Ahriman: Sorcerer (15 page)

Credence brought its fists together. The Terminator caught in the double blow lived for long enough to feel his armour fracture, and hear the roar as Credence triggered the flamer units bound to its wrists. Fire poured inside the cracked armour, and the Space Marine within became a soup of cooked flesh and bone. The automaton pivoted, holding the dead Terminator like a club, and used him to smash his comrade to the ground. Credence came forwards before the Terminator could rise, and punched down again, and again with perfect machine rhythm.

Ignis let the automaton mash the Terminator for nine seconds.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Kill protocol revoked.’ Credence straightened, and walked slowly back to stand behind Ignis. Once stationary it gave a lower series of clicks. Ignis looked up at it, eyebrow raised. The automaton’s armour was chewed by bolt fire and steaming with blood.

Ignis looked back to the heap of broken armour and pulped meat that had been Hzakatris. It was a shame. He had been sure Hzakatris would turn against Ahriman. A frown formed on his forehead as he considered the imperfection in the pattern of events. It was an unfortunate, but luckily minor flaw.

Ignis shook his head, and looked at the other two warlords. Neither had moved. ‘So, do we have an agreement?’

Grimur watched the fire and tried to remember the cold of Fenris. The hall at the heart of
Hel’s Daughter
rumbled around him with the voices muttering around a dozen different fires. Once there had been many more fires, and the circles around each had been five deep, and the hall had rolled with voices. But that had been long ago, on a ship now lost to the storms. The hunt for Ahriman and his kin had claimed both ship and comrades. Those who clustered around the fires now spoke in the silences between words. They all wore their armour since the hunt had begun, only shedding it for repair. They were fewer, and older in years and scars. Firelight touched grey hairs, and glinted on teeth grown long through time.

The chamber itself was black from the smoke of the fires. Pillars of raw iron reached up from the floor, their surfaces reshaped into dragons which bit and clawed the distant ceiling. Runes marked the walls, cut into the bare metal by axe blows. The names of those who had fallen on the hunt spoke to Grimur from those marks.

They rarely gathered like this now, and when they did they all knew that they were facing a turning in the hunt. The people of Fenris called such a moment ‘the laughter of the wind’, when the wind carrying the scent of the prey changed direction, and all might be lost by a single wrong decision. That was why they had gathered beside the fires, both here and on the other ships. The wind was laughing and leading them into a storm, so they looked into the fires and spoke, and remembered sagas no longer told.

Sycld stirred at Grimur’s side, tilting his thin face towards his lord.

‘You must tell them soon, jarl,’ said the Rune Priest in a wet hiss.

‘Be silent,’ growled Grimur, without looking around. Sycld pulled away, but Grimur could feel the priest’s eyes still on him.

We are the wights of the Underverse,
thought Grimur. He gulped the bitter liquid from his drinking bowl. The fire danced in his eyes.
We are the night walkers
.
There is no saga waiting for us, just death at the end of the chase, and the silence of snow falling to cover our skulls.

Carefully he put the bowl down on the floor. The murmur of voices faded to silence. Grimur began to rise. Faces turned to look at him, amber irises reflecting gold in the dim light. His hand tapped his throat, and the vox pickup activated in the collar of his armour. Across each of his ships, the Wolves of his pack would hear him, and would see him stand in their halls as a hologhost. His axe came up with him. Its edge was a crescent of reflected firelight.

He looked around, meeting the fire-touched eyes, feeling the twisted muscles of his back creak as he moved. He paused, tasting the tang of the smoke, and the scent of the blood mixed with the liquor in the drinking bowls. Fat hissed as it fell into the fires from charring meat. He opened his mouth, and felt his teeth unmesh.

‘We remain,’ he said into the silence. ‘No others stand with us. Others fall, their blood soaks into the snow, their cries fade behind us, but we remain. The years turn, the winters pass, and come again, and still we run on. Others forget the crimes of the past, others forget what was, but we remember.’ Grimur brought his axe up in front of him, and let his eyes touch the knotted serpents behind its cutting edge. ‘We remember. We run and we do not tire, not if a thousand winters pass.’ He looked up again, feeling the stillness amongst his warriors, the breaths paused to hear again the words they had heard so many times before. ‘We are vengeance,’ he said.

The growls come then, rising through sharp teeth to shake the air. For a second Grimur felt as though he was back at his father’s side standing in the halls of the Fang, hearing the mountain ring to the sound of his brothers’ voices. He had been young then and was old now, and the growls that shook the air were fewer and heavy with time. This was not the cry of the young wishing for blood; it was the cry of old wolves reminding each other of what they had been and what they still were. He let his axe fall to his side and the cries faded.

