Текст книги "Vulkan Lives"

Автор книги: Ник Кайм

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Further Death Guard reinforcements were entering the fray. They were well drilled and led by a hulking warrior in heavy armour. Numeon caught site of the section leader striding down the slope. Thick plates banded the Terminator’s shoulders, a rounded war-helm sitting like a bolt between them. A metal skirt of horizontal slats protected the warrior’s abdomen and in a gauntleted fist, he clenched a pole arm with an arcing blade at its summit.

His men gave their commander a wide berth, inviting a clutch of Salamanders to attack him. The brute lashed out with the power scythe, and four legionaries fell back with limbs and heads cleaved off. He advanced, an upwards swing bifurcating his next opponent. As he moved on he crushed the stricken Salamander’s head underfoot and left a dark smear in his wake.

This was one of Mortarion’s chosen, his elite cadre. The Salamanders had encountered them before, during the Great Crusade, in the joint campaign to settle the world of Ibsen. They were the Deathshroud, and had no equals amongst the XIV Legion.

Chainsword snarling, Nemetor met the formidable warrior in single combat.

It was a fight the brave captain was unlikely to win.

‘Nemetor!’ Numeon roared, pushing to even greater efforts as he fought to reach his brother-captain.

Death Guard and Salamander exchanged blows, the combat already lasting much longer than any previous engagement of Mortarion’s chosen warrior. It took eight seconds for the Deathshroud to cut Nemetor down. His scythe blade sheared the Salamander’s chainsword in half, the teeth exploding from the still churning belt and embedding in Nemetor’s armour. The backswing raked his chest, opening up ceramite and smashing Nemetor off his feet. He was about to be subjected to the same desultory end as his battle-brother with the crushed skull when Vulkan intervened.

The primarch parried the scythe with his sword blade before reaching inside the Deathshroud’s guard to land a blow with his gauntlet. One of the warrior’s retinal lenses cracked on impact, revealing a bloodshot eye, burning with hate. Half of the legionary’s war-helm was badly dented and a dark fluid was leaking out from under his gorget.

He roared, putting his anger into a two-handed swing that Vulkan stepped aside before cutting horizontally with his sword and slicing clean through the Deathshroud’s waist. Coughing blood against the interior of his half-crushed helm, the dying legionary reached for a canister mag-locked to his belt. It was another of the dirty bombs that he had unleashed on Nemetor and his company. Vulkan crushed the Deathshroud’s fingers under his boot. Sheathing his sword, the primarch wrenched the power scythe from the legionary’s grasp and snapped it over his knee in a flurry of agitated sparks.

It was enough to break the spirit of the Death Guard, who were now engaged by assaulting Firedrakes and fell back in good order. The Pyre Guard were putting the others to the blade when Numeon leaned down to rip off the Deathshroud’s helmet.

A pallid-skinned, mashed-up face greeted him. To Numeon’s surprise the warrior did not spit or curse – he grinned, exposing a raft of broken teeth. Then he began to laugh.

‘You’re all dead men,’ he whispered.

‘Not before you,’ replied Numeon, and ended him.

He looked up again when he heard screaming. Not from the dying, but savage and guttural war cries. A ruddy smog was sweeping across the battlefield, fashioned from blood-drenched mist and the smoke generated by thousands of fires. Caught in a crosswind, it slashed in from the east and brought with it the brutal challenge of a Legion that revelled in war. It was air to them, sustenance.

World Eaters.

Their brownish-red silhouettes materialised in the smog like phantoms, along with something else.

Something big.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Immortal

‘You have a fine mind, John. We should talk, and consider the options available to beings like us.’

– The Emperor, the Triumph at Pash

When he heard the screaming, Numeon drew his weapon.

It was coming from the infirmary, a gut-wrenching cry of agony that shook the legionary from a dark reverie. He’d heard screaming like that before, on a plain of black sand. And it chilled him, the symmetry he found in the remembrance of one held against the reality of the other.

The cry of agony ceased almost as soon as it began. A noxious stench permeated the air – whether from whatever had just happened in the infirmary or a false sensory remnant from his bleak imaginings, it was hard to be sure. Numeon didn’t move. He kept his eyes on the infirmary door, glaive levelled at waist height with the volkite primed.

Behind him, the dying embers of the pyre crackled into extinction. He paid them no heed, his attention fixed. Others arrived onto the manufactorum floor, drawn by the scream. Numeon kept them back with a warning hand gesture, before nodding in the direction of the infirmary.

