by Nick Kyme
They looked like ancient knights, armed and armoured as such.
From the look of the breach in the ceiling it was recent, and rather than diminishing Kinebad’s find, the caustic action of the rain was actually revealing the begrimed tablets around the obelisk. Script had begun to form at the base of each. A closer inspection revealed the language to be old, some form of archaic Gothic no longer spoken in the Imperium.
As a student of history, Kinebad had mastered many dead tongues as well as the extant conjurations of languages that had evolved over time. Though obscure, he found he could read what had been inscribed on the tablets.
‘You asked what this place is,’ said Kinebad, as he knelt by the tablet that was facing the entrance and therefore in his line of approach. The image on the tablet was of the same warrior depicted by the statue, his gauntleted fist held up in triumph. ‘It is history, Scar-borne. It is legacy and the truth concerning a myth ten thousand years old.’
‘You’re wrong, inquisitor,’ said Scar-borne, his voice darkening as he drew the heavy slugger from his back.
This time Kinebad turned, his right hand reaching for Redoubter out of instinct and conditioned reflex.
It would be too late. Scar-borne had him cold. The ugly maw of the slugger seemed to gape and mock. Little more than a blunderbuss, it would, nonetheless, shred the inquisitor’s storm coat, light body armour and flesh.
‘We had an agreement,’ he snapped, more a reminder than a threat.
‘Down,’ said Scar-borne.
Kinebad obeyed.
Thunder shattered the silence of the temple, broke it apart with two raucous booms of the warrior’s massive cannon.
Hot viscera splashed against the inquisitor’s storm coat. He looked around, still crouched down, and saw the steaming bodies of two skels. The wire-furred canines shone black in the half-light, their mail coats glossy with their exploded blood and innards. Massively muscled, with fur as resilient as mail and the unerring silent approach of the very best apex predators, skels were a deadly xenos breed. They were also the dominant and prevalent form of life on Draor.
Scar-borne went over to both carcasses, stamping down on their skulls with an armoured boot.
‘It’s a lair,’ he told Kinebad, before thrusting an outstretched finger at the opening. As the light came in, the summit of a ziggurat was revealed. ‘More skels will fill this place within the hour. Whatever you need to do, do it quickly.’
Skels were also adept climbers, their long dewclaws strong enough and sharp enough to gain purchase in solid rock. Before planetfall, Kinebad had conducted extensive observation of the indigenous xenos population. That learning had proved extremely useful in getting them this far.
Kinebad gave a mute nod of thanks in Scar-borne’s direction as he remembered the many reasons he had offered him a position with his group.
Turning, he began to read.
‘On the eighteenth day of Nureg, the Guardian of Terra did alight on Draor…’ Kinebad began.
Scar-borne’s gaze went to the statue, the great armoured warrior. There was something familiar, archaic about the design of his battleplate.
‘…and there was a great star-fire in the heavens as seven ships of gold descended.’
The fabled landing described was depicted on the second tablet.
On the third was a host of warriors, knelt down in fealty.
‘And, lo, did the men of Iron kneel to his will and the will of the Avenging Son.’
On the fourth tablet was a huge figure wearing a politician’s robes and carrying a heavy book under the crook of one mighty arm. His head was arrayed with a laurel wreath and a white ‘U’ symbol served as a clasp for the garments he wore in place of his armour.
‘He brought his word and his bond, but it was the gift of bone the men of Iron took heed of.’
The fifth tablet depicted the so-called ‘Guardian’ handing a box to one of the men of Iron, a leader judging by his sword and banner.
‘And so reunited with their patriarch was a pact with the men of Iron sealed and the Imperium of Man reunited.’
A skull, its eyes rendered in dull, lifeless jet, dominated the final tablet and it was there the inscribed legend ended.
‘Never again would it be put asunder.’
Kinebad was shaking. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, despite the chill.
‘Do you know what this means?’
Throughout the recitation, Scar-borne’s gaze had not left the statue. Now it fell to the inquisitor.
‘They raised a monument,’ he said, ‘the people who once dwelled on this world.’
‘Almost ten thousand years ago, yes they did.’ Kinebad shook his head, scarcely believing what he had discovered. ‘This is real Imperial history, Scar-borne, from the days of the War.’
‘There have been many wars. I’ve fought in several.’
‘The Heresy War that ended the first Great Crusade.’ When Scar-borne’s interest wasn’t piqued by Kinebad’s rhetoric, the inquisitor grew irritated. ‘It was a formative period in your Chapter’s history.’
Now it was Scar-borne’s turn to be angry.
‘I have no Chapter,’ he said. ‘Not anymore.’ Scar-borne’s shoulders slumped as he briefly relived bitter memories. ‘I am unworthy of it,’ he added quietly, allowing his gaze to fall.
As Kinebad revisited each tablet, pict-capturing with his scrutinising lens, he heard Scar-borne speak from the other side of the obelisk.
‘Why have I never heard about any of this before? I know my Chapter’s history. I have read of every battle the Legion fought in, and studied them. But this… I have no knowledge of this.’
