Vulkan Lord of Drakes Page 4

  ‘It has been too long,’ Vulkan said. ‘I have been consumed with my labours. I am changed since last we spoke. Nocturne has changed also. Greatly.’ He looked towards the horizon, thinking of the glow of the void shields around Themis. ‘Do you recognise our world? Do you approve? I would like to think so. Our people are safer than they have ever been. They are protected by shields of a kind we would never have imagined before the coming of the Outlander. You might think them almost sorcerous. They are not. They are a work of craft, and so they can be improved upon. I have done so. So yes, our people are safe.’

  Fire passed over him again. The plain shook. Vulkan drank in the strength, the violence and the raw geologic life of Nocturne. The stirring of the deep drakes sent vibrations up from the depths of the world. They ran through Vulkan’s armour and along his spine.

  ‘We have changed the face of Nocturne,’ Vulkan said. ‘We have pushed what is natural back from the cities. We have pushed back its beauty, as we must when that beauty is too lethal.’

  He paused. He reached out and placed his palm against the obelisk, against the deep engravings of a hammer and drake flanking a huge forge. ‘I am sorry I was gone so long.’ Too long for N’bel, Vulkan thought sadly, who had died before his return. ‘I saw much. I learned much. I will be going away again soon, I think, and I will be taking my sons with me. Safeguarding the people on Nocturne is not enough. The dangers that encompass humanity in the galaxy threaten our home as surely as they do every other world. And the Great Crusade needs us. The Emperor needs us. His dream cannot only be based on conquest.’ He thought about Ranknar, and how close the war to bring that world into compliance had come to becoming a war of extermination. ‘There must be protection too. There must be sanctuary. Or there is nothing upon which to build.’

  Vulkan circled the monument, his pace steady, untroubled by the tremors rippling through the plain. ‘I have missed you, father,’ he said. ‘In the years since my return, not a day has passed that I did not wish you could be part of the great work here. I wish you could see Nocturne’s Legion.’ He pressed his lips together in a tight smile. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘can you tell me when we march?’

  Golden light glinted in the corner of his right eye. Vulkan whirled and saw a huge figure walked towards him through fire and ash. Though it was night, the figure’s armour shone like the sun. It was the Outlander. A psychic wind blew His red cape and His long, dark hair. The handsome face was as pale as it had been when Vulkan had first beheld it, before he had known the apparition’s true identity.

  The vision was translucent. Vulkan saw through the Outlander to the slopes of Deathfire. Even so, the figure’s majesty was barely diminished by the absence of His physical presence. Vulkan felt as he always did when he gazed upon the Emperor. He was ­humbled and inspired in equal measure by the greatness before him.

  ‘Look to the Taras System, my son,’ the Emperor said. ‘Look to Antaeum.’

  ‘What will I find there?’

  ‘Your other sons. For more than a year, they have been fighting the orks in the Taras Division. They have need of you now.’

  ‘A year!’ Vulkan exclaimed.

  ‘They have done much,’ said the Emperor. ‘But they have reached the end. Soon, they will be able to do nothing more.’

  ‘Why did you not tell me sooner?’

  ‘They were not ready for you until this moment, and you were not ready for them,’ the Emperor told him. ‘Go to Antaeum. Save the old Legion.’

  ‘I will forge a new one,’ Vulkan promised.

  ‘Forge the true Legion,’ said the Emperor.

  Three

  journey / bait / ending

  Knowledge without wisdom is ashes. Duty without belief is a husk. Protection without care is a cleft anvil.

  – Vulkan, Maxims

  The huge dome was constructed out of layers of adamantium and basalt. It opened with a groan of thunder. The land shook with the steady vibrations of its movement. The four quarters of the dome pulled away from one another. It was as if a mountain were withdrawing into the ground. The glow of the forges within lit up Nocturne’s predawn. In the distance, the lights of Hesiod bore witness as the great device below was slowly lifted to the surface by pneumatic pillars as thick as the legs of a Warlord Titan. A squadron of lifters descended over the forge. They moved into position, then hovered, lowering transport clamps to seize the machine.

  Inside the forge, forward of the now immense open space where the machine was revealed in its entirety, Vulkan stood on the gallery overlooking the tanks. He addressed the assembled ranks of his warriors.

