Rebirth

by Nick Kyme

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A few hours. It might take five or six transfusions. Perhaps, during the wait, you can tell me why you are here and not upon some battlefield somewhere.’

  Agatone turned from the machine to look the medicus in the eye.

  ‘What makes you think we’re not on a battlefield?’

  Issak nodded, as Agatone began to remove his greave for the first transfusion. He clicked on the comm-bead.

  ‘Zartath, maintain watch on our perimeter,’ Agatone said. ‘Exor can be healed but it’s going to take a few hours.’

  A grunted affirmative returned on the other end of the feed before the link was cut.

  Agatone had given the hound his leash – now he would find out just how tame the ex-Black Dragon was.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

  As the atmospheric craft touched down in one of the Forge Hammer’s hangars, Urgaresh felt his battle-brothers strain at the leash. Thorast was the exception perhaps – in him there was nobility still. But then, he had always possessed the most outwardly balanced mien of the zorn or ‘wrath’ as it was known on Gauntlet. Urgaresh told himself they could come back from the edge, but only once they were whole again. They needed leadership. It had wounded them to lose him like that, and then be cruelly denied by a quirk of fate. He wondered what of their fates once this was done. Would they rise? Could they? Human blood slaked Urgaresh’s claws. It stank of damnation. A necessary evil, he told himself. Committed by a necessary monster.

  And we are, all of us, monsters.

  Unlike the bone-cold Apothecary, Haakem and Skarh snarled and spat every moment they were airborne, gnashing their incisors until their gums bled. Both warriors clenched and unclenched their fists at the void of not having a weapon to hand. They felt it as keenly as a missing limb. Urgaresh knew this with certainty, because he felt it too.

  Ghaan was the last of them. The old vexilliary was akin to a brooding storm, sullen and adapting to the pain of his injuries with all the civility of a sabre-wolf. He had once carried their standard, and considered it an honourable duty. His banner had long since been lost to ruin, burned by a dark lance. In its absence, Urgaresh found it hard to remember what they were fighting for. He supposed it was for each other and when that was no longer a tenable belief, he would fight for a good death instead.

  Yes, they had risked much in braving the slave pits of Volgorrah. Four caskets in the old Fist of Kraedor’s mortuarium attested to that more poignantly than any ragged banner ever could. The bodies were lost to them now. Jerrak, Skellig, Neroth and Bhar’thak. All gone, their legacy in Thorast’s care now.

  None had escaped wounding. Urgaresh carried a limp, a hand span of xenos steel still embedded in his right thigh. Both Haakem and Skarh bore head injuries, the mounting pressure of which had made them increasingly volatile. Urgaresh had to keep the leash tight on those two, and maintained a vigilant watch aided by Thorast. The Apothecary had lost an eye, but it did not spoil his already brutish face. The loss of depth perception meant his scalpel was less reliable but his blade arm was still strong and that was all that really mattered. Ghaan had been untouched, but now had extensive burns from the Thallax’s lightning gun.

  They had lost their ship, gutted during their escape and with only enough strength left in her weary bones to get them within sight of their goal. The Kraedor’s crew all dead. The four corpses of their brothers. There was little left but the mission. It would have to be enough.

  They would have to be enough, but they were dangling by the thinnest of threads.

  Urgaresh knew these warriors, like he knew his own blood. The zorn needed a victory. They had fought and died together in a search that began in Commorragh and would end here above this dirt-ball world in the corridors of some insignificant frigate. Their journey had begun in anger and a desire for retribution, so it would end the same. Urgaresh liked the symmetry of that, though his soul was far from poetic. Before their first steps, they had been monsters. With everything that had happened, Urgaresh had no word that could describe them now.

  ‘What will you do with us now?’

  The voice intruded on Urgaresh’s black mood. His mind’s eye was awash with revenge scenarios. He saw now only in two hues, both well matched to his humours. Red and black.

  Fire and bone.

  As if waking from a dark dream, Urgaresh looked down at the diminutive mortal who had showed such defiance in the cryo-vault. Urgaresh wanted to smack the pride right out of him, but stayed his hand. It would achieve nothing but to satisfy a savage urge.

