by Nick Kyme
It took some effort, but he raised his head to meet the gaze of the other being in the room.
‘Can it kill him?’ he asked.
The creature manifest in a pall of roiling smoke opposite nodded its feathered heads. Its beaks chattered, incessantly mumbling. Erebus forced his mind to shut out these words, for they were madness and to hear them was to be damned to the same fate.
He bowed as the smoke faded, taking the daemon with it. The great pressure upon Erebus was relieved, and he could straighten his back. He breathed for the first time in a long time without it feeling like a saw was ripping through his chest.
‘Then it shall be done, Oracle,’ he said to the ghosting smoke, and left the sanctum.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Penumbra
His breathing gave my brother away.
‘Ferrus, leave me alone…’
Since my last encounter with Curze, I had sunk into a deep melancholy, struggling to put together what was real and what I only imagined. Each time I returned from death, I felt a piece of my mind slip away like a shed scale or flake of ash. And the harder I tried to grasp at it, the more it fragmented. I was breaking – not physically, but mentally. Yet I was not alone in that. Curze too had showed me some of his inner doubt, his pain. Whatever he had witnessed in the visions he described had disturbed an already fragile mind. The sadistic tendencies, his obvious nihilism, were both symptomatic of that. I didn’t know if he meant to share his trauma to make me pity him or somehow lull me into trusting him as part of some longer torture, or whether his mask had simply slipped and I had been treated to his true image. Both of us had been reflected in the obsidian glass and neither of us liked what we saw.
‘Ferrus is dead, brother,’ a voice answered, prompting me to open my eyes.
The cell of volcanic glass hadn’t changed. In its walls I beheld my reflection, but could see no other, despite the fact that whoever was in here with me was close enough that I could hear them whisper.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, standing. My feet were unsteady but I held my ground. ‘Ferrus, if this is some trick–’
‘Ferrus died on Isstvan, as I once thought you had done.’
My eyes widened, I dared to hope. I recognised the voice of my unseen companion.
‘Corvus?’
From the darkness, I saw a shadow that bled outwards into a silhouette before finally resolving into Corax, my brother. It was as if the Ravenlord were wearing a long cloak that he had suddenly cast off to reveal his presence. Despite the fact that he was standing in front of me, he still portrayed no reflection in the glass, and as I regarded him I found it difficult to pinpoint his exact location in the room. He was shadow, always within the penumbra even in the harshest daylight. It was his gift.
I reached out to touch his face and whispered, partly to myself, ‘Are you real?’
Corax was clad in black power armour of an avian aspect. With two taloned gauntlets he disengaged the locking clamps that affixed his war-helm to his gorget. The beaked helmet came loose without a sound. Even the Ravenlord’s power generator from which sprouted his jump pack’s incredible wings functioned almost silently. It was only by the virtue of my primarch’s hearing that I could detect the lowest, residual background hum.
‘I am as real as you, Vulkan,’ he said, lifting the war-helm to reveal a slightly aquiline face framed by long, black hair. There was a quiet wisdom in his eyes that I recognised, as well as the greyish pallor common to inhabitants of Kiavahr. A pelt of raven feathers ringed his waist and there was a large skull that rested above his armoured pelvis from some great prey-bird that he had once stalked and killed.
‘It is you, Corvus.’
I wanted to embrace him, to embrace hope in the form of my brother, but Corax was not as tactile as Ferrus had been. Like the bird from which he took his name, Corax did not like his feathers to be touched. I saluted him instead, pressing my clenched fist against my bare chest.
Corax saluted in return before replacing his helm.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘We are aboard Curze’s ship.’
‘I can explain how I found you later.’ He clapped me on the shoulder, a rare concession for him, and for the first time in what felt like years I experienced a lost sense of brotherhood and comradeship. ‘Now I need you to come with me. We’re getting you out of this place.’
As he spoke, my eye was drawn to the half-light spilling into my cell. Through the open door, I saw a dimly lit corridor and a strike team of Raven Guard surrounded by dead Night Lords.
