Feat of Iron - Nick Kyme Read online

  Slowly shaking his head, Desaan said, ‘They will break and we will have lost one of our own into the bargain.’

  ‘Enough,’ stated Santar, regarding the kneeling man. He bade him stand. ‘I am not a king and you are not my subject. On your feet.’

  Nodding at Desaan, Santar asked the colonel, ‘Is he right? Will you break?’

  Salazarian squared his shoulders and thrust out his jaw. ‘Let us show you our worth. We will not break, my lord. We have endured this far.’

  ‘Few mere men can make that claim,’ said Henricos.

  Santar’s eyes were chips of slate when he met his gaze. ‘I knew you had an affinity for humans, sergeant. I saw it when you gave your report concerning the Army divisions.’ He paused, eyeing first the storm and then the Army veterans.

  It is better to act and ask for forgiveness later than be paralysed by indecision.

  He’d heard Ferrus Manus say that before. Santar wished he could ask for his guidance right now. Since he could not, he said, ‘You vouch for this man and his warriors?’

  ‘It will be my death if they fail,’ said Henricos.

  ‘You are right about that,’ Santar told him, making the threat very clear. ‘Find the coven or whatever means the eldar are using to perpetuate that storm and remove it. We will follow in after and eliminate whatever is left standing. The path is laid, brother. All you need do is to follow it.’

  Henricos saluted and went to muster the rest of the Masonites.

  After he had gone, Desaan shook his head.

  ‘Reckless bravery kills warriors swifter than any bolter or blade.’ He pointed at the storm bank. ‘Those men will die in there. Henricos too.’

  Santar watched the ominous black cloud, imagined it watching him back with a feral sentience.

  When they were retreating, when its tendrils had closed with the delicate inexorability of a drifting fog, he’d felt a crushing weight in his chest, as if his limbs had been bound in metre-thick ferrocrete. They all felt it, each and every one of them that was significantly part machine.

  All of their strength, the power of a Legion at his disposal, and all any of them could do was watch.

  ‘Then I hope they die well and make a worthy sacrifice. But I promise you this. One way or another, we are bringing that node down. The Gorgon has willed it.’

  Cold stone chilled his face. A trickle of water from some underground stream wet his lips and brought him round.

  Dazed and groggy from the poison, Ferrus rolled onto his back and groaned.

  He had never felt so weak.

  He couldn’t remember passing out. It must have happened on the way from the abattoir.

  Attempting to rise unleashed a hellish crescendo crashing into his mind. Blood thundered in his ears. He held his head and, wincing, got to one knee.

  Lead dragged at his limbs, made him sluggish and slow. Forgebreaker acted as a crutch. Twice now since being in the labyrinth he had used it ignobly. The fact did not sit well with the primarch, who surveyed his surroundings once standing again.

  Mercifully, the serpent or whatever it was had gone. Even the sibilance of its presence was absent and a terrible silence replaced it. Ferrus doubted he would live if he faced it at that moment. He could barely lift his feet, let alone a weapon.

  He patted the pommel of Draken.

  ‘Thank you, brother.’

  The way behind him was darkness. He couldn’t even see the abattoir now and wondered how long and how far he had wandered in delirium. Ahead was darkness too, but with a tiny shard of light like a beacon to guide him through a storm. The turbulence of his thoughts pulled at him.

  What had the creature said?

  Angel Exterminatus.

  Ferrus understood the words but not their meaning. It pained him to think about them and the vague sense of flame intruded at the edges of his consciousness when he did.

  With motion, his strength began to return. His arm was still ravaged where the living silver had been melted away but it didn’t burn as badly. His neck itched like all hell, though, and he suspected the creature had dealt a secondary wound he was unaware of until that moment. But when he touched the skin beneath his gorget it was uninjured.

  Biting down his irritation, Ferrus walked slowly towards the shard of light.

  Likely this was yet another trick, some fresh torture with which to test him. Ferrus had yet to discern its purpose. He reasoned that if his enemies meant to kill him, they would have done so already or at least tried harder and more overtly. Xenos, particularly the eldar, were cryptic and capricious, even to one with the formidable mental acuity of a primarch. Their rationale was lost on him. The thing that hunted him was no serpent, it was something darker, something primordial and, he suspected, not something wholly fashioned by his captors. It had meant to end his life. He felt all its rage, its denial, its sadistic yearning of which Ferrus was the focus. When they had fought he could sense this, but it was inchoate as if the creature itself was only partially realised.

