by Nick Kyme
Emitting a high-pitched, staccato drone, the laser destroyer stabbed a continuous barrage of beams into the area designated by its operator. It didn’t stop until the Rapier powered off for emergency cool-down.
Dust clouds were still dissipating, the odd section of debris belatedly collapsing onto the street below by the time Numeon and the others surfaced from cover.
Helon, Uzak and Shaka were all dead, their bodies littering the apron outside the vehicle yard.
Domadus stomped forwards through the narrow gap between the outer wall sections. His bionic eye was still scanning, exothermic and motion detection.
‘There’s nothing out there. No visible threats.’
Pergellen agreed, snapping his scope back onto his rifle, but adopting overwatch all the same.
‘Keep eyes on, both of you,’ said Numeon, going over to help Leodrakk to his feet.
Numeon had tackled him to the ground when he’d tried to bait the shooters, sending them both sprawling.
Leodrakk had a mark down the flank of his battle-plate where something had scored a shallow groove into the metal.
‘Ricochet,’ he said, grunting as he got up with Numeon’s assistance. ‘Lucky.’
‘Luckier than them,’ said Numeon, and as he turned to gesture to their dead comrades he noticed the prone form of John Grammaticus.
The human was lying with his face to one side, clenched in a mask of pain. He clutched his side, his hand and most of his arm drenched in blood.
Numeon scowled, realising where the errant shell had deviated.
‘Damn it.’
Narek yanked Dagon clear of the rubble. It looked as if several storeys had collapsed on top of him whilst the sniper was making his escape.
‘I warned you not to linger,’ Narek told him, letting go so that Dagon could dust off his armour and cough the grit up out of his lungs. His helmet was wrecked, dented by a stone slab or a girder. Both retinal lenses were smashed, Dagon had a deep gash above his left eye where the impact had pushed inwards, and the vox-unit was in pieces. Taking a last look at the snarling, daemonic visage on the faceplate, Dagon discarded his helmet.
His true face, Narek decided as Dagon looked at him, was entirely more disturbing.
The brow, nose and cheekbones were raised, the skin in between sunken as if drawn in by age. It had a slightly coppery tinge, but not like metal – more like oil, and the colour changed subtly depending on how the light struck it. Most disturbing of all, though, were the two bony nubs either side of Dagon’s forehead. In their infancy right now, Narek knew they would only grow, the longer Dagon was in Elias’s presence.
Here, on Traoris, in Ranos, he felt the shifting of reality. It trembled, affecting him on an internal level, like maggots writhing beneath his skin.
Narek betrayed none of this to Dagon, who smiled, revealing two rows of tiny fangs instead of teeth.
‘Four kills, you said.’
Narek checked the load in his rifle before slinging it back over his armoured shoulder.
‘I counted a tally of three,’ he replied.
‘The human was caught by a stray.’
‘You should have killed the legionary as instructed.’
‘He shifted.’
‘Then compensate,’ said Narek, and headed out of the wreckage.
‘He was ripped open, brother. No human could survive his injuries. Four for four.’
‘No, Dagon. We scratched three. Even if the human dies, it’s blood for blood. Legionary for legionary.’
Dagon nodded and followed his mentor back through demolished streets.
‘We’ll be back for the fourth,’ Narek called over his shoulder. ‘And then we’ll take the rest.’
CHAPTER TEN
Burning flesh
‘We have all burned. Down in the fire pits, or from the brander’s iron in the solitorium, we have all touched the fire. It leaves scars, even for us. We carry them proudly, with honour. But the scars we took that day on that battlefield, we bear only with shame and regret. They are a memorial in flesh, a physical reminder of everything we have lost, a burn even we fire-born cannot endure without pain.’
– Artellus Numeon,
Captain of the Pyre Guard
I lived.
Despite the fire, I had, against the odds, survived. I remembered the furnace, or at least fragments of what it had done to me. I remembered my skin blistering, the stench of burning fat, the smoke from cooking meat filling my eyes as the vitreous humour boiled within them.
