‘The Emperor be praised,’ said Caspean.
‘I feared the night’s losses were too great for us to bear,’ said Farith Redloss.
‘There is the small matter of us returning,’ said the Lion. ‘We have stepped across eternity, so it seems, by simple force of will, of need. It was not a conscious decision, but rather one of the emotions.’
He stepped forward, but did not seem able to pass into the Reading Room. Every time he came too far, he simply vanished from the field. Striding back into view, he glanced at Dantioch in frustration.
‘It did not promise it was a two-way process, my lord,’ said the warsmith, and sighed. ‘Try to focus on your greatest need, your greatest wish.’
‘I should make a wish?’ said the Lion. ‘You make it sound like a fairy story.’
‘Perhaps such technologies and their functions are the root of such stories,’ said Dantioch.
The Lion scowled.
‘I do not wish to be here,’ he said. Again, he seemed to have no success in stepping out of the field.
Guilliman stepped forward beside him. Just like the Lion, he too passed out of sight, unable to step across. Guilliman shook his head and smiled a sad smile, regarding his failure more stoically than had the Lion. He stared out at his officers.
‘I have news,’ he said, ‘which if I cannot cross over I must at least urgently impart to you. First, though, tell me – has Curze been captured? Slain, even?’
‘Not yet, my lord,’ said Dolor.
‘You will update me,’ Guilliman replied, nodding. ‘He must be apprehended. In the meantime, I command you, at once, to prepare the fleet. Visitors descend on Macragge. You must be ready to greet them.’
‘It will be done,’ said Caspean.
Euten stepped forward.
‘I am glad of the sight of you at least, lord,’ she said. ‘Curze told me you were dead.’
‘Curze told you?’ Guilliman asked in alarm.
‘Curze almost killed our dear lady last night, my lord,’ Caspean explained.
Guilliman started forward, grave concern plain on his face, and took her by the hands to comfort her.
‘Are you well? Did he hurt you?’ he asked.
She smiled.
‘I am well now, lord,’ Euten said. ‘I am well now. Look. What did you wish for?’
Guilliman looked down and realised that he had stepped across.
‘I did not wish for anything,’ he admitted, ‘except that you were unharmed. Evidently, I needed to be here, to make sure of your safety.’
He looked back at the Lion. He had never seen his brother so stricken with frustration.
Guilliman faced the field and reached out his hand.
‘Give me your hand,’ he said.
‘I cannot!’ the Lion cursed.
‘I need you here with me, brother,’ Guilliman insisted. He leaned in, seized the Lion’s hand through the edge of the field, and pulled.
The Lion stepped through into the Reading Room.
‘How did you do that?’ the Lion asked Guilliman.
‘I think,’ said Guilliman, ‘that I am more open with my needs and my hopes. I do not sequester them as you do, brother. The field could not read you. In that theoretical there is perhaps a practical that we both might heed.’
The Lion hesitated, then he nodded and placed his left hand around their already clasped right hands.
Behind them, Dantioch shifted painfully on his wooden throne. His latest efforts had sapped much of his strengths. He looked at Polux.
‘Will you go?’ Dantioch asked Polux.
‘I think the field will permit me,’ Polux replied, ‘for I need to be on Terra, and Macragge is one step closer, but I fancy the mysteries of the Pharos might be more expediently uncovered if comrades work together.’
Dantioch held out his hand. Polux took it.
‘I will be glad of the help, Alexis,’ he said.
‘As I am already glad of yours,’ Polux replied.
Polux looked out of the field at Guilliman.
‘I will stay here for the while, lord,’ he said, ‘with your permission. We will work to unravel further the mysteries of this light, and this link.’
‘With my blessing,’ said the Avenging Son. Polux saluted.
‘Tell me about Curze,’ Guilliman asked his officers. ‘How close are we to finding him? What other crimes has he committed?’
‘There is much to tell,’ said Dolor.
