Feat of Iron - Nick Kyme Page 8

  ‘How deep do you think it goes, brother?’

  Meduson followed his first captain’s eye line. He smiled when he realised what Santar was suggesting.

  Santar touched a finger to his gorget to open the comm-feed. ‘Ironwrought.’

  Ruuman came back between loud salvoes of heavy weapons fire.

  ‘I need you to do something for me…’ Santar said, and relayed his plan.

  ‘You are the hammer,’ said Meduson when the first captain closed the feed again.

  Santar’s lightning claws slid free of their sheaths. He fed a crackle of power down the blades.

  ‘Then it’s time we swung and struck.’

  Arrogance deliberately visible and overflowing, Santar forged through the Iron Hands ranks that parted for him and his entourage of Morlocks. He kept his helmet maglocked to his thigh plate. He was more vulnerable without it, but the warriors around him needed to see his face. Without the primarch, it was up to him to inspire.

  Behind his mask of ferocity, he hid his desire to be fighting alongside his lord. He could not imagine a time when that would not be so.

  He raised his iron fist to the Morlocks and roared.

  ‘Iron and death!’

  An insistent voice inside him intruded on Santar’s belligerence and the resounding affirmation of his charges that was hard to ignore.

  Father, where are you?

  Ferrus scowled.

  ‘Petty tricks,’ he stated flatly, though none of the hanging skulls in the abattoir seemed to hear him.

  Death did not unnerve the Gorgon, even the prospect of his own. Long ago, in the desolate wastes of Medusa, he had come to terms with the inevitability of his own mortality. He would live longer than most, perhaps even millennia, for who could say what the limits of the Emperor’s gene-science were? But he was a warrior and warriors would eventually meet their end at the edge of a blade. Ferrus hoped his ending would be glorious. He also hoped, one day, for peace. But without war he wondered what would then become of his purpose and function?

  Scowl became sneer, and Ferrus’s lip curled derisively at the strung effigies meant to portend his doom. Swollen with righteous indignation, he had to resist the urge to destroy every one of them.

  Without the lambent illumination of the gemstones, it was still light enough to see, even though the light was crimson and pulsing like a vein. The skulls were far enough apart to weave through without the need to touch them. Twisting in the breeze, one of the heads yawed around to face him.

  He smiled at the cadaverous doppelganger, his eyes narrowed and cold.

  ‘I would make a handsomer corpse,’ he said, and smiled. It sounded like a remark Fulgrim might have made. At the thought of his brother, a sound echoed in the primarch’s ear that he recognised, the hissing discord that had dogged his steps.

  The hunter had returned. Likely, it had never left. To this Ferrus paid his full attention, for its threat was real and it was close. It was in the chamber with him, slithering alongside him, matching his every step.

  ‘Come into the light, coward,’ he snarled. ‘I would like to see the enemy who wishes me slain a hundred times over. I will make a lie of that assumption, though you will only suffer one death.’

  His belligerent companion did not respond.

  Ferrus went on.

  Halfway across the grim abattoir, the cluster of the skulls became so tightly packed that Ferrus would have no choice but to ease them apart in order to pass.

  Using Forgebreaker like a cattle-prod, he tentatively pushed one of the heads aside.

  A slow moan escaped the dead lips. A second of the heads echoed the first, then a third and fourth. Gripped by a sudden and terrifying epidemic, every one of the decaying skulls began to animate in a baleful chorus.

  They were alive. Dragged back from damnation, these revenants wearing the flesh of Ferrus Manus had returned to haunt him. Revulsion, rage and disbelief warred inside the primarch and he backed away expecting an attack. A skull brushed his neck. Dry lips touched his skin like a kissed caress. Recoiling, he collided with another. A cheekbone shattered with the force. Bone fragments cascaded. A tooth bit into his armoured shoulder plate and stuck. Ferrus pulled it out, snarling as the moaning rose to a wail. The sound was low and accusing.

  You did this to us…

  You consigned us to this fate…

  We are in limbo because of you!

  Ferrus’s fists clenched, his teeth locked.

  ‘Shut up!’ he hissed. His fury boiled over and he whirled around, bringing Forgebreaker up in front of him.