‘Can you fight?’ Corax asked me, glancing over his shoulder as he led me to freedom.
‘Yes,’ I replied, and felt some of my faded strength returning. I had been a long time from earth and beaten constantly as I was, my fighting prowess was far from its height. I caught a bolter in mid-flight. It felt good to wrap my hand around the trigger, feel its heft. I racked the slide. It was Corax’s own weapon, not his favoured armament but a back-up. I was glad to receive it.
I had questions, many of them, about the war and Horus. But this was not the time.
As my brother reached the doorway, he said something to his Raven Guard in Kiavahran that I didn’t understand before unfurling his power whip and letting the three barbed tips crackle with energy as they touched the ground. Four silver claws extended from his other hand, their blades wreathed in actinic fury.
‘Our ship is close, but these corridors are swarming with Eighth Legion filth. We can bypass them easily enough but we’ll need to take a different route with you, brother.’
Corax was about to lead us out when I gripped his forearm.
‘I had almost given up hope,’ I said quietly.
Corax nodded. ‘So had I, of ever finding you alive.’ He held my gaze for a second, before turning towards the corridor. ‘Follow me, brother.’
He swept out of the cell and though I was close on his heels, I almost immediately lost in the gloom. The corridor was wide, but low and well enough lit, yet Corax and his kin were hard to locate.
‘We cannot wait, Vulkan,’ my brother whispered.
‘I can barely see you.’
‘Make for the end of the corridor. Kravex is there.’
My eyes narrowed and I found the legionary, just as Corax had described, waiting at the end of the corridor. His appearance was a fleeting shadow, for when I reached the point where he had been standing, Kravex was gone again.
It continued like this for what felt like hours, moving unchallenged and unheeded through myriad tunnels, vents and ducts. Sometimes the way led us down or crawling through some narrow conduit or climbing up some claustrophobic shaft. Always Corax was nearby but never close enough to actually feel like he was there. He was a shade, moving through the darkest fog, cleaving to the shadow’s edge and never quite stepping into the light.
I followed as best I could, catching glimpses of Kravex or one of the other Raven Guard when my sense of direction faltered and they had to put me back on the path. I think there were five in all, not including Corax, but I could not swear to that. The XIX were experts in subterfuge. Ambuscade and stealth fighting were an art form to the Ravens. I felt woefully under-schooled.
Several times I was stopped suddenly – my brother, though still occluded, hissing a warning to make me pause. Legionaries were looking for us. We heard their booted feet, caught snatches of their passage, through the vents and iron grilles of the vast ship.
Deeper now, into its bowels, we found ourselves in the ship’s bilge. Effluence ran in a thick river and the walls were crusted with grime and other matter. It was a vast and cyclopean sewer, wrought of dark metal, crosshatched with girders and hanging chains. Heat from the enginarium decks wafted down through slow-moving turbine fans, churning up the vile stench of the place. The toxic air would have killed lesser men, and I suspected that the uneven floor underfoot was actual
ly bone.
‘Through this channel,’ said Corax, stepping down into a sloping aqueduct and keeping his voice low as a search team rattled the deck grille far above our heads, ‘we can bypass a heavily guarded part of the ship. A hatch at the end leads out to an ancillary deck where we breached.’
‘And what if your ship has already been found?’ I asked, following my brother and his warriors as they waded into the murky sewer. It was dark in the tunnel, only illuminated by the fizzing glow of phosphor lamps.
‘Unlikely,’ Corax answered. ‘It is masked beyond the means of this vessel’s sensorium to detect. Come on.’ His warriors were ranging ahead, and I soon lost them in the gloom.
We tramped on through the filth in silence, the disturbed waters only making the fumes more noisome. As above, below it was a labyrinth and I had the distinct feeling we were heading down towards its core. A part of me yearned to find Curze waiting there, so I could inflict upon him every act of retribution I had dreamed about since being incarcerated at my mad brother’s pleasure.
It would be so easy… His skull in my hands, the bone cracking as I slowly crushed it.
