Deathfire Page 8

  Var’kir was standing next to the casket and looked down into its empty confines. He laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘I doubt my presence will tip the scales. I am looking for something, however. I came here hoping to find Numeon’s belief, his certainty in Vulkan’s resurrection.’

  ‘And did you?’

  Var’kir met the Librarian’s questioning gaze.

  ‘Did you see it?’ he asked.

  Prayto frowned, confused. ‘See it?’

  ‘Vulkan’s healing, his return from death. Did you witness it? How did it happen? What was it like?’

  Prayto shook his head, saying, ‘Not exactly. Valentus Dolor, Casmir and I… we became…’ he fought for the right word, ‘…aware of what was happening, and requested Lord Guilliman. You have to understand something, Phaestus,’ he said, and there was a note of caution in his tone. ‘When Vulkan arrived on Macragge, he was dead. Utterly. Not wounded. Not even close to death. Dead. An autopsy had been ordered, the primarch due for vivisection, when everything changed.’

  Var’kir listened intently. No one amongst Guilliman’s inner circle had ever been so candid about the circumstances of Vulkan’s regeneration. His miracle.

  ‘Changed?’ asked the Salamander, in a half-rasp.

  ‘He lived. Breathing, flesh healing. All except one vital aspect had returned.’

  Now Var’kir’s face darkened, as he related something he had heard.

  ‘His sanity.’

  Prayto nodded sadly. ‘Yes. His mind was fractured. Raving. I tried to enter it, to find some means of reassembly, but it was like stepping into a sea of shards, the glass cutting at my mental flesh. I had to withdraw.’ He sounded apologetic.

  Var’kir’s gaze fell again, as he unburdened a deep truth to Prayto that he never could to Zytos or Numeon.

  ‘I believe that Vulkan is dead, and I do not think he has walked from his tomb like some faro of Gyptus. I merely want to find him, and lay him to rest in the earth of Nocturne.’

  A grief-stricken silence descended, awkward and painful. Wounds had been inflicted on the XVIII Legion, inadvertently by the XIII.

  Titus Prayto now took it upon himself to try to salve some of them.

  ‘There is something you need to know,’ he said.

  Var’kir’s gaze burned into him from the other side of the gilded casket.

  Prayto did not flinch from it or what he knew he had to do.

  ‘It is your right as a Salamander.’

  Eleven

  Lead us

  Magna Macragge Civitas, Heptapygion Fortress

  Against all reason, a flicker of hope that had been dwindling since his arrival on Macragge began to rekindle within Numeon. Rumours persisted of the miraculous, the revivification of Vulkan. Raised in the cauldron of Nocturne, a crucible of fire, the inferno the Lord of Drakes had endured when breaching Macragge’s atmosphere was another baptism.

  ‘He will rise,’ swore Numeon, but when no sign of the immortal primarch could be found, his at first indefatigable conviction began to fade.

  Clad in scalloped war-plate befitting a centurion, the former captain of the Pyre Guard braced his gauntleted hands against the crenellated ramparts of the Heptapygion Fortress and looked out across the glittering azure ribbon of the Laponis.

  The Heptapygion stood as a bulwark in the crook of two major arteries that flowed from the Gulf of Lycum and guarded the south-westerly approach into the Civitas.

  A cold breeze was roiling off the sea, bringing with it the scent of brine. Rippling tides foamed against the rugged coastline as the rising swell hammered the natural barricade of the cliff face. In the harbour enclave, maritime vessels rocked uncertainly on churning waters.

  Numeon felt that same discord within his gut.

  Six days and the Lord of Drakes was still missing.

  He gripped the sigil in his left hand, subconsciously willing it to surrender an answer. At the edge of his dark reverie, he heard booted footsteps.

  ‘How have we not yet found him?’ he asked simply.

  Zytos joined him on the rampart.

  ‘I have hunted on the Arridian Plain for days with barely any sight or sound of quarry,’ Zytos replied, recalling what little time he had spent on Nocturne. He put a consoling hand on Numeon’s shoulder which, for once, the other Salamander did not reject.

  ‘At least you had some spoor to follow, a spur to your hope.’

