Sons of the Emperor Page 6

  'You are neither, Vulkan,' the Emperor replied, but did not elaborate, 'and, yes, I suppose it was a trick of sorts. A means of determining the truth.'

  'Then are you a sorcerer?' Vulkan asked. 'Was it magic?'

  The Emperor's mood darkened, but fractionally, so that only someone who was particularly astute would notice. Vulkan slightly raised his eyebrow.

  'Not a sorcerer,' said the Emperor. 'Magic… is not real, it is merely science yet to be understood. Show a primitive culture fire for the first time and they call it magic. Bring a starship to a backwards world yet to invent the combustion engine and it is hailed as witchcraft. Superstition, the darkness of old ways and the atrocities committed in their name, that is what I wish to bring an end to.'

  'So, you are a scientist?'

  'A reductive term,' the Emperor answered, thoughtful, 'but as fitting as any. I have a laboratory and have accomplished much to reach this point, through experimentation and endeavour.'

  'And war,' said Vulkan. 'You are a warrior too.'

  'Yes, and war. I won't lie, there has been blood spilled on this journey and there will be more. I never imagined the enlightenment of mankind would be an easy task, nor one accomplished without violence. However regrettable.' The Emperor's eyes seem to cloud for a moment then, lost in abstract thought. 'I have had failures. Some of which I shall never speak of.'

  'My brothers?'

  The Emperor did not answer, and that was answer enough.

  'Will you not tell me of them?' asked Vulkan. 'Are they like me?'

  'Utterly unlike you,' said the Emperor, brightening, 'and that is your single greatest trait. My proudest achievement.'

  'Will I meet them if I agree to follow you into the stars?'

  'Yes, you will, though I have yet to find them all. You will learn much from them, and they from you.'

  Vulkan glanced down at the sand accumulating around his boots. The desert was shifting again. Soon it would swallow this ridge and another would emerge elsewhere.

  'Are they from worlds like Nocturne?'

  'As harsh and beautiful, you mean?' asked the Emperor. 'Some are. Some are kings, others are scholars, chieftains, slaves…' his eyes fell upon Vulkan, 'even blacksmiths.'

  'What would they think of me? Could I really feel a bond of fraternity with them? And they with me?'

  The Emperor smiled. 'Let me tell you of Ferrus.'

  The Gorgon grinned, an altogether ugly expression on such a grizzled face.

  'He is ferocious,' he said, his voice as gritty and harsh as his appearance. His black armour was shorn to the bare ceramite in places, though the scorch marks caused by fire barely showed. 'The way you described him, I thought…'

  'You did not expect a warrior,' said the Emperor, His gilded panoply gleaming. He stood upon a blasted hillock, not that He needed the vantage to look imposing. His stature and power spoke for themselves. Despite the battles, He remained pristine. As radiant and terrifying as a nuclear sunrise.

  'I expected a blacksmith, but he is a destroyer.'

  Much of the outer lands beyond the major cities of Ranknar had been reduced to ash. A bombardment lasting several days had softened up the native defences, but had seen the same forces dug in instead of broken as the Emperor had hoped. The Imperial assault, when it came, swept across all six continents as relentless as a hurricane. Still, the Ranknar had endured, buoyed by their perverse faith, the reason for the Imperium's proclamation of extinction.

  And so the Emperor had unleashed His Dragon, and the lands had burned. Only then, slowly swallowed by fire, had the Ranknar showed any signs of defeat.

  'I thought the Wolf King had fury,' said Ferrus, admiring the choleric spirit of his newfound brother, 'But this… Where did you find him?'

  'A death world,' said the Emperor, His piercing gaze seeing more and ranging farther than any other on both the battlefield and second battle line where He stood with His son, Ferrus Manus. 'One consumed by fire.'

  Ferrus gave a snort of laughter.

  They watched from the blasted hillock, the troops and armoured divisions arrayed before them and ready for the Gorgon's command. His warriors, his Iron Hands. The Dragon led a company of them, and several cohorts of army auxilia. The scent of engines and hot metal from the idling artillery and heavy battle tanks wafted over the mustering, but petered out and was swallowed up by the stink of sweat and death by the time it reached the battle less than a hundred metres away.

