Feat of Iron - Nick Kyme Read online

  ‘Notice the deeper toe impression,’ said Tarkan, drawing his combat knife to better illuminate his audience. The glinting monomolecular tip stabbed into the end of the print.

  ‘He was running,’ said Desaan.

  Santar frowned and looked into the sun-streaked horizon, as if an answer waited there.

  ‘But from what?’

  ‘Or to what?’ suggested Desaan.

  There was no blood, no scorch marks, no evidence of any struggle. The trail simply ended.

  Santar frowned again, unhappy with this turn of events.

  ‘Good work, Brother Tarkan,’ he said, turning.

  Desaan was nonplussed. ‘Aren’t we continuing the search?’

  ‘There is no point,’ said Santar. ‘Wherever Lord Manus is, we cannot reach him. Meduson has need of us.’

  Desaan’s riposte was quiet and just for Santar. ‘We cannot just leave him, brother.’

  The first captain stopped to regard the others. Tarkan was back on his feet. ‘Choice is not a luxury we have right now, Vaakal. There is still a war to fight. At least we can do something about that.’

  Reluctantly, Desaan conceded the point. Logically, he could do little else. None of them could.

  Following the trail of the Army divisions, the fifty legionaries left the desert basin and their primarch to his fate.

  A bird. No, not merely a bird, but an immense avian beast whose magnificence had long faded. Easily the size and span of a gunship, its previously formidable muscle was wasted and atrophied. Wings that might once have been gilded were ragged and tarnished. Its skin hung loose about its frame like a feathered robe that was overlarge, the bones protruding in a raft of ugly contusions beneath. It was a carrion-eater, whose last meal was distant in the memory.

  Myth recounted many tales across many cultures of the gryphon, cockatrice and harpy. Civilisations had been eradicated by such beasts, if the bards and tale-tellers were to be believed. Even in its debilitated condition, this monster would kill them all. With ease. Ferrus slowed as he approached the creature.

  You will find me a difficult morsel to swallow, he promised, nearing the summit of the stone stairway.

  As he gained the last few steps, he realised it was not one bird but two, and they were no carrion-eaters. It was a pair of eagles, albeit rope-thin and emaciated. They each watched him curiously out of one eye, the other blinded by some past misfortune, as if with some knowing prescience the primarch was not privy to.

  As he reached out to them a death screech escaped their beaks, harrowing and reedy in its tonality. The Gorgon went for Forgebreaker but his fingers never touched the haft when he realised the pair of eagles were not about to attack. Instead, the creatures spread their once great wings and took flight.

  It would have been a pity to slay them, though perhaps it would curtail their misery and be an act of mercy. Surprised at how gladdened he was to have stayed his hand, Ferrus followed the trajectory of the first as it soared into the vaulted darkness of the cavern. Upon reaching the crack in the ceiling, it disappeared. He was envious of its wings, however decrepit and decaying they were. It had limped into the golden light regardless.

  His sons were above, separated from their father by that gilded crack in the world’s underbelly. For a few moments the eagle’s shadow lingered and it was almost as if Ferrus could reach out and touch it…

  The other eagle flew deeper into the caverns. In spite of his initial belief, Ferrus realised the pair were not completely identical. Where the first was wise and austere, the second prey bird had a nobler, patrician bearing in spite of its ragged appearance.

  Defiant, thought the primarch, familiar, even.

  It glided through an open portal cut from the stone wall of the cavern. The archway was militaristic, reminiscent of a civilised culture in its architectural tone, like the old empires of the ancient Romanii. It led into a further chamber lit by a firmament of stars.

  ‘Yet more cold stone,’ he thought aloud, as the crags of dark granite were revealed.

  Frustrated at his sense of powerlessness, Ferrus was beginning to believe that the road he was on was an endless one, that distance held no meaning in this labyrinth.

  It was pointless to fight against that over which he had no sway. Though it went against his instincts, Ferrus surrendered to fate. For now. He would reach the terminus of his journey when whatever had trapped him here deemed it appropriate.

  Then he would crush that being with all the fury of Medusa.

  Whatever lurked at the heart of the maze, it was no invincible monster.