  He was the necessary monster, he knew, but would not let it be his keeper. I choose when you are unleashed. I. Choose.

  ‘Leave this vessel,’ Urgaresh rasped, as a low growl began to build in the hold from the others.

  The mortal looked perplexed. Wary.

  ‘You are releasing us?’

  Urgaresh leaned in close, and let the rank odour of his charnel breath wash over the man.

  ‘Flee now, maggot. I won’t offer again.’

  He rose back to his full height and the mortals left the ship, casting wary glances behind at the black-armoured warriors, and carrying their wounded survivor between them.

  ‘He will raise alarum, brother-sergeant,’ said Thorast. ‘More will come.’

  Urgaresh bared his teeth. So did Haakem and Skarh.

  ‘Let them,’ he declared, snarling as the bone blades pierced his flesh.

  Ghaan came to his sergeant’s side, his movements awkward and pained. The burning had reached deep. The old vexilliary felt it gnawing with every step.

  ‘What are your orders, brother-sergeant?’

  ‘First, we three take the armourium.’ His gaze encompassed Ghaan and Thorast. Our weapons were lost aboard the Kraedor. We need replacements.’

  Ghaan nodded.

  ‘They’ll expect us to strike for the bridge immediately,’ Urgaresh went on, ‘and will make their defences accordingly.’

  ‘And us, brother-sergeant?’

  Urgaresh turned to Haakem and Skarh.

  ‘You will unpick those defences before we get there, brothers.’

  Haakem bared his teeth a little further as he anticipated the hunt to come. Skarh unsheathed his bone claws and began striking them against one another to sharpen their edge.

  ‘A warning,’ said Urgaresh before they moved out, satisfied he had given the mortals enough of a head start, ‘no killing unless we must. We are cursed, but we are not damned. Not yet.’

  Descending the ramp of the Arvus lighter, they entered the darkness of the frigate’s landing deck. The hunt began.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Heletine, on the border between Escadan and Canticus

  Smoke collides and the last vestiges of light die with the phosphor flare.

  Ash is clouding my vision, choking me despite the enhancements of my transhuman body. The transformation is only partial. I am without black carapace, and the last few muscle and organ inducements to make me truly fire-born.

  I am dying, encumbered by a weight on my back I can’t remember bearing.

  So close…

  I thought I could see fire, just the edges of it, lapping like a burning sea at the end of the fire chasm. I need only reach for it, like a beacon. But even that is lost to me.

  Pain, rage, anguish. They fall upon my shoulders, adding to my burden.

  Ash, smoke, the resonance of heat like a throbbing invisible wall. If I reach out I can touch it with my fingers and feel it burn.

  No direction left. No flare to guide me. No firelight from the edge of this chasm. I am lost.

  I cry out a name. It is defiance, not a hail for aid or me beseeching for divine providence. We are taught not to believe in such things, and even if I did I am undeserving of any favours.

  I was a fool to come here into the darkness and shadow. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save them, just as I had been saved. But I am not of Nocturne. I am a Scorian and
the weakness of that has left me undone in this place of hell. How arrogant of me to believe I could tame it. None could tame this fiery wilderness, certainly not one such as I.

  The name I cried rips from my dry lips one last time. It is like breathing in a furnace and the act leaves my throat raw. I imagine my flesh burning, all of it ending, my bones as ash. I will rejoin the earth and the Circle of Fire shall turn again. There is no coming back. No one can do that. Not even…

  A light…

  I see a light. A flame is kindled within that echoes the one I can see without. The spark of it ignites. Now it is a beacon I can follow. A figure is outlined in the smoke. He is carrying the firebrand and urging me and the two I carry to safety. The steps are hard. I am exhausted, but hope gives me purpose. My captain has forged me to be strong, so I am determined to reward his faith with effort.

  The edge of the fire chasm comes into view and the smoke begins to thin at last.

  Half delirious, my vision fading, I look up to see a figure standing over me.

  It is not Ba’ken as I first thought.

  ‘Rest…’ he says. I swear I know him. But it can’t be possible, for this man is dead.

