The Returned - James Swallow

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  The Returned - James Swallow

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  The Returned

  James Swallow

  The skies above the Razorpeak range wept oil. Low cowls of cloud, grey as ancient stone, ranged from horizon to horizon, grudging to allow only a faint glow of sunlight to pierce them from the great white star of Gathis. The clouds moved upon the constant winds, the same gales that howled mournfully through the jagged towers of the mountains, the same heavy gusts that reached up to beat at the figure of Brother Zurus.

  The slick rain, dark with the metallic scent of oceans and the tang of rotting biomass, fell constantly upon the landing platform where he stood. Zurus watched it move in wave fronts across the granite and steel. The storms hammered, as they always did, against the constructions men had built high up here in the tallest crags. The platform was only one of many extensions, cupolas and balconies emerging from the sheer sides of the tallest fell among the Razorpeaks. The earliest, most primitive tribes of Gathis II had christened it the Ghostmountain, a name not in honour of its white-grey stone, but in recognition of the many dead that haunted it, so lethal were its slopes. Thousands of years later and the name was, if anything, more fitting.

  Once, before men had come from Terra to colonise this world, there had been a true peak atop the Ghostmountain, a series of serrated spires that rose high enough that they could pierce the cloud mantle. Now a great walled citadel stood in their place, the living rock of the peak carved and formed by artisans into halls, donjons and battlements of stark, grim aspect. At each point of the compass, a hulking tower rose, opening into the sculpted shape of a vast raptor screaming defiance at elements and enemies. These warbirds put truth to the name of the great fortress-monastery atop the Ghostmountain: the Eyrie.

  One of the great eagles stood at his back, and like the raptor, Zurus was watchful. He peered out from under the hood of his heavy, rain-slick over-robe, waiting for the roiling, churning sky to release to him his responsibility. In the far distance, down towards the settlements of Table City and the lowhill coasts where the tribals lived, great jags of bright lightning flashed, and on the wind the grind of thunder reached his ears a few moments later, cutting through the steady hiss of the falling rains.

  Zurus was soothed by the sound. He found it peaceful, and often when he was far from Gathis, perhaps upon the eve of battle at some distant alien battleground, he would meditate upon the sounds of the rainfall and find his focus in it. And so, when he had awoken at dawn this day, he had at once sensed something amiss. Zurus exited his sleeping cell and found only rays of weak sunlight reaching down the passages of the dormitoria; and outside, a break in the clouds, and a silence in the air.

  A rare thing. By the ways of the Gathian tribes, an omen of ill fortune when the eternal tears of Him Upon The Throne ceased to fall, and with them the protection the God-Emperor of Mankind provided. After a time, the rain began again, as constant as it ever was, but Zurus had witnessed the moment of silence, and was on some level unsettled by it.

  As he had crossed through the gate to venture out to the landing platform, a figure in red-trimmed robes was waiting for him in the lee of the entranceway.

  Thryn, the Librarian Secundus. The old warrior’s sallow, bleak features always measured Zurus whenever he turned to face him. The look in his eyes was no different from the expression he had shown when the battle brother had first seen the psyker, on the fateful day the Chapter had recruited Zurus into their fold. Many decades ago now.

  Thryn nodded towards the open gate and the sky beyond. ‘The rain returns,’ he noted.

  ‘It never leaves,’ Zurus replied. The exchange of words had a ritual quality to them.

  The Librarian’s lip curled in something that a generous observer might have considered a smile. ‘If only that were so. The light of naked sun upon the peaks… It does not bode well.’

  Zurus gathered in his robes, unfurling the hood. ‘I have no time for omens.’

  Thryn’s mouth twisted; the old warrior could sense a bald untruth even without the use of his witch-sight. ‘You are ready for this, brother?’ he asked, turning to stare out at the empty landing pad. ‘You did not need to take on this duty alone. Other men–’

  ‘It is right that I do it,’ Zurus spoke over the Librarian. ‘It is right,’ he repeated.

