Feat of Iron - Nick Kyme Read online

  It was probable that in tracking down this final node location the same would be true.

  Ferrus’s steely gaze returned to the distant horizon and the haze he had perceived earlier. There was no time to waste.

  ‘We descend immediately. Army be damned.’

  Seven separate outposts yielded no sign of the node. Following the coordinates of the Mechanicum, the Legion had fought several brutal skirmishes. After the last, Ferrus had been forced to report his lack of progress to his brother primarchs. Vulkan was… accommodating, even offering aid which Ferrus flatly refused. The exchange with Mortarion was less cordial. At this rate, it might be days before the legionary forces could consolidate and leave One-Five-Four Four behind. The slow pace of the Army divisions was not helping their cause. Ferrus could not deny the strength of their guns, they were useful, but bemoaned their frailty. So many had fallen behind. He doubted their return.

  This desert is an eater of men, he thought bitterly.

  The valley below had a strange cast to it. The others could not see it; it went beyond their ken to comprehend. Ferrus felt it, though; he felt the pull of it bringing him closer to his imagined abyss. Something was dogging his thoughts, just beyond the reach of his senses. He wanted to seize it, crush it in his fist, but how could he crush a feeling?

  Out there on the sand plain, deep into the valley, it was waiting for him.

  Perhaps it had always been waiting.

  Trepidation, anger and resolve kaleidoscoped into a single imperative.

  Face it and kill it.

  That was the Gorgon’s way, how he had always lived. It would be how he would die, too, he was certain. Nothing had ever bested him. Determination definedhim.

  I am coming for you, he vowed as he led the descent.

  Fading light radiating from the ossified walls of their psychic sanctuary described the frown on the first speaker’s face.

  ‘He is singular in his will and purpose.’

  ‘Do you still believe he is on the wrong path?’ said the other.

  ‘The nexus is close…’ muttered the first speaker.

  ‘How will you convince him of it? Mon’keigh, particularly humans – especially one such as this – are distrustful by nature.’

  As the conjurations of his plan began to connect like the chromosomes of an embryonic life form, the first speaker’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘It will need to be cunning. He must believe it is his decision. It is the only way to alter his path.’

  ‘This web you weave is flawed,’ said the other.

  The first speaker met the other’s gaze and a flash of power illuminated a question in his almond-shaped eyes…

  …which the other gladly answered. ‘You are trying to turn stone into water, have it flow to your design. Stone cannot bend, it can only break.’

  The first speaker was defiant. ‘Then I shall break it and fashion it anew.’

  As they neared the floor of the basin, the air became still and silent. Deep cliffs rose on either side of the Morlocks, and the broad valley quickly turned into a ravine into which the sun barely reached.

  ‘Where have we ventured?’ Santar’s voice was not much louder than a whisper.

  Thick, engulfing darkness dwelled here. Rather than a desert, it had become a stark landscape of mortuary stones and crypt-like monoliths. In the shadows, the sand banks were almost black and Santar was reminded of his primarch’s earlier confession about his dreams. Even the pellucid lustre of the bone-white rocks had dimmed.

  Several Morlocks were glancing around at their altered surroundings. Veterans all, they were disciplined enough not to react, but Santar sensed grips tightening on bolters.

  ‘Steady, the Avernii,’ he said into the feed and then isolated Desaan’s channel. ‘Keep your legionaries close and ready, brother-captain.’

  The two companies marched alongside one another, spread wide and in shallow ranks. Heavy shadows and the abject stillness of the valley made the distance between them feel like a gulf.

  ‘Did we lose the sun?’ asked Desaan. ‘It is black as Old Night down here.’

  Santar looked up. The orb still blazed in the sky, but its light was being filtered as if through murky gauze, turning grey and dilute before it hit the valley.

  ‘I have lost sight of Meduson and Ruuman,’ the captain added.

  Santar arched his neck towards the tip of the rise but it was almost impossible to see the summit.

  It was deep, much deeper than it looked. Sand squalls billowing around his feet put him in mind of iron filings skittering around an anvil. It was also farther than Ruuman had suggested, and the Ironwrought was never usually wrong about such things. But nothing about this situation was usual.