  Va’lin came around with a sudden start. He had been meditating, trying to restore some of his vigour from the earlier battle. He had scarcely got his bearings when he heard a voice he recognised.

  ‘You make a poor sentry, brother.’ Naeb’s gentle laughter turned it from a rebuke into mild cajoling.

  Va’lin had been perched on the edge of a jagged promontory of a former scriptorium at the edge of Escadan. Everything within the archive had been destroyed, set to the flame or simply obliterated during the initial bombardment. The vista did not change very much below either. A sea of destruction stretched into the distance where Imperial-held Escadan gave way to the viciously contested streets of Canticus. For even here, at the edge of the Imperium’s strongest bastion on Heletine, the war was rudely felt and its works laid bare for all to see.

  Va’lin eyed his brother shrewdly. ‘I am surprised to see you alive, let alone upright and with strength enough for mockery.’

  Naeb opened his arms. The mark from the split in his armour remained, though the blood had been cleaned away and the damage to the war-plate fused by a Techmarine.

  ‘Sepelius might be a grim and unpleasant snakr’ah, but he knows his craft.’

  Naeb used an old Nocturnean word to denigrate the Apothecary. It loosely meant ‘snake-skinner’ but more broadly referred to ‘one of ophidian nature, with a lowness of bearing and character’. To Epimethians like Naeb, most other Nocturneans were snakr’ah, except the regal born of Hesiod. And they had other names for the nobles of that Sanctuary City.

  Va’lin noticed Dersius looming behind his friend and nodded to the burly Themian. Though he doubted Dersius would admit to it, Va’lin suspected he was keeping a watchful eye on their wounded brother. Naeb’s easy humour could not hide the fact he was in pain. Va’lin read it in the slight grimace when Naeb had showed off his injury and thought his brother was not looking. The fluid movement that made Naeb such a fierce sparring partner in the battle-cages seemed unrefined and halting.

  Dersius nodded. ‘Va’lin,’ he said, taciturn as ever. Naeb thumbed over his shoulder at the massive warrior. ‘My keeper,’ he explained, with only a little wounded pride to add to his physical injuries. Va’lin saw clearly that Dersius had appointed himself Naeb’s shadow until he was restored to his former strength. Self-reliance was a tenet of the Promethean Creed but so too was self-sacrifice, a virtue in which Dersius had excelled often.

  Both fire-born carried their battle-helms and something of their faces was revealed in the flickering firelight from below. Naeb had the cultured features of a rogue trader, albeit bulked out and hardened by his transhuman physique. He wore his salt-white hair in three short rows that cut his scalp into four equal black segments. He was also handsome for a warrior, which suited his sanguine demeanour well.

  A Themian tribal tattoo painted Dersius’s flat and uncompromising face. The pigment used to ink the warrior was deep blue, so the icon of a leo’nid rampant was difficult to make out unless observed in the proper light. Like most from the City of Warrior Kings, he was bald and had features more in kind to rock than flesh. In many ways Dersius reminded Va’lin of his old captain, Ba’ken.

  ‘Have you come to summon me then, brothers?’ asked Va’lin.

  Come the dawn, which was still an hour or two off, the Imperial forces and their Ecclesiarchy allies would muster for a massive offensive. Word had reached all officers, and through them their warriors, of a huge push into Canticus to reclaim the city in its entirety and drive the heretics out. Many had died in the last failed offensive. Many must therefore be mourned before commencement of the next. Fires littered the ubiquitous ruins on the border between cities in recognition of that fact as the Salamanders war host about to descend on it observed their rituals of flame and ash.

  Power-armoured figures were gathering below, forming circles around distant blazes. Each was a pyre, the burning of a brother in arms.

  Naeb’s expression grew serious.

  ‘Iaptus wants us to remember Sor’ad.’

  Va’lin nodded, needing to say nothing further.

  All three donned their battle-helms. A slew of situational data appeared in crisp glowing green across Va’lin’s retinal lens display: trajectories, wind speed, ground distance. Fuel levels and engine temperature for his jump pack were reading optimum.

  ‘See you when we hit earth,’ he said to the others over the vox-feed, and cast a glance in his brothers’ direction as they lined up on the ruined promontory alongside him.