Scorched black, rendered to ash, I was nothing but dust. A shadow without form, not unlike my gaoler-brother’s favoured aspect.
And yet…
I lived.
The furnace was gone. Ferrus was gone. All was darkness and cold. I remembered that I was on a ship, somewhere in deep space. I remembered the prison that my iron-hearted sibling had made for me, a cage strong enough to hold a primarch.
I was still weak. My limbs felt heavy and my hearts were beating furiously in my chest as some act of enhanced physiology worked to keep me alive. Perhaps I had healed, some regenerative gift I didn’t know I possessed. More likely, the furnace was not real, nor my ordeal in it. I had been seeing the grim corpse-visage of my dead brother, after all. Who knew what traumas my mind had endured?
For a moment I considered the possibility that all of this was fabrication, that I was lying on Isstvan V, wounded and in a sus-an membrane coma. Or that I had been recovered and my body laboured to revive itself in some clinical apothecarion chamber, my mind struggling to catch up with it.
All of this, I dismissed. My abduction was real. Curze was real. This place, this prison that Perturabo had made for me, was real. There was no waking up from a nightmare – this was the nightmare. I was living it. Every tortured breath.
But it was hard to think, to reason. Ferrus’s very presence and everything I had seen or not seen made me question myself. It was harrowing enough to have flesh and bone rent, split and cleaved, but what was truly terrifying was the slow erosion of sensibility, of self and the trust in my capacity to tell reality from fantasy. How can you defend yourself against your own mind, what your senses tell you? There was no armour for that, no shield or protection save strength of will and the ability to reason.
I didn’t try to rise. I didn’t voice my defiance or anger. I merely breathed and let the coolness of my darkling cell wash over me. I tried to recall everything I knew of my gaoler, everything I could accurately remember.
And then, closing my eyes, I allowed myself to dream.
Kharaatan, during the Great Crusade
Unwashed, malnourished, the soldiery of Khartor City were a sorry sight. Like an ant horde, dressed in carapaces of dirty red, they filed from the open city gates with their arms held above their heads in surrender.
The wall guard had come first, escorting their captains and officers. Then the first line troopers from the courtyard, and the second barricaders, the tower sentries, the inner barracks troopers, the reserves, the militia. They piled their weapons in the city square as instructed by the loudhailers of Commander Arvek’s black-jacketed discipline masters. By the time the city had been emptied of its warriors, the surrendered materiel reached into a mighty black pyre.
Civilians came next.
Women pressed infants to their chests, wide-eyed men tramped in solemn procession, too afraid to cry or wail, too broken to do anything beyond stare into the rising dawn that crept across the sand dunes like a patient predator. Canines, cattle led by farmers, labourers, fabricators of every stripe, vendors, clerks, scribes and children. They vacated Khartor, their home and solace, in a great and sullen exodus.
Vodisian tanks flanked battalions of Utrich fusiliers and Navite hunters, crisp in their Imperial Army uniforms. Even Commander Arvek himself leaned from the cupola of his Stormsword to watch the t
hrong of natives tramp past. Several stopped at the feet of their oppressors, pleading for mercy until the discipline masters moved them along. Others balked in the shadow of Princeps Lokja’s Fire Kings, believing them gods rendered in iron. When aggression and intimidation could not move them, these poor individuals had to be carried by teams of orderlies from the medicae. There was little else to use these surgeons and hospitallers for – the Imperial force had ended the conflict unscathed. And this was despite the presence of xenos amongst the dirty hordes.
It was a fact that both pleased and irritated the Lord of the Drakes greatly.
‘He was right,’ Vulkan muttered, watching Khartor City from a distance as it gradually emptied.
‘My lord?’ asked Numeon, standing beside his primarch in the muster fields. Nearby, on a plain of earth flattened by Imperial pioneers, the Salamanders were re-embarking their Stormbirds for immediate redeployment. Compliance was over. The Imperium had won.
‘Bloodless, he said,’ Vulkan replied, surveying the human masses as they left the city.
