by Various
N’bel shook his head. ‘No matter how many we kill, there is always the same remaining at the camp. If I believed in it, I would say they cannot die because they are not truly alive.’
And neither are you, my brother…
A second sentry fell to a hurled spear. Another Nocturnean pairing appeared briefly before becoming lost again in the rocks and smoke.
The heart of the slaver camp was close. They’d penetrated the outer ring and were moving into the vicinity of the metal tents. The sun was still low, low enough to cast long, red shadows across the desert.
Dak’ir was about to advance when he saw the drygnirr again. It crouched atop the shell of a dusk-wraith’s corpse, blinking with eyes of flame.
‘Why do you watch me?’
He sees into your mind… my mind. I feel it… the burning… Vulkan, give me strength.
The drygnirr was occluded by a sudden stream of smoke. Once it had cleared, the creature was gone again.
Another shaft nocked to his bow, Dak’ir moved on.
Six of them crept silently into the dusk-wraiths’ camp, slaying sentries invisibly as they went. The rest of the slavers were swollen on carnage, in a drug-induced soporific slumber brought on by the brazier pans blazing lambently around the camp.
Upon reaching the first of the tents, a warning cry rang out.
The others had launched their attack. East and west, sauroch riders drove at the slavers to steal their attention.
‘Swiftly now,’ whispered N’bel, up off his haunches and running low to the first of the tents.
Dak’ir was right behind him.
N’bel ushered him on to the next tent, but gripped Dak’ir’s arm before he could go.
‘What?’
‘That’s where you’ll find what you seek.’ N’bel was pointing to the larger structure, the one at the heart of the camp. ‘He awaits.’
‘Who, brother? Who awaits?’
I can smell his decaying breath, feel it against my cheek, despite the burning…
‘Your enemy is there.’
‘My enemy? But what about the people?’ Dak’ir was struggling but N’bel would not let him go. Dusk-wraiths had noticed the commotion. Their forces were moving through the camp.
N’bel smiled. ‘We are already dead, Dak’ir. We’ve been dead for aeons, brother. Now, go!’ He pushed Dak’ir off, who stumbled and almost fell.
He was about to turn, to demand the truth, when a burst of rifle fire sliced overhead. Shard ammunition tore up the earth and shredded the flank of a tent. Dak’ir was about to loose when he saw another dusk-wraith, then a third and a fourth, heading towards them.
The large tent was near. He dropped his bow and ran.
The whine of automatic fire from the dusk-wraiths’ weapons hurt his ears. They merged with the baying of the saurochs as they were slaughtered. Somewhere a skimmer-machine exploded.
‘We are dead, Dak’ir, but you still live. Go!’ N’bel’s final words were a shout.
Dak’ir didn’t look back.
Crashing bolter fire rings my ears. I am within my gunmetal cocoon, surging to the planet below.
His path to the large tent was suddenly blocked by one of the dusk-wraiths. She was masked, the face long and elongated to tapered spikes at chin and forehead, and grinned evilly. The sun glinting off her wicked blades, held in either hand, turned the metal to the colour of blood. She was lithe and deadly, with the body of an athlete and a torturer’s confidence.
She rushed Dak’ir, a murderer’s snarl pulling at ruby lips visible through a slit in the mask.
He scraped his sword along the ground, kicking up a line of cinder-flecked dust into her face. She hissed as the hot flakes stung her, but drove on.
Dak’ir felt a cut to his ribs, then the warm splash of blood down his side. They’d crossed each other, like duelling riders, blade to blade.
I must control my breathing, remember the routines learned in the solitorium. My hearts beat with the thrill of battle.
She came again, the dusk-wraith witch, slashing down with her blades as a pair. Dak’ir parried, sparks spitting off the metal of his sword. A kick to his stomach sent him sprawling across the hot sand and into the tent.
Pain lanced his body. It was like he was on fire.
Must… fight… it… The burning… will consume me if I don’t.
Dak’ir waited several moments in the dark, watching the slivered entrance, waiting for his assailant. But she never came. He was alone.