‘What was that?’ he heard Leodrakk hiss, and caught the sound of the Pyre Guard’s bolter slide being racked.

‘Came from in there,’ murmured Numeon, maintaining his aggressive posture. ‘Who’s here, besides Leo?’ he asked. He had taken off his battle-helm; it was sitting by the side of the pyre dappled with soot. Without it, he had no visibility of his comrades’ positions relative to his own.

‘Domadus,’ uttered the Iron Hand.

‘K’gosi,’ said the Salamander, just above the quiet rumble of his flame-igniter.

‘Shen?’ asked Numeon, aware of fourlegionaries in total, and swearing he could make out the growling undertone of the Tech-marine’s cybernetics.

‘He was dead,’ said Shen’ra, announcing his presence with his answer. ‘No man could survive those wounds. No man.’

‘Then how?’ said Leodrakk.

‘Because he isn’t a man at all,’ muttered K’gosi, raising his flame gauntlet.

‘Hold,’ Numeon told them all. ‘Approach no closer. Out here, at a distance, we have the advantage over whatever is in that room. Domadus,’ he added, ‘get Hriak. No one else enters. Leodrakk, guard the door.’

Both legionaries did as ordered, leaving Numeon to maintain watch.

‘We wait for the Librarian, find out what we’re dealing with.’

‘And then, brother-captain?’ asked K’gosi.

‘Then,’ Numeon replied, ‘we kill it, if we have to.’

All of them had heard rumours. War stories. Every soldier had them. They were an oral tradition, a comradely means of passing on knowledge and experience. What lent these tales credence was that veteran officers of the Legiones Astartes had attested to factsand given them, in detail, in their reports. To falsify an account of a battle or mission-action was no minor infraction in either Legion or Army. All military bodies took such things incredibly seriously. But facts, explainable through scientific means or not, could not accurately and convincingly reference ‘abominations’ or even ‘physical possession’ without coming across as suspect. These were the words of vaunted, trusted men. Captains, battalion commanders, even Chapter Masters. Such testimony should have guaranteed veracity and credence.

And yet…

Creatures of Old Night and evil sorcery had been confined to myth. It was written, in ancient books, that they could reshape men and assume their forms. Towards the end of the Great Crusade, evidence that was concealed at the time – but later brought to light – gave claim that such creatures could even turn a legionary’s humours against his brothers.

In Numeon’s darkest nightmares, the name Samusresonated with eerie familiarity. Here, on Ranos, it had visited him more frequently. It had been the same on Viralis. They were not xenos, and he had seen and exterminated enough aliens to know this was the truth. Numeon knew an old word for them, one that if spoken a few years ago would have earned derision, but that now carried a ring of bitter and forbidding truth.

And, if further rumours were to be believed, the patronage of such beings was sought out and courted by the Word Bearers. They had found a different faith, the followers of Lorgar. In his gut, Numeon knew that was why they were here. He feltit.

‘Something comes!’ hissed K’gosi.

The Salamanders aimed weapons as a man-shaped figure staggered through the infirmary to reach the door to the manufactorum. It was dark inside and only a silhouette was visible through the window.

‘If it is allowed to speak, it might be the end of us,’ said Shen’ra.

‘Agreed,’ said K’gosi.

‘Wait…’ said Numeon. For despite those misgivings and the threat of something unknown gnawing at the resolve of every legionary in this war, this felt different.

With a low creak, the door opened and the man they knew as John Grammaticus stepped through its open frame. His hands were raised, and when he was no more than a metre beyond the doorway he stopped.

‘Who are you?’ Numeon demanded in a belligerent tone.

‘John Grammaticus, as I told you.’ He seemed calm, almost resigned, despite the fact he faced off against four battle-ready Space Marines.

‘You could not have lived,’ Shen’ra accused. ‘Your wounds… I saw you die on that slab in there. You could not have lived.’

‘And yet, here I am.’

‘Precisely our problem, Grammaticus,’ Numeon told him. ‘You live when you should be dead.’

‘I am not the only one.’

The slightest pause betrayed Numeon’s doubt before he answered. ‘Speak plainly,’ he warned. ‘No more games.’

‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you,’ Grammaticus confessed.

‘We should kill him now,’ said K’gosi.

