by Andy Clark
‘Tan Chimaeros no longer,’ intoned Luk, and Daniel heard no sadness in his voice, only anger. ‘By this vow I renounce that name, and spit upon its dishonour. By this vow, I discard my rights, my titles, my lands and my House. By this vow, I declare myself Freeblade, and ask that you, my king, recognise me as such.’
Danial understood Luk’s decision. Only by renouncing his station and becoming a Freeblade would the young Knight ever prove beyond all doubt that he didn’t share in his father’s heresy. Yet it was a terrible choice to make, for it cost Luk everything but the Knight in which he rode to war. Luk looked up, and Danial saw the knowledge of all this clear upon his friend’s features. Luk knew what he was doing.
‘Very well, Luk Kar Chimaeros,’ responded Danial, reciting the words from the Code by memory. ‘I name thee Freeblade. By what title shall you be known henceforth?’
‘I will be the Knight of Ashes, my liege,’ said Luk fiercely. ‘For they are all I have left.’
‘Then so be it,’ said Danial sadly, drawing his draconblade and touching its tip against Luk’s chest, directly over his heart. ‘Rise, Luk Kar Chimaeros, once-son of the traitor Gerraint Tan Chimaeros, now the Knight of Ashes.’
Silence met the High King’s proclamation. The naming of a Freeblade was nothing to celebrate. Luk rose and limped across the circle. Solemn, he held out his hand to Sire Markos. The old Knight looked at it for a moment as though it were a serpent that might bite him. Then, grudgingly, he clapped his hand around Luk’s wrist and allowed the Freeblade to haul him to his feet.
‘Traitorson no longer, eh?’ grunted Markos, face pale with pain. Luk shook his head. ‘Still broke my damn sword though,’ said the herald. ‘Had that a long time.’
‘You were trying to kill me with it,’ replied Luk, his tone neutral.
‘I was,’ admitted Markos. ‘That’s what happens when you duel a man, lad.’
‘I apologise, Sire Markos,’ said Luk stiffly, and Markos sighed.
‘Sod it. Just get me to the medicae, Luk Kar Chimaeros. You’ve made your point.’ Luk nodded, and glanced at Danial. We’ll speak of this later, the look said, and Danial nodded in turn.
Luk and Markos limped away in search of a Cadian medicae, and the circle of Knights slowly broke apart. Some, Sire Garath loudest amongst them, were still muttering and cursing, but they would have nothing further to say to Luk after his vow. None would besmirch the Code by harassing Luk further after he had rendered himself a Freeblade.
‘At least that’s one problem solved,’ sighed Jennika as the crowd dispersed. ‘Now I’m going to go and look into another. I’ll see if I can’t get a straight answer out of Polluxis for you, Da.’ His sister turned and strode away. Danial realised that he was left alone with Lady Suset.
‘Was there something you wanted, milady?’ he asked.
Suset pushed her dark fringe out of her eyes and frowned. She was somewhat shorter than Danial, but she had a presence about her that he found both compelling and slightly unsettling.
‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for the loss of your father, Danial,’ she said. ‘And that I know this must be a difficult time. If you need someone to talk to…’
She let her sentence hang, unfinished. Danial shook his head ruefully.
‘I feel like that’s all I have done for the last few days. Talk. I think it’s time I acted.’
‘Of course, my liege,’ she replied, suddenly stiff. ‘Then may your ancestors’ wisdom guide your deeds.’
Suset walked away, and Danial couldn’t help the feeling that he had missed some hidden dynamic within their exchange. The thought was pushed aside as Suset’s parting words sank in. He wrapped the fingers of one hand around the amulet he wore, and felt a growing spark of excitement.
‘The wisdom of the ancestors. Perhaps that’s precisely it.’ Filled with sudden purpose, Danial strode away through the gloom to find a Sacristan.
As his neural jacks clicked into place, the High King admired the repair work that Polluxis’ acolytes had done. It was exceptional, the dents hammered and smoothed, the damaged systems replaced and even the heraldry restored. When at last he rode to battle, Danial would do so in full panoply.
