Prospero Burns

Eleven

‘Step back,’ Bear repeated, with greater emphasis.

Amon of the Thousand Sons turned and looked at the Space Wolf over Hawser’s shoulder. He reignited his smile.

‘You’re aiming a weapon at a fellow Astartes, wolf-brother?’ he asked. He looked slightly amused. ‘Is that wise? Is it even… decent?’

Bear’s bolter did not waver.

‘I’m protecting the skjald, as is my bond. Step back.’

Amon of the Thousand Sons laughed. He took a step or two away from Hawser and the parapet. The Custodes was still frozen in place, but he was trembling ever so slightly, like a sleeper trying to swim clear of a dream and awake.

‘Are we to bicker and brawl while history is made below us?’ the Equerry asked.

‘It’s a possibility,’ said Aun Helwintr. The rune priest had approached silently from the other side, flanking the Thousand Sons Equerry.

‘Two of you?’ Amon declared, with mock delight.

‘The skjald is under our protection,’ replied the priest.

‘But I make no threat towards him,’ Amon answered lightly. ‘We were just talking.’

‘Of what?’ asked Helwintr.

‘Idle things,’ Amon replied. ‘Innocent things. A toy horse made of wood, the inlay of a regicide board, the taste of radapples, the playing of a clavier. The things that string a life together. Nostalgia. Memories.’

‘Step back,’ Bear repeated.

‘Oh, so terse and humourless that one,’ said Amon.

‘Step back and take your magic with you,’ said Aun Helwintr. The rune priest moved forwards, left foot ahead of right, assuming a ritual-specific stance. His hands locked, the left arm up like a lindorm about to strike, the right low at the waist and palm-up with the fingers curled like fish hooks. Hawser suddenly felt an increase in air pressure.

‘What I especially admire,’ said the Thousand Sons Equerry, ‘is your hypocrisy. You hound us and harass us over our so-called sorcery, yet you do not shrink from using it, shaman.’

‘There is a vast gulf between what I employ for the good of the Rout and what you practise, warlock,’ Helwintr replied, ‘and the chief part of that gulf is control. Only the naive would think that mankind could survive in the cosmos without some measure of craft and cunning to protect him, but there is a limit. A limit. We must know what we can master and what we cannot, and we must never allow ourselves to step beyond that line. Tell me, how many steps have you taken? One? Three? A dozen? A thousand?’

‘And thanks to our innate superiority to your gothi fumblings, we have mastered every one,’ Amon returned. ‘You have barely dipped your toe in the Great Ocean. There is always something more to know.’

‘There is such a thing as too much,’ said Hawser.

Amon smiled.

‘Words said to you by that treacherous priest Wyrdmake on the day you awoke on Fenris.’

Hawser looked at Helwintr.

‘From his own mouth,’ Hawser said. ‘I don’t know what further proof we’d need that the Fifteenth have been using me as a spyglass since I entered the Aett.’

The smile left Amon’s lips. He glanced at the poised rune priest.

‘Aun Helwintr!’ he cried. ‘Plainly named in the bright thoughts of the skjald! You have no sway over me now I have your name in my mouth!’

The air seemed to buckle explosively between the Equerry and the rune priest. The force of it knocked Hawser to the ground. Light blistered. Helwintr was hurled back against the rear wall of the gallery space, his hands smoking. His impact grazed a dent in the wall’s basalt face.

Bear fired three precise shots with his bolter. It was ridiculously close range, and Bear was taking no chances. Each one was a kill-shot. Each one was a man-stopper. He did not even consider laming the Thousand Sons Equerry when a hostile act had been made against his priest-brother, and a threat remained to his skjald. His response was automatic, and no Astartes could miss under such circumstances with his signature weapon.

On the ground, rolling over, Hawser felt time bulge and contort. He could see the mass-reactive shells in flight as they went over him, smudging out lines of grease-on-glass slipstream behind them, like comet tails, like bad stars streaking towards impact.

The shots burst before they could hit Amon. They ruptured into little flattened disks of shockwave fire and filled the air with white, papery dust that rained down like ash or deep winter snow. Amon came through the swirling blizzard at Bear, arms outstretched, roaring Bear’s name aloud. Hawser knew the name had been stolen from his mind, just as Helwintr’s had been. The Equerry had Bear’s name, and so had power over him.

Bear threw aside his bolter, its dependability found wanting, and put his right fist into Amon’s face.

The Equerry crashed backwards into the parapet wall, his lips and nose mashed and bloody. His recoil from the blow was so sudden, Hawser had to squirm away to avoid being trampled underfoot. Indignant fury blazed from the Equerry, along with a measure of shock. The name should have stopped Bear in his tracks.