  The dead should stay dead…

  Such debasement only confirmed the weakness of flesh and its eventual corruption. The fact it was his own dead visage made no difference to the Gorgon. He had held back before, allowed temperance to stay his hand. Now he would smash every one of the wretched things to bone-dust and memory.

  A streak of silver flashed in the darkness, the abattoir’s light flowing over it like congealed blood…

  Ferrus’s first blow never fell.

  Agonising hellfire roared up his spine, and bent it almost double. Armour plate cracked with the primarch’s sudden and violent convulsions, split like hot metal cooled too fast. Pain that would kill a hundred lesser men flooded his veins and nearly crippled him. Ferrus was bowed, down on one knee and hurting. Spitting phlegm and blood, he unleashed a peal of anger and fought the poison down. Pellucid silver cooled the burning of the wound, miraculous but far from cleansing, and the primarch straightened. Ferrus’s other hand was clenched around his wrist. It throbbed beneath the fingers of living metal, told him he had been hurt. Worse, he had been weakened. Forgebreaker was lost, spilled from his numbed grasp and sent clattering to the ground.

  He lifted his hand gingerly, like peering beneath battlefield dressings and expecting to be confronted by gangrene. Two puncture wounds, deep and wide like dagger thrusts, pierced his inviolable metal skin. The wounds bubbled with venom and Ferrus watched in disbelief as the living metal corroded before his eyes. As if stung, he withdrew his other hand, afraid that the taint would spread to both. Beneath the bleeding silver, burned and blistered skin was revealed and in it a memory was born…

  Standing at the edge of the lava chasm, the beast above.

  Breath of cold and sulphur.

  Hands raw and bleeding, but taut enough to snap anvils.

  The beast was waning. The battle they’d fought had taken its toll.

  Molten silver upon its flanks reflected the magma glow and shimmered with heat haze.

  Such a magnificent creature.

  He would kill it anyway, his dominance proved beyond doubt.

  I am stronger.

  Fangs bared, a song of fury upon its lips.

  He would prove it.

  He would find a way to pierce its miraculous flesh and kill it.

  The lava beckoned. His forge.

  Here, weapons were made and unmade.

  I will prove I am stronger.

  I must, for if I do not what does that make me?

  Memory faded, vague and indistinct. Myth and fact wove a single narrative that left him wondering at the truth of his own origins. Distraction was momentary. Need for survival and his warrior instincts took over. Rather than search for Forgebreaker, Ferrus ripped a spatha from his waist, a thick, meaty blade that was keen-edged and deadly. Numbed by the virulent poison, his wounded arm hung low at his side. Ferrus took the blade in his left hand, adjusting stance and grip before he scored a slit down his wrist to release the poison. Burning brine-yellow fluid seeped like acid down his red raw hand, dripping off bloodied fingers. Pain eased, so too the clamour in his skull that felt like it was being pummelled by a dozen gauntleted fists.

  Like my head is being cut from my shoulders…

  Ignoring the mournful cries of the heads, shutting out the death rattle of his own voice heard a hundred times over, Ferrus searched the shadows. He turned quickly at the glint of silver in his peripheral vision.
It flashed with the urgency of a warning beacon.

  Preternatural reflexes saved him from being maimed further. He lashed out, but the creature was swift beyond reason and slid from the primarch’s enraged clutches.

  Serpentine, but like no snake Ferrus had ever encountered. Silver scaled, it was not unlike the spawn of a beast he had fought long ago. Stars were merely chips of granite in the darkling sky back then, when there was only Medusa and the endless arctic night. Swallowed by shadow, the impression of the creature was fleeting but familiar.

  Perhaps we have met before…

  A tail crack made the Gorgon turn and he swung again, blindly, and cut only air. He felt slower. Despite excising the poison, the sting of his wound was creeping up his shoulder and into his neck. The phantom pain he’d felt around his throat ever since coming to the desert burned like white fire.

  Real or imagined, this creature could hurt him. Pulled from some black abyss of Old Night, it had manifested in this nether realm intent on his undoing. His gaolers knew his past, his primordial fears and desires, and taunted him with visions of an imagined future. They plucked strands of unrealised fate and watched the vibrations resonate through the primarch’s demeanour.

