by Nick Kyme
‘I have a theory. Too early to be sure yet.’
‘I’m sending reinforcements.’
‘Not necessary.’
‘They’re coming anyway.’
‘I want to find out exactly what we’re dealing with first. Dagon and I move faster alone.’
‘I doubt Haruk would agree with that.’
‘Haruk is dead. He won’t be agreeing with anything any more.’
‘Humour doesn’t suit you, Narek. Stay where you are. Wait for the others.’
Elias ended the communion, leaving the huntsmen alone again.
‘So, we wait?’ asked Dagon.
‘No,’ Narek replied, and got to his feet. ‘Search everywhere. Leave nothing untouched. I want to know everything, every scrap of information this warehouse can yield. We are not alone in Ranos, Dagon. Our former brothers-in-arms are here with us.’
Dagon scoffed. ‘To what end?’
‘What else? What would you or I do if we were them? They want vengeance. They mean to kill us.’
Sebaton’s head pounded like he’d drunk too much svod and had woken to a particularly brutal hangover. He was unbound, slumped on a chair, head down. Wincing slightly, but not moving to touch it, he could feel the contusion on the side of his head where something had hit him hard. No, not something, someone.
The encounter in the warehouse came back to him in all its life-threatening glory.
He should be dead right now, or at the mercy of a ritual knife. Instead he was here, wherever here was. He listened, feigning unconsciousness and trying to get a sense of exactly what level of trouble he was in. Harsh machine noise surrounded him. At first he thought he might have been taken to a manufactorum, but if he was still in Ranos that was unlikely, as, from what he’d seen, the city was effectively dead. A low background hum underneath the machine noise put him in mind of a generator, adding weight to a theory about the nature of his captors, if not their identity.
Sebaton put together what he knew. Varteh and the others were almost certainly dead. This meant he was alone. A Legion faction, possibly more than one, was on Traoris. They had found the dig site and had sent scouts to hunt him down and take what he had exhumed from the catacombs. This meant they had some knowledge of what it was, or at the very least realised that it was important enough to divert significant resources to obtain it. At least two others, enemies of the Word Bearer sent to kill or capture him, had intervened and he was now in their custody. What happened next depended on what else Sebaton could discover about his captors’ motives. With that in mind, he stayed still and listened hard.
Half-heard mutterings; the crackle and static of a vox-feed suggested an exchange between at least two people. As Sebaton tried to home in on the conversation and discern some meaning, two others started talking. Obviously standing much closer, their words were easy to understand.
‘He doesn’t look like much,’ said the first speaker, his tone rough with a slight growl adding to its bite. The voice was male, and very deep.
‘That traitor seemed to think he was worth the effort of killing,’ answered another. His voice had a resonance that was almost mechanical, as if re-vocalised and amplified through vox-augmentation.
‘And on that evidence we should take him?’ asked the first. ‘We have more urgent concerns.’
‘Agreed,’ said the second, before a third voice chimed in.
‘I would know why the Word Bearers want this man.’ This one was older, rasping. ‘He is more than he seems, and I don’t think he’s from Traoris, either.’
There was a pause, and Sebaton heard the dulcet whirr of servos connected to a warrior’s gorget as he shook his head.
Then the first said, ‘We’re wasting time. What does it matter if he’s not a native?’
The third continued. ‘Not sure. But the Word Bearers want him, which means we should deny them that. As to their purpose, I also mean to find that out, and he is the answer.’
The conversation paused again, but for longer this time. Sebaton felt his raw nerves bite, and his heart trembled.
‘You’re fooling no one,’ the older one rasped in his ear. It was as if the speaker were standing right next to him, until Sebaton realised the words were spoken directly into his mind.
‘You have uncovered no secrets. Your intent is as obvious to me as that costume you are wearing. Now… awake!’
Sebaton opened his eyes, realising that any further attempts at subterfuge would likely only get him hurt or worse. His vision was blurred, probably from the concussion. He was staring at his feet and a grubby floor underfoot. When he tried to move, to lift his head and rub his eyes, he felt the press of cold metal against his skull.
