Spear of the Emperor - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read online

  ‘You truly know nothing of what I speak?’

  My tongue thickened beneath that stern gaze. He seemed… hurt, almost, by my ignorance. I shook my head rather than risk trusting my voice.

  ‘On my home world,’ he said, ‘the River Ghoul, Abydaras, was the creature said to guard the way to the Emperor’s side in the afterlife. Abydaras held the souls of the slain in his jaws, weighing the balance of their sins. The righteous were released. The sinful were devoured. The founders of my bloodline named these blades in honour of that ancient myth. Each of the swords is said to measure the weight of those whose blood they draw. It was their creators’ hope that no righteous heart could ever be stilled by the ten Fangs of the River Ghoul. So, if you do desire a weapon… take this.’

  He tossed the weapon to me. It crashed onto the dark metal floor in front of my dirty, ragged boots, and there it lay, breathtakingly lovely. If my regency sword could have purchased a noble’s tower in a hive spire, this blade would have bought the rest of the city.

  ‘Pick it up,’ he commanded me. ‘Use it, child. See if I bleed.’

  I wanted to. I wanted to lift it, but feared I wouldn’t be able to. Not one-armed, even with the bionic bones still inside my natural limb. It was the weapon of an Adeptus Astartes warlord, and I was a malnourished serf with infection running its gleeful way through my blood. Most of all, I feared playing into his plans or taking part in his games. But, Throne of the Emperor, how I wanted to. Ancient legend or not, he would have bled. His ­heretic heart was anything but righteous, no matter how he behaved now. I was willing to wager my soul on that.

  I stepped back from the curved sword. ‘No.’

  Again, that expression of surprised hurt showed on his face. Evidently I’d refused a great honour.

  ‘Your ignorance grieves me,’ he said. ‘And I am insulted, Anuradha. That is the truth. Did they not teach you of us? Why would they let you rot in such moronic incomprehension?’

  ‘The Spears told me all I needed to know,’ I said, as coldly as I dared. ‘About the Pure, and the Exilarchy you lead.’

  ‘The Spears!’ He snarled the word as a curse. He lips peeled back from perfect teeth, rage strangled his speech, and here at last was the beast behind the beauty. ‘I don’t speak of the Spears. I speak of the Mentor Legion, your precious lords. Do they not speak of us? Is it shame that silences them?’

  In the face of his sudden fury, ignorance was my only shield. ‘Why would they speak of you?’

  Nar Kezar stood as if struck by the blade he’d offered me. He couldn’t have looked more surprised if the God-Emperor Himself had walked from the warp and stood by my side. Words had abandoned him. Shock ripped through him with such force that his mouth trembled.

  He would kill me. I was sure of it. He started walking towards me, and I stepped back again, telling myself it was because Tyberia commanded me to survive, not because I was so scared I could barely piece a coherent thought together.

  He was fast even in his slow, bulky grace. He clutched my chin in the tips of a finger and thumb, ruthlessly gentle where the last Pure to manhandle me had just been ruthless. I looked up into his pale eyes, unable to think what words would save my life. Certainly, no action would. There was nothing I could do to harm this creature.

  ‘Do you know,’ he whispered to me, ‘why this war started?’

  Yes, I thought. You tore your way from the Great Rift and laid siege to the worlds of Elara’s Veil. You massacred whole populations and took the survivors for slaves. You bled the Spears and the Lions, and you despise them for having the courage to redden the earth with your filthy blood.

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We were bleeding, child,’ he continued in that soft tone. ‘Oh, how our wounds ran red. For so long we’d sailed, tempest-tossed in the howling dark. Our servants and slaves wept and wailed and prayed, not just for days, but years. Did we change? Did we adapt? I ask you, Anuradha, who would not change after nearly drowning in the Sea of Souls? Dreams and delusions became truth and reality. We looked too long into the screaming abyss, yes, and saw what swam there. What gestated there. What waited behind reality’s masquerade, forever looking back.’

  Nar Kezar exhaled. For all his beauty, the wind from his lungs was rancid and sour. ‘And when we reached home, after so very, very long, we sought to replenish our ranks. A harvest of flesh, for implantation and ascension into our ranks. New warriors, child. We needed them, most desperately. How then did our ­brothers react to our return? How did our oathsworn brethren of the Adeptus Vaelarii greet us?’

