The Returned - James Swallow Read online

  His own kinsmen did not trust him, and for reasons that a cursed fate had forced upon him.

  Tarikus grimly considered the unfairness of it, the hard reality of callous outcome that was the way of his bleak universe. After Serek, where he and his squad had engaged a force of necrontyr and ultimately been compelled to flee a planet in its death throes, he had healed aboard a hospitaller ship. In a narthecia-induced slumber, his enhanced physiology working to repair the damage of a poor teleport reversion, he had slept the voyage away – at least until the Traitor-kin had ambushed them. Too weak to fight them all, Tarikus had been captured even as his brothers escaped, thinking him dead. From there, the whoreson Red Corsairs sold him like chained cattle to the master of the Dynikas prison – and he had remained in that place for month after month, year after year, confined with other Astartes stolen from battlefields or presumed dead. Forgotten men turned into laboratory animals, test subjects for the amusement of the Chaos primogenitor who called himself Fabius Bile.

  Tarikus had expected to die there – but then he was a Doom Eagle, and Doom Eagles always expected death. Still, when the chance for freedom came, he embraced it with all his might, aware that his service to the Golden Throne was not yet over. In his soul, Tarikus knew that he was not ready to perish, not on Dynikas, not at the hands of Bile and his freak-army of modificate mutants. He had not been granted permission to die.

  He heard footsteps out in the corridor, then a voice. ‘Tarikus,’ called Zurus, ‘will you join me?’

  The Doom Eagle gathered in his duty tunic and over-robe, then opened the cell door. ‘Are we going somewhere?’

  Zurus nodded once. ‘I have something I wish you to see.’

  They walked, and Zurus did his best to observe his charge without making his scrutiny an open challenge. Tarikus seemed no different from the man shown in his file picts, or captured by the imagers of servo-skulls in battle footage. He carried himself like an Astartes should, and with no prompting the warrior showed all the correct fealty and honour towards the sacrosanct statuary ringing the gates of the great circlet corridor, which ran the circumference of the Eyrie. If anything, Tarikus seemed almost moved to see the great carving of Aquila, first of the Doom Eagles and chosen of the Second Founding. Zurus looked up from his own deep bow a moment quicker than usual, examining the curve of the other man’s shoulders.

  Finally, Tarikus stood and straightened. ‘Perhaps you wish to set an hourglass at my side, brother. That might be method enough to gauge my piety.’

  ‘I am not an inquisitor,’ replied Zurus, a little too swiftly. In truth, he wondered what the representatives of the Ordo Hereticus might have done if they knew of Tarikus and his circumstances – or indeed that of the other handful of Astartes, who had been liberated from Dynikas by brothers of the Blood Angels Chapter. To spend months, years even, in a gaol ruled by one of the most notorious traitors of the Heresy… Could anyone, even a chosen warrior of the Emperor’s Astartes, emerge untouched by the experience? Could a Space Marine survive such a thing and not be tainted in some fashion? Zurus held the question in his thoughts as he spoke again. ‘You are among kinsmen here.’

  ‘And who better to judge me?’ Tarikus looked around, his hard gaze sweeping the ranges of the curving corridor, the galleries overhead and the gloomy alcoves where lume-light did not fall. ‘Where are my other watchers? Nearby, I’d imagine.’

  Zurus resisted the urge to look where Tarikus did. He knew full well that the Librarian Thryn was somewhere close at hand, studying them both. He wondered what Thryn thought of them; outwardly, the two Doom Eagles were similar in aspect, although Zurus’s hairless scalp was paler – the legacy of his origin in the sea-nomad tribes, unlike Tarikus, who was a son of the high-mountain kindred. They were both as good an example of the aspect of a Son of Aquila as one could hope to find on the Ghostmountain; but it was what lay beneath that aspect that could not be quantified.

  That which could not be valued in the weight of coin; this was what Zurus had to quantify. If Tarikus was found wanting, it would mean ignoble death – the worst of fates for a Doom Eagle to suffer.

  A party of Scouts passed close, and Zurus guessed by their garb and weapons they had returned from a training sortie out in the equatorial island chains. He gave the youths a terse nod that was returned, but none of them acknowledged the presence of Tarikus, passing him by without making eye contact. Zurus saw him stiffen at the slight, but he said nothing. After a moment, he nodded to himself, as if accepting something.

