The Returned - James Swallow Read online

  The Doom Eagle looked inside himself and dared to wonder what a real death might feel like. He had been close to that abyss so many times, but never fallen to it; and now, in this moment of great darkness he dared to wonder if death would be the better end for him. If he had perished aboard the hospitaller ship, or perhaps in the cells of the Dynikas prison, then all that happened now would not have come to pass. Tarikus’s Chapter would continue on, untroubled by the aberration of his chance survival. The pestilent questions would not have been asked. Constancy would not be challenged.

  He felt hollow inside. In his prison cell, whenever he could snatch a moment away from the eyes of the mutant guards and the modificate freaks, he had prayed to the Golden Throne that he might live to see home once more. And in all that time, he had never once thought that he would not be trusted by his own kinsmen.

  Conflict raged inside him. At once he hated Thryn and the others for daring to doubt him, but at the same moment he understood why they did so. If matters had been different, if it had been Zurus returning to Gathis and not Tarikus, then what choices would he have made in the same place? What questions would Tarikus have demanded answers for?

  It came to him that the only way he would be able to prove himself would be to give up the last breath in his body. In death, truth could not be hidden.

  The door to the psyker’s sanctum opened on oiled pistons and a grave voice issued out from the darkness inside. ‘Enter, Zurus. If you must.’

  Zurus did as he was bid. Thryn’s meditation chamber was little bigger than the accommodation cell where the sergeant laid his head, but it had the illusion of depth thanks to the strange jumble of shadows cast by electro-candles atop a series of iron stands, each at the corner of a mathematical shape carved into the floor.

  Thryn rose from a kneeling cushion and pushed aside a fan of imager plates. Zurus glanced at them and saw only unreadable texts and oddly blurred images. He swallowed and failed to hide a grimace. The air in here was strange, almost oily, but with an acid tingle on the bare flesh of his face and hands.

  Thryn glared at him. The psyker was in his wargear, and about his head in a blue-white halo, the crystalline matrix of a psionic hood glowed softly. ‘You’re interrupting my preparations, brother. And you have no good reason.’

  Zurus met his hard look with one of his own. ‘I have every reason–’ he began.

  ‘I’ll save you the trouble of explaining yourself to me, shall I?’ snapped the Librarian. ‘You’ve been swayed by Tarikus. You’ve listened to his men, and felt their anxiety for their former commander’s fate.’ He turned away. ‘And as you have never truly felt content as the leader of Tarikus’s former squad, you wish to have him return to our fold so you can be free of your conflicts. Is that close to the truth?’

  Zurus bristled at the other warrior’s tone. ‘You make us sound like mewling, weak children! You mock men who dare to show compassion and loyalty to their brothers!’

  ‘Pragmatism is the watchword of the Doom Eagles,’ Thryn continued. ‘We do not let matters of sentimentality cloud our vision.’

  ‘You think fidelity is something to be dismissed, witch-kin?’ Zurus advanced on him. ‘Is your warp-touched heart so empty that you forget your bonds of brotherhood?’

  ‘I have forgotten nothing,’ Thryn replied. ‘But some must bear the burden to voice the questions that no others can utter. Some must dare to speak the hard words that no brother wishes to hear!’ He turned to face him, the psy-crystals flickering. ‘This obligation is mine. I will see it to its end.’

  Zurus’s shoulders sagged. ‘How much further must this go? You have looked into his mind – tell me, have you sensed the taint of Chaos in his thoughts?’

  Thryn shook his head. ‘I have not.’

  ‘And the testing of his flesh, first the Talons and then the wind and ice. Did his body belie the touch of the Archenemy at any time?’

  ‘It did not,’ intoned the Librarian.

  ‘Then how can you let this go on? Tarikus is not corrupted!’

  Thryn nodded. ‘I agree.’ It was not the answer Zurus was expecting. Before he could speak again, the psyker continued. ‘I agree that his mind and his body are sound. But it is not those that I seek to test, brother. It is his soul. That which is the most ephemeral, yet the most powerful element of a life.’ Thryn sighed, and something of the bleak aspect of his face softened. ‘We know the insidious ways of Chaos, the Emperor blight them. Tarikus may carry a seed of darkness within him and never know it. It has happened before. He may live out a long life, and then one day, at an appointed time, or at some word of command, be transformed into something horrific. All that, if the smallest sliver of warp-stigma lies buried in his aura.’