‘But first,’ said Euten, ‘you say we are to ready the fleet? For whose arrival? Who comes to Macragge, Roboute?’
‘Another brother,’ said Guilliman. ‘Another Angel.’
22
Where the
Hammer Fell
‘Death must occur so that life may prevail.’
– literal translation of the
ciphered rune of the Cabal
He came back to the place where the sky had dropped him.
Dawn had stolen in, grey and damp. Magna Macragge Civitas seemed wounded and tense, its golden lustre dimmed. Beyond the shimmer of the city shields, the coastal wind brought the grumble of thunder, and an oceanic storm threatening to blow inland and break against the sheer wall of the Hera’s Crown mountains, thus shedding its rain upon the old city.
Vulkan came back to where the sky had dropped him, his mind dislocated and hurt, his garb a bloodied mis-match of purloined plate and sub-suit. His hands shook. He recoiled from shadows. His eyes smouldered. Sometimes, he chattered nonsense sounds at the sky or the earth.
The earth had once been his friend. The heat of that friendship was long gone. Vulkan’s mind simmered with a fire of its own. It was hotter than any fire of the earth-rock, hotter than any magma, hotter than any core.
Sometimes he fell to his knees, and moaned or sobbed, and touched his hands to the ground and then to his face, marking his ebon skin with dust as grey as ash.
Curze had tested him by exploring the limits of his unusual life beyond its breaking point. Curze had to pay for that.
Vulkan was subliminally drawn to the object that would be pure enough to deliver his vengeance.
John glanced at Damon and nodded. They hurried across the empty street, the mumble of distant thunder in the air, and clambered their way into the burned-out ruin of a building.
The air smelled of soot and charred paper, and also of chemical fire-retardant. John could feel the heavy rain sizzling off the city shields high overhead. He wished that the shields were down, so that the rain could purge the site and wash the city clean. Magna Macragge Civitas was a city at war, however, and its armour was permanently buckled tight.
Damon Prytanis drew his pair of sling pistols. It was a deft, oft-practised gesture: slip-slip, from under his fur coat. He checked their loads. John knelt, and opened his carrybag.
‘You think he’s here?’ Damon asked.
John nodded, unwrapping the parcel he had pulled from the bag.
‘Hunch, or clear read?’ asked Damon. ‘It makes a difference.’
‘Clear read,’ John replied. ‘This is where he landed.’
Damon looked at a brick arch above the entrance to the building’s quadrangle.
‘The Antimon Machine Works,’ he read. ‘It’s seen better days.’
‘He hit it like a meteor,’ John replied. ‘Set the place alight. It was a good thing the building was derelict.’
John rose. The fulgurite spear, unwrapped, lay in his hands.
‘Is that it?’ asked Damon Prytanis.
‘Yes.’
‘Not much to look at, is it?’
‘The most potent things often aren’t,’ John replied.
‘S’why the ladies love me, Johnny,’ Damon smiled. He waited. ‘Nothing? Not even a courtesy laugh?’
‘Let’s get on,’ said J
ohn Grammaticus. ‘I’m not getting any younger.’
Damon regarded him quizzically.
‘I thought we had to wait for… you know… the other primarch,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be another primarch who does it, right? Isn’t that what they had foreseen?’
‘Yes.’
‘So we need the other primarch?’
‘No,’ said John.
‘No?’
‘I’ve thought about this,’ John said. ‘A primarch would be ideal, but I don’t think it’s essential. We can do it, either of us, you or me.’
‘No, that’s not what they told you,’ Damon began uneasily.
‘Maybe, but we’re on the ground, and we’re making the choices now,’ John replied. ‘Curze is too dangerous. He’s too much of a liability. We can’t control him; we can’t even predict what he’ll do. In fact, that’s the point. Curze is psyk-invisible most of the time, so they can’t have foreseen him in this situation. If the Cabal had known Curze was the only option, they wouldn’t have gone for it.’
He looked at Damon.
‘If we’re going to do this, and do it right, it has to be us. It has to be me.’
