by Ben Counter
Lysander followed the path down towards the fortress’s heart, at every step thinking what the next trick would be. Lycaon and Kaderic were beside him, and they knew the art as well as Lysander. They ignored the obvious pathways and aimed instead for the half-hidden passages the Iron Warriors themselves used to move about the fortress. They knew, as if by an Emperor-given instinct, which levels were actually half-floors where they would be forced heads bowed into killing rooms with spears thrust down from above, and which archways concealed nothing more than a dead end into which they were being herded.
At an intersection, Sergeant Gorvetz brought Antinas forward to flood the corridors with flame, and Antinas did so with Givenar’s name on his lips. The Devastator squad fought the gunfire of a dozen Iron Warriors with their own massive firepower, buying an opening for Kaderic’s and Lycaon’s squads to get past. Lysander voxed for Gorvetz to disengage and follow – Gorvetz replied that he could not turn his back on the enemies flooding the area or they would all be lost. And so the strike force left Gorvetz behind and forged on.
The fortress’s design had robbed the Imperial Fists of a third of the strike force’s strength, but any other force would not have made it that far at all. Lysander led the way through a chapel to dark gods, heaped high with sacrifices of bleached bones and the battle-dead. A hall crammed with mutants gathered to worship there was but an obstacle to be crashed through – with volleys of bolter fire followed up with a chainsword charge the hall was swept clean and the Imperial Fists rampaged through over the bodies.
At the far end of a long, broad corridor lined with statues of Iron Warriors from centuries past, Lysander recognised the armour and bearing of Captain Hexal.
‘Brother Lysander!’ called Hexal. ‘We knew you would return. You have kept us waiting too long! Let us get acquainted anew, for I have almost forgotten how it felt to make you kneel.’
‘He seeks to distract us,’ said Captain Lycaon. ‘A fight to settle our honour here will give the Iron Warriors time to cut us off and trap us.’
‘He has distracted me well enough,’ replied First Sergeant Kaderic. ‘If there is one here who should give this creature the duel he seeks, it is I. Go on, Lysander, go on! Hexal will have to take my head long before he tests his blade against yours.’
‘I need you with me,’ said Lycaon to Lysander, as more Iron Warriors burst into the passageway behind Hexal. ‘Let Kaderic have this fight. He can keep Hexal off our heels. We must go on.’
‘Then I go on with you,’ replied Lysander. ‘First Sergeant! Let Hexal know that he is dying! Let him feel what our lost brothers felt!’
Kaderic was already charging, his squad in tow, yelling the Chapter’s oldest battle-cries as he closed with Hexal’s squad. Any reply Kaderic made to Lysander’s words was lost in the clash of chainblades and bolter fire, and Lysander and Squad Lycaon crashed down a stairwell and further into the fortress.
Lycaon and Lysander entered the sweltering heart of Kulgarde, where the reservoirs of molten rock boiled as they fed the forges above and below. Gangs of mutants, skin evolved thick and leathery against the heat, hauled enormous slabs of war engine armour from gigantic forges. The high ceiling was obscured by banks of smoke and lengths of massive chain looped down, hung with titan-sized weapons for fitting onto Kulgarde’s war machines.
The mutants swarmed from their work posts, taskmasters bellowing orders to charge and butcher the Imperial Fists. Squad Lycaon met them with volleys of bolter fire, short and disciplined, shredding bodies as they surged forwards. With a terrible cry more mutants were arriving on the same level, sent by Kraegon Thul’s orders to swamp the area and slow the Imperial Fists down until the Iron Warriors could force them to battle.
Like a sea of flesh at high tide, they flowed through their own dead. The taskmasters rose like warships on that tide, ordering forward the new arrivals of pallid medical orderlies and emaciated dungeon keepers, shambling labour-brutes and bloated chapel attendants. Thousands of them were flooding the forges, some pushed into the molten pits as they were crowded too close, others vanishing beneath the feet of the larger mutants around them. Their lives meant nothing as individuals – together, as one raging mass, they were an unstoppable force.