Grammaticus sighed. ‘It would do no good. It never does. May I put my arms down yet?’

‘No,’ said Numeon. ‘You may talk. If I deem what I hear to be the truth, you may put your arms down. If not, we’ll bring you down a different way. Now, how is it you are still alive?’

‘I am perpetual. That is to say, immortal. Your primarch is, too.’

Numeon frowned. ‘What?’

‘Kill him, Numeon,’ K’gosi urged, ‘or I’ll burn him to ash where he stands.’

Numeon put out his hand to ward the Pyroclast off. ‘Wait!’

‘He’s lying, brother,’ murmured Leodrakk, edging up beside Numeon.

‘I’m not,’ Grammaticus told them calmly. ‘This is the truth. I cannot die… Vulkancannot die. He lives still, but he needs your help. Ineed your help.’

Shaking his head, Leodrakk said darkly, ‘Vulkan is dead. He died on Isstvan with Ska and the others. The dead don’t come back. Not unchanged, anyway. Just shells, like on Viralis.’

K’gosi was nodding. ‘Fire cleanses this filth, though…’ He advanced a step, close to touching Numeon’s outstretched hand with his breastplate.

‘Stand down.’ Numeon saw the Pyroclast in his peripheral vision, the chain mask and scale long-coat lending him the appearance of an executioner. It might yet be his role.

‘I want to believe him as much as you do,’ said Leodrakk, switching to Nocturnean, ‘but how can we? Vulkan alive? How would he even know? We’ve already lost enough to treachery.’

‘We all wish the primarch were still with us,’ added K’gosi, ‘but he’s gone, captain. He fell just like Ferrus Manus. Let this go.’

‘And you, Shen?’ asked Numeon. ‘You have said little. Am I deceived, a fool to believe our lord primarch yet lives?’ He risked a side glance and saw the Techmarine’s face was pensive.

‘I can’t say what Vulkan’s fate is. I only know we fought hard and bled greatly on Isstvan. If anyone could have survived, it would have been him.’

‘Brother…’ snarled Leodrakk, unhappy at what he saw as Shen’ra’s capitulation.

‘It’s true,’ the Techmarine replied. ‘Vulkan could be alive. I don’t know. But this man was dead. He was dead, Numeon, and dead men do not speak. You are our captain and we will follow your orders, all of us. But don’t trust him.’

Before Numeon could answer, Leodrakk made one last plea. ‘It’s likely we’ll die here. But I won’t have us killed because we were too credulous to act against the danger in our midst.’

‘ I am not the one who is in danger,’ said Grammaticus, in perfect Nocturnean.

The shock around the legionaries was masked but noticeable.

‘How do you know our language?’ asked Numeon.

‘It’s a gift.’

‘Like coming back from the dead?’

‘Not one of mine, per se, but yes.’

Hriak entered the room. Behind his retinal lenses, lightning streaked the pale sclera of his eyes and formed into a dark tempest.

‘Lower your weapons,’ he rasped, stepping into Numeon’s eye line and in front of him.

No one questioned him. They lowered their weapons.

Domadus came in just after, taking up position at the door. His bolter wasn’t aimed at the human but it was in his hand and ready.

‘Are you going to try and prise my head open again?’ asked Grammaticus, warily eyeing the approaching Librarian.

Hriak regarded the human silently for a beat. ‘For a man, you are… unusual. And not just for your ability to cling tenaciously to life.’

‘Interesting way of putting it. But you’re not the first legionary to remark on that,’ Grammaticus replied.

Ignoring the attempted wit, Hriak went on. ‘I have heard of biomancy that can knit skin, mend bones,’ he reached out to touch Grammaticus’s healed body, ‘but nothing like this. It could not bring men back from the dead.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ answered Grammaticus. ‘I serve a higher power who call themselves the Cabal.’

‘A higher power?’ said K’gosi. ‘Do you believe in gods then, human?’

Grammaticus raised his eyebrow. ‘Do you not, even after all you’ve seen?’ He continued, ‘They gave me eternal life. It’s them whom I serve.’

Numeon detected the bitterness in his reply and, coming up alongside Hriak, asked, ‘To what end, John Grammaticus? Evidently you are no creature of Old Night, else my brother here would have urged us to destroy you at once. Nor do I think you’re an alien. So, if not malfeasance, what is your purpose?’

Grammaticus met the Salamander’s gaze. ‘To save Vulkan.’

