Текст книги "Vulkan Lives"

Автор книги: Ник Кайм

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

‘One winter, one particularlybitter and frigid winter, they went to war with a rival gang. Territory and status were the prize. It became about honour, if you can believe that? Such a lofty and costly ideal. It took them far from what they called home. It was war, only much grubbier than you have ever experienced.

‘Towards the end, food ran short, when the rats were gone and the litter in the streets bereft of sustenance. Desperation breeds desperate men. The loyal gang, the one whose blood ties were so strong… they fell upon each other. Murdered each other. One side wanted to keep fighting, the other just wanted the war to end. You see, brothers, sometimes the enemy is just the person preventing you from getting home.’ Curze stepped forwards, put his hands on the rail in front of him. ‘No more delays. Only one of you is getting out of this. Only one gets to go home.’

Corax picked up the trident.

‘I am sorry, Vulkan.’

I could give him no answer.

Curze retreated into the shadows again.

‘ Remember what I said, brother,’ he whispered to me.

I had barely wrapped my hand around the sword’s hilt when Corax lunged. His feet left the ground, his leap taking him halfway across the small arena. Dragging the blade free, I rolled and felt the trident punch the earth where I had been standing. A second blow darted past my cheek, tearing it open and flecking the sand with blood. I parried, smashing a third trident thrust aside and landing a heavy punch to Corax’s midriff, staggering him back. I had a second’s rest but he came at me again, crafting a series of small but piercing jabs against my improvised defence.

I had never fought Corax before, but had seen him in battle often enough. His fighting style was not unlike the avian creature from which he took his honorific. Deft, probing attacks like the snapping of a beak assailed me. He was swift, with an ever-shifting combat posture, attacking my blind side and often moving into peripheral assault patterns.

I turned and blocked, took small cuts on my arms, torso and legs. He was relentless, and had not spent the last few months or years of his life trapped in a cell. Furthermore, he was willing to kill me. There was a fury to his attacks, something I had not yet embraced for the duel. Since picking up his trident, a change had come over my brother – one that I was unprepared for.

The abyss returned in my mind, beckoning as the hot nails pushed deeper into my skull, stimulating my anger and need for violence.

Was I the monster that Curze had described all those years ago on Kharaatan? When I had burned that eldar child to ash for her part in killing Seriph, was it retribution or had I just used that to justify an act of sadistic self-satisfaction?

I reeled, feeling my sanity unpicking at its already frayed seams.

Corax landed a telling blow, the trident lodged in my left pectoral, digging into muscle and below. I would have screamed were it not for the wedge in my mouth gagging me.

Rage.

I cut a savage wound across Corax’s torso as he found his guard compromised with the trident still impaled in my body.

Rage.

I snapped the trident’s haft in two, leaving the fork still embedded in my flesh.

Rage.

I threw down my sword and hurled myself at Corax.

I am strong, perhaps the physically strongest of all my father’s sons. Corax had claimed as much once. Now he felt it first-hand. With a single blow of my clenched fist I smashed apart his helmet’s grille, revealing his anguished mouth beneath, spitting blood. I landed a second punch around his left ear, snapping his head to the side and denting the helm inwards. Corax shrieked like a bird. I wanted to break his wings, fracture that weakling skull. Despite his attempts to fend me off – a knee into my chest, a heavy jab to my exposed kidneys, a throat strike – I overwhelmed him. With sheer bulk, I bore him down to the earth. He grunted as his back hit the ground hard, and I punched the air from his lungs. Like a vice, my hands were around his throat. Straddling him, Corax’s arms pinned by my knees, he couldn’t move. All he could do now was die.

During the savage assault, his helmet had come apart. I saw his dark eyes staring at me, that quiet wisdom turned to terror.

I squeezed harder, feeling his toughened larynx giving way to my fury as I slowly crushed it. His eyes bulged in their sockets and through blood-rimed teeth he choked two words.

‘ Do it…’

At my side, I felt the presence of Ferrus, his skeletal form hovering in my peripheral vision.

‘ Do it…’ he rasped.

Above me in the amphitheatre, held fast but still struggling, I heard Nemetor whisper.