‘Brothers!’ ordered Lycaon. ‘Stand and fight! I shall take Kraegon Thul’s head. Lysander, can you get us to the throne forge?’
‘I can,’ said Lysander, snapping off his own shots into the tide of screaming mutants. ‘But we do not have long.’
‘It must be you and I,’ said Lycaon.
‘Then it shall be.’
Lycaon led the way into the burning darkness, where billows of smoke from the forges masked the way ahead. Lysander glanced behind him to see Halaestus fighting alongside Squad Lycaon, jaw set as he rattled off a magazine of bolter fire into the enemy. Then the darkness grew around them and Lysander lost sight of them.
So it was that two Imperial Fists made it as far as the vast circular door, its two halves meeting at a massive combination lock. The lock’s concentric circles were marked with sigils taken from the Iron Warriors heraldry, mounted over a mass of clockwork connected to the hydraulic rams that could swing the doors open or slam them closed.
The sound of the approaching horde rang against the pitted iron of the walls. Lysander stepped up to the lock and ran his hands across it.
He hauled the rings around until they lined up a hand, a shattered tower, an open eye and an eight-pointed star. With a hiss of spurting hydraulics the doors boomed open and a fiercer heat rolled out, a blistering gale heavy with sulphur and ash.
Ahead was the spherical chamber that Lysander had seen once before, when he had first come to Malodrax and was dragged by Captain Hexal through the halls of Kulgarde. He and his battle-brothers had been brought here, the forge throne.
The lower half of the sphere was full of churning molten iron, bubbling up plumes of flame. The walls were hung with weapons and armour, each one a unique masterpiece with blades of diamond or polished ivory shining in the yellow-orange glare. Hundreds of them hung there, still glowing, for the heat of their forging had never dissipated.
Suspended over the molten fires, connected to the doorway by a narrow walkway, was the circular platform on which stood the anvil. It looked like it had been hauled from some distant temple-forge, ancient and gnarled, scarred with the marks of a million blades hammered into shape.
Kraegon Thul was waiting. He stood before the anvil, smoke coiling around him, his outline shimmering in the heat. He was every bit the monster Lysander remembered, as if the industrial magnitude of war was distilled and poured into the shape of that ancient, age-corrupted armour. Kraegon Thul raised a hand and from the ceiling fell a familiar shape – the Fist of Dorn, Lysander’s thunder hammer, taken from him when he was first brought to Kulgarde. Thul caught the hammer and swung it as if testing its balance.
It was obscene to see a relic of the Imperial Fists in the hand of an Iron Warrior. The machine-spirit of the ancient weapon must have been crying out in misery and anger. A wave of shame came over Lysander, for he had lost the weapon and placed it in the armoury of his Chapter’s greatest enemy.
Chaplain Lycaon stepped forwards, crozius arcanum in hand. There had been no question that he would be the one to face Kraegon Thul. In ages past it was a law of the Chapter that the Commander’s Right be respected on the battlefield, and that any Imperial Fist who tried to usurp it and face the enemy’s champion himself would be punished with the nerve glove or cortical scourge. That was no longer the case, but the tradition was still strong. Though Lysander had brought the Imperial Fists here, it was Lycaon who should take the Warsmith’s head back to the Phalanx.
‘Kraegon Thul!’ called out Lycaon over the scalding gale swirling around the crucible. ‘You owe us many deaths, but to my shame, I can grant you only one! Kneel and I will take your head. Fight and I will cut you to pieces upon your ow
n anvil, and the history of my Chapter will sing of your suffering! Make your choice, Warsmith, and die!’
17
‘When I look upon death, as I know I shall, it will be with the knowledge that I have changed the universe around me. How many men can say that? A man might live two or three hundred years among the Imperial nobility, but what of it? A hundred more and it will be as if he had never existed. Not I. If nothing else, the enemies of mankind will remember me as a deadly foe, a lesson against underestimating my species. And so when I look upon death, I will welcome it.’
