by Nick Kyme
He had lied to Grammaticus. It wasn’t hope that drove them, nor was it faith. It was defiance and a refusal to give in when the possibility of achieving something of meaning still existed, even if that thing were merely vengeance. With his last words, Skatar’var had sworn him to that promise and Numeon meant to keep it. They all did.
Away from the heart of the urban sprawl, the city thinned out and became less of a warren. Tall stacks gave way to smaller, blister-like habs and outpost stations. Here were the stormwatchers, the men and women charged with the dangerous duty of watching the lightning fields and the ash wastes that kept each of the eight cities apart. Even across the grey deserts surrounding Ranos, the lightning had changed. It struck more fiercely, with greater frequency, carving scorched-black rifts in the earth as if nature itself were being wounded by the Word Bearers’ ritual.
The space port squatted on a flat plateau, raised a few hundred metres above the cityscape itself. From the outflow and the aqueduct in the valley beneath, the legionaries and their human cargo had headed towards the port, hoping to find a route off the planet for Grammaticus. They had skirted the edge of the plateau, neglecting the roads, for they were well watched. They had come low, through the tributaries spat out from the sewers, and found themselves arriving close to the space port’s borders and looking up at its iron-grey towers and desolate landing apron. Like the gnarled creatures of childhood myth, Numeon and his shattered company crouched beneath a large, partially collapsed bridge, the manmade ditch it spanned dry and dead.
On the bridge and beyond it, the strip of Ranos roadway was dead to all forms of traffic. A civilian half-track and a couple of heavier freight loaders cut forbidding skeletons with their chassis burned out and black. Smoke had long ceased rising from their metal carcasses. Here, at the space port, the Word Bearers’ wrath had fallen first and fallen hardest. No vessel could be allowed to escape and raise alarm. The XVII Legion had massacred everyone and everything, including vehicles.
Numeon was hidden by shadows and the ignorance of his enemies as he surveyed through his scope. On a slab beside him were his weapons, the rest of his ammunition and the sigil.
He heard Leodrakk approach and saw him pick up the hammer icon that had once belonged to their primarch and would, perhaps, again.
‘Do you believe it?’ Numeon asked, putting the scope down.
Around him, dispersed along the underside of the bridge and concealed by its overhang, the last of his shattered company made ready for their final hours. All remaining weapons and ammunition had been collected and redistributed to ensure every legionary could fight to his maximum efficacy. At one time it would have been Domadus’s task, but the Iron Hand was gone and so K’gosi had taken on his mantle as quartermaster. They had lost Shen’ra too and many others who should have seen a better end. Numeon owned that, all of it. He would carry that to his pyre.
‘That Vulkan lives?’ Numeon clarified.
‘I said the words, did I not?’ said Leodrakk, handing back the sigil. ‘Still trying to fathom its mysteries, Artellus?’
Numeon glanced at the hammer, at the gemstone fashioned into the cross section. ‘Ever since I took it from the battlefield. But I am at a loss, I’m afraid. Much of Vulkan’s craft is beyond my understanding. It is a device of some kind, not merely ornamental. I had hoped it might yield a message or some piece of knowledge to guide us…’ He shook his head, ‘I don’t know. I always just saw it as a symbol, something to give us hope in our darkest hour.’
‘And this is it then, our darkest hour?’
‘It might prove to be, but you didn’t answer my question. Do you believe that Vulkan lives? Saying it is not believing it.’
Leodrakk’s gaze strayed to where John Grammaticus was hunched down and muttering to himself, arms wrapped around his knees, head bowed as he tried to stay warm. Hriak was nearby, ostensibly keeping an eye on the human. He had shielded him psychically from the cleric’s warpcraft, thrown the soul-flare of Grammaticus’s essence outwards like a ventriloquist throws his voice, drawing the Word Bearers into the trap at the outflow. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience for the human, but the Librarian noticed that little and cared even less.
