by David Guymer
Like Ferrus, he was a conqueror, and a part of him mourned the certainty that never again would he face an opponent as mighty.
The being began to speak, but the words that emerged were gibberish sounds. The rattle of caterpillars. The sound molten steel makes as it is poured into a mould. The first time he had heard a bolter fired. Thunder. The war shriek of an eldar banshee. A white noise drawn from his memory to fill that which could never be filled. They were the sounds of a time out of place, and with that realisation the illusion fell away like a window without a frame and shattered…
No physical memory or psychic charlatanry could mimic the Emperor of Man.
Ferrus understood now. The psyker foraged in his mind for memories of his most testing encounters, seeking an advantage to be used in the present, or perhaps simply to break his will with past failures. With a titanic effort of self-discipline he forced himself into the present.
He was a primarch, the Gorgon of Medusa, foremost of his brothers. The Gardinaal claimed they knew him, but no one knew him. No one, not even Fulgrim, would have known the one thing that Ferrus had always wished for. The one thing, in his pursuit of excellence, that he craved.
To be beaten.
To a god amongst men, triumphs were everyday affairs. But defeats? They were precious. Each carried its own lesson, and the day the Emperor had brought his light to Medusa had been the greatest of his life. He allowed himself to look back into the shattered pieces of the psyker's illusion.
The Emperor stood there before him, sublime, burning sword held out in challenge, and Ferrus knew.
If they were to fight again, the outcome would be different.
He lunged for the simulacra with both hands, blasting it back into his memory and punching through Strachaan's energy field. The psyker was howling in denial, crimson energies whining and sparking, flickering about Ferrus' wrists as though he had plunged his hands into electrified blood. He took hold of Strachaan's rib-like outer frame and roared, his hands flaring to yellow and then white as they responded to his rage. The armour where he gripped blasted to smithereens and knocked the undying construct to the floor.
Torn fluidics spurted, pistons wheezed, fields flickered and failed. Limbs twitched. The Gardinaal gave a great heave of breath, the connections around his eye sockets delivering jolts of panic.
Ferrus stood over him, volcanic with wrath. 'The Gardinaal think they can beat me?' He raised a boot. 'No one can beat me.' And stamped down on Strachaan's face grille with all the power of Medusa unleashed.
Dekka slid down the wall, all he could do to keep the psychic feedback from detonating his brain from within. He groaned, head in his hands. Impossible. Impossible that his attack could be repulsed by a non-psyker, impossible that the greatest warrior of the Gardinaal could be defeated. Impossible. And yet it was happening. Groggily, he opened his eyes, his vision pressed in by black rings and filled with a glowing sleet, a psychic afterglow of sorts. Punishment for getting too close and staring too long into something so bright. He saw the primarch drag his foot from the ruin of High Lord Strachaan's helm, biomechanic vitae spurting over his boot. The relic suit jerked, then a leg, then one claw of a blade, then nothing at all. The status lights dimmed.
An inappropriate smirk grew across the throbbing ache that had become Dekka's face.
It was not funny. Strachaan was dead. Venn was dead. The consulate was rubble. Everyone he had ever known, worked for or with was dead. His descendants were dead or soon to be, his gene-line terminated. He knew it was not funny. And yet he could not help but rejoice at having outlasted them all.
And he was not dead yet.
Ferrus Manus bent to collect his hammer from the wreckage, and Dekka sighed to watch the living metal of his hand lap around the grip of the mighty weapon. And to think that he had once thought Moses Trurakk a giant.
The primarch began to walk towards him, hammer trailing through broken glass and discarded blades. His eyes blazed like molten silver, his face set into a mask of blood and outrage that pinned Dekka in place as potently as a spear through the shoulder.
What right had the Gardinaal ever had to resist such a being? They had been fools, and fools always deserved to lose.
'I should thank you.' His face couldn't support the smile any longer, and it melted from him. 'These last few days have been—'
The hammer smashed him into the wall before he could finish.
When Forgebreaker was drawn out of the panel, nothing remained of Sylvyn Dekka but a red stain in the crater of something that had once been beautiful. Ferrus Manus took its haft in both hands and strode towards the buckled door.