– Inquisitor Corvin Golrukhan
The stained-glass window that dominated the chapel displayed a saint of Chaos, a prophet of the warp, dozens of storeys high, surrounded by the ruins of a once-great city. She was shown as a warrior, her skin bright red, horns on her brow, a golden bow in one hand and the severed head of a greenskin alien in the other. She wore a gown of flame with thousands of worshippers burning at her feet. The sky behind her was streaked with falling stars and shattered moons.
Lysander smashed through the window, the saint of Chaos disintegrating beneath him. The chapel whirled as he fell and he reached out, groping for his foe. His hand closed on the plume of Karnak’s helm and he dragged the alien with him.
They had fought from the duelling ground through the temple, as Shalhadar’s faithful battled the scum of Kulgarde everywhere around them. The surroundings had been a blur until Karnak got the upper hand for a split second, catching Lysander’s blade on his own and hurling him through the window.
Lysander hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of his lungs. He had come down in a great clockwork monstrosity, an ancient engine that drove a production line hammering out segments of machinery and armour. Belts of articulated steel ran back and forth across the vast space as hammers and mechanical welding arms swung between the columns of cogs and pistons. The sound was deafening and Lysander’s head swam with it.
Karnak had landed a short distance away, on one of the conveyor belts among the machine components. He still had his sword on him and he didn’t look as winded as Lysander.
Karnak was already on his feet. Lysander’s body complained as he snatched up his axe and circled, picking his way through the machinery grinding overhead. The axe was a crude weapon snatched from a brute-mutant moments earlier, a similar size to the executioner’s axe with a notched and blunted blade. Karnak loosened up his shoulders, switching his sword back and forth. Lysander’s armour was scored all over by the tip of the sword and his cloak was in tatters.
Karnak sprinted at Lysander. Lysander sidestepped behind a huge cog – Karnak dived through the spokes of the cog and whipped the blade at Lysander’s leg. Lysander brought the haft of his axe down in time to deflect the blade but the sword cut straight through his weapon. Lysander dropped the useless halves of the axe as Karnak rolled to his feet.
‘Kneel,’ hissed Karnak in a hoarse whisper of a voice. ‘Obey. Take a warrior’s end.’
‘You know I will not,’ replied Lysander. ‘You waste your breath.’
‘Quite so,’ said Karnak. ‘But I must ask. It is how it is done.’
The exchange had bought Lysander the seconds he needed to think. Karnak was faster. Lysander was stronger. The Codex Astartes made much of how a Space Marine had to accentuate his strengths, never seek to compensate for his weaknesses. Rogal Dorn had taught that an Imperial Fist should be a master strategist when it came to planning the battle, but become a brutal savage when it came to fighting it. Lysander would not beat Karnak in a fencing match, but he had tricks this alien could never match.
Lysander grabbed the spokes of the cog beside him. Metal screamed as the cogs around it disengaged, stripping teeth. He ripped the cog free of its mountings – it was three metres across and solid iron. Lysander spun like a hammer thrower, letting the force come up from his feet, through his legs up to his abdomen and chest, and out through his shoulders. The cog scythed into Karnak, smacking him square in the midriff and throwing him back through a bank of spinning clockwork. Shards of brass and steel rained down. The conveyor belt ruptured under the impact and threw links as it spooled into the air, scattering a fountain of scrap metal.
Lysander leapt the distance between himself and Karnak. He kicked the alien’s sword away and was on him, putting all his weight on the armoured chest. He slammed a fist into Karnak’s throat, feeling the alien buck and squirm under him, trying to wriggle out, but Lysander was too heavy and strong.
‘You should have just killed me,’ snarled Lysander.
Karnak forced an arm free and clutched at Lysander’s face, trying to get his fingers through the eyeholes of the executioner’s hood. The hood came free and Lysander grabbed Karnak’s wrist, trapping his arm against the floor. Karnak was left looking up at Lysander’s exposed face.
‘You’re Lysander,’ said Karnak.
Something in the moment of recognition threw Karnak’s focus. He stopped struggling for a moment and Lysander smashed a fist into his faceplate. The armour split and Lysander’s fist came away with fragments of the eyepieces embedded in his knuckles.