‘ Do it…’

It would be so easy. I had but to tighten my grip a fraction and…

I stopped. Fingertips still clinging to the edge of the abyss, I hauled myself up and rolled away from its burning depths. In that moment, I knew that I would not be granted my freedom. I wantedto kill Corax to sate my rage.

‘Kill him, Vulkan!’ Curze snarled, rushing up to the rail. ‘He’s finished. Claim your freedom.’

‘Return to your Legion,’ urged Ferrus. ‘It is the only way…’

I released my grip around Corax’s throat and let him go. Exhausted, physically and mentally, I rolled off my brother and onto my back.

‘No. I won’t do it,’ I gasped, breathing hard. ‘Not like this.’

‘Then you have damned yourself,’ hissed Ferrus.

Not knowing what had happened, Corax got to his feet, picked up my fallen sword and stabbed me through the heart.

I came round screaming. I had returned to my cell, but still lay on my back. The door was intact and there was no evidence of my recent escape. I was strapped down to a metal slab, arms, legs and neck. I couldn’t move and there was a metal wedge in my mouth, gagging me. Surrounding me was a coven of human psykers, feral-looking with strange sigils daubed on their bodies and robes.

‘Davinites,’ Curze explained as he walked into my eye line, before killing every one of the witches in a sudden and violent blur. ‘They have served and failed their purpose,’ he said when he was done butchering them.

It was all a lie – visions implanted in my mind.

Curze removed the wedge from my mouth.

‘Did you expect me to kill him?’ I snarled.

My brother looked profoundly unhappy.

‘You are not noble. You are no better than me,’ he muttered, before killing me again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sacrifices

‘You have suffered. I know this. You have come to the abyss, and almost surrendered yourselves to it. That changes now. I am father, general, lord and mentor. I shall teach you if I can, and pass on the knowledge I have gained. Honour, self-sacrifice, self-reliance, brotherhood. It is our Promethean creed and all must adhere to it if we are to prosper. Let this be the first lesson…’

– Primarch Vulkan in his inaugural address

on Terra to the survivors of the XVIII Legion

Numeon didn’t know who had survived the battle. He was lying face down, his armour’s sensors screaming in a rash of red warning icons. Undoubtably, the fall had saved his life. He hoped it had taken others with him. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and fought to bring the physical trauma under control. Pulse was returning to normal. Breathing also. He waited, in silence and in darkness, for his body to repair and his armour systems to reboot and stabilise.

Someone stirred in the darkness next to him.

Shen’ra’s battle-plate was split, gored by blades and shell holes. His cybernetic eye flickered and went dead.

‘Lost the half-track…’ he croaked.

Numeon managed to nod.

‘Lit those traitors up well though, didn’t it?’ said the old Techmarine, smiling as he passed out. His vital signs were holding; Shen’ra yet lived.

There were others too, some less fortunate than Shen’ra. After Leodrakk and Hriak had escaped with the human, Numeon had returned to the manufactorum. Avus was dead, giving up his life so that his kinsmen could get away. He had saved Numeon in the process, then killed the other Word Bearers into the sacrificial bargain. A melta bomb at close range.

The third legionary, another sniper and probably one of those responsible for the shooting of Helon, Uzak and Shaka, had fallen back before the Raptor’s impassioned onslaught. Avus was another kill-notch on his rifle now, the Word Bearer’s disengagement from the fight leaving Numeon impotent to enact vengeance or make his own sacrifice.

By the time he got to the others, the fight had spilled out onto the streets. Domadus was down, Pergellen nowhere to be seen. K’gosi and Shen’ra remained, surrounded by the dead and dying. In desperation, the Techmarine set off a seismic charge, hoping to take their enclosing enemies with them. He succeeded in part, but collapsed the manufactorum’s already weak foundations.

Numeon remembered the ground coming apart beneath him, the sense of weightlessness akin to the last moments of a drop-pod insertion. Debris was coming down on top of him. A chunk ripped off his right pauldron and sent radial fractures up his arm. He clutched the sigil, Vulkan’s sigil, as they touched down in water. A sewer pipe, running fast, carrying them away from the battle, cheating them of the honourable death they had all earned.

