Lucius held up the limb-blade.
‘You taint us,’ Anteus said. ‘Shame on you. Using an enemy’s claw like a sword…’
‘Throw it away, captain,’ Eidolon said. ‘I’m surprised at you.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Tarvitz?’
‘Yes, my lord?’
‘The Blood Angels will require some proof of their fallen. Some relic they can honour. You say shreds of armour hung from those trees. Go and retrieve some. Lucius can help you.’
‘My lord, should we not secure this—’
‘I gave you an order, captain. Execute it please, or does the honour of our brethren Legion mean nothing to you?’
‘I only thought to—’
‘Did I ask for your counsel? Are you a lord commander, and privy to the higher links of command?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Then get to it, captain. You too, Lucius. You men, assist them.’
THE LOCAL SHIELD-STORM had blown out. The sky over the wide clearing was surprisingly clear and pale, as if night was finally falling. Tarvitz had no idea of Murder’s diurnal cycle. Since they had made planetfall, night and day periods must surely have passed, but in the stalk forests, lit by the storm flare, such changes had been imperceptible.
Now it seemed cooler, stiller. The sky was a washed-out beige, with filaments of darkness threading through it. There was no wind, and the flicker of sheet lightning came from many kilometres away. Tarvitz thought he could even glimpse stars up there, in the darker patches of the open sky.
He led his party out to the ruins of the trees. Lucius was grumbling as if it was all Tarvitz’s fault.
‘Shut up,’ Tarvitz told him on a closed channel. ‘Consider this ample payback for your kiss-arse display to the lord commander.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Lucius asked.
‘I told him it was a waste, lord,’ Tarvitz answered, mimicking Lucius’s words in an unflattering voice.
‘I did tell you!’
‘Yes, you did, but there’s such a thing as solidarity. I thought we were friends.’
‘We are friends,’ Lucius said, hurt.
‘And that was the act of a friend?’
‘We are the Emperor’s Children,’ Lucius said solemnly. ‘We seek perfection, we don’t hide our mistakes. You made a mistake. Acknowledging our failures is another step on the road to perfection. Isn’t that what our primarch teaches?’
Tarvitz frowned. Lucius was right. Primarch Fulgrim taught that only by imperfection could they fail the Emperor, and only by recognising those failures could they eradicate them. Tarvitz wished someone would remind Eidolon of that key tenet of their Legion’s philosophy.
‘I made a mistake,’ Lucius admitted. ‘I used that blade thing. I relished it. It was xenos. Lord Eidolon was right to reprimand me.’
‘I told you it was xenos. Twice.’
‘Yes, you did. I owe you an apology for that. You were right, Saul. I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind.’
Lucius put his hand on Tarvitz’s plated arm and stopped him.
‘No, it’s not. I’m a fine one to talk. You are always so grounded, Saul. I know I mock you for that. I’m sorry. I hope we’re still friends.’
‘Of course.’
‘Your steadfast manner is a true virtue,’ Lucius said. ‘I become obsessive sometimes, in the heat of things. It is an imperfection of my character. Perhaps you can help me overcome it. Perhaps I can learn from you.’ His voice had that childlike tone in it that had made Tarvitz like him in the first place. ‘Besides,’ Lucius added, ‘you saved my life. I haven’t thanked you for that.’
‘No, you haven’t, but there’s no need, brother.’
‘Then let’s get this done, eh?’
The other men had waited while Tarvitz and Lucius conducted their private, vox-to-vox conversation. The pair hurried over to rejoin them.
The men Eidolon had picked to go with them were Bulle, Pherost, Lodoroton and Tykus, all men from Tarvitz’s squad. Eidolon was so clearly punishing the troop, it wasn’t funny. Tarvitz hated the fact that his men suffered because he was not in favour.
And Tarvitz had a feeling they weren’t being punished for wasting charges. They were suffering Eidolon’s opprobrium because they had achieved more of significance than either of the other groups since the drop.
They reached the ruined trees and crunched up the slopes of smouldering white slag. Remnants of stone thorns stuck out of the heap, like the antlers of bull deer, some blackened with charred scraps of flesh.
‘What do we do?’ asked Tykus.
