Deathfire Read online

  ‘Have you seen it in the flame, Chaplain?’ asked Gargo, eager to hear of any premonition.

  Even in the esoteric Promethean Cult, such practices were rarely conducted any more. Few thought it in keeping with the secular galaxy the Imperium had attempted to establish.

  Of late, however, superstition and the old ways were staging a revival.

  ‘No,’ Var’kir admitted, and his expression darkened, ‘but there is much I have missed recently.’ This time his frustration at the escape of Barthusa Narek played heavily across his features.

  There was a notable omission at the table, an empty seat. None gathered in the sword hall would look upon it, though the one alongside this vacancy now stood.

  Zytos braced his gauntleted hands against the heavy lacquered wood and the table groaned against his weight, despite its ostensible sturdiness.

  ‘Listen,’ said Zytos, a sergeant by rank but much more than that to the gathered survivors who had washed up at Ultramar. ‘Var’kir is right. Our allies here are few, we know that now. Vulkan gone, the traitor fled – there is little to keep us on Macragge.’ The firelight flickered against his tough, ebon features, emphasising his youth and the baldness of his scalp. ‘We are the Pyre, and we must endure… for Vulkan.’

  These words prompted a murmured echo from the others. Notably, Xathen abstained, his red eyes burning into Zytos as he listened.

  ‘I believe Igen Gargo when he says the Charybdis is ready. And I have met Kolo Adyssian and found him honest and brave. We could not want for a finer shipmaster. Far’kor Zonn agrees with me, also.’

  Here, Zytos glanced to the Techmarine, who nodded and briefly set the gyros in his mechanised neck whirring.

  ‘A decision then lies before us,’ Zytos said, casting his gaze around the entire shadowed assembly. ‘We can stay, and become a part of Guilliman’s new crusade–’

  ‘A political appointment, and no more than that,’ Xathen snorted, but found most in agreement. ‘I have no wish for what few Salamanders remain to be part of some symbolic propaganda for Macragge.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Abidemi.

  ‘Or I,’ echoed Dakar.

  Other voices joined them. Only Var’kir and Zonn kept quiet.

  Zytos nodded at the sudden groundswell, satisfied, determined.

  ‘Then we leave, and join up with whoever still fights for the Throne beyond Ultramar’s borders.’

  ‘A third choice exists,’ said Var’kir as the tumult of vengeful voices faded.

  All eyes fell upon him, fiery in the shadows.

  ‘Nocturne,’ he uttered simply.

  Xathen frowned; his eagerness for retribution against the traitors edged towards belligerence, even amongst brothers. ‘Nocturne? Through the storm, a journey that perilous? I want to die in battle, not aboard a battered warhorse vessel straining to reach home.’

  ‘For Vulkan,’ Var’kir replied, and the mood fell back to sombre reflection.

  ‘Vulkan is gone,’ said Xathen, as grief-stricken as the rest but choosing to deal with it through anger and recrimination. ‘Ash and smoke, you said so yourself, Chaplain.’

  ‘Numeon believes,’ said Zytos, attracting Xathen’s ire.

  ‘All I know of Artellus Numeon is he was once a great warrior.’

  Gargo interrupted, speaking through clenched teeth. ‘He still is, brother.’ He grimaced, and suddenly clenched his shoulder.

  ‘Still hurts, eh?’ said Xathen, unable to fetter his natural belligerence. ‘We all lost something on Isstvan, though, didn’t we.’

  There were nods at that. Gargo averted his gaze from the Pyroclast, and took the pain.

  ‘Numeon is also our leader, in the absence of any other,’ said Var’kir, turning back to the matter at hand. He gave a quick glance to the slightly crestfallen Zytos.

  ‘A leader who does not want to lead,’ Xathen replied. Swinging his arms wide, he gestured expansively to the others. ‘And where is he? Our strength gathers, trying to determine our best fate and he is not to be found. Only an empty seat to remind us of his absence.’

  Igen Gargo retreated from the argument. A murmur of dissenting voices ebbed until all were silent.

