by Various
Each panel was perfectly laser-etched into thin strips; each strip sported a half-globe of glass, behind which lay a random item. Upon the strip, the name of a Doom Eagle claimed by death. Next to each name, inside the glass, a relic: a fragment of armour, an eye-lens, a bolt shell, an honour-chain. Every artefact, something touched by the dead. A piece of them, to be held in trust for as long as the Chapter existed.
The grav-car changed tracks, joining a conveyor that took them across the span of the hall, down and across in zigzag motions toward one of the tallest of the panels.
Zurus looked down towards the floor far below. Somewhere down there was the memorial of Aquila, and beside it a cracked helmet under glass. It had no dressing, no great and ostentatious detail to set it aside from every other marker. The First Master had ordered it so, knowing that in death, all men were in unity.
He glanced up and saw that Tarikus was also looking downward. Mimicking me, he wondered? Or is he feeling the reverence that I feel?
At last, the grav-car rattled to a halt some distance up the face of a suspended wall and Zurus gestured towards the pane that hung before them. Behind a glass bubble, an Astartes combat blade was visible, the fractal edge still bright and sharp even though the length of the knife was dirty and pitted with use.
Tarikus saw the weapon and took a half step towards it, then stopped dead. ‘It’s mine,’ he said. The tone of his voice was peculiar; there was something like fear in it.
Zurus nodded and indicated the memorial panel. ‘Look here, brother.’
There in gothic script, etched by the hand of some machine-slave stoneworker, letters lined in heavy silver. As if he had no control over the action, Tarikus reached out and ran his fingers over the shape of his name. ‘No…’ began the other Astartes, shaking his head.
Zurus nodded again. ‘You were lost, brother. You know our laws and diktats. Your name was cast from the rolls. The ceremony of loss completed and sanctified. Your name, carved here, in memoriam. By the lights of the Chapter and all of Gathis–’
The other Doom Eagle turned abruptly to face him, a curious shade of emotion in his dark eyes. ‘I am dead,’ he said, finishing Zurus’s sentence for him. ‘I no longer exist.’
Tarikus strode from the gates of the Reclusiam across the processional bridge with such pace and intent that it was a long moment before he realised he had nowhere to go. He slowed and the grief he had tried to outrun caught up with him, as if it were only his swift tread that had kept it at bay.
In his darkest moments, trapped in that hated prison cell, Tarikus had encountered a great dread within himself that had shocked him with its potency. He had feared that he was forgotten; that after he was lost in deep space, the many sorties and battles he had fought, the honours he had earned, all would count for nothing among his brethren. He feared that all he had done would be meaningless.
But now he saw that the greater horror was this – that he had been remembered, in so final and damning a way as to make each breath he drew now a phantom. In the eyes of Great Aquila and his Chapter, Brother-Sergeant Tarikus had perished aboard that lost medicae frigate, years past. His kinsmen had counted him gone and made their peace with that fact.
Was it any wonder the Scouts had looked away from him, unsettled by his presence? For a Chapter so intimate with the manners of death, to see a warrior return from it must have shaken them to their core. Our ghosts remain dead, Tarikus thought, recalling the words written in the Prayer Mortalis.
Zurus called his name and he turned as the other Doom Eagle approached him, his pale face set like ice.
‘This must be undone,’ Tarikus began, but Zurus waved him into silence.
‘Do you understand, brother?’ Zurus demanded of him. ‘You see now why your reappearance is… problematic?’
Tarikus felt a swell of anger inside him, and let it rise. ‘Don’t speak to me as if I am some whining neophyte. I am a battle-brother of this Chapter with honour and glory to my name!’
‘Are you?’ The question slipped from Zurus’s lips.
He glared at the other warrior. ‘Ah. I see. At first I thought you were concerned that my wits might have been dulled by my confinement, that perhaps you suspected my spirit damaged by my experiences… But it’s more than that, isn’t it?’ Tarikus made a spitting sound and advanced on the other Doom Eagle. ‘Can it be that you doubt the evidence of your own eyes, brother?’ He put savage emphasis on the last word.