  ‘Like the Land of Shadow,’ the primarch rumbled.

  Even without the feed, Ferrus Manus’s stentorian voice carried on the skirling breeze. He anchored the two formations. He was the hinge along with a bodyguard of his staunchest praetorians, which included Gabriel Santar.

  ‘I see no ghosts, primarch,’ said the first captain, attempting to break the tension.

  Back on Medusa, the Land of Shadow was a bleak place supposedly infested by shades and revenants. Such talk came from superstitious men, those of weak and gullible minds. The Iron Hands knew differently. In its trackless depths were great obelisks of stone and metal, whose purpose had been lost to time. Monsters plied its darkened furrows and forgotten chasms, that much was true. And madness lurked on its endless plains for the unwary or the foolish. The association was not comforting.

  ‘The ghosts are here,’ said Ferrus, adding a layer of frost to the already chill air. ‘We just cannot see them yet.’ And as the squalls began to thicken into a storm, he added, ‘Close ranks. Keep it narrow and deep.’

  The valley had become another realm entirely, one Santar did not recognise. Cast from skeletal rocks, shadows stretched into claws, reaching for the Iron Hands and slowly encircling them.

  ‘Why do I not know this place?’ he asked of himself.

  Desaan’s comm-feed crackled with interference. ‘Because… is not… same.’

  ‘Lord Manus,’ said Santar, the sense of threat abruptly palpable.

  Ferrus did not look his way. ‘Keep moving. We cannot turn back.’ The primarch’s tone suggested he knew they had stumbled into a trap. ‘The eldar have us, but will not keep us.’

  The wind was rising, and so too the storm. It robbed the primarch’s voice of its potency. At the same moment, the heavy tread of many booted feet was silenced as the storm rolled over the Morlocks without warning.

  It hit them like a hammer and within seconds the two companies were engulfed.

  The sun died at once, lost to a shrieking darkness.

  Moments later, slashing grains abraded Santar’s armour like blades. He heard the grind of the desert against the metal, but dismissed the minor damage to his battle-plate as the report of it scrolled across the retinal lens in his battle-helm. Lightning claws unsheathed, Santar tried to slice through the black morass and found it less than yielding. It was like cutting earth, only it was air.

  ‘Stay together,’ he said down the feed, ‘advancing as one.’

  Fewer acknowledgements sounded that time. The tactical display was faulty and the bio-scan markers denoting the position of his battle-brothers were intermittent. As far as he could tell, formation was being maintained, but he did not know how long that would last. Santar sensed things would get worse before they got better. Grit clogged the rebreather grille of his helmet, raking his tongue. It tasted like ash and death. Copper-scent spiked his nostrils.

  ‘Together as one,’ he repeated.

  A distant shrieking registered on his aural sensorium, overloading the angry static from the comm-feed. It didn’t sound like the wind, or at least not just the wind. A series of baffling returns ghosted in and out on the tactical display.

  ‘Weapons ready,’ he ordered, searching for an enemy. Black sand marred his view, making target acquisi
tion impossible. A screaming refrain muddied the response from his fellow sergeants and captains. Affirmation icons sporadically blinked into being, as if the feed’s interfaces had been degraded.

  Santar could barely make out the primarch’s outline, just a few metres in front of him.

  ‘Lord Manus,’ he called, before Ferrus was lost further to the storm.

  There was no response at first but then the faint reply reached him.

  ‘Forward! We drive through it or we die.’

  Santar wanted to consolidate; to forge a defensive cordon and wait out the tempest, but this was no ordinary phenomenon. To linger would bring lethal consequences, he was sure. He advanced.

  Something flickered into existence on his retinal display. It was a heat signature, weak, but distinct enough for him to locate.

  He swung his head around, the Cataphractii armour more cumbersome than he was used to, and saw… a face.

  It was inhuman, the skin pulled taut across an overlong skull. Chin and cheekbones were angular, pointed at the tips, and the eyes were merely hollows.

  ‘In the Emperor’s name…’ he breathed as he realised the deathly visages were swarming their ranks like a shoal of flesh-eating fish, disembodied and darkly luminous in the storm.