‘I know you know what this is,’ said the first voice, Sebaton catching the barest glimpse of dirty, emerald-green leg greaves. ‘And what it can do. No tricks.’
Sebaton nodded. The bolter was pressed so tightly to the side of his head that the muzzle would leave an angry red ring in his skin.
He was inside, still in Ranos as he’d suspected. He had been taken from the warehouse, though. The air was musty and reeked of ink. It was a large room; it had to be to accommodate the heavy machinery hinted at in the shadows at its periphery. He noticed a sheaf of parchment on the floor, trapped beneath one leg of the chair where he was sitting, but couldn’t read what was on it. Stacks of this parchment were piled up in three corners of the room. A printing press, then.
‘May I raise my head?’ he asked, spreading his arms in a gesture of compliance. He still had his digital weapon, that was something. But the contents of the cloth bundle he had risked and lost four men’s lives to obtain were no longer in his possession. His captors might have it, although he suspected not. If they were looking for it then why bother to interrogate him? Why bother to pull him from the warehouse and bring him here? That gave Sebaton an advantage – he knew they wanted him alive. How long that situation lasted would likely depend on what he said and did next, and what they could find out.
The pressure against the side of Sebaton’s head eased as the gun was withdrawn. He looked up, gingerly touching the abrasion left behind. Three warriors surrounded him. Two in front, another just visible in his peripheral vision around the side. One more waited farther back, observing.
They were huge, hulking men, clad in full armour that growled as they moved, with the gears and servos engineered into it. It was power armour. Sebaton had escaped one legionary, only to be caught by at least four others.
Now his head was up, he got a good look at his closest aggressor.
The legionary wore emerald-green armour, tarnished by wear and battle-damage. He also noticed rasping marks where the bearer had tried to shave off pieces of rust that had colonised the edges. It was ornate, a battered antique now, with artistic flourishes wrought into the metal that seemed at odds with a warrior’s wargear. He still had his helmet on; a cage of ivory fangs framed the jaw and snout. Behind the red retinal lenses the warrior’s eyes burned. A pelt, or perhaps a hide, hung raggedly from his shoulders. Even this had seen more than its fair share of battle.
He was one of the XVIII. A Salamander. No wonder he looked rough.
‘How many of you are there?’ Sebaton asked him, without thinking.
The Salamander seized him by the chin. The edges of his gauntlets were warm and pinched Sebaton’s flesh.
‘No questions will come from your mouth, only answers.’ Behind the oval eye-pieces of his helmet, his eyes burned brighter as if reacting to his sudden anger. ‘Understand?’
Sebaton nodded and was released.
‘Who are you?’ the Salamander asked, stepping back.
‘Caeren Sebaton.’
‘And what is your purpose here?’
‘Archaeology. I came to excavate relics.’
‘Alone?’
‘No, I had a team.’
/>
Another of the three, armoured in black, muttered, ‘The pair of servitors Pergellen found.’
Like the Salamander, he also looked ragged. His armour was broken, held together by field repairs and, Sebaton suspected, sheer will. He was hard to focus on, blending well with the shadows, and although a lumen strip buzzed and crackled overhead, the warrior’s power armour reflected no light.
XIX Legion. Raven Guard.
This one also gave off an aura. Like knew like. Sebaton realised this was the psyker that had addressed him earlier.
The Salamander nodded to his brother-in-arms.
‘There were four men also,’ offered Sebaton, hoping his unprompted show of cooperation would improve his chances of survival. He had to get away from here, double back somehow and retrieve what he had taken from the catacombs. ‘Dead too.’
‘You know the manner of what is hunting you?’ asked the Salamander.
‘I do.’
‘Then you’ll also know how much danger you are in.’
‘Painfully so, yes.’
‘What do you know about why the Word Bearers are here?’
‘Nothing.’
