The air between them grew awkward, and Talos grunted an acknowledgement. “Will that be all?”
“What awaits us in the Maelstrom? What is the Hell’s Iris?”
Talos shook his head. “You will see with your own eyes, if the ship manages to hold together for long enough to actually reach the docks there.”
“So it’s a dock.”
“It’s… Octavia. I am a warrior, not a scribe or a literist. I lack the words to do it justice. Yes, Hell’s Iris is a dock.”
“You say that like it’s a curse. ‘I am a warrior.’” Octavia licked her dry lips before speaking. “What did you want to do with your life?” she asked. “I told you the truth: I’d always dreamed of guiding such a warship, and for better or worse, fate gave me what I wished for. But what about you? Do you mind if I ask?”
Talos laughed again, that same whispering chuckle, and tapped the defiled aquila emblazoned across his chest.
“I wanted to be a hero.” A moment later, he masked his scarred face behind his skulled helm. Red eye lenses stared at her, devoid of all emotion. “And look how that worked out.”
IX
VOYAGE
Reaction was mixed as one of the Legion masters strode into Blackmarket that night. Most stood stock still, freezing in place, variously wondering who had done something wrong, or if their own transgressions were about to be punished. Some fell to their knees in respect, or bowed their heads in greeting. Several fled at the first sight of the master’s red eye lenses emerging from the blackness. Most of these—oil-stained workers from the engine decks—ran down the many corridors leading from the communal crew chamber.
Their escape went ignored. The warrior moved through the parting crowd to stand before a single man who tended a market table, selling scraps of white cloth and charms woven from female hair. Nearby, humans dimmed their lamp packs as a sign of respect in the presence of a Legion master.
“Arkiah,” the warrior growled. His vox-voice was a guttural snarl, a rasping coming through the vocabulator in the helm’s mouth grille. The man flinched back, cowed by fear, kept straight only by his stubborn pride.
“Lord?”
The warrior reached for the gladius sheathed at his shin, his movements deliberate and slow. As he rose with the blade in his hand, eye lenses still locked to the mortal’s sweating features, he growled another three words.
“Take this sword.”
Talos dropped the gladius onto the table with a clang, scattering trinkets off the edges. The blade was as long as the human’s arm, its silver length turned amber in the dim lighting of the communal chamber.
“Take it. I am due to meet with the tech-adept, and that meeting goes delayed while I remain here. So take the sword, mortal. My patience is finite.”
With trembling fingers, the man did as he was ordered. “Lord?” he asked again, his voice quavering now.
“The blade in your hands was forged on Mars in an age now believed to be myth by almost every soul in the Imperium. It has cut the heads from men, women, children, aliens and beasts. With these hands, I pushed it into the beating heart of a man who ruled an entire world.” The warrior reached to his belt, where an Adeptus Astartes helm hung on a short, thick chain against his hip. With a jerk, he wrenched the helm free, letting it thud onto the table where the sword had lain a moment before.
Red ceramite, marked by dents and scratches; green eye lenses, both cracked and lifeless. The helm stared at Arkiah in dead-eyed silence.
“This helm is all that remains of the warrior that murdered your daughter,” said Talos. “I killed him myself, in the running battles that raged across the decks as we fled from Crythe. And when it was done, I severed his head from his shoulders with the very blade you now struggle to lift in your hands.”
The man made to lower the sword, to rest it back on the table. “What do you wish of me, lord?”
“It is said you sow the seeds of discord among the mortal crew, that you preach this vessel is damned, and all who sail aboard her are destined to suffer the same fate as your daughter. Is that so?”
“The omens…”
“No.” Talos chuckled. “If you wish to be alive at the end of this conversation, you will not speak of ‘omens’. You will speak the truth, or you will never speak again. Do you preach of the Covenant’s damnation?”
Arkiah’s breath misted in the cold air. “Yes, my lord.”
The warrior nodded. “Very well. That does not anger me. Slaves are not forbidden emotions and opinions, even misguided ones, as long as they obey their duties. What are your duties, Arkiah?”
