Feat of Iron - Nick Kyme Read online

  Warning icons flashed loudly and insistently on his retinal display. He ripped off his helm to silence them.

  Closing his eyes, Henricos prepared for the end when a hand touched his shoulder and he opened them again.

  ‘The war’s not done with you yet, Iron Hand,’ said a voice of ice and fire.

  The giant before Bion Henricos was clad in armour of coal-black. His powerful arms shimmered with lustrous silver that flowed like mercury. Eyes of knapped flint regarded him sternly, and the hammer in his hand could sunder mountains.

  Ferrus Manus had returned, and the eldar were fleeing.

  ‘The storm has ended, brother,’ said the primarch, and held out his hand. ‘Now, stand with me to see it finished.’

  Henricos heard the rest of the Legion approaching through the fire and smoke of the battle.

  Santar and the Morlocks were first to the primarch’s side. Joy at the sight of the Father was hard for them to contain. Their bolters and blades sang.

  The node fell quickly, though much of what followed was a blur for Henricos. He carried Salazarian back to friendly lines. Barely three hundred of the veterans returned alive with him.

  They would later be honoured for their part and recognised as adopted sons of Medusa. They were the first of the Chainveil, destined to be its captains, and living proof of the concession that, from that day, not all flesh was weak.

  Santar found him at the edge of the battlefield, standing vigil over Bion Henricos.

  After he’d returned the body of Colonel Salazarian, the sergeant had fallen unconscious from his injuries.

  ‘He will live,’ said the Gorgon, ‘but he will need further augmentation.’

  ‘As is his right. The Iron Fathers can tend to him,’ Santar replied. ‘I had thought to punish him for turning on the Iron Creed.’

  ‘You still should.’

  Santar considered that, but other thoughts were dominant in his mind and rose to the surface.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ferrus in a quiet voice. His mood hardened abruptly and he met the first captain’s questioning gaze. ‘It changes nothing.’

  The primarch beckoned to one of his legionaries, who set up a hololithic projector in the earth. Word had reached the Iron Hands that the Salamanders had discovered a second ‘prime’ node in the jungle. With victory in the desert, Ferrus was determined to meet his brother.

  ‘Are we leaving?’ asked Santar as the hololith came to life in a grainy cone of grey light.

  ‘We are. Gather the Morlocks and tell them we’re headed to the jungle.’ A thin smile betrayed the primarch’s pleasure. ‘My brother has need of us.’

  As Ferrus began his communication with Vulkan, Santar did as he was ordered, but despite his lord’s return he couldn’t shake the feeling that all was not well. Whatever had occurred during the Gorgon’s absence had left an indelible mark, one that would resonate into the future. Perhaps all their futures.

  The ossified highways that led from their cocooned sanctuary were perilous, but there was little choice but to brave them. The scrap of malfeasant sentience that had found its way into Lathsarial’s pseudo-world was dead, slain by the Gorgon.

  It would be millennia before it could return.

  Lathsarial staggered and the Diviner helped him walk. The ignorant creature he was trying to save had wounded him. Despair and anguish bled out of him in a psychic wake that would attract other predators. They needed to find safe haven quickly.

  ‘I have failed,’ he moaned, utterly desolated. ‘I have allowed a war to come to pass that will decimate our race when we are already so few.’

  The Diviner’s attention was on the webway around them. He kept his senses alert to any crack, any seemingly insignificant fissure. Many sub-realms had already been devoured and more would follow as the conflict Lathsarial had fought so hard to prevent came to pass.

  Such things were inevitable, and so the Diviner’s mood was sanguine.

  ‘It was not your war to avert,’ he said, opening up a fresh channel in the bone road that was seldom trodden and therefore safer. ‘A healing place is close.’

  Lathsarial did not answer. The farseer was inconsolable.

  ‘Humans are closed-minded,’ said the Diviner. ‘Even those that consider themselves greater, like the Gorgon. He has feet of iron, fixed to his fate and his doom.’

  ‘But he does not condemn himself alone, but a galaxy. One that is destined to be engulfed in flames.’

  Cool light bathed them as they found the healing place at last. The Diviner set Lathsarial down upon a slab of bone and bade him rest.

  As the other farseer faded from consciousness, the Diviner revisited his vision of prescience. Three times he had seen the exact same eventuality unfold. That, in itself, was remarkable.

  ‘There is hope,’ he muttered. ‘In the empire of the Battle-King, he who would install an heir. Even if the Gorgon falls and fails to heed our warning, there is another who will listen, one who was lost.’