The Buried Dagger - James Swallow Read online

  The Sigillite lifted Rubio’s sword until the tip of it rested on the legionary’s neck ring. He would only need to put his weight behind it to send the weapon through Rubio’s throat and finish him.

  The legionary could not speak, but Malcador reacted as if he had.

  ‘Do you think this is what he wanted, Tylos? Even if you fail, and I stand here, your sword in my hand, he still scores a victory. I die and you are killed because of it. I survive and I kill you. One death or two, he still gains. Because he knows your value as much as mine.’

  Malcador steeled himself and got better purchase on the blade’s hilt. Then, rather than end the Knight-Errant, he pulled it away and walked to the cells where the Silent Sisters waited in their blank-gazed torpor.

  The power of the restricting field meant that Rubio could not even move his eyes, forcing him to only look ahead. But at the edges of his vision he saw the movement of the cell doors opening at Malcador’s command, and he saw the first of the bodies fall. He heard the song of the blade he knew so well hissing through stale air and human flesh. There were no cries, of course, but the gush and spatter of slit throats had a sound all of their own.

  As each Sister was dispatched, the telepathic fog abated by degrees, but it meant nothing to Rubio. The glowing device affixed to his chest was negating all energy-conduction in his armour, from the flex-metal power musculature of his arms and legs to the psi-attuned crystals of his psychic hood. He could do nothing but wait and witness, trapped in the amber of reborn rage.

  At length, Malcador moved back into his field of sight. His terracotta robes were spattered with splashes of crimson, his hands red with murder. The Sigillite let Rubio’s gladius drop and he came face-to-face with him.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, as colour returned to the old man’s cheeks. ‘Why don’t we see how this all began, yes?’

  No, Rubio wanted to say, but that reaction was built upon fear. Old, primal terror from his childhood, the dark and shapeless shadow of a forgotten terror experienced by the unfinished mind of a babe in a crib. Something buried so deep it was never to be remembered, but not so lost that a keen and hateful soul could not dredge it up and weaponise it.

  Malcador cupped Rubio’s twitching face in his blood-slicked hands and pushed–

  –All the way back to Calth.

  This was the place. A blasted wilderness of seared grassland beneath a dying star, kilometres outside the lines of defence set up upon the railhead that led to Numinus City. Rough cones of old rock forming shallow canyons. The fading winds of a thinning atmosphere.

  Rubio and the others were out there on a reconnaissance sortie. The 21st Company had fallen back to this zone, bloodied and shocked by the brutal treachery of the Sons of Lorgar, and now the Ultramarines dealt with the horror of that sedition by returning to what they knew best – their tactics.

  The orders from Captain Gaius were clear. Lone legionaries spread out in a finger-five deployment, each covering a sweep zone, searching for any sign of the Word Bearers or the hordes of insane auxilia they had brought with them.

  It gave Brother Rubio and the others something to occupy their minds, something other than the question of why the XVII Legion had chosen to break their oaths.

  The first shots of the rebellion fell here and he did not know it. But he would, in time. All the galaxy would learn the truth.

  Their use forbidden by the Edict of Nikaea, Rubio felt lost without his psionic abilities, and in reflecting on that his distraction cost him dearly.

  ‘There you are.’

  In this memory he did not remember, Rubio whirled, bringing up his bolter to fire. Behind him, a figure in armour the colour of congealed blood, his face revealed in the weak light as if it were a parchment covered with lines of arcane symbols. The words defeated understanding, squirming out from under his comprehension.

  ‘This is the one?’ said the Word Bearer, as if conversing with someone only he could perceive. ‘It doesn’t look like anything to me.’

  Rubio attempted to pull the trigger of his bolter, but no part of him could move. His eye was drawn to a glow in the off-hand of the traitor legionary, a mote of eldritch warp fire held there by the cage of his fingers in ritual pattern.

  He knew the Word Bearer then.

  Erebus, said another voice, coming at him from outside the memory. Of course.