‘The truth–’
Tarikus’s anger was strong now, and he refused to let Zurus speak. ‘What do you presume?’ He spread his hands. ‘Are you waiting for me to shed my skin, to transform into some hell-spawned Chaos daemon? Is that what you think I am?’
Zurus’s gaze did not waver. ‘That question has been asked.’
He took a quick step forward and prodded Zurus in the chest with his finger. ‘I know what I am, kinsman,’ snarled Tarikus. ‘A warrior loyal to Holy Terra!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Zurus, ‘or perhaps you are only a thing which believes that to be true. Something that only resembles Brother-Sergeant Tarikus.’
Muscles bunched in his arm, and for a long second Tarikus wavered on the verge of striking the other Space Marine across the face. That another Doom Eagle would dare to impugn the honour of a kinsman lit his fury still higher, reasons be damned.
And in that moment, through the lens of his cold anger, Tarikus discerned something else: a greasy, electric tingle across his skin and the sense of a hundred eyes staring at him. He relaxed his stance and turned away, glaring about across the length of the high marble bridge. The only sound was the clatter of heat exchangers working far below in the depths of the Ghostmountain.
To the air he spoke a demand. ‘Show yourself, witch-kin.’ Tarikus shot a look at Zurus, and the other warrior’s expression confirmed his suspicions. He turned away again, ranging around. ‘Come, brother. If you wish to damn my name, at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye when you do so,’
‘As you wish.’ The voice came from behind him, close and low. Tarikus found a figure in the lee of a carved support, swamped by red-trimmed robes. The Doom Eagle had looked in that direction only moments earlier, and there had been nothing there. Only shadows.
The psyker walked closer, dropping his hood. Cold, hard eyes bit into Tarikus, searching for any sign of weakness. He betrayed none.
‘I am Thryn,’ said the Librarian. ‘My name is known.’
Tarikus nodded once. ‘I have heard of you. A chooser of the faithful.’
‘But not you,’ Thryn replied. ‘It was not my duty on the day you were picked from the aspirants to join this Chapter, all those decades ago. Perhaps, if it had been, this question would already be answered.’
‘There is no question,’ Tarikus retorted. ‘What you see before you is all that I am. Doom Eagle. Adeptus Astartes. Son of Gathis.’
Thryn cocked his head. ‘The enemy hides in plain sight. A tactic the followers of the Ruinous Powers are quite fond of. They have warped many a mind in the past. It is only sensible that we must be certain that has not happened here.’
Tarikus met Thryn’s burning gaze and refused to look away. ‘Do you know what kept me centred for all those months inside that hellhole, witch-kin? It was my faith in my brothers, my Chapter and my Emperor. Was I wrong to believe that? Have I been forsaken?’
‘That is the question we must ask of you, Tarikus,’ said Thryn.
‘You dare ask me to prove myself?’ The fury boiled inside him. ‘After all that I have done in Aquila’s name, you question me?’ He advanced on the psyker until they were face to face. He could feel the prickling aura of the Librarian’s controlled mind-force pressing on his flesh. ‘This is your greeting for a lost brother, who by the grace of He That Is Most Mighty, has had the temerity to survive. Nothing but disdain and isolation. Accusations and disrespect.’
‘This is the universe we live in,’ offered Zurus.
Tarikus paused, holding Thryn’s gaze. ‘Perhaps you would have preferred it if I allowed myself to die in confinement.’
Thryn cocked his head. ‘That would have brought a definite end to this matter, to be sure.’
‘Then I apologise for daring to live,’ Tarikus shot back. ‘It must be very inconvenient for you.’
‘There is still time,’ said the psyker. ‘But not much time.’
Tarikus was silent for a long moment, and with an effort, he calmed himself and shuttered away his annoyance. That there was some logic in the challenge posed by Zurus and Thryn only made matters worse; but rather than resist it, Tarikus drew in a breath and looked to his heart, to the soul and spirit that made him a Doom Eagle.