Half submerged, the air rank with the stink of effluvia, Numeon stared up at the ceiling as crawling sewer vermin came to inspect the latest offerings from above but found them brittle and tough.

‘K’gosi…’ he breathed.

‘I am here.’

‘Can you move?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then wait for a time, wait until you can,’ said Numeon.

‘I’m not going anywhere, Pyre captain.’

‘Good,’ Numeon answered, half dazed and drifting in and out of consciousness. ‘That’s good.’

He still clung to the sigil and lifted the hammer icon into a shaft of light lancing through a crack in the wall to inspect it. It was smeared with grime; Numeon used his thumb to clean the sigil and was reminded of when he saw it last on Isstvan.

Isstvan V

The Contemptor lumbered through a pall of smoke, blood flecking its blue-and-white paintwork. Numerous blade and shell scars marred its armour, the true laurels of battle by which all warriors were ultimately judged, or so the XII Legion believed.

Ash-fall from the many thousands of fires was turning the sky grey. It baptised a cohort of warriors, clad to various degrees in ancient gladiatorial trappings and wielding ritual caedere weapons. They were the Rampagers, a deadly breed even amongst the Eaters of Worlds, and a throwback to Angron’s incarceration as a slave-fighter. Bellowing guttural war cries, they charged ahead of the Dreadnought to engage the Salamanders.

Numeon balked at what the battle-maddened World Eaters attempted. He counted no more than thirty men. Just three squads. Yet they charged over a hundred. Several went down to sporadic bolter fire. Some were clipped by shrapnel but kept on coming. Only those too injured to fight, unable to run because of missing limbs or critical wounds were halted. Something urgent and terrible spurred them on. Numeon had read reports of the ferocity of the XII. Even when they were the War Hounds, their reputation in battle, particularly close-quarters, was fearsome. As the reborn World Eaters under Angron, they had become something else. Rumours abounded within the ranks, of arcane devices that manipulated the legionaries’ tempers, simulacra of the ones embedded in Angron’s skull by his slavers.

Now he saw them, ignoring pain and injury, frothing with frenzy, Numeon believed those stories to be true.

A howling berserker, a falx blade in either hand, leapt at the primarch. Vulkan swatted him aside, but the crazed warrior managed to parry a killing stroke and came up fighting as he landed. A second Rampager whirled a chain with a barbed hook around his head. Lashing out, it snared Atanarius and dragged the swordsman into the World Eater’s killing arc.

Numeon had no time to react as he threw himself aside from a massive hammer smashing down at him. Driven by a small rocket-propelled ignition system, it struck the ground with meteoric force and trembled the earth underfoot. Varrun stepped in to engage the warrior but was taken off his feet by the hammer’s backswing. Trying to rush to Varrun’s aid, Numeon found the falx-armed legionary in his path. The Salamander blocked one swing of a curved blade, barely turning it aside as he felt the hook of the other rake his armoured face. One of the lenses cracked and he lost resolution in it. Ganne bore the frenzied legionary down and pummelled him with his storm shield, whilst Igataron crushed the World Eater’s shoulder to disarm him of the falx. The blood-splashed legionary was about to lunge, ignoring the excruciating pain he must be in, when Numeon impaled him through the chest with his glaive.

‘They are insane,’ growled Ganne.

Numeon nodded, and in the brief respite searched for the rest of his Pyre Guard to see how they were faring.

Varrun was still down but at least moving.

Atanarius was on his knees, butcher’s hooks digging into his armour, still snared by the chain. Skatar’var was trying to release him as Leodrakk fought the chain-wielder, but was finding the Rampager’s fury hard to counter. He staggered, on the defensive, and would have fallen if Vulkan hadn’t lifted the World Eater off his feet and rammed him head first into the ground to silence his screaming.

Another hammer-bearer smashed aside three of Heka’tan’s Fire-born, the Fourteenth and Fifth Companies having found a way through the trenches to engage the World Eaters. Gravius’s troops were still catching up. Below them, K’gosi and the Pyroclasts held the trench-works. Elsewhere on the slope, a much larger force of Firedrakes fought Angron’s Devourers to a bloody stalemate.