The Salamander turned. The Raven Guard slowly shook his head, prompting his flame-eyed comrade to bear down on Sebaton again.
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘It’s the truth. I have no idea what they want, or you for that matter.’
That was bold. A little foolish, too.
‘Well,’ said the Salamander, unhitching the clasps around his helmet, ‘that’s easy to answer,’ he added, removing it and revealing a face as black as jet with two burning orbs for eyes. Even the pict-captures as part of his data inload had not prepared Sebaton for this, and he balked.
‘I want to know everything you know,’ the Salamander said. ‘And I want to know it… right now.’
Something had happened to these warriors, something that had changed them deeply.
‘Who are you? What are you even doing here?’
‘I warned you once not to ask questions.’ Somewhat forebodingly, the Salamander stepped back and gestured to his comrade.
‘Hriak…’
Without seemingly moving, the psyker was upon him. Close up, Sebaton could see that he wore a tattered grey cloak over his power armour and had a fetish of avian bones attached to the conical snout of his helmet. Definitely one of the Raven Guard. Several of the Legions wore black but a closer look had confirmed it. Legionary psyker, known as a Librarian. They were supposed to have been forbidden in the Legions, but evidently circumstances had forced that particular edict into repeal. In the Raven Guard’s outstretched hand, Sebaton could see a thunderhead of dark lightning. It was raging, the force of a storm held in his palm.
Incredible. The sheer will required for that level of mastery…
When Sebaton realised that it was about to be unleashed on him, he flinched, but a steel-fingered hand held him fast. It was a bionic – he could hear the machine parts grinding as they flexed and bit hard into his shoulder.
‘Take it easy, I’m not a threat,’ said Sebaton.
‘We know,’ uttered the warrior behind him, the one who spoke with the strange machine-like cant.
‘If you were,’ said the Salamander, ‘you’d already be dead. And should you prove to be after Hriak has scryed you, I’ll have Domadus pull out your spine.’
Sebaton didn’t doubt it. Domadus was X Legion, Iron Hands. They weren’t known for their compassion. His presence raised further questions. All three legionaries came from forces that had been nearly destroyed on Isstvan V. Yet here they were, together, allied to some common cause.
Sebaton suspected that it might be the desire for revenge.
‘We got off to a poor start, I think,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for any of this.’
‘Your demands fall on deaf ears,’ Hriak rasped. It sounded like some old injury was marring his speech, but Sebaton couldn’t see what because the warrior was wearing his helmet. His voice put Sebaton in mind of a cold wind rustling through dry leaves, of a dead and desolate winter, and bones lying under the snow.
A moment later and the lightning touched against Sebaton’s forehead.
Fire, cold and terrible, burned him. It hollowed Sebaton out, tendrils of flame worming into him, slowly unpicking the mental barriers he had erected to protect himself from incursion. Deeper it went, spreading out, searching. His mind was a labyrinth, but this was a Legion psyker and he moved swiftly through the contours of it on feathered wings.
He thought of the drowned boy, his pale face lurking under the water.
Hriak’s voice penetrated the memory, a distant echo on the horizon that filled the sky with the promise of rain.
‘He’s hiding something…’
Sebaton was standing at the edge of the drainage basin, a hook and net in his hand, ready to scavenge. He rooted himself to that spot, like an anchor in time, and replayed it over and over. Stepping into the water, feeling the brush of fingernails against his naked skin. The burn as they gripped. The five red weals left behind, a hand grasping, entreating another child to come down into the water and join the rest of the damned.
Lightning split the sky, dark and forbidding. Standing ankle-deep in the murky water, Sebaton sheltered his eyes, but the storm continued to rage behind them.
‘Do not resist…’ bellowed the thunder.
Sebaton held on, just as the drowned boy clung to his ankle.
He groaned, ‘Let me go,’ his voice that of a child’s and an adult’s at the same time as two realities collided.