  ‘Where are my men?’ said the other warrior, without meeting his gaze. ‘It has been two years since I last saw them, and this question I have asked more than once. Do they live still?’

  Zurus had been ordered not to speak of Tarikus’s former comrades-in-arms, but the command sat poorly with him. He could not in good conscience remain silent on the matter. At length, he gave a nod. ‘They live,’ Zurus admitted. At Serek, Tarikus had led a number of good, steadfast Space Marines – Brothers Korica, Petius and Mykilus – each of whom had survived the Red Corsair attack on the medicae frigate.

  ‘I wish to see them.’

  Zurus shook his head. ‘Perhaps later.’

  Tarikus shot him a glare. ‘Do not lie to me, brother. Grant me that, at least.’

  He sighed. ‘What do you expect me to say, Tarikus? What did you think would happen when you returned here?’ Zurus gestured around. ‘Did you think we would welcome you with open arms? Take you in as if nothing had happened? You said it yourself. Two years, brother. A long time in the heart of darkness.’

  The other man’s gaze dropped to the ornate stone floor, and despite himself, Zurus felt a pang of sympathy for him. ‘I’m a fool, then,’ said Tarikus. ‘Naïve to think that I could return and pick up where I left off.’ He shook his head. ‘I only want to return. That is all.’

  Zurus frowned and walked on. ‘Come,’ he told Tarikus, ‘you must see this. You’ll understand better when you do.’

  The Eyrie’s central feature was a great octagonal tower, tallest of the citadels that reached for the sky, deepest of those that plunged levels down into the heart-rock of the Ghostmountain. The Reclusiam was a million memorials to countless deaths across the galactic disc. Entire floors were given over to relics recovered from the sites of terrible battles and brutal wars across the entire span of the Imperium. Many were from conflicts in which the Doom Eagles had taken a direct part, but others were from atrocities so soaked in despair and fatality that warriors of the Chapter had been drawn to visit them.

  The Doom Eagles were born from the Legion of the Ultramarines in the wake of the Horus Heresy, in the shadow of Great Aquila. He had been a warrior of Guilliman during the Siege of Terra, and along with the rest of the Ultramarines, battles fought during the race to reinforce humanity’s home world waylaid them at a most crucial moment. As Chapter history told it, Aquila had been so wracked with guilt and despair at arriving too late to protect the Emperor from his mortal wounds at the hands of Horus, that he had sworn an oath never again to delay in defence of the Imperium. When the time of the Second Founding came, Aquila willingly broke away to forge the Doom Eagles and make his belief manifest in them. The first Master made it a tenet of his new Chapter that every Son of Gathis would understand the cost of hesitance, of failure – and with it, the great guilt that came in step.

  He would have them see these things, know them first-hand. And so, the relics; gathered by brothers on pilgrimages to places of battle and failed wars, each item a piece of despair and calamity made solid and real.

  Many levels of the Reclusiam were such grim museums, halls reverent with shards of stone and bone, glass and steel. Armageddon, Rocene, Malvolion, Telemachus, Brodra-kul, and countless other war-sites, all represented here. And in the hallowed core, brought to this place by Aquila himself, the silver-walled chamber where pieces of shattered masonry from the Imperial Palace lay alongside a fe
ather from the wing of Sanguinius and a shard of the Emperor’s own battle armour.

  It was said that those with the witch-sight could hear the ghost-screams in the tower. If that were so, if these relics could indeed contain a fraction of the pain and anguish that had enveloped them, then Zurus was glad the great chorus of sorrow thundering silent in the air was hidden from him.

  This was not their destination, however. With Tarikus quiet at his side, the Space Marine rode the grav-car that ran the brass rails following the length of the tower. They rode up and up, beyond the ranges of the death-relics of strangers and into the Hall of the Fallen.

  The largest open space inside the Eyrie, the vast walls, floor and ceiling were sheathed in great tiles of polished obsidian, each the size of a Land Raider. Hanging at right angles from complex armatures, some from floor to ceiling, others suspended at differing heights, there were free-floating panels of the same dark stone. At a distance, the glassy black panes seemed clouded somehow, but as one drew closer, definition unfolded.