  ‘Legionaries of the Eighteenth,’ he said, ‘you are sons of Nocturne, you are my sons and, through me, you are the sons of the Emperor. Today, you begin your Crusade. Today, we go to find your brothers. We go to fight at their sides. We will go to them, and you will know them to be your brothers, and you will know that the galaxy is your home, and that our great arm is the shield for all of humankind.’

  With a deep howl, the lifters began to raise the machine from the forge.

  ‘Look!’ Vulkan said, pointing to the immense construction as it began to climb into the sky. ‘There is a piece of the history of this Legion. It served your brothers who are now on Antaeum, and you have served it by remaking it stronger. Through it, the union has already begun to be forged. See its power! See what it represents! See in it the beginning of what this Legion will truly be.

  ‘And now let us march!’

  His sons in their thousands roared, pledging their loyalty to him. Then the tank engines rumbled to life, and they began to move up the ramp towards the waiting heavy lifters.

  They had heard Vulkan. He knew they had listened. He did not doubt they accepted what he had said. What he was not sure about was whether they believed his words with the fire he needed. It would have to burn hot to shape them as it must.

  T’kell was waiting for Rhy’tan when he emerged from the reclusiam of the battleship Flamewrought.

  ‘Were you on the bridge when we left Nocturne?’ T’kell asked.

  ‘I was,’ said Rhy’tan. ‘I took leave of our world and did so on your behalf as well, brother.’

  ‘My thanks.’

  Rhy’tan nodded. ‘Accepting our duty does not diminish the pain of departure. Knowing that we are not abandoning Nocturne does not extinguish the impression of doing so.’

  T’kell did not answer. There was no need for him to do so. The instinct to protect the home world was ingrained in the very being of every native of Nocturne. The elevation to Legiones Astartes did not change that. The instinct defined who they were. Rhy’tan understood what Vulkan taught as the new, wider duty of protection. He understood, but did not feel the calling as he knew he should.

  ‘Now that the wait is over, are you less troubled?’ he asked T’kell.

  They began walking in the direction of the amphitheatre that lay in the centre of the troop holds. There, the Igniax could address all the legionaries on the battleship. He had not done so before, but he had been meditating in the reclusiam with this purpose in mind.

  After a pause, T’kell said, ‘I am glad our mission has begun.’ Then he added, ‘I am grateful for the sense of purpose.’ The way he said purpose made it sound as he if were seeking the correct motive power of an engine. T’kell had a tendency to think in terms of straightforward, mechanical cause and effect. He did not handle uncertainty of any kind with grace.

  ‘We have our purpose,’ Rhy’tan said. ‘But…?’

  ‘Am I that transparent?’

  ‘We are that close.’

  ‘Our distant brothers of the Eighteenth…’ said T’kell. He hesitated.

  ‘You wonder what lesson we are truly going to learn,’ Rhy’tan finished for him.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said T’kell. ‘You do as well?’

  ‘All our questions will be answere
d.’ Rhy’tan decided there were some doubts he should only express to the primarch. But he also decided he would not speak in the amphitheatre today. He shared too many of the same questions, and he did not trust his answers.

  ‘Do you think we will arrive at Antaeum in time?’ T’kell asked.

  ‘The Emperor chose this moment to reveal our mission for a reason,’ Rhy’tan said carefully.

  ‘That reason might not be their salvation.’

  Rhy’tan grimaced.

  ‘They’ve taken the bait,’ Numeon cried over the vox. ‘Very obedient, these greenskins.’

  ‘Predictable in their savagery,’ said Vaughn as he moved south from the volcanic cone. ‘Let us give them their reward.’

  The lava plain swarmed with the xenos horde. Orks descended from the attack moon and the hulks in a perpetual drop on the other side of the volcanic chain that bordered the plain to the south. They advanced, a tide with no ebb, towards the Legion’s base.

  The fixed gun emplacements of the fortress opened fire, pounding the distant ranks of the orks. The XVIII’s heavy armour was concentrated at the foot of the volcano. The base was inaccessible to the tanks unless they were airlifted, but they had some mobility in the region that was relatively untouched by the lava flows. They hammered the middle distance, and Vaughn led his legionaries out to meet the orks that made it through both layers of barrage. There were plenty.