  He released me at last, though he didn’t move away. ‘Here is the truth of your war. It was the Spears. They fired the first shot. And the Lions, those golden champions, fired the ­second. Three billion lives thrived on Khamun-Sen. Three billion lives, and our entire civilisation. Burned to ash. A kingdom reduced to slag by Exterminatus. Their wrath went deeper than inflicting destruction. This was annihilation. This was oblivion.’

  ‘Khamun-Sen,’ I said, repeating the name. An unbelieving breath. I feared I’d laugh, and only stopped myself by covering my mutilated face with my remaining hand. ‘Khamun-Sen,’ I said into my palm.

  ‘And what if we ask Amadeus to lie about what he sees here?’ Serivahn had said, back in the barrow tomb. ‘What if we have secrets we wish kept on this side of the Rift?’

  ‘My home world,’ Nar Kezar agreed passionately. ‘We tried to defend it. We fought back. And still it burned. To see your master here, child, wearing the colours we once wore… To know the Imperium banished all memory of us, letting lesser men wear our heraldry…’

  ‘I see no Scorpion on your war-plate. Only the basilisk of the Pure.’

  Lost in theatrical reflection, he took a moment to acknowledge my words. ‘As I said, my child, there were changes. Everything changes, you know. But no matter. The insult of the Mentors’ existence will stand, for now. We must secure the Veil first, and bring it to order. It has been a long century, Anuradha. We didn’t want this war, but since the Spears began it, we will finish it.’

  ‘Why?’ I sounded helpless in my confusion. That frustrated him, I think, because I wasn’t the celebrating convert he’d hoped. The truth – his deformed version of the truth – wasn’t sweeping me up in the throes of revelation. ‘Why fight at all?’

  He stared at me as if I were mad. ‘Elara’s Veil is ours, you stunted creature. Does ignorance flow through you in place of blood? We swore lifelong oaths to protect the Veil. And we will do so, even over the bodies of our brothers. We are the true Sentinels of the Veil. The worlds that swear allegiance to us are spared the worst of what breeds and seethes within the Great Rift.’

  ‘You demand they endure horror,’ I said softly, ‘for the sake of avoiding even greater horrors.’

  His laugh was bleak, and his gaze invited me to share in some cosmic jest. ‘Is that not what the Imperium is, child?’

  Some of it, perhaps. Some of the Imperium’s worlds, no doubt. But not all. Not all.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That isn’t the Imperium. It’s the Exilarchy.’

  His voice rose, a preacher reaching his pitch. ‘And what do you believe the Exilarchy is? It is nothing more than a union of Veil-worlds that joined with us. Worlds that saw our return in an age of Chaos, and they trust us to shepherd them through it. Worlds that have grown weary of fighting and bleeding and rotting under the protection of the Lions and the Spears. We are the architects of peace, child. We are the ­heralds of a new dawn.’

  My eye socket ached as I stared up at him. I’d have given my life for the chance to lift my bandages and slay him with my terminus-eye. I think Amadeus would have approved of that, even if it would surely have led to my death soon after. I know the Spears would have rejoiced. Even Tyberia might have considered it a worthy death.

  I took in the towering figure before me, in his white armour, changed by
time and the whims of the warp. The basilisk on his shoulder guard was an unnatural beast twisted by the misery of its own existence, an aberration hating the world that birthed it.

  ‘They were right,’ I said, and it was too late to call the words back. I met his eyes with what remained of my sight, and I swallowed my fear. ‘The Spears were right to burn your world. The God-Emperor alone knows what poison you brought back to Khamun-Sen after the warp ate your souls. And how is it you still live, when the Scorpions were sentenced to death by failing gene-seed? What pacts did you swear out there in the dark places of the galaxy, to grant you another chance at life?’

  The more I said, the more the woad on my face – Tyberia’s blood – began to itch. ‘The Scorpions are dead, and the Adeptus Vaelarii mourns their memory. You are the Pure. The Basilisks. Takers of slaves. Murderers of cities. Bringers of war. Lords of the Exilarchy.’