  Just over sixty Salamanders dwelled on Macragge, borne on the storm, the illumination of the Pharos their only beacon of hope amidst galactic darkness… until Numeon. His fervour and belief had ignited something, a flame thought extinguished.

  Defeated, scattered, the pragmatic recourse would be to allow subsumption into the still fighting Legions. Numeon had shown them another path, one that saw them reunited with their father and errant brothers.

  Every fire-born son on Macragge now trawled the labyrinthine Civitas, searching for any sign.

  ‘You are our hope, brother,’ Zytos said warmly, prompting Numeon to turn away from the bleak vista over the Laponis and face him. ‘Vulkan lives.’

  Smiling thinly, Numeon said, ‘He lives, and he is here.’

  Zytos gestured to the sigil Numeon was idly cradling.

  ‘Is that…?’ he ventured.

  ‘From his armour, yes.’

  ‘May I see it,’ Zytos asked, ‘just for a moment?’

  Numeon handed over the hammer without hesitation.

  ‘Neither a tool to forge with,’ said Zytos, turning the sigil over in his burly hands, ‘nor a weapon to kill his enemies.’

  ‘It’s a symbol,’ Numeon told him, taking back the hammer as it was offered and returning it to the clasp on his belt.

  Zytos nodded.

  ‘Unto the anvil.’

  ‘And soon, back into the fire,’ Numeon replied.

  Zytos regarded his brother’s fresh-forged armour enviously. Drake-hide green, the scalloped edges overlapped in the manner of scales. The black-smiter who made it had engraved symbols of the flame into every plate to represent rebirth and the purpose that Numeon had rekindled in the Salamanders who had washed up on Macragge’s planetary shores.

  Incongruously, an Ultramarian blade swung lightly at the hip, albeit sheathed in a Nocturnean scabbard. The bolt pistol on the opposite hip and the serrated sword on Numeon’s back were both fire-born crafted.

  The blade was a ‘dragontooth’, an old weapon since upgraded and refashioned for Legiones Astartes use. Each tooth was monomolecular-­edged and thrice-folded during forging to increase hardness and durability. Affixed to a chain feed, they were deadly. Hefted by a decent swordsman, it had the sharpness to cut through battleplate.

  Ubiquitous as the humble bolt pistol was in the ranks of the Legion, Numeon’s inherited sidearm was a singular piece. Named Basilysk for its bronze-chased, serpent-headed muzzle, it had a wider gauge than standard Mars-pattern bolt pistols. This modification reduced effective range but dramatically increased stopping power, and as such required specialised shells.

  ‘Gargo did a fine job on your armour.’

  ‘He said he was rushed but I am in his debt, and yours and Var’kir’s for the weapons. Know they shall be returned to you once there is time enough for forging again.’

  ‘A weapon given is a gift, brother-captain,’ said Zytos. ‘I could no more take back my arm should I give it unto you. Both are yours now.’

  ‘Then you have my gratitude, brother,’ Numeon replied graciously.

  Zytos gave a short, humble bow.

  ‘An honour.’

  ‘Does the blade answer to a name?’

  ‘Draukoros,’ Zytos replied, ‘in honour of the beast whose teeth make up its killing edge.’

  ‘It is much vaunted then. It reminds me how much I miss the presence of Skaltareth.’ Numeon h
ad worn the mantle of the great drake since becoming fire-born. Its loss felt like a piece of him had been cruelly excised.

  Zytos smiled, an expression that came easily to the immense Themian. ‘Then we shall find another beast for you to flay.’

  His face grew serious and he looked about to say more when he averted his gaze to the horizon.

  ‘Say it,’ Numeon said firmly.

  ‘Why won’t you speak to them?’ asked Zytos, meeting his brother eye to eye.

  ‘I am not their leader, Zytos. Vulkan is, and he will be with us again soon. Besides,’ offered Numeon, ‘you have led these warriors proudly in the absence of any other.’

  ‘Brother, it is not–’

  ‘Brothers!’

  A voice from behind Zytos interrupted, catching the attention of both Salamanders.

  Var’kir was ascending the stairway of smoothed grey basalt to the rampart.

  ‘I may have learned of a way to find our father,’ he said, his old eyes squinting in the dying light of the sun.