The air smelled strange, like being underground, and the scent of soot and ash was redolent. As his eyes slowly adjusted, Dak’ir reached out a hand to touch the walls of the tent. Half expecting a barb or spike, he was cautious, but instead of a cut, all he felt was stone. The walls were rough and craggy, and hot against his tentative fingers.
The sensation was momentary. As he felt his way ahead in the dark, the walls changed again, smooth and cold as metal should be.
There were no captives, nor any dusk-wraiths. Yet, N’bel had mentioned an enemy.
The tent was larger within than it appeared on the outside. At the end of its gloomy length, Dak’ir saw a figure seated upon a throne. It was a silhouette, a veritable giant, and armoured unless he was mistaken.
‘Come forth!’ Dak’ir challenged, brandishing his sword.
The figure did not answer, did not even flinch.
‘If you are my enemy then face me.’
Still nothing.
Dak’ir crept closer.
From the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement… a flash of reptilian eyes, a streak of blue on black. But when he looked, the drygnirr wasn’t there.
He watches, even now… even as I burn.
The figure on the throne was mocking him, Dak’ir was certain. He would cut the–
A thrown spear tore into the side of the tent and a shaft of light spilled in. It lit the figure, a silhouette no longer. His armour was pitted and broken, as if it had been corroded by time or–
The melta’s beam cutting across the temple. There is nothing I can do, even when it touches my face…
Though badly damaged, much of the paint chipped away, Dak’ir saw the armour had once been green. A pair of wings with a flame in the centre emblazoned the warrior’s shattered breastplate. Fingers of bone poked out from his ruined gauntlets. A chest cavity of dust-choked ribs yawned through the ragged gaps in his plastron. A skull, locked in a rictus-grin, regarded Dak’ir where a battle-helm had long ceased to be.
A word, a name, trembled on Dak’ir’s lips as he approached the armoured cadaver.
‘Ka… Ka…’
He was my captain. My guilt gives him form in this place.
Dak’ir was less than half a metre away – ‘Ka… Ka…’ – when the corpse-warrior reached out with his deathless hands and seized Dak’ir by the neck.
‘Diiiiieeeee…’ it hissed, naming itself and damning Dak’ir in one word, though its rictus jaw never moved.
Yes, that was his name. I cannot forget.
Dak’ir was choking. He scrabbled at the bony fingers but they wouldn’t relent. Blood pulsed in his ears and he felt his eyes bulging as his brain was starved of oxygen.
The burning… Use it!
He had to drag some breath into his lungs or be strangled by the terrible undead thing before him. That was when he noticed the air bleeding out of the room, devoured hungrily by the flames wreathing his body. It burned, a flame so invasive it went to the nerves and threatened to overwhelm Dak’ir.
The skeleton’s grip loosened.
Dak’ir choked through fire-cracked lips.
‘What is happening?’
Let it burn us. Embrace the flame. It is yours to mould…
The fire became an inferno. It roared outwards in a wave, cascading from Dak’ir’s body, exploding the skeleton to ash with its fury, yet he was untouched.
Pain wracked him, bringing him to his knees as the fire rolled out, devouring the tent, sloughing the metal. It
boiled outwards in a white-hot tempest. Blinking against the rising sun, Dak’ir watched the rest of the camp as it was consumed. His brothers fled before the flame but none could outrun it. N’bel fell last of all, screaming as the burning stripped flesh from bone and turned a man into a dark shadow upon the scorched earth.
It was out of his control now, a fiery maelstrom engulfing all upon the plain, consuming all of Nocturne in a relentless wave.
Dak’ir threw his head back, as the fire turned on him at last, and screamed.
Pyriel staggered as the blast wave struck him. He was standing in the pyre-chamber below Mount Deathfire. Crushing the totem creature of the drygnirr in his fist, now little more than a simulacra wrought of flame, he hastily erected a psychic shield against which the waves of conflagration broke eagerly. He could barely see the figure crouched at the eye of the flame storm, but heard Dak’ir’s screaming clearly.
White fire lit the Librarian starkly, flickering across the blue of his power armour and the many arcane artefacts chained about his person. The drakescale cloak Pyriel wore on his back snapped and curled with the tangible heat.
