The Path of Heaven

by Chris Wraight

  The Melak Karta swung down and around, straining hard against the sudden course correction. More hits came in from the pursuing cruiser, strafing the rear thruster-banks and causing the plasma-trails to spit and writhe.

  Idda swung around in his harness, confused. ‘My khan, we cannot pull clear on this course.’

  ‘We never could,’ said Algu, grimly. ‘And they never wished to catch us.’

  As the last word left his mouth, the truth became apparent – a battleship emerging from Revo’s distant horizon, a mere speck of light against the iron arc, but already close to the limits of its long-range weapons. Ident-runes began to scroll down the Melak Karta’s cogitator feeds – scanned and cross-referenced against sighting and fleet databases.

  It was Gloriana-class: the Endurance, flagship of the XIV Legion’s primarch. Survival had just gone from being a matter of difficulty to one of near-impossibility.

  ‘Keep running,’ ordered Algu, watching the battleship sweep into full view, thinking back to the times he had pulled a similar manoeuvre on his prey. ‘Find some speed from somewhere. Ignore all limits – just get me speed.’

  Idda complied instantly. The entire bridge complied, and soon voices were raised as every section frantically searched for some way to boost the already perilous levels of engine-overburn.

  Algu watched them for a moment. Some had served with him for decades, and he knew they would find a way, if one could be found. It would at least fill their minds with something productive and stave off the paralysis of fear.

  As for him, fear was not even an option. He gripped the hilt of his chainsword tighter, feeling the weight and balance of it in his grasp. It felt good – in peak condition, recently refined by the Techmarine Xiang, already humming with the thirst for combat.

  That was well. Unless a miracle occurred, it would be in use within the hour.

  Mortarion did not oversee the running down of the frigate. He waited in the depths of the Endurance for notice to reach him that the ship had been disabled and boarding squads sent in.

  During that time, he surrounded himself with the things he had taken from Terathalion, and from Xerxes IX, and from the dozen other worlds he had laid low. After Prospero, where his last encounter with the Warhawk had taken place, his path through the void had become meandering, and the destruction wrought unfocused. There had been matters to resolve, and that had taken time. The fading embers of the Prosperine empire had been the victim of that destructive period, and he had absorbed the last of its secrets in a bid to settle the doubts that the Khan had kindled in his mind.

  The residue of that quest remained in place. Heavy glass jars lined the walls of the broad chamber, glossy with syrupy preserving oils, each one containing the atrophied remnants of semi-formed things. Great leather tomes, their hide covers mouldering in the humid atmosphere, were stacked up like towers in the semi-dark. Three great weapons had been placed in stasis fields, their iron-dark blades inscribed with xenos scripts.

  Mortarion stalked amongst it all, running rheumy eyes across the esoterica of fallen civilisations. Such a collection would have been laughed at by the truly determined jackdaws of the Great Crusade, by a Lorgar or a Magnus, but the Death Lord had come late to study. He devoured learning now with the fervour of the long-famished, reading feverishly for days at a time, suffering no interruptions. All the time, he remembered the words of the daemon Lermenta, the one he had captured, taking her from the ruins of Terathalion and holding her here until the truth of her came out.

  By the gods, you learn fast, she had told him.

  He had killed Lermenta’s mortal shell, but that would not end her animating spirit. It lingered in the shadows, perhaps goading him, perhaps assisting, always there. And all the time, the span of his knowledge widened. The sum of spells at his command grew, gifting his already deadly Legion another weapon. The stronger he became, the more clearly the intelligences on the other side pressed against the membranes of reality. He heard them speak to him in his rare sleep-periods, gifting him visions of the past and the future, though intermingled within the truth were falsehoods so blatant that even he could see them.

  At other times, he would cast the books aside, rip their pages free and burn the scripts contained within. He would smash the jars and storm from his sanctum, pledging never again to immerse himself in the filth of proscribed wisdom. In such times as those, the menials aboard the Endurance would look up from the bilge-decks and gunnery halls with dread, waiting for the crash and roar of their master’s rages.