  Each panel was perfectly laser-etched into thin strips; each strip sported a half-globe of glass, behind which lay a random item. Upon the strip, the name of a Doom Eagle claimed by death. Next to each name, inside the glass, a relic: a fragment of armour, an eye-lens, a bolt shell, an honour-chain. Every artefact, something touched by the dead. A piece of them, to be held in trust for as long as the Chapter existed.

  The grav-car changed tracks, joining a conveyor that took them across the span of the hall, down and across in zigzag motions toward one of the tallest of the panels.

  Zurus looked down towards the floor far below. Somewhere down there was the memorial of Aquila, and beside it a cracked helmet under glass. It had no dressing, no great and ostentatious detail to set it aside from every other marker. The First Master had ordered it so, knowing that in death, all men were in unity.

  He glanced up and saw that Tarikus was also looking downward. Mimicking me, he wondered? Or is he feeling the reverence that I feel?

  At last, the grav-car rattled to a halt some distance up the face of a suspended wall and Zurus gestured towards the pane that hung before them. Behind a glass bubble, an Astartes combat blade was visible, the fractal edge still bright and sharp even though the length of the knife was dirty and pitted with use.

  Tarikus saw the weapon and took a half step towards it, then stopped dead. ‘It’s mine,’ he said. The tone of his voice was peculiar; there was something like fear in it.

  Zurus nodded and indicated the memorial panel. ‘Look here, brother.’

  There in gothic script, etched by the hand of some machine-slave stoneworker, letters lined in heavy silver. As if he had no control over the action, Tarikus reached out and ran his fingers over the shape of his name. ‘No…’ began the other Astartes, shaking his head.

  Zurus nodded again. ‘You were lost, brother. You know our laws and diktats. Your name was cast from the rolls. The ceremony of loss completed and sanctified. Your name, carved here, in memoriam. By the lights of the Chapter and all of Gathis–’

  The other Doom Eagle turned abruptly to face him, a curious shade of emotion in his dark eyes. ‘I am dead,’ he said, finishing Zurus’s sentence for him. ‘I no longer exist.’

  Tarikus strode from the gates of the Reclusiam across the processional bridge with such pace and intent that it was a long moment before he realised he had nowhere to go. He slowed and the grief he had tried to outrun caught up with him, as if it were only his swift tread that had kept it at bay.

  In his darkest moments, trapped in that hated prison cell, Tarikus had encountered a great dread within himself that had shocked him with its potency. He had feared that he was forgotten; that after he was lost in deep space, the many sorties and battles he had fought, the honours he had earned, all would count for nothing among his brethren. He feared that all he had done would be meaningless.

  But now he saw that the greater horror was this – that he had been remembered, in so final and damning a way as to make each breath he drew now a phantom. In the eyes of Great Aquila and his Chapter, Brother-Sergeant Tarikus had perished aboard that lost medicae frigate, years past. His kinsmen had counted him gone and made their peace with that fact.

  Was it any wonder the Scouts had looked away from him, unsettled by his presence? For a Chapter so intimate with the manners of death, to see a warrior return from it must have shaken them to their core. Our ghosts remain dead, Tarikus thought, recalling the words written in the Prayer Mortalis.

  Zurus called his name and he turned as the other Doom Eagle approached him, his pale face set like ice.

  ‘This must be undone,’ Tarikus began, but Zurus waved him into silence.

  ‘Do you understand, brother?’ Zurus demanded of him. ‘You see now why your reappearance is… problematic?’

  Tarikus felt a swell of anger inside him, and let it rise. ‘Don’t speak to me as if I am some whining neophyte. I am a battle-brother of this Chapter with honour and glory to my name!’

  ‘Are you?’ The question slipped from Zurus’s lips.

  He glared at the other warrior. ‘Ah. I see. At first I thought you were concerned that my wits might have been dulled by my confinement, that perhaps you suspected my spirit damaged by my experiences… But it’s more than that, isn’t it?’ Tarikus made a spitting sound and advanced on the other Doom Eagle. ‘Can it be that you doubt the evidence of your own eyes, brother?’ He put savage emphasis on the last word.