Sweat beaded the Librarian’s forehead. He felt it running down to the nape of his neck. Never before had he been so tested, never before seen such a potent reaction to the burning. To his horror, the edges of his psychic barrier were cracking against the fire tide. He tried to reinforce them but found he had neared his limits.
‘Vulkan’s strength…’ he gasped, beseeching his primarch and was answered.
Master Vel’cona emerged from a cascade of flame into the room, his eyes ablaze with cerulean power. His armour, only a suggestion through the heat haze, was more ancient than Pyriel’s. Akin in some ways to the earth shamans of old Nocturne, it was festooned with reptilian bones and dripped in scale.
Together, the two Librarians pushed the fire tide back until it was nought but wisps of smoke. A blackened crater outlined Dak’ir’s crouched position. He was naked, steam and fire exuding from his scarred flesh. The searing legacy of the melta beam he’d suffered on Stratos flared angrily on the side of his face, a physical reminder of how he was different to his fire-born brothers. The burning had destroyed his armour, rendering it an ashen patina shrouding his body.
Though he remained still and upright, his head tucked into his chest, arms drawn up around his legs protectively, Dak’ir was unconscious.
The entire pyre-chamber was a charred, soot-stained ruin. It was little more than bare rock, its entrance sealed by a pair of reinforced blast doors, but fire-blackened wall to wall. The only void was where Pyriel had been standing. The air was so hot it hazed, and reeked heavily of sulphur.
The ash cocoon encasing Dak’ir cracked and he slumped to the earth.
Vel’cona regarded the would-be Lexicanum impassively. ‘He has survived the burning.’
It wasn’t a question, but Pyriel answered it anyway.
‘Yes.’ He was still breathless from his exertions but recovering.
‘And?’ Vel’cona turned his penetrating gaze onto the other Librarian. The fuliginous darkness of the room seemed to coalesce around him, rendering him indistinct and shadowed.
‘Incredible power, like nothing I’ve ever seen.’
Vel’cona’s eyes flared like blazing blue sapphires in the gloom. ‘Can it be controlled?’
Pyriel removed his battle-helm, revealing a sweat-swathed face. His scalp was excessively damp. Only now was the cerulean fire in his ember-red eyes fading, such was the power he’d been forced to call upon. He delivered his answer in a low voice.
‘On this occasion, he could not.’
‘Saviour or destroyer…’ Vel’cona muttered. ‘Nocturne in the balance… A low-born, one of the earth, will pass through the gate of fire.’
Pyriel was confused. ‘Master?’
‘The Tome of Fire reveals much,’ said Vel’cona on his way out of the chamber. He had to use a bolt of psychic force to open the metal blast doors. They were fused together. ‘But it does not tell us everything. Who can say what the Ignean’s role will be in the turning tide? His flame may flicker and die, it may roar into a conflagration. Much is not yet known, but I sense a visitor approaching who may help us in our understanding.’
Pyriel had been hoping for a more straightforward explanation, but he had learned long ago not to question the vagaries of the Chief Librarian of the Salamanders.
‘What is your will, master?’
‘Keep training him.’
‘And if he loses control again?’
‘Do what you must,’ Vel’cona’s voice echoed from the darkness beyond the fire-smote room. ‘Destroy him.’
A GOOD MAN
Sandy Mitchell
As the tide of war swept across the Sabbat Worlds, most of us could be forgiven for taking more notice of its rise than of its ebb. But after the battlefronts moved on, leaving rockpools of conflict and its aftermath beached by their withdrawal, the vital task of restoring the Pax Imperialis was only just beginning. On world after shattered world, a veritable second crusade of those with the necessary expertise to manage the reconstruction followed hard on the heels of the first.
Which was how Zale Linder came to Verghast, around the middle of 771, among a swarm of Administratum functionaries charged with the restoration of good order there. He wasn’t much to look at, so typical of his brethren that he might have escaped notice altogether, had he not worked so assiduously at coming to my attention; but that was to be later, and to really appreciate his story, I suppose we’d better start at the beginning.