The long stretch of straight bilge pipe was finally giving way to a sharp bend when I caught the stark muzzle flash in my eye line and heard the grunted accusation of discovery.
Corax was already moving, several metres ahead of me, power whip cracking in his gauntleted fist. ‘They have found us!’
I heard one of the Raven Guard fall, but didn’t see it. Our vanguard was beyond the bend; so, too, was Corax now, and I could only hear the battle. There was a loud splash and I assumed that the warrior had sunk into the water.
I reached the turn but found only darkness in front of me. Even with the phosphor lamps, spitting and flickering in the rank air, I could see neither friend nor foe.
Another flash set me to purpose, a fleeting pict-capture of monochrome grey lodged in my retina of two legionaries clashing with blades. I roamed towards them, finding sludge under my feet and progress slow. The next section of pipe was equally as long as the first and my allies fought some way down it, far from my aid.
I stopped, trying to ascertain how many enemies we were facing, and where. Without the muzzle flash my sight was hindered again. I set the bolter I had been given under my chin, resting the stock against my cheek as I slowly panned it around the sewer. Weapons fire reverberated off the vaulted ceiling, echoing loudly, making it difficult to pinpoint. I realised the pipe in this part of the sewer was far from straight. Columns supported it, their foundations beneath the rancid waterline. There were alcoves and sub-ducts, maintenance ledges and antechambers. Without a bearing I could quickly lose my way, and my rescuers with it.
Somewhere in the distance, Corax was fighting. I heard the crack of his power whip, and could smell the ozone reek of his lightning claws even above the rancid fluid slowly riming my waist. I broke through the viscous skin that had started to encircle me, wading quickly through the morass as I fought to reach my brother.
In shuddering silhouette I saw another Raven die, his wings bent outwards as a bolt shell tore him open.
‘Corax!’ I called out, still panning with my bolter, concerned that any snap shot might hit my brother or one of his sons.
I heard the clash of steel, a burst of bolter fire, but got no answer.
‘Corax!’
Still nothing. The tunnel yawned in front of me, a diseased and gaping maw, and the darkness closed like a storm. I caught flashes, muzzle fire and the ephemeral flare of power weapons. Nothing more than silhouettes greeted me, the after-image of a blow already struck, a kill already made.
In the foulness sloshing around my waist, I caught a brief sight of an armoured corpse. In the dark, face down, it was hard to discern who it belonged to. I forced my way over to it through the mire, but was too slow. Trapped air escaping from the gaps in its armour, the corpse sank without trace. I plunged my hand into the filth, reaching and grabbing for it. I needed to see it, to touch something undeniably real. Something scraped against the tips of my fingers. Delving deeper, the rank waters lapping at my face, I grasped the object. Bringing it up into the light, I saw a skull. Sewer-filth peeled off bleached bone like a sloughing skin. It grinned, as all skulls do, but I found some familiarity in its macabre visage.
Ferrus Manus’s cleaved head stared up at me.
Recoiling, I dropped the skull and was about to reach back down for it when I heard Corax shout out.
‘Vulkan!’
A small spherical object, its activation stud flashing, arced overhead. Its parabola took it down into the waters, almost on me.
I turned, taking a sharp breath and closing my eyes as a concussive blast pushed me down into the mire. Skin stinging with the host of shrapnel embedded in my back, I touched the floor of the tunnel, my head and shoulders completely submerged. The spike of a rib, a jutting femur, the ridged line of a spinal column – I scratched at the underwater boneyard in a desperate attempt to gain purchase and rise above the water.
Then I was rising, carried along in the sudden swell caused by the explosion, before breaching the surface. Thrown into the air, chased by a gush of filth, tendrils of it clinging to my body, I hit the wall hard and slid down against it.
I had lost my bolter, the weapon slipping from my grip during the fall. Gagging, coughing up filthy water from my lungs, I heard approaching footsteps splash through the mire.
Dazed, my vision blurring, I looked up and saw a hand proffered towards me.
