Now Peals Midnight - John French Read online

  ‘If we fail now then that future will never come.’

  ‘You doubt that you will survive? And there I thought that I – with my gene-witch ways and strange insight – was supposed to be the pessimist.’

  ‘Failure is always possible even if you never surrender to it.’

  Andromeda glanced at him, an expression he could not read on her face. She was rolling another shard of rock around her hands.

  ‘You did not fail him,’ she said. ‘And he did not fail even in the end. You bear his name but there is no burden that you must carry. I did not say you will fail. I said that you would never be ready. The two are different.’

  Archamus did not reply, but shifted. The black cloak hanging from his shoulders suddenly seemed as unfamiliar as the name that still did not seem to belong to him.

  He let out a breath to speak.

  The signal system in the collar of his armour hissed, and whispered a series of coded clicks. Archamus turned, clamping his helm onto his head.

  ‘He is coming,’ he said. Andromeda dropped the stone over the edge, but did not watch it fall. She slid to her feet beside him.

  Archamus’ brother-huscarl came out of the dark first, bolter ready. Identification signals clicked between him and Archamus as he advanced. Caution, even amongst brothers, was a lesson the last years had taught well.

  Will our blood remember that death of trust, too? he found himself thinking.

  Rogal Dorn stepped into sight, the burnished gold of his armour seeming silver in the moonlight. Archamus bowed his head briefly. The huscarls never knelt in the presence of their lord; they were his praetorians and war companions, and the duty of their office was sign of deference enough. It was another change that Archamus still found unsettling.

  ‘My lord,’ he said. Dorn met his gaze as Archamus raised his head.

  ‘Follow,’ said the primarch, and moved past them, his strides swift but unhurried.

  Andromeda dropped off the balustrade and followed with Archamus.

  ‘You know why you and Archamus were summoned, mistress Andromeda?’ asked Dorn without slowing or turning.

  ‘You find it reassuring to have him at your side,’ she said without hesitating.

  Dorn glanced over his shoulder, and Archamus thought he saw a flash in his lord’s eye. Andromeda shrugged.

  ‘Yes, lord praetorian, I know why.’

  ‘And you know where I am going?’

  ‘You are going to look at the sky,’ she said.

  Dorn did not answer, and they followed him through the echoing dark of the Palace.

  Two Hours to Midnight

  ‘Strength and truth shall be its future, but for now it will serve us as a place of slaughter. And this will be a slaughter…. That is the price of that future.’

  His own voice followed Rogal Dorn as he walked beneath the Dome of Unity. The voices of others wound through his thoughts, on and on, shouting from the silence. He thought of all the steps he had taken in his life, all the decisions made, and all those that now seemed to have a different meaning to what he had thought at the time.

  ‘It will never end, don’t you see that? Hate only breeds hate and the Imperium cannot be built upon such bloody foundations.’

  ‘You are not my son. And no matter what your future holds, you never will be.’

  ‘The Imperium will not survive if it does not die, brother…’

  ‘Ash running through our fingers…’

  ‘I am not your son…’

  ‘Lord praetorian.’ His personal vox cut through the voices of ghosts.

  ‘Speak, mistress,’ he said, subvocalising into his armour’s vox so that neither Archamus, Andromeda or the other huscarls would hear.

  ‘Word has come,’ said Armina Fel. ‘As instructed, it has not been broadcast to the astropaths across the system. Do you wish the signal sent?’

  ‘When will the first lights appear?’ he asked.

  ‘Two hours,’ she said.

  Two hours…

  ‘Thank you, mistress,’ he said and cut the link.

  He turned to Archamus. The sight of a young warrior’s face bearing that name pulled another voice from the edge of night.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘That others will die for my weakness. That I will fail.’

  ‘Prepare a signal to all Legion formations,’ he said.

  Above the Palace the Arcus orbital plate drifted on the edge of the atmosphere. Captain Demetrius Katafalque watched night slide across the face of the viewport. Pinpricks of light dotted the spreading dark, clustering in the shapes of the great city drifts, space ports and hive clusters. He knew every detail of that view at night, in day, and reimagined in the endless strategic holo-displays that filled the hours he was not on the wing with the rest of his assault company. The hours that remained were given to waiting.

  In the distance he heard the hiss of a hatch release, but did not turn.

  On the other side of the plate he could have looked out and seen the reaches of space. Long ago, the first ancients to touch the void beyond the sky would have had only the stars to greet them. Now the night side of Terra glittered with the lights of warships. System monitors; converted trade tugs; mass conveyors carrying Terra’s void-borne reserve forces; war-barques whose keels had been set in a time before Unity and empire was a dream; missile pinnaces so young that their weapons had never spoken in anger: all arranged in constellations that crowded the blackness as the light of Terra spidered the darkening ground.

