One of them came in, almost at the level of the roofline, and sprayed two warning salvos of fire from its twin-linked heavy bolters. The grouped blasts blew out great sections of the portico roof, directly behind Curze. Flames, dust and fragmented tiles erupted in all directions.
Curze, furious at the intervention, turned and shrieked directly into the lights of the Storm Eagle. The gunship had a confirmed lock on him, and its weapons blazed.
In a huge bound that spread his cloak behind him like wings, Curze leapt clean off the portico and landed on the hull of the Storm Eagle. Its engines immediately started to wail as it recoiled from the roofline. Its nose dipped as it turned out.
Curze clung on. He punched his right fist through the cockpit canopy, and seized the human pilot-serf by the throat, the blades of his claw encircling the man’s collar.
Attempting to flee, Curze hijacks a Storm Eagle gunship
‘Away from here,’ he hissed over the screaming engines and streaming wind.
The pilot looked at him, eyes wide, choking.
‘Now!’ Curze added.
Unsteady, yawing badly to starboard, the Storm Eagle turned and began to move across the gate yard away from the Residency. It was running at less than rooftop height.
‘Climb,’ Curze insisted over the headwind. ‘Climb!’
The gunship began to gain altitude.
Behind it, Vulkan braced himself and leapt too. He slammed onto the gunship’s starboard tail wing on his belly, and held on. The impact made the gunship sway laterally as it continued on its slow, advancing hover.
Vox channels went wild. The squads of Ultramarines in the Portis Yard and Residency quadrangle started to fire in a free-for-all at the wavering gunship, realising that it had to be sacrificed if Curze was to be stopped.
Bolt-rounds and las-bolts clipped and boomed off the Storm Eagle’s armoured hull. Sparks leapt and shrapnel flew. Fireballs bloomed and left scorched patches on its armoured skin.
Curze looked down the hull of the Storm Eagle and saw Vulkan. The gunship’s nose was coming up. It was approaching the line of the Aegis Wall. Curze kept his hand clamped around the pilot, threatening to shear his head from his shoulders.
‘Over!’ he said.
Vulkan clawed his way up the wing, over the starboard engine cowling. Curze judged the weight of the mace in his free hand. He waited until Vulkan clambered clear of the cowling. Then he hurled the weapon with a vicious snap-sling of his arm.
The mace’s head struck Vulkan in the face. He lost his grip, and flew sideways, into the Storm Eagle’s tail assembly, which he tried to grab hold of.
He failed, and fell off the gunship’s stern.
Vulkan plummeted about thirty metres. He neither landed on the yard inside the Aegis Wall, nor fell the greater depth of the wall and Castrum on the outside.
Instead, he struck the top of the wall, smashing into the castellations with a force that broke his spine. Then he dropped, limp, and folded onto his side on the wall-top walkway, a bright mirror of blood leaking out of his shattered body, his life seemingly extinguished once more.
The gunship, with Curze clinging to its cockpit assembly, continued over the wall. Ferocious hails of gunfire chased it from the yards and wall-top. It slugged on. The Castrum dropped away. Curze was high over the city and the parkland.
‘Down!’ he hissed.
The pilot gurgled. He had been bleeding profusely since Curze had first smashed the canopy in his face, and seized his throat. The gunship began to bank towards the towers and spires of the city.
Gunfire continued to track it from the walls and battlements. The second Storm Eagle, searchlamps blazing, thundered over the Aegis Wall in pursuit, taking a far more direct and aggressive path than its stricken twin. The other gunships aloft circled back to allow the Storm Eagle to take its kill.
Curze glanced back, the night wind lashing his hair, and saw it gaining.
‘Down!’ he ordered.
The Storm Eagle began to drop fast. The spires, city halls and residential citadel spires north of Martial Square rose to meet it, their windows lit. Raid sirens were blaring down in the streets. Curze could see the criss-cross light streams of traffic in the streets below. Titan’s Gate, immense and unlit, was a black henge, a silhouette against the distant bright radiance of the landing fields far to the south.