Bear hit him again, twice more, both body blows. The Wolf was snarling. Amon went back against the parapet, and the force of his impacts knapped flakes of basalt off the lip of the wall. He threw a blow at Bear that Bear seemed not to feel.

The impacts and the shock had broken Amon’s concentration. The noble Custodes, pinned like a specimen by the power of his name since the Equerry’s first appearance, let out a strangled cry as he tore himself back into mobility. It was an awful sound, the sound of a man who had been drowning and had never thought to breathe air again, the sound of a man waking from an immobilising nightmare. He shuddered backwards out of his stance, and then tried to lunge at the Thousand Sons warrior.

‘Amon Tauromachian!’ the Equerry proclaimed, and the Custodes slammed over onto his back. It was as though he had been knocked down by typhoon winds. He slid backwards along the gallery floor for a dozen metres, his armour scraping up flurries of sparks off the rock, driven by a hurricane-force blast no one else could feel.

The Equerry held out his right hand, and Amon Tauromachian’s guardian spear flew to him from where it had fallen. It landed in his palm with a solid smack. Wielding it expertly, and transferring it into a two-handed grip, he swept it laterally at Bear. The toe of the blade caught Bear’s left shoulder-plate and rotated him brutally. Slivers of ceramite plating spun away from the impact.

Bear drew out his axe, and used the haft to stop the next swing. He tried to hook the attacking weapon away, but the guardian spear had a much greater reach. Amon’s use of it was so precise, Hawser had no doubt that the Equerry had simply lifted decades of practice drill and technique from the mind of the Custodes. The halberd’s blade ripped the Fenrisian war axe from Bear’s grip, and then came back again to cripple him.

All the men of Tra, indeed every man of the Rout, had been taught that the only thing of consequence was victory. Outsiders considered the Sixth Astartes notorious for their wild belligerence, but that was simply an inevitable by-product of their defining mindset. The Vlka Fenryka were stoically resolved to take any action necessary in order to win.

The truth is that we are the most harshly trained of all.

Bear tilted slightly and took the blade in his side. It cut through the torso plating under his left arm. An Astartes from another Legion might, if faced with the same dire threat, perhaps have tried to hunch and shield himself with his shoulder plate. The result would have cost him an arm. Bear threw his guard wide, arm raised, and absorbed the hit in his physical core. The impact made him roar to vent the pain. Hawser, watching wide-eyed in horror, saw the daggers of Bear’s fangs. He saw the blood gout from the trench wound puncturing Bear’s flank.

Bear clamped his left arm down like a vice and trapped the halberd buried in his ribs. He gripped the golden haft, slippery with blood, and yanked Amon close. The Equerry couldn’t pull it out. With his free right fist, Bear punched Amon in the face repeatedly, each blow delivered with a roar of pain and triumph, each blow causing blood to spray. The fifth or sixth blow caught the Thousand Sons warrior in the throat. Gore from his pulverised face covered the front of his glorious armour.

Amon slipped backwards, swaying, releasing his grip on the guardian spear. Bear wrenched it out of him and hurled it away. Hawser ducked as the blood-splattered weapon clattered past him.

Bear grasped Amon by the chest plating with one hand and the scalp by the other. He twisted the Equerry’s head back, exposing his throat, and lunged in, teeth bared.

‘No!’ Hawser yelled.

Poised to bite and finish his prey, Bear snarled a wet leopard-growl at Hawser. His black-pinned golden eyes had gone dark with pain, pain and some other feral property.

‘Don’t!’ Hawser cried, holding out a staying hand. ‘We need him alive! Alive, he’s testimony for us! Dead, he’s proof simply of our aggression!’

Bear relaxed his grip slightly, and pulled back from the threatened bite, though his mouth still gaped hungrily and his teeth gleamed. He punched Amon again, punishingly hard, and laid him out on the basalt floor.

‘Blade!’ he demanded.

Hawser unlooped his axe, and tossed it to Bear. The Wolf caught it neatly in his right hand, knelt down over the Equerry, and hacked the mark of aversion into his chest plating.

The Equerry of the Thousand Sons screamed. He thrashed and convulsed with demented fury and threw Bear backwards. His fists and feet hammered the floor in an insane blur, and his screams turned to choking gulps as blood and plasmic matter sprayed from his mouth. As his convulsions reached a pitch, a torus of sizzling, foul-smelling energy blasted out of him, soiling the air with streaks of sooty smoke.