  Santar roared, ‘Enemy contact!’ He hoped the feed would convey his warning.

  The Morlocks opened up with their bolters, and a chugging staccato of hard bangs resounded. Muzzle flashes were like subdued distress flares, dulled by the tempest wind.

  Utterly alien, the face retreated into darkness as Santar advanced. It drew him on, step by step.

  ‘Engaging!’

  He swung, energy crackling off the blades in tongues of jagged azure, but cleaved only air.

  ‘Detecting movement,’ Santar heard over the feed, but he could not identify the speaker as a conglomeration of voices vied for his attention.

  ‘Contact,’ cried the echo of another, also anonymous to the first captain even though he had known and fought beside these warriors for decades.

  Dense bolter bursts erupted throughout the Iron Hands formation as an effort to repel the attackers was mounted in earnest.

  ‘Desaan, report,’ shouted Santar as something preternaturally fast and impossible to track flitted across his left flank. He turned as a second figure skittered into his limited peripheral vision on the right. It glared as it passed him and Santar was left with the vague impression of its wraith-like countenance.

  Lord Manus had been right; there were ghosts waiting for them in the darkness and now their patience was at an end. Blood was in the water.

  ‘Unknown… enemy.’ Desaan’s reply was piecemeal but clear. ‘Cannot pin down… dispositions… engaging… multiple contacts…’

  Of the primarch, there was no sign. Ahead was darkness, so too behind and in every other direction. Orientation at this point was impossible, so Santar chose to stand.

  ‘Maintain position,’ he said down the feed. ‘They are trying to pull us apart.’

  He tried to find his lord but could discern nothing with either sight or sensor beyond the blackness.

  Desaan’s broken acknowledgement was delayed and came as scant comfort to Santar. The Morlocks were divided, swallowed by the storm, and Lord Manus had been shorn from the rest of the Legion. Their strength and fortitude had been vexed in a single moment of rashness.

  Santar cursed his lack of foresight. He should have insisted they skirt the valley or wait for a thorough reconnoitring of the area, but the primarch would not be swayed. It was as if he drove head-on at some fate that only he could see. Santar was closer than any of the Iron Hands to his lord but even he was not privy to the primarch’s inner thoughts.

  A keening wail, high-pitched and several octaves above the scream of the storm, cut the air. It made Santar’s head throb, despite the protection afforded by his battle-helm. Vertigo fell upon him in a crashing wave and he staggered. Impenetrable static marred the feed completely, though he could not muster his voice to give an order anyway.

  Santar tasted blood in his mouth and spat it against the inner surface of his helm. He gritted his crimson teeth.

  Be as iron.

  Shuddering vibrations cascaded along his bones with the invasive intensity of mortar impacts. He staggered again but fought from collapsing. Fall now and he was certainly dead. No warrior wearing Cataphractii war-plate would ever rise unassisted if he fell. And there were more than just ghosts prowling the blackness. Before the aural assault, he had caught the impression of edged blades, of lithe and spectral warriors. Finding inner fortitude, Santar looked for something to kill.

  Dull, armoured silhouettes stumbled through the fog – his Morlocks, slow and all but mired.

  Screaming scythed through his pain, a desperately mortal sound that presaged a line of bolter fire ripping along his right flank. Santar ignored it, heard the sudden air displacement to his left instead.

  Found you…

  Defensive instinct made Santar parry the blade blurring towards his neck, and at last he got a proper look at his attacker.

  It was a mask that the eldar wore, bone-white to match its segmented armour, with a mane of tendril-like black hair cascading behind it. Judging by the form-fitting cuirass, this one was female and not a wraith or ghoul at all. The sword was long and curved, forged and sharpened by a killing mind. Hot sparks rang from the blade as it ground against Santar’s lightning claws.

  She was at once a part of the storm yet at the same time apart from it, blending with the eddying wind as she chose. Leaving a trail of jagged spikes to fade in the air behind her, she disengaged.