‘Down!’ Curze ordered again.
They were lumbering low over the high tops of towers and domed vaults, or even between the bulk of the tallest spires. Their course was arching east of Martial Square, swinging towards the high, block shapes of the Treasury and the new Senate House.
The Storm Eagle chasing them began to fire. Bright heavy bolter fire spat orange darts through the night, shots that reflected off the high windows of the towers on either side of them. They found their mark. Parts of the tail assembly burst away in a shower of spalled metal and a gout of burning gases.
The gunship that Curze was riding lurched, its engines straining.
They were losing height very fast, nearly smashing into the north face of the Consular Record Building. The starboard wingtip raked a flurry of squealing sparks off the building’s stonework.
Curze had been watching his visions all the while, letting them play through his head like that damaged pict-feed, sorting the true from the false, the trustworthy from the untrustworthy. His entire operation since planetfall had been guided and directed by his visions.
Vulkan. Vulkan was the only part of it that his visions had not shown, nor even hinted at.
He saw glass now. Water, fire. A specific dome.
More shots hit the diving Storm Eagle from behind. A greater chunk of it exploded and broke away. It fell rather than flew, no longer controllable, a chunk of mangled debris arcing like a meteor to impact, trailing fire and wreckage. Twenty metres above the rooftops. Curze saw the dome, the particular dome. He let go of the pilot’s throat and jumped, falling away from the plunging gunship.
Feet first, he hit the dome of the building, a great and ornate crystal canopy, which shattered under him. Pinwheeling in a torrent of glittering fragments, he fell hard and hit water in a plume of spray.
The Storm Eagle, leaving huge, jumping yellow flames in its wake, continued on for another five seconds, and struck the east facade of the Treasury building fifteen metres above the street. It made a dazzling orange fireball that punched through the wall and incinerated the chambers within, and simultaneously spat back into the night sky, lofting and expanding and raining burning fuel and micro-debris. A nanosecond after impact, as the fireball was forming, the Storm Eagle’s munitions payload went off, and a second, larger, brighter fireball engulfed the first, blooming like a small sun over the Treasury Yard. The orange glare was reflected in a million windows, except in the nearby streets where the blast blew all of the casements out.
Curze surfaced in a spray of water and shook his head. He was in the principal Nymphaeum of Magna Macragge Civitas. A large, circular building with columns supporting the famous crystal dome, it housed the oldest of the natural springs that had been worshipped in the days of the Battle Kings as sacred to the water spirits.
Curze thrashed to the edge of the stone pool and rose out of the water, letting it stream off him onto the flagstones. He glanced back at the spring-fed pool, polluted with fragments of smashed crystal. The clear water was stained. There was a fair measure of blood in it.
Not all of it belonged to Curze, not by any means.
He smiled, a black crescent in the sloshing blue twilight of the Nymphaeum. He walked towards the exit, towards a night-bound city lit by the fury of burning wreckage.
Curze understood cities at night. The secret was, you either made them darker, or you made them burn.
He waited for the visions to show him where to go next, and which of those things to do.
Tetra
rch Dolor strode along the walkway, on top of the high Aegis Wall, staring at the fireball blooming over the eastern Neapolis. The night sky was full of circling, beating gunships.
Verus Caspean waited for him.
‘Is that a kill?’ Dolor asked.
‘His escape vehicle was brought down east of the Martial Square,’ said Caspean.
‘Can we confirm his death?’ Dolor asked.
‘Not yet, lord tetrarch,’ replied Caspean. ‘Forces are on the ground. We’re waiting for word.’
‘I want a body,’ said Dolor, ‘preferably one I can spit on. Burned bones at least.’
‘Yes, lord tetrarch.’
‘Less with the “lord tetrarch”, my noble and good friend, Verus,’ said Dolor. He looked Caspean in the eye. ‘Phratus has fallen. Until the Avenging Son can be found, I have authority in the Fortress, and I directly name you First Master to succeed Auguston.’