He looked up and nodded. Somewhere in the shadows one of the last Iron Priests saw the gesture and called on the spirits of the ship. A sphere of green light appeared in the dark, hanging above the fires. All eyes turned to it. Grimur’s ships had been hanging in the dead space between stars for weeks, waiting to hear where the hunt would carry them next. Grimur had kept his plans to himself. It was better that the rest of the pack were told when there was little time to brood on it.

‘The Cadian Gate,’ he said. ‘Our seers have walked the paths of dreams and seen that the prey has passed out of the Eye. He and his slave-kin are within the Imperium, and where they have gone we must follow.’ He paused. There was no shock, no ripple of surprise or unease, but he could feel the change in the hall, the shift in the pack’s mood. The skin of his back prickled, and the ice at his core hardened. ‘They have taken a serpent’s way through the storms. Such ways are closed to us, so we must pass through the Gate.’

‘If it is guarded, we will not pass.’ It was Halvar. The pack leader brought his armoured hand up to his face, and ran his thumb slowly over the scar tissue where his nose had once been. His eyes stayed fixed on the projection. After a long moment he turned to look at Grimur. Lifetimes of war on the borderlands of the Underverse lived in that look.

‘We will pass. A scattered fleet flees from the deep Eye, running on the clear tides towards Cadia. They are desperate, wild and panicked and will make Cadia in two weeks. That is when we will also reach the Gate, and slip through while the beasts occupy the blades of any who guard it.’

‘And if we do not pass unseen?’ said Halvar, and Grimur knew that he was just speaking what all would be thinking. ‘What if the guardians of the Gate see us, and bar our path?’

Grimur shivered, and heard his axe clink against the thigh plate of his armour. It was the question that he had come here to answer. The question he knew he would have to answer as soon as Sycld had told him that Ahriman had left the Eye.
What if we must face those who serve the Emperor, and what if they see us as enemies not friends?

‘Then we cut them down,’ he said.

X

Recall

The sky was the grey of beaten iron. Iobel looked up and watched lightning writhe at the base of the anvil-headed clouds. The air was clammy against the exposed skin of her face. It tasted of storm charge and rust. She let out the breath she had held, and looked down. The dead world sank away from her in grey drifts of ash. The jagged teeth of mountains rose in the distance, while sharp daggers of grime-coated crystal covered the distance between like shards from the broken blade of a god.

‘Rain’s coming,’ said Linisa, her lilting voice crackling across the vox. Iobel glanced at her acolyte. Linisa’s armour was red and massive, like corded muscle cast in ceramite and exotic metal. The idea of the wisp-thin girl within the hulking suit was almost comical. Almost. The gun tubes ringing Linisa’s wrists only added to the effect. ‘You will want to get your helmet on,’ said Linisa. ‘The scans say these storms are acidic, bad enough to burn to the bone.’

As though on cue the rain started. A single fat drop exploded on the ash and left a crater of grey mud. Iobel clamped her helmet over her head. The rain started to pour from the sky. The ground around her was a dancing sheet of liquid. She looked down at her gauntleted hands. The white lacquer was already blistered, and the grey ceramite beneath was fuming as the rain poured between her fingers. A bolt of lightning fell amongst the forest of crystal shards, and the grey world became white.

‘You say we have to cross that?’ said Linisa.

‘Yes,’ said Iobel.

‘Could the gun-cutter not have dropped us closer?’

Iobel shook her head.

‘Atmospherics are too unstable.’

‘But walking is safer?’ Linisa raised her hands before Iobel could reply. ‘Just saying.’

Iobel turned her gaze back to the broken land. In truth she was far from sure this was wise, but it had taken four years to find that this place still existed, and three times that time to reach it.

Prospero, the world that had sired an order of traitors and sorcerers. She had been searching for it ever since Carsona, and here it was, beneath her feet. It had been a long journey, and she had learned things that she would have killed others for knowing. The Thousand Sons, the breaking of the Edict of Nikaea, Magnus the Red – all now loomed in her dreams, and with them the rasped words of a dying psyker linking them like a chain binding the present to the past.

She felt the psychic thread tug at her mind, pulling her out there into the desolation which had once been a great city. It had latched onto her mind as soon as she had set foot on the planet. It was not a voice, more like a path left by the passing of others, a path that had been left for her, or those like her, to find.

‘You are sure there is something here?’ asked Linisa.

Iobel said nothing, and Linisa had been with her for more than long enough to know what that meant. ‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘Best get moving.’

It took them an hour to cross two miles. The rain had turned the ash into a grey mire. Even with the augmented strength of their armour each step was a fight against the sucking tug of the mud. A white fog had risen soon after the rain had stopped. The readings on Iobel’s helmet display said it was both toxic and corrosive. She did not need the readings to tell her the last part, one glance at Linisa was enough. Her acolyte’s armour was grey, the red lacquer stripped clean from curved plates.

