Lion El'Jonson- Lord of the First - David Guymer Read online

  The knight dipped his head, which Aravain mirrored in turn. Both knights straightened simultaneously. The guard nodded, apparently satisfied, and stepped aside. Aravain entered.

  He looked around, studying the private chancel in detail. A coal fire burned in an open brazier, chasing shadows across walls of dressed Calibanite stone, glinting off the ancient weaponry on display. A sarcophagus of coarse-grained gabbro lay across the occidental-oriental line with sidereal 'north' pointing towards the ship's distant bow. Its lid bore the repose of a hooded knight. The floor around it was traced with the golden lines of the Spiral Path. A Calibanite theosophy, it represented the progression from outer to inner, the deification of knowledge as something to be accumulated and earned through mastery of the path. It also commonly symbolised death, the completion of one path and the beginning of another.

  In addition to the guardian at the door and the guide four knights stood at the points of the compass rose detailed around the sarcophagus Each was of a similar height and, gin in war-plate beneath their plain white robes, of similar build. None had come armed and all stood with crossed arms in identical fashion. The one point of disambiguation was a small thing, but as striking to the eyes of one attuned to subtlety as a rosary of coloured lights.

  The knight at the septentrional point wore a golden talisman rather than one of silver, the berries of the device crafted from nacre instead of plain glass.

  The preceptor of the Order of Santales.

  Or so Aravain could only assume. Never in his own brief tenure within the order had a threat arisen requiring a gathering of the cenobium, the inner circle of their order's most august and learned knights. Nor did he have any inkling as to who the preceptor might be when he was not performing his duties to the orders sinister. He could be a common legionary or a praetorate of the Lion. When they met as luminaries of the order it made no difference.

  The only other legionary that Aravain knew for certain was a member was Vadric, a veteran of the original First Legion and his former Chaplain from the Ninth Order, in whom Aravain had confided the horrors of Indra-Sul. It had been Vadric, in turn, who had inducted him into the Order of Santales. It could have been Vadric wearing the preceptor's chain, or not Aravain could not even say with certainty if the old warrior was a part of the inner circle at all.

  Within the order there were no names. Outside of it. the order did not exist.

  'Welcome, my brothers,' said the preceptor.

  The voice was almost familiar, but altered in tone, accent and points of emphasis to make it difficult to recognise. He uncrossed his arms from his chest and the other three knights did likewise, like robotica under haptic control. He extended one hand in welcome across the black gabbro, his robes partially falling away from a rerebrace rich in emerald-green iconography. The other knights silently repositioned themselves, making space within their circle for Aravain and his guide from the Parade of Heroes.

  The unspeaking guardian turned his back.

  Aravain did not know him either. Perhaps a seventh knight of the cenobium drawn by lot to perform that thankless task. A probationary member of the inner circle, maybe, or a trusted acolyte of the preceptor.

  Aravain had further on the spiral path to walk yet.

  'Almost one hundred and sixty years ago this order was founded.' The preceptor spoke again once the knights had settled. 'Named for the santales, a plant native to the forests of Caliban. It is a hale and aggressive species, feeding not off the soil but from the trunks of the mighty trees upon which it grows. It is a parasite. And though it keeps its host strong and immune to the seasons, sheathing it in sharp thorns and poisonous berries that deter all but the most reckless herbivore or woodsman, it does so only to feed its need. And when the great oak can sustain that need no longer then the santales will withdraw its roots to seek another, leaving naught but a husk of withered bark behind it.'

  The assembled knights nodded.

  'It is not enough to cut away the vines. The roots of the santales plant go deep, and the patient woodsman must follow its course across dozens, even hundreds of dead and dying boles before he might arrive at its stem.' The preceptor paused. 'By the oaths you have sworn to me and to this order I have drawn you from your duties to the Legion. You all know why. All of the fallen worlds that we have encountered across this dark fringe of the Umperor's galaxy, the lore that we have gathered and kept safe even from our own - it is for this day, my brothers, the dawn we all feared to meet but swore to face together should it come/

  The santales,' growled one.