On the walls of this last bastion, cannon embrasures lay empty, watch towers stood like impotent sentinels and only shadows manned the battlements. One by one, soldier and civilian alike, the entire populace of Khartor submitted to the will of the Imperium.
Numeon frowned. ‘Was it not?’
For the first time in almost an hour, Vulkan turned his fiery gaze on his equerry. Numeon did not so much as flinch. Even his heartbeat did not betray him.
‘You are a brutal warrior, Artellus,’ said the primarch.
‘I am as you need me to be, my lord.’ He bowed his head just a little, showing deference.
‘Indeed. All of the vaunted Pyre Guard are without equal in the Eighteenth. Like the deep drakes, you are savage and fierce, sharp of claw and tooth.’ Vulkan nodded to the blade affixed to his equerry’s back. It had yet to be bloodied on this campaign and judging by the utter capitulation of the Khar-tans, it would remain unsullied. ‘But would you slaughter an entire city, soldier and civilian alike, just to send a message and spare further bloodshed?’
‘I…’ There was no right answer, and Numeon knew it.
‘The scales are in Curze’s favour. Blood for blood. Yet, I am left with a cloud of compromise and guilt over my conscience.’
Numeon looked down as if the earth at his feet could provide an answer. ‘I feel it too, my lord, but what is there to be done?’ He spared a glance at the rest of the Pyre Guard, who were waiting solemnly for their captain and primarch a little way back, separate from the Legion.
Vulkan looked over to where one army was met by another as several of Commander Arvek’s battalions joined up with swathes of Munitorum staff to receive the natives and accept their surrender. The Army troopers did it with their lasguns held ready; the Munitorum officers greeted them with mnemo-quills and data-slates instead.
‘I don’t know yet, but had I realised how deep Curze’s malady went, I would not have agreed to this compliance.’
Numeon regarded Vulkan. ‘His malady? You think the primarch ill?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes. A sickness, and a most insidious one. The darkness of his home on Nostramo – I think he never really left it.’
‘You could take these grievances to Lord Horus or Lord Dorn.’
Vulkan nodded. ‘I have always valued the counsel of my elder brothers. One is close to the Crusade, the other to Terra. Between them, they will know what to do.’
‘You still sound troubled, my lord.’
‘I am, Artellus. Very much so. None of us wants another sanction, another empty pillar in the great investiary, another brother’s name excised from all record. It is shame enough to bear the grief for two. I have no wish to add to it, but what choice do I have?’
Numeon’s reply was muted, for he knew how it grieved Vulkan to speak ill of his brothers, even one such as Curze. ‘None at all.’
Nestling in a shallow desert basin by the muster field, the Munitorum had assembled an armada of transportation vessels. Gunmetal grey, stamped with the Departmento sigil and attended by a flock of overseers, guards, codifiers and quartermasters, the ships were being prepped for immediate atmospheric embarkation. Unlike the Stormbirds, these vessels were not bound for fields of war. Not all of them, not yet.
They were vast, cyclopean things, far larger than the legionary drop-ships or the tank transporters utilised by the Army. Designated for recolonisation, Army recruitment and, in some instances, potential Legion candidacy, the fate of every Khar-tan man, woman and child would depend on how wholly they embraced their new masters. Certainly, none would return to Kharaatan again; only the manner of their departure and their onward destination were in question.
After several hours of slowly denuding the city of its occupants, two camps had begun to form comprised of Khartor’s citizens: those who had fought alongside the xenos willingly and those who had fought against them. Establishing the guilt or innocence of either was taxing the Munitorum staff in the extreme, and herds of people were amassing in a sort of limbo between both whilst a more thorough assessment could be made. Pleas were made, bribes ignored under the watchful eye of Munitorum overseers, but one by one they were codified and hustled aboard ships.
It was tight. Between the sheer number of bodies, the pre-fab Munitorum herding stations, tanks and landers, there was little room to move or breathe. Processing was taking too long, but still more were fed into the codifying engine of the Departmento. Hundreds became thousands. Choke points began to form. Unrest developed, put down by vigilant discipline masters. Order held. Just.