The tension in the manufactorum suddenly went up several notches.

‘So you’ve said,’ Numeon replied. ‘But I thought he was supposed to be immortal, like you? What need of saving would our primarch have?’

‘I said save him, not save his life.’

Leodrakk sneered, his displeasure at this exchange obvious, ‘And what makes you think you can succeed where we, his Legion, failed?’

Numeon bit back the urge to tell his brother they had not ‘failed’, and let Grammaticus continue.

‘Because of the spear. I need it, the artefact your enemy took from me. They are my enemy, too. With it I can save him.’ Grammaticus turned to the Librarian. ‘Take a look if you don’t believe me. You’ll find I’m speaking the truth.’

Hriak gave Numeon an almost imperceptible nod.

Grammaticus saw it too. ‘So, help me. We have a common foe in this, as well as a common goal.’

‘An alliance?’

‘I’ve been proposing one ever since you captured me.’

‘Where is he then?’ asked Numeon. ‘Where is our primarch that we might save him? And how can a mere human, albeit an immortal one, hope to achieve such a feat? You say you need the spear to do it, but how? What power does it possess?’

‘He’s far from here, that’s all I know. The rest is still a mystery, even to me.’

‘Have Hriak tear his skull open,’ snapped Leodrakk. ‘He’ll unlock what he knows.’

‘Please… Help me to the spear and off Ranos. I can reach him.’

Numeon considered it but then gestured to Hriak.

‘Tells us what he knows,’ he said darkly.

The Librarian took a step forwards so he could press the palm of his right hand against the man’s forehead.

‘Don’t do it…’ murmured Grammaticus. ‘You don’t know what–’

He convulsed as the pain of mental intrusion hit him. Then Hriak jerked, and a grunt of agony escaped through his vox-grille.

Numeon reached out to him. ‘Brother…?’ The Raven Guard warded him off with an outstretched hand.

He couldn’t speak. Hriak was breathing hard, the throaty sound affected by exertion as his powers were tested. He fell down to one knee, but maintained eye contact and kept his hand up to show the others he was all right. He let it drop to his gorget, then detached his helmet clamps, releasing a small plume of pressurised gas into the air. Then he lifted the helmet free. Underneath, his skin was pale, almost bone-white. Ravaged by injury, one half of the Raven Guard’s face was pulled up in a permanent grimace. His neck bore the scar of a grievous throat wound. It was deep, and looked grey and ugly now that it had healed. Grammaticus balked at the grim apparition. Since Hriak’s discomfort had begun, his own pain had visibly eased.

Hriak let him go, relieved no longer to be in contact.

‘Do you see now?’ said Numeon. ‘We have suffered much and have little left to lose, save for our honour,’ he told Grammaticus. ‘I would have no compunction killing you now or later if you lie to us or obfuscate the truth again.’

‘I am not lying. Vulkan lives,’ Grammaticus said simply.

‘He doesn’t know anything else,’ rasped Hriak, taking Numeon’s arm as it was offered and getting back to his feet. He had yet to put his helmet back on, even though he was clearly uncomfortable with his comrades seeing his damaged face. Breathing was obviously easier without it, though. ‘Or at least, not yet. His instructions have been imparted psychically. Some are locked. I cannot reach them.’

‘He’s preventing you?’

‘Someone is.’

‘This Cabal, his masters?’

Grammaticus interrupted, ‘They guard their knowledge well. No amount of digging around in my skull is going to unearth what you’re after.’

‘I have to concur,’ Hriak conceded, reaching for his helmet.

‘Either help me or let me go,’ said Grammaticus. ‘This stalemate achieves nothing for either of us. Let me save him.’

‘How?’ asked Numeon, suddenly angry. ‘I need to know. I haveto know.’

Grammaticus sagged, defeated. ‘I don’t know. How many times must I say it? I only know it concerns the spear.’

Numeon calmed down, but his frustration was still bubbling under the surface. He turned to the others. ‘The cleric likely has the spear now,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it from him.’

‘From his dead hand,’ put in Leodrakk as he saw the chance for petty revenge.

‘One way or another,’ Numeon replied. He glanced at Grammaticus. ‘Bind him. I don’t want him trying to escape.’

Domadus nodded and began uncoiling a length of rappelling cable from his belt.

‘This is a mistake,’ said Grammaticus.