  Thryn turned back to study him for a long moment, then stepped away, out of his path. ‘As you wish.’ The Librarian banged his fist against the inner door of the gateway and halted. Metal gears began to grind as the saw-toothed hatchway drew open. When Thryn spoke again, he did not face him. ‘But remember this, Zurus. What comes today, what you go to meet… You have not faced the like before.’

  Something in the other warrior’s tone chafed on him. ‘If you think I will falter when… if the time comes, you are mistaken. I do not shrink from death.’

  Thryn gave a low chuckle. ‘That much is certain. We are Doom Eagles, brother. Death is part of us.’

  ‘I know the difference between friend and foe,’ Zurus insisted. ‘I know what the Archenemy looks like. I can tell a traitor when I see one.’

  The inner gate clanged open. ‘I have no doubt you believe that. But Chaos has faces it has never shown to you, kinsman. Do not forget that.’ Thryn walked away, back into the fortress.

  The thunder was closer now, sullen and deep enough to echo in his bones. His companion rains drew hard across the metal decking as if they were scouring it, preparing it for the arrival; and then it came to him that the tone of the storm-sound had changed, a new note growing loud, fast approaching.

  Zurus looked up, following his hearing. The oily rain touched his face, streaking over an aspect that was a maze of scars. He saw a shape up there, only the suggestion of it really, a shadowed thing with broad wings and a hooked profile. A vast eagle, falling towards him, talons extending.

  The sound was strident, and it opened the cowl of cloud cover for a brief instant. On pillars of orange fire and hard jet-noise, a gunmetal-silver drop-ship suddenly emerged from the haze, dropping fast. Rain sluiced from the steel wings and across the blocky, rigid angles of the Thunderhawk’s blunt nose. Zurus’s robes snapped and billowed as the thruster backwash buffeted him, but he did not move from his sentinel stance.

  The drop-ship landed firmly, the slow impact resonating through the landing platform. Engines keening as they powered down, the craft settled on hydraulic skids, lowering itself to the deck as if it were thankful to have completed its journey. Zurus saw motion behind the windows of the cockpit, but nothing distinct. He found he was holding his breath, and chided himself, releasing it. The Astartes warrior resisted the urge to throw a glance over his shoulder, back towards the Eyrie. He had no doubt Thryn was at some gallery window far above him, watching.

  With a crunch of cogs, the Thunderhawk’s drop ramp unfolded, a mouth opening to show the dark interior of the transport craft. A servitor was the first to shamble out, head bobbing as it chewed on the punchcard containing its command strings. The machine-slave dragged a wheeled trolley behind it, half-covered by the tattered remains of a war cloak.

  Zurus’s gaze was momentarily drawn to the trolley as it was pulled past him; he saw the distinct and unmistakable shape of ceramite armour heaped within the wheeled container. The silver wargear, the trim of red and ebon, as familiar to him as the scar-patterns on his own face. Doom Eagle armour, but corroded and damaged in a fashion no son of Aquila would ever willingly countenance.

  When he looked back
there was a hooded man at the top of the ramp. He was looking down at his hands, and the streams of rainwater spattering off his upturned palms. He resembled a pilgrim accepting a benediction.

  The Thunderhawk’s sole passenger spoke, after a moment. ‘The rains,’ he began, in a low, crack-throated voice. ‘I thought I might never see them again.’ He took in a deep, long breath through his nostrils. ‘On the wind. I smell Chamack.’ There was a smile in the words.

  Zurus nodded. Down in Table City, leagues away from the Eyrie, the great bio-matter refineries that fabricated lubricant oil from the fibres of the sinuous Chamack sea-plant worked night and day, and the heavy, resinous odour was always present in the air. Zurus only ever noticed it by its absence.

  The moment passed and the new arrival bowed his head. He began to walk down the ramp, but in two quick steps Zurus had crossed to the bottom of the gangway and stood blocking his path. The other man faltered, then halted.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Zurus. ‘Let the ghosts of the mountain hear your name.’

  From beneath the other man’s hood, eyes narrowed and became cold. ‘The ghosts know who I am, brother. I am a Gathis-born son, as you are.’