  Even Zytos had no answer. Though there was honour in leading his brothers, and part of him would miss that, he had rejoiced when Numeon had come back to them to take up the fallen mantle of Legion Master.

  Var’kir had will enough to challenge the scarred veteran.

  ‘He grieves, Xathen. That’s where he is. Mourning the dead.’

  Fifteen

  Lost causes

  Magna Macragge Civitas, Memorial Gardens

  Var’kir had called them gardens, but Numeon saw no beauty in them. Between the daemons fought in the bowels of the Eastern Keep and the empty memorial vault meant to contain his father, he had seen precious little beauty anywhere on Macragge.

  Instead, he saw granite and cold marble across a bleak expanse of dark turf threaded with black orchids and pale lilies. Inner peace was a stranger to this auditorium of grief and pain. Tombs and mausoleums stretched in every direction. Great statues loomed, forever clad in funerary armour, held fast in their finest moments of fading glory.

  A cold wind blew through this place of the dead, disturbing stone-clad trenches of dank water. It numbed Numeon’s soul and stabbed his heart with ice.

  ‘I am a wraith,’ he murmured to the other revenants, ‘standing alone in your long shadows.’

  ‘Bleak words for bleak environs,’ uttered a deep, sibilant voice.

  Numeon drew his sword. ‘Who goes there?’ he demanded, recalling Thiel’s words about doppelgangers and renegades abroad in the Civitas.

  A tall, powerful figure emerged from the darkness, as grim and forbidding in his black armour as any chiselled memorial statue. It could be none other.

  ‘I am Lion El’Jonson.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ Numeon replied, lowering his sword. ‘The Lion, primarch of the Dark Angels.’

  Hooded eyes regarded Numeon, framed by a mane of long blond hair. The primarch towered over the Salamander, his mood and his manner inscrutable.

  He proffered his gauntleted hand.

  ‘Consider this a formal introduction then,’ said the Lion. ‘I wanted to speak to the Legion Master of the Salamanders alone.’

  ‘I have no claim to that title.’

  ‘Yours is the only claim, captain.’

  ‘Then I do not wish for it. What is it you want from me, lord?’

  The Lion lowered his hand, his face unreadable.

  ‘Just your ear,’ he said, stepping back towards the shadows.

  A huge wing-hilted blade hung across his back, mercifully undrawn.

  ‘You have it,’ said Numeon, somewhat wary.

  ‘You disagree with the policies here on Macragge, do you, Numeon?’

  ‘I have no mind for them, right now. I came here to be alone.’

  ‘With your grief? Your anger?’

  ‘Both. Either. What does it matter to the Lord of the Dark Angels?’

  ‘I am just intrigued. Confronted by a legionary who aches to return to his world, I wonder, Numeon, what is that feeling like?’

  ‘Desperate, asphyxiating. Is that what you expected?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ admitted the Lion. ‘Is it merely the pull of Nocturne or does something else compel you?’

  ‘Am I pushed from Macragge, is that what you’re asking?’

  The Lion paused to consider his answer. ‘Not exactly that. Not Macragge.’

  ‘Then you mean Lord Guilliman’s ideal.’

  The Lion said nothing, but Numeon felt himself under sudden scrutiny. The Salamander narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You don’t agree with it.’

  Again, the Lion kept his own counsel.

  ‘I don’t wish to become a
political pawn in whatever is happening here. I have even less tolerance for it than Sergeant Thiel.’

  ‘Many feel as you do,’ the primarch uttered finally. ‘Some say we were too quick to give up on Terra. I believe you are someone who does not give up on lost causes easily either. Our lost causes are sometimes all we have to strive for.’

  Numeon gave a short, bitter laugh.

  ‘Look around us, my lord. We are amongst graves. Do you think I came here because my faith in lost causes is strong?’

  The Lion shook his head, saying, ‘I meant no disrespect, but be mindful of who you are speaking to.’ There was warning in his tone, exacerbated by the mail and plate he wore, and the great sword strapped to his back. Deeper shadows abided within the furred cloak arrayed about his shoulders, suggesting the Lion’s enigmatic and capricious nature.

  For the first time since the conversation began, Numeon had reason to be concerned.