Linisa swore every step of the way, moving through colourful and creative phrases in High and Low Gothic and the spire tongue of her birth hive. Iobel said nothing to stop the stream of invective; it gave her something else to focus on besides the voices of the dead.

The ghost voices had begun as soon as they entered the fields of broken crystal. They rose in Iobel’s mind, roaring with rage, crying out in pain, babbling, pleading. She closed them out, but they always found a way back in, and each time they were stronger. Several times they almost drowned out her awareness of the psychic trail. She was starting to wonder if she had made a serious mistake. The whole landscape, from grey sky to grey ground, seemed to press on her mind. She was not even sure what she was expecting to find; nothing remained here now, just the shards of crystal cities, and the ashes of its past.

‘What was that?’ Linisa’s voice cracked across the vox, sharp and sudden. Iobel reached for the boltgun clamped to her back. She twisted, trying to see what Linisa had seen. The acolyte had moved close to her, arms raised, weapon tubes focused on the fog. Iobel instinctively extended her senses beyond her mind, and then recoiled.

‘Turn back now. You must turn back.’

The voice was so clear that it sounded like her own. She shook her head to clear it. The fog was thick around them. Linisa was braced, legs sunk to the knee in the ash mud. Iobel could hear her own breathing fill her helm. She shifted her grip on the boltgun in her hands.

The figure reared from the grey sludge. Its body was a ragged sculpture of torn armour and heaped bones. It had no head, and only the vaguest similarity to a human shape. Black liquid poured from it. White ice crackled across its growing limbs. A roar of countless anguished voices filled Iobel’s mind. She reeled, blood spattering the inside of her helm. The sludge around the creature froze hard. It lunged forwards with a limb made of cracked armour plates and broken blades. Linisa fired from behind Iobel. A deluge of bolts hammered into the creature, ripping it into chunks with explosions. Its arm tore away. Rounds exploded within its torso, and for a second it seemed to shiver. Linisa shook as her armour absorbed the recoil. The creature staggered, its roar now a shriek.

Linisa moved forwards, firing without pause, frozen ground splintering before her. The creature lunged again with its remaining arm. The acolyte ducked, but not fast enough. The creature’s fist lifted her from the ground and tossed her into the fog.

The creature turned to Iobel, its chewed body glowing with pale light. She caught herself as she stumbled backwards, and aimed her boltgun. The creature raised an arm of debris. Iobel squeezed the trigger. The boltgun roared until the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.

It took several deep breaths before she remembered to release the trigger. The creature lay in the mud, a heap of bones and armour. Steam rose from it as the witch ice melted. Iobel moved closer. Her mental senses were silent. The creature was dead, as much as something which had not truly lived could die. Looking down at the remains she recognised the shape of broken power armour within them. Specks of red lacquer clung to the deep recesses of some, ice grey to others.

‘So walking was still a good idea,’ said Linisa. Her battle rig was dented, but still seemed to be in one piece. If anything the damage just enhanced the armour’s air of blunt brutality. She stopped beside Iobel, and looked down at the remains of the creature. ‘Please tell me this is not what we came here for.’

‘No,’ said Iobel.

‘Hmmm. What is it, anyway?’

‘An echo of the past,’ said Iobel. ‘A cluster of shredded souls trapped at the moment of death, like flotsam caught in an eddy. So much was done here – it is no longer just a planet, it is a scar in the warp.’ She straightened up and looked back into the fog, reached for and found the tug on her psychic senses. ‘We keep going.’

It took them another hour to find it. When they did Linisa just stared, and muttered a sequence of swear words in a dozen dialects. It had been buried in a small adamantine box at the base of a toppled obelisk. A faint psychic aura pulsed from within the box. Iobel had hesitated before opening it, but when she did, she almost laughed. She lifted out what she found, and held it up to the faint light. It was an ‘I’ crossed by three horizontal bars moulded in polished adamantine; the symbol of the Inquisition. A brilliant blue carbuncle sat at the symbol’s centre, winking in the weak light like a single, watching eye.

‘What–’ began Linisa.

‘It is an answer, of sorts,’ said Iobel, watching fire kindle at the heart of the blue gem. ‘It says that others have followed the same path I have, and that there are more answers for those who have come this far. If they can find them.’

‘That’s it?’

‘It’s enough,’ said Iobel.

The fog froze. Everything stopped moving. The low sounds of distant rain and thunder cut out.

Iobel lowered the Inquisitorial symbol. She reached for her boltgun.

‘Enough,’ said a low, deep voice which came from Linisa, but did not belong to her.

Linisa paced forwards slowly, her movements feline smooth despite the bulk of her armour. Cold light burned in the eyes of her helm. Iobel had her bolter in her hand, but she already knew that nothing would happen if she pulled the trigger.