Tarvitz sighed, and knelt down in the white spoil. He began to sift aside the chalky debris with his gloved hands. ‘This,’ he said.
THEY WORKED FOR an hour or two. Some kind of night began to fall, and the air temperature dropped sharply as the light drained out of the sky. Stars came out, properly, and distant lightning played across the endless grass forests ringing the clearing.
Immense heat was issuing from the heart of the slag heap, and it made the cold air around them shimmer. They sifted the dusty slag piece by piece, and retrieved two battered shoulder plates, both Blood Angels issue, and an Imperial army cap. ‘Is that enough?’ asked Lodoroton. ‘Keep going,’ replied Tarvitz. He looked out across the dim clearing to where Eidolon’s force was dug in. ‘Another hour, maybe, and we’ll stop.’
Lucius found a Blood Angels helmet. Part of the skull was still inside it. Tykus found a breastplate belonging to one of the lost Emperor’s Children. ‘Bring that too,’ Tarvitz said.
Then Pherost found something that almost killed him.
It was one of the winged clades, burned and buried, but still alive. As Pherost pulled the calcified cinders away, the crumpled black thing, wingless and ruptured, reared up and stabbed at him with its hooked headcrest. Pherost stumbled, fell, and slithered down the slag slope on his back. The clade struggled after him, dragging its damaged body, its broken wing bases vibrating pointlessly.
Tarvitz leapt over and slew it with his broadsword. It was so near death and dried out that its body crumpled like paper under his blade, and only a residual ichor, thick like glue, oozed out.
‘All right?’ Tarvitz asked.
‘Just took me by surprise,’ Pherost replied, laughing it off.
‘Watch how you go,’ Tarvitz warned the others.
‘Do you hear that?’ asked Lucius.
It had become very still and dark, like a true and proper night fall. Amping their helmet acoustics, they could all hear the chittering noise Lucius had detected. In the edges of the thickets, starlight flashed off busy metallic forms.
‘They’re back,’ said Lucius, looking round at Tarvitz.
‘Tarvitz to main party,’ Tarvitz voxed. ‘Hostile contact in the edges of the forest.’
‘We see it, captain,’ Eidolon responded immediately. ‘Hold your position until we—’
The link cut off abruptly, like it was being jammed.
‘We should go back,’ Lucius said.
‘Yes,’ Tarvitz agreed.
A sudden light and noise made them all start. The main party, half a kilometre away, had opened fire. Across the distance, they heard and saw bolters drumming and flashing in the darkness. Distant zinc-grey forms danced and jittered in the strobing light of the gunfire.
Eidolon’s position had been attacked.
‘Come on!’ Lucius cried.
‘And do what?’ Tarvitz asked. ‘Wait! Look!’
The six of them scrambled down into cover on one side of the spoil heap. Megarachnid were approaching from the edges of the forest, their marching grey forms almost invisible except where they caught the starlight and the distant blink of lightning. They were streaming towards the tree mound in their hundreds, in neat, ordered lines. Amongst them, there were other shapes, bigger shapes, massive megarachnid forms. Another clade variant.
Tarvitz’s party slid down the chalky rubble and backed away into the open, t
he expanse of the clearing behind them, keeping low. To their right, Lord Eidolon’s position was engulfed in loud, furious combat.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Bulle.
‘Look,’ said Tarvitz.
The columns of megarachnid ascended the heap of rubble. Warrior forms, equipped with quad-blades, took station around the base, on guard. Others mounted the slopes and began to sort the spoil, clearing it with inhuman speed and efficiency. Tarvitz saw warrior forms doing this work, and also clades of a similar design, but which possessed spatulate shovel limbs in place of blades. With minute precision, the megarachnid began to disassemble the rubble heap, and carry the loose debris away into the thickets. They formed long, mechanical work gangs to do this. The more massive forms, the clades Tarvitz had not seen before, came forwards. They were superheavy monsters with short, thick legs and gigantic abdomens. They moved ponderously, and began to gnaw and suck on the loose rubble with ghastly, oversized mouth-parts. The smaller clades scurried around their hefty forms, pulling skeins of white matter from their abdominal sphincters with curiously dainty, weaving motions of their upper limbs. The smaller clades carried this fibrous, stiffening matter back into the increasingly cleared site and began to plaster it together.