  ‘I came here to mourn,’ he said, contrite. ‘For peace.’

  Bowing, the Lion answered, ‘Then I shall trouble you no further. But remember what I said, Numeon. None of us will give up on our causes.’

  ‘And what of Caliban then?’

  A slight tremor of unease crossed the Lion’s face, so quick and so subtle it could almost have been Numeon’s imagination. Almost.

  ‘Mourn for my brother Vulkan, as I shall,’ said the primarch, retreating into shadow and the deeper groves of the gardens, ‘but don’t expect to find peace.’

  He sounded bitter, but before Numeon could ask why, the Lion turned and his long cloak swept around in his wake. Then he was gone, lost to the dark.

  Numeon stood alone for a few moments. He hadn’t realised how fast his heart was beating. The encounter with the Lion was both unexpected and disturbing. He found himself wondering at the Dark Angel’s agenda. His words rang true.

  Our lost causes, Numeon realised, are sometimes all we have to strive for.

  His purpose here returned to him, his grief and anguish also. After so long in denial, he had finally come to accept the irrefutable.

  Vulkan was gone.

  His father had not escaped his casket to walk amongst the living again; his form had dissipated back into the ash of its creation. Even his murderer had inexplicably slipped his shackles and, despite all the assurances he had heard second-hand from Guilliman, Numeon held little hope Barthusa Narek would be apprehended. With Sanguinius and the Lion by his side, despite his curious misgivings, the Lord of Macragge was more concerned with building his war machine, his legacy and the Ultramar second front than he was about errant traitors, even ones as high profile as the Vigilator.

  No hope, no vengeance.

  ‘I have been denied everything,’ he hissed, bitterly.

  Perhaps he should seek out the Lion and speak with him further? For now, he was ill-prepared for such a conversation. He needed time.

  Stepping through an ivy-strangled arch, Numeon found himself upon a stairway of black basalt leading up to a stone plateau at its summit. In the middle of the plateau was a memorial stone. Here were etched the names of those who had died on Isstvan V. There were many gaps, many names yet to be spoken, many of the dead still to be confirmed.

  Another monument rose above this first memorial, a golden and glorious statue of Ferrus Manus, primarch of the Iron Hands.

  Carven in a belligerent aspect, he clenched a massive hammer in his outstretched hand and held it aloft as if to challenge the heavens. Rendered in agonising exactness, his war-plate almost transcended stone in its verisimilitude. The artisan had sculpted severe features for the Gorgon – an unyielding, defiant expression that dared all who looked upon it not to feel humbled even by his simulacrum. Dead eyes, blank of the primarch’s infamous temper, stared down upon Numeon.

  It was a bleak epitaph, he decided, ill-fitting of such a formidable being.

  But how else could the dead be remembered, other than by having their essence trapped in stone? Ferrus Manus would have raged at such poor treatment.

  Numeon laughed grimly, imagining it. Then he looked beyond the statue, further into the memorial gardens.

  Here the foliage gave way entirely to dark marble. No tree or leaf grew in this lightless quarter, only skull-wreathed columns that had erupted from the ground like tumours. Lesser statues rose between them, some in repose upon their tombs, others standing proudly, their bodies interred in the earth below.

  As Numeon left the statue, descending from the plateau to walk between the structures of dark marble, his grief found him.

  Falling to one knee as if struck, he wept for his slain father. None would see it, for he was alone in his misery.

  In his mind’s eye, a great pyre burned. Upon it was Vulkan, returned to the flame at last.

  ‘Embers,’ hissed Numeon, finding his composure but still bent on one knee, his head bowed in sufferance. ‘That is all we are, and all we can become in the end.’

  Finding enough resolve to raise his head, he noticed one of the statues regarding him from the shadows. Sitting sternly on a marble throne set upon a shallow plinth, the statue struck Numeon as familiar.

  He got to his feet, eyes straining against the darkness, but the statue was too far away to discern in detail.

  As Numeon approached it, his armoured boots rang loudly against the marble but he did not hear them. His every sense was transfixed upon the enthroned figure.