  Zurus frowned. ‘The only way to be sure is to kill him, is that what you mean? If you end him and he erupts into some hell beast, you are proven right. If he dies, then he was innocent and just, and goes to the Emperor’s side.’ He snorted. ‘A poor choice for Tarikus on either account.’

  ‘This matter cannot be brought to a close while doubt still exists,’ insisted Thryn.

  ‘Then you’ll do it?’ Zurus snapped. ‘And not just the little-death this time, but a cold-blooded murder?’

  ‘Lord Hearon has granted me latitude to do whatever I must to end this uncertainty. And I will end it, this day.’ Thryn returned to the centre of the room and knelt once more.

  Zurus felt the tingle on his skin of psy-power in the air, the near-storm sense of it growing by the second. ‘What will you do?’

  Thryn bowed his head. ‘Go now, brother. You will know soon enough.’

  He lingered at the threshold for a long moment, then stepped through and allowed the hatch to close behind him. Cogs worked and seals fell into place, and Zurus stood outside, staring at the strange hexagrammatric wards etched into the metal, wondering what final trial Tarikus was about to face.

  A sound came to him, echoing down the stone corridor. It sounded like thunder, but it could just as easily have been the report of distant shellfire.

  Tarikus awoke, and he was in hell.

  He fell hard, the rough metal plating of the floor rising up to slam into his knees and arms. He groaned and coughed up a river of stinging bile and thick amnio-fluid. Black streaks of blood threaded the ejecta from his lips. The warrior felt strange; his body seemed wrong, the impulses from his fingertips somehow out of synchrony with the rest of his nerves. He tried to shake himself free of the sensation but it would not leave him. Tarikus’s flesh hung on him like an ill-fitting suit of clothes.

  He looked up and blinked, his eyes refusing to focus properly. Lights and shadows jumped around him, blurring into shapes that he could not define. Something hove close and he perceived a hand reaching out to him, offering assistance.

  ‘Here,’ said a thick, resinous voice. ‘To your feet. Come. There is much work to do.’

  He took the grip, and felt peculiar talons where fingers should have been; but he was already rising, legs working, muscles tightening.

  Light flashed, too slow to be storm-glow, the thunder-pulse with it too quick, too near. Gunfire? The sluggish thought trickled down through the layers of his awareness.

  Tarikus jerked his hand away. ‘Who are you? What is happening?’

  Harsh laughter answered him. ‘So many questions. Be still, warrior. All will be made clear.’ One of the shadows came closer, looming large. ‘Don’t fight it, Tarikus. Let it happen.’ He heard another low, callous chuckle. ‘It will be less painful.’

  There was heat at his back, burning and steady like the beating of a pitiless sun; and in the air about him, he perceived motes of dust falling in a slow torrent. He saw steel walls. Chains and broken glass. ‘What is happening?’ he shouted, but his words were lost in the blazing roar of a weapon. He knew that sound: a heavy bolter on full automatic fire, impacts cutting into flesh and ceramite.

>   ‘You have done well,’ he was told. ‘Better than we could have expected. You opened the way for us.’ The shadow-man came closer. ‘Our perfect weapon.’

  ‘What?’ Tarikus raised his hands in self-defence. ‘I do not understand–’

  ‘Then look at me,’ said the voice. ‘And know the truth.’

  The light chose that moment to come again, and in its hard-edged, unflinching glare Tarikus saw a thing that resembled an Astartes, but one made of flayed meat, broken bone and corroded iron. A face of gallows-pale flesh leered at him and twisted in amusement. Beneath it, on the figure’s chest, was the design of a star with eight razor-tipped points.

  ‘Traitor!’ Tarikus shouted the word.

  The corrupted warrior nodded. ‘Yes, you are.’

  He stumbled backwards, shaking his head. His skull felt heavy and leaden. ‘No…’

  ‘Your hands. Look at your hands.’

  Tarikus could not help but glance downward. The meat of his hard, calloused fingers was gone, and in its place were arcs of bone that glistened like black oil.

  ‘The change is already upon you. It’s coming now. Let it happen.’

