War Without End Read online

  Kell blinked back tears. ‘What… What do you want from me?’

  Horus studied him. ‘Tell me what you want.’

  Before, Kell might have said that he wanted an end to the pain, to the terrifying questions he asked of his own sanity, his fractured memories. But he knew that there would be no solution to that. He was broken beyond mending. There was only one place for him to find peace now.

  ‘I want to have clarity again.’ He looked at the pistol in Horus’s hand, small and childlike by scale. ‘To be the weapon. Machine cold and focused.’ Saying the words was an act of both liberation and of betrayal.

  ‘I will grant that,’ Horus told him. He looked down at the Exitus pistol he had taken from Kell. ‘You don’t need this. I will see you are awarded something better.’ With a flick of his wrist he tossed the spent gun away, then gestured to Kell. ‘Give me your hand, murderer.’

  Kell presented his ripped palm and the Warmaster took it. The long icy talon came down and cut a shape in agony across his scarred flesh. Darkness bloomed there, inky and smoking. Slowly, painfully, Horus drew the same arcane octed design that Kell had glimpsed on the walls of the Vengeful Spirit. He felt the mark sinking into him, resonating out and repeating all through his bone and meat, replicating like a virus. The Assassin was being changed by the act in ways beyond his understanding.

  The searing, soul-rending pain brought him almost to the edge of heart-cease, but then it mercifully ebbed away and Kell was breathing hard, chilly and rough-edged gasps coming thick and fast.

  ‘Now then,’ said Horus, releasing him and stepping back. ‘We shall see what the weapon can do.’

  When Kell looked back down at his hand there was a gun in it, something alien and menacing, something unhallowed.

  A pistol, made of glass and blood and hatred.

  If you are ever in doubt, look to your weapon and see the words inscribed upon it. Know them and know you are certain. This singular truth will never alter.

  The outcome justifies the deed.

  Every day he would wake and think he was on Prospero again.

  His chamber’s chime would sound at the start of each diurnal cycle, dragging him from sleep. For a moment then, lying in the dark, he would taste the crystal dust. He would look up, expecting to see the scud of charcoal clouds and the capillaries of lightning.

  Then the chamber’s lumens would glow into life and he would see the painted walls, the weapon racks, the empty incense burners.

  He never used those burners, even though menials provided him with fresh vials of oil at regular intervals. He wouldn’t have known how to do so properly.

  The Swordstorm was the flagship of another Legion. Everything about it – its smells, sounds, the tang of its air and its myriad customs – was unfamiliar. He’d never been on a White Scars vessel before. He knew of no one who had.

  His hosts had been solicitous. They seemed to know more of his Legion’s peculiarities than he did of theirs, which was a minor irritant.

  He learned quickly, though. He studied them as closely as they studied him. When it didn’t feel invasive, or if he thought it would go unnoticed, he employed his cult discipline’s arts, gently prying open the paths of the past and the future. That helped him. He understood more.

  Using those same arts on Prospero had been dangerous in the last days. The ghosts that remained there had been drawn to him, so he had learned to associate the exercise of gifts with peril. It was hard to let go of that association, especially when the dreams were still so vivid.

  But as time passed, as the Swordstorm ran through the deep void and put more distance between him and the world of waking dreams, it became easier. Yesugei helped him. The Stormseer was a sympathetic guide. It came back, bit by bit, and with it the sense of pleasure in command.

  He was returning to himself. Revuel Arvida, of the Fourth Fellowship, Corvidae, was remembering what he had been, and giving thought to what he might become.

  At times, in his mind, he still trod the vitreous rubble of Tizca, searching for something – anything – amid the slumped heaps of ashes.

  In the real world, though, he had escaped.

  ‘Did you know Ahriman?’ asked Yesugei.

  Arvida shook his head. ‘We spoke, a few times.’

  ‘He was respected? I assume so.’