  As he drew nearer, he noticed something clenched against its chest and then he saw what was also jutting from it.

  Numeon’s tongue was stolen away, his eyes widening, his mouth trying to form words but failing. He managed one just before he sank to his knees again.

  ‘Father…’

  Sixteen

  Severed ties

  Cruiser Monarchia, the shrine

  Severance was painful. Blood rites took their toll on the flesh. In a crude way that failed to appreciate the complexities of their meta­physics, that is how they functioned.

  Quor Gallek had been blood-tithed to the Unburdened when it was banished. Not in actual communion, for such a feat was beyond even a Dark Apostle of his considerable dedication and ability, but rather a perpetual latent awareness. During the tithing, several revelations had emerged.

  Barthusa Narek was no longer incarcerated. Another ‘interested party’ had freed him for reasons as yet unknown. The identities of these apparent allies was also obscure. Sadly, his whereabouts on Macragge were currently unknown too.

  Before banishment, Xenut Sul had revealed something else.

  Against all odds, Vulkan had arrived on Macragge some time ago.

  Lying in state, his obsidian flesh now acted as a sheath for the fulgurite.

  ‘Xenut Sul,’ murmured Quor Gallek, wiping blood from his nose and spitting up a gobbet of crimson-veined phlegm, ‘how deeply you must have sunk your claws into him.’

  As Xenut Sul’s prisoner aboard the Demagogue, the Salamanders captain had known and revealed little. On Macragge, with the Unburdened already having breached his mental defences, Artellus Numeon had proved much more useful.

  All of this, Xenut Sul gave up to Quor Gallek before his anchor to the mortal plane was unhooked and cast off. A daemon’s bargain, Xenut Sul wanted Quor Gallek to find him and pluck his incorporeal essence from the aether.

  ‘You will have to wait, my malicious creature,’ hissed Quor Gallek, rising.

  So would Barthusa Narek. He knew where the fulgurite was; he had even seen vicarious testament to its power. Now all Quor Gallek had to do was obtain it.

  Standing in the darkness of the tithing chamber, he lifted a still-trembling hand to the vox-panel.

  ‘Shipmaster,’ he said, ‘bring us to the edge of Macragge’s monitors and engage broad sensorium sweeps.’

  The gravel voice of the Monarchia’s shipmaster came back with a question.
r />   ‘What are we seeking, Magister Quor Gallek?’

  ‘A large vessel,’ Quor Gallek replied. ‘Salamanders.’

  With a unique cargo.

  Seventeen

  Symbols

  Magna Macragge Civitas, Fortress of Hera

  Numeon stood in another of the Praetorium’s audience halls. It did not seem so long ago that he had been received in one by no less than three primarchs. Again, he was not alone, but on this occasion Barek Zytos, Rek’or Xathen and Phaestus Var’kir accompanied him.

  For now, they were the only four souls in the large, vaulted chamber.

  Xathen whistled.

  ‘Grandiose,’ he muttered, taking in the spectacle of the frescoed ceiling, the ornate columns, banners and tapestries. It was a work of art, although some of that had faded during Ultramar’s recent austerity as Guilliman girded his former empire. ‘Every brick intended to remind us of Thirteenth Legion pre-eminence. Is all of the Fortress of Hera like this?’

  ‘Did I make an error bringing you here for this?’ asked Numeon, addressing Xathen, though his eyes never left the great doors to the hall.

  The Lord of Macragge was late.

  ‘There are lords on Nocturne with smaller manses than this antechamber,’ Xathen replied.

  Numeon still didn’t look at him.

  ‘Do I need to repeat myself, sergeant?’

  Xathen snorted ruefully but was contrite. He raised his hand in a gesture of compliance. ‘You did not make an error bringing me to this gathering, brother-captain.’

  ‘Who are we?’ Numeon asked them all.

  ‘The sixty-six,’ uttered Xathen.

  ‘The Pyre,’ replied Var’kir.

  ‘Salamanders,’ said Zytos and put a reassuring hand on Numeon’s shoulder, who turned to regard him. ‘United in this fight. Vulkan is with us. You are with us, Numeon. It’s time to go home.’