The Omnibus - John French Read online

  Astraeos blocked the slash to his throat with his sword. The blades met with a scream of sharp edges, and he let Thidias’s combat knife grind down his sword to catch against his crossguard. Thidias hammered his other fist up under Astraeos’s arms and into his gut. The Librarian felt something crack. Thidias hit him twice more, each blow striking the same point with hammer force. Astraeos could taste blood on his own breath. He slammed his forehead into Thidias’s face. Thidias staggered, recovered and rammed his weight forwards, trying to free his knife. Astraeos twisted his sword and the force flicked Thidias from his feet as he gripped the knife. He hit the metal floor then began to rise. Astraeos let the tip of his sword raise a droplet of blood from Thidias’s neck, and looked into his brother’s face. A cold grey eye looked back at him from beside a glowing indigo lens set in a moulded brass fitting.

  ‘Mine is the failing,’ said Thidias, his voice a low rasp. Blood trickled down the warrior’s face, following the old pattern of scars that crossed his lean features. Astraeos nodded slowly, and moved the sword tip from Thidias’s throat.

  From the gloomy margin of the chamber, Kadin gave a mirthless chuckle as he paced forwards. Like Astraeos and Thidias, Kadin wore a loose tabard of grey fabric, the exposed flesh of his arms flowing with muscle beneath a network of scars. He was younger than Astraeos, but the scar tissue that covered his skin made him seem weathered and old, like a tree that has survived many storms. His face was broad, his features lost under the glossy skin of burn tissue. Kadin held a short sword loose in his left hand, the edges of its broad blade glinting with fresh sharpness. It was a blade for fighting close, where you could see the fear and fury in an enemy’s eye, and smell his blood as he died. A green lens shone from Kadin’s left eye socket, its setting clicking as it narrowed its focus. Carmenta had given each of them a machine eye to replace those taken by Maroth. Astraeos had been strangely reluctant to accept, as if part of him wanted to leave the empty hole as a reminder.

  Astraeos took a breath. They had been keeping the council of blades for six hours. The fighting chamber was a long, low-ceilinged hold crammed between the engine and weapon decks. Weapons and armour lined the walls; some had been smashed to ruin by the Harrowing, others gleamed as new. Huge cages of coals burned at the hold corners, filling the hold with heat, smoke and a dim red light.

  ‘You wish for rest, brother,’ said Kadin. He might have been smiling, but old scars twisted his mouth and his voice was as cold as snowfall. Astraeos shook his head. Kadin nodded.

  Kadin lunged, whip-fast. Astraeos was not even aware of raising his blade but somehow he deflected the blow. Kadin was already out and circling. Two more cuts lashed out, low and fast, and Astraeos had to step back as the broad blade slit the air where his leg had been.

  ‘You trust him?’ said Kadin as he circled. Astraeos watched his brother’s green eyes, one true and one false, ignoring the fluid movements of the blade in Kadin’s left hand.

  ‘No,’ said Astraeos, trying to focus on angles of cut as the words of the debate boiled through his mind. The image in his own new augmetic was almost perfect.

  Almost. Kadin’s blow whipped across from the right and he barely caught the movement in time. He flinched back and the blade ripped open his right shoulder.

  ‘You gave him our oaths but you do not trust him,’ growled Kadin. Astraeos focused on Kadin’s constantly moving shape. His right arm felt slow and weak as he raised his sword.

  ‘He gave us our lives,’ Astraeos said levelly, and cut as he spoke. The blow would have opened Kadin from neck to thigh but he was already spinning past the descending sword. Blood ran down Astraeos’s right arm. He had not even seen the cut. If it had been battle he would have sensed the blow without needing to see it, but the council of blades denied him his powers as it denied him his armour. ‘He freed us. It is the way of things. Salvation demands loyalty.’ Kadin lunged, his face twisted into a wolf snarl. Astraeos flicked his sword out to parry, but the scarred warrior had switched the blade between his hands as he moved. The true cut opened a red grin across his left thigh. Numbness spread down Astraeos’s leg.

  ‘He is a sorcerer,’ spat Kadin, ‘a witch in the service of false powers, a renegade to his own oaths.’

