by John French
… and the raven laughed, and the ground spiralled beneath him as he rose into the red sun…
Reality blinked back into place. Tolbek was charging, sword rising in a glowing crescent. At the chamber door the two Harrowing guards had started forwards. Maroth gasped, shaking where he stood, and Ahriman could taste the fear fuming from him in black clouds. Ahriman reshaped his thoughts and the fire storm enveloped Tolbek. Tolbek was burning, his robes charring, his armour glowing with heat. Tolbek spoke a word and the flame sucked into his body like water draining into sand.
Gzrel was fast, despite his bulk. His claws reached for Ahriman, lightning coating their tips. Ahriman turned to look at Gzrel and the claws sparked across a wall of invisible force.
The Harrowing initiate on Gzrel’s right began to move, his thoughts a feral babble of instinct and rage. A part of Ahriman’s mind locked around the champion’s thoughts and squeezed. The champion began to spasm…
…‘Higher, higher,’ called the raven, and he could feel the heat of the red sun on his body as the ground vanished beneath him…
One of the Harrowing by the door fired. The bolt-round skimmed Tolbek’s shoulder and exploded. He did not stop moving. Ahriman heard the telepathic command flick from Tolbek’s mind, and saw the light in the eyes of the two Rubricae flicker. They turned towards the door and fired. The bolt shells glowed as they burrowed through the air and hit the Harrowing guard. Suddenly there was blood splattering the floor. The guard screamed, blue flames spreading across his body from his shattered chest. The Rubricae fired again and fire swallowed the second guard’s head. Ahriman could feel the hunger in the flames as they burned the guards to grey ash.
Gzrel’s claws raked across Ahriman’s kine-shield, each blow shaking the sorcerer’s focus. He turned and looked at Gzrel, seeing the pulsing blood flowing beneath armour and flesh. Warp-twisted molecules spun in the dark liquid. Ahriman broke their bonds with a thought. Gzrel began to shake, then to howl. He scrabbled at the air, claws trailing blue sparks. His face bloated, black blood boiling from his mouth. The vents in his armour coughed and vomited foul liquid. The flesh sloughed from his face, but his skull continued to scream as he fell.
Cottadaron finally reacted. The twisted sorcerer sent a forked tongue of black lightning from his hand which cut through Ahriman’s kine-shield with a detonation of unlight. Pain bored into him, running up his nerves and across his skin. For an instant his focus almost slipped. He had misjudged Cottadaron; he would not make that mistake twice. Just behind Cottadaron the remaining Harrowing initiate was convulsing on the floor. Ahriman still held the warrior’s mind in his own, and he willed the other to rise. The effort made him shake and he felt a cry rising to his own lips. The champion came to his feet, swayed, and cut Cottadaron’s head from his shoulders. Ahriman ripped his mind out of the champion’s, and then the lifeless body was falling.
Tolbek took another pace closer, and all Ahriman could see was red, the red of death, the red of a bloated sun…
…the sun filled the sky. The ground was a memory forgotten beneath his feet. The raven was a silhouette of shadows against the sun. ‘Look,’ said the raven…
Tolbek was three strides from Ahriman, footsteps scattering blood drops from the floor. The sword in his hand was blue with heat. Arcs of lightning crackled across his scorched armour.
Ahriman was dimly aware of Maroth, still alive, cowering behind the throne. He reached out with his own mind, felt the soothsayer’s psyche like a cracked sphere in his mind’s grip. He squeezed and somewhere he heard Maroth shriek.
Pain filled Ahriman, sudden and bright. It felt as if a door long shut in his soul were straining at its locks. Images of raven feathers and dying suns pressed into his mind, trying to pull him back. He shut them out. Raised his hands with palms open, waiting for Tolbek…
…the surface of the red sun cracked, and flowed, and he realised that themolten fire was a sea of faces, and that each one was screaming…
The sword shimmered as it cut down towards Ahriman’s head.
The telekinetic blow was unrefined and desperate, but it worked. Tolbek’s sword twitched to the side, and Ahriman felt Tolbek’s focus break. Ahriman moved forwards, his open hands clamping over Tolbek’s grip on the sword as he pivoted. Tolbek flipped through the air, and Ahriman caught the movement with his mind and slammed his brother into the floor. He stamped down on Tolbek’s chest and felt something crack. Tolbek’s sword was in his hand, its sigil-etched blade still crawling with fire. On the floor Tolbek tried to come to his feet. Ahriman hammered his mind into Tolbek’s, breaking wards and mental shields with raw power.