  Numeon’s tone betrayed the desperation he had been hiding from Zytos.

  ‘Tell us.’

  Twelve

  Blood rites

  Magna Macragge Civitas, Eastern Keep

  Xenut Sul had been chained before being taken to his cell in the Eastern Keep. As the door slammed shut, darkness engulfed him. It was a dungeon, one of several in the bastion. Not a prison exactly, but with enough secure rooms to hold the captured enemies of the Ultramarines.

  His cell was on the northern side of the keep, several levels down from the summit where he had been brought in via gunship. Xenut Sul assumed the casket he had been incarcerated in was meant to make the sons of Guilliman feel safe. This chamber, with its adamantium fetters, its ferrocrete walls and reinforced iron-bound door, achieved a similar purpose.

  It was a falsehood, of course.

  No room, no locked and barred dungeon or oubliette, could imprison Xenut Sul. The enterprising Ultramarines had overreached themselves, just as his master said they would. They did not fully comprehend what manner of entity they had placed within their midst.

  Nor would they. Xenut Sul had seen to that, hiding his psychic spoor to avoid detection. They would learn soon enough, but by then the time for that being useful information would have lapsed.

  A shame then, Xenut Sul reflected, that he was not here on Macragge, in this exact place, to kill Ultramarines.

  His prey was of a different persuasion.

  Traitors, he mused as he slipped effortlessly from his bonds, came in many varied stripes. His limbs grew nubile as the bones holding his flesh together lengthened and slid through manacles meant for a warrior in solid battleplate. His body distorted as if stretched, like a reflection in a wyrd-mirror. Back arching, neck extending, Xenut Sul contorted skin and bone, and eased loose of his chains like a viper altering its shape to penetrate the tightest of confines.

  Shedding his armour, the reptile now denuding its scales, Xenut Sul crouched in the half-dark and listened.

  Footsteps receded against the hard slabs of the corridor adjacent to his cell, telling him the gaolers had since departed. There were other guards, he could scent them patrolling, but they were relatively far off.

  A thin shaft of light spilling both under the door and limning the minuscule crack delineating its vision slit betrayed no lingering presence just beyond the threshold. It was not unknown for gaolers to wait quietly in the gloom to see what their prisoners might do or say when they thought they were alone.

  Xenut Sul knew he had value, otherwise he would be dead. But he suspected he was also not the most vaunted commodity in the custody of the Ultramarines. That dubious honour went to another.

  ‘I shall silence him,’ Xenut Sul hissed to the dark, but not only to the dark…

  Holding his right hand into the grainy light, a long talon extended from his index finger. It grew until it had curled into a sharp, barbed tip, at which point Xenut Sul drew it gently down his left forearm.

  Skin and flesh parted easily enough, then a deeper subdermal layer. A substance akin to blood trickled out, viscous and flowing with sentient anima. Pooling at Xenut Sul’s bare feet, it congealed into the simulacrum of a skull. Dark fluid ran unabated from Xenut Sul’s arteries, like the exsanguination of a corpse by a mortician’s catheter, layering the bone edges of the skull then transforming it into flesh. Definition followed with the simulation of skin, hair, even the tattooed runes across the face that now resembled the Preacher’s visage.

  As if rising from deep water, in this instance a blood-red well, the waxen face gasped for breath. ‘Waking’ into Xenut Sul’s chamber, the ‘Preacher’ Quor Gallek regarded the Unburdened with solemn eyes.

  ‘Speak…’ The bloodied visage spoke with Xenut Sul’s voice, albeit a rasping, deathly approximation, its lips and that of the Unburdened moving synchronously with every word. ‘We do not have long.’

  Xenut Sul smiled, despite the strain of communion. Witnessing the suffering of the preacher salved some of his discomfort.

  ‘He is here,’ Xenut Sul whispered, ‘just as Barbos Kha and Ulkas Tul described.’

  Dredging their soulless matter from where it burned in the ether had been worth the trouble. Eternal agony awaited them now, a fair price for betrayal… even of a betrayer.

  ‘Do Guilliman’s sons suspect?’

  ‘Neither my true form nor mission.’

  ‘Can you get close enough?’

  Xenut Sul scoffed, ‘This cell is no impediment.’