  Arvida found the questions uncomfortable. The XV Legion was not one of the largest, but there had still been tens of thousands of warriors in the ranks. Yesugei seemed to expect him to know everything about every fellowship.

  ‘He had the primarch’s ear. Few others did.’

  Yesugei sat facing him, dressed in white Stormseer’s robes. Candles were set about them in the modest chamber, and they burned brightly, illuminating long paper strips daubed with calligraphy.

  Arvida could sense the quiet power cloistered within the warrior opposite him. It was not at all the same as his, but it was still potent. Warp gifts were like accents – the language was the same, but the treatment varied. Arvida guessed that Yesugei didn’t have the full range of command available to a Magister Templi, but there was no shame in that. The capabilities of the Stormseers felt somehow… shackled, as though self-imposed bonds had been placed around the action of drawing from the Great Ocean.

  Strange, to limit oneself. Then again, in the light of events, perhaps just prudent.

  ‘I liked him,’ said Yesugei. ‘Had hoped that–’

  ‘That he’d been down there, rather than me?’

  Yesugei returned a smile. Arvida could appreciate the benign temper of the V Legion. Yesugei, for all his evident deadliness, wore the mantle lightly.

  ‘Am glad one of you survived. That is gift.’

  Again, Arvida felt a twinge of discomfort. What did Yesugei want from him? What did he expect now?

  ‘We have been divided,’ said the Stormseer. ‘Like all Legions. We purge spoiled blood from our ranks. We need new start. The Khan presides. We will be purified before we fight again.’

  ‘So I hear.’

  Activity had been frenetic on the Swordstorm ever since leaving Prospero. Tribunals had been arranged. The word was that those who recanted their support for Horus would be offered some sort of absolution – the chance to serve on forward missions, taking the war directly to enemy-held targets.

  They were near-suicidal strikes, many of them. Arvida guessed that was the point.

  ‘It occurs to me, when I think on this,’ said Yesugei. ‘Your Legion gone. You are all remains. We are wounded. If you wish to serve, you could. We take you.’

  ‘I am XV Legion,’ said Arvida. ‘I took vows.’

  Yesugei nodded. ‘Understand. Do not wish to coerce you. But consider it – you are welcome here. Once, brotherhoods served with fellowships. Not so strange, doing again.’

  Arvida looked away, and his gaze ran to the calligraphy strips. He could appreciate the artistry in the soot-ink swirls. No doubt Yesugei had made the devices himself, and no doubt they had some hidden meaning. Perhaps, if he concentrated, he could unearth it. There was a time when such a task would have been trivial. Now, still weak from his ordeal, he knew that it would not be so easy.

  ‘I knew I would not die on Prospero,’ he said, ‘but I had no visions of where fate would take me. I still feel blind. You know of Corvidae-sight? It is hard to lose.’

  ‘Will come back.’

  ‘Maybe. Until then, do not ask me to make choices.’

  ‘Of course. Work to do. But think on it, yes? We can speak again.’

  ‘We will.’ Arvida found himself wanting to change the subject. ‘So what of those coming before the tribunals? Will they all be pardoned?’

  ‘Is for the Khan to decide. He will rule. Some knew more than others. Hasik… I do not know. It is painful.’

  Arvida could still sense the lingering bewilderment among the Khan’s w
arriors. They had prided themselves, as so many of them had told him, on harmony. It was bad enough to contemplate bringing bloodshed to other Legions. It was almost unconscionable that it should take place within the ordu.

  ‘What if they don’t recant?’ Arvida asked.

  ‘Some will not. They made tsusan garag. Blood oath. It binds them.’

  ‘They didn’t know what they were swearing.’

  Yesugei gave him a wry look, as if to say you know what the warp thinks of pity.

  ‘Does not matter. Is done. They will be offered chance, but will not take it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The Khan will release them. That is all.’

  Release them. The phrase was unusually euphemistic.

  ‘Seems a waste,’ said Arvida.