  I have slain frost giants, he said to himself. I have killed ice wyrms with my bare hands. You snare a gorgon at your peril…

  The celestial constellations that illuminated his passage into the next room were not made of stars at all. Clusters of gemstones punctuated the walls, glittering in the ambient light. There was little remarkable about the threshold, just diamond-veined rock. He heard the languid flap of wings as a distant echo in his ear and since he could not fly, Ferrus followed the second eagle deeper into the star-lightened darkness.

  Ferrus smelled dead meat and cold. Something metallic spiked his tongue.

  The itch around his neck began to irritate and burn.

  Serpent breath hissed on the breeze.

  His belligerent travelling companion had returned.

  Have you come for me at last?

  Ferrus drew Forgebreaker and held it loosely in one hand. It hummed pugnaciously in his grasp.

  I will crack your skull like an egg, beast.

  The serpent kept its distance, lingering at the periphery of his awareness. It knew he would not merely blunder into the dark and attack it. Ferrus had to wait. Infuriating, and the creature knew it. But beyond simple goading, it had another purpose in forestalling a confrontation. It wanted him to see something first, something it had made for him.

  Like a swathe of black canvas had been drawn over the latter part of the chamber, the light of false stars was extinguished. Ferrus stood at its border, about to step into a shadow realm. Even his silhouette, limned with crystalline light, seemed dwarfed by it.

  And then everything changed.

  The darkness parted like a veil.

  One by one, the gemstones winked out. Like a cut artery washing over a lens, a visceral glow imposed itself over the scene. A gruesome abattoir was laid out, and Ferrus scowled at its ugliness.

  Blood-stink laced the air, leaden with a bitter tang. It crusted darkly in the corners of the slab-stoned floor, and reached up dank walls like a fungal contagion. Marks were smeared in the porcelain-white of the room, where hands and feet had slipped in the muck. Men and women had died in this place on their knees, pleading for their lives with the torturer’s blade at their necks or bellies. Hooked chains scaled the walls, gummed with meat, ready to receive the flesh feast.

  Images of rusty cleavers, jagged paring knives and flesh-ragged bonesaws resolved in Ferrus’s mind, though none of these butcher’s tools were visible.

  Instead, suspended from the ceiling on strips of sinew, there were heads. A hundred decapitated heads swung languidly on the breeze, turning slowly to reveal their full horror. Their faces were frozen in expressions of anguish, some open-mouthed and voicing silent screams; others with jaws locked in teeth-clenched agony.

  Ferrus worried at the rash beneath his gorget and felt anew the phantom sting of the executioner’s knife from a wound he had never received.

  Or perhaps, just not yet…

  The thought formed unconsciously, as if implanted. Ferrus was too shocked to rebel against it.

  Revelation piled atop revelation as he finally recognised the warrior in the faces of the hanging heads before him.

  Tortured, contorted with pain beyond mortal endurance, Ferrus had never before beheld such a terrible sight.

  Each face was his.

  WRATH OF IRON

  Jutting from the desert sand like a sliver of arching bone, it looked obvious enough.
As he arrived at the battle site, Gabriel Santar wondered why it had taken them so long to find the eldar node.

  Take out the nodes and disrupt the enemy’s cohesion. Like trying to communicate across an interrupted circuit, the eldar’s ability to coordinate their defence would be severely inhibited. Break the nodes and break the enemy. These were the edicts of Lord Manus, both to his Legion and his brothers warmongering elsewhere on One-Five-Four Four. It rankled that the primarch would not get to see his plan borne to fruition.

  For that and many other reasons, he dearly wished his lord was present.

  The Morlocks, together with Tarkan’s small band of snipers, had returned at the head of a massed column of Army battle tanks. What was left of the Army divisions, mainly Dogan Maulers and some Veridan Korracts, had also made the journey, most hanging off hull rails or perched atop the cupolas of the larger vehicles. Some mechanised elements had also survived the desert, and along with a few Sentinel outriders, they carried what was left of the Saavan Masonites.

  A ragged force, but reinforcement none the less.