+Who sent you, brother? How did you find me?+ Tolbek’s mind slid out of his grasp. Ahriman could feel something forming in Tolbek’s mind, even as he bored deeper trying to find truth. He punched through walls of thoughts and cut through dream structures. He was angry, and the anger gave his power a vicious strength. Tolbek retreated, vanishing into the darkness of his unconscious, taking the truth with him. In the stopped-clock reality of the throne room the chase was a space between heartbeats.
+To dust returned, brother,+ called Tolbek’s voice, and suddenly Ahriman was drowning in a sea of ashes. Tolbek’s mind was immolating, pulling itself apart as it retreated from Ahriman’s telepathic invasion. Tolbek’s laugh was the howl of the inferno.
Ahriman barely had time to pull his mind back. Tolbek’s armour cracked, glowing lines running over its surface. Then it flared with eye-searing light and crumpled to molten slag and black powder. Ahriman shook, a bitter taste of bile and blood filling his mouth. He could feel the power he had wielded washing through him, draining through his mind, and the image of the raven and the red sun beat on him and he could not close it out. The barriers in his mind and soul shattered. His mind, so long blunted to the call of the future, flooded with sights of the impossible. The vision took him and he rose on raven wings into a sky the colour of blood.
‘Look, look, you must see,’ called the raven, and it was flying into the red sun, and Ahriman was following, his wings burning to smoke. He saw.
He saw a warrior robed in blue and armoured in gold and sapphire standing beneath a white sky. The warrior reached up and pulled his helm from his head. Ahriman felt the idea of a breath catch in his throat. The eyes that looked back at Ahriman were blue, and they were his own. The image smiled with his mouth.
+You see,+ said the warrior, but it was the raven’s voice that spoke.
‘I know you, daemon,’ growled Ahriman.
+Daemon,+ laughed the warrior, but Ahriman heard the sound in his mind. +Once you would have said that such a word was a sign of ignorance.+
‘I remember,’ he snarled. ‘Your lies will fail, as they did before.’
+Are you so sure?+ said the warrior, its chuckle the call of carrion. +You call me daemon, yet what do you know of such things?+ The image in front of Ahriman changed, the features melting, the crystal blue armour splintering and reforming as the flesh beneath burst into a new form. Wings spread from the creature’s shoulders, the feathers fluttering between colours. The body grew taller, its back bending into a hunch, the limbs splitting. Delicate claws extended from fingers, and the fragments of the sapphire armour flowed across the towering form. The head that looked back at Ahriman was a mass of eyes without a mouth.
+You see,+ said the creature. +You remember this path even though you shunned it.+
‘No. Never,’ said Ahriman, his voice a shaking whisper. ‘It is a lie.’ The creature laughed in his head and he felt rage. He had seen the truth of the warp and the daemons that called themselves gods. They were lies, lies and temptation, and the ruin of everything. They were corrupters of truth.
His Legion had fallen, his father had fallen. He would sink, he would become less than a slave, but he would not fall to the lie as he had before. His fist lashed out before he realised what he was doing. It struck the creature and cracks radiated from the impact. Mirrored splinters cascaded down in a rain
of fragmented images. Ahriman raised his head to shout but he had no mouth, only eyes. The raven’s laugh filled his mind and he was spinning through space, his body broken into countless pieces of mirror.
He was standing above a plain of black glass. Beneath him a thousand figures knelt. Some still had features of humanity: a head above shoulders, a face with eyes and mouth. But most were shaped by nightmare. Drooling mouths opened and closed across bodies that were at once glass and flesh. Arms sprouted, clutched and withered. Hooting calls filled the air.
Ahriman had to look, his eyes moving from figure to figure, searching for what he knew must be there. When he found it he stared. The mark of the Thousand Sons was clear on the shoulders of every figure.
+Your brothers,+ said the crow voice from behind Ahriman. +Or are they your sons?+
Ahriman said nothing. His eyes were still fixed on the serpentine sun symbol etched onto the shoulder of one of the figures.