  ‘And what are we, brother?’ said Astraeos. And what should I have done, brother? The question flicked through his mind, silent and unspoken. He gave me life, and I must repay that gift the only way I can. We are nothing without the oaths we swear. We are the last of a brotherhood all but destroyed because others broke their word while we kept ours.

  ‘We broke no oaths,’ said Kadin, and Astraeos could see anger in his brother’s eye.

  ‘And we will not now,’ said Astraeos, but there was no fire in his voice. His broad head had started to dip, and his shoulders slumped. Blood streaked his arm and leg. He looked like a wounded bear, its strength leaking from it as the wolf circled.

  ‘He is an outcast,’ said Kadin.

  ‘Are we so different?’ Astraeos tried to cut as he spoke but the blow was too slow and Kadin was already pivoting past the point to slice at Astraeos’s unwounded arm. Astraeos suddenly swivelled and cut low, the false fatigue vanishing from him in an eyeblink. The flat of Astraeos’s sword scythed Kadin’s legs from under him. Kadin fell, and felt the point of Astraeos’s sword prick his chest before he could rise.

  ‘The decision is mine,’ said Astraeos. Kadin nodded once and Astraeos looked up to where Thidias watched from the chamber’s edge. ‘Ahriman has our oath, and that binds us.’ But to what end, Ahriman? What do you flee and what are you hurrying to find?

  ‘And if he proves unworthy to bear our loyalty?’ said Kadin, but Astraeos had turned his back, and stalked to where his bronze armour hung from brackets on the wall. In the glow of the fire cages, he could see where the emblems and honours had been ground from the dull surface.

  ‘This council is over, the blades have spoken,’ said Astraeos, as he hung the sword on the wall and took down the first plate of his armour.

  ‘What of the one who took our eyes?’ asked Kadin, rising from the floor. Astraeos put his hand to his right eye socket, felt the silver and black that held the pale crystal of his new eye. He thought of Maroth curled on the floor, blind, weeping blood. How could a Space Marine become such a broken creature? Maroth was no longer a human, no longer a warrior; he was a mewling creature, too vicious and spiteful even to pity.

  ‘Ahriman holds the strings of his life,’ said Astraeos. Thidias glanced at Kadin but both remained silent. Astraeos did not look at them.

  In truth he agreed with them. He knew nothing of Ahriman besides his power and that other renegades hunted him. Oaths did not require trust, though; that was a truth the Imperium had taught him. He began to armour himself, locking plates together, building a second skin of metal over his flesh. Once he would have had serfs to aid him, but they belonged to a past long dead. The three Space Marines were silent while the only sound was the scrape of ceramic and metal. Astraeos finally straightened, bronze-plated once again, and began to walk to the chamber’s sealed doors.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Kadin from behind him.

  I do not know, brother. I do not know where our oath will lead us. The thought formed in his mind but he left it unspoken as he walked from the chamber.

  The throne chamber was silent and stank of decay and ashes. The candles had long burned to pools of fat, and the only light came from a cracked glow-globe held by a hunched servitor that stood just behind Ahriman. Gzrel’s corpse lay slumped across his throne. A grey fungus had sprouted from his flesh and armour, reducing him to a formless heap. A carpet of fine white stalks had spread across the other bodies. Ahriman thought he saw the long strands twitch and sway as the light fell on them.

  Ahriman’s eyes lingered for a moment on the pile of soft ash at the floor’s centre. It still lay as it had fallen, the outline of a human form in grey powder. He thought of Tolbek and, for a second, he closed his eyes.

&nbs
p; The guilt and anger had begun as the Titan Child dived into the warp. Perhaps it had been there before, blotted out by the drive for survival, numbed by the euphoria of wielding powers he had so long denied to himself. He had walked from the bridge and lost himself in the tangle of the ship’s passages, letting his mind play through what had happened, the vision, the emissary, what he had done and why. As the intoxication had failed, the guilt had come, pouring into his thoughts like a black cloud. He had failed, he had been weak.

  I should have let it play out, he thought. As he watched the servitor take more clicking steps into the chamber, the yellow light of the glow-globe clasped in its hand revealed more signs of violence and decay. The light reflected back from something amongst the ruin that glinted like polished crystal. He took a step closer, and bent down. Then he realised it was a pair of eyes, glassy and dead, staring from Gzrel’s fungus-masked face.