That was not his mission now, however. His sister had told him to show confidence, but how could he do that when he felt none? Danial had never in his life been forced to make important decisions without the guidance and wisdom of his father. Tolwyn was lost to him, a fact he had yet to fully come to terms with, but there were others that could lend him their advice. Others, daunting though they were, who could help him understand his allies turned enemies, and gain insight into how to defeat them.
Oath’s reactor came online with a snort of exhaust and a shuddering rumble. Runes lit across the Knight’s instruments, a few flickering amber before holding steady on green. Danial heard the background hiss and whine of the scrapcode that polluted his auspex and vox, and he muttered a prayer to the Emperor for protection.
‘Come on, my friend,’ murmured Danial to his Knight. ‘We’re going to seek revelation.’ The Knight Errant growled, and Danial took Oath out at a slow stride, angling his steed towards the darkness of the transit tunnels. Some were too small to walk a Knight through, but there were plenty that he could use to move deeper into the complex. Danial needed solace and isolation to think. Oath of Flame left huge footprints in the dust, raising swirling clouds with every booming footfall. The particulates whirled like a storm in the light from the Knight’s lumens, filling Danial’s path with a golden haze.
He pushed deeper, into warehouse chambers that hadn’t seen human usage in what must have been decades. Perhaps centuries. Small mountains of crates sat abandoned beneath dust sheets that were probably hundreds of years older than Danial himself. Web-strewn aquilas lowered down from huge, cracked walls. Dust had collected into thick dunes. In places, Oath was forced to lengthen its stride in order to step over fallen pillars or heaps of rubble, and more than once Danial saw scurrying things the size of hunting canids fleeing the light of his lamps. This lightless warren would be dangerous to a man on foot. It didn’t matter; cocooned within his Knight, Danial was beyond such concerns.
Beyond a partially-collapsed warehouse chamber dotted with the rusting corpses of tanks, Danial found himself entering an altogether more sacred space. Oath’s feet clanged upon riveted metal, and its lumen picked out old cogitator banks and arcane machineries looming all around. High on one wall was the cog-and-skull emblem of the Machine God, its eye lenses glowing from some internal power source despite what must have been years of neglect. Or perhaps it was divinity that kept the embers alive. If he was to commune with the spirits of his throne, he wanted the Emperor watching over him. A place of ancient faith seemed apt.
Danial closed his eyes and wrapped both hands around his grandfather’s amulet. Pushing down his disquiet, he opened his mind to the whispers of his ancestors, the ghosts in his throne.
Danial breathed slowly, waiting, beginning to feel faintly foolish and slightly relieved at the same time. And then quite suddenly a susurrus of half-understood voices engulfed him, their words building in urgency by the moment. Rather than fight, or force their words to make sense, Danial gathered his courage and let himself fall into their midst, sinking back into the mass of half-seen shadows and clutching hands. He parted the whisperers’ curtain, and stared into the cold, dead eyes of the Knights Draconis from ages past. As he looked into his ancestors’ eyes, so they looked into his and truly saw him for the first time. Danial felt a sudden surge of panic as the spirits of the dead pressed in on all sides. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t. He tried to reach for Oath’s machine-spirit, but its reassuring solidity was gone. Ice cold waters closed over his head. A whispering shroud slithered over his face. Muttering voices swelled into a thunder that deafened his thoughts, and Danial thought he heard the dracon roaring. Then blackness took him.
…He was a man far from home. An explorer. One who had volunteered to depa
rt the cradle world sure in the knowledge that he would never see home or family again. The thought made him sad, but the thrill of exploration filled him. His colony ship had landed on an uncharted world, barely habitable by humans, and had become a fortress and a home for its crew of colonists. Now he strode out in one of the STC biped-walkers that his ship’s systems had created. A Knight, they called it, and so too was he…
…He was a warrior, a loyal man faced by the horror of disloyalty. He was a Knight of the House Draconis, marching beneath the colours of High King Rhoderic Tan Chimaeros to war across a burning plain. Before him were arrayed the traitors who had allied themselves with the Warmaster Horus. Knights of House Hydrax and House Medusos…
…He was a Knight engaging in a dual of honour upon the great Jousting Plains of the Valatane…
…He was a herald to the High King, holding his ion shield firm as alien energy weapons battered at it…
…He was a warrior beset by bellowing greenskins that swarmed up the legs of his immobilised steed…
On and on it went, until Danial feared he would go mad, or else lose his sense of self forever amidst these whirling ghosts.