‘This is a lie,’ whispered Ahriman.
+Is it?+ said the voice behind him. +Time is not fixed, nor is flesh, nor is fate.+ The voice paused and Ahriman looked down. His hands were claws. A shiver passed through him and he felt the feathers of his wings rustle at his back. +You could rule over all this,+ said the voice. +You could cast down your father and undo what you have done.+
‘The Rubric…’
+Can be undone.+
‘No,’ said Ahriman. You cannot listen, he thought to himself. He had opened the door to powers he had long shunned and the warp and its lies had found him. This is a lie, I must not listen.
+Yes, all can be changed, even the fate you created for your brothers, but in the undoing…+ The voice trailed away, as Ahriman looked over the things that had been his brothers, his Legion.
‘No, better dust.’
+But this will be. Can you not see?+ asked the voice, and the world turned. He was standing amongst the creatures that had been his brothers. The wet stink of their flesh filled his gorge with bile. He felt his limbs distorting, bone softening to clay, flesh to slime. He tried to speak again, to call the vision a lie, to deny the daemon’s claim, but he had no mouth. He was less than a beast, less than dust.
+Others will act, Ahriman,+ said the crow voice in his head. Above him and his brothers a figure in bone robes and red armour stood on a pillar of jade. Horns rose from the red figure’s temples and jutted from the jaws of its helm. +Others will tread the paths you do not. It is fated.+ The voice paused, and the scene began to whirl into colour and fading sensation. +But who walks those paths, who is the master of fate and who its victim: that is unknown.+
He was shivering. Somewhere he was shivering, and blood was running from his mouth and nose.
+Fate has come for you, Ahriman, as you feared it would and knew it must.+ The crow’s voice became fainter, and he could feel the hard inner surface of his armour. He was lying on the floor of the throne room. He could taste acid and blood on his tongue, and a blinding pain throbbed behind his eyes.
+Remember,+ chuckled the raven’s voice, as blood spread across the throne room floor and ash fell as silent snow.
IV
Oaths
His dead brothers watched him. The two Rubricae were silent and still. Charred flakes of debris drifted down to cover the red of their armour. The light in their eyes had dimmed to pale green in their helms. Ahriman watched them as he stood, waiting for a movement, for a sign of awareness. There was none. He could hear the spirits trapped inside the armour, confused and half blind, searching for direction. Without Tolbek to guide them they were little more than statues.
He glanced around the chamber. Fresh blood was still seeping from heaps of hacked flesh and armour. The battle with Tolbek and the slaughter of Gzrel and his vassals had taken fewer than five beats of a human heart. He needed to make decisions and make them quickly. There were at least a hundred more of the Harrowing on the Titan Child, and many more on the Blood Crescent. It would not be long before they discovered what had happened to their lord, and when they did… There was also Tolbek’s ship hanging close in the void, its crew waiting for their master’s word.
The pain in Ahriman’s head was growing, and his muscles were shivering with the after-effects of the vision. He tried to focus. The memory of what he had seen and heard boiled through his thoughts. He pulled his helmet off and spat a gobbet of blood and bile onto the floor. The air tasted of corruption, charred meat and exposed guts. He was alone on a ship of enemies with more enemies waiting in the void; he was exhausted, his mind and spirit drained. The only advantage he had was that no one knew what had happened here. Not yet.
A low gurgling and a gasp made him turn. Ahriman tensed, suddenly aware of another living presence in the chamber. It was close to the tangle of armoured corpses heaped over the throne. He moved closer, trying to ready his exhausted mind. When he was a step away from the throne he saw the figure and remembered that he had not killed every member of the Harrowing in the chamber.
Maroth lay curled on the floor behind the throne. His face was streaked with tracks of blood that had run from his eyes. He had drawn his legs up under him, his gauntleted hands clasped to his chest. Ahriman stepped closer and Maroth’s head twitched up. A blood-rimmed eye met Ahriman’s gaze and Maroth let out a hissing yelp. Ahriman did not need to read the sorcerer’s tattered aura to tell that something had snapped inside him and what remained was fractured and broken.
Space Marines were creatures made from men but forged to be weapons. They were made to endure in mind and body what mortal men could not, but Maroth had cut away at that strength, selling himself for petty power and lies. He had sacrificed too much and not understood what he had given. Ahriman’s invasion of Maroth’s mind had snapped what strength remained, and he felt brief pity at what this demigod warrior had allowed himself to become.