His brothers would see who he truly was, and it was exactly what they had all already known. He was the Gorgon.
And the Gorgon knew only one way to make war.
'Armour breaks, buildings burn, rubble is pulverised into dust, only humans can survive - these are not my words, and it is apposite that the name of he who wrote them is now ash. It is the strength of the human frame to emerge from any hell, beaten, but stronger. Flesh, bone, the genic inheritance we bear, that is all that will outlive our works in the end…'
- The Remembrances of Akurduana, Vol. CCLXVII,
The Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal
ELEVEN
News of the attempt against the primarch's life travelled quickly through the Fist of Iron and the combined fleet, but details were the first to suffer before the outrage that ensued. Morn was alive. Morn was dead. Morn was in medical stasis awaiting interment in one of the Avernii Clan's Contemptor Dreadnoughts. Veneratii Urien did still live. That much was known. His former captain, Garr of Order Quarii, had, to the relief of all, bellowed the news into the Hall. Santar, if the slow bleed of rumour and hearsay could be believed, clung to life like a Norsii swordsman to his blade It was said he had been the closest to the explosion. Words like 'miracle' and 'machine-touched' were conjuncted to rumours of his survival, though none could agree on where he now was or the gravity of his injuries. Taking all accounts at face value left the First Captain with little more than one arm, a head and a blinding determination not to be outlived by Lord Commander DuCaine. Of the honour guard that had departed the embarkation deck for Ferrus Manus' chambers, some said three were dead, others said that number was closer to ten. But none could agree on whether that included Morn, Urien or Santar.
As for the primarch himself, even rumour and hearsay only went so far.
Thus, the mood amongst his children in the Practice Hall was black. The Iron Hands did not express themselves as eloquently or as often as the Emperor's Children, but they did feel. They needed an outlet. And Akurduana was happy to provide.
He allowed the Avernii Clan veteran's flail to drone past his head.
'There was no warrior more tenacious than Morn.' The veteran's name was Joraan. Akurduana smashed his elbow into the warrior's cheek, Timur's curved edge rising counter to turn an axe-blow from his body. 'He survived the Battle of Lox.' The axe-warrior, Feldom, threw a punch with his off-hand that Akurduana deflected from the vambrace of his training leathers. 'For what? To be slain by a subdermal explosive in a corridor of his own ship.' A brief tangling of limbs saw Feldom stumbling away.
A quick follow-up and Akurduana could have finished him, but instead he skipped back as the clawed gauntlet of the third Iron Hands legionary hacked millimetres from his face. It was a lighter, unpowered version of the lightning claw, designed for practice use but plenty lethal enough when employed with more anger than skill.
Akurduana's feet fluttered beneath him as Esoc's partner claw slashed for him, left to right. Athenia nudged it on its way, his chanabral sabres dancing apart, whirling together, and spinning off with new partners as they blocked a furious tirade of blows. Nothing came out of Esoc's mouth but grunts and spittle. It was not that the veteran was unskilled - far from it, he was one of the First Order's best - but he was unreasoningly angry. Cutting outwards from the middle with both blades, Akurduana batted aside
the Iron Hand's claws and opened up his front. A backward somersault carried him under Joraan's flail and staggered Esoc with an uppercut delivered from the toe of his bare foot.
The veteran grimaced, clicking his jaw side to side. 'Try that in power armour.'
'Superior armour. Superior firepower. Superior numbers. Sometimes I wonder how you Iron Hands would cope with the odds stacked against you.'
'Morn never feared the odds.' Claw, axe and flail flashed together. Akurduana could not tell now which one of them spoke. 'He walked into the fire at Lox and was one of the few to walk out.' Akurduana wove, skipped, danced through blades on pointed toes, landing a blow where one presented, but otherwise content to let his adversaries work. 'He commanded the First Order since. They say it was to be him or Santar to be Clan Captain. But Santar was already Ferrus' equerry. And Morn was Terran.' He eased himself from the melee, isolating Esoc and Joraan with a twirl of his blades, inviting Feldom to power after him, which the axe-warrior duly did, hacking at him with a roar, axe clamped in both hands.