‘My lord.’
‘We must surely maintain and reinforce the chain of command in this black hour, Verus,’ said Dolor. ‘You will perform the duty in superlative fashion.’
‘Thank you, tetrarch,’ said Caspean, saluting and bowing.
‘We will know no fear, First Master Caspean,’ replied Dolor, saluting back. ‘Make your respect known!’
The Ultramarines around them clattered out brisk salutes.
‘Will we know no fear, Valentus?’ Caspean asked. ‘This night may have seen the violent death, in the space of one full hour, of four of the Emperor’s sons.’
‘These bold and dread facts are yet to be confirmed,’ replied Dolor.
‘One might be,’ Caspean replied. He led the tetrarch along the defensive platform to a section of the battlement that was wet with blood. Ultramarines stood all around, their heads bowed.
Vulkan lay in a broken heap, on the walkway, surrounded by a wide slick of his lifeblood.
‘In the spirit of our brothers, the Salamanders,’ said Caspean, ‘Vulkan lived. But he does so no longer.’
Dolor was about to reply when the vital sensors of every man in the vicinity, including his own, went off. They had all been set to maximum yield earlier that evening, in the hope of detecting the Night Haunter as he hunted through the dark.
A brand-new life trace had been detected within five metres of them.
‘Great Terra!’ Caspean exclaimed.
Vulkan sat up in the pool of blood. He gazed at them, his eyes like the hearts of red suns.
‘My lord,’ said Dolor, taking a step forward. ‘My honoured Lord Vulkan, we–’
Vulkan ignored him and got up. He took several deep breaths as if scenting the air, and gazed over the lip of the Aegis Wall towards the hot fire burning in the Treasury quarter.
‘My lord,’ Dolor urged, ‘will you speak to us? Will you tell us where you have been, what has befallen you, and how you come to us? My lord, I–’
Vulkan didn’t look back. He jumped onto the rampart of the Aegis Wall, spread his arms wide, and stepped off.
He fell, magnificent, like a cliff-diver, head first into the dark green space of the parkland below the Castrum.
20
Alignment
‘Cut in darkness, and you are called a monster;
cut in starlight, and you are proclaimed a god.’
– The Nocturniad, Eleventh Cycle.
They hurried through the subsystem of Strayko Deme, moving through the ancient but well-maintained network of sewers, outfalls and storm drains that lay beneath the paved streets and refined avenues. Occasionally, light fell upon them through drain gratings or grilles, and where it did, it was tinged with flame.
‘Why are we moving?’ John asked. Narek had unbound him, but hustled him along on a leash of dirty rope tied around the Perpetual’s neck.
‘You heard the blast.’
‘It could have been anything.’
‘Tell me it wasn’t.’
‘I can’t tell you anything, Narek–’
‘Respect!’
‘I can’t tell you anything, my lord,’ John Grammaticus repeated in a low voice. ‘This close to that torc you’re wearing, I’m limited to virtually nothing. And I’m in pain.’
‘That is a shame.’
‘Tell me what you know then.’
Narek came to a halt. They had just entered the cistern of a wide storm drain, circular in cross-section. Dark, pungent water rippled around their feet as they came to a stop.
‘Some form of aircraft crashed, not far from where I had you secured. The authorities of the city will be closing in. I can fight Ultramarines well enough, but perhaps not all the Ultramarines. So, we’re moving.’
‘To where?’
‘Wherever I can find. Come on.’
John paused.
‘Come on!’ Narek hissed, snapping on the rope. John lurched, his neck jerked painfully.
‘Look, Narek. My lord. I could help more than this.’
Narek of the Word looked at him carefully.
‘You are full of mind-tricks and deceit, John Grammaticus… or Caeron Sebaton… or whoever else you ever are. Our business on Traoris taught me that.’
John nodded.
‘Yeah, I bloody am.’ He ran an index finger around the inside of the noose to loosen it. ‘If I could escape from you, Narek, I would. There, I’m honest, at least. You are dangerous. You’re never more than a few moments away from killing me, and you don’t trust me. But this, Narek of the Word, this is not a good position for either of us to be in.’
