Old Earth Read online

  Vulkan’s voice arrested his brief reverie. ‘Come, my sons,’ he said, beckoning them to his side. A second set of steps on the opposite side of the plateau to the path that led to the forge, beaten smooth by repeated and monumental impacts, wended down to a chasm broad enough to admit the gunship.

  Within the chasm stood a crooked arch of night-black stone.

  Gems encrusted the arch, some as large as Zytos’ war-helm, ­others the size of his clenched fist. Sickly green light emanated from the gems. Runes had been etched into the stone face, which was smooth and somehow organic.

  ‘Bone,’ he said disbelievingly. ‘This is fashioned of bone.’ He turned to Vulkan, who was watching him pensively. ‘I know of only one race that crafts with bone.’

  ‘The eldar,’ said Gargo, clenching the spear he had brought from the gunship a little tighter. It was the same one he had taken from the rig of the jetbike, only made more ornate, with a flamer attached to the haft below the speartip.

  ‘An eldritch gate,’ Vulkan said. ‘It has been here since before the days of the N’bel, hidden beneath the heart-blood of Deathfire. Slavers who once ravaged Nocturne used it. Our ancient tribesmen had no defence against such art.’

  ‘Cowards,’ spat Zytos.

  During the Great Crusade, Zytos had liberated many worlds that had fallen under the yoke of the eldar. He had fought the aliens gladly, and though some in the Legion held to the belief that the eldar were a schismatic race, split into disparate factions, he saw no distinction. This gate, though, had all the trappings of a darker aspect of the eldritch creatures. Its very appearance was offensive.

  ‘Have you brought us here to destroy it, father?’ asked Abidemi, his hand around the hilt of Draukoros.

  ‘No,’ said Gargo, lessening his grip on the spear. ‘He means for us to use it, don’t you, my lord?’

  Vulkan nodded. ‘It has been broken for an age, sealed here in the nadir of the world. It is how we reach the shadowed road. Commorragh.’

  ‘And from there?’ asked Zytos, unable to take his eyes from the gate for fear of what might come out of it.

  Vulkan let the pommel of his hammer hit the ground. The blow resonated down the haft with a low but defining chime of metal.

  ‘Terra.’

  The chime continued, echoing and intensifying. Underfoot, the rock began to tremble.

  ‘Have no fear, my sons,’ Vulkan assured them. ‘It will not stand after our passage through it, but we must act swiftly.’

  Zytos felt the first stirrings of a gentle wind against his face and then saw a crackle of dark light manifesting in the crook of the archway. It grew larger, splitting in several directions like caged lightning. The wind grew into a tumult, deathly cold in spite of the mountain, in spite of his armour. Hoar frost began to form upon his faceplate. Below, the earth rumbled with thunderous intent. Eldritch winter and primordial fire warred for dominance.

  Vulkan took up his hammer, a fragment of rock pinging off his shoulder guard from above like rain.

  ‘It is time to leave.’

  None argued, though Gargo glanced up at the falling rock.

  ‘Igen…’ Vulkan gently urged.

  As if woken from a dream, Gargo nodded and made for the gunship still idling on the plateau.

  By the time the primarch and his legionaries were aboard, and the gunship had begun to rise, a storm raged inside the confines of the eldritch gate. Zytos saw it as the ramp closed, a crackling maelstrom of dark lightning resembling a forbidding horizon. Then the hold sealed closed and it disappeared from view.

  The gunship began a ponderous turn, fighting the searing updraughts coming off the mountain, its turbofans beating furiously. Falling rock battered the hull as it tried to gain more loft.

  Zytos exchanged a look with Abidemi, whose gaze barely left the ceiling of the hold.

  We stay here much longer and we don’t leave, his eyes said.

  A spit of flame caught Zytos’ eye through a viewslit. It speared upwards, a pillar of fire reaching into the vaults of the cavern, a lava sea in turmoil.

  A second geyser burst forth a moment later, a long plume of burning magma. Then came a third, a fourth, until pillars of fire were surging from the mantle of Nocturne in a sustained frenzy of volcanic eruption.