  ‘We bring these customs up into void,’ said Yesugei. ‘We carry weapons of Unity and wear badges of Imperium, but the plains are still in our soul.’ He was thoughtful. ‘I think it will get worse. We will remember old savagery. There is bitterness running in brotherhoods, now.’

  He looked back up at Arvida.

  ‘You could help us,’ Yesugei said. ‘I see Ahriman’s gifts in you.’

  There it was again. The Stormseer was certainly insistent.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Arvida, but didn’t meet his eyes.

  In his dreams, he went back.

  Lucid dreaming, they used to call it – being aware of the deception. But that was only half of the truth. Part of him knew he remained unconscious on the Swordstorm. Another part stalked the ruins unwittingly, still searching.

  He’d tried to leave Tizca in the early days, thinking – correctly – that the city’s warp-burned shells would harbour abominations. For a few days he’d taken a hard path, out and up into the highlands in search of cleaner air.

  Somehow, it was worse up there. The skeletal stumps of firs stood like sentinels across barren hillsides, barring a starless sky. From the heights, he could see the devastation in panorama, and there was no escape from the vastness of it. Tizca’s lightless sprawl ran away to the northern horizon: an immense black scar on the face of annihilation.

  The air remained foul, even when the gales shook the brittle tree carcasses. He tasted toxins through his vox-grille, and knew that they would overwhelm his system sooner or later. He exhausted himself walking, and that alarmed him: he should not have been exhausted by anything, not with a physiology like his.

  At times, Arvida cursed Kalliston for bringing him back. He howled out his grief. He started to hunt, to chase down any sign of enemies. When he loped back into the city, hugging the shadows and searching out targets, all he met were empty echoes. He began to doubt everything that had happened since making planetfall.

  The ghosts came soon after that. Kalliston was the first of them, whispering in the carbon-dark. Arvida saw him several times – standing atop isolated towers, silhouetted against the night. At first he tried to reach him. He only gave up after the fourth attempt, when he scaled the flanks of a burned-out cupola to find nothing but thick dust at the top. No bootmarks disturbed the layer of glistening ash.

  Other ghosts were less benign. The spirits of slain Wolves still slipped through the dark, snarling in broken, breathy hatred. Forgotten Prosperine creatures, their bodies etiolated into glassy sacs of aether-spume, rose from the unquiet earth and hunted him. He learned how to drive them off, but every exercise of power drained him a little further.

  He began to starve. Waking and sleeping merged. He found no flesh-and-blood enemies, just spectres and emanations.

  It was then, in order to stay sane, that he started to look for the relic. He didn’t know what it would be, but anything would do. It would have to be solid, a part of the old light-filled world. Not a weapon, but a fragment of something loftier. The libraries and the repositories were all torched, though he guessed that even the Wolves must have left something.

  For a long time, all he found was more dust. He drew closer to the centre, where the broken-backed mass of Photep’s Pyramid still reared, sensing a flicker of energy amid the broken flags. Some of the observatories still retained their copper domes, albeit scorched black.

  He broke into them all, kicking aside barriers that would once have barred entrance save to the elect of the cults. He waded through wind-scoured dunes of rubble and pushed his gauntlets deep into backed-up detritus. His fingers scrabbled, searching out something, scraping through the sedimentary layers of misery.

  It was just as his gauntlets finally grazed against something hard-edged, buried deep, that he lurched awake.

  Arvida opened his eyes and saw the lumens of his private chamber flare into life. He saw the weapon racks and the incense burners. A soft light pulsed by his bunk – Yesugei had summoned him again.

  He pushed himself up, shedding the spun-wool blanket in a rumpled heap. His primary heart was beating hard.

  He raised his right hand, the one that had brushed up against the edge in his dreams. He turned it in the light – the flesh was pale, blotched with red spots. As he looked at it, he felt the itch again, like insects crawling under the skin.

  He clenched his fist and the irritation eased a little. He got up, rolling his shoulders and flexing his arms.

  ‘Ready?’ asked Yesugei over the comm.