  Judging by the impasse around the node and its defenders, they couldn’t have arrived soon enough.

  The node itself was immense and wreathed with a crackling energy shield the Iron Hands were struggling to crack. Santar could see no power source, no objective they could attack and neutralise to bring the defences down. It was generated by some other means unknown to them.

  Heavy impacts blossomed in bright azure bursts, and the shield rippled to diffuse their explosive energy across its curved surface.

  Ruuman refused to concede defeat. His Rapiers and missile batteries kept up a constant fusillade, charging the air with their noise and actinic stench. Expulsion clouds thickened into a fog that rolled off the bank where the Ironwrought had positioned his divisions and spilled down into Meduson’s advancing companies below.

  Santar was met by Bion Henricos, and the sergeant snapped a quick salute when he saw the first captain.

  While Meduson was overseeing the battle, he’d placed his hulking sergeant in command of the Iron Tenth. These warriors looked impatient for combat while Meduson’s vanguard, spearheaded by the Morlocks, tried to force an opening several hundred metres deeper into the field.

  ‘You can use the Army divisions?’ asked the first captain before Henricos could voice a greeting. There was no time to observe pleasantries. Amongst the Iron Hands officer cadre, the sergeant had the greatest empathy with the humans. Santar merely wanted that utilised, and conveyed as much in his perfunctory demeanour.

  No word was spoken of the mission or the primarch. It was not the sergeant’s place to ask, though he did cast a quick glance at Desaan who was a step behind the first captain.

  There must have been a short shake of the head from Desaan, because Henricos stiffened in grief and anger, but fell back to his duty in short order. That was to Henricos’s credit as he appraised the arriving column.

  ‘Just under fifteen thousand men and sixty-three operational vehicles,’ said Henricos. ‘Yes, my lord, I believe I can use these divisions.’

  Santar nodded. ‘Good. They are ragged, brother-sergeant,’ he warned.

  ‘Ready for a fight,’ countered Henricos.

  Smiling beneath his battle-helm, Santar said, ‘Indeed.’ He liked this Henricos, his dogged spirit. ‘Where is Captain Meduson?’

  Devastatingly powerful ranks of plasma cannons and Tarantula gun platforms boomed across the battle line, filling the rear echelons with light and thunder. Henricos waited a few moments for their salvo to subside before pointing north-east to where the acting commander was stationed.

  Santar saw Meduson and his retinue, but his gaze lingered on the shield after the plasma wake and heavy bolter smoke had dispersed. He expected a crack in the eldar’s armour, even a fissure. Nothing. The shield still held.

  ‘It has been like this for the past hour,’ said Henricos.

  Santar grunted, displeased. ‘Get the Army ordnance sounding immediately. I want to hear it from the front line when I’m standing next to that energy shield.’

  ‘We’ll punch a hole though it for you, my lord.’

  ‘See that you do. Flesh is weak, but those tanks are steel,’ he reminded Henricos.

  Santar didn’t linger. He headed over to Meduson.

  ‘Desaan, with me,’ he growled, watching the ineffectual barrage continue to rain down on the shield.

  ‘Their resistance is fearsome,’ said the captain of the Iron Tenth as Santar approached.

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  Meduson carried a holo-slate in his bionic hand and was appraising the tactical dispositions of his force. Heavies gave support fire from range, while three wedges of Iron Hands from the Sixteenth, Thirty-Fourth and Twenty-Seventh clan companies provided a relentless assault on the entrenched eldar positions. Santar recognised the sigils of the Vorganan, Burkhar and Felg clans battling tirelessly at the front.

  Down the centre, where the firestorm was hottest, he knew he would find the Clan Avernii, his Morlocks. Judging by the static representation of the veteran company, they too had reached an impasse. No Iron Hand had yet reached the shield wall itself.

  Eldar forces in front of it, acting as a breaker, were thick but also retreating back behind it.

  In reserve for the Iron Hands were Sorrgol’s clan warriors of the Iron Tenth, Meduson’s own kith and kin, as well as Kadoran, Lokopt and Ungavarr clans who brought down hellfire from the high ground. Even with all of that might at their disposal, the Iron Hands could not breach the eldar cordon.

