For a moment he sees what the elder knights all claimed to see – a sight he’d always believed to be the lies of ageing warriors girding their fading legends with false poetry.
Yet there it is in the beast’s black eyes, something beneath the raw desire to survive. Recognition stares back at him: a crude intelligence, malicious despite its feral simplicity. The moment shatters as the creature vents its anger. Something between a lion’s burbling snarl and a bear’s hoarse roar rings out in the cold air between them.
The boy fires again. Three more shots echo through the forest, disturbing the snow bundled on branches above. Shivering fingers seek to reload the primitive pistol, but the beast’s sinewy weight pounds into his chest, hurling him away, throwing him down onto the frost. In the same moment the boy hits the ground, he feels the chunky shells scatter from his grip, spilling out onto the snow. The beast’s bulk on his back saps his strength as well as his breath. What little air he drags into his abused lungs reeks of the creature’s foetid exhalation, and a hot, wet mist of stinking tumour-breath washes over the back of his head. Whatever the beast is, it’s rotting from within. Saliva runs in a slick string from the beast’s jaws, spattering onto his bare neck.
Corswain swings over his shoulder, hammering the body of his pistol against the beast’s skull. Bone gives with a muffled crack, eliciting a whine that’s almost feline. As the creature rears in response, the boy scrabbles across the snow, regaining his feet in a staggering run. Steel whispers as it slides from his sheath, a sword almost as long as the boy is tall, clutched in two shivering hands. As the beast stalks closer, he sees the malign hunger in its eyes cool to a feral wariness. It’s afraid now, or at least cautious. Flakes of snow drift onto the blade, freezing into diamonds wedded to the steel.
‘Come on,’ the boy breathes the whispered words. ‘Come on...’
The beast leaps, striking his chest with the force of a stallion’s kick, and he’s down again. This time his sword spins from his grip, stabbing into the snow like a grave marker. The ache in his chest is a dull, creaking crackle, as if his lungs are filled with dry leaves. He knows his ribs are shattered, but there’s almost no pain at all.
The boy strains under the creature’s weight, his young muscles bunched taut as he struggles to strangle through the thick fur. The spined quills pierce his fingers and the backs of his hands, each one tipped by beads of clear, stinging venom. His hands tremble as the toxins attack his blood.
When he coughs, steaming bile gurgles from his mouth in a bitter rush. The puke hisses onto the snow, eating holes in the frost with acidic eagerness. The boy barely notices his useless hands falling away from the beast’s neck, nor how they curl into arthritic claws.
Convulsions wrack his whole body no more than three heartbeats later. The venom has him now. A scream leaves his lips as nothing more than a silent mime.
Slowly, everything starts to whiten, to fade away. He feels himself dragged, body scraping over the snow, but other, truer sounds begin infiltrating his thoughts: the sound of a ticking fan blade in a labouring air filtrator; boot-steps on the deck above; the omnipresent rumble of live engines.
At last, he opens his eyes.
It plays out like this each time he sleeps. The beast never dies in his dreams.
II
His mind wandered during the morning vigil. As Corswain knelt with his brothers, his head bowed against the hilt of his sword, he gave all the appearance of another knight in dutiful reflection of the coming crusade. In truth, he dwelled in memories. His thoughts flew home to a world that hated him.
Caliban.
The name brought a smile to his lips, hidden by the hood that cast his features into shadow. Caliban, that lethal haven of burning summers and vicious winters; where the unending forests permitted no sunlight to fall beneath their boughs, and every ancient tree defended itself with poisonous sap for blood; where every beast hunted with killing talons, mythic agility, or acidic venom. Biting insects spread plagues that left entire settlements silent and lifeless within days. Chittering clouds of locusts descended over the land year after year, annihilating villages and towns in their wake.
Orders of knights shared the grim duty of burning devastated settlements with each yearly cycle around the sun. On Caliban, the number of names inscribed upon the rolls of the dead matched the lists of the newborn. Imperial ledgers coded the world In Articulo Mortis, ‘at the moment of demise’, with the slang tag of ‘Death world’. Corswain had laughed when he first saw those words written in an archive.