‘They’re rebuilding the trees,’ Bulle whispered.
It was an extraordinary sight. The massive clades, weavers, were consuming the broken scraps of the trees Tarvitz had felled, and turning them into fresh new material, like gelling concrete. The smaller clades, busy and scurrying, were taking the material and forming new bases with it in the space that others of their kind had cleared.
In less than ten minutes, much of the area had been picked clean, and the trunks of three new trees were being formed. The scurrying builders brought limb loads of wet, milk white matter to the bases, and then regurgitated fluid onto them so as to mix them as cement. Their limbs whirred and shaped like the trowels of master builders.
Still, the battle behind them roared. Lucius kept glancing in the direction of the fight.
‘We should go back,’ he whispered. ‘Lord Eidolon needs us.’
‘If he can’t win without the six of us,’ Tarvitz said, ‘he can’t win. I felled these trees. I’ll not see them built again. Who’s with me?’
Bulle answered ‘Aye.’ So did Pherost, Lodoroton and Tykus.
‘Very well,’ said Lucius. ‘What do we do?’
But Tarvitz had already drawn his broadsword and was charging the megarachnid workers.
THE FIGHT THAT followed was simple insanity. The six Astartes, blades out, bolters ready, rushed the megarachnid work gangs and made war upon them in the cold night air. Picket clades, warrior forms drawn up as sentinels around the edge of the site, alerted to them first and rushed out in defence. Lucius and Bulle met them and slaughtered them, and Tarvitz and Tykus ploughed on into the main site to confront the industrious builder forms. Pherost and Lodoroton followed them, firing wide to fend off flank strikes.
Tarvitz attacked one of the monster ‘weaver’ forms, one of the builder clades, and split its massive belly wide open with his sword. Molten cement poured out like pus, and it began to claw at the sky with its short, heavy limbs. Warrior forms leapt over its stricken mass to attack the Imperials. Tykus shot two out of the air and then decapitated a third as it pounced on him. The megarachnid were everywhere, milling like ants.
Lodoroton had slain eight of them, including another monster clade, when a warrior form bit off his head. As if unsatisfied with that, the warrior form proceeded to flense Lodoroton’s body apart with its four limb-blades. Blood and meat particles spumed into the cold air. Bulle shot the warrior clade dead with a single bolt round. It dropped on its face.
Lucius hacked his way through the outer guards, which were closing on him in ever increasing numbers. He swung his sword, no longer playing, no longer toying. This was test enough.
He’d killed sixteen megarachnid by the time they got him. A clade with spatulate limbs, bearing a cargo of wet milky cement, fell apart under his sword strokes, and dying, dumped its payload on him. Lucius fell, his arms and legs glued together by the wet load. He tried to break free, but the organic mulch began to thicken and solidify. A warrior clade pounced on him and made to skewer him with its four blade arms.
Tarvitz shot it in the side of the body and knocked it away. He stood over Lucius to protect him from the xenos scum. Bulle came to his side, shooting and chopping. Pherost fought his way to join them, but fell as a limb-blade punched clean through his torso from behind. Tykus backed up close. The three remaining Emperor’s Children blazed and sliced away at the enclosing foe. At their feet, Lucius struggled to free himself and get up.
‘Get this off me, Saul!’ he yelled.
Tarvitz wanted to. He wanted to be able to turn and hack free his stricken friend, but there was no space. No time. The megarachnid warrior clades were all over them now, chittering and slashing. If he broke off even for a moment, he would be dead.
Thunder boomed in the clear night sky. Caught up in the fierce warfare, Tarvitz paid it no heed. Just the shield-storm returning.
But it wasn’t.
Meteors were dropping out of the sky into the clearing around them, impacting hard and super-hot in the red dirt, like lightning strikes. Two, four, a dozen, twenty.
Drop-pods.
The noise of fresh fire rang out above the din of the fight. Bolters boomed. Plasma weapons shrieked. The drop-pods kept falling like bombs.
‘Look!’ Bulle cried out. ‘Look!’