  Hatred flooded me as I spoke. I thought of Tyberia, what they brought back of her, and what I’d lowered into the inciner­ator. I thought of my captivity, and the pain of my infected face and broken skull and starving belly. I thought of the bodies in the streets and on the battlefields of Kouris. I thought of my father, the creature that wore his skin, summoned by the deeds of these men, who played at being kings of a kingdom that had renounced them centuries ago.

  ‘You’re husks. You’re what the warp spat back out after the Scorpions died.’

  I was ready, then. Ready for him to kill me. If I was to journey to the God-Emperor’s side, I would see Tyberia and tell her: I couldn’t do what you asked, Ty. I couldn’t survive. I couldn’t kill Kartash. But I told the truth to a madman, even through my terror, and I don’t regret it.

  Nar Kezar was watching me with half-lidded eyes. Not enraged by my words, but drunk on them. His tongue licked a slow circuit of his perfect lips, and his voice shook with some transhuman incarnation of desire.

  ‘You have no conception,’ he purred, ‘of how sweet ­genuine hatred tastes. Oh, to feel as fiercely as you feel. To believe so ardently.’

  He laughed softly to himself as he turned from me with no more ceremony, lifted the curved blade from where it lay on the deck, and sheathed it smoothly in its scabbard.

  ‘If you’re quite finished distracting me with your ignorance…’ he began, and then said no more. He’d turned to the view of the Venatrix’s spinal battlements, and the thrashing murk of the warp around it.

  And this time, I dared to see for myself. A ship, nothing more than a speck, sailed far to starboard. Even as I watched, it grew. Slipping here and there through the obscuring tides, rolling as it pushed through the etheric storm, its Geller field a dark flare of cold, natural space haloing its hull.

  Nar Kezar heaved a breath, evidently weary of the pursuit, showing irritation and, I believe, the very edge of admiration.

  ‘Brêac,’ he growled, ‘and that bastard cripple.’

  ‘No,’ I said, watching the ship as it spiral-dived towards us.

  ‘You object?’ Nar Kezar smiled. ‘I’ve spoken with Serivahn myself, child. I’ve seen him on the oculus when our vessels have traded threats and cannon fire in the past. I know of his malformations.’

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘I mean… that’s not the Hex.’

  3

  There was a great deal I didn’t know, then.

  I had no way of knowing that when the Hex had foundered in real space over two months ago, dragged from the warp by the detonation of the psychic mine, she’d sent out astropathic calls for aid, crying out that the Venatrix, the hated Huntress, was slipping through its grasp once again.

  I had no way of knowing the Venatrix’s destination, either. The crew of the Hex had surmised their prey wouldn’t make the long and dangerous run for Exilarchy territory, and would instead try to lose her pursuers in regions still held by the Adeptus Vaelarii. I‘d missed every council taken around holo­lithic tables; every star chart marked with projected courses; every report given by an increasingly weakening Ducarius, as he peered into the Sea of Souls and sought to follow the Venatrix’s bow wave through the warp. He and the Hex’s Navigator had been communing to the same end, and through their union, the Spears had been able to maintain pursuit through the halting, stop-start jumps of warp travel in the Dark Imperium.

  I didn’t know of the soul-draining coordination required by the astropaths and Ducarius, arranging meeting vectors and ambush sites in a realm of ceaseless energies that obeyed no physical laws. I had no idea that it took them a month simply to meet up with Adeptus Vaelarii reinforcements, and another month to align their courses to close the trap’s jaws. Even achieving these deeds in that time frame was hailed as nothing short of miraculously fortuitous. Three astropaths died, expiring from the effort required to coordinate the trap’s closing jaws.

  Nor was I aware that the mood of the Pure aboard the Venatrix was one of unease. The Hex was a hated legend among the Exilarchy, as sure as the Huntress was an unwelcome symbol to the Adeptus Vaelarii. When they couldn’t shake Brêac’s ship in the Sea of Souls, when it became clear the chase was going to be long and sour if they sought to match speed against speed, Nar Kezar ordered his vessel to change course again and again and again, trying in futility to lose their pursuers.