The scribes’ notations damned the world as a worthless globe deserving no further colonisation. It was rendered exempt from paying Imperial tithe even when all other worlds began to suffer such demands from the fledgling usurers of Terra, and pledged itself only to sell its sons into willing slavery in the Emperor’s First Legion.
On and on the negative declarations went, citing brutal weather conditions that would affect sensitive orbital communication satellites; continental forests useless for lumber because of the unsafe biochemistry in the world’s flora; and screeds of lore decreeing Caliban’s fauna among the most predatory yet found on any colonised world – from the lowliest vermin that showed no fear of humankind to the great beasts that mercifully stood on the edge of extinction.
Corswain knew it was all of that and worse. But it was also home, a home he’d not seen in three long decades. A home he no longer believed he would ever see again. His smile in the morning vigil was both secret and bittersweet.
Alajos called to him once the reverence ended. The other knights filed from the chamber of reflection, their white surplice robes not enough to cover the battle scarring that ravaged every suit of black armour.
We have been fighting this war for two years, and I recall each day, each night, every order to draw steel and every shell fired in anger.
Two years. Two years since Horus committed his first act of insanity. Two years since the VIII and I Legions both found themselves ordered into the void, feuding over possession of an entire subsector. Neither side gave ground without taking it back elsewhere. Neither side charged without leaving a vulnerable flank open to assault. Neither Legion lost a battle when their progenitors led them to war.
Two years of civil war. World against world, fleet against fleet, brother against brother.
‘Hail,’ Alajos greeted him.
Corswain nodded in reply. ‘Is something amiss?’
Alajos, like his brothers, wore his full armour beneath a clean surplice. The hood was up, leaving his features in shadow.
‘The Lion summons us,’ he said.
Corswain checked his weapons. ‘Very well.’
III
The lord of the First Legion sat as he so often sat these nights, leaning back in an ornate throne of ivory and obsidian. His elbows rested upon the throne’s sculpted arms, while his fingers were steepled before his face, just barely touching his lips. Unblinking eyes, the brutal green of Caliban’s forests, stared dead ahead, watching the winking dance of distant stars. Every so often there’d be the slightest betrayal of movement: the rise and fall of his armoured shoulders, or a moment taken to blink and shake his crowned head in silent dismissal.
The warlord’s armour was the same rich, unspoiled black as the void into which he stared. Sculpted across his breastplate and greaves, rearing lions formed from red gold – that rarest of metals dredged from the dusty crust of Mars – bared their teeth at a diligent and devoted bridge crew. He wore no helm while he sat in repose, yet the mane of ashen blond locks was bound back in a tight horsetail to keep his face free of distraction, and a simple silver circlet adorned his tanned brow. This last trinket sported no ostentation, being nothing more than an echo of tradition from the disbanded knightly orders of the Lion’s adopted home world. By such simple crowns were the knight-lords of Caliban once known.
Alajos and Corswain approached the t
hrone as one. In perfect unity, they drew their blades and kneeled before their liege. The Lion watched their obeisance with impassive eyes. When he spoke, his voice was the grind of thunder at the horizon – it could never be mistaken for human.
‘Rise.’
They rose as commanded, sheathing their swords in twinned movements. Alajos remained hooded, ignoring the bustle of the command deck around them, his hidden eyes focused only on the enthroned warlord. Corswain stood more at ease, arms crossed over his breastplate, his armour enlivened by the thick, white fur pelt draping down his back. The skinned beast’s fanged head draped over his shoulder guard, forming the cloak’s binding.
‘You summoned us, my liege?’
‘I did.’ The Lion remained seated with his fingers steepled before his lips. ‘Two years, little brothers. Two years. I can scarce give it countenance.’
Corswain allowed himself a smile. ‘I was thinking the very same thing no more than half an hour ago, my liege. But what causes you to dwell upon it?’
Now the Lion rose, leaving his long blade and helm resting on the throne’s arched sides. ‘It is not because I share your impatient nature, Cor. I assure you of that.’
Alajos snorted. Corswain grinned.