‘Please…’
‘Let him go.’ The voice was distant at first, recalling Sebaton from the brink of unconsciousness. The pain abated, his eyes opened again, but the sense of violation remained.
The Librarian, Hriak, was standing in front of him. The dark lightning had gone from his hand.
He hissed, ‘He’s a psyker, Leodrakk.’
So that was the Salamander’s name then, Sebaton assumed.
‘What did you find, Hriak?’ asked Domadus.
‘Despite trying to obfuscate it with some childhood trauma, he is not who he claims to be. He found something in some ruins, in a sector of the city far from here. But I don’t think he has it any more.’
Leodrakk changed places with Hriak to continue the interrogation.
‘Those traitors are here for a dark purpose. For some reason, they were also looking for you. Now,’ he said, raising his bolter so Sebaton was staring down its ugly, black maw, ‘I will ask you one final time. Who are you and what are you doing in Ranos?’
Sebaton realised then that the situation he was in was much more grave than it had first appeared. He hadn’t been rescued, he had simply traded one potential captor for another. These warriors were loyal servants of the Emperor, but something had broken inside them. They were verging on desperate, even fatalistic. Wounded, and not only physically. They were the kind of scars that would never heal, like the five tiny marks on Sebaton’s leg.
Sebaton sagged in the chair, but looked the Salamander in the eye.
‘I am Caeren Sebaton. I am an archaeologist, and I came here to excavate relics.’
‘No more lies or I’ll kill you here. Now,’ Leodrakk warned, priming his bolter. ‘We didn’t survive the betrayal of Isstvan with a great deal of patience. Speak truthfully!’
Leodrakk’s hand was suddenly around Sebaton’s throat and lifting him out of the chair. As the ground fell away beneath him, Sebaton felt his larynx being slowly crushed.
‘I can’t… speak… with your hand… around my throat,’ he croaked, feet dangling in mid-air.
Snarling, Leodrakk threw the man down. Sebaton sprawled, bouncing hard off his right shoulder but landing with some grace on all fours. Scurrying backwards into a corner of the room, he thought about using the
ring, but the three warriors had him cornered.
He saw Domadus properly for the first time. The Iron Hand was heavily cybernetic. Most of his left side had been reconstructed, the mechanism of his body visible through the gaps in his black armour. His throat and lower jaw were completely augmetic, and puckered scar-tissue ringed the area around where his left eye should have been, but where instead a red lens flashed as it refocused on its target.
Mag-locking his bolter to his thigh, Leodrakk advanced on Sebaton. They were in pain, all of these warriors, and like anyone in that position they wanted to lash out.
‘I’ll crush the truth out of you.’
A fourth figure stepped into the light, the one whom Sebaton had seen observing from the shadows. ‘Stop.’
Leodrakk faced the legionary angrily. ‘It’s under control.’
Now Leodrakk had turned, Sebaton saw the chunk of bone tusk jutting from his armoured hide. It was split, little more than a stump.
The legionary who had interrupted was a Salamander too, and wore fine-crafted armour like his comrade’s, but had his helmet clamped to his thigh. His hair was cut into a red crest that perfectly bisected his scalp. A scar throbbed under his right eye, but he wasn’t blind in it, nor did it ruin his noble countenance.
‘No, you lost control when you nearly choked him, brother.’ He gestured to the door. ‘Shen’ra is outside. Something tripped the sentries.’
Leodrakk suddenly looked concerned.
‘Both guns?’
‘Sensors, Tarantula sentries. Everything.’
‘How far out?’
‘First marker.’
Sebaton had no idea what they were talking about, but it sounded serious.
Leodrakk’s anger returned with interest. ‘All the more reason to put this one in the fire.’
‘I hope he’s speaking metaphorically,’ said Sebaton.
‘He is,’ said the other Salamander, but Leodrakk didn’t give that impression at all.
‘We make him talk. Tell us everything he knows,’ he snarled, clutching the grip of his sidearm.
‘By force-feeding him your bolter?’
‘If necessary!’