With a deft stab under the stroke, Akurduana snared the axe blade with Athenia's cross guard, pivoted the blade to pop the axe from Feldom's grip, then cracked him over the back of the head with the jewelled pommel. The legionary stumbled past and into the path of Joraan's flail. He took the hit with a sigh, almost grateful for the release, and slumped to the floor of the cage with a smile on his face.
He dipped his guard slightly as the others closed. His breath was coming with a pleasing rapidity, his skin warm and lightly lathered with sweat. He jerked his head, flicking his warrior braid from his face. 'It was not Morn's fault, what happened. Nor Urien's, nor Santar's. It was not your fault for not being there.'
'No. It was the primarch's fault.'
With evident difficulty, Ulan Cicerus climbed up to the cage. A handful of Iron Hands sullenly polishing sparring blades watched him from the benches. The Ultramarine moved with a hunch that spared his right side, thick tubular bandages emerging from the folds of his toga. His noble features were drained and pale, as if standing was an ordeal for the ages, but he carried his ornate Ultramarian sword and a short spear from the training racks in his hands.
'In his haste to outshine my father, he acted recklessly. Ferrus Manus brought this upon himself. And upon us all.'
'You cannot blame your losses on him,' one of the Iron Hands growled. Joraan.
'Not all of them. Perhaps not even most of them, and I will have to live with my shame. Will he? I do not know. That is what we would call a theoretical. The practical is that men are dead who would otherwise have lived if he had waited.'
'He has his reasons,' said Akurduana. To prove himself superior to his brothers. Or at least in his own mind, their equal. But even if Akurduana could break the primarch's confidence, he doubted the Ultramarine would be impressed by such a justification. 'He is a primarch, and above our judgement.'
The Iron Hands rumbled agreement They would curse their primarch as often as laud him, but that was their right. They were his sons.
'That is not how I was taught.' Cicerus angled his spear towards the two Iron Hands, his sword to Akurduana. His injuries were severe, but he was still a Chapter Master of the XIII Legion. 'Will your grief turn its face from mine? You are not the only ones to have lost brothers.'
The Iron Hands drew back, by unspoken consent making room for the Ultramarine to enter. He dipped his head. 'My thanks.' Then hinged with his spear, the four warriors dissolving together like oxygen into blood in a blistering catharsis of melee. Cicerus fought Joraan. Esoc fought Cicerus. Akurduana fought everyone and would have bested them all had he but tried a little. He might not have been a great painter, or an orator or scholar, or victualler or medicae, but put a sword in his hand and something transformative took hold.
Closer to Fulgrim, he sometimes thought. Further from the Emperor, he would invariably then feel, later, after the weapons were sheathed and his hands were bloody.
Esoc backpedalled furiously, tripping over Feldom's prone body to crash into the bars. The Iron Hand fed his arm through the bars to take a grip on them. He was bruised, but energised for it. He nodded his thanks. Akurduana returned the gesture, and again to those still conscious, but as he extended a hand to help Cicerus hold his balance he froze.
The Hall was silent.
It was testament to Cicerus and the Iron Hands' cumulative abilities that they had preoccupied him sufficiently to miss the cessation of combat in the lower cages. The combatants stood quiet. Those content to grieve alone without the catalyst of arms were deathly still, a hundred pairs of eyes all slaved to one and focused on Akurduana.
The mood when he had begun had been black. Now it was something else. In any other company, he might have called it fearful.
Ferrus Manus watched him from the other side of the bars.
Akurduana could almost feel the chamber being bent around him, the hopes, fears and lives of so many drawn by his raw, neutronic charisma towards brief iridescence and death. He dropped to his knee and bowed.
'My lord primarch. I am overjoyed to—'
'Santar and DuCaine. Then Urien. Then Santar again.' Fulgrim had a temper and had been known to lose it, but Ferrus Manus' wrath was tectonic. 'Now half a squad of my veterans. Did my brother send you purely to humiliate me?'
'My lord, he—'
'Does Fulgrim appreciate your excuses?'
'N-No, lord.'