  Ferrus folded his silver arms, restive. They shimmered with an uncanny lustre, the metal of their forging as miraculous as it was mysterious. A massive warhammer lay against one armoured shoulder, a gift from Fulgrim and one he desired to bloody again. For now, he would do as his father ordered. He would watch, and let the Dragon wreak havoc. Ferrus suspected it was not only his newfound brother who was being tested this day.

  'Draconic in both aspect and temperament,' he said, alluding to the savage scalloped war-plate worn by the Dragon.

  'You taught him much of your craft, Ferrus?' asked the Emperor.

  'None, in truth. He needed no help in that regard. When I reached the forge, he was gone and the armour with him.'

  The Emperor smiled, as if pleased with His works.

  'Your assessment?'

  'Overly flamboyant, but it appears to serve well.'

  'Him, not his armour, Ferrus.'

  A raised eyebrow and a grunt of acknowledgement preceded the Gorgon's reply.

  'He fights like a Medusan ur-wyrm. Are they all like that where he came from?'

  'No, he is unique. As are you.'

  His silver fingers clenched and unclenched without Ferrus realising. He nodded.

  'He is impressive,' he admitted, then turned disdainful, 'but Russ and Horus, even Fulgrim, they match his prowess. I see nothing special about him.'

  'You will.' The Emperor paused abruptly, and the Gorgon felt his hackles rise. 'They are opening the gates.'

  Ferrus hid his unease at his father's use of prescience, remaining bullish. 'Then they are as foolish as they are blind. A sortie is insane. They don't know when they are beaten.'

  'Does any beast, when cornered?'

  'They risk annihilation,' said Ferrus, as the gigantic city gates did indeed open.

  'Desperate men perform desperate acts. I feel fear in them. A fearful enemy attacks without restraint. This will be costly for us.'

  A rust-red mist gathered around the opening, obscuring whatever was coming through.

  'They are all soldiers, and know the risk.'

  'Be wary of profligacy, my son. Life is not so cheap as you might think.'

  The ruddy fog parted and what stood before the gate stopped the Gorgon's reply dead. His eyes widened.

  The ground shook, felt as far away as the second battle line.

  Ferrus swung his warhammer into both hands.

  'Now can we intervene?'

  The Emperor had already drawn a glittering, golden sword. Its edge burst into flames.

  'Yes, now we can.'

  The bogatyrs did not walk alone, and where they walked the ground trembled.

  Sarda watched them stride from the gate in the languid manner that creatures of such immense stature have, three golem-engines, their phage-swords bleeding red aether and their ocular weapon mounts cycling to lethality. He stood almost eye-to-eye with the bogatyrs despite the fact he was nearly twenty metres up on the city's foremost battlements. His awe at the sight of the Red Citadel's guardians hid a secret disgust for the method by which they had been roused for war.

  An army came with them. Six phalanxes of Red Knights of the Orders Sangrov and Incarnadov rode at the flanks while twelve platoons of Blood-Guard brought up the rear, gun-chariots in tow.

  Thunder cracked overhead as artillery on both sides exchanged fire across a kilometres-long battlefront. The tanks of the Imperium sat on the ridge beyond the city, dug in behind makeshift palisades. They faced the cannons jutting from the Red Citadel's walls. Smoke and fire laced the air w
ith every fresh volley. The bogatyrs strode through it, dauntless.

  Plumes of earth and fire reached up into the sky with every explosive impact, taking the broken bodies of men with them. The bogatyrs remained inviolate, emerging through overlapping clouds of smoke, their energy shields crackling with particulate.

  Sarda watched an ivory giant cut an Imperial tank in two. The vehicle's bifurcated sides fell open, exposing a ruined anatomy within. Nothing lived; the red aether from the phage-swords saw to that. The bogatyrs had the appearance of marble statues, like knights of antiquity, but were nothing of the sort. Fashioned by the goreov priests, they were war engines, part machine, part biological.

  They reaped death through the Imperial ranks.

  Scores of men fell burning to the radiation beams of a bogatyr's ocular array; another reduced a transport vehicle to molten slag. Small victories, but they gave the Red Knights and the Blood-Guard heart.

