Promethean Sun Page 11

  “What is this place?” hissed Numeon.

  Strange sigils were daubed on the walls, alien in origin, and there were shrines sunk into alcoves dedicated to aberrant deities. A procession of crude statues, long-limbed and androgynous of gender, lined the edges of a subterranean passageway that fed deeper into the complex. At the end of the passageway shadows were moving in the reflected glow of ritual firelight.

  “A temple.” Vulkan’s voice was deep and thick with anger. He drew a gladius.

  A susurrus of scraping metal followed as the Pyre Guard each unsheathed their own short swords. None would muddy their chosen weapons on filthy, graven priests.

  “Tread quietly and in my wake,” Vulkan told them and began to move towards the flickering light.

  A sick feeling took hold in the primarch’s stomach, something that had been growing ever since the boy-child from the jungle had confronted him. Insidious talons had sunk deep into him and were twisting at his resolve. He remembered the thoughts he’d had earlier when he’d considered what must have transpired on Ibsen before the Imperium had arrived to enlighten it.

  How far from the Emperor’s light had the natives had fallen?

  Vulkan reached the edge of another chamber. It was roughly circular, crudely hewn from the earth and packed with clay. There sigils were drawn upon the wall like before and totems placed at specific cardinal points around the room. In the centre was a ring of fire. A cadre of robed figures cavorted around it, chanting. It was the same lyrical mantras as sung by the female seer. Within the ritual circle, partly hidden by the rising flames, was a figure tied to a wooden column that supported the chamber roof. Runic symbols, alien symbols, were notched upon its surface too.

  As Vulkan stepped through into the light, one of the priests turned. He was wearing a mask of some wretched eldar deity and a rune was cut into the flesh of his bared chest. Upon seeing the primarch, a shadowed giant with the glowing eyes of a daemon, the priest cried out and the chanting stopped abruptly. Screaming took over, and the drawing of jagged blades. It would be like trying to fight a Terran bear with a pin. Realising their only escape route was blocked, the worshippers fled to the back of the cavern and cowered. Some spat curses, but kept their daggers low so as not to provoke.

  Numeon stalked forwards, a thin snarl escaping his lips.

  “Wait!” Vulkan stopped him. The praetorians looked ready to kill the humans out of hand, but stood down and simply glowered at them.

  “They never wanted to be saved,” said Vulkan, partly to himself. “They were already saved, but not by us—”

  “Primarch, they are no better than the eldar,” snapped Numeon, still eager and in the slaying mood.

  “I have been so blind.”

  Sheathing his gladius, for there was no real danger here, Vulkan approached the ring of fire. What he saw tied up against the column within made him stagger.

  There was a rattle of armour as the Pyre Guard went to their lord, but Vulkan’s upraised hand stilled them.

  “I’m all right.” His voice was barely above a whisper. His gaze was drawn utterly to the figure, as the cavern seemed to shrink around him, pressing against the primarch with the weight of destiny.

  It was the eyes that he recognised, for the body had long since shrivelled to desiccation and the vicissitudes of time had ravaged it.

  He would remember those eyes, dagger-thin and filled with a sickening ennui.

  A debilitating pain welled up in Vulkan’s chest as old memories came back like reopened wounds.

  “Breughar…”

  Thoughts of the dead metal-shaper brought tears of fire to the primarch’s eyes as he realised who he stood face-to-face with. She recognised him too, but her corpse-like face was incapable of expression.

  “The slaver-witch.”

  Suddenly the battle in front of the gates of Hesiod did not seem so long ago.

  The dusk-wraiths had been here, to Ibsen, just as they had tormented Nocturne all those centuries before. The horrifying truth of it fell hard and pitilessly. The humans worshipped the eldar because they were their saviours. They had saved them from the slavers, from their own dark cousins. And now they had tortured this one for some fell purpose, perhaps to ward off future incursions, or maybe it was to remove the terror from the myth. Either way, Vulkan’s rage rose to the surface like a volcano moments from eruption.

  He turned his back on the witch for the last time.

  “This world is lost.” He felt numb, almost stupefied. His breathing came quick and angry. His teeth clenched and so did his fists. He mumbled the command, “No one leaves this place alive,” before becoming loud enough to cause a panic in the priests. “Slay them all.”

  Heart heavy, Vulkan walked away and left the sounds of slaughter behind him.