'Is it not enough for you that the Gardinaal frustrate and deny me at every turn? Do I need Captain Akurduana to take every opportunity to demonstrate the frailty of my Legion as well?'
'Fulgrim loves you as he loves no other. He praises you as no other. Not Horus. Not Sanguinius. You.' Akurduana thumped the stiff leather of his chest-piece, emboldened to go further by his own fluttering of anger. 'And I am his firstborn son.'
'You swore an oath to support me. On your knees. In my own chamber.' He bellowed the last and Akurduana was almost felled before the strident force of the primarch's words. Ferrus' gaze shifted to encompass the Iron Hands sprawled over the floor of the cage 'Is this what your oath is worth to me?'
Akurduana bowed his head. It was not only Ferrus' sons who had felt the cut of their own blade over the compliance of Gardinaal. The primarch was angry. He needed someone to blame.
Akurduana was happy to provide.
'You are as much a father to me as Fulgrim. Tell me what it is you wish from me and if it is mine to give, I will give it.'
Ferrus shook his head as though disappointed. In a rustle of mail, he raised one fulminating metal fist to point towards the heavy-barred dome of the Hall's largest fighting cage. It was huge, held erect by four great columns of reinforced ferrocrete. Akurduana had assumed it was for hosting bouts between Dreadnoughts. A shiver of fear ran through him. Closely shadowed by, and barely distinguishable from, another of excitement.
Now he saw what it was really for.
'I want to see just how good you are.'
'Luc Honsoum.'
Milein Jaskolic read the name aloud from her flipboard as she struck it through.
She felt for a pulse in the neck, then the wrist. Trooper Honsoum's burnt skin was still warm and a little clammy. It reminded her of a damp sponge that had been left to go cold. With a shiver, she made a note - KIA - on the repatriation form.
The Army took care of its own. Tull called it the Covenant Militarum, some spark of enlightenment that had endured through the wars of ancient Europa. As much as the Legions might privately - and some not so privately - wish to push their mortal auxilia until they gave, it was, fortunately, none of their business. The Covenant Militarum gave a regiment's commanding officer ultimate responsibility for the individuals in his regiment. So while superhuman heroes battled for the right to rule the galaxy, the Army took care of its own.
But it wouldn't be the first time that a traumatised soldier had sought demob status amongst the dead.
She nodded to the corpsman, who then wheeled the troll
ey past, clattering up the ramp of the Arvus lighter. It wore the drab ochre-and-grey camo of the Fifth Galilean Mixed Infantry. Even the whine of its engines was sombre.
She sighed and flipped to the next page.
No one waited in line with more patience than the dead.
Dozens of them surrounded the waiting Arvus on trolleys, pushed by corpsmen in an assortment of unwashed regimental fatigues. If there was a uniform then it was the sombre expression they wore. A mixture of sorrow and boredom. Milein shook her head. Tull had a way with the dead, a black camaraderie. He would tell them jokes, sit up late in the mortuary telling stories, as if every one were an old friend, that they might wake as if from a coma if only they had a familiar voice to grab hold of. She smiled sadly. Tull wasn't nearly as thick-skinned as he made out. She wished he was here now for this. Or any of the medicae corps from the 413th. But she was the only senior left that hadn't been deployed to the planet. She supposed she should be grateful, and by Terra was she grateful, but she very much preferred her patients alive.
'Samuel Gorse.' She read from the next form as the corpsman clattered back down the ramp with an empty trolley. As if they had just colluded in a magic trick. 'Eric Steele.' In, out. In, out. 'Karl Jarro.' More names. Like birth and death, sped up. Her stylus scratched on paper. 'Ibran Grippe.'
She lowered her flipboard and smiled. The colonel beamed up at her with the disarming honesty of a man who had come to terms with the fact that his days were numbered. In double figures if he was extraordinarily lucky.
'This is it then,' he said.
Ibran sat up on his trolley, dressed in his formals by one of the merciful sisters, but with a foil blanket still draped over his legs. The bandages had been unwound from his face. His skin looked as though it were just badly sunburned, a few pioneer melanomas freckling his cheeks. A braided dress cap effectively concealed his baldness, but there was no obscuring the loss of his eyebrows and lashes.