Within the gaggle of Imperial servants, the Order of Remembrancers was also represented. Cataloguing, picting, scribing; some rendered the scene in art that would later be confiscated, others took personal testimony of the liberated where they could – this too would be redacted. No images or reports of the Crusade escaped into the wider Imperium without first being sanctioned. Capturing glory, the gravitas of the moment, that was the purpose of the remembrancers. Nothing more. Vulkan saw Seriph amongst the throng, carefully staying out of the way behind a squad of Utrich fusiliers.
Following his primarch’s eye, Numeon asked, ‘Isn’t that your human biographer, my lord?’
‘We parted poorly when we last met. Another effect of Curze’s presence on me, I am ashamed to admit. I will redress that.’ Vulkan started off towards the Munitorum encampment. Despite the cramped conditions, none stood in his way. ‘Have the Legion ready to depart when I return,’ he called to his equerry, who saluted behind him. ‘I wish to linger here no longer than is necessary.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Numeon replied, and in a lower voice added, ‘You will find no argument here.’
Numeon’s gaze strayed from his primarch to the edge of the camps where a squad of Night Lords looked on. Wisely, they had chosen to pitch their landers far from the Salamanders’ muster field and were represented by a token force yet to join the others. There was no sign of Lord Curze.
The VIII legionaries mingled with the Munitorum officers, who gave every one of them a wide berth. This was also wise. Even with their skull-faced helmets concealing their expressions, Numeon could tell that the Night Lords were enjoying this petty act of intimidation. More than once, a legionary deliberately strayed needlessly close to the path of a busy clerk or scribe, forcing the poor individual to alter his course lest he be harassed or called to account under the glare of retinal lenses. The others not involved in these ‘games’ muttered snidely with one another at the obvious sport.
‘They’re goading us,’ said Varrun, appearing quietly at Numeon’s side with the rest of the Pyre Guard.
‘Our primarch,’ said Atanarius, noble chin lifted in the face of the VIII, ‘how does he fare?’
Numeon answered honestly, ‘The same as us. The Kharaatan compliance has left a bitter taste.’
‘Th
ey revel in it,’ offered Ganne, only half holding back a snarl.
‘I would see the smirks wiped off their faces,’ said Leodrakk, prompting a slow nod and muttered agreement from his brother, Skatar’var.
‘Aye,’ Varrun agreed. ‘In the duelling cages, I would measure their true worth as warriors.’
Only Igataron said nothing, silently glowering at the Night Lords.
‘They are still our brothers-in-arms,’ Numeon reminded them. ‘Our allies. Their cloth is not so different from ours.’
‘It is of a darker hue,’ snarled Ganne. ‘We all saw the slain in Khar-tann City.’
Numeon gestured to the human rebels being herded slowly into the Munitorum’s pens.
‘And here, the very much alive citizens of Khartor. It is a fact difficult to ignore.’
No one spoke, but the heat of anger was palpable between them and directed at the VIII Legion.
The Night Lords were not just there to cajole, however. Their legionaries ringed a third, much smaller encampment. This one was a prison of enclosed ceramite, warded by no fewer than three Librarians. It surrounded the xenos overlords who had enslaved this world.
Khartor had been the greatest of Kharaatan’s cities, its planetary capital. And it was here, when the Imperium returned with flame and retribution, that the aliens had chosen to make their lair. A coven of twelve had subverted the will of Kharaatan, a cautionary tale of the dangers of xenos collusion. Xenographers codified them: eldar. Long-limbed, almond-eyed and smouldering with arrogant fury, the XVIII knew this race well. They were not unlike the creatures they had fought on Ibsen, or the raiders that had once plagued Nocturne for centuries before the coming of Vulkan. The Pyre Guard were Terrans by birth, they had not experienced the terrors inflicted on their primarch’s home world, but shared his ire at the aliens in spite of that.
The natives of Kharaatan had worshipped these witch-breeds as gods, and would pay a price for that idolatry.
‘What persuasion could the xenos have used to press an entire population into service?’ Numeon wondered aloud.