  And though I had no way of knowing for sure, I could at least guess what they’d done to my master aboard the Venatrix. I didn’t expect to see him again in this life, and if by some twist of fate I did, logic dictated he would be a wreck of the warrior I’d once served.

  But I knew none of this then. I learned all of it later.

  As the unforeseen vessel bore down in a rolling dive towards the Venatrix, I knew only one thing for certain: that strike cruiser wasn’t the Hex. Later, I would hear the vessel’s name and thank it in my prayers every day and night. I still do so, even now, years from my last battle. Tears prickle the edge of my vision when I think back to that moment, as she tore through the tides of madness, running straight for us.

  I was right. She wasn’t the Hex. She was called the Blade of the Seventh Son. Once, she had belonged to the Black Templars. Now she flew in the colours of the Celestial Lions.

  True to her name, she struck the Venatrix amidships, ramming her with the wrath of the God-Emperor Himself.

  My world exploded in a storm of light and fury.

  I didn’t want to die, but I welcomed that storm. I’ll never forget laughing as the thunder struck.

  4

  Any warrior will tell you that during a battle, you know almost nothing of what’s happening outside your immediate senses. War is disorder. It’s sensation, it’s confusion, it’s a dry mouth and an aching need to piss. It’s trying to see. It’s straining to see where you are and what’s happening around you, to orient yourself and stay alive. You know nothing in the one moment you need to know everything.

  Being below decks during ship-to-ship warfare is that sense of disorder magnified tenfold. You don’t know what the other vessel is doing, nor how your own craft is responding. Everything shakes around you: the walls so hard they can’t be trusted, the deck so fiercely you crawl as much as you run. Your world quakes out of rhythm with the ceaseless banging of the vessel’s guns. If you’re close to the firing decks, a single broadside can leave you deaf for minutes afterwards. Servitors and crew will load the macrocannons by tending the autoloader towers, with blood running from their ears, down their necks, into their uniforms.

  Explosions. Thunder. Shipquakes. Each one could mean anything. Every detonation could be something as banal as an unessential bulkhead getting blown out, or the very end of the battle. You don’t know. You have no way of knowing. The ship could be cleaved in half, and in the darkness of your own deck, you won’t know you’re already doomed.

  I didn’t lose consciousness when the Blade struck, but that’s the only victory I can claim. The chamber was a battered ruin, and I had to pull myself, one-armed, from
the wreckage. I couldn’t stand, and at first I couldn’t understand why. I had to roll over to look down at what was wrong – and when I saw it, I was too bleached of emotion to feel any horror. By then, the degradation of my body had become almost a matter of detached curiosity. How much of yourself could you lose and still be you?

  I tied my belt around my thigh to stop myself bleeding to death. Beneath the belt, my left knee was crushed to inflexion, the bones were just rubble under the skin. My foot and most of my shin was still somewhere in the wreckage.

  The worst part was feeling no pain in that leg. None. Surely a bad sign.

  Nar Kezar was gone. From the cracked windows, I could see the Venatrix burning along her mangled spinal battlements. Her starboard side was hammer-struck where the Blade had rammed her, buckled badly enough to break her back.

  I could also see stars. We weren’t in the warp. The Blade had driven us back into real space.

  We rolled, paralysed in the void, at the mercy of momentum. Fusillades of weapons fire, the last gasps of a dying animal, banged from the Venatrix’s sides. And there was the Blade of the Seventh Son, wounded herself and keeping back, drifting aside from the broadside volleys. She was the huntress now, letting her fading prey spit out its final anger before she would move in for the kill.

  The Hex held no such patience. I didn’t know what ­system we were in, but the Spears’ strike cruiser darkened the light of that distant sun, casting its shadow across us. As she weathered the pathetic broadsides sputtering from the ­crippled Venatrix, the Blade sailed in alongside her sister ship.

  Boarding pods streamed from both vessels.

  I kept crawling.

  Morcant was the one to find me, timeless hours later, in the darkness of yet another corridor. I didn’t know how long I’d been crawling towards the ever-shifting sounds of battle, and I had no conception of how the wider fight was going. I remember his helm, crested high, looking down at me. Blood marked his armour in rainfall dappling. Three helms in the bronze-edged white of the Pure were chained to his belt. He’d been trophy-hunting.