  ‘Captain,’ said the voice of Getterax, from behind him. He turned, surprised. The master of signal assigned to the Arcus orbital plate rarely left the command cluster at its core.

  ‘A signal has come from Terra, direct transmission from the primarch’s Legion communication channel.’

  Katafalque blinked. He was not given to surprise, or at least inside his mind the gap between surprise, assessment and clear action was so short that it barely existed. But the communications that controlled the intersecting layers of defence around Terra were precise. The signals and command channels were designated, as were the contingencies and backups. None of them included communication directly from the primarch.

  ‘It was sent to all Legion area commanders throughout the first through third spheres.’

  ‘Only to the Legion?’

  ‘Yes, captain.’

  He blinked again.

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It is gene-encrypted for you alone,’ said Getterax, holding out an iron-framed data-slate. Katafalque took it, released his armour gauntlet and pressed his thumb against the aperture at the base of the frame. A needle stabbed into his flesh and withdrew with a sip of his blood. Green static filled the screen and then coalesced into script. He read the words, and was still for a long moment.

  ‘Bring the Legion contingents in the plate to full readiness. It is to be done quietly and thoroughly. Check that all command-and-control functions are at optimal.’

  ‘Of course, captain…’ Getterax paused. The bulbous signal and vox-module ringing his head did not hide the signs of the frown he was suppressing. ‘You wish this done without bringing the other forces on the plate to equal readiness?’

  Katafalque nodded. ‘That will happen but before it does we must be ready. We are the rock that the storm surges around, Getterax.’

  He turned back to the viewport. Night had now run across all the visible surface. He recognised the lights of Bhab, Dhawalagiri and Gravula.

  None of them know, he found himself thinking. Those sleeping this night do not know what truth they will wake to.

  ‘If I may ask, captain–’

  ‘Full system invasion alert to be issued in two hours. Stand ready. Look to those who will look to us. The hour is come, my sons.’ Katafalque spoke the words he had read, and looked around at his Legion brother. He thought of the warriors of the IX and V Legions scattered between Terra and the dark beyond. He thought of the billions of mortal soldiers, some
who were only soldiers by a few weeks. He thought of all the nights and days when it had seemed that the enemy had come to the heart of the Imperium. All had been false, some provoked, some dreamed from fear and fatigue. But now, on this quiet night, the dreams would end.

  One Hour to Midnight

  The ice wind coming up the valleys of the Himalazia greeted Dorn as he took the last steps onto the parapet. The smell of the work camps, which had scented the air while he was making the Palace into a fortress, had gone. Now the air smelled of smoke and the promise of snow. They were burning the last of any structures within a kilometre of the wall, clearing a killing ground.

  He paused after he took the top step. Then nodded once and climbed up onto the parapet. Plasteel plates now hid the view beyond, allowing only a firing slit view for most of the length of the wall. On this small section, pistons had lowered the plates so that the sky above and the night horizon were visible. His brothers waited for him there.

  The Khan’s armour was ash-white, with fresh marks of red on its plates. His face was solemn and his stillness seemed to vibrate the air around him. Beside him stood an angel in burnished gold armour and crimson cloth. Sanguinius turned to look at Dorn, and a conversation passed in the meeting of their gazes. Around the pair stood warriors of their Legion, and a small clutch of humans. Archamus, Andromeda and the huscarls formed a loose ring behind Dorn as he stopped two paces from his brothers.

  ‘Praetorian,’ said Sanguinius, bowing his head. The Khan gave a short nod.

  ‘It is true,’ said the Khan, as though cutting to the end of a conversation that had passed unspoken. ‘My astropaths brought me word half an hour after your message arrived.’

  Dorn thought of the news Armina Fel had brought him as the sun had set above the Bhab Bastion.

  ‘The auguries all confirm it. There is a quieting in the warp, a silence moving and growing like a storm cloud. It has been growing darker and darker. It is a warp displacement, the bow wave of something approaching through the skin of dreams. It is like… On worlds where there are oceans, the seas become flat before the coming of a tidal wave. The waves draw down the shore as the deeps draw breath.’ She had paused. Shivered.

  ‘I understand,’ he had replied.

  Dorn looked at the Khan and nodded. Along a near section of the wall, the void shields began to test fire, crackling through the dry air as midnight drew closer across the Palace.

  High above them – almost hidden by the flash of the shields and the lights of warships – a new star formed in the darkness, growing brighter and brighter.

  On the walls of the Imperial Palace the three loyal sons of the Master of Mankind looked up as the first notes of sirens began to sound.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn and Tallarn: Ironclad, the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus, including ‘The Dead Oracle’ and ‘Hand of Dust’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

  Inquisitor Crowl, who serves on Holy Terra, follows the trail of a conspiracy that leads him to the corridors of the Imperial Palace itself…

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78572-850-1

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Now Peals Midnight – John French

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Now Peals Midnight – John French

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Now Peals Midnight – John French

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license