Damon Prytanis gave him a long, probing look.
‘You’re not trying to pull some crazy shit on me, are you, Johnny?’
‘No.’
‘Johnny?’
John Grammaticus turned to look at him.
‘For Terra’s sake, Prytanis. We’re about to do something that’ll change the course of galactic history. We’re about to betray our kind. Again. I just told you I’m prepared to do that. So give me a break, okay?’
John had the spear in his right hand. He held out his left.
‘Can you spare one?’ he asked.
Damon looked down at the twinned sling pistols he was wielding and realised what John meant.
‘Nice try,’ he replied with a dark chuckle.
‘He’s not likely to come quietly,’ John said. ‘All I have is the spear. We may need to put him down first so I can use it.’
‘Well, let’s see how we go. I’ve got your back.’
‘You’re not making this any easier,’ said John. ‘He’s a primarch!’
Damon sighed, briefly holstered one of the murehk, drew his short-pattern chainsword from under his fur coat and tossed it to John.
John caught it.
‘Look after it,’ Damon said, drawing his other sling gun again. ‘Look after it, and it’ll look after you. That baby will cut through anything. Even a primarch.’
They entered the machine works.
The inner quadrangle was a rockcrete yard layered with dust, grit and shards of ceramic and glass. Each side of the quad was formed by a massive fabricatory shed, with a pillared walkway around the perimeter. The western end of the layout was flattened and smashed, as though a missile had torn through it and delivered a thermic warhead.
Damon and John crunched forward, a shabby rogue in a coat of black fur and a tall man in the dark garb of a repatriation officer, funeral watch division. How appropriate, John thought.
‘Got a fix on him?’ Damon hissed, prowling along the northern side of the quad, his guns ready. For the first time, he really looked like a soldier to John. In a million years, John could not have imitated that skill, that readiness, that capacity.
John focused.
He’s all around us, John thought. Vulkan is here, and he’s everywhere. His mind is so raging, so powerful. I need–
‘Johnny?’
‘Give me a second,’ John replied.
I can taste the hurt. He’s so wounded. I recognise that. I recognise that! What is it? What is it? He’s feeling something I feel–
Vulkan came out of the shadows. He was right on them.
‘Shit,’ said Damon Prytanis.
Vulkan was an immense shape, eyes blazing. He looked like a massive stone statue brought to life, for he was covered in dust and dirt. He had spent the last fifteen minutes digging in the pit of the crash site. He had a hammer in his hands. It was his hammer – Dawnbringer – the one he had fallen with, the one that had brought him to Macragge. It had been buried much deeper than the level his body had been recovered from.
Howling, the maddened primarch flew at them.
‘Shit!’ Damon cried again, backing up fast.
Vulkan swung the hammer at them. It came cross-wise at human head-height, whistling through the air. Damon ducked. John threw himself to the right.
Both Perpetuals cheated death by a hair’s breadth. The hammer-swing sliced the empty air and demolished one of the quad’s pillars.
Damon had ducked so frantically that he fell. Vulkan loomed over him. Damon rolled, barely in time to avoid the next swing, which smashed the paving stones where he had been sprawled a moment earlier.
Damon kept rolling, turning fast – a combat move. He tumbled out of Vulkan’s immediate kill-radius, and then rocked up on one knee, firing.
‘Son of a bitch!’ he exclaimed, letting rip with both of the murehk. Vulkan, four times his size, plated and raging mad, charged at him, with Dawnbringer raised.
Damon Prytanis expended both of his plasti-crystal ammo cores in less than four seconds. Vulkan was a big target, and Damon shot thousands of razor-rounds through his bulk.
He shredded him. The pavement behind Vulkan, for a distance of some eight or ten metres, became a huge splatter pattern of blood and ruined tissue, where separate through-wounds and impacts had gouted.
Vulkan dropped to his knees a few feet short of Damon, blood venting and squirting from hundreds of wounds.