  ‘You don’t seem special, Ultramarine,’ Erebus was saying, coming closer, removing his gauntlets so he could touch the flesh of Rubio’s face with his bare fingers. ‘But I have learned not to question them. What the Octed knows of your path and where you will end up is all that matters.’ He leaned in, and unspeakable pain exploded across all of Rubio’s sensorium. ‘What do you have that I can use, I wonder? Let me see.’

  In real time, it took only seconds, but in the non-space of the mind an eternity unfolded. Imagine a bathysphere descending into the abyssal deeps of a fathomless ocean; thus was Erebus as he fell into Rubio’s memories, searching back and back to the most primal of them, seeking the ur-fear formed in his mind before he had known true sentience.

  Then, with the skill of cruelty’s artisan, Erebus stitched that primitive terror to its red twin, to raw fury. He gave it Malcador’s face as the root, and sealed it within a shell of words. Waiting for the day.

  ‘Such pride and arrogance in your breed, Rubio,’ said Erebus, as he withdrew, the deed done. ‘It will amuse me to think of you as no better than a servitor, waiting for the right trigger command.’ He showed a mouthful of teeth. ‘That will amuse me a great deal.’

  And then he was gone and the moment had never happened, swallowing itself, becoming nothing. Hiding.

  Hiding until–

  ‘We can’t have that.’

  Malcador’s fingers slipped through the matter of Rubio’s flesh until he was touching the substrata of his raw psyche. Now it had blossomed, it was easy to see where Erebus had hidden the trigger for the hate-bomb that had lain inert for years in Rubio’s mind.

  The Sigillite had a grudging admiration for the ploy. It showed a subtlety on the Word Bearer’s part that he had not thought Lorgar’s lackey to be capable of. But then again, he imagined it was more the voices that had whispered to him from the void behind such a tactic than Erebus himself.

  He kept Rubio suspended in negative time as he gauged the depth and intricacy of the mnemonic implant. It wove around elements of the Codicier’s core self, his super-ego and the surface layers of Ultramarines hypnogogic programming. All were pieces of Tylos Rubio that could not be easily excised without collapsing the whole.

  The simplest solution would be to euthanise, of course, but then that would upset the balance of the project on Titan. And although Malcador had built a degree of redundancy into the scheme, if the choice came down to it, he didn’t want to lose this particular one. Up on the Eagle’s Highway, when Malcador had halted him, the Sigillite had seen into Rubio’s heart. That kind of purity and devotion was impossible to fabricate.

  So, with the greatest care, Malcador retraced Erebus’ path and undid his works.

  Rubio choked and his tripartite lungs quaked inside his ribcage as they sucked in a gale of cold air.

  He blinked furiously, trying to get his bearings. He was on his knees, in the holding chamber within the White Mountain. He tasted blood and the acid tang of spent ectoplasm.

  ‘Steady, lad,’ said Malcador, standing a few metres away. He held himself up on his staff, the crackling flames in the iron basket atop it giving his face a hard cast. ‘You lost a step there, I think.’

  ‘Aye…’ Rubio felt wrung out and cold, but he shook off the sensation and rose. Before him, he saw the silhouette of his sword lying in a spill of crimson. And beyond it, a line of dead bodies. The lost pariah Sisters, all executed. He knew immediately that it had been by his weapon. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You don’t remember?�
�� Malcador sucked in a breath through his teeth. ‘Psi-shock, perhaps. Such effects can obliterate short-term memory chains.’

  Rubio looked back towards the hatchway and found it hanging open, stained with human vitae. The scientician Brell lay off to one side, unmoving. ‘The last thing I recall is the door opening…’ He trailed off. Beyond that point, Rubio’s eidetic memory was a seamless negative space. He tried to grasp at the threads of it, but there was nothing there.

  ‘It was the trap we knew it would be.’ Malcador became solemn. ‘The Sisters attacked us. It appears they were mentally programmed in some fashion. You took the sword to them.’ He gave a nod. ‘Rubio, you saved my life.’

  ‘Yes?’ He frowned, lost in the moment. ‘I don’t recall it.’ Rubio’s face clouded as he gathered up his sword and cleaned off the blade. There was something else missing, something he couldn’t find a shape for. His only way to define it was by the void it left behind, and that was insufficient.