  Ice filled his gut and Tarikus thrashed at the air, smashing aside a support frame, crashing back into the opened medicae tank where he had been healing. He tried to give a wordless shout of denial, but the sound would not form in his constricting throat. His muscles bunched and he shuddered, losing balance. Tarikus could feel a wave of something terrible billowing up inside him, reordering the meat and blood of his body as it moved. He spat and acid flew from his lips, spattering the walls with tiny smoking pits where the droplets fell. He tried to reject it, and failed.

  He could hear battle beyond the doors of the chamber now, fast and lethal. Thunder rumbled all around, echoing through the stone at his feet. The Eyrie was under attack.

  The Traitor Marine took a step towards him. When it spoke again, there was almost concern in its words. ‘The Primogenitor told me it would not be an easy transformation. But hold on, kinsman. You will be renewed in all but a moment. And then you will join us fully.’

  ‘I am not your kinsman!’ Tarikus roared, and the words were ragged animal sounds torn from the throat of some monster, not from his lips, not from the mouth of a Doom Eagle. ‘What have you done to me?’

  Another chuckle. ‘You did this to yourself, Tarikus. Don’t you recall?’ The room seemed to contract, the walls closing in on them both. ‘On Dynikas. When you cast off your master. When you finally understood?’

  ‘Understood… what?’ All around him the stone of the medicae chamber flowed like wax into different shapes, and through the haze across his twitching vision the walls momentarily turned into planes of steel, vibrating with heat. The cell. The chains and the walls and the cell. Did I never really leave? Have I always been there?

  The Traitor cocked its head. ‘You understood that you had been discarded. Forgotten. That your corpse-god is ashes and lies. That you mean nothing to the men who tried to make you their slave.’

  Tarikus stumbled away, shaking his head, denying every word. ‘No!’ He tried to launch himself towards the other warrior, but the sudden heat robbed him of every ounce of energy. In place of sweat, oily fluids seeped from his skin, draining his vitality with them.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ The Traitor gestured around, and Tarikus saw a distorted liquid mirror shimmer in the air. Upon it he saw himself in rags, kneeling before a towering figure in a coat made of human skin, a giant brass spider emerging from its back.

  Fabius Bile.

  ‘No…’ he insisted. ‘This is a trick! That did not happen! I would never break my oath!’ Tarikus lurched back to his feet. ‘I would not turn!’

  ‘But you did,’ said the voice. ‘Because they hated you, forgot you.’ The Traitor gestured and Tarikus saw a line of figures in tarnished silver armour standing high behind him. Their proportions were monstrous; they towered like Dreadnoughts, each one jeering and mocking him. They had faces he knew: Zurus and Thryn. At their shoulders: Korica, Mykilus and Petius. And above them all, as tall as a Titan, Aquila himself.

  Tarikus reached out his mutating talon-hand and they shrank away; and then the worst of it. As one, all the Doom Eagles turned their backs on him, casting him aside.

  Suddenly the room was tight and small about him, the space at the bottom of a pit that stretched up and away, walls too sheer to climb, light too far to reach.

  ‘Poor Tarikus,’ said the voice, soothing and unctuous. ‘Is it any wonder you accepted the gift?’

  Terror filled him at the words, but he could not stay silent. ‘What gift?’

  The Traitor opened its claw-hand and in it lay a feather, a small curl of plume alike to those that an eagle might leave behind in passing. It was ink-black, a colour so deep and strong that Tarikus immediately knew that to touch it would be poison to him.

  No sooner had he laid eyes on the barb than his chest began to burn. Tarikus gasped and clawed at the wet strips of torn tunic shrouding his torso and ripped them away. His transformed talon hands caught the surface of his skin and great rents appeared in the meat of him. From the wounds he had made, no blood flowed; instead cascades of tiny black feathers issued out, spilling from his body. He roared and felt his throat filling with a swarming mass. Tarikus retched and spat a plug of wet, matted quills from his lips.

  ‘Do you see now?’ said the Traitor. ‘A Chapter that rejected you, left you to perish in the cold, pitiless void. A cadre of false brothers who fled when their lives were in jeopardy. The lies you were told about fealty and honour, but all of it sand. Is it any wonder you were broken?’ The other warrior leaned in. ‘Is it any wonder you let us remake you in the Primogenitor’s name?’ He nodded. ‘And now the last shroud is released from you, kinsman. Now you are free to be one of us… and our first act will be to grind this Ghostmountain to dust.’