‘Come with me,’ the Lion said, his tone neither kind nor cold, and the three warriors moved to the holo-lithic table at the heart of the command chamber. At the Lion’s order, a robed servitor triggered the projectors into life, bathing them all in the ethereal green half-light of flickering holo-images. The patchwork display hovering in the air before them showed the suns of the Aegis Subsector, each with their child worlds. Heraldor and Thramas flashed brighter than any other, both systems marked by a messy display of Mechanicum symboliser runes.
Corswain saw nothing new. A long crescent of pulsing red worlds marked the spread of systems locked in open rebellion; these were the worlds existing in defiance of the Imperium, flying the banners of Horus Lupercal and the Mechanicum of Old Mars. Entire solar systems in breach of the Emperor’s will, opposing just as many systems crying for Imperial aid and Terran reinforcement.
‘Parthac fell earlier this evening,’ the Lion gestured to one of the systems ringed by Martian glyphs. ‘The Fabricator-Governor of Gulgorahd reported his victory four hours ago.’ The primarch’s subtle mirth would be invisible to all but his closest kin. ‘He was less elated when I informed him that his push to take Parthac left Yaelis open to attack. The rebels took Yaelis less than an hour ago.’
‘He overcommitted.’ Corswain watched the flashing glyphs before looking to his liege lord. ‘Again.’
Alajos spoke before the Lion could reply. ‘Did he tender an apology for failing to heed your words when you promised this is exactly what would happen?’
‘Of course not.’ The Lion leaned on the table, his fists on the smooth surface. ‘And that is not why you are here, so spare me the righteous indignation, even if it is fairly placed.’
‘Contact with the Imperium?’ Alajos let hope filter into his voice.
‘No.’ The Lion brushed his gauntleted hand through the flickering hololithic image, seeming to drift deeper into his own thoughts. ‘No, our astropaths are still rendered mute by the warp’s turbulence. I believe the last recorded contact is currently listed as four months and sixteen days ago.’ The warlord’s cold green eyes never wavered from the holo image. ‘Two years of void skirmishes, two years of planetary sieges, two years of global invasions and worldwide retreats, orbital assault and shipboard evacuation... and we have a chance to end it at last.’
Corswain narrowed his eyes. He’d never heard the Lion speak in possibilities before. Always, the primarch spoke with a pragmatist’s tongue guided by an analytical mind, his every wartime utterance drenched in logic, with all sides considered before any remark left his lips.
‘Curze,’ Corswain ventured. ‘Have we located Curze, my liege?’
The Lion shook his head. ‘My venomous brother,’ he gestured to the hololith again, ‘has located us.’
The hololith wavered, crackling audibly as it re-tuned to present another image. ‘One of our outrider vessels, the Seraphic Vigil, received this message from a deep-void beacon left in its patrol path.’
Corswain read the distorted words, silently mouthing them as he did so. They made his skin crawl. ‘I don’t understand,’ he confessed. ‘One of the Lutherian Amendments to the Verbatim. And an unpopular one, at that. Why leave this for us to find?’
The Lion’s murmur of agreement sounder closer to a feral growl. ‘To bait us with mockery, using words Curze likely believes are apt. The beacon was set to transmit coordinates in addition to this message. It appears my beloved brother wishes to meet at last.’
‘This can only be a trap,’ said Alajos.
‘Of course,’ the Lion agreed easily. ‘And yet we will sail into the beast’s jaws this once. We cannot spend eternity butchering one another’s warriors the way we have these last years. If this crusade is ever to end, my brother and I must face one another.’
‘Then continue the hunt,’ Alajos insisted. ‘We catch their fleets–’
‘As often as they catch ours.’ The Lion spoke through closed teeth, his armoured shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breath. ‘For twenty-six months I have chased him. For twenty-six months, he has fled from me, burning worlds before we arrive, crippling supply routes, annihilating Mechanicum outposts. Every ambush we plan, he slips from our fingers, wriggling away unseen. For every victory we claim, Curze gifts us with a loss in return. It is not a hunt, Alajos. If a primarch does not fall, this will be war without end. And neither he nor I will fall without death bestowed by a brother’s hand.’