  Disciplined cadres of legionaries smashed into the dis­organised swarms of the xenos and hurled them back. They marched over the congealed flows and jagged outcroppings of the plain. Two armies clashed over an ocean of rock frozen in mid-storm. Vaughn fired his combi-bolter in short, controlled bursts, sweeping left and right, blowing apart snarling bodies.

  ‘We advance to the edge of our bombardment,’ he ordered. ‘Then retreat and pull them back through the gauntlet.’ He voxed the base, contacting Tech-Priest Xerexenia.

  ‘Lord commander,’ she said.

  ‘Do we have auspex readings of the volcano?’ He needed to know about any eruption before it happened. With that foreknowledge, he might be able to turn the volcano into the Legion’s greatest artillery piece.

  ‘All sensors deployed, lord commander. The data stream is satisfactory.’

  A massive brute leapt over a lava formation and seized Vaughn. It wielded an axe whose blade was not sharp but could smash a mortal’s limbs like twigs. The greenskin struck the blade against the side of Vaughn’s head. His ears rang, but his helm repelled the blow. Furious, the ork opened jaws that could snap a man in half and bit the helm. Its teeth shattered. Disgusted, Vaughn drove his power sword through the beast’s neck. He thrust the dead monster away and hurled himself at the next greenskin.

  ‘Is this not the war we have deserved?’ he shouted to his troops. He grinned fiercely. ‘This is our battlefield, and they die in it!’

  He looked ahead and saw waves of orks still coming, an infinity of foes. A good war, he thought. If we end, we end well.

  The orks had brought their artillery, but it was too spread out to be effective. Their fire was undisciplined, raining every­where on the plain and at the base. It was more of a threat to the greenskins than it was to the Legion. A shell landed a few metres away from Vaughn. The explosion knocked him into the air, but he landed on his feet. Legionary Orasus was down beside him. Vaughn picked him back up, blasting away the three orks that had jumped on him and were trying to tear off his armour.

  They reformed the squad and moved forwards again.

  ‘There will be songs for this battle,’ Orasus said.

  ‘So there shall be,’ Vaughn answered, his rebreather bringing the smell of spent fyceline through the stink of sulphur. Can there be a song without a singer? he wondered. No, but there was music now: the deep, throbbing pulse of the Legion’s guns; the counter­point of the endless, rippling boom of explosions; the choir of greenskin voices raised in pain and distress as they were blown up and shot by the score, by the hundreds, soon by the thousands; and another rhythm, that of marching and killing, boots against rock, shells against flesh.

  A war with no retreat. There was glory in that. Have we been looking for this? came the thought. For all our history, is this the war we have been seeking?

  Vaughn forced his thoughts back to the present, to waging the war for as long as possible. He voxed Resalt for her status.

  ‘We are holding on, lord commander,’ she said. ‘The greenskins are focused on landing their troops.’

  ‘Harry their fleet to the extent that you can,’ said Vaughn.

  ‘I will not sacrifice this ship unnecessarily,’ Resalt reassured him, ‘but we will be useful in this war.’

  In this last war, Vaughn heard in her voice. We all know, he thought. All of us.

  There can be joy in this. There can be joy in an ending.

  The amphitheatre was carved from a single, massive slab of basalt. Unbroken, seamless, it was as if Nocturne had shaped it deliberately, a gathering place for its sons, a celebration of its warriors. At first glance, it was a work of dark, monolithic simplicity, an embodi­ment of strength. Closer up, it revealed the craft of the artisan. Each ring of seats was engraved with the monsters of Nocturne, monsters whose reality made them no less beings of myth. Proud drygnirrs and dactylids coiled across the surface of the stone, symbols of the indomitably resilient life of Nocturne, as hard as the world that challenged it. There was beauty in this life. It was precious, though there was nothing fragile about it. The engravings were exquisite and as indestructible as their subjects.

  The amphitheatre was empty but for the Igniax seated midway down its slope. Rhy’tan looked up as Vulkan entered from the top starboard archway. His face was as strong as his doubts. Vulkan read the pain there, and it pained him in turn. Rhy’tan had not found the faith he needed.