Then he vanished, leaving nothing but the vast pooling spatter of blood behind.
Damon got up. ‘What the hell?’ he muttered.
Nearby, John was getting back on his feet.
‘That hammer of his,’ John said. ‘It has a teleport function.’
‘Oh goody,’ Damon replied. He ejected the smoking stubs of his spent cores and loaded new ones. Then he began to circle, both sling guns out in front of him, straight-armed.
‘You feel him?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said John.
‘Tell me when you feel him.’
‘Obviously.’
A long second passed.
Damon looked around. ‘What’s taking so long?’ he asked. ‘Some sort of teleport lag?’
‘Behind you!’ John yelled.
Damon turned in time to see Vulkan appear behind him in a swirl of charged dust. He was no longer a dirt-grey statue. He was a revenant thing, painted head to foot in his own blood.
Damon narrowed his eyes and opened fire again.
‘Yeah, you great big bastard?’ Damon said, his pistols whipping and wailing. ‘Teleport all you like. You mess with me? End of.’
A second relentless hurricane of razor-fire ripped through the primarch. John could feel the air dampening with blood mist. Vulkan staggered into the lethal streams of gunfire, but only made a step or two.
He fell, first to his knees, then face-down. His body and skull were deformed and misshapen from the sheer structural damage wrought by the murehk overkill.
Vulkan tried to rise. He was shuddering, and weeping blood like a fountain. He got halfway to his knees, using his hammer as a crutch.
‘Oh, just give it up,’ Damon said.
He stepped forward, put both Guh’hru and Meh’menitay to Vulkan’s forehead, and blew the back of the primarch’s skull out.
Vulkan dropped dead.
Damon looked around at John. Damon’s face was dappled with spots of Vulkan’s blood. He began to reload again. His hands were shaking.
‘I don’t know how many times I can kill him,’ Damon said desperately. ‘Will you please do it? Fast?’
John approached the fallen primarch, raising the spear. The copper stench of blo
od was overwhelming.
Vulkan came back from the dead once again.
It was happening faster. It was happening faster and faster each time. New life followed each death at an increasingly fearsome rate. Vulkan’s rage was such that he would not let death keep him for even a second.
He lurched at them with a roar of unimaginable pain, his ruined head still re-forming and becoming whole again. Muscle, tissue, flesh and bone knitted and reconstituted in front of their eyes.
Damon let out a snarl of dismay. He hadn’t even had time to finish his reload. Vulkan grabbed Damon by the throat and threw him across the quad. The Perpetual landed badly. John heard a bone break.
Vulkan turned to face John.
‘I can help you,’ John said. ‘Please. I understand your pain. I recognise it. The pain of life and death, of life and death after life and death… I understand. Please, let me help you…’
Vulkan took a step forward, glaring down at John Grammaticus. He was breathing hard, wheezing through shredded lungs that were still regrowing. Blood leaked out of him, through multiple puncture wounds that were still closing.
‘I understand,’ John repeated, trying to sound reassuring.
I understand,+ he sent, simultaneously.
Vulkan wavered slightly.
‘I understand. Dying is hard,’ said John. ‘Dying hurts. Believe me, I have been there. Please, Lord Vulkan, let me help you. Let me spare you. Let me cure you.’
Vulkan paused. He was still dripping blood, and his ramshackle armour was peppered with razor-slits. Slowly, hesitantly, he held his hand out towards John Grammaticus.
Then Vulkan’s head vanished in a mist of blood and brain tissue.
The shot echoed around the quad long after Vulkan’s virtually headless body had fallen.
Painted with gore, John staggered back.
Narek of the Word walked into the quad, lowering his Brontos-pattern sniper rifle. He stood over Vulkan’s body and put two more rounds through the torso at close range.
‘He’s dead,’ said Narek.
‘Not for long,’ John replied.
‘Long enough. Use the spear. Do the deed. Then you’re coming with me.’
John was suddenly very quiet. The temperature in the quad dropped by ten degrees.