‘Even I was ignorant of it. History is full of lacunae, especially after so many millennia. Much is lost, like the people who raised this monument and committed this truth to indelible stone for others to find. Here we are unearthing some of that truth, the same truth that our enemies seek to use.’
Recording the image of the final tablet, Kinebad walked back around the obelisk to find Scar-borne looking right at him.
‘The cult you and I destroyed on Sturndrang. That was not the end of it?’
‘It was the beginning.’
Scar-borne shook his head and scowled, gesturing to the obelisk.
‘Do you even believe this?’
Kinebad’s gaze, much like his conviction, was unwavering. ‘I believe we are a step closer to achieving our ends and finishing the Incarnadine Host for good.’
The vox-link in Kinebad’s ear crackled, interrupting them.
‘Go ahead, Skaed.’
A woman’s voice answered, patchy but still audible across the feed. Torrential rain served as a backdrop behind it.
‘Indigenes are moving in. So we need to be moving out. Right now.’
A brief break in connection prompted Kinebad to crouch and press the receiver bud in his ear. ‘Skels?’
‘Hundreds of the ugly bastards, and some larger xeno-forms we haven’t seen before.’
‘Effect egress at once, Skaed. I want you on the Reckless and back with Heckt immediately.’
‘I am in no immediate danger, inquisitor. My vantage is still good. I could provide you with some cover.’
‘Unnecessary. Scar-borne is with me.’
‘That is what concerns me.’
‘Retreat to the Reckless, Uanda.’
Uanda Skaed gave the affirmation tone and cut the link.
Scar-borne was racking two immensely large shells into the breach of his slugger.
‘I knew she didn’t like me.’
‘Do many?’
‘No.’
Kinebad raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know why you favour that monstrous cannon. It’s badly weighted, the aim is poor and the reload slow.’
‘Because it kills whatever it hits.’ Scar-borne grinned and one side of his face, one that was severely scarred, contorted into a terrifying scowl. ‘We have an understanding, it and I.’
‘So it
seems.’
Through the gap in the ceiling, the howling had begun.
‘We need to move,’ said Kinebad.
Scar-borne nodded and led them out.
Outside, the deluge intensified. Sulphur rain was lashing straight down in burning little tears of acid. The refractor field generated by one of Kinebad’s several rings flickered with the constant hammering of the rain. Scar-borne had no such protection. He did not need it. His armour was acid-proofed and his skin was inviolable against it. He endured the heat too. Kinebad used his psychic gifts to maintain a comfortable temperature; Scar-borne was simply used to hotter.
Underneath the tumult of the storm, the low howling of the skels was just audible.
A flash of lightning cut a jagged path through the night sky. It lit up a barren landscape, a place of ruination and a people long since deceased. Skels dominated now and their eyes flashed like hungry sapphires as they gathered in packs around the inquisitor and his warrior.
Scar-borne counted almost three hundred skels. The larger xeno-forms Skaed had mentioned were further back and harder to make out. Porcine perhaps, with an almost simian gait? When encountering the alien, it is mankind’s natural instinct to try to make sense of it, to look for parallels within his own sphere of knowledge. But one cannot impose the natural upon the unnatural, the familiar on the alien. The things waiting for them out in the rain adhered to no natural template. They were monsters, but Scar-borne knew monsters and their kind very well indeed.
‘You expect me to fight all of them?’
‘I know you probably would,’ said Kinebad, producing a small lozenge-shaped object from his many trappings, ‘but I had something less messy and more effective in mind.’
‘The fealty the tablet spoke of,’ said Scar-borne, showing some interest in what Kinebad had discovered for the first time, as the inquisitor began to activate the aetheric beacon, ‘it was to Guilliman, wasn’t it? He was the Avenging Son and the pact he had Dorn make was for the Codex.’
‘I believe it was, yes.’
As if scenting that their prey was leaving, the skels began to move and their howling increased in pitch.
‘And the gift he gave? The one to force the men of Iron onto bended knee…’
Dematerialisation was in process, and both Scar-borne and Kinebad felt their bodies and immortal souls being slowly surrendered to the warp.
The skels were rushing now, shrieking and baying as the prey-scent began to fade. Saliva-wet fangs glistened in their hyperextended mouths.
Kinebad spoke a silent prayer as he felt the first pull of aetheric wind, the skin-tingling charge of corposant.
‘It was the skull of their primarch,’ said Kinebad as the screaming of the skels and the tearing of reality merged. His voice trailed off, partially lost to the warp but lingering long enough for Scar-borne to hear what he said, ‘the head of Ferrus Manus.’
TO BE CONTINUED IN INFERNUS
About the Author
Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Vulkan Lives, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio drama Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. For the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Nick is well known for his popular series of Salamanders novels and short stories, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal for the War of Vengeance series. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.
Ancient prophecies and new rivalries rock the Salamanders Chapter as enemies gather to destroy them...
For my beautiful girlfriend, Stef. Without you, none of this would have been possible…
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