  ‘Horus engineered this event to destroy us both,’ continued the Sigillite. ‘That was his intent. Kill me, and take you off the board into the bargain.’

  ‘Why would I matter?’ The question fell from him, unbidden. The hollow sensation in Rubio’s mind made him feel bleak and distant.

  Malcador approached and looked up at him. ‘Because you have so much yet to do, my friend.’

  The Sigillite offered Rubio something, and he took it: a silver disc, the same as the ones he had seen on the table in Malcador’s private quarters. Turning it over, Rubio revealed a name etched there in High Gothic script.

  ‘Koios,’ he read aloud. The same name Yotun had addressed him with. ‘I don’t understand. What does this mean?’

  ‘Make your peace with it.’ Malcador’s face faded into the depths of his hood. ‘Soon that will be who you are.’

  Interval VI

  Lords of Death

  [The planet Barbarus; before]

  Mortarion indulged his comrade, and followed him in silence back through the streets of Safehold, out to the barren field where the captured airship floated just above the churned earth. Tethers held the craft down against the stiff breeze that pulled at its bullet-like shape, and a steady caravan of people passed them in procession back towards the township, each one carrying a bale of cargo or a barrel of water recovered from the airship’s belly compartment.

  The people will eat well tonight, thought the Reaper of Men, gauging the bounty that Typhon’s forces had brought back with them. He would allow it, just for this day, as a celebration for the victories of the Death Guard. But tomorrow, the supplies would be locked in the city’s communal stores and regular rationing would return. Resources were precious on Barbarus, and those who did not consider that reality would die as readily as those culled by the Overlords.

  He wondered if Typhon had an ulterior motive with this generosity. Did he hope that it might make the people better disposed towards him? Mortarion doubted it. Despite all the battles his old friend had won, the intolerance towards the half-breed’s nature could never be completely erased. Too many looked in Typhon’s dark eyes and saw only the bastard child of a human woman and an Overlord. Mortarion had won loyalty despite his inhuman qualities and the dark past of his origins, and some might have said his was the higher mountain to climb. But for Typhon, his blood would forever be his burden.

  ‘What is it?’ Typhon sensed Mortarion watching and turned back to look at him as they approached the drop-ramp leading up into the airship.

  ‘Only those who have fought beside you know what dedication you have to our war,’ Mortarion told him. ‘I will never forget it.’

  Typhon halted. ‘We are all united in our hate for the Overlords,’ he said, after a moment. ‘When they’re dead, we’ll have to find something else to kill. What do you think that will be?’

  ‘I look forward to the day when I have the luxury of that question.’ He gestured at the airship. ‘What have you brought me to see?’

  ‘Clear the cargo bay!’ Typhon didn’t answer him, and instead he jogged up the ramp, repeating the order to all within earshot. ‘You heard me! Get out!’

  Civilians scuttled frantically out of his way, almost falling over themselves to avoid Mortarion, some dragging barrels, others dropping their loads in fright. A handful of Typhon’s hatchet-faced warriors strode off their guard posts and followed the citizens down the ramp. As Mortarion ducked his head to enter the low-ceilinged cargo compartment, he felt the airship’s deck sway gently in the wind, and cast his gaze around. There were still many containers to be removed, but by far the largest was a metal crate made of steel panels, easily the size of a steam-crawler.

  Typhon pulled a handle set into the wall and with a crunch of cogwheels, the cargo bay’s clamshell doors slammed shut, leaving them alone. Mortarion suddenly became aware of a thick, greasy stillness in the air, and it made him ill at ease. ‘I await your answer,’ he told Typhon, a twitch moving through his fingers. He dismissed the urge to reach for the shaft of his scythe, to seek solace in the weapon’s heft.

  ‘You and Rask have the right idea with those armours of yours,’ Typhon began, walking across to the metal crate. Something inside it made a noise, like the scrape of a talon over rusted iron. ‘But you’re going about it the wrong way. A handful of men, even with the best of weapons, won’t be enough. You know how lethal the high crags are. A single pinprick hole in that plate and all flesh within would suffer an agonising end.’