  ‘You must say the words,’ insisted Zurus. ‘For protocol’s sake.’

  Hands tightened into fists, before vanishing into folds of the dripping robes. ‘The protocols of which you speak are for outsiders. Strangers.’

  Zurus searched the face concealed beneath the hood for any sign of subterfuge or malice. ‘Say the words,’ he repeated.

  The other man said nothing, and the moment stretched too long. Then finally, with a fall of his shoulders, the new arrival relented. ‘My name is Tarikus. Warrior of the Adeptus Astartes. Brother-Sergeant of the esteemed Third Company of the Doom Eagles Chapter. And I have returned home.’

  Tarikus. Zurus had been there on the day that name had been added to the Walls of Memory in the great Relical Keep. He had watched with due reverence as a helot carved the name into the polished black marble, etched there for eternity among the hundredfold dead of the Chapter. Zurus had been there to hear the Chaplains announce Tarikus’s loss, and cement it in the annals of Doom Eagle history. Two whole Gathian cycles now, since he had been declared Astartes Mortus. Many seasons come and gone, his life become a revered memory among all the honoured fallen.

  The other man drew back his hood for the first time and walked on, down towards the end of the drop ramp.

  Zurus took a wary step backwards and met the gaze of a dead man.

  ‘Is it him?’

  Thryn did not turn away from the rain-slicked windowpane, watching the two men far below on the landing platform. He saw Brother Zurus step aside and allow the passenger from the Thunderhawk to stride back towards the gate. The Librarian clearly saw the tawny, battle-scarred aspect of the man, lit by a momentary pulse of high lightning. ‘That remains to be seen, lord,’ said Thryn, at length.

  In the shadowed gloom of the observation gallery, Commander Hearon folded his arms across his barrel chest and his ever-present frown deepened. The answer was unsatisfactory to the Chapter Master of the Doom Eagles. ‘I allowed him to be brought here on your advice, old friend,’ Hearon rumbled. ‘I did so because I thought you could give me the answer I wanted.’

  ‘I will,’ Thryn replied. ‘In time.’

  ‘Not too much time,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘Voices call for a swift end to the matter of this… return. Chief among them the Chaplains and your senior, Brother Tolkca.’

  Thryn nodded. ‘Yes, I imagine the Librarian Primus is ill-tempered at the thought of such a thing being placed in my hands.’

  Hearon gestured at the air. ‘He is at battle a sector distant. You are here. If he’s irked by my decision, he may take it up with me on his return.’ The commander leaned in. ‘There is no precedent for this, Thryn. Death is the closure of all things, the last page in the passage of a life. For that book to be re-opened once we have written the final entry…’ Hearon trailed off. ‘This man… if that is what he is… must be put to the question. The truth of him must out.’

  The Librarian nodded again, musing. Thryn had pored over the battle records and honours listed under the name of Tarikus. A veteran of bloody conflicts and engagements on worlds such as Thaxted and Zanasar, he had risen to the rank of Brother-Sergeant with command of a tactical squad under Consultus, the current captain of the Third Company. The Third had a history of ill fate; two commanders in succession had been lost to them during the last Black Crusade of the Archtraitor Abaddon, at Yayor and then again at Cadia, but Tarikus had survived them all – even the great massacre at Krypt, where the Doom Eagles had lost many men on the surface of that brutal, frigid planetoid.

  It was only after the destruction of the planet Serek, on a voyage back to the Segmentum Tempestus, that the luck of Brother Tarikus had run dry. The medicae frigate he had been aboard was ambushed by the hated Red Corsairs, and torn apart. Tarikus had not been among the Astartes who made it to the saviour pods before the wrecked ship had plunged into a star. He was given the honour of a worthy end, and declared dead, with all the ritual and rite such a tribute entailed.

  But now… Now a ghost walked the halls of the Eyrie.

  Thryn was well aware that some brother Chapters of the Doom Eagles regarded their association with matters of death as unusual. Morbid, even macabre; he had heard these slights from warriors of the Space Wolves and the White Scars, even brothers of the Ultramarines, the very Legion his Chapter had been drawn from. Some viewed the character of the Doom Eagles and saw an obsession with fatality; but this was a short-sighted, narrow view.