  'Speak their name, brother. Let there be no more allusions here/

  'The khrave.' The six knights spoke as one, the alien word trembling from their hoods with the common voice of loathing.

  The preceptor turned towards Aravain.

  'Through our brothers in the hierarchy of the Firewing, one of our circle was a party to the boarding action on the Obrin.' The other knights turned to regard Aravain. 'Apprise the cenobium of your encounter there, brother.'

  Taking a moment to order his thoughts, Aravain gave his account.

  He began with a simple recital of the after-action reports that the Interrogator-Chaplains of the Firewing had compiled on the attempted mutinies aboard the Muspellian ships. They had discerned no warnings missed by the planetary authorities, no obvious connection or suspicious level of association between the erstwhile recidivists to indicate pre-emption. And yet their actions had been timed to the nanosecond and coordinated for the infliction of maximum disruption. If the Lion had not brought the Legion to Muspel when he had then Aravain was in no doubt that the Muspellian fleet, and perhaps even the planet itself, would now be in the grip of the khrave.

  What their immediate goals had been, Aravain did not know and admitted as much when his account demanded it. To suborn control of the Muspellian fleet? Or simply to destroy it? He could only speculate.

  He spoke then of his own experience, the unease he had fell the moment he had disembarked from his gunship. The sense of being observed, perceptions of a wholly alien intent being slowly unfurled from across the blackness of the void.

  Where possible, he took pains to cull his account of any names or signifiers by which he might be personally identified. The perceptive would be able to glean even from his sanitised rendition that he was a member of the Librarius, and any knight of centurion rank or above would have been able to access the mission archives and draw his name and that of Squad Martlet from the Obrin files.

  An honourable knight, however, would not seek to do so, and the least he could do to uphold his own oaths of secrecy was to deny them that temptation.

  The preceptor bowed as Aravain concluded his testimony.

  'It was I who received your missive from the Obrin.'

  'I am honoured,' said Aravain.

  'I heard reports of similar occurrences from Squad Raptora aboard the Mirikov,' said one of the five.

  'And I from the Vassily.' Another. 'She has been impounded by the Wrath of Caliban and nothing more has been heard of her since. Some say it is at the Lion's own command.'

  'If that is so then it will be obeyed,' said the preceptor.

  'I arranged for the remains of one of the mutineers, slain by Brother Peliath, to be returned under medicae stasis to the Invincible Reason for dissection. According to Apothecary Sathariel he had been dead for many days. Through no failing of his own, the Apothecary lacks the knowledge to recognise the symptoms, but the human's mind has been psychically devoured, his body sustained only by some massive external force.'

  'Santales,' one of the cenobium murmured, making the sign across his breast.

  'Proof then,' said another.

  'If proof were needed.'

  'We are fortunate you were on that mission, brother-' began a fourth, the guide.

  'He was there for a reason,' the preceptor interrupted. 'As the Lion brings us all to Muspel for a reason.' He turned his head to address the full circle of knights. The question then is t
his - is Muspel itself infested with the santales parasite or have we stymied its encroachment here by denying it the planet's ships?' The hooded knight sighed. 'You have all read the same reports as I have been granted. You know the misrule under which this system seems to have laboured since the departure of the Ninth, the inexplicable sense of lethargy that characterises its native people. Knowing all of this I cannot allow myself to hope that the planet is clear of parasitism. And yet, for all the lore we have safeguarded in our conquest of the northern fringe, we must be wary, lest unfounded assumptions lead us and our brothers into folly. Those blighted worlds we encountered before were lifeless husks already, centuries withered. The nearest we have come to encountering a living khrave world was Indra-Sul, and of that the Raven Lord left precious little for our order to examine.'

  'Then what are we to do?' said one.

  'Watch, brother, as always. Ensure that the influence of the khrave finds no foothold within our own.'

  'They will not,' said another.