  Ferrus was uncertain what that meant. One thing he could be sure of was that it wasn’t dead and would return for him. Whatever the eldar’s original plan, he knew he would have to kill the creature now to escape.

  Entering through the shard of light that had widened into a brilliant chasm to allow him passage, Ferrus steeled himself for that battle to come.

  He would not have long to wait.

  A series of grand, triumphal archways led into a long processional before him. They had the appearance of great gates but with their portals laid open and shattered to potential invasion. Fire-blackened stone crept at their edges and ugly shards were chipped from every stone.

  The chasm of light had closed behind him, leaving no visible way out.

  As he had suspected, this was to be the final arena.

  Ferrus felt like a giant touring a grand but blasted palace in miniature. As he passed along the processional, he left the sundered gates behind and walked into an appended chamber. Even scaled down in miniature, the great hall was immense. A giant would have been dwarfed by it. Gothic architectural flourishes dominated, but they were bleak and austere, suggestive of faded glories and cultural stagnation. Skulls lined the walls as if part of some vast reliquary and a sombre mood pervaded its grim design. A monument to decay and everlasting decline, here opulence had long since given in to decrepitude.

  As he made his way across the diminutive flagstones underfoot, Ferrus realised it was no great hall, nor had it ever been so.

  It was a tomb.

  And at the end of a cracked plaza, wreathed with gossamer-thin webs and the rough patina of heavy age, there stood a massive throne, out of scale with the rest of the palace.

  Slumped upon it, in emaciated repose, sat a king.

  The king of stagnation, lord of a decaying empire, his robes were tattered, his body a flesh-starved and skeletal ruin. He bore no crown, only a rictus grimace, a final pained expression of a dream unfulfilled.

  He towered over Ferrus, glaring down through abyssal eye sockets the colour of sackcloth.

  A hissing breath, its last, escaped the undead king’s mouth and drew a nerve tremor of consternation from the primarch’s face.

  Half-expecting the revenant to rise, he took a backward step.

  Only when the breath continued long after it should have ended did Ferrus realise it was not the king, but something else that gave the corpse its mimicked speech.

  Uncoiling from its hiding place behind the tarnished throne of the dead king was the serpent.

  The head and neck stood erect whilst its vast body undulated beneath it, providing support. Mirrored silver sheathed its flanks. Its eyes were sulphur-yellow pools of corruption, cut open with black, dagger-thin pupils. Hate exuded in a heady musk that made the primarch’s senses lurch vertiginously.

  He reached for Forgebreaker, but the serpent sprang at him, faster than mercury, and Ferrus was forced to seize its jaws before they snapped around his throat.

  Hot
, stinking spittle, acid-tanged, spattered the primarch’s face and he snarled. Fighting this beast was like clinging to liquid, but Ferrus wrestled it down and wrapped his arms around its neck before it could wriggle free. Thrashing hard, the serpent hauled him off the ground and smashed him down again. Lances of agony impaled his back and shoulder. His neck felt about ready to crack as the burning wound that was not a wound around his throat smouldered like hellfire.

  ‘I am the Gorgon!’ he yelled. ‘I am a primarch!’

  His head hit something hard, and dark spikes intruded at the edge of his sight. A red rime layered his vision but Ferrus held on.

  He held on and squeezed.

  Despite the serpent’s fervent efforts, Ferrus slowly tightened his grip. He would strangle it, crush every ounce of life from the creature until it lay cold and unmoving. Then he would stave its skull to a crimson paste.

  ‘Back from the underworld…’ he spat. ‘You should have stayed dead, Asirnoth…’

  For what else could it be but a manifestation of that dread creature?

  The serpent’s head turned… turned in a way that should have broken its neck in the primarch’s iron grip. Lips that should not be lips parted. Eyes that were human and familiar regarded him. A mane of hair crept down its back as a noble and patrician countenance asserted itself across previously reptilian features.