The ageing man backed up a step. “I… I am just a menial, lord. I do whatever is asked of me by the crew.”
Talos took a step closer. His active armour growled with teeth-itching resonance. “And does the crew ask you to preach that every one of them is damned?”
“Please don’t kill me, lord. Please.”
Talos stared down at the man. “I did not come here to kill you, fool. I came to show you something, to teach you a lesson every one of us must learn if we are to remain sane in the lives we lead.”
Talos gestured to the helm as he continued. “That warrior killed your daughter. His blade tore her in half, Arkiah. She would have taken several moments to die, and I promise you those moments were more painful than anything you can possibly imagine. Your wife also died in the raid, did she not? Slain by a Blood Angel blade? If she was with your daughter at the end, then this warrior likely butchered them both.”
Talos drew his own blade. A Blood Angel sword, as long as the human was tall, prised from the loose fingers of a slain hero. The polished and winged artefact was wrought of silver and gold: its craftsmanship unmistakable, its value uncountable. He slowly, gently, rested the golden blade on the ageing man’s shoulder, the edge just shy of kissing the mortal’s neck.
“Perhaps this was the last thing they both saw. A faceless warrior towering above them, blade ready to fall, to cut, to cleave them apart.”
Tears stood in the man’s eyes now. When he blinked, they trailed down his cheeks in quicksilver rushes.
“Lord,” he said. One word, nothing more.
Talos read the question in the broken man’s eyes. “I have come to ease your doubts, Arkiah. I did what I could. I tore her murderer apart. I carry his memory with me, in the taste of his blood on my tongue as I ate his heart. Your daughter died, and you are entitled to your grief. But here, now, you have the murderer’s remains. Use the sword. Break the helm. Take the vengeance you crave.”
At last he found his voice. “I do not wish vengeance, lord.”
“No.” The Night Lord smiled behind the faceplate, pulling the healing muscles tight. Despite his words to Octavia, his face was a mask of constant aggravating pain now. He’d been considering stripping the skin from the left side of his skull, deadening the nerves, and replacing the scar tissue with bare augmetics. He still wasn’t sure why he felt such reluctance to do so.
“If vengeance is hollow,” Talos continued, “then you have simply not suffered enough. Revenge is all any of us can hope for, each time we must lick new wounds and wait for them to heal. Every soul on this ship, mortal and immortal alike, accepts that as truth. All except you. You, who insist you’ve been wronged more than any other. You, who dare to whisper dissent into the shadows, forgetting that your masters dwell within that same darkness. The shadows whisper to us, Arkiah. Remember, little human, treachery on this ship is punishable by being flayed alive.”
Talos was no longer speaking directly to him. The warrior turned, addressing the crowd that ringed them both, even as he aimed his words for Arkiah’s ears.
“So answer me something: do you mumble your traitorous words because of selfish grief, as if you are the only one to have lost something precious, or is it because you truly think your fellows will rise up in rebellion against the Legion?”
“My daughter…”
The Night Lord was a blur of movement and a purr of ser
vo-joints. One moment he faced the crowd, his back to Arkiah; the next, the weeping man was held aloft by a fistful of greying hair, boots hanging above the decking.
“Your daughter was one of hundreds to lose her life that night,” the Night Lord growled, “on a ship that falls apart beneath our feet even now because of the damage it sustained. Do you want me to apologise for not protecting her? Or would that also change nothing? Would those words, even true, ring as hollow as worthless vengeance? Will they bring her back?”
Talos hurled the man aside, sending him crashing into a table that toppled under the impact. “We lost dozens of warriors the same night you lost your daughter. Dozens of souls who’d stood on the very soil of Terra and watched the walls of the Emperor’s palace tumble to the ground. Warriors who’d devoted eternity to fighting an unwinnable war in the name of vengeance. We lost hundreds of mortal crew. Every mortal on board lost someone or something precious that night, and they swallowed their grief, settling for the hope of revenge. But not you. You must tell everyone else that their losses mean nothing next to yours. You frantically whisper that everyone must piss themselves in fear at an unwritten future.”