John stepped towards the frowning Word Bearer. Oozing water rolled around his ankles.
‘There are worse allies to have than a Space Marine,’ he offered, ‘just as there are worse allies to have than a Perpetual. Of course, that’s true only if they get to work to their strengths. Take off the torc.’
‘No.’
‘Take it off.’
‘No,’ said Narek. ‘I am no fool. You are high-function. You would… blow out my brain with an aneurism with one thought-blink, and leave me dead. Or something.’
John shrugged.
‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘Though that would be worst case, and at least it would be quick.’
‘You could do that?’ asked Narek.
‘Of course I couldn’t!’ John snapped. ‘I’m a telepath, not a telekine. I can do all sorts of things, Narek. I can read your mind, or let you read mine, speak any language, be anyone I like, surveil the area for psykana sensitivity, or even look into the ghostly filaments of the near-past and near-future… None of which sound like bad ideas, right now. It would be good to have more immediate combat intel than “something crashed so we had to run”.’
Narek grunted.
‘I could read disposition,’ said John. ‘I could tell you where the Ultramarines are. I could guide us. I could alert us to proximate activity. I could find what we’re looking for.’
‘You’re dangerous,’ Narek whispered.
‘So are you. And right now, my lord, I think leaving me hooded is making this situation even more dangerous than it has to be for both of us.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ said Narek, clenching his steel-gloved fist around the rope to yank it again.
‘I know,’ John replied, ‘but you want to use me as a weapon to assassinate your dear, beloved primarch, so I think you’ll probably have to start trusting me at some point, or that’s never ever going to become a practical possibility. Weapons need love, respect, careful handling and a chance to excel in their particular way. Ask your sword. Ask that ridiculously large damned rifle of yours.’
John took a step closer. The rope between them slackened.
‘Narek, trust is the issue here. Let me open my mind. Let me allow us to see each other’s thoughts. There’s a lot of common ground, I think, more than you’d imagine. We’re never going
to be alike, you and me, but I think we’re aligned.’
‘Aligned?’ the Word Bearer asked, his voice very small and hollow.
‘Yes. We’re in alignment. We’re not like the hands of a clock at midnight. We’re never going to point in the same direction. But think of the hands at six o’clock.’
He paused.
‘You know what a clock is, right?’
‘I’ve seen them,’ Narek nodded. He was more used to digital chronometer displays.
‘At six o’clock, the hands point in opposite directions, but they make a straight line,’ said John. ‘They are in alignment.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you?’
Narek nodded. ‘It is a metaphor for cooperation between two individuals who have conflicting aims, but many common values.’
‘Right. Shit, that’s right.’
Narek hesitated.
‘I am alone,’ he admitted eventually. ‘I have turned against my Legion. I have killed a certain number of my brothers. But my Legion has turned, so I am an outsider to all others. No loyalist would ever trust me, no Imperial Fist or Iron Hand, and – since Calth – no noble Ultramarine. I am cursed at every turn. All I can do is make amends. All I can do is cleanse and restore my Legion, for it was once so great! It was beautiful, John Grammaticus. It was the truest expression of the Emperor’s word.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ John said, ‘and I’m not mocking you when I say that. You scare me half to death, Narek of the Word, but I admire you. The way Horus’s war has played out, the brothers of the Word Bearers are on the wrong side. You’ve thrown yourselves in with darkness. So, understand me. I’m astonished by you, by your resilience and loyalty to the original high principles of your Legion. The cosmos believes all Word Bearers to be traitors, heretics and rebels, but you, alone, have rebelled against their rebellion. I admire that. That’s why I’m even considering helping you in your cause.’
He shrugged.
‘But I wish you’d let me read you, so I could be sure the tale you’re spinning me is true. The Word Bearers manipulate truth. Your story could simply be a way of obtaining me and the spear for Lorgar.’