  Clinging to the battlement's edge, almost wishing he could be part of the melee, Sarda dared to believe…

  'We can defeat them,' whispered Veddus. The skin of his hands and forearms was flecked with dark spots. His manner verged on manic, but Sarda agreed. 'Ranknar has not abandoned us. He is with us.'

  And Veddus turned as he heard others on the battlements echo his words. He repeated them. Louder.

  'He is with us!'

  The defenders roared back.

  'Ranknar!'

  'Wait…' Sarda bellowed over the cries of affirmation. He gestured to the battlefield and all eyes went to where a lone figure held his ground, standing in defiance of the bogatyrs.

  Sarda held his breath. Before the ivory knights was a dragon.

  'I believe you,' said Vulkan, staring into the desert reaches, trying to commit to memory this desolation that he called home.

  'In the Imperial Truth?'

  'I believe you want to save mankind. I believe you have a vision and mean to see it done whatever the cost.'

  'I have and I will,' the Emperor replied. 'It sounds bloody. It will be. Conquest always is, but there is darkness in the galaxy, Vulkan, the remnants left behind after Old Night. Horrors you can scarcely imagine. Superstition and fear, a race enslaved by its own isolation. There is but one path for mankind that does not end in extinction. The path I offer. I desire mankind's pre-eminence. Its evolution. I raised armies and unified a world to try to accomplish it.'

  'And created sons, primarchs.'

  'Yes,' said the Emperor, His voice serious but not unkind. 'I made you. And your brothers.'

  Vulkan frowned. 'Why? You already said we are your generals, your legacy, but why create us so differently and cast us far from your sight?'

  The Emperor pursed His lips, and Vulkan suspected there were some truths He would not reveal.

  'I am a singular being, Vulkan. I am a man, and also more than man. I sometimes think of myself as a creator, much as you think of yourself. A maker. At other times, a father. Yet, I find I am… removed. My concerns are of a lofty nature.'

  'You cannot relate to them,' said Vulkan, understanding. 'To mankind, even though you claim to be one of them. You made sons so that you would not be alone, so that you could share company with like minds, if not equal minds.'

  The Emperor smiled. 'You are partly right. I have a better fate for mankind. I would see them elevated, long lasting, perpetual.'

  'And what of the fates of your sons, sent across the void to worlds of fire and ice? Was that too a part of your design?'

  'I see much, but not all,' was all the Emperor would say, and again Vulkan sensed there was more.

  Above, the throaty roar of engines shook the sky. A ship appeared, obscured by cloud, a distant but growing silhouette in the heavens.

  'A vessel comes,' said the Emperor. 'It is bound for Terra and will arrive soon.' He turned to Vulkan. 'Have I convinced you?'

  Vulkan watched the ship, imagining his destiny closing around him, the wide aperture of possibility narrowing to a single vanishing point.

  'Vulkan…' said the Emperor, when no answer came, 'are you decided?'

  Vulkan met his father's gaze, a father that up until a few hours ago he did not know he had. N'bel was his father, a blacksmith, a good man, a just man. Could this Emperor claim to be so too?

  'To leave Nocturne and my people unprotected, it is no easy thing you ask. You want to bring light into darkness, and you will wage war to achieve it. You need warlords. A sword to kill or conquer, not a hammer to build with.'

  'I need you, Vulkan. That is why I am here. It is the sole reason I have crossed the sea of stars to reach you. A sword to conquer, a hammer to build. One need not render the other obsolete.'

  Vulkan thought on that. He looked back to the desert again, hoping some truth that had so far eluded him would be revealed in the whirling eddies playing across the sand.

  'I am torn. I have never considered myself a warrior or a general. I only want peace. You have told me much of my brothers, of Ferrus, of Fulgrim, Leman and Horus. They are generals, bellicose and proud. They are artisans and leaders of men, the conquerors for your age of Imperium. I am a blacksmith, a maker. I understand what I might learn from them, and they from each other. But what could I possibly teach them, father? Answer this and then I will decide.'

  * * *

  But they were still men, and men could not stand against primarchs.

  Ferrus destroyed every knight that dared to cross swords with him, his hammer a deadly metronome in his silver hands. He silently applauded their bravery, but swatted them aside like wasps. An irritant but nothing more.

  His true quarry ranged ahead, possessed by an even greater fury and about to charge the gates of the city on his own. When Ferrus came upon the first of the felled statue-engines and saw what its shattered chest cavity harboured, he realised why.