‘Maybe. Either way you are not leaving us just yet. I want to see what happens when you are reunited with the spear, see what fresh secrets tumble from your mind. Then I’ll have Hriak pry open your skull and extract whatever is hidden within.’

Grammaticus hung his head, let his arms fall by his sides and cursed whatever fates had delivered him to the Salamanders.

Eighty metres from the manufactorum, Narek hunched low behind a half-collapsed wall and peered in awe through his scope.

‘Impossible…’ he breathed, adjusting the focus, enhancing the image through the shattered window-glass.

He saw six legionaries, the guerrilla fighters from before, just as he had predicted. What surprised him was the sight of the man he had killed, the one who could not have survived his wounds and yet stood unscathed in the middle of the manufactorum floor. Standing. Breathing. Alive.

Narek opened the vox to Elias, vaguely aware of his companions around him and knowing the rest were converging from separate angles on the manufactorum.

‘Apostle…’ he began.

Things were about to change.

Despite the attentions of his Apothecary, Elias was in excruciating pain. After a struggle, two legionaries had managed to get him back into his power armour but his burned arm remained unclad. It was black and almost useless. The wounds from the godfire that had seared him seemed unaffected by his enhanced physiology or any healing skill his Legion possessed. Only a rival patron could restore him, and as he sat clenched with agony in his tent, Elias thought bitterly on the failed ritual.

The spear was nearby, lying on a table within reach. It no longer glowed, nor burned. It simply appeared to be a spearhead fashioned from rock and mineral. But that simple shell contained something much more potent.

Elias was considering when to apprise Erebus of his progress, but wanted to be in a clear frame of mind first. His master would have questions, questions Elias wasn’t sure he had the answers to just yet. So when the vox crackled to life, his mood was particularly fractious.

‘What is it?’ he snapped, wincing at the pain in his arm.

It was Narek.

At first Elias was annoyed. How many more times would he have to tell the huntsman what was required of him? It was a simple task, a well-trained dog could do it. He was considering in what manner to sever his ties with Narek when what he heard changed his mind on the subject. The contortion of Elias’s face, a grimace of pain and snarl of anger, turned to interest and machination.

Suddenly the pain seemed to diminish, his maiming become less significant.

The ritual had failed. Not because of the spear, or the words. It was the sacrifice that he had got wrong. Now he knew why.

Elias rose from his seat and reached for his battle-helm.

‘Bring him to me. Alive, so I can kill him.’

Fate and the Pantheon had not abandoned him after all.

He smiled. Erebus would have to wait.

Something had happened. Narek could tell from the tone of Elias’s voice. He sounded in pain, and the huntsman wondered what Elias had tried to do with the spear. Something foolish, driven by hubris. He put it out of his mind. Amaresh was waiting. He could almost hear the eager rush of blood in the other Word Bearer’s veins.

‘What are we waiting for?’ he growled.

Narek didn’t bother making eye contact. He lowered the scope.

‘Plan’s changed,’ he said, relaying his orders across the vox to his men. ‘Our orders are to extract the human. Alive.’

‘You are not serious,’ snarled Amaresh, grabbing for Narek’s shoulder guard. In a single movement, the huntsman twisted the other Word Bearer’s armoured wrist and smashed him down onto the ground. He did it so quickly that the others had barely noticed. Amaresh went to rise, but found the blade of Narek’s knife pressed at his throat. One thrust and it would pierce gorget, neck and bone.

‘Deadly serious,’ he told him. ‘Dagon,’ he began after a few seconds, once he was sure that Amaresh would follow orders. ‘Maintain eyes on all the exits.’

Dagon gave a clipped affirmative.

‘Infrik, come around the front and– Wait, there’s something…’ Narek had looked up to gauge the relative positions of his men. That was when he saw the smallest glint of metal, reflected from a scope lens. ‘Clever…’

Amaresh had only just risen to his feet when the bolt-round entered the back of his battle-helm, into his head, and exited through his left retinal lens in a welter of blood and bone. Even a legionary as gifted as Amaresh couldn’t survive that.

Narek hit the deck.

He doubted that the sniper would take another shot, at least not a meaningful one. He knew the shooter. It was the one from the cooling tower, the legionary who had seen him and Dagon before. Amaresh was a jerking corpse as the last dregs of nervous convulsion left him. Narek found himself liking this enemy.

The plan changed again.

He reopened the vox, relaying calmly, ‘Full attack.’