‘It’s over,’ said Corax.
‘I didn’t even see them,’ I gasped.
‘Trust me, brother, they’re dead, but more will be coming after that explosion. We have to move.’
With Corax’s help, I got to my feet and together we reached the end of the sewer tunnel, where a maintenance ladder led up and out.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked, not seeing Kravex or any of the other Raven Guard.
‘Dead,’ Corax replied grimly, and kept his eyes front. ‘Here,’ he said, gesturing to the ladder. ‘I’ll go first. Follow me closely.’
I nodded and tried not to think about what my brother was feeling at that moment.
Halfway up the ladder, Corax said, ‘They knew the nature of this mission, and accepted its risks.’
I didn’t reply, merely followed in silence.
Though thick with fumes emanating from the enginarium decks, the air beyond the sewer was almost cleansing by comparison.
Another large chamber stretched out before us. It was cluttered with machinery and packing crates. Cranes loomed overhead and a gantry overlooked the space on one side. It appeared to be empty.
‘Ancillary deck,’ Corax explained, breaking into a steady run, ‘mainly used for storage and repairs. Relatively small. Difficult to breach.’
‘Your ship is close?’ I asked, keeping pace.
‘This way…’
Corax reached the junction first. As he stopped dead, I knew something was wrong. When I caught up to him, I realised what.
Pressure vented from a tear in the Thunderhawk’s fuselage. A jagged hole punched inwards, scorched marks radiating from the breach. It was still seized in its locking clamps, though one of its stanchions was twisted. The glacis plate in the nose cone was shattered, its prow-mounted guns wrecked.
‘Looks like your flight will have to be aborted,’ a low voice declared from the shadows.
The lumen strips overhead were extinguished with the sharp thunk of a thrown switch.
Darkness prevailed for a few moments until twin ovals of crimson light from a warrior’s retinal lenses pierced the gloom. He was joined by twenty more, fanning out from alcoves and behind the scuttled gunship where they had been lying in wait, assembling in front of us to block off the deck.
Corax and I stood our ground.
‘So few of them…’ he rem
arked to me.
Ten more legionaries clanked into position behind us.
‘So very few,’ I agreed.
A warrior in Terminator armour, one of the Atramentar, stepped forwards. ‘Lay down your arms.’
I recognised his voice as belonging to the one who had addressed us earlier.
‘I don’t take orders from Nostraman gutter scum dressed as soldiers,’ Corax replied.
Behind us, a further ten warriors cut off our escape.
I glanced at them, smirking. ‘Only forty? Curze has overestimated your ability to stop us.’
The Atramentar laughed; it sounded dull and grainy through his vox-grille. Spikes protruded from his shoulder guards and painted-on lightning bolts livened up the drab metal of his midnight-blue armour. In one gauntleted fist, he clutched a heavy-looking maul.
‘Night Haunter told us to take you alive,’ he said. ‘He didn’t say you were to be left unscathed.’
All around the four Night Lords squads, blades and cudgels were drawn.
‘His mistake,’ muttered Corax, soaring into a turbine-boosted leap. A shriek ripped past his lips, an avian war cry that stunned the Atramentar for a precious half-second. Steel wings spread, an angel of death’s shadow bearing down, Corax impaled the warrior on his lightning claw, and I saw the Atramentar’s body slide to the deck where the Night Lord died, gurgling blood.
The Ravenlord lashed out with his whip as he landed, snaring a charging legionary around the waist, yanking him off his feet and smashing him into the wall.
I turned, tearing down a tower of crates that crashed into the path of the warriors behind us. It would hold them for a few seconds, but it was all I needed.
Barrelling into the Night Lords coming at us from the front, I met two legionaries in mid-charge and swept them up off the deck with my sheer bulk and momentum. I hurled one like a discus, my arm around his waist, and saw him pinwheel into three others. The second of them I seized around the head and pile-drove into the floor. The deck bent and split under the impact, several of its rebars impaling my opponent through the back to jut out from his chest.