Karnak grabbed a shard of broken metal, a strut snapped off from the clockwork he had crashed through. He stabbed it at Lysander’s neck but Lysander knocked the hand away, spotting a great spear of jagged metal stabbing out from the wreckage. He hauled Karnak off the floor, taking his whole weight – as furious as he was, Karnak seemed to weigh nothing at all.
‘Wait…’ gasped the alien.
Lysander lunged at the wreckage. The jagged spike punched through Karnak’s back and speared out through his chest, just off-centre. Lysander let go and Karnak was left hanging there, skewered through like an insect on a scientist’s wall.
Karnak convulsed and coughed. Lysander tore the broken helmet off him, ready to look into the alien’s eyes before the killing blow went in.
He had wondered many times since he had been on Malodrax just what kind of alien Karnak was. The elaborate armour and the air of arrogance suggested one of the eldar, an ancient and cruel race for which Lysander had nothing but disdain. Perhaps Karnak was one of Malodrax’s natives, who had kept the civilisation and learning of his people in return for becoming a slave to Kraegon Thul. Or maybe he was from one of the numberless xenos species with whom humanity had not yet had any contact, brilliant but deviant creatures who planned mankind’s downfall in the galaxy’s shadows. All these had been possibilities, and Lysander would have been happy to kill any of them.
But he was not looking at an alien now. He was looking into the bloodied face of a human. It was long and lean, the hair shaved back close, the eyes deep-set and grey.
‘They got you…’ said Karnak, a dribble of blood running from the corner of his mouth. ‘They used you. But it is not too late…’
‘Who are you?’ demanded Lysander.
‘Sildyne,’ came the reply. ‘My name is Sildyne.’
Lysander stepped back a pace. ‘Sildyne? Golrukhan’s assassin?’
Sildyne smiled weakly. His teeth were broken and bloody. ‘Who did you think made sure the scalpel would break? I would have done the same for your brothers, but Thul sent them to the Bone Carvers before I could… before I could do anything. I feel no pain, you know. That is how we can tell we are dying. My spine is cut.’
Lysander’s thoughts were spinning. He seized onto the one thing he had – the reason he was there, the man he had come to kill. ‘Where is Kraegon Thul?’ he asked.
‘Somewhere safe,’ said Sildyne. ‘You are here to kill me. You will not get at him now. But…’ Sildyne groped at the belt of his armour, where several compartments were built into the plates around his waist. One of them slid open and he took out a long, thin-bladed dagger, its hilt a vial of colourless liquid, wound round with filigree gold. ‘Golrukhan gave me one last task to perform if he was ever killed or taken alive. To kill Kraegon Thul. This was to be m
y weapon. The venom in it will seize the gene-seed’s genetic markers and turn them against the host. A Space Marine can survive most anything, but not this. I put myself close enough to Thul to use it, but that… that monster… he never took off his armour.’ Sildyne laughed at that, the sound a ragged bubbling from his torn lungs. ‘One glimpse of exposed skin and I would have killed him. But there was none.’
Sildyne held out the weapon. His fingers went limp and the weapon fell – Lysander caught it before it hit the floor. He saw now the channels in its stiletto blade, through which the venom would course when the blade was pushed home and the vial shattered.
‘What must I do?’ said Lysander, looking down at the weapon.
‘Leave here. Escape. Come back with friends. But remember, Lysander. This was not an accident. They sent you here to kill me. Malodrax sent you. They are all slaves to its will. Do not follow them. Do not let this world use you any more…’
Sildyne’s eyes rolled back and his mouth lolled open. His hands fell nerveless by his sides. For a moment Lysander could only stare at the man he had killed, the man who had engineered his escape, had dedicated himself to killing Kraegon Thul, and who had been rewarded with an execution.
‘My tome has been taken from me and I write this on a scrap of parchment in the blood of my torn fingers, in a code that only an acolyte of mine could ever read. I am not such a fool that I believe anyone will ever read it, but the Emperor’s sight is upon me and I will set out these thoughts even if He is the only one who will ever see them.