‘But, my liege–’
‘Be silent, Ninth Captain.’ The Lion’s voice remained measured and low, but cold passion, almost feverish in its intensity, burned in his eyes. ‘We are one of the last loyal Legions left at full strength in the Imperium, and we are alone in the void, seeking to hold the entire kingdom together while all other eyes turn to Terra. Do you think I have no desire to stand with Dorn on the battlements of my father’s palace? Do you believe I wish to linger here in the silence of space, piecing together the shards of this shattered empire? We cannot reach Terra. We tried. We failed. That war is denied to us by the warp’s treacherous tides. But the rest of the galaxy is falling dark, and we may be the only living Legion that bears the Emperor’s light out here among the stars.’
The Lion straightened again, his eyes still fierce with suppressed emotion. ‘That is our duty, Alajos of the Ninth Order. And our Legion has always done its duty. We must win this war. An entire subsector with its forge-worlds bleeding their genius and materiel into surviving, rather than supplying other Imperial forces. The knight worlds do the same, as do the harvest worlds, the host worlds, the ore worlds. The sooner we complete this crusade, the sooner every Imperial sector is bolstered by its efforts, and the sooner we sail to join forces with Guilliman.’ He sighed at this last declaration. ‘Wherever he may be.’
Corswain remained silent throughout all of this. When the Lion’s last words trailed off, leaving the promise hanging in the air, the knight cleared his throat to speak.
‘I understand why you will rise to Primarch Curze’s bait, my liege. But why did you summon us?’
The Lion exhaled slowly, indicating a world on the hololith at the edge of the Eastern Fringe. ‘The coordinates mark this system. I cannot risk the entire Legion fleet abstaining from the crusade on a fraternal whim.’ Here, he grinned – a smile nothing like his subtle, sincere smirk. This was a tiger baring its fangs. ‘I will take a single company and a handful of warships, with a small support fleet. Enough to repel and evade treachery if it strikes, but not enough to risk losing any ground in this pitiful, eternal deadlock if it is all nothing more than a false trail.’
Alajos saluted immediately. ‘The Ninth Order will be honoured to se
rve as your personal guard, my liege.’
‘And I am honoured to be served by them.’ The Lion nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Cor. You seem thoughtful, little brother.’
‘What is this world’s name?’ Corswain asked.
The Lion consulted the data-screen mounted on his side of the table. ‘Tsagualsa. Listed as barren and unsuitable for colonisation, with no evidence of settlement during Old Night.’
‘So we are summoned by a blood enemy to a dead rock at the galaxy’s edge.’ Corswain glanced at Alajos. ‘If the entire Night Lord fleet is there, you may cross blades with Sevatar a second time.’
The captain lowered his hood, revealing his devastated face. Most of his ruined visage was marred by lumpen scar tissue and discoloured synthetic flesh that hadn’t healed cleanly at the seams. His teeth were blunt steel pegs affixed into reconstructed gums.
‘Good.’ Alajos narrowed his eyes – practically the only unflawed feature on his face. ‘I owe him for this.’
IV
The strike cruiser Vehemence translated in-system alone. It burst into the silence of realspace on grinding, protesting engines, braking as it slowed from the warp rupture in its wake. Momentum desistors fired along the ship’s prow and central spine, lesser brake-engines howling to slow the warship’s forward flight.
In space, it came to a slow crawl in noiseless elegance. On board, the shaking hull coupled with the screaming engines made for a scene altogether less graceful. Hundreds of sweating crew members in the enginarium chambers worked to maintain the immense plasma furnaces, while uniformed officers on the command deck called and demanded status reports from every section of the ship. The Lion’s throne on board the Invincible Reason was a grander affair than anything on the bridge of the Vehemence, and rather than take the captain’s position, the Lion allowed Captain Kellendra Vray to ostensibly remain in command of her vessel. While she sat in her smaller throne, her greying hair bound in a severe ponytail, the Lion stood to the side with his arms crossed over his breastplate as he stared at the oculus screen.
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