  'Do not be so certain,' said Aravain, and though it guilted him to censure another on the charge of arrogance, he felt it justified. Me reflected on the psychic imprint he had felt in the corridor aboard the Obrin and shuddered at the cold, inhuman potency of the residue it had left behind. The immensity of it. The khrave are psychic xenoforms of tremendous power. The fleet has been taking periodic auguries of the system since our arrival and discovered no sign of alien vessels or bases. Whatever they do, they do from far beyond the limits of this solar system. Think on that, brothers. Imagine the power of it, if you can, and overestimate your ability to resist their influence at your peril.'

  The cenobium exchanged hooded glances.

  'The Lion must be warned.'

  'Agreed,' the six knights spoke as one.

  'The Lion is a master of the war unseen,' said Aravain, 'but how can even he be on his guard against the xenos that strikes with a loyal hand, from beyond the reach of the Invincible Reason's lances?'

  'The Lion sees and hears all,' said the preceptor. 'For now, return to your squads and your duties within the Legion, and take your knowledge with you.'

  'Is it not time to lift the veil from this threat?' said Aravain.

  'Secrecy is our shield,' said the preceptor. 'It is how we defend lesser men from themselves.'

  'We should activate Dreadwing protocols, and open the Santales armourium.'

  The preceptor raised a hand to silence the ripple of assenting mutters.

  'I will confer with the high preceptor.'

  'Will you tell him that the khrave come to Muspel?' said Aravain.

  'No, brother. I will tell him that the khrave have been here waiting for us from the beginning.'

  FIVE

  I

  At the same time that the warships of the First Legion were corralling, sectioning and individually quarantining the Muspellian garrison fleet a squadron of jet-black Stormbirds screamed into the upper atmosphere. They shuddered across the ionopause, aerofoils straining, smoke streaming from wing flaps and vents. Names licked over the heat shielding orange to yellow to armaplas-melting white. Pinks and greens limned the armament hard points and the noses as the planet turned a flamethrower to every hidden contaminant trace in the armour. In spite of the atmospheric turbulence, so different to the mathematised precision of void flight, they held formation, metres apart. Their descent plots were perfect. The adaptive reflexes of their pilots were transhuman. With a series of bumps, the squadron broached the tropopause, scraps of white cloud ripping across their fuselage and burning up. Second by second the cloud layer thickened until, with no warning at all, it was torn away.

  Slipping into a new formation, a long 'sword' with crossed quillons formed by a pair of Stormbirds apiece, the Dark Angels aircraft rocketed across a sprawl of post-urbanised neglect.

  There were dozens of smaller settlements scattered across Muspel's primary landmass, mostly classified by the IX Legion's civilian census-takers as agri-complexes. Homesteads by any other definition, kinship groups of hunter-gatherers and subsistence-level farmers. Their populations ranged from single digits to the low hundreds. There was one city of note. It went by the official Imperial moniker 'Muspellia Primus' although doggedly held onto its native appellation of 'Maripose'. Its layout was typically pre-Old Night, the buildings bespoke, the conurbations sprawling, lacking the enforced standardisation and brutalist symmetry of an Imperial colonisation. Irregular buildings constructed from a black crystalline rock native to no quarry on this world lay unlit and unloved where they had been abandoned, dead for centuries if not for millennia. They dotted the earth between the mountainous uplands of the Namastor, the storm-lashed grey peaks that lay about fifty kilometres to the north, and the artificial reefs of the ancient harbour. Industrial-scale trawlers and construction vessels operating out of the newly refurbished Imperial docks crawled over the grey-water. Altitude made the waves appear frozen.

  Wingtip to wingtip, the Stormbirds deployed brake flaps. The huge aircraft juddered with the sudden resistance as the formation veered into the Sheitansvar's heavily restricted airspace.

  The Sheitansvar was the colloquial name for the archipelago of islands that projected out from the headland like a horn or a tail. There were five of them - Coccyges, Lament, Merigion, Nigris and Uncus - becoming increasingly desolate and armoured in rock the further into the ocean they sat. Crusade logs reported that Muspel was a planet without even the most basic and primitive of weaponry, but the Sheitansvar as a whole, and cliff-sided Uncus in particular, exuded the feel of a site that had always been a fortress, a place where hostile armies would come to die. Another mystery in the enigma of Muspel.