  Santar kept his guard up, ignoring what his retinal lenses were telling him and trusting to instinct. When the follow-up attack came it was delivered with power. The sword clashed against his lightning claw and he felt the jolt of it all the way up into his shoulder. She glared at Santar, incensed at his defiance, and released a hell-screech from her mask that forced the first captain’s jaw to lock. Weathering the aural barrage, he thrust with his other lightning claw and trapped the eldar’s bone blade fast.

  A pistol appeared in her other hand but the shots rebounded harmlessly off Santar’s war-plate like ineffectual insect stings.

  The grating laughter emitting through his mouth grille surprised him.

  Abandoning the pistol, she took her sword in a two-handed grip in an effort to release it. Whilst trapped she could not withdraw and if she disengaged without her blade she would be cut apart. Even eldar were not faster than lightning.

  ‘You’re not so scary,’ Santar grunted through clenched teeth as she fed another hell-screech into his face. The first captain’s superior strength was telling against the alien’s pressing sword, and his bionics growled in anticipation of triumph. ‘I am scarier.’

  Santar parted her weapon in two, shredding it with the scissoring action of his paired lightning claws. The sundered half of the blade, separated from the ragged edge of its broken hilt, spun into the warrior’s undefended chest and impaled her. She fell back into the storm and was immediately lost within it.

  The ambush was faltering, and Santar was certain the darkness itself was receding as the storm ebbed. Several Morlocks lay prone where they’d been transfixed by blades or felled by the howling but others were rallying. Even the feed was returning to normal.

  ‘Are you alive, first captain?’ It was Desaan, the muffled thud-chank of his bolter chorusing behind him.

  ‘Alive and wrathful, brother-captain,’ Santar replied, gutting another of the wraith-warriors. He was wrenching the blades free from her back with a satisfying slurrch of flesh when his left arm seized. He tried once to free it but it wouldn’t move.

  ‘Something is wrong. Brother, I… gnn.’ Paralysis anchored his bionics in place as if they had simply stopped functioning. His legs, also mechanised, were locked. ‘I cannot… gnn,’ the pain of it was incredible and he gasped the last part, ‘…move.’

  Searching for allies he only
found two fleshless masks bearing down on him. They grinned cruelly, a witching glow to their features, and spat something vengeful in their native tongue.

  ‘I can kill you both… one-handed,’ Santar promised but felt a chink in his confidence as they began to weave around him.

  Something was coming through the comm-feed, arresting his attention from the wraith-warriors as they closed. He recognised the plaintive cry of his fellow captain.

  Between the circling forms of the eldar, he glimpsed Desaan stumbling through the darkness, firing wildly. An errant burst clipped one of the other Morlocks, dropping his guard so another wraith-warrior could plunge its sword between the armour joint linking breastplate to greave. The Iron Hand sagged before the storm cut him off from view.

  ‘Desaan!’ Santar’s would-be killers were near. ‘Watch your fire, brother.’ He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Desaan staggered on, bolter tracking dangerously as his firing arcs went unchecked.

  ‘Desaan!’

  He looked as if he was…

  ‘Blind, first captain…’ he mumbled, stunned. ‘Hnn… I can’t… see…’ His arm was limp by his side. Others were afflicted too, the Morlocks undone by precisely what had given them strength.

  Flesh is weak. The mantra came back to Santar with mocking irony.

  The eldar had done something to them, crafted some malign sorcery to affect their cybernetics. To a man, the Morlocks all had extensive bionics.

  Santar stared at the wraith-warriors who were brandishing their swords in the promised cuts to come.

  ‘Come on,’ he slurred. His heart might as well have been bared to their blades.

  The wraith-warriors paused, lingering half-corporeally amidst the storm. As one they blurred. Two became many, and their harsh laughter resounded through the howling that was pounding Santar relentlessly.

  ‘Come on!’ he roared. ‘Fight me!’

  The eyes of one – or was it all? – narrowed behind its mask and Santar followed its gaze to where his arm was paralysed. Only it was moving again, but not of the first captain’s volition. Energy cracked along the lightning claw blades, fierce enough to rend war-plate. Fascination and disbelief coalesced into horror as Santar realised they were being turned inwards… towards his neck.