  I am a sorcerer, he thought, looking into the eyes. The powers that I wield are the powers of daemons and cruel gods. There is no higher ideal, no redemption by knowledge. He let out a shaking breath. Anger rolled through him, feeding on his guilt and feeding it in turn. I have failed again, I am weak and I did not have the strength to let my fate take me. For an instant, he thought of walking to an airlock and letting the storms swallow him.

  He looked up from Gzrel’s empty stare into the eyes that he had been avoiding since he entered the chamber. The two Rubricae stood where they had been. He could feel the ghost essences within each suit of armour whispering at the edge of his mind. Anger hissed in those whispers, like shouts of frustrated rage caught and scattered by the wind. He stood and walked until he was standing in front of them, his eyes level with theirs.

  Rubricae battle plate was deep crimson, edged in silver and hung with strips of papyrus. Ahriman’s eyes flicked over the armour of one, picking out small marks and signs that spoke of the warrior who had been the flesh within the metal. They were few, but enough for him to name who the Rubricae had been in life. With the name came a face, a tone of voice, and a memory of a quick laugh and wry smile. The Rubricae had been one amongst a Legion, but Ahriman could remember the names and faces of all his brothers.

  He looked closer at the armour, seeing with his mind as well as his eyes. Sigils snaked through the armour, in places etched into the ceramite, in others woven invisibly into the deep substance of every plate and join. To Ahriman they looked like chains of blue fire. From within the armour, he felt the spirits thrash at their bindings, like caged predators smelling the blood of their captor.

  Slowly, hesitantly, he raised his hand, and reached out with his armoured fingers. He touched one of the pauldrons.

  A chill spread across his hand. Ahriman tried to pull his hand away, but not quickly enough. The Rubricae’s fist closed around his wrist. He felt the plates of his own armour buckle, and heat spread from the grip. The Rubricae’s eyes blazed at him. He tried to pull away, but it drew him close.

  +Ahriman,+ hissed a voice in his mind. He could feel the pleading and anger in the voice, grating together like iron and stone.

  ‘I…’ He began to speak, but the grip grew tighter. The binding sigils on the Rubricae’s armour shone brighter and brighter. Ahriman’s arm was burning with heat as the ceramite under the Rubricae’s grip buckled. A second hand gripped his neck and lifted him off the floor. The iron fingers began to close slowly on his throat.

  +Ahriman,+ said the voice again, and its whisper overwhelmed his thoughts.

  He was drowning, he could not breathe, he could not feel, he was blind. He was tumbling through a universe of darkness and shadow, of glimpsed futures and broken memories. He could not remember where he had been, or why he had been. He remembered a figure in red armour, a blue sky streaked with purple as the sun set. There was battle, an axe slicing towards his head and he was twisting with the blow, ramming his own blade up under the beard of the warrior that would have killed him. There was blood so bright and vivid he thought he could feel it spatter his cheek.

  The image faded.

  Where had the image gone? What had it been? Was it a memory of his past? Had he been the killer or had he died, his blood glistening in the sun? He tried to remember the image, to hold onto it, but… What image? There had been an image, a memory, it had been… But he could not grasp it again.

  Darkness.

  He tried to breathe, but could not. He was drowning and the darkness wrapped him tighter as he spun on, falling, falling without end.

  Where was he? His name, what was his name? He wanted to shout, but he was drowning in the blind dark. His name…

  ‘I am Ahzek Ahriman.’ He felt the words heave from his own throat. The darkness blinked away, and he was looking back into glowing green eyes set in a high-crested helm. The fingers around his throat were still closing. He remembered an axe falling, and blood in the sun. He remembered searching for something to cling on to as he drowned in forgetfulness. He remembered reaching for his name.

  He looked into the eyes of the Rubricae, and spoke the name of the warrior it had once been.

  ‘Helio Isidorus.’ The Rubricae went still, and Ahriman gasped in its grip. He understood; he had not just reduced his brothers to spirit and dust, he had shattered their identities. Over time the touch of the warp would have changed their flesh and dissolved their minds into madness, but Ahriman had broken everything they were and everything they had been at a single stroke. The armoured figures in front of him were shells around empty spaces, like a human silhouette scorched onto a wall by a bomb blast. These sons of the Rubric were worse than dead; their existence had been annihilated.