‘I see something in the spear that kindles hope that has only been the barest embers for so long,’ Leodrakk admitted, gesturing to the fulgurite sitting snugly in Numeon’s scabbard. ‘I have resisted because to hope for one is to hope for another.’
‘Ska,’ Numeon correctly assumed.
‘He could yet live.’
‘As may all of our Pyre brothers, but I have my doubts.’
‘We know he did not die in the blast,’ Leodrakk tried, but couldn’t keep the bite from his tone.
Only later, when their drop-ship was aloft and had broken through the traitors’ pickets surrounding Isstvan, did Numeon tell Leodrakk that Skatar’var had contacted him. He knew Leodrakk would have wanted to go back, that he wouldn’t heed his brother’s wishes as Numeon had. He hadn’t raged or struck out at the Pyre captain as Numeon supposed was his right. He had simply darkened as a flame does when slowly starved of oxygen.
‘I forgave you that moment on the ship when you told me,’ Leodrakk said.
‘Your forgiveness is irrelevant, Leo. I either saved our lives or went back for Skatar’var and signed all our death warrants. I made the pragmatic decision, the only one I could in the circumstances.’
Leodrakk looked away, out past the bridge and towards the space port. Even from this distance, the patrols were visible.
‘Why tell me this now, brother?’ asked Numeon.
‘Because I wanted you to know there wasn’t any bad blood between us for this. I would have wanted to go back, and I know all three of us would have died. It doesn’t make it any easier, though. There will always be a part of me that wonders if we could have found him, if he had survived and we passed him by, only metres away.’
‘I have had the self-same doubts regarding Vulkan, but I stand by my decision and know if presented with it all over again that I would not waver from the course I have already taken. History cannot be unwritten and scribed anew. It is done, and all we can hope for is that we perform our duty until death, irrespective of the destiny we crave for ourselves.’
Pergellen interrupted on the vox.
‘Speak, brother,’ said Numeon, reacting to the Iron Hand’s comm request as he activated the bead embedded in his ear.
‘I have eyes on our former cousins.’
‘How many?’
‘More than you or I should like.’
‘Then these are our final hours.’
‘So it would seem, brother,’ the Iron Hand replied. There was no regret, no sorrow in his voice. It served no purpose. There was but one duty left to perform now.
Numeon thanked the scout and cut the link.
‘Get them ready,’ he said.
Leodrakk was turning to carry out the order when Numeon clutched his Pyre brother’s arm. ‘I know, Artellus,’ Leodrakk told him, clapping the Pyre captain on the shoulder. ‘For Shen, for Ska, for all of them.’
Numeon nodded, and let him go.
‘It’s actually quite stunning when you look at it from this distance,’ Numeon said once Leodrakk had gone. He was watching the lightning flashes over the ash wastes.
‘The word that springs to my mind is deadly,’ Grammaticus replied. He was on his feet and standing next to the Pyre captain.
‘Most beautiful things in nature are, John Grammaticus.’
‘I didn’t have you pegged as philosophical, captain.’
‘When you’ve seen the fury of the earth up close, watched mountains spit fire and the sky redden to the hue of embers, reflecting its hot breath against the ash clouds overhead, you learn to appreciate the beauty in it. Otherwise, what’s left but tragedy?’
‘It’s all about the earth,’ Grammaticus mutt
ered.
Numeon looked sidelong at him. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. You are doing the right thing.’
‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’ The Salamander turned to regard Grammaticus. Towering over the human, his face was unreadable. ‘Betray me, and I’ll find a way to kill you. Failing that, I’ll take you back to Nocturne and show you those fire mountains I mentioned.’
‘I get the impression I won’t see their beauty like you do, Salamander.’
Numeon’s eyes seemed to burn cold. ‘No, you won’t.’
Behind him, the human became aware of another’s presence. Numeon nodded to him.
‘Hriak, all is ready?’
‘Everything is in place, the plan is formed,’ he rasped.
Grammaticus raised an eyebrow, ‘What plan?’
