?’

  Abidemi bowed, barely resisting the urge to kneel.

  ‘Lord primarch,’ he said, his deep voice almost a growl.

  ‘Do you believe as your brothers do? Am I selfish to ask this of you?’

  Atok Abidemi raised his eyes, but not his chin. The thin crest of hair dividing his scalp had been dyed a darker green than his scalloped armour.

  ‘I believe Artellus Numeon died, so you could live. I now carry his sword. I do not know how he did this. Or why it happened. I only know what I can see. I see my primarch. I hear his voice. Do you wish to know what I believe, father?’ He raised himself up again, emotion making him tremble. ‘I believe… Vulkan lives.’

  Vulkan embraced him, father to son. He embraced them all, and felt the pain of the last few years lessen.

  ‘Heed me,’ he said. ‘Say nothing of this. Tell no one. The Legion must think I am dead.’

  ‘But, lord primarch–’ Gargo began.

  Zytos gave him a fierce glance, but Vulkan raised his hand for calm.

  ‘I need your trust, my sons.’

  ‘And you have it,’ said Zytos, ‘but I do not know what to make of this.’

  Vulkan gave a sombre smile. ‘I expect this is not the reunion you envisaged when I and not Numeon came out of the desert. But it is my will. Horus and his kind believe me dead. Let them. My father has generals aplenty. That was never my true purpose, but I had to die first to understand that.’ Vulkan smiled again, wry and a little indulgent. ‘Ever curious is my father’s humour. Even standing before you, reborn, I still do not fully grasp His intent. There are… pieces missing. A plan. But I know I will never return to this war at the head of a Legion. It saddens me, for nothing would give me greater joy, but the sons of Nocturne are not unfamiliar with sacrifice. This is mine. I now ask it of you also.’

  Zytos ran a hand across his shorn scalp, squinting against the sun. ‘Should this honour not be Rhy’tan’s, or at least one of the Igniax? Had T’kell not already left Prometheus…’

  Vulkan rested a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘It is you who ventured out into the desert, Barek. You and Igen and Atok. You who protected me as I slept, across the Ruinstorm. You who brought me back.’

  ‘Numeon did that,’ Zytos replied, failing to hide a tremor of emotion in his voice.

  ‘Numeon chose you. As I chose him. He did not undertake his task alone.’ He released Zytos to speak to his sons as one. ‘In the earliest days of Nocturne, before my father came and gave us the gift of illumination, the gift of Imperium, tribal chieftains had a name for their closest warriors and seneschals. They called them draaksward, sword dragons. I name you three the Draaksward. I am in need of sword dragons, of your brotherhood.’

  The sea wind blew a mournful chorus across the desert. It seemed to linger overlong, before Zytos stepped up to the primarch. For a supposed savage of Themis, he was both noble and proud.

  ‘What would you have us do?’

  ‘Return here, after three suns have passed. Return to the mountain. Bring a ship. Small. Fast. Our leaving must remain unnoticed.’

  ‘And to where are we bound, my lord?’ asked Zytos.

  ‘The shadowed road,’ said Vulkan, echoing the old man’s words. ‘An old, forgotten path.’

  Gargo and Abidemi exchanged a glance. Zytos had doubts too, but his love and obedience for his primarch overrode them.

  ‘We would follow you unto death if necessary, my lord. I will not lie, though. I have questions. Many of them, and I still grieve for Numeon, even as I grieved for you. I cannot claim to fathom what has brought this day to pass. I am ignorant of the deeper sec
rets of the universe, and confess I remain bewildered. But you need not ask for what is freely given.’ He reached behind him and pulled forth an ornate thunder hammer strapped to his armour’s power generator. ‘Upon this hammer, I swear it.’

  Abidemi reached for his scabbard and drew the blade within. ‘I will take the path with you, my lord,’ he declared hoarsely.

  ‘And you, Igen?’ Vulkan asked the last of his sons.

  Gargo turned, and Zytos looked about to reprimand him when he reached for a spear lashed to the side of one of the jetbikes. He returned and thrust its heel deep into the earth, so the speartip stood proud and shone in the sun.

  ‘I fear no shadows, not with the primarch by my side.’

  Vulkan nodded, stern, fiercely approving.

  ‘Three suns,’ he said, letting his gaze fall on each and every one of his legionaries.

  Three sons… It could not merely be coincidence.

  Then he turned and slowly trudged back to the mountain.

  The growl of engines came to him a few minutes later as his sons departed, back to the Draconius Gate and the lies they would have to tell their comrades about why they had gone into the desert and what they had found.

  After a short climb up the crags, Vulkan found the fissure again. He descended deep into smoke and flame, and returned to the chamber. His hammer awaited him, standing upright, perfectly balanced, its head touching the earth, its haft beckoning.

  Nocturneans believed that when a weapon was forged, it not only gained form but also animus. It became, for want of a better term, conscious. Such stories were told by the elder black-smiters, but as he beheld the hammer and gripped the haft, Vulkan could believe it too. He found his strength and reached for the fulgurite lodged in his chest, wrenching it free as if he were drawing out a thorn. The primarch let out a breath and felt the agony of the excision fade with it. One hand still on the hammer’s haft, he took a knee and reverently laid the stone shard down. It held the Emperor’s grace, and so it was the Emperor in Vulkan’s eyes.