  Tarikus could not stop himself from trembling. The worst of it was not the visions, or the perhaps-memories, or the sense of his own body slipping away from him. No, the worst of it was that he could not be sure. The Traitor’s words had the edge of truth to them.

  How often in those long months in that cell had he lain in torment, one single question desperate on his lips. Why have I been forgotten? His every waking moment as an Adeptus Astartes had been in service of something greater than himself, and in return, in exchange for the surety of fate and death the Doom Eagles gave, Tarikus had the priceless gift of brotherhood. The certain knowledge of comradeship among his kindred, the knowing that he would never be lost, not so long as a single son of Gathis still drew breath. So why did they never come for me? Why did they count me dead and be done, never to speak my name again?

  ‘Because it is a lie,’ said the Traitor. ‘And has ever been one.’ He gestured around. ‘We will never lie to you, Tarikus. You will always know the truth with us.’ The hand extended out to him once more. ‘Take it.’

  The thunder outside and the flashes of blue-white light coursed all around him. Tarikus looked up and saw the outstretched hand, the turncoat Astartes – and beyond, the shadows of the Doom Eagles.

  They were judging him.

  Time halted for Tarikus, and the questions that had bombarded him since he had returned to the Eyrie were echoing through his mind. The accusations welled up from within.

  He could imagine a shade of himself – a weaker, broken Tarikus – who might have had the flaw of character to yield to the strain of his confinement on Dynikas. This ghost-Tarikus, this pale copy of him, made bitter by his abandonment, clawing in desperation for the one thing every Space Marine wanted… The bond of brotherhood. Without their comradeship, the Astartes were nothing. Everything they were was built upon that foundation. What horror it would be to lose that, to be cast adrift and counted as unkindred. A weakened soul, captured at the lowest moment, might be persuaded to bend the knee to a former
foe for just a taste of that blessed bond once again. A fragile spirit, yes, who would willingly hide their new loyalty beneath the cloak of the old, and carry poison back to those who had deserted them. Poison and murder, all in the name of revenge.

  Suddenly, events were moving again, and he was aware of the Traitor nodding. ‘Yes. You see now, don’t you?’

  But that shade, that weakling who appeared in his thoughts… Whatever it was, it was not Tarikus, son of Gathis, scion of Aquila. He drew himself up and with a vicious shove, pushed the turncoat aside.

  Tarikus glared up at the silent, condemning gazes of his Doom Eagle brethren, peering at the phantoms of their faces. ‘I am not a heretic.’ He spoke, and with each word that left his mouth, Tarikus felt his vitality returning to him. A sense of righteous power enveloped him, and with it the wrongness of his changed body bled away. Moment by moment, he began to feel correct. With every breath, he moved closer to the warrior he had always been – and with a surge of strength, Tarikus realised that he had not felt so certain of anything in years. Not since before he had been taken prisoner. ‘Judge me if you will,’ he shouted, ‘I do not fear it! You will look inside my heart and see only fealty! I am Tarikus!’

  The hazed faces of his former squad mates danced there in the wraith-light. Korica: impulsive and brave. Mykilus: steadfast and strong. Petius: taciturn and measured. They did not turn from him. They had not forgotten him.

  Behind him, the Traitor was getting to its feet, coming towards him with murder in its eyes. ‘Fool–’

  He silenced the enemy by grabbing his throat and tightening his grip until the Traitor could only make broken gurgles. Gunfire-thunder rumbled louder and louder in his ears and Tarikus bellowed to make himself heard. ‘I am a Doom Eagle! My fidelity will never falter!’ He threw his enemy to the ground. ‘I did not break! I will never break!’

  A great pressure, silent but deafening, pushed out from inside his thoughts, and all at once the warped walls around him exploded like glass beneath a hammer.

  Tarikus swept around; he was intact, unchanged. Everything that had happened in the phantom room was gone, vanished like shafts of sunlight consumed by clouds. He stood before the open healing tank, then turned and found the Librarian Thryn coming back to his feet. The psyker was nursing an ugly bruise forming at his throat. He spat and eyed the other Astartes.