Talos sheathed both blades and shook his head. “I grieve for her loss, little father, for her life and what it represented in this wretched sanctuary we are all forced to suffer. I regret that all I could give her was the peace of vengeance. But let me be utterly clear, mortal. You live only because we allow it. You drew your first breath in an empire we built, and you serve us as we tear it down. Hate us. Despise us. We will never care, even as we shed blood to protect you when we must. Heed these words, human. Do not dare put your heart’s losses above anyone else’s. The warp always finds its way into fools. Poisonous thoughts are a beacon to the neverborn.”
The crowd watched with rapt eyes. Talos turned, his eye lenses meeting the gaze of every serf in the chamber, one after the other.
“We sail through bleak tides, and I will lie to none of you about what awaits in our future. The Covenant bleeds, crying out for repair. We draw near to the dock at Hell’s Iris, a place some of you will remember without affection. Once we are docked, remain locked in your quarters unless you are attending to essential duties. Every soul among you with access to a weapon, make sure you carry it with you at all times.”
One of the crowd, a new slave from the Ganges, stepped forward. “What’s happening?”
Talos turned to the man, looking down at his unshaven face. It was only then the Night Lord realised he’d been speaking Nostraman. Half the crew were new—they had no experience with the dead language.
“Trouble,” Talos spoke in Low Gothic, the Imperium’s mongrel tongue. He was growing more comfortable with it since Octavia came on board. “We are making for a haven of renegades in the heart of Imperial space, and will arrive at its borders within a handful of hours. There is a chance the ship will be boarded while we linger in dock. If that happens, defend the Covenant with your lives. The Eighth Legion are not generous masters, but we are saints compared to the depraved souls we must ally with. Remember that, should you find yourself tempted by thoughts of escape.”
Talos saved his last glance for Arkiah. “Little father. If you defy the Legion with anything more than a selfish coward’s whispered words in the future, I will carve the skin and muscle meat right from your bones. Your flayed skeleton will be crucified at the heart of this very chamber, hanging as a warning to all. Nod if you accept these terms.”
The ageing man nodded.
“A wise decision,” Talos replied, and stalked from the chamber. In the shadows of deeper corridors, he spoke four words into an open channel.
“First Claw, to me.”
He sat with his head cradled in shaking hands, gently rocking back and forth as he sat in the middle of a bare chamber, whispering the names of gods he hated.
One of his brothers called to him over the jagged soundwaves of the vox.
“I come,” Uzas replied, rising to his feet.
He lowered the immense blade, releasing the trigger to let the sword’s teeth fall still. The engine in its hilt idled as the warrior listened to his brother’s summons. Sweat bathed him beneath his armour, leaving his skin itching even as it soaked into the absorbent weave of his bodyglove.
“On my way,” Xarl voxed back.
The quill slowed in its scratching path across the parchment, then finally stopped. The warrior looked to the skull-faced helm on his writing desk, watching him with its unblinking eyes. Reluctantly, he placed the quill back in its inkpot. A dusting of fine-grained sand trickled over the parchment to help the letters dry, before the warrior reached to activate the vox-mic in his collar.
“As you wish,” said Mercutian.
He walked the ship’s corridors, staring into the darkness through red-stained lenses and flickering white targeting cross hairs. A rune chimed on his retinal display, his brother’s name-glyph pulsing for his attention. He blinked at it to reply.
“Something amiss?”
“We are gathering in the Hall of Remembrance,” Talos’ voice came back.
“That sounds tedious. What might the occasion be?”
“I want a full report of the necessary repairs before we dock.”
“I was right,” Cyrion replied. “That is tedious.”
“Just get there.” Talos severed the link.
The Hall of Remembrance echoed with the sound of divine industry. Servitors lifted and hauled, drilled and hammered; each one of them robed and hooded in black surplices, bearing the winged skull symbol of the Legion on their backs. Several had Nostraman glyphs tattooed on their foreheads—former serfs guilty of minor sins, sentenced to live out their lives as lobotomised, augmented drones.