  The Doom Eagles were gifted with an understanding of the universe. They knew the truth, that all life is born dying, moment by moment. What others saw as fatalism, they saw as pragmatism, a manner born out of knowledge that life and joy were transient things, that the only constants in existence were despair, loss – and ultimately the embrace of death. We are already dead, so said the first words of the oath of the Chapter. The Doom Eagles understood that death was always close; and so they fought harder, strove longer, to perform their duties before the cloak of Final Sleep came upon them. They had no illusions.

  Death was the end of all things. Nothing could come back from the void beyond it. This knowledge was the pillar upon which stood everything the Chapter believed in.

  Tarikus, by his presence, his mere existence, challenged that.

  Hearon spoke again. ‘You have my authority to do as much as required in order to cut to the core of this circumstance.’ The Chapter Master turned away. ‘I ask you only be certain.’

  Thryn felt a tightening in his gut as the full scope of Hearon’s command became clear to him. ‘And if I cannot be certain, my lord? What would you have me do then?’

  ‘There is no scope for doubts, brother.’ Hearon paused at the edge of the chamber’s shadows and nodded towards the window. ‘End him if you must. Our ghosts remain dead.’

  Tarikus awoke, and his first reaction was one of shock. It faded quickly, to be replaced by a twinge of annoyance; ever since his escape from the prison on Dynikas V, each new slumber ended with the same tremor of fear and uncertainty, and it angered him.

  Each time, he expected to find himself back in the searing metal cell, his ash-smeared skin slick with sweat against the hard surface of his sleeping pallet, the humid air about him resonating with heat. It was as if his subconscious mind could not willingly accept that he had found his freedom. He had experienced so many strange tortures during his imprisonment in that light-forsaken hell that even now, weeks after breaking out of the cursed place, some seed of doubt remained lodged in his thoughts, some tiny part of him too afraid to accept the reality presented to it for fear it would be torn away a moment later.

  The stone and steel of the prison on Dynikas V was no more, his tormentors consumed by tyranid swarms, the prison itself scoured to the
bedrock by Astartes lance fire; but the walls still stood in Tarikus’s mind, and he wondered if they would ever fall.

  With a sigh, he pushed such thoughts away, rose and moved to the simple fresher unit in the corner of his room. Perhaps there was an irony in the fact that this small chamber was also called a ‘cell’, but its function was dedicated to providing silence and peace, not confinement. He ran cold, brackish water over his face, glancing at the small circular window high in the wall. A simple pattern of acid-etching covered the glassaic; the shape of a spread-winged eagle and upon that the lines of a human skull. The sigil of his Chapter. Seeing it made Tarikus’s chest tighten; the symbol meant so much to him. It had been his life for so long, and in the darkest moments of his incarceration, he had thought never to lay eyes upon it again.

  Men of the steady and dour nature that characterised most of the Astartes of the Doom Eagles Chapter were not often given to moments of open excitement or joy, and yet Tarikus could not deny that he felt something close to those emotions deep within him, a strange elation at being home once more, but tempered with apprehension at what was to come next.

  A day now since he arrived on the Thunderhawk. A day, after a sullen greeting from this Brother Zurus; none of his questions answered, mind, only the offer of a spartan meal and the room and rest. A place where you can reflect, Zurus had said. It was not lost on Tarikus that, although the door to his chamber had not been locked, a discreet gun-servitor had been stationed nearby. And he knew without needing to search for them that audial and visi-spectrum aura sensors were concealed in the covings above him.

  They were watching him closely. He expected as much.

  Should he have been affronted by such surveillance? On some level he was. On another, he understood the motivation behind it. Trust was a precious commodity in the Imperium of Mankind, and it was only in places where bonds of brotherhood and fealty ran strong that it could be spent. The ranks of the Adeptus Astartes were one such place, but when outsiders ventured into that circle – outsiders and strangers, Tarikus reminded himself – the wellspring quickly ran dry.