Shuddering and wailing, he clambered to his feet. He was aspirating blood and other fluids through the pulped ruin Bear had made of his face. His shaking was like a palsy, a nervous judder. Clouds of vapour were pouring off him, rank and oily. Almost at once he was moving, fleeing, thumping quickly but unsteadily away along the gallery, his arms clenched around his torso.

Bear struggled to rise and give chase. He was intercepted by the Custodes, who was finally back on his feet and free of the sorcerous yoke. Deep gouges marked the Custodes’s golden armour.

‘Wait,’ he said to Bear. ‘I’ve signalled the Custodian force. The upper galleries will be sealed. He cannot escape. The Sisterhood will silence him, and my brothers of the Legio Custodes will bring him down.’

‘I will hunt him myself!’ Bear insisted.

‘No,’ said the Custodes, more firmly. He looked over at Hawser.

‘Ser,’ he said. ‘I apologise. I failed you badly.’

Hawser shook his head. He walked to the parapet and looked down. Far below, the proceedings of the great council were continuing without interruption. The cone of the supervolcano was so vast, no one on the chamber floor had been aware of the violent altercation in the upper parts of the auditorium.

Aun Helwintr appeared at Hawser’s side. His face was paler than usual, as if he had been starved of light and food for a year. He had removed the gauntlets of his power armour. His hands were miserably scorched, raw-red and blistered. He gazed down into the bowl of the amphitheatre.

‘A report must be passed to the Emperor without delay,’ he said, speaking not to Hawser but to Amon Tauromachian and Bear. He was staring straight down at the bright form on the dais, and the shock-haired giant pleading his case from the wooden lectern before him.

‘No matter what argument the Crimson King presents,’ said Helwintr, ‘this will surely influence whatever decision the Master of Mankind makes.’

‘It’s the most unnerving thing that happened to me in my old life,’ said Hawser. ‘It has the most… maleficarum.’

‘You know that’s not true,’ said Longfang. ‘In your heart, you know better. You’re denying yourself.’

Hawser woke with a start. For a terrible, rushing moment, he thought he was somewhere else, but it was a dream. He lay back, trying to slow his bolting heart. Just a dream.

Hawser settled back onto his bed. He felt tired and unrefreshed. Sustained artificial gravity always did that to him.

There was an electronic chime.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Ser Hawser? It is your hour five alarm,’ said a softly modulated servitor voice.

‘Thank you,’ said Hawser. He sat up. He was so stiff, so worn out. He hadn’t felt this bad for a long time. His leg was sore. Maybe there were painkillers in the drawer.

He limped to the window. The shutter rose into its frame recess with a low hum, allowing golden light to flood in.

The sun was just coming up over the hemisphere below him. He was looking straight down on Terra in all its magnificence. He could see the night side and the sunlit blue of oceans and the whipped-cream swirl of clouds and the glittering light points of a superorbital plate gliding majestically past beneath him.

He saw his own sunlit reflection in the thick glass of the window port. Old! So old! So old! How old was he? Eighty? Eighty years standard? He recoiled. This was wrong. On Fenris, they’d remade him, they’d—

Except he hadn’t been to Fenris yet. He hadn’t even left Terra.

Bathed in golden sunlight, he stared at his aghast reflection. He saw the face of the other figure reflected in the glass, the figure standing just behind him.

Terror constricted him.

‘How can you be here?’ he asked.

And woke.

‘Who were you talking to?’ asked Ogvai.

‘His dreams,’ said Aun Helwintr. ‘They’re getting louder.’

Hawser sat up. They were in the chamber beyond the quiet room. The moving light of magmatic turmoil dappled the walls. It was uncomfortably hot. The warmth of the smoky air had caused him to doze. He imagined that sleep was an attempt by his mind and body at self-preservation after the unsettling clash with the Thousand Sons warlock.

Considerable numbers of Tra were gathered in the chamber, along with Wolves from Onn and Fyf.

‘Did they catch him?’ Hawser asked.

Helwintr glanced at him, and then shook his head. He was applying salve to the weeping burns on his hands. Given the damage Hawser had seen earlier, the flesh was healing with astonishing speed.

‘He slipped into the shadows,’ said Helwintr.

‘Spineless Custodes lost him,’ said Skarssen.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ rumbled a voice. ‘It doesn’t matter a damn now.’

The Wolf King loomed into the chamber, a hulking mass of shadow backlit by the fire-glow. He was flanked by the painfully beautiful maidens bearing their raised longswords.

He came closer, and the men bowed their heads, even Ogvai and Lord Gunn. The flickering flame light revealed his face, half shadowed, and the broad smile that exposed his inhuman teeth.

When he spoke, it was with a wet leopard-growl.

‘The Emperor has made His ruling,’ he said.