  The gunship banked urgently, its right wing dipping with a sudden burst of its left thruster. A spit of flame roared across its armoured flank as the plateau cracked apart and surrendered to the lava sea. Zytos felt the heat prickle his skin through his war-helm. For a few seconds the darkness of the hold retreated before a harsh flare of light.

  If they were to die here, then at least they would die with Vulkan.

  Despite the angry trembling of the gunship and the unfettered fury of the mountain as it reached out to impale them on spears of flame, the primarch crouched in silence. He sank to one knee in the middle of the hold, hammer braced across his leg, unmoving.

  Zytos glanced across the hold where Abidemi had taken up a place on the grav-bench. Zytos did the same, the shriek of warning sirens within almost forgotten amidst the rising tumult outside. He set his thunder hammer as he had before, the walls shuddering so hard they rattled his teeth. His skull ached. He lowered his head as he had before. He closed his eyes as he had before. He grew still.

  Abidemi sang. He sang of Nocturne, and the deep drakes. He sang of the old tribes. Voice rising against the bellow of the mountain, he sang without cease as the engines roared with furious exhalation and sent them headlong into an eldritch storm.

  Fire, light and fury disappeared. Only darkness remained.

  Narek of the Word had reached the foot of the mountain when he heard the thunder. A battered Scimitar-pattern jetbike lay behind him, its fuel reserves spent, its gravitic engines no longer capable of keeping it aloft. He had used it, like he used all things, until it was exhausted. So even if he could have reached the jetbike, it would not matter.

  Craning his neck, he looked up and cursed under his breath.

  He had already waited out the storm. The mountain was supposed to be still, and yet it raged anew.

  Halfway across a slope of jagged scree, Narek felt the earth rumble­ beneath him. Above, the mountain roared and the fissure in its rocky flank he had been heading towards gave vent. A swathe of bile-yellow cloud and choking ash spewed outwards, eclipsing the meagre light of the sun.

  As he had tracked the gunship earlier he had seen no sign of shelter on the desolate plain. Finding the jetbike had been fortunate, that its rider had been alone even more so. He had killed the warrior without wasting a round. A huntsman must be as proficient with his knife as he is with his rifle. All Vigilators knew that, and Narek was no ordinary Vigilator.

  Still, his skill with either would not help him now. Nor, he suspected, would his power armour. A sand cloak, taken from the dead rider, had kept out most of the drifting ash but it had already been damaged before he reached this grey desert, and several of his suit’s mechanisms now growled in pain whenever he moved. Narek had left the rider’s mantle of lizard-hide. Dishonour had its limits he had decided. He regretted doing so now for it might have provided some additional protection.

  He glanced east, across his battered shoulder guard.

  The gully where he had taken refuge before was far away, and he sensed another cataclysm was imminent. To remain where he was also only ended one way. That left the fissure. He had watched the gunship fly into it, and so surmised that whatever lay beyond offered a greater chance of survival than he had currently. Then again, the XVIII Legion were masochists and fatalists after a fashion… For all Narek knew they had flown into the mountain to commit suicide.

  Some of his former cousins were very strange. Not just the former ones, come to think of it.

  He ran, the sand cloak fluttering wildly behind him, his long-barrelled rifle slung across his back and locked to hi
s failing generator. His armour gave an audible groan. Every greave and joint shrieked in protest.

  ‘Shut up,’ snarled Narek, as he quickly clambered up the rugged slope.

  Behind him, he felt the earth crack and a heat warning flared bright in his retinal lens display.

  He ran faster.

  A fumarole vented on his right, pushing him left to avoid a dousing of caustic acids. The reek of burnt ceramite came through his rebreather and a damage sigil flashed.

  He pressed on, almost arachnid-like, scurrying beneath a cascade of falling rock. A cloud of ash engulfed him, the pall too wide to avoid, and he engaged prey-sight to better navigate his suddenly pitch-dark surroundings.

  ‘Fiery hells,’ he swore, his world reduced to degrees of light, and smiled at the irony of his words.