Numeon smiled. He could see that it unnerved the human.
‘I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Dawnbringer
I named it Dawnbringer for a very specific reason.
Names are important for weapons, they attribute meaning and substance to what might otherwise be merely tools for war. Curze never paid much attention to that. His concerns are less sentimental, bloodier. To my benighted brother, a spar of sharpened metal is as good as the master craftsman’s finest blade if it kills the same. This was his oversight, this was why I had fashioned the hammer as I had. Dawnbringer was different. It would literally bring the light.
And now it was before me at the heart of Perturabo’s labyrinth, but the hammer was not what my eye was drawn to first.
Both of them were dead. I knew it before I crossed the threshold but I still grieved for them upon sight of their bloodless bodies.
‘Were they dead before I even entered this place?’ I asked.
To my surprise, Curze answered.
‘Before you came aboard my ship.’
His voice was disembodied, but it came from somewhere in the heart chamber.
Nemetor, of course. It would have to be him. He was the last of my sons I ever set eyes upon. Curze knew that would breed a special blend of pain for me. The other one brought me a different kind of grief, for he was part of a brotherhood I had long considered my council.
‘Skatar’var…’ I whispered the name as I raised my hand to touch his skeletal body, but fell just short of making contact.
Averting my gaze from my dead sons, I resisted the urge to cut them down from where they hung like meat and instead focused on Dawnbringer.
The hammer was exactly as I remembered. It looked innocuous enough resting on an iron plinth, though I can humbly say it is the finest weapon I have ever crafted. It shone in a place that was drab and ugly by comparison.
The heart of the Iron Labyrinth was an octagonal chamber, supported by eight thick columns. The dark metal seemed to drink the light, absorb it like obsidian into its facets. But it was merely iron, the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It was heavy and dense with little in the way of ornamentation… or so I at first believed.
As I lingered, I started to discern shapes wrought into the metal. They were faces, screaming, locked forever in moments of pure agony. Beneath each of the arches to which the columns abutted hung a grotesque and malformed statue. They were monstrous things, ripped from a madman’s fever dream and trapped in this iron form. No two were alike. Some had horns, others wings or bestial hooves, feathers, talons, a hooked beak, a swollen maw. They were wretched and repellent, and I could not imagine what had compelled my brother to sculpt them.
If this was a heart, it was a blackened, cancerous organ whose slow beat was as the chime of death.
Seeing no other recourse, I walked up to the plinth and reached for the hammer. Some kind of energy field impeded me, giving out an actinic flash of light as I touched it and making me recoil.
‘You didn’t think I’d just let you take it, did you?’ Curze’s voice rang out, everywhere and nowhere as it was before.
I backed away from the plinth, the gate by which I had entered the heart closing behind me as I warily eyed the shadows. I had no intention of leaving. There was no escape that way. The end of this torment was in here with my brother. With the entrance now sealed, darkness reigned fully. There were no lumen orbs, braziers nor lanterns of any kind. I touched the energy field again, prompting a flare of light briefly to encase the hammer before dying again like a candle flame. The flash gave me little to see with, though I turned as I thought I saw one of the statues start to move.
‘These fear tactics might work on mortals but I am a primarch, Konrad,’ I declared, grateful to my father for gifting me these last moments of lucidity. I would need them to fight my brother now. ‘One worthy of the name.’
‘You think me unworthy, do you, Vulkan?’
His voice came from behind me, but I knew it to be a trick and resisted the temptation to face it.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think, Konrad. Nor what the rest of us think. You behold your reflection, brother. Is that not what you see?’
‘You won’t goad me, Vulkan. We’ve come too far, you and I, for that.’
‘Did you think there would be no mirrors in the darkness, nothing to reflect your worthless self? Is that why you cower there, Konrad?’
I began to turn, sensing my brother’s closeness, if not his actual presence. He was gifted, despite my taunts suggesting the contrary, not so unlike Corvus, though his methodology was far removed from that of the Ravenlord.