Then he remembered the creature held in the Titan Child’s cold vaults, and the empty pit of Astraeos’s eye. He raised his hand, gathering strains of emotion to his will. Crackling blue light arced around his fingers. It would be a kindness. The power built, and he remembered the raven’s laughter and the vision the battle had induced in his mind. He hesitated.
Maroth snarled, but Ahriman could see the fear in the broken sorcerer’s eyes.
The energy crackled to nothing on Ahriman’s fingers. Maroth’s wide eyes blinked and he began to shake. After a second the shake became a low gurgling chuckle.
‘Get up,’ said Ahriman quietly. Maroth continued to laugh from the floor. Ahriman lifted his hand and extended a fraction of his will. Tolbek’s sigil-etched sword leapt from the floor to his hand. He caught it and suddenly its point was at Maroth’s neck. The last sorcerer of the Harrowing went still, the choked-off laugh spluttering in his throat. ‘You do not want to die,’ said Ahriman. ‘Now stand or I will take your eyes and give you to your nightmares.’
Maroth stood, somehow looking withered and hunched despite his armour. He kept his blood-rimmed eyes on Ahriman.
‘I can keep my eyes?’ he said, and there was a tremble of madness in the words.
‘I will not take them, and you will live,’ said Ahriman. He glanced towards the immobile Rubricae and the sealed doors to the chamber. ‘But now you will follow me and do as I command.’ Maroth looked as if he were about to sneer, as if a fragment of his pride had surfaced in his mind. Then he met Ahriman’s gaze again and gave a smile that showed his filed teeth; they were pink with blood.
‘Where are we going,’ Maroth hesitated, and his tongue flicked across his teeth, ‘master?’
‘I am not your master,’ said Ahriman, walking towards the chamber doors. ‘And we are going to take this ship.’
They moved quickly through the Titan Child. Ahriman walked behind Maroth, so that anyone looking would see him in his normal place. Maroth twitched and murmured as he walked, and Ahriman had to growl threats into his mind so that he moved with his usual imperiousness when they passed others of the Harrowing. Fatigue pulsed at Ahriman’s temples
whenever he psychically nudged Maroth.
He glanced at the soothsayer as they passed through an access hatch into a deserted tunnel. Maroth had started to drool, his spit flecked with green bile and blood. Ahriman quickened his pace and pushed Maroth in front of him. He wondered whether anyone would think to enter the throne room. Most would be too terrified of displeasing Gzrel, but someone might wonder why Maroth walked the decks but his master was nowhere to be seen. Every moment made discovery by the rest of the Harrowing more likely, and when they did uncover what had happened there would be carnage. Some of the Harrowing would assume that Maroth had decided to oust Gzrel and try to revenge their dead lord. Others would assume the same but see the opportunity to seize power themselves. Factions would form in seconds and the blood would flow. Ahriman had seen it happen in many warbands. If Gzrel had died at any other time Ahriman doubted that any of the Harrowing would have survived at all.
They slowed when they reached the compartment of the ship Gzrel had made his gaol. The corridors and small rooms already reeked of faeces, open flesh and fear. There the Harrowing, and a clutch of hunched mutant slave masters, stood close to the sealed blast doors. Ahriman barked telepathic orders at Maroth and he approached them with his usual air of contempt. Ahriman followed, Tolbek’s sword held loose in his hand. The Harrowing growled words of respect and the slaves abased themselves as they passed.
At the entrance to the cells another of the Harrowing stood. Hagos was his name, remembered Ahriman. He was massively built, and his chainaxe rested at his feet, its motor silent. Unhelmed, Ahriman could see the chewed and twisted flesh of Hagos’s head; he had lost half of it to a rival’s teeth. He watched them come, and Ahriman could sense the caution in the gaze. Uncomplicated, reliable and brutally disciplined, Hagos was the only one Gzrel had trusted to guard this door. He was also mute, and had a mind like a lump of iron.
Ahriman felt Maroth’s mind jump suddenly, and the soothsayer staggered, a high-pitched whine escaping his lips. Ahriman went still. By the door, Hagos had brought his chainaxe up. The weapon’s teeth remained motionless.