  Five hundred metres ahead of him, the flesh and iron versions of Meduson’s army were doing the actual fighting.

  Rows of legionaries strode implacably into the teeth of the enemy, bolters kicking up a steady barrage. Meduson had positioned smaller divisions of conversion beamers and graviton cannons amongst the bulk of the battalions, identified by the sporadic flash from their barrels and arcing lances of power, but the enemy was resolute.

  ‘They are tougher than expected,’ Meduson admitted. Scorch marks blackened his battle-plate, suggesting he’d attempted to storm the eldar outpost in an earlier sortie and been repulsed.

  ‘You thought they would yield easily, brother-captain?’

  Meduson’s head twitched slightly when he realised the primarch was not with Santar.

  ‘The Gorgon?’ he asked, though his tone suggested he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘When will he return?’ He made no suggestion of the primarch’s death, such a thing was beyond countenance, though the shadow of that possibility passed over Meduson’s features like a dark cloud.

  ‘He will return?’ he rasped, fists clenching of their own volition as a vengeful fury came upon him.

  ‘We failed to find him.’ Santar had no answer to give.

  ‘He’ll be angry when he does come back.’

  Santar gestured to the holo-slate and the slow manoeuvres of the forces depicted on it. ‘That I would like to see.’

  ‘They are well corralled,’ said Meduson.

  Reserve forces of Iron Hands were moving in, encircling the node and its guardians in a ring of black ceramite.

  ‘Laying siege to a foe isn’t really our way though, is it, Shadrak?’

  Meduson gave a feral smile. ‘No, first captain. It is not.’

  ‘They hold tenaciously to something.’

  ‘Sounds like you admire them.’

  Santar’s eyes never left the holo-slate, thinking and strategising. In his time as equerry, he had learned much from Ferrus Manus. Often the Gorgon stood in Guilliman’s shadow but he was just as adroit a tactician. Others claimed his only drawback was that his single-mindedness sometimes left him slightly myopic. Though he would never speak of it aloud, Santar believed Ferrus didn’t have the Battle King’s patience for endless scenario-making either.

  ‘Admire them? No,’ said Santar with absolute certainty. ‘I want to understan
d them so I can better destroy them.’ Then he added, ‘Have you breached the energy shield even once?’

  ‘We haven’t even reached it. I expected their capitulation when facing our obvious numerical superiority, first captain. It’s only logical.’

  ‘Perhaps there is no concept of inevitability in the eldar culture.’

  Meduson’s silence intimated he didn’t understand that.

  ‘Suggestions then?’ asked Santar.

  ‘Hit them harder, throw more warriors against their defences until they shatter.’

  ‘Fortunately I have brought some with me who are keen to be reunited with their clansmen.’

  The Morlocks strained at the leash behind him.

  Meduson cast them a quick glance. ‘Hungry too.’

  ‘War is an unsubtle thing, Shadrak,’ Santar said. ‘Sometimes you just have to wield a larger hammer. Show me where you would like it to fall and we’ll make that breach for you.’

  ‘That is comforting to hear–’

  Meduson held up a hand, pausing to listen to a series of reports across the feed as the various commanders advanced or altered position. He met Santar’s gaze when he was finished. ‘I assumed you’d take command upon your return, first captain. I’ve already sent our troops’ dispositions across the feed to your retinal lens.’

  ‘Not necessary,’ said Santar. ‘You have this in hand, brother. I want to dirty my claws with xenos blood.’

  Meduson thumped his armoured chest, unable to stifle his pride at the first captain’s confidence in him.

  ‘Then let your wrath fall here, my lord.’

  As the words registered in Santar’s feed, an icon lit up on his retinal display. The other troop dispositions overlaid it. The rest of the Morlocks were holding at the very brunt of the battle, attacking the eldar defenders at close quarters. Here the defences were thickest, here the aliens wore heavier armour and brought their most devastating weapons and gun platforms to bear.

  Even at a distance it looked ferocious.

  Ignoring the cauldron he was about to step into, Santar scrutinised the distant shield as if he could discern a weakness just by looking at it.