  A crag loomed up ahead, its outline dark against the intense magnesium-white behind it, and Narek readied himself for a climb. He drew his knife, holding it reversed in his grip and reasoning it might find purchase where his hands could not. About to make the leap, he stopped as the earth parted and a ragged crevasse opened in his path. He almost fell, so violent was its birth, and took a knee to steady himself.

  The crevasse yawned wide, a maw filled with undulant and thrashing light. Heat warnings spiked across his retinal lenses as the crag seemed to retreat from him.

  The fissure lay beyond the crag, but he could barely see it. The crag lay well beyond his reach.

  Narek looked behind him and found a rivulet of lava hemming him in. The rock underfoot had fallen away before and behind, until only a diminishing atoll remained with Narek at the very edge of its curve.

  He had come here to kill a primarch. In a galaxy and a war that had increasingly lost all meaning, it was the one thing he could cleave to. That mission had failed, which left but one recourse.

  Narek stood up. He reached for his gorget and unclamped his helm, letting it fall from his gauntleted fingers as soon as it was removed.

  Then he laughed.

  He laughed loudly and ruefully, cursing all the fates that had led him here, and vowing to seek vengeance against them all if there was vengeance to be had beyond death. His former cousins in the XVIII seemed to think so. Perhaps they were not as mad as Narek supposed.

  ‘Come then, fire,’ he shouted, unrepentant as all of his past deeds were laid before him in his mind’s eye. ‘Come then, death. Come then, hell, and see if you are worthy of Barthusa Narek!’

  He closed his eyes, and felt only peace before the end…

  Until he heard a voice. ‘Not yet.’

  Narek opened his eyes. The tumult of the volcano seemed dulled, as though it were being heard from a distance or under the sea.

  An old man faced him, a wizened looking creature with thin, frail arms, wearing a grubby wrapping of robes and holding a gnarled staff.

  ‘I had expected death to look more formidable,’ said Narek honestly.

  ‘Not yet, Bearer of the Word. You cannot die yet.’

  It struck Narek that the old man should either have choked to death on the fumes or shrivelled in the searing heat, but he appeared unharmed and unconcerned. That alone made Narek attend to his words.

  Perhaps I have gone mad, he considered.

  The old man’s eyes narrowed, and it was only then that Narek noticed their shape and hue.

  ‘You are not mortal,’ he said, only half-aware of the slowly sundering earth around him. If he was dead anyway and this some profoundly strange rite of passage into hell, then he would let it run its course.

  ‘I am mortal, just not as you are. But my provenance and fate are unimportant. It is your purpose that concerns us now.’

  ‘Purpose?’ Narek frowned, the burning sensation against his skin had lessened. Even the ash and rain of failing debris spewed up from the mountain had slowed to a near-glacial pace. ‘Who are you? Why aren’t you dead?’

  The old man smiled, as if such questions were unimportant.

  ‘Have no fear, Bearer of the Word,’ he said, reaching up to place his hand upon Narek’s chest. An icon of a book had been emblazoned there once. ‘There is more than one path off Nocturne.’

  ‘I fear nothing.’

  ‘I believe you. I suggest you close your eyes.’

  ‘Close my wh–’

  Time resumed its inexorable pace, and Narek closed his eyes as a veil of pyroclastic cloud fell over him and the roar of the mountain grew so loud it turned to silence.

  Four

  Flesh and iron, unalloyed

  It begins with darkness.

  Darkness above, torn by cracks of light given a thunderous announcement.

  Darkness below, thicker, more tangible, ever-shifting.

  His armour is painted in it, the darkness of below somehow blacker than his proud livery.

  On hands and knees, he tries to rise but is unable. Another blow comes down and there is pain. It wars with anger, disgust, outrage and grief. An emotional kaleidoscope difficult to process, impermeable to cold logic.

  Wrath prevails instead, hot and welcome. Necessary. Essential to survival.

  The Son of Iron scrambles, crawling like a wretch between greaves and boots. Iron fingers reach out in a claw, a fistful of blood-soaked earth their reward.

  He rises to his feet, a firm hand upon his elbow providing needed support. The burr of a chainaxe grows loud in his ear. A grieving brother takes the blow and the hot splash of his final moments strikes the Son of Iron’s face like rain.