‘Do you seek me, Vulkan? Do you wish to have your chance again, like you did at Kharaatan?’
‘Why would I want that? You are beneath me, Konrad. In every way. You always have been. The Lord of Fear has no land, no subjects but the corpses he makes. You have nothing, you are nothing.’
‘I am Night Haunter!’
And at last Curze gave in to his self-hatred, his pathological denial, and revealed himself to me.
At the heart of the labyrinth, Curze finally faces Vulkan
One of the statues hanging down from an archway, a chiropteran creature I mistook to be a carven gargoyle, slowly unfurled its wings and dropped to the ground. It was him, and he brandished a long serrated blade.
‘We are both such savage weapons, Vulkan,’ he told me. ‘Let me show you.’
Curze lunged, laughing. ‘Never gets old,’ he said, hacking into my body again and carving a deep wound.
I cried out but kept my senses long enough to hammer a punch into his neck. Even his armour was no protection against my blacksmiter’s fists. I had bent metal, grasped burning coals. I was as inviolable as the hard onyx of my skin and I let my brother feel every ounce of that strength.
He staggered, slashing wildly and catching me just above the left eye as I advanced. A jab aimed for his exposed throat missed and fractured Curze’s right cheek instead. In return, he skewered my left leg, ripping the blade and some flesh out before I could trap it. Now I stumbled and Curze wove round my clumsy right hook to bring his sword down onto my clavicle. I threw up my forearm just in time and felt the weapon’s teeth bite bone. Then I charged in with my shoulder, trying to ignore the agony igniting down my arm. I heard him grunt as my body connected, smashing into his torso.
Curze tried to laugh it off, but his fractured cheek was paining him and I’d just punched most of the air from his lungs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ferrus watching the uneven duel. He was no longer the cadaverous ghoul I had made him. The Gorgon had become as he was, as I wanted to remember him. No longer berating me, I sensed in him a willing urge for me to triumph instead.
‘Let me tell you a secret, brother,’ I said, breathless.
We were a few handspans apart, battered but regrouping for another round. Amused, Curze bade me continue.
‘Of all of us, father made me the strongest. Physical
ly, I have no equal amongst my siblings. In the sparring cages I used to hold back… especially against you, Konrad.’
All the mirth drained away from Curze’s already pallid face.
‘I am Night Haunter,’ he hissed.
‘What was your boon, Konrad?’ I asked, backing up as he advanced with sword held low.
‘I am the death that haunts the darkness,’ he said, angling the blade so it would cut across my stomach and spill my viscera.
‘Always the weakest, Konrad. I was afraid, I admit that. But it was from the fear of breaking you. I don’t need to hold back, though, any more,’ I said, smiling in the face of my brother’s rising hatred. ‘Now I can show you how much better than you I am.’
Possessed by a sudden rage, Curze threw down the blade and came at me with his bare hands. I knew it was coming and had shifted my stance just slightly so I was ready for it. I let him land the first blow. It was vicious and tore a hunk of flesh off my cheek. He reached for my throat, talons poised to rip it out, teeth bared in a savage snarl… before I clamped my fist around his forearm, falling back and using his momentum to carry him up and over me.
In the forge, the hammer swing is everything. Shaping metal, bending it to my will, it is the blacksmiter’s art. By its nature, metal is unyielding. It breaks stone, sunders flesh. Strength is not enough. It takes skill, and timing. Judgement of when the hammer has reached its apex, when the strike is purest, that is what I knew. It was ingrained in me by my Nocturnean father, N’bel.
I used his lessons in that moment, I lifted my brother like the smiter lifts the fuller and brought him down upon the iron plinth, my anvil. A sharp crack and a light surge that painted the chamber in blueish monochrome preceded the collapse of the energy shield. Curze broke it with his back, his body. As he rebounded hard off the iron floor, the energy coursed over him, setting fire to nerve endings and burning hair and scalp. He rolled with the last of his momentum, smoke exuding from the plates of his armour.