  ‘I…’ it said without hint of sibilance, ‘I am not…’ the words were lyrical, musical and rich, ‘Asirnoth…’

  Ferrus knew, as he knew the voice and the face before him.

  It was the perfect killer, preternaturally fast and superhumanly strong. Only another primarch could have defeated it.

  Only another primarch…

  He relaxed his grip and a flash of transformation blended the human visage with that of the creature. A rack of saliva-wet fangs pierced its gums, drawing blood with the violent metamorphosis. Eyes that had been warm and fraternal narrowed to yellow knife-slashes. Scaled flesh colonised its lower neck and cheekbones like a contagion.

  Fighting down the urge to vomit, Ferrus reasserted his grip. His eyes widened in eerie synchronicity with the creature’s as its neck was slowly crushed. It struggled. It wanted to live, to manifest, but Ferrus would kill it. He would end it with his bare hands.

  ‘You are not him,’ he told it through a barricade of clenched teeth.

  A final tortured rasp, part reptilian, part human, slipped from the serpent’s mouth and it became still and lifeless.

  Giving it one final squeeze until it felt as though his knuckles might break, Ferrus let go and the creature slid to the ground dead.

  A long, trembling breath came from his throat and he rubbed his eyes as if to banish a bad dream.

  Disquiet turned to anger. Ferrus pulled out Forgebreaker and did as he’d vowed. He kept going for a full minute before his arms and shoulders ached at him to stop. Little was left of the creature when he was done, just a ruddy smear. He was breathing hard and beads of sweat cascaded from his brow. He felt the chill of evaporation against his fevered skin and followed that sensation all the way to the throne.

  Enraged, Ferrus stormed towards the corpse-king, hauled it one-handed from its seat of office and smashed it into pieces of bone on the ground.

  ‘Your reign is ended,’ he told it, before stowing the hammer and gripping an arm of the throne in each hand. Ripping it aside, tearing it bodily from its bearings, Ferrus revealed a doorway of light. Casting the wretched seat aside, he stepped through the portal and prepared to face his tormentors.

  It was not as he expected.

  An orrery of worlds and stars revolved before him, locked in an infinite space that had no dimension, no limit or discernible edges. The effect was disconcerting.

  The primarch’s gaze was drawn to a dominant prime world, sitting amongst four others in a system of stars and desolate moons. The world was black, and Ferrus was reminded of the dark sand that had been underfoot for so much of his journey. Then, as if a giant celestial match or the contrail of a meteor had been struck against its surface, a flame was born upon the prime world. It grew into a conflagration, eclipsing all of its continents and seas, enveloping them like a baleful sun. Only once the transformation was absolute did Ferrus realise it was not a sun at all, but a burning red eye with a black pupil.

  As the tableau unfolded further, he saw a slow-moving ring of black iron grow around the red world that held its fire in place until a second ring of cobalt joined it. Though it burned furiously, the eye could not escape the combined rings of metal sent to contain it. The sun faded and finally blinked out, leaving the world black and still once more.

  Ferrus reached out to touch the orrery but his silver hand passed through it, revealing the illusion. It vanished like smoke in an eyeblink.

  ‘What is this?’ he snapped. ‘More signs, more games?’

  ‘Not a game,’ said a deep, faintly musical voice.

  Ferrus turned to face his captor, Forgebreaker gripped in his closed fists.

  ‘It is the future. Your future,’ said the eldar. ‘If you wish it to be.’

  The alien was robed, the colours subdued but manifold. Arcane sigils were stitched into the iridescent fabric, but also hung on gossamer-thin chains or from glittering diamond threads. It wore no helmet or mask, but showed a long face of high cheekbones and a tapered chin that jutted like a dagger. Strange tattoos marked its flesh and were shaven into the side of its scalp from which a long mane of golden hair cascaded. Fathomless wisdom and capricious intellect glittered in the almond-shaped eyes that regarded the primarch, but also fear.

  ‘You have reached a fork in the road, Ferrus Manus. The path you are on leads to death, but another leads to survival and the changing of a great many things in the galaxy,’ said the eldar. ‘You do not realise how important you are.’

  It opened its hands in a gesture of peace and solidarity.