‘So be it,’ he said grimly. ‘If I must be questioned, then I must be questioned. This is the way of things. I will face it and not flinch. Tell me what must be done to put this challenge to its end.’
‘You’re certain?’ asked Zurus. ‘It will be difficult. Some have been broken by less.’
‘Tell me,’ repeated Tarikus, glaring at the psyker.
Thryn looked back at him with a level, even gaze. ‘There are rituals of purity. Rites of passage. You will be tested.’ The psyker turned to leave. ‘Tomorrow, at dawn–’
Tarikus’s hand shot out and grabbed the Librarian’s forearm, halting him instantly. ‘No,’ said the Doom Eagle. ‘We will begin this now.’
Thryn studied him. ‘You understand what you will face?’
‘Now,’ repeated Tarikus.
They began with the Talons.
A mechanism made of bright, polished steel, and as cold as polar ice, it wrapped around Tarikus and held the Doom Eagle in its grip. It resembled an artificer’s vice, scaled up to the size of a giant. A great oiled screw turned, bringing knurled blocks of metal towards one another in an inexorable approach. From each block grew a fan of wicked barbs, claws modelled on the talons of the great raptors that rode the thermals of the Razorpeak range.
Tarikus stood between them, clad only in thin exercise robes. The muscles of his arms and legs bunched and became iron-solid as he settled in against the blocks. Only his strength and fortitude held back a crushing death. He breathed evenly, pacing himself, marshalling his strength rather than spending it all in a single effort.
The Talons pressed in. They never tired. The slow-turning gears pushed against the Space Marine’s resistance, daring him to falter for just a moment; and there was the insidious thing about the trial. If the warrior relaxed, even for an instant, the blocks would lurch forward by a full hand’s span, reducing the space between by a good measure – but in doing so, giving him a moment’s respite from the struggle. Thus, the Talons preyed on fatigue and inattention. After hours, days between the blocks, a warrior might consider letting them close the distance a little, just to take a precious second of rest before they reached their stops and started to press in once again; but that was the route to failure. So it was said, Hearon himself once managed a lunar month in the Talons and never gave any quarter.
Tarikus was there for days. With no windows in sight, he could only make the most basic reckoning of the passing hours. And unlike Hearon’s trial, Tarikus was not left alone with his struggle. From the shadows about the Talons, figures moved and called out to him, bombarding him constantly with questions and demands. They asked him to recite lines of catechism and Chapter rote, or they hectored him over every last point of the story he told of his confinement in Bile’s prison. The interrogation went on and on, without end, circling his thoughts until he felt his mind going numb.
Thryn was among his questioners; perhaps he was only one of them, perhaps he was all of them, but as sweat dripped from Tarikus’s limbs and acid slowly filled his veins, the warrior did not give the answers the Librarian wanted. He told the same story over and over, he recited his hymnals and prayers as he should have, all the while resisting the constant, blinding pressure. Denied food, denied water, denied release, he stood his ground.
Then without warning, a week into the trial, it ended. The Talons retracted, and Tarikus fell to the deck, his muscles twitching and cramping. It took him a moment to get back to his feet. Dimly, he was aware of figures in the cowled robes of Chapter serfs crowding towards him.
He frowned. This could not be the end of it. He had not suffered enough.
He was correct.
Tarikus was stripped naked and put into the hold of a rotorflyer. The aircraft left the Ghostmountain with a sudden upward lurch, and almost as quickly it began a steep downward arc. The Doom Eagle had barely enough time to register the howl of winds over the hull of the craft before the deck beneath him parted and he fell.
Tarikus landed hard on a shelf of icy rock, a harsh bombardment of sleet angling across it towards a sudden, sheer drop into the mist. He glanced up to see the flyer power away on flickering blades and caught sight of the Eyrie beyond it. They had deposited him on one of the nearby peak sides, little more than half a kilometre distant from the Ghostmountain as the eagle flew, but uncrossable without a jet pack or a wing-glider.