  Arvida looked at himself in the mirror over his wash-stand. Was it fatigue that gave him red lines under his eyes? Or was it really spreading that fast?

  ‘Ready,’ he confirmed, pulling on his robes and heading to the armoury.

  He wore his armour for the drills. Several times, V Legion artificers had offered to take his crimson battleplate down to the forges. It was in bad shape and they were keen to treat him as an honoured guest.

  He had always refused. His armour was what had kept him alive, so he tended to it himself. The most help he accepted was the loan of tools and menial attendants; everything else, from the core maintenance to the gradual removal of ground-in filth, he did alone.

  He held a short-bladed sword in his right hand but was otherwise unarmed. Yesugei stood before him with a similar weapon. He, too, wore full armour. The chamber around them was white-walled and capacious, with a floor of polished rockcrete and multifaceted lumens suspended from a mirrored ceiling.

  This was the third time that he and Yesugei had sparred together. The White Scar had won the previous bouts easily but the gap had been closing. Arvida swung his blade lazily through the air, swiping around himself in a loose figure of eight.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asked Yesugei, remaining perfectly still.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I could send you to spar with any warrior of Fifth Legion.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why I choose to best you myself?’

  Arvida smiled. The gentle goads were all part of the process – to rouse him, to get his blood flowing again. ‘You wish to observe.’

  Yesugei raised his sword – a curved blade with a single cutting edge, inscribed along its length with Khorchin runes. Neither weapon was powered, but they were still deadly enough at close range.

  ‘Then we begin,’ said Yesugei, moving into guard.

  Arvida let his body relax. This was not a true test of his physical recovery – that was complete. Nor, despite the props, was it a test of weapon skill. He knew what it was and why the Stormseer went to such lengths. It was touching, in a strange way.

  Yesugei came at him fast and low, leading with a sharp jab to the chest. Arvida responded, noting the false slowness of the move and adjusting for the parry. The two blades locked, screeching briefly as the edges ran down one another, before breaking away.

  Then it was all about movement. Yesugei, despite his greater bulk, was swift and skilful. There were no poor swordsmen in the White Scars, and he employed his gifts with imagination. As so often before, Arvida was push
ed back, retreating across the empty chamber in a blaze of sparks.

  The pace picked up. Arvida worked his straight blade two-handed, spinning it before him in a glittering defensive figure. He missed nothing. Every blow was met with a counter, and his defence stayed solid.

  But that was not what Yesugei was testing.

  The Stormseer maintained the pressure, altering the angle and pace of his strikes. He probed relentlessly, aiming for Arvida’s weak points. One of those was his right pauldron, damaged on Prospero so that it fitted poorly with his upper cannon. A stab there, thrust with perfect precision, would bite deep, and they both knew it. So the duel had a centre of gravity to it, a fulcrum around which they both worked.

  In the end, it was an error that made the difference. Arvida was driven further back by a sequence of rapid cross-wise slashes and found himself running out of space as he approached the wall. He pushed back, trying to rotate the angle of the combat and break out into fresh ground. His left boot slipped, just by a fraction of a centimetre, but it was the kind of minuscule flaw that settled such duels.

  Instinctively, Arvida knew that his damaged pauldron was exposed. His mind, working in milliseconds, perceived the danger and he tensed to block the inevitable attack.

  But then he saw it, for the first time in months. Yesugei’s body-outline ghosted into fragments, and a faint impression of a sword-arm flickered out in the other direction, away from the pauldron to stab out at his twisting torso.

  That was it, the merest blink of time’s eye, but it was enough – the future, perceived at the heart of the duel’s whirl and sway.

  So Arvida did not move to protect his exposed pauldron, but sent his blade jabbing up the centre towards Yesugei’s breastplate. The Stormseer’s arm duly moved to where the ghostly image had been, allowing Arvida’s sword to slip past. The straight blade bit deep, carving into a gold dragon’s-head decoration just below Yesugei’s gorget.