  It was not a faith that Vulkan could impose.

  ‘You thought the end of the waiting would be the end of doubts,’ Vulkan said, as he joined Rhy’tan.

  ‘I did,’ Rhy’tan admitted. ‘I was wrong. I apologised once for my doubts, Lord Vulkan.’

  ‘And I told you not to.’

  ‘You did. But I beg forgiveness again, and I must, because I have failed in my duty, and so I have failed you.’ He gestured at the empty space about them. ‘If I spoke in here now, it would be a lie.’

  ‘I would not ask that of you,’ Vulkan said. ‘I never would.’ He sat beside the Igniax. ‘So speak your truth.’

  Rhy’tan sighed. ‘The mission of the Terran Eighteenth,’ he said. ‘It is hopeless without us.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘There is no guarantee that we will arrive in time.’

  ‘Empirically, there is not. But I have faith in my father. He would not send us on a pointless quest.’

  ‘Forgive me, but what if its failure is the point? I do not wish to say that the Eighteenth of Terra is dying for nothing. Its stand is as noble as it is heroic. It is what I would do to preserve my charges in the same situation. But this is the situation they have pursued time and again. I see the pattern, lord primarch, and it is the pattern of extinction. Perhaps extinction is the lesson.’

  ‘It is not,’ said Vulkan. ‘Unless we fail in our duty. The Terran Eighteenth will not vanish because we will save it from extinction. We will preserve it and we will join it, and that will be the lesson.’

  The desire for hope appeared in Rhy’tan’s eyes, though his doubts clearly remained.

  Vulkan clapped him on the shoulder and walked back up the slope of the great amphitheatre. The sound of his boot steps rang hollowly in the emptiness.

  I will fill what is empty, he vowed. On the anvil of this war, I will make a great alloy.

  Vaughn had lost count of the days. After the first ten, they ceased to have meaning. He could check his chronometer, but there was little point. The numbers felt too much like a countdow
n to the end, between the rain of sulphur and the rain of shells. There was virtually no difference between day and night: the lightening of the grey of ash during the former and the brighter glow of the eruptions during the latter were the only markers. There was no pause to the war, no respite. The orks attacked as if this was the climatic moment of the battle.

  Vaughn was in the base, replenishing his ammunition, when Xerexenia contacted him over the vox, asking for an audience in the command centre.

  He made his way there through the medicae. Every surgical table was occupied by a wounded brother. Fimbrus, the Chief Apothecary of the Legion, directed the attempts to save their lives. He nodded briefly to Vaughn and bent back down to the work of amputating the left leg of a still-conscious legionary. Vaughn passed from table to table, softly speaking words of solidarity and thanks to his brothers.

  The gesture felt like a farewell.

  The mood in the command centre was less sombre. Xerexenia existed in a state of perpetual curiosity and interest. Vaughn was convinced the tech-priest would study the process of her own demise with delighted satisfaction.

  ‘Another magma build-up,’ Xerexenia said when Vaughn joined her. ‘To the south and in this peak.’ One of the mechadendrites sprouting from her hunched back gestured at the pict screens.

  ‘So soon after the last surge,’ Vaughn marvelled. He looked at the stream of red in the geologic readings. Antaeum was a planet in permanent agony, seeking to wrench itself apart. An eruption of the cone in the centre of the lava field was imminent, and there was an enormous spike in pressure across the chain of volcanoes to the south. ‘How soon?’ Vaughn asked.

  Xerexenia chattered briefly in binaric, then said, ‘Four hours.’

  ‘That will slow the orks down,’ Vaughn said, seeing an opportunity. ‘They cannot cross the mountains during the eruptions. Their landing site will be cut off from the plain. That will give us the chance to cut down the army between here and the mountain range in the plain. So we will push them hard now. We will advance with the heavy armour and drive them back. When the eruptions come, we will force them into the fire.’ He did not give in to the blandishments of a dream of victory. But they might delay the orks’ progress, gaining themselves and the populations they were defending a bit more time. That would be triumph enough, and then they would fight on, day by day, moment by moment.