The megarachnid were swarming over them. Tarvitz had lost his bolter and could barely swing his broadsword, such was the density of enemies upon him. He felt himself slowly being borne over by sheer weight of numbers.
‘—hear me?’ The vox squealed suddenly.
‘W-what? Say again!’
‘I said, we are Imperial! Do we have brothers in there?’
‘Yes, in the name of Terra—’
An explosion. A series of rapid gunshots. A shockwave rocked through the enemy masses.
‘Follow me in,’ a voice was yelling, commanding and deep. ‘Follow me in and drive them back!’
More searing explosions. Grey bodies blew apart in gouts of flame, spinning broken limbs into the air like matchwood. One whizzing limb smacked into Tarvitz’s visor and knocked him onto his back. The world, scarlet and concussed, spun for a second.
A hand reached down towards Tarvitz. It swam into his field of view. It was an Astartes gauntlet. White, with black edging.
‘Up you come, brother.’
Tarvitz grabbed at it and felt himself hauled upright.
‘My thanks,’ he yelled, mayhem still raging all around him. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Tarik, brother,’ said his saviour. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
FIVE
Informal formalities
The war dogs’ rebuke
I can’t say
IT WAS A little cruel, in Loken’s opinion. Someone, somewhere – and Loken suspected the scheming of Maloghurst – had omitted to tell the officers of the 140th Expedition Fleet exactly who they were about to welcome on board.
The Vengeful Spirit, and its attendant fleet consorts, had drawn up majestically into high anchorage alongside the vessels of the 140th and the other ships that had come to the expedition’s aid, and an armoured heavy shuttle had transferred from the flagship to the battle-barge Misericord.
Mathanual August and his coterie of commanders, including Eidolon’s equerry Eshkerrus, had assembled on one of the Misericord’s main embarkation decks to greet the shuttle. They knew it was bearing the commanders of the relief taskforce from the 63rd Expedition, and that inevitably meant officers of the XVI Legion. With the possible exception of Eshkerrus, they were all nervous. The arrival of the Luna Wolves, the most famed and feared of all Astartes divisions, was enough to tension any man’s nerve strings.
When the shuttle’s landing ramp extended and ten Luna Wolves descended throug
h the clearing vapour, there had been silence, and that silence had turned to stifled gasps when it became apparent these were not the ten brothers of a captain’s ceremonial detail, but ten captains themselves in full, formal wargear.
The first captain led the party, and made the sign of the aquila to Mathanual August.
‘I am—’ he began.
‘I know who you are, lord,’ August said, and bowed deeply, trembling. There were few in the Imperium who didn’t recognise or fear First Captain Abaddon. ‘I welcome you and—’
‘Hush, master,’ Abaddon said. ‘We’re not there yet.’
August looked up, not really understanding. Abaddon stepped back into his place, and the ten, cloaked captains, five on each side of the landing ramp, formed an honour guard and snapped to attention, visors front and hands on the pommels of their sheathed swords.
The Warmaster emerged from the shuttle. Everyone, apart from the ten captains and Mathanual August, immediately prostrated themselves on the deck.
The Warmaster stepped slowly down the ramp. His very presence was enough to inspire total and unreserved attention, but he was, quite calculatedly, doing the one thing that made matters even worse. He wasn’t smiling.
August stood before him, his eyes wide open, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly, like a beached fish.
Eshkerrus, who had himself gone quite green, glanced up and yanked at the hem of August’s robes. ‘Abase yourself, fool!’ he hissed.
August couldn’t. Loken doubted the veteran fleet master could have even recalled his own name at that moment. Horus came to a halt, towering over him.
‘Sir, will you not bow?’ Horus inquired.
When August finally replied, his voice was a tiny, embryonic thing. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember how.’
Then, once again, the Warmaster showed his limitless genius for leadership. He sank to one knee and bowed to Mathanual August.
‘I have come, as fast as I was able, to help you, sir,’ he said. He clasped August in an embrace. The Warmaster was smiling now. ‘I like a man who’s proud enough not to bend his knees to me,’ he said.
‘I would have bent them if I had been able, my lord,’ August said. Already August was calmer, gratefully put at his ease by the Warmaster’s informality.