  He wavers, drunk on grief, but anguish drives him on. His goal is close. He can see it, not so distant now, though it feels like he has crossed a gulf to get this far. Others close upon it too. Not all are kin, and their butchery is different to what the Son of Iron has in mind.

  He lashes out, skill forgotten but rage lending the blow strength enough to break his enemy’s guard. The Son of Iron does not wait for the body to fall. Its blood paints him, overlaying the darkness, and that is enough. Instead, he keeps going until he reaches his goal.

  On hands and knees again. It feels like cheap reverence, and so he pulls forth his knife and begins the cut. A piece has already been removed but the nipping dog who took it has already fled with his prize. An old adage pierces the overwhelming fog, which parts reluctantly in the face of reason.

  Sinews part, more akin to cables of metal than flesh. The blood is hot, hot enough to leave a scar. It sears armour meant to be proof against acid. With a last jerk of the knife, the prize comes free. It shimmers, cold to the touch but not dead. No, something dwells within still. The Son of Iron tries not to succumb to awe, his face reflected back at him. It is bloodstained, harrowed, a wraith that speaks and walks as a man.

  He flees, falling more than once, a ring of Iron brothers his bulwark against the hungry pack in his wake.

  He scrambles upwards. The mound of the dead yields under boot and gauntlet as limbs part or bodies slide. It has grown high, much higher than he remembered. A monument to slaughter.

  A roar sounds overhead and the backwash of engines brings with it the reek of oil and blood. A doorway opens. More darkness within, unquiet, screaming, accusatory, promising hollow vengeance.

  He staggers inside, his burden heavy but weightless.

  Hands reach for him. Fingers are missing from some, but their owners lend aid with what they have.

  Then he falls, and a different kind of darkness takes him.

  Aug awoke, the quietly whirring cogitator next to him a reassuring presence.

  He consulted a diagnostic via a data-screed that scrolled across his left eye. His bionics read as optimal. Blood pressure and heart rates appeared elevated, but had begun to normalise. Adrenaline levels suggested he had recently been in combat, but the Iron Heart’s apothecarion had been his cloister for the last seven hours. The chrono overlaying the inner sclera of his right eye confirm
ed it.

  ‘Your biochemistry is concerning, brother.’

  Aug opened his eyes, his flesh eyes, as he heard Gorgonson’s ­grating voice.

  ‘I feel strong,’ said Aug, and knew he looked it too.

  The Apothecary of Clan Lokopt looked pensive but gave nothing of his inner thoughts away. They were alone in the apothecarion, Gorgonson sitting in front of Aug, who reclined on a medi-slab, his flesh and augmetics linked up to the diagnostic machines.

  Aug sat up and started to remove the wires. His flesh-spare frame barely resisted. The cogitator gave out a terminal whine before Gorgonson silenced it.

  ‘Not much blood…’ he mused aloud.

  ‘I lost a lot on Oqueth,’ Aug replied, a half-smile curling his lip.

  Gorgonson frowned, and glanced down at the data-slate in his left hand.

  ‘Humour still intact,’ he muttered. ‘At least the tech-priests on Lliax left you with something.’

  ‘And gave me a lot more besides,’ said Aug, reaching out to touch Gorgonson on the shoulder. His attempt at reassurance failed.

  ‘If you’re going to tell me that I need not be concerned,’ said the Apothecary, a dour look upon his grizzled face, ‘then you will waste your breath. It is my duty to be concerned. Any procedure, however small, that I have no knowledge of is a risk. The fact that your augmentation on Lliax was extensive makes it doubly so.’

  ‘My restoration, Goran. Magos Dominos Pharmakos saved my life and returned me to the war, to Shadrak’s side. What risk is there in that?’

  Gorgonson was not about to be placated.

  ‘I don’t know, brother, and that is the issue. There is much that remains secret about the Martian Mechanicum.’

  Aug let him go. ‘Then use the evidence of your eyes. What do they tell you?’

  ‘That you are hale and hearty in body…’

  Aug smiled, believing he had made his point and that would be the end of it. Gorgonson’s troubled expression told him otherwise.