  ‘You have an alternative?’ Mortarion scowled as he said the words, becoming more unsettled by the moment. ‘A way to survive up there?’

  ‘The Overlords live in those toxic reaches,’ Typhon replied. ‘They alter their golems and their helots to endure it. Imagine if we could do the same.’ He reached for a heavy padlock secured to the front of the crate, and Mortarion saw a brief glitter of twisted light around the device. The padlock fell to the deck. With his other hand, Typhon touched his throat. ‘You would not need seven warriors in ponderous, heavy armour suits. You could send a whole army up there, throw them screaming and furious through the thickest clouds. The final fortresses of our enemies would be overwhelmed.’

  A cold surge of fury washed over Mortarion. He had often overlooked Typhon’s more unpalatable statements and his unorthodox actions, partly out of a sense of loyalty and partly because the warrior fought hard and brought him victories. But what he suggested now was close to spitting on everything that Mortarion held sacrosanct. ‘The Overlords warp their underlings with dark power. They change them with magicks!’

  ‘What you call magick is only a talent they conceal from us,’ replied Typhon. ‘It is one we too could learn to command.’

  ‘To what end?’ Was Typhon testing him with these words? He could not be certain. ‘You have seen what becomes of those turned into the golem-soldiers. Nothing of their will remains. They become mindless!’

  Typhon nodded. ‘Aye. But if some were willing to volunteer for such a transformation… If you asked it of them, Reaper of Men… Would it not be worth the sacrifice?’

  His words brought Mortarion up short. It is so, he told himself. There are those whose loyalty is such that they would do such a thing, if I offered it.

  He thought of Dural Rask, who had followed him from the earliest days of the war and treated him as if he were a fate-sent saviour. He thought of fierce Kahgor Lothsul, warriors like Morgax Murnau and Taragth Sune, even bookish Caipha Morarg and Hunda Skorvall – all of them would agree to give themselves up, body and soul, if they believed it would end this conflict forever. ‘You would have us become the enemy in order to defeat it…’ he muttered, grasping the full import of that dire possibility.

  ‘We can learn their ways.’ Typhon twisted a switch on the flank of the metal crate and the steel panels along its side snapped open, folding back to reveal a cage within. ‘We can pull the secrets we need from this.’

 
Inside the cage, suspended from hawsers, was a deathly figure in soiled black robes. It looked up and revealed a bruised face of milk-pale skin streaked with watery yellow blood. Eyes alight with the deepest, most Stygian terror found Mortarion’s and the mouth behind a barbed gag worked in panicked gulps. Unintelligible wails escaped the creature and it flailed feebly against its restraints.

  ‘Volcral.’ Mortarion made a curse of the minor Overlord’s name. As a youth, he had witnessed this fiend harvest lessers to make into intricate sculptures of dripping meat and broken bone, for no better reason than to entertain itself. It was absolutely terrified of him, and it had all right to be. Mortarion pointed at the prisoner. ‘Why is this cur still drawing breath? You told me you had defeated Volcral’s army!’

  ‘And I have,’ said Typhon. ‘I took their master as my prize. I made it watch as we built a pyre for the bodies of its minions.’

  Volcral slumped against the floor of the cage, and Mortarion saw the reality of the creature’s utter defeat in its expression. Typhon had broken it.

  He sucked in a breath. ‘The mission I gave you is unfinished. Kill the Overlord. Do it now.’

  ‘You always told me never to waste a resource,’ countered Typhon. ‘Allow yourself a moment to think beyond your rage, my friend. Think of what we can learn from this creature. We know that their means and methods work against us. They are not unproven like the Forge Tyrant armour! We can take that power for ourselves, Mortarion! And not just immunity to the mists, but more.’ He moved closer, his voice dropping to an urgent growl. ‘You know better than all of us what forces Necare can call upon. Balefire from beneath the earth. Murder-mists and storms that tear at a man’s mind. Imagine if we could turn that power against him.’

  For a heartbeat, he did as Typhon asked, and considered his words. The temptation, the unbridled possibility of it, was difficult to ignore. But as he looked inward, all he could see was the piece of himself that would blacken and wither if he were to align to the same path as his foster father.