Please, he thought desperately, willing them to understand his fear and confusion. For a moment he felt his mind break the surface. Determined, he sought not to break free, but to ask his questions. Please, I seek your counsel, he thought. High King Tolwyn is dead and I am his son and heir. Viscount Gerraint Tan Chimaeros has led his House into heresy and I must stop him. I must understand my enemy. Please, help me. Ghostly voices howled and chanted and muttered all around, and then he was dragged down again.
…He observed now as through a silvered veil. A young Knight, tall and with flowing raven hair, strode through the fallen remains of an Adrastapolian Keep. He realised with a jolt that it was Gerraint Tan Chimaeros. Young, handsome, and whole, wearing upon his brow the crown of the High King of Adrastapol. Banners hung upon the walls of that blackened place, their swirling design strange and unfamiliar. Gerraint strode through veils of mist and shadow to a fallen mound of rubble and began to drag rocks from the heap. Revealed beneath was a crumpled human form. Alicia Kar Manticos. So young, little more than a child, and sorely hurt. Bending gently down, Gerraint lifted the wounded girl in his arms and bore her away…
…Gerraint again, older now and bearing fresh scars. The Viscount Tan Chimaeros no longer wore his crown, and his body was partially supported by the augmetic brace. Gerraint stood before a row of sarcophagi, each draped in an Imperial flag, and Alicia stood at his side in a black gown and mourning mask. Tolwyn stood on Gerraint’s other side, speaking quietly and earnestly to the Viscount Tan Chimaeros. Suddenly angry, Gerraint snatched the nearest of the aquila banners. Hurling it to the floor, he turned and stormed silently away through the whirling shadows. Tolwyn and Alicia remained, talking for a time, slowly drawing closer together. They turned towards one another, so close that they almost touched…
…a dark place, and a cloaked figure receding away down a corridor. It swept banners on the walls as it walked, the crest of House Chimaeros but different somehow. Wrong. The figure rounded a corner and saw two more figures, cloaked and robed, waiting at the end of the corridor. The images were dimming. Grey strands of smoke tore apart, and Danial’s breath became laboured as he clung to the vision, trying to see the faces lurking beneath those hoods. A heavy, ironbound door swung open at the end of the corridor, admitting the absolute pitch darkness of the void. Something terrible stirred in that darkness, something with a single, staring eye that began to draw him in against his will. Something that, impossibly, knew he was watching from beyond the veil of the vision. He felt as though he were drowning, dying. Dimly he could hear his medicae monitors pinging and shrieking in alarm as his vital signs fell, but he could no more escape this vision than he could his duty as High King. And then suddenly he heard a voice, and felt
hands shaking him, slapping his face and dragging him out of his trance. Danial gasped in a great lungful of air, the terror of the thing that had almost taken him into its terrible darkness still lingering. He felt a burning heat in his palms, and realised that it came from his grandfather’s amulet. His eyes snapped open, wild with fear and anger. Jennika was crouched beside his throne, her face inches from his, and the carapace hatch of his Knight was open.
‘Jen,’ he gasped, and grabbed her in a fierce, terrified hug. His big sister wrapped her arms around him for a moment, squeezing him tight, before she released him and rocked back on her heels in the confined space of the cockpit.
‘What were you thinking?’ she said angrily. ‘Disappearing like that? We thought the traitors had gotten to you somehow! And this? What were you…’ She stopped, and Danial realised that his face must be radiating the horror that she had pulled him out of. ‘Da, what is it?’ she asked. ‘What did you see?’
‘I can’t do this any more, Jen,’ he replied, his voice quivering with emotions barely held in check. ‘I can’t. I’m no king. I’m not even sure father was. Jen, you do it. You’d make a wonderful queen, wouldn’t you? Our first? You can, you should, because I just… Jen, I…’
‘Danial,’ said Jennika firmly, her voice cutting through his rising panic. ‘I can’t. It doesn’t matter if you want me to. It doesn’t matter if I want to, and believe me, brother, part of me does. We’re Knights. Honour, tradition, pride, duty, they’re everything we have. So whatever it is you saw, whatever you were trying to do, I need you to put it aside and be High King now.’