  ‘The truth–’

  Tarikus’s anger was strong now, and he refused to let Zurus speak. ‘What do you presume?’ He spread his hands. ‘Are you waiting for me to shed my skin, to transform into some hell-spawned Chaos daemon? Is that what you think I am?’

  Zurus’s gaze did not waver. ‘That question has been asked.’

  He took a quick step forward and prodded Zurus in the chest with his finger. ‘I know what I am, kinsman,’ snarled Tarikus. ‘A warrior loyal to Holy Terra!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Zurus, ‘or perhaps you are only a thing which believes that to be true. Something that only resembles Brother-Sergeant Tarikus.’

  Muscles bunched in his arm, and for a long second Tarikus wavered on the verge of striking the other Space Marine across the face. That another Doom Eagle would dare to impugn the honour of a kinsman lit his fury still higher, reasons be damned.

  And in that moment, through the lens of his cold anger, Tarikus discerned something else: a greasy, electric tingle across his skin and the sense of a hundred eyes staring at him. He relaxed his stance and turned away, glaring about across the length of the high marble bridge. The only sound was the clatter of heat exchangers working far below in the depths of the Ghostmountain.

  To the air he spoke a demand. ‘Show yourself, witch-kin.’ Tarikus shot a look at Zurus, and the other warrior’s expression confirmed his suspicions. He turned away again, ranging around. ‘Come, brother. If you wish to damn my name, at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye when you do so,’

  ‘As you wish.’ The voice came from behind him, close and low. Tarikus found a figure in the lee of a carved support, swamped by red-trimmed robes. The Doom Eagle had looked in that direction only moments earlier, and there had been nothing there. Only shadows.

  The psyker walked closer, dropping his hood. Cold, hard eyes bit into Tarikus, searching for any sign of weakness. He betrayed none.

  ‘I am Thryn,’ said the Librarian. ‘My name is known.’

  Tarikus nodded once. ‘I have heard of you. A chooser of the faithful.’

  ‘But not you,’ Thryn replied. ‘It was not my duty on the day you were picked from the aspirants to join this Chapter, all those decades ago. Perhaps, if it had been, this question would already be answered.’

  ‘There is no question,’ Tarikus retorted. ‘What you see before you is all that I am. Doom Eagle. Adeptus Astartes. Son of Gathi
s.’

  Thryn cocked his head. ‘The enemy hides in plain sight. A tactic the followers of the Ruinous Powers are quite fond of. They have warped many a mind in the past. It is only sensible that we must be certain that has not happened here.’

  Tarikus met Thryn’s burning gaze and refused to look away. ‘Do you know what kept me centred for all those months inside that hellhole, witch-kin? It was my faith in my brothers, my Chapter and my Emperor. Was I wrong to believe that? Have I been forsaken?’

  ‘That is the question we must ask of you, Tarikus,’ said Thryn.

  ‘You dare ask me to prove myself?’ The fury boiled inside him. ‘After all that I have done in Aquila’s name, you question me?’ He advanced on the psyker until they were face to face. He could feel the prickling aura of the Librarian’s controlled mind-force pressing on his flesh. ‘This is your greeting for a lost brother, who by the grace of He That Is Most Mighty, has had the temerity to survive. Nothing but disdain and isolation. Accusations and disrespect.’

  ‘This is the universe we live in,’ offered Zurus.

  Tarikus paused, holding Thryn’s gaze. ‘Perhaps you would have preferred it if I allowed myself to die in confinement.’

  Thryn cocked his head. ‘That would have brought a definite end to this matter, to be sure.’

  ‘Then I apologise for daring to live,’ Tarikus shot back. ‘It must be very inconvenient for you.’

  ‘There is still time,’ said the psyker. ‘But not much time.’

  Tarikus was silent for a long moment, and with an effort, he calmed himself and shuttered away his annoyance. That there was some logic in the challenge posed by Zurus and Thryn only made matters worse; but rather than resist it, Tarikus drew in a breath and looked to his heart, to the soul and spirit that made him a Doom Eagle.

  ‘So be it,’ he said grimly. ‘If I must be questioned, then I must be questioned. This is the way of things. I will face it and not flinch. Tell me what must be done to put this challenge to its end.’