For once, the Lord of the Red Sands was close to his honour guard. Numeon heard him bellow a challenge, heard Vulkan’s name amongst the guttural syllables of his native tongue. The ash and smoke were thickening; down to one retinal lens, the other a static-veined mess, it was difficult to get a visual. He caught sight of Vulkan.

The primarch was trading blows with the Contemptor. Though it dwarfed him, the hefty war machine was slowly being taken apart. Vulkan had fought it back and was amongst the Firedrakes in the heart of the battle.

Torn between rejoining the primarch and gathering his brother Pyre Guard, Numeon ran to Varrun, who was still down.

‘Get up! This is far from over.’

Varrun muttered something, but did as he was told.

As he hauled his brother to his feet, Numeon found Vulkan again through the throng.

The Contemptor towered over him, twin power claws trailing jagged loops of energy. Its chest plate was badly dented and cables in its neck spat dangerously.

A dense muzzle flare erupted from Vulkan’s pistol. It had been a gift from Lord Manus, a gesture the primarch of the Salamanders had reciprocated. Discharged at close range, it severed the servos in the Dreadnought’s right arm, rendering one of its weapons limp and useless. Vulkan clambered up the Dreadnought’s torso and when he reached the summit rammed his sword downwards into its armoured head. Like a beast felled but still catching up to the realisation that it was slain, the Contemptor sank to one knee. Its dead arm hung loose by its side whilst the other gripped its knee, struggling for purchase.

Numeon rejoiced as the war machine collapsed, triumph turned to anguish when he saw the pair of Rampagers closing on the primarch. Vulkan was pinned, unable to release the weapon he had sunk so deep to kill his enemy. With a savage twist, the primarch snapped the blade and hurled its jagged remains at one of the Rampagers. It struck the savage gladiator in the face, goring out an eye and killing him instantly. Pushing back off the Dreadnought’s corpse with his feet, Vulkan dodged the eviscerator meant for his skull. It chewed into the Contemptor’s metal chassis instead, grinding metal and spitting sparks before getting stuck.

Yanking at the eviscerator’s hilt but unable to release the weapon, the Rampager roared and abandoned it, intending to take Vulkan on with his bare fists. The primarch had drawn Dawnbringerand took the Rampager’s head off with a desultory swing. Blood was still fountaining from the World Eater’s ragged stump of a neck when a shadow loomed on the ridge-line above.

Anointed in blood, partially obscured by scudding clouds of smoke and shimmering heat haze, Angron bellowed.

‘ Vulkan!’ His voice was the like fall of cities, rumbling and booming across the vast battlefield.

Angron jabbed down to his brother with one of the motorised axes he carried. Its blade was burring, roaring for blood. ‘ I name you high rider!’

Spittle frothed the red primarch’s lips. His oversized musculature, seemingly too tight for his vein-threaded skin, rippled. Thick ropes of sinew stood out on his neck. A scarred and war-beaten face, framed by the nest of cybernetic scalp-locks snaking back across his head, tensed as Angron’s eyes widened.

Farther down the slope, Vulkan gripped the haft of his hammer and went to meet his brother’s challenge.

Numeon saw it all, and almost urged his primarch to hold.

An arcing missile salvo from one of the traitor gun emplacements forced the Pyre captain’s attention skywards. He tracked the spear-headed missile all the way down, following its trajectory until it struck part of the slope between the two primarchs.

A firestorm lit the hillside, several tonnes of incendiary ordnance expressed in the expansive bloom of conflagration. It swept outwards in a turbulent wave, bathing the lower part of the slope in heat and flame. This was nothing compared to its epicentre. Firedrakes were immolated in that blast, blown apart and burned to ash in their Terminator armour.

A hundred dying sunsets faded from Numeon’s sight. Blinking back the savage afterglow he saw Vulkan wreathed in flames, but stepping from the blaze unharmed. The remaining Firedrakes gathered to him, tramping over the dead where they had to.