  Ferrus knew he could not give in to it.

  Delirium had started to affect his senses as whatever venom the serpent possessed did its work.

  Endure.

  The word was like his anchor. Lose that and he would be cast adrift upon an endless sea of chaos.

  The hiss of living metal as it dripped from his arm and splashed onto the ground in molten gobbets brought the primarch back around. He shook his head to banish the worst of the fog threatening at the edge of his vision.

  Basilisk, khimerae, hydra, such fiends had many names and forms. The creature was none of those. But it was powerful. It had to be to undo what was supposed to be incorruptible.

  Is nothing incorruptible?

  What were all the frost giants and ice drakes compared to that?

  Ferrus pushed the unworthy thoughts aside, realising they were being fed to him. The raging core bubbling beneath his cold exterior began to vent. His grip tightened on the spatha and the leather bindings wound around the hilt cracked.

  The weapon had been a gift from Vulkan, and the memory of his brother gave him strength.

  ‘I forged it to fit your hand, Ferrus,’ he had said. ‘It is your sword, not the equal of Forgebreaker I grant you, but a worthy weapon I hope. You honour me by carrying it.’

  Ferrus had turned it over in his hand, his cold eyes running across the filigree and ornate intaglio, the inlaid gemstones and Nocturnean inscription. The fine serrated teeth were diamond-sharp and acid-edged, the metal of its forging dense and unyielding.

  Ignoring the weapon’s obvious craft and beauty, Ferrus had at once seen its potential as a blade, but chose to be harsh instead of praising his brother’s craftsmanship.

  ‘Why does it need such ornamentation? Can I kill my enemies better because of it?’ There was a smirk upon his face that in retrospect Ferrus was not proud of.

  Vulkan had taken it in his stride. ‘It’s a master weapon with a master’s pride lavished upon it,’ he admitted. ‘When I draw my blade, I want my enemies to know it is a warrior-king’s weapon they face, wielded by a warrior-king’s hand.’

  ‘Even though you would rather wield a hammer to create than a blade to destroy?’

  Vulkan had smiled then and the gesture was warm as a lava glow.

  ‘Nocturneans are pragmatists, my brother. While war is necessary, I will fight, but I hope that one day I can put down my sword.’ His eyes flashed with fire. ‘Until then I’ll keep my killing edge sharp.’

  Ferrus had nodded and sheathed the blade, attaching it to his weapons belt. ‘I might have need of a knife,’ he had said lightly, and touched a silver hand to his glabrous skull, ‘for when the serfs don’t scrape close enough to the skin.’

  They laughed, the Gorgon raucous and ribald, the Drake booming and hearty as they shared a rare moment of levity until the Crusade forced them onto different paths. Until One-Five-Four Four.

  The memory of that day vanished in the reflected metal of the blade.

  Ferrus had named it Draken in honour of his brother. He needed its bite now and was glad of the spatha’s presence in his hand.

  Much like in the mausoleum gallery, the walls in the abattoir were polished obsidian. Their mirrored black stretched into infinity. The heads were reflected there, but in the doppelganger world they were sheathed in flesh. Severed arteries pulsed, spewing blood. It spattered his brow, still warm, still living. The wound was fresh cut and it blazed against the neck of the real Ferrus, who fought his revulsion at the spectacle rendered in the darkling glass. They were laughing, the severed bloody heads, all of them. They were laughing at him.

  Idiot!

  Weakling!

  Unwanted son!

  This last barb stuck in his throat. Ferrus was remarkable and on Medusa he was a king of kings. None could match him. But when his father came and brought him to seventeen remarkable brothers, he realised his place. Unlike Vulkan who had accepted his position gladly and humbly, Ferrus railed. Was he not the equal of his siblings? When faced with the glory of Horus, the majesty of Sanguinius or even Rogal Dorn’s dogged solidity, it was easy to believe that some sons would wait in the wings while the chosen few enacted their father’s grand plan for the galaxy.

  Ferrus wanted that light for himself, to be equal. He wasn’t vain; he merely wanted to be acknowledged. His entire existence until that point had been spent in the pursuit of strength. He could not believe that all of that had been done in an ancillary role. Ferrus could not believe his father had brought him from one shadow to merely consign him to another.