Scores of menials and servitors laboured at tables and conveyor belts, constructing the explosive bolt shells used by the Legion’s warriors, while others worked at wall-mounted consoles, deep-scrying parts of the ship and directing the repair teams. The entire hall resonated with the flood of chattering voices, clanging tools, and beaten metal.
Four great sarcophagi hung bound to one wall, wrapped in chains and supported by ceiling clamps. Only one remained within a protective stasis screen, its cracked surface halfway restored to perfection, though blurred by the field’s blue mist.
The warband’s Dreadnought coffins shivered as the ship gave another lurch, their chains rattling again. Each of the coffins’ surfaces was immaculately wrought from precious metals, carvings lovingly etched into the armour. Such patient and diligent work was the responsibility of a master artisan, the craftsmanship a league apart from the simplistic repairs performed by most menials and slaves.
First Claw regarded one another around the chamber’s central hololithic table. A three-dimensional image of the Covenant of Blood rotated before them all, its flickering, patchy contours flawed by stains of flashing red damage warnings. It pulsed in and out of existence in sympathy with the tremors shaking the ship.
“That doesn’t look good,” Cyrion noted.
“It is not,” Lucoryphus rasped. “Not good at all.” His presence had been an unwelcome surprise for First Claw upon entering. Talos knew without doubt that the Raptor had been sent by the Exalted to serve as the shipmaster’s eyes.
“Tech-adept.” Talos turned to Deltrian. “I need a complete listing of the repairs to be done, with the materials you’ll need. I also need a time frame for how long the Covenant will be in dock undergoing overhaul.”
Talos stood with Deltrian, opposite Xarl and Lucoryphus. Little could be considered similar between the three warriors: Talos stood in his Legion war plate, weapons sheathed, eyes calm, helm resting on the edge of the table. Lucoryphus kept his weeping mask in place—in truth, Talos had no idea if the other warrior could even remove it anymore—and leaned forward with a graceless awkwardness, struggling to remain bipedal on his ceramite talons. Xarl was also bareheaded, the skull helm locked to his thigh. He stood impassive in his beaten armour, his scarred features a m
ap of unpleasant memories, and his black eyes always moving between Talos and Lucoryphus. He wasn’t subtle about it, wasn’t even trying to be subtle—Xarl sensed the genesis of a rivalry between the two warriors, and watched with keen eyes.
Deltrian grinned because Deltrian always grinned. The chrome skeletal face beneath the black hood could form no other expression. As the tech-priest spoke, vein/wires and cable/muscles in his cheeks and neck tightened and flexed. His voice was an automaton’s emotionless screed.
“The immaterium propulsion engines have been subjected to an inadvisable degree of damage in the last eight months—” here, Deltrian paused, turning his emerald eye lenses to Lucoryphus, “—but they function within permissible boundaries.”
The tech-adept’s eyes hissed softly, moisturised by the coolant mist-sprays built into his tear ducts. Talos couldn’t help but steal a glance. He kept his curiosity about Deltrian’s personal reconstruction behind polite respect, but why even a tech-priest of the Martian Mechanicum would rebuild himself to resemble an augmetic image of a skinless human was a mystery. He suspected it was because of Deltrian’s bond with the Eighth Legion. This aspect, more given to inspiring fear in mortals, surely suited him better.
Or perhaps it was a matter of faith. Appearing as a synthetic version of the human skeleton, to show the many changes Deltrian had undergone in his quest for mechanical perfection, as well as evidence that he acknowledged his mortal beginnings.
Talos caught himself staring. With a guilty smile, he looked back at the hololithic.
Deltrian gestured with a chrome claw to red patches across the ship’s hull. “The flawed systems are located at these points. The hull sections in absolute need of complete reparation are located here, here, here, here and here. As for core systems, the Ninth Legion inflicted severe damage upon the actuality generators. Until this date, shipboard repairs have been sufficient to restore sustained empyrean flight. If we do not dock soon for an overhaul of the actuality generators, the immaterium engines will be throttled by failsafes, preventing their activation.”
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