  My eyes are open, father.

  He knew what he must do.

  ON THE HILLS overlooking the great runic arch, Vulkan watched the fires burn. Heavy landers were breaching the upper atmosphere in the distance, conveying the tens of thousands of Army divisions bound for the next warzone. Below, the conflagration was slowly consuming the entire jungle. Everything burned. This world would be razed to ash, its mineral seams mined to extinction and put to use for the furtherance of the Great Crusade. Ibsen had become a death world, it had become Nocturne.

  “I sanctioned murder of unarmed men today,” Vulkan said to the heat haze rippling off the blaze. It was incandescent, beautiful, terrible.

  Ferrus Manus answered. “Better to cleanse this place and begin anew than leave behind a canker to fester.” The Gorgon had come to bid him farewell until the next campaign. His Morlocks and the rest of his Iron Hands were embarked, only the primarch and Gabriel Santar remained.

  “I know that, brother.” There was resignation in his tone.

  “You risk your men and you risk your life; you cannot save everyone, Vulkan.”

  “The nodes we collapsed, they were keeping that thing dormant.” He gestured to the arch. “It’s a gateway. I’ve seen them before, long ago. They lead to the endless darkness where only horror and torture await. I have done this, Ferrus. I have condemned this planet to the same fate as my own. How am I supposed to live with that knowledge?”

  “More worlds will burn before this crusade is done—innocent worlds. The galaxy is at stake, brother. What is one planet compared to that?” Ferrus snapped, betraying his anger and frustration at something he didn’t truly understand. “Your compassion is a weakness. It will end up killing you.”

  Ferrus stalked away, his Stormbird ready to launch, and Vulkan was left to contemplate the raging flames.

  He was not alone for long.

  “Primarch, the ships are leaving.” It was Numeon, come to summon his liege-lord.

  Vulkan turned to the equerry. “Did you find the remembrancer as I asked?”

  Numeon stepped aside, revealing a robed and erudite-looking figure. “I did, my lord.”

  Vulkan frowned. “That is not Verace.”

  “Primarch?”

  “That is not Verace,” Vulkan repeated.

  The remembrancer bowed nervously. “My name is Glaivarzel, my lord. You offered to relate your life’s origins to me so that I might capture it for posterity.”

  Vulkan ignored the human, his attention on Numeon.

  “Bring me Remembrancer Verace. I will speak to this man later.”

  Numeon hastily dismissed Glaivarzel, but returned with a confused expression.

  “Primarch, I don’t know of whom you speak.”

  “Are you trying to vex me, equerry?” Vulkan grew angry. “Bring me the other—” He stopped. There was utterly no recognition in Numeon’s eyes, none at all.

  A stranger’s words came back to him.

  I’ll try to watch over you when I can.

  All the fury in him drained away. Vulkan held Numeon’s shoulders as father to son.

  “I’m sorry. Ready the ship. I’ll be there in a few moments.”

  If Numeon und
erstood what had just happened he didn’t show it. He merely nodded and went to his duty.

  Vulkan was left alone with his thoughts.

  An ocean of fire was washing across the jungle. Its trees would blacken and die, its leaves would wither to dust. An arid plain would rise from a fertile land and a race would be forsaken to memory. He imagined the settlers that would come after them, the burgeoning Imperial landers brimming with people. It was a new world for the expeditionaries to inhabit, for pioneers to map and colonise. World One-Five-Four Four. It would not be easy for them.

  The dusk-wraiths would return, Vulkan was sure, but the colonists would take up arms and fight them just as his people had. It would be a hard life, but a good and noble one. N’bel had taught him the importance of that.

  As a primarch, he had come to Ibsen with his humours out of balance, his purpose blunted. He had wanted to save these people and though he could not, Vulkan had rediscovered a part of himself he thought lost. Compassion was seen as a flaw to some. Certainly, Ferrus Manus thought so. But an Outlander had opened Vulkan’s eyes and shown him it was his greatest strength.

  “I will name this place Caldera,” he said aloud, and vowed he would protect it with the same ferocity as Nocturne. It would not become just another compliant world, a number without a heart. Vulkan had taken much but he could give it that at least.

  The flames of the conflagration were rising. Thick clouds of ash scurried across the reddish sky at the eve of a fresh Hell-dawn. Vulkan turned his face to the heavens and met the glare of the baleful sun. A Promethean sun.