Badly burned, the Ravagers were still fighting. The Pyre Guard and some of Heka’tan’s men finished them before Numeon led the warriors after their lord. Varrun was limping. Atanarius clutched his side, but clung to his blade determinedly with one hand.

‘Are we whole, brothers?’ Numeon quickly asked.

Atanarius nodded.

Varrun gave a mocking laugh. ‘Perhaps we should look to increasing our ranks when this is over?’

Ganne came to his side, not supporting the veteran but keeping watch.

‘Are you my protector, brother?’ Varrun asked.

‘Not remotely,’ snarled Ganne, but didn’t leave him.

Igataron said nothing, and merely glowered. His eyes behind his retinal lenses always seemed to burn brighter than his brothers’.

Mauled as they had been by the World Eaters, Numeon knew that his warriors had suffered but would not stop until they were dead or the battle was over. But it was grievously attritional, and he was not ashamed to admit relief when he heard that the reinforcements coming in to make planetfall behind them.

Hundreds of landers and drop-pods choked the already suffocating sky, emblazoned with the iconography of the Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers and Night Lords. Even the sight of Konrad Curze’s Legion gave Numeon hope that the battle could be won and Horus brought to heel at last.

Vulkan had seen the arrival of his brothers and their Legions too, though he gave no outward sign of relief or premature triumph. He merely watched impassively as the manifold shuttles touched down and the loyalists took up position on the edge of the depression. Of Angron, there was no sign. The firestorm had beaten him back, it seemed, and now with the arrival of four more Legions, the Lord of the Red Sands had ordered a retreat.

Grainy static preceded the opening of the vox-link. All the Pyre Guard heard it, too, though it was on Vulkan’s channel, the primarch’s view that there could be no secrets from his inner circle. Through the choppy return, the Gorgon’s voice thundered.

‘ The enemy is beaten!’

His anger was obvious, his desire for retribution palpable. Lord Manus wanted blood to salve his wounded pride.

‘See how they run from us!’ he continued, an eager fervour affecting him. ‘ Now we push on, let none escape our vengeance!’

Numeon exchanged a glance with Varrun. The veteran was badly wounded but able to fight on. Atanarius was also struggling, whilst Skatar’var stayed close to his brother Leodrakk on account of his injuries. With reinforcements ready to deploy, it made sense to fall back and consolidate. Pressing the advance now yielded only glory and profligate death.

Vulkan was impassive, betraying none of his thoughts as he allowed Corax to speak up.

‘ Hold, Ferrus! The victory may yet be ours, but let our allies earn their share of honour in this battle. We have achieved a great victory, but not without cost. My Legion is bloodied and torn, as is Vulkan’s…’

Again, the primarch kept his own counsel, as the Ravenlord concluded his speech.

‘ I cannot imagine yours has not shed a great deal of blood to carry us this far.’

Lord Manus was belligerent. ‘We are bloodied, but unbowed.’

Making the most of the enemy’s retreat and the brief cessation in the fighting, Vulkan chose that moment to give voice. ‘As are we all. We should take a moment to catch our breath and bind our wounds before again diving headlong into such terrible battle.’ The cost of which lay all around, clad in bloody green armour.

‘We must consolidate what we have won,’ Vulkan suggested, ‘and let our newly arrived brothers continue the fight while we regroup.’

But the Gorgon smelled blood and would not relent.

‘ No! The traitors are beaten and all it will take is one final push to destroy them utterly!’

Corax tried a last attempt at reason.

‘ Ferrus, do not do anything foolish! We have already won!’

It was to no avail, as the link to the Iron Hands’ primarch went dead.

‘Our brother has overmuch pride, Corvus,’ said Vulkan candidly.

‘ He will get himself killed.’

‘He is too tough for that,’ Vulkan said, but Numeon heard the lie in his words, the hollow tone of his voice.

‘ I won’t be dragged in with him, Vulkan. I won’t lead my sons into another meatgrinder for the sake of his pride.’

‘Then hope reinforcement reaches him quickly, for he won’t be dissuaded by you or I.’

‘ I am converging on the dropsite. Will I meet you there?’