  There had been lapses. Molech was the worst, in which he had given in so completely to the stuff of the aether that it had seemed there was no way back from it. And yet, just as on Barbarus, an old, deep stubbornness prevailed. The abomination Grulgor was contained again, sealed down in the darkest oubliette of the flagship and bound tight with wards and hexagrams gleaned from desolated grimoires. His warp-spawned toxins had been replaced with the forbidden bio-weaponry developed in the years before the Crusade – just as destructive, but at least confined to the physical.

  What he had told Horus was true – he had kept the Legion pure. His warriors fought with their blades, bolters, fists and nothing more. There had not been a Librarius in the XIV Legion for a long time, and never would be again.

  But what of Typhon? That element, at least, had eluded his control. Calas emerged ever more often in Mortarion’s fevered dreams, marching at the head of Legion detachments he barely recognised. There would have to be a reckoning with Typhon before the assault on Terra. The Legion had become too distributed, too caught up in the sprawl of the burning galaxy.

  And so the order to bring the Khan to heel had been well made. It would be a work of glory, something to set aside the deeds of Fulgrim and Lorgar. Mortarion would march to Terra with the mantle of primarch-slayer, just as his Chemosian brother would.

  Until then, the study continued, the immersion into the lore that both disgusted and fascinated him. If he noticed the degraded appearance of those about him, the gradual accumulation of grime and war-patina, he never spoke of it. Sickness ran through the mortal crews of the line battleships, making the echoing holds ring to the cries of the afflicted, and nothing was done.

  I will comprehend, became the mantra, repeated into the deeps of the endless nights. This at least will not be denied me, not as the other things have.

  When notification eventually came through that the V Legion frigate had been broken open and lay ready for his arrival, Mortarion cast around him, rooting through the vials and specimen crystals. Having found what he had been searching for, he trudged from the chamber, leaving it to the chattering whispers and the slow-ticking dark.

  He passed through the winding inner ways of the Endurance, and all fell back before him. Legionaries bowed; the mortal crew fell to their knees, not daring to look up at his cadaverous face as he swept past them. He reached the Stormbird hangars, where his Deathshroud honour guard waited.

  Once in the void, on the approach, he could assess the prize through the real-viewers. The enemy frigate was scorched, as if it had been plunged into a lake of fire. Clearly the Endurance’s gunners had enjoyed their work.

  The Stormbird entered the frigate’s hangar, dipping hard to avoid a collapsed entry portal. It set down on a shattered apron, coming to rest amid hissing heaps of molten metal.

  Mortarion emerged, passing through the still-burning interior like a shade of the afterworld, his entourage tramping behind. He crunched over the corpses of both White Scars and Death Guard legionaries, all slumped across one another in bloody piles. The sounds of ongoing conflict could still be heard from far off – the crack of bolter-fire, the clang of sword-edges – but that would soon be over. His troops would not have permitted him to enter a ship that had not been made safe, its enginarium and bridge secured and all weapon systems disabled.

  The place smelt foul. Some barbarian-world incense
or other had been strewn across the once-gleaming surfaces. The interior was too bright, emblazoned with lines of red and gold, and he found himself adjusting the filters on his helm-lenses to compensate. For a long time, the interior of all his Legion vessels had been miasmic.

  By the time Mortarion reached the bridge, the devastation was complete. The enemy had clearly barricaded themselves behind the last set of blast doors at the end, fighting hard for the final stages. Just as many Death Guard armour-plates were mingled with the ivory of the Khan’s sons, testament to a resilience that the Chogorians were not necessarily known for.

  Only one enemy combatant remained alive. All others – the Space Marines, the mortal crew, the servitors – had been slaughtered at their stations, making the bridge reek of copper and charcoal. The lone survivor, the ship’s master, was held up by two Death Guard legionaries, his helm ripped off and his long black hair hanging in matted clumps around a mottle-red head.