Danial took a determined breath and nodded.
‘The sentries have seen something, Da,’ said Jennika. ‘Brother, it’s House Chimaeros. We’ve found them.’ Danial nodded again, taking another deep breath, calming as his mind began to work again.
‘Show me,’ he said.
Three of them walked their Knights back together: Danial, Jennika, and Sire Percivane Dar Draconis. Jennika assured Danial that he would be better off hearing the news directly from the scouts that had gathered it. Thus the Knights spoke only sparingly as they cut a swift path back through the tunnels to the inhabited warehouses, meeting up with several more returning search parties on their way. Danial turned his visions over in his mind as they walked. If his flickering chrono was telling the truth, he had lost almost six hours in the embrace of his throne mechanicum, yet it felt like the experience had lasted only minutes. What else had he seen in that time and not remembered? What had his ancestors revealed to him? The ghosts of his throne seemed quiescent for now, but for how long? These were the thoughts whirling around Danial’s mind as he brought his Knight in through the encampment, but he dismissed them in a heartbeat as he saw the assemblage that awaited him.
Disengaging from his throne, Danial clambered from the Oath’s carapace hatch and dismounted. Jennika and the brawny Sire Percivane met him at his Knight’s feet.
‘There will be voices raised for revenge, brother,’ muttered Jennika as they approached. ‘Loud voices. I would counsel caution but you are the High King now, and the decision falls to you. Just know I’ll support you in whatever course you choose.’
Danial nodded gratefully to his sister.
He guessed that every single loyalist Knight had gathered, along with a number of Sacristans and Cadians.
The Knights bowed to him as he passed, and the young king saw many curious glances from those wondering where he had been, and why. He shrugged them off and advanced to the centre of the gathering, where a pair of Cadian Guardsmen stood ramrod straight. Major Kovash hovered close by, while Polluxis, Luk, Markos, Gustev and other worthies moved forward to stand with them.
‘Major Kovash,’ began Danial. ‘My sister tells me that your men have located the traitors?’
‘That’s correct, my lord,’ said Kovash, saluting smartly. ‘Troopers Stransk and Vance, of fourth platoon.’
Danial glanced at the two troopers, who saluted in turn. They were hard looking men, grizzled and intense.
Kovash gestured to the two Guar
dsmen to proceed.
‘Trooper Stransk and I were on watch at waypoint seven-omega,’ said one of the Cadians in clipped tones, ‘from oh-three-hundred hours sidereal, scheduled for relief at oh-fifteen-hundred. At oh-six-hundred-seventeen, Trooper Stransk sighted three Knight-class enemy walkers crossing from east to west across our grid-locale. Enemy were observed at approximately half a mile distance, crossing the grid at a steady stride, and with lumens lit and sweeping.’
‘What House?’ asked Danial. ‘Did they see you?’
‘Their heraldry was consistent with House Chimaeros,’ replied Trooper Vance, ‘and no, in our opinion, my lord, they were on a reconnaissance mission. Most likely part of a circuit or grid sweep. During the remainder of our watch, Trooper Stransk and I observed a further three parties of House Chimaeros Knights moving along the same path.’
‘It sounds like hunting parties,’ said Luk. ‘Beaters, trying to flush us.’
‘It does,’ said Danial. He saw now why the others were excited. The Code Chivalric dictated that any such hunt be conducted from a central staging post to ensure coordination. If the Chimaeros and Wyvorn Knights still obeyed even the rudiments of their training, then Gerraint or Dunkan would likely be there, commanding the search.
‘We can turn their hunt against them,’ said Sire Markos. ‘Mount up, everything we’ve got left, follow their trail back to their stronghold, and catch them by surprise.’
‘Show the wretches what it feels like, eh?’ added Gustev, thumping one fist into his other palm.
‘It’s quite an assumption, sires,’ said Jennika. ‘What if they’re outbound from the valle electrum, and returning there when their sweep is done? Or just roving bands, with no central cohesion? Emperor, even worse, what if it’s a trap, and they’re just trying to lure us out?’
‘They don’t know we’re here,’ insisted Luk. ‘So how could they be setting a trap?’