  The stippled, Dark Age ruins of the islands' fortifications had been extended with the harsh features of gothic architecture. Prefabricated bridges of Imperial design linked the islands of the peninsula chain. They were built off the pilings of older versions that appeared to have collapsed centuries ago. As one travelled further across those bridges, the terrain itself becoming less hospitable and more overtly hostile, the defensive curtains grew steadily higher. The armoured blisters of flak batteries and void banks, additions wisely left in place by the engineers of the IX, became ever denser, until one arrived at the Vaniskray. The highest and farthest-flung promontory of the entire Sheitansvar, the wave-beaten keep of Muspel's planetary ruler was enviably defensible. The castle's foundations went deep into the rock of the promontory, barred oriels and gun loops studding the cliff face all the way down to where waves exploded into spray over lumpen rock armour. Every centimetre of ground was battlemented, a mess of gun nests and turrets, swallowtails duelling in the incessant wind with the occasional flourish of Baalite statuary. With the exception of the guns themselves, most of the defensive work long predated the craftsmanship of the Blood Angels.

  With limited space for landing facilities on the tiny, densely fortified islet, the Stormbirds descended towards the second isle in the archipelago chain.

  Designated 'Lament' by the Imperial logisters, only a handful of structures stood there and, unusually for Maripose, all of them were purely Imperial in design and function: aircraft hangars and promethium silos, a few dozen Hydra defence batteries mounted on rotatable platforms either side of a five hundred-metre-long runway. It was home to two dozen squadrons of defence flyers, the most illustrious engine in its host a Xiphon-pattern interceptor with ace decals and the campaign badges of the Cryllic Wars on her fuselage - until seventeen of the most glorious military machines ever to emerge off the forges of mankind touched down on Muspel.

  Lion El'Jonson was a being of few words. When he made a statement, it was heard.

  II

  The Lion paused at the foot of Nighthawk's descent ramp, arms crossed over his breastplate, cloak whipping about in the turbofan downwash, and gazed wordlessly into the drizzle.

  Lament was a grey island. The most uncompromising of the Sheitansvar chain, it was the lowest and nearest to sea level. Night-black waves bea
t against the rugged rock armour and wooden pilings that defended the esplanade from the sea, periodic explosions of icy spray sweeping in as far as the Stormbirds on the runway. The geosculptors of the Mechanicum who had arrived with the Imperial colonisation had accelerated that aeons-long process of natural weathering to grind the entire island down to a perfect level plane. They had serially layered its rugged bedrock with rockcrete, ferrocrete and ceramite until it more closely resembled an attack carrier rising from the water to launch a squadron of Starhawk-pattern bombers than an island, wholly artificial in form and in purpose. It took senses keener and less easily fooled than sight to pierce the illusion.

  The place was eerily quiet. The Lion picked up on the squelch of boot leather on wet ground, the scrape of rubberised hoses as the island's ground crew hurried to attend him, audible not because they were unusually loud but because everything bar the breaking action of the waves themselves was so uncommonly quiet. The air smelled of salt corrosion and seaweed.

  To the Lion the sounds of a city told him as much as the rustle of leaves above a forest track, the shift of ground litter under an incautious tread.

  He was tasting the wind.

  Listening.

  Waiting.

  The first virtue of a master hunter was patience. The first learned by the hunted was caution. The Lion had been both in his time.

  He knew how to be prey when it was necessary.

  Across the parallel runways, a Company-strength force, a hundred knights of the Legion, had already disembarked to take up fire positions around the Stormbirds' armoured and void-shielded hard points. Nighthawk herself was a sovereign amongst angels. Her sleek obsidian planes were adorned with the six wings of the hexagrammaton and the hundred secret paths of the hekatonys-tika. Gilt scrollwork and golden edging embellished her armour plates and missile pods while, pride of place across her nose section, there was emblazoned a gold-wreathed aquila, an emblem usually reserved for the palatines of the III Legion. It marked this as the very vessel that had once conveyed the Master of Mankind, beloved by all, to Caliban. She had been presented in tribute to the newly denominated Dark Angels, a gift as worthy as the Leonine Panoply or the Lion Sword.