Vulkan paused and it felt like the few seconds stretched into minutes before he gave his answer. Numeon was reminded of their words aboard the Fireforge, of Ferrus Manus’s wrath being his undoing, of the foreseen distemper in Horus and the profound disquiet about this very battle. They rose up in the Pyre Guard captain, threatening to choke him with their sense of foreboding.

‘Aye,’ said Vulkan at length. ‘We shall consolidate at the dropsite. Perhaps Ferrus will see sense and muster with us.’

‘ He won’t.’

‘No, you’re probably right.’ Vulkan ended the transmission. It was as if a mantle of grief lay about his shoulders, heavy with the burden of a fear that had been confirmed in what he’d just heard or felt. Numeon could not explain it.

‘Order all companies to fall back to the dropsite,’ Vulkan told him.

Numeon voxed down to K’gosi at once. The Pyroclasts had all but cleansed the trenches of the enemy, leaving the route back clear and open.

Whilst the retreat of Horus’s rebels was ragged and disorganised, the warriors of the XVIII and XIX Legions fell back in good order. Tanks returned to column, rumbling slowly but steadily back down the slope. The scorched trenches emptied as legionaries filed out in vast hosts, company banners still flying. They were battered but resolute. The dead and injured came with them, dragged or borne aloft by their still standing brothers. It was a great exodus, the black and green ocean of war retreating with the tide to leave the flotsam of their slain enemy behind it.

Most of the fortifications were destroyed. Huge sections of earthworks and spiked embankments lay open like rotting wounds. Bodies were impaled upon them, some clad in dusky white, others in arterial red or lurid purple. It was the evidence of fratricide a thousand times over, and it was this that Vulkan lingered behind to look upon before he quit the field.

‘This is not victory,’ he murmured. ‘It is death. It is bonds broken and bloody. And it shall mark us all for generations.’

On the northern side of the Urgall Depression, a fresh sea made ready to sweep in and carry all of the mortal debris away.

Across from the muster field of the Salamanders, which was little more than a laager of drop-ships, were the Iron Warriors. Armoured in steel-grey with black-and-yellow chevrons, the IV Legion looked stark and stern. They had erected a barricade, the armoured bastions of their own landing craft alloyed together, to bolster the northern face of the slope. Great cannons were raised aloft behind it, their snouts pointing to the ash-smothered sky. A line of battle tanks sat in front, bearing the grim icon of a metal-helmeted skull. And in front of that, Iron Warriors arrayed in their cohorts, thousands strong. They held their silence and their weapons across their bodies, with no more life than automatons.

The drop-zone was flooded with warriors now, as a makeshift camp materialised to serve the injured and secure the bodies of the dead. Tank yards manifested as labour teams of Techmarines and servitors assembled to make standing repairs. Multiple triage stations were being set up in the lee of the larger Stormbirds, whilst the holds of some Thunderhawks acted as emergency infirmaries. The able-bodied looked to their armour and weapons. Quartermasters took stock, replenished ammunition and materiel where they could. Officers reorganised in the face of casualties. Subalterns and equerries gave brief reports to line officers, and standard bearers acted as rally points as the entire Vexillarius was put into motion organising for the second assault.

Not a single legionary about the XVIII stood idle.

Yet the Iron Warriors, the entire muster on the northern slope, neither spoke nor moved beyond what was necessary to assemble.

Chief Apothecary Sen’garees voxed through to the command echelon, including Vulkan and the Pyre Guard, complaining of the lack of reply regarding requests for aid, specifically medical.

Numeon felt a grim silence descend across the whole Urgall Depression like when a storm eclipses the sun, as he saw Captain Ral’stan of the Firedrakes raise his fist in salute to their iron allies.

Not one responded to his hail. Only the wind kicking at their banners gave any sense of animus to the IV Legion throng.

‘Why do they ignore us?’ asked Leodrakk openly.

Vulkan was staring in the direction of his brother, Perturabo. The Lord of Iron returned the Lord of Drakes’ gimlet gaze with one of his own.

‘Because we are betrayed…’ said Vulkan, disbelieving, horror turning to anger on his face, ‘To arms!’

More than ten thousand guns answered, the weapons of their allies turned on them with traitorous intent.