He cast around, searching for something to shield himself from the punishing weather, and found only a canted slab of rock. Aching from the strain of the Talons, Tarikus made it into the poor cover and found mud and lichen in the lee. The fungus he ate, the mud he smeared over his flesh to hold in his body heat.
He wondered if this was some kind of punishment. Had he failed the first test in some way that had not registered in his mind? Or had Thryn and those who sat in judgement of him tired of the game and made their choice, left him out here to die of exposure? Both seemed unlikely; a bolt shell to the back of his head would have ended him far faster than starvation or hypothermia, and the Doom Eagles were not given to cause suffering where it need not occur – there was enough of that to go around in the universe, without adding to the volume of it.
As he half-dozed behind his rough shelter, Tarikus imagined the scrutiny of distant eyes, watching him from the windows of the fortress-monastery he thought of as his home. He felt darkness crowd in on him, a numbness spreading through his body. Still they questioned him, only now it was without words, now it was with the force of ruthless nature. Now it was Gathis itself, the voice of the Ghostmountain and the Razorpeaks, that challenged him.
And still, the answer that was sought was not given. By the following dawn, Tarikus had died.
Thryn sensed his master’s displeasure before he entered the observation gallery. It filled the space around him like a cold fog, present in everything and ready to become an ice-storm at a moment’s notice.
Within he found Hearon at the heavy window, and off to one side the figure of Brother-Captain Consultus. The warrior was clad in his wargear, and he stood at stiff attention, eyes focused on a distant point beyond the far wall. Consultus looked like carved stone, immobile and rigid; but Thryn saw past that, reading the steady churn of emotions inside the captain of the Third.
The Luckless Third, so the other company commanders called them, but never to their faces. Thryn considered this and saw truth in it; the return of Tarikus was just one more piece of ill fortune laid at the boots of Consultus and his men.
Hearon threw a glance at the Librarian. ‘You have an answer for me?’
‘I do not, lord,’ he replied.
‘Where is he now?’
The psyker gestured with a nod. ‘In the apothecarion. He was recovered before brain death could occur. He will live.’
‘For what that is worth.’ Thryn’s master made a negative noise. ‘Does your witch-sight fail you? Look into his soul, tell me what you see.’
‘I have,’ admitted the psyker, ‘and I can draw no conclusion. Resilient as he is, his psyche was tormented by imprisonment and suffering, but that is to be expected. But this is not a case of black and wh
ite. There are many shades of grey.’
‘I disagree,’ Hearon replied. ‘The question is a direct one. Is Tarikus to be trusted? Yes or no?’
‘He has endured the trials,’ ventured the captain. ‘Survived, once again.’
‘I know your opinion already,’ Hearon snapped. ‘Repeating it serves no purpose.’ He looked back at Thryn.
‘The captain is quite correct,’ said the Librarian. ‘His flesh withstands great punishment. He does not waver beneath chastisement that would kill a warrior of lesser courage.’
Hearon grimaced. ‘That is a thing of meat and blood,’ he said, with a terse gesture. ‘And we know those can be controlled.’ The Chapter Master shook his head. ‘No, it is the question of Tarikus’s spirit that tasks me. His soul is where the question lies.’
‘His faith in the Emperor is strong.’ Thryn paused, framing his words. ‘His faith in his Chapter also.’
‘Even after we have done this to him,’ Hearon was looking at Consultus as he said the words. ‘I don’t need Thryn’s powers to pluck that thought from your mind, brother-captain.’
‘It is so, lord,’ Consultus replied.
‘Let no man here labour under the mistaken belief that I take pleasure in this,’ Hearon grated. ‘But Tarikus is one man. My responsibilities are to a Chapter one thousand strong, to a heritage of ten millennia. The Doom Eagles are my charge, and if I must shoulder the guilt of persecuting a single kinsman in order to protect them, I will do so without hesitation. It is only a grain of sand against the weight of Aquila’s holy remorse.’
Thryn was silent for a moment. He knew full well why he had been called to this meeting, and why too Consultus, as Tarikus’s former commanding officer, had been brought in as a witness. ‘There is word from the Council of Eagles?’