  I did this, he thought. I thought I was saving them, and I did worse than destroy them. A black wall of emotion washed back through him. He had fallen and taken his brothers with him. Knowledge did not set the mind free, but chained it with pride and dragged it into darkness. He looked at the ashen remains of Tolbek on the deck.

  Your brother’s fate is your fate, the daemon in the vision had said.

  I have to know, he thought. He could have closed his eyes to the past and to the fate of what remained of his brothers, but not now. Something was reaching from Ahriman’s past to pull him into a future he did not want to see. He had to find out who and why. The decision was heavy with anger. Someone had forced him to this, and was twisting his fate. He would not submit to that.

  He looked up at the Rubricae that held him, and willed it to release him as his mind spoke its name.

  +Release me, Helio Isidorus. Release me, my brother.+

  The arm let him down slowly, the fingers opening one after another. He looked at the second suit, his eyes taking in identifying details, his mind tasting the spirit within. It had remained immobile but he could feel its spirit pressing against its bindings. Its true name came to mind and he whispered it along with its brother’s.

  +Helio Isidorus. Mabius Ro.+

  Both suits turned towards him as one.

  I will not bind them to me, he thought. They were once my brothers, and they will never be my slaves.

  +Remain here,+ he sent. He backed to the bronze doors. The light-bearing servitor followed him with shambling steps. When he reached the door he raised a hand as if in farewell. Flame sprang from the corpses, spreading from one of the dead to another until the throne chamber was ablaze. The two Rubricae stood amongst the spreading flames, the red paint blistering and peeling from their armour. Ahriman stepped through the thick metal doors and placed his hands on either side, ready to push them shut on the burning room. He looked back at the two suits of armour that were becoming blackened statues amongst the rising flame.

  +Dream, my brothers,+ said Ahriman, as he pushed the doors closed. They stared at him unmoving as the doors sealed and the room became a furnace.

  ‘He will betray us.’ Kadin paused after the words, watching Thidias for any reaction. There was none. Thidias knelt over the disassembled components of his bolter, his lips moving in a silent stream of words, his eyes close
d. He wore no armour, just a robe of ash-grey fabric, held at the waist by a knotted length of rope. The guts of his bolter glistened with fresh oil in the light of a half-burned candle which floated on a brass suspensor disc. The chamber was small, barely long enough for Kadin to have lain down in. Its ceiling was low and its hatch narrow. The paint and rust on the walls had been stripped back to the bare metal. Strips of parchment hung from rivets across the wall. There was no bed or pallet, just the hard metal of the floor and the wargear stacked in one corner. Kadin could smell gun oil and incense in the thickly circulating air. He shifted uncomfortably. He did not like Thidias’s chamber; it was like walking into a memory he would rather forget.

  Thidias’s lips went still, and he opened his one good eye. The indigo lens of the bionic flickered and then shone bright and strong. Slowly he looked up at Kadin.

  ‘The blades have spoken, the matter is decided,’ said Thidias.

  ‘Astraeos–’

  ‘Leads us,’ said Thidias, his voice abruptly iron-hard. In the candlelight he suddenly looked old, as if the shadows pooled more deeply in his face. ‘Astraeos leads us, and I follow him as I swore to when he returned to take us from the fire.’ He paused. ‘As you swore, too.’

  ‘But you doubt this decision,’ said Kadin, his armour clicking as he gestured. ‘I saw it in the council.’

  Thidias gave a small shrug and looked back down at the weapon components laid out in front of him. Carefully he reached down and picked up a part, then another, his hands moving together in an accelerative rhythm as the boltgun formed in a stream of metallic clicks. The final catch snapped into place, and Thidias mouthed another litany of silent words over the weapon and placed it down. He looked up.

  ‘I questioned, as was my place,’ said Thidias, and shook his head. ‘There is nothing more to say.’

  Kadin spat, and turned away. He had never liked Thidias, not really. They were brothers, the last of a shrinking circle of brotherhood, but that was not enough.