  Mortarion approached, and the other Death Guard on the bridge retreated, forming a circle around the primarch and his prey. The shattered bridge equipment continued to crackle sullenly, sending curls of smoke into the vaults above.

  ‘Look at me,’ Mortarion commanded.

  The White Scars legionary lifted his head with difficulty. His eyes struggled to focus.

  ‘You have been caught up in this,’ Mortarion said, drawing close, studying the warrior’s wounds. He reached out with a brass-clad finger and traced the line of the scar down his left cheek. ‘You fought well, but there are no alternatives now. You were on course to meet your master. Give me the coordinates.’

  The warrior grinned, exposing a smashed jaw-line. Then he spat a bloody gobbet into Mortarion’s face.

  Mortarion let the acidic spittle slip down the outside of his rebreather-housing. ‘Very good,’ he said.

  He reached down for the casket he had taken from his chambers. It was no larger than his forearm, a little wider, capped with iron at either end. In between, shrouded behind frosted glass, something swam fitfully. As he lifted it higher, black tentacles lashed against the inside of the armourglass, briefly sucking to it before whipping free.

  ‘See. This is a djemdja falak. A mind-eater. It will kill you, but not for many long hours. During that time, it will devour your mind from the inside. For the period you remain conscious, you will scream out anything I ask you. If you knew the secret of the Khan’s movements, his allies, his weaknesses, you would tell me it. Is that not a strange thing? Is this not a strange creature? I hunted long for it, for they are rare beyond price now. But I have this one, and be sure that I will use it.’

  The warrior looked at the canister with contempt. ‘Yaksha,’ he rasped.

  ‘Daemon? No, not on this occasion. There are monsters in the universe other than those in the warp. But come, there is nothing served with stubbornness. Tell me where your master is, and you may yet die with honour.’

  The White Scars legionary couldn’t take his eyes from the creature that thrashed inside the tube. After a long, agonised pause, he lifted his bloodshot eyes back to Mortarion.

  ‘Then I… will tell you,’ he said, his voice wet with his own blood.

  Mortarion listened patiently.

  The warrior grinned. ‘Over your corpse. Laughing.’

  Mortarion smiled thinly. ‘I fear he has missed his chance for that.’ He indicated to the two Death Guard, and they forced the warrior’s arms out at right angles, which pushed his face closer to the stooped primarch’s. ‘We shall talk much now, but while your mind is still your own, know this – you are beaten. Every battle you fight, you lose. You were built for speed, and this war is the slow grind of long attrition. You bleed for a creator who no longer knows whether you live or die. I gave your master a choice on Prospero – glory or futility. As your mind rips apart, as the agony seeps into your soul and you hear yourself give me everything I want, remember that. He did this to you.’

  The legionary closed his eyes, and started to mumble some kind of mantra.

  ‘Er Khagan, eran ordu gamana Jaghatai. Tanada Talskar. Eran Imperatora. Er Khagan, eran ordu gamana Jaghatai…’

  Mortarion let him babble. He held the glass tube up against the warrior’s face, and with a single twist broke the seal. There was a flurry of black scales, a snap of skin, a sluice of oil, and the thing leapt for the warrior’s head, punching through his closed eyes and wrapping barbed coils around his temples.

  Mortarion strolled away, discarding the broken canister as the screams started. He briefly looked around him, at the broken bridge, at the twisted ranks of cadavers, at the blood dripping down from the perimeter walkways, and sighed.

  ‘Let us begin, then, and see how long this takes,’ he said, turning back to the struggling legionary, his writhing forehead now lost behind the flex and pulse of neurotoxin-glands emptying. ‘Tell me, where is the Khan?’

  Twelve

  The Sickle Moon broke the veil a long way out from Aerelion, driven off-course by a brutal warp squall just before making for the planned exit vector. Yesugei had felt every beat and hammer of the aether-storm during the passage. The surges had pushed against the fragile outer shell of the vessel, swamping it, pressing down on it like piled earth against a rotten wall.