  'Blood of Asirnoth…'

  He felt the same pure rage well up inside him that had overtaken the Dragon.

  A child lay dying in the carcass of the statue-engine, a withered and wretched thing, half drained of blood. It was abominable science, a machine fuelled by the blood of the living, a parasitical engine fed children to give it animus.

  Appalled, Ferrus almost missed the vox-crackle in his warhelm. It was the Dragon.

  'Bring down the gates,' he said, drunk on wrath, his voice a predatory snarl. 'Now, father!'

  Ferrus found the Emperor on the battlefield, only a short distance away. The Imperial army had closed ranks as the enemy fell back, consolidating to a position of strength, their Emperor inspiring the utmost discipline. If the self-proclaimed Master of Mankind felt anything at the Dragon's words there was no sign. He merely raised his flaming sword. Moments later, a concentrated barrage struck the main gates of the city, a blow so unerring that Ferrus wondered if the Emperor had applied some of his strange craft to make it so.

  The gate split apart, the wall that held it rupturing and collapsing at the same time. Dust and smoke billowed outwards, clouding an outpouring of burned and shattered rock. It was a small breach, a crack in an otherwise sprawling face of rock, but it was all Vulkan needed.

  The Dragon ran for the gap in the wall, easily outpacing the few warriors still with him, and killed everything in his path.

  Ferrus looked down sadly on the dying child and gave it mercy. Then he went after his brother.

  'To the Dragon!' he roared to the warriors in his command, vox-boosting his voice so that the very air trembled.

  His brother had disappeared into the smoke-choked darkness just in front of the wall.

  'He cannot fight an entire army, even a defeated one, and win,' he said.

  The Emperor did not answer, and Ferrus had no time to look and see if he had heard him.

  And then he saw the weapon, wheeled into position on a great iron carriage. It had the look of a spire, tall and ugly. Barbs ran down a dark metal shaft that terminated in a narrow spike like an arrowhead. It protruded menacingly from behind the city's broken battlements, more dominant
than any of its towers and bleeding red miasma.

  Ferrus knew its ilk if not this specific design.

  Virus weapon.

  It was pointing straight up. The natives intended to saturate the atmosphere with a contagion, something wrought by their rancid blood-science.

  'Father…'

  Now the Emperor spoke.

  'I have seen it, my son.'

  'There is no time to withdraw. That missile…'

  'I will do what I can to stop it.'

  Reacting to the obvious threat, the Imperial artillery chain redoubled its efforts and unleashed repeated missile salvoes against the city.

  Detonations marched the walls, blasting revetments, tearing the garrison apart, reaching towards the shattered gatehouse.

  Ferrus did not slow. He would get to his brother; he would stop the virus missile from ever launching or they would die together. He had about made peace with his potential death when the Dragon's voice came over the vox again.

  'Hold your fire! Hold, hold, all weapons!'

  His impassioned command reverberated, reaching enemies and allies alike. He stood before the breach, barely a metre away, though the soot and displaced earth made it impossible to see what had made him stop.

  It took a few seconds, but the steady barrage began to slow.

  Ferrus kept running, possessed of an urgency that felt strange and unsettling, concern for a brother he had never met. Grey cloud briefly obscured his vision, before it passed and he saw him again, his mysterious brother charging the breach.

  The last missile fell, already on its deadly path and too late to be recalled or brought down. It struck the gatehouse. It struck the breach.

  'Father!' Ferrus cried out, surprised at his sudden dismay.

  His legionaries turned aghast to where fire and destruction had shattered the gatehouse. Men in the Imperial army ranks slumped, stunned. No one had seen a primarch fall before. Most believed they were immortal.

  'Nothing could survive…' whispered Ferrus, trying to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses. 'Father, is he…?' he asked, louder.

  The Emperor said nothing, as an anxious silence stole over the battlefield. The fighting had stopped.

  'Wait…' a weary voice came across the vox, and through the parting smoke, across embers of burning wood and stone still flickering at his leaden feet, emerged the Dragon. He had lost his warhelm and one shoulder guard hung by a ragged thread. There was blood. His own. A crack split his breastplate. He held his left arm close to his body.