  I will make you proud, father. I will prove my worth.

  ‘Come then!’ he bellowed, but the challenge was unmet. The creature would snap at him from the shadows and lay him low with a thousand cuts.

  An inglorious death.

  Ferrus would not submit to that.

  But the creature was fast. He had yet to land a blow and striking at flashes would not yield victory. It wanted to goad him, make him lower his guard and open up to a mortal wound.

  He caught sudden movement in the corner of his eye and followed it, holding out the spatha defensively, its blade flat and angled away from his body.

  It was hard to refrain from violence; his entire existence was violence.

  Fury was hammering in his ears like a pealing bell. He focused and the clamour lessened to a dull roar. The creature was close, though it betrayed no sign of its presence. It felt as though Ferrus was somehow bonded to it, possibly through the bite and the taint of its venom. He wanted to hurt it for that, to redress the balance then destroy it. A font of inner rage was lapping at the edges of his consciousness, close to spilling over from thought into action.

  He remembered the forge and the solace of working metal. The only salve to his wrath, the one thing that could placate his volcanic anger. In spite of such anger, Ferrus knew patience even if it sometimes felt like he was grasping at smoke. Unlike Vulkan, patience did not come easily to him. It was an early lesson for all forge smiths. Tempering could not be rushed, metal needed time, it needed to wait until it was ready; so would he.

  He saw Forgebreaker lying on the ground, but resisted the urge to take it. The creature wanted him to. It waited for him to reach for his hammer.

  Vulkan’s blade would more than suffice. He trusted his brother’s craft.

  He should have told him that.

  Ferrus closed his eyes and listened. He heard a faint and rasping refrain, almost masked by the ambient noise. The reptilian hiss of the serpent.

  Now I’ll bait the hook…

  Blind, he was vulnerable.

  So he lowered his sword, let his arm fall by his side.

  He listened harder, allowed his heart to still.

  The cacophony of the dead lessened, the serpent’s voice in
tensified and Ferrus perceived two words.

  Angel…

  It hurt just to think it, as if it carried potency beyond its literal meaning.

  Exterminatus…

  It was hidden within the multiple susurrations of the creature, enfolded within pitch and cadence like a secret note in a virtuoso’s perfect symphony.

  It meant nothing to him, yet he felt the weight of its importance like it was a physical thing.

  ‘And the heavens burned with its refulgent beauty…’ The words came to Ferrus’s lips unbidden, as if belonging to another speaker without the power to articulate them.

  Something dark was at work here, something evil that intruded upon the nether realm Ferrus was bound to. He wondered if his captors realised.

  There was no time to consider it further, doing so would serve no purpose anyway.

  Breath held in his chest, Ferrus heard the scrape of metal that presaged the creature’s attack, its whickering tongue. Trusting to instinct, he waited until the creature was almost upon him before cutting. Scaled flesh parted against his sword.

  His eyes snapped open like armoured visors and Ferrus thrust again. A snarl of pain rewarded him. As he withdrew Draken from the shadows its edge was coated in gore. It was not blood but an ichorous fluid, heliotrope purple in colour, gripping viscously to the blade.

  He had hurt the creature. Its susurrus grew in pitch, a collision of anger and pain. Metal scale scratching against stone faded as the monster retreated into the darkness. Ferrus did not move for several minutes, listening for signs of its return. The wound in his forearm pulsed with foetid vigour, and the silver lustre had almost burned away completely, leaving it raw and agonised. Sheathing the spatha, he reached down and his fingers curled around the haft of Forgebreaker, as if weapon and wielder had sought each other out. Never had his hammer felt so heavy and cumbersome in his grasp.

  ‘Flesh is weak…’ he muttered and cursed his impotence in bringing to heel the forces that conspired against him.

  The memory of the phrase hidden in the serpent’s voice returned to him.

  Angel Exterminatus.

  As did the sense of malfeasance it carried. Some other sentience had pushed the words into his mind. It didn’t feel like a warning, as so much of this crystalline labyrinth did. It was a promise, a prophecy.