We can only imagine Linder’s reaction to his surroundings when he first set foot on the shuttle apron at Kannack. Armed men were everywhere, in the uniforms of PDF regiments, or the Imperial Guard units left to garrison the planet, and the scars of the recent fighting were more than evident on the port facilities surrounding him. Come to that, as most of the shuttles approaching the Northern Collective overflew the glass-walled crater where Vannick had once stood, he’d probably seen some of the worst devastation even before his arrival.
For a man more used to the musty recesses of a scriptorium, the noise, bustle, and constant tang of combustibles from the surrounding manufactoria must have been disconcerting in the extreme. Nevertheless, by all accounts, he rallied at once, chivvying the small knot of brown-robed Scribes towards the rail terminal, though few of them were quite so quick to adjust to their new surroundings as he was.
The echoing hall with its multitude of platforms, from which services departed to destinations throughout the North Col and beyond, probably seemed as alien to the Administratum adepts as the landing field had been, but they found a local service into Kannack itself without much trouble. The Verghastites had become used to off-worlders by this time, particularly bewildered-looking ones speaking strangely-accented Gothic, and the booking clerk who wrote out their tickets in a flowing copperplate hand directed them to the correct platform with all the polite deference due to customers he’d overcharged by about five per cent.
The train rattled its way to Kannack Hub in little more than an hour, affording Linder a few brief glimpses of the spoil heaps and outlying reclamation zones, before burrowing into the side of the Western Spine like a worm into an apple. The last couple of kilometres of track ran within the lower hab levels, through tunnels and caverns of steel and brick, some spaces large and open enough to seem like small towns in their own right, while in other places the enclosing walls whipped by disorientatingly just the other side of the window.
The Hub terminal was more crowded than anywhere they’d seen so far, and the little knot of off-world adepts navigated it in an apprehensive huddle, following the directions they’d been given as punctiliously as the curlicues of an ancient text being restored to legibility by a fresh layer of ink. Once again, Linder took the lead, although he was by no means the most senior member of the party; but he had more local knowledge than any of the others, furnished to him by a friend and colleague who’d arrived
in an earlier wave a year or so before, and who had corresponded diligently in the interim. He already knew how to flag down one of the municipal charabancs thronging the outer concourse, and how to distinguish the combination of numeric and colour coding which marked one heading in the right direction. How grateful his colleagues were for being saved a five-kilometre walk, mostly in an upwards direction, isn’t clear, but I presume the majority were relieved to find what seats they could among the shift-change crowds.
What really matters is that Linder eventually ended up where he belonged, at the Administratum Cloister; but the details of his journey are important to someone like me, to whom details are everything. In that relatively brief trip from the landing field, he demonstrated the single-mindedness and adaptability which set him apart from his colleagues, and which were to lead him down darker paths than he could ever have dreamed he would walk.
The first intimation that something was wrong would have been when he registered his arrival at the Codicium Municipalis, where he had been assigned to work, and enquired about the friend who had preceded him to Verghast.
‘No record of that individual exists,’ the junior Archivist on the other side of the polished wooden counter informed him, with the neutral inflection peculiar to lowly functionaries trying to appear not to relish the chance of making the lives of their superiors more difficult.
‘Please check again,’ Linder said calmly. He’d been navigating his way around the labyrinthine ways of the datastacks for most of his life, and was well aware that information could be lost or mislaid in a myriad of ways. ‘Allow for misspellings, and cross-reference with the arrival records of the landing field.’
‘The results are the same, honoured Scribe,’ the Archivist told him, after a wait no longer than Linder had expected. ‘There is no reference to a Harl Sitrus in any of the informational repositories accessible from this cogitation node.’
‘Then I suggest you commence an immediate archival audit,’ Linder said, ‘since the data I require has clearly been misfiled.’
‘As you instruct, honoured Scribe,’ the Archivist said, suppressing any trace of irritation which might have entered his voice; there were worse ways of wasting his time, which Linder could easily impose if sufficiently irked. ‘Would you like a summary of the results forwarded to your cubicle?’