  ‘Shall we wager on who lands first?’

  Va’lin smiled behind his faceplate. Naeb’s spirit was beyond dampening it seemed.

  ‘Agreed,’ Va’lin replied, ‘name the stakes.’

  ‘The honour of leading the combat squad when Iaptus splits us again.’

  Va’lin bent his knees slightly, descending into a crouch and saw the stance echoed by his brothers.

  ‘How can you be sure he will?’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘Making bets when we are about to mourn our brother?’ Dersius’s tone smacked of disapproval as his deep voice came over the vox-feed.

  Naeb had to crane his neck a little to regard him eye to eye.

  ‘Do you want to lead or not? Sor’ad would have approved.’

  Dersius nodded, and it was as if the snarling drake teeth on his battle-helm had cracked a rare smile.

  ‘Just say when we leap.’

  ‘On a count of five,’ said Naeb, and a chrono flared into life on Va’lin’s and, he knew, his brothers’ retinal displays.

  ‘Was it Dak’ir?’ Naeb asked.

  Va’lin turned his head towards him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your dream.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Mark!’

  The chrono hit zero the same second Naeb announced it. Two ignition flares lit up the ruined scriptorium, spilling gouts of flame across the promontory. Va’lin was a fraction behind, gunning his jump pack in the wake of the others, but he was too late. Naeb’s jump arc, superior to Dersius’s, would carry him earthward first. The honour of leadership would be his.

  Iaptus was waiting for them around the fire with the rest of the squad. A shrine devoted to Saint Hafetus had stood here once, a known smith according to Xerus. Near to the Canticus border, it had suffered during the war and was now little more than a ruin. Despite that, it was deemed a fitting place of commemoration.

  Arrok, Vo’sha, Illus and Xerus were already crouched by the pyre, their bare faces swathed in flickering shadows. Half glimpsed through tendrils of smoke, Va’lin saw Ky’dak sat a little distant from the others. Even in this solemn act, he was a man apart. Va’lin was at odds whether to despise or pity him.

  Xerus nodded, and bade the three latecomers sit down. He was the other specialist in the squad, but pre
ferred a broad-barrelled plasma pistol to the flamer Va’lin carried. Iaptus approved, of course. He said it gave the squad balance. Xerus was a veteran, and possessed of a generous spirit that had seen him become something of a mentor for the younger specialist. Proficient in many weapons, since his earliest days in the Devastators and then Tactical before joining Captain Dac’tyr’s Wyverns, Xerus was an exceptional teacher. Through his guidance Va’lin had thrived, despite his relative inexperience.

  Flames of burned orange and vermillion flowed over a silhouette of scorched black plate. The last of their number, late of the corporeal realm dominated the gathering. Here was Sor’ad’s final rest, his armoured corpse in repose upon the pyre with its progenoids since excised by Sepelius to preserve the dead warrior’s legacy. Dark smoke rose in a great column from the smouldering body, driven upwards by the heat of the blaze and blighting the sky, as the mood of all present was blighted by their loss.

  ‘We gather to remember…’ said Iaptus, his face framed by firelight which heightened every noble groove and peak. Honour scars branded in linked chains of Nocturnean sigil were etched upon his cheeks and forehead. An arrowhead of short wiry hair that was the colour of black volcanic ash covered his chin and jaw. His scalp likewise. In the old language, the sigil-dialect of the first Nocturnean earth-shamans, Iaptus meant ‘Piercer’. On first impression it was an ill-fitting honorific for one who carried a thunder hammer and fairly bludgeoned his opponents, but as leader of Squad Iaptus he was every shred the lance Dac’tyr used to core his enemies, heart and all.

  Like the others, Iaptus had removed his battle-helm out of respect and his ornate jump pack was unclasped and leant against the remains of the walled enclosure that surrounded the squad. In the middle of the ruin, encircled by a ring of stones, the pyre had grown into a conflagration and reached up into the night.

  The other three took their places by the fire, Va’lin sparing only the briefest glance for Naeb who had the audacity to wink at his battle-brother.

  ‘We gather to set a flame…’ Iaptus continued once the rest of his squad was gathered and crouched.