Linisa crouched down, and scooped up a handful of grey ash from the ground. Iobel blinked. Something was screaming inside her, the voice which told her to turn back – a voice which sounded like her own.

Linisa let the dust fall from her fingers.

‘The bones of a Legion buried beneath the ashes of all they had built.’

‘Ahriman,’ breathed Iobel.

‘It was enough, wasn’t it, to come here, to touch the first grave of my Legion? In this moment you knew that everything you had discovered of us was true.’ Ahriman pointed at the Inquisitorial symbol still clutched in Iobel’s hand. ‘And that bauble was enough to lead you further, and to continue your hunt for the
truth
.’ Ahriman stood, the form of Linisa blurring as it moved, spiralling into a rising cyclone of dust. ‘And here and now, it is enough for me to do the same.’

Iobel was shaking where she stood. The fog and ground were gone. She stood in emptiness. The shape of Linisa had vanished. Two cold points of lights shone in the spinning cloud of dust before her. She felt her will try to hold her where she was.

‘No!’ she managed to shout, before the storm of dust enveloped her.

‘Why am I here?’

Astraeos watched as the man with the thin face stepped closer.

‘You are here because you are a traitor,’ said the man in a flat voice. ‘You are here because your master deserted you. You are here to give us everything you know.’

‘A traitor… I am no traitor.’

The man shook his head. Behind him the crone and the glass-eyed man exchanged glances.

‘I am sorry, perhaps you believe that now. Perhaps you believed it before, but what you believe does not alter the truth. You have broken oaths, you have embraced powers that wish only mankind’s slavery, and you have drawn arms against those who fight to preserve humanity. You are a servant of ruin, Astraeos.’

‘I…’ The word caught in Astraeos’s throat. ‘…cannot remember.’

‘No, your mind was damaged. Though if you can remember, you will.’

Astraeos did not reply. His head was rolling with fog. Who was he? He recognised the name that the man had given him, but was that really his name? Other images and half recollections drifted close to his awareness, then dissolved back into vapour. Memories were there. He could sense them waiting just beyond his perception, like the buildings of a broken city looming out of the fog. He wanted to know who he was, and why he was here, bound to a metal slab. He had been here for some time, but he was not sure how long. He remembered that there had been questions before, that there had been pain, but he could not remember the details or how long that cycle of pain and questions had lasted. There was just a dull aching feeling that he had been asked these questions before, and asked the same questions in return.

The thin-faced man had not moved; Astraeos had the impression that he was waiting.

‘What is your name?’ said Astraeos.

‘My name is not the question at hand,’ said the man, and glanced behind him towards the crone and the crystal-eyed man. ‘I am an inquisitor. Think of me as that if you must.’

‘Inquisitor,’ said Astraeos carefully. Somewhere in the fog of his memory something moved and creaked. The word meant something to him, something more than its obvious meaning. ‘You call me a traitor, and think that I will tell you whatever you ask?’

‘Do you believe that you are a traitor?’

‘No,’ said Astraeos without a pause.

‘Then you have your answer.’

‘I cannot remember who I am, or why I might be here.’ Astraeos gave a tired laugh. ‘What do you wish to know?’

‘Everything,’ said the inquisitor. He ran his hand over his forehead, and let out a carefully controlled breath. ‘Let’s begin with what you can remember – your name is Astraeos.’

‘No,’ said Astraeos. In his mind he felt a pocket of recollection open before him. It felt good to speak, as though by talking his memory became clear. ‘It
is
my name, but it was not my first name.’ He stopped, licked his dry lips. Images and sensations filled him. He could see faces, and smell a swirl of scent that had not been real to him for a long time, but was real for him now, more real than the face of the inquisitor, or the ache in his head. He began to speak, and his voice seemed to be coming from someone and somewhere else.

‘When I was born they called me Mellik. There was a lot of smoke when I was small, and the sky was always the colour of copper. I remember towers going up to the clouds. They were covered with lights, and bled fire. I think I had sisters. I don’t remember what home was called, or what anyone else was called. I just remember that I was called Mellik. I can still hear someone calling that name. I used to hide, find a corner on the roofs, or crawl into passages, and just wait for it to be quiet. I didn’t like people, and they didn’t like me either. I was different, everyone knew it, even though I never told them. I could hear them, though. I could feel their fear and hate touch my skin when they looked at me.’

He paused. Around him the fragments of memory turned, showing him glimpses of faces, of voices. He watched them, knowing they had all meant something to him, but unable to grasp what.

‘Most of your kind cannot remember such things,’ said the inquisitor. The images of the past dimmed.

‘My kind?’ asked Astraeos. The inquisitor nodded.

‘A psyker of the Adeptus Astartes.’

‘Is that what I am?’

The inquisitor raised an eyebrow.