  He had flown through worse, but the endless torment of the heavens took its toll. The ship was in little better shape now than when it had rejoined service immediately after Prospero, and then it had been barely voidworthy. Everywhere he looked there were the signs of stress – bulwarks cracked down to the decking, the taste of leaked promethium, the continual flicker of lumens.

  Locked away in his personal chambers, he recited the mantras of homecoming, shutting out the turmoil for just a few moments. He stood, eyes closed, before an altar over which hung the calligraphic tiang. Wisps of sandalwood smoke curled upwards from golden bowls, glistening from the light of three drifting suspensor-lumens.

  He felt fatigue lying heavy on his limbs, and went through the long-established muscle-relaxant exercises. Those disciplines predated his Ascension to the Legion and were designed to work with mortal limbs, but he had never got out of the habit of using them. If they had little effect on his genhanced physiology, the repetition of old rites soothed the disquiet in his mind.

  The warp made it worse. To one with his gifts, piercing the centre of the storm was a mental challenge. On some nights, he could not escape the visions – the stretched faces clustered against the hull, the fingers scraping down the adamantium, the deep, thundering howl of infinite voices circling over the abyss.

  On the altar-top rested the tarot pack he had been given by Arvida. The deck of esoterica had once belonged to Ahriman, lost equerry to the Crimson King, and had been retrieved from Tizca by its last living son. Arvida had passed it on to Yesugei a long time ago, having rejected the chance to formally join the V Legion, and since then it had sat, barely touched, in the Stormseer’s chambers. Only in recent months, as the storm-ways had closed about them, had he reached for the symbols.

  Even with his eyes closed he could see the pictograms last turned over: the swordsman, the one-eyed king, the fiery angel. The signs remained opaque. Perhaps the tarot only answered to its old master. Or perhaps Yesugei was just failing to see something, letting his fatigue get the better of him.

  In any case, scrying the future had never been his talent. His was an elemental gift – power over the ways of matter, the stuff of the physical. Prophecies and soul-delving, that had been the preserve of the others, the ones who had dug too deep.

  But still he turned the cards, one by one. From time to time he felt he was on the edge of something, just on the cusp of seeing a pattern, and those moments would spur him to research further.

  Then he smiled to himself. Even he was capable of weakness, of the human vice of just a little further. That was the root of it all, all this damnation – the satiation of curiosity, the p
ushing into the darkness. There was no unlearning it. It was written into the genetics of every one of them, the seeds of species destruction, as permanent and furtive as a virus.

  He opened his eyes. The suspensors glowed to full power, flooding the chamber with daylight-equivalent illumination. He moved over to the altar, and took one final card from the deck, turning it face-up.

  The Hierophant.

  Yesugei placed the card on the stone. The card still showed its old artwork – a delicate ink and wash over thick, gold-edged material. The depicted prelate held his hand up, two fingers angled towards the heavens, two curled into the palm, extending earthwards.

  Yesugei’s smile died. The deck was mocking him and he was not in the mood to indulge it. He turned and left the chamber, the suspensors following him like trained dogs. Doors hissed open and closed three times, tracing a route deeper inside his private rooms. Every surface was thick with glyphs, all drawn by his own hand – some were wards against yaksha, others magnifiers for weather-magic.

  The final set slid apart to reveal Ilya’s guest, now restored to something like health, clad in clean white robes and sitting at his ease, alone, in a hull-facing cell. The warp shutters on the porthole had withdrawn, giving him a view of the approach to Aerelion through the real-viewers.

  He didn’t turn to greet the Stormseer. Alongside everything else, he seemed to have recovered his Nobilite hauteur.

  ‘So the woman has discovered all she can,’ the man, Veil, said, dryly. ‘And now they send for the soldier.’

  Yesugei joined him at the viewport. At that stage the destination was just a larger star amid a whole swathe of lesser stars. They would encounter V Legion outriders long before the planet asserted itself as more than just another pinpoint of cold light.

  ‘No, I am not soldier,’ said Yesugei.

  ‘You are a legionary. You may dress it up in as many totems as you like, but you still kill for the Imperium.’