  ‘What did you offer for your capture?’

  ‘Your name, the promise of something further so they would keep me alive. You were right that the blacksmith’s totem would call out to them.’

  Quor Gallek smiled with ophidian threat, but his time within communion drew short. He snarled, exerting his will to stay bonded a little longer.

  ‘Kill him, Xenut Sul,’ he said, Xenut Sul’s lips mimicking the bloody simulacra. ‘Wrench every morsel of truth from your torturing of his soul and then cast his essence into the warp. I have promised a feast. Then the next act can begin…’

  Xenut Sul nodded, eyes vital with malice.

  ‘The fulgurite,’ he uttered, as if to confirm the prize that awaited them.

  ‘God-killer… a weapon that can slay a primarch… even the Emperor…’ Agony contorting his features into a grimace, Quor Gallek sloughed away skin, flesh and bone until only formless blood remained.

  Xenut Sul sagged with exertion, but his eagerness was undiminished.

  ‘I will flense your dirty little soul,’ he promised to the dark, but not only to the dark, ‘Barthusa Narek.’

  Thirteen

  A bloody reunion

  Magna Macragge Civitas, Eastern Keep

  A Thunderhawk, hastily summoned, conveyed the Salamanders from the Heptapygion Fortress to the Eastern Keep. They landed amidst squalls of rising dust and some alarm, given the suddenness of their arrival.

  Before the cobalt blue-clad guards could intercede against the three draconic legionaries, who leapt eagerly from the gaping side hatch of the gunship, Aeonid Thiel and Vitus Inviglio emerged from the depths of the bastion to act as escort.

  Both were armed, but their weapons were slung and sheathed.

  Thiel raised his left hand, palm outwards to the Salamanders.

  ‘Slowly,’ he warned. ‘This is precisely why you weren’t told.’

  Zytos was first to reply, his anger getting the better of him.

  ‘Our father’s murderer is in one of your cells, and you did not see fit to tell us. We have been in the city for months!’

  Var’kir defused the situation before Thiel had to.

  ‘Be calm, Zytos. You forget your blood.’

  ‘It flows like magma through my veins, Chaplain,’ he replied, teeth clenched.


  Numeon ignored them both, instead meeting face to face with Thiel.

  ‘Var’kir and I will go with you,’ he told the Ultramarine. ‘I will see the traitor known as Barthusa Narek now. We have history, he and I. A lot of legionaries are dead because of him.’

  Thiel didn’t move. Neither did Zytos, despite Numeon’s pronouncement, which said a lot about the Salamanders captain’s charisma and influence with the rest of the XVIII. It struck Thiel in that moment that bereft of their primarch, Artellus Numeon was Legion Master in all but name.

  He said nothing of these thoughts, stating instead, ‘I do not have sanction to allow you to kill him, Artellus. Much as I would like to let you.’

  ‘I give you my solemn word,’ Numeon replied, laying his clenched fist across his breast in the style of the Ultramarines.

  Thiel paused, assessing the threat evident in both Salamanders. It was a habit he could not shake, even around allies.

  Finding no reason to doubt or perhaps not really caring to, he nodded to Inviglio, who quickly ushered the tense-looking guards aside.

  ‘When we enter the Eastern Keep,’ Thiel told them as they followed Inviglio, ‘you follow my exact word, and do not deviate from it.’

  Numeon’s face was unreadable. ‘Understood.’

  Var’kir quietly nodded.

  The four legionaries passed through the gate and into the keep. Like a statue of onyx, Zytos dutifully waited for them outside. He seethed with anger, but quickly realised this was precisely why Numeon had left him behind.

  The bowels of the Eastern Keep were deep and went down into the bedrock of Macragge. Here, Thiel told them, was where they were holding Barthusa Narek. Other prisoners were also incarcerated within the bastion, but none had been held as long as this particular Word Bearer.

  ‘I have summoned Titus Prayto,’ said Thiel as the four walked in near lockstep down stout corridors of steel and stone. ‘Though I suspect he is already well aware of your presence.’ He cast a quick glance in Var’kir’s direction, who had the good grace not to deny it.

  ‘How did you get him to tell you?’ Thiel asked, his eyes fixed ahead again.