  All Ferrus saw was an alien deceiver.

  ‘And you expect me to believe you, creature?’ He spoke plainly and calmly. There was none of the untempered rage of earlier.

  ‘I offer you hope. I offer it to the galaxy,’ it pleaded. ‘You can change everything.’

  Ferrus smiled, but it was a hollow gesture. The eldar’s shoulders sagged when it saw it.

  ‘I know I will die,’ the primarch said, ‘just as I know my place and duty. It matters not if it is upon some blackened world I have never seen or the very crags of Medusa itself. I am a warrior-king, alien, but I am also something else. Human. And unlike you eldar, we humans do not submit to fate.’ His eyes flashed with fire. ‘We shape it.’

  ‘You are mistaken–’

  ‘No, you are the one who has made the grievous error by trapping me here,’ said Ferrus, swinging Forgebreaker around. The serpent’s gore flicked off the head, a taste of things to come. ‘An error only exceeded by you showing yourself to me now.’

  ‘Please, I offer life…’ said the alien.

  ‘You offer a cage of pre-destiny,’ snarled Ferrus. ‘It is your last desperate gambit,’ he said, before he charged.

  ‘Heed me,’ cried the eldar, backing away and throwing up a psychic shield to defend itself. ‘It does not have to be this way. Do not give in to wrath.’

  ‘Wrath is what I am,’ he roared. ‘I am a warrior-king, born from battle’s blood!’

  No mind-fashioned shield could stay the destructive fury of Forgebreaker, not when wielded by its master. The defences were shattered and the psychic shards bit into the eldar as painfully as any blade. It recoiled and threw a jag of arc-lightning that Ferrus deflected with his shoulder guard. Ozone-stink filled his nostrils but he was not about to be deterred.

  His bellow shook the fabric of the constructed world around him, the psychic echo of his rage unpinning it at the seams.

  ‘Now release me!’

  Sweating, bleeding and clenched by fear, the eldar fled through a fissure in the fake reality.

  Ferrus reached out, tried to slip through the sa
me doorway as the eldar witch, but a corona of perfect light repelled him.

  ‘Release me!’

  The words stretched out into infinity as the light engulfed him, drowning his senses until they merged. Until darkness overwhelmed them and it felt like he was falling forever.

  The last coven witch slid off his sword, leaving a trail of alien blood along the blade. Even with its death and the slow banishment of the black storm, Bion Henricos knew he was dead.

  Of the six thousand veterans he had led into the darkness, barely eight hundred remained. They circled the Iron Hand, an injured Colonel Salazarian fighting hard alongside him despite the blood in his lungs. The Army commander squinted through one eye – the other one had been plucked out by an eldar’s knife – and saw they were overrun.

  For the first time in an hour, Salazarian stopped barking orders to his men.

  Henricos recognised his sudden fatalism.

  ‘You gave us back our dignity and honour,’ said the colonel, ‘and I thank you for that, my lord.’

  A high-pitched whine. Rapid air displacement and the splash of hot fluid against his face told Henricos the old man was dead before he saw the gaping hole in the veteran’s chest.

  Salazarian fell, dead-eyed and still, into the arms of the Iron Hand who cradled him to the ground.

  The storm was ebbing but the darkness of it was slow to disperse. His brothers would not reach him in time. Men were dying in droves as the eldar gave their last. They were dying too, but were not content to do so alone. They wanted the Space Marine’s head. They wanted Bion Henricos.

  ‘For the Gorgon!’ he cried, leaving his Medusan steel-edge impaled in the earth so he could draw his bolt pistol. Shells sprayed in an arc of muzzle flare that left a tongue of fire in the air. Alien bodies were struck and died in explosive agony. A head shot through the darkness took out a warleader whose falchion had looked as keen as its wielder.

  ‘For the Gor–’

  Something hit Henricos in the neck, possibly a shuriken from an eldar bow-caster. He grunted, felt it burn. A las-beam pierced his thigh a half-second later. He staggered, slid the combat shield off his butchered forearm, and tried to clutch the graze across his throat with the stump of his wrist but found it wanting. A further beam lanced his torso, somewhere between